A segment featuring Chris Columbus was aired on Encore yesterday (the director of the first two Potter films) - he discusses his role in the directing of the film, re-writing the 'Philosopher's Stone' script and producing the films.
The transcript can be read
here courtesy of
Veritaserum.
You can download the files (right click save target as...) from the links below:
Link 1 Link 2 Quote:
I called my agent and I said, "I'd love to Harry Potter." My agent says, "Yeah, so would every other director in town, including Steven Spielberg, who's probably going to do it." So I said, "Okay, I'll forget about it." I started writing another script, actually.
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I remember getting the script in the mail and it was a letter from Warner Brothers saying "you must promise not to duplicate this script, to destroy..." I threw the letter away and I went to the computer and I started rewriting it - no one knew I was doing that.
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I called my agent the next day and I said, "Look, I need you to get me the last meeting. I want all of these other directors to go in first and I want the last meeting." So I spent ten days re-writing the entire script.
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I put the script down and I said, "I've rewritten the script - you know, free of charge, no strings attached, I just wanted you guys to see what I would do with the movie." I think that surprised them. In Hollywood, you know, no one will pick up a pencil without getting paid for it. And they had seen that I had taken these ten days and rewritten it. Whether it was good or bad or any....I think that made an impression on them.
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And as a result I took that script and I gave it to Steve Kloves, the writer, and I said, "Look at these as my notes - you know, take what you want to use and we'll throw out the rest." Since then we've had a great relationship. Steve wrote both Harry Potter films and he's a director himself, but it was my way of saying to the studio, "I'm committed to this."
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I wanted people to feel as if the film could've been made in 1955 or it could've been made in 2001. I wanted people to feel that way - that it had that sense of timelessness about it.
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The first two weeks of that film we spent just telling the kids, I spent telling the kids, to keep their heads up, to keep their eyes open, not to look into a camera as they were doing a scene - just to get through it every day.
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That can be extremely exciting or it can incredibly frustrating. I happen to have a terrific director doing the third film, Alfonso Cuaron, so I'm loving what I'm seeing him do every day with the film. Yet at the same time, I miss directing - I miss being out there with the actors, so I want to get back to it real soon.
Source:
Mugglenet and
Veritaserum.
Columbus discusses PS & re-writing the script 
