Nick of Time is a 1995 movie in real time by director John Badham starring Johnny Depp in the role of Gene Watson an accountant whose daughter is kidnapped to blackmail him to commit a murder http://inadepptrance.wordpress.com/feed











 

NICK OF TIME 

1995

Gene Watson

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Director: John Badham

Writer: Patrick Sheane Duncan

With : Johnny Depp, Courtney Chase, Charles Dutton, Christopher Walken, Marsha Mason, Peter Strauss, Gloria Reuben, G.D. Spradlin

Tagline: "Within 90 minutes, someone is going to die... And the clock is ticking"

 Rate: R

 

Awards & Nominations:

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SYNOPSIS

No sooner does accountant Gene Watson (Depp) arrive at L.A.'s Union station with his six-year-old daughter than he's plunged into a nightmare. Two shadowy strangers (Christopher Walken, Roma Maffia) separate Watson from his little girl, slap a gun into his hand and present a devil's bargain: kill a top government official before she leaves a nearby political rally... or never again see his beloved child. 

UNUSUAL TECHNIQUES

- The plot unfolds in real time.

- The bulk of the movie was shot almost entirely hand-held using combinations of multi-camera and Steadicam set-ups. Even during the few actual dolly tracking sequences, the camera was hand-held and operated from a dolly by a seated cameraman.

 - One of the most remarkable film sequences involved one seamless take during which Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken board a glass-walled elevator and ride 35 floors to the top of L.A.'s Bonaventure hotel. Crammed into the confines of the elevator with the actors were, director John Badham, cinematographer Roy H. Wagner, focus-puller Todd Slyapich, sound mixer Willie D. Burton, boom operator Marvin E. Lewis and script supervisor Barbara Thaxton. Given the fact that the elevator was glass from top to bottom, was lit by 8 Kino Flo lamps, ensuring that camera and crew reflections were not captured on film was quite an exercise in and of itself.




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QUOTES FROM JOHNNY DEPP

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Watson's business card lists a Santa Maria (California) address. Santa Maria is in the 805 area code, but the phone number on his card has a 310 area code (Los Angeles).

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"For me, it's always more difficult to play a square. Playing a real straight guy is a real challenge - and wearing that suit every day! I've never played an executive before."
Johnny Depp, The Virginian-Pilot, November 1995

"Hey, I don't mind working with kids - [Courtney Chase] was a great kid. She won a lot of money off me. We'd bet on how many takes a scene would require. The bet was $20 each time out. She won about $60. A pretty sharp kid."
Johnny Depp, The Virginian-Pilot, November 1995

"It's not a conscious attempt to be commercial at all - I read the screenplay and liked it a lot. I was on the edge of my seat when I read this thing. It reminded me a lot of the old Hitchcock films. I wanted to do it, and I wanted to work with [director] John Badham. I was a big fan of Saturday Night Fever, which he directed; it's a great movie. I also wanted to work with Christopher Walken, whom I've always admired."
Johnny Depp, Interview magazine, December 1995

"What happened to me for a while is that people started calling me "oddball." They thought I could only play these outcasts. So, this was a chance to play something really straight."
Johnny Depp, Interview magazine, December 1995

"I've attempted things in the past where people thought I tried to sell out. For example I did this film "Nick of Time" with [director] John Badham. I don't know if the film was particularly good. I did that film not for money, or not to sell out. I didn't think it was going to be successful at all. I didn't care. I did it because I wanted to work with Christopher Walken and I wanted to work with John Badham. The script was very much like an old school Hitchcock film. All of those elements were intriguing to me so I took it."
Johnny Depp, The Decatur Daily, July 2005

 

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QUOTES FROM OTHERS

"If Hitchcock were making this picture [Nick of Time] he’d probably have wanted Jimmy Stewart. Who’s the Jimmy Stewart of the 90’s? Nice, unassuming, unpretentious? Johnny has a basic sweetness to him. He’s a classic movie actor, like the true greats—Paul Newman, Gary Cooper, even Steve McQueen. Minimalist in approach, but extremely honest. Johnny is that kind of actor. He has this great ability to be in a scene where he may do nothing and yet he establishes his presence on the screen."
John Badham, 1995

"Johnny would come in at seven in the morning and we would start to stage a scene, and I would think he was only propped up by a stage brace. He would stand there looking a little shaken, but totally focused. What I learned right away was, it didn't matter if he never went to bed, he was right on top of it."
John Badham,  from Johnny Depp, A Modern Rebel by Brian J. Robb

"He has great enthusiasm. He’s like a little kid on the set, a real devil. We all know about Leslie Nielsen carrying around his little farting machine, and Johnny Depp had one of those, which he thought was great fun. But somebody also gave him a laser beam pen, one of those things you use in lectures for pointers, and next thing I know he is all over the hotel with this damn thing, entertaining himself all day long. His favorite thing was to get over the bar, about 40 feet above, and get some drunk looking around wondering why his drink was suddenly glowing red. It was like a bad joke out of some old movie. You’ve got to love somebody like that."
John Badham, 1995




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