Matthew Broderick: The Hollywood Interview

Matthew Broderick in Wonderful World.

THE EDUCATION OF MATTHEW BRODERICK
How the most (arguably) iconic juvenile lead of the 1980s has not only matured into one of our finest character actors, but just keeps getting better

By Alex Simon

If we are all a combination of nature and nurture, actor Matthew Broderick is both. The son of acclaimed character actor James Broderick (best-known as the father on the 1970s hit series “Family”) and playwright/author/painter Patricia Broderick, Matthew’s upbringing in an artistic environment led him to take the stage at age 17, opposite his father in a production of On Valentine’s Day.

Two Tony awards and many decades later finds Matthew Broderick’s resume filled with some of the most iconic films of the 1980s: WarGames, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Glory to name a few, where Matthew established himself not only as one of the finest, and most versatile, young film actors of his generation, but distinguished himself on Broadway as well, in now-legendary plays such as Torch Song Trilogy and Neil Simon’s autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues (a role he repeated in the film version, directed by Mike Nichols).

The ‘90s saw Broderick step into more mature roles such as the voice of adult Simba in the Disney hit The Lion King, and that of the hapless, but well-meaning, high school teacher in Alexander Payne’s scathing satire Election, a part which has become somewhat archetypical of Broderick’s later work. He also made his directing debut with Infinity in 1996, penned by his mother. The new century found Broderick again a star of the Broadway stage, originating the role of nebbishy accountant Leo Bloom in the musical of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, opposite Nathan Lane, for which he received a Tony nomination.

Matthew Broderick’s latest big screen outing is writer/director Josh Goldin’s Wonderful World. Broderick stars as Ben Singer, a failed children’s music composer struggling to find meaning in his life. When his Senegalese roommate (Michael K. Williams) has a health scare, Ben finds himself drawn to the roommate’s beautiful and kind-hearted sister (Sanaa Lathan), whose gentle, loving nature forces Ben to reevaluate his cynical view of life. Also starring Ally Walker, Philip Baker Hall and Jodelle Ferland, the Magnolia Pictures release opens in New York and L.A. January 8.

Matthew Broderick sat down with The Hollywood Interview during a recent visit from his native New York to discuss his latest role and other adventures in the screen trade. Here’s what followed:

Tell us about your character of Ben Singer and how you found the heart of this very cynical, “glass half-empty” man.

Matthew Broderick: Well, I have my cynical side so it was fun to explore that. The film is written and directed by Josh Goldin, who’s been a very dear friend of mine for about 20 years, and Ben is very much like Josh in many ways, although Josh is much more cheerful. It was nice that our friendship was able to turn into a professional relationship, and thank God it didn’t go too disastrously, so we were able to remain friends. (laughs) But I liked the part a lot.

Does it make a difference working with a director with whom you have a personal relationship? Is there more of a shorthand present in terms of communication?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I haven’t done it that often, but I have a little bit and, knock wood, it’s always been a pleasure. I can see how it would not be. I mean, if you’re friends, you might be too careful with each other or it might be strange to be bossed around or directed by somebody with whom you’re close. But that’s never happened with me, particularly with Josh. He didn’t change personalities when he became a director. We still had the same relationship. He was not afraid to be honest with me, and vice-versa, and we always ended up having a drink after we’d shoot, so we never went to bed angry, as they say. (laughs)

L to R: Matthew Broderick, Michael K. Williams and Sanaa Lathan in Wonderful World.

How do you think people will relate to Ben’s character and what he's going through, particularly in terms of what the country has gone through in the past year?

It’s interesting because the story seems to be sort of a litmus test for people in terms of whether you see things as positive or negative, and whether your life is the way it is because of your actual circumstances, or because of how you’re looking at things. Ben sees everything in a kind of negative light when the movie begins, and he’s done it to such a degree that he’s almost bringing it on himself. He’s making things worse than they are, and his daughter, which is an interesting part of the film, his relationship with his daughter, he begins to see that he’s actually hurting her, and that’s when he says ‘Wait a minute.’ Then he has a roommate who gently nudges him along in terms of how he’s thinking about things, and then he gets involved with a romance, which wakes him up and gets him out of just thinking about his ex-wife. So he suddenly has a little luck, and also an internal change in his attitudes that makes him end up in a slightly better place than he was in the beginning of the movie.

I’ve been a huge fan of Michael K. Williams since The Wire and it was great to see him do such great work here. Tell us about working with Michael.

Josh wanted him so badly, from seeing The Wire, and the two characters couldn’t be more different, but Michael just has such great energy and is such a bright and interesting actor. I loved working with him. He’s always surprising, and very present, and has a great attitude. He’s always very happy, as is Josh, and thank God, because we shot the thing in 21 days. When you’re on that tight of a schedule, people can get cranky, but by and large, everyone stayed cool and wanted it to come out well and there was no craziness, and a lot of that was due to Michael and the attitude he brought.

Broderick and Ally Sheedy in WarGames.

We should talk about some of your other films. Why don’t we start near the beginning, with WarGames. You did that right after your triumph on Broadway with Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and you didn’t see a lot of that in the early ‘80s, with actors going back and forth between the stage and screen, as you do now.

Yeah, that happened purely by luck. I was auditioning for WarGames the same time I was auditioning for Brighton Beach and they both worked out and there was time to shoot before the play began. I was cast in the play before I was cast in WarGames, I think, and then luckily the film shot in time for me to be able to do the play, as well. So it was just luck. I didn’t have some master plan to do both. It just worked out that way.

How does your early work hold up for you now?

I don’t know. It’s hard to…my younger things, there are always moments I think are not very good, and I would do better now but at the same time, there’s a lot that I probably wouldn’t do as well. There’s something very nice when you start out and you don’t know too much and you’re more trusting and there’s an ease about the work that’s good. You can’t lose because you’re just thrilled to be there, basically. Then also the nice thing when you’re starting out is the audience is just happy, or hopefully happy, to see this new guy. After a while, that goes away and they’re saying “Hm, is this different from the other thing you did?” And they start to have opinions about you, preconceived things, so you never get that fresh feeling again. So that was an exciting time, because nobody knew what to expect from me, nor did I.

Broderick in an iconic pose from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Speaking of that, we have to talk about Ferris Bueller, which is your most iconic role. I remember reading an interview with you a few years back where you said, after the film’s huge success, you were afraid of getting typecast as that guy for the rest of your career.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be typecast, I just wanted to make sure my career could withstand being identified with such an, as you say, iconic character. It’s like when, back in the old days, if you were cast as Superman, it was hard for audiences to see you as anything else. So, as silly as it sounds now, that part almost had people thinking of me as that guy. So I was just trying to make sure I had a career, and I did, so no complaints.

What was the experience like of making the film itself? It looked like everyone was having a ball.

We were. It was really fun to shoot. It was all about John Hughes. He was so bright and funny, and had such an original mind. It kind of seemed like a new type of film at the time, something that hadn’t really been seen before. It was a big shift, and John’s work was very much on everybody’s mind at the time. I had seen The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, and then to be asked to do his next one was really thrilling. We shot it in Chicago, which is where John was from, and knew every inch of. He showed us around and we just formed this great camaraderie: me, Alan Ruck, Jennifer Grey, Mia Sara. It was a very special time.

L to R: Alan Ruck, Mia Sara and Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

What film after that would you say helped redefine your career in terms of moving into another genre comfortably?

I don’t know that there’s any one that redefined me. I just think that, after a while, if you keep working you start to feel as though you’re not so defined by one thing. I mean, I liked Election a lot. That was a different way to go. Glory, I think, was different. Then a lot of the plays I’ve done, like The Producers those are different, too. So I’ve had a lot of variety, and a lot of things that didn’t work, too.

Broderick in Ed Zwick's Glory.

Glory is one of those movies with a blessed cast: you, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Andre Braugher, Cary Elwes, and others. You all either launched your careers with that film, or sent your careers into a new arc.

It was amazing, wasn’t it? I don’t really run into Denzel that much anymore, but his career has really been magnificent from then on. Some of my favorite actors are in that film, so I was very happy to have been in it with them. Morgan Freeman was one of those people. I mean, I grew up watching him on “The Electric Company,” playing Easy Reader. (laughs) Of course Morgan has had a tremendous career, as well. The director, Ed Zwick, too. So yeah, it’s fun to look back and say ‘I knew them when,’ although we were all pretty established at that point, but no one was really a “star,” per se.

You’ve gotten to work with some amazing directors during your career: Mike Nichols, Sidney Lumet, John Hughes, to name a few. When you directed your first feature, what lessons did you take from them?

Well, you take different lessons from different people. There are so many ways to be a director, and those are three very different directors with different styles. Sidney’s technical skill is just incredible, and I wish I had that, which I knew I didn’t have. Sidney Lumet has directed ten thousand movies and four thousand live television shows, so he just knows everything. Mike is so great with actors and you just want to be around him. He’s a very fatherly director and everyone just wants to hang around near the monitor and talk to Mike. So I couldn’t do that, either. (laughs) John Hughes was a little more shy, a quiet director, but knew exactly what he wanted, but was a little more reticent, I think. But very, very funny when he wanted to be, and very smart. Plus, John wrote all of his films, and when the writers are directing they tend to have a more exact notion of what they want, whereas if the director didn’t write it, he or she is more likely to say “Well, what do you think we should do?” They’re a little looser sometimes. They’re all different, and those three are three of the best.

Broderick and Marlon Brando in The Freshman.

You’ve also worked with some of the greatest actors in the world. We’ve got to talk about Marlon Brando. Any stories about The Freshman?

Oh God, I’ve got a million. (laughs) I mean, he was just so thrilling to watch. He was very friendly to us, to all the actors. He really liked actors. Me and Bruno Kirby would hang out in his trailer, trying to get information. Marlon was very entertaining, liked to talk a lot, and I just hung on everything he said, and I loved watching him work. I can’t remember any stories, really. Sorry. (laughs)

Did he tape his lines on you?

(laughs) No, by that point he used an ear piece and an assistant would feed him his lines if he couldn’t remember. You didn’t notice it, and he rehearsed a lot, too. So it wasn’t that he didn’t care about it. He just didn’t like to know his lines too well. He said if he knew his lines too well, then it wouldn’t be spontaneous, because a part of you is always thinking “What’s the next line?” He didn’t want that part of his mind going. That’s what he said. But if he could read them or hear them, it took his consciousness away from “What am I saying next?” He was a very unique person, and a great actor.

What about all the great actresses you’ve worked with? Any who stand out in particular?

Well, the danger of these questions is that I’m going to leave people out that I don’t mean to. But I’ll tell you one who comes to mind, and that’s Sanaa Lathan, from this movie. She had to work very hard, and very late sometimes, and always cheerfully. She had to learn dances and accents and really make you believe she was from Senegal. She did all of it. What other actresses…Marsha Mason was terrific in my first film (Max Dugan Returns), Ally Sheedy was great. I’m just going chronologically. I don’t know…I’ve worked with great women. I don’t know where to begin. (laughs)

Reese Witherspoon and Broderick in Election.

In terms of the diversity of the roles you’ve played, where would you say Ben Singer falls?

Gosh, I don’t know. I mean, I hope he’s different. It’s nice because he’s not soft. He has an edge to him, which is nice, because I often get parts which are softer. At the same time I don’t like to play something that’s too foreign to me, because I want to serve the script. I don’t want to be doing some exercise for someone else’s enjoyment. I want to play parts that suit me. It’s tricky to know what those are sometimes, but I don’t necessarily think I should break too far away from how I am, or how I’m thought of. You can go a little bit out there, but not too far. That’s my opinion.

You’ve also managed to continue your balance of stage and screen work, again one of the few actors who has managed to do that now. Is it a different process acting on the stage versus acting on film, or are they first cousins?

They’re first cousins, I think. Technically the process is very different. You never have enough rehearsal on a film. Everything you’re seeing in a film is the first day of rehearsal. So I like plays, because it gives me time. On the other hand, there’s immediacy with film that’s very nice. The fact that you haven’t done the thing 200 times is kind of good. It’s fresh. But scenes either play well, and you either work in it, or you don’t. I either suit a role and bring something good to it, or I don’t. I’m never sure which way it will go, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the stage, film or TV. That part of it is always the same.

Broderick and Nathan Lane in The Producers.

But when you play a part like Leo Bloom in The Producers hundreds of times, I’d imagine that you are able to go deeper into the character just because you get to spend so much more time with him.

Yes. We did that for a year, not including Chicago. Then we did the movie, and then we jumped back into it on stage for maybe another four months, me and Nathan (Lane). I think for like six months you get better, and then after that, maybe you don’t, looking back on it. Some things get better, but some things don’t. Sometimes things can get too much better, too strange. I don’t know if that happened with The Producers, but luckily I had Nathan, and that kept me sane. That made it possible to do it 500 times. We kept each other awake.

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Phillip Noyce: The Hollywood Interview

Director Phillip Noyce confers with actors Derek Luke (left) and Tim Robbins (right) on the set of Catch a Fire (2006).


THE ART OF NOYCE
By
Alex Simon

The following article appeared in the November 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Phillip Noyce was born April 29, 1950 in Griffith, New South Wales, Australia. The son of a country lawyer, he moved with his family to Sydney when he was 12. As a teenager, he began experimenting with an 8mm camera. He turned the hobby into a passion after viewing a program of American underground films, when he realized one didn't need much of a budget to capture exciting images on film. With tiny donations by friends, he made his first short, Better to Reign in Hell in 1968. He then enrolled as a law student at Sydney University, but after a year switched over to the arts.

Throughout his studies, he continued making short films with equipment owned by the university's film society. He also became the manager of a filmmakers' co-operative and worked briefly as an assistant on professional productions. In 1972, he was one of the first dozen students enrolled at the Australian Film and Television School, where he made two shorts and a 50 minute documentary, Castor and Pollux, which won the Rouben Mamoulian Award at the 1974 Sydney Film Festival and represented the school at the Grenoble (France) Festival.

The success of his first professional film, God Knows Why, But It Works (1975), a dramatized documentary about the work of a Greek-born doctor among the Aborigines, paved the way for Noyce's first feature, Backroads (1977), a powerful drama about race relations. He followed this immensely impressive though low-budgeted film with Newsfront (1978), a heart-felt valentine to newsreel filmmakers before the advent of television. After a couple of lesser dramas, Noyce returned strongly with the suspenseful thriller Dead Calm (1989). That film won him an invitation from Hollywood, where he went on to make big budget hits, most of which display Noyce's fascination with technology, such as the Tom Clancy adaptations Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), the Joe Eszterhas-scripted Sliver (1993), and The Saint (1997). Noyce's latest is The Bone Collector, a tense thriller starring Denzel Washington as a best-selling author and former member of New York's finest who is paralyzed from the neck down, and is reluctantly recruited to aid a rookie cop (Angelina Jolie, excellent as always) in her investigation of a series of brutal serial killings.

Phillip Noyce is a bear of a man in person: 6'4, with a frame that would make most NFL linebackers cringe. He recently sat down in his offices, designed by famed architect Frank Gehry, to discuss his work.

When I first heard about this film, I thought 'Oh God, not another serial killer movie.' But you really made it about the characters, not the killings.
Phillip Noyce: Yeah, we've seen a lot of movies about serial killers, a couple of which have been special: Silence of the Lambs, and Seven. It's very hard to be original on that subject. To me, when I read the screenplay, the fact that there was a killer out there was the reason to bring these two people together. It's true, that the fact that the killings are brutal provides a tension outside the relationship between Denzel and Angelina that then sort of reflects back onto them. What happens to each of the characters individually and what happens to them together, fascinated me when I read the screenplay. I've always been drawn to brainy action heroes, like Jack Ryan, and Lincoln Rhyme, Denzel's character, also thinks with his brain as much as his brawn. They're almost cousins! (laughs) It's just that Lincoln Rhyme has this problem in that he's quardropalegic. And the fear that he has of losing the use of his brain, his most precious asset, I found very moving. It's a very uplifting story. When you go out and meet quardropalegics who, in spite of their handicap, lead full lives, Christopher Reeve is the most prominent example, it's very inspiring. It's funny, I kept getting the two characters confused during filming. Sometimes I'd say Lincoln Ryan instead of Rhyme! (laughs) I'm working on an adaptation for a new Clancy film now (The Sum of All Fears) and I've found myself calling the character Jack Rhyme! (laughs) So there you are.

I thought the relationship between Denzel and Angelina Jolie was very interesting.
Yes. In many ways it's a love affair that's 99% mental. I only realized why I felt that was interesting when I met a quadropalegic in England and I asked about his sex life. And he said 'Look, your genitals are your usual place where we feel sexual response. But, it's not where it originates. In spite of what many women may think, men's brains are not in their dicks, they're in their heads. When a woman turns me on, my head becomes a giant, swollen penis! (laughs) I experience orgasm up here just as strongly as I ever did when it was mainly centered in my loins. All the pleasure cells are still operating.' So the non-physical sexual relationship they share in the film, to me, defines the essence of a true relationship. There are some similarities to Rear Window (1954), but even more than that film, Denzel's character inhabits the mind and the body of Angelina's character. It's not just that she goes out because he's confined to the apartment. She walks for him. She brings him back to life. She sees for him, touches for him, smells for him. I just found the nature of that relationship fascinating, because he recognized at the beginning that she was him! Again, they don't have sex, but that's a wonderfully romantic and erotic relationship. In many ways, this is Pygmalion, with a twist, where Professor Higgins is a detective.

Angelina Jolie is a fascinating actress, and obviously Denzel is one of the great actors of his generation. What was it like working with them? How are they alike, and how do their techniques differ?
Denzel combines the best of two distinguished traditions: the English and American traditions of acting. The American modern tradition is called "method," where the actor immerses him or herself into the character totally. Denzel trained in the theater where you've got to do that every night. Obviously he could never truly realize the pain that a real quadropalegic goes through, so he immersed himself in the technical aspects of being a quardopalegic. Much of the decision to cast him was based on the belief that if this movie, which is basically a piece of escapist entertainment, if it was seen to be belittling the experience of being a quardropalegic, the audience would reject it and it would fail miserably. By casting Denzel, I felt that I had a man of great dignity, of great prowess as an actor, of great humanity, and someone who would never belittle the predicament of his character. Regarding Angelina, when I saw her in Gia (1998) I thought 'This is some spice that I've never tasted before, and it's hot!' (laughs) When you part come along calling for an actress in her early to mid-20's and one of such extraordinary talent comes along, it's very difficult to ever again think of anyone else, and we never did. She is gifted with her father's (Jon Voight) thespian skills. She is gifted with both parents' beauty. The camera loves her. She's charismatic. She's absolutely dedicated, constantly telling her stand-in not to worry about standing in for lighting...as complicated as we might think she is, but when it comes to acting, she's very uncomplicated, but is not afraid so much that she denies possibilities. She was fresh, hungry, eager, willing and unafraid. It was one of the best experiences I've had working with an actor.

Tell us about your childhood.
I grew up in a town called Griffith, 500 miles to the south of Sydney. It was an irrigation area in the middle of the desert, an oasis. It was a citrus growing area, the fruit bowl of New South Wales, and it was 60% Italian. My father had a lot of Italian clients who paid him in kind: fresh bread, cheese, salami, wine, which I became addicted to at a very early age. There was always an Italian wedding to go to every month. So it was a strange place. Later the area became notorious not as the fruit bowl, but as the marijuana bowl. (laughs)

How did you fall in love with movies in an environment like that?
There were two picture theaters. One screened Italian movies, subtitled. But the picture theater that I frequented was the Lyceum theater. I loved movies because I could escape into the stories, but I never imagined that I would make them. An even more important influence was traveling vaudeville shows that would come to our town. That was the main attraction for kids at these agricultural shows, the sideshows. I used to love these shows. I loved the life that I imagined the people that ran them lived. My parents used to give me and my two brothers one pound each over the three days of the show to spend. There was two ways to get in: sneak under the tent, or offer yourself as the stooge. They'd always ask for volunteers. I always did, because I got in for free. (laughs) I remember this guy took a piece of paper, stuck it on the end of my tongue. Then his wife, who was about 5 feet 2, took a sword that must've been 4 foot 6, raised it in the air, and cut the paper in half! So close to my tongue, that it wasn't funny. But I wasn't thinking of that. All I could hear was the roar of the crowd. (laughs) I just wanted to be part of the show. My earliest memorable experience seeing a film was when Psycho came to town in the early 60's. Big event. By the time it got to our 10,000 population town, it was notorious for scaring the wits out of people. I don't know why my parents allowed me to see this movie, because it wasn't on the usual Saturday matinee that I went to. That was an event, seeing people so scared by this thing. Also the shower scene was good for a young boy because it was so...sexy! (laughs)

Did you go to film school?
Yeah, I got into movies when there was no movie industry in Australia to speak of, there hadn't been since the late 30's, the beginning of the second world war. There was a thriving film industry during the depression years, largely due to one man named Ken G. Hall. He made up to four features a year, seventeen in all between 1930-1941. When I grew up, we suffered from a peculiar disease later diagnosed as "the cultural cringe," which basically told us we shouldn't bother doing anything (artistic), because the English, particularly the Americans could do it better, so why should we bother? Economically, it was true, because the picture theaters were owned by British and American concerns. When I was 17, I saw an advertisement for some American underground movies being shown by a group called Ubu Films in Sydney. I was struck by the fact that these were movies made cheaply where personal expression was the key. They basically said that anyone could make a movie. So I thought 'I'm anyone,' and I raised some money, sold parts to my friends, and shot a movie for about $600-$700 about the sex fantasies of a teenager. (laughs) I sent it to a film festival in Holland. At that time there was an anomaly in the Australian censorship laws. They seized my film when I put it in the post, and banned it, which was perfect! It was only banned for export, not screening in the country itself. It became quite notorious and did very well! (laughs)

You initially studied law, right?
Yeah, then I studied fine art at Sydney University. During that time I became manager of the Sydney Filmmakers' Co-op. It was short filmmakers pulling their films together, renting them out to theaters and showing them. We also started a number of cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne, and other cities, screening the short films of many Australian filmmakers who are well-known now: George Miller (Mad Max trilogy), Peter Weir (The Truman Show), Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant), Fred Schepisi (Roxanne), Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), and screening them to a very appreciative audience. They were thrilled that the images reflected their faces, rather than American faces. I then went to the National Film School, as one of the first students chosen, for a one year in an accelerated course in directing. I spent about a year showing the films, and living off the films that I made at film school, one of which was a documentary called Castor and Pollux, which contrasted a gang of bikers and a gang of hippies. It became quite a success, which led to my making my first short feature, Backroads, which was inspired by Wim Wenders' Kings of the Road (1976). The film was largely improvised by the actors, even though the action part of the story was scripted.

Dead Calm is the film that brought you to Hollywood. Tell us about the genesis of that.
It was quite a departure for me in that it came out of working in television. George Miller bought an old picture theater in Sydney with his partner Byron Kennedy. They founded a director's studio that was like Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, and a number of us were under contract there, and did television work. I did two miniseries there, one about a breakout at a Japanese POW camp during WW II. I did an episode on this series about a Japanese and an Australian pinned down in the jungle fighting each other. It was about the tension between the two of them. The result of that one hour was that I realized that I seemed to have a talent for what we call "thrillers." At this time, Tony Bill who I had met when I first came to America with Newsfront, had given me a novel by the American writer Charles Williams, and this was Dead Calm. Orson Welles had been trying to make it before he died. I brought it back and showed it to George, who expressed desire to make it. Tony was kind enough to let George approach Ojda Kadar, Orson Welles' last girlfriend, who had appeared in Orson's unfinished version of Dead Calm, because Tony had not been able to convince Ojda to sell the rights to him, for him to direct. George, who is a doctor, has a marvelous bedside manner, approached Ojda and convinced her that we didn't want to make a Hollywood version of the story, and that the adaptation would be done in the spirit of what we imagined would please Orson. She agreed, then Tony very generously allowed us to make the film without his participation. And that's the film that brought me to America.

You've always been fascinated by technology in your films. Where does this come from?
It goes back to those experimental films that were my first inspiration. One of those films from that period that I most fondly remember was called Burning Off, which was a silent movie that had a smell track. Burning off was something my father did every Sunday, which was burning the eucalyptus leaves, and this thick smoke would gather round the house. For Burning Off the movie, they brought in film canisters full of leaves which we burned while people were watching! (laughs) We also did things like have people leap out of the screen while people were watching, so the movie would become real. There was a term for this called "expanded cinema." I also had a light show company for a while that would do light shows at rock concerts.

Any advice for first-time directors?
The important thing I'd say is to try and look at your story for the elements that are not necessarily apparent, but which are going to connect with an audience. For example, with The Bone Collector, the story is apparently about hunting for a serial killer, but really the movie connects with audience on a deeper level because it's about resurrection, a story that, like the story of Christ, has been connecting with human beings for centuries. There's always something in every successful story that operates on a spiritual or gut level, far apart from what's apparently on the page or the screen, and you really have to find out what that one element is, and structure the whole movie around exploiting that. Secondly, nothing is more important than the characters in the story. Unless the audience finds someone to connect with, someone who engages them, it doesn't matter how many fancy shots you have, it's all for naught.

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Armand Assante: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Armand Assante.



ARMAND ASSANTE:
RENAISSANCE GANGSTER
By
Alex Simon


A veteran of over 80 film and television productions, Armand Assante first made a splash in the pop cultural lexicon with Sylvester Stallone’s post-Rocky directing debut Paradise Alley, in 1978. After making the ladies’ hearts beat a bit faster with turns in films like Little Darlings and the now-classic Private Benjamin (both 1980), it was his turn in the latter, as the suave French gynecologist who wins Goldie Hawn’s heart with what became every Jewish man’s fantasy deal-closing line that had Hollywood buzzing with statements like: “Who is this amazing, sexy French guy?” and “ He’s heir apparent to the throne of Alain Delon!” The answer was simple: the “French guy” was born and raised in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood of Washington Heights, and bowed on the world stage October 4, 1949, to an Italian father and Irish mother, the second of three children.

Growing up in an artistic household, young Armand Assante, Jr. was exposed to the theater early by his parents, and initially fell in love with music. At 17, Armand entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts where he was the recipient of the Jehlinger Award for Best Actor in 1969, making his professional theatre debut the same year opposite Imogene Coca in “Why I Went Crazy,” under the direction of Joshua Logan. He spent years in the theatre before his film debut in 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush, remaining a devoted student of Mira Rostova in New York for more than 20 years.

Armand won an Emmy as Best Actor for his mesmerizing turn as mob boss John Gotti in the 1996 HBO production, Gotti. 2007 has been a significant year for Armand’s career, as well: California Dreamin’, a Romanian film in which he stars, won the coveted Un Certain Regard category at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Armand also does a riveting turn as gangster Dominic Cattano in Ridley Scott’s crime epic American Gangster, going toe-to-toe with Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas, the most notorious drug dealer of the 1970s.

Armand, who lives far from the limelight on a farm in upstate New York, sat down with us recently in the booth of a busy Beverly Hills eatery to reflect, ponder and digest a buffet of topics. Here’s a taste of that meal:

American Gangster marks the second time you’ve worked with Ridley Scott. Tell us about his process.
Armand Assante: Ridley, even when you watch his earliest films he did as a kid, is one of the greatest shooters of all time, but he is also one of the best filmmakers of all time. He hires an actor based on what that actor can bring to that specific role. He puts a tremendous amount of faith in the talent he surrounds himself with. What I love about what Ridley did on American Gangster is that he was tough on himself, as a director.

How so?
It’s all story, no indulgence. It cuts to the bone. What I really appreciated is that Ridley didn’t indulge anyone or anything in that movie. It’s just a masterful piece of direction.

I think it’s his best film.
(laughs) I’m glad you said that, because I was afraid to, but I agree. I think it’s his best film. It’s his most powerful, hard-hitting film and what I appreciate about it the most is that it didn’t soft-sell or romanticize the tragedy of heroin or the gargantuan effect it had on our society, from the top to the bottom.

What I really appreciated was how invisible he was as a director. I didn’t notice one bit of his direction the first time I saw it. That’s the mark of a great director to me.
Totally. It was all story.

Yeah, and I think someone like Sidney Lumet is the master of that. You never notice how well-directed his pictures are until the second or third time you see them.
Lumet said something interesting to me, which has since become my golden rule, and that is that 80% of a film is pre-production. And Ridley really drove this home the same way.

I also appreciated that this film, which is set in the ‘70s is very much a ‘70s film: it’s completely morally ambiguous on every level. There’s no black and white, except for maybe Josh Brolin’s crooked cop, who’s a flat-out villain. Your character and Denzel’s are far more honorable men than his character is.
That’s right. In many ways, it’s about the dangers of corporate enterprise.

I love the speech your character has about how if you’re successful, you’re going to have enemies. If you want friends, you have to be mediocre.
(laughs) Yeah, wasn’t that amazing, and true? Great screenplay by Steve Zallian. He’s sort of a throwback to the Steve Shagan generation of writers. It’s a very provocative screenplay. I remember being a kid, and actually hearing about the Vietnam-heroin connection. My father was in the Marine Corps, and he talked me out of going to Vietnam. I remember reading about how the Vietnam war was a continuation of the opium wars in China.

And who knows what’s being smuggled back in the coffins from Iraq and especially Afghanistan, which I think has more poppy fields per capita than anywhere else in the world.
I’m sure they’ll turn a blind eye to that, too. I was working in Bulgaria last year, and all the truck drivers on my floor had just come back from Iraq, and they said it was hell on Earth. They were terrified, every minute.

What was it like sharing the screen with Denzel?
He’s as big a star as you can get, and he’s that big a person, as well. He’s a tremendous actor, and I always thought the world of him, but I didn’t quite know what to expect. It turns out he’s an incredibly generous, giving person, and a generous, giving acting. That’s the soul, the magnamity of his work. It’s interesting, I heard that recently he was at a veteran’s hospital in Maryland or Washington and he said to one of the foreman, they told him a number and Denzel just wrote them a check. I could expect that from him. Very generous man, and I think his performance in this is worthy of an Oscar. It’s a very compelling performance. And Russell, as well. Beautiful work. When you see work like that, you know what goes into. They’re not only walking the line, but they’re carrying it on their shoulders.

You’re a native New Yorker, right?
Yeah, born and raised in Washington Heights.

Both your parents are artists, as well?
My father’s a painter and he supported us with advertising. My mother was a concert pianist, piano teacher, and she’s a writer. I have an elder and a younger sister, as well.

Did either of them go into the arts?
My older sister was an actress and signer for years, primarily a singer. She never recorded, but she still sings in cabarets and things.

When did you know you were an actor?
I was introduced to the theater when I was four years-old. I was smitten with the magic of theater when my parents took me to see Mary Martin in Peter Pan at The Winter Garden, in 1954. They took me to musical theater all through my childhood. I went into the theater when I was 16, and in between working in the theater and studying professionally, I’d been in the theater ten years before I made my first film. I worked almost theater on the East Coast. I did phenomenal material. I was lucky. I’ve always been a journeyman actor. Acting never came easy to me at all. Music came easily to me. As a kid, I was a professional drummer and singer. I was on the road for years as an actor, honing my craft, and even in film, I found my process was just too slow.

How so?
Just in terms of the time I felt I needed to prepare. It only comes with experience that you learn to hustle. It’s still for me an arduous task. You think a lot about what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s hard to make great material, and I’ll fight for it too, if I have to. I’ll go to bat for a producer, or director. I’ll do everything I can to help them. But it’s tough. I think the industry is tougher than it’s ever been right now. It’s hard to get independent films made, and it’s hard to get good stories made. In many ways, the digital age has changed the geography of filmmaking in that it’s made things cheaper, but it’s also made things faster. And I don’t know if that’s always fair to the creative person. It’s an interesting time, but I think that the over-informationalized and computerization of society has taken the focus away from what it is that I love, which is just stories, and storytelling. I find it a harder world to work in because of that because people are now thinking at that speed and in those terms, too.

It’s the super-processor mentality.
Yeah, and that’s not what actors, writers and artists are supposed to be about. So the pressure is greater and the expectations are greater, when in fact sometimes less may be more. Interesting time.

Also, the studios don’t seem to care if a picture is good anymore. They only care if it makes money. It takes someone like Steven Spielberg to do a Schindler’s List or a Ridley Scott to do American Gangster, which I know has been floating around Hollywood for years.
Yeah, there’s literally a handful of filmmakers left who have the juice to make the films they want to make. And the age-old phenomenon about this industry is how they chew people up and spit them out, like what they did to guys like John Frankenheimer. It’s just brutal. If you’ve ever tried to develop something yourself, you see how hard it is. You also see a lot of grift. When you see that level of corruption coming into your industry, you just want to say ‘Wait a minute, this ain’t the street!’

The first movie I saw you in was Paradise Alley. Did you meet Stallone when you made your debut in The Lords of Flatbush?
I met Sly on Lords, but didn’t get to know him. For some reason, he had me in mind when he wrote Paradise Alley. I happened to be in L.A. doing an episode of Kojack, my first job in L.A. ever, and I ran into Sly and he invited me into his office. He said “I’m doing this film, and I’d love you to play this part.” Boom! Just like that. It was a wonderful entrance for me into the business and a fabulous role. He looked out for me and was very good to me. I’ve never forgotten that. Sly’s one of the most unique men in the business. When you get to know Sly, you realize how tremendously talented he is, which most people don’t understand. He’s a very misunderstood figure, and a very hard, hard working guy.

Then the movie that really established you was Private Benjamin.
Yeah, I was very lucky to work with Goldie and Howard Zieff and Harvey Miller, Nancy Meyers and Charlie (Shyer). That was an amazing amalgam of talent that went into making that picture. It was really my first introduction to Hollywood and that first understanding of how tough it was.

Why was that?
There was a lot of skepticism about the release of Private Benjamin, and much to everyone’s surprise right out of the gate, it was an overwhelming hit, from the first screening in Westwood. I vividly remember Goldie, Charlie, Harvey, Nancy and Charlie sitting at the premiere in Westwood, and still editing in their heads, and you don’t see that kind of teamwork often. I’ve only been on a handful of projects that really made an impression, but what I continually tell people who want to make films, and somehow most of them don’t get the message, is that in truth, if you want to make a project work, stay working on it about three years after it’s released. Because if you don’t have the passion going in, it’s the passion that you have after to sustain what you held in the process true that keeps it going. Any project I did that worked, did so because the team from the inception, never let it go. I never underestimated the passion of that team for that reason. And other projects I’ve done since then that have really kicked it out of the park had that some kind of passion and commitment behind it.

What were some of those?
Stuff like Gotti, The Mambo Kings, Belizare the Cajun…it’s just about having a team that’s relentless. And I have the same feeling about American Gangster. There’s a relentlessness there, a tenacity. Sly has that. So does Goldie. So does Ridley. That tenacity continues to make an invaluable impression on me, and that’s what it takes to get anything done in this business, and you just don’t see it very often. If you’re not ready to do that, you’re in trouble, because it simply takes too much time, too much energy and too many brain cells.

You’ve always chosen to live in New York. Why?
When I tried to live here I always found L.A. to be a community of an overwhelming amount of information, 95% of which was false. It’s very easy for creative people to become addicted to that flow of information, and they stop paying attention to what their initiative is, or what their drive is. You forget what your taste is and you become addicted to the taste of others. “Well, I should really be doing this, instead of what I want to do,” that sort of thing. That’s not what you’re supposed to be about. The hardest thing about being in L.A. is being able to hold onto what you are, because it’s very easy to get swept up into what’s popular, marketable, cool, and so on.

It’s a town of conformists and if you’re an artist, by definition, you’re a non-conformist.
Yeah, and it’s very easy for actors especially to conform, because sometimes it’s just about paying bills, about getting through the week.

The same goes for writers. You might write 12 Angry Men, but your agent says that what’s selling now is comedies about 16 year-olds farting and trying to get laid.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And how do you keep your integrity in that situation, but also pay your bills? That’s the dichotomy.

You got to work with the great John Frankenheimer on Prophecy.
John asked me to do that film, and I thought it was impossible to make an animatronic bear work. David Selzer’s script was prescient, dealing with environmental issues, and how genetic structure of animals can be mutated. So I loved the script but in ’78, I just didn’t think the technology existed to bring it off. I turned the film down four times, but John just hammered at me to do the movie. And I’m glad I did it. He was one of the great directors. The film was not well-received at all, but John was a fascinating guy, a very complicated guy. I hammered him every day because I knew that this was an opportunity for me to learn from a master. He came out of a pool of directing giants that I knew growing up watching live television.

Since he had a stage background, how did John work with actors?
John was unforgettable with actors. He lived in the moment and wanted the moment captured on film. He was really in an actor’s face. He believed in bringing an actor right in front of the camera. He not only told me things he’d done in the past, but he’d do things to get a certain look in your eye…once, without telling me or any of the other actors, he blew off a shotgun about four feet away from us, and he got the look that he wanted. He wanted everything very pliable and spontaneous, and he got it. When I look back at some of the people I’ve gotten to work with, I’ve really been blessed. I got to work with a lot of the guys who came out of live TV when I did films in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Who were some of those?
Fielder Cook, Ralph Nelson, Buzz Kulik, Edgar Scherick and you look at those projects those guys did on television, and they stand up to anything. Story, story, story. That’s what they were about. They were a tremendous education for me. You learn by osmosis. One thing I’ll remember the rest of my life, I had the same exact experience both with Fiedler Cook and with Sidney Lumet. There was a time with each of them when I was on the set, and I said ‘I’m sorry. I’m totally lost. I don’t get where my character is. I don’t get where this scene is going or why it’s not working, so I’m asking you what should I do?’ They both said the same thing to me: “Lean forward six inches.” And the fuckin’ scenes came alive like that! That’s powerful. That’s knowledge.

You did Q & A with Lumet. Tell us more about him and his process.
It was a phenomenal book which Sidney synthesized into a great screenplay that actually could have worked beautifully on the stage. It was that hammered out. Sidney’s one of those directors who believes in a tremendous amount of preparation for everyone, actors and crew. He walks everyone through everything before he does a single shot. I doubt, maybe there’s a handful of directors in the world today, who would give an actor a screenplay in May, and say we’re going to shoot in September, and have almost three weeks of rehearsal prior to it. It doesn’t happen. But Sidney is that kind of person. I thought he deserved the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy when we did Q & A, and he just got it what, a couple years ago? If you look at his body of work up to 1990, it’s a phenomenal body of work. He’s one of the all-time great storytellers certainly of his generation, and perhaps of the 20th century because he’s carrying on an ancient tradition which is that of the real Hebraic storyteller. His father was a star of the Yiddish theater. His uncle was Jacob Adler. It was passed onto Sidney, who took it to a whole new level. The guys who originally came to Hollywood, the Jews who built the business, were about that. The western was a metaphor for Biblical stories. They were morality plays. And men like Lumet and Arthur Miller, they were and are about morality plays. They were looking for that in their work constantly.

The Mambo Kings allowed a fusion of your two greatest loves: music and acting.
It was the passionate obsession of Arne Glimcher that really put all that together, and brought all that talent together. Arne is the one who saw Oscar Hijuelos’ book, bought it, and put his love of that music, that era, and those people into the film. To think we had people like Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, who is really the father of Latin jazz, he was in his 80s then. He came in and consulted on it. All the giants of the era were there consulting for us. Antonio Banderas and I were really blessed to be in that kind of environment. It was a year before the film started to come together, so again, Arne was relentless.

In that film, as well as so many of your other films, you’ve proven yourself to have a gift for accents. Where does that come from?
Well, I grew up in an Italian household and in that era of Washington Heights, when I was a boy, I was in a building that was literally a melting pot of the world: Russian, Italian, Irish, Scottish, Puerto Rican, Jewish, French…you heard all this stuff every day in the street and it was osmosis. You just picked it up. Growing up on the streets of Washington Heights in that time was like growing up in a city in Europe. It had everything from rabbis, to hawkers, to coal being delivered by horse-drawn wagons. By around ’57 or so, that was all gone and became more homogenized. But that’s how I developed my ear for rhythm. I credit my childhood with that. That’s how I also became obsessed with jazz, and musical styles of writing. Mamet is very much like reading jazz.

Yeah, and John Cassavetes is like watching jazz on film.
Yeah, absolutely. I loved Cassavetes growing up. Minnie & Moskowitz is one of my favorite films of all time, Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands. I love them. They were a breed unto themselves.

Let’s talk about Gotti. How did you get into his skin, because he was such an enigmatic figure.
I studied every transcript I could find on Gotti, and the funny thing at the time was, HBO didn’t want to get into any of the legal issues, so I went to Gotti’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, because I think four of the guys in the story were actually on parole, so it was very dangerous to talk about. So the legal issues were a little nerve-wracking to deal with, but once Cutler saw we were serious about addressing them, he was very cooperative, to a degree, and it all came together. We cast it all out of New York, and all the guys on it went on to be regulars on The Sopranos. It was one of those roles that’s a rare opportunity. I put on 50 pounds for the role, and I listened to guys who grew up with him in Howard Beach, and guys who knew him. I could never get around Gotti himself. You start to listen to the rhythm of the way they communicate and their lingo, and I heard a recording of his voice, the rhythm of his voice, and all that put together really put me in a different zone, which was very removed. He was living an ethos of a guy from the ‘40s, of another time. That was kind of an interesting thing to work with. (Writer) Steve Shagan picked up on that in the writing. In some of the transcripts of things he’d said, I come across these amazing things, things a Mexican revolutionary would have said in the 19th century, that were almost like poetry, and we interjected them into the film. He said something about the poor to the effect of “You think I was put on this earth to make them rich and me poor,” things like that, that would have been more fitting coming from Pancho Villa or Che Guevara than a mob boss from New York. But the fact that he tried to conduct his operation like it was in another time was both what made him unique, and was also his undoing, because that time was over.

In his own way, did you see him as an honorable man?
To me, he’s honorable in the fact that he maintained his honor and held a tremendous dignity in the face of something that was almost a delusion. His ethos was something that was decades removed from what the mob was about in that time. For me, the movie isn’t even really about Gotti. It’s about how the media or the government, and sometimes even I get confused about which is which, controls our perceptions. Is this democracy, or is this the media’s version of what a democracy is? What Gotti was about, and I think why it struck a chord with people to such a degree, is that the media can inflate something to much that the entity being inflated can start to believe its own ethos and the ethos being projected upon them. And if you allow yourself to reach that high a profile, the government can pull the rug right out from under you.

Frank Lucas talked about that in American Gangster, about the importance of keeping a low profile, as did Ben Kingsley as Meyer Lansky in Bugsy. Remember when he said to Warren Beatty? “Famous for George Raft is good, Ben. Famous for you is not good.”
Yes, exactly. And that’s one of the greatest gangster films ever made, by the way. I love Bugsy. Warren Beatty just nailed that. He was phenomenal. And James Toback’s script was amazing. I did a film with Jimmy called Love and Money. He’s a fascinating character, absolutely brilliant. He understood the system at a very young age. But I think that’s why Gotti struck such a chord: we’ve come to depend on the media so much that we’ve become deluded by it. Iraq is a classic example of that.

Remember the final line of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When legend replaces truth, print the legend.”
Exactly. And John Ford called that back in 1962.

You’ve done a lot of work in Eastern Europe recently. Tell us about some of your impressions.
It’s one of the most exciting places in the world to work for the simple reason that you’re working with unobserved talent. They’re not conforming, they’re not even noticed, so they’re very pure in their reactions. The one film I did, California Dreamin’, with a young director named Christian Nemescu, who was killed in a car accident right after the film wrapped. 27 years-old. It won Cannes in the Un Certain Regard category. Christian, to me, was like a neo-realist from Italy. Those films were like reflex reactions to what is happening in society. That was his talent. He was a very gifted young man, so it was very sad on so many levels. But Eastern Europe is now what I imagine Italy was like right after WW II, because it’s being rebuilt and there’s a feeling that anything is possible. They’re just beginning to find themselves after going through generations of repression and corruption. It’s “You know what? This is who the fuck we are in the face of these Fascist bastards!” And anything that comes from the heart like that on film, is very exciting.

We’re coming out of what I think will be recorded as the darkest period in our country’s history.. We’re just now seeing films like In the Valley of Elah that are dealing with what’s been happening. Do you think that, as in Eastern Europe, there will be a sort of artistic renaissance here?
There’d better be. One of the great things about this country is that you can speak out, but you have to make a point of it. It has to become your obligation as a writer, actor or filmmaker. You can’t hide under a rock. That’s what I’ve always respected about the people of this country and certain people in the Hollywood community: they’re harbingers of things to come.

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Into the Belly of the Beast: Antoine Fuqua returns to the (police) force with BROOKLYN'S FINEST

(Director Antoine Fuqua, right, and Richard Gere, during the shooting of Brooklyn's Finest.)

By Terry Keefe

(This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

Don’t even bother trying to pigeonhole director Antoine Fuqua in one genre, Hollywood. He’s made it impossible.

After the success of Training Day in 2001, the searing L.A. police thriller which won Denzel Washington the Best Actor Oscar for his turn as the corrupt detective Alonzo, Fuqua picked for his next project Tears of the Sun, a run-through-the jungle action story, albeit one with a social message about colonialism, starring Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci, set in war-torn Nigeria. After that, he was off to Camelot in 2004 for his revisionist take on King Arthur. 2007 saw Fuqua teamed with Mark Wahlberg for Shooter, a modern western of sorts, with Wahlberg playing a retired military sniper who is framed for a crime and subsequently cleans up the “town,” in this case a particularly malignant wing of the military industrial complex. Fuqua has only now returned to the setting of his greatest commercial and critical success, that being the police department, for Brooklyn’s Finest, which follows one tumultuous week in the lives of three separate police officers, played by Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, in Brooklyn’s 65th District. Gere’s Eddie is a cop who has done little except punch the clock for his twenty years on the job, and finally gets to retire at week’s end, although life will present him with one last crossroads and a chance to use his gun for something positive, or not. Cheadle’s Tango has been deep undercover for way too long and learns that the only way back to his old life is by betraying an old gangster friend played by Wesley Snipes. And Hawke’s Sal is a once-good cop who can’t pay his family’s bills and has taken to robbing drug dealers for their cash.

Fuqua grew up in a tough section of Pittsburgh, before attending West Virginia University on a basketball scholarship, where he majored in electrical engineering. He received his first breaks as a director through a series of music videos, the most prominent of which was Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

[Over lunch, Antoine and I started with some small talk about how so many of the great L.A. institution restaurants have disappeared. Joined in progress.]

I listened to the Training Day director's commentary last night, and you were talking about shooting at the original Pacific Dining Car [for the scene where Denzel Washington’s Alonzo goes to meet with the Three Wise Men] -- so some of the classic places have survived.

Antoine Fuqua: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No question about it. That place is like my midnight joint. In the middle of the night, man, I'll go down there. One o'clock in the morning-- I'm up writing at night, and I'll just like want a steak or get in the right environment...and it's all sorts of great characters in there.

What sorts of characters are there in the middle of the night?

It's kind of bizarre. There's guys in suits, you know, businessmen in suits, which, you're not quite sure what kind of business they're in. You know what I mean? 'Cause it's not like New York, Wall Street, and it's in the middle of the night, like one in the morning--and then you got like the old, old drunks -- old women, sitting in there eating. You know, like, they look like they've been there since it opened.

They possibly have.

Then you've got the people in the bar that are a little more...mysterious.

The place is the definition of noir.

It's totally noir. That's exactly what it is. And then every once in a while you see some young, really beautiful people coming in. There's always somebody trying not to be seen, like a booth in the back. But, you know, you're walking through the booths, you can't see who's in there.

Which is perfect for your scene with the Three Wise Men, in Training Day. Of course they would meet there.

That's where they'd meet! That's where they'd have to have a place. That's the type of people you'd see in there. Three guys in suits...politicians? Detectives? You know they're not a hundred percent clean, because there's something about 'em that's a little different, maybe it's in their eyes or in their sweat. It's that little film you can see, you know? And you know not to interfere with whatever's going on over there. And they make sure you don't sit too close.

You know, they told me [at first] they wouldn't let me shoot there, either, and I called the owner, making Training Day, and the owner came down, cool guy, and he's like, "No, we'd never do that." And I said, "You gotta do it." I said, "The movie is an L.A. story, and most people don't get a chance to see this -" Really, he was cool. He was like, "Okay, I'm on it." That one stained-glass window? I loved that room. The reason I picked that room, there's a bullet hole right there. [laughs] If you look at the shot, there's a real bullet hole right there. And I was like, “What's the story to that?”

Did they know? Did they tell you?

They kind of said there was a shootout, a long time ago. It's old. A long time ago. And they left it there. And, you know, I remember just looking at that bullet hole, going, you know, "Just that alone is a great detail." For me. Just for me, whether the audience ever pick up on it. These Three Wise Men sitting there with a bullet hole in the stained glass.

(Fuqua, right, directs Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington in Training Day.)

You like shooting in practical locations, I assume.

I prefer 'em. It's tough on crew, but it just can't be the same essence otherwise, you know, because the actors know it's fake, I know it's fake, somewhere in your mind, it's just fake. And I know it's acting, except when you're in a real environment, [as an actor] you look at the environment, and go, "What is it about this...what is it about me that's fake, because everything else is real." So... "I have to adjust myself to be real for this environment, because if I don't feel that I really fit in, then it's not working." If you put an actor in a real environment, all their choices have to be based on what's real. And, then, as a director, you can't always move that wall and get that fancy shot.

Lighting's more difficult. You're backed in.

But then again, you know, sometimes it makes you just have to deal with some real hard choices. Instead of it being a restriction, it actually becomes more of a creative choice, "What's this scene about?" It's not about the fancy shot on the wall, it's not about the pretty light in the hallways. You know, and if you can get away with that and tell your story, and it actually helps you be more disciplined, then it's better.

In Brooklyn's Finest, that was a real housing project?

[nods] We didn't build anything. Well, we built one thing: Ethan's basement. That was the only thing, because I needed the space, but actually I had to do it for tax reasons. So I built that one set. Everything else was real, all the scenes in the projects were real, every little small project apartment was real.

Were people living there in the project buildings, when you were shooting?

Oh, yes. We paid them to use their apartment. Some apartments I decorated, but I barely decorated. I found so many amazing things, like when Ethan goes in and shoots the two guys and he goes in the back room, it's got weird little waterfalls [in decoration form, on the wall]--

That was a great touch.

Well, I saw it on the wall in another apartment. And it’s [the apartment] chaos, and a big-ass Rottweiler, and a baby's crying, and I walked into this back room, and it's the most serene, blue, weird waterfall, like the only moment of peace. I just thought, "I gotta have that in the movie."

A lot of those visual touches felt very '70s. I grew up around the same time you did, and I just remember some of those types of decorations and their design. You can't find that stuff.

You can't find it, man. I would walk around to the prop department, "I want this--" But there's not a prop house [for those items]. It reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in the projects and stuff, so... Yeah, even the panther on the wall. I saw that somewhere. Because some are stuck in time, you know, places, they don't have money to keep decorating and keeping up with the times, man. They get what they can get. And most of that stuff is from the '70s. Velvet paintings. The painting of the black Jesus, you know.

Were you channeling any '70s cop movies on Brooklyn's Finest? Sidney Lumet?

You know, I was, but it was self-consciously in a weird way. Sidney Lumet and I actually sat down after I did the movie, and he watched the rough cut.

Really?

That was great, man, what an honor. He came in, he sat down, and watched the whole movie, and straight up, man, he turned around, and goes, "I love it." He loved it. And he gave me some advice, he goes, "Fuck exposition! Fuck that! Nobody explains shit!"

Lots of exposition was never his thing.

Yeah, and he's right, but there's a few things in there I had, that an audience may need that [exposition], it's so complicated...but then, you know, I took his advice in some areas, and I was like, "He's right, man," because people are smart. They're gonna get it. You don't need to tell 'em everything. And some of it is better for the imagination. But it was great. And then Scorsese...

Oh, did he watch it also?

Yeah. You know, it's great.

Those are the two guys you would want to give advice on this film.

Those are my gods, and I became good friends with both of them. I've been blessed, because I got to hang out with Scorsese, man, and talk to him, and do the thing for the DGA about Mean Streets. I didn't realize how much I was influenced by Mean Streets, or Q&A, you know, you start watching 'em, going, "Ah, I kind of shot it like that." Weirdly enough, you know, because I had scenes where I would stay wide….I just loved the acting, and I realized I loved Sidney Lumet movies because he would too. It was like stage clips, he would just stay wide, and the actors would just fuckin' fill the frames up with their power. What's weird with Scorsese is that, I love the stories of the Bible. I grew up with pastors in my life, my grandfather was a priest--and I was on the other side. I was always on one foot: half gangster, the other foot: half priest. I always knew right from wrong, which probably saved my life, but I was always one step away from the other side. And then I didn't really realize it until I met with Scorsese, he's like that, too. Scorsese's part gangster, part priest. He's this nice guy, wonderful guy, giving, caring, but he's got this other wildness in him. And I was like, “Wow, no wonder we loved the same movies growing up.” The movies he obviously grew up watching, that I discovered, you know.

The character arc of Richard Gere also has roots in the Western.

That's Shane. He hangs his guns up, and turns his conscience off, and in our case, instead of a little boy who brings him back, you got a girl. And he has to do it, he has to go and pick his gun back up. He didn't even have the guts in the beginning of the movie to kill himself. But he had to go into hell. Into the heart of darkness.

The belly of the beast.

The belly of the beast. That's why I had him go DOWN into the basement [in the conclusion at the housing project]. The reason I had Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke going UP was because their journey was different, they were spiritual heroes doing the wrong thing. And it was that sort of elevation of these angels who were supposed to go up, and they stopped. Ethan can't even finish his prayer. He's given up on faith. And Cheadle's given up because he took an oath to serve and protect, and now he's gonna go do vengeance.

That's why I started off [the film] sort of in the sky, where in my mind, God and the Devil made a deal. They made a wager: Are there any good men or not? And the camera comes over the graveyard, and it's like, oh, they're all dead. And then you discover [Hawke and Vincent D‘Onofrio, talking in a car], and okay, “Are these good men?” And then it sort of starts to take you into that journey, or that concept, and we watch the pressure of their lives -- economic, psychological, spiritual pressures -- unfold and become more and more taxing, and then what choices do they make? And then that's where I found that, that was the journey for me. So it was almost more of a spiritual movie for me. The [police] stuff is superficial, it was much more internal, for me, and for the actors, because I laid it out for them in a lot of ways. Cheadle’s color was red -- passion, violence. That's why, when he's looking right at the camera in the beginning, it's red on his face, he says, “You gotta get me outta here!” And then Ethan's was green, he was always a tender, green one-- you look at greed, you look at the money, greed, a demon. Once you do that act, taking a human life, the demon has you. How do you redeem a person after taking another human life? And so it kinda has that. And so Richard's color was neutral. That's why, in the beginning, he was a ghost. There weren't even sheets on the bed.

Inaction is his problem.

Exactly. He had to be resurrected. Reborn. And that's why, when he comes up the steps, in the beginning, in the precinct, they don't even acknowledge him. The cops don't, they move aside.

(Richard Gere in Brooklyn's Finest, above.)

Redemption stories have something of an appeal to you I noticed. I watched Shooter last night, and I watched Tears of the Sun, and I've seen Training Day a number of times. There's kind of a theme. Tell me where I'm wrong on this…you have great faith in the individual, but great suspicion of institutions.

A hundred percent right. I think there's always going to be an abuse of power. I think if you ever put your faith in institutions, it's a false god, it's gonna let you down every single time, you know. I mean, we got a wonderful new President, President Barack Obama, it's fantastic, he's the first African-American -- half-African-American, I like to make that clear -- because he is that. But he's the first mixed President, let's just say. But he's still part of the institution.

Yeah. It's like, “Congratulations. Now you've got to be suspect too.”

Exactly. It's like, now you've joined the ranks of the rest of 'em, because you're a part of that institution, no matter what. And there are secrets we don't know about. And there's agendas we don't know about. So, I think, people, innately people are good people, the majority of us, outside of a few fucking freaks out there like murderers -- but 99.9% of the people, I think, want to do the right thing. I think the pressures of life always put something in front of you, and opportunities to do the right thing.

In Tears of the Sun, I kind of went back to my old Westerns, which was like The Wild Bunch. The Command is saying, “Just do what we told you and get out, we don't want any problems, political issues.” You're watching someone being murdered and raped and slaughtered. Do you do what's right, human, you know, the right thing as a human being, the moral thing, or do you listen to command and follow orders? Can you sleep at night knowing women and children were just slaughtered and burned? You do the right thing, though. That's basic Western, typical. And I believe that people in the business of service, you know, police, firemen, military guys, that's a redeeming quality, man. They're out there fighting for the people, you know. That's a good thing. The hardest thing is to be in their shoes. To judge them on some of the choices they've made without understanding the whole picture….

I used to, I grew up hating institutions. Hating the police force, 'cause, you know, the abuse that I watched them, the power they would abuse. And, you know, I'm an adult, with children and everything, I'd rather understand it. I'd rather not have hatred as much as understanding of what caused a cop to shoot a kid forty-something times. What was his history? What was his psychological makeup? Because maybe we should take that as a pattern, and watch other people that have that same pattern. And take their gun away before they kill someone else. Or themselves. And that's the other thing that I found, is that the New York Times had an article that more police officers kill themselves than die in the line of duty. And I had a buddy, I said, “What is that?” He said it's called the Hall of Whispers. The Hall of Whispers, that's what he called it. Because you don't talk about that.

Was he a cop, your friend?

Yeah. Undercover cop. I was surprised. It starts to bring up these psychological issues… My question is, so what do we do? And as a filmmaker, you know, it's like Scorsese said, “We all become smugglers,” you know, we have to smuggle in a social relevance, in the package of entertainment.

If it's entertaining...

People will see it. But then you can't try and teach people, because you lose your audience, because nobody wants you to sit there and preach to 'em, and try to teach 'em. I'm just a director, you know, I'm not a professor or a politician. I'm an entertainer. But I can't help but want to try to find a way to constantly put that in, my message, somewhere.

Did you consciously avoid doing cop stories for a while after Training Day?

Yeah.

You were probably offered every great cop script, although maybe there aren’t that many great cop scripts?

There's not a lot of great cop scripts that I could find my way in. It was just some tough guys being tough guys, guns and shooting the bad guys. It was just, like, bullshit. And then I read this, and, you know, it's hard to say why now, but I know that for me, this was important, because there were three different stories that all felt to me Biblical, and I don't know why. And it may have been just, they're so complex. They touch on so many different things, they touched on what was happening in our country. Ethan Hawke's character is like, “I can't even take care of my family. I can't even move. I have twins, and one of them may die, because I can't get another house. Can't get a loan…” You know, what do you do?

He's a good guy. He's doing the right thing. He's protecting our kids, right? He can't get a loan. You know. And if guys like that start to feel abandoned, they start to feel like everybody else in the world is getting what they want, and getting taken care of. And here he is trying to do the right thing, and be a good guy, and not cheat on his wife, and take care of his family, and do the righteous thing, and he's getting punished for it. A lot of people in this country are feeling that way. Unfortunately, they made bad choices, like the guy that drove his plane into the IRS. That's life's pressure, taking a hold of somebody, and twisting their thinking, and making them do something horrible. And when I read the script, I said, this is kind of speaking to where we are.

It felt very much of the time.

Yeah, and that's why I did the scene with Richard at the end, that last shot. For me, that's why I did that. This country's beat up, right now, black eye, bloody, you know, a mess. Still has some abundance there, you know, I love my country, but we're a little lost, a little confused, and then we finally took a path, and we're walking ahead, and we've got some hope left, but when you stop and look at us, man, we're a little beat up, you know, and that's--

We're walking with a limp.

Yeah. There's some blood in our eye. But, you know, we can move forward. But it's up to us. And that [final] image of Richard Gere, to me, represents this country.

I always say, you look up the Statue of Liberty's gown, she's got some scars, and you know, she's a little beat up, up under there. But she's still standing! She's taken some hits, you know, like a boxer in the ring, her ribs was broken, but we’re still standing, and that's really how I saw this movie. This is an American story about where we are, as a country. And there's still some hope, but we've got to figure it out. We gotta pick our direction, and we gotta move ahead. That's why I had Richard, dazed, the yellow line is faded, the line is not so clear anymore. And he's pacing back and forth, and nobody is really giving him no great thank you. I didn't do the scene where the girl hugged him, [little girl voice] “Oh, thank you! You did a great job!” None of that shit. I just thought, man, I'm gonna stay wide.

You're ready for the big swell of the music at that point, but he's just “there.”

He's just there.

There's dead cops upstairs.

There's dead people everywhere. He just says, “Well, I don't know where I'm gonna go, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna get high anymore, though. I'm gonna move straight ahead.” I’m hoping that that resonates.

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Norman Jewison: The Hollywood Interview

Director Norman Jewison.


NORMAN JEWISON:
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 1999/January 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Norman Jewison was born July 21, 1926 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The son of a shopkeeper, Jewison got his BA at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and after moving to London, where he wrote scripts and acted for the BBC, he returned to Toronto and directed live TV shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(1952-1958), then musicals and variety in New York (including much-heralded specials for Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland), before embarking on a film career.

Jewison's initial offerings were harmless pieces of fluff like Forty Pounds of Trouble (1963), The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964) and The Art of Love (1965). Suddenly in late 1965, the 39 year-old director decided to get serious, replacing the legendary Sam Peckinpah on the dynamite Steve McQueen vehicle The Cincinnati Kid, the story of an itinerant poker player in New Orleans. Jewison's work kept growing from there. He followed Kid with the political satire The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! in 1966, then made what some consider still to be his finest film.

In 1967 the United States was a very different place than it is today. No other film captured this quicksilver moment in time better than In the Heat of the Night, the story of a Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) reluctantly recruited by a redneck southern sheriff (Rod Steiger, Oscar-winner) to aid him in a murder investigation. The film broke more racial and social taboos than can be listed here, and ushered in a new genre in American film, one where African-Americans took center stage, where black was beautiful. Although it helped give birth to the blaxploitation genre of the 70's (which many critics revere), In the Heat of the Night's influence can also be felt in the films of Spike Lee, and many other filmmakers who, over the past 30 years, have dealt with race, culture clash, and the socioeconomic realities which create an underclass in our society. It also spawned a highly-successful TV series, and won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

Jewison followed this landmark film with another classic, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), again starring McQueen, this time with Faye Dunaway as his love interest. Gaily, Gaily (1969) was writer Ben Hecht's story of his apprenticeship on a Chicago newspaper. Jewison then brought two landmark Broadway musicals to the screen: Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), scoring big hits with both. These were followed by the science-fiction classic Rollerball (1975), starring James Caan, and the fictionalized Jimmy Hoffa biopic F.I.S.T. (1977), starring Sylvester Stallone and written by a first-time screenwriter named Joe Eszterhas. Jewison next helmed two scripts written by another young tyke named Barry Levinson (and his then-wife Valerie Curtin):...And Justice for All (1979) with Al Pacino, and Best Friends (1982) with Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn.

Jewison scored another breakthrough when he dealt with the race card once again, bringing Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play to the screen as A Soldier's Story (1984). Starring Howard E. Rollins, Jr. (who also played the Poitier role in the TV series of In the Heat of the Night) as a black army officer investigating the murder of a sadistic sergeant at the tail end of WW II. It co-starred many new faces, including Robert Townsend, David Alan Grier, and this kid named Denzel Washington in a pivotal role. We'll come back to him later...

Jewison brought another play to the screen brilliantly with Agnes of God in 1985, followed by another triumph with the romantic comedy Moonstruck in 1987, an Oscar winner for Best Actress (Cher), supporting actress (Olympia Dukakis) and screenplay (John Patrick Shanley). Next came In Country (1989), a post-Vietnam drama starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd, another play adaptation in 1991 with Other People's Money, starring Danny de Vito, the romantic comedy Only You (1994) with Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey, Jr., and the fantasy Bogus (1996) with Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu.

1999 brings Jewison full circle, completing his film trilogy about race in America. The Hurricane stars that kid Washington we mentioned earlier, in the true story of former boxing champ Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was wrongly convicted on a trumped-up murder charge, and served more than 30 years in prison. The Hurricane marks a welcome return to the cinema of social consciousness that Jewison helped give birth to 33 years ago. The story is so fantastic, it's almost hard to believe that such a miscarriage of justice occurred not only in this country, but in this day and age. Denzel Washington delivers his finest performance to date as Rubin Carter.

Mr. Jewison, who possesses an energy, an appearance, and an enthusiasm that run counter to his 73 years, still makes his home in Canada, and has remained active in his homeland. In 1986, he established the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in Toronto, where he works with young Canadians learning the craft of filmmaking (much like our own AFI). Although he was only in the States a short time to promote The Hurricane, he gladly extended our allotted interview time so we could keep talking.

Along with The Hurricane, many of your films have a very strong social conscience. Where does this come from?
Norman Jewison: I think we're all products of our environments, where we grew up, what we read, what was inculcated into us. Also, I had the opportunity to be in the Canadian Navy at the end of WW II. When I was on leave, I hitchhiked across the United States. Canadians are always interpreting the United States for the rest of the world because we share the longest undefended border of any two countries in the world. I think it's a fascination, a love-hate relationship. It was my first experience with apartheid when I hitchhiked all through Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. I saw people who couldn't sit on the same bus, drink from the same fountain, go get a cup of coffee at Woolworth's, and yet they were being asked to give their lives for their country in defense of this society. And I didn't think that was fair. Also, I grew up with people calling me "Jewie" and "Jewboy" and found out I wasn't Jewish! (laughs) But I've been searching for my own Jewishness all my life, and wound up in Yeshivas in Israel, and interpreting Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar, trying to explain to the rest of the world what it's like to be Jewish! (laughs) Like Topol said, I know more about Judaism than most Jews. We're all products of our own history, as people. When you're attacked, or you're pushed, you push back, and you start studying why, and how. I wanted to make The Hurricane 10 years ago, when I read about it in Sports Illustrated. I think that the reason that maybe this film can work now, is because I didn't think anyone was going to come see In the Heat of the Night, or A Soldier's Story. I didn't know how I was going to tell this story or how it would work. As Bobby Kennedy once told me, "Timing is everything" in life, in art, and in politics. This story says to me: "Hate got me in here. Love's gonna bust me out." Hate breeds prejudice, which breeds war, which breeds murder. Now there's nothing new about that. That's what God was saying, that's what Christ was saying, that's what Gandhi was saying, that's what Martin Luther King was saying, that's what Malcolm X was saying, that's what Krishna Murdhi was saying, and that's what Rubin Carter is saying! So maybe the time is right for us to analyze that again.

It was refreshing to see a socially conscious film again.
Well, we've moved away from that, unfortunately. The only reason this got made is because of Beacon Pictures. Universal released it, but it's an independently made film. Universal wasn't really that excited about it, otherwise they would've made it themselves. These sorts of films aren't easily made. Every studio in town passed on A Soldier's Story until I said I'd do it for nothing! We only made it for about $5 million, shot it in Arkansas. We also had the benefit of then-governor Bill Clinton who got me 600 African-American National Guard troops for the marching scenes. I never could have afforded that number of extras. He said "Don't worry about it. We'll call out the National Guard and send the white boys home." (laughs) So President Clinton helped me get that film made because he believed that it was important socially. So I'm politically motivated as a person, but I also did The Hurricane because I think it's a wonderfully dramatic, compelling story. I try to make my films as entertaining as possible. If I wanted to make messages, I'd do documentaries.

This is the second time you've worked with Denzel. Could you talk about what it's like collaborating with him?
It was wonderful working with him again, because I've always admired him as an artist. But he really wanted to do this picture and for a director, there isn't anything better than having an actor who is totally committed to film, not for his career, not for the money, not doing it for any other reason than he has to do it. He has to play that part! So the two of us really had a great time making this film, because we were both really committed to Rubin. It was amazing because, especially with the scenes in jail, Denzel even started to sound like Rubin, in addition to looking like him. He just became him! He even had Rubin's fighting style down. Denzel has a great gift. I think Denzel is at the peak of his talent in this picture, and it wasn't easy. We were reaching for some pretty difficult moments.

You mentioned Bobby Kennedy earlier. How well did you know him?
I met Bobby skiing in Sun Valley when I was young. I supported his campaign here and was supposed to meet with him at 10:30, the night he was assassinated. I had Melina Mercouri with me, whom he very much wanted to meet. So we were on our way down to meet him at John Frankenheimer's house when we heard. It was part of the reason I left America in 1970. I spent the next eight years working out of London, making films in Yugoslavia, Israel, and Germany. Then, in 1978 I moved back to Canada.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born and raised in Toronto. My dad ran a clothing store and post office. I had one older sister. I was always performing, poetry readings and things like that, from the time I was about six. I don't know why, either. I always loved dramatic storytelling.

Was there one film that really grabbed you as a kid, where you said "This is for me"?
Well, I started in the theater, as an actor, then got into live television with the BBC in London, so television was like a miracle to me. But when I was a kid, I used to go to the movies for 10 cents on Saturday, then I'd act out the whole movie for a penny! (laughs) I guess it was an obsession with storytelling. I remember Gunga Din as one of the great movies for me. And I also remember Rose-Marie, with Nelson Eddy playing a Mountie! I thought that was so romantic and wonderful! I guess we're all searching for those things that touch us. As you get older, you get a little more particular. I think directors are a little like orchestra conductors. We get better as we get older, as long as you still have all your marbles and are still committed. But I don't know if they believe that in Hollywood. (laughs)

Who are some of the other filmmakers that influenced you as you got older.
All the works of David Lean, John Huston. William Wyler was my great idol, because he could take a bad script and make a mediocre picture. He could take a mediocre script and make a good picture. He could take a good script and make a great picture! This guy could never miss. His ability to tell a story on film was unparalleled. Willy told me that there's no difference between genres. In a musical you're telling a story where you're being helped by the music, and if you can make it believable, that the person who's singing the song is really feeling those emotions, then all you've done is taken the musical form and added it to the story. But he didn't believe that there was any big difference between comedy and drama, except that comedy was more difficult because it required a greater discipline on the part of the actors and the director. Willy had a confidence that really impressed me. I think Howard Hawks had it, too, and I think Frank Capra had it, George Stevens had it, William Wellman had it, Billy Wilder had it, and Fred Zinnemann had it. I came in contact with all these people when I was very young, and learned from them. I sat at Willy Wyler's feet, because I was coming to film from the outside, coming from live television, so it was important for me to spend as much time as I could with the giants. A lot of this business is about passing down.

And collaboration.
Absolutely! As a director, you get a lot of help, like I did from (cinematographer) Roger Deakins on The Hurricane. I had to tell Roger how I saw this story in order for him to make that happen, because only he can make that happen. Directors stand back and watch the cameraman make it happen. I really believe that films are made by writers, directors, cameramen, and editors. Those are the key storytellers, because all of them are involved in telling the story. The closer those four people work, the more they become one. If you take hands and form a circle, you are now one. That's what the North American Indians said, because there's something about becoming one. The tribe, the family. Making a film requires the individual artists to take hands, and form this circle, and become one with the work, because the work is what's important, so the film is the result of this closeness. And the look, and image and vision of the film has to come from the director, but he's only a part of the circle.

How much actual direction do you give?
It depends on the actor. Certain actors know exactly what they want and what they're doing, certain actors don't. But again, it all comes down to believability. If they're believable, leave it alone. If they're not, then maybe youíd better take them aside, and whisper to them. And maybe you can help them, who knows? Maybe you spotted it. But there are no rules.

You got to work twice with Steve McQueen. Tell us about him.
He could string you out there. He was street smart. He was shrewd. He wasn't highly intellectual. He was Peck's Bad Boy. I used to call him "Spanky." (laughs) Steve was always looking for a father. I told him "I can't be your father, but I can be your older brother, who went to college. And I'll look out for you. And I want you to believe that I'll look out for you. So you continue to take apart the Volkswagen engine over there, and I'll look out for you." He looked at me and said "You're twistin' my melon, man!" (laughs) I never knew what he was saying, he was so hip! (laughs) I got him to the point where he never looked at the dailies and he trusted me. I think it was a relationship of trust. I didn't want him for Thomas Crown, you know. He convinced me that he was right for it, and as a result, brought a lot of interesting stuff to that part. He'd never worn a tie in a film, and here he was playing a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth, a Boston Brahmin with beautifully tailored English suits and he'd never done that before. He was very easy to direct, too. The problem was, if he would see that you were insecure about something, he'd go in for the kill. He was always looking for weakness, so I made sure I was very secure around him.

Did you see the remake of Thomas Crown?
No, I couldn't bring myself to. But I like John McTiernan's work and I heard it was very good.

The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! is a great film, both as a straight comedy and a very pointed political satire.
It's the only film I've made that's become part of the congressional record, as a plea for coexistence at a time in history when the word "détente" wasn't even being used. It's also the only film I've made where its first screening was for the Vice President of the United States, and this huge group of diplomats and dignitaries, and its second two weeks later, was screened at the Soviet Film Workers Union in Moscow, and I couldn't even get back into the country after I went to Russia! (laughs) I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be there. I got my visa in London because I was traveling under a Canadian passport. As a Canadian, I had made this film for Americans and for Russians. Again, as Canadians, we're always the observers, interpreting America for the rest of the world because we're the most like you.

Tell us about In the Heat of the Night. Did you know going into it what a groundbreaking film it was going to be?
No. I think it was an important film for its time. I think the timing was right, as Bobby Kennedy said. He told me, "This is a very important film." I didn't think anyone was going to come to see it. There were newspapers that wouldnít take the ad in certain cities. When you're making a film that has a social comment, I think itís important that it be at a time that people want to discuss it, and that you never really know. It's instinct. I was kind of surprised when people reacted to it in such a strong way. Then the nice thing that happened was The New York Film Critics gave it their Best Picture award, and when I accepted the award at Sardi's who was presenting it, but Senator Robert Kennedy, from New York. As he gave it to me, he whispered "See, I told you the timing was right, Norman." But I don't think anyone really knows what the reaction to a film is going to be. With The Hurricane, we showed it for the first time as a work in progress at the Toronto Film Festival. It was agreed that we'd show it there because it has such a strong Canadian connection, but because it was a rough cut, no critics were allowed to attend. So I didn't know how people were going to react. Would you believe we got a six-minute standing ovation?! I was in a total state of shock and panic! I thought maybe it was an aberration because it was a hometown crowd.

You actually shot most of In the Heat in Illinois, not the south.
Except for three sequences shot in Tennessee: the cotton-picking stuff and the scene in the big southern mansion. Sidney didn't want to go south of the Mason-Dixon line with the political climate being the way it was then. We shot most of it in a little town called Sparta, Illinois. It wasn't easy.

Tell us about Rollerball.
Rollerball was my first, and only, film about the future, the not too distant future. I tried not to get caught up in the technology too much. I wanted to isolate the areas in which I would work. I found the BMW building in Munich, which was perfect, as our main location. Its design was very ahead of its time. We were the first ones to use identity cards to get into places and all that sort of thing which is quite commonplace today. It was an interesting film to do from a political aspect, because it was a film about a world where political systems had failed and multinational corporations had taken over. It deals with violence used as entertainment for the masses, which goes back to the Circus Maximus. I think when you use violence for entertainment, you're getting pretty low on the human scale. (laughs) I think it turned out to be a pretty interesting film, very stylized, packed a wallop. In Europe it became a cult film, whereas in America a lot of the critics went after it as being exploitative, of just being about a violent game.

Legend has it when the cameras stopped rolling, James Caan and the other actors played rollerball for real.
(laughs) Yeah, they kind of got caught up in it. I was always terrified someone was going to get killed. We had a few accidents, so I was frightened all the time we were shooting.

F.I.S.T. was an interesting film.
It was Joe Eszterhas' first script. He spent about six years researching the Teamsters when he was at Rolling Stone. The problem is, there weren't that many people interested in the Labor Movement in 1977! (laughs) It was a hard film to sell because of that, but it was a pretty strong picture.

Tell us about Moonstruck.
I was kind of tracking a writer named John Patrick Shanley, who we used to call "the bard of the Bronx." He'd written a lot of great one act plays. All his stuff was familial, always Catholic, and very much New York. I don't think there's anyone who has an ear for dialogue like Shanley does. He'd written this script called The Bride and the Wolf, and by the time I got it, there were lots of coffee stains on it. It had been around. Lots of people felt it was too much like a play, which it was. So I asked him if he wanted to work on it, which he did. We worked about five or six weeks on it, changed the title, added a little more poetry to it, a little more cinema, and the rest is history. I gave it to Alan Ladd, Jr. at the Toronto Film Festival. Cher was my first choice for the lead. It's probably one of the best-cast films I've done. Every actor I wanted, I got. We shot most of it in Toronto, again. There's lovely use of opera in the film, which I love, of Puccini. In fact, the whole film is a bit like an opera. I love that film, itís full of energy and life. It's so Italian! (laughs)

You worked with Judy Garland early on in your career. What was she like?
Judy had more comebacks than anyone in show business, and I was there at the last one. It was just called Judy, and was after the Carnegie Hall album. She'd never done television before. I think it was one of my most exciting experiences in live television, because it was like capturing quicksilver. We had to deliver two other stars, or they wouldn't go ahead with the show. So we got Frank Sinatra. I called him, and I was just a kid, I was very nervous, and I called him in Palm Springs and asked him if he'd come to rehearsal. (laughs) So he says "Okay kid, I'll be there." I said, "You know she likes to work at night, so could you come at seven at night?" He laughed and said "I said I'd be there." I said "Bring Dean Martin, will you?" (laughs) And I hung up, and sure enough, they came in the limo, both of them, and they worked 'til midnight. It was a wonderful experience. She had her last big comeback, and out of that, they wanted to put her on every week, which was a disaster! (laughs) I came in the next year and produced ten of the shows, but it was just too much for her. That was the story of her life. People always pushed her, exploited her.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Always remember that it's a collaboration between yourself, your cinematographer, your editor, your writer, and your cast. Remember the idea of the circle and try to keep that circle together. Always make a film for the right reason, because you have to. Because you believe in it. Always believe in yourself and your own vision. Never let anyone else tell you that a film can't be done, or that you can't do it, because it can and you can.

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