‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Director On Documentary Idea With 2 Million Feet Of Film Used Due To Robin Williams’ Improv & The Sequel That Never Happened
deadline.comRobin Williams was known to be a talent in improvisation and Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus is opening up about working with the late actor.
In a new interview to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the comedy, Columbus said that Williams improvised so much on set “We shot almost 2 million feet of film on that picture.” “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,'” Columbus told Business Insider. “By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise.
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.” Columbus recalled that the script supervisor was not typing what Williams was saying during his improv scenes and “Robin would change every take.
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 added.
Read more on deadline.com