Q. So that's not some kind of gloomy "Blade Runner" homage. It's just to make the footage match?

A. Precisely. And it's expensive to have giant tankers filled with water. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. There was a lot of resistance. I was like, "This is New Line, isn't it?" But people got with the program. I remember (New Line executive) Lynn Harris, who I adore, had the unenviable position of coming down on the day when we were shooting the gluttony murder. And we had 30-gallon trash bags filled with cockroaches that had to be spilled onto the floor and then we would see them scatter. And she was there for about three hours and then decided: Somebody's getting fired over this and it's not going to be me. [Laughs.] This is a joke. This is the kind of stuff that David normally says with a smile on his face to be funny. I have to say that.

Q. You kid, but the test screenings for "Seven" were notoriously awful.

A. Disastrous. I think we scored in the 50s, which normally tells you that that movie is going on the shelf. Joe Farrell (founder of NRG, the company that introduced market testing to studios) and his band of merry men was one of the more pathetic scams in Hollywood for so many years. I think we tested the movie in Long Beach. And I remember arriving and saying, "Listen, just for my own edification, I'd love to see the flier that you used to amalgamate this crowd that's going to see this thing tonight."

And they said, "OK, fine." And they brought me this little 5-by-7-inch card that said: "Would you like to see a new movie starring Brad Pitt ('Legends of the Fall') and Morgan Freeman ('Driving Miss Daisy')?" It made no sense to me. You're not going to market this movie to the people who like "Driving Miss Daisy." That's not a correlative. There's no connective tissue. There's no relationship between these experiences, much less the kind of storytelling that we're asking the audience to immerse themselves in.

Q. How did you recover from a screening like that? What happens next?

A. There was a moment when we had shown the movie, they were underwhelmed and nervous, and there was a big meeting convened at New Line in one of the massive conference rooms. One of the producers who's no longer alive, her big idea was that Brad and Gwyneth Paltrow have these dogs that live in that tiny little room in their apartment. And she was convinced that the thing that would send him into apoplectic, inconsolable sorrow was if the German shepherd — if that was the head in the box. And we were all kind of like: Really?

By the way, remember that we did not have the helicopter footage yet, and I think I had two nights to shoot the end. So I came to them after this horrendous screening when we got the notes from the audience that said I wouldn't recommend this movie to my worst enemy. And it was discussed whether I should continue on with the movie and whether or not we should shoot animal heads or whatever.

Q. You're right back to the nightmare of "Alien 3."

A. I remember at the end of this meeting, I turned to (New Line production president) Michael (De Luca) and I said, "I want to see you in your office across the hallway." And we got up and we left and we went across the hall into his office and we closed the door. And I said, "Dude, we talked about 'Klute.' We talked about 'The French Connection.' We talked about the kinds of movies that we wanted to make. And I'm telling you, this movie is a good movie. It will be if we can complete the intention. And I need the money to finish this, and I'm coming to you and saying if you support this, I know I can make a better movie than what we screened."

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