It’s clear that Corbet hopes to be more than an actor — and is already. It’s also clear, having watched his short film, why he ranks Haneke among his idols. Like the latter’s characters, Corbet’s linger long before and after conventional shots might begin or cut away. What do characters in a film do before someone enters the room to cue the dialogue? What does internal monologue look like? Much of Haneke’s work defies the quick cutaway and dwells on these simple, long moments of watching. In Funny Games, Peter’s accomplice, Paul (played by Michael Pitt, in the American version), occasionally stares straight into the camera, calling even more attention to the act of watching by addressing the audience directly.
     Quick cuts and slick editing are so prevalent in film now that it’s actually more startling to witness an event unfold onscreen during the course of a single shot. Time, Corbet says, is one of those crucial aspects of filmmaking that often gets overlooked. He has a soft spot for what he calls patient cinema and will gladly go on about likeminded filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami, Bruno Dumont, Claire Denis, and Hsiao-hsien Hou, though he mentions that he’d love to see an exhibition of Michael Bay’s unedited dailies — a shot out a car window, for instance, racing a hundred miles an hour down a San Francisco street. That’s an astounding feat. What must it look like without a cutaway?
     If, at its most fundamental level, film is about watching, then an over-edited film is about distracting you from watching by telling you what to see. Maybe it’s helpful to see Funny Games in this light — as a film that does the exact opposite. At some point, Corbet did, in fact, get an answer to his initial question “Why did Haneke remake this film?” He tries his best to recount what Haneke told him: “The first film is a movie about movies, and the second film is remake of a movie about movies. And so, if the first film asks the question, “Why are you watching this? This is so aggressive. This is so violent,” then the second film asks the question, “Why are you watching this again?”