00:00Can I just say one thing? Helen said something earlier today, that this movie was as much about the maintaining of dignity.
00:12It was something that had not occurred to me, and it is alarmingly true. It is exactly what it was about.
00:23We had a beautiful script, absolutely. By Stephen Amadon. Yes, by Stephen Amadon, thank you.
00:34But, or rather, and, as well as the script, there was a certain amount of improvisation,
00:40which I think was essential to create this sense of reality between these two characters.
00:49So, in fact, Donald and I did improvise quite a lot, and Paolo allowed us.
00:54Because I wasn't able to say the word cat, you know. He just let it roll on.
00:57I was so mesmerized watching them.
01:00But, indeed, when, you know, John, Donald, like John, is a very intellectual person.
01:08He's very deep thinking. He's incredibly well read, you know, and he's very, he's intellectual.
01:16And I think from discussions we had before we started shooting, it was, and he was so right,
01:23that it's the loss of memory for a man who remembered, you know, pages of poetry off by heart,
01:32who could quote, you know, Hemingway or Joseph Conrad or, you know, who knew literature so well.
01:40And it's that man losing his memory is the beauty and the poetry and the incredible pain of that.
01:49And the pain of it, more for Ella, my wife, than even for me.
01:55I mean, it's a struggle for John.
01:58But to see it, to have to witness it, to participate in, the pain of having him come back and then disappear in front of their face.
02:09Yes, exactly. Absolutely.
02:11Of course, there's something sort of liberating, probably, as an actor, to be allowed to go anywhere you want.
02:19Do you know what I mean? You know?
02:21And no one looking at you, you're going, well, Donald's gone completely mad. Why is he doing that?
02:26What's really liberating is, is being supposed to go somewhere and forgetting where you're supposed to go and have it be perfectly legitimate.
02:37Because you think it's a character when he's, in fact, a poor bloody actor who can't remember what he's supposed to be doing.
02:45What?
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