Don Cheadle and director Paul Haggis on the set of Action is a necessity in a James Bond adventure, so part of Haggis's work at this stage is thinking of sequences to top the set pieces in , like the Bahamian construction site chase. "I didn't come up with the chase sequence in the beginning. That was Martin Campbell who came up with that and it was presented to me.
But just the stairwell scene and things like that, I'd come up with, so I've got a couple of those planned." The panel discussion was free of fans digging for intel. There were far more filmmakers hoping for some helpful advice.
For Haggis and Forster, it was a tremendous opportunity to give something back to a world that has allowed them to pursue their passions. "Filmmakers don't tend to spend too much time with one another and talk much with one another," said Forster. "It's fun getting together and doing something like that.
" "I just know what it was like for me when I was trying to break in in my early '20s," said Haggis. "I don't know what people get out of it but there's no way to tell ahead of time. You can say something to someone that'll just change the direction of their work.
You don't even know what you said. Or you can blather on for hours and just be meaningless but I figure I should take the risk because it's important. People who are trying to follow their dreams need all the encouragement they can get.
Anything I can give them, or Marc or anyone else can give them to give a little step up or edge or something to inspire them is our job." Some of the helpful advice the filmmakers shared in their hour-long chat included Haggis' warning against well-wishers. Whether they are advisors urging you to stick to a genre, or test screening focus groups trying to give your film the best ending possible, they are all bad news.
"Don't talk to those people anymore," advised Haggis. "Honest to God, because those guys are really trying to help you and they can help you right into not having a career. The one thing you really have to be afraid of in this town are people who want to help you.
When people want to hurt you, you see them, you know who it is. The ones who want to help you, like in testing, they really want to help you with the movie." Of course, Haggis was a successful television writer/producer before he made his first film.
Forster represented more of the struggling artiste who had to cobble everything together from dust. "Once I finished film school and I moved out here [to Los Angeles], I realized the only way I could actually ever make something happen is writing my own scripts," said Forster. "Nobody's going to offer you anything so I just was writing a lot.
I had this one script which I felt I could shoot on digital video, everything together and do it in like two weeks for $100,000. That was my whole dogma, just make this movie for $100,000. Just let's take a video camera and cast friends in it and shoot it and we did that and then we got into Sundance and that's how everything started.
" That may sound like common sense, but it is surprisingly easy in Hollywood to rely on other people to deliver your dreams to you. "It's so hard in this town because at that stage, people promise you things," Forster shared. "Financing doesn't go through.
If you say, 'I need two million dollars, I need a million dollars to make this movie,' I said, 'Forget you.' That was the first two years. Forster's story prompted moderator Mangold to make the most controversial comments of the whole affair.
He had previously been prompting the conversation between Forster and Haggis, but having made his first film, , the same way Forster made his, Mangold got passionate about do-it-yourself-ers. "The people you keep seeing making movies are the people who don't quit making movies," Mangold began. "The people you keep seeing asking about how they get movies made are people who spend all their time asking.
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