REED: Hello, I'm Peyton Reed, director of Ant-Man.
- And I'm here with... - Paul Rudd.
- Hi, Paul. - Hi. How are you, Peyton?
REED: Doing well.
We're talking into Schoeps MK 41 microphones
for you tech-heads out there.
RUDD: That's Why you asked what they were.
REED: Yeah.
Here we are, at the opening scene of Ant-Man.
This is 1989, a flashback, where we see the, uh, Triskelion building from
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, still under construction.
And a much younger Michael Douglas.
This is where we intro Hank Pym.
And the effects work here was done by a company called Lola.
Out of all the effects in the movie,
this was the one that made me the most nervous.
Because it was the opening scene of the movie,
and we were making Michael Douglas 25 years younger than he actually is.
And if it didn't work, It was the first scene in the movie,
and you're in danger of losing some of the audience.
But Lola did amazing work here.
We shot Michael with dots on his face, tracking marks.
Then we shot a much younger double
for Michael Douglas doing the same thing.
And then we also put Michael in a 3D laser scanner to scan his face.
And we gave all those elements to Lola,
and, uh, they came out with amazing work.
We also, of course, have Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in this scene,
probably around age 65.
That's John Slattery as Howard Stark, Tony Stark's father, of course.
And it was fun.
You guys wrote this scene, right? You and Adam wrote this scene, Paul?
RUDD: Yes, yes, based on one that had been written by,
I think it was Callahan, after Edgar and Joe,
bringing it into the Marvel world a little bit more.
And Martin Donovan there.
Of course, you and I both are big Martin Donovan fans from...
REED: A thrill to bring Martin Donovan into the Marvel Universe.
RUDD: ...the Hal Hartley school of filmmaking.
REED: Absolutely.
This was like being able to put Hank Pym,
who in the comics is a big Marvel character,
um, to retroactively insert him
into the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And also set up Mitchell Carson
as someone you're going to see in present day.
Here, of course, the Marvel logo.
So, Paul, let's talk about it.
Um, you're Ant-Man now. How does it feel?
RUDD: It's cool. (LAUGHS)
We're recording this now and it has just been... (STAMMERS)
What, its third week in the theaters, I think?
And, uh, yeah, I'm just starting to kind of decompress.
(MEN EXCLAIMING)
I like this shot, Peyton.
Did you always imagine going overhead with this,
- with this mysterious jail lighting? - REED: (CHUCKLING) I did.
RUDD: I watch a lot of Lockup on, uh, MSNBC late at night,
- and it always looks like this. - REED: Oh, yeah, that's the way it is.
Um, I love the idea of starting present day
with a close-up of Paul Rudd,
uh, with a little scruff on his face, looking rugged.
You don't know what's happening, and he just gets punched out of frame.
How many punches did we do? Eight?
RUDD: I don't remember. REED: I think it was eight.
RUDD: I got punched throughout the whole movie,
so they all start to bleed into one another, so to speak.
REED: We wanted to start the movie seeing Scott Lang in prison,
so you got a sense of, "Oh, here's Paul Rudd,
"but haven't seen Paul Rudd like this, in prison, beat up and rugged."
So we see Scott Lang getting out of prison, uh, in San Quentin.
He's being picked up by, uh, his friend Luis,
who's played by the great Michael Peña.
Scotty!
RUDD: Isn't there a joke here? I remember, on the set, thinking,
"it would be funny if he was holding his iPhone above his head
"and playing the Peter Gabriel song," like Say Anything...
"playing In Your Eyes on a very tinny, small iPhone. "
REED: Yeah, and we shot that
(CHUCKLES) with Peña holding the iPhone up
like Cusack with the boom box.
Uh, unfortunately, that song was quite expensive.
RUDD: (LAUGHING) Imagine that. REED: Yeah.
RUDD: This was the very first scene we shot.
REED: Yes, this was day one with you and Peña in the van.
RUDD: That's right, in San Francisco. REED: Yeah.
RUDD: Uh... And we went through...
People always ask me, how much improvisation, uh, is there in films?
In this, there wasn't a whole bunch
but I feel like we played around a lot with this scene.
We were trying to kind of really figure out what it was.
We added a lot of different things
and then zeroed in on the bare essentials.
REED: Yeah, and it was day one.
Everybody's figuring out their character and their chemistry.
And, also, Peña was driving that van for a time.
I remember being nervous in the back.
RUDD: And very, uh, terrifying, actually,
because that van did not have the best handling in the world,
and that road was on the side of a mountain.
REED: Yeah.
And here you are in Baskin-Robbins.
RUDD: Which was a scene that was originally...
We, Adam McKay and I, were figuring,
"Okay, what's another good introduction
"to see how far the character has fallen?"
And Baskin-Robbins said yes. (CHUCKLES)
REED: Well, it's important to see Scott Lang, that he's gotten out of prison,
and he is actually trying to get a job.
He's really making an effort,
and even in this Baskin-Robbins scenario...
RUDD: I always felt, this idea,
one of the things that I thought was very interesting about Scott Lang,
and was true in the comics, and, uh, is something that...
He needs to be a thief, and he needs to be...
He needs to have had some kind of questionable moral code
so that he has a place to go to, has something to learn.
And, yet, it was always, I felt,
like a very fine line with the powers that be,
just how far he fell on that spectrum.
How much of a Robin Hood character is he?
It's a tricky thing 'cause you don't want to make him saintly.
REED: Right, but you don't want to make him like a heavily armed guy
who's in for armed robbery or something like that.
RUDD: I think that ultimately you don't want to make him violent.
Um, but I always felt like it would be good
if we could tilt into the not-so-saintly category.
- But it's finding that balance. - REED: Yeah.
Gregg Turkington in that scene that you mentioned, of course.
We're big fans of Gregg's from On Cinema at the Cinema
and of course Neil Hamburger.
To me, and I'm sure I'm speaking for you, too,
(CHUCKLES) I was thrilled to have him in the movie.
- And that scene is terrific. - RUDD: Oh, yeah.
I've been a Neil Hamburger fan since the mid-'90s.
I have every Neil Hamburger CD, I think,
including 50 States 50 Laughs.
REED: Okay, nice. Nice.
All right, now we're in the Tenderloin.
Uh, the exteriors were shot in San Francisco in the Tenderloin area.
And, of course, this is a set of Luis' apartment here
that we shot at the Pinewood Studios,
the brand-new Pinewood Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.
We're the first motion picture to shoot at those studios.
RUDD: But was this...
This was a real place in San Francisco, right?
REED: Yeah. RUDD: This apartment was...
- This section was all in San Francisco. - REED: Yeah.
RUDD: First week. REED: Yeah.
Except for this interior which is on a set.
RUDD: Is it? I don't even remember. REED: You don't remember, do you?
RUDD: Who's that?
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING) - REED: That's...
Here is David Dastmalchian playing Kurt,
and of course T.I. playing Dave.
These are members of Scott Lang's crew.
These guys who are all ex-cons and now they're out
and they're just trying to find their way in the world.
And it added up to millions.
REED: I love Peña's character, Luis,
who was always a character in the original scripts,
but I think we expanded his role pretty greatly.
RUDD: Right.
REED: And I love the idea that he's kind of this father figure to these guys.
(LAUGHS) He's making them waffles.
I remember first reading your guys' scene
where he was making waffles...
- RUDD: Mmm. -...and I thought it was funny
but also there's a family dynamic going on between these guys,
which I like.
My cousin talked to this guy two weeks ago about this little perfect job.
No way.
RUDD: He's such a good actor, Michael.
No!
RUDD: You watch this and then you put this up
next to End of Watch or something,
and it's just very impressive that it's the same guy.
REED: Oh, yeah. RUDD: As well as his other films.
REED: He's amazing.
This is San Francisco. (CHUCKLES)
RUDD: When I first met Dave, he was doing that accent,
and I didn't realize at first that he was, um, American.
- I thought that that was legit. - REED: Nice.
RUDD: And then he started talking to me in his real accent,
telling me about the town that I am from in Kansas City,
which is the same town he's from in Kansas City.
And I thought he was messing with me,
and I thought he did a really good American accent.
(CHUCKLING) Uh, he's a talented guy.
REED: He's amazing. He really is amazing.
This is, uh, Pym Technologies
and the introduction of Michael Douglas,
the great Michael Douglas, who plays Hank Pym in our movie.
And, of course, there's Corey Stoll and Evangeline Lilly.
Bang, bang, bang! We meet them all in this first scene here.
Michael Douglas.
To me, that's one of the great things about the Marvel movies,
is it attracts just amazing actors.
The cast that we have in this movie,
yourself included, Mr. Rudd, is amazing.
RUDD: Well, thank you for saying so. REED: Yes. Absolutely.
We're ready for you inside.
Ouch.
REED: This building, Pym Tech, was the...
In Atlanta, it's the, uh, Georgia Records.
It's where they keep all the records.
I liked it a lot because it was this giant monolith with no windows.
It felt like a laboratory and a building that time had left behind.
RUDD: It was also the news station in Anchorman 2.
REED: (CHUCKLES) That's right.
RUDD: It was the second time I shot there.
Yeah, it is a very popular building in Atlanta
that I think has acted as a set for many things.
REED: Right now, of course,
I feel compelled to give a shout-out to Shepherd Frankel,
our production designer.
This is the, uh...
RUDD: Oh, they're all applauding for Shepherd.
REED: Yeah.
- Way to go, Shepherd. - RUDD: They heard your shout-out.
REED: Great job.
So, he designed this entire Pym Tech set,
which we built down in Atlanta at Pinewood,
and it's just a beautiful, beautiful set.
You could just point the camera at any angle and it was beautiful.
And of course, he also was responsible for the miniature version of Pym Tech.
So now we get into the science of the Pym Particle.
Uh, we should talk about Corey Stoll here,
who, uh, is an amazing actor.
I remember the first time I saw him was in Midnight in Paris
playing Ernest Hemingway, which...
Pretty thankless to play Hemingway,
and he was so grounded and real and amazing. I loved it.
RUDD: Yeah, he was incredible in that.
I remember walking out of the movie going,
"God! Who was that guy that played Hemingway?"
REED: Yeah. Unbelievable.
These are very quick clips from the S.H.I.E.L.D. files.
We treated it almost like the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage,
where it's like, "Whoa! Is this real?
"Have we caught something? What is it?"
And these are little extracts from a scene that we shot in the movie
that was originally in the script that we ended up cutting.
But it's great. It feels like real found footage of Ant-Man.
Hank, will you tell our guests what you told me
every single time I asked you...
REED: I should also talk about Russell Carpenter,
our cinematographer.
Academy Award winner for Titanic.
He shot Titanic and True Lies for James Cameron
and many, many other movies.
But it was a thrill to get Russell to do this movie.
And, uh, I think the look of the movie is really... It's just beautifully shot.
This is Shepherd's Futures vault set,
which has amazing lighting built into the set
and has little faint echoes of a Star Wars Death Star vibe, which I like.
Always a good thing.
RUDD: it was always a challenge, I think,
when we were trying to figure out this scene,
if he hasn't perfected the suit yet,
how was he going to put on some kind of demonstration
and not put on the suit and make it visually dynamic
when you know that you just wanna save him for the end,
for the third act, of just seeing him in the suit for the first time.
And somehow
convey that he hasn't quite perfected it yet.
MAN ON VIDEO: It's time to return to a simpler age.
RUDD: Would it make sense?
REED: Yeah, and this is a reel that was done by a company called Trixter,
who really did amazing work.
We'd done some rough boards and ideas for this.
And, uh, they really built something that felt like one of those industrial films,
these industrial military complex things.
(CHUCKLES) And the idea that there's this technology
and it's all the language used about, "We can't get away with the things.
"There's too much surveillance in the world,"
and what if we could create a technology
that gets past that surveillance
(CHUCKLING) so we can do these awful things
and take out people we don't like and remove certain governments...
Yeah, we liked the sense of dread that it gave us,
and it's beautifully animated.
MAN ON VIDEO: The Yellowjacket.
So, it's a suit?
(PEOPLE MURMURING INDISTINCTLY)
REED: Uh-Oh.
Don't be crude, Frank.
RUDD: Yeah, you could just tell right there
that he said the wrong thing.
- That's 'cause Corey sold it. - REED: Yeah.
Corey's amazing 'cause Corey's a very physically imposing guy,
and what you may not know about him
is that he's a pretty big comic book nerd.
Last summer, a year ago, when we were all at Comic-Con,
that's when I discovered that he knows his way around a comic book.
You seem a bit shocked.
Darren, there's a reason that I buried these secrets.
REED: There's nothing quite like Michael Douglas' voice.
It's a tonic.
RUDD: I still have a voice-mail from him
when he called me early on, and I just kept it. (CHUCKLES)
REED: (MIMICS DOUGLAS) "Hey, Paul,
"it's Michael Douglas.
"Why don't you answer your phone anymore?"
RUDD: That was very, very good. It's a very good Michael Douglas.
REED: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Um, Evangeline Lilly, of course,
uh, who we probably all first came to know on Lost.
Um, incredibly talented actress and fantastic as Hope in this movie.
Her arc in this movie, I think, is really terrific.
'Cause it's also her arc as becoming a hero as well.
- It's too dangerous. - We don't have a choice.
REED: I also liked the idea that Hank Pym has this problem, right?
His technology's about to be replicated by his former protege,
and it's about to get out in the world.
So he recruits Scott Lang,
and the real solution to his problem
is right there under his nose the whole time.
It's Hope, and he just can't see it yet,
and part of the arc of their relationship is him coming to understand
that she's got a lot to offer.
I thought that was an interesting thing in the story.
He didn't get an invitation.
But he came anyway!
RUDD: Bobby Cannavale.
REED: There's Bobby Cannavale playing Paxton,
who is now with Scott Lang's ex-wife.
You haven't paid a dime of child support.
REED: And that's Abby Ryder Fortson who plays Cassie Lang,
Scott Lang's daughter. What a cutie.
(CASSIE GIGGLES)
RUDD: Such a sweet kid.
- And really talented. - REED: Yeah.
RUDD: As is Bobby Cannavale.
REED: He's also a sweet kid. RUDD: He's a very sweet kid.
I've known Bobby for years
and this is the first time we've ever worked together,
- which was really cool for me. - REED: I like it.
I love him!
RUDD: You wanna talk about that little bunny there, Peyton?
(REED LAUGHING)
REED: So yeah, the design of this toy that Scott gives his daughter
was very controversial.
Maybe the only time Paul and I had a pretty deep disagreement
about the design of something.
RUDD: Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
I always imagined him giving her something that was like, um...
You don't know the first thing about being a father.
RUDD: Like a Boohbah.
Boohbah is a very weird reference. What are the... (STAMMERS)
(RUDD CHUCKLING)
What are those things, like a Teletubby or something?
Some kind of thing that was not anything,
that just seemed weird and a little off.
REED: Like a cutesy blob... RUDD: Yes!
REED: Like a little Japanese anime influence kind of thing.
RUDD: And that just seemed terrifying.
REED: Yeah, I wanted to go terrifying.
I wanted to do something that was so weird
that the audience would be like,
"Oh, why would a dad give that to his daughter?"
But she responds to it in a great way, and it says something about their bond.
RUDD: Which is exactly what I thought,
but I thought, "Well, this is small and terrifying."
But you were right. It plays. It works.
REED: It works well, I think. As does Judy Greer.
(RUDD LAUGHING)
That's a good segue.
As does Judy Greer, who plays Scott Lang's ex-wife, Maggie.
I love Judy Greer. I've always loved Judy Greer.
RUDD: Who doesn't love Judy Greer? REED: I don't know.
RUDD: I wanna say, maybe this night, Judy Greer made me laugh so hard.
We went to do karaoke.
Bobby and, um, Peña and I, we were all...
We got one of the rooms, like a karaoke room,
and, uh, she was just looking in the book
and said just kind of to herself
but out loud enough that a couple of us heard.
"Guys, what Lou Bega song should I do?"
(REED LAUGHING)
RUDD: That made me laugh for about two weeks.
REED: She's incredibly funny. RUDD: Yeah, she's hilarious.
REED: Speaking of hilarious,
watch what Darren Cross does with his technology, Paul.
This may surprise you...
RUDD: I've seen... I know what he does.
REED: Oh, you've seen this? RUDD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
REED: When did you see it?
RUDD: Uh, at the premiere.
REED: Oh, right, right, right. That's right.
RUDD: There it is. He zaps him. REED: Ugh.
Little glob. And then when it returns here,
that's still actual strawberry jam right there, the smear.
That's practical and real.
There's actually a take, I think,
where Corey, uh, lifts the paper towel to his tongue
and tastes Frank before he flushes him. (LAUGHING)
RUDD: Ugh. REED: Yeah.
That didn't make the movie. That did not end up in the movie.
Oh, yeah, look at that glare.
Thank you.
RUDD: It's always interesting when you see these put together,
and from an actor's standpoint and not the director or editor,
where sometimes scenes fall in.
This was a scene that was written earlier than where it is in the film.
This was almost an introduction.
REED: It was originally, yeah, and also a really long scene
that seemed to have three different scenes included in it.
It was too long and it had to turn these corners.
RUDD: It was written...
We should say that there were other writers on set
that also would do work while we were shooting,
that would sometimes take notes or come up with things,
and they worked on this scene. That's Andrew and Gabe.
REED: Andrew Barrer and Gabe Ferrari,
yeah, who are terrific
and did amazing work all throughout production.
And this was a scene that was really hard to figure out
'cause originally, yeah, it was gonna be
a weird introductory scene to Darren Cross
and also to Hope van Dyne.
But it made more sense in this shorter version
and in this position in the movie.
(RUDD CHUCKLES)
RUDD: I just like his, "My morning meditation... "
It's so subtle that it just makes me laugh.
REED: Oh, now we're back in the Tenderloin.
Remember that night? A guy urinated on the van.
RUDD: I didn't know that. REED: Yep.
Yeah, it's on TMZ. You can check it out.
Ooh.
RUDD: How cool is Tip, by the way.
REED: Tip is the unofficial mayor of Atlanta.
RUDD: Yeah.
REED: Anything you want or need in Atlanta, he knows everybody.
RUDD: He's a real sweet guy, too.
REED: I love him. Yeah, he's fantastic.
Tell me about that tip.
REED: Now we get into, uh, the first tip montage.
RUDD: Different "tip. "
REED: That's right, a different "tip."
- Not T.I. Tip. - RUDD: Not the T.I. montage.
REED: Yeah, this is like a heist tip.
I was at a wine tasting with my cousin Ernesto.
REED: This is something where...
The movie was always created to be a heist movie
when Edgar and Joe first wrote the drafts.
That's Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish.
All the original drafts, it was conceived as a heist movie,
which I thought was really smart and great.
And it was also conceived as a Hank Pym/Scott Lang
mentor/mentee story.
And when we came in and continued to work on the script,
we wanted to increase all the heist movie tropes.
So this was something we added, the idea of...
In those movies it's always like,
"Okay, if I'm in on this heist, I gotta know the tip is solid."
We liked the idea that, uh, Michael Peña's character, Luis,
(CHUCKLES) Would talk about the tip
and then just get distracted by all this unnecessary detail.
RUDD: I think it's really where his character started to...
Oh, okay, this is kind of who he is.
And it was fun 'cause he would change it around a little bit
to see where he'd go with it, and he'd just...
He's just always so excitable.
What?
Old man have safe.
REED: So, we shot Michael telling the story in the set here,
and we did a bunch of different takes,
and immediately that night, went to the cutting room
and went through all the takes and picked the best moments
and did, basically, an audio cut, well, we call it a radio cut,
uh, which we came up with,
and then we used that audio to shoot all the different characters
because they all had to lip-sync.
So when we cast all those characters,
all those actors had to be good actors,
but they also had to be able to lip-sync as well.
And now we get into the heist montage,
which is all the guys getting ready, and it's scored to the Commodores.
I was always a big Commodores fan.
I went to see the Commodores with my older brother in 1977
in Raleigh, North Carolina.
So, this is a Commodores track. An early Commodores track.
So, talking about the music, Chris Beck did the score of the movie.
I love this score.
One of the things that Kevin Feige and I talked about
from the beginning is,
"Wouldn't it be great to have a super recognizable Ant-Man theme?"
The kind of theme that when I was a kid
and saw Superman: The Movie, that John Williams theme,
you just can't get it out of your head.
And Chris knocked it out of the park.
Chris had done my first movie, Bring It On, he had scored,
and I'd wanted to work with him again, and we've both been so busy
and just because of scheduling,
we hadn't been able to work together again until now.
And I'm thrilled to work with him again, and he just knocked it out of the park.
I love it. It's jazz.
It's like a big superhero score, but it's also jazzy and fun
and has all this heist movie vibe to it.
And now, Paul,
- you just leapt over a fence. - RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
REED: And now you're climbing up a house.
- Those are some skills, man. RUDD: And then...
Well, I must say, I had a little help in that department.
REED: What? RUDD: Yeah, Colin scaled that house.
Alarm is dead.
RUDD: And then when we shot that,
sound stage raised just that corner. That was...
REED: You were two feet off the ground.
RUDD: Yeah. Yeah.
REED: You could've been hurt, though. RUDD: I could've.
REED: Two feet. RUDD: I could've...
REED: Twisted ankle, you could've... RUDD: I could've been hurt.
REED: Yeah, you could've messed up your hair.
There's a fingerprint lock on the door.
It's got what? Ernesto didn't tell me nothing about that.
RUDD: This was something that kind of...
Early on, when McKay and I started working on this,
we thought we wanna see Scott really steal this thing.
We wanna see him be good at what he does.
A good thief.
So, we added all of this stuff, which is true.
It is legit.
How you would get a fingerprint,
how you could break into that safe with liquid nitrogen.
We learned a few other tips that actually didn't make the film.
Things you could do to infrared cameras,
things you could do to... 'Cause we had also...
I know we had filmed this.
We're, uh, planting cameras in cable boxes...
REED: That scene will appear on the DVD and Blu-ray as a deleted scene.
RUDD: So this is a legit thing
where you go outside, you just cut the cable,
somebody reports the cable being out.
No matter what they do, they can't seem to fix it.
And then you put a camera in the cable box
and you go back outside and reconnect the cable.
And these were all tips that were told to us by a guy
that Adam McKay knows.
- I think is Greg Maxwell, right? - REED: Yes.
You guys were meeting with him when you were writing,
and I came over one day, and that guy was amazing.
Wow.
RUDD: He was absolutely crucial to coming up with so many of these...
REED: Sorry, Paul, that's my hometown,
Raleigh, North Carolina, on that safe.
I had to put that there.
- That's a shout-out to my hometown. - RUDD: Ah!
(WHIRRING)
(GAS HISSING)
RUDD: Here's one thing where I thought,
"Okay, this is a little ridiculous."
An air mattress is going to somehow muffle the sound of a two-ton door
or whatever the...
REED: "Hey, yeah, you don't wanna wake the neighbors."
RUDD: The one thing that isn't legit is,
those bolts would go through that sleeping bag.
REED: No, no, no, they'd bounce off.
RUDD: No, they would go right through.
REED: No, look at the movie. They bounce off.
(RUDD LAUGHING) - REED: Watch them. They bounce.
This is one of my favorite sections of the movie
'cause it's largely visual-effects free,
and it really is all about Scott Lang's MacGyver-like skills.
It really shows that, okay, this is a guy who,
when the chips are down, he knows how to get stuff done.
He's a very smart, resourceful guy,
and that was important in terms of why Hank Pym chooses this guy
to, uh, wear the Ant-Man suit.
- There's nothing here. - What did you say?
REED: And there's the Ant-Man suit.
Speaking of it, I just said it and there it is.
RUDD: There it is.
REED: That suit is brilliantly designed.
And I would like to give a shout-out, of course,
to all the guys in the Marvel Visual Development department.
Ryan Meinerding and all those guys.
The suit, it's just beautiful.
It really feels like it's got history to it. It's got scrapes and dents on it.
It feels analog as compared to the Yellowjacket,
which feels digital and weaponized
and this 21st-century technology.
And now, of course, the ants.
One of the most challenging things, the visual effects in this movie,
um, I'm really proud of.
Jake Morrison, our visual effects supervisor,
and Diana Giorgiutti, who's our visual effects producer,
they just knocked it out of the park.
We talked from the very beginning about
the shrinking having to look absolutely photorealistic.
And to do that, we used a combination of motion picture macrophotography,
still macrophotography,
um, motion capture.
You and Corey got in the motion capture suits and did a lot of that.
The stunt guys did motion capture.
It was a whole combination of techniques to achieve it.
I really like where we ended up.
It feels tactile and real.
I wanted it so that when you're running through all these surfaces,
and if you're running across a wood floor,
you'd feel the grain of the wood,
or if you're just going through carpet, you'd feel the fibers.
And we also had the flexibility to move our camera around.
They digitally tiled with macrophotography,
still macrophotography, all these surfaces
and then put these thousands of frames together
to create these environments,
and I think it's really, really effective.
And we just shrunk a lamb.
Unsuccessfully.
Back in the Tenderloin.
I remember this being a really challenging scene.
For some reason, the whole idea that the first...
Uh, Paul and the Ant-Man suit and that whole thing we did,
I think some of it will appear on the disc that you are now watching.
(CHUCKLES) Uh, in the bathtub, there's a whole montage
of Scott Lang doing strange things in the Ant-Man suit.
RUDD: I remember that being a note, uh, early on,
the studio saying, "Why would he just put this on?"
REED: Mmm-hmm. RUDD: Um...
I never thought, like... (STAMMERS)
"I don't see any problem. Why not?" Why wouldn't you just put it on
and see what it is?
But again, usually in scenes where you're shooting like this,
you will try lots of different things,
'cause you don't know what you're gonna use.
There was a whole thing of like, "All right, uh..."
All of a sudden it turned into Taxi Driver.
REED: C-3PO. RUDD: Yeah, C-3PO was one of them.
Looking at yourself in this thing, what do you do?
I remember if I would go to
try on clothes or something when I was in my 20s,
I'd go and I'd pretend like I'm playing guitar or something.
Look at myself in the mirror, just like, "What am I doing?
- "This is my cool stance." - REED: Exactly.
RUDD: (LAUGHING) And so that's what that is.
REED: All right, now we 're down in the tub.
And this was one of the trickiest sequences
because this is the first time we see Scott shrink.
And that paratrooper fall down into the tub,
and our camera wraps around, and now we pull back
like we're in the Grand Canyon or something here.
To get that, all the surfaces right,
and there's dust in the air and the way lights are playing around,
um, it was really, really tricky to do.
And then a giant Michael Peña.
Who doesn't want to see a giant Michael Peña in a movie?
And now, uh, the chaos begins.
The trial by fire.
RUDD: Now, the bathtub and everything
and all the macrophotography is real.
- What about this water? - REED: The water is CG.
We shot with macrophotography the elements of the real tub.
And then, of course, that was transferred into these digital places
so we could move the camera all around.
This shot, to me, I love. I think it feels very real.
(CHUCKLES) You've got one hair there for scale.
It was always important to put little things in the frame
to sell the scale of Ant-Man.
Whether it's a little piece of hair or a screw or something like that.
This sequence, again, I think, uh...
A lot of elements of this are still from the original drafts.
The idea, like the first time he puts on the suit,
it's just him trying to survive.
And it's him reacting to all these things that are thrown at him really quickly.
And just making it as chaotic as possible,
the first time Scott puts on the suit.
Also something we talked about a lot was,
because he's got a mask on, we wanted it to feel like
it was always you, Paul Rudd, in that suit.
Because there are always movies
where you're with the actor who is playing the hero,
and then they put on a suit that has a mask,
and it's sometimes hard to relate that character
- to the character. - RUDD: Right.
REED: Iron Man, of course, they always go inside Iron Man's helmet
and you see Downey full screen.
In this one, it was really important to get the eyes right.
RUDD: Yeah, almost every scene we shot,
I didn't have those lenses over my eyes.
REED: Yeah, they're digital.
RUDD: It was, uh, clear, or not even a face plate sometimes.
REED: Yeah, we had to be able to control
the amount of red in those lenses
'cause it was really important to see...
Paul, you have really expressive eyes.
But it's really important to see that expression with Ant-Man
to keep your character alive.
RUDD: Obviously right there in the car...
- REED: Garrett Morris. -...is Garrett Morris.
A kind of homage, albeit briefly,
to, uh, an SNL sketch early on
where Garrett Morris played Ant-Man in a very famous sketch
where Belushi was the Hulk.
REED: Bill Murray was Superman. RUDD: Yeah.
REED: Yeah, he's technically the original onscreen Ant-Man, Paul.
- Technically. - RUDD: Yeah.
REED: Here you are, you get arrested.
That was a fun shoot for some reason. And we're in San Francisco there.
And now you're behind bars.
You're incarcerated.
RUDD: There was a whole other sequence, again, that I thought, like,
"Oh, this will be one that certainly will make the movie."
And then it's not in it at all.
We added the thing with Michael talking to me in the helmet
and that it freaks me out and I have to return it right away.
...you prefer the inside of a jail cell.
RUDD: Adam and I had come up with this idea that,
"Well, if you get this suit and you discover what it can do,
"if you're not freaked out, think of everything you could do."
We had a whole series of things that I do as I'm small,
and it's really that same moral dilemma,
"Do I want to go down this road?"
And I'm really trying not to go down this kind of thief road.
That is what, uh, motivates me to return it.
But I thought it would be a very fun sequence
to see the wish fulfillment sequence.
REED: And we shot a lot of that stuff.
And I know some of that will appear on this DVD and Blu-ray
that you're listening to right now.
There was some really, really fun stuff.
One of the things in there,
Mr. Tom Scharpling appeared in that section in a lottery.
RUDD: (CHUCKLING)That's right.
REED: That did not make the final cut of the movie.
But there's always room for, uh, Tom Scharpling
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think.
(INAUDIBLE)
REED: Now we go back and we visually show that Michael Douglas, Hank Pym,
had planted this tip in the first place,
that eventually got to Luis that made its way to Scott Lang,
that led him to the safe to get the Ant-Man suit.
He's the puppet master here.
And look at your face when you realize that.
You're blown away.
RUDD: Yeah, absolutely.
REED: And there's the ants.
Uh, another scary thing was the ants in this movie,
creating photorealistic ants that didn't seem gross and creepy
but also had some character to them. They had to look real.
You couldn't go down and be with the ants
and suddenly feel like you were in a Pixar movie.
I love Pixar movies, but these had to look more realistic.
So it was really fun,
throughout the course of production and post-production,
to create these characters.
And, of course, we even took it so far
as to creating this bond between Scott Lang and one particular ant,
who, we'll see later, he, uh, decides to name.
I love the shots where either the ants or Ant-Man
are really small in the frame.
You really have to look and discover what's going on.
It's very different than, I think, any of the other hero movies.
RUDD: One of the great thrills I had,
and there were several in making the movie,
was spending about an hour on set
- talking to Stan Lee. REED: Mmm.
RUDD: And Stan Lee was, uh, very excited about this movie
and that, in his mind, we were finally going to see Ant-Man
as he always imagined Ant-Man.
Because, he said, in the comics,
it was never really drawn to scale the way that he imagined it
because you couldn't in just a comic panel.
And that you could do things in film that you can't do in a comic book.
And so that was really cool to have that conversation with him.
REED: Yeah, that was an amazing day.
What, what?
Where the hell did he go?
I have no idea. He just vanished.
REED: This is one of my favorite sequences.
The visual effects in this, the ants and just the color,
the red and blue, the police lights lighting the thing,
it all lends to the chaos and it's really atmospheric,
and you see dust, and then whoom! There comes Ant-thony in there
like a giant Black Hawk helicopter.
And Chris Beck's music soaring.
I love that. That sells the scale of it in such a great way.
And this was a really challenging movie.
They're all challenging movies in terms of the visual effects,
but this one, I think, had some real bizarre images,
images that you're just guaranteed
(CHUCKLES) to not see in any other movie.
This chase sequence I remember being a challenge as well.
It was originally written and boarded
to feel kind of like Return of the Jedi speeder bike,
and it was just flying through and everything.
It occurred to all of us throughout
that we should really be playing this in weird different perspectives,
like these shots here where it's not just about flying.
It's about, he's literally got to get through a police blockade
and is able to do it on a police car.
But we play with perspective and shift perspective a lot
and present these angles in a chase
that you just wouldn't see in a different movie, any other movie.
HANK: He is not listening to you.
SCOTT: What?
REED: And every single shot of Ant-Man,
whether he's running or jumping or flying on an ant,
how big he was in the frame and issues of scale and size
were always an issue on all these shots.
A regular medium shot of Ant-Man in general was not very good
because it just felt like, oh, he's regular size now.
These really close close-ups were effective
to see where he is psychologically,
and when he's smaller in frame, it just feels much more satisfying.
And these snap zooms to really show the scale.
What a cameraman, you know...
Imagine being a cameraman and trying to shoot Ant-Man.
Getting the focus right and getting him in frame
would be next to impossible.
So we had fun with that, too.
Now here you are back in Pym's house
and the first time you meet Hope van Dyne.
Look at Evangeline Lilly.
Look at her.
RUDD: I remember when she cut her hair.
- 'Cause her hair was not... - REED: Oh, yeah.
RUDD: When she first showed up, her hair was different.
- And then she went in and got it cut. - REED: That was scary.
RUDD: Well, I remember it was such a transformation.
It was cool, and it reminded me of the comics.
REED: Here are the bullet ants. Paraponera...
RUDD: Clavata. REED: Clavata. Nice.
RUDD: You had that for breakfast this morning, didn't you?
You had a clavata. You always start the day with a glass of clavata.
REED: Oh, yeah, it gets me going. It wakes me up.
Used to be coffee. Now it's Paraponera clavata.
RUDD: The, uh, number one on the Schmidt pain index.
While sounding very intense,
I don't think quite conveys just how intense.
I had read online that the bite of a bullet ant
is actually the most extreme pain
that you can experience and still live.
REED: And long-lasting. And you had that...
There was a video of these guys.
I can't remember the name. It's an Australian guy.
RUDD: Yeah, Hamish and Andy, I think. These guys are really funny.
Bullet ants are used in some rituals.
Kind of, boy becoming a man.
It's like the most painful Bar Mitzvah that you can have.
(CHUCKLING) In some kind of Aboriginal...
I'm not sure, 'cause I'm not an Aboriginal. (STAMMERS)
These guys went and did it to experience, uh, what it was like,
and they put their hands in these gloves
and they're bitten by bullet ants.
And eight hours of just agony, unrelenting...
REED: That gets worse. RUDD: Relentless pain.
REED: He was sweating and shaking. They had to give him adrenaline.
RUDD: Yeah. REED: Yeah, so it's immensely painful.
And now we see that he's been following you.
He knows about Vista Corp.
Also, in that frame, if you go back to that newspaper frame,
there's an article to the left of the Scott Lang article
that talks about cryptozoologists.
So there's some Bigfoot hunting going on in there.
I like that. That was big news that day, apparently.
Um...
And this is one of the things I love,
the small scale here of just seeing two ants
pushing sugar cubes across the table.
We had a really elaborate practical thing on set
that Dan Sudick, our special effects supervisor,
devised with these little pulleys and strands,
and it was great reference for these cubes
moving and going up the side of the sugar bowl.
And, of course, we ended up doing it all digitally, but it was great.
We always had practical reference for the lighting for all these effects,
to help it seem 100% photorealistic.
I speak to them.
I can go anywhere, hear anything...
REED: And the set here, again, beautiful.
Hank Pym's house, this old Victorian house
that feels a little trapped in time,
that maybe since, uh, his wife vanished,
the house has not really been the same,
there's kind of a sadness to the house.
I like that a lot.
Come with me.
REED: And now we reveal the hidden secure room...
...altered atomic relative distance.
SCOTT: Huh?
...where Hank Pym has all his secret technology.
HANK: That's why it works.
RUDD: There we go.
REED: There's a prop that's about to show up. This, right here.
That prop was designed, uh...
It appears, actually, in a Tales to Astonish issue
early on with Hank Pym.
It's a direct Jack Kirby drawing of this ant hill.
So that's fun.
RUDD: We had a few of those. I remember putting...
There was... Even escaping that jail,
when we see Ant-thony for the first time
in that shot you were talking about,
where there was a match on the ground,
taking a match and striking it and using it to keep the ants away,
which was also from a comic.
REED: Yeah, and that was in for a long time.
And then we'd start talking about the scale of it.
It would be like you picking up a telephone pole.
RUDD: Right.
He heard rumors about what was called the Pym Particle...
REED: And there are the Pym Particles.
And here we get into the explanation of the technology and the suit.
And if you see all around the room,
there's various parts of the Ant-Man suit...
RUDD: That ant hill was made by Russell Bobbitt,
who did all of the props on the film.
And he's great. He made that with a 3D printer.
REED: Yeah, it's unbelievably great.
Russell is an incredibly creative, resourceful man. It's unbelievable.
RUDD: And he made those ants in a 3D printer as well.
He's incredible.
REED: He made them move around?
RUDD: No, no. He created those ants.
REED: Wow. RUDD: Yeah.
Those are real ants that Russell made.
REED: (CHUCKLES) In a laser printer? RUDD: Yeah.
REED: 3D laser printer? RUDD: 3D, yeah. Ant printer.
See that orange thing right over Michael's shoulder?
- That's a 3D printer. - REED: That's true, it is.
RUDD: I don't know if that's the one he used, though.
REED: Every super scientist has a 3D printer.
It's just one of the things you have to have.
RUDD: This I remember vividly,
as I'm sitting here talking to Michael Douglas,
having an out-of-body experience,
thinking, "Oh, my God, that's Michael Douglas,"
which would happen on occasion.
But I remember it really happening in that scene.
REED: I imagine, as an actor, if Michael Douglas is just giving you
intense eye contact and staring you down, it's intimidating.
RUDD: Well, there's that thing that sometimes happens
where we're engaged in the scene, we're playing our characters,
and it's not... It's weird.
When you act with somebody,
you feel differently than you would
- if you're just meeting them in life. - REED: Sure.
RUDD: But when it comes to somebody that's been in that many great movies
or is iconic and legendary,
it's impossible not to have those moments,
even during scenes where you may forget about a movie...
I'd think, like, "Oh, my God, the Wonder Boys
"or Falling Down," which is one of my favorites.
It just happened throughout the entire shoot.
REED: You had a China Syndrome flashback.
RUDD: Mmm-hmm. Especially in this room.
REED: And now Darren Cross has successfully shrunk a lamb.
Now, this is a true story.
The lamb that we actually shot with was 10 days old.
It was just the cutest, freshest little lamb.
We shot in the morning, and we broke for lunch,
- and the caterer served lamb chops. (RUDD LAUGHS)
REED: It's a true story. It sounds like a made-up story but it's true.
I don't know if it was coincidental. I hope it was coincidental.
RUDD: I like those cufflinks that Pym's wearing there.
- There are ants in them. - REED: Amazing.
On the monitors back there, there are these electron microscope,
these black and white things over Pym's shoulder there,
that this amazing artist Michael Oliveira created.
He does electron microscope photography,
and we were able to use some of his images in the movie, which...
I think they're beautiful.
(HANK SCOFFS)
I spent half my life
trying to keep this technology out of the hands of a Stark.
REED: This was a tricky sequence, obviously.
Michael Douglas' character, Hank Pym,
has a lot of exposition to deliver in the movie.
RUDD: He had to do a lot of the heavy lifting in this thing,
and it's because he's such a great actor
that it's got real gravitas to it,
and he makes sections of things that are not that interesting, interesting.
REED: But there's a lot of backstory in this thing.
We have to set up Hank Pym as Ant-Man,
who Scott Lang was and what he did and Scott Lang as Ant-Man,
the technology of shrinking, the technology of controlling ants,
his history with S.H.I.E.L.D. and all that,
and of course the Yellowjacket
and the history of his protégé gone bad,
and his relationship with his daughter, what happened to his wife.
(CHUCKLING) There's a lot of stuff to set up in this movie,
in addition to setting up all the various things
that have to go into the heist they pull off.
RUDD: Right.
...close to Cross. Otherwise, this mission cannot work.
REED: I like the idea, too, of really playing at something that,
as the script progressed...
Really creating Hank Pym as a very complicated character.
He's got a temper, which we see from the very first scene.
And also the idea that...
In this scene particularly, he lashes out at his daughter
in a really ugly Way.
We come to find out it's him, in his mind, being protective of her.
He doesn't want her to meet a fate similar to what happened to his wife.
But he's really been holding her back.
It's a very strange relationship that Scott finds himself in the middle of.
I like the idea of Pym as a mentor,
but a mentor who has some serious issues.
She's right, Hank.
RUDD: Well, this whole thing with fathers and daughters
and parents and children,
we even tried to capture some of that with Corey and Michael's characters
as the forgotten son and that kind of thing.
REED: Which is one of the things I liked about it from the very beginning.
From the story, it felt like a more intimate kind of Marvel movie.
That it dealt with...
Your character, his whole motivation and thing
is just to be a better father to his daughter,
to become a part of her life again.
And he goes on this crazy journey to achieve that.
But I liked it.
I liked that it
literally shrinks down what usually goes on in these movies.
I always thought it was amazing from the very early draft
that it leads to a third act
where the giant superhero battle happens in a little girl's bedroom.
I thought that was a great twist on a Marvel movie.
HANK: To become the hero that she already thinks you are.
REED: And now you're getting sucked in here, man.
Michael's amazing in the movie, obviously, all throughout.
But he has some really quiet, delicate moments in this movie
which I think he just performs beautifully.
The chemistry between you guys is terrific.
I need you to be the Ant-Man.
REED: Some real pheromones in the air. (CHUCKLES)
RUDD: What, now or then? REED: Oh! Well, both, really.
Now we get into our training montage.
This was one of the most difficult areas of the movie
in terms of shooting it, the order,
and also the level of what's going on between these three people.
Obviously, Hope is not thrilled to be part of training this guy
because she thinks she should be the one in the suit.
But we had to get across the powers of the suit very quickly,
the dynamics between these characters,
but also have it be fun and get the kinetics in,
and also set up the idea of the quantum realm.
We spent a lot of time in editorial finding the balance in this sequence.
You punch too hard, you kill someone. Too soft, it's a love tap.
REED: This was a fun day,
- you guys fighting. RUDD: Yeah.
One thing that's really cool,
that the toughest person in the movie is Hope.
REED: Yeah. No question.
Yeah, I would not want to get in the ring with her. She's got skills.
You guys both did a lot of fight training.
Well, we should talk about just your workout regimen in general.
On top of being in the movie,
having to perform and know your lines, having to look good,
and also being a writer on the movie,
your workout and diet regimen was insane.
It was really insane.
- RUDD: I just ate lamb every day. (REED LAUGHS)
REED: Fresh lamb. RUDD: Fresh lamb.
REED: Tiny lamb.
But the idea of just having to go through that regimen...
'Cause making any movie is grueling.
Making this movie was really grueling.
Um...
But I didn't have to do a diet where
I was eating a milkshake and an almond.
RUDD: Well, (STAMMERS) it's that thing
that you're gonna have to be held accountable.
And, also, to do some of this stuff
required being in decent shape anyway.
And it's par for the course, isn't it, really?
I think everybody's...
REED: Look at those bis and those tris.
(RUDD LAUGHING) - Look at your delts and your lats.
RUDD: I still don't know what any of those are.
REED: They're just various muscles. I don't know where any of them are.
This stuff I love.
All the stuff in the ant hill has this feel to it that I love.
It reminds me of the comics and, uh, it's something that,
if we're fortunate enough to do another Ant-Man movie,
I'd love to see even more of. I just think it's...
RUDD: You guys were very conscious of trying to make
each ant have its own distinct personality.
Crazy ants being almost like puppies, right?
REED: Yeah, like little Chihuahuas.
That image where they jump all over you
feels like something out of 101 Dalmatians or something.
Making them cute but finding a line where it wasn't annoyingly cute.
And the bullet ants are big, almost like tanks, and they're very scary.
And there's always Chris Beck's great tropical music that happens
(CHUCKLES) when you see the bullet ants.
And they feel like something out of a '50s monster movie, which I love.
And then the carpenter ants, the winged carpenter ants.
They're sort of the workhorse ants and you forge a bond with one of them.
- He becomes your trusty steed. RUDD: Mmm.
REED: A nice little Death Star graphic going on there.
All this macrophotography and all these little elements
that go into the visuals here are beautiful.
It all keys off Russell Carpenter's lighting.
Jake Morrison and all of the visual effects vendors we used on the movie,
um, they just did beautiful, beautiful work.
Great character animation on the ants.
That was one of the first days we shot there,
- that shot with the three of you. RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
(GRUNTING)
Aw! You okay? Did I hurt...
REED: You getting punched in the face always gets a laugh.
It's a go-to, the audience loves you getting hit.
- Look at this! Whoa! RUDD: Let's... No.
REED: All right, Paul. That's 100% Paul Rudd.
That's no visual effects trickery.
That's, uh, pure Rudd.
RUDD: That, by the way, was not in the script.
REED: Which? The shirtless scene? RUDD: No.
REED: The shirtless scene is a demand of a Marvel movie.
- Every hero's got to be shirtless, man. (RUDD CHUCKLING)
REED: Hey, it's no coincidence that Rudd rhymes with stud.
You heard it here first. I don't know.
RUDD: Nobody stands like that, by the way.
REED: What, the way you stood? RUDD: Yeah.
REED: You did. Looks good.
RUDD: While I was trying to apply alcohol to my many abrasions.
REED: Yeah, it's a tough... I just remembered the build-up to that day.
- RUDD: Ugh. (REED CHUCKLES)
REED: Now, did you talk to some of the other, uh, Marvel heroes
about their workout regimens
or what it was like being shot shirtless? Did you have these conversations?
RUDD: No, not really. I mean, I talked a little...
- REED: Did you call Thor on the phone? (RUDD CHUCKLES)
RUDD: One of the benefits about being the size of an ant
is that you don't have to be the size of Thor.
REED: Right.
RUDD: So, I was spared a little bit, I think.
REED: Again, the animation on these ants,
it was one of the scariest things.
And again, all the visual effect vendors we used on the movie
just knocked it out of the park
in terms of the photorealism in the character animation.
It was fun to do these...
I think there were over 1,500 visual effects shots in the movie.
And we'd have these visual effects reviews
that, as we got deeper into post-production,
would happen more and more frequently,
we all go in a room and the shots are projected
and we have laser pointers, and it's like,
"Oh, this is great. This is great. This can be better."
And that process is really, really fun, um,
and everybody had such keen eyes.
It's the 12th Marvel movie.
So, Victoria Alonso, who's really the queen of post-production at Marvel,
she can see things in a frame... And I have a really particular eye,
but she can see things in a frame that, "Wow! How did you see that?"
We would all be in there.
Um, Louis D'Esposito, Kevin Feige, Brad Winderbaum, Victoria,
uh, all the visual effects people,
and just scrutinizing every shot in the movie.
This car scene...
Another one that was tricky and we had to find the balance.
And I remember, you wrote many, many drafts of this scene.
This was Evangeline's first scene she shot in the movie
and maybe our second day of shooting or something.
REED: One of her heaviest scenes, and it was, um...
It was just one of those things, one of those tricks of scheduling
where it's like, "Ah, really? This is her first... It's such a tricky scene."
Um, but I really like where we ended up with the scene.
It's really, really an affecting scene.
Anyway...
REED: But there were...
There was a long version of this scene.
There was all this... It had to navigate all of this...
This is where their relationship starts to thaw and she sees
that there's more to Scott Lang than she originally thought.
And we see you finally start to control some ants, man.
RUDD: About time.
REED: I mean, come on. RUDD: I mean...
I'm tired of putting that sugar in my tea myself.
REED: This earpiece, we shot with a practical one
and then we removed it and created a digital one.
The effects in this movie, for the most part,
a lot of them are these really simple moments,
like the ants coming on to the dashboard here
and lifting the penny. Um...
They were just these very simple effects,
but the character animation is really good and subtle,
and each one of those ants has their own little personality,
(CHUCKLING) and if you watch what they do
and how they're receiving the signal from you, it's really, uh...
There was a lot of thought put into the character animation
and the textures of these ants.
And the amount of stubble on your face.
(RUDD LAUGHS)
Paul was clean-shaven. That's all digital stubble.
- You know, we added... (RUDD LAUGHING)
This next scene, this was also a tricky one.
This is one that you and McKay originally came up with.
It was the idea that Janet van Dyne
had not really been a presence in the original drafts,
and she's such a presence in the comics
that, um, I think we were all in sync about wanting her...
We weren't sure how, at first, to have her in the movie.
Um...
But she's someone that really informs
what's going on with the relationship between Hank and Hope
and this idea that he's tried to protect her
from this information for so long,
and now he sees the necessity of being honest with her
about what happened to her mom.
There were a bunch of different versions of, uh, Hank and Janet
and this dire situation of, uh...
RUDD: One, he was on a mine...
REED: Yeah, there was a mine in the water, there was that version.
There was briefly a version, I think,
where they were fighting robotic something, I don't know.
But we had to have all these scale cues in it,
and also we wanted a really great visual introduction to her,
which we get here.
But it had to be immediate jeopardy in this thing
where there was no time to think, and Hank's regulator didn't work
and she had to make this game-time decision to sacrifice herself.
Which, of course, comes into play later on in the third act
where you do the same thing.
But with a different result.
RUDD: That's a cool shot. That looks very real.
REED: Yeah, that's some beautiful effects work.
...and went subatomic...
RUDD: Evangeline's so moving to me in this scene, too.
REED: Yeah.
REED: Evangeline, too. We all had early conversations...
You and Evangeline had conversations really early on
as you guys were writing, um,
about stuff for her character
that I think was some really smart stuff as well.
Just about fleshing out her character a little bit
and seeing what was, uh, at the core of this rift in their relationship.
And I love how delicate Douglas is in this scene.
- He's really... RUDD: Yeah.
REED: There's an intimacy that, uh...
He's an incredible actor,
and it reminds you why he's an incredible actor,
'cause it's a really different type of role for him.
He's done so many different types of roles,
but this elder statesman role
was something that, uh, I really do feel is different for him.
He's incredible.
I really was just constantly struck by his enthusiasm as an actor.
I remember when we got him in front of that array
when we were just shooting his face
for that missile flashback that you just saw.
That was a new technology to him
and he just embraced it like a 20-something-year-old actor.
RUDD: (STAMMERS) And Evangeline in that scene, too, is so heartbreaking.
Yeah, I remember the first time I saw it and was really moved.
REED: And then you coming in.
This is what you labeled a "treacle cutter."
RUDD: I always get very sensitive
to scenes becoming too saccharine and sentimental
in all the wrong ways.
So, if you can just pull the rug out,
uh, hopefully the drama will land and it won't make you wanna throw up.
REED: And it gives you a great... The audience always loves it.
Here's some more bonding between you and Ant-thony.
That was something that... Again, it was...
I liked the idea that Pym numbers these ants.
They're just ants to him,
but that Scott really, he has a relationship with this.
It's like the Lone Ranger and Silver.
We wanted to see if we could get some emotion out of that relationship.
RUDD: I remember throwing out "Ant-thony" one time in the room
and then that just stuck.
And then afterward, thought, "Oh, it should've been, like,
“Ant-on' or 'Ant-cine,
because now there's Anthony and then Ant-thony. I never really...
- I was like, "Wait, now what is it?" - REED: "Ant-thony."
- Ant-thony. - RUDD: Ant-thony. Ant-thony.
REED: Now, let's talk about this sequence.
This was something that you, uh, and McKay wrote.
Talk about how this came about, 'cause I love this sequence.
RUDD: Well, going back to that thing of a heist structure and heist movie,
which is clearly what Edgar and Joe always had in mind,
we thought, "Oh, yeah, they always do a test run,
"and it never works."
And so, I think it was that thinking that led to this,
and Adam and I were just (STAMMERS) in our hotel room
trying to break down the story,
and thought, "What if he does some kind of test run?"
And then it just came about, like, "What if he fought an Avenger?
"That would be unexpected."
And then we went and pitched it to Feige, who said, "Yeah."
And that's how it all happened.
REED: And the idea that it's Falcon feels like the right level of Avenger,
because I feel like if you went up against Thor or Iron Man...
RUDD: Yeah, we wouldn't...
At first we were talking about, "All right, who would it be?"
Uh...
And then thought, "Falcon," around the time,
and then Kevin said, "Yeah, Falcon would be good."
REED: 'Cause Anthony Mackie is so badass
in Captain America: Winter Soldier.
And one of the things I love about the Marvel Cinematic Universe
is that Anthony Mackie can play Falcon in Winter Soldier,
which is the tone of a '70s political thriller,
and then he can show up in this movie
where he's doing a more comedic version of himself.
And it all works.
And then obviously he's back in Civil War, um,
in the Russo brothers' Civil War, and it's a different tone entirely.
RUDD: Mackie's hilarious. He's a great dude.
He was also a guy that I know
that people on set that were part of the crew were saying,
oh, they couldn't wait till Anthony got there 'cause he's such a great guy.
Everyone really likes him and he's got such a good energy about him.
And it was all true.
I was really, uh, psyched to meet him, really,
'cause I didn't know him before this. Uh, I knew who he was,
but I never had any kind of conversation with the guy or anything.
REED: This scene also taps into that 10-year-old kid in me...
That one of the joys of reading Marvel comics is, like,
"This hero has these powers. This other hero has these powers.
"What happens if they go up against each other?"
For me, this was a thrill.
This is the ultimate wish-fulfillment thing from those comic books.
And it's also like you said, it's a trial by fire.
It's Scott going into a situation
for which he's really, woefully underprepared.
And he comes out (CHUCKLES) with the piece they need
and really having made a huge impression on Falcon.
Also, the fact that we were shooting this on the backlot at Pinewood,
which is basically woods.
And I grew up in the South and we used to play in the woods,
and there's a whole thing that taps into this childlike thing for me,
which I like in this scene.
But, uh, it was tricky to shoot
because there are obviously a lot of pieces involved.
ILM added all of the Avengers facility and everything in the background,
and obviously you inside his backpack, um,
because it was just woods.
(CHUCKLES) That was it. - RUDD: Right.
(GRUNTING)
REED: I also think it's a way to tie Ant-Man into the larger universe,
but it's done so in a really organic way.
I mean, it serves the story that we're telling in Ant-Man.
And that was a thing that,
from the beginning, it felt like Ant-Man has to work
if you've never seen another Marvel movie or read a comic.
It's gotta have a beginning, middle and end and work on its own.
That was completely irresponsible and dangerous!
REED: This is such a small scene but again, one of my favorite scenes
'cause the dynamic between you guys in this is terrific.
He's pissed because you were reckless
and yet, there you are. You achieved the goal.
And even Hope is shocked.
And then he goes into this reverie of his golden S.H.I.E.L.D. era.
You got it.
Well done.
SCOTT: Wait a minute.
REED: I think Michael Douglas can do anything.
Drama, comedy, anything.
RUDD: Oh, yeah.
(SCOFFS)
Hey, how about the fact that I fought an Avenger...
REED: I remember having large conversations
about how bruised and battered you were
- from the Falcon battle. (RUDD CHUCKLES)
You have this giant shiner on your forehead,
and then, as in movies,
a few scenes later it's healed.
- It's healed up. (RUDD CHUCKLES)
There were all these discussions that you...
Uh-oh.
Darren Cross is in Pym's house.
I like the idea that we don't really answer the question
- as to how he got in. RUDD: Yeah.
REED: Was the door open? Did he use his technology to get in?
We never answer the question, and we're not going to now.
This scene was all about just building this dread
and also showing Scott in a pinch
really being able to use his powers for controlling ants.
I have good news.
Really?
REED: And, uh, Sammy Sheldon Differ,
who did all the amazing costumes in the movie,
uh, and was key in obviously making...
The design of the Ant-Man suit is incredible,
but really making it come to life in three dimensions
is all, uh, Sammy and Ivo Coveney,
who designed that suit and really manufactured that suit.
RUDD: And helmet. REED: And the helmet.
They're just beautiful to look at.
I'm biased but I think it's the best costume
in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It's amazing-looking.
But I also love that they put Corey in
what looks like a German, uh...
Like a flight jacket, in this thing.
- It's so intimidating. (RUDD STAMMERS)
RUDD: The suit and helmet were deceptive.
They were the most complicated, uh...
It was the most complicated suit as well,
because there were so many parts to it.
In the backpack there were a lot of wires
because the suit would light up, uh,
even though we never really utilized that during the shooting.
Uh, and the helmet had something like 40 or 50 parts to it.
REED: It's insanely intricate.
And also, I just remember the process.
We really had to give consideration
as to how long it took you to get in and out of that suit
as we were scheduling the shoot day.
RUDD: We were able to, uh,
like anything else, start knocking minutes off
the more used to it we got.
But to get into that suit required a couple of people.
I had a small pit crew.
REED: Yeah, it was fantastic.
- How do you know that? (CELL PHONE RINGING)
RUDD: Oh, my. What a glamorous shot of Darren Cross on her phone.
REED: He really did it up right.
RUDD: Wow! REED: Yeah.
I'm at home. Why?
REED: I'm also always amazed by the very simple effects.
We shot Corey in the car just in front of a blue screen
with some interactive lighting and stuff.
And then, after visual effects are done with it, it comes back
and there's just these great reflections on the thing.
Such a simple effect, seemingly,
but it's really, really good.
It doesn't look like a Seinfeld episode where they're driving.
RUDD: I was thinking of Airplane!
(CHUCKLING) When Robert Stack is in the car,
hit the guy on the bike and then it's just the Wild West.
But he is not onto you.
He's adding full body scanners to all entrances...
REED: This is also... I love this scene here
because this is really where we start to see Scott stepping up as a leader.
He's got a plan.
Because now Darren Cross has changed the game.
He's upped the security on Pym Tech.
And so you've got to think on your feet.
I remember us talking about the dialogue in this scene.
So we expand our team.
What do we need?
REED: Of course this is where we're, uh, setting the stage
for the reappearance of the Wombats, as Douglas calls them.
Not those three Wombats. No way.
REED: This always gets a great response,
(CHUCKLES) when the guys show back up to the movie.
Something about Peña's character, about Luis, that...
He's obviously had a very difficult life,
as we established from his very first scenes in the movie.
But he's constantly positive and optimistic.
It's such a winning character.
And also, later in the movie you see him
have that conversation with you about, uh,
"Wow! Are we the good guys? It seems really weird,"
and then he goes and saves a guy,
that he has his own arc as a hero in the movie.
And I think that people have really responded well to that. That it's...
He's this guy who has these weird and varied interests.
He knows all these... He knows a lot about wine
and abstract-expressionist and Neo-Cubist art.
And he's an incredibly positive guy. I think it's a terrific character.
DAVE: Damn!
Whoa!
REED: That whole opening and closing of the mask, I think, was...
I remember the first time we saw the first effect of that
on Jake Morrison's computer on the set and we were showing you.
It's just such a simple effect but it...
The whole mask and that mechanism is all CG when it opens and closes,
and it looks absolutely photorealistic.
RUDD: And it's one of those things that,
"Okay, how do I open and close it?
"Maybe there's just a button behind my ear or something."
You just...
(CHUCKLING) You never really question it, but that was...
Yeah, I wasn't really touching anything.
REED: I love the simplicity of tiny Ant-Man on Luis' shoulder.
There was a version early on, remember?
There was a whole Pym Tech sequence where you were gonna...
When you first did recon on Pym Tech, there was a sequence
where you were on Pym's shoulder for a lot of the time,
and we did a few of those shots before we changed that whole sequence.
(CHUCKLES) But, um, I love the simplicity of that.
It reminds me of the comics.
...a slight chance of maybe pulling this off.
REED: Also, always surprised... Not surprised,
but, uh, Dastmalchian's line about, "This is the work of gypsies,"
- always gets a huge response. RUDD: Mmm.
REED: On paper, is that the funniest joke of all time? I'm not sure.
But it really always gets a laugh.
Get some sleep, Scott.
RUDD: I'm not so sure that joke was on paper.
REED: (CHUCKLES) Yeah, I'm not so sure either.
RUDD: I think he maybe just said it. REED: I think you're right.
Again, I like that our movie will slow down
and play these intimate moments.
Scott thinking about his daughter.
There's one thing... Before he goes on the heist,
he wants to go kiss his daughter.
Reminds the audience, of course, what he's in this for
and the whole reason he's doing it.
Again, Abby is just terrific in the movie.
And she just happened to have lost her front two teeth
before we started shooting the movie.
We actually caught her in this very real moment in time where...
By the time the premiere came around,
(CHUCKLES) her teeth were coming back.
But we caught her in this moment of her childhood
where she'd lost her two front teeth, which is so cute.
All right, just so we're clear, everyone here knows their role, right?
- Dave? - Wheels on the ground.
- Kurt? - Eyes in the sky.
- Luis? - Oh, man, you know it.
REED: I wanna take this opportunity to thank you, Paul,
for The Andy Griffith Show joke.
RUDD: I can't believe it's in there.
REED: As you know, I'm a huge Andy Griffith Show fan.
RUDD: That's the only explanation 'cause it's not that funny.
REED: Oh, come on. RUDD: (CHUCKLING) It's not.
REED: Have you seen the movie?
RUDD: He's funny when he says, "I wanna whistle," but, uh...
REED: Have you seen the movie play in North Carolina?
It kills. It kills.
Have you seen that with an over-60 crowd? It kills.
RUDD: (LAUGHING) I haven't, no.
REED: Now we get into the actual Pym Tech heist,
uh, where everybody has their role to play.
This was a fun and incredibly intricate sequence to shoot.
It's a really long sequence,
but this is where the heist really kicks into gear, so, um...
Visually, it had to be really kinetic. Everything's happening at once.
Um...
Russell Carpenter again, our DP,
and Peter Rosenfeld, our camera operator.
It's a combination of dolly stuff and Steadicam and crane,
and it all had to be really kinetic and move.
Utilities online.
(WHISTLING IT'S A SMALL WORLD)
REED: (CHUCKLES) And there's Luis doing what you told him not to do.
And he's whistling It's a Small World.
Kevin Feige, of course, at Marvel, is a huge Disney fan.
I think he actually collects Disney stuff.
The whole history of the parks and everything, he's fascinated.
Uh, he loved the idea of Luis whistling It's a Small World.
And here we go. Now we're about to go into the pipes.
(BEEPING)
RUDD: How did you shoot this?
Were you really shooting the inside of pipes?
REED: We shot, as reference with the macro crew,
we did shoot the inside of pipes,
and we also shot actual water flowing through the pipes
at different frame rates
to see how water looked and flowed at that size.
Earlier, there's a moment where you're feeding Ant-thony
a ball of water which is the surface tension on a raindrop,
that's pretty accurate.
So, we had to find the right consistency of water here,
so it wasn't too gelatinous and it felt like water.
RUDD: And this is a legitimate thing.
Ants will attach themselves to each other
and, uh, use their bodies as a raft.
REED: Yeah, these are the fire ants. They're like architects.
They cling together, they can make rope ladders.
If you go on YouTube, you can look at this footage of ants really doing this.
And I think that's one of the thrills of the movie, too, for kids.
You can go online and see, oh, these are real carpenter ants
and fire ants and crazy ants and bullet ants.
They're all real types of ants,
and they all have these real skill sets
that in the movie we use for these different elements of the heist,
but it's all based in fact.
And there are hundreds of other types of ants for future heists.
Got a Crown Vic right outside there.
This is problem?
DAVE: Considering the Crown Vic's the most
commonly used car for undercover cops, man...
REED: I love Pym's car.
I'm surprised you didn't ask for Pym's car at the end of the shoot,
just like a little parting gift.
You'd look good in that car.
(RUDD CHUCKLES)
RUDD: Yeah. What do you think they would have said?
REED: Uh...
RUDD: "Sure"? (CHUCKLES)
REED: "Sure. Take it. Absolutely, it's yours."
RUDD: Are you kidding me? REED: "It's all yours."
RUDD: This is a nice car.
REED: And now the bullet ants attack.
This guy was great for a stunt like that.
That's a very strenuous stunt to do and make it seem realistic.
And I think he, uh...
I don't know what it's like to actually be attacked by bullet ants,
but that seems real to me.
RUDD: It's very real. It's exactly what it's like.
I saw it from the Hamish and Andy video.
REED: Yeah, just the instant shock.
DAVE: (SCOFFS) Looks like Pym's getting arrested.
REED: So, this was all a combination of shooting
on the actual location in downtown Atlanta
and then some blue screen stuff on the stage.
A bunch of different elements going into this stuff.
In the movie, we placed Pym Tech
on a section of San Francisco called Treasure Island.
It's this real area in San Francisco,
and it just felt like where Pym Tech would be,
right across the water from downtown San Francisco.
And Treasure Island, uh... Look Treasure Island up on Wikipedia.
It's a really fascinating area.
And now Darren Cross.
There originally was a lot more with the idea that Darren Cross
had this, uh, unrequited love for Hope...
- RUDD: Mmm-hmm. -... which we played with
and we finally found the balance that you see in the movie.
But originally there was more of it,
and it really threatened to kind of weaken him as a villain,
if he was too...
And, also, he seems like a guy who does know all the angles,
and it's all like a chess match with him.
It felt, at the end, as we were cutting it,
like we didn't necessarily buy that he had not foreseen
that she was playing him a little bit.
It made him stronger this way.
Well, you can never be too safe.
REED: I love this weird little moment where they smile at each other.
(CHUCKLING) Just something that they did.
RUDD: There are a lot of things that I think Corey does that...
It's just really strong acting.
Even the pause that he takes right there
before he asks, "How do I look?" is so loaded
because you don't know what's going on in his mind.
- And that's all him. - REED: Yeah.
RUDD: It's great.
- It's really fun to watch. - REED: It's amazing to watch.
It's all about whether Darren Cross knows or doesn't know,
and he's constantly playing that up.
And also keeping the idea that, uh, what Darren Cross wants most of all
is for Pym to say, "I'm proud of you."
Just to have some acknowledgment from his former mentor.
RUDD: Right.
REED: This stuff, again, is really fun stuff.
In the comics, Ant-Man flying on an ant is one of the iconic images.
And we wanted to do it in as photorealistic a way as possible.
The idea of this whole server room at Pym Tech
seeming like Tokyo at night, making it kind of impressionistic.
When he gets up on the top of this and looking out over it,
these computer banks look like skyscrapers.
SCOTT: All right, guys. I'm in position.
REED: One of the things that Ant-Man allowed us to do was,
there's a real variety of imagery
in terms of the environments that Ant-Man's in,
from the ant hills to the server room.
It's one of the things that the movie,
particularly this section that we're getting into now,
where there's a fight in a helicopter, then a briefcase,
then a backyard barbecue and then into Cassie's room.
It just takes...
(STAMMERS) It was looking at all the different situations
you could put Ant-Man in and making them all tonally different.
This in 3D,
particularly seeing this at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles,
in IMAX laser projection, 3D, it's unbelievable.
A nod to Star Wars.
SCOTT: Heading to the particle chamber.
REED: And now it's just about ratcheting up the tension.
There's Martin Donovan again as Mitchell Carson,
the bane of Pym's existence.
There were different versions of what happens to Mitchell Carson
at the end of the movie.
Um...
Originally, there was a moment where he, uh, is running out of the building
and gets caught in the shockwave,
um, and he still has the Particles but he's scarred.
Uh, in the finished version,
we do see him get the Cross Particles and he escapes Scot-free.
There was a version where we were gonna kill him.
And then there was a version where he survived,
and Ant-Man took him out at the end of the movie.
RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
Which mirrored the original opening.
And poor Martin had to sit in that makeup trailer for hours
'cause they aged him
and made him look scarred and burned.
REED: Yeah.
RUDD: I'd say he had the worst of it, I think, of anybody...
- REED: I think you may be right. -...on the show.
REED: It's true.
I remember talking about, I think in the original drafts,
there was a version where Pym Tech didn't get blown up,
- there was a version where... RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
...Pym Tech got blown up
and then at some point in prep, we decided,
"Wait a second, there's Particles. It will blow up and then implode
"and then go into a tiny, uh, point of convergence."
And I love where we ended up with that.
There's a little screw in the shot.
Obviously, you kick it over here to check the laser grid.
But there are all these little scale cues that we always have in the frame
for Ant-Man and the ants.
Are you happy that we got one Adam and the Ants song in the movie?
Does that make you happy?
RUDD: Uh...
It always makes me happy when you get any Adam and the Ants song.
- I loved Adam Ant. - REED: Me, too.
RUDD: Loved Adam Ant. REED: Me, too.
- Make it go faster. - Dude, seriously.
(BANGING ON DOOR)
REED: Oh, this is really tense and exciting.
Yeah, caught up in the movie.
There was a black guy that looked exactly like me
who attacked us and put us in the back of this disgusting van.
REED: I love Tip and his Georgia accent. The greatest.
- Wait! - What? What do you mean, "Wait"?
RUDD: Hey, you had me do a lot of, um, ADR after the movie was done.
One of the things that you can kind of get away with,
when you're in a helmet, is adding lines.
So I spent a lot of time saying, "I'm getting the hang of this.
"Whoa!" (STAMMERS)
REED: I think you did the most ADR
definitely of any actor I've ever worked with.
(STAMMERS) There's a huge amount of it in the movie.
It's finding that line of... Too many "Yee-haw," whatever, is too much,
but it found the line of keeping Scott Lang alive inside that suit.
...trusted even more than me?
REED: And it's crucial to do.
We were changing the edit and refining and tightening things
up until the last minute.
And a lot of it required additional ADR.
Exactly your kind of guy, Hank!
He escapes his jail cell without leaving any clue as to how.
REED: I love the shot of the reflection
- of Cassie in the lenses. RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
That was a scene that we shot.
REED: And that will also be on this DVD and Blu-Ray
that you now have in your player.
(REED CHUCKLES SOFTLY)
I love, Ant-Man, that you're very tiny in there,
just trying to get out of the ring in the side of that shot.
(RUDD CHUCKLING)
REED: The tone of that was interesting because we had a version
where you were dinging against the glass a few times,
and it tipped it a little too comically.
We had to find the line of not undercutting the tension.
RUDD: Right.
...but I'm keeping the particle to myself.
They don't run on diesel.
REED: So, Mitchell Carson, uh, at the end of our movie,
gets away with a vial of the Cross Particles.
So, they are out there somewhere.
And for those of you who are Marvel fans,
go on the Marvel Wikipedia and look up Mitchell Carson.
He's an actual character in the Marvel Universe.
I'm not sure quite what's gonna happen with him.
There's been a lot of conjecture about who he is and who he might become,
what might happen to him.
But read up on Mitchell Carson.
This is not who you are.
It's the particles altering your brain chemistry.
REED: I love that shot where there's this moment of vulnerability
where he may turn a corner,
she may have actually gotten to him.
Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait.
(SIGHS)
REED: This is a strange moment for a villain.
I have to be the one to do it.
Here we go.
(RUDD CHUCKLING)
- RUDD: "Here we go." (REED CHUCKLING)
REED: Evangeline is so sharp with her movements
when she elbows the guy in the face and all her fighting movements.
She really committed to it. She really dug in.
...but I think I am now!
REED: And now we get to see Ant-Man's powers full force,
like how quickly he shrinks and grows and can take out people.
Very exhilarating.
This was a sequence that we, uh,
in the cutting room, worked and worked and worked
and got it tighter and tighter.
'Cause this whole sequence has to just keep moving.
That's an interesting shot there, uh,
where you punch the, uh, Hydra buyer.
It was originally Evangeline punching,
and we changed it to you punching.
I should talk about the sound design, too, that Skywalker did,
the sounds of the ants
and the sounds of the ear piece communicating.
It's really great sound design work.
We talked a lot about how the ear piece works
and how it actually communicates with the ants,
and having some kind of electronic but also some kind of insect sound to it.
(ALARM BLARING)
We got a 10-33 at Pym Tech.
Request immediate backup!
DAVE: Go, go, go!
REED: Do you remember we rode around in the van
(STAMMERS) with Nerdist?
To an intro thing, in the van.
What a great van. Who got the van at the end of the movie?
Did you get the van? (CHUCKLES) They didn't give you the van?
RUDD: I got nothing, but I didn't ask for anything. I wouldn't.
REED: Oh, you need the van. RUDD: No, I don't think I need the van.
There were a couple of those vans, I think.
- Two of them, right? - REED: Oh, yeah.
We need to get him out of here.
Go get that suit.
REED: So, now, this is where we really start our gonzo set of sequences
where, Ant-Man, uh, you are fully formed as a hero now.
All those shots where you're running across the floor,
when Ant-Man is really tiny in the frame,
that's going to be really fun stuff
for people to single-frame
and scroll through, uh, on DVD and Blu-ray.
It's some of the most exhilarating stuff.
Here also, like in the fight
where we go down inside the scale model,
and the sound design where the music drops out
and it becomes like missiles going by instead of bullets.
RUDD: Did we miss a Zoolander joke there?
REED: (CHUCKLES) Well, the Internet did it for us.
RUDD: "Is this a building for ants?"
REED: Exactly.
I think We did.
(PANTING)
Thank you, Luis.
- Are we the good guys? - Yeah.
- We're the good guys, right? - Yeah, we're the good guys.
Feels kinda weird, you know.
Yeah, but we're not done yet.
Get out of here before this place blows!
REED: And I love this moment where Luis
(CHUCKLING) reluctantly comes into his own as a hero
and saves the guy that he had knocked out.
(GROANING)
HOPE: The charges are set.
We've gotta find a way out of here. And fast.
REED: Now we get to our tank sequence.
You'll see elsewhere on the disc some amazing stuff
of the practical effects, of us sending a tank through a giant wall,
that went into creating this sequence.
Multiple shots fired!
REED: We love the image of a giant tank
just coming out of a building with a keychain.
The keychain, I have to give credit to Jake Morrison.
That was Jake Morrison's addition
which, in hindsight, seems like such a no-brainer
(CHUCKLING) but wasn't originally there and it just, uh...
It makes that moment.
RUDD: it really does sell the whole thing.
- The tank was always in there. - REED: Yes, always.
We need a doctor!
We've got him.
(MUSICAL CAR HORN HONKING)
REED: It must have been a really padded tank
for, uh, Hank and Hope to have survived that.
RUDD: (LAUGHS) That's true, isn't it? REED: Yeah, yeah.
RUDD: They're not the most...
REED: They're pretty strong.
Okay now, here, the death of Ant-thony.
This was something that I became obsessed with,
getting some emotion out of killing an ant.
And I love the moment.
RUDD: Very poetic, with the wing. REED: Yeah.
And I've gotten a lot...
On Twitter and stuff, people were going,
"Is Ant-thony really dead? Is he okay?"
But the average lifespan of a carpenter ant
is something like 12 weeks.
So, he was probably at week 11 at least.
I think he made the most of his time on Earth. He really did.
He lived life to the fullest.
This sequence, the copter sequence,
there's so many elements going on in this scene.
We shot against blue screen in an empty helicopter block
that Shepherd designed the interior of, but the exterior is all CG.
Here comes the giant implosion.
I love the music when we cut back to Cross.
He's lost his marbles now.
Game over now.
Yeah, the Pym Tech implosion of the building really feels like
a souped-up version of the house in the original Poltergeist.
Okay, I got him, I got him. There he is! Go, go, go!
REED: That, of course, is Wood Harris. We haven't talked about Wood Harris.
RUDD: Yeah, I was just thinking that. We haven't...
REED: In the passenger seat of that car.
I love this reveal of Yellowjacket.
One of my favorite moments in the movie.
RUDD: Great actor, Wood. REED: Yeah, absolutely.
RUDD: This whole sequence in 3D... REED: Yeah.
...really is super cool.
REED: Ant-Man lends itself just conceptually to 3D.
It really does enhance the experience.
Here's a moment I'm super proud of.
We talked about... There's an iPhone in this.
SIRI: Playing Disintegration by the Cure.
REED: In the briefcase.
We played around with some iPhone jokes,
like Cross yelling out something like, "You're gonna wind up dead."
"Searching for the closest Panera Bread."
There were some funny jokes, but The Cure thing really was a joke
but it went beyond a joke, it elevated this sequence,
and scored it in this giant anthemic way.
RUDD: I remember when you showed it to me the first time,
I was like, "Oh, my God, it's so great. It's such a great record."
REED: It's the second CD I ever bought.
RUDD: Really?
REED: Yeah, I had tons of vinyl before that,
but it's the second CD I ever bought.
A great album to this day.
But there's all these different action sequences back to back,
and it gave that briefcase a whole different tone and character.
(CHITTERING)
(CRACKLING)
The sound effect when you swat Yellowjacket into the bug zapper.
Freeze! Put your hands up! Get them up!
REED: I like the idea the movie could have ended there.
You could have captured Yellowjacket and the suit there
if it weren't for Cannavale showing up.
It would have been over.
RUDD: Yeah. But you know what?
He's doing what he thinks he needs to do.
REED: He's doing his job. RUDD: Yeah, he's just doing his job.
REED: We played around a lot
in shooting Ant-Man and Yellowjacket when they're small,
the idea of shallow depth of field
and the cameraman trying to find their focus.
That was one of the things that helped
sell the realism of the macrophotography,
was not making it so perfect.
You need to desist right now! Your delusions are out of hand.
DISPATCH: All units, we have a 2-36 in progress...
REED: This is one of the last things we shot,
you guys in the car.
(SIREN WAILING)
And now we head into Cassie's bedroom for
the giant third-act battle between Ant-Man and Yellowjacket.
The design, again, of that Yellowjacket suit
and the visualization is just terrific.
SCOTT: Paxton, let me help!
REED: It's such a horrifying image to have
this guy show up in the little girl's bedroom.
I really love that.
(STRAINING)
That was a fun day for you,
trying to stuff your head in the helmet a bunch of times.
(REED LAUGHING)
RUDD: Impossible.
REED: There was one take where you literally almost ripped your ear off.
I remember looking at you and thinking, "That had to have hurt."
I want your daddy, too.
(CASSIE SCREAMS)
There you are.
Daddy, is that you?
Hi, peanut.
REED: I love that sweet moment between Scott and Cassie there.
How did "peanut" come about?
RUDD: There's meaning there.
- I love this stuff with the carpet. - REED: Yeah.
RUDD: The carpet, it's...
One of my favorite shots is
early on when you're first discovering the suit and the vacuum...
There's something about carpet, and thick carpet, I think, that really...
REED: It's really tactile. You can feel it.
SCOTT: Not just me!
REED: Originally, in this sequence, there were no ants.
It was just Ant-Man fighting Yellowjacket.
I remember getting into prep and thinking, "He's got to have the ants.
"And we got to have him... It all has to dovetail.
"He's got to command an army of ants."
So, we added all the ants in this sequence.
The shrinking is incredible and obviously Ant-Man's major power,
but it was controlling the ants that I always loved
and made it really weird and unique and was so fun in the comics.
We added a lot of that as the film progressed.
But this sequence is terrific.
Again, this was a sequence
that was always in the original scripts of the movie.
Thomas, I think, came about later.
I remember that we were still trying to get the rights to Thomas
when we were in prep.
We call that the gift-that-keeps-on-giving shot.
Any time we're in the action with Ant-Man
or down in the macro world
and then we pop back out to the real world perspective
to show that it's just going on in the corner of a room,
it always got a great reaction.
RUDD: Look at the archway of the wooden block
and you can see the remnants of the ants.
REED: We had one really graphic version where it was disgusting,
and a leg was really swinging off, but we backed off of it a little bit.
- We just back it up, okay? - DAVE: That's it.
REED: I also like that the movie takes time
to just hold on these guys backing up for a while here.
This whole room was a set, but visual effects went in
and digitally photographed all the textures and everything
so that we could create a virtual room for these shots.
It's really incredible technology.
I think now was the time to do an Ant-Man movie
because the technology has finally caught up with the concept.
There's our giant ant. And wait for it...
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING)
Yeah, always gets a great reaction.
We did two takes of that.
I don't know if you were there that night,
dropping this giant thing on the cop car.
The dolly move was not quite right on the first one.
And I ordered a second take,
and people were not necessarily happy about doing a second take of that.
But it's the second take that's in the movie,
and it had to be right.
(ALL GASP)
That's a messed-up looking dog.
I'm gonna to destroy
- everything you love. (SCREAMING)
Freeze! S.F.P.D.
(GRUNTING)
(STRAINING)
I can't break through.
DARREN: It's titanium, you idiot!
REED: It's fun getting the fighting style of Ant-Man,
sort of the martial arts and fighting moves
combined with the shrinking and growing.
- You stay behind me, okay? - Okay.
Stay behind me.
REED: And, again, this is something. I love that in an action comedy,
that the emotionality is important.
This moment of self-sacrifice for Scott
was something that you guys originally brought to the script,
which I felt was not only terrific but just crucial to what the story is.
RUDD: It's his moment of redemption.
(SCREAMING)
REED: A lot of people have been asking,
"Is Yellowjacket dead?"
He's at least severely hurt.
(VOICE ECHOING)
HANK: You could go subatomic.
You could go subatomic.
Oh, no.
REED: This was something, again...
This is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
I love what it does story-wise,
and I love that we just could go a little psychedelic...
- RUDD: Yeah. -...in the visuals.
RUDD: I always thought it'd be really cool...
You see this movie where now our eyes have adjusted
to seeing everything on a very small level,
and to then get into this weird world.
Be visually striking, and then also
can act as a bridge
for future storytelling.
REED: Yeah.
RUDD: How was it, as far as the visual effects...
Because what do you use as...
REED: As a reference? RUDD: As a reference.
REED: Industrial Light & Magic did this sequence,
and we had lots of discussions
about the different levels of the quantum realm.
It's starting to be like germs and things like that,
and then getting down to the atomic level
and then subatomic level,
getting into this Kaleidoscopic thing, which is really almost visualizing
Scott's mind almost starting to break down
and a little more hallucinogenic.
And in the void, we discussed this, where the sound drops out
but also how it should be nothingness,
but there has to be something in nothingness.
RUDD: Yeah, I think originally we had had a thing with that weird animal,
that turned out to be the demonic bunny,
had a sound and that I was hearing it...
- REED: Yeah. -...in this world.
But sound is different in this world.
- You don't even hear things... - REED: Yeah.
...in the same way.
REED: And Scott using his smarts and his electrical skills
to figure out he's got one grow pellet left
and he sort of Jerry-rigged the regulator
in a vain attempt to come back from the quantum realm.
The whole ending battle has, to me,
real hints of '80s Amblin stuff.
There's a little E.T. vibe, a little Poltergeist vibe, to it.
Daddy!
I love you so much.
I love you, too.
REED: I was constantly impressed by Abby.
To be so young, and she's so focused,
and just really, really prepared and terrific.
And so cute.
RUDD: Yeah, she's just such a sweet kid. Just great.
- GALE: Is she all right? - She's fine.
RUDD: Her whole family, very nice. Very nice parents.
REED: (CHUCKLING) This little moment where she sees him there.
And then, of course, Thomas and the skittering ant.
I like, story-wise, too, the idea that...
The fact that Scott gets out of the quantum realm
might reignite this obsession for Hank Pym
to reinvestigate the quantum realm
and maybe Janet could be out there somewhere.
Have fun, by the way, freeze-framing the quantum realm sequence.
There may be some things that you weren't able to catch
in your theatrical Ant-Man experience
that you might be able to see on home video.
RUDD: Ooh! REED: What?
RUDD: That's the best part of this commentary.
REED: Huh? Come on.
Get some rest.
REED: There was a lot of discussion about this photograph.
It's Hank, Janet and Hope.
We didn't really want to see too much of Janet.
She's obscured there.
Maybe one of the only photos he has of Janet left.
Again, I think the quantum realm
was a very compelling visual place
and has infinite possibilities to revisit.
...shoot me again.
Yeah. I don't know what you were doing, grabbing and kissing me like that.
I'm a little surprised myself.
I have to get somewhere. I'll see you later, Hank.
Really, Hope.
REED: That's a nice run, Paul.
RUDD: We weren't sure whether or not we were gonna even have that.
REED: Yeah, it's true. RUDD: There was no...
I think originally there was no kissing scene.
REED: Mmm-hmm.
REED: This scene I really like, and we worked on this a lot,
but I like the idea that it gives you a glimpse of...
Scott is back in their world, and that there is not only...
There's a newfound respect between these two guys.
RUDD: Yeah, yeah, that was a big deal.
You don't want Paxton to be an enemy.
He is Cassie's stepfather,
and I think it's important that the audience feels good
about where Cassie is living and who she's living with.
REED: Exactly.
And that this is their new normal now.
Whatever happens, this is going to be their dynamic.
And then, of course, Cassie's new pet.
RUDD: Which according to your math is probably gonna die next week,
so I hope she doesn't get
too emotionally invested in this relationship.
REED: Well, he's probably like a goldfish, really.
RUDD: He's worse than a goldfish.
- A goldfish can last a while. - REED: Yeah.
Also when the goldfish doesn't last, you can flush him down a toilet.
I guess they'll have to bury the ant.
But let's not talk about that. Maybe this ant lives for a while.
Scott could always make a new one.
No, no, no. No doubt, no doubt.
RUDD: Do you think she would notice? REED: Yes.
RUDD: If they just replace the ant? REED: Yeah, she would notice.
She's a sharp kid.
So, now the second tip montage,
which was where we landed on ending the movie.
And I like the idea that it not only gives Stan Lee his cameo,
I think we've bested all the other cameos. That's my opinion.
"You know what I'm sayin'? She's crazy-stupid fine, right?"
The bartender's all like "Yeah, crazy-stupid fine."
REED: And what a day for us,
to meet Stan Lee, talk to him about Ant-Man, terrific.
RUDD: Yeah, it was amazing.
It's cool being on set when Stan Lee is there
because it's like the President is visiting.
REED: Yeah, everyone gets quiet and reverent.
He's amazing.
But this also ties in to the idea that you made an impression on Falcon
and now he's looking for you.
And all the Marvel fans particularly intrigued.
By the way, of all the lip-syncers in both these sequences,
Anthony Mackie, unstoppable.
I think it's 'cause he's done a handful of movies with Peña
and he knows Peña's cadence, but he was just dead on every time.
Yeah, the idea of Falcon's looking for Scott
and how is this going to play into the larger MCU.
What'd he say?
He said "Yes."
REED: (LAUGHING) And holding a little too long on Peña there.
RUDD: A little too long. REED: So great. Um...
So you actually know the answer
(CLEARS THROAT) to what's gonna become of Scott Lang.
You've already shot, at this point, as we're recording this,
you've already shot some stuff for Captain America: Civil War.
RUDD: Yes.
REED: How was that experience, Paul?
RUDD: It was amazing.
It was really cool. And I just...
REED: Which side of the civil war? RUDD: I just did...
REED: Which side of the civil war are you on?
RUDD: Oh, I think you could probably find out.
REED: Come on, which side? The fans want to know.
Hey, fans, I'm doing this for you.
- Which side are you on? - RUDD: They don't care.
REED: Are you on Cap's side or are you on Iron Man's side?
- It's a simple question. - RUDD: You're asking me?
REED: Mmm-hmm.
I'm asking you, Paul Rudd, who plays Scott Lang/Ant-Man,
which side of the civil war are you going to be on?
RUDD: Well, I could tell you. REED: Yeah?
The mics are on, man. Let's do it.
Who out there wants to hear?
RUDD: First of all, right there, Lars. We haven't even mentioned Lars.
REED: Lars Winther, our AD.
RUDD: It sounds as if I'm trying to skirt the...
I won't. We'll go back to this topic.
REED: Lars is a fantastic first AD.
Also, the first AD on Captain America: Civil War.
Which brings us back to Captain America: Civil War.
- Which side are you on? RUDD: I'm on Lars' side.
REED: Lars' side? Lars is like Switzerland.
I mean literally, he might be from Switzerland.
RUDD: He is, he's from Switzerland. REED: No, he's not from Switzerland.
Um...
But yes, which side?
RUDD: Um...
I'm on Captain America's side.
(COMMENTATORS LAUGHING)
REED: Wait, did you just tell them... "Yeah, I'm on that side."
Well, you heard it there. I don't know if it's true or not.
I have no idea. 'Cause in my mind...
RUDD: I'm kidding. I'm on Iron Man's side.
REED: Oh, so you're on... Okay.
Oh, wait, wait, wait. There's more movie. (SHUSHING)
RUDD: I'm not on...
REED: There's more movie.
RUDD: What's happening? I've never seen this.
I'm not on any side.
REED: This is a crucial pan' of the movie
and the completion of Hope's arc in Ant-Man
where Hank Pym finally realizes
that she's capable of so much more.
He's not gonna hold her back anymore.
And she's going to figuratively, and possibly literally,
be able to finally spread her wings, Paul.
And look at the design of that Wasp suit.
Fantastic.
Yeah, I think there's great promise
of seeing Evangeline Lilly in that Wasp suit, kicking ass.
It's about damn time.
REED: What were we talking about?
RUDD: We were talking about Civil War.
REED: Can I pitch my...
Is it too late to pitch my idea for Captain America: Civil War?
I don't know who's on what side.
RUDD: I'm thinking it probably is too late.
REED: I haven't read this stuff. I don't know who's on what side.
But I want it to be a Civil War reenactment movie
where they all dress up like North and South,
like the blue and the gray,
and they just go to some field in Virginia and just have it out.
RUDD: Yeah, that's...
REED: It becomes like a period movie. RUDD: That happens, by the way.
REED: Is that what happens? Is that a spoiler?
Jnadvertent spoiler? - RUDD: Mmm-hmm.
REED: I think that would be a weird, different take on a Marvel movie.
RUDD: It would. How great would it be
to see all of them actually doing a Civil War reenactment!
REED: Yeah.
RUDD: It would be very interesting. REED: Yeah.
RUDD: Tom Kenny was the Hideous Rabbit?
REED: Mmm-hmm. RUDD: I didn't know that.
REED: Is that true? You didn't know that?
RUDD: No. REED: Yeah, Tom Kenny.
Tom Kenny, of course, from Mr. Show
and also the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.
RUDD: Oh, my God! I had no idea. REED: That's right. Mmm-hmm.
There's a lot of people
that are involved in the making of a movie.
I'm gonna give a special shout-out to our editorial group.
Dan Lebental who is a phenomenal editor.
I'd worked with him on my movie, The Break-Up.
He also cut Iron Man and I think also cut Iron Man 2
and cut Thor: The Dark World.
But he is integral to what makes the movie work,
just a fantastic editor.
Colby Parker, Jr., also a fantastic editor,
worked with us.
Movies like these take a...
The post-production and editorial staff on this movie were fantastic.
RUDD: All of those PAs right there. REED: Yeah, look at everybody.
RUDD: These are true group efforts of everybody.
Look at these drivers. I mean, come on.
REED: So which side are you on?
RUDD: See that guy Dan Mabry right there?
All the way to the left, third row down.
Dan drove me around, and he's the best.
- So thank you, Dan Mabry. - REED: That's nice.
I like a shout-out to the drivers.
Did you know I was a van driver on Bu“ Durham'?
RUDD: No, I didn't know that. REED: That's a fun fact.
RUDD: Really? REED: Yeah.
RUDD: You drove on Bull Durham? REED: I did. I drove a van.
RUDD: That's really cool. REED: A 15-passenger van.
- It was a Ford. Yeah. - RUDD: Wow.
REED: Mmm-hmm.
RUDD: Um...
- So you must have some stories. - REED: I do, I have some.
Let me ask you, whose side were you on?
- Susan Sarandon or... - REED: Sarandon.
RUDD: You were Team Sarandon? REED: I was Team Sarandon.
Yeah, all the way.
I have some behind-the-scenes footage
where she autographed my forehead.
RUDD: Really? REED: That's true, yeah.
Which side are you on in Civil War?
RUDD: Um... I am on the Hulk's side.
REED: Mmm!
- You're on Hulk's side? RUDD: Yeah.
REED: I didn't know Hulk was... Is Hulk involved in it?
RUDD: Yeah, I'm on his side.
REED: So, you did shoot on the movie. You shot some scenes.
RUDD: I did. REED: Uh-huh. Okay.
RUDD: Do you think that they're gonna edit out
even me saying some of these people...
- Or not really? - REED: What people?
RUDD: Like Iron Man and Captain America and Hulk.
REED: No, they're all Marvel properties.
I don't think there's any copyright infringement.
Are you afraid someone's gonna take an audio sample of one of them,
- and just that'll be the answer? RUDD: Dissect it.
REED: Yeah, I think you've covered all your bases.
RUDD: By the way, I'll tell you everything.
But I know they don't like it if I do that.
REED: You're gonna tell me everything?
RUDD: I'll fell you.
I'll say it all On this DVD.
REED: Let's get it out there. RUDD: Here's the thing, though.
You've just spent the last two years living in the world
where it's like these are state secrets.
REED: I have, yes.
RUDD: So, you're really stoking this fire.
REED: Which is when I ask the question,
I'm asking on behalf of the fans.
You know what? Ant-Man is the 12th Marvel movie.
Marvel's been very successful, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- Do you know why it's successful? - RUDD: Why?
REED: Not only are the movies good but the fans are good.
And the fans deserve an answer right now from you
about which side you're on in the movie Captain America: Civil War
- that won't come out until... - RUDD: Here's the thing.
How do you know that I'm on a side?
REED: Well, "civil war" would suggest that there's a war.
And in a war there have to be sides.
RUDD: Right. However, aren't there some that maybe...
REED: Neutral? RUDD: ...are Switzerland,
who don't maybe agree with any of them?
- Because of the mentor that I have... - REED: Are you saying...
...in this movie?
REED: Oh, Are you saying maybe that Ant-Man is neutral?
RUDD: Maybe. REED: Maybe.
RUDD: Not really. REED: You're really hedging your bets.
RUDD: No, I could really sell that, though.
REED: Yeah. RUDD: If I really tried.
REED: Yeah. Um...
Well, I know that...
RUDD: I'll tell you what was amazing about it, though,
is that we were working on this movie and...
Here it is, Antmusuz, written by Adam Ant
- and Marco Pirroni. - REED: Marco Pirroni.
RUDD: Yeah. REED: Such a classic.
RUDD: Quick. Adam Ant's real name?
REED: Stuart Goddard. RUDD: There you go.
REED: Mmm-hmm.
There it is, man. Thomas the Tank Engine.
Right there. He gets a credit.
Listen to Chris Beck's music again, folks.
Beautiful.
And, again, the first movie to ever shoot at Pinewood Studios, Atlanta.
Very proud of that.
I think we signed the wall.
I think we signed the wall of one of the stages.
It's probably gone, they probably scrubbed it off.
(RUDD LAUGHING) - It's not there anymore.
RUDD: I forgot to sign the wall while I was there.
REED: Oh, wait. (SHUSHING)
There's another scene.
RUDD: And then I went back and signed it
when I was working on Civil War.
REED: Is that true? RUDD: Yeah.
REED: Did you backdate it?
FALCON: Hey, Cap!
(REED SHUSHING)
REED: Oh, okay, here's some Captain America: Civil War.
Are you in this scene? You might be in this scene.
That's a question! Are you in this scene as Ant-Man?
RUDD: You gotta look closely. REED: Where?
Are you in Bucky's shirt?
ROGERS: Even if he did...
FALCON: Who knows if the Accords will let him help.
REED: What are the Accords? The Accords. He said the Accords.
RUDD: It's a fleet of Honda cars that they got.
They got these...
REED: So they drive around in Hondas now?
RUDD: They drive around in Honda Accords.
REED: Ant-Man will return. Well, there it is.
Thank you for listening. It's Peyton Reed, director of Ant-Man.
And Paul Rudd, I play Scott Lang who's actually Ant-Man.
REED: Thank you so much for listening.