....

The Batman script was fighting him daily and he was fighting it back, which was the correct relationship to have with material that mattered, but it meant that [John Wick] by contrast, felt like breathing.

Everything about the preparation had moved with a speed that Regal had not quite anticipated and had decided not to question.

The casting was straightforward because the film was straightforward in the best sense, it lived and died on one person, and that person was already cast, so the surrounding roles filled in around him without the usual friction.

Storyboarding done, and the world’s internal logic established on paper.

The score, one of the things Regal considered non-negotiable on this particular film, where the sound needed to do as much work as the image, was already in the hands of someone who understood what he was asking for.

The cinematography had taken longer to resolve than anything else, which he had expected.

This was a film that would be remembered for what it looked like, not in the showy way, or the kind of visual language that called attention to itself, but the kind that worked on an audience below conscious thought.

He had a clear picture of it: John in cool blues and greens, the colour of someone moving through a world he’s trying to exit.

The people pulling him back toward the criminal life saturated in red, insistent and warm and threatening, and the things representing the life he actually wanted; it is gold.

Just that temperature of light, that promise of warmth, present in the margins of the film before it was taken from him.

He had considered doing it himself for approximately forty-eight hours before acknowledging that he had already committed his directing energy to the second half of a three-hour Batman film and adding this to the same schedule was not a plan, it was a collapse waiting to happen.

He found the right person, someone who understood that colour in a film wasn’t decoration; it was an argument.

....

Most of the crew was new.

This had been deliberate, the experienced LIE technicians; people who knew the rhythm of how his sets worked, he had moved them toward Batman, which wasn’t shooting yet but was close enough to preparation that having the right people in the room mattered.

John Wick got fresh people, selected carefully, genuinely talented, but people for whom this was the largest thing they had stood in the middle of.

Which meant that when Regal and Keanu walked onto set on the first day, between the two of them they represented the full sum of the production’s combined experience.

Keanu took it in quietly for a moment, looking at the crew finding their positions with the careful energy of people trying to appear more settled than they were.

Then he glanced at Regal. "We’re the oldest people here by at least a decade."

"Professionally speaking."

"I meant literally."

"Azari in lighting is twenty-eight." Regal said. "You’re not that much older."

"I am old enough that I remember when we were the ones moving around a set pretending we knew what we were doing." He looked at a young camera operator who was checking his equipment for what was visibly not the first time that morning. "Except we were worse... At least one of us was."

Obviously, Keanu was referring to their debut film [Following].

"But in the end it made a good film."

"Yep..." Keanu said, with the mild emphasis of someone correcting something important.

Regal looked at the set and the new crew... He could feel the nervousness running underneath the professionalism like a current.

"These ones are coming in better prepared than we ever were; in terms of training, resources and the mistakes they make in the first week won’t be the same ones they make in the second."

"And you’re comfortable with that."

"I am banking on it, actually. People who’ve never made mistakes on a set at this level are still carrying the mistakes they haven’t made yet. I would rather have them make the mistakes now in front of me than later when we can’t absorb them."

Keanu was quiet for a moment, then said: "That’s a very generous way of looking at it."

"It’s also a practical way of looking at it. Both things can be true."

....

They were setting up for the first shot when Regal noticed the situation developing in the corner near the dog handler’s station.

He stopped walking.

Three crew members - he had seen them earlier, the lighting assistant Azari and two others whose names he hadn’t caught yet, had constructed what could only be described as a formal instructional arrangement.

One of them, the taller of the two men, was on all fours on the floor with the committed expression of someone who had fully accepted the terms of the situation.

The second man was crouched beside him performing a demonstration that involved a face-approaching motion.

The third, Azari, holding her clipboard in one hand, had the actual puppy elevated at face height with the person on the floor, moving it gently forward as if introducing two parties who needed time to understand each other.

All three were completely serious about this.

Regal and Keanu stood and watched it for a moment.

Keanu said: "I have a question."

"I can see what you’re looking at and I don’t have an answer yet." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"My question is specifically whether they think the dog is learning from watching a human demonstrate the action, or whether the proximity is meant to create some kind of rapport between the dog and–" he gestured at the man on all fours. "That person, who is presumably standing in for me."

"I think the theory may be that the dog will understand the desired behaviour through observation and peer encouragement... and I believe the theory is also wrong."

"The dog looks like it has opinions about the theory."

They both looked at the puppy, it was watching the demonstration with the specific expression of an animal that has formed a comprehensive view of what it is witnessing and has decided to keep that view to itself.

"Should we–" Keanu started.

"Give it another thirty seconds." Regal said. "I want to see where they take it."

They gave it thirty seconds, and the demonstration evolved in a direction that neither of them had predicted, which involved the third man putting the clipboard down and joining the demonstration in a supporting capacity that was not entirely clear but was fully committed.

Regal called out to them.

....

The response was immediate and total.

All three stopped simultaneously and looked at him with the specific expression of people who had been located doing something that they could not quickly explain and were now calculating whether explanation was even worth attempting.

A negotiation happened between them; silent, efficient, conducted entirely through the language of very slight shoulder movements and eye contact, in which the question of who should walk over first was raised, debated, and resolved in the manner of people who have decided that collective responsibility is safer than individual exposure.

In the end all three of them came over together.

Regal looked at them and Keanu, to his right, said nothing but shifted his weight slightly in the way that meant...

"I know that’s just your neutral face, but they don’t, and right now to a new crew it reads as ’I am considering consequences.’ Dial it back slightly."

Regal just shrugged his shoulders and asked their names.

The man who had been on all fours was Copper and the one who had been demonstrating was Jex.

Azari he already knew from earlier in the morning.

Regal registered all of this without commenting on any of it.

"Good work." he said.

They looked at him.

"Not the part where you tried to teach the puppy how to act." Regal continued. "That part was probably not going to produce the result you were after." He looked at them steadily. "The part where you looked at an instruction that gave you no guidance whatsoever, and instead of doing nothing, you came up with something completely absurd and committed to it fully." He paused. "Keep that."

Regal turned to his AD. "I need bacon grease from catering. Whatever they have."

..and the AD left without asking for questions.

The three of them Azari, Jex and Copper looked at each other with confused faces.

When the grease arrived it was passed on to Keanu who looked at the container, and without asking any of the questions that were available to him, he started applying a small amount to his face, while Regal directed the placement.

"This is the part." Keanu remarked, as Regal adjusted the light reading. "That should make it into interviews."

Regal did give him the expected reaction.

Instead they went to the set, and the puppy encountered the bacon grease and made its decision in under three seconds.

The scene existed, and the camera caught it.

In four minutes, first take, done.

....

The three of them stood near the monitor afterward and watched the replay.

It was the opening of the film - John in the bed in the grey light after the funeral, alone with the specific quality of alone that a house has when someone is gone from it, and then the dog arriving with no understanding of any of it and going directly for his face, and something in his expression in that moment that was not quite grief and not quite relief but sat somewhere between them in a way that only worked because the dog wasn’t performing anything.

Azari was allowed to watch the replay twice.

"He put bacon grease on a movie star’s face." Jex said quietly. "To get a dog to do something that we spent forty minutes trying to choreograph."

"And it took four minutes for us... That’s ten times longer and for a worse outcome." Copper said.

Azari was still watching the monitor. "The thing is... When you watch the scene, none of that is visible. It just looks like a dog being a dog and a man being a man and somehow that’s the saddest thing I have seen on a monitor all week."

They were quiet for a moment.

"Do you think." Copper said. "That this is what it’s like on all his sets? Because I have heard things, but hearing things and then standing here watching the actual process are very different experiences."

"I believe so...." Priya said. "And he has a very clear picture of what he wants and a completely unpredictable method of getting there, and those two things together produce something that makes sense only after it’s already happened."

The puppy was back with the handler.

It looked comfortable and entirely satisfied with its morning’s work, in the manner of an animal that had been given bacon grease and found the world acceptable.

"Honestly." Copper said. "The dog figured it out faster than we did."

Nobody disagreed with this.

....

.

[To be continued...]

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