The 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” featured extensive improvisation from Robin Williams, leading to a surplus of film footage.
Director Chris Columbus recalled Williams’ preference for improvisation, resulting in numerous takes and challenges for the script supervisor.
Williams’ improvisation often left the other actors surprised, and the director had to use four cameras to capture the unpredictable moments. (Trending: Joe Biden Impeachment Formalized As Republicans Unite)
“Early on in the process, he went to me: ‘Hey boss, the way I like to work, if you’re up for it, is I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play,”‘ recalled Columbus.
“By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise,” he explained.
“And that’s exactly how we shot every scene. We would have exactly what was scripted, and then Robin would go off and it was something to behold,” shared Columbus.
“Remember, this is the early 1990s, she wasn’t typing what he was saying,” Columbus said about Margaret de Jesus manually recording the sessions.
“She was handwriting it and Robin would change every take,” exclaimed the director.
“So Robin would go to a place where he couldn’t remember much of what he said. We would go to the script supervisor and ask her and sometimes she didn’t even get it all. Often, he would literally give us a completely different take than what we did doing the written takes,” he continued.
He added, “If it were today, we would never end. But back then, we were shooting film so once we were out of film in the camera, we would say to Robin: ‘We’re out of film.’ That happened on several occasions.”
“It got to the point that I had to shoot the entire movie with four cameras to keep up with him. None of us knew what he was going to say when he got going and so I wanted a camera on the other actors to get their reactions,” he explained.
“There are roughly 972 boxes of footage from Doubtfire – footage we used in the movie, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage – in a warehouse somewhere and we would like to hire an editor to go in and look at all of that footage,” revealed the director.
Adding, “We want to show Robin’s process. There is something special and magical about how he went about his work and I think it would be fun to delve into it.”
The movie, based on the novel “Madame Doubtfire,” was a box office hit and remains popular.
Columbus hinted at a potential documentary exploring the extensive footage and Williams’ creative process.
After Williams’ death in 2014, he was posthumously diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.
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