Confronting the witness

Story Notes

Ricky Thalgood is a piece of work. A common criminal, unburdened by excessive mental capacity, but rich in bad decisions. As he says, he's not a good guy, but he's not a bad guy.

Leanna is now driven to confront the accused killer of Cage's parents without loosing her cool. This scene represents some phenomenal performances by everyone involved.

Leanna's has to mask her revulsion and fear of this accused murderer, as well as mask her REAL reason for interrogating him, all while seeming professional. Leanna seizes on a small misunderstanding at the begriming of their meeting wherein Ricky assumes she's been assigned to help him.

Leanna quickly bypasses Ricky's childish behavior and gains his trust by tricking Officer Thibedeaux into giving him a cigarette. Ricky keeps up his sillyness until Leanna asks about the night of the murder. Then Ricky's demeanor changes abruptly.

Ricky was a pawn in this incident, not that anyone will ever believe him. He was taken over by the entity and has no clear recollection of anything that happened, until the entity left him, at which point he saw the horrific scene before him, and ran away in terror.

This was Leanna's last test of her reluctant theory. By confronting Ricky, Leanna could either abandon her wild notions for a simpler tragic explanation, or she might get from Ricky another hint about what she's stumbled upon.

She gets much more than a hint. With very little pressure Ricky quickly crumbles and falls apart, paranoid, manic, crying and begging. He comes right out and says that "something evil got into him" and he begs for help as Mitch drags him screaming out the door.

Leanna now has her answer. She's on the right track and she's got to do something about it.

Filmmaker's Notes

I LOVE this scene. It's kind of a sleeper. Some time ago there was a lot of applause for the fantastic mini epic performance that Benicio Del Toro gave in The Pledge. Jeff Boyet's amazingly fluid transitions and pitch perfect emotional tone remind me a lot of that scene. And he did it take after take. It was amazing!

From a technical standpoint this was pretty daunting. This was a real isolation room. No fly-out walls. The scene itself needs to be played fluidly to get the pacing right, so we couldn't break it up too much. The room was extremely small, and had a huge mirror on one side. So we threw blankets on the floor, tossed the camera and boom guys in, and shut the door. We did several takes and it was remarkable how little of the footage was unusable for reflection, focus, framing, or audio reasons. A testament to the professional efforts of our team.

 
 

Interviews

Selected Scene Explorations

  1. Opening Montage
  2. The Intruder
  3. Opposites Attract
  4. The Hospital
  5. The Patients
  6. First Impressons
  7. An Issue of Trust
  8. First Big Clue
  9. A Door is Opened
  10. Confronting the Witness
  11. Testing a theory
  12. Enter Mason
  13. The Conversation
  14. Leanna is Lost
  15. The Entity Forms a Plan
  16. Leanna's Call, Bill's Epiphany
  17. Only one of us can stay
  18. Resolution

Thoughts and Spooky Production Stories:

HInts and Inspirations.