The scene was attempted a second time, up on top of the fort, and cameras didn't even roll. Michael, though he wasn't admitting it, wasn't sure how to shoot the scene.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version.
We were using a hand-held camera to film the scene when Morse collapses. The camera wouldn't start. Three times they said action and it still wouldn't work. To this day, they still don't know what was wrong.
I made a big mistake with him the first day I shot. We're shooting the scene where I come back from the party, the dance, in the sleigh with Julie Christie and we turn the corner and go past the camera and the camera follows us just a little bit and we disappear.
The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong.
For the first two weeks of filming, I remember bristling at some of the occurrences on the set, none of which directly involved me. Then I surrendered to the environment, to Michael's method, and became much happier, even though no one knew what to expect.
As actors, we went where we wanted to, and the camera followed us: it was like having another person in the room. There was no formal structure to the process. It was very liberating.
Within the process of filming, unexpected situations occur.
If you're shooting a really serious, dramatic scene, personally I wouldn't want to look at the camera.
There's just such a premium on hurrying, and the camera is the be all and end all, and the actors had better hurry up and get it right and get it done.
Yes, the marriage proposal was shot. Michael excluded the dialogue from the final edit.