I realized most of them were “temporary.”
The treatments and stories for the second
half wouldn’t stay the same — but I never
felt anxious about it because this was an
ordinary process for Bong, who creates the
completed version when the time comes.
As I expected, after four months of Bong’s
working on the scenario, in December 2017,
I finally faced the perfect version of Parasite
with awe. I screamed with joy and confi-
dence, that it will do. The next step was just
to make the film as it was written. — T.B.
The biggest challenge was
scheduling. We wanted
Sterling K. Brown to play [the
father figure] Ronald. As we were pulling the
film together, Sterling read it and spoke to
[director] Trey [Edward Shults] and [actor]
Kelvin [Harrison Jr.]. But Sterling was shoot-
ing This Is Us, which was shooting while we
were making Waves. At first glance, it was
a scheduling clash. That would be the end
of that conversation. But we were so keen to
have him. We really thought he was the guy.
It seemed almost 98 percent impossible. We
couldn’t move our shoot that much because
of Lucas Hedges’ play, The Waverly Gallery.
We were literally hours away from moving
on from Sterling, with maybe two weeks
till we started shooting. It was like, “We’re
going to have to find another Ronald.” Then
a producer on This Is Us, a guy called Jeff,
became our angel. What we ended up doing
is, we changed our whole week around, and
our weekend was a Thursday and a Friday.
Sterling would shoot This Is Us Monday
through Friday during the weeks in Los
Angeles. On a Friday night in L.A., he would
red-eye to Miami or Fort Lauderdale, and
we shot weekends. Saturday and Sunday
we would do Sterling’s scenes. And it’s a
particularly intense character he has to play.
Then he would get on a plane back to L.A.
and do This Is Us from Monday to Friday. I’ve
never seen someone put themselves into
such a difficult work situation. — T.B.When we were shoot-
ing all the Tethered
holding hands on the
beach in daylight, it dawned on
me, “How on earth are we going
to not let this become a spoiler,
because there are people every-
where?” I was looking at every
person and bluffs in the distance
and seeing who’s up there, trying
to make sure no one leaked this.
We started telling people that we
were shooting a Verizon commer-
cial. If we sell that, then maybe
they will disperse and not try to
get the pictures. It seemed
impossible not to let that leak,
and somehow it didn’t. — H.L.JIM WILSON
IAN COOPER
WAVES
US
I thought getting a real NBA
player and real NBA games
would be impossible. The script had been
based on an [actual] diamond-dealing Jew
who was obsessed with basketball. It had
gone through a bunch of iterations based
on player availability — meaning that if we
were using the Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire,
we needed to have the games that Howie
was betting on be Knicks games. But then
Amar’e didn’t want to change his hair to be
period-appropriate. We asked a bunch of
players. These guys are public figures and a
lot of them were nervous to be in a serious
movie. It’s a lot easier to get them to say, “I’ll
be in Space Jam.” There is zero reputational
risk. Between the scheduling, and finding
an NBA player that wanted to do it and one
we thought we could get a good performance
out of, it all came down to the last minute.
We lucked out with Kevin Garnett. He felt
right out of Safdie Central Casting. — M.G.SEBASTIAN
BEAR-MCCLARD
UNCUT GEMS