Madeleine Stowe Quotes

• "20th had huge doubts about LOTM during the editing and testing process. This went on for months. Audiences were appalled with the violence."
• "As we were leaving the Huron camp, it was awkward filming. I think that the Huron watching us was there to create tension - maybe we wouldn't get out. Nothing complicated."
• "At the moment, my producing partner, Michael DeLuca and I are working on The Unbound Captives. This is a period piece set in mid-nineteenth century Texas. It is a romantic, violent epic based upon a difficult time in history. It is my sole focus, the only thing I want to do."
• "Because of the tension and difficulty, I remember trying to do the silliest things when we weren't rolling cameras, anything to lift the spirits. But once on set, it was important to have full concentration."
• "Daniel and I simply expressed what we felt was appropriate for the scene and Dante Spinotti had an innate sense of where to place the camera. And as I remembered, he used a hand-held to get a sense of raw beauty."
• "Daniel was a wonderful and trustworthy partner. And a fine prankster as well."
• "David kept nagging me, saying that he fully believed in the project. I read it twice more, then finally sat down with Michael to discuss the film."
• "Difficulty also creates its own kind of beauty, I suppose. And while I don't revisit it unless asked, there is this sense of apartness I felt during that period of time from our own world."
• "For the first two weeks of filming, I remember bristling at some of the occurrences on the set, none of which directly involved me. Then I surrendered to the environment, to Michael's method, and became much happier, even though no one knew what to expect."
• "He also didn't like a lock of my hair and said that he couldn't get into the moment without the hair being just right. I quietly knew that he was anxious and that the hairdo wasn't the real issue. But we all let it go and came back to the scene sometime later."
• "He was also very clear that the decision to cast me as Cora was all Michael's."
• "I cannot tell you where my interpretation of Cora began and Michael's ended. I often times felt as if he were in the scenes with us, such was his imprint. So when I said, "I feel like everything I tried to do is there", it is less because of what I did than it is a case of Michael keeping his word."
• "I don't really recall the Uncas and Alice relationship very well as written. Somewhere , I have the memory of making some kind of joke about "A romance for everyone", but it seems to me, that there was to be an attraction that was never acted upon between the two characters."
• "I don't recall who taught me how to fire the flint-lock, I apologize. We had fantastic crew members like Mickey Pew, the propmaster, who could produce anything Michael asked for with a "Mickey Pew, with you, sir"."
• "I genuinely liked all of the cast members very much. Steve had a wicked sense of humor. I remember Russell coming to my rescue, once. I watched Eric evolve before everyone's eyes. Maurice loved what he did, so. He treated his character with respect, down to the costuming."
• "I have this recollection of feeling a kind of shock when I arrived in Asheville. An entire hillside had been deforested in order to build the fort. That gave me a bit of a jolt, and I instantly started jumping to all kinds of conclusions about this huge machine which had started rolling."
• "I know that Michael met with the studio again and drew the line. In any event, Joe Roth was very proud of the film and the studio had a happy ending."
• "I phoned Joe Roth, who was head of the studio at the time, and told him how beautiful the film was, and that I was fully ready to support it, that Michael's work was wonderful and I imagined that Daniel would feel the same. He listened quietly and read between the lines."
• "I remember Eric sitting in the outer office. He was a striking and interesting young man and someone was asking him if it was appropriate to say "Native American" when referring to his people and he said, "No. Indian"."
• "I remember feeling that Michael was extremely sensitive when it came to that moment. Most directors are and they usually rely, at least in my experience, on the actress to take over. And Michael is a gentleman."
• "I remember nearly having a fit of the giggles during the reading because dear Daniel was SO respectful and serious and I was finding the whole situation funny because I was speaking to his profile."
• "I remember that she had these lovely eyelids, lovely eyes, and was still on that border of shedding a kind of gawkiness. She's spectacular on that cliff with Wes. I saw her a year later and she'd completely grown up. The transition was made and she was beguiling."
• "I remember the day vividly and how proud Russell felt to be an actor. Something clicked in him as he gave his last speech, and he was so happy."
• "I thought what an interesting choice Waddington was for Duncan. Such a complete surprise to me. While I didn't know it at the time, Daniel had suggested to Michael that I play Cora before we had ever met."
• "I'm reticent to say much more, but we would like to begin in the coming year. We'd like to shoot through the seasons because of the passage of time. This project is the great love of my life."
• "I've never returned to the locations. I do remember certain days more clearly than others and certain locations with a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps one day, I'll bring my daughter to see them, if she's interested."
• "In the 90's action pictures were all the rage. As a woman, I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece."
• "It was exactly what was released two months later with the exception of a couple of reaction shots which we went back in to get. I liked the movie very much and asked him what the studio's problem was. I felt that he was at a point where they might have worn him down."
• "It was treacherous. I think someone was injured. But I did love being there, we all did."
• "Jodhi was very young, 16, I think. Highly gifted, and at an age where she may have felt a bit isolated. She was also very bright and it was important that one not speak to her as a child."
• "Kellie was newly widowed, had grown up around horses all her life, and could hook up a trailer and drive her rig better than any man. She became my very close friend, and I'm godmother to her first-born."
• "Michael insisted that the accent be less formal and more in keeping with what he called the "rhythms" I had used in my initial reading. Wanting things to be right, I've always been troubled by that decision. Michael responds to things emotionally and his instincts had to be trusted."
• "Michael is a funny character, for whom I have a great deal of affection. He sat across his desk and seemed to be a bit of a blunt fellow. We began talking about the characters and he opened up about his vision."
• "Michael Mann's an extremely thoughtful and sees grand issues both social and political in an interesting way. Quite honestly, I wasn't certain how some of his ideas were applicable to the screenplay, but he was heartfelt and adamant about them."
• "Michael used the preproduction period to study our faces. He'd have me come to rehearsal with my hair up and speak Cora's words. He'd do a semi-circle and just look at me from every angle. I cannot express how rare it is for a director to do this."
• "Michael was right there, asking for specific shots from Dante. Everything fell into place and it was a particularly lovely, unforced moment. You ask if Hawkeye and Cora make love - -The answer is, that none of us ever felt that to be an answerable question."
• "Michael was very specific during rehearsals. When he was pleased, he always had this charming grin."
• "Michael would take us on location and see how the colors worked in the forests and fields."
• "My agent, David Schiff, forced me to read Michael Mann's screenplay. While upon reading it once, I thought it was a nice action picture, I didn't feel any particular affinity for either Cora nor the story."
• "My driver Kellie Frost and I would race these fellows home and they were always faster on the highway. We did the same with Daniel and his driver, and thus began a long series of jokes and competitions to alleviate the impossible hours and tensions this film provoked."
• "On the last day of shooting, we were all so exhausted that no one knew what they were doing. After lunch we had make-up touch-ups, only it was Daniel doing my make-up this time. When the AD's called for us, Daniel replied," I'm going as fast as I can"."
• "One day, during preproduction he called me into his office. I thought that he was displeased with something and asked him, "What is it?" He said, to my surprise "I just wanted to hang out". And that was it. I don't even recall that we had much to say at that point."
• "Part of Michael's uniqueness, I think, comes from the fact that he worked with music. He had a tape which he gave me with many different compositions, really eclectic. These pieces of music were sources of inspiration."
• "Saving Milly was a break from this effort because I felt that it was time to be part of something that could shed light on a disease everyone feels they know, when most know so little."
• "Some of the imagery was inspired by Wyeth's illustrations. The best of which, I think, is the moment when Magua stands before Chingachgook to accept his death blow."
• "Sometimes he'd launch into a discourse, a convoluted discourse about something or other, and I had no idea what he was saying. I'd tease him about it, "What on earth are you talking about?" And he was capable of blushing."
• "Sometimes I'll turn the channel and there's the movie and I can honestly say that those last few minutes always fascinate me. It's one of the rare instances when image, music, and drama work effectively."
• "The best directors I've worked with have always had a strong sense of music and movement. These two things are inseparable. And Michael used them so effectively in LOTM, particularly during the last ten minutes of the film."
• "The emotion, and surrender was what was important to Michael and I believe he used most or all of what we shot."
• "The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong."
• "The location was very difficult to get to. I recall rock-climbing a good deal of the way in that long skirt, and I felt terrible for the crew members who had to haul the heavy equipment. For some reason, they couldn't get there by helicopter."
• "The moment with Hawkeye is all about mutual attraction, expressed without filter from him, and a surrendering of social guardedness from Cora. She accepts his directness as her own."
• "The next day at work, I went straight to Daniel and told him so, saying something to the effect that "It was my fault". We told Michael my opinion (and this was unusual), he thought it over, watched dailies (which we were not allowed to see) and came back and said "You're right"."
• "The reading was simple, and Michael was very specific with his direction (he chose the scene where Hawkeye tells Cora about his background)."
• "The scene was attempted a second time, up on top of the fort, and cameras didn't even roll. Michael, though he wasn't admitting it, wasn't sure how to shoot the scene."
• "The weather was turning cold and I remember that Dante was using nothing but natural light as his electric department was away, prepping the scene in the cave. We stayed on that rock for the whole day."
• "There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version."
• "There came a point in time, with all the difficulty, all the frustration, where I was quite content to be where I was. I suppose one could call it a kind of enchantment, I don't know. The shoot was so difficult on the crew and the extras."
• "There were guys like Chunky Hews in the electrical dept. and Danny Eccleston who would enthrall us with fantastic stories of great English directors and their experiences. They were wild boys grown up."
• "There were long wardrobe fittings where Michael would have us hold bolts of fabric up to our bodies. James Acheson is hugely talented and he had the daunting task of assembling his crew to make these period costumes from scratch."
• "There were mornings in the make-up trailer where I'd have fits of laughter because of the extraordinary daily events of the shoot. Sometimes, it was all too much to believe. But the wildest things happened."
• "There would be no future for her without her right to self-determination. This is how I remember it. She wouldn't surrender her will. But, you need to ask Jodhi. I can only remember the superficial conversations Michael had. I certainly don't know what he told her in private."
• "We were all so different, temperamentally from one another, it's impossible to believe that we were together for so long. The cast and crew. How could we be more different from one another? It's difficult to imagine. But something lovely came of it."
• "Wes was one of the first cast members I remember having a conversation with - such a great face. There were Colm Meany and Pete Posthelwaite - fantastic Brits."
• "When Michael began speaking about the character's inner life, it was clear that his own inner life was strong, as well. I then saw Cora in a completely different light because of Michael's orientation. It became easy to personalize her."
• "With respect to "What are you looking at, Sir?", again I remember Michael staging the scene in rehearsals. I did something, and he was happy."
• "Working on the accent helped, enormously. I will tell you that when I brought Michael a correct "British" accent, one that my dialect coach was happy with, he hated it."
• "Yes, the marriage proposal was shot. Michael excluded the dialogue from the final edit."
• "A lot of people in the movie industry tend to run and hide from it like ostriches. Movie industry people are definitely in denial right now, but you do become desensitized to violence when you see it on the screen so often. Let's face it, violence exists for one reason in movies, and that's to get an effect, create an emotion, sell tickets."