General Patton

I've told Chuck (Cinematographer) my strategy for blocking and rehearsing The Last Hurrah is the "General Patton." Basically, we're going to drive straight to Berlin without stopping. George S. Patton's genius as a World War II general is that he didn't pause to clean out every Nazi battalion between Normandy and Berlin. He skirted past some of them so he could quickly strike Nazi Germany at its heart. Then, other allied armies filled in the gaps Patton skipped along the way.

For The Last Hurrah, we're doing a fast blocking pass all the way through to page 108. Then, we'll fill in the trickier details in subsequent passes. I want every shot in this movie to be well composed and visually interesting. But I don't expect to solve them all sequentially without costing valuable time.

For what it's worth, this is basically my writing process as well. Speed is of the essence. The faster I work, the more confident I am that my intuition is guiding me.