ZOOEY DESCHANEL: The Hollywood Interview

"One day, you'll be cool." - Zooey Deschanel in Almost Famous.

BEHIND BLUE EYES

This article originally appeared in the February 2003 issue of Venice Magazine. Deschanel hadn't headlined a feature until that month's release of All the Real Girls, although she had been on the Hollywood radar for some time. My opening paragraph speaks about how she never looks quite the same from film-to-film and how that's given her a certain anonymity as an actress. She's a star now and that definitely dates the intro, although it was certainly true at the time.

Zooey Deschanel steps up to the top of the marquee in All the Real Girls and creates a heartbreaking portrayal of young love.
by Terry Keefe

Zooey Deschanel would probably be the world’s greatest secret agent. A back-to-back viewing of all her films to date reveals that she never seems to look the same in any of her roles, even though the only thing she may have changed is her hairstyle. You’re watching a film like last year’s Big Trouble wondering who this young actress playing a carefree high school student is, until it hits you that you that it’s the same person who played Anita in Almost Famous two years prior, a film in which Deschanel looked considerably older and was much more serious. The one thing that would give her away as a potential master of disguise for the C.I.A. is those wide blue eyes. From the moment she walks in the door at the Santa Monica coffee house where we’re meeting for our interview, they’re recognizable anywhere as the same eyes that looked down at young actor Michael Angarano (playing young William Miller) in Almost Famous and promised him, “One day, you’ll be cool.”

A few days after our meeting, Deschanel would fly off to the Sundance Film Festival where All the Real Girls would be premiering and where it would take home a Special Jury Prize “for emotional truth.” Deschanel would also be lauded for her work by many film critics, such as Ray Pride of Indiewire who deemed her “an All-American Marvel.” Girls is the first film in which Deschanel really carries the story as a lead and she’s very excited to talk about it. As she should be, because her performance is quite a revelation, although it’s not really a surprising revelation. For an actor who has been seen predominantly in supporting roles to date, Deschanel has garnered an unusually strong fan base both in Hollywood and outside of it who have been waiting eagerly for her ascension to leading lady status for some time. A search of the internet reveals tribute websites such as “The Nature of Zooey Deschanel: The Number 1 Site for all your Zooey Needs” which are rabid in their devotion to her and the acting promise she has displayed. Of course, the film industry has also been buzzing about her for quite a while. The early entertainment press that she garnered a few years back often centered around her family background, because her parents are Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Natural, The Patriot) and actress Mary Jo Deschanel (The Right Stuff, Twin Peaks). But All the Real Girls proves definitively that, impressive lineage aside, she is an original talent all her own. It’s her first entry in what should be a good year for Deschanel: she has a full plate of upcoming projects, including the release of Manic, as well as Elf, which is being directed by Jon Favreau and which stars Will Ferrell.

All the Real Girls is the sophomore film of director David Gordon Green, who previously directed the widely acclaimed George Washington in 2000. Green developed the screenplay with longtime friend Paul Schneider, who also stars in the film opposite Deschanel. The story is one of young love, but it’s young love as we’ve rarely seen it in the movies. Girls doesn’t feature any “falling in love” montages over pop songs, and it is almost defiant in its determination to avoid any cliches. However, it’s very true to the young love that many of us know from real life - full of moments of transcendence but also of pain and of reality’s hard knocks. Paul Schneider plays Paul, a 22-year old who has lived his entire life in a small North Carolina mill town and whose most notable achievement to date is the amount of womanizing he’s done. But then he’s hit with the proverbial thunderbolt of real love when Noel (Deschanel), the 18-year old sister of his best friend who has been away at boarding school for years, returns home. Deschanel has described the characters’ relationship very accurately as “a train wreck at the exact moment of impact.” They connect on a very deep level but the reality is they aren’t quite ready for this type of relationship yet, so things eventually spiral into heartbreak for both of them. What is remarkable about the film is just how authentic Girls feels, as if the viewer is literally a fly on the wall watching this relationship develop and then dissolve. It’s also refreshing that the dialogue isn’t “movie speak” where everyone is clever and every line is a set-up or a punch line. That being said, the film is never boring and, given time to work its magic, it will eventually mesmerize you.


All the Real Girls is one of the first films in a long time which shows young love like it really can be - a devastating emotional experience.

Zooey Deschanel: That was one of the things that really struck me about it when I read it. There’s no cliches of young love. It’s pretty much trying its best to be a realistic look at it. David Gordon Green and Paul Schneider wrote it when they were in college. So (my character) was sort of a composite of a couple of different girls. I think they kind of wrote it with a broken heart. It’s a pretty real look at what young love is. Because young love can be so amazing and so sad and so poignant and so poetic and sort of wonderful in its tragedy. A tragedy in the true sense of the word, as I learned it in English class [laughs], is a fight between two goods. It’s having to choose one good over another good. And I think basically that’s what this is in a sense. The most interesting characters are when you see how their trying to do good becomes their downfall. Those are the most interesting stories. The 400 Blows is one of my favorite movies and I think that’s a great example of that. (The lead character) means so well and yet everything he does is taken in the wrong way. And I can relate to that so much. In a way, that’s what All the Real Girls is. You have two people who have the best intentions, but their actions, within the context of the story, end up being their downfall.

The film is notable for its “real” dialogue, which is completely natural and unaffected. Did you have to make a conscience decision to keep the dialogue feeling authentic in your performances and not make punch lines out of certain pieces of dialogue?

Well, we improv’d a lot of it. There was a wonderful script already written and then we rehearsed for like 2 weeks. I think all of what ended up being the dialogue on-screen came out of the chemistry between Paul and I and David all working together. It was a great creative process. You’d do something and David would be like, “That’s great, I love that.” Or you’d do something and he’d be like, “No, I don’t like that.” It all came out of that. None of us really wants to go for the obvious, so I think we’re all pretty much on the same page.

What do you think attracts your character Noel to Paul?
I think he’s kind of a mysterious person. Paul has this thing where there’s always something hidden underneath. He’s intriguing, funny, and smart, but it’s not so obvious. He doesn’t wear everything on his sleeve, it’s all hidden. And they have a great chemistry too. Also, I think within the character history, he’s her older brother’s best friend and you know, there’s always that thing of having a crush on somebody that’s older than you. When she finally comes back from boarding school, she’s probably had a crush on him forever. She’s really just growing up now. She’s been at boarding school, it’s a little bit of an arrested development situation. She gets out and her first love - there he is.

What do you think happens to Noel 10 years down the road?
We always talked about this. Because sort of the idea was to leave people with the feeling that the story of these two wasn’t over. That they could get together 10 years down the line, after they’ve learned stuff. But the whole tragedy of their relationship is just that they’re too young. These two people need to experience more before they get together. But at the time they’re just so hurt that they can’t salvage it. I think for Noel, she needs to live in the place she grew up in for a little bit. I think she ends up leaving but she has to experience things like working in the factory. She has to do that because that’s part of growing up there. I think she probably goes to college eventually. She’s pretty smart and interesting.

Did you meet anyone down on the location in North Carolina who could be the real-life Noel?
No, no, I didn’t. You know, sometimes I’ll read characters who remind me of people. But this one, it’s funny because people would go, “It’s not you.” But I would go, “It is me. It’s totally me!” In a lot of ways it reminded me more of myself at a younger age, a few years ago. Except she grew up in the South and went to boarding school, you add these different elements. But that’s kind of the way I work. I end up thinking of myself and how I relate to it and maybe adding different aspects of other people I know. Generally, most of the characters I do are somehow me, just maybe me at a different moment. Sometimes it’s the me who’s alone, you know? Because nobody ever sees that person who’s alone. It’s like the me driving in my car alone, nobody ever sees who that person is. Except me. So this is my way of revealing parts of myself that nobody else ever sees. [laughs]

Tell us about Manic, which is getting its release later this year.

It’s a really good movie. I want this movie to come out finally. It’s such a small movie that it keeps kind of getting pushed under the rug. It’s a hard movie I guess because it’s disturbing to some degree.

A lot of Manic was improv’d as well, wasn’t it?

There was a good script but then we had all this rehearsal and we improv’d a lot of it. Most of the stuff I did was improv’d. It was, again, you’d improv in rehearsal and then they’d script it. They’d write down what you said and then you go and you do the scene like how you did it in rehearsal, or you can go off it a little bit. A lot of times really interesting things come out of that.

You play a mentally disturbed girl in it. Tell us about her.
(She’s) a really shy, introverted, anorexic patient. It’s very different from anything I’ve done. I really want it to be seen just for that reason. People love to categorize you. They can’t handle it if they can’t go, “Oh, you’re this girl who does this. That’s your specialty.” Well, I don’t want to think anything’s my specialty. I want to think that acting is my specialty, which means I’m versatile and, you know, that’s my job. I’ve gotten a lot of attention for certain things I’ve done but then there’s other things I’ve done which are very different that nobody’s seen.

You look different in every part you play. You’re very chameleon-like. I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Yeah, yeah [laughs].

You of course could stick with one look if you wanted to.

If I wanted to but that’s not fun. [laughs] The chameleon thing, somehow I have something about me, I never even realized it, that looks incredibly different if I change my hair color or my hair-cut or my make-up or my clothes, I look like a totally different person. That’s why in Almost Famous, I wore a lot of make-up and I had my hair a certain way, and everybody thought I was a lot older than I was. But in real life I always looked a lot younger. So it was really strange. They’d call me in for these parts and I’d be like “I’m way too young for this.” And I’d go and they’d be like, “Wait a minute, you’re really young.” And I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m really young, I know.” I did Almost Famous when I was 19. So it was really interesting. I do change a lot. And I can look a lot younger or a lot older. I guess that’s what a chameleon is. You put it on a branch and it turns brown. You put it on a leaf and it turns green.

How were you cast in Almost Famous as Anita?

That’s an interesting story. Almost Famous was my second movie. I had done my first movie, which was Mumford (1999), my senior year of high school. And I missed my last month of school to do it. So I was corresponding with my teachers and doing my term papers. I was in all honors classes so it was like this big deal to leave school.

Were you taking the AP tests during Mumford?

Oh yeah, I was taking the AP tests in-between. Which is always something I learned how to do, because I wasn’t really social in high school, I mostly did my homework and did theater. And so I was doing professional theater and doing my homework backstage. I did Into the Woods for 5 months when I was 17 and they were all laughing at me because I was doing calculus homework. We were doing a singing run-through and I was doing “X plus Y.” [laughs] So I did Mumford and then I went to Northwestern. That’s where I really wanted to go and I wanted to do theater and study theater. But I had been working for a couple of years, doing professional work, and going off to college you basically take yourself out it. So I came back for my Christmas break and auditioned for the Cameron Crowe project [which would become Almost Famous]. I read for the casting director and then I got called back a week later. And I went in and there was Cameron and I did an improv and did a reading. Then I didn’t hear about it for months and months. Apparently all the parts were cast. So I just went back to college and I didn’t even think about it. Kate Hudson was cast in my part and Sarah Polley was supposed to play Penny. Then Sarah Polley dropped out and Kate Hudson was cast in that part. They were frantically trying to find someone to play Anita. And Cameron went back through his tapes. They saw my tape and called me back in. It was weird, because a friend of mine who was friends with Cameron told me, “All the parts are cast.” So I thought, “That’s weird. Why are they calling me back in?” I went back in and read and then I heard that I got it. Cameron didn’t even know that Kate Hudson and I went to high school together. And then he mentioned it to her and she was like, “Oh my god, that’s so funny.” She was a year older than me. We had a couple of classes together.

Were they drama classes?

No, we had math, because I was a year ahead in math. But we did do a play together, Man of La Mancha.
Did Cameron have a real-life sister that the Anita part was based on?

Yeah. I never got to meet her. I was upset because I really wanted to. And I never got to meet his mom either. But I hear she’s just so great. She was on the commentary of the DVD of Almost Famous. They (the mother and sister) never really reconciled in real life but they reconciled after the movie, which was really cool. A lot of the pictures which are on the wall in the movie are my face superimposed with her body. The set photographer had been friends with Cameron for a long time and said, “You look so much like his real sister.” And when I heard his Mom’s commentary on the DVD, she said, “She looks just like her.” That’s funny.

It’s been oft-written about you that you grew up on film sets. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I did. But I didn’t go to the film sets, I grew up going on location. I hated going to film sets. They’re boring.

I know. I was thinking, “How does a kid entertain oneself on a film set?”

I didn’t really. I would go maybe once or twice on one movie. So to some degree (that story’s) accurate. But everybody’s like “Hollywood Royalty.” I’m like, “I’m not Hollywood Royalty.” [laughs] People just say that kind of stuff. I never met any famous people really. I mean, my dad’s an amazing cinematographer, but I mostly knew crew members. A lot of actors like to separate themselves from crews. I’m part of the crew, that’s how I think of it as. We’re all trying to make a good movie. I think I really benefited from being my dad’s daughter, just knowing that.

Do you think you learned a lot about filmmaking though, just by osmosis because you were around it all the time?
Yeah, and you know, my dad showed me all of Hitchcock’s movies, and Kubrick’s movies, and Truffaut’s movies, and Godard’s movies when I was a kid.

And sort of talked you through them?

Basically he started with Hitchcock when I was like 11 and then Kubrick. And then later I watched a lot of the French New Wave stuff when I was around 16. So I really always loved movies. But I also loved theater too and I really thought I wanted to do that so I could separate myself from my parents, you know? I love musicals and I have a cabaret act, the Pretty Babies. I was going to be a singer maybe. That’s my other passion really, singing and playing music. I play piano and I play ukulele. It’s standards and some country standards. Pretty much the early part of the 20th century. We dress up but it’s about the music. Because I know there are all these burlesque acts. There’s no stripping. [laughs] We really sing. It’s me and this girl Sam Shelton, who’s also an actress.

I’m sure you get asked this question a lot, but have you done any photography yourself?

I like taking pictures. It’s kind of a hobby but that’s not really my passion. I love beautiful photographs and I like taking them. But that’s not what makes me tick. Acting and music make me tick basically.

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Mike Leigh: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Mike Leigh.


MIKE LEIGH:
THE LORD HIGH EXECUTIONER SPEAKS OUT
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the February, 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Mike Leigh was born February 20, 1943 in Salford, Manchester, England. The son of a doctor, Leigh went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Camberwell Art School, the London International School of Film Technique and Central School of Arts and Crafts. Moving from the stage, to TV and finally film, Leigh's distinctive film style—in which the commonplace is often tinged with the extraordinary—has been dubbed "social surrealism," or as Leigh prefers to call it, "heightened realism." He prefers to work without a script, writing the film as he rehearses with his cast, improvising and collaborating together.

A creative force in London's experimental fringe theater since the 1960s, Leigh earned critical acclaim for his numerous TV films investigating the vicissitudes of life among the "proles," notably the 1977 drama, Abigail's Party. After making his feature debut with Bleak Moments (1972), Leigh took a 17-year hiatus from theatrical films, working exclusively for British stage and TV. He returned to films, winning international attention with High Hopes (1988), a grim portrait of Thatcherite London. Leigh's low-key style and his knack for offbeat characterization and warm humor all enrich his surprisingly life-affirming 1991 comedy Life is Sweet, about a dysfunctional working class family. His next effort, Naked (1993), was a stark portrait of one man's (David Thewlis) journey into the bowels of his soul. Critically acclaimed in the US and at the Cannes Film Festival (where he was named Best Director and Thewlis Best Actor), the film was largely panned in England, with most reviewers citing what they saw as the story's misogynistic aspects. Secrets and Lies (1996) brought Leigh his first Oscar nomination as Best Director, for the acclaimed story of a simple, troubled woman (Brenda Blethyn) whose life becomes unraveled when the illegitimate daughter she gave up years before comes back into her life. Career Girls (1997) told the touching story of two college chums (Katrin Cartlidge, Lynda Steadman) reuniting after ten years with the story alternating between present reminiscing and flashbacks to their awkward time at university.

Leigh's latest might be his best film yet. Topsy-Turvy tells the story of Victorian-era composers William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, famous for operettas such as The Pirates of Penzance, and their strained personal and professional relationship. As they struggle to revive their sagging career, writing what would become their most famous work, The Mikado, we are treated to a blistering portrait of Victorian England in its waning days, when its grip on the world was slowly slipping away, like a dying buzz from a sloe gin fizz. Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner lead a marvelous ensemble cast in the Sony Pictures Classics release.

Mike Leigh is an amiable gent with a dry, acerbic wit that one would expect based on his films. Here's a few of his thoughts on filmmaking, England, and the genius of Gilbert and Sullivan.

While this is true of all your films and how they capture a specific time and place, I came away from Topsy-Turvy with a feeling of what Victorian England tasted and smelled like. How do you bring this off?
Mike Leigh: Well, the key to it is research, really. We always do a lot of research. And what we don't do in my films is just research what is going to be on the screen. We research everything whether it's going to be on-screen or not, because we don't know what's going to be on the screen until the film is finished. With Topsy-Turvy, you name it, we researched it. We were in rehearsal for seven months, and I'd been reading on the subject for a good long time. But to answer your main question, it's partially the research, and partially the collaborative function of the way that we work on (my films). What's very important to realize is that it isn't just a matter of what the actors do, it's about what everybody does. That's why there's all those bits in the film about telephones and fountain pens, and all that. With the pen, for example, our production designer, Eve Stewart who is brilliant, got hold of an old fountain pen from the period and said "Could we work it in?" So that's kind of how it works.

How did you initially discover Gilbert and Sullivan?
I was taken to see their plays as a kid. The first was The Mikado in 1949. I was hooked from there! (laughs) What I like is that quite a lot of people have said "I hate Gilbert and Sullivan and I loved this film." That's about as nice a compliment as one could get, isn't it?


Jim Broadbent (L) and Allan Corduner (R) as the legendary Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy-Turvy.

One of the wonderful things Topsy-Turvy shows is how theater was the one thing in that period which brought the classes together.
Yes, although on the whole theater was still a pretty middle class affair then. We talking about 1885, which was 15 years after the first Great Education Act. So on the whole, people in a theatrical company like that would have come from middle or lower middle class backgrounds. Working class would have been unlikely. In those days, working class people were hardly educated. So when you see the men in the chorus with their Northern accents, they were most likely lower middle class. Their dads wouldn't have been down in the pit working. They might have been the foreman, or clerks. It really wasn't until after the first World War that the class system was shaken up and working class people began to have a voice.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born and raised in Manchester. I have one sister. My father was a doctor in a very working class area. We lived over the surgery until I was 13. Manchester in the 40's and 50's was a very industrial city. This was before the clean air acts. My father spent a lot of time treating bronchial cases. I remember coming home from school and would go into the house through the surgery area. He was an old-fashioned doctor and didn't work with appointments. You just went and waited. I remember this room full of men all going (makes hacking cough sound). And that's what it was all about...Manchester now is a great buzzing, lively city and has been a center of the music scene in England, along with Newcastle. In the 50's, it was the deadest place in the world, just a complete bore. My generation couldn't get out quick enough.

You initially went away to RADA, right?
That's right. To be honest, though, my first love was always the cinema. At that time, in many provincial cities, there were huge numbers of local cinemas. Walking distance from where I lived, quite near Strangeways prison, there were probably 14 or 15 local picture palaces: little ones, big ones, with names like "The Empire," "The Capitol," "The Devonshire." The big one was called "The Rialto." They've all disappeared now. Now, the domination of Hollywood is such that every cinema in the world is showing the same films. In those days, it was much more diverse. Except that we only saw British and American movies, nothing else. Also, every program had two films on it: the A picture and the B picture. So if they'd let you, and if you could afford it, you could see movies all the time. I remember we used to wait outside the cinema where an 'A' film (adults only) was playing and beg people to buy our tickets for us and take us in. (laughs) So going off to be an actor at that time seemed a logical thing for a middle class kid, even though what I really wanted to do was make movies. I think it was the right decision, however. It gave me a terrific understanding of the craft. I went to RADA at a time when it was very old-fashioned and sterile and I rebelled against it, so it helped me find my own voice. Then I went to art school, and then to film school.

Did you get into films right away?
No, I started in the theater, sort of fringe, experimental theater. I also worked in the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was a great writing education as well as a theatrical education. Some great people were there with me: Ian Holm, Ian Richardson, Helen Mirren. It was exciting, but I wanted to make films.


A young Leigh, circa early '70s, lines up a shot.

Your first film was Bleak Moments.
Albert Finney backed the whole thing. Roger Ebert gave me one of the best reviews I've ever had for that film. Then I did a whole series of films for the BBC before I did High Hopes in 1988.

People tend to compare your work and Ken Loach's work (Raining Stones, Hidden Agenda) quite a bit. How do you feel about that?
I know Ken and like him and his work very much. We're both marginally bemused by the comparisons. I mean, yeah, we both sort of make films about the working class, but that's where the similarity ends. Our films are different stylistically, they're different politically. There is no question as to where Ken's objectives lie. My films tend to be more ambivalent and inconclusive, I think.

It's well-known that your films are virtually unscripted. Tell us about what the writing process is for you.
We do a great deal of improvisation and what we arrive at is very ordered and very disciplined, like a script would be. It's a combination of what is said, and what happens during rehearsal. We start out with a blank slate, really. Everyone takes part in the film not knowing what it's going to be. It's about doing everything you can to help make it come alive. And I begin by writing what's basically a very simple structure and taking it from there.

So for you, casting is 99.9%.
It's crucial. Very important. I always take my time when I'm casting. You've got to get it right.

What are some of the films that influenced you the most?
There are lots. Jules and Jim (1961) certainly. I saw that when I was about 20 and was in love with a woman who was in love with someone else, so it really hit home for me. Hobson's Choice (1954). Scrooge (1935). Various Ealing comedies: I'm All Right Jack (1959) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951). Spartacus (1960). I love westerns. I saw every western and love to watch one on the box every now and then. I've seen probably every John Ford film, but never really thought about it in terms of who directed it, because that just wasn't something you thought of in those days. The other thing is that there was another kind of cinema then that doesn't exist anymore: the news theater. They'd run a continuous program of newsreels, some Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Keystone Cops, that sort of thing. That was the big thing then, the essence of film...I remember thinking as a kid 'Wouldn't it be great if there could be a movie that showed people as they really were, or life as it really was?' Then all of the sudden, around 1959, there was this film: Room at the Top. And all of the sudden, there was the world of Lancashire and Yorkshire that I had grown up in, and it was very exciting to see the world of my street up there on the screen.

Since your films are so much about character, how do you feel about the a lot of the so-called "mainstream" films that aren't about character?
Well, I enjoy seeing a lot of different kinds of film. But I've sort of run out of steam with out-and-out commercial films that have nothing to say. There was a time when I'd happily sit through any film. But I think I've reached the stage where there are certain films I can do without. I feel a very clear distinction between what I see, and what I make. If I only saw films like the ones I make, then I'd either see no films at all, or only my own films. Every once in a while, I'll find a film that I feel is a soul mate, like The Straight Story (1999). It's not quite a film that I'd make, but it's close in its spirit and its soul. I really admire it, especially when those two old guys go to the bar and recall WW II. Then there are movies like The Truman Show (1998), a movie I'd never make in a million years, that I thought was very, very good and exciting to watch.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Don't compromise. Don't let anyone tell you what to do. Just get on with it.

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Ridley Scott: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott.


RIDLEY SCOTT:
CAESAR CINEMATICA MAXIMUS
by
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the May 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Ridley Scott has been one of the cinema's most successful commercial filmmakers, boasting one of the most distinctive visual styles in film history. Born November 30, 1937 in South Shields, England, he entered the BBC in the mid-60's as a set designer, and soon moved on to directing, turning out slick episodes for such series as Z Cars and The Informer. He then set up his own production company, Ridley Scott and Associates, through which he produced and directed television commercials that became noted for their technical superiority and visual dazzle. (Talent runs in the Scott family: brother Tony is a renowned director himself (Top Gun, True Romance, Crimson Tide) and son Jake made his directorial debut last year with Plunkett and McCleane.)

Scott brought that flair for sumptuous design to the big screen when he made his debut as a feature director in 1977: his adaptation of Joseph Conrad's The Duellists won the Camera D'Or at Cannes, for Best First Film. He hit paydirt with Alien in 1979. The box office smash about a monstrous stowaway aboard a space ship made a star of Sigourney Weaver, spawned three sequels and countless imitations. With Blade Runner (1983) Scott created what many feel is his signature film: a futuristic detective story starring Harrison Ford, bolstered by the most innovative production design in film history. Although many found the film's narrative muddy, due to a hastily re-shot ending and a tacked-on voice-over by Ford, Scott's Blade Runner: The Director's Cut was released in 1993, featuring Scott's original cut of the film, which many feel is far superior to the original. It also spawned the trend for "Director's Cuts" of every film under the sun being re-released in theaters, and on video and DVD.

Scott's next two films, the sumptuous fantasy Legend (1985) starring Tom Cruise, and the thriller Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) performed poorly at the box office, in spite of critical acclaim for the latter. Black Rain, a police thriller set mostly in Japan starring Michael Douglas, proved a big hit worldwide, putting Scott back on the A list map, and paving the way for Thelma and Louise (1991), an Oscar winner for Best Screenplay, following the exploits of two daring heroines (Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis) as they make a mad dash across the southwest.

Scott's next three films: the Christopher Columbus biopic 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), the sea-faring adventure White Squall (1996) starring Venice fave Jeff Bridges, and the military drama G.I. Jane (1997) starring Demi Moore, failed to garner much critical or box office kudos for Scott, although each film has its defenders, and all three boasted some spectacular moments.

Scott's latest should put him back on the critical and box office map where he belongs. Gladiator tells the story of Rome's greatest general Maximus (Russell Crowe), the favorite of ailing Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). When the emperor lets it be known that Maximus will be his successor, passing over son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), Commodus tries to have Maximus assassinated. With being too much a spoiler, let's just say that Maximus is reborn a gladiator, eventually making his way to the Coliseum in Rome, where he and Commodus meet for a final show-down! Great writing, characters, direction, cinematography, and performances from the entire cast, which also includes Connie Nielsen, Djimon Hounsou, and the great Oliver Reed in his final role, make this winner the one to beat this summer. The Dreamworks release hits theaters on May 5.

Ridley Scott sat down over a fine Cuban cigar with Venice to discuss his latest cinematic opus, the genius of Oliver Reed, and what really happened with Blade Runner.

Was there trepidation on your part making a gladiator picture in the shadow of a classic like Spartacus?
No, the only film that I was worried about was Airplane! Remember the scene when Peter Graves asked the little boy if he liked "gladiator pictures"? (laughs) But seriously, no. I mean, you could never hope to duplicate Spartacus, or any great film for that matter. I saw Gladiator as a historical epic that was character-driven. All the characters in it have a great deal of humanity, especially Russell's character, Maxiumus.

Tell us about working with Russell Crowe. There's no doubt after seeing this film that he's going to be a huge star.
Russell's a collaborator. He brings a great deal to the table when he takes on a role, really gives it his all and has a lot of ideas. As soon as we cast him as Maximus, he started reading Marcus Arrelius' writings and familiarizing himself with the history of the Roman Empire. He's very well read on a lot of other subjects, as well.

The battle scenes were tremendous. They really put you in the middle of the action. Were they difficult to shoot logistically?
Not at all. Originally we went to Germany to shoot the opening scenes, then relocated to the UK when we discovered that a section of forest near Galway airport was going to be razed for construction. The owners of the land said it would be cheaper if we burned it down that if they cut it down, so they said "come in and do what you like." We were able to shoot a lot of the film there, and did the entire opening in just three weeks. Any time you change locations, you're costing yourself a great deal of time and money, so it helps if you can contain it.

Oliver Reed gives his last performance in Gladiator. He was a legendary character.
Oliver was what I'd call a "charming scoundrel." He was a wonderful actor, incredibly intense. I knew for that role I needed a Robert Shaw-type actor who was tough as nails, but also had a sensitive side. There aren't too many actors like Shaw, or Reed around anymore. The only other two would be Richard Harris and David Hemmings, both of whom are in the film as well. Although, I think Russell has a lot in common with them. Very straightforward, no-nonsense sort of guys. Old school.

Didn't Reed still have scenes left to shoot when he died?
Yeah. He still had three weeks left. I had to shoot most of his scenes at the end of the film using his body double, then for the close-ups we superimposed Oliver's face onto the body double's. Eerie, eh? I also was able to use some shots from earlier scenes and outtakes. But thank God for digital technology...Oliver went out the way he would have wanted to, I should think: with a pint glass in his hand.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born in the north of England, near Newcastle where my father was in the shipbuilding business and also in the army. We lived all over Europe, in Germany for five years. That was a wonderful experience. I wanted to be an artist, so my dad encouraged me to pursue art school, which I did. Then I went to work for the BBC, started as a set dresser and enrolled in their production program. Then I started directing live television shows like Z Cars and a show not many people in America know called The Informer, which was created by a wonderful director by the name of Peter Collinson (The Italian Job).

Then you went on to become the top commercial director in Britain. Ridley Scott and Associates was the biggest firm of its kind, right?
Still is, actually. We employ over 50 directors at the moment. I loved doing commercials. It was a great training ground for me. But I couldn't wait to start making features.

When you were a kid, was there one film you saw that really grabbed you where you said "This is what I have to do?"
The Searchers (1956). I remember just being blown away by that film. I love westerns. I want to do a western some day. I don't think anyone else ever captured the west the way John Ford did. I actually went to the hotel in Monument Valley, where they used to stay. They have the "John Ford Room" there with all these production photographs that he took. Vistas, panoramas, that sort of thing. They're the most extraordinary photographs...As far as other films that influenced me, I'd have to say The Third Man (1949), and later on 2001 (1968).

I understand that with Alien, you never intended it to be thought of as a "horror film."
No, not at all. What we were after was sort of a variation on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians set in space. We wanted it to be character-driven, and suspenseful, and not all about jumping out of your seat in fright. One of the things I'm most proud of about that film is Jerry Goldsmith's score. My God, what a score! I think it's one of the most-imitated film scores ever written, and for good reason. I just saw a sci-fi horror film the other day that had a score that was almost exactly like Jerry's score from Alien. I guess when you've got a good thing...

Why weren't you involved with the sequel, Aliens (1986), which James Cameron did?
Very simple: they didn't ask me! To this day I have no idea why. It hurt my feelings, really, because I thought we did quite a good job on the first one. I had an idea for a fifth installment in the series. It would be all about the aliens themselves: what their world and civilization are like. What made them tick. We always thought of that derelict spacecraft where they found all the eggs in the first one was a sort of aircraft carrier or bomber. They would drop the eggs on the planets they wanted to conquer, then come back a few years later after the landscape had been "cleared," so to speak.

Sounds like a great idea.
Yeah, but they still haven't asked me to do it! (laughs)

What happened with Blade Runner? Was it taken away from you and re-cut, then you released The Director's Cut 10 years later?
No, not at all. It wasn't taken away from me. The version that was The Director's Cut was in fact my original cut, and it tested badly. That simple. So we went and re-cut it, added in Harrison's narration and tried to play up the Raymond Chandler angle, which just didn't work. We never really nailed the Chandler feel in that narration. The last film that really did was Apocalypse Now (1979), where the narration was done brilliantly.

You could hear the disdain in Harrison Ford's voice in that narration.
Oh yeah, he was not happy about doing that at all. The funny thing was, looking back on the test scores, they really weren't all that bad, in the 60's I think.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Even when you feel like you don't know what you're doing, give a direction, give an order to the crew, then very calmly go into your trailer, sit down and say to yourself "What the fuck am I going to do?" (laughs) You can never know exactly what you're going to do at any given time during a shoot. You have to be open to changes, to accidents, many of which are happy ones. Just remember: even after you've been directing a long time, there are going to be days when you still feel like you don't know what you're doing! (laughs)

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Joe Eszterhas: The Hollywood Interview

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas.



JOE ESZTERHAS
IS TELLING NO LIES IN AMERICA
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the October 1997 issue of Venice Magazine.

Joe Eszterhas has been one of Hollywood's top screenwriters for the past fifteen years. The author of such diverse works as Jagged Edge, Music Box, Basic Instinct, Flashdance and Showgirls, Eszterhas is a man of many voices and many lives, his having begun in Hungary in 1944, born in a tiny town near the Austrian border. Eszterhas spent his first six years in German and Austrian refugee camps, emigrating to the U.S. in 1950, settling with his family in Cleveland, Ohio. There, Eszterhas attended Catholic schools and developed an interest in writing. After graduation from Ohio University where he majored in journalism and English, Eszterhas first made a name for himself as a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and later Rolling Stone, writing what many consider to be the definitive coverage of the aftermath of the Kent State shootings in May of 1970. Eszterhas followed this with a book on the shootings called 13 Seconds, written with Michael D. Roberts. In 1974 Eszterhas wrote Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, which won a nomination for the National Book Award and gained the attention of a Hollywood producer, who thought the young scribe should try his hand at screenwriting. Eszterhas' first script F.I.S.T., a fictionalized story about a Jimmy Hoffa-type labor leader played by Sylvester Stallone, was produced in 1977. He hasn't stopped working since.

Eszterhas' latest film, his 17th produced, is Telling Lies in America, a semi-autobiographical story about a Hungarian immigrant teenager named Karchy Jonas (Brad Renfro) growing up in Cleveland in the early 1960's. Karchy is an outcast as a scholarship student in his preppy high school, seeking solace in the seemingly glamorous world of rock & roll. When a slick local disc jockey (Kevin Bacon) agrees to take Karchy under his wing, Karchy embarks on a voyage of self-discovery that takes him from being a wide-eyed boy, to a much wiser young man. Directed by Guy Ferland and produced by Banner Entertainment the film also stars Calista Flockhart and Maximilian Schell.Telling Lies is a bittersweet memoir, full of truth, nostalgia and laughter that stings in your throat. It is by far Eszterhas' most personal, and finest work to date.

Among Eszterhas' upcoming projects are the satirical comedy An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, Reliable Sources, Evil Empire, and Blaze of Glory, a biopic about the life of singer Otis Redding.

Eszterhas and his wife Naomi, who are expecting their third child soon, sat down recently in their magnificent Malibu home to discuss Joe's remarkable life, past, present and future.

When did you develop an interest in writing and storytelling?
JOE ESZTERHAS: My dad's a writer in the Hungarian language and he's written about 30 Hungarian novels. I grew up on the near-West side of Cleveland, which is a tough, sort of polyglot neighborhood with everyone having their individual turf. Until I was 13 or so, I didn't even read. It was the classic thing of the immigrant kid who comes to the new world, feels his parents are out of touch with the new world and goes in exactly the other direction. So I was really into baseball and rock & roll. There was a lot of bad stuff happening in the neighborhood. It was a time when people had zip guns and knives...and I got into a lot of juvenile trouble. When I was 13, I got into some serious trouble because I hit a kid in the back of the head with a baseball bat who'd been taunting me for a lot of years and was older, calling me names like D.P. (displaced person), Greenhorn...this kept going on for a while. I fought him a couple times, but always lost since he was about four years older than me. Then one time at a baseball game when he was up to bat, I just went up behind him and hit him the back of the head. I went to Juvenile. Went through the whole process. And I realized then that if I kept living the way I had been living, there was no future. And I started to read, read voraciously. Read anything at all. There was this paperback bookstore in my neighborhood, and I'd go down there. The guy liked me and he'd give me the books and I'd bring them back, like a library. And I read anything and everything: Tennessee Williams one day, A.J. Cronin the next day, Steinbeck, Forrester. I fell in love with reading. That's where it really began. I took notes on the books I had read, made lists for myself. I remember one year I went through 300 some books. What happened then is that I stayed off the street. I was petrified about what had happened to the kid that I'd hit. He was in the hospital for something like ten days and there was a period when no one was sure if he was going to survive. The only thing left with neighborhood that I really did was play basketball, which I usually did by myself because I didn't want to mix with the same kids I was with before, because it was all trouble. I just turned to reading completely. After two or three years of that, I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to tell a story. So I wrote some stories for myself and fell in love with writing. I decided early on to do journalism as a way of making a living in the hopes of eventually writing fiction. It was the old Hemingway school where his theory was that every writer should spend five years doing journalism and not a minute more because those five years would be extremely educational, but if you stayed a minute longer, you'd get totally jaded and lose all of your sensitivity.

What was your beat during your newspaper days?
I was a street reporter. The intent was always that I'd use the experience for some day writing fiction. The political beat or the city hall beat were beauracratized beats, where you weren't really responding to experiences. As a street reporter, I covered whatever happened. From car wrecks, plane crashes, shootings, riots...I was always interested in the human aspects of those things. Then I was a feature writer and wound up getting a Jimmy Breslin-style column. Journalism, in my case, was an amazing training ground, first because I didn't know American society since I was an immigrant and in an ethnic sort of background for much of the time. And two, I was intensely shy as a kid and it was very difficult for me to talk to people. Journalism throws you into all levels of American society and forces you to interact with people.

How did you go from The Plain Dealer to Rolling Stone?
In 1971 I was fired from The Plain Dealer for writing a piece in The Evergreen Review on the My-Lai massacre. It became a huge national case that was about if you are employed by a publication, can you criticize that publication in a different venue if you're still paid by them. I had written as a free-lancer before I was fired in Cleveland, a couple of pieces for Rolling Stone. One of the pieces was on a biker gang shoot-out in Cleveland. After I did this piece, Hunter Thompson wrote me a note that said "Goddammit, now I know there's someone else out there that knows about bikers besides me." (laughs). Hunter, unbeknownst to me, went to (Rolling Stone publisher) Jann (Wenner) and said "I think this guy's a really terrific writer." So it was like a gift from God. Two days after I got fired in Cleveland, I get the call from Rolling Stone saying we'd like you to come out to San Francisco to do a piece on narcotics agents. Can you get a leave? I said "Yeah, no problem pal. I've just been canned!" (laughs) So I went out to San Francisco and met everybody, liked everybody. You have to remember that at the time, this publication was just raising its head from being absolutely underground. I went to Rolling Stone at a time when the closet was filled with shoeboxes full of cash from people sending cash for subscriptions, and we didn't know what the hell to do with it. Finally it got full one day, Jann called the Brink's truck one day and they came in and took it all away! (laughs) It was the very early stages of Rolling Stone. It was the fun stage. It was the kind of period where if you wrote a piece about narcotics agents who were abusive, and many were, and it was about busting kids with a little weed instead of going after the big smack dealers because that was too complicated and they may have been getting paid off. So they'd bust kids for having a little weed, get big headlines and look like heroes, which is total bullshit, right? So I wrote some pieces that brought that out. And when they came out, we had some of the biggest dope dealers in San Francisco coming by the office saying "Hey man, that was a really great story," and bringing us huge bags of dope! The office was filled with huge garbage bags full of marijuana! That's when I was with Rolling Stone. (laughs) We all felt that we were doing something different in journalism that was challenging to the establishment and the journalistic structure. There was hardly any advertising, no holds barred writing. You could have a piece that ran 40,000 words and if it was too long, they'd bump an ad to run the whole story! Imagine that today!

Let's talk about Kent State and your pieces on the killings of the four students by National Guardsmen in May of 1970.
The thing about Kent that I'm really proud of is that I wrote a book on it called 13 Seconds that came out at the same time as a book James Michner wrote on Kent State. The Michner book was a complete whitewash. His book's thesis was that the confrontation between student demonstrators and National Guardsmen had been caused by outside agitators and political radicals and that they were the people at fault. The truth about Kent State was that it was the culmination of months of red-hot rhetoric not only by Richard Nixon, but by James A. Rhodes, the Governor of Ohio, who kept attacking the protesters as "bums" and "lowlifes." The rhetoric had a prevailing psychological affect on everyone in the state, including the guardsmen. So you take a bunch of kids who are 18-21, put them in Kent with gas masks and helmets and guns, and they've been conditioned by this horrendous rhetoric, and suddenly they're there with protesters yelling at them, throwing stones but nothing else. And in the deepest part of themselves, they had bought the fact that these people were radicals, outside agitators, Communists, all that, and they lost it. They opened fire. That they lost it is understandable because they were kids. What got them to the point where it was easier for them to lose it, in my mind, which the Michner book ignored purposely because Michner was, in my mind, a Republican apologist, was that they had been conditioned by the rhetoric from Nixon and James A. Rhodes. I remember doing an hour on the Today show in 1971 with Michner and Izzy Stone, when it was done live. I was just a kid, 27 years old. I'm really proud that I wrote this book because otherwise I think Michner would've gotten away with his incredible whitewash...I covered it as a journalist. I wasn't there the moment of the shootings but I had covered the previous weeks protests and I was there an hour after the shootings, so I knew the build up. It is one of the great tragedies of our time, in my mind.

Tell me about the genesis of Telling Lies in America.
I wrote it around 1984. Everyone passed on it initially. Then through the years, many people started responding to it. Fran Kuzui, who is one of the producers...sometime in the late 80's, got a hold of the script, tried to get the financing for it and just couldn't do it. John Candy at one time wanted to do it, which would have been very interesting...then, ironically what happened is that I forgot about the piece because I don't like to re-read my stuff. Then after I met my wife Naomi, she wanted to read everything I'd written and went on this gigantic hunt.

NAOMI ESZTERHAS: I searched everywhere! Joe didn't have copies of a lot of his old scripts, so I went to studios, agencies, places like Script City...then I read Telling Lies and I told Joe that I couldn't believe it hadn't been made. It's such a wonderful story, so moving.

JOE: What Naomi did that was really cool was get obsessed with the piece in a very lovely, gingerly way...but then what happened was that she kept re-reading it and one day came in and said to me, very lovingly and gingerly, I've got an idea here that the relationship between Karchy (the protagonist) and his dad really isn't explored enough...so I took the script and re-wrote it from page one. So there were a lot of different little things changed. So Fran Kuzui had kept telling people how much she loved this. She and Guy Ferland were friends, she was kind of a mentor to him...Guy read it and said he'd love to direct it. So Guy and I talked. I looked at his film The Babysitter, which I thought had a lot of terrific things in it...then I gave Guy the re-write and felt that he really understood the piece from the inside. So he, Fran and Ben Myron took it to Banner, which was just started out and they agreed to do it for $4 mil, in 20 days for shooting! It's amazing.

I find it interesting that, even at your level, you still have a hard time getting your projects set up.
Oh, constantly! Constantly! I did a piece on Otis Redding two years ago called Blaze of Glory, another spec piece. People warned me, told me it was a tough sell, that nobody knew who the fuck he was. To me, the strength of the story, in addition to the great music, was the relationship between Otis and Phil Walden, who was his manager and his friend. On a whole other level it's about a black man who realizes his blackness and becomes in charge of himself and his company and of his destiny, even though he's begun with a white man who was his friend, which makes it very difficult...so we took the script out, everybody loved it, but nobody wanted to do it! (laughs)

How did you become interested in Otis Redding?
I was the last guy to interview him before he died. I was a young reporter in Cleveland and there was a place called Leo's Casino, which was the only place in Cleveland where people like Otis and Aretha Franklin and Lee Dorsey played. I was always in love with R & B, and that's where it was. And Otis was really sweet to me. We talked for about an hour. The next afternoon I was in the city room when a guy brought the wire up to me. Otis had flown out of Cleveland that afternoon and crashed in that lake in Wisconsin. So I had met the man. I felt this amazing warmth. I listened to his music all the time as the years went by, and I really felt something, so I decided to do it. About six months after we sent it out, Jon Avnet, the director, read it and liked it and we did sell it to Universal, then Jon decided he was going to do something else and the piece was just sort of up in the air. Only in the last couple months has something started to come together again because Iain Softley (Backbeat) wants to do it as his next movie. So it looks like it might finally happen now with Miramax. So to answer your question, is it difficult getting things set up? Oh yeah.

I hear there's a great story about you, Jimi Hendrix and a Hungarian restaurant.
(laughs) Hendrix comes into Cleveland in '69 and at that point is this totally feared, sexual, hot, stunning black person who's got all these young, white women around him. He's playing the Public Auditorium in town and the cops are very nervous. It was the same time that they busted Jim Morrison in Miami (for indecent exposure). So I go back and interview him for The Plain Dealer. What struck me about him was that he was one of the gentlest human beings I'd ever met. He had this wonderful gentleness and warmth that just sort of enveloped you. I talked with him for about an hour. He was there with Chas Chandler and Noel Redding. Jimi says he's hungry and what's good in Cleveland. I suggested this Hungarian restaurant...he sort of looks at these two other guys and says "Okay, cool. Let's go." So I take him to this little Hungarian restaurant on Buckeye road in Cleveland, filled with people in their 60's in black suits, women in babushkas and shit (laughs) and here we come as this fucking limo stops! Jimi gets out, things are dangling, hair is exploding. Here come the other two guys, bopping out! The owner knew me, comes running up "What the fuck are you doing?! Who are these guys?!" And we sit down and have this wonderful, big dinner and he loved it! Then what was funny, after dinner Jimi says "Man, I gotta buy a car. I want a blue Corvette." So Chas makes a couple calls. An hour later we're at a Corvette dealer in Shaker Heights. Jimi picks it right off the floor, hires some guy to drive it down. We go back to the concert and Jimi's in a great mood. We've been smoking dope all afternoon. Jimi does "Purple Haze," then the house lights suddenly go up. There's been a bomb threat! Everybody gets cleared out. I'm not certain to this day whether that was a real bomb threat, or whether the cops were just trying to fuck with him.

The first film of yours that had a big effect on my generation was Flashdance.
I was hired on Flashdance to rewrite the original script by Tom Hedley. A couple stories I remember about that. The lead role was down to three girls: Jenny Beals, Demi Moore, and this New York model named Leslie Wing. They were all terrific. Michael Eisner at the time was the head of Paramount and he had a hard time making up his mind as well. So Michael gathered the toughest, grungiest Teamsters and macho guys on the lot, put 200 of them in a screening room. Michael got up, said "Guys, I'm going to show you three screen tests. The only thing I want to know when they're done is, which one of these women would you really want?" Jenny Beals won hands down! (laughs) The other story is that (director) Adrian Lyne's cut was 40 minutes longer than the theatrical version. Paramount literally took the film away from Adrian and chopped it down to what it now is. If you can imagine taking 40 minutes out of a picture! Adrian's cut was much closer to Fame with that kind of character development than the movie that you saw. Paramount had so little faith in the picture that they sold off 34% of their own rights to the picture to a private investor group, thinking this movie was going to bomb. Those private investors were really lucky! (laughs) The movie wound up doing something like $380 million worldwide.

A lot of your films have dealt with the theme of betrayal: Jagged Edge, Music Box, Betrayed, Basic Instinct. Where does the need to keep exploring this theme come from?
First of all you have to realize that I've written a lot of other scripts in between those, some of which got produced and some which didn't--all with very different themes and of different genres. It's tricky for a screenwriter. A novelist writes what he writes and it's published. If you look at his body of work, you can see everything he's written and his progression. The screenwriter doesn't have the choice of publishing it. The studio either makes it, or not. That's why if you look at four things in a row that a screenwriter has had produced, they might all be of a similar nature or theme, and the assumption is that this is the only theme the writer writes about, when the reality most likely is, these are the sorts of films that the studio is out to make. In terms of the theme itself, it's one I would articulate as 'we don't know the people we love.' And there's part of them we will never know. And I think films like Betrayed, Music Box, Basic Instinct, certainly played off of that theme. I've always been fascinated by the hidden parts of us. I think a close relationship with someone, man or woman, is a lifelong quest to find that hidden part. And unfortunately in most relationships I don't think people do find that hidden part. They don't share it.

Let's go back to Telling Lies. Is it autobiographical?
I've called it figuratively autobiographical. What I mean is, it's always tough to tell how much is and how much isn't because it's a sort of swirl of imagination...parts of it certainly are. The kid certainly reminds me very much of how I was at that age. The insecurity, the false bravado, the desperation to do something and to be somebody when there ain't but a piece of fuckin' evidence that you can be something or be somebody. And underneath all that a terrific fragility of the spirit. I certainly felt all that...there was a lot of prejudice and ugliness in my school, too. I was one of the six poor kids who stayed together at one table all four years while everyone else just sort of pissed on them. And this was not just among the students. The brothers fostered it also. I remember brothers saying "Oh look, Joe's got a new pair of pants today," in front of the whole class, you know? I remember my father, who was making hardly any money, being brought into the school by the principal who told him he was one of the few fathers who hasn't contributed to some fund, and why was this. My father tried to explain that he was very poor and the priest said to him, "Yes your son's here on scholarship, but that doesn't mean you have to behave like a bum with us."

Don't you think that most artists have a hard time fitting in from an early age? You're thinking and feeling things that most of your peers simply don't think and feel.
Yeah, I think if you're off the beaten path in any way it's always tough. I've been off the beaten path my whole life. You can say it's "artistry" although I admit it's a word that scares the living fuck out of me, "artist."

Why?
Well, I always say I do the best that I can at what I do, which is writing and if other people want to use that word, fine. But I have great trouble with it in terms of self-definition simply out of humility, I think. It's one hell of a word to live up to. Maybe it's my background, having grown up blue collar with a lot of people who work with their hands.

It sounds like you had some tough times in high school. Did you ever go back to any class reunions?
No, I haven't. It was too painful. We've been getting these things 'Please come back and be our speaker,' that kind of stuff. When we showed Telling Lies for the first time at the Cleveland film festival last March, this guy came up to me after it was over and said "Joe, it's Marty...Do you remember me?" And he'd just seen the film. I said "Yeah, I remember you." He was one of the guys who'd given me a hard time. He paused and said "I'm sorry." (Pause) It was very telling. A terrific moment.

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Jim Jarmusch: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch.


JIM JARMUSCH: GHOST STORY
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the March 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Jim Jarmusch's hip, urban, comic jags arose from the same East Village-New York University explosion that nurtured the relentlessly contemporary films of Susan Seidelman and Spike Lee. Jarmusch offers lowlife reflections of post-modernist communication and mis-communication between characters sealed off from one another, their only connection the many-tentacled pop trash culture of America.

Jarmusch was born January 22, 1953 in Akron, Ohio. In 1971, Jarmusch enrolled at Columbia University in the English literature program. A few months before graduation, on a visit to Paris, Jarmusch discovered the rich treasures of the Cinémathèque Française and wound up staying in France for a year. Upon returning to New York City, he enrolled in the graduate film program at New York University, where he became a teaching assistant to director Nicholas Ray, then teaching at NYU. Through Ray's efforts, Jarmusch became a production assistant on Wim Wenders' tribute to Ray, Lightning Over Water (1980). Jarmusch completed his NYU film project, Permanent Vacation (1980), and began work on a short film, shot over one weekend, that eventually became Stranger Than Paradise two years later.

Stranger Than Paradise startled audiences with its gritty cool and fresh comic tone, winning the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the best film award from the National Society of Film Critics. Jarmusch has referred to his first three feature films as a trilogy. Stranger Than Paradise, along with Down By Law (1986) and Mystery Train (1989), take place in a blighted American cultural landscape—from the bleak, wintry moonscape of Ohio and the cracked seaminess of an over-ripe Florida in Stranger Than Paradise to the diffuse, cinema-reflected New Orleans in Down By Law and the tawdry, clapboard decay of Memphis' Mystery Train. In this world characters make connections by sharing TV dinners, chanting ice cream jingles and revering Elvis Presley. A Jarmusch film begins with characters who live a robot-like existence, unable to relate or communicate; a typical Jarmusch shot features a character staring offscreen until the screen fades to black or there is a cut to darkness. Into this stultifying atmosphere, a character with a different viewpoint and perspective enters, exposing the shallowness of the enmeshed character's existence.

Jarmusch followed Mystery Train with the ensemble piece Night on Earth (1991), an exhilarating five-part story, each taking place inside a taxi cab in disparate cities around the world: New York, L.A., Paris, Rome and Helsinki. Dead Man (1996) was Jarmusch's western/William Blake homage, starring Johnny Depp as a tenderfoot who heads west, and is mistaken for a notorious gunslinger. The film is also notable for being Robert Mitchum's final screen appearance. Jarmusch entered the documentary ring a year later with Year of the Horse, chronicling legendary rocker Neil Young's concert tour.

Jarmusch's latest is his most quirky, inventive work to date. Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai tells the tale of a solitary hit man called Ghost Dog (Forrest Whittaker) who lives according to the ancient Japanese code of the samurai. When he hits a "made" mafioso, Ghost Dog suddenly finds his beliefs, his beloved pigeons, and his life on the line. Co-starring wonderful character actors like Cliff Gorman and Henry Silva, Ghost Dog is one of the first great films of the 21st century, combining humor, nail-biting action, and genuine insight to the human condition.

I loved Ghost Dog. Tell us about how this story was born.
Jim Jarmusch: Boy, that's always the toughest question. I collect a lot of disparate ideas over time, then eventually sit down and make a script out of them. I guess it started with the fact that I wanted to make a character who was contradictory, like a likable killer. Then I thought, what actor could I picture playing this? That actor was Forrest Whittaker. So I started out with that sort of vague idea in my head, and started weaving a lot of details I'd collected together. I wanted to make him a samurai because western warriors are usually trained just to be killing machines, whereas eastern warriors are trained spiritually and philosophically, so that was interesting to me. It's a hard question to answer, because so many elements in the film seem to be linked together cross-culturally in our culture: the whole hip-hop interest in eastern culture is interesting to me, and the cross-reference between hip-hop and the mafia is interesting to me.

One film I kept thinking of while watching Ghost Dog was Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967). Was that an influence?
Definitely. I even tried to quote certain things from the film directly, but in my own way. For example, Ghost Dog in the end has no bullets in his gun and no one's really aware of that, like in the end of Le Samourai when Alain Delon has no bullets in his gun when he's supposed to hit the girl who saved him.

I've always felt that you and Melville could have been filmmaking cousins.
He's certainly been an inspiration. I love his films, and have for a long time. He was somewhat cross-cultural in his storytelling, as well. Although his films are very, very French, his gangsters always dressed in an American style, drove big American cars in Paris. In his films, he had a running joke with his editor, where his killers would wear white cloth editor's gloves. I used that in Ghost Dog. I don't know if that was a joke on Melville's part that his editor was a butcher or a killer (laughs).

Tell us about working with great character actors like Henry Silva and Cliff Gorman.
Henry Silva's like a cult figure for me. I've always loved his presence, and any film with him that I've seen in the past, probably since I first saw Johnny Cool (1963) on TV in the early 70's...when I wrote this, I wasn't quite sure who should play Ray Vargo, then I suddenly thought of him...it was great working with him. He'd come to hang out on the set during a half day when he wasn't even working. He's really interested in the process, really interesting to rehearse and collaborate with. Cliff Gorman came in and read for Valerio, read this side once, put it down on the table and said "You know, that's about the best I can do. I dunno." And he walked out! I said 'That guy is Sonny Valerio!' (laughs) 'I wanna work with him!' He really brought a lot to the film. He's a great actor.

Tell us about your background.
I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio and left when I was about 17. I was kind of an introverted kid, read a lot. When I was a teenager and discovered music, first through the radio, then a friend of mine's older brother had books by William Burroughs and records by the Mothers of Invention, opened me up to all the strange things out in the world, beyond the borders of Akron. It was very much of a car culture, growing up there, with rock and roll on the radio and the only way to escape was when you were old enough to get your hands on a car and drive around.

What did your dad do? Was culture something that your parents valued?
Initially my dad worked for B.F. Goodrich, like everyone's father worked for a rubber company. My mother was actually the movie critic for the Akron Beacon-Journal before she was married, when she was very young. My grandmother on my mother's side was very interested in Native American culture and Oriental art. Even though she didn't have any money, she used to have prints of paintings that she liked, so as a kid I knew who Rembrandt and Vermeer were. When I was 15, she gave me the translation of Proust. My father is a little less interested in those things. So a lot culture was opened up to me on one side of the family, but in sort of a middle class, midwestern kind of way, you know?

Then you went off to college.
Yeah, I went to Northwestern for a year, as a journalism major, until I was asked by the Dean to leave the school. (laughs)

Why?
I wasn't completing the required courses. I was taking creative writing and history courses instead, not showing up for my journalism courses. So I transferred to Columbia and studied English and French literature.

Was it during this period that you discovered film?
Yeah, just being in New York and having access to a lot of different kinds of films in the mid-70's was amazing. Then one year I went abroad and studied in Paris, ended up staying for 10 months instead of the four I was supposed to stay, and came back with a lot of "incompletes" because I spent all my time at the cinematheque there. That really opened me up to films from all over the world...Then I came back to New York and was a musician for a while, was in a band. Then one day having no money and not knowing what to do with myself, I applied to the graduate film school at NYU. It was really a whim. For some reason I got in and got financial assistance.

Was there one film you saw during this time that really grabbed you, where you knew "this is it for me."
That's a tough one...maybe seeing Breathless (1959) for the first time in Paris. It really moved me. The whole nouvelle vague was important to me. It's interesting because all those guys wrote about Hollywood filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray and Robert Aldrich, and it was sort of like reading about those directors through the French directors, I came back towards Hollywood with a new appreciation of it.

At NYU you got to work with Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place). What was he like?
Well, I went back to NYU for my third year to tell Laszlo Benedict, the head of the school, that I wouldn't be returning to school, because I had no money and I was going to try to make a film on my own. He said "That's really too bad, because I have a fellowship that I was going to give to you so you could pay your tuition, and I wanted you to meet someone I'm bringing here this year that I know you're a big fan of, Nick Ray." I was like, whoah! Laszlo said "He also needs an assistant and I recommended you. He's in the next room. Go talk to him." (laughs) So I go in and talk to Nick Ray. He says to me "Can you define the meaning of the word "dialectic"?" I said "Yes"...and he said "Good. You can be my assistant." So I was. Nick was pretty sick at the time, and he insisted on holding classes at his house. I learned so much from Nick about books, movies, his experiences, about baseball, painting, the design of things. A lot of it probably didn't register at the time, but now many of those things I'm still trying to apply. One thing he said to me was "Anyone who tells you that there's one way for all directors to direct all actors is an idiot. There's only one way for each director to direct each actor, and you have to find that way yourself and how you're going to collaborate. He told me that he and James Dean drove cross-country together before shooting Rebel, not to talk about the film, but to get to know each other so they could work well together. There's so many other things I learned from him: that the dialogue is often less important than the look in someone's eye. I could go on and on about Nick Ray.

Tell us about Permanent Vacation.
It was my thesis film for NYU, a 70 minute film. Then when I turned it in they told me it was a piece of shit, and that they weren't going to give me my degree. I didn't graduate until years later when they were using my name in ads saying "Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch...all NYU film graduates." I mentioned that in an interview, not in a bitter way, that it was kind of ironic since I never got a degree. I guess they saw the interview, because I got a degree in the mail not long after that. (laughs) Funny how that works...

You and Spike Lee were at NYU around the same time, right?
Yeah, Spike used to work in the equipment room, which was really frustrating because it was almost like a scene out of a Spike Lee movie: "Spike, I need to check out the Nagara." "You want the Nagra?" "Yes, I need to check it out." "When do you need it?" "Tomorrow." "How many days you need it for?" "Just tomorrow." "You only need it for tomorrow?" "Spike, I just need the Nagra for tomorrow." "You sure it works?" (laughs) And it just went on and on like that. Spike has a lot of Mars Blackman in him. I love Spike and I really liked his last film a lot, Summer of Sam (1999).

Your first film that got you noticed was Stranger Than Paradise. How did you get the financing for that first effort?
Initially I did it as a short film, because Wim Wenders had some unexposed film stock leftover from a film called The State of Things. I had met Wim through Nick Ray and liked him a lot. I showed Wim Permanent Vacation, and he really liked it. So I knew I had enough film to make a 30 minute movie. John Lurie and I had a vague idea that we turned into a little script, and we shot the film using one camera set-up for each scene in order to make the story work with the limited amount of film that we had. Then while editing that short version, I wrote a longer version to make it a feature, which took over a year to get financed. By 1984, we'd completed the whole film.

Down by Law introduced America to Roberto Benigni. Tell us about working with him.
I had met Roberto when I was in Italy through mutual friends, and didn't know his work or anything, but just fell in love with his spirit, and with him. I had started a sketch for the next film with Tom Waits and John Lurie in my head, but hadn't gotten very far. Then after spending a week with Roberto speaking broken French, since neither of us could speak the other's language we'd babble at each other in French. We became really good friends and I stayed in Rome and wrote the treatment in a few days for Down by Law, and he agreed to do it. I hadn't seen any of his other work until after we'd made Down by Law. Roberto's one of the most intelligent, amazing people I've ever met. He's memorized the entire Dante's Inferno, Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, he plays about six instruments which he's taught himself...He's great to work with. We have plans to work together again.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who left us recently, has played an important role in several of your films.
His death hit me really hard. Growing up in Akron, there were two AM radio stations I listened to, and one of them played I Put a Spell On You almost every night. And I remember thinking 'This is my theme song. It's like a waltz tempo in an R & B song with a guy screaming and snarling and beautiful lyrics. So over the years I collected everything I could find that was recorded by him. When I was writing Stranger I wanted the song to be in it, so I tracked him down and found him living in a trailer in New Jersey with no phone. I sent him a letter and he came into the city and we had dinner. The man was so proud, so smart, so his own person. He didn't care what the rest of the world thought. He had an incredibly beautiful voice. His plan was originally to be a classical singer. He loved Paul Robeson. He loved Caruso. But for some reason he got sidetracked on the R & B circuit, luckily for us. So we stayed in touch, and I cast him in Mystery Train. There was one point during the shoot where his acting was very big and I was trying to tone him down. And he said "Jim I don't understand. You ordered a nuclear device and now you're requesting it not to explode!" (laughs) So then I put it into musical terms: 'Now in this overdub...' and he was really responsive to that. He was just a wonderful, wonderful guy. I really miss him.

With Dead Man, you worked with Robert Mitchum on his last film.
I went up to Santa Barbara and had a two hour lunch with him where he told me so many stories about his life, I hardly said anything. He had a very old school approach, like you couldn't change any of his dialogue. I went into his trailer to talk with him about a very minor adjustment in the dialogue, and he said "You're not going to change his dialogue, are you? Good luck to you!" So he opens the door and Mitchum is sitting there, and he says "So I guess you're going to change my dialogue, huh?" I said 'It's just a minor thing. I'm sorry.' "You're sorry. That's what they said to Gary Gilmore." (laughs) But then he consented to do it. He had this facade of being really gruff. He'd arrive on the set and someone would say "How are you today, Mr. Mitchum?" "Terrible." Someone else would walk by: "How are you today, Mr. Mitchum?" "Worse." He was really funny, an amazing wit.

Tell us about The Sons of Lee Marvin.
The Sons of Lee Marvin is a secret organization. I can't tell you much about it other than we have cards, and if you get a card from one of the founding members, you are an honorary member. Some of our founding members are myself, Tom Waits, John Lurie. We inducted at one point (musician) Nick Cave, because if you look like you could be a son of Lee Marvin, then you are instantly thought of by the Sons of Lee Marvin to be a Son of Lee Marvin. I lived in Berlin for almost a year in '87. Nick Cave lived there too and we used to hang out. People would always mistake us as brothers. It all started years ago with an idea I had for a movie where Lee Marvin was a father with three sons who all hated each other, and he was an alcoholic guy and lived in a barn somewhere. It was one of those ideas that gradually became more interesting to me, then Lee Marvin crossed over to the other side.

You know you could still make that movie, but with James Coburn instead of Lee Marvin.
(laughs)Yeah, that's true. I was always surprised they never played brothers in a film. They would've been so great together.

Who are some of your other influences filmmaking-wise?
From the Japanese classic filmmakers like Ozu and Mitsugushi, to Carl Dryer and Bresson, to the nouvelle vague, then there's the Sam Fullers, the Nick Rays, Fassbinder...an endless wealth of incredible people.

You got to know Sam Fuller quite well.
Yeah. Sam was, like Screamin' Jay in a way, someone who just followed his own path. People could never figure him out. The leftists would say he was reactionary and right wing. The right wing would say he was a leftist socialist. His movies often did concern the big lie of American culture, so there's a lot of politics in his films. But what a particular human being. His brain was always on fire with ideas, with enthusiasm. He loved movies, knew so much about them and was very innovative in moving a camera by hand, or the way things were designed. He was considered by many to be a 'B' movie director, but in a way that allowed him the freedom to make a very odd body of work.

Any advice for first-time directors?
I'm not a teacher and I'm not really good at advice, but I guess my only advice would be to stay really true to your own vision, no matter what other people around you or people financing the film might say. What we really need is new blood and people who have their own vision that stays intact. If it's unconventional, then I'll be the first in line to see it. Make the film you want to make, not the film that you think could be marketed. Other than that, the mistakes you make are always the most valuable things. The things you do right, that worked, you don't learn as much from. Something you did that you imagined would come out differently, you really get a gift out of. So don't be afraid of mistakes, because they're valuable. Also, rehearse with your actors and collaborate with them. Rehearsal is like a sandbox. There is no money running through the camera and no mistakes can be made in a rehearsal. As there are to make films, theoretically there are that many ways to make a film, so find your own way.

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Jerry Bruckheimer: The Hollywood Interview

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer.


JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: KING OF THE BIG-TOP
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the June 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

You don't hear the word "impresario" used much in the 21st century vernacular. If you don't know it's meaning, Webster's defines impresario as "one who puts on or sponsors an entertainment (as a television show or sports event)." Dry, dictionary-style definitions aside, impresario brings to mind those colorful characters of yesteryear. The Buffalo Bill Codys, the Flo Zigfelds, the Cecil B. DeMilles: larger-than-life characters whose moniker conjured up images of bigger-than-life entertainment spectacles. If Jerry Bruckheimer seems too low-key a guy to join the aforementioned rogues gallery, grab your magnifying glass and look closer, Sherlock.

Born the only child of German-Jewish immigrants in 1945, the Detroit, Michigan native attended University of Arizona, seeking out an arid climate to battle chronic asthma which he'd suffered since childhood. After earning a degree in psychology, Bruckheimer returned to Detroit to work in the advertising trade. After producing an award-winning Pontiac television ad, a take-off on then-current hit movie Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Bruckheimer's pinache caught the eye of renowned ad agency BBD & O, which lured him to Madison Avenue. It was during his four year stint with the prestigious agency that Bruckheimer met photographer, and aspiring filmmaker, Dick Richards. Bruckheimer, not yet 30, left BBD & O to produce three films for Richards: the gritty western The Culpepper Cattle Company (on which he was associate producer, 1972), the Philip Marlowe film noir Farewell My Lovely (1975), and the French Foreign Legion adventure March or Die (1977).

It was during the 1980's, however, that Bruckheimer truly found his place: as a producer of slick, big-budget, highly-commercial stories with pulsating rock music soundtracks, populated by a cast of beautiful up-and-comers. American Gigolo (1980), which made Richard Gere a household name, was the first of the decade, followed in rapid succession by Michael Mann's feature debut Thief (1981), and Paul Schrader's sexy remake of Cat People (1982).

It was with Flashdance, in 1983, that Bruckheimer formed a business partnership that would change his life, and the Hollywood landscape, forever, joining forces with Don Simpson to produce one of the biggest hits that year, not to mention one of the most influential films to American pop culture. Don Simpson was a larger-than-life force who seemed to consume the world and all it had to offer with the gusto of a starving child. His in-your-face approach to life sharply contrasted Bruckheimer's low-key, poker-faced, all-business style, forming the perfect balance between the extreme and the subdued. The Simpson-Bruckheimer logo on a film soon became a brand-name of its own, promising a bigger, louder, splashier moviegoing experience for all who came, turning the young producers into a sort of cinematic Barnum and Bailey. The suburban multiplex was their big top. And they were the undisputed kings. Just a few of their other titles include: Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and its sequel Cop II (1987), Top Gun (1986), Days of Thunder (1990), his first project with director Michael Bay Bad Boys (1995), Crimson Tide (1995), Dangerous Minds (1995), and The Rock (1996). It was during production on The Rock that Simpson died suddenly, leaving Bruckheimer to carry on their tradition of blockbusters. In the annals of show biz, only Paul McCartney has fared as well as a solo act. Jerry Bruckheimer Films went on to produce Con Air (1997), Armageddon (1998), Enemy of the State (1998), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), and Remember the Titans (2000). To date, Bruckheimer's films have earned over $3.8 billion in box office, video and recording receipts, more than any other producer in history.

Bruckheimer's latest is (surprise) the biggest, most anticipated blockbuster of the summer. Pearl Harbor marks Bruckheimer's fourth collaboration with director Michael Bay, telling the epic story of the infamous Japanese bombing raid that kick-started America's involvement in the second World War. An all-star cast of heartthrobs (Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding, Jr.), newcomers (Josh Hartnett, James King) and old pros (Jon Voight, Colm Feore, Mako) guide this epic during its three hour running time. The 40 minute sequence which re-creates the bombing itself might be the most spectacular movie spectacle ever filmed. See it on the biggest screen, equipped with the best sound system you can find. This is not a movie to wait for on video and DVD! The Disney release is currently playing nationwide.

Jerry Bruckheimer's Santa Monica offices say a lot about the man. Located on a small side-street in an unobtrusive part of the city, the red brick building with the unassuming facade houses an interior that resembles something out of Architectural Digest, its walls decorated with pop art canvases, and offices decorated with modern furniture, that look as if they were plucked directly from the Museum of Modern Art. Appropriate digs for a guy who walks softly, and carries one of the biggest sticks in the business.

Pearl Harbor must've been a real challenge for a producer logistically, since it has more big set pieces than any film in recent memory.
Jerry Bruckheimer: It was very difficult initially to get (Disney) behind it. Originally, when Joe Roth was running the studio, he was all for it. Once we finally got it to the number that he wanted to spend, Joe Roth was out and we had to pull the plug, and start all over again. We had to pull more money out of the budget. Michael Bay quit a bunch of times. The whole process was on-again, off-again for six or eight months 'til we finally got the go-ahead.

Was it difficult finding enough period aircraft?
It was. We were able to locate 14 of the real planes. One guy found one in the Philippines that was at the bottom of the ocean. He fished it out, got the original plans from Japan that were written in this ancient Japanese dialect. It was on microfilm because the Japanese had destroyed all their original plans. He restored it like new using those as his reference.

You also shot in a variety of locations: California, Hawaii, Mexico to name a few.
We were in England and Corpus Cristi, Texas as well. All the stuff in Baja, Mexico was stuff we shot in the tank that was built for Titanic. Most of the stuff with people going into the water and the U.S.S. Oklahoma rolling over. We were down in Baja for ten days.

How many days did you shoot total?
I think it was close to 100, amazingly fast for a film of this size.

Your cast is a combination of new faces, established actors and old veterans. You've always had a knack for finding new talent. Tell us about James King, for starters, who's a new face.
Michael saw her in a magazine and thought she was really interesting, loved her personality, her beauty, and she got the part. She really radiates a kind of youthful innocence that you don't see much anymore, more like the young women of (the early 1940's).

Josh Hartnett has an interesting quality, too. A lot of people think he has an uncanny resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones.
I see him more as a Gary Cooper type, a throwback, with a little Montgomery Clift thrown in.

I thought it was interesting that you decided to use the old three strip Technicolor process, which hasn't been used in decades, in some of the release prints.
Yeah, that was Michael's idea. He wanted to evoke that bygone look that movies used to have.

This is your fourth film with Michael Bay. Tell us how you originally connected with him.
We needed to do a video for Days of Thunder and we didn't have any money, so we called a commercial production house that had the best directors. And I said "Who do you have that's on the way up, a new star?" They sent us three or four reels and one stood out, that was Michael's. When it came time for Bad Boys, I asked for his reel again, and it was amazing. It's been an amazing collaboration. Each picture he does grosses double or triple from the previous one.

Like the other directors you've worked with, Dick Richards, Paul Schrader, Michael Mann, Adrian Lynne, Bay has an amazing visual eye, which is obviously important to you.
I think interesting visuals separates what we do from most other films. When a director has a unique take, a unique vision, that's what makes a unique, memorable film, and that's what I've always looked for in the directors that I like to work with: is their work interesting? Is it different? Is it unique? The image has always been important to me. When I was six years old, my uncle gave me his old camera and I fell in love with photography. I did it for years, then eventually gave it up when I just didn't have time for it anymore. Recently, I picked up the camera again, and shot lots of stills on the Pearl Harbor set, many of which are in the book on the film's production.

Pearl Harbor didn't feel like an "effects movie" which really added to its impact.
As an example, Armageddon had 400 visual effects shots. Pearl Harbor has 150. We always wanted to keep as much of it real as we could, so it stayed a "period" picture, as opposed to a film with a more modern feel.

How long did it take to shoot the entire bombing sequence?
That was all part of the Hawaii stuff and we were over there about six weeks.

Did the Navy and Army give you full cooperation in shooting at Pearl Harbor?
Yeah, we went to the Pentagon and met with the Secretary of Defense, who was a supporter of ours, and that kind of had a trickle down effect. I think it's the biggest joint operation they've ever done (for a Hollywood movie).

When you produce a picture how much of a voice do you have in the actual filmmaking process?
I get involved in the casting. I get involved in the screenplay. I get involved in the music, and the promotion. When it comes to filming it, I leave that to the director.

You were born and raised in Detroit.
Yeah, my parents were both born in Germany. My dad was a salesman who sold mostly clothes, never made more than about $140 a week. We were lower middle class. I was an only child. My mom's still here. She came out for the premiere, which was exciting for her.

When did you fall in love with movies?
Oh yeah, I was an avid moviegoer. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be part of it somehow.

Was there one movie that really did it for you?
Probably The Great Escape (1963). I said 'I wanna be Steve McQueen. I want to ride that bike!' (laughs)

From Detroit, you went to University of Arizona.
Yeah, I couldn't get into a lot of other schools, didn't want to go to school at home, and I wanted a warm climate for my asthma. I started at Arizona State, which I attended for a year. It was very much a city school, then, the campus was just deserted on the weekends, so I transferred to U of A the following year, which had a lot more out of state students. I majored in psychology, with an algebra minor. Psych teaches you communication skills and how to sell your point of view, which has been very helpful to me. U of A was great. I'd never experienced weather like that before. In Michigan it was always six below (zero).

From there you went back to Detroit and got into advertising.
Yeah. I started out in the mailroom, then got promoted to tracker for television, then an assistant producer, and from there to BBD & O in New York.

It was there that you met Dick Richards and your film career began.
Yeah, he hired me as associate producer on The Culpepper Cattle Company. It was tough. I was a new kid in Hollywood and I was this interloper, but we struggled and got it done. I worked with him on two more films, then went out on my own.

Your first film as a producer was a period piece, Farewell My Lovely, which has a strong cult following. What was that like?
That was a great experience. Robert Mitchum was...a lot of fun. (laughs) A nice guy, but real complicated. A character.

All of your films have made money, if not been outright blockbusters. What is it about a particular story that attracts you?
Do I want to go see it? That simple.

How did you meet Don Simpson?
My ex-wife was working at Warner Bros. for Don's best friend. We went to a screening of The Harder They Come (1973) and my then-wife introduced us after we came out of the theater. Then when I got divorced, he had this big house in Laurel Canyon with lots of bedrooms. One of his roommates had just moved out, and he invited me to take his place. We became roommates and he borrowed my only sportcoat to attend his first meeting at Paramount, where he eventually became head of production.

From everything I've read, it sounds like you guys were complete opposites and that's why you complimented each other so well.
Don was very funny, bombastic. He would've entertained you through this whole conversation. He had a great sense of humor. He could talk about himself for hours. Once you got him going, there was no stopping him. Whereas I'm much more laid back, even-keeled. Don was always up and down. Don understood the studio politics and all the things that people like Michael Eisner were saying in subtext, things which I didn't have a clue about. He'd report to me afterward, like a translator: "This is what was said."

What was it like suddenly being on your own again?
Very tough. One minute you have your best friend sitting next to you, bouncing ideas off him, then all of the sudden he's gone, and you're on your own.

What advice would you have for a first-time or aspiring producer?
Get on the floor, start working. Get any job you can, just to get in the door. Once you get in the door, if you're good, you'll move up so fast, you won't know what hit you.

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