ome true.

carrie-anne moss: we know how hard it’s going to be, so it’s... we know the challenges we have ahead of us.

keanu reeves: well, the thing about it and it’s true the first one as well is that, you know, i love the material, i love the character and i love who i ended up working with, so that is something that regardless of what has to happen, it is just the, that’s the thing that kind of gets me through it.

philosophies of the matrix

owen paterson (production design): when i first read the matrix, there was a great deal about that, i don’t know, the eastern influence, that comic book influence that had been meshed into kind of western philosophy.

keanu reeves: a 5)synthesis from literature, from the exposure they had in the cinema, from their lives, from what they’re interested in, from what they find funny, from what they find cool.

the wachowski brothers (directors): we like the kung fu movies, we like japan 6)animation, japanimation. we like john wu movies, and books, you know, that are science fiction and about the nature of reality.

joel silver (producer): they really have a grasp of philosophy, of all types of philosophy, of eastern philosophy, of you know european philosophy.

keanu reeves: larry and andrew said, “ok, we’d like you to play thomas anderson, neo.” i had to read 7)baudrillard; i had to read out of control, which is about systems, evolution and robots. and then there was another book, which was evolutionary psychology. those were three books that they wanted me to read before i even opened up the 8)script.

owen paterson: baudrillard’s ideas of 9)simulacra 10)simulation is an important point within the film, and that what we see in the film as a real object is in-fact 11)optical simulation.

the screenplay

lorenzo bonaventura (exec. v.p. of warner bros.): i read the matrix script and really 12)flipped out for it. thought it was fantastic, thought that as a script the first 40-50 pages were the best 40-50 pages i’d ever read. and then i got very confused.

bill pope (director of photography): i have to say that i didn’t understand the script. i mean, i understood the script well, obviously i liked it. but every time i re-read it and every time we got closer, i understood more and more and more and more. i had questions forever and would constantly try to change the plot and they were “now, bill, bill, bill, you just don’t understand!”

laurence fishburne (“morpheus”): i have no idea why people who’ve read this script for the first matrix found it confusing -- i don’t get that at all!

john gaeta (visual effect): upon reading the script and seeing the 13)conceptuals, you know, at the same time, you know, the immediate reaction is umm... there is no chance in hell this movie will be made. there is a whole 14)slew of these scenes i see being 15)chopped out or left on the floor, there is just too unlike a large studio to take a chance on something that seems very alternative.

carrie-anne moss: it took me a lot of readings, a lot of conversations with everybody to fully understand the script. but i just remember thinking, i mean, they don’t really think i’m going to do this stuff like running, like jumping from one building to another. it’s like, well, no, of course nothing bad and like running sideways along the wall, cos everything was really specifically put in the script.

the “look” of the matrix

owen paterson: what we had to do really in the film was to establish i think 16)visually the difference between the matrix and the real world.

bill pope: in the matrix everything was slightly 17)decayed, i think it was slightly 18)monolithic and grid-like, like a machine would make it. you notice some things about the interrogation room or the government’s office. there are 19)grids on the walls, there’s grids on the floor, there’s even grids in the ceiling. so that’s why we’re hoping that that will 20)convey a feeling of 21)artificial control, if you like.

kym barrett (costume design): owen and i 22)collaborated a lot on the strength of the tones of green in the matrix. also we talked with bill about, you know, when the light hits a certain 23)fabric or a certain leather, or how i could make it pick up green or how i could make it pick up different colours.

john gaeta: in the lab, we wanted to be much more about the human beings, and so we used longer lenses and sort of the backgrounds get all sort of soft and have the humans stand out more.

bill pope: their clothing is a little more humane and cloth-like and their makeup is more natural, their hair is more natural, they’re less styled.

owen paterson: the matrix will always have a green 24)bias to it. whereas in the real world we went for a blue bias, and we avoided green except for tanks 25)console on the “nebuchadnezzar”, which has got green code in it, which is of course the matrix. so all of those things which might not seem a great deal to anyone else, to anyone whose