geraldine page on woody allen

One day on the set of Woody Allen’s Interiors they were shooting a scene where she came in the front door of her home, put her purse down on a hall table and continued on into the house. It was that simple, no dialogue. “Eighty-three takes later,” she tells me, “Woody says, ’Let’s take it again.’ Now I was ready to strangle him. Woody what do you want? And he asks, ‘What are you doing, Gerry?’ I said I was an interior designer coming home and putting down my bag. ‘That’s the problem,’ he said, ‘I just want you to walk in and put down your bag.’ Well I thought he was crazy but I said fine let’s do it and I did. I did less, just walked in and put down my bag. Woody said, ‘Cut. Print it.’ The difference was miniscule but the result on screen was enormous.” She screws up her mouth, “He was right. I learned a huge lesson that day, did some of my best work on that one.”

http://www.regionsroad.com/columns/0103_geraldinepage.html (wonderful source)