FRIEND ARTISTE

Long Live Love or Charming Country Max Ernst, German, 1891–1976 1923

In Monk Magazine, Van Sant commented that "the campfire scene was the last thing we shot in America before we went to Europe.

About three nights before we shot the scene, he showed me a lot of stuff he had written, and it was like sixteen pages of handwritten notes with arrows and things leading to other pages and circles around words. It was a big mess. He said he was rewriting the scene and wanted to know if he could do this.

I was scared. It looked like he was freaking out. It was out of control... Sometimes actors just want you to say "No!", I didn't think he was doing that [but] he was the type of guy that wanted you to say "No." So I asked Keanu if it was all right, if River was like, stepping on his turf, because when one actor starts to write another actors' lines, it can get into this bad scene. Keanu really loved River, and he just said, "Yeah, man. Yeah."

This is the best part in the film", insists Gus, "and was chosen by River to be his big scene. He chose it because his [other] big scene, the one with his brother, had shot early, and he didn't get what he wanted out of it. So, he asked me to save the campfire scene.

He was a prolific songwriter, and he rewrote the scene like a song. Although, besides putting everything he had into the scene, he didn't really change it much. As a matter of fact, one of the ways it was changed was for him to flat-out say that he is in love with Scott."

Nocturnal Spirits - Lewis Hazelwood-Horner

British, b. 1992 -