Sergio.L
Chicken Thief
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« #3 : January 12, 2008, 12:40:48 PM » |
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This is an interview from a book called Italian Filmmakers Self Portraits
Gili:
With the passing of the years had the final screenplay become very different from the first adaptation?
Leone:
Yes, it had changed a lot. For example, there were, shall we say, historical things in the 1968 part that were clearly understandable; with the passing of the years, they became less so. We eliminated those. Initially the film was supposed to begin in a completely different way. I had written the first part with an American screenwriter who afterwards made a movie with Frankenheimer; he practically stole that first part by giving it to John Frankenheimer's 99 And 44/100 Dead. The film was released and it was a bad film; there's this sequence in the beginning that I wanted to do, a cemetery along the Hudson River. So, we changed the original screenplay a lot. I first started writing with Medioli and Arcalli, and then Arcalli died and I worked with Benvenuti and De Bernardi. I gave them all the childhood part, a little because I remembered a film that they had written with Franco Rossi, Friends For Life. Ferrini did the last part, that is, he collaborated with us on the writing of the final script, but the treatment was already finished when he joined
Gili:
Did the long period of waiting and the screenplay's long development help the film?
Leone:
I don't know. One thing is absolutely sure: the way it was conceived, the film was more than one film, it was two. Grimaldi, in fact, was hoping it would become two long episodes, a bit like 1900, and this, for better or for worse, was something that remained. Even after the cuts, it was constructed like that. This was so true that I still have an hour more to add for TV, an hour already edited but not dubbed, that would make the film four and a half hours long. Maybe you can tell where it was cut.... nevertheless, the film is rigorously structured. Clearly, the film might be a little bitter to taste, since it is born out of nothingness, that is, out of the limbo of opium. There's this character who appears and who, suddenly, in twenty minutes of the film, goes into oblivion and returns without the public knowing the characters' or story's background. Then little by little there's a long flashback to his childhood, which to me is crucial, since childhood, of course, is the platform for the entire story of this great friendship between two characters. It's a little like Once Upon A Time In The West , a dance of death with a man plunging into oblivion . If the film had a subtitle, it could also be called, " Once Upon A Time A Certain Kind Of Cinema". It's a homage to things that have interested me; we find here a preoccupation with death which, after fifty, comes automatically. I see that I've started reading the obituary columns now, though I never read them before
Gili:
How long did the shooting take?
Leone:
It lasted six or seven months, with a few short breaks and one month devoted to traveling. In fact, Once Upon A Time In America is equal to two films. If you consider that I shot Once Upon A Time In The West in fourteen weeks, automatically I needed thirty for this one
I've never heard of a version in which Noodles is fleeing the city by bus. but the opening sequence at the level crossing would have been great - but too expensive. he wanted to do that scene without cutting! Noodles young and old at the same time - I don't know how Leone would have done it...
I have another question:
In The Hoods the Combination's hired killers are called Mendy, Trigger and Muscels. In the final film they are called Mandy, Trigger and Beefy. But in an early script the three characters are totally different. They are called Sal, Carmine and Pasquale. Does someone know why?
And in The Hoods and in the early script there is a character called Salvy the Snake, a gay gangster. Was Salvy the Snake changed to Chicken Joe in the final movie?
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