Spoiler Alert: This feature discusses specific elements of the film, including the ending.

It's not every day you get to sit down to dinner with filmmaking legends Oliver Stone and Benicio del Toro. Anticipation was high when a group of journalists were invited to do just that in support of this week's Blu-ray release of Savages. The dinner took place on the eve of the presidential election, and topics swung wildly from hi-def transfers to classic films to politics to the current state of the drug war.

There was a good deal of warm banter between the director and actor throughout the night, as well as a few good-natured barbs. There was a tremendous sense of mutual respect and admiration, and Stone stated, "Benicio gave me the most intellectual feedback during the script." Del Toro would frequently call Stone on the weekend to talk about his complexly villainous character, the violent cartel thug Lado.

"[Benicio] tortures you a bit, and eventually you say, 'Well, you know, he does have a point.' You get to that place in your mind where you overcome resistance and you go with it. Sometimes a better idea, sometimes not so, but we changed a lot as we went. It was very much a live character."

Stone gave this example: "It's a small thing but it's a big thing. The kid Estaban, is a lovely character and in the novel; goes through to the end. He plays a big role at the end, because it's a different ending… One day, Benicio comes to me and goes, 'Lemme kill him.'" It changed the flow of the script and the production, but made a big impact on Lado's character in the end.

Smaller touches were pulled in from real life. The idea of a bad-ass cartel guy showing up to a safe house with Starbucks was added when del Toro arrived on set with a latte. In the film, Lado poses as a gardener to blend in, and the real moustache del Toro grew for the film is patterned on a gardener from his neighborhood. He studied his mechanic's speech patterns to nail the right Tijuana accent.

Savages is many things, but thematically, it looks deeply at the drug war on both sides of the US/Mexico border, and how that impacts individuals, institutions and families. "I think the drug war is a disaster," Stone said. "The problem is that you don't catch the bad guys. They go on and on and people don't go to jail; at least the smaller people."

Del Toro did Traffic in 2000, and admits that nothing much has changed in the drug war since then. "It just keeps going. The war needs to be re-studied and [they need to] use different tactics. Not much has changed, except that you can buy medical marijuana in 17 states. That's the beginning of something, perhaps." Ultimately, he maintained that in order to move forward, the powers that be would have to answer the question, "How do you take violence away from it?"

One of the most talked-about elements of the film was the double ending, and Stone explained his choice to go in that direction. "In O's head, in her mind, it's her story as she tells it. As a romantic, she has a rather hippie view of the world, that she can be in love with two men. And in her vision of the world, two of them would lay down their lives for the other one. I didn't buy that. I'm perhaps too old or too cynical but I think it's a nice vision. It's her Butch Cassidy ending, but she says, 'That's the way it should have ended, but the truth has a mind of its own.'

"Ironically, it gives the three of them a second chance. But it wasn't done for the purposes of a happy ending. It was done because I don't believe that two of them would lay down their lives for the third one. That's all. They're too young, too inexperienced. And Salma Hayek confirms my point of view when she says, 'There's something wrong with your love story, baby.' So I think one is a romantic idea, and I think one is a realistic idea, and I love double endings. They may not be as smart commercially, but who knows?"

Stone stated that the studio loved the idea of a double ending, but admitted, "we had to refine it, smooth it out, and we previewed it three or four times. We knew there would be some objections at some point, but that's what makes it film. You have to take some risks and push it a little bit."

Benicio del Toro attended the screenings, which was strange for him because, "the audience really hated me." Watching with a live audience, it becomes a very different experience. "I think you're nervous, you're hoping they get what you're trying to do." But he does not envy directors at screenings. "The actor gets to rest in between scenes, unless you're in every scene… and a director doesn't get to rest."

The Blu-ray contains the theatrical cut, as well as a cut that integrates new, unrated material. "It's not a director's cut and I'm not saying it is," Stone said. "It's an unrated version. It was eleven minutes of background on these characters that didn't screw up the flow of the movie." He calls the version that screened in theaters the director's cut, but said that the unrated version added extra background for fans who wanted to know more. "I didn't call [the unrated version] a director's cut, because I really liked the theater version. That was my choice."

The unrated version adds a brutal scene between Benicio del Toro's character Lado and his wife, which adds even more savagery to an already complex and violent character. There's one more added scene of Benicio's character with his kids at a Little League game, which Stone "thought was an interesting sidelight into his American integration."

In addition, Stone said, "We added Salma and O (Blake Lively) in the bedroom together. That was a scene that I never thought would work, and I thought it kind of worked." However, he also stated that, "Everything I felt really interrupted the flow, I put in deleted scenes."

When asked why he didn't just incorporate the extra footage into the theatrical release, Oliver explained, "The movie was two hours and six minutes without titles, and… enough! It was a bullet, and that's the way it should have been."

Both filmmakers are true cinephiles, and draw on a wealth of history when discussing any aspect of film. Stone, who has spoken passionately about this subject at CES 2011, believes strongly that the Blu-ray format will be the gold standard for collectors of the future, imagining a time when discs go for $800-1000 in good condition. "There's nothing better in the world, in my opinion, next to going to the theater, than Blu-ray," said Stone. "It's like a preservation for me, because every filmmaker is horrified by what happens to film. We're all horrified by what happens in some of the theaters. The projection used to be horrible." He admits that the HD projection systems in place now do a better job, but Blu-ray offers a pure experience for film enthusiasts.

However, although he embraces hi-def, Stone maintains a love of film grain, and maintains that filmmakers have to keep shooting on actual film. "It has to stay grainy. That's what film does. We have true grit in our faces. We have skin and skin has to register. We have eyes, and eyes are the most crucial. There's not enough range in the digital versions."

Like many collectors, Stone prefers the physical media over digital downloads. "Hardware is disappearing," he said. "Everyone talks about cloud computing. You trust it; I don't. I want my comic book, I want my baseball card! And the baseball cards are a good point, because look at those baseball cards from the '50s. They've gone through the roof!"

Savages released on Blu-ray disc Tuesday, November 13th.

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