Michael Shannon

Yeah, I mean, the charges themselves were, I believe...

That was the first time that anybody had been charged with, you know, crimes against humanity.

I don't think that was a term that existed prior to this trial.

Yeah, Russell and I had met the weekend before we were set to shoot that scene just to go through it.

And we both agreed that it would be our preference to do the entire scene without breaking it up.

They had scheduled it, I believe, for three days of shooting because typically on a film set, you would not attempt to shoot that many pages in one day.

It was around about, I think, a 20-page scene.

And we both agreed that to break the scene up into acts, if you would, over the course of three days would deflate the momentum and the tension of the scene.

And I just always am a big fan of getting lost in a scene if and when I can.

A lot of times for me, the most difficult scenes are actually the very short scenes because sometimes it takes a minute to get your bearings, you know.

And I like to get to a place where I just forget that there's a camera or anybody's filming it and it's just something happening.

And so it was actually an opportunity for,

that I relished.

Some people, I think, would say, oh, you must have been so anxious about having to do so much in that fashion.

But it was kind of the opposite.

I think I would have been more anxious had we kept it the way they had scheduled it.

For the record, is there any doubt in your mind that Adolf Hitler is dead?

So you are aware that this makes you the only living man who can expound to us the true purposes of the Nazi Party and the inner workings of its leadership?

Your party, from the very beginning, intended to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

And upon coming to power, you immediately abolished parliamentary government in Germany?