Patrick Stoner: In order for the witty repartee
in ONE FINE DAY to work, the dialogue's pacing has to be much faster than
we're used to hearing, doesn't it?
George Clooney: Yes. In fact, we had to keep speeding it
up. We would do a scene, and then we would look at the tape, and Michelle
would say, "It's got to be faster." And I would agree. So, we would do it
again, and it would still need to be faster when we looked at the tape. We
just kept speeding it up until it felt VERY strange while we were doing it,
but it looked and sounded right when you viewed it. Strange, huh?
Stoner: It IS, but the director, Michael Hoffman, has a
theory about that. Let me run it by both of you: He says that when we're in a
room like this one, just talking, we're getting data from a lot of sources --
out of the sides of our eyes, things heard around the corner -- extraneous
information that we barely notice. BUT, when you FRAME a shot and isolate
attention to, say, two people verbally sparring, you can take in that limited
information much faster because you don't have all of the competing stuff. Not
bad, huh?
Clooney: Not bad at ALL. That must be why it felt so
different when doing it but worked when you viewed it on playback. Of course,
that's the way I like to work anyhow -- just throw the lines away, not try to
fill the space with anything. On E.R. -- whatever I do -- I'm always just
throwing them away because I'm not good enough to fill the spaces with
anything else. That's just what makes ME comfortable.
Michelle Pfeiffer: That's also why everything had to be so
PRECISE. If you're going to speed through the dialogue, everything -- every
movement, every nuance -- must have a purpose. It should LOOK casual but BE
precise. For example, in this film there are split-screen phone calls --
George on one side of the screen, me on the other, talking to each other.
Every move had to be choreographed so it would match what the other was doing.
That's the kind of thing that can drive an actor crazy. You know, "Tilt your
head this way. No, just a little more. Then look up THERE and left THERE." A
lot of meticulous planning went into looking spontaneous.
Stoner: And the echoes of those old movies were
everywhere. Did you have a particular favorite?
Pfeiffer: I just LOVE Katharine Hepburn. I think she's
just about the perfect actress. I would watch her old films on TV -- I never
got to see them in the movies -- and would just marvel at how good she was. Of
course, the parts she played were attractive too -- strong but feminine,
independent but not competitive. She played women who were comfortable with
themselves, and she seemed to attract men who were comfortable with that. I
miss those films, and that's why I wanted to do this one.
