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David, your last two films have been set in the woods. What are some of the challenges of filming that way?

DGG: I love the uncertainty of working with nature, animals, and kids. I like to bring on the elements, I say. Shooting outside there are challenges [with lighting], but those are inconsequential. I love the idea of being out in the woods with my buddies, working hard to make movies and creative opportunities with beautiful backdrops. I look forward to climbing to the top of a mountain and shooting. If anything depresses me, it is finding out that I’m shooting on a soundstage on a constructed set that’s been idealized by all the department heads. I like to think, “We will show up before the sun rises and put everything together in the dark, and as soon as it’s ready with enough light in the sky, we will get shooting until the sun goes down.”

As you said earlier, the script has some improvisation in it and being based off of a book, you can’t fit everything into a film. How often did the “blueprint” you have change throughout the process?

NC: Last night we had a screening and someone asked a question if there was anything in the book, not in the script, that I put back into it, but I didn’t answer it. This morning I told David I didn’t answer it, because my answer was all about Häagen-Dazs and Bruce Lee. And David said, “Now I want to really hear it,” so now here I go (laughs).

So in the book, Larry Brown has this very beautiful described scene where Joe is pulling buckshot out of his shoulder, because he gets shot in it. It’s beautifully described. I said that we should put that scene back into the script, because it wasn’t in it initially. I thought it spoke volumes about the character. Now here we go to Häagen-Dazs and Bruce Lee. My father came home with a carton of Häagen-Dazs. It was the first time it came out. He said, “Everyone says it’s the best ice cream in the world. I bought the vanilla one, because I want you to know, without the complexity of other flavors; if they have achieved the simplest flavor and you can compare it to other ice creams that are also vanilla, so you can truly know if this is the best ice cream in the world.” So we tried the vanilla and I was like, “Wow! That’s the best vanilla I’ve ever had.”

Then my father took me to see Return of the Dragon with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. It was the last fight scene in the movie in the coliseum and Bruce Lee broke Chuck Norris’s arm. Chuck Norris was in extraordinary pain. Pain is something we all have seen and experienced, so you know when someone is faking it or lying about it. So pain, out of all of the emotions to portray, is the vanilla. My father looked at me and said, “You really feel the pain in his performance,” and I took it in that I do. So I said, “Let’s put in the scene where Joe is pulling the buckshot out so I can portray the pain, in such a way that it’s the vanilla, so people know that I’m really feeling it and am very committed to it.” So there’s my Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Larry Brown, Joe, David Gordon Green story.

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