{"id":22112,"date":"2019-05-28T05:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=22112"},"modified":"2019-05-27T11:17:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T15:17:40","slug":"27-things-we-learned-from-brian-helgelands-payback-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=22112","title":{"rendered":"27 Things We Learned from Brian Helgeland’s ‘Payback’ Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rob Hunter <\/b>and Film School Rejects <\/b><\/a>present 27 Things We Learned from Brian Helgeland’s ‘Payback’ Commentary<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/b>But first some background…<\/p>\n

Payback <\/em><\/b>is one of the very rare films that has more than one version available.\u00a0 Brian Helgeland was fired from the film when he refused to make changes ordered by the studio.\u00a0 The studio then ordered additional scenes changing the tone and ending of the film.\u00a0 That version was released to great success both theatrically and on video\/dvd.\u00a0 And thanks to the video\/dvd market, Helgeland was able to have his version released and it was also successful.\u00a0 I have both versions in my collection and like both.<\/p>\n

With all that said, here are my three favorites from Helgeland’s commentary:<\/p>\n

\n

12. He was in post-production on this film the night of the Academy Awards, and having been nominated for his L.A. Confidential<\/em> (1997) script he really hoped he would be named the winner. \u201cI knew that they were getting close to finally removing me off this movie,\u201d and he thought winning the Oscar would mean they couldn\u2019t fire him. He won, Sean Connery tussled his hair backstage while congratulating him, and that was his Sunday night. \u201cAnd on Tuesday I got fired. So much for the magic of an Academy Award.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

13. Walter Matthau handed him his Oscar. Matthau starred in Charley Varrick<\/em> (1973). The restaurant scene at 32:53 was filmed in a place called Varricks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

17. An early teaser strung together the film\u2019s funnier scenes, and both audiences and the studio responded favorably. He protested and was told by the marketing department that \u201cwhat it is is one thing, and selling it is another thing.\u201d The studio clearly wished the movie \u201cwas more like our trailer, and I didn\u2019t know it at first but it became this struggle for what the heart of the movie was about.\u201d Re-shoots began leaning heavily toward the teaser\u2019s tone, and the writing was on the wall.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 27 Things We Learned from Brian Helgeland’s ‘Payback’ Commentary.\u00a0 But first some background…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-movies","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22113,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions\/22113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}