I don't do any editing while we're making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.
I don't remember doing more than one take for a film.
When you do a movie, you shoot, and then you go away. A lot of the times you walk about from the movie, you say, 'Oh, I get that scene now... Oh, that whole ending - I wish I could have done another shot.'
Of course, a movie is in constant flux.
I think you get less takes on TV than in movies.
You see one scene shot 25 times in one day, which is totally fascinating, but while you're watching it, you're remembering, 'This is what I was thinking when I was writing that part of the book,' and so it brings it all back very gradually as you're working.
I did a film called 'Patriot Games' with Harrison Ford, and we actually shot three different versions of my death. And they settled on the third.
It's hard when you see a scene where it's raining, and we have the rain machine, and you see it for 5 minutes, but that scene takes all day to shoot, and you do it with rain, and the dry off, and go back and do it again.
When you're working in front of the camera, there are always things that occur to you after the director has said 'Cut.' I could probably, if I sat down and thought about it, come up with instances where I wished I had made this particular choice or that particular choice.
