James Ellroy: The Hollywood Interview

Author James Ellroy.


JAMES ELLROY: BARK AT THE MOON
The "Demon Dog of American Fiction" sinks his teeth into RFK, MLK and Vietnam with The Cold Six Thousand
By
Alex Simon

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

If there were any justice in this world, and in the world of James Ellroy that's debatable, there would be a picture of the imposing, 6'4" author in Webster's Dictionary under the word "survivor." Regarded by literary scions as not only the reigning king of crime fiction, but also one of the greatest authors of our time, James Ellroy came into the world as Lee Earle Ellroy, born in the city of his literary dreams and nightmares: Los Angeles, during the post-war boom of 1948. Ellroy's father Armand was an accountant, and onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. Mother Jean was a registered nurse. According to Ellroy, in his memoir My Dark Places, "They stayed together for 15 years. It had to be sex."

After a nasty divorce, Jean was given custody of young Lee, and a tempestuous relationship between the two quickly developed, for Geneva Hilliker Ellroy had two fatal weaknesses: booze and men. Both took their toll on her young son. After initially moving to Santa Monica, Lee suddenly found himself living in the town of El Monte, a less-than-glamorous enclave in the lesser-than-glamorous San Gabriel Valley. In 1958, after spending the weekend with his father in L.A., Lee returned to El Monte, only to learn that his mother had been murdered over the weekend, strangled to death, her body dumped in a field next to Arroyo High School. The murder is still unsolved. It would be the spark that ignited some of the most brilliant American fiction of the latter 20th century.

The next decade and a half was a continuous downward spiral for Ellroy, who nearly succumbed to alcohol and drug addiction while still in his early 20's. After getting sober, Ellroy began reinventing himself, and started writing in an attempt to purge some of the demons that nearly consumed him. While supporting himself as a golf caddy, Ellroy published his first novel, Brown's Requiem, in 1981, followed by Clandestine, the following year, which was a fictionalized account of Jean Ellroy's murder set during the Red Scare of the early 50's. Four more crime novels followed, each more powerful than the other, gaining momentum as Ellroy began to find his literary voice, many of his stories dealing with the brutal slayings of innocent women, and the knights in tarnished armor (usually cops) who sought to avenge them. His work garnered rave reviews and a solid cult following. Stardom was just around the corner.

The Black Dahlia hit bookstores in 1987 and made Ellroy a full-fledged literary star. A fictionalized account of Los Angeles' most notorious unsolved murder (wannabe actress Elizabeth Short's bisected body was found in a vacant lot. She had been slowly tortured to death over a two day period), it deftly blended historical fact with fiction so seamlessly, it was difficult to ascertain where the reality/fantasy line was in the sand, if it was ever there at all. The Black Dahlia was also Ellroy's first chapter in his now-legendary "L.A. Quartet," which includes The Big Nowhere, White Jazz, and the classic L.A. Confidential, which was adapted for the screen into one of the most honored films of 1997.

1995 saw the publication of Ellroy's epic American Tabloid, a down-and-dirty jigsaw puzzle of U.S. history in the early 60's, ending with JFK's assassination. Time Magazine named it "Book of the Year." In 1997 Ellroy published his shattering memoir My Dark Places, in which the author reopened the investigation of his mother's unsolved murder with the help of retired L.A. County Sheriff's detective Bill Stoner. Ellroy has also published Hollywood Nocturnes, a collection of short stories, and Crime Wave, a collection of fiction and non-fiction pieces that he penned for Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ) Magazine. It was to be the 21st century, however, that would see Ellroy's greatest work, to date, come to pass.

The Cold Six Thousand is the sequel to American Tabloid, following that story's surviving characters, and a few new ones, immediately following JFK's murder, up to Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968. A labyrinthine, epic, and passionate tale of greed, twisted ideals and the underbelly of the American dream, The Cold Six Thousand deserves to take its place alongside the greatest American novels of our time. Ellroy has outdone himself once again.

James Ellroy, who now lives in Kansas City with his wife, writer and journalist Helen Knode, sat down with Venice Magazine in his favorite L.A. haunt: the original Pacific Dining Car on 6th street downtown. Journey with us now to the dark places, big nowheres, and black dahlias that exist in the world of James Ellroy...

The thing that really struck me with this book, as you did in American Tabloid and many of your previous works, is how you weaved historical fiction with historical fact, and made it seamless.
James Ellroy: The one question I never answer is what's real and what's not in my books. What I give you is the human infrastructure of public events. I make them more real because I give you the hearts and souls of the people who were there, implementing public policy at its very lowest levels. There's no sense of hindsight in these books, and especially in this one, because the human stories I'm telling are so immediate. They're integral to the larger public events, but they are, in most occasions, even more compelling. The idea of a young cop who travels to Dallas on November 22, 1963 to kill a black pimp in order to prove himself in the police hierarchy, and then the shit hits the fan with JFK getting killed. What's important to Wayne Tedrow, Jr. now is getting out of Dallas with some honor still intact. But oops, he starts saying things he shouldn't.

All your books are journeys of self-discovery for your characters. But with this book, this was history that you lived through, as a young man. In the course of writing American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand what did you learn about the United States?
I made a conscious decision after I finished the L.A. Quartet books that I would never again write anything that could be perceived as a crime novel or, God forbid, a mystery. I think these two books, if you have to hyphenate with the word "novel", would be classified as historical novels. I was moving into the years of my cognizance. The four quartet books began in '47, before I was born, and ended in '59, when I was not quite eleven years old. I had a reluctant idea of what the key events would be in both books would be about going in: J. Edgar Hoover's reluctant war against organized crime; John Kennedy's ascent; Bobby Kennedy's rise as crime fighter number one in America; Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in 1959 and the mob's being pissed off that they were losing a couple hundred grand a day when Castro nationalized their casinos; the 1960 election; Howard Hughes' colonialist designs on Las Vegas; the crazy Cuban exiles mingling with the CIA and the mob; the Kennedy assassination; J. Edgar Hoover's war on the Civil Rights Movement; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; the early days of the Vietnam war and CIA men bringing heroin out there. Just an enormous tapestry of America from 1958-1968. I knew the rudiments of the story. I had a sense of collusion, which is the title of part II of American Tabloid. You had then that last gasp of republic accountability America, this nexus of rogue intelligence agents, crazy Cuban exiles, right wing lunatics of all stripes, the intelligence community and high-ranking law enforcement officials and political operatives all serving a common cause, which was the anti-Communist agenda. They were all in bed with each other incestuously. They had imperialist designs on Central America, Cuba and Vietnam. What I decided I was going to write was the epic history of American bad ju-ju.

That's when it really all started, isn't it, after WW II?
Exactly. I heard a story where Eisenhower, who was traumatized by what he saw during WW II, particularly the death camps, said in his first cabinet meeting "Gentlemen, I will tolerate no foreign wars during my administration." And what he did was let the CIA run amuck in Iran, Guatemala, and all over the globe, because he didn't want another full-scale conflict. As Saul Bellow wrote in The Adventures of Auggie March "Everyone knows there is no fineness or accuracy in suppression. If you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining." That's what these guys ultimately learn (in The Cold Six Thousand).

And we're still recovering from the hangover that this party gave us, aren't we?
Absolutely. The party of drugs and American expansionism, mass skepticism, and bad wars.

Do you think we'll ever recover from JFK's assassination?
I think we already have. I think if we found out today who really pulled the trigger, it would be irrelevant. I think that America was never innocent. This country was founded on slavery, land grabs and the genocide of the indigenous population. This narrative line has been stuck on JFK's death. The truth is, Jack Kennedy accepted favors from organized crime, then sicced his rabid, pit bull kid brother on them. Jack promised the Cuban exiles a second invasion after they were betrayed at the Bay of Pigs, then continued to screw them. Jack Kennedy deported (mob boss) Carlos Marcello. He walked out of El Salvador and Guatemala with cactus thorns in his ass. He fucked up and fucked with some very hot headed Latins that most sophisticated people would know "Don't fuck with these guys." It's a terrible story of hubris and naiveté. I think what Jack Kennedy's death was, was a glorified business dispute killing. I think that by the rules that Jack Kennedy lived by, he got what he deserved.

What about Bobby?
I came to admire him a lot in the course of my research. He was the greatest American crime fighter of the 20th century and Martin Luther King was the greatest man of the American 20th century. He was a marked man from the Montgomery bus boycott on, and I think that sustained physical courage that he was forced to have, messed with him.

How do you get in the mindset to write a period piece?
I isolated myself in the 1960's when I wrote The Cold Six Thousand. I thought about it from a 60's mindset. I immersed myself in it. I sat in a room and thought about it, and savored what I always call "the tremor of intent," which is the title of an Anthony Burgess novel. The tremor of intent is gearing yourself up to write a great novel, a novel of complexity, depth, stylistic ardor, characterization and, dare I say it, profundity. It's going back to when you were a kid and all you wanted was to be a great novelist, because great novels were the only thing that moved you. It's savoring that kid's feeling of "I want to do that, and I want to be the best." You've gotta get there first in isolation, which helps you conceptualize it, plan it, and steer you for the sustained concentration that books like that require. Part of the process for me, aside from the assiduous note taking from research, is the outline. The outline for The Cold Six Thousand was 343 pages, and took me eight months to write. Then you have to pull it off in successive drafts. There has to be perfect order in the words, perfect depth of characterization, perfect setting of every scene. You've got to be able to track all your references, to be able to juggle the 125 characters that the book has. You've got to be able to push everything away so you can shape this thing into a cohesive whole. Even though I'll break to do magazine pieces, like in GQ, it's all about living in that pitch. So present day politics and social conditions are not considerations. It's all about thinking, immersing yourself in the era. It all comes down to this: how well can you lie? How well can you do it? It comes back to that. You have it or you don't.

How did you get the nickname "Mad Dog"?
Well, really it's just "dog," but I guess it's because I've always loved dogs. I have a canine identity thing, and I've always done dog shtick.

Let's talk about your background. My Dark Places is one of the most amazing memoirs I've ever read. Like all your characters, you are a survivor who's lived many lifetimes. In a nutshell, what was it like being Lee Ellroy, long before you were reborn as James Ellroy?
It was fearful. It was anxious. It was debased. It was bufoonish. It was occasionally horrifying. It was degrading. I doubt if I've had five depressed minutes in my life. A lot of anxiety, though. Some anger. I possessed in the early part of my life, a horrible obsessive nature, and I've been able to turn my obsessions into something good, creative and life-affirming and now I'm having a big, fat, fuckin' blast! I'm the happiest person I know.

Any one of the things that happened to you as a young person would have killed most people. What do you think accounts for your resilience?
I saw the enemy, and it was me. It's like that line from the Pogo comic strip: "We have seen the enemy, and it is us." When I cleaned up and was suddenly sober at 29, I didn't have anybody to blame. My parents were dead. I didn't have any brothers or sisters, or any family. I knew that nobody turned me into an alcoholic and a drug addict and a bum and a thief and a lowlife and a full time fantasist. I understood that I had free will in all of this. And I understood at the time that each one of us is fully responsible for his success and happiness and no one else. I cleaned up because I wanted things. I wanted to get laid. I wanted either the woman, or women, plural and I knew I wasn't going to get either in my current, raggedy-ass state. I wanted to write novels. I wanted to live a decent life.

Tell us about when the fascination with writing started.
I always wanted to be a novelist, I think even preceding my mother's death. I read kid books up until her death, boy's adventure books. Then after my mother's death, I started reading kid's mystery stories, then adult mystery stories, then true crime books, then the entire crime fiction genre: Raymond Chandler, Joseph Wambaugh...good and bad crime writers across the board. I loved Mickey Spillane when I read him as a kid, because he's a big anti-Communist, as I was then. The Fugitive TV series made a huge impression on me as a kid. I watched the first couple years of that. It debuted at an interesting time: two months before John Kennedy got it. It was great, because wherever David Janssen went, he always hooked up with the best looking woman in town! (laughs) And these actresses...oh God, Diana Muldaur, Anne Francis, June Harding...

I love June Harding. Remember her in The Trouble With Angels. (1966), with Hayley Mills?
Are you a June Harding fan? That's great, because she's a friend of mine. I wrote a piece for GQ called "My Life as a Creep," about my teenage years when I was obsessed with June Harding. My buddy Rick Jackson of the LAPD was working as a private eye then, and I was telling him about her, and he found her, living back East. She's an artist now, a great human being. But she was a guest star on "The Fugitive." Let's see, there was also Patricia Crowley, Madeline Rue, Lois Nettleton...all these good-looking, classy, smart women and great actresses. I felt like the Fugitive as a kid, like I was on the run. So here I could fantasize being on the run, getting all the babes! (laughs)

Your first novel, Brown's Requiem, was written in 1980, when you were still working as a golf caddy.
At the Bel-Air Country Club. I was living in Venice, on Ocean Front Walk, near the Victory Coffee Shop. I didn't have a car, and would take the bus out to Bel-Air, write on a bench outside the caddyshack, caddy, make just enough money to pay my rent and eat off of, a little for bus fare. I'd write on my days off. I'd write at night, late afternoons. I wrote the book in 10 1/2 months.

The book that really put you on the map was The Black Dahlia.
I'd been obsessed with that case since 1959 when I read about it in Jack Webb's book The Badge, which my dad bought me for my eleventh birthday in March, 1959. In the wake of my mother's death, I found it shocking, revelatory. I didn't understand at the time, of course that (murder victim) Elizabeth Short was the stand-in for my mother. I had nightmares about Elizabeth Short, became obsessed with her. I used to ride my bicycle down to 39th and Norton where her body was found. I later read John Gregory Dunne's wonderful and fanciful novel True Confessions in 1977, which is also based on the Dahlia case. When I started to write two years later, I thought that I couldn't write about the Black Dahlia case because he already had...years later in 1985, I was finally, tenuously, self-supporting as a writer. I had moved East. I ordered up the LA Times, January-May 1947 on microfilm. I went to the big New York library on 42nd street and 5th avenue. I got myself $400 in quarters, which is a shitload of quarters, and copied it off of microfilm. So I had complete chronologies of the LAPD investigation. I had known the essential story for many years, the details. I savored the tremor of intent very large on that book. I was living by myself in a basement apartment in Eastchester, New York. I put the story together largely through finding a methodology and a psychology that was so horrible, so baroque, that it would credibly explain the horrible crime itself. So, hence the story of Georgie Tilden and the Sprague family. I realized after I'd finished it that I didn't want to write contemporary-set books, that I didn't want to continue the Lloyd Hopkins series. I wanted to write a quartet of books about L.A., my smogbound fatherland, between the years '47-'59...I even remember staring at my desk, thinking that the third book would be called L.A. Confidential, that it would be huge, that it would feature a hellish robbery, people gunned down in a meat locker, and scandal rag journalism. It all evolved in a fever pitch between the years '85 and '91--I wrote the four books in six years.

The film of L.A. Confidential became an almost instant classic and was adapted from your book which was thought by most to be unfilmable because it was so complex.
I thought L.A. Confidential was a wonderful film, and a very deft adaptation, particularly considering that it only encompasses 15-20% of the overall story. It was amazing and dislocating to see these deft actors portraying Bud White, Ed Exley, Jack Vincennes, Sid Hudgens, Lynn Bracken and Dudley Smith. It was strange to see these actors, because I never think of actors when I'm writing, who weren't these characters as I'd pictured them, speaking some of my words reinterpreted was startling. The music was wonderful. Curtis Hanson would be the first to admit that a few of the scenes are underdressed due to budgetary constraints. To see it fly along of its own momentum, it's own wit and own dramatic arc was startling because it was a work that could only have originated with me, but in the end, was something entirely different, yet mine. (The film of) L.A. Confidential is the best thing that ever happened to me in my career, that I had nothing to do with. It was a fluke and it's probably never gonna happen again.

Are we going to see more Dick Contino and Danny Getchel stories?
Yeah, I want to do another Dick Contino and a whole bunch of Getchels, with Danny spreading his bad ju-ju. I want to do a piece where he's hanging with Ayn Rand during the Red Scare. I want to do a piece where he's a front man for Ronald Regan during his gubernatorial campaign. I'm actually going to do one where he's hanging out with Curtis Hanson and Sam Fuller during the Watts riots! (laughs)

You dedicated The Cold Six Thousand to former L.A. County Sheriff's homicide detective Bill Stoner.
Bill's my best friend. We remain very, very tight and talk a lot. He's a profound human being and a very old soul, as they say. It wouldn't have worked with anybody else but him. It was a guide shot. It was a great confluence.

Were you able to make peace with your mother after My Dark Places?
We continue. As I say in the book, "Closure is bullshit." I think about her. There's moments when I'm savoring the tremor of intent, and my thoughts keep coming back to her. There's a great photograph of her that I describe in My Dark Places from August of '46. I'm a year and a half away from being born. She wasn't married to my father then. She got married when she was a few months pregnant with me. She's sitting in the backyard at a swimming pool at a party, looks like a Beverly Hills movie biz party. She's sitting there, and she looks so good, and she's smiling and she's delightedly content. And I'm thinking (whispers) "What were you thinking? What's going on there?" Why did you settle for so little when you could've had so much? What were the blanks, what were the fill-ins of your horrible story, your horrible childhood in rural Wisconsin? Her dad, my grandfather, drank himself to death at 49. He was a forest ranger and game warden. He'd hire Indians to put out forest fires, then they'd use the money to go out and buy booze, then start more fires so they could get paid to put them out again. It's a classic example of a woman who was molested in the home, was promiscuous at a very early age, back in the day when promiscuity was wild and crazy ju-ju, not like it is today. She got out of that town and never looked back. She was running for the rest of her life. My mother was statuesque, fair, red-haired, hazel eyes. She was a very handsome woman. Always wore her hair in a bun. She exuded allure and mystery and she created a blank space around her and made people come to her. She hid from people. She only told people so much. She didn't let people all the way in. She slummed with cheap men. She listened to the Brahms symphonies and piano concertos on a cheap record player we had at the place in El Monte. She loved reading historical novels and Reader's Digest condensed books. She'd get drunk and her alcoholism escalated during the last couple years of her life, even though I was only 8 or 9 years old I was able to figure that out. She would formalize and overstate her lies. She did not credit me with being a good lie decoder. There's so many mysteries. Who killed her? Why did she suddenly move us from Santa Monica out to El Monte, which my father called, aptly, "Shitsville, USA"? You never knew what she was thinking.

At the end of the book, even though you didn't solve the physical mystery, it felt like you solved an internal one.
I got a handle on my origins. I got a handle on my ancestry. I calculatedly understood, going in, that it's highly unlikely that we were going to find her. I understood, on a semi-conscious level, that the book would not be about a successful homicide investigation, but would be about my journey of discovery with my mother and Bill Stoner's journey of discovery as a homicide detective.

You live in Kansas City now. Any chance you'll ever move back to L.A.?
No. I love Kansas City. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's homogenous. It's physically very beautiful. It's nicely contained. It's a peaceful zone in the middle of the country. I went there with my wife before we got married to meet her mother, and I fell in love with the place.

What advice would you have for a first-time novelist?
I would say, don't write what you know. I would say write the kind of shit that you like to read. I would say outline assiduously. I would say savor the tremor of intent. I would say think. I would say make the whole process as unintimidating as possible by planning. This will allow you to write a more surely plotted, and more complex book than you might be able to if you just went at it hack and burn and chop.

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John Frankenheimer: The Hollywood Interview

Director John Frankenheimer.


JOHN FRANKENHEIMER:
RENAISSANCE AUTEUR
By
Alex Simon

This article originally appeared in the October 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

John Frankenheimer is responsible for some of the hallmark productions of American cinema and television. An innovator in both fields, he helped pave the way for later generations of filmmakers to express their social, political and artistic points of view in bold and breathtaking ways. Consider this:

BEFORE THERE WAS STEVEN SPIELBERG, THERE WAS JOHN FRANKENHEIMER. Frankenheimer was the original wünderkind, having directed over 150 TV plays during the days of live television in the 1950’s while still in his 20’s, including many of the celebrated Playhouse 90 series. His landmark productions of Rod Serling's "The Comedian" and J.P. Miller's "Days of Wine and Roses" catapulted him to the top of the new medium of television. By the time he was 30 years old in 1960, Frankenheimer was firmly established as the top television director in the country. By the time he was 34, he had been at the helm of the most important political films of the 1960’s, which brings us to our next point:

BEFORE THERE WAS OLIVER STONE (OR COSTA-GAVRAS), THERE WAS JOHN FRANKENHEIMER. Frankenheimer’s trilogy of Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May(1964) explored American political life, thinking and philosophy like no other filmmaker has done before or since. All three films were bold indictments of the paranoia, corruption and dehumanization that the political process (and politically-motivated institutions) can bring down upon the common man. Plus, he did them in exciting and breathtaking ways, bending the cinematic form into a gritty, visually intoxicating canvas. Which brings us to our next point:

BEFORE THERE WAS JOHN WOO, JAN DE BONT, RICHARD DONNER OR (INSERT THE NAME OF ANY OTHER ACTION MOVIE DIRECTOR HERE________), THERE WAS JOHN FRANKENHEIMER. Frankenheimer redefined the way action and suspense were portrayed on-screen, taking cues from his idols Alfred Hitchcock, Carol Reed and George Stevens (as well as French master Jean-Pierre Melville), using not only action, but character to build suspense. The Manchurian Candidate, the World War II thrillerThe Train (1964), the science-fiction/realism masterpiece Seconds (1966), and the landmark racing epic Grand Prix (1966) which gave the viewer a front seat perspective for what it felt like to travel at speeds that make the corners of your mouth bend and leave bugs firmly planted in your teeth, all redefined the action film in their own way, while remaining true to Frankenheimer’s own vision, and very plainly carrying his distinctive filmmaking stamp.

Frankenheimer kept his love of politics and action alive in later films as well, including the dynamite sequel French Connection II (1975);Black Sunday (1977), in which the late, great Robert Shaw must stop Black September terrorists (led by Bruce Dern, in a brilliant performance) from blowing up the Super Bowl; Dead Bang (1989) in which cop Don Johnson takes on neo-Nazis in the midwest; The Fourth War (1990), an end of the cold war thriller; and Year of the Gun (1991), which dramatized the true kidnapping and murder of Italian Premier Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades terrorist group in the late 1970’s. Frankenheimer has continued his innovative work in television as well, with a series of made-for-cable films that have tackled subjects that many of the big studios thought too hot to handle, including Against the Wall, a dramatization of the 1971 prison riot at Attica, New York; The Burning Season in 1994, which marked the final performance of the great Raul Julia and won three Golden Globe Awards and two cable ACE Awards. “Andersonville,” a Civil War mini-series for Turner Network Television, which earned Frankenheimer his third consecutive Emmy. The following year, Frankenheimer helmed the critically lauded “George Wallace,” with Gary Sinise in the title role. It won the Golden Globe for Best Film for Television along with the George Foster Peabody Award. Frankenheimer also received another Emmy nomination. In 1996, the American Cinema Editors honored Frankenheimer with the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, celebrating his lifetime achievement as a filmmaker.

Frankenheimer’s latest ranks with the finest work of his career. “Ronin” tells the story of a disparate group of freelance covert operatives, led by Robert De Niro, who must retrieve a briefcase, the contents of which are a mystery, for an unknown client. The film is one of the best of the year, having all the great qualities of the thrillers of the 60’s and 70’s (intelligence and nail-biting suspense), along with what this writer feels is the finest car chase ever put onto celluloid and some other truly breathtaking action sequences. This is one that keeps you guessing what’s going to happen next right up to the closing credits, after which you find yourself begging for more. Its stellar supporting cast includes Natascha McElhone, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce. In other words, run, don’t walk to see “Ronin” when it opens in October from MGM/UA.

A true renaissance man, Mr. Frankenheimer is an accomplished chef, having studied at the legendary Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, as well as an accomplished race car driver and tennis player, a sport in which he excelled during his years at Williams College. Mr. Frankenheimer sat down recently to reflect on his truly rich and remarkable life.

Most of your films seem to have either political themes or socio-political overtones. Where does this fascination with politics come from?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: It stems from the fact that when I was in high school, I started disagreeing a lot with my father on politics, because he was really very conservative. He really wanted the status quo, and I didn’t want the status quo. The whole racial question really, really bothered me. I came from New York, and one of my first girlfriends was an African-American dancer. And this caused a furor of sorts within my family. And the more furor it caused, the more I realized that this was something I wanted. Then I got a lot of exposure to a lot of actors, dancers and writers at a very young age, and I got really involved in that kind of cause. Then when I got into live television, there was the whole business of McCarthy, which was...you can’t imagine how terrible that was. That really galvanized me into a political arena. And of course in live television it was very hard to do political stuff because there was the blacklist. You could do anything psychological, but nothing sociological. So I couldn’t wait to really be able to do that, which is what I think what attracted me to “Birdman of Alcatraz,” which is a very political picture...then there was this tremendous involvement with Robert Kennedy. We were very, very close friends and I did all the film and television for his campaign. He stayed with me and I drove him to the Ambassador Hotel the night he was shot. All his clothes were in my house...and I really had a nervous breakdown after that. That’s when I went to France, and that’s when I went to the (Cordon Bleu), because I just had to do something else with my life, and I really couldn’t go near politics for a long time after that. Then little by little, I came back to it. It was really the cable movies that got me back into it, “Against the Wall,” for instance, then “The Burning Season,” and then really plunging right back into it with “George Wallace,” which is something that goes way back to my younger days. Then when (“Ronin”) presented itself...I love that kind of story, where things are never as they seem to be.

It really reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, “The Third Man” (1949).
I’m so glad you said that because whenever anyone asks me about “Ronin,” I always say that the film that I want it to remind them of is “The Third Man.” Carol Reed influenced me more than any other director with “Odd Man Out” (1947), “The Fallen Idol” (1948), “The Man Between” (1953)...I have two biographies of Carol Reed that I use as my bibles.

Frankenheimer on the Paris set of Ronin, with Robert De Niro (1998).

The look of “Ronin” was reminiscent of “The Third Man” as well, with its emphasis on light and dark, sharp camera angles, and the way you made all those old buildings around Paris into characters of their own.
Well the whole business of depth of focus, which I use a great deal, goes back to my days in live TV, because we were able to use a big, big stop there, like F-11. We didn’t have instant access to video cassettes or film stock the way young filmmakers do today. So the first time I ever saw “Citizen Kane” (1941), which was after I’d already become a director and was doing all that stuff myself, and saw that Welles did it too so much earlier was great vindication for me. And I discovered Carol Reed earlier than that, because I always went to see foreign films. Hitchcock also, and George Stevens really helped to form me.

I thought “Ronin” had a lot of Hitchcockian overtones, in terms of all the deceptions, double-crosses and twists. How did you come to the script initially?
What happened was I read a script that I really loved that was owned by MGM/UA and the producer was Frank Mancuso, Jr. I really wanted to do this picture...I felt that I got along with Frank terribly well, but they seemed to be ambivalent about doing this movie. So I came home after being away for the weekend, and there was this script, Ronin, that my agent had sent me. He said “Look, they really loved meeting with you, and the fact that you lived in France and speak French, they think you’d be perfect for this movie.” So I read it and I was very ambivalent about wanting to do it, because I was very passionate about the other one. But I really liked Frank. He’s the best producer I’ve ever worked with, along with Fred Coe, and that’s crucial. You’ve got to get along with management, or you can be sunk. So I thought about it, and I’d always wanted to shoot a picture like this. I got a brilliant cameraman, Robert Fraisse, most of my crew I had worked with on “French Connection II,”...then we were lucky enough to get DeNiro. After that, the rest of the cast just fell into place.

I thought the film hearkened back to the best thrillers of the 60’s and 70’s that had action, but were also smart.
Well you have to be smart, and you have to have style. All the great action films that we love when you look at them, they all have this terrific style to them, like “The Third Man.” I just think that’s part of the genre.

I find most of the action movies today frustrating because they’re all style and no substance.
The action has to come out of character, it can’t come out of technology. We didn’t use any of that computer shit in the picture. Everything you see, we really did it. And I think you can tell the difference.

As a director you obviously learn a lot from your actors. What did you learn from De Niro?
I learned that you can have a lot of fun, and still do good work. DeNiro’s done 50 movies. I’ve done 35, plus 150 live television shows, so neither one of us had a whole hell of a lot to prove. We both knew that the other knew what they were doing. The other thing I learned from DeNiro which validated something I’ve always known, is that the good thing about experience is that it enables you to know that no matter how bad a situation might be and how much you might not know the answer to something, that you will find your way out of it. You’ll find the solution. You’ll find a way to do it. Whereas when you’re first beginning, you tend to panic. Just trust your instincts, which is what DeNiro does. He trusts himself, and I’m learning to do that. The other thing he does well is listen, as do all the actors in this film.

That’s something else I’ve noticed about your films. You shoot in such a way where the actors just communicate physically, often with very minimal dialogue, another thing lacking in film today. It's almost like the newer filmmakers don't trust the actors or the material.
You have to keep in mind, though, that many of the new filmmakers haven't had the experience. Again, I directed over 150 live television shows, which really let me work with how to stage scenes, with how to let an actor express themselves. I also had great material, written by Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, J.P. Miller, Clifford Odets...and what it enabled you to do was trust the material. And when you trusted the material, you trusted the actors and then used the camera to help that, you don't use the camera to intrude, to just constantly cut, cut, cut, cut. You try and stage the scene in such a way that movement tells you something. George Stevens was brilliant at that. So was William Wyler. So was Carol Reed. And so was Hitchcock. If you look you can really see the influence of George Stevens in my work, especially my TV work, with all the triple and quadruple dissolves. "A Place in the Sun" (1951) I think, is the greatest movie ever made.

Let's talk about your beginnings. It sounds like you were a middle class kid?
Yeah, my father was a stockbroker, then he retired and lost a lot of money. My dad was Jewish and my mother was Irish-Catholic, which was never an issue because my father was never a practicing Jew. He's the one who drove us to (Catholic) Sunday school. I went to a Catholic military academy for high school. I had wanted to be a priest. I didn't really find out I was half-Jewish until I went to college, when my father told me I'd never get into a fraternity if people knew that. So I left that out on the questionnaire. It wasn't a lie, just an omission. So I did get into a fraternity, and then they found out about it, and I was absolutely ostracized. This was at Williams College, which was interesting because it forced me to go to the theater, and that's the reason I'm here talking to you. I always liked the theater. In prep school I always felt more comfortable being in school plays. I was a very shy kid and my father made me study public speaking and play tennis at a very early age to sort of bring me out of my shell. So theater was just kind of a natural outlet for me.

Were you a good actor?
I don't think so. I thought I was at the time, but looking back I don't think I worked at it hard enough. But I always loved the movies, as well, was always going from the time I was a little kid.

Was there one movie you saw as a kid that made you say "This is it. This is what I have to do?"
No, because at that time I didn't equate movies with something I wanted to do professionally. I just loved to go. I do remember the film that had the most influence on me as an actor, because it made me start smoking, and that was "Sunset Boulevard." I was cast at 19 years old in this play as a 35 year-old, very sophisticated New York guy, and I knew that I couldn't do this. My hands just felt like two dumbbells. Then I went to see "Sunset Boulevard" and there was Bill Holden looking very cool with his cigarette...so the next day I walk on stage with a cigarette, looking very cool, and I trip over the foot of the leading lady! (laughs) The director said "I don't care if you smoke, just learn how to do it!" So I spent many nights alone in my room practicing smoking, which I got very good at, but on opening night, I still stunk in the play.

Did you start directing in college?
I did one play in college, Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." It was done in the round and it was a disaster! It started out with the leading man tripping over the legs of the head of the English department! (laughs) Then I did a lot of summer stock when I was in college. We re-did the University Players, that whole group that was Joshua Logan, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart...all these students from Ivy League colleges. We formed the theater in Cape Cod, and it was a great experience. Then the Korean War started, and I had a commission in the Air Force after being in a Catholic military school. I got stationed in Washington D.C. with the aeronautical chart and information service, through which a stroke of absolute luck, they combined with the Air Pictorial Service and formed the Aerial Photographic Unit, and I got assigned out here, in Burbank to make training films. It was great, and I really learned a lot.

Frankenheimer as an assistant director in the early days of live TV (1953).

How many films did you direct during that period?
Well, that's the other thing. The Air Force didn't know what to do with all these guys out here, and the Air Force (brass) didn't even know that they had this unit, so there was nothing for them to do! So the Major in charge took me aside when I arrived, I was a lieutenant, and said "Look, my men are all going AWOL, going into Hollywood and bouncing checks and picking up prostitutes...I want my men kept busy!" Now this was at the Burbank Airport. So nearby was this asphalt plant. The Major said "I want you to take all these men, go to the asphalt plant and make a film about asphalt." And I didn't have the faintest idea how to do this! So we get there, and this tough guy, a former taxi driver in New York named Kizumplik, he says "You don't really expect us to make this stupid goddamn movie about asphalt, do you Lieutenant?" They wanted to go to Hollywood, and I wasn't about to say 'no' to him. So they all left and it was just me and this young black guy, and we stayed and read the manual about how to operate the camera, and made this film about asphalt. When we finished it was all under-exposed, because we didn't know what we were doing, but we kept at it, and we learned. Then I did some training films, and my introduction to television was doing a piece about registered cattle over in Northridge! (laughs) This guy had a weekly television show called "Harvey Howard's Ranch Round-up." He said "Lieutenant, do you write?" I said "I sure do." "I just fired my writer. You're my new writer." So I wrote for Harvey Howard for about 18 weeks. It was a country western show where I'd write the introduction for Harvey, he'd come out and sell his cows, and he'd introduce the country-western numbers. The FCC finally came to us and said "Gentlemen, on an hour show you're allowed to have 12 minutes of commercials and 48 minutes of show. You have 12 minutes of show and 48 minutes of commercials. You're off the air!" (laughs)

24 year-old John Frankenheimer directing a live television broadcast (1954).

How did you go from there to live TV in New York?
This was about 1952, and I had decided then that I really wanted to get into film. I heard a phrase from Fred Coe once. He said "Talent is doing easily what other people find difficult." And working with the camera was very easy for me. I'm not going to tell you it's enough, but it was very easy for me. I was born with that. I had an aunt who lived out here, retired in Palm Desert, and she knew a bunch of old-time film actors. One of them, a woman named Sally O'Neil, had been a silent film star. She knew John Ford and through her, I got an introduction. John was about to do "The Thin Gray Line," about West Point. Since I had been to military school, he promised me a job as his sort of assistant/gofer and technical advisor. Then he wound up in the hospital for a cataract operation. He called me in and said "Look John, I don't know when I'm gonna get out of here. If I were you, I'd consider getting into television. But, I'm not going to help you because you have to do it yourself." So I took his advice and went here to NBC and they offered me a job as a pageboy. I went to CBS and they offered me a job as a parking lot attendant. There were guys with PhD's in that job, why not me? ABC didn't really exist as a network at that time, they just had a series of stations, but they offered me a job as a scenery construction coordinator. So I got my mustering out pay from the Air Force and went back to New York where some guys and girls I had done theater with were now working in television. And they were all very glad to see me until they found out what I wanted, which was a job. So I did the rounds, and through a stroke of luck got into see the guy at CBS who hired assistant directors. It turned out that he had been in the same Air Force outfit that I'd been in, only he'd been in during WW II. So we had a lot in common. And he looked at me, then looked at this pile of resumes and said "Why should I hire you, with your limited Air Force experience, over one of these people who've had years of experience in theater and the movies?" I was 23 years old, and you're brave at 23, and I said "Well, I won't have to unlearn any bad habits because I don't have any bad habits yet." He laughed and said "You know what, I have a feeling that you wouldn't get lost. I'll call you when I have something." So I went to this fleabag hotel over on the west side, and they didn't have any sort of message service back then, and every morning I'd buy a sandwich, then sit by the phone during CBS office hours and wait for it to ring. I started to get pretty goddamn depressed after about three weeks, but then he called. He said "I've got a temporary position for an associate director. Are you interested?" So I took it and learned on the job, and it was all about camera. I started out on the "Gary Moore Show," then "Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person," then to "You are There," which was Sidney Lumet and I became Sidney's associate director. He was great to me. I learned a lot from Sidney, the way he worked with actors and everything else, and he became my mentor. Then in 1954, he left the show and I got to direct. And that's what happened.

Tell us about what it felt like working in live TV.
I'll start out by saying this: from 1954 to 1960 when I was working in live TV, I look back on that as the highlight of my life. It was a time when this amazing group of actors, writers and directors was able to get together and do some fine work. Just look at some of the actors there: Paul Newman, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen, Eva Marie Saint. The directors: George Roy Hill, Franklin Schaffner, Arthur Penn, Bob Mulligan, Sidney Lumet...just a tremendous talent pool and we all knew each other and were all friends and really liked each other, which is completely different than it is today. And we're still all friends today. It was a combination of theater and film, because you rehearsed as a play, then had to put it on camera, the difference being that with live TV you only had one night, and with a play, if you were successful, you went on. Sidney Blackmer, who I worked with, once described live TV as "Summer stock in an iron lung." (laughs) Which was pretty apt, because the pressure was just tremendous...You were always rehearsing one show, and working on two or three other scripts simultaneously. You would finish a show on a Thursday night, then the next day on Friday, would begin a production meeting for the next one. It was a constant turnover.

The Young Stranger was your first feature in 1957. How did you find the change from TV to film?
I didn't like it. The film was based on a play that I'd done on TV, also with James MacArthur (Dan-O on "Hawaii Five-O") in the lead. I felt the crew had no interest in the quality of the movie. I didn't get along with the cameraman, who didn't want to shoot the movie the way I wanted it shot...I like the kinescope version better, honestly. So I went back to "Playhouse 90" after that and stayed another three years.

An original poster for Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

In watching "The Manchurian Candidate" again, it struck me by how contemporary it felt. At the time (1962), did you realize how innovative it was?
No. I loved the book (by Richard Condon). I loved George Axelrod's script. I had a great crew and we just went ahead and made the movie. It's funny that you should ask that question. I was in a meeting yesterday with a producer, discussing this movie that I'm going to do, and the producer said "You know, we've got to approach this like we've got a real shot at the Academy Award." And I said "Everytime I've approached something with the idea that I have a real shot at being nominated for the Academy Award or the Emmy, I haven't been," because you start to take yourself much too seriously, and that makes you much more restricted in what you do. The thing I remember most about "The Manchurian Candidate" is what a wonderful time we all had making it. And I think it shows. "Ronin" was the same way. Both films mark very good points in my life.

Frankenheimer on the set of The Train (1964).

You worked with Rod Serling both on "The Comedian" and "Seven Days in May." Tell us about him.
The second show I ever did was with Rod. It was in 1954, called "A Knife in the Dark." It was a prison drama, with Paul Newman in the lead, which he did for $300. I got $250 for directing it and Rod got $200 for writing it. That was the start of our relationship and I did seven other Serling shows. I hired him to do "Seven Days in May." We were very, very good friends. He was a terrific writer, never believed totally in himself, and never thought he could write a love scene. I did a "Playhouse 90" once where we were in really bad, bad trouble with the script. Nothing was working. And Serling had another show coming up the next week called "The Velvet Alley," which Schaffner directed and he was staying up at the Bel Air Hotel, so I went to see him. Told him what the problem was, especially with this love scene. He asked a lot of questions about the scene, about what it was about, and he'd never read the script, mind you...and in a matter of hours, the new scene was ready and it worked beautifully. Rod was a genuinely good man and he died much, much too young.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign. Frankenheimer was in charge of his publicity. The two men became close, and it was JF who drove RFK to the Ambassador Hotel the night he was assassinated.

Tell us how your association with Robert Kennedy began.
In 1960 I was probably the best-known television director around. And I was approached to do some work for John Kennedy. And I don't know...I was 30 years old. I was going through a divorce, and I just didn't want to deal with it, so I said no. Then when we were in pre-production on "The Manchurian Candidate" a couple years later, there was a great deal of concern that JFK wouldn't like it because of its subject matter. So Sinatra, who was great friends with him, flew up to Hyannis Port and told Kennedy he was doing the film, to which Kennedy replied "I love 'The Manchurian Candidate.'Who's going to play the mother?" (laughs) So Kennedy loved the movie, and then when we were getting ready to do "Seven Days in May" and wanted to shoot in the White House, I'd gotten to know Pierre Salinger. Salinger went to the President to see if it was okay, and the President said "Absolutely, if it's John Frankenheimer. I want to meet him." So I met him, went to a press conference with him. He was wonderful to me. He said "So you want to shoot this riot in front of the White House?" I said "Yes sir." He said "Fine. I'll be gone to Hyannis Port for the weekend. You just be sure you're done by 6:30 on Sunday when I get back." (laughs) Then he was killed, and I'd always felt guilty about not having done that work for him early on. So then when his brother declared his candidacy in '68, I immediately called Pierre Salinger and said "Pierre, I want to be part of this." He said "Well, the candidate is going to be over at the Sportsman's Lodge tonight at 6:00 if you want to come over and meet him." So we met, and it was all very nice. The next day, Salinger called me and said "John, the candidate has to go to Gary, Indiana tonight to do a debate with high school students and after that he has to record a speech. Would you come and do it?" So I took about one second, and I said 'Yes.' So I flew to Chicago, rented a car, and drove to Gary. I got there and it came time to do the speech. And Bobby said "I've only got about ten minutes to do this, I'm in a hurry." And I said "It's going to take more than ten minutes, senator." "Well I don't have more than ten minutes." "Then why did you send for me all the way from California? Why didn't you just get some flunky local director to put the camera on you?" He said "Let's just do it." Fine, so he did it, and his people said "What do you think?" And I said "I think it's terrible. He looked cold. He looked angry. He looked hostile. Awful." So Kennedy said "Well, thank you very much." And I said "Well guys, thanks." And I left and got a call later from Richard Goodwin (one of RFK's staff), who asked if I could come tell the senator what I just told them. So I went to see him and he said "What?!" And I said "Well Senator, I don't think that's the Robert Kennedy that people are going to want to vote for. You seemed very ill at ease and when you're ill at ease you have a tendency to withdraw." "Well how do you propose to fix it?" I said "Well Senator, I don't know if I can fix it, but I think if we sat down and took our time, and talked about it, the worst that could happen is that you wasted an hour and a half of your time and you just wind up with what you already had. The best that could happen is that we could do something really good. I think you really need help in television because people have this opinion of you as being arrogant and cold and you don't need that." So we sat and we talked and we got to know each other a little bit, and said 'Okay, let's just do it.' And we ran the tape, and I said "Just do it to me." So he did it, and it was much better. We did it again, and it was really good. And I said "That's it!" So he was very pleased and thanked me, and I headed out to my car. Then Goodwin and Ethel Kennedy came out and said "We don't know what your plans are, but he really liked you a lot and you really made him good. We have to go to Michigan. Would you consider canceling whatever it is that you're doing and coming with us?" So to make a long story very, very short, I never left him. I was there with him for 102 days.

If Bobby Kennedy were in the room with us right now, what would I feel? What would my impression be?
Well I think you'd be very impressed. I think you'd see a man who was totally dedicated to everything he believed in. He was funny. He was shy. He listened beautifully. And he got to the point (of what he was saying) extremely quickly. I think if what happened had not happened, I think he would've won the Democratic nomination. I think it would've been tight, but he would've won. I think he would've been elected President and I think a lot of the bad things that happened in this country after 1968 would not have happened.

How do you think the country would be different?
I don't think we'd have the racial problems that we have. I don't think there would be this terrible line of delineation between the poor and the rich. I think we would have had a great more deal national pride. I think we would have gotten out of Vietnam much, much sooner. All the cynicism that came out of Richard Nixon's administration would be gone. I think we lost our innocence as a country with John F. Kennedy's death. Then with Bobby's death, Martin Luther King's death and the scandal of the Nixon administration...had Bobby lived, I think this country would have gone through a healing process. And I think that we would be a United States today.

Everyone I've seen interviewed who was involved with RFK says that his death was the defining moment of their lives.
Absolutely. It was the defining moment of mine.

You were supposed to be up on the dais with him at the Ambassador, weren't you?
Yes, then at the last moment, it was decided that having a film director up on stage with him wasn't the image they wanted, so we had a friend named Paul Schrade, who was about my size and complexion, take my place. And he was one of the three people shot in the kitchen. Bobby said "As soon as I say 'On to Chicago,' get the car and have it waiting around back by the kitchen." So I got the car and pulled up and the cops started pounding on the car yelling "Move it! Move it!" Then this woman came running out of the side entrance screaming "Kennedy's been shot! Kennedy's been shot!" Then we saw the cops dragging this guy out from the side entrance, and the guy turned out to be Sirhan. My wife said "That's not Kennedy! He hasn't been shot!" The cops were pounding on the car now yelling for us to move, so I pulled away, then I flipped on the radio, when the news came over: "Senator Robert Kennedy, his brother in law Steven Smith and film director John Frankenheimer have been shot in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel." They thought Paul Schrade was me. This will show you how your mind plays tricks on you: for years I thought the driveway to the Ambassador Hotel was as long as a football field, but it's only about 150 feet long, as I found out when I went back to shoot "George Wallace" there thirty years later. But that night, as the news came over the radio, it seemed that long.

Was that the first time you'd been back since that night?
Yes. I just couldn't go back before then. And now it's in complete disrepair, just falling apart, almost symbolically.

After RFK's assassination, you took some time off.
Yeah. I managed to finish one film, "The Gypsy Moths," (1968) but I just felt like "What's the point? What does any of this really matter?" I mean, when you're a part of something like that and then all of the sudden it's taken away with just one bullet (snaps fingers). It really makes you take stock in what's important.

How did you get your faith back?
Time repairs a lot of that, really. And for me it wasn't a matter of getting it back, it was about finding a new reason to continue. And I found some material that I really was passionate about, which for me was Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" (1973).

Let's talk about some of the later films. "French Connection II" was the only sequel you've done so far. Was that difficult doing a sequel to a film when you hadn't done part I?
I wasn't prepared for how hard it was. I wanted to do the story, which (writer) Robert Dillon and I had made up. I had lived in France, so it seemed a logical match. Then when I actually sat down and looked at the original again, I was just awed time and again with how great it was and what a terrific film William Friedkin had made. So I realized that I had to keep that distinctive style, and that was hard, very hard.

Frankenheimer directing Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

You did five films with Burt Lancaster. Tell us about him.
He was very professional. He set a terrific example for everyone else with his work ethic, which is probably the finest I've ever seen, his and Gary Sinise's. He was very nice to the crew and the other actors. He was a great collaborator because he knew a lot about script. And a lot about producing. We became very good friends. I have nothing but respect for him...He was very well-read, entirely self-educated. He taught me an awful lot. I learned more about stunt work from him, because he was a terrific stunt man. Burt really knew more about how to make a movie than anyone I ever met. What I learned from Burt was to have the courage to take my time. To really rehearse the scene, to examine it.

How much do you generally rehearse?
As much as I can. During "George Wallace" we rehearsed 2 1/2 weeks. During "Ronin" because we were so rushed to get going, not as much before shooting, but a lot during the production itself. I also like to shoot a lot of set-ups. On "George Wallace" for example, we shot 20 to 1. I like to work at a fast pace and I expect the people around me to do the same...It's interesting, because I went back and looked at some of my television work, and I found it a lot more interesting than a lot of my film work. And I thought "Why is this?" I mean, "Days of Wine and Roses," for example, is really interesting visually. Then I realized of every actor I had three different sized close-ups. Whereas in movies I'd been saying "Okay, let's shoot a close-up." And we'd do a lot of takes of that close-up, but it was always the same bloody shot. And it wasn't until I did "The Burning Season" that I deliberately did three sizes of close-ups on every shot. So when you edit, it becomes very interesting, because you can use whichever one you want. When you look at "Ronin," it's filled with different sized close-ups.

Frankenheimer with his 1995 Best Director Emmy for Against The Wall (1994).

Do you do a lot of takes?
No. We rehearse a lot, but don't do a lot of takes. A lot of times I like the first take best. Not always, but often, which is another reason to rehearse as much as you can. That's one reason Sinatra and I were perfect together.

Frankenheimer directing Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

Tell us about Frank.
Well I was terrified of him. He had this reputation that he chewed up directors for breakfast, that he'd only do one take, that he was always late, things like that. And I said to my partner George Axelrod "I don't know if I want to do a picture with Sinatra." "Well then dear boy, we'll buy you out. United Artists has put up a lot of money to make a picture with Sinatra, much more so than with you. If you've got a problem with Mr. Sinatra, I suggest you call him up and discuss it with him." So I did. I went up to see him at his house on Coldwater Canyon, and he couldn't have been nicer. I mean this was a guy who could turn on the charm like no other. So I was honest with him about why I was there. That there was no way I could work with him only doing one take, that sometimes it took longer, and so on. And I finished it by saying "I say these things to you because I'd rather get it out now, rather than waiting until we start shooting. I also realize that what I'm saying could mean my leaving the picture, because if it becomes a choice between you and me, United Artists is going to choose you." So he said he really appreciated my honesty and said "Look, I'm an insomniac. I can't get to sleep before 5 am on any given night. If you can arrange it so we can start shooting at 12:00 noon, I promise you I'll be there on time each and every day." I said "You got it." And he was. Regarding the "first take" issue he said, "I'm an entertainer, not an actor. I'm better on the first take. It's very hard for me to do it again. Is there any way you could simplify the camera shots?" I said "If that's what you want, you might as well hire some hack, because part of what I bring to the party is to make the film visually interesting. But why don't we do this. We'll rehearse really thoroughly, and that'll make it more likely that we'll do fewer takes, but that means you'll have to come in and rehearse every day, with a full crew and cameras and everything." He said "Okay," and that's what we did. The first scene we shot, was the scene where Doug Henderson comes to visit him after he's had this nervous breakdown. And we rehearsed it, and rehearsed it and everyone was very nervous and finally we did the take, and I said "Cut." And Sinatra turned to me and I said "That was it. Print it!" And this big smile came over is face and he said "This is going to be okay!" And it was, it was more than okay. I'll never forget that smile "Are you sure you don't wanna do it again?" (laughs)

Frankenheimer lines up a shot on the set of The Challenge (1982).

Any advice for first-time directors?
Yeah. Joe Sargent and I were talking about that. He said, "You know when I first started out I almost set myself up for failure, because I waited so long to do my preparation. I kept putting it off, and putting it off. Then by the time I did my third picture I really dragged myself into it and started to prepare." So I think you really have to prepare thoroughly. Then I think you have to surround yourself with the best people you can surround yourself with. Not necessarily the best people who are qualified, but the people you feel the most comfortable with. And make sure to the best of your ability that the script is in the best bloody shape it can be in. If you have any questions about the script, ask the writer. Try and have a couple read-throughs before production begins. Then try to make sure you're not trying to do a schedule that' s too short, because once you fall behind, the pressure really starts to build and you start to worry about all the wrong things. You have to remember that when people see the movie, they have no idea if you were ahead or behind schedule. They don't care! The other thing I would tell you is what Henry Hathaway told me: "The movie business is a business of compromises. If you make one compromise a day on a 25 day shoot, you're gonna have a movie with 25 compromises." And that's the best advice I ever got: don't compromise.

Frankenheimer with actor Michael Gambon, portraying President Lyndon Johnson, in JF's final film, Path to War (2002).

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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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