Bronson's Loose Again! On the Set with Charles Bronson by Paul Talbot

Author:Paul Talbot [Talbot, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BearManor Media
Published: 2015-11-26T08:00:00+00:00

Bisexual henchman Whitley (Raymond St. Jacques). Kohner says, “[Thompson] was so efficient that he would get twenty, twenty-five set-ups in a day. He started out as an editor. He knew exactly what he wanted. He knew exactly what angles, what shots. Lee knew exactly what shots he needed to put together the film. The whole crew appreciated when the director didn’t make them work over and over getting the same shot from different angles.The crew and the actors know [when] the director is obviously going to direct the film in the editing room. Lee didn’t need to do that at all. He was just a terrific filmmaker. So it all worked just fine, and Charlie mellowed out. [Bronson] had a lot of respect for Lee.”

Bronson once said, “I avoid a director if he takes too long because I get paid the same if it takes ten weeks to make a picture as I do if it takes two years.”

Crowther: “[Thompson] walked on a set very prepared. I don’t know how he did on other movies, where he’d have more time to prepare, but on this one he didn’t work from a storyboard. I sat down with him after shooting every day to go over the next day’s shooting—not the shots, just the continuity. Because he came into it so fast, he had to be reminded what came before, what was going to come after, how things fit together. He had little pieces of paper, and he’d scribble things. He was such fun. I used to call him ‘Lee T.’ because he looked like ‘E.T.’ He looked like this little alien creature, and he had this very funny little English voice. Very prissy. [laughs] He was the total antithesis of Charlie, and they got along famously. They really worked well together.

“Charlie had a contract that said that he worked eight hours— period. He would not go overtime at all. He wanted to be with the family. He was such a professional that you got eight hours’ work out of Charlie. He never had a problem with lines; he always was on his marks; he really knew what he was doing. Almost always on a set when you have a major star, and he has off-screen lines—in other words, it’s somebody else’s close-up—that star will just stand off-camera and just deliver the lines. Or they’re in their trailer, and the continuity person will do the off-screen lines. Charlie always would be there right next to the camera, not only doing his lines but giving a performance. He never cheated a second. That was the coal miner ethos: You were paid for a day’s work; you did a day’s work. Early on, through the writing process [Bronson] didn’t have anything to do with [the script] at all. [During production], he would come back with changes or he would have questions, little things. I had a thing in the script where he said, ‘My name is Smith. Bart Smith,’ and Charlie just guffawed and said, ‘God, this isn’t James Bond.

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