00:00Just me and Jack Nicholson and Scorsese, and we had gone over to Jack's hotel room.
00:06It was my favorite thing that happened on The Departed about a scene that I was not in, but he was.
00:10And the scene said, it was one eighth of a page, and it said,
00:13Costello, which is the name of his character, Costello executes man kneeling in the marshes.
00:18He looked at that, and he goes, okay, I can do that, but I think I can make it better.
00:23I'm not going to add any time, and I'm not going to add to your budget.
00:26But instead of a man kneeling in the marshes, I make it a woman.
00:30And I go, oh, okay.
00:32And he goes, so I'm going to execute a woman, but I'm not going to be alone.
00:35I put Ray in the scene with me, and that's Ray Winston, who plays kind of his right-hand man,
00:39this brilliant, brilliant English actor.
00:41And he goes, so I put Ray in the scene with me, and I do the thing, and I shoot her in the back of the head,
00:46like it says in the script.
00:48But if you leave the camera rolling after she falls, I turn to Ray, and I say,
00:53geez, she felt funny.
00:55Now, that's a really sinister thing to say, because it means I do this a lot,
00:59and there's a way people fall.
01:00Right.
01:01She didn't fall that way.
01:03And I go, oh, yeah, I get it, man.
01:04I get it.
01:05Now, you could end the scene there, but if you leave the camera rolling,
01:09Ray steps forward, and he reveals that he's holding an axe.
01:13He's going to chop her up.
01:15But if you leave the camera rolling, I turn to Ray and say, wait, I think I want her again.
01:21But if you keep the camera rolling, Ray stops and looks at me, and there's a pause.
01:27And I go, ah!
01:28And that's a sinister thing to do, because we're making a joke out of this whole thing.
01:32And I go, yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it.
01:34He goes, now, you could end the scene there.
01:36But if you leave the camera rolling, God.
01:38And he turned around, and he goes, you know, I never would have made it this far in my career
01:45if I wasn't a great writer.
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