As Coates said, “You see in George what the story is really about, when he’s talking to her.”Īnd no matter how sensual the scene is, it’s not at all explicit, which Coates confirmed, “I think it’s very erotic when you don’t see that much.”Ĭoates also stated another editing truism: “I think with those scenes, this is very often true, that you get it pretty well right the first time. Which also foreshadows their ill-fated love affair. And overlaying the dialogue from the bar over key erotic moments, also reveals plot points preceding that encounter and allows Jack and Karen’s fears and vulnerabilities to keep seeping in, despite their desires. The build-up of tension and release: the tease of their almost having sex and then cutting back to the bar repeatedly. The intercutting in the sequence represents the perfect marriage of style and content. (There is a hopeful twist: She introduces him to another prisoner and master escape artist!) Jack leaves the hotel, and the Sig pistol he had taken on the pillow – although Karen ultimately ends up arresting him. (Figures 57, 58)Īfter arguing about how they each may have just used each other Karen says, “I just wanna know what’s going to happen.” The final release and the longest shot in sequence – as is the final freeze frame. He said, ‘Do it, let’s have a look at it,’ and he liked it, so we kept it in.” ‘I just felt we needed one more,’ I said to Steven. (Figure 55)Ĭoates discusses this last freeze frame: “I put one in where he is just about to seduce her on the bed, literally the day before we cut negative. Freeze frame just before the kiss happens. (Figure 54) Jack comes into frame for a kiss.
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“Lets get out of here.” (Figure 51) “Yeah,” says Jack. (Figures 48, 49)īar: Silence over two shot. Silence, as they playfully throw back bed covers. Hotel room: first flash forward and first touch. (Figure 7) (Figure 8)Ĭamera pans down: (Figure 9) His hand touches hers: (Figure 10). The opportunity “may only happen two or three times in your life,” says Jack. Then the discussion turns to what’s at stake: Will she fulfill her duty and arrest him? Or should they just go for the moment and have no regrets. Right away they get into classic Elmore Leonard repartee, first playing a fake fantasy date routine. It turns out to be Jack, in a tuxedo, no less. A couple of traveling salesmen hit on her and she brushes them off, and then another male appears unexpectedly behind her. The scene starts with Karen in a hotel bar, having come to Detroit to find Jack. I would say, ‘Let’s do this and cut from here with the hands,’ and he’d say, ‘Let’s try overlaying the dialogue here,’ and we just did it, and it was really exciting. Then we got the idea, Steven Soderbergh and I sort of, between us, really, started intercutting, we just tried one or two things and it started to gel, flashing back, sometimes we flash forward. So I cut the two sequences completely separately, the bar scene with all the dialogue, the one in the hotel room just with music. Although I don’t think we were ever going to lay a whole heap of dialogue on it because it worked so well in the bar.
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As Coates explained, “It started in the bar, he sits down and talks to her and they start flirting and then the scene in the bedroom was only shot silently because it was going to have the dialogue from the first scene laid over it. The innovative approach to that sequence – intercutting and making time jumps back and forth between the bar where they meet and the hotel room where they end up – was not planned. And that moment when she does finally meet up with him, at a hotel, is considered one of the most iconic and brilliantly edited sex sequences in film history. (Figure 1) The banter and mutual attraction begins and, after Jack manages to get away, Karen spends approximately the next hour of the film in pursuit of him. When we first meet Karen, she happens to be outside a prison that Jack is escaping from and ends up as an unlikely hostage, squished next to him in the trunk of her car. And in this scene, in particular, the artful banter and charged chemistry between the charismatic leads, Jennifer Lopez, playing Karen, a Federal Marshal and George Clooney as Jack, a bank robber. “Coates and the director made highly effective, sometimes audaciously stylistic choices that fully displayed the wit, satire, colorful characters and often absurd situations of the Elmore Leonard novel that the film was based on. Coates, ACE, who always relished the opportunity for a challenge, said in a 2016 interview, “When I first worked on Out of Sight, I knew that Steven did things in a fairly far out way so I said to him, ‘Stretch me.’ He wanted to try things, experiment in the cutting room, and I was looking forward to that.