How They Got Their Lines Down Cold

Key 'Breach' Scene Had Multiple Takes on a Chilly Night, All Part of the Plan

Exactly a year ago, the night of Valentine's Day, film director Billy Ray looked though a video monitor at the perfect shot -- the one in which Ryan Phillippe would confront co-star Laura Linney in a Washington public plaza while a golden moon hung in the black sky.

He was in Woodrow Wilson Plaza at the Ronald Reagan Building, shooting a scene for "Breach," a thriller that recounts the FBI's effort to arrest double agent Robert Hanssen.

A crew of several dozen, including Washington gaffers, production assistants and caterers, thronged the mall. The actors were warmed up, their breath forming wispy clouds in the wintry air. And Ray was getting ready to film the movie's most significant moment -- when Linney (playing an FBI agent) reluctantly tells Phillippe (as FBI operative Eric O'Neill) the full truth about the man he was assigned to monitor.

Ray's strategy was to make Linney deliver her lines differently each time, so she could elicit different reactions from Phillippe. But the dialogue wouldn't change.

"If I push Laura in a certain direction," he later explained,"I'm going to affect Ryan's performance. If we can calibrate Laura's level of anger between 1 and 10, he's going to react differently to a 10 than he does to a 1. And Ryan's so good he'll react differently to a 5 than he does to a 4.6."

This would give him choices later, in the editing room.

The takes began.

"What's the trouble?" the in-character Linney said -- again and again and again.

"I want to see what you got on this guy," Phillippe replied, just as many times.

And so it went, take after take. In some, Linney was edgy, her blue eyes hardening. In others, her expression softened. Her tone was variously harsh, accommodating and somewhere in between.

Eventually, a frozen reporter felt obliged to go home at 2 a.m., but -- Ray reveals a year later -- they decided to use the kinder, gentler Laura.

"She winds up -- in a very humane way -- just knocking the hubris out of him, but not punishing him. I think she feels the enormity of this, and understands that he's starting to appreciate it too. So she eases back. I think it's the right choice."

After that scene and an elaborate crane shot that ultimately never appeared in the movie, they were finished.

"It was 6 or 7 in the morning. Somebody brought out some champagne."

And another Washington movie had wrapped.