Frankenheimer's DVD commentary **Spoiler Alert**

**Spoiler Alert**

I really enjoyed listening to John Frankenheimer's commentary track. He relates some interesting anecdotes about shooting the film, and some are pretty funny.

One of them concerns the surgery scenes. They're all real operations, the most graphic of which is the one involving the nose.

Director of Photography James Wong Howe, a team of cameramen and Frankenheimer were all in the operating room during the nose surgery. All six of Howe's cameramen ended up on the floor, having fainted after seeing what was going on.

Howe, who was running one of the cameras, told Frankenheimer to grab a second camera and start shooting. When Frankenheimer said he wasn't very good at that sort of thing, Howe said it didn't matter; that everybody else was "on the ground" and to just point and shoot; that the wide-angle lens wouldn't go out of focus and he couldn't miss. Howe didn't even care if the shot was steady. All he asked was that Frankenheimer "get out of my way when I tell you to get out of my way."

So that's what Frankenheimer did. Some of his shots are in the movie.

Years later, a man came up to Frankenheimer and told him that he (the man) had worked with Frankenheimer on Seconds. Frankenheimer didn't recognize the guy and told him so. Then the guy said, "You photographed me having my nose operation."