All language subtitles for Film Geek (2023)_en

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[upbeat music]

- [Richard] This is
a story about a boy,

his dad, and the movies.

This is the story of
my cinema-fueled youth

in New York City.

My name is Richard Shepard.

I grew up in the
1970s and early '80s.

Back then, the city streets
were dirty and tough.

The subway's dangerous.

It was a time of crime and
grime and psycho killers

and Reggie Jackson.

And the birth of punk
and the birth of hip hop.

It was a golden time.

New York was my home,

and even though the city
could be an intimidating

and steaming cesspool
of anger and edge,

it was all I knew and
I felt like I owned it.

And movies were a large
part of that ownership.

Maybe the biggest part.

I was surrounded by film.

I surrendered to it.

I went to the movies,
made Super 8 movies,

collected movie posters and
soundtracks, read movie books,

became obsessed by movie
reviews and movie advertisements

and movie trailers.

I loved movie theaters
and the smell of popcorn

and the smell of
mildew and Lysol

because many of those
theaters were old and fading

and full of weird New Yorkers
getting lost in the dark.

I escaped into the movies.

They became a lifeline to me,

a punk rock cinematic mosh
pit out of the ordinary.

The egomaniacal film
director floating down

from the sky in "The Stuntman."

The Playboy bunnies
escaping the rowdy soldiers

in "Apocalypse Now."

The sexy girl rollerskating

through the giant
loft in "Diva."

The baby that was really a doll,

that was really a bomb
in "Marathon Man."

I remember it all.

It's strange.

So many memories of my
youth have started to fade,

but when it comes to the
films I saw back then,

my memory is agile, fresh.

And it's not just
the famous movies,

it's all the films
I went to then.

The horror films,
the foreign films,

the second-rate dramas,
and exploitation pictures.

How is that?

Why do the films stick
when so much else fades?

This was before streaming,
before cable, before Blu-Ray.

There was regular
commercial TV, of course.

And VHS and Betamax
if you were fancy,

but if you really
wanted to see a movie,

you went to the theater,
you went at an appointed hour,

you went with people who
meant something to you.

You sat in the dark

and let the stories take
you where they might.

And because of that, each
outing to a movie was an event,

something you remembered.

Even the shitty movies, even
"Cujo," even "Death Wish II,"

even "Friday the 13th
Part III," in 3D,

which I saw at the Loew's
Orpheum on East 86th Street,

and when one of the
characters stretched her arms

straight to the 3D camera,

offering another
character a joint,

my entire audience reached
out their hands to get a toke.

This is a story of the
movies in my youth,

the years before I
went off to college,

of the films I saw

and the experiences
I had watching them.

It's also a story of a
movie-crazed New York City,

and it's also a story
about my father,

a loving, but often
mysterious man

who had no discernible job,

went by three or
four different names,

had an incredible connection

and fascination with
the city's underbelly

and whose love of movies helped
foster my own cinematic DNA.

Like the story structure of
many of the movies my dad

and I saw when I was a kid,

let me start at the ending.

Not the ending ending,
but close enough.

Obviously, the scene takes
place at a movie theater,

the Cinema Studios 1
on the Upper West Side.

It's my senior
year in high school

and the film playing
there is "Winter Kills,"

starring Jeff Bridges
and John Huston.

My father and I hadn't
heard much about it

other than it was star studded.

It was supposed to be good,

and it was a conspiracy
movie, which sounded fun.

- A conspiracy.

- A conspiracy?

- [Richard] By this
point in high school,

I rarely went to the
movies with my parents.

I had friends and girlfriends

and it just wasn't something
we did that often anymore.

But my dad was excited
about this film

and even though I probably
would've preferred to see it

with my buddies, I
went with him instead.

I could tell that it
meant something to him

to have this experience
with me back at the movies

where we had spent so much
time together as I grew up.

Little did we know what
was in store for us.

"Winter Kills" was
truly a bonkers film.

Funny, surreal, and deep.

It blew my 17-year-old
movie-addled brain

splat against the back
wall of the theater.

It was a brilliant take on
the Kennedy assassination.

It was also an uncommonly
compelling love story

and the darkest family saga
you could fucking imagine.

In the finale, John
Huston desperately clings

onto a giant American flag

50 floors above a
Manhattan street.

I mean, what's not to love?

And love it, I did.

I was hooked on the film.

I love the twisty complex
story, the way it looked.

The beauty of Belinda
Bauer as a mysterious woman

who may or may not be fucking
with Jeff Bridges' heart.

Mostly I love the
surreal touches,

how every time a smiling
lady on a bicycle rode by,

something very bad happened.

[melancholic music]

[bomb exploding loudly]

The movie was thrilling
and hysterical

and a real cinematic high

because the director danced
on a razor blade of tones

and wildly pulled it off.

I quickly needed to know
everything about this filmmaker.

I found out his name
was William Richert.

I learned that he rented a house
in Malibu on the same block

as Jeff Bridges so he could
get to know him as a neighbor,

and then he sprung
his script on him.

He told John Huston
Elizabeth Taylor was attached

before she was and
told Elizabeth Taylor

that John Huston was
attached before he was,

and he somehow got both of
them to be in the movie.

It had taken Richert years
to get this movie made.

When "Winter Kills"
was finally released,

the film was dumped.

And soon after, the producer
got murdered by the mob.

Richert was now bankrolling
a re-release himself.

The story of the life of the
movie was almost as intriguing

as the movie, and the movie
was fucking intriguing.

I was jacked up
by "Winter Kills."

Walking home with my father
that cold Saturday in January,

I couldn't stop
talking about it.

I was full of questions
and critiques and insights.

I wanted to talk about
the batshit crazy script,

the indelible score, whether
Belinda Bauer would marry me.

I was in a film fanatic frenzy.

[light music]

My father lit up a cigar and
smiled at me on the street.

He was smiling because
he finally understood me.

He finally understood

why I was failing
nearly all my classes,

why I was constantly cutting
school to go to the movies,

why my college admissions
counselor worried

I wouldn't get into any school.

He finally understood
why I could just

as easily go nuts
over horrible films

like "Forced Vengeance"
or "Faces of Death,"

as I could over great
ones like "Winter Kills."

I wasn't just a movie
lover like he was.

I was a true movie geek.

Good, bad or indifferent,

if it was projected against
a screen, I devoured it.

My father understood
that his passion

for great movies transferred
to me, had been altered,

genetically mutated, so
that I connected deeply

to all movies, everything
to do with movies.

I had become the
Frankenstein monster

to my father's Dr. Frankenstein.

[dramatic music]

How did it happen?

In what lab was this
movie monster created?

[dramatic music]

[King Kong growling]

[Fay Wray screaming]

"King Kong" was the first
film I remember seeing.

I was five or six
and I was captivated,

lost completely in that
exotic black-and-white world.

The whole thing,
the tattered map,

the strange island, the
giant ape, the dinosaurs,

this woman's scared by the
beast, but also taken with him.

"Why did they ship this
ape from the island?"

I asked my father.

"Why did they torture him?

Why did they kill him?"

[dramatic music]

I saw it at a theater
that I only went to once,

somewhere on the east
side of Manhattan.

I remember they
served hamburgers

and soda when you
watched the film.

I remember loving
being there with my dad

and I remember my father
and I went for hot chocolate

at Rumpelmayer's on Central
Park South after the film.

And I remember it
as a perfect day.

The 1933 "King Kong" captured
my imagination in a way

that it still does to this day.

I watched the film
religiously as a child

whenever it was on TV.

I even wrote an article
about it when I was nine,

about seeing the
movie so many times.

I tried to get it
published in a magazine.

I can only imagine the
editor's face seeing

this handwritten screed of
a young little film nerd.

What could he have
thought reading it?

What did I say?

That article is missing, but
my memories of the film remain.

New York City was
where Kong was taken

and it was where I lived and
it made a huge impression.

I thought for sure
that what happened in

that movie happened
in real life.

Later in 1976, they remade
"King Kong" with Jeff Bridges

and Jessica Lange.

The World Trade Center replaced
the Empire State Building.

I was 11 and saw it
with my dad again.

I thought I was good, but I
was adamant that it wasn't

as good as the original,

adamant as only an
11-year-old could be.

My father truly loved movies.

And I loved my dad,
so it's not strange

that I followed his heart

towards the flickering
images in the darkness.

He was a man of
big ego and style.

My dad was a loving man,

but mysterious too with
various names and various jobs,

many of them illegal.

He was a small time
loan shark, a gambler,

an antiques trader who was
always looking for an edge.

Stained envelopes with money
were slipped under our door

when I was growing up.

Phone calls from strange
men asking for Jack,

even though my dad's name was
Bob, were regular occurrences.

My dad scrambled by,
survived, provided.

My parents and I lived
a nice middle class life

though I never knew what
really went into it.

I grew up in a rent-
controlled apartment.

My mom and dad rarely ate out,

but we would go
away for the summers

and I never wanted for anything.

It was a life of privilege,

even if that privilege
I now know was flimsy,

built on dreams and cons.

[light music]

My father collected
antique toys and old books,

mostly on art or boxing or
the history of the movies,

but most of all my
dad was an artist,

a sculptor, a collagist.

He lived an artist's life

though he never sold
any of his work.

He was a true individual,
a true New Yorker,

who slept till noon most
days, ate onions like apples,

read voraciously,
under tipped famously,

could be rough and rude,
but warm and charming too.

He told me that
when he was a boy,

the movies were an escape
from his tough father.

He'd sneak off with
his cousin, Leonard,

to the Museum of Modern Art

and watch old films
that screened there.

My dad would tell me
about those films,

describe his favorites.

Later as an adult,

I put my dad in a few
of my small indie films.

He wasn't an actor,
but he was a natural.

He was so happy seeing

how the process of a
movie actually went,

how the art form he
loved was crafted.

I had him play a
bartender in both films,

even though my dad rarely drank

and he didn't really
frequent bars.

It just seemed right for him.

Bars were full of characters

and my father certainly was one.

When he died of
cancer at age 73,

I dedicated the film I was
directing, the black comedy,

"The Matador," with
Pierce Brosnan, to him.

The end card said, "For
my dad, who loved movies."

The second movie that
I remember seeing was

at a school friend's
birthday party.

It was in a private
screening room in a midtown

Manhattan office building.

The film was "Willy Wonka,"

and it filled my
6-year-old heart with joy.

The colors, the
songs, the kids in it,

the candy, the winning ticket.

[kids shrieking]

- Little surprises
around every corner,

but nothing dangerous.

- [Richard] I remember
being delighted by Willy.

He was kind and then
mean and then kind again.

That was important to me.

Did I yet know that it was
an actor playing that part,

that Willy Wonka
wasn't a real man,

that it was in fact Gene Wilder,

a person I would go on to
adore in "The Producers"

and "Blazing Saddles,"

and "The Adventure of Sherlock
Holmes' Smarter Brother,"

a movie that made me laugh
so hard I couldn't breathe?

Gene Wilder was such
a brilliant performer.

He had the warmest eyes.

It seemed like my parents

and I would go to the
movies all the time.

It was just what
we did as a family.

Cartoons, musicals.

One of my favorites was "The
Adventures of Robin Hood,"

that I first saw at
a revival theater

on the Upper West side
near where I lived.

My mother had always joked

that my father purposely
cultivated an Errol Flynn vibe.

I didn't know what that meant
until they took me to see it.

Watching Errol Flynn in that
film was like looking at my dad

up on the screen,

only he was sword fighting
and saving Maid Marian

and hanging with his
friends in Sherwood Forest.

I fell in love with the movie,

with the idea of my
father as the hero.

Later, it was on TV,

and while we only had a black-
and-white Zenith television,

in my mind, I
always saw the film

and the beautiful color I
watched it in originally.

The Sheriff of Nottingham
was played by Basil Rathbone,

such a great name, who
had played Sherlock Holmes

and I'd see those
films on TV too.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles,"

"Terror by Night."

I borrowed a pipe of my father's
and a hat from my mother

and played Sherlock Holmes
in my bedroom mirror.

I did a lot of shows
in that mirror.

My first plays, my first
stories, my first movies,

playing all the parts
using wigs and disguises.

I'd watch Abbott and Costello
movies on Sunday morning TV.

I'd watch the Marx Brothers
and "The Thief of Baghdad,"

and "Gunga Din," and
"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,"

and "The Wizard of Oz."

I still remember
being six or seven

and going upstairs to my
friend Amy Seplin's apartment

on the 11th floor to rewatch
"The Wizard of Oz" with her

and getting so scared
by the flying monkeys

and the Wicked Witch that
I ran back to my parents.

My mother was waiting
for me on the fifth floor

with the front door opened.

My mom knew that the
only way I could watch

those scary scenes was with
her protectively by my side.

My mother, Arpy, that's
A-R-P-Y, it's Armenian,

I'm half-Armenian,

went to the Fashion
Institute of Technology,

and worked for a small design
house before I was born.

She quit that job to raise
me though she still did

the most beautiful fashion
sketches when I was growing up.

Clearly her heart was
still in that world,

even if her dream
had been deferred.

"Vogue" magazine and
"Women's Wear Daily" used

to be delivered
to our apartment,

and my mother was always
stylish and beautiful,

and I still remember the
various silk scarves she'd wear.

She was bright and kind and
adored me and my father.

My mom's friend, Hannah,

said that my mom
would've died a virgin

if she hadn't met my dad.

I'm not sure about that,
but she loved him enormously

and put up with

and even embraced his
various eccentricities.

He opened a world for her

that she clearly
wanted to explore.

Wake up at 4AM so we
could drive two hours

and be the first people at
some strange flea market

my father wanted to
go to in New Jersey.

No problem.

Wait in the car
when my father broke

into some abandoned building
in the Bronx to look

for twisted scrap metal
for his sculptures.

Yep, we did that too.

If my mother had a
problem with any of it,

I certainly didn't know.

This was the life they
made for each other.

She was the one who took
me to ice skating lessons

and birthday parties in school.

She was the one waiting for me

when I came home terrified
from watching "Wizard of Oz."

He was the one who,
most cinematically,

while giving my mother driving
lessons one Sunday afternoon,

saw a purse snatching
in progress,

yelled at my mom
to step on the gas.

[car roaring]

And chased the
muggers two blocks.

[dramatic music]

Until my dad, this Upper West
Side Popeye Doyle wannabe,

stopped them by using his black
eyeglass case as a mock gun.

[tires screeching]

- [Actor] Hold it!

- [Richard] This happened.

I was in the backseat
of the car when it did.

Terrified and thrilled
at the same time

as the muggers
dropped the purse,

somehow believing that my dad's
eyeglass case was a weapon

and that all undercover
police cars are supposed

to have a terrified 10-year-old
kid in the backseat.

It should be noted that
my mother kept her calm

behind the wheel
the whole chase,

like Roy Scheider's character
in "The French Connection."

She was a partner
you wanted to have.

[screaming]

There are three significant

moments at the movies

that scared the shit

out of me in my youth.

The first one happened
when I was around seven.

My parents and I were staying

at the Mohonk
Mountain House Hotel,

which would remind me of
the hotel in "The Shining,"

and they were showing a movie

in their grand ballroom
one night and we all went.

It was the 1964 film, "Wait
Until Dark," with Audrey Hepburn

as a blind woman being
terrorized by criminals.

I remember nothing about that
movie except for one moment

where Audrey Hepburn comes
into her dark apartment.

[suspenseful music]
[Audrey Hepburn screams]

The fear I felt,
the scream I gave,

the feeling in the pit
of my stomach, the tears.

To say that I was
scared shitless would be

an understatement.

I was scarred,
permanently altered.

Yet it did not deter me.

If my parents wanted to
show me a movie, any movie,

I would go.

No complaints.

My father had many movie books

and we'd sit in the living room,

the smell of his sweat and
cigar smoke filling my lungs,

and flip through them,

going deep after an old
film we'd have seen.

He'd show me pictures of other
movies with the same actors,

explain the plots of films
made by the same director.

I became obsessed by Fritz Lang

before I saw a frame
of "Metropolis."

I knew almost every
Hitchcock cameo

and could name almost every
single one of his films.

I might've been the
only little kid who knew

who Edward Everett Horton
was and my obsession

with that wonderful 1930
supporting performer

started a lifelong love
of character actors.

My father curated everything.

It was through
him that I learned

to find pleasure in old
black-and-white movies,

in Edward G. Robinson
and Barbara Stanwyck,

and Sydney Greenstreet,

in films that were famous and
films that were lost in time.

And I was the perfect student,

asking question after question,

hanging on my
father's every word,

his every piece of film lore,

and it wasn't only older
movies that I was seeing.

As I grew up, my parents started
taking me to new releases.

"Murder on the Orient
Express, "Paper Moon."

- Crazy!

- [Richard] "The Sting."

"Young Frankenstein."

[Frankenstein monster grunting]

- Let me out, let
me out of here.

Get me the hell out of here.

- [Richard] But only
after my father took me

to see the 1935 James Whale
film, "Bride of Frankenstein,"

downtown at the
Theatre 80 St. Marks.

He wanted me ready to get all
the jokes in Mel Brooks' film.

The Theatre 80 was soon

to become my favorite
revival theater in the city.

It was a small cinema where
the projector was actually

behind the screen

and the Art Deco concession
bar was a thing of beauty.

For years, I would always get
an extra sense of excitement

if I knew we were going
to see a movie there.

It was downtown, slightly
scary and foreign to me,

as if we were transported
to another Manhattan.

At nine, I remember
going with my mom and dad

to the ornate and majestic
Ziegfeld Theatre in Midtown

to see the "Towering Inferno."

Two studios had competing
fire in big building movies

based on two different books,

and they decided to
combine the projects

into one mega
all-star multi studio.

Paul Newman and OJ Simpson

and Fred Astaire in
the same movie movie.

I was too young to notice
the cardboard acting.

Too young to know
that Paul Newman

and Steve McQueen
fought over billing,

and contractually had to have
an equal number of lines.

I just thought it was thrilling.

I was so taken with it that I
actually read one of the books

that was based on and at
that point in my life,

I barely read anything.

It was the beginning of my
seeking books or articles

or albums or posters
of the movies I saw.

If I loved it, I wanted more.

"Earthquake" was another
all-star disaster movie,

and it was advertised
as being in Sensurround,

which was supposed to make
you feel like you were really

in an earthquake.

That was enough for me
to drag my father to it.

I remember getting to
the movie theater early

and checking under the seats.

I was sure that
each chair was wired

to shake like a 7.0 big one.

Unfortunately, that
wasn't the case.

Sensurround was just

low frequency noises
on the soundtrack.

Still, the movie
exceeded my expectations.

I had never been to Los Angeles,

but I loved seeing it destroyed.

At the end of the
film, my father told me

that the drunk at
the bar in the movie,

who was so wasted that he
wasn't phased by the earthquake,

was a cameo by an actor
named Walter Matthau.

I didn't know who that was,

but I was about to find out.

Going to "The Bad News Bears"
with my childhood friend,

Mark Gregory Peters,

was the first movie
I can remember seeing

without my parents.

I had just turned 11.

And as Mark and I headed to
the Paramount Movie Theatre,

I held onto my
ticket money tightly.

This was New York City in 1976.

The streets were dangerous

and we all weren't
Charles Bronson.

People got mugged
on a regular basis.

I did at least.

"The Bad News Bears" seemed
like it was made just for us.

It made us laugh and
was outrageous and rude,

and we were so happy we didn't
see it with our parents.

[motorbike crashing]

The swearing.

- Hey, Yankees!

You can take your apology
out of your trophy

and shove it
straight up your ass!

- [Richard] The sheer
off coloredness of it.

- [Coach Morris] Timmy Lopez.

- Lupus.
- Lupus.

- 'Cause that booger-eating
spaz makes me wanna puke.

- [Richard] Can you imagine
a studio movie made today

where a character
is named Lupus?

- Hey, my uniform's too small.

- Ah, shut up.

- [Richard] I love
Walter Matthau in it.

His grumpiness with just
a hint of sweetness.

I thought he was so funny.

- Still here.

- [Richard] Soon after I
would see Matthau on TV

in the movie, "The
Taking of Pelham 123."

They showed that
film constantly.

It felt like it was
on every Saturday,

and that was okay with
me because I loved it.

I still do.

It was such a tense
New York City thriller,

gritty and grimy.

If you wanna know what living

in the city in the mid-'70s
was like, this movie is it.

- Hey!

- Now you listen to me,
you dumb son of a bitch.

- [Richard] Each part of the
plot works like clockwork

with a funny and wise Matthau

and a perfectly
menacing Robert Shaw,

who I remembered
from "The Sting,"

and David Shire's intense
music and the ending.

I still think it might be
the best movie ending ever.

A train and its passengers
has been hijacked for ransom.

One of the criminals
has a terrible cold,

and every time he
sneezes over the radio

to the transit cop
played by Matthau,

Matthau says.

- Gesundheit.

[man sneezes]

Gesundheit.

- [Richard] At the end,

after almost all the
criminals are caught or dead,

Matthau and another
cop, Jerry Stiller,

are looking for disgruntled
ex-subway employees

who they suspect might be
the last missing criminal.

They come to Martin
Balsam's shitty apartment.

He's got a share of the
ransom money on the bed

and thinks he's gotten
away with the crime.

There's a knock at the door.

He nervously hides
the money in the stove

and lets the cops in.

Things are tense.

- Where were you, say,
afternoon, Mr. Longman?

- Right here.

- [Richard] But they
eventually leave.

As the door is closing,

a relieved Balsam
suddenly sneezes.

[man sneezes]
- Gesundheit.

[door thuds]

[door creaks]

[upbeat music]

- [Richard] Very few movie
endings are that satisfying.

Maybe the original
"Planet of the Apes,"

maybe "The Third Man,"
maybe "The Godfather."

Maybe.

[upbeat music]

It was about this time
that I started noticing

that my father wasn't
quite like everyone else's.

He didn't seem to care
much about rules or decorum

or even laws.

One day, my mother
couldn't get a reservation

for their friends and us
to a popular restaurant,

so my father called

and pretended to be Henry
Kissinger's assistant,

calling from the White House

and said that Dr.
Kissinger's important guests

from overseas needed
to get a table,

and like Peter Sellers's
in "Dr. Strangelove."

- Mr. President.

- [Richard] My father then
spoke in a thick German accent

at the best table in the place
for the rest of the evening.

Another day, he came home

with a giant 1940s
Coca-Cola advertising sign

that he collected in
the middle of the night

from the side of
an old building.

The fact that the building was

a working New Jersey
diner was never discussed.

Many of the old movies my father

and I watched together were

about lovable
rogues and rascals.

It all seemed so normal
to me, almost familiar,

but weren't parents
supposed to be different?

Weren't they supposed to follow
rules, decorum, and laws?

My dad didn't carry
a gun like Bogart,

but I wouldn't have been
surprised if he had.

Was I embarrassed
by any of this?

Honestly, no.

That would change, but
at this point in my life,

I was too in love with
my father to care.

He was different, sure,

but in my eyes, he
could do no wrong.

Mark Gregory's parents,
Adrienne and Tony Peters,

had a small vacation cottage
in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania,

and during the summers,

I would sometimes go
up there with them.

One of my favorite
parts of going was

that there was a drive-in nearby

that showed
exploitation pictures,

and we could see the screen
from his dad's convertible

when we would go into
town to get ice cream.

It seemed like we'd always
pass at the perfect moment,

a woman's prison battle,
a brutal decapitation.

[glass shattering]

A fist flying ninja fight.

Needless to say,
we wanted ice cream

every night of every
weekend we were there.

Soon after the drive-in
started showing porno films,

which I guess is
something that happened

in the '70s in America.

Anyway, one night
as we were going

to get our chocolate
chip mint ice cream cones,

we passed the theater and there,
on the big outdoor screen,

I saw my first blowjob.

It was only for like five
seconds, 120 frames of scratchy,

blurred erection and lips,
but it seared into my body

and soul like a dirty
cinematic tattoo.

Obviously, Mark's
parents were not pleased,

and the ice cream
trips ended soon after.

A few years later, I
was at summer camp.

It was a baseball archery
swimming sort of day camp,

bug juice and tether ball,

but my favorite part
was whenever it rained,

they would pull out this creaky
old 16-millimeter projector,

pack us into this damp,
rickety wood building,

and show us a movie,

or at least as much of
a movie as was necessary

to weather the rainstorm.

They had a few stock films.

"The Sound of Music"
always bored me,

but sometimes if it was
gonna be days of rain,

they'd rent a 16-millimeter
print of a recent film.

One wet afternoon,

they decided to show us the
action movie, "Breakout,"

starring Charles
Bronson, Robert Duvall,

and Bronson's
wife, Jill Ireland,

who I recognized from an
episode of "Star Trek,"

a show which I
was obsessed with.

Here I am as Mr.
Spock for Halloween.

The braces are a nice touch.

I wish I could go back in time

and try to understand the
mindset of the camp director

who thought that showing a
bunch of boys age 8 to 13,

a brutal prison escape
movie was a good idea.

Reel after reel,

we saw scenes of excessive
violence and tawdry melodrama.

It was fantastic, like
some brutally exploitive,

sweaty gift from the movie gods.

[plane roaring]

Finally, in a sequence
where a hooker undresses

and we see her naked rear end,

the camp counselors
came to their senses

and the projector was abruptly
and rudely turned off.

[projector stops whirring]

We sat in darkness.

The only noise being the
sound of the rain pouring down

on the roof outside

and the disappointed sighs
of every kid in the place.

Was "Breakout" a good movie?

Did it contribute to
my cinematic education?

I don't know, but to remember
a film 40 plus years on,

to revere it is something.

It has to be something.

[man screaming]
[suspenseful music]

Soon after my summer
of "Breakout,"

I went with my parents

to the Tower East
Theatre on 71st Street

and Third Avenue to see a film

on the opposite end of
the cinematic spectrum,

one of the greatest movies ever,

Alan Pakula's "All
The President's Men,"

about the true story of
Woodward and Bernstein,

and the Nixon Watergate scandal.

I had never seen a like
that with that intensity.

- [Dahlberg] I know I
shouldn't be telling you this.

I gave it to Mr. Stans.

- I beg your pardon?

- [Dahlberg] I gave it to Stans.

- Maurice Stans?

The head of finance for Nixon?

- [Dahlberg] Yes, in Washington.

- [Richard] I didn't
understand everything

or maybe barely anything,

but I understood enough.

I got that it was
good, that it was deep,

that it was about something.

At dinner at a restaurant after,

I sat and listened to how
adults actually talked

about movies. Passionate,
intelligent film lovers,

arguing, cajoling, going deep.

Occasionally, I
would ask a question,

but mostly I just listened.

Later, I would re-watch the film

and get lost in the details.

The brilliant
acting and writing,

the eerie wide shots,
the scary conspiracy,

in the bright light of day

and the dark shadows of parking
garages full of secrets.

If asked, I usually say
that "The Godfather II" is

the greatest American
movie ever made,

but "All The President's
Men" is right up there.

I knew it even then.

Soon after, I saw "Rocky"

at the Loew's 86th
Street movie theater,

which was across the
park from where I lived.

What a movie going experience.

Hard to imagine it now where
we watch movies on our couch,

but there was an entire
packed audience filled

with mostly adults
cheering at the screen,

cheering at every punch.

My parents were cheering.

To this day,

I think it's one of the
most perfect screenplays

ever filmed.

Written quickly, legend
has it, in three days

by Sylvester Stallone,

who was struggling
mightily at the time,

appearing in porn
movies to pay the rent.

One of those X-rated
films was released

as "The Italian Stallion"
after Rocky became a hit.

- I've been hired by
Stallion Releasing Company

to supervise the editing
of this new X-rated film,

"The Italian Stallion,"

with Sylvester Stallone in
the starring role as Stud.

- [Richard] Stallone
turned down big money

to sell his script for "Rocky,"

so he could star in
the film himself.

He knew it was his shot.

The movie was made down
and dirty in 20 days

by the director
John G. Avildsen,

who happened to live
in the same building

where I eventually lost my
virginity on East 89th Street,

a useless fact stuck in
my head for four decades.

With "Rocky," Avildsen and
Stallone created something

that was emotional
and intricate,

thrilling and uplifting.

The training scenes were
great, gritty, and tough,

but I also connected to the
smaller quieter moments,

the awkward date with Talia
Shire at the ice skating rink,

the sad, desperate moment

where Burgess
Meredith's Mickey begs

to be brought back
into the fold.

- I got all this knowledge.

I got it up here, now I
want to give it to you.

I want to give you
this knowledge.

I want to take care of you.

I wanna make sure
that all this shit

that happened to me
doesn't happen to you.

- [Richard] I loved the
movie and I love my father

because he loved
boxing and boxing films

and it meant everything
that he connected

to the film as much as I did.

It was amazing that
they ended the film

with "Rocky" losing the fight.
- [Talia Shire] Rocky!

- [Richard] When the 1980s came,

Rocky couldn't
lose a fight again,

but 1976 was a different time.

- Rocky!

- Adrian!
- Rocky!

I love you!

- I love you.

[upbeat music]

- [Richard] He could
lose, but go the distance,

which was a different,

more important kind of winning.

That landed with me.

- "Rocky."

- [Richard] When "Rocky"
won best picture,

I cheered at the TV.

I was ecstatic.

It was as if I
had won the Oscar.

I barely noticed

that "Rocky" had beaten
"All The President's Men."

[door thuds]

[dramatic music]

In May of 1977, I saw "Star
Wars" for the first time.

Like many kids of that era,

that two hours changed my life.

I remember it perfectly.

I could tell you where I
was sitting in the theater,

second to last row
because it was packed

and we got there too
late for better seats.

Like seeing "Blue Velvet" for
the first time a decade later

or "Breaking the Waves"
a decade after that,

or "There Will Be Blood"
a decade after that.

I left the theater transformed.

My previous cinematic worldview,
shredded and left for dead.

- No!

- [Richard] I was jacked up and
messed up and invigorated

deeply erotically
passionately in love with

that movie, with all movies.

My dreams of playing third base

for the New York Mets
were put on hold.

My attention shifted.

I would make movies.
I would tell stories.

[dramatic music]

For my sixth grade
graduation, I asked my parents

for a Super 8
camera as a present.

This was a game
changer, a life changer.

With my Super 8
camera and projector

and a million film
ideas up my sleeve,

I was chomping at the bit to
start making my own movies.

First, of course,

I obviously needed my own
film production company.

Couldn't do it without a
film production company.

I named it Guiar Pelicula
Motion Picture Company,

which I thought was
Spanish for Shepard Movies,

but it wasn't.

Also Shepard Movies Motion
Picture Company wasn't

exactly the cleverest
of production names.

My Aunt Hannah got me
some company T-shirts

as a graduation gift

and Mark Gregory's
dad made me a mug

that put my name in the company
of some great directors.

I immediately started making
little films, action pictures,

mysteries, comedies, using
my friends as actors,

my toy chest as a
prop department.

I tried animation.

I tried disaster films.

Here you can see New York
gets submerged in a flood.

While making "A Test
to Fail," a mafia movie,

I had my friend Peter
Schwartz strangle the bad guy,

played with great menace
by my father, to death.

[cheerful music]

Later, his body was
thrown out the window.

That was actually my
favorite stuffed animal

and it accidentally landed
on the awning of my building

where we had to bribe
our super, Mr. Martinez,

to retrieve it.

For a war film, I made with
my friend, Simon Stark,

we took turns operating
the camera and acting.

I played a Nazi guard and he
played an escaped prisoner.

I'm still not sure
what his neighbors

in the Jewish enclave
of Scarsdale, New York,

thought of the two of us running

around with fake
blood and fake guns.

I do know we were
extremely lucky

that the giant exploding
swastika fire we set,

with lighter fluid
in his backyard

for our incredible finale

where the Nazi dies, didn't
burn the entire street down.

The fact was I was hooked.

Christmas couldn't
come fast enough

so I could get a film
splicer and editing system.

- [Paul Stewart] Well, Charles?

- [Richard] My birthday
brought a sound Super 8 camera.

- Merry Christmas.

- [Richard] It was all
I was thinking about.

- Rosebud.

- [Richard] Of course,
my grades suffered.

There were tutors, panic.

I had to switch schools.

- But I was going
into Tosche Station

to pick up some
power converters.

- You can waste time
with your friends

when your chores are done.

Now come on, get to it.

- [Richard] My mother
worried about me,

but my dad seemed to understand.

If his own father had tried to
quash his creative instincts,

my dad made sure to encourage
mine, at least up to a point,

and that point was his wallet.

All my movie making
ambitions were expensive

and my parents were
quickly losing interest

in being my personal
film financier,

so I resorted to other
methods to get my movies made,

subterfuge and crime.

When one day,

a roll of my Super 8 film
got developed incorrectly,

they gave me a free roll
of film to make up for it.

Using this knowledge

and blaming the lack of
receipt on my parents,

I went from camera store

to camera store throughout
the city lying about

how they up fucked my movie
when they developed it,

and getting free rolls
of film in return.

Later in high school, I
got the kids in my class

to bake cookies and brownies

and I would do bake
sales on Lexington Avenue

to raise money for my movies.

I was a hustler even then,

and that's because I was a
scab-filled street junkie.

I was addicted to movies, to
watching them, to making them.

I constantly needed a fix.

I subscribed to
"American Film" magazine,

read every issue cover to cover.

I bought every book I
could get my hands on.

"The Making of 2001,"
"Halliwell's Film Guide,"

and "The Movie Brats,"

which discussed how many of
my directorial heroes had gone

to film school.

I made a mental note.

Filmmaking ignited
something in me.

It engulfed me and
held me in its sway now

for more than 40 years.

Why?

Who was this 13-year-old
boy that had to make films?

It brought me joy, I know
that, instantaneous joy,

but lots of things at
that age brought me joy.

It was more than that.

I think there was this
sense of satisfaction

with my filmmaking, of
completion, of success.

With every bad grade
and worse report card,

I still had this thing
that made me feel important

and worth something.

I had success instead of failure

and I fucking breathed it in.

♪ My anxiety ♪

♪ It's always the same ♪

- [Richard] At a certain
point, as I got older,

my father basically
stopped taking me to movies

he didn't wanna watch himself.

If I wanted to see,
"Love At First Bite"

with "Bad News Bears
in Japan," or "Meteor."

- That meteor's five miles wide

and it's definitely
gonna hit us!

- [Richard] I could go with
my friends or with my mom,

but my dad was done
slumming it with me.

This was a blow, a wake
up call to a new reality.

Going to the movies with my
parents, both my parents,

was what I was used to.

No matter what the film,

we went as a family.

That my father would
just walk away from

that was staggering.

He was my movie
teacher, my hero.

How could he do this to me?

The fact was he no longer
saw me as a little kid.

He no longer felt that
he needed to coddle me,

especially when it
came to the movies.

From now on, if I wanted
to go to films with my dad,

it had to be tagging
along to the movies

that he wanted to see,
movies made for adults.

[helicopters whirring]

That's how I ended up
going with my father

to see a certain movie that
would change my life forever.

It was a Saturday afternoon
in the spring of 1980.

We went to the
New Yorker Theatre

on 89th Street and Broadway,

which was only a few
blocks from my home.

The New Yorker was a great
Upper West Side institution.

I loved it there.

Never more so than

when I saw the film my
dad took me to that day.

Francis Ford Coppola's
"Apocalypse Now."

"Apocalypse Now"
was the first movie

that made me truly understand
what a director did.

The images and
sequences that Coppola

and cinematographer Vittorio
Storaro created together are

embedded in cinema
history and in my history.

I love the use of color,
the music, and sound design.

The helicopter
dissolving into a fan.

I loved Han Solo playing
a small supporting part

in awkward glasses.

I love Francis Ford
Coppola's cameo.

- Don't look at the camera.

Just go by like you're
fighting, like you're fighting!

Don't look at the camera!

It's for television,
just go through!

- [Richard] I love
Martin Sheen's voice,

the beautiful way his
narration was recorded.

- [Martin Sheen] How many
people had I already killed?

There were those six that
I knew about for sure.

Close enough to blow their
last breath in my face.

- [Richard] With "Apocalypse
Now" I finally understood

for the first time
that one person working

with many people had driven
all these things to the screen,

had dreamt it and
made it happen,

had directed the
movie to existence.

I was so obsessed about
the film that I went

to Jerry Ohlinger's
Movie Materials shop

on West Third Street

and bought the film's poster
with the great art by Bob Peak.

It hung on my wall for years.

I bought notes,
Eleanor Coppola's book

about the making of
her husband's film,

and I read it religiously,
trying to soak it in,

trying to learn what
it would be like

to make something so brilliant.

"The teeth in my
soul have cavities,"

she quotes Francis
Coppola saying.

I still remember
circling that one.

I bought the record, a double
album with dialogue and music

and narration from the film.

I attached many extension cords
to my portable record player

and brought it out to the
backyard of our vacation rental

and listened all summer long.

I memorized the entirety
of Michael Herr's narration

for the film.

- [Richard and Michael]
Saigon. Shit.

I'm still only in Saigon.

- [Richard] "Every time
I think I'm gonna wake up

back in the jungle."

- Are you an assassin?

- I'm a soldier.

[brooding music]

- You are neither.

[brooding music]

You're an errand boy

sent by grocery clerks
to collect a bill.

- [Richard] "Apocalypse Now"
changed the way I saw movies.

It opened my mind, blew
away my expectations.

I was never the same.

[brooding music]

Westport, Connecticut is where
I obsessively listened to

that "Apocalypse Now"
soundtrack album

and as far back as I remember,

summers were spent up there.

Other than weekends,

my dad mostly stayed
in the city to work,

so it was usually
just me and my mom,

and that was fine by me.

She was great
movie going company

and many a warm summer
night of my youth

was spent getting lost together

in whatever film was playing
at the local movie theater.

Oh, the summers were
a glorious time.

My mom and I went to see
almost every movie I wanted.

From "Meatballs" to
"Uptown Saturday Night,"

if it played in
Westport, we were there.

A few years before "Apocalypse
Now," when I was 10,

I begged and begged my
mother to take me to "Jaws."

It was all anyone
was talking about

in the summer of 1975.

My mother finally relented

and we saw it at the Fine
Arts Theatre in Westport.

[screaming]

It was there that the second

of the three biggest scares

that a movie happened to me.

Not when the head pops
out of the sunken boat,

though that was terrifying.

Not when the boy was
attacked at the beach

after everyone finally
went back in the water.

No, it was when Roy Scheider
was casually throwing chum

into the ocean.
- I can go slow ahead.

Come on down and chum
some of this shit.

[water splashing]

- [Richard] Holy shit, that
scared the hell out of me.

My mother, of course, instantly
regretted the decision

to take me to "Jaws"

as I was totally
terrified by the movie.

- Did you hear your father?

Out of the water now!

- [Richard] Though I loved it.

And subsequently, like much
of America that summer,

I refused to go into the water.

That didn't stop me from
buying "The Jaws Log,"

a book by one of the
film screenwriters.

It was a true behind-
the-scenes story

and I ate up each
delicious page.

I felt like I was almost a
member of the film's crew

and even as a 10 year old,

that's desperately
where I wanted to be.

[water splashing]
[screaming]

I was terrified by the movie,
but wildly inspired by it.

My sweet mother,

what she must have thought
after taking me to "Jaws."

She's lost to dementia
now, barely remembering me,

but I still have so
many questions for her,

so many movie memories
that only she and I shared.

[melancholic music]

[brooding music]

- [Narrator] It's the biggest,
it's the best, it's Bond.

- [Richard] After
the summer of "Jaws,"

my mother and I had better
Westport movie success

with the "James Bond" films.

We saw "The Spy Who Loved
Me" and "Moonraker."

We saw "The Revenge
of the Pink Panther"

and "The Pink Panther
Strikes Again."

[glasses shattering]

One of my favorite films I saw

during the summertime
was "Breaking Away,"

directed by Peter Yates and
written by Steve Tesich.

My mother and I actually saw
it twice in the summer of '79

as it played at the local
theater from June to August

back when movies
would play for months,

slowly finding their audience.

Seeing this film about four
friends' endless summer days

and a bike race that
changes their lives.

I instantly fell hard for it,

especially for the scenes
of the friends hanging out.

They seem like real
people, real buddies,

funny and competitive
with each other.

- How'd you get to
be so stupid, Cyril?

- I don't know.

Guess I have a dumb
heredity or something.

What's your excuse, Michael?

[Michael laughs]

- [Richard] "Breaking Away"
was the perfect summer movie.

It was light and funny,
but also real and resonant.

[actor singing]

The kids in the movie
were older than me

and definitely different,
but I connected

to the way they talked and hung
out and the dreams they had.

- How you doing, guys?

- Well, we're a little disturbed

by the developments
in the Middle East,

but other than that.

[upbeat victory music]
[audience cheering]

[upbeat music]

- [Richard] One of the oddest
films I saw with my mom in

Connecticut was a PG version

of "Saturday Night Fever,"

which Paramount
Pictures released

after the original R-rated
version became a mega hit.

My mother had loved the movie

and played the soundtrack often,

but she wouldn't let me see it.

"Too inappropriate," she said.

This pissed me off
to no end, but at 12,

with no car and stranded
in our country house,

I had no choice but to brood

and endure everyone
talking about a movie

I was unable to see.

Finally,

when this more family-
friendly version was released,

I got to check out what all
the commotion was about.

I liked it, I guess.

Sure, the dancing
and music was cool,

but I knew I was
missing something.

I was missing the good part

and not just the nudity
in four letter words.

Later, when I saw the
original R-rated cut on VHS

in 11th grade, I was blown
away by what was cut out.

Instead of just a dance
movie about a young guy

with big city dreams,

"Saturday Night
Fever" was a dark,

yet honest look at flawed,

complex people with real
troubles as well as real dreams.

Travolta was still
deeply likable,

but he now existed in a
world with hurt and anger

and death where a girl
could be horribly assaulted

in the backseat of a car,

where pain was as much
a factor as pleasure.

In other words, it was a
classic '70s American movie.

The flaws were the point,

the humanity exposed
by the truthfulness,

and it still had a
killer soundtrack

and a perfect beautiful
John Travolta.

One summer day, I was in a
small Westport bookstore,

biding my time as
my mother shopped

at the farm stand
across the street.

Suddenly, she ran
into the store,

all flush and frazzled,
yanked my hand and said,

"Come with me," as if
our house was on fire.

My mother quickly dragged
me across the street

and shoved me into
the farm stand

and right up next to a
gentleman in sunglasses

checking out the peaches.

This is how I got to see Paul
Newman up close and personal.

For years after, I would joke
that my mother only used me

as a cute prop, a way in so
she could smile flirtatiously

and bat her eyes at him,

but now I understand that she
probably really did it for me,

as she always said,
because my mother knew

how much I loved "The Sting"
and "The Towering Inferno,"

and movies.

And she knew that seeing

a star like Paul Newman up
close would stay with me.

I soon found out that
New York City was great

for spotting movie stars

and running into
them gave me a high.

I saw Sylvester Stallone and
John Travolta walking together

in matching fur coats
on the Upper West Side

as they were making
"Staying Alive."

One day, my father made
the mistake of telling me

that he had just spotted
Roy Scheider browsing

at the New Yorker Bookstore,

which is above the New Yorker
Theatre in my neighborhood.

This was serious film nerd news.

[suspenseful music]

I mean, here was
the star of "Jaws"

at a bookstore only a few
blocks from my apartment.

I vowed to run into him myself

and spent many,
many hours roaming

the aisles of the
place looking for him.

It never happened, of course,

though I did fall in
love with the bookstore

during that time.

Trips there were always special.

My dad bought cigars at the
indoor newsstand below it

and then we'd go up the
narrow spiral staircase

to this massive,
mysterious store above.

I can still remember the
dusty smell of the place

and, of course, where
the film section was.

If I saw my dad as Errol
Flynn when I was a kid

and then Humphrey
Bogart as I got older,

by the time I was 14, I
became completely convinced

that he most resembled

the lunatic character
Peter Falk played

in the perfectly bonkers
comedy, "The In-Laws."

Falk played a slightly deranged,

though completely
lovable CIA agent

who had a very hard
time with the truth

and an even harder time
staying out of trouble.

Like my dad, Falk in the
movie had secret identities

and mysterious agendas.

My father wasn't traveling
all over the world getting

into comic trouble, but he
just as well could have been.

He did things that made
no sense at the time,

but seemed vitally
important to him.

Some were small like his refusal

to pay admission
prices to anything.

If it were an antique fair,
he would always sneak us in

through the service entrance

rather than pay a
dollar to get in.

Or he'd speak in gibberish

until the person at the front
door gave up and let us in.

He'd tell my mother he was
betting only a hundred dollars

on a boxing match, but I'd
see thousands of dollars come

and go, and I knew
he was lying to her.

But the biggest move my father
made was a day he announced

to me and my mom that he
would no longer be speaking

to his own father or
his brothers ever again.

Even for my dad, this seemed
like a crazy thing to do.

He was cutting off
his family completely.

When I probed him further, he
told me that his whole life,

they never understood
him, never encouraged him,

and he needed to
expunge them now

in order to finally feel
free and be fully happy.

He said one day he would
explain the whole story,

but for now, I
just had to accept

that it was something
my father had to do,

so that was that.

Making that heartbreakingly
difficult decision

in order to help himself

showed me that my father
had a level of guts

I couldn't imagine.

In the movies, I
always saw courage

as Rod Taylor
saving Tippi Hedren

as the birds attacked
her in Hitchcock's Film.

Or Richard Dreyfuss
getting on the mothership

with the aliens in
"Close Encounters."

But in my real life,

I had never seen a braver
thing done by anybody.

[somber music]

[man singing in Italian]

With my father's open wounds

about his own
family now exposed,

he decided I was mature enough

to appreciate the most famous
movie made about a family,

Francis Ford Coppola's
"The Godfather"

and "Godfather Part II."

The movies were playing in
revival at the Regency Theatre

on West 67th Street.

Those movies were
a lot to take in

and I would have to see
them both many times more

to fully get their impact,

but it clarified
my youthful belief

that Francis Ford Coppola was

the greatest
filmmaker of all time.

Something I also noted was

that the actor playing
Fredo had a quality

that just cut to my heart.

I related to his
loneliness, his otherness.

There was a sadness in his eyes,

a weakness in him amongst
all the other machismo

in the films, and I
deeply connected to it.

In college, I put together

that the same actor from
the Godfathers was

also in "The Conversation,"
"Dog Day Afternoon,"

and "The Deer Hunter."

And that I loved him
in all those films.

Years later, I would make
a documentary for HBO.

"I Knew It Was You.
Rediscovering John Cazale,"

and would be able to
shine a light on the man

who only did five movies,

all of them classics,

all of them nominated
for best picture.

It was an incredible
run, never duplicated.

Cazale was Al
Pacino's best friend,

Meryl Streep's boyfriend,

and he died of cancer at 42.

Of the bountiful pleasures
in doing that documentary,

the best was that I got

to interview many of my
childhood movie heroes,

including Coppola himself.

It was quite a thrill
talking with him,

though I didn't have
the guts to tell him

that I had memorized
all the narration

from "Apocalypse Now."

I also didn't tell him that
one day in high school,

I saw that a movie was being
filmed at the Plaza Hotel

and I followed the cables from
the generators on the street

into a side door, up some back
stairs, down a long corridor,

through two giant banquet
rooms filled with equipment

and onto the set of his
movie, "The Cotton Club,"

where I stole some
craft service donuts

before being spotted and
kicked to the street.

- What do you
think you're doing?

[cheerful music]

- [Richard] Growing up in
New York was also great

for stumbling onto film sets.

One night I was near
the Metropolitan Museum

and came across a big
movie being shot there.

There was a large crew
and many period cars.

Not knowing any better,

I walked past the rest of
the New Yorkers watching,

slid under several
police barriers,

snaked my way through a bunch
of crew members and extras,

and found myself exactly
where I wanted to be,

standing at the video monitors
right behind the director,

who in this case was
the great John Huston,

who was making the not
so great film version

of the Broadway
musical, "Annie."

♪ Clears away the
cobwebs and the sorrow ♪

- [Richard] No one said
anything to me as I stood there,

as they all assumed that I
was a son of someone important

and meant to be so
close to the action.

I watched take after take,

incredibly excited by all
the machinations it took

to get a scene done.

I was a bit confused that
Huston wasn't yelling action

or cut himself.

Wasn't it always the
director who yelled cut?

- [Henry] Cut!

- Who said cut?

- I had a film run out.

- [Eli] How many feet of film
are left in that camera, Gabe?

- 33.

- Goddamn your fucking eyes out.

How dare you yell cut on my set?

- Well, what the hell,
Eli, 33 feet is nothing.

- It is 22 seconds, Henry.

In 22 seconds, I could
break your fucking spine!

In 22 seconds,

I could pinch your head
off like a fucking insect

and spin it all over
the fucking pavement.

In 22 seconds, I
could put 22 bullets

inside your ridiculous gut.

What I seem unable to
do in 22 seconds is

to keep you from
fucking up my film!

- [Richard] Without a doubt,

my favorite movie set
watching experience was

when Brian De Palma's
"Dressed to Kill"

took over East 70th Street
where my high school was

for three days of filming.

Being so close to
an actual film set

for so long was the
kind of high-grade,

24-frames-a-second smack

I needed to shoot directly
into my cinephile arm.

Just outside the window
of my science class was

a full film crew, as
well as Angie Dickinson,

Keith Gordon, Nancy
Allen, and Michael Caine,

but mostly there was
director Brian De Palma.

I watched them shoot
as often as I could,

sometimes cutting classes
right in front of my teachers.

If you listen
closely to the film,

you can hear us, the
kids on the soundtrack.

[kids chattering]

I remember talking with De
Palma, getting his autograph,

asking him questions.

When the film was released,
I saw it opening day.

I can't tell you how many
times I've seen it since.

Sexy, daring, violent,
and disturbing.

It's De Palma's slickest film
and in my mind, his best.

It's a Hitchcock homage, of
course, but much, much more.

It has jaw-dropping
scenes of violence,

but a beating heart as well.

[subway door slamming]

It's also a true New
York movie with dirty,

dangerous subway cars,

and even more dangerous
building elevators.

It also has a scene
set at the Met

that I think is one of the
greatest set piece sequences

in all of modern film.

Unhappily married

Angie Dickinson meets
a mysterious stranger

while sitting in front of
a large Alex Katz painting.

The pair seem to connect.

[dramatic music]

But then they don't.

[dramatic music]

But then they do.

As the possible future lovers
glide from room to room,

the suspense ratchets.

Each shot, each glance,
each cut raises the sexual

and cinematic tension.

[dramatic music]

Helped enormously by Pino
Donaggio's brilliant score,

this exquisite dance of
flirtation between Dickinson

and the man might be my favorite
scene in any movie ever.

It shook the film out
of its B-movie roots

and clearly announced

that it was a genre-
bending work of art.

[dramatic music]

"Dressed To Kill" is also a film

where Brian De Palma
uses split diopter lenses

that keep foreground

and background in focus
to maximum effect.

Later, as a filmmaker myself,
I continued to refer back

to much in the movie,

using split diopter
lenses on my thriller,

"The Perfection," in a very
clear homage to De Palma.

Like many films of that era,

parts of "Dressed to
Kill" are problematic,

but the movie still holds up,
still tingles, still scares.

[woman screaming]

I bought the
soundtrack, of course,

used it to score some
of my Super 8 thrillers.

I read Pauline
Kael's rave about it

in the New Yorker over and over.

She wrote,

"The pleasure of
the movie's suspense

becomes aphrodisiacal."

My God, could there ever
be a better compliment

in a film review?

At this point, movies
fully took over my life.

I was all in.

My already bad grades got
worse, but it didn't matter.

New York was a mecca
for all things film

and I took full advantage.

I saw nearly everything
that got released

from "Blood Beach" to Eric
Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach."

[Marion speaking Italian]

- [Richard] My high
school friends,

Mark Mullin on the left,

and Liam Plevin, were
also film obsessed.

So I had partners in
crime going to the movies.

"The Road Warrior,"
"Altered States,"

"The Shining," "Tootsie,"
"Tender Mercies,"

"Being There,"
"Prince of the City."

For the four years
of high school,

we'd go to films every
Friday after school,

sometimes Saturday
and Sunday too.

If the movie was rated R, we
asked people to buy us tickets,

always young couples on a date.

If the line was too long,

we'd loiter in
front of the theater

and then when the
line started moving,

we'd effortlessly cut it like
the super smooth movie spies

that we were.

Senior year, Liam and I
even got part-time jobs

at the Criterion Movie
Theatre in Times Square

because back in the early '80s,

being an usher at
a movie theater

in the city allowed
you two tickets

to any other movie theater
in the city at any time.

It was like a secret society.

You just called up
and dropped the bomb.

You would let the
ushers in for free

to your theater if they
did the same for you.

The idea that I could go to
any movie in the city for free,

my God, it was heaven.

When my parents heard
about that perk,

they reminded me that
when they were young

and just beginning to date,

my father won a movie
trivia contest in a magazine

and the prize was
a free pass for two

to any movie in the
city for a year.

This is how my parents courted.

This is how they fell in love.

It's funny how my dad
and I both managed

to get into the movies for free

at pivotal points in our lives.

Hustlers, both of us.

There were six screens
at the Criterion

and Sidney Lumet's "The
Verdict" played there

for several months in
the winter of 1982.

I'm sure I ended up seeing
it at least 50 times,

parts of it at least,
which was okay with me

because I loved it.

It was a studio
film made for adults

as opposed to
studio films today,

which are made for kids.

Watching it expanded my
universe, didn't placate to it.

- I'm going up there,
I'm gonna try it.

I'm gonna let the jury decide.

You know, they
told me about you.

That you're a hard ass,
you're a defendant's judge.

Oh, I don't care.

I said, "The hell with it."

To hell with it!

- [Richard] The
Criterion also showed,

"The Empire Strikes
Back," in re-release

before "Return of the
Jedi" was to come out.

Part of my job was to check
the picture projection

and sound, and one day I walked
into one of the theaters,

which was thick with pot smoke

and found that the sound
was completely off.

No R2-D2 beeps.

No Wookiee howls, no
John Williams score, zilch.

I asked one of the 10
people in the audience

how long the sound had
been out and he smiled

and he said he thought
about 15 minutes.

In that time, no one had
come out to complain.

They were all too fucked up.

At other times, packs of
teenagers would try to sneak in

by walking backwards

as the crowd streamed
out of a previous show.

As someone who was used to
scams getting into theaters

for free, I appreciated
the creativity.

I'd joke with my parents
for years about

how back in the early '80s,

when it was one of the most
sketchy areas in all of America,

they let me work in a
Times Square movie theater.

Truth was they
never really seemed

to give it a second thought

that I was working in a
neighborhood of thieves

and roving gangs and
pimps and prostitutes.

It was New York and
I was a New Yorker.

I just had to deal with it.

[upbeat music]

I saw every kind of
movie during those years.

Art films, teen comedies,
Oscar winners, Kung Fu films,

Schlocko action pictures.

I saw horror movies like
"The Fan," "The Fog,"

"The Fun House,"

insane low budget wonders
like "Parasite 3D,"

"Amityville 3D," "Psycho 2,"
"Halloween II," "Wolfen,"

"Silent Scream," "Creep
Show," "Basket Case,"

"Dawn of the Dead,"
and "Fade to Black,"

that starred that guy
from "Breaking Away"

and had some great
gratuitous nudity.

I saw foreign movies

like Italy's "The Night
of Shooting Stars,"

France's "La Boum,"
Japan's "Kagemusha."

I saw the "The
Draughtsman's Contract,"

"Circle of Deceit,"
"Time Stands Still,"

"Breaker Morant,"
and "Gallipoli."

Jean-Jacques Beineix's
film, "Diva," blew my mind

with its use of color and
music and punk rock beauty.

This unique French movie
about obsession, opera,

and priceless recordings
that lead to murder was,

along with "Dressed to Kill,"

one of the most
influential films I saw

during that period.

I realized that beautiful
design and music,

and a unique cinematic style,

could elevate a genre movie
into something better,

that films could have more
than one level to them.

In fact, the more
levels, the better.

I wasn't yet ready to give
up my schlock film mania

for only art films,

but I had finally started
to notice the difference.

I got so film obsessive that I
didn't even have the patience

to wait till 3PM
when school got out

to see the new movies
that were opening.

I started cutting classes
on a scarily regular basis.

I saw "Star Trek:
The Motion Picture"

at the Paramount Theater
at the first 11AM screening

on opening day.

For a "Star Trek" fanatic,

that turgid slog of a film
was especially disappointing,

but I didn't mind.

I was where I wanted to be.

My 11th grade
girlfriend, Mitzi, and I

cut school to see
"One From The Heart,"

because, well, I just had to.

It was Francis
Coppola after all.

Mark Mullin and I didn't
even show up to school

the day "Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan" opened.

It was thankfully leaps

and bounds better
than the first one.

We also saw "Poltergeist"
on that same day,

one right after the other,

just crossed 86th Street
from the Loew's Orpheum

to the Town and Country.

- What's happening?

- [Richard] Now that's an
excellent Friday afternoon.

Shortly after our drama
teacher, Betsy Lifton,

joined us as we ditched school

to see Martin
Scorsese's brilliant

and misunderstood,
"The King of Comedy."

Suddenly, Scorsese was
all I was talking about.

Coppola appeared in
my rear view mirror.

Mark Mullin had been making
Super 8 films himself

before he transferred
to my school,

so we instantly hit it off
when he arrived in 10th grade.

Soon, he and Liam and I
were making films together.

Thrillers mostly, but some
dramas and comedies too.

They were far more ambitious
in my Super 8 solo efforts.

In "Shadows From The Past,"

a title my father helped come up

with along with the catch line,

"Memories may haunt you
but reality will kill you."

We convinced our high
school history teacher,

Mr. Lakaye, to play
a version of himself,

except that he's a
high school teacher

who's a homicidal serial killer.

Mark played the transfer student
who recognizes Mr. Lakaye

as a suspected murderer
from his former school.

- Sit down, Mark.

[hand slaps newspaper]

Have you told anyone about this?

'Cause if you had, I'd
suggest you change your story

or it might become,
as we say, unhealthy.

- [Richard] In another film,

we intercut Mark
having a conversation

with Robert De Niro
from Taxi Driver.

- You talking to me?

- [Mark] Yes, Mr. De Niro.

Let me rephrase the question.

How did it help you learn
to deal with people?

- Are you talking to me?

- [Richard] Achieving this

by buying a short Super
8 version of the movie,

you could do this as before
the age of home videos,

studios used Super 8
movies as a marketing tool

and we then spliced it
in with stuff we shot.

- Okay, okay, Mr. De Niro.

Okay, okay, I get the point.

- [Richard] We
showed these movies

to our high school classmates,

usually in a packed
auditorium after school.

We made posters and
flyers to get them

to come just like the pros did.

It was always an
immediate blast to watch

and listen to our classmates
as they viewed our films,

to hear their laughter,
to grab their attention.

Soon, our principal, Colin Reed,

who himself was a movie buff,
got caught up in our passions

and started funding our films
with the school's money.

We'd go in and pitch him
ideas like we were at a studio

and he'd either
greenlight it or pass.

[upbeat music]

When we saw Alan Parker's
brilliant and exuberant, "Fame,"

still one of my favorite films,

we made the far less brilliant
and exuberant "Audition."

- I killed my own mother!

- [Richard] When we
saw Martin Scorsese's

rock and roll fever
dream, "The Last Waltz,"

we made a music doc about
Mark's high school band,

Quarter Deck.

[upbeat music]

- Wait, stop, stop, stop.

- [Richard] Watching it now,

I think our studio
head, Mr. Reed,

should have passed on that one.

My mother and father
were encouraging

of my cinematic output,

but they were also honest
in their assessment,

especially my father.

My dad liked some of
my Super 8 movies,

but others didn't work for him.

This remained true
with all my films,

even my professional ones,
until the day he died.

He never really bullshitted
me when it came to my work.

If he saw a film of mine that
he thought wasn't successful,

he went outside to smoke a cigar

and hoped the subject would
be changed before he returned.

That's why his compliments
meant so much to me.

When it connected, he connected,

and while I wasn't always
striving for his approval,

I can't say it wasn't
in the back of my mind.

That's why I wish he could
have seen the movies I directed

as an adult,

when I finally started finding
my true voice as a filmmaker.

The ones I made after
he died, "The Matador,"

"The Hunting Party,"

my eyeballed Jude
Law gangster flick,

"Dom Hemingway."

It's not surprising

that so many of the movies I've
written are about outliers,

men who won't conform,
lovable criminals and rogues,

[explosion]

men who absolutely do
not play by any rules.

It's a darkly humorous
cinematic world I understand

and relate to because
I grew up with a man

who was those characters.

It's sad how I couldn't really
start writing those movies

until after my father got sick.

As if I needed the space,

the transition to be able

to become the filmmaker
I was meant to be.

I really wish he could have
gotten a chance to see them,

to see what the filmmaker he
had nurtured actually produced

when set free.

[footsteps thumping]

As one can see with his
cameo in my movie, "Mercy,"

my father sometimes looked
like a homeless person.

It was a persona he cultivated
so he could go unnoticed

as he broke into
abandoned buildings

or tried to negotiate
a better price

for one of his antique
toys he collected.

Once in 11th grade
when I was performing

in Peter Shaffer's
"Black Comedy,"

a performance, it
should be noted,

where I broke my nose running
into Michael Bregman's skull

during one of the
blackouts in the play,

my father was turned away from
the door of our high school

because some teacher
thought he looked

like a crazed street person.

Of course, he'd wear
a tie if he had to,

and he rocked that look
because he was a man of vanity

and style, but he also carried
brass knuckles in his pocket

because he never strayed too
far from New York's underbelly.

That was my father,

sophisticated when
it suited him,

but otherwise edgy and scrappy
like the city he loved.

That duality extended to
other parts of his life.

He was a man who was selfless

and selfish, sometimes
at the same time.

When I called him
to get help taking

a giant 12-foot "Star
Wars" marquee sign home

from the Criterion
Movie Theatre,

he told me to figure
it out myself.

After all, he hadn't
needed help getting

that Coca-Cola sign home,

but he would show up at
every school play no matter

how mediocre my performance
was bound to be.

Once when I was 12, he took
me to a "Star Trek" convention

at the Hilton on 54th Street.

Dropped me off is a
better description

as my dad had no
interest in going

and he rarely did what
he didn't want to do.

["Star Trek Theme"]

Anyway, when he came to pick
me up later that afternoon,

I wasn't outside as planned.

Frustrated, my
father went inside

and found me standing
on an endless line

to get James Doohan,
Mr. Scott's autograph.

I had been waiting for two hours

and I was now very close.

Realizing that I
wasn't going to leave,

my father joined me on the line.

He wasn't happy
about it, but he did.

Just then, James Doohan stood up

and said that he was finished.

His time was up.

I instantly broke out in tears.

I was so close to him
and I waited for so long

and now he was just going?

Seeing my heartbreak and
always up for a little rumble,

my father said in an
incredibly loud voice,

loud enough for James Doohan
and half the Hilton to hear it,

"My son and I just
drove 12 hours

from South Carolina in the rain

so we could get Mr.
Scott's autograph.

I would hope that he
could help us out."

[dramatic music]

Feeling terrible for me

and having no idea that
my father was bullshitting

and that we lived just uptown,

Mr. Scott motioned us over

and quickly signed my
8-by-10 glossy of him.

[cheerful music]

That was my father.

He made my day.

He thrilled me.

That he later secretly sold
all my "Star Trek" memorabilia

while I was off in college

because he needed
some quick cash

for some scheme is another
story all together.

As I said, selfless and selfish.

New York City was
my father's city,

but it was also mine

and that was a true
gift my dad gave me.

New York was alive with cinema.

It was just up to
me to seek it out.

I mean, where else could you
see "My Dinner with Andre,"

an hour-and-51-minute movie

of just two brilliant
guys talking?

Or "Chan Is Missing," a
$22,000 indie that's as funny

and original as any bigger film?

Or the X-rated epic, "Caligula"
with Malcolm McDowell,

Peter O'Toole, John
Gielgud, Helen Mirren,

and a bunch of porn
stars that was both dirty

and boring at the same time.

With my friends, Mark and Liam,

there was rarely a
film we didn't go to,

a theater we didn't
know, the Coronet,

the Baronet, the Paris.

They had some great names.

The Sutton, the Gemini,
the Carnegie Hall Cinema,

the Trans Lux 85th
Street, Cinema I and II.

And The Thalia, which always
smelled of Chinese food

and consistently played the
smartest, coolest films.

I lost many, many hours in
each of those movie theaters.

Of course, this being New
York of the early '80s,

I learned to avoid a few
of the sketchier ones

along the way.

The Embassy at Broadway

and 47th Street was a
guarantee of danger.

It was only to be entered
in cinematic duress.

The UA East on First Avenue
was a recipe for being mugged,

although I did see the sci-fi
film "Hangar 18" there.

- Keep the lid on Hangar 18.

- [Richard] I mean, how
could I not see a film

that purported to tell us

why the government
was concealing UFOs?

Mark, Liam, and I got some
of the girls in our class

to see "The Dogs of War,"

a brutal action picture
with Christopher Walken,

by convincing them

that it was an animated film
about a bunch of cute dogs

that accidentally get
recruited to the army.

[werewolf growling]

We saw "An American
Werewolf in London"

and a few weeks later,

we recognized the film's
director, John Landis,

walking on Madison
Avenue and stopped him

and peppered him with
a million questions

and all he could do is
look at us incredulously

and say, "Who are you guys?"

- Wonderful, thanks a lot.

[phone ringing]

- [Richard] We saw the thriller,

"When A Stranger Calls,"
starring Carol Kane

as a babysitter getting
ever threatening phone calls

from a killer.

- [Killer] Have you
checked the children?

- [Richard] And it
provided the third

and biggest scare I had

at the movies as a kid.

What was so great about

the scare was that I actually

knew it was coming.

See, the theater had
a waiting area inside,

a few couches to sit on
if it was rainy or cold.

We got there early and
were waiting patiently

while the previous showing
was nearing its conclusion.

Suddenly through the
closed theater doors,

we heard the entire
audience scream in unison.

We excitedly looked
at each other,

what horrors could cause an
audience to react like that?

Just then, the theater doors
swung open and a man ran out

and puked in fear in the lobby.

It was truly the greatest
preamble to a horror movie ever,

and the movie didn't disappoint.

The first 20 minutes
are the film's best,

ending with the police calling
and telling the babysitter.

- [Police] We traced the call.

It's coming from
inside the house.

- [Richard] But the true scare,

the scare that caused the
entire audience to scream

and some dude to puke
happens at the end.

It's years later and
Carol Kane is married

and is living a normal life
when the killer escapes.

There's a scene at night
where Carol Kane is in bed

with her husband and the closet
door slowly starts to open.

It's terrifying
because we suspect

that the killer is hiding in
there and we just want Carol

and her husband to
get up and get out.

- [Jill] Stephen. Stephen.

[suspenseful music]

[dramatic music]

[Jill screaming]

- [Richard] Cue the giant
audience scream and the puke.

[cheerful music]

Few movies of that period were

as critically mistreated
as Michael Cimino's

"Heaven's Gate."

Vincent Canby of "The New
York Times" wrote that,

"The notoriously over budget,

three-and-a-half-hour Western
was an unmitigated disaster."

And continued,

"The film fails so completely
that you might suspect

Mr. Cimino sold his
soul to the Devil

to obtain the success
of The Deer Hunter,

and the Devil has just
come around to collect."

That review was
nitroglycerin in newsprint.

I couldn't stop rereading it.

I counted the hours
till school was over

so I could race over to Cinema
I to catch it opening day.

I didn't care if they
thought it sucked.

I had to see for myself.

Sometimes the thought of
a very bad movie was just

as enticing as a very good one.

Of course, not everyone was
as adventurous as I was.

A week after the film opened,
it was yanked from theaters

because it was such a
cataclysmic box office bomb.

It basically put the film
studio out of business.

I didn't love the movie,
but an unmitigated disaster?

Had they seen "Meteor?"

- That meteor's five miles wide

and it's definitely
gonna hit us!

- [Richard] The critical
laceration of "Heaven's Gate"

was the beginning of my
obsession with movie reviews.

I eagerly attacked my parents'
newspaper every Friday

to see what the
critics would say.

I read the film section
in "The Village Voice"

and Pauline Kael in
"The New Yorker,"

and I became obsessed
with Siskel and Ebert,

who at that time
weren't quite famous,

but instead were doing a
small weekly movie review show

on public television.

I loved those guys.

They were as film
nerded out as I was.

One thing that reading all
those movies reviews did was up

my game on defending
the movies I loved.

♪ Pennies from heaven ♪

- [Richard] Or expertly
eviscerating the ones I didn't.

I was always up for
a good film argument

and sometimes they'd
last for days.

That said, no one was
ever able to convince me

that Robert Benton's
"Kramer vs. Kramer" deserved

to win the Best Director Oscar

over Francis Ford
Coppola's "Apocalypse Now."

[helicopter roaring]

Still, I loved
"Kramer vs. Kramer."

It was set on the Upper East
Side where my school was

and several of the locations
were places I walked

by every day.

It was exciting to see my city
when I went to the movies.

Peter Falk in a taxi in Herald
Square in "The In-Laws,"

the Upper West Side
restaurant my parents

and I would sometimes go
to in "The King of Comedy,"

the corner where I grew up

in the opening sequence
of "Romancing The Stone."

"Kramer vs. Kramer" was
a true New York movie.

Every inch of it felt
lived in and real.

Dustin Hoffman was deeply
moving in the film,

out of his depth as a parent.

- Daddy, it's
burning, it's burning!

- What?
- It's burning.

- Ow!

Damn it!

Goddamn her!

- [Richard] But stepping
up when it mattered.

It would be years
I have to admit,

before I could appreciate

Meryl Streep's
complicated character.

At the time, I hated her in it.

- Okay, look, we're
gonna sit here, and-

- [Richard] The movie was
about divorce and it resonated

because all around me,

my friends' parents
were splitting up.

It was like a Manhattan
Upper Middle Class virus

that was spreading
at an alarming pace.

It was everywhere.

I always assumed my parents
would be together forever,

but around the time that
"Kramer vs. Kramer" came out,

my parents' arguments were
getting edgier and louder.

- [Ted] Just do
what you have to do.

[glass shattering]

- [Richard] And I
remember crying,

thinking they would
be the next to split.

They didn't.

My parents stayed together

and pretty happily, it seemed,

for 40 years until my dad died.

This, even though my
father was a master flirt

when he wanted to be,

and secretive in the way a
man having affairs would be,

I didn't think about
it much then, though

I saw so many films about
infidelity in high school,

"An Unmarried Woman,"
"Betrayal," "Body Heat."

- I'm a married woman.

- Meaning what?

- Meaning I'm not
looking for company.

- And you should have said,
"I'm a happily married woman."

- [Richard] But now I wonder
about all those summer nights

my father was in New York City

when my mother and I
were in Connecticut.

What was he doing?

Was he just going home
alone at the end of his day

or was there something else?

Did he cheat on my mother
like Albert Finney did

to Diane Keaton

in Alan Parker's devastating
"Shoot The Moon."

- Well then, tell
me about Sandy.

Does she fuck you
morning, noon, and night?

- [Richard] I don't know.

At least I didn't know then.

Near the end of my father's
life and later after he died,

I would uncover some
of his many secrets.

Most were ones I
didn't wanna know.

It's funny how mysteries
are the center of

so many great movies,

but in real life,
solving those mysteries,

revealing dark secrets can
shatter perfect memories.

I can't just look at my youth

with the happy tint
of nostalgia anymore,

but I accept it all.

My parents were simply human.

That's the truth.

And growing up is finally
just understanding that.

In 10th grade, I started to keep

a list of all the
movies I saw that year.

I'd write it in the back
of my school's yearbook,

on one of the advertising
pages just as a record.

By senior year, my list of
movies overflowed to the pages

beyond and an
eclectic list it was.

- Showtime, folks.

- [Richard] I could just as
well be swooning over

"Q - The Winged Serpent,"

an awesome low budget
Larry Cohen movie

about a large serpent
living in Manhattan

as I would be at Robert
Redford's beautiful

and emotional,
"Ordinary People."

The fact was I was inhaling
movies at a furious pace.

If they projected it, I went.

"Capricorn One," "Porky's
II," "Superman III,"

"The Class of 1984,"
"1990 The Bronx Warriors,"

[cannon blasting]

whatever it was, I was there.

My father would often ask why
I was seeing such garbage.

I told him I learned something
from every movie I saw

and while he didn't
believe it, I did.

Plus, a lot of those
movies were simply fun.

"Rocky III" was
about as good a time

as I've ever had at the movies.

- I pity the fool.

- [Richard] Plus, because
we went to a sneak preview,

they gave us a free 45
record of "Eye of the Tiger"

by Survivor.

Who wouldn't want that?

I also went to a sneak
preview of a film

by one of my favorite
directors growing up,

Steven Spielberg.

I didn't have high
hopes for the movie.

I hadn't heard
anything about it,

and the photos at the
theater looked kind of lame,

but about 30 seconds

after "Raiders of the
Lost Ark" started,

I knew that my initial
instincts were rubbish

and I was about to rocket

to some higher
cinematic pleasure dome.

It was really nice to
turn my dad on to a movie.

If he liked something
I recommended,

I always felt a rush

as if I was sitting on
his lap again as a child.

Only this time, I was the
one introducing him to films.

He didn't always understand
me in high school,

but he understood movies
and my love for them

and that's where we connected.

I certainly didn't
recommend everything to him.

Pretty sure he wouldn't
have dug "Ms .45,"

but if it was in his
cinematic sweet spot,

penetrating dramas like
"The Great Santini,"

visionary sci-fi,
like "Blade Runner,"

a throwback film like "Raiders,"

he would usually
respond like I did.

[metal clanking]

[man screaming]

What a strange time in
film the early '80s.

While later in the
decade, the Top Guns

and "Ghostbusters II" would
dumb down the studio business

in a way it would
never recover from,

many of the early '80s
studio movies still tried

to embrace intelligence
over commerce.

"Raging Bull," "All That Jazz."

"My Favorite Year,"
"Sophie's Choice."

In the years I was inhaling
movies at a critical pace,

those films and
others pushed buttons

and caught people off guard.

Yes, there was plenty of
crap and I saw most of it,

but along with the crap,
there was something else.

There was art.

Some of the other films
that I saw in that period

that had an impact
on me, artful or not,

included John
Carpenter's "The Thing,"

a terrifying and wonderfully
claustrophobic horror fest

that made me a lifelong
lover of practically done,

non-CGI visual effects.

I dug "Starstruck," a rough
and tumble Australian musical,

directed by Gillian Armstrong.

I remember listening
to the soundtrack

on a dinky cassette player.

[upbeat music]

There was Bill
Forsyth's "Local Hero,"

still one of the lightest,

most swirling original
movies ever made

with a great Mark
Knopfler score.

Another great score
was by Philip Glass

for "Koyaanisqatsi,"

which Coppola produced.

A wordless, plotless documentary

about a world out of balance,

it sounded potentially
slow and pretentious,

but because Coppola
was involved,

I went and I was blown away.

I saw it three times.

Debra Winger stole my heart
in "Officer and a Gentleman."

I saw it twice because
of her earthy, sexy,

lived in performance

and frankly, the
graphic sex scene,

though nothing
compares to how a hot

and beautiful Mel Gibson and
Sigourney Weaver were together

in Peter Weir's journalists-in-
a-war-zone romantic thriller,

"The Year of Living
Dangerously."

I was turned on by both of them.

Jessica Lange was
ravishing in "Tootsie,"

but it was her devastating

and ferocious performance in
"Frances" that stuck with me.

The film was about the 1940s
movie star, Frances Farmer,

who because she was
fiery, unpredictable,

and refused to play
by society's rules,

was given a lobotomy

which tragically
neutered her personality.

This horrific surgery was
all the rage at the time

in dealing with people
who did not conform.

- Along with the cure
comes a loss of affect,

a kind of emotional flattening

with diminished creativity
and imagination.

- [Richard] The movie
was heartbreaking.

"Cutter's Way" was
one of those dark

and emotional
cinematic discoveries

that lift you up off the ground.

With a healthy amount
of '70 cynicism

matched with a beautiful
1980's aesthetic,

courtesy of director,
Ivan Passer,

and cinematographer,
Jordan Cronenweth,

it showed flawed characters
desperately trying

to do the right thing in the
face of overwhelming odds.

Amazing how Jeff
Bridges kept showing up

in some of my favorite films.

I went to "Out Of The Blue"

because it was directed
by Dennis Hopper

who had been in
"Apocalypse Now,"

and I remember being
captivated by Linda Manz

and this dark little story
of tragedy in punk rock.

"Over The Edge"
by Jonathan Kaplan

and starring a very
young Matt Dillon,

had a similar punk attitude,

[gunshot]
[explosion]

as did Penelope
Spheeris's amazing doc,

"The Decline of
Western Civilization,"

as did Susan Seidelman's low-
budget fireball, "Smithereens,"

as did Nick Cage and Martha
Coolidge's "Valley Girl,"

one of the greatest,

"Hello, I'm destined to be a
fucking movie star" performances

I've ever seen.

[somber music]

The more and more movies I saw,

the worse and worse
my grades got.

By senior year, I was nearly
failing out of high school.

My SAT scores were
even more embarrassing.

My directorial heroes
were the first generation

that went to film schools.

George Lucas at USC, Francis
Ford Coppola at UCLA,

and Martin Scorsese at NYU.

They had set a trail
I wanted to follow.

It didn't matter that many
great directors before

and after completely
bypassed film school.

In my mind and at that time,

the main way to a career
in the movies was going

to one of those universities.

Plus, I had no other options.

I had no interest
in anything else

and no talent for
anything else either,

so I sent in my applications.

My guidance counselor
almost cried.

There was no way with my
grades I was getting anywhere

near those schools
and it was true.

With each application
came a rejection.

USC Film School,
UCLA Film School.

My dream of following Lucas

and Coppola to California
became just that, a sad dream.

Then in February, I got turned
down by Boston University,

my safety school, the one
I'd go to if all else failed.

The skyscrapers of
the city collapsed

around me like some
cheesy disaster movie.

I had been given a
gift, a loving family,

a privileged upbringing
that allowed me

to become the person I
wanted to be and I blew it.

I fucking completely blew it.

What was I going to do?

Movies were the
only thing I knew.

From the earliest age, I
had been molded by my father

to love and devour them,

to watch films and talk
about films and make films.

They were my blood, my heart.

[somber music]

My parents, knowing
that I was spiraling

and seeing how
truly scared I was

at the prospect of not
getting in anywhere,

did their best to comfort me,

though I knew they were
worried too and disappointed.

Finally, my father asked if
I was free one Saturday to go

to the movies with him.

Go to the movies,
not with my friends,

but with him for the
first time in months

to go see "Winter Kills."

And so we did.

And afterwards, on the way
home, he told me something,

something that made
everything I knew

about him suddenly make sense.

He told me that when
he was a young man,

dreaming about being an artist,

he, like Jessica Lange
as Frances Farmer,

was fiery, unpredictable,

and refused to play
by society's rules,

and his parents had
almost lobotomized him.

[somber music]

They hated his nonconformity,

his dream of an
artist's way of life.

It was only because a forward
thinking uncle intervened

that my father was spared this
terrifying medical procedure.

With that news,

I finally understood why
my father lived his life

the way he did,

why he was unlike the
other dads in the school,

why he refused to
get a normal job,

and basically lived
his life tap dancing

on the edge of respectability.

It was because his parents
had almost destroyed him

for being himself and he
was gonna make damn sure

that was never
gonna happen again.

Good, bad, liar,

thief, husband, father.

My dad was who he was.

No one was gonna stop that.

He was a man truly
comfortable in his own skin.

I loved him for it.

And because my father
had his artistic dreams

nearly destroyed
by his own parents,

he went out of his way to
make sure I would never feel

that I couldn't have
an artistic life.

"College or no college,"

he said, "It didn't matter."

I would be all right.

I would be all right if I
just took that love of movies

that he had given me and let
it take me where it might.

I would be all right if
I could be comfortable

in my own skin like he was,

comfortable being the
film geek that I was.

[upbeat music]

Rocky running up those stairs

in Philadelphia was
nothing compared

to how I felt that day.

I saw a future again.

I would continue making movies.

I might not win every fight,

but I knew I could
go the distance.

[instrumental music]

Two weeks later, I came home

to an acceptance letter
from NYU Film School.

One more story about my dad.

It takes place about 15
years after high school.

I've made a few independent
films at this point,

but I'm barely scraping
by financially.

I've managed to raise
a million dollars

to make my movie, "Oxygen,"

much of it coming from

the air freshener
king of Long Island.

Three weeks before
we were to shoot,

the investor
paperwork wasn't done

and I had the film's
pre-production payroll to meet

with no money in
the bank to pay it.

Desperate broke and facing
my movie falling apart,

I did what any self-respecting
film director would do.

I turned to a loan
shark for help.

I turned to my father.

Through thick cigar smoke,

my father agreed to loan
me $10,000 for a week

until the investor's
money came through.

He would deliver it to me in
cash in a brown paper bag

in specific denominations
wrapped in thick rubber bands.

In return, I would
pay him back $11,000

exactly seven days later,

in cash, in the
same denominations,

in the same brown paper bag

with the same
thick rubber bands.

It had to be the
same rubber bands.

In a weird way, only my
father could explain,

it was the most
important thing for him.

My dad's one week vig was 10%.

That was a lot of money.

When I tried to negotiate, he
stopped the conversation dead.

If I wanted his money, I
had to do it on his terms,

selfless and selfish.

But he came through for
me like he always did.

I paid him back and
the movie got made

and it led to other
movies, larger movies,

and TV pilots, and TV
series, and short films,

and documentaries.

Would any of that have
happened without my father,

without him holding
my hand all the way

through "King Kong"
when I was six,

sharing his movie
dreams with me?

It's sad that with all
the Super 8 films I made,

there's so very little
footage of my parents.

I didn't have them act in any
of my childhood productions

except that once early on

where my dad clearly
enjoyed playing the bad guy

and got strangled by my friend.

[somber music]

Before I was born,

there were these brief frames
at my cousin's first birthday,

grainy, shaky images
of my parents,

months after they were married.

Big smiles and big
dreams, I'm sure.

There was only one film,

even remotely feeling
like a family home movie,

a trip my parents and
their friends made

to visit me at sleepaway camp.

The footage is mostly of
me or my camp buddies,

but there are these three
quick shots of my dad,

just a few frames,
cigar in mouth,

shirt unbuttoned like he
used to wear in the summer.

It strangely really
captures him.

It's like I can step into
that frame of Super 8 film

and see my entire
childhood with him.

And then there's this pan
that almost gets to him,

but heartbreakingly stops.

If only the camera
had kept panning.

There's even less
footage of my mother,

just this quick moment in
a yellow shirt sitting next

to her friend, Hannah,
looking happy and beautiful.

Just a few frames of
her, nothing more.

[somber music]

I did put my dad in a
few of my feature films

and I feel really lucky
to have that footage.

Yet when I watch it, I see the
older version of my father,

the father I knew as an adult,

when I came home on vacation
or stopped by for dinner,

as always a warm, loving,
complicated person,

but not the man who
is my whole world.

But still, when I look
into his eyes here,

I'm able to go back in time

to see the man I
built forts with

and read books on his lap
with and walked the city with,

the man who took me to the
movies, took me into the movies,

gave me this specific love,
this lucky cinematic life.

[somber music]

- Had a fellow used to come
in here every afternoon,

exactly at 3 on the nose.

I think he was a school teacher.

He used to come in here every
day, sit where you're sitting,

order a Maker's Mark,
pull out his false teeth,

and place it in front of him.

And get filthy drunk.

Then he died.

[somber music]

- That's a nice story, Sally.

- [Bartender] Yeah, it is.

[somber music]

[tape deck clicking]

[Upbeat instrumental music]