The opposite approach is the convergent which, in Godfather II is an extreme example of that, which is where... It's a film made up of two completely different tracks, and you intercut from one to the other. And in Godfather II, the point at which they meet is actually just outside of the film, which is where Marlon, the Godfather, comes in at the end of the film. You only hear him, you never see him, but he comes and you're left with Michael sitting alone at the table about to tell his father that he's joined the Marines.
But a more conventional approach would be a hypothetical film where you have a scene on a train with some businessmen going to the nearest town, discussing what they're going to do, and then you cut to a family in a car, going on a picnic. And the kids are making noise in the backseat and the father's telling them, 'Be quiet.' Then you cut back to the businessmen, then back to the car, and at a certain point, the train and the car are going to come together in an accident. And the businessmen and the family are going to, you know... Their stories are going to mix together. The problem with the single point-of-view film, and Talented Mr. Ripley is another example of this where we have an unsympathetic main character who murders people and lies, but you're fascinated with them. And hopefully, you're fascinated with the Harry Caul character. Or you just get up and leave the theatre. There isn't a scene where some of the other characters go off and say, 'What do you think about that Tom Ripley? I think he's duh duh duh.' It's – you're either looking at Tom Ripley or Harry Caul, or you're looking at something that he is looking at. You're never let off the hook. The problem is, how do you tell the truth in that story? It's tricky.
And we ran up... we run up against this problem in The Conversation, which is what happened, you know? We couldn't have a scene in which, you know, like the end of detective stories where they say, 'Well, actually he did this and she did that.' 'You mean?' 'Yes, he did that. And then...' We couldn't go there, because that would break the rules that we were operating under. So we had to find some way to help the audience in this way, and we were doing many things.
