CHRIS NEUMER: Is there any specific thing you can mention?

GALE ANN HURD: No, there’s something in every scene almost.

CHRIS NEUMER: Really?

GALE ANN HURD: So, it’s very hard, it’s very hard to look at. But that’s what I enjoy about the whole DVD commentary. Is being able to re-live the making of the movie.

CHRIS NEUMER: Being able to say, god dammit! I shouldn’t have done this, we should’ve gone somewhere else.

GALE ANN HURD: Or to say, you know, there’s a reason why we had to do this. And that makes me feel better about it. Because that’s what the DVD commentary is. Talking about why something happened, or what was involved in making it that way, as opposed to just creatively looking at something and thinking, oh God, if only.

CHRIS NEUMER: Is there any one example of anything you can give me that you look at, like a scene or DVD commentary that you’ve done, and you just think, something little, big, something that feel like it’s pricking the back of your ear, like, maybe this isn’t right, maybe we should go back and re-shoot something and edit that in. Are there one or two things that you can think of off the top of your head more than others?

GALE ANN HURD: There are scenes in Terminator. I think Terminator is a really good movie. But there are scenes in Terminator that I can see the compromise. Like there’s a music cue when Terminator is in the tunnel, in downtown LA, and there’s a music cue, and I truly want to run screaming from the theater; that I wish we could’ve redone.

CHRIS NEUMER: What is it about it, is it too early, or is it just because it’s there?

GALE ANN HURD: It’s this electronic, percussive thing, it was early synthesizer, and it sounds like early synthesizer.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’ll bet Michael Mann has a similar reaction every time he sees Manhunter.

GALE ANN HURD: So, you just… yeah. That’s the fingernails on the chalkboard. But there are also things I see and I say God, I would not have changed anything, and that would be the drowning scene in the Abyss.

CHRIS NEUMER: Which?

GALE ANN HURD: When Lindsay, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has to drown.

CHRIS NEUMER: Ok. But she doesn’t actually drown.

GALE ANN HURD: No, she does drown, she’s dead. Completely dead, and Bud has to revive her.

CHRIS NEUMER: Ok, that’s where you threw me off. Ok.

GALE ANN HURD: She was dead. But we studied, we researched, and people do get revived, kids longer than adults. They talk about that in the scene. That’s one of my favorite scenes.

CHRIS NEUMER: The realism of it all or the sense of urgency?

GALE ANN HURD: The emotion of it. Two people who have had trouble, who have problems. Both wanting to die for the other person, and to risk that so the other person can live, knowing that there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to be revived at all. I think that’s what’s great about the human spirit.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’ll have to quote Robert Altman and say, "I have no clue how actors do what they do, it’s just a magic to create that kind of emotion."

GALE ANN HURD: Oh God, yeah. And if you knew how that scene was shot, even more so, because we had to shoot it over the course of three different days, so it wasn’t shot in continuity at all.

CHRIS NEUMER: Wow. Just like end of the day pick-ups?

GALE ANN HURD: Every day. We’d shoot other stuff, and then we’d have to go back and do that, we worked on lowering the submerse fill, and the crane; it just became this whole thing. It completely blows me away every time I see it.

Chris Neumer