I’ve often been criticized for the unnecessary length of some of the
scenes in both Faces and Husbands. In some ways the length of the
scenes and duration of the shots are accidents in that they weren’t
planned before we actually shot them. But they are important to the
effect. I want to give the actors enough time to allow them to express
what they are feeling in a scene – I don’t want them to have to keep
down their energy or curtail their performances. The length of the
scenes allows us to capture reactions and behaviors that might never
take place if it didn’t go on and on. The pacing conforms to the time real
emotions take to happen. The scenes find their own form in the emo-
tional rhythms of the actors because they give them that freedom. We
don’t call cut and do the next shot until the first shot gets to its natural
emotional resolution, its logical outcome. The bar scene takes more real
time than usual. But if you were really in a bar, it would be a hell of a
lot longer than that. So in a sense it was tightened up. The way people
think about scenes or criticize that scene – they feel it’s too long, or too
irritable, or too this or too that. But it’s a scene you remember.

Other films are really a shorthand the way they have been done.
They’re a shorthand for living and people understand that shorthand.
You have certain labels like a home run, a double, a single, a triple –
baseball jargon – which you use to describe a very powerful scene. Dif-
ferent kinds of things stir the emotional things in you. Films are still
predicated on incidents. Incidents are exciting. They set off one thing.
You recognize certain incidents, and you go with them. Husbands is an
extremely entertaining film in spots, just as I think life is entertaining in
spots. Like life, it’s also very slow and depressing in areas. The one thing
it’s not is a shorthand film. I won’t make shorthand films, because I
don’t want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured
truths. If I had my way, Husbands would be twice as long as it is [...]