Paul Schrader: The Hollywood Interview

Writer-director Paul Schrader (right) on the set of Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.


PAUL SCHRADER:
DOMINION OF THE DARK
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2005 issue of Venice Magazine.

Paul Schrader cemented his legendary status in cinema when he penned the Oscar-nominated script of Taxi Driver, which was directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976. Since that time, Schrader has become a sort of thinking man’s mogul, a writer-director whose work plumbs the depths of the human soul and psyche, and takes viewers to many dark corners that they may have preferred to remain hidden.
Schrader’s journey has been as fraught with dark shadows as some of his characters. The product of a strict Calvinist upbringing, he was born July 22, 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the second child of a business executive and a homemaker who refused to let their children (older brother Leonard is also a renowned screenwriter, earning an Oscar nomination for Kiss of the Spider Woman) see a film until they were 18. Schrader was educated at Calvin College, Columbia University, and UCLA and was heavily influenced by foreign filmmakers such as Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dryer and Yasujiro Ozu. After an initial stint as a film critic, Paul and Len Schrader became established screenwriters with the sale of their script The Yakuza to Warner Bros., with Paul’s Taxi Driver soon following. Written during a period of intense alcohol and drug abuse, and suicidal behavior, Taxi Driver has gone on to become the ultimate look into the heart, mind and soul of a societal fringe-dweller whose yearning for recognition explodes with furious violence. Robert De Niro’s psychotic cabbie Travis Bickle seemed to provide the world with insight into what made previously incomprehensible “whackos” like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and Charles Manson tick. It remains a potent classic and a testament to Schrader’s gifts as a writer.
Schrader made the jump to director with 1978’s Blue Collar, followed by the classic American Gigolo (1980, and regarded by many as a touchstone film of the era), Cat People (1982), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Light of Day (1987), Patty Hearst (1988), The Comfort of Strangers (1990), Light Sleeper (1992), Touch (1994), Affliction (1997), Forever Mine (1999), and Auto Focus (2002). Schrader has penned the scripts for such diverse films as Obsession (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Old Boyfriends (1979), Raging Bull (1980), The Mosquito Coast (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), City Hall (1996), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999).
Paul Schrader’s latest film has had a perilous journey that could be a movie plot in and of itself. Schrader inherited Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist after director John Frankenheimer died during pre-production. Intended as an exploration of the Father Merrin character (portrayed by Max Von Sydow in the 1973 film) and his first encounter with the demon who dominates the original story, Schrader’s film was rejected by Morgan Creek Pictures and its CEO James G. Robinson as being too cerebral and not gory enough. Schrader was then let go as director, and replaced by Renny Harlin, who proceeded to reshoot almost 100% of the picture, resulting in the box office and critical bomb Exorcist: The Beginning.
Schrader’s version has been given a new lease on life, however, having received a limited theatrical release last summer and arriving on Warner Bros. DVD this month. Watching the two films back-to-back, one is struck by how distinctive the two schools of filmmaking are that Schrader and Harlin’s work represents. Paul Schrader sat down with us recently to discuss his experience making the film, as well as other aspects of his storied, legendary career.

When I heard you were going to be directing a prequel to The Exorcist I was a bit surprised, since it’s a change for you in terms of genre. What attracted you to the story?
Paul Schrader: Three things, not in any particular order: I loved the inversion of the premise, that instead of tormenting a cute little girl, you edify an afflicted outcast and turn him into Lucifer. I just thought that was genius. I loved that it was a real character study, with Father Merrin’s journey. I also loved the fact that it was in motion, and real. From the day I read the script to the day we started shooting was only three months. (John) Frankenheimer had scouted locations, had partially cast the movie, developed the script, budgeted the movie. It was a going, happening thing. For someone who’s spent years and years raising money to get films made, that was very attractive.

Is there a certain degree of baggage for a filmmaker when you’re making a film as a sequel to a legendary film that came before it?
An enormous amount of baggage. The kind of baggage that would scare off a number of other directors, because you can’t recreate The Exorcist, and you can’t compete with it. That’s a losing game. I’ve never been afraid of trying things other people say are impossible. I ended up with Patty Hearst because no one could figure out how to do it. I ended up with The Comfort of Strangers because (John) Schlesigner couldn’t figure out how to do it. So when someone tells me “You can’t do this,” my response is “Yes, I can.” But most importantly, this film takes place 25 years before the events in Georgetown. I wasn’t locked into anything, as a result, except I had to show Father Merrin meeting the devil, I had to show an exorcism, and I had to be sure that Merrin survives in the end. Beyond that, I had no allegiance to the Friedkin film. So I can roll back in history and make a film that stylistically, is more like an old-fashioned film, like the films of the 40s, when this film takes place.

Did you watch a lot of the old Universal horror films from that period to prepare?
No, mostly westerns. This film was never a horror premise, to begin with. This film is essentially a western, right down to the last shot, which is Shane. It’s the gunslinger who’s gotten out of the gunfighting business and has to strap on the six-shooters one more time to face the bad guys who ride into town. There were a lot of conscious references to the American west. This was because, when I was getting ready to do the movie, I went to the African location where the movie takes place, which is in West Kenya on the Sudan border, very wild country. There was a civil war going on, half-naked teenagers walking around with AK-47s, that part of the world. Very desolate, very wild, like the old American west. The architecture was even reminiscent of the old American west. That’s when we went back to the drawing board, and said this isn’t Nairobi in 1947, this is Fort Apache. This is a frontier post in the middle of nowhere. So we created this town based on that. The cowboys and Indians became the colonials and the natives.

This film is also unusual for you because it was written by someone other than yourself. Usually, you’re a writer/director.
Yeah, although I’ve directed a few pictures before that were written by others. The truth is, I sit down and retype the whole script anyway if it’s by someone else. I change things into my punctuation, my phraseology, so that when we’re on the set I can say ‘Oh yeah, I remember when I wrote this,’ (laughs) which is very unfair, in a way. When you write and direct, you’ve got to separate the two functions. It’s two different sides of your brain. Writing is very left brain, while directing is very right, and you can’t confuse the two. Whether you’ve written the script yourself or not, you have to attack it and destroy it so it fits the new form of logic that is directing. It’s also important that you understand the antagonistic nature of the two tasks, because writers and directors often lie to each other, and if you’re the same person, you believe those lies.

How was the film received by the studio brass during that first screening?
We had a ten week shoot: five in Morocco, five in Italy. I was under enormous pressure to deliver a cut very, very quickly, which always makes me suspicious. So I showed the first cut, which ran about two hours, ten minutes, to Jim (Robinson, CEO of Morgan Creek). We talked for three or four minutes, he said “It’s a little long. Take ten minutes out of it.” So I did and showed it to him the next week, and he didn’t come. In fact, that was the day that the editor was fired, and I was told to go home. There were no notes, and there were no discussions. That’s why I feel it’s a case of buyer’s remorse. I think somewhere towards the end of the process, Jim realized that they’d financed the wrong movie. He hoped they could bring in another editor and re-edit it, and it didn’t work. When they brought in Renny (Harlin) he said the same thing: “You don’t have a horror premise.” So they went back and started re-writing the script and changed the premise to have the demon possess a beautiful, young girl, a la the Friedkin original. And then they had their new movie, and more of a horror film.

I actually rented the Renny Harlin version after I saw your film. The contrast between the two was quite striking.
Yeah, it’s interesting isn’t it?

My guess is there will be many articles, papers and monographs written about the two for years to come.
Yeah, maybe to the point where film professors will start saying “You can write your term paper on anything you want, except the two Exorcist prequels!” (laughs)

What really stood out about Harlin’s version is that it was so clearly made as an exploitation film: Graphic violence, sex, over-the-top histrionics. What I liked about your film, is that it explored the human psyche instead of quarts of blood. Once upon a time that’s what films used to do, in general.
When you see the two films as you did, you see a generational gap. There’s the generation that was raised on story and character, ostensibly a version of stage drama. And then you have a generation that was raised on video games, commercials and MTV. And no one saw my film. It’s been sitting on a shelf for two years. It wasn’t shown to Warner Bros., or in house at Morgan Creek. Only Jim, Guy McElwaine and David Robinson, they’re the only ones who saw it. Never previewed, never tested. So finally, I heard the most true comment from someone over at Morgan Creek who said “Schrader’s is a better film, but Renny’s is a better trailer.”

Which sums up the difference between the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls and the MTV generation.
Yeah, exactly. And he was right: Renny’s is a better trailer.

The other big difference between your generation of filmmakers, who were students of film and only made films, and the newer crop of filmmakers is that they cut their teeth on commercials and music videos—which isn’t filmmaking, it’s advertising. So they’re inherently not storytellers, they’re salesmen. And what they wind up making is $100 million mouth wash ads, disguised as movies.
Yeah, and the core of those movies, the stories, have to be greatly simplified, just as in advertising, the message is greatly simplified. “Buy this product, and you’ll get laid.” That’s how simple it is. You never sold anything by saying “Buy this product, maybe you’ll get laid, maybe you won’t.” (laughs) It’s very frustrating. If you like language, and character conflict, and ambiguity, there’s not a lot of room for you in a movie studio. And that’s one reason that I think the theater has been getting so much better lately. So many writers who were shuttled off to Hollywood a decade ago have started coming back to the theater. Writers like John Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for Moonstruck (1987), then got stuck writing stuff like Congo (1995), he won the Pulitzer this year for Doubt. John is a close friend of mine, and he’s returned to the theater because movies just don’t have the substance that they used to.

The other option you have is to go indie, but you also don’t make the same kind of living you would doing studio pictures, especially if you have a family to support.
I don’t even know if the indie route is all it’s cracked up to be. The studios have swallowed most of them up. To release a $2 million indie film, requires the same $5 million print and ad budget that a $50 million film does. When a distributor looks at a $2 million film, they’re looking at how much money they’re going to have to put in to get it out there. This might all change, of course, with broadband distribution, showing first run films on the web. Who knows how this is going to change things? I read a piece in The New York Times the other day, about how the Hong Kong film industry from a high of 300-400 films a year in the mid-90s, is now down to less than 50 films a year. From the Hong Kong perspective, the industry is near-dead now. They attribute its death to piracy, that there’s no money in making films anymore. Music in China is 95% pirated now, so that music groups issue albums to promote their tours, the opposite of the original paradigm, which was you went on tour to promote your album. If China is in some way the precursor of the new economics of entertainment, we’re in for a big shock, and a major case of whiplash, because this whole house of cards with these prohibitively expensive movies is going to come crashing down, just as it has in the music business. There is no more pressing issue than piracy. The best solution is the I-tunes solution: just sell it on the web and go to your competitors and fill their free software with viruses. (laughs) So movies may be headed toward that direction: on-demand, an IMDB catalog of films, available on a per-view basis. Everything about movies is obesely bloated at this point, and it deserves to collapse.

It’s gotten to the point where the people in charge of greenlighting movies don’t know or even like movies.
I can’t tell you the last agent or executive I talked with who likes movies. It’s becoming harder and harder. I was talking with Steven Soderbergh recently and the same subject came up, and he said “I find that I can’t mention films I like now if they didn’t make money.” Anytime you mention a film that didn’t make money, they get this look in their eyes, and it’s like: oops! (laughs) The people who run the business who don’t like movies are shameless about viewing movies as simply a commodity. They’re proud of it!

What do you do in that situation? Do you jump on the bandwagon to try and make a living, or do you hold fast to your ideals?
Well, fortunately I’m at an age where it’s almost too late to jump on the bandwagon. I’ve got another three or four films left in me, and I will struggle and I will get these films made.

But you’re still a young man. You’re what, 58?
Yeah, but it’s not easy for me to get a film made.

What was the last film you made that, according to Hollywood standards, was a “success”?
Well, both Affliction and Auto-Focus made money, but they don’t count.

Even the Oscars that Affliction won and was nominated for don’t count?
Nobody’s interested in prestigious, low income films. It’s just not what they do. The first time I realized this, I made a movie called Light Sleeper. It was made for Carolco, and because of Carolco’s arrangement with either Universal or United Artists, it had to be offered to them. Mike Medavoy, was at that time the executive. Mike is someone I had known for many years, and at one time was my agent. So Mike had to look at the film to see if they would release it. He called me up and said “This is really a good film. I really like it but you know, we don’t really distribute this kind of movie anymore.” And it was that blunt, that simple. They’re in another business now. So the films that I was making when I began, which were all studio films, then became independents.

One thing that struck me about Dominion was its theme of a protagonist questioning his faith, which is something that runs through most of your work. You came from a very strict, Calvinist family growing up. Although you obviously didn’t adopt that philosophy as an adult, it would seem that certain questions were raised in your psyche that have stayed with you.
They never leave you, no matter how far or how fast you run, you don’t outrun your childhood. And if you’re raised in an environment of good and evil, a very real hell, moral consequences, that stays with you your whole life. If you’re raised that at any moment, Jesus will return and judge you, maybe catch you masturbating, you’ll go straight to hell. I remember this very vividly, here give me your hand (Schrader takes my hand, palm up). I asked my mother, when I was about seven or eight, what was hell like? She took a sewing needle and went like this (Schrader jabs my finger, gently, with his fork) and jabbed me, and blood was coming out of my thumb. She said “You know how that felt when that needle went in your thumb? That’s what hell’s like, all the time.” I thought ‘Oh boy! Okay! I’m not going there. You want me to wash the dishes, clean my room, no problem! I don’t want to go to that needle in the thumb place!’ So that was the world in which I was raised. I later saw it for the metaphorical construct it was: a system of thought in order to make the world simple and understandable.

What did your father do?
Well, to his great chagrin because he wanted to be a minister, the Depression came, and he couldn’t support his family, so he dropped out of Calvin College, the college that both Len and I went to, and ended up as an executive for a pipeline company called Michigan-Ohio Pipeline. He then decided that his sons would become ministers, so that was the great drama and trauma of our adolescence. I learned a lot from my brother, who is three years older than I, because my father came at him. My brother resisted him, but he broke my brother. He broke his spirit. I remember watching him work my brother over verbally. I remember talking to Len, and Len saying “This is what’s going to happen.” So when my turn came, I fought back. I punched him. And that’s probably the difference between my brother and I. When my father died, my brother was not able to go to the funeral. And I think my father is still alive inside my brother. He never really got to punch him. It’s so strange, so Freudian, when you look at people whose lives are still defined by hating somebody who’s long in the ground. That’s what therapy is all about.

Has therapy been helpful to you over the years?
Yeah, very. The very first money I made, for the sale of The Yakuza, I went into analysis five days a week. I was frightened. I was walking around, carrying a gun. I could only sleep with a gun in my mouth. And I was thinking, ‘How long can this go on?’ (laughs) So when I went on the couch five days a week, it saved my life. And I’m forever grateful for that. My presenting cause--which is an infirmity you have that’s psychosomatic--of my neurosis was extreme claustrophobia, which I learned through research results from fear of the womb. I couldn’t ride on elevators, or go on airplanes. I’d have rather walked up twenty flights of stairs that go on an elevator. My doctor said to me “When you see a woman’s vagina, what do you think?” I said ‘The first thing I think is that I’m in the wrong place, that I walked into the girls’ locker room by mistake. I shouldn’t be there.’ Then I said, right out of the blue, ‘I feel like I’ve stepped into an elevator, and once those steel doors close, they’ll never open again.’ And I jumped up from the couch and started running around the room saying ‘I just said it! I just said it! I made the connection!’ It was about the power of the female to swallow your ego, and devour it.

So was your mother more dominant in your life than your father?
Yeah, but I mean, it’s always a give and take. I loved my mother and feared my father. My hatred of my father was more resolved than my love of my mother.

Did your father see any of your films?
It’s funny, the one time my father and I discussed it—and he didn’t go to movies, didn’t believe in movies—I started getting phone calls from him around the time Last Temptation was finished: “How’s the new movie coming along?” and so forth. The first couple calls I was a bit confused by it all. The third time he called, he started to ask me about the theaters it was going to be playing in. I said ‘Dad, are you by any chance in the group that is trying to block this film?’ And he said “Yes, but only locally.” (laughs) And he did manage to block it locally! There is some comfort in the fact of knowing that your father walked the line, even though it might have been tempting for him to support the work of his son, he stuck to his beliefs to the end. After he died, every film that my brother and I had done, he had purchased on video. And we found them all, still in their original plastic wraps. He never opened them or watched them, but he had them! (laughs) “My sons have done this, but I haven’t seen them!”

How have you maintained your relationships with your fellow Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma, Lucas?
Not much, really. Obviously, once you get successful, everyone has their own little communities, and you live inside those. So those early years of swapping each other’s ambitions, that goes away. Some of my fellow soldiers have wearied of the fight, which is the premise of Peter Biskind’s book. I disagree with the premise. I think he found himself a premise that he was determined to see through regardless of the evidence that he gathered. I remember calling Peter just before the book came out and saying ‘Peter, I know you think we all sold out, but I just finished a film called Affliction that’s as pure a film as anything I’ve ever done. I wish you’d see this before you go to press on your book,’ but I couldn’t get him to see it. It’s like that graduate student who decides on his doctoral thesis premise and then makes everything fit into it, no matter what.

Getting back to the purity of your films, I would argue that Affliction is the second purest, and your purest is Mishima, which to me is an unheralded masterpiece.
Well, it’s the most original, but I don’t know that it’s the most personal. I think Light Sleeper is the most personal. But it is the most original and the most unique. When I was younger I knew Charles Eames, the architect. I used to spend a lot of time hanging around his workshop at 901 Washington. Charles said to me once “Art is really only about problem-solving. Before I make a new chair I go around and measure everyone’s ass in the workshop—problem-solving.” In a way, the genius of Mishima lay in problem-solving. Here you have a functioning schizophrenic: a man who lives multiple, simultaneous lives, contradictory ones. How do you portray such a character? How do you portray his inner life as well as his creative one? So you create this odd, cross-hatch structure: time, place, film stock that reflects the contradictory, schizophrenic nature of the character. So the beauty of Mishima is that it was the right solution to the right problem. I never made another film like it because I never had a problem like that before. It was the only way I could see to solve it.

Tell us about how Taxi Driver changed your life.
It’s kind of a wonderful thing to be associated with a classic. People have actually said to me “It must be terrible when one of your first scripts becomes a classic. How do you live up to that?” And I know full well that in my obituary, the first line will mention Taxi Driver, unless I kill the President or something. (laughs) And my response to that is, ‘Don’t you understand that it’s a wonderful film?’ I have friends in their 40s and 50s who are still on their hands and knees, crawling down Hollywood Boulevard for a little recognition. The fact that I got that kind of recognition early and powerfully, is not an intimidation, it’s a liberation. I suddenly could say that I never had to worry about becoming somebody. I did something that has allowed me to go on, and be free because I will never top it. Rather than being a sword hanging over my head, it really released my self-confidence as an artist because I knew that I had produced creative work that had value.

What was it like making the jump from screenwriter to writer/director with Blue Collar.
I made the decision not because I felt my work was somehow being ruined by the directors who’d shot my screenplays—which is the normal screenwriter’s lament. But I came to the point where I said ‘What are you? What is your identity? Are you a writer, why don’t you write something, like a book, where your words are the final product. Or, are you a filmmaker, in which case, you’d better start making films. This thing called screenwriting has such an unshaped background that by itself, will only bring unhappiness as you go down the road.’ So that’s when I started thinking about directing. I think I would have gone back to film criticism, rather than just be a screenwriter, because in being a film critic, your words are still the final product, whereas as a screenwriter, that’s never the case.

Is a first-time director ever prepared for that first day they walk on the set, or is it baptism by fire?
It’s on-the-job training. It’s not that hard to direct a movie. That’s one of the myths of filmmaking. All you have to do, is surround yourself with an experienced team. So many cinematographers and assistant directors ghost direct movies. We know their names. They get paid to do that. I can take anyone here, put them with that team, and an efficient, workable movie will result. So what you are bringing to the dance is not experience, but a kind of vision and originality. “I would like to tell this story. It hasn’t been told before, I don’t think. But I don’t quite know how to tell it. Help me out.” I did two films where I didn’t know how to direct: Blue Collar and Hardcore. Somewhere during American Gigolo I figured out what directing was, which was primarily because of a production designer named Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who got me to start thinking in visual terms instead of literary terms. They’re different thought processes. By the time I did Gigolo, I was starting to think as a picture maker much more than as a storyteller. But it takes a while. During the first and second film in particular, you’re just trying to keep your goddamned head above water.

One thing I’ve always loved about your films is that you’re a proponent of “less is more.” This is never more evident that if you put your version of The Exorcist next to Renny Harlin’s.
You have to get the viewer into the dance. And the only way you can do that, is to back off. If you keep throwing things out there, there’s no way they can ever participate in the story. And when the viewer participates, that’s when the viewer comes alive, and becomes part of the creative process. And therefore there has to be a certain mystery in every story that the viewer can address, a kind of disparity, a kind of uncertainty where the viewer says “Wait a second. This, and this, and this, they don’t really go together. But if I move this here and this, then they go together.”

What you’ve just said sums up what so many filmmakers today have forgotten: they know how to stimulate they eyes and the ears, but not the brain.
Right, and unless the viewer can join in the creative process, they’re strictly outside voyeurs.

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James Coburn: The Hollywood Interview

Actor James Coburn.


JAMES COBURN:
COOL DADDY
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

cool n 1: Self-assurance 2: sophistication
3: calm 4: Poise, composure 5: See Coburn, James.

James Coburn was born August 31, 1928 in Laurel, Nebraska. His father, an auto mechanic, moved the family to Compton, California in the early 30's at the height of the depression, in hopes of finding a better life for his family. Young Coburn stayed in Compton through high school. Following military service in the Army, Coburn studied acting at Los Angeles City College, USC, and with the legendary Stella Adler in New York. He then returned to Southern California, where he made his stage debut at the La Jolla playhouse in Billy Budd. Following some work in commercials and live TV, Coburn made his film debut in 1959 in Ride Lonesome, a Budd Boetticher-directed horse opera starring Randolph Scott. He then hit paydirt with his supporting role in the smash hit The Magnificent Seven in 1960, following this with the classic The Great Escape in 1963. Coburn continued doing solid supporting work in film and TV throughout the early 60's, finally earning leading man status as superspy Derek Flint in Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Flint (1967). He formed his own production company in 1967, Panpiper, producing the critical and cult favorite The President's Analyst, a brilliant social and political satire that is now widely regarded as one of the seminal films of the 1960's. Coburn also did three films with ultra-violence guru Sam Peckinpah: Major Dundee (1965), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and the WW II drama Cross of Iron (1977) which showed the war from the German P.O.V., and directed second unit for Peckinpah's Convoy (1978).

Coburn's screen persona gave Americans what Sean Connery gave to the English: an urbane, sophisticated hero, who can let loose a one-liner, dry martini or deadly karate chop in the blink of one eye, while winking at us, the audience, with the other. His cat-like grace and steely intensity made him one of the top box office stars of the 60's and 70's, and Coburn still retains a strong following of fans as the 1990's come to a close.

Coburn has appeared in dozens of films. Just a few other noteworthy ones include Don Seigel's Hell Is For Heroes (1962), Charade (1963), Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964), Sergio Leone's Duck You Sucker! (1971), Richard Brooks' Bite the Bullet, and Walter Hill's Hard Times (both 1975). A near-fatal bout of rheumatoid arthritis slowed Coburn down in the late 70's, just when he was reaching the peak of his career. After focusing his considerable discipline on building (or re-building) his body, Coburn now happily declares that he is "pain free." Seeing the silver-maned, elegant Coburn stroll through the garden of the Beverly Hills home where this interview took place, one would never guess this was a man who was near death once upon a time. The lithe, cat-like grace is still there, as is the charm, easy laugh, and ten thousand watt smile that has been captivating the movie-going world for nearly 40 years. The foremost thing on Coburn's mind these days is his latest film, Paul Schrader's Affliction. In it, he plays Pop Whitehouse, father to Sheriff Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte). Affliction is the searing, much-talked about film that deals with domestic violence as it's passed down through the generations of a family like a cancerous heirloom. Coburn's venomous performance has critics and the public alike buzzing "Oscar." If nominated, it would be a first for Coburn, who, at 70, seems less like an old veteran gunning for a last lap around the track, than a seasoned pro whose powers are every bit at their peak when he enters the ring. There goes the bell. Round one...

Your character Pop Whitehouse is one of the most loathsome villains to grace a movie screen in recent memory. Did you have trouble shaking him off once the picture wrapped?
JAMES COBURN: Not really, because I got it all out. It's really when you can't get it out or when you're doing it on stage and you have to do it over and over again that it can be troubling. But I learned long ago how to get rid of it by doing it! (laughs) You get it out...villains are really fun to play because they're usually meatier characters, because they've made decisions that haven't all been very good ones, (laughs) and are paying the price, with a little karma attached. They have something to say, I think. I never play them as a "bad guy." I play them like I have something to accomplish. In Affliction, it was "I have to get my boys to be men! If they're not strong men, by God, I'll beat the shit out of them!" That's what makes him seem so savage...it's that conflict. Scripts without conflict are really boring. Characters without conflict are really boring to play, because you're always trying to catch up with something. And this one was just loaded with conflict. Paul (Schrader) said to Nick and I in the beginning "I'm just gonna let you two guys go after each other!" And we did. We went for it. It was great fun. I'd like to do it all over again.

Is it difficult to go to such a dark place as an actor?
It's sometimes difficult to find, initially. But as actors, we don't have to be who we're playing. That's one of the good things about being an actor. But, if you let yourself get locked into that, where that character becomes your essence, that's scary. There was an old film called A Double Life (1947), starring Ronald Coleman, where he became so infected with Othello, that he actually performed it for real, with his own Desdemona. Stella Adler, who I studied with, said "Actors act. They don't have to be their roles." On Affliction, we were all joking around between takes, then when we went back to it, boom! We were right back into it again, because it was written so well. It was very straight-on. There was no ambiguity about the characters, and it's really fun and enriching when that happens. As actors that's what we try to do, enrich our own beings by absorbing impressions, then generating it out through our craft and giving it to the audience. Truth is obvious, it's always obvious, isn't it? Screenplays sometimes hide the truth, which isn't necessary. You have to give audiences some credit. You don't have to play around the truth. And what Pop Whitehouse was saying, even though you might hate him for it, was the truth! He knew exactly who he was. He was, nevertheless, afflicted, but he was also very honest.

Tell us some more about working with Paul Schrader.
Schrader knows what he wants and knows when he's got it. He'll play to shades. "A little darker, Jim." "Not so bright!" (laughs) It was a very good shoot, not difficult at all. And Paul certainly helped in that.

What was it like studying with Stella Adler?
Great. I actually studied with Jeff Corey out here first. His philosophy was more improvisational. Get away from your ego, get away from lines, things like that. Learn how to play the action of the scene, that's what improv is really about. Stella, on the other hand, was into style. The style of Shakespeare, modern styles...she'd show you how to do it. You'd see her transform into a raving hag and then into a little girl. Drop of a hat, bang. That's what I mean about acting. You don't have to live it. As long as the character doesn't inhabit you, that's the kick of acting. De Niro studied with Stella. She was furious with him for putting all that weight for Raging Bull. (laughs)(imitating Stella) "What are you doing to yourself?! You'll ruin your health!" (laughs). She was very demanding, very hard on women especially. She would just strip you down, peel your ego right off your skin.

Who was in your class at Stella's?
Warren Beatty was in my class. He played piano in this Irish drama we did called Red Roses for Me. I played an Irishman (in an Irish brogue) "Aye, what's goin' on over here?!" (laughs) There were a couple others, but Warren went on to the most prominence. From there, I went onto live TV. The first thing I ever did was with Sidney Lumet. That's how I paid my rent, that and commercials. I once did a Remington Rand commercial where I shaved off eleven days of growth, live on-camera, in less than a minute! (laughs)

You did a couple Twilight Zones also. What was Rod Serling like?
Serling was very tight-lipped. He had a jaw that never completely opened up! (laugh) But I really loved him. He was a sweet guy. I was always running into him when he was going back to D.C. to "do something." He was very active politically, always trying to "get things done." That's why all of his things had some sort of a political bent. Not just political, but sociological as well. They were all about something. You just don't have that anymore. You have a couple of guys beating each other up, a little sex here and there, but it's not about anything anymore. As good as NYPD Blue is, it's about relationships, and nothing else. But Rod was great, he was just dynamite and that's what killed him. He just used all of himself up. But now they don't even need actors. They've got The Rugrats, they've got the pig (Babe), they've got cartoons...they're slowly getting rid of the actor, which they've been trying to do for years. (laughs) "Why do we need actors?"

You and Steve McQueen were great friends. Tell us about Steve.
Steve always thought of himself as a re-actor, not an actor. I think he got that from John Wayne (laughs). What can I tell you about Steve? (His first wife) Neile used to call him a "male nymphomaniac." (laughs) He had an incredibly dynamic personality. He was like a kid. He said to me one time "Why can't they make a movie about just one guy--me!" (laughs) He even had a script idea about a guy who crashes in the desert, and trying to survive. While we were shooting Hell is for Heroes, we were shooting up in Redding, where it was so hot, I mean 110 in the shade. And the studio gave him this convertible. And we'd be driving along the road, and all of the sudden he'd shoot off the road and go tearing through the woods, as fast as he could until he ran into something! So he wore this car out in about a week and a half, and they sent a guy out who said "What the hell happened to this car?!" Steve said "I dunno. It just stopped running." (laughs) He would always test the producer, Marty Ransohoff. When they were doing The Cincinnati Kid (1965), he ordered two dozen pairs of Levis on the studio! Marty said "What the hell do you mean?! You don't wear any Levis in this picture!" Steve said "Yeah, but I wear them to and from the picture." (laughs) He hated to go out in public. He hated to sign autographs. He hated people to come up and bother him. So he'd put on disguises to go out.

It sounds like you guys were polar opposites.
We were, except that we both were fascinated with cars. We hung out together quite a bit, would drive cars, smoke grass, have a great time. He was a unique character, all those guys were. Steve. Peckinpah...

Tell us about Sam Peckinpah.
Sam Peckinpah was a genius for four hours a day. The rest of that time he was drunk. He called himself "a working alcoholic," but he was much more than that. I think the alcohol sort of quelled all the influences that were going on around him so he could really focus on what he was doing with the film. He would shoot with three cameras and just...do it. You never talked with Sam about things like motivation. I asked him one time, when we were doing Major Dundee. I said "Sam, what is it that makes my character tick?" And he thought about it for a minute and finally said "Drier. Dry. He doesn't give a shit." And that's who that character was! And that's how I played him...It was really sad what happened to that picture. The studio took it away from him and re-cut it. We had a great knife fight in that picture, between Mario Adorf and myself. And it was a viscous fucking knife fight. While we were shooting it, people were yelling for us to stop! That's how real it looked. It was a terrific piece of action, and it was cut from the film...the night it premiered at the Paramount theater, Sam saw the studio's cut and was just devastated. His hands were shaking. He had half a pint of whiskey and dropped it. It smashed on the floor. And my wife at the time said "Sam, it's okay, it's only a movie."

When you look at Major Dundee, it's sort of like looking at the U.S. cut of Pat Garrett, which was also severely compromised by the studio. You can see there's a masterpiece in there somewhere.
I agree, but what they call the "director's cut" of Pat Garrett is actually just the television cut. Sam had the only true cut that he made, and that's up in his archives in Sonoma. When he finished cutting Pat Garrett, it was taken away from him. This was Jim Aubrey at MGM and he was more interested in getting his hotel ready than he was in film. I think he really despised anybody who displayed artistry. He really like digging into them. When we started shooting Pat Garrett, I just finished shooting a film with Blake Edwards called The Carey Treatment (1973) that Aubrey also took away and re-cut. And I said to Sam "This guy's crazy! He could do this film all sorts of harm." Sam said "Don't worry about a thing, Jim. I just bought one share of stock in MGM, and if they mess with me, goddammit, I'll sue their asses!" (laughs) "One share of stock, Sam?! What's that gonna do ?!" "You'll see." (laughs)

I heard a story that Peckinpah got drunk during the shoot and didn't want to kill Billy! True?
Yeah, but he wasn't that drunk. We were sitting in his trailer and he said "Goddammit! Why do we have to kill him?" "Well Sam, that's the way it happened." "Well, why can't we make it un-happen?" "Sam we can't do it." (beat) "Why...not?!" (laughs) I think he saw a lot of himself in the character of Billy...We found out halfway through the shoot that most of the masters we had shot were out of focus. We were using five or six cameras at once and we didn't have a camera mechanic because MGM wouldn't pay for one! So we used different lenses, different set-ups, and still, it's all out of focus. Finally the camera mechanic is sent out. It turns out the flange in the camera was off by one one thousandth of an inch, or some damn thing. So we tell Aubrey that we have to re-shoot all these masters. He says "You're not gonna re-shoot anything. The audience isn't gonna know the fuckin' difference!" Can you imagine?! It was just mind-blowing! So what we did was, we stole all those shots when the brass didn't know we were shooting and got it all! So now this really pissed them off, because now we had some real film on our hands! (laughs) So Sam had his cut previewed, and at the same time, Aubrey had his guys cutting their film. So all the editors got together and gave Sam a cut of his film, but without a soundtrack. He didn't get that back until he cut it for television. But there's only about five minutes missing from that cut he originally made.

I thought R.G. Armstrong was really amazing in that film.
R.G. Armstrong saved my life. I had rheumatoid arthritis really badly and every day for ten months he'd come over and give me a deep tissue massage. I couldn't stand up without breaking a sweat. This was about 1978-79. I didn't come out of it completely until the last couple years. Doctors don't really know anything about arthritis, other than to say "take these." So I went on a long fast, fifteen days, then broke the fast. Took a blood test and found out I was allergic to 45 out 75 foods that I was tested for. Started eating right, but I was still contaminated, so R.G. came over and just broke down all that crystallization that had occurred. I was turning to stone, really, is what happened. I'm free of pain now because of this drug I'm taking called MSM. It rejuvenates the tendons. It's fantastic because I couldn't move. And this was all right at the peak of my career. If you have a background of Irish or Scotch-Irish, you're predisposed to having that arthritic gene. But you never know what triggers it. Mine was triggered by negative emotion. I was going through a divorce and I wasn't going to "let it affect me." So I was just turning to stone on the inside instead. It's a terrible disease. The immune system takes calcium out of the bones, and puts it into the muscles. And then the ligaments shorten. That's why you see a lot of arthritics who look shriveled.

Tell us about the genesis of The President's Analyst.
Ted Flicker I met while we were shooting Charade in Paris. He'd come over to meet with his friend Peter Stone, who'd written the picture. So Ted was sitting in the background with his big black shades, watching us shoot. So Peter introduced us...George Peppard and Elizabeth Ashley were having a Christmas party a few years later. Ted was there. He said "I've just finished a script called 'The President's Analyst.'" I said "That's an intriguing title. Do you have a deal on it?" He said "No." So I took it home, read it, and wanted to do it. Ted said he wanted to direct it, so I said "Let me talk to Paramount." I had just done Waterhole No. 3 (1967) over there. Robert Evans had just taken over, he loved it. Peter Bart read it, loved it. They said "Can he direct?" I said "I dunno, let's find out." So they put the whole deal together in five days! It was Evans' first film at Paramount. There are some great scenes in there. It was named one of the finest political films of the decade by the Sunday Times in London...Ted Flicker never did another movie. He moved out to New Mexico, did one hit TV show, the name of which escapes me, and sculpts, paints. Just finished a script about the Civil War.

I know you were also very close to Bruce Lee. Tell us about Bruce.
Bruce was a true martial artist, created himself, from a little roustabout guy running around the streets of Hong Kong, into this magnificent fighting machine. He truly was an artist. His art had no defensive movements. It was all attack. He was so fast, you couldn't touch him. He was so fast, he had to slow down for the camera, because it couldn't catch him! It would look like he hadn't done anything. (laughs) We wrote a script together called The Silent Flute, with Sterling Silliphant. We all went to India. Everytime we went someplace, Bruce had this pad that he'd hold in one hand and punch with the other! It drove me nuts! (laughs) I said "Bruce, will you cut it out, man?! You're shaking the whole airplane!" He said "But it make my knuckles hard!" "I know, but it's pissing me off!" (laughs) Everything he did was related to his art. But he had a great sense of humor, or he did until he went to Hong Kong. He came back from Hong Kong one time, and he was always very outspoken about martial arts. "This martial arts in Hong Kong is bullshit," he said, because there was no bodily contact. "Judo good. Ju-jitsu good. Aikido, best. But this other stuff, no good." So we'd go to these tournaments and he'd spout off...he was back in Hong Kong, and was invited to this tournament that was televised, as an observer. He was famous, and controversial, as being an outspoken martial artists. So they were breaking boards and ice with their heads...Bruce said "That's not martial arts." So they said "Why don't you show us your idea of martial arts..." So they taped up three thick pine boards. So he held it out and side kicked it, and everything went flying into the air, knocked one of the lightbulbs out way up. Sparks came flying down...it was one of those great, dynamic moments! And the next day, the papers were filled with this! From that, both Run Run Shaw and Raymond Chow, who were big film producers there, made him offers to do films there. So he came back and we were having dim sum at the Golden Door down in Chinatown, and he's telling me all this. He said "They want me to do this TV series at Warner Brothers called Kung-Fu. But I'm also getting these offers in Hong Kong. What should I do?" So I thought about it for a minute, because he really wasn't a good actor. But he had great dynamic presence and had this macho attitude that he could play really well...but that would be very tiresome watching for an hour on television. Plus he spoke with a very heavy Chinese accent. So I said "Go back to Hong Kong and make southeast Asian movies. You'll be huge star." "But I want to work here." I said "You want to be a movie star, right? It's what you've always wanted." He thought for a minute and said "I want to make more money than Steve McQueen." (laughs) So he went to southeast Asia, David Carradine did Kung-Fu in slow motion, Bruce became a huge movie star and made more money than Steve McQueen. Strange story...Anyway, then I get a call one morning from Sterling Silliphant saying "Bruce is dead." I didn't believe him, but I learned that a couple months before he'd come home and passed out in between really these really intense workouts that he was doing. And this girl that he was with couldn't wake him up. He went to all of these doctors who told him "Your body's perfect, you're just over-worked." He went back and within six weeks he was dead of an edema of the brain. And that was that...

What do you think of the state of most Hollywood films today?
I'm from the Billy Wilder school. Somebody asked him "Do you ever go to movies?" He said "No." They said "Why not?" Wilder said (German accent)"Build da set, blow it up! Boom!" (laughs) Finally, they've gotten rid of the actors.

Still, there's films like Affliction, only they're all indie films, as opposed to studio pictures.
Right, they're all about something. You have to go the indie route. The English Patient was about something, and it was an indie. But look how long it took that to get made. But when it was, all the actors went for it. And we do, we do go for that. And Billy Wilder, one of the greatest directors in history, can't get a fuckin' job! He can't get hired.

I know a producer who wanted Wilder for a film at Tri-Star a few years ago, and the exec at Tri-Star said "Billy Wider...?" Isn't he, like, 70?"
(laughs) Yeah, but he's got 70 years of talent in him, too! I don't know where these guys come from. They come out of business school, not film school...All the studio heads when I started out were filmmakers, they knew and understood the craft. They weren't owned by corporations. Zanuck was always a filmmaker. Jack Warner was at Warners when I started. Cohn was at Columbia. All their movies were about something. It wasn't about making money so much, as about making entertainment that would make money. Now it's about build the set, blow it up! Give somebody a giant gun and let it go boom-boom-boom...but it's really in the hands of the people. If it goes into the hands of the mechanics, it's going to go down the tubes. But I think there's enough interest in some of the young filmmakers and actors in doing quality work. There's some wonderful actors out there: Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Helen Hunt, Ed Norton...I think real filmgoers are interested in something more intelligent and challenging...but where is it going? Well, if I could say where it was going, I'd invest in it! (laughs)

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Nick Nolte: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Nick Nolte.


NICK NOLTE: REBEL, REBEL
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1998/January 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Growing up in Arizona is sort of like being a forgotten third cousin of the Rockefellers with a different last name: no one talks about you, no one thinks about you, and no one notices you. You're the red-headed, pasty-faced stepchild that vanished into the wallpaper of the east wing. You know that you're very close to something important that people do notice (like California) where books, plays and movies are set, where many famous and accomplished people are from, where people seem to want to be, want to go and very often seem to be on their way to. So for those of us stuck in the limbo land of identity-free Arizona, we had very little to really call our own. We had one Trump card: Steven Spielberg. Aside from the most successful filmmaker of all time, we could claim Alice Cooper, Steve Allen, Wayne Newton, and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman, remember her?), but no true-blue, bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool, cooler than cool movie stars...that is not until 1976 when a TV "mini-series event" rocked our world. Rich Man, Poor Man was a revelation for a couple reasons. First, it was a great, old fashioned story full of sex, violence and one-eyed villains who were deadly with a sharp blade. Second, it introduced a young actor named Nick Nolte to the world. And get this: Nolte, this cooler than cool, dyed in the wool star-to-be was from Phoenix! Well...okay. Maybe "from" is too strong a word, but he went to Arizona State, lived in the Phoenix metro area on and off for years and at one time or another, had an Arizona driver's license, so dag-gummit, we claimed him as our own! Nolte's immediately-recognizable star quality combined the vulnerability of James Dean, crossed with the surly world-weariness of Robert Mitchum to create a much-needed rebel without a care for the rebel-challenged times of the mid-70's. Ask anyone from Arizona and they'll tell you: "Yup, Nick's one of us."

Nick Nolte was born nowhere near Arizona, but in Omaha, Nebraska on February 8, 1940. The son of an Iowa State football player, Nolte followed his dad's footsteps initially, excelling in sports as a teen, and eventually earning a football scholarship to Arizona State, where he flunked out. Over the next few years, he played ball, but barely studied, at four other schools, including Eastern Arizona Junior College, Phoenix City College, and Pasadena City College, before finding himself out of options as a football player. After briefly holding a job as a Los Angeles iron worker, he discovered the theater, studying at the Pasadena Playhouse. For the next 14 years, Nolte roamed the country with various regional companies and worked extensively at New York's Cafe La Mama. Although he settled down considerably during his travels, marrying the first of his three wives and catching up on his education by attending classes at various universities, the still-rebellious Nolte was arrested for counterfeiting draft cards and was put on five years probation. Things improved dramatically for him upon his return to California in 1973, however. He began appearing in films and TV shows, and in 1976 hit paydirt with Rich Man, Poor Man. Movie stardom quickly followed, with Nolte gaining notoriety for many of his unconventional, non-commercial choices of projects. Many feel that the longevity of his career has been helped by the fact that he refuses to be pigeonholed into "movie star" parts.

His first high-profile feature was the big screen adaptation of Peter Benchley's The Deep (1977), where Nolte played second fiddle to Jacqueline Bisset's tangible assets; director Karel Reisz's overlooked masterpiece Who'll Stop the Rain (aka Dog Soldiers, 1978); the greatest gridiron film ever made, North Dallas Forty (1979); the biography of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, HeartBeat (1980): the box office smash 48 Hours (1982) which introduced another fresh young face in Eddie Murphy; Under Fire (1983), director Roger Spottiswoode's masterful political thriller about the coup in Nicaragua in the late 70's; Grace Quigley (aka The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley, 1985) with screen legend Katharine Hepburn; Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986); Sidney Lumet's Q & A (1990); he scored two hits in 1991 with Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear and Barbara Streisand's Prince of Tides. He followed these with George Miller's acclaimed Lorezo's Oil in 1992, James L. Brooks' I'll Do Anything and William Friedkin's Blue Chips in 1994, Merchant-Ivory's Jefferson in Paris in 1995, and Keith Gordon's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1996). Nolte ends 1998 with two major releases: reclusive auteur Terrence Malick's long-awaited World War II drama The Thin Red Line, in which he plays a Lt. Colonel who may or may not be totally insane, and Paul Schrader's searing drama Affliction, a compelling and bleak depiction of a small town sheriff's investigation of a shooting and his impending mental collapse, framed with a backstory of childhood abuse at the hands of a tyrannical father (James Coburn). Both films are slated for Christmas releases in L.A. and New York for Oscar consideration and feature some of Nolte's most compelling, complex work to date.

In person, Nolte is not the imposing giant he appears to be on screen, but a trim and dapper fellow of about 6'1 who loves nothing more than to sit at home with a good book on a Friday night. Nolte sat down recently to discuss his work, his memories and of course, his (sort of) hometown, Phoenix.

Your character in Affliction, Wade Whitehouse, really stayed with me for a long time. Did you have trouble shaking him as well?
Nick Nolte: Yeah, he hung around for quite a while, just because of the place I had to get to find him. I stalled doing this film for about three or four years. We finally got it set up about a year and a half after Paul and I had first met, and when Paul called, telling me he wanted to start shooting, I had a couple other projects I'd already committed to. Plus, I didn't really feel quite ready to do it. So Paul was quite upset that it fell apart...finally the head of Largo, Bart Potter, asked me if I had any projects I wanted to do, and I told him about Affliction. So it took about five years altogether. And I needed those five years, not that I didn't understand the rage and the violence in the character, because I did. But it was all about whether I wanted to go there or not...but this primal rage, this capacity for violence that we address in the film, it's in us all.

I thought one of the most compelling things about Wade's losing his mind was that you weren't sure until the very end whether the murder was real or in Wade's head, because Wade believed so strongly that he was right. He didn't think he was insane, so neither did we, as the audience.
The insanity is Wade's denial of the situation. The other brother (played by Willem Dafoe) is truly insane. He's locked himself away in this little world where he doesn't have to deal with human beings at all. Wade is a classic hero in the sense that he faced his deficit, his affliction, and deals with it...but the whole nature of mental illness is denial. Hitler didn't believe he was crazy. He thought he was right. He thought he was rational, and correct. It's not the crazy person who's dangerous, it's the rational person who's in denial.

The Thin Red Line deals with many of the same issues, doesn't it?
It does, and it doesn't. I think one of the themes is, based on what James Jones, who wrote the book the film is based on, said. He said that in the moment of the biggest horror that one can face--war--where you absolutely know you're going to die and that the fellow next to you is going to die, in that moment there's a falling away of all pretense, and in that moment, you experience the most profound love for the fellow next to you that you will ever experience. And it's a hypocrisy that that's the case. Jones was on the front lines, so he knew first-hand. It's also a story about courage. Who's able to arise to the occasion and shoot that gun? In WW II and up to Vietnam, only 20% of the troops actually fired their weapons. 80% did not fire. A Colonel did this whole study, and he discovered that there's an instinct in all humans not to kill, and that instinct has to be overcome somehow during times of war. They found that a lot of the men were shooting over the enemy's head and that those who couldn't shoot at all, would load the guns for those who could...But Jones said that he never felt that kind of profound love again in his life and the only kind of love that comes close to it, is love for a child. That's about the only kind of love you'll sacrifice yourself for.

Let's talk about your background. Were you drawn toward theater as a kid?
No, not until I came out here. In the early 60's I had a friend who was going to the Pasadena Playhouse--I was going to Pasadena City College--and he invited me to see a play he was in. So I went, became fascinated with it, and left L.A. and went to Arizona, where I started doing theater. I did some work at Phoenix City College with John Paul, all the community theaters, started a couple rep companies out there. Then I worked all over the country, finally ended up with a company that went to Broadway and then folded. Then a guy I knew in Phoenix named Keith Anderson called me up, and told me he mounting a production of this William Inge play called The Last Pad. So we did it, Inge came over and saw it, and insisted that it come to L.A. with our cast. So we put it on in what's now the Geffen Playhouse. This was about 1974 and I went from there to doing TV guest spots, and then Rich Man.

You were really one of the first actors who was courted by the big studios to take a more independent route, weren't you?
You have to remember, I was 35 years old when I got Rich Man and I had 14 years of theater experience and during that 14 years, I chased nothing but the authors (of the plays). If there was an Arthur Miller play, I'd find out where the production was being done and go audition. If they were doing Luther somewhere, I'd go audition. I tried to do that play every 2-3 years, because it's such a scope of his life and I'd get a different insight into the character every time. So after Rich Man I had a lot of offers for three picture deals and I'd say "What are the pictures?" And they were always crap. There were three pictures I tried to get into that year: Apocalypse Now, George Roy Hill's Slap Shot, and Billy Friedkin's Sorcerer. I came close on Apocalypse, but they gave it to Harvey Keitel, then to Martin Sheen. And during all that time, they had The Deep just sitting there, with my agents going "Do The Deep! Do The Deep!" Since I wasn't cast in these other pictures, I went to work and did The Deep.

Tell us about working with Robert Shaw in that film.
(laughs) He'd corral me in a corner and say (imitating Shaw)"It's a treasure picture! A treasure picture! Let's drink some rum!" (laughs) We'd be in the tank filming with Jackie Bisset and take these giant phallic shells and chase her around. Jackie would start laughing. With Jackie in the scene, you were always swimming upside down, with her wearing that t-shirt. (laughs) Bob and I got real close during the shoot. Here's one day: we were sitting on the boat, docked, and were shooting this scene where we had to get off the boat, onto the dock. And it starts raining, all day. And we're just sitting in this boat. So Bob turns to me and says "See that bottle of whiskey over there?" I said "Yeah." "Let's have it." So we take the bottle, have a drink. It keeps raining and we keep drinking...finally at five o'clock a little ray of light breaks through and hits the dock. And (director) Peter Yates goes "Let's get the shot!" I immediately, being a young actor, try to get up. And I'm drunker than a skunk! We'd gone through that bottle and started another one! (laughs) So I'm all ready, trying to pretend I wasn't drunk and Bob goes, "No, no, let me handle this." So Bob gets up, walks up the stairs to the top of the boat, started walking along the plank, gets to the front of the boat and BOOM! He falls flat on his face! Peter Yates starts yelling "Oh my God, he's drunk!" Bob rolls off the boat, falls into the water, climbs into a little dinghy, starts it up, and heads across the bay! So everybody was terribly frightened to go get Shaw, so I got elected since we were friends. So I go across the bay, to this house where he is. I look through the window and I see him sitting in a chair with another bottle. So I crack open the door and say "Bob...?" He turns to me and says "What took you so long?" (laughs) That was Shaw. That was Shaw.

Let's talk about North Dallas Forty, which I think is the greatest football picture ever made.
I'm sitting in Mexico doing Who'll Stop the Rain, reading Peter Gent's book North Dallas Forty, just going "This is an amazing book." Anthony Zerbe walked by and said "That's your next picture." I said, "You mean I can just do what I want?" He said "Absolutely. That's going to be your next picture." So I got a writer friend of mine and we just started writing it. We didn't have the rights to it, didn't know what its status was. I called my agent and manager at the time and said I wanted to do this film, could they please check on the rights. But they didn't want me to do this project, so they didn't really pursue it. In the meantime every job that was offered to me I turned down. So this went on for a year. At the end of that year, I got a call from Michael Eisner, who had just come on as one of the three presidents of Paramount, along with Barry Diller and Robert Evans. He was also a vice-president at ABC when I did Rich Man, so I had a relationship there. He read the script and said "Okay, this is going to be one of my first films. But you've got to use a Paramount producer and a Paramount-appointed director. I said "Fine." Diller and Evans didn't want to do it, there was a lot of competition between them, but we went ahead anyway. During the development process we had gone through lots of different writers, comedic writers who wanted to have one of the players go on the field with a wooden leg, things like that...so I called Pete Gent and had him come back to have him on the set.(producer) Frank Yablans didn't want him there. He screamed at Pete: "Get this guy the hell off the set!" I said "Frank, this is the man who wrote North Dallas Forty, this is Phil Elliot, my character. I need him here to help me with my character." Frank grumbled "Alright, but he'd better not get in the way." So then (director) Ted Kotcheff comes up to me and says "Get Gent to start writing." So Pete started re-writing the script. And we shot one of his scenes, and Frank wasn't there that day. We were in dailies later, and this scene came up, and it was just brilliant, and Frank said "This is great! Who wrote this?" Pete raised his hand. Frank barked back: "Keep writing!" (laughs) So that's how North Dallas Forty was done. It was forced into being by my simply saying "I am going to do this."

I think Under Fire is an overlooked masterpiece. Tell us about the genesis of that film.
I'm going through the commissary at Paramount and I see Roger Spottiswoode and Ron Shelton. I knew Roger because he was Karel Reisz's editor. I asked them what they were up to. They were about to pitch Under Fire. I asked to read it and said "Look, you guys stay here, I'll go over to the office and read it." So I read it and it was just brilliant. So I committed to it, and because they had the actor already attached when they pitched it, it got set up! So we go down to Mexico to shoot it. We didn't have that big a budget, maybe 10 or 12 million. Right when we hit Mexico, the peso devalued by half, so we doubled our money! Now we had $24 million, in Mexican money, to shoot this. So we were able to give it an epic scope.

Tell us about Katharine Hepburn and Grace Quigley.
What Kate did, when I went to Kate's house in New York, she said "Pick a chair you want to sit in." So I sat down in this chair and she said "Ah yes, just as I thought, you picked Spence's chair." (laughs) She was great, just wonderful. The producer would say to her, "Kate, how are you going to play this?" She'd say "What do you mean 'how am I going to play this?' Do you know how you're going to do something before you do it? That's a stupid question!" (laughs) Here's a woman that was fired on eight films, bought her way out of a Broadway play, she said "I was very young and just terrible. I didn't know any technique and I went to the producer and said 'Get someone in here who can act.' And the producer said "No, we didn't hire you for your talent, we hired you for your name." She's very aware, very tuned in. And she knew that wasn't the right place for her to be, so she raised some money and bought her way out of the play. She came along in my life at just about the right time. I was pretty on the edge. And that film had a real ambiance as a holdover from Vietnam, the counterculture. It's an interesting film. Rex Reed called it a "Nazi film," that it promoted killing the elderly, which was absurd.

Let's talk about Prince of Tides, another character with a lot of backstory. Did you have a similar experience with your character Tom Wingo in that as you did with Wade Whitehouse?
Absolutely. I was living in North Carolina at the time, in a beach house, just above Myrtle Beach. I told Barbara Streisand that I was going to go to that beach house for the summer, and I was going to live that life, out on the beach, hang out in some classes with some school teachers in small schools near that area, go down to Beaufort and try to trace Pat Conroy's writing of the novel, which became sort of a massive detective job. Because Conroy talks not only about Beaufort, but all of the south. For a while Robert Redford had the piece, and had a different kind of script than Barbara had. I thought she really found the heart of that material. So I really lived that life, went shrimping...I always felt the character of the sister was Anne Sexton. Barbara felt she was Sylvia Plath. Then someone told me that Pat has a sister who's a poet, so it might just be his sister! (laughs) But Barbara took the heart of the story and focused it on the women and the men. She was a wonderful director, wonderful with the actors and so steeped in the material.

How do you like to be directed, if at all?
However that director wants to direct. With Sidney Lumet, for example, he has a style where we do four weeks of rehearsals where we answer every question from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. We rehearse it a lot like a play. And that's a wonderful approach, because by the time you film, you don't really have any questions about the characters. Sidney and I had a ball. He was wonderful. But every director's different, and you learn something new with each approach.

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