1
00:00:31,124 --> 00:00:33,134
I saw <i>Vertigo</i> in 1958.

2
00:00:33,209 --> 00:00:36,249
I saw it at Radio City Music Hall.
I will never forget it.

3
00:00:37,255 --> 00:00:38,625
Give me your hand.

4
00:00:44,596 --> 00:00:46,966
That left an incredible impression upon me.

5
00:00:47,098 --> 00:00:48,978
What's so compelling about <i>Vertigo?</i>

6
00:00:49,100 --> 00:00:51,020
It is the...

7
00:00:51,102 --> 00:00:53,692
He's making a movie about
what a director does,

8
00:00:53,772 --> 00:00:56,982
which is basically create
these romantic illusions.

9
00:00:57,108 --> 00:01:00,488
It makes you fall in love with it
and then kills it. Twice.

10
00:01:00,570 --> 00:01:02,070
And it's what we do as directors.

11
00:01:02,155 --> 00:01:07,118
We create these beautiful women,
these exciting virile men.

12
00:01:07,202 --> 00:01:10,332
We get audiences involved in their stories

13
00:01:10,413 --> 00:01:13,503
and emotionally attached to them.

14
00:01:13,583 --> 00:01:17,053
And Hitchcock made a movie which is,
you know, it's so Brechtian.

15
00:01:17,128 --> 00:01:19,378
It's showing what we're doing
as we're doing it.

16
00:01:19,464 --> 00:01:22,304
And it is something
that has fascinated me, you know,

17
00:01:22,383 --> 00:01:24,973
since I saw <i>Vertigo.</i>

18
00:01:40,777 --> 00:01:42,107
I was the youngest.

19
00:01:42,195 --> 00:01:44,445
I was born in North New Jersey.

20
00:01:44,531 --> 00:01:46,491
When I was about five,

21
00:01:46,574 --> 00:01:51,294
we moved into suburbian Philadelphia,
right off the Main Line,

22
00:01:51,371 --> 00:01:53,871
in a kind of fairly nice suburban house.

23
00:01:53,957 --> 00:01:57,667
My father was a very successful
orthopedic surgeon,

24
00:01:57,752 --> 00:02:00,172
and then my mother was very close
to the three of us.

25
00:02:00,255 --> 00:02:02,665
She was over at school a lot.

26
00:02:02,757 --> 00:02:06,177
You know, going to our football practices
and soccer practices.

27
00:02:06,261 --> 00:02:11,061
My father basically drove into the city,
and operated very early and was teaching

28
00:02:11,182 --> 00:02:13,812
and then writing his books
when he got home at night.

29
00:02:13,893 --> 00:02:17,063
So, we didn't see a lot of him.

30
00:02:17,188 --> 00:02:21,148
And we didn't have much
of a relationship with him.

31
00:02:21,234 --> 00:02:23,654
I went to a Quaker school, Friends' Central.

32
00:02:23,736 --> 00:02:26,316
And I went to that school for 12 years.

33
00:02:26,406 --> 00:02:29,276
Well, I'd say the thing that left the most
impression on me

34
00:02:29,367 --> 00:02:32,077
was, you know, meeting at this Quaker school.

35
00:02:32,203 --> 00:02:36,333
Sitting in silence and thinking about
the moral aspects of your life,

36
00:02:36,416 --> 00:02:40,036
and if you had anything you wanted
to share with the community

37
00:02:40,128 --> 00:02:41,418
you stood up and talked.

38
00:02:41,504 --> 00:02:44,514
There was a lot of turmoil in my family.

39
00:02:44,591 --> 00:02:46,721
My parents were not happy together,

40
00:02:46,801 --> 00:02:50,141
and at one point I got up and talked about...

41
00:02:50,221 --> 00:02:55,691
the difficulties going on within my family.

42
00:02:55,768 --> 00:02:57,558
I was very chummy with the girls.

43
00:02:57,645 --> 00:02:59,265
I got along with the girls very well.

44
00:02:59,355 --> 00:03:02,105
I would do sort of crazy things occasionally,

45
00:03:02,233 --> 00:03:05,113
like taping the girls sex education class.

46
00:03:05,236 --> 00:03:07,776
Debbie Deming, as I recall her name,

47
00:03:07,864 --> 00:03:11,034
she dared me to do it,
and then of course I did it,

48
00:03:11,117 --> 00:03:15,287
and then of course I told her
and then she turned me in.

49
00:03:15,371 --> 00:03:19,751
I went to Columbia to study physics,
and math and Russian.

50
00:03:19,834 --> 00:03:21,424
I was basically a science nerd.

51
00:03:21,502 --> 00:03:23,762
I mean I wasn't really interested in movies,

52
00:03:23,838 --> 00:03:25,338
not until I went to Columbia.

53
00:03:25,423 --> 00:03:29,393
There was a lot of excitement
because, of course, we had the war,

54
00:03:29,469 --> 00:03:31,099
had to worry about getting drafted.

55
00:03:31,179 --> 00:03:33,889
And we had all this French new wave
stuff coming in,

56
00:03:33,973 --> 00:03:35,433
all these foreign movies,

57
00:03:35,516 --> 00:03:37,306
So, it was a pretty exciting time.

58
00:03:39,270 --> 00:03:40,980
It was like, that's what you talked about.

59
00:03:41,064 --> 00:03:42,364
That was like, the new thing.

60
00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:45,440
There was no place you could take film
at Columbia.

61
00:03:45,526 --> 00:03:50,616
I signed up for a cinema society
called Cinema 16,

62
00:03:50,698 --> 00:03:51,988
run by Amos Vogel.

63
00:03:52,075 --> 00:03:54,485
And they would show all these
very avant-garde shorts.

64
00:03:54,577 --> 00:03:56,367
That was... That's what you signed up for.

65
00:03:56,454 --> 00:03:59,624
I submitted my shorts every year,

66
00:03:59,707 --> 00:04:02,627
until the third year I won it
with <i>Woton's Wake.</i>

67
00:04:02,710 --> 00:04:04,840
<i>

68
00:04:04,921 --> 00:04:06,171
<i>

69
00:04:06,297 --> 00:04:10,547
<i>

70
00:04:17,976 --> 00:04:20,596
Bill Finley was a classmate
of mine at Columbia.

71
00:04:20,687 --> 00:04:22,397
So, I began to craft pieces

72
00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:25,860
for his particular kind
of characters he could portray.

73
00:04:25,942 --> 00:04:28,492
And that was the genesis of <i>Woton's Wake,</i>

74
00:04:28,569 --> 00:04:29,859
<i>where he played everything</i>

75
00:04:29,946 --> 00:04:33,026
from the Phantom of the Opera to King Kong.

76
00:04:33,116 --> 00:04:35,116
I'd seen a casting notice

77
00:04:35,201 --> 00:04:37,831
for a graduate project at Sarah Lawrence

78
00:04:37,912 --> 00:04:40,042
and I said, "Oh, this looks like
a good idea."

79
00:04:40,123 --> 00:04:43,793
So, I went up to Sarah Lawrence
and I got into a graduate play.

80
00:04:43,876 --> 00:04:47,376
And that's when I met Wilford Leach,
who was very influential.

81
00:04:47,463 --> 00:04:51,133
And he was like my mentor.
He was a brilliant director.

82
00:04:51,217 --> 00:04:54,637
That's what really started me going,

83
00:04:54,721 --> 00:04:57,271
in the sense of learning
all the things I had to learn

84
00:04:57,348 --> 00:05:00,178
in order to, you know, be a director.

85
00:05:00,268 --> 00:05:03,268
My first feature came out of Sarah Lawrence.

86
00:05:03,354 --> 00:05:07,074
We brought Will on to sort of
oversee the whole thing.

87
00:05:07,150 --> 00:05:10,780
And a lot of the people in it came right
out of the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

88
00:05:10,862 --> 00:05:13,612
Bobby was in the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

89
00:05:13,698 --> 00:05:15,778
Jill was in the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

90
00:05:15,867 --> 00:05:18,327
Jennifer Salt was in
the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

91
00:05:18,411 --> 00:05:20,661
Well, that sounds like free love.
What about purity?

92
00:05:20,747 --> 00:05:23,037
<i>The Wedding Party</i> was De Niro's first movie.

93
00:05:23,124 --> 00:05:25,844
Bobby came into a casting session

94
00:05:25,918 --> 00:05:29,208
and Will and I were in the loft on Broadway.

95
00:05:29,297 --> 00:05:32,677
He's, like, the last guy in the room.

96
00:05:32,759 --> 00:05:34,589
And he's very quiet, shy.

97
00:05:34,677 --> 00:05:38,007
And then he said he had something
he'd prepared in class.

98
00:05:38,097 --> 00:05:41,727
Then he went out, and Will and I
were sort of looking at each other,

99
00:05:41,809 --> 00:05:45,479
and, like, 20 minutes from...
We thought he'd left, it was at night.

100
00:05:45,563 --> 00:05:47,403
And then he burst through the door

101
00:05:47,482 --> 00:05:51,612
and does a scene from Clifford Odets' play.

102
00:05:51,694 --> 00:05:55,534
<i>"Strike, I think about the cab strike."</i>

103
00:05:55,615 --> 00:05:56,865
And it was like...

104
00:05:56,949 --> 00:06:00,909
You were, like, watching Lee J. Cobb
rant in front of the union guys.

105
00:06:00,995 --> 00:06:02,825
It was like, "holy mackerel!"

106
00:06:02,914 --> 00:06:04,604
The one place where there's life, the beach.

107
00:06:04,624 --> 00:06:06,214
The dock, where there's something...

108
00:06:06,292 --> 00:06:07,752
a connection to the mainland.

109
00:06:07,835 --> 00:06:10,295
And you walk... Start walking
around the beach.

110
00:06:10,421 --> 00:06:14,341
The great irony was that we
co-directed <i>The Wedding Party.</i>

111
00:06:14,425 --> 00:06:18,295
That's when I saw and knew more about
motion picture directing than Wilford did.

112
00:06:18,429 --> 00:06:22,229
We had the scene with Bill Finley,
Bob De Niro and Charlie Pfluger,

113
00:06:22,308 --> 00:06:25,308
where the two boys are trying
to convince him not to get married.

114
00:06:25,436 --> 00:06:27,146
We were shooting it and I could see

115
00:06:27,230 --> 00:06:28,860
that we were never able to do the shot.

116
00:06:28,940 --> 00:06:30,530
Plus, it was not a good shot.

117
00:06:30,608 --> 00:06:33,778
Because basically we're shooting
three guys against the hedge.

118
00:06:33,861 --> 00:06:37,281
You know, you weren't getting any value
out of the motion of the camera.

119
00:06:37,365 --> 00:06:40,945
And Will kept on insisting
that we do it this way.

120
00:06:41,035 --> 00:06:42,535
And then Will kind of got frustrated,

121
00:06:42,620 --> 00:06:44,460
and I said, "Will, let me block this act,

122
00:06:44,539 --> 00:06:46,959
because this is not the way.
This should work."

123
00:06:47,041 --> 00:06:48,921
So, I blocked it out a whole different way.

124
00:06:49,001 --> 00:06:52,001
Broke the whole thing up
into a whole bunch of shots.

125
00:06:52,088 --> 00:06:55,378
And... And I made the shot work.

126
00:06:55,466 --> 00:06:56,716
And he was wrong.

127
00:06:56,801 --> 00:07:00,011
I shot a lot of documentaries
in that period in order to support myself

128
00:07:00,096 --> 00:07:01,506
while I was in graduate school.

129
00:07:01,597 --> 00:07:05,347
I shot a documentary about the OP Art
opening at the Museum of Modern Art,

130
00:07:05,476 --> 00:07:06,886
which was pretty successful.

131
00:07:06,978 --> 00:07:08,688
I was a very good cameraman.

132
00:07:08,771 --> 00:07:10,481
You know, and I had a really good sense

133
00:07:10,565 --> 00:07:13,395
how to follow a scene
and see what was happening.

134
00:07:13,484 --> 00:07:17,074
Well, the advantage of doing everything
yourself is that I did everything.

135
00:07:17,155 --> 00:07:19,405
I figured I'd really hit the big time

136
00:07:19,490 --> 00:07:22,410
when I didn't have to pack up
the equipment at the end of the day

137
00:07:22,493 --> 00:07:24,623
and take it back to the rental house.

138
00:07:31,502 --> 00:07:34,882
You see a lot of the sort of Hitchcockian
things in <i>Murder a la Mod.</i>

139
00:07:34,964 --> 00:07:38,804
A lot of stylistic madness going on.

140
00:07:38,885 --> 00:07:40,485
You have the scene of Jennifer, you know,

141
00:07:40,511 --> 00:07:44,561
me trying to talk her into taking
her clothes off for the camera.

142
00:07:44,640 --> 00:07:46,980
Is this supposed to be sexy?

143
00:07:47,059 --> 00:07:48,749
Well, yeah, you're supposed to be,

144
00:07:48,769 --> 00:07:50,609
you know, doing sort of strip tease for us.

145
00:07:50,688 --> 00:07:53,318
Which is very much like the same scene

146
00:07:53,399 --> 00:07:54,899
that I did in <i>The Black Dahlia</i>

147
00:07:54,984 --> 00:07:56,904
where I'm interviewing an actress.

148
00:07:56,986 --> 00:07:59,106
- How long have you lived here?
- Two years.

149
00:07:59,196 --> 00:08:00,446
- You lost your accent?
- Yeah.

150
00:08:00,531 --> 00:08:01,991
So, some of that stuff I,

151
00:08:02,074 --> 00:08:04,744
you know, started to play with
in <i>Murder a la Mod.</i>

152
00:08:04,827 --> 00:08:07,407
We had to release it ourselves

153
00:08:07,538 --> 00:08:09,868
over on 12th Street and Second Avenue.

154
00:08:09,957 --> 00:08:13,127
I was literally pulling people
off the street to go see it.

155
00:08:13,210 --> 00:08:15,250
When I was a graduate student
at Sarah Lawrence,

156
00:08:15,338 --> 00:08:17,588
Universal Pictures paid my tuition.

157
00:08:17,673 --> 00:08:19,433
When I got out of Sarah Lawrence

158
00:08:19,550 --> 00:08:23,140
I got into a new talents program
at Universal,

159
00:08:23,220 --> 00:08:25,720
and again I was writing stuff
but nobody ever read anything.

160
00:08:25,806 --> 00:08:28,016
And we became so frustrated
Chuck Hirsch and I,

161
00:08:28,100 --> 00:08:30,230
that we decided to make a movie ourselves.

162
00:08:35,149 --> 00:08:38,149


163
00:08:38,235 --> 00:08:42,485
<i>Greetings</i> was the more Godardian
influenced movie.

164
00:08:42,573 --> 00:08:45,660
Of course, we were seeing all the Godard
movies at the New York Film Festival.

165
00:08:45,743 --> 00:08:48,123
They were all a revelation one after another.

166
00:08:48,204 --> 00:08:51,624
I especially remember <i>Weekend,</i>
going, "Holy mackerel."

167
00:08:51,707 --> 00:08:55,287
And very much influenced
by what was going on politically.

168
00:08:55,378 --> 00:08:56,978
What you... What are you finding space for?

169
00:08:57,004 --> 00:08:59,804
Well, you know, I'm trying to get
in my pre-induction physical side.

170
00:08:59,882 --> 00:09:02,082
I mean, if you wanted to stay out of the war,

171
00:09:02,134 --> 00:09:04,054
and you were a middle-class kid,

172
00:09:04,136 --> 00:09:05,716
you could figure out a way to do it.

173
00:09:05,805 --> 00:09:10,135
I finally had to go in
and I had a letter from a doctor.

174
00:09:10,226 --> 00:09:14,186
I took everything to make me allergic,
so I could hardly breathe.

175
00:09:14,271 --> 00:09:17,021
I was up all night and I was running
around, wheezing.

176
00:09:17,108 --> 00:09:19,498
We kept him awake for two days.
We can't keep him going like that.

177
00:09:19,527 --> 00:09:21,987
They took me right to the psychiatrist.

178
00:09:22,071 --> 00:09:24,031
Hey, Lloyd. You be the psychiatrist.

179
00:09:24,115 --> 00:09:27,485
I had to dead stare right at his forehead

180
00:09:27,618 --> 00:09:30,658
and talked about my homosexual feelings.

181
00:09:30,746 --> 00:09:32,096
Just walk right up to the sergeant.

182
00:09:32,123 --> 00:09:33,673
You gaze. Just walked right up to him.

183
00:09:33,749 --> 00:09:35,599
Get as close as you can.
Look him straight in the eye.

184
00:09:35,626 --> 00:09:39,546
Seduce him with your eyeballs and say, "Hi."

185
00:09:39,630 --> 00:09:42,590
I was a communist. I was a homosexual.

186
00:09:42,675 --> 00:09:44,175
I was crazy.

187
00:09:44,260 --> 00:09:49,100
And I think with my letter from my doctor,
that got me out.

188
00:09:49,181 --> 00:09:51,271
<i>Greetings</i> opened in December,

189
00:09:51,350 --> 00:09:53,350
and was crucified in <i>The Times.</i>

190
00:09:53,436 --> 00:09:56,726
Fortunately what happened was,
the review was so bad,

191
00:09:56,814 --> 00:10:01,284
a guy wrote a reply in <i>The Sunday Times,</i>

192
00:10:01,360 --> 00:10:02,780
which was huge,

193
00:10:02,862 --> 00:10:05,702
saying "Was that a way to greet <i>Greetings?"</i>

194
00:10:05,781 --> 00:10:08,081
And then, at that same week,

195
00:10:08,159 --> 00:10:11,909
Pauline Kael's review came out
in <i>The New Yorker</i>

196
00:10:11,996 --> 00:10:14,826
and suddenly the movie became a hit.

197
00:10:14,915 --> 00:10:17,285
I feel very strongly
about these political movies

198
00:10:17,376 --> 00:10:18,836
when I get into that area.

199
00:10:18,919 --> 00:10:21,589
This... This clearly shows that Officer...

200
00:10:21,672 --> 00:10:23,632
was in the front and firing from the front

201
00:10:23,716 --> 00:10:26,506
with a Russian 6.76mm rifle, see.

202
00:10:26,594 --> 00:10:28,974
Causing a neck wound in the president's neck,

203
00:10:29,055 --> 00:10:30,715
7/8ths of an inch below the collar button.

204
00:10:30,806 --> 00:10:33,426
And it's the very anti-establishment,

205
00:10:33,517 --> 00:10:37,057
usually comedic in the case
of <i>Greetings and Hi, Mom!</i>

206
00:10:37,146 --> 00:10:39,896
You know, looking around
and saying, "This is crazy."

207
00:10:39,982 --> 00:10:41,862
I'm studying people and I,

208
00:10:41,942 --> 00:10:43,902
you know, when you took the book
and everything,

209
00:10:43,986 --> 00:10:46,156
it was amazing. It was just beautiful.

210
00:10:46,238 --> 00:10:48,698
And it was what I called
a private moment, you see.

211
00:10:48,783 --> 00:10:50,533
And I study people like this.

212
00:10:50,618 --> 00:10:52,348
Okay, now... Now, don't you think you're hot?

213
00:10:52,369 --> 00:10:54,119
Don't you want to go to bed now?

214
00:10:54,205 --> 00:10:56,165
- Ah, I'm tired.
- Yes, you're tired.

215
00:10:56,248 --> 00:10:57,888
- I'm tired. And I want to go.
- You want to go to sleep.

216
00:10:57,917 --> 00:11:01,127
So, don't you think you should
take off your dress?

217
00:11:01,212 --> 00:11:02,632
- Sure. Take it off.
- My dress?

218
00:11:02,713 --> 00:11:06,013
Remember, this is a private moment,
and no one is watching.

219
00:11:06,092 --> 00:11:09,802
Bobby emerged
as the most captivating character.

220
00:11:09,887 --> 00:11:13,467
We said let's... I think we've got
to make him like, the main character.

221
00:11:13,557 --> 00:11:15,477
This guy is fantastic.

222
00:11:15,559 --> 00:11:18,939
So, that's what happened with <i>Hi, Mom!</i>

223
00:11:19,021 --> 00:11:21,231
which is basically a son of <i>Greetings.</i>

224
00:11:21,315 --> 00:11:23,315
<i>

225
00:11:23,400 --> 00:11:25,650
<i>

226
00:11:25,736 --> 00:11:28,696
<i>

227
00:11:28,781 --> 00:11:30,621
The whole idea of <i>Be Black Baby</i>

228
00:11:30,741 --> 00:11:32,741
came as an environmental theater piece.

229
00:11:32,827 --> 00:11:36,457
It was supposed to put you
through a race awakening...

230
00:11:36,539 --> 00:11:39,499
We want to take you through
the black experience.

231
00:11:39,583 --> 00:11:41,173
...where you experience

232
00:11:41,252 --> 00:11:45,922
what black people experience
in America of the mid 60's.

233
00:11:46,006 --> 00:11:50,636
This is at the... the height of, you know,
Black Panthers,

234
00:11:50,761 --> 00:11:54,681
and, you know, "burn, white guy, burn."

235
00:11:54,765 --> 00:11:56,885
These guys came up... They were so scary,

236
00:11:56,976 --> 00:11:59,346
and they were so like, "You motherfucker,

237
00:11:59,436 --> 00:12:02,056
what do you know about race relations?"

238
00:12:02,148 --> 00:12:03,938
And then you go, "Holy smackerel."

239
00:12:04,024 --> 00:12:05,994
So, I didn't rehearse them with the troupe.

240
00:12:06,068 --> 00:12:08,648
When we shot the sequence
in that freight elevator,

241
00:12:08,779 --> 00:12:11,869
the other actors had never seen them before.

242
00:12:11,949 --> 00:12:13,659
When the thing opens, and they see us go on

243
00:12:13,784 --> 00:12:16,374
and grab her throat and throw her down
and start to rape her,

244
00:12:16,453 --> 00:12:20,423
everybody's like, "Oh, my God.
This is, like, really happening."

245
00:12:20,499 --> 00:12:22,289
Turn that fucking camera off! Turn it off!

246
00:12:22,376 --> 00:12:24,496
Get it down!

247
00:12:24,587 --> 00:12:26,987
Get that camera down!

248
00:12:27,072 --> 00:12:29,012
Oh, please, stop.

249
00:12:29,091 --> 00:12:30,401
Shut the fuck up.

250
00:12:30,426 --> 00:12:32,086
My hair!

251
00:12:34,972 --> 00:12:37,892
I was in the back of the elevator
with Chuck, my producer,

252
00:12:37,975 --> 00:12:40,095
and I looked over to him,
he was like, terrified.

253
00:12:40,186 --> 00:12:41,806
And I had this big smile on my face.

254
00:12:41,896 --> 00:12:43,806
So, I said, "This is really working."

255
00:12:45,691 --> 00:12:48,571
I'm going to tell all my friends
they've got to come.

256
00:12:48,652 --> 00:12:50,742
They really got to come.

257
00:12:50,821 --> 00:12:53,161
Except they should have called it...

258
00:12:53,240 --> 00:12:55,240
- It was really something.
- "Humiliate The Honky"

259
00:12:55,326 --> 00:12:57,786
or "Hump The Honky."
But it was great theater.

260
00:12:57,870 --> 00:13:00,750
So, when I went to Hollywood,
at Warner Brothers,

261
00:13:00,831 --> 00:13:04,461
Marty was out there editing
<i>The Medicine Ball Caravan,</i>

262
00:13:04,543 --> 00:13:06,963
which was Woodstock on wheels basically.

263
00:13:07,046 --> 00:13:09,086
I sort of introduced him around.

264
00:13:09,173 --> 00:13:10,553
There was Marty and I,

265
00:13:10,633 --> 00:13:13,183
then there was George
and Francis, and Steven.

266
00:13:13,260 --> 00:13:16,810
The thing about Steven, I think he was
the first person I ever saw

267
00:13:16,889 --> 00:13:18,349
that had a phone in his car.

268
00:13:18,432 --> 00:13:20,292
I'm trying to call Brian De Palma,
New York City.

269
00:13:20,309 --> 00:13:24,099
Hello, Brian, this is Nancy
and Amy and Steve.

270
00:13:24,188 --> 00:13:25,648
- Hi, Brian.
- Hi, Brian.

271
00:13:25,731 --> 00:13:27,821
Happy Thanksgiving.

272
00:13:27,900 --> 00:13:29,690
It's 1976, Brian.

273
00:13:29,777 --> 00:13:33,357
We're photographing this on 8mm sound film.

274
00:13:33,447 --> 00:13:34,837
And we want to say happy Thanksgiving.

275
00:13:34,865 --> 00:13:36,185
Sorry you're not home to enjoy it.

276
00:13:36,242 --> 00:13:38,452
Steven and I were so close back then.

277
00:13:38,535 --> 00:13:41,825
This is the whole
Warner Brothers youth group.

278
00:13:41,914 --> 00:13:44,504
Schrader was out there.
Schrader was a critic.

279
00:13:44,583 --> 00:13:47,003
He brought me the script of <i>Taxi Driver.</i>

280
00:13:47,086 --> 00:13:50,166
I didn't think it was commercial,
but it was extraordinary.

281
00:13:50,256 --> 00:13:52,626
And I thought it was more to Marty's taste.

282
00:13:52,716 --> 00:13:54,176
That was basically our group.

283
00:13:54,260 --> 00:13:56,970
And we were all
very supportive of each other,

284
00:13:57,054 --> 00:13:59,524
and passing these scripts back and forth

285
00:13:59,598 --> 00:14:01,388
and looking at each other's movies.

286
00:14:01,475 --> 00:14:05,395
And what we did in our generation
will never be duplicated.

287
00:14:05,479 --> 00:14:08,819
We were able to get into the studio system

288
00:14:08,899 --> 00:14:14,359
and use all that stuff in order to make
some pretty incredible movies

289
00:14:14,446 --> 00:14:16,946
before the businessmen took over again.

290
00:14:17,950 --> 00:14:19,740
But I was making my Hollywood movie now

291
00:14:19,827 --> 00:14:22,447
so I thought, "Well, wow,
I'm in the big time."

292
00:14:22,538 --> 00:14:24,118
It's this is sort of whimsical thing

293
00:14:24,206 --> 00:14:26,956
where a guy drops out of a corporation

294
00:14:27,042 --> 00:14:29,552
and he decides he's going to change his life

295
00:14:29,628 --> 00:14:32,088
and become a tap dancing magician.

296
00:14:32,172 --> 00:14:35,342
Tommy Smothers had just been
fired from his show

297
00:14:35,426 --> 00:14:39,006
because he did all these sort of anti-war
things and all this political humor.

298
00:14:39,096 --> 00:14:41,386
Our government is asking us
as citizens, good citizens

299
00:14:41,473 --> 00:14:46,233
to refrain from traveling to foreign lands.

300
00:14:46,312 --> 00:14:49,232
Okay, all you guys in Vietnam, come on home.

301
00:14:49,315 --> 00:14:52,815
This is this big kind of
anti-Establishment movie.

302
00:14:52,943 --> 00:14:56,163
So, I wanted to use Orson Welles
as the tap dancing magician instructor.

303
00:14:56,238 --> 00:14:58,988
I found that Orson Welles
was not learning his lines.

304
00:14:59,074 --> 00:15:00,704
We had cue cards all over the place.

305
00:15:00,784 --> 00:15:02,754
And I'd never seen this before.

306
00:15:02,828 --> 00:15:06,828
You just looked at him, you say,
"This isn't right. This is sloppy."

307
00:15:06,957 --> 00:15:10,287
I kept on shooting until he knew the lines.

308
00:15:10,377 --> 00:15:14,717
To work that hard
would be unfair to your rabbit.

309
00:15:14,798 --> 00:15:17,258
Here's Brian De Palma dealing
with Orson Welles, you know,

310
00:15:17,343 --> 00:15:20,393
I'm in my 20's and I'm going, "Holy mackerel.

311
00:15:20,471 --> 00:15:22,891
I'm telling Orson Welles
he's got to do this thing again."

312
00:15:22,973 --> 00:15:25,063
It's like, "Whoa!"

313
00:15:25,142 --> 00:15:27,602
You know, when I was working
in somebody else's material,

314
00:15:27,686 --> 00:15:28,976
I would try to direct it.

315
00:15:29,063 --> 00:15:33,613
I would try to find ways to make it work
within the way it was written.

316
00:15:33,692 --> 00:15:38,742
So, I didn't try to change it into
whatever my style was at the time.

317
00:15:38,822 --> 00:15:42,412
I basically tried to interpret
the material as best I could.

318
00:15:42,493 --> 00:15:45,583
And Smothers got disenchanted
with it very quickly.

319
00:15:45,662 --> 00:15:48,502
Wound up disliking me,
disliking the material,

320
00:15:48,582 --> 00:15:51,292
disliking the establishment
he was working for.

321
00:15:51,377 --> 00:15:53,837
Literally, one time he just left.

322
00:15:53,921 --> 00:15:56,301
Nobody could find him for four or five days.

323
00:15:56,382 --> 00:15:59,092
We finished the movie and it didn't work.

324
00:15:59,176 --> 00:16:01,926
And I had written a whole bunch of stuff
to make it work,

325
00:16:02,012 --> 00:16:05,182
but I said, "Hey, it's either
my way or the highway,"

326
00:16:05,265 --> 00:16:07,555
and I got on the highway the next day.

327
00:16:07,643 --> 00:16:10,233
I was devastated. I was finished.

328
00:16:10,312 --> 00:16:13,402
I mean, in my career I've had
these devastating things happen

329
00:16:13,482 --> 00:16:16,862
where you basically have to start
from scratch, and I was finished.

330
00:16:16,944 --> 00:16:19,954
So, I went back to New York
and we started making <i>Sisters.</i>

331
00:16:23,492 --> 00:16:27,332
<i>Sisters,</i> I got the idea
from a picture in <i>Life Magazine.</i>

332
00:16:27,413 --> 00:16:31,753
They had these Russian Siamese
twin sisters called Masha and Dasha

333
00:16:31,834 --> 00:16:33,794
as they're sitting together on a couch.

334
00:16:33,877 --> 00:16:35,917
One looking kind of gay and happy,

335
00:16:36,046 --> 00:16:38,086
and the other one sort of
slumped over to the side,

336
00:16:38,173 --> 00:16:40,343
looking completely psychopathic.

337
00:16:40,426 --> 00:16:45,136
And the caption was, "Although
they're physiologically perfectly normal

338
00:16:45,222 --> 00:16:47,222
as they develop into adolescence,

339
00:16:47,307 --> 00:16:49,937
they're developing certain mental problems."

340
00:16:50,060 --> 00:16:53,730
Conjoined twins called Siamese

341
00:16:53,814 --> 00:16:55,774
challenge life with their first breath.

342
00:16:55,858 --> 00:16:57,288
There was nothing easy about it.

343
00:16:57,317 --> 00:17:00,447
When we started with $150,000,
we were non-union.

344
00:17:00,529 --> 00:17:01,949
We were shooting in Staten Island.

345
00:17:02,072 --> 00:17:03,532
We were on such tight budgets.

346
00:17:03,615 --> 00:17:05,085
I mean, you know,
it had to be all figured out.

347
00:17:05,117 --> 00:17:07,997
I'd rehearsed the stuff with the girls.

348
00:17:08,078 --> 00:17:09,958
I mean, you know, all the actors I knew.

349
00:17:10,080 --> 00:17:12,670
Charlie Durning, I'd him put in <i>Hi, Mom!</i>

350
00:17:12,749 --> 00:17:13,999
It was his first movie.

351
00:17:14,084 --> 00:17:16,924
Finley, I'd worked with many movies before.

352
00:17:17,004 --> 00:17:18,554
Jennifer Salt, Margot Kidder.

353
00:17:18,630 --> 00:17:22,380
Who I was working with
essentially my repertory company.

354
00:17:22,468 --> 00:17:24,848
- You're the lady of the house?
- Yes, I am.

355
00:17:24,928 --> 00:17:26,678
- You live here alone?
- Yes.

356
00:17:26,763 --> 00:17:28,223
Have any company this morning?

357
00:17:28,307 --> 00:17:29,847
- Oh, no.
- Well, a split screen

358
00:17:29,933 --> 00:17:35,023
I got from <i>Dionysus In '69,</i>
where I shot the narrative of a play

359
00:17:35,105 --> 00:17:38,935
and Bob Fury shot the audience's involvement

360
00:17:39,026 --> 00:17:40,896
with the players and the play.

361
00:17:40,986 --> 00:17:42,276
And I got this idea,

362
00:17:42,362 --> 00:17:44,532
"Well, we'll show them simultaneously."

363
00:17:44,615 --> 00:17:46,115
The thing about movies is

364
00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:49,370
that you're telling the audience
what to look at.

365
00:17:49,453 --> 00:17:52,003
When you... you know, cut to something,
you're saying, "Ooh!

366
00:17:52,122 --> 00:17:55,752
There's something important
going on here. Look at that."

367
00:17:55,834 --> 00:17:59,384
The thing about split screen
is the audience has a chance

368
00:17:59,463 --> 00:18:02,513
to sort of put two images
together simultaneously

369
00:18:02,591 --> 00:18:04,381
and something happens in their head.

370
00:18:04,468 --> 00:18:08,758
You're giving them
a juxtaposition as opposed to this.

371
00:18:08,847 --> 00:18:13,637
Split screen is a technique
that can take you out of the experience.

372
00:18:13,727 --> 00:18:16,647
The idea is where it is appropriate.

373
00:18:16,730 --> 00:18:18,770
In <i>Sisters,</i> of course, it worked quite well.

374
00:18:18,857 --> 00:18:20,397
Can I get the blood cleaned up

375
00:18:20,484 --> 00:18:22,904
before this... Jennifer
comes around with the police?

376
00:18:22,986 --> 00:18:24,236
Makes perfect sense to me.

377
00:18:24,321 --> 00:18:28,411
May be completely alien to some other viewer,

378
00:18:28,492 --> 00:18:30,452
but you take something like <i>Barry Lyndon.</i>

379
00:18:30,536 --> 00:18:33,326
I could see these huge, slow zoom shots,

380
00:18:33,413 --> 00:18:36,173
and when I first saw the movie,
I disliked it intensely.

381
00:18:36,250 --> 00:18:39,340
After having seen it a couple
of more times, I can see that Kubrick...

382
00:18:39,419 --> 00:18:43,839
he's getting you into the time sense
of the period you're in.

383
00:18:43,924 --> 00:18:47,264
In order to get people
to understand this century,

384
00:18:47,344 --> 00:18:49,474
you have to <i>slow time.</i>

385
00:18:49,555 --> 00:18:51,305
To him, I'm sure it makes perfect sense.

386
00:18:51,390 --> 00:18:53,230
To a guy that just walked off the street,

387
00:18:53,308 --> 00:18:55,598
you say, "Oh, wait a minute.

388
00:18:55,686 --> 00:18:58,186
This is not like movies. What is this?"

389
00:18:58,272 --> 00:19:02,072
And that's very much... some
of these techniques that I developed

390
00:19:02,192 --> 00:19:06,112
came from what looked like
perfectly logical way

391
00:19:06,196 --> 00:19:09,526
to portray what I was seeing and feeling.

392
00:19:13,078 --> 00:19:16,158
When we were doing <i>Sisters,</i>
my editor, Paul Hirsch,

393
00:19:16,248 --> 00:19:20,208
laid a lot of Benny's stuff
from <i>Psycho</i> in a temp track.

394
00:19:20,294 --> 00:19:22,504
As we were looking at it, it worked so well.

395
00:19:22,588 --> 00:19:25,128
We sort of looked at each other and we said,

396
00:19:25,215 --> 00:19:27,425
"Where's Bernard Herrmann now?"

397
00:19:27,509 --> 00:19:31,759
So, we brought him to New York
to look at the film.

398
00:19:31,847 --> 00:19:35,977
When he arrived, you know,
Benny's, you know, with his cane,

399
00:19:36,059 --> 00:19:40,359
and he's hunched over, and he's been
on a plane, and he's very grouchy.

400
00:19:40,439 --> 00:19:43,399
And he comes off the elevator
in Movielab and I, you know, said,

401
00:19:43,483 --> 00:19:46,033
"- Hello, Mr. Herrmann, it's an honor.
- Where's the movie?"

402
00:19:46,111 --> 00:19:47,991
Okay, so, we go and we sit him down.

403
00:19:48,071 --> 00:19:51,531
Of course I had all this Bernard Herrmann
music on the temp track.

404
00:19:51,617 --> 00:19:54,537
So, of course, as soon as he hears...

405
00:19:54,620 --> 00:20:00,920
I forget what it was,
I think it was either <i>Vertigo</i> or <i>Psycho.</i>

406
00:20:01,001 --> 00:20:03,501
When he starts to hear the music,
he starts shrieking.

407
00:20:03,587 --> 00:20:06,337
He said, "Stop the projector!

408
00:20:06,423 --> 00:20:10,643
Stop it, stop it! I can't hear that!"

409
00:20:10,719 --> 00:20:13,849
And I said, "Oh, my God,"
so we stopped the projector.

410
00:20:13,930 --> 00:20:17,640
He says, "I can't look at your movie
and listen to that!"

411
00:20:20,354 --> 00:20:24,324
So, we frantically pulled
all the temp track off

412
00:20:24,399 --> 00:20:27,069
and then played the movie silent for him.

413
00:20:27,152 --> 00:20:31,572
So, we didn't have any score
on the movie for him to listen to.

414
00:20:31,657 --> 00:20:33,907
But he... he was scary.

415
00:20:33,992 --> 00:20:36,832
You don't sit there, you know,
going through note by note

416
00:20:36,912 --> 00:20:38,292
with the composer, with Benny.

417
00:20:38,372 --> 00:20:40,962
He just... He sees the movie

418
00:20:41,041 --> 00:20:42,711
and goes home and writes the score.

419
00:20:50,717 --> 00:20:54,717
Consequently, having been involved
with so many movies that were not a hit,

420
00:20:54,805 --> 00:20:57,055
I was trying to make a successful movie.

421
00:20:57,140 --> 00:20:59,310
Fortunately, it was successful

422
00:20:59,393 --> 00:21:02,563
and I was able to sell it
to American International.

423
00:21:02,646 --> 00:21:09,066
<i>

424
00:21:09,152 --> 00:21:12,322
<i>

425
00:21:12,406 --> 00:21:15,906
<i>

426
00:21:15,992 --> 00:21:18,332
<i>

427
00:21:18,412 --> 00:21:20,142
This is before <i>The Rocky Horror Show,</i>

428
00:21:20,163 --> 00:21:21,963
about a year before <i>The Rocky Horror Show.</i>

429
00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:23,380
Again, I just got this idea.

430
00:21:23,458 --> 00:21:25,958
I mean, just hanging around
and watching, you know,

431
00:21:26,044 --> 00:21:28,304
the whole kind of music business.

432
00:21:28,380 --> 00:21:30,300
You know, I was living in L.A.

433
00:21:30,382 --> 00:21:32,512
We were going to the rock clubs

434
00:21:32,592 --> 00:21:34,552
where personalities are so colorful.

435
00:21:34,636 --> 00:21:38,176
The idea came from Muzak in an elevator,

436
00:21:38,265 --> 00:21:41,305
when I heard a Beatles song
in Muzak in the elevator.

437
00:21:41,393 --> 00:21:45,813
And I said, "You can take
something extremely original

438
00:21:45,897 --> 00:21:49,187
and turn it into syrup
and it's completely commercial."

439
00:21:49,276 --> 00:21:50,856
And the whole idea of Swan

440
00:21:50,944 --> 00:21:54,664
sort of taking the Phantom's
very original music

441
00:21:54,740 --> 00:21:57,870
and then, you know,
first you hear it as 50's rock and roll,

442
00:21:57,951 --> 00:22:01,291
then it's Beach Boys, then it's horror rock.

443
00:22:01,371 --> 00:22:03,061
I mean, it just it doesn't
make any difference.

444
00:22:03,081 --> 00:22:06,671
You just... And you hear the same song
basically in three different forms.

445
00:22:06,752 --> 00:22:09,382
Mr. Paul Williams.

446
00:22:12,758 --> 00:22:15,008
I don't know how we came upon Paul,

447
00:22:15,093 --> 00:22:17,143
but the idea of him playing Swan...

448
00:22:17,220 --> 00:22:19,350
because he's such an interesting
looking character,

449
00:22:19,431 --> 00:22:22,891
and he was able to write
all these parodies of all these forms.

450
00:22:22,976 --> 00:22:25,266
<i>-
-

451
00:22:25,395 --> 00:22:26,855
<i>

452
00:22:26,938 --> 00:22:30,648
<i>

453
00:22:30,734 --> 00:22:31,994
No no.

454
00:22:32,068 --> 00:22:34,818
<i>

455
00:22:34,905 --> 00:22:38,655
<i>

456
00:22:38,742 --> 00:22:40,792
Wrong. Wrong again.

457
00:22:40,869 --> 00:22:45,869
<i>

458
00:22:45,957 --> 00:22:51,587
<i>
that I've been

459
00:22:51,671 --> 00:22:53,381
Pretty, but no.

460
00:22:53,465 --> 00:22:57,925
<i>

461
00:22:58,011 --> 00:22:59,851
<i>

462
00:22:59,930 --> 00:23:05,390
<i>

463
00:23:05,477 --> 00:23:06,727
No.

464
00:23:07,729 --> 00:23:14,689
<i>

465
00:23:14,778 --> 00:23:17,778
I always had the idea
of Finley playing the Phantom.

466
00:23:17,864 --> 00:23:19,784
Try it again.

467
00:23:19,866 --> 00:23:21,906
<i>Phoenix.</i>

468
00:23:21,993 --> 00:23:25,333
And he plays that kind of character
in <i>Woton's Wake</i> basically.

469
00:23:25,455 --> 00:23:26,825
And then I had to find Phoenix,

470
00:23:26,915 --> 00:23:29,665
which, she turned out to be
a Sarah Lawrence student.

471
00:23:29,751 --> 00:23:31,551
And that's where Jessica came from.

472
00:23:31,628 --> 00:23:34,298
The terrible thing about <i>Phantom</i> was,
when we finished it,

473
00:23:34,381 --> 00:23:36,841
we made it for about $1.2 million
or something,

474
00:23:36,925 --> 00:23:41,465
and Fox offered us $2 million to buy it
and I was like, "Holy mackerel."

475
00:23:41,555 --> 00:23:45,425
Unfortunately, we had not taken out
EandO insurance.

476
00:23:45,517 --> 00:23:48,057
So, we were hit with like,
four lawsuits immediately.

477
00:23:48,144 --> 00:23:51,194
Universal said we were infringing
on their <i>Phantom of the Opera.</i>

478
00:23:51,273 --> 00:23:53,693
I had a company called Swan Song Records

479
00:23:53,775 --> 00:23:56,185
that was a name of a real record company.

480
00:23:56,278 --> 00:23:58,108
Our picture was called <i>Phantom.</i>

481
00:23:58,196 --> 00:24:00,816
We had to change that because
of the <i>Phantom</i> comic strip.

482
00:24:00,907 --> 00:24:02,367
It was very successful in L.A.

483
00:24:02,492 --> 00:24:04,952
It was very successful in Canada.

484
00:24:05,036 --> 00:24:08,866
In France, it played for like, ten years.

485
00:24:08,957 --> 00:24:11,327
But, like, New York, it just died.

486
00:24:11,418 --> 00:24:14,838
I mean, I remember going to the theater
and, like, there was nobody there.

487
00:24:14,921 --> 00:24:18,301
Finley and I just outside the theater,

488
00:24:18,383 --> 00:24:20,473
looking for a line that didn't exist.

489
00:24:27,642 --> 00:24:31,652
The whole coming about of <i>Obsession</i> happened

490
00:24:31,730 --> 00:24:34,440
when Marty was working,
I think, on <i>Mean Streets,</i>

491
00:24:34,524 --> 00:24:36,744
and I was helping edit one of the scenes,

492
00:24:36,818 --> 00:24:38,898
the scene where Bobby comes into the bar

493
00:24:38,987 --> 00:24:41,197
and then he and Harvey talk in the back room.

494
00:24:41,281 --> 00:24:43,381
- How much you got?
- Charlie, I'm going to pay him next week.

495
00:24:43,408 --> 00:24:44,698
I'm going to pay ya!

496
00:24:44,784 --> 00:24:47,144
Where ya going, you don't do nothing.
How much you got there?

497
00:24:47,162 --> 00:24:49,752
Schrader came over and began to play cards

498
00:24:49,831 --> 00:24:51,541
or Schrader lost a whole bunch of money.

499
00:24:51,625 --> 00:24:53,305
And I said, "Come on,
I'll take you out to dinner."

500
00:24:53,335 --> 00:24:56,085
And that's when we got the idea
to do <i>Obsession,</i>

501
00:24:56,171 --> 00:24:57,511
because we'd both seen <i>Vertigo.</i>

502
00:24:57,589 --> 00:25:00,589
They'd recently shown it
at the L.A. County Museum.

503
00:25:00,675 --> 00:25:04,505
The first time it had been shown
in 20 years or something.

504
00:25:04,596 --> 00:25:06,176
I went home and wrote up the story

505
00:25:06,264 --> 00:25:09,234
and then Schrader took it on
and did the script.

506
00:25:09,309 --> 00:25:10,939
The original script of <i>Obsession,</i>

507
00:25:11,019 --> 00:25:13,309
which is called <i>Déjà Vu,</i> was in three acts.

508
00:25:13,396 --> 00:25:15,106
And there's a whole act in the future.

509
00:25:15,190 --> 00:25:16,980
So, I got rid of the third act,

510
00:25:17,067 --> 00:25:19,567
which Schrader always
was very unhappy with me.

511
00:25:19,653 --> 00:25:22,573
Well, the tough one was getting an actor
that could get it financed.

512
00:25:22,656 --> 00:25:24,026
And we were trying to get

513
00:25:24,115 --> 00:25:26,735
a kind of Hitchcockian leading man in this.

514
00:25:26,826 --> 00:25:29,326
And finally, we managed to get
Cliff Robertson,

515
00:25:29,412 --> 00:25:32,002
which was not my first choice,

516
00:25:32,082 --> 00:25:35,342
but that's, like, the best guy
we could get for the movie.

517
00:25:35,418 --> 00:25:37,998
And I think the weakness
of the movie is Cliff,

518
00:25:38,088 --> 00:25:40,668
and what... the greatness
of the movie is Genevieve.

519
00:25:40,757 --> 00:25:42,297
I mean, she carries the movie.

520
00:25:42,384 --> 00:25:44,684
Cliff was very difficult to work with,

521
00:25:44,761 --> 00:25:48,851
and he did things
that I'd never thought were possible.

522
00:25:48,932 --> 00:25:51,232
He could see that Genevieve
was taking the movie over.

523
00:25:51,309 --> 00:25:53,979
I mean, we got to a part where
they could hardly work together

524
00:25:54,062 --> 00:25:56,482
because he was affecting her performance.

525
00:25:56,606 --> 00:25:59,526
Not only not feeding her lines well.

526
00:25:59,609 --> 00:26:03,449
"I love you, I feel very strongly
about this. You mean more"...

527
00:26:03,530 --> 00:26:07,490
I mean, literally, you know,
not giving her anything to work off of.

528
00:26:07,617 --> 00:26:10,247
He would just start doing this.

529
00:26:13,873 --> 00:26:16,253
So, her eyeline would be like over here.

530
00:26:16,334 --> 00:26:17,794
Well, Vilmos lost his temper.

531
00:26:17,877 --> 00:26:20,437
Because, you know, Cliff always used
this kind of brown, you know,

532
00:26:20,463 --> 00:26:23,473
he looked like... Well, this is a guy
that's supposed to be haunted

533
00:26:23,550 --> 00:26:26,470
by the unfortunate death of his wife.

534
00:26:26,553 --> 00:26:28,053
He's supposed to be pale.

535
00:26:28,138 --> 00:26:30,718
He's got this brown stuff on his face.

536
00:26:30,807 --> 00:26:32,927
And I remembered Vilmos grabbing him once

537
00:26:33,018 --> 00:26:36,308
and literally backing him up
into the mahogany wall,

538
00:26:36,396 --> 00:26:39,726
and saying, "You are the same color
as this wall.

539
00:26:39,816 --> 00:26:42,236
How can I light you?"

540
00:26:45,488 --> 00:26:49,528
That took me many hours to paper that over.

541
00:26:49,659 --> 00:26:51,909
You about ready to go back
to old U.S. of A., Court?

542
00:26:51,995 --> 00:26:54,745
What is the technique that will work

543
00:26:54,831 --> 00:26:59,211
for this particular theatrical event
happening in front of you?

544
00:26:59,294 --> 00:27:02,634
<i>Dionysus</i> gave me the whole split screen idea,

545
00:27:02,714 --> 00:27:07,144
and then I went on with the split diopter
idea from those split screens.

546
00:27:07,218 --> 00:27:08,508
I mean, I edited <i>Dionysus,</i>

547
00:27:08,595 --> 00:27:12,095
so I was constantly putting
two images against each other,

548
00:27:12,182 --> 00:27:14,452
and I thought, "Well, how can I do this
in a regular movie?"

549
00:27:14,476 --> 00:27:17,016
You're putting something
very big in the foreground

550
00:27:17,103 --> 00:27:21,483
juxtaposing it against some other piece
of information in the background.

551
00:27:21,566 --> 00:27:23,896
I used it in <i>Carrie,</i> too, in the classroom,

552
00:27:23,985 --> 00:27:26,145
when Billy is reading his poem

553
00:27:26,237 --> 00:27:28,617
and you see Carrie at the back of the class.

554
00:27:28,698 --> 00:27:32,078
Then the diopter sort of cutting
on Billy's hair.

555
00:27:35,497 --> 00:27:38,037
I have long silent sequences
that need to be scored,

556
00:27:38,124 --> 00:27:40,884
so I need big orchestral scores.

557
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,090
Fortunately, because Benny was such a genius,

558
00:27:43,171 --> 00:27:46,931
9/10ths of it was there and there was
very little you had to change.

559
00:27:53,765 --> 00:27:57,725
This was the same year that Benny
was working on <i>Taxi Driver</i> with Marty.

560
00:27:57,811 --> 00:28:01,441
He conducted the score,
went back to his hotel, and died.

561
00:28:04,109 --> 00:28:06,739
I was there.

562
00:28:06,820 --> 00:28:09,820
It was, like, almost Christmas Eve.

563
00:28:12,033 --> 00:28:13,123
Benny was my first...

564
00:28:13,201 --> 00:28:14,871
One of the greatest composers I've heard.

565
00:28:14,953 --> 00:28:16,663
So, I started at a high point.

566
00:28:16,746 --> 00:28:20,786
Now I had to find somebody
to pick up the slack basically.

567
00:28:20,875 --> 00:28:22,585
And I was fortunate enough to find Pino

568
00:28:22,669 --> 00:28:24,799
because I liked his score to <i>Don't Look Now.</i>

569
00:28:30,552 --> 00:28:33,432
When I discovered him, he lived in Venice.

570
00:28:33,513 --> 00:28:36,603
And brought him in, and the first score
he did for me was <i>Carrie.</i>

571
00:28:38,268 --> 00:28:41,558
And then we did eight more films after that.

572
00:28:41,646 --> 00:28:43,646
<i>Carrie</i> and <i>Obsession</i> the same year.

573
00:28:43,773 --> 00:28:45,193
'76 was a very big year.

574
00:28:45,275 --> 00:28:47,315
Apart from <i>Get to Know Your Rabbit,</i>

575
00:28:47,402 --> 00:28:51,202
the first ten features I made
were independently financed.

576
00:28:51,281 --> 00:28:52,821
I had the Orson Welles problems.

577
00:28:52,907 --> 00:28:54,777
I had big ideas.

578
00:28:54,868 --> 00:28:57,118
And I needed a lot of that stuff.

579
00:28:57,203 --> 00:29:01,833
So, I had to get back into the system.

580
00:29:01,916 --> 00:29:04,126
And I only managed
to do it again with <i>Carrie.</i>

581
00:29:04,210 --> 00:29:10,300
<i>Carrie</i> came to me in a steam room
over on 12th Street,

582
00:29:10,383 --> 00:29:12,933
where a writer friend of mine

583
00:29:13,011 --> 00:29:15,971
suggested this book
by Stephen King called <i>Carrie.</i>

584
00:29:16,055 --> 00:29:17,965
I discovered it was at United Artists.

585
00:29:18,057 --> 00:29:20,347
Mike Medavoy was head of the studio.

586
00:29:20,435 --> 00:29:24,435
He knew who I was and liked my movies
and that's how I got the job.

587
00:29:24,522 --> 00:29:27,782
Larry Cohen had written the script.
It was in pretty good shape.

588
00:29:27,859 --> 00:29:29,499
But I got rid of the brackets immediately.

589
00:29:29,569 --> 00:29:32,819
You know, it's all told,
Sue Snell was being interrogated.

590
00:29:32,906 --> 00:29:35,326
And it's all done in flashbacks
about what happened.

591
00:29:35,408 --> 00:29:37,468
We kept on coming in
with a budget of a $1.8 million,

592
00:29:37,493 --> 00:29:39,793
and they said,
"We're not making it at $1.8 million.

593
00:29:39,871 --> 00:29:42,501
It's got to be $1.6 million."

594
00:29:42,582 --> 00:29:45,922
And I said... You know, just like
my <i>Get to Know Your Rabbit</i> experience...

595
00:29:46,002 --> 00:29:51,262
I said, "Guys, that's what it costs.
It's $1.8 million."

596
00:29:51,341 --> 00:29:53,051
And they said fine.

597
00:29:53,134 --> 00:29:56,764
And then they started moving
the furniture out of my office.

598
00:29:56,846 --> 00:30:00,096
The movie had been cancelled.

599
00:30:00,183 --> 00:30:02,893
So, I went home that weekend
and thought about it.

600
00:30:02,977 --> 00:30:04,977
And I somehow came back and said,

601
00:30:05,063 --> 00:30:06,423
"You know, I've been thinking about it.

602
00:30:06,439 --> 00:30:09,229
If we moved this and changed this around,

603
00:30:09,317 --> 00:30:12,107
maybe we can do it for $1.6 million."

604
00:30:12,195 --> 00:30:16,905
And they said, "Great. It's a go."

605
00:30:16,991 --> 00:30:19,701
And of course it cost $1.8 million.

606
00:30:19,786 --> 00:30:23,286
George and I were casting <i>Star Wars</i>
and <i>Carrie</i> at the same time.

607
00:30:23,373 --> 00:30:25,793
George was doing like, a huge cattle call,

608
00:30:25,875 --> 00:30:29,205
because he was looking
at every young actor in Hollywood.

609
00:30:29,295 --> 00:30:31,705
And I said, "George, let's do this together.

610
00:30:31,798 --> 00:30:34,258
We're looking at the same types of actors."

611
00:30:34,342 --> 00:30:36,842
I think Amy got pretty close
to playing Princess Leia.

612
00:30:36,928 --> 00:30:39,428
All the data banks in R2 are still secure.

613
00:30:39,514 --> 00:30:42,274
And that's where these two casts came from.

614
00:30:42,350 --> 00:30:45,020
I'd seen a young actress
that was in some movie

615
00:30:45,103 --> 00:30:48,193
about a teenager that gets pregnant
and has an abortion.

616
00:30:48,273 --> 00:30:50,943
And I was sure she was, like,
perfect for Carrie.

617
00:30:51,025 --> 00:30:53,695
And I had... And I worked with her very hard.

618
00:30:53,778 --> 00:30:55,878
You know, because we had to shoot
all these screen tests.

619
00:30:55,905 --> 00:30:58,315
Sissy came to me and asked
if she could try out

620
00:30:58,408 --> 00:31:02,158
because I knew Sissy from <i>Phantom</i>
because she was Jack Fisk's girlfriend,

621
00:31:02,245 --> 00:31:04,655
and, you know, was painting sets.

622
00:31:04,747 --> 00:31:07,957
But then she got a commercial that same
weekend we were shooting these tests

623
00:31:08,042 --> 00:31:10,002
and said, "Should I go do the commercial

624
00:31:10,086 --> 00:31:12,086
or stay here and try out?"

625
00:31:12,171 --> 00:31:17,471
And I said "Sissy, I'm really leaning
towards this other girl, but..."

626
00:31:17,552 --> 00:31:20,182
And the studio didn't even want me
to try out Sissy.

627
00:31:20,263 --> 00:31:23,063
They just thought she was just
physically wrong.

628
00:31:23,141 --> 00:31:26,141
And I... And Sissy said, "No,
I'll do the tryout."

629
00:31:26,227 --> 00:31:29,057
And of course, when she did the test
she made everybody look silly.

630
00:31:33,609 --> 00:31:37,109
I don't know where I got the idea
for the slow motion in the shower.

631
00:31:37,196 --> 00:31:38,656
Big problem with all the nudity

632
00:31:38,740 --> 00:31:41,030
because the girls
are all very self-conscious.

633
00:31:41,117 --> 00:31:43,907
But the fact that we shot
like two days before

634
00:31:43,995 --> 00:31:47,825
with Sissy completely naked
doing all the close-ups,

635
00:31:47,957 --> 00:31:49,957
you know, with the blood that comes down,

636
00:31:50,043 --> 00:31:52,133
so they figured, "Hey, if Sissy can do it...

637
00:31:53,379 --> 00:31:54,929
we'll do it."

638
00:31:56,091 --> 00:31:57,134
Help.

639
00:31:57,216 --> 00:32:01,140
You know, I get a lot of criticisms
because of these kind of juxtapositions,

640
00:32:01,220 --> 00:32:03,310
but to me they seem perfectly logical.

641
00:32:03,389 --> 00:32:05,849
I mean, she has her period. She's hysterical.

642
00:32:05,975 --> 00:32:08,555
She goes for help and the girls
basically, you know,

643
00:32:08,644 --> 00:32:11,664
beat her down in the corner of the shower.

644
00:32:16,152 --> 00:32:18,072
A very difficult scene to do.

645
00:32:23,034 --> 00:32:24,354
That's what Hitchcock always said.

646
00:32:24,369 --> 00:32:27,369
I mean, it's always the run-up
to what happens that's interesting.

647
00:32:27,455 --> 00:32:32,065
And you obviously see in my movies,
the run-up goes on forever.

648
00:32:33,378 --> 00:32:34,998
Yes, they did.

649
00:32:35,088 --> 00:32:37,628
Yeah, that's fantastic.

650
00:32:40,343 --> 00:32:42,983
You know, many times
I'd be doing very complicated shots

651
00:32:43,012 --> 00:32:45,432
and nobody would understand what I was doing.

652
00:32:45,515 --> 00:32:49,231
You know, that figure eight shot where,
you know, you go with the ballots,

653
00:32:49,310 --> 00:32:50,900
brings you all the way up to the side.

654
00:32:51,020 --> 00:32:55,648
You go over the top of the blood
then zoom back to Sissy and she gets up.

655
00:32:55,733 --> 00:32:59,610
I give you Tommy Ross and Carrie White!

656
00:33:01,739 --> 00:33:05,239
That shot took a day to shoot.

657
00:33:05,326 --> 00:33:07,116
Literally, the head of the studio came down

658
00:33:07,203 --> 00:33:08,913
and asked what the hell I was doing.

659
00:33:09,038 --> 00:33:13,038
And it's like, "You want
to shoot this? Be my guest."

660
00:33:19,090 --> 00:33:22,220
I did grow up in an operating room.
I saw a lot of blood.

661
00:33:22,301 --> 00:33:24,471
My father was an orthopedic surgeon.

662
00:33:24,554 --> 00:33:27,434
And I used to go to the hospital
and watch him operate.

663
00:33:27,515 --> 00:33:31,225
You can't imagine how much blood
is flying around in an operating room.

664
00:33:31,310 --> 00:33:34,900
With the sawing and the wrestling

665
00:33:34,981 --> 00:33:36,941
and it's not like eye surgery,

666
00:33:37,066 --> 00:33:38,686
it's really physical.

667
00:33:38,776 --> 00:33:43,406
You know, our movie blood was all
some kind of corn syrup and dye,

668
00:33:43,489 --> 00:33:45,319
this theatrically red.

669
00:33:45,408 --> 00:33:48,658
It isn't like what real blood is,
which is brownish,

670
00:33:48,744 --> 00:33:52,214
and, when it dries,
it's almost completely brown.

671
00:34:13,686 --> 00:34:16,396
When Carrie starts to knock everybody off,

672
00:34:16,481 --> 00:34:18,401
I shot the whole thing in split screen.

673
00:34:18,483 --> 00:34:22,903
But what I discovered was, split screen...
it is not good for action.

674
00:34:22,987 --> 00:34:27,157
So, Paul Hirsch and I pulled out
a lot of the split screen.

675
00:34:27,241 --> 00:34:28,781
You see it occasionally.

676
00:34:28,868 --> 00:34:31,288
But it's not good for, you know,

677
00:34:31,370 --> 00:34:33,540
action, reaction, action, reaction.

678
00:34:33,623 --> 00:34:37,793
It's too much of an intellectual form,
basically.

679
00:34:37,877 --> 00:34:39,167
Endings are extremely important

680
00:34:39,253 --> 00:34:40,883
and that was one of the great endings.

681
00:34:40,963 --> 00:34:44,053
In the wide shot, where you see
the traffic in the street

682
00:34:44,133 --> 00:34:47,553
and she walks down the side
and then goes into the graveyard...

683
00:34:47,637 --> 00:34:49,387
that we shot backwards.

684
00:34:49,472 --> 00:34:51,682
I wanted it to look strangely odd.

685
00:34:51,766 --> 00:34:55,016
There was something strange about it,
but you're not exactly sure what.

686
00:34:55,144 --> 00:34:57,944
There was a similar sequence in <i>Deliverance,</i>

687
00:34:58,022 --> 00:35:00,112
when Jon Voight dreams about the bodies

688
00:35:00,191 --> 00:35:02,901
coming up from the lake
where he's buried them.

689
00:35:02,985 --> 00:35:06,355
I remember that was quite a...
quite a shocking moment.

690
00:35:08,157 --> 00:35:12,787
But that's the only thing, I think, that
could possibly have gotten me thinking

691
00:35:12,870 --> 00:35:16,170
about the hand out of the grave.

692
00:35:32,098 --> 00:35:36,058
The executives at United Artists
were very classy.

693
00:35:42,066 --> 00:35:43,726
They had <i>Rocky</i> that year.

694
00:35:43,818 --> 00:35:46,898
And <i>Carrie</i> was like...

695
00:35:46,988 --> 00:35:49,068
was like an AIP picture to them.

696
00:35:49,198 --> 00:35:50,408
It was like,

697
00:35:50,491 --> 00:35:52,331
"Well, it's... You know,

698
00:35:52,410 --> 00:35:55,120
we'll distribute it, but let's not talk
about it too much."

699
00:35:55,204 --> 00:35:56,214
<i>Carrie...</i>

700
00:35:58,457 --> 00:35:59,997
<i>A new film by Brian De Palma.</i>

701
00:36:00,084 --> 00:36:02,844
So, they put it a lot in a bunch
of theaters on Halloween,

702
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,010
expecting it to play
for a week or so whatever.

703
00:36:05,089 --> 00:36:06,969
And then it made a tremendous amount of money

704
00:36:07,049 --> 00:36:08,489
and they started to take it more seriously.

705
00:36:08,509 --> 00:36:12,139
But I was always fighting for, you know,
money for the campaign.

706
00:36:12,221 --> 00:36:14,101
And against all odds,

707
00:36:14,223 --> 00:36:16,853
Sissy and Piper were both
nominated for Oscars.

708
00:36:16,934 --> 00:36:20,104
What's great about <i>Carrie</i> is they made
so many versions of it now,

709
00:36:20,229 --> 00:36:23,939
and they've made so many mistakes
that it's wonderful to see what happens

710
00:36:24,025 --> 00:36:25,775
when somebody takes a piece of material

711
00:36:25,860 --> 00:36:28,320
and makes all the mistakes that you avoided.

712
00:36:29,322 --> 00:36:31,702


713
00:36:31,782 --> 00:36:36,952


714
00:36:37,038 --> 00:36:39,538
There's a three-hour
television version of <i>Carrie,</i>

715
00:36:39,623 --> 00:36:41,173
<i>which is exactly like the book.</i>

716
00:36:41,250 --> 00:36:44,460
Instead of crucifying Mrs. White,

717
00:36:44,545 --> 00:36:46,665
they give her a heart attack.

718
00:36:46,756 --> 00:36:48,586
And I remembered in a script meeting saying,

719
00:36:48,674 --> 00:36:50,054
"This is what happened?

720
00:36:50,134 --> 00:36:52,604
She clutches her heart and falls down?

721
00:36:52,678 --> 00:36:54,968
That's dramatic!"

722
00:36:57,266 --> 00:36:59,596
That's where I came up
with the flying utensils.

723
00:37:14,825 --> 00:37:17,745
Well, then I got offered
another studio picture.

724
00:37:17,828 --> 00:37:20,158
Or a couple... Just different studios,

725
00:37:20,289 --> 00:37:22,459
and the best one I could get was <i>The Fury.</i>

726
00:37:22,541 --> 00:37:24,291
Which suddenly had a huge budget,

727
00:37:24,377 --> 00:37:27,667
which was like, $5 million
or something, unheard of,

728
00:37:27,755 --> 00:37:29,795
and we suddenly had all these movie stars,

729
00:37:29,882 --> 00:37:31,972
you know, Cassavetes and Kirk Douglas,

730
00:37:32,051 --> 00:37:35,601
and I said, "Wow, let's do this.
I've never done this before."

731
00:37:35,679 --> 00:37:38,099
Plus, we had a whole bunch
of charming girls in this.

732
00:37:38,182 --> 00:37:40,772
And even though it's kind of not the movie

733
00:37:40,851 --> 00:37:43,601
you would have top on your list to make...

734
00:37:45,231 --> 00:37:47,651
there were a lot of things in it
I really liked.

735
00:37:47,733 --> 00:37:50,363
I liked the scene where Amy's on the steps

736
00:37:50,444 --> 00:37:53,284
and she touches the scar
in Charlie Durning's hand

737
00:37:53,364 --> 00:37:57,034
and then remembers Robin
being chased up there

738
00:37:57,118 --> 00:37:59,748
and going out the window.

739
00:37:59,829 --> 00:38:02,079
And I loved the Johnny Williams score.

740
00:38:02,164 --> 00:38:04,214
I thought Johnny did
a great job with the score.

741
00:38:04,333 --> 00:38:06,543
That's one of my favorite scores, that score.

742
00:38:08,254 --> 00:38:09,964
I had to do a car chase in <i>The Fury.</i>

743
00:38:10,047 --> 00:38:12,087
I don't like car chases.

744
00:38:12,174 --> 00:38:14,144
I find them a very boring thing.

745
00:38:14,218 --> 00:38:15,758
I'm not a car person.

746
00:38:15,845 --> 00:38:19,305
I don't get excited taking shots
of wheels turning,

747
00:38:19,390 --> 00:38:21,560
point of views out of windshields

748
00:38:21,642 --> 00:38:25,692
or cars banging into...
It just doesn't do anything for me.

749
00:38:25,771 --> 00:38:28,651
You know, you're forced because
of the script to do certain things.

750
00:38:28,732 --> 00:38:30,342
You have to figure out,
how am I going to do this?

751
00:38:30,359 --> 00:38:31,819
And how can I make it interesting?

752
00:38:31,902 --> 00:38:34,702
And after <i>The French Connection,</i>
there are no car chases.

753
00:38:34,780 --> 00:38:37,280
It's just ridiculous to even
think about doing a car chase.

754
00:38:37,366 --> 00:38:40,536
It's the best idea in the world.
Subway, car underneath.

755
00:38:40,619 --> 00:38:43,159
I mean, you know, there's not
a better idea than that.

756
00:38:43,247 --> 00:38:44,997
But I like... I like Cassavetes

757
00:38:45,082 --> 00:38:47,382
and it was interesting working with him.

758
00:38:47,460 --> 00:38:49,840
He hated a lot of what he had to do.

759
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:53,260
The only time that John
really sort of went ballistic

760
00:38:53,382 --> 00:38:55,892
was when we had to do a body cast of him

761
00:38:55,968 --> 00:39:00,308
and stick him in all this gook
for the blowing up of himself.

762
00:39:00,389 --> 00:39:03,229
He hated that. Drove him crazy.

763
00:39:03,309 --> 00:39:06,059
You know, it's on the page
and you gotta figure out how to do it.

764
00:39:06,145 --> 00:39:08,015
But it doesn't come from you, essentially.

765
00:39:08,105 --> 00:39:11,065
You're basically directing
somebody else's ideas

766
00:39:11,150 --> 00:39:13,570
and you're trying to do
the best that you can.

767
00:39:13,652 --> 00:39:17,622
But it's not one of my favorite films
by a long shot.

768
00:39:17,698 --> 00:39:21,328
I'm Dennis Bird. And this is my life.

769
00:39:21,410 --> 00:39:25,790
I had this idea that the way to teach film

770
00:39:25,873 --> 00:39:28,583
would be to actually make
a low-budget feature.

771
00:39:28,667 --> 00:39:33,337
I decided to try this idea out
at Sarah Lawrence

772
00:39:33,422 --> 00:39:36,222
and see if I could just teach a class

773
00:39:36,300 --> 00:39:38,930
which consisted of what you have to do

774
00:39:39,011 --> 00:39:41,931
in order to create a motion picture feature.

775
00:39:42,014 --> 00:39:45,202
What's the point of film school if you
don't know how to make a low-budget movie?

776
00:39:45,226 --> 00:39:47,616
Because that's what you're going to be
faced with eventually.

777
00:39:47,645 --> 00:39:50,765
I had this idea
based on stories about my family,

778
00:39:50,856 --> 00:39:54,186
and with the class we developed the script.

779
00:39:54,276 --> 00:39:55,896
- Oh, hi, Dad.
- Hi.

780
00:39:55,986 --> 00:39:57,296
I thought it was just going to be,

781
00:39:57,321 --> 00:39:59,631
"Oh, we'll go to Sarah Lawrence
and we'll teach this, and..."

782
00:39:59,657 --> 00:40:01,237
Well, it was like making a movie.

783
00:40:01,325 --> 00:40:05,075
I mean, it was just as exhausting
as when you make a movie.

784
00:40:05,162 --> 00:40:08,002
Hey! You're zonked out in your own rushes.

785
00:40:08,082 --> 00:40:09,502
You realize how dangerous that is?

786
00:40:09,583 --> 00:40:10,893
We had to raise the money.

787
00:40:10,918 --> 00:40:12,168
And of course, as you know,

788
00:40:12,253 --> 00:40:14,233
when you're raising money
for independent features,

789
00:40:14,255 --> 00:40:17,215
you know, the tax shelter dentist
fell out at the ninth hour.

790
00:40:17,299 --> 00:40:19,429
And I called up Steven and George and I said,

791
00:40:19,510 --> 00:40:21,640
"You guys are going to contribute
some money to this,

792
00:40:21,720 --> 00:40:25,640
because... the dentist just fell out."

793
00:40:25,724 --> 00:40:28,194
I had a couple of people offering to buy it.

794
00:40:28,269 --> 00:40:30,019
It only cost $300,000.

795
00:40:30,104 --> 00:40:31,924
I was trying to make a deal
with United Artists,

796
00:40:31,939 --> 00:40:36,529
but this was the great year of Cimino's
catastrophe over there.

797
00:40:36,610 --> 00:40:40,160
We finally made a deal with them
and they opened it up on 57th Street.

798
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:42,909
It got some good reviews
and played for about two weeks.

799
00:40:42,992 --> 00:40:45,412
I bought <i>The New York Times</i> ad.

800
00:40:45,494 --> 00:40:47,294
What's disappointing about teaching film

801
00:40:47,371 --> 00:40:49,921
is that, you know, 99% of them
are going nowhere.

802
00:40:49,999 --> 00:40:52,379
Anybody that has a career,
it's a... It's a miracle.

803
00:40:53,502 --> 00:40:55,922
<i>Dressed to Kill</i> was a very hot script.

804
00:40:56,005 --> 00:41:00,005
And I sold the script for a million
dollars, which is like, "Holy mackerel."

805
00:41:00,092 --> 00:41:01,512
It all went extremely well.

806
00:41:01,594 --> 00:41:03,644
The picture, you know, previewed well.

807
00:41:03,721 --> 00:41:05,971
It's one of those pictures
where everything worked.

808
00:41:06,056 --> 00:41:08,726
You know, and sometimes I have
these ideas in my head

809
00:41:08,809 --> 00:41:12,609
and until they gel into a whole movie,
they sort of circle around.

810
00:41:12,688 --> 00:41:16,068
I'd written a script
based on the book <i>Cruising,</i>

811
00:41:16,150 --> 00:41:18,190
which ultimately Billy Friedkin made.

812
00:41:18,277 --> 00:41:20,277
And then, you know, from my days at Columbia,

813
00:41:20,362 --> 00:41:23,412
where my roommate and I used to go
to the Museum of Modern Art

814
00:41:23,532 --> 00:41:25,702
and look at the pictures
and the pretty girls,

815
00:41:25,784 --> 00:41:30,374
I got this idea of this pick-up
at the Museum of Modern Art.

816
00:41:30,456 --> 00:41:33,206
And you know, this dissatisfied,
you know, housewife

817
00:41:33,292 --> 00:41:35,792
and she's cruising along
and she gets picked up.

818
00:41:35,878 --> 00:41:37,958
And I think it came together
when I finally got

819
00:41:38,047 --> 00:41:40,217
the whole transsexual section of it.

820
00:41:40,299 --> 00:41:43,179
The idea of, "I'm a woman living
in a man's body."

821
00:41:43,260 --> 00:41:44,820
<i>There's a lot of macho things there.</i>

822
00:41:44,845 --> 00:41:47,675
<i>This is very common
among transsexuals. You find, um...</i>

823
00:41:47,765 --> 00:41:50,885
You know, it was sort of perfect,
kind of <i>Sisters,</i>

824
00:41:50,976 --> 00:41:53,096
the good half, the bad half.

825
00:41:53,187 --> 00:41:55,357
The fact when he gets aroused, you know,

826
00:41:55,439 --> 00:41:58,569
that means his penis is growing
and he can't be a woman.

827
00:41:58,651 --> 00:42:00,941
Do you find me attractive?

828
00:42:01,028 --> 00:42:02,948
Of course.

829
00:42:03,030 --> 00:42:04,280
Would you want to sleep with me?

830
00:42:04,365 --> 00:42:05,815
And he's got to stop

831
00:42:05,908 --> 00:42:08,368
whatever is making, you know, him get aroused

832
00:42:08,452 --> 00:42:11,412
and of course, leads to him murdering Angie.

833
00:42:18,796 --> 00:42:20,956
There's a big controversy over
<i>Dressed to Kill</i>

834
00:42:21,048 --> 00:42:23,548
because of my fight with the ratings board.

835
00:42:23,634 --> 00:42:25,594
And that got into the press,

836
00:42:25,678 --> 00:42:28,848
and I got a lot of angry protests

837
00:42:28,931 --> 00:42:32,101
because of the violence against women.

838
00:42:32,184 --> 00:42:34,027
No...

839
00:42:35,020 --> 00:42:37,230
You know, again it's structured
with, you know, <i>Psycho,</i>

840
00:42:37,314 --> 00:42:41,944
bumping off the lead character
in the first 20, 30 minutes of the movie.

841
00:42:42,027 --> 00:42:43,527
In the elevator scene,

842
00:42:43,612 --> 00:42:46,822
it's Michael's double that is slashing Angie.

843
00:42:46,907 --> 00:42:48,777
I just knew you wouldn't recognize him

844
00:42:48,867 --> 00:42:51,497
with the dark glasses
and the wig and everything,

845
00:42:51,620 --> 00:42:54,420
and I wasn't going to show that much of him.

846
00:42:54,498 --> 00:42:57,038
And I said, "You know,
why get Michael in this outfit

847
00:42:57,126 --> 00:42:58,476
if you're not really going to see him?"

848
00:42:58,502 --> 00:43:01,842
The whole Keith Gordon character
came from, you know,

849
00:43:01,922 --> 00:43:04,882
me and my science fair projects,

850
00:43:04,967 --> 00:43:06,507
and following people around.

851
00:43:06,635 --> 00:43:08,845
I used to follow my father around

852
00:43:08,929 --> 00:43:10,559
when he was cheating on my mother.

853
00:43:10,639 --> 00:43:12,139
I took photographs of him.

854
00:43:12,224 --> 00:43:15,314
You know, I could see a woman going in
and out and stuff like that.

855
00:43:15,394 --> 00:43:18,370
It was all taking place at his office,
which was down the street from our house.

856
00:43:18,397 --> 00:43:23,737
And I'd broken into the office by ramming
my fist through the glass door.

857
00:43:23,819 --> 00:43:25,699
And I was carry... I had a knife with me,

858
00:43:25,779 --> 00:43:27,699
and I threatened him,
and I said, "Where is she?"

859
00:43:27,740 --> 00:43:29,320
And I had to search through the office

860
00:43:29,408 --> 00:43:33,578
and I finally found her
in a closet on the third floor.

861
00:43:33,662 --> 00:43:37,332
Well, he was a little bit surprised,
to say the least.

862
00:43:37,416 --> 00:43:39,036
I mean, you know, that is me.

863
00:43:39,126 --> 00:43:41,296
I was following around
my father for my mother.

864
00:43:41,378 --> 00:43:45,378
He's following around the murderer
because his mother got bumped off.

865
00:43:45,466 --> 00:43:47,016
Yeah!

866
00:44:00,397 --> 00:44:02,187
The waiting is very important.

867
00:44:02,274 --> 00:44:04,904
You know, so you could ground yourself.

868
00:44:04,985 --> 00:44:08,525
So the audience gets very accustomed
to where everything is.

869
00:44:14,369 --> 00:44:16,539
Well, I got the whole psychiatrist idea

870
00:44:16,622 --> 00:44:18,752
because that was based on
the psychiatrist I had

871
00:44:18,832 --> 00:44:20,962
when I was first going out with Nancy.

872
00:44:21,043 --> 00:44:24,513
I met Nancy on <i>Carrie</i>
and we started to go out together

873
00:44:24,588 --> 00:44:26,588
while I was working on <i>The Fury,</i> I think.

874
00:44:26,715 --> 00:44:28,625
I thought she was very good in <i>Carrie</i>

875
00:44:28,717 --> 00:44:31,387
and then I wrote the part
for her in <i>Dressed to Kill.</i>

876
00:44:31,470 --> 00:44:33,060
The story was getting to the point

877
00:44:33,138 --> 00:44:36,268
where I thought I made
enough movies with my wife

878
00:44:36,350 --> 00:44:40,100
and what was becoming
kind of a strain in our relationship.

879
00:44:40,187 --> 00:44:42,477
But John loved working with her so much

880
00:44:42,564 --> 00:44:45,364
that when we did <i>Blow Out,</i>
it was like, "Let's do it with Nancy."

881
00:44:48,070 --> 00:44:49,700
The first idea for <i>Blow Out,</i>

882
00:44:49,780 --> 00:44:51,370
<i>it was a very low-budget movie.</i>

883
00:44:51,448 --> 00:44:54,738
And suddenly, John wanted to do it,
then the whole movie changed.

884
00:44:54,827 --> 00:44:57,657
It went from like, a $5 or $6 million movie

885
00:44:57,746 --> 00:44:59,576
to close to a $20 million movie.

886
00:45:06,046 --> 00:45:07,966
Well, the Steadicam was Vilmos's idea.

887
00:45:08,048 --> 00:45:10,128
I mean, Vilmos knew about this new camera

888
00:45:10,217 --> 00:45:11,967
and he said, "Why don't we try it out?"

889
00:45:12,052 --> 00:45:14,182
I mean, we used to handhold those shots,

890
00:45:14,263 --> 00:45:16,723
but I never liked that
kind of shaky camera stuff.

891
00:45:16,807 --> 00:45:18,557
Once the Steadicam came in,

892
00:45:18,642 --> 00:45:21,442
you could work out these long kind of shots,

893
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:24,310
where you would take your characters
through environments

894
00:45:24,398 --> 00:45:27,228
and have things interacting with them.

895
00:45:27,317 --> 00:45:31,277
As I was mixing <i>Dressed to Kill,</i>

896
00:45:31,363 --> 00:45:33,913
the sound guy had to go out
and get different...

897
00:45:33,991 --> 00:45:35,451
I kept on saying to him,

898
00:45:35,534 --> 00:45:38,124
"I'm tired of that sound
of wind in the trees.

899
00:45:38,203 --> 00:45:40,293
Could you please get me something better?"

900
00:45:40,372 --> 00:45:43,042
And then, he would go out in his backyard

901
00:45:43,125 --> 00:45:45,205
and record new stuff for me.

902
00:45:45,294 --> 00:45:48,464
So, that concept of him recording sounds

903
00:45:48,547 --> 00:45:52,127
and then the idea that the sound he records

904
00:45:52,217 --> 00:45:55,677
is the key to the murder,
the assassination of the candidate.

905
00:45:55,804 --> 00:45:59,184
And it has, of course, it has
that little Chappaquiddick in it.

906
00:45:59,266 --> 00:46:01,306
Was the governor driving the car?
Was he in control?

907
00:46:01,351 --> 00:46:03,231
Control? It went into the drink, didn't it?

908
00:46:03,312 --> 00:46:05,022
- He wasn't in no control.
- Was he alone?

909
00:46:05,105 --> 00:46:07,355
- Was he alone in the car?
- Well, I didn't see anybody.

910
00:46:07,441 --> 00:46:09,651
A little of <i>Blow Up.</i>

911
00:46:22,497 --> 00:46:26,247
Putting the pictures together
that you saw from the Zapruder film,

912
00:46:26,335 --> 00:46:30,625
syncing it with the sound
is what we do in the editing room.

913
00:46:30,714 --> 00:46:33,764
Having synced up so many movies myself,

914
00:46:33,842 --> 00:46:35,592
all that stuff sort of came together

915
00:46:35,677 --> 00:46:40,477
and the whole idea of using the techniques
of making the film in making the film.

916
00:46:51,568 --> 00:46:52,818
Kill it.

917
00:46:52,903 --> 00:46:54,573
I was a big assassination buff

918
00:46:54,655 --> 00:46:56,865
and I read all the books
about the assassination.

919
00:46:56,948 --> 00:46:58,888
What's interesting about
the Kennedy assassination

920
00:46:58,909 --> 00:47:01,869
is it's the most intense
investigation ever done.

921
00:47:01,953 --> 00:47:06,333
No murder was ever investigated like this
in the history of crime.

922
00:47:06,416 --> 00:47:09,876
But <i>Blow Out</i> gets down
to somebody trying to find out

923
00:47:09,961 --> 00:47:13,091
what actually happened, and my conclusion was

924
00:47:13,173 --> 00:47:15,633
even if they could figure out
who was on the grassy knoll,

925
00:47:15,717 --> 00:47:17,047
no would care anymore.

926
00:47:20,263 --> 00:47:24,393
The thing about the 360 shot
was I wanted to create

927
00:47:24,476 --> 00:47:27,476
the sense of a reel of tape turning,

928
00:47:27,562 --> 00:47:31,272
so I made the camera turn
as of all the reels of tape turning.

929
00:47:31,358 --> 00:47:34,568
And every time we made
a revolution around the room,

930
00:47:34,653 --> 00:47:37,203
more stuff was erased.

931
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:39,990
Vilmos and I were peering over the set.

932
00:47:40,075 --> 00:47:42,985
The camera operator was running around

933
00:47:43,078 --> 00:47:47,368
panning the camera 360 degrees.

934
00:47:47,457 --> 00:47:51,917
Nobody saw the movie until it was finished,

935
00:47:52,003 --> 00:47:54,263
because I had a lot of power
off of <i>Dressed to Kill.</i>

936
00:47:54,339 --> 00:47:58,389
When they saw that ending, oh, it died.

937
00:47:58,468 --> 00:48:01,348
I'll never forget when we showed it
to the executives,

938
00:48:01,430 --> 00:48:03,220
they just were like, appalled.

939
00:48:03,306 --> 00:48:04,926
You know, many of my movies

940
00:48:05,016 --> 00:48:07,726
which were considered
great disasters at the time.

941
00:48:07,811 --> 00:48:10,311
You know, there was
no bigger disaster than <i>Blow Out.</i>

942
00:48:10,397 --> 00:48:12,857
It's always surprising.
You always think they're gonna come...

943
00:48:12,941 --> 00:48:15,281
come out and see your movies,

944
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,660
even as odd as they ultimately wind up being.

945
00:48:18,739 --> 00:48:22,909
When you take in a...
a very moving, emotional experience,

946
00:48:22,993 --> 00:48:27,503
like the death of a girl
he put into jeopardy,

947
00:48:27,581 --> 00:48:31,461
and you use her cry in a, you know,
tawdry horror picture...

948
00:48:31,543 --> 00:48:33,843
I guess I got the idea of that,

949
00:48:33,962 --> 00:48:36,722
you know, when you cut soundtracks and
you're doing footsteps,

950
00:48:36,798 --> 00:48:41,338
you put all the fill in between
each of the magnetic tracks.

951
00:48:41,428 --> 00:48:45,348
Well, when I picked up the fill once
and it was like <i>Lawrence of Arabia.</i>

952
00:48:45,432 --> 00:48:50,352
And I said, "My God,
<i>Lawrence of Arabia</i> is being used as fill."

953
00:48:50,437 --> 00:48:51,727
Oh, jerk.

954
00:48:55,609 --> 00:48:57,939
Now, that's a scream! How was the level?

955
00:48:58,028 --> 00:49:00,028
But all that suffering

956
00:49:00,113 --> 00:49:05,203
is just reduced to a scream
that's put on a soundtrack.

957
00:49:05,285 --> 00:49:06,825
That's wonderful.

958
00:49:06,912 --> 00:49:08,672
That moves me every time I see it,

959
00:49:08,705 --> 00:49:10,955
the way John plays the scene.

960
00:49:11,041 --> 00:49:14,171
"It's a good scream. It's a good scream."

961
00:49:14,252 --> 00:49:15,502
It's a good scream.

962
00:49:16,505 --> 00:49:17,585
It's a good scream.

963
00:49:18,590 --> 00:49:22,050
It's a good scream. It's a good scream.

964
00:49:36,566 --> 00:49:38,486
Say hello to my little friend!

965
00:49:40,195 --> 00:49:42,355
Most of my movies are about megalomania

966
00:49:42,447 --> 00:49:44,777
and guys that live in insulated universes

967
00:49:44,866 --> 00:49:48,246
and the crazy things that happen
within those insulated universes,

968
00:49:48,328 --> 00:49:51,038
which is something that continues
to fascinate me.

969
00:49:53,250 --> 00:49:55,250
Marty Bregman came to me

970
00:49:55,335 --> 00:49:59,045
because Al wanted to do
a version of <i>Scarface.</i>

971
00:49:59,130 --> 00:50:03,340
And the original idea for <i>Scarface</i>
was to do Al Capone, Chicago.

972
00:50:03,426 --> 00:50:05,006
Marty told me that he and Al

973
00:50:05,095 --> 00:50:07,965
wanted to develop a script with David Rabe,

974
00:50:08,056 --> 00:50:09,926
and I had recently worked with David Rabe

975
00:50:10,058 --> 00:50:12,188
developing a script, <i>Prince of the City,</i>

976
00:50:12,269 --> 00:50:16,439
on a corrupt narcotics cop,
that I ultimately didn't get to make.

977
00:50:16,523 --> 00:50:18,863
But we had spent a year
working on the script,

978
00:50:18,942 --> 00:50:22,902
so I was very familiar with working
with David and his process.

979
00:50:22,988 --> 00:50:27,028
David, when we started to do the script,
said, "I will do the script

980
00:50:27,117 --> 00:50:31,407
but I don't want to have to work
with Bregman and Al.

981
00:50:31,496 --> 00:50:34,206
We'll do it together,
like we did <i>Prince of the City."</i>

982
00:50:34,291 --> 00:50:37,671
And then Al came to meet with me
to see how things were going,

983
00:50:37,752 --> 00:50:39,422
and I explained to him how it was going

984
00:50:39,504 --> 00:50:41,594
and I got a call from Bregman
later that night

985
00:50:41,673 --> 00:50:43,383
saying Al's all upset about the script.

986
00:50:43,466 --> 00:50:45,426
He wants to have a meeting
with David tomorrow.

987
00:50:45,510 --> 00:50:49,810
I told Marty Bregman David will quit
if I ask him to come to a meeting.

988
00:50:49,890 --> 00:50:51,620
I couldn't convince him
that David would quit,

989
00:50:51,641 --> 00:50:53,481
so I called David up and I said,

990
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:55,360
"They want to meet tomorrow
about the script,"

991
00:50:55,437 --> 00:50:56,687
and David says, "I quit."

992
00:50:56,771 --> 00:51:00,941
You know, I came up with an era
that you went down with the writer.

993
00:51:01,026 --> 00:51:04,026
If the writer got fired, you walked.

994
00:51:04,112 --> 00:51:06,742
You didn't say, "Well, let's get
three or four more writers

995
00:51:06,823 --> 00:51:08,913
that you happen to like."

996
00:51:08,992 --> 00:51:11,202
So, I called up Bregman the next day,

997
00:51:11,286 --> 00:51:13,406
and said, "I'm sorry,

998
00:51:13,496 --> 00:51:15,216
this doesn't look like
it's going to work out.

999
00:51:15,248 --> 00:51:16,498
I can't do the movie."

1000
00:51:16,583 --> 00:51:18,753
And then they hired Sidney and Oliver

1001
00:51:18,835 --> 00:51:21,625
and Sidney and Oliver came up
with the whole, you know,

1002
00:51:21,713 --> 00:51:24,673
Cuban Scarface set in South Florida.

1003
00:51:24,758 --> 00:51:26,928
Well, the terrible irony of that is,

1004
00:51:27,010 --> 00:51:29,760
that I developed the script
of <i>Prince of the City,</i>

1005
00:51:29,846 --> 00:51:31,466
which I thought was a great script.

1006
00:51:31,556 --> 00:51:33,976
I spent a year and a half with Bob Lucy,

1007
00:51:34,059 --> 00:51:36,349
the cop that it's all based on.

1008
00:51:36,436 --> 00:51:39,186
And when Matt got interested in it,

1009
00:51:39,272 --> 00:51:42,732
and through another writer,
wanted to do the project

1010
00:51:42,817 --> 00:51:44,817
and the United Artists people fired us.

1011
00:51:44,903 --> 00:51:48,280
The next thing I knew, Sidney and Matt
was making the movie with somebody else.

1012
00:51:48,365 --> 00:51:52,235
So, I feel Sidney had basically,
you know, stolen this movie from me.

1013
00:51:52,327 --> 00:51:53,787
And the irony, of course,

1014
00:51:53,870 --> 00:51:57,710
is a year later they offer me the movie
that Sidney had developed.

1015
00:51:57,791 --> 00:52:01,591
Well, first we started in Florida
and got run out by the Cubans.

1016
00:52:01,670 --> 00:52:03,250
They just ran us out of town.

1017
00:52:03,338 --> 00:52:05,798
They didn't like the...
What the script was about.

1018
00:52:05,882 --> 00:52:08,972
They thought we were making
all Cubans gangsters.

1019
00:52:09,052 --> 00:52:12,562
I was there for months,
you know, scouting things and...

1020
00:52:12,639 --> 00:52:16,479
and then we ultimately had to pull
the whole picture back to California.

1021
00:52:16,559 --> 00:52:19,939
And I said, "I wanted to have
this very acrylic, tropical look."

1022
00:52:20,021 --> 00:52:22,611
I don't want these <i>Godfather</i> gangsters,

1023
00:52:22,691 --> 00:52:24,901
where everybody's, you know, with dark rooms

1024
00:52:24,985 --> 00:52:26,435
and you can hardly see anything.

1025
00:52:26,528 --> 00:52:28,658
This should be bright. This is Miami.

1026
00:52:28,738 --> 00:52:30,988
And white suits, pastels."

1027
00:52:31,074 --> 00:52:33,914
So, I had a very strong idea
of what it should look like.

1028
00:52:35,103 --> 00:52:37,583
Well, what happened when
we were doing this shoot-out,

1029
00:52:37,664 --> 00:52:40,294
Al grabbed his gun
and grabbed it by the barrel,

1030
00:52:40,375 --> 00:52:44,835
which was red hot, and seared his hand.

1031
00:52:44,921 --> 00:52:46,201
And he had to go to the hospital

1032
00:52:46,256 --> 00:52:50,136
and we couldn't shoot with him
for two weeks, so it...

1033
00:52:50,218 --> 00:52:53,968
So basically, I had two weeks
to shoot everything but Al.

1034
00:52:54,055 --> 00:52:57,765
So, needless to say,
I shot every conceivable way

1035
00:52:57,851 --> 00:52:59,351
somebody could shoot at somebody else

1036
00:52:59,436 --> 00:53:02,476
while I was waiting for my star to return.

1037
00:53:04,774 --> 00:53:07,114
Steven wandered over. We did a few shots.

1038
00:53:07,235 --> 00:53:09,955
"What do you think about this, Steve?
Should we put another camera up here?"

1039
00:53:09,988 --> 00:53:12,278
"Why not?"

1040
00:53:12,365 --> 00:53:14,405
I mean, everybody was shooting.

1041
00:53:14,492 --> 00:53:16,622
People shooting at people.

1042
00:53:18,496 --> 00:53:21,116
I'm working as an interpretive director.

1043
00:53:21,249 --> 00:53:23,249
Oliver had directed one movie,

1044
00:53:23,334 --> 00:53:27,634
and he felt that I wasn't doing the movie
the way he wanted to do it.

1045
00:53:27,714 --> 00:53:31,304
And I ultimately had to have him
taken off the set,

1046
00:53:31,384 --> 00:53:33,344
because he was talking to the actors.

1047
00:53:33,428 --> 00:53:34,548
You can't have an actor

1048
00:53:34,637 --> 00:53:37,347
getting two different points of view
from two different people.

1049
00:53:37,432 --> 00:53:39,732
It just confuses them.
They need a single voice.

1050
00:53:39,809 --> 00:53:42,019
Script's all based on real material.

1051
00:53:42,103 --> 00:53:44,563
You know, Oliver almost
got killed researching.

1052
00:53:44,647 --> 00:53:46,397
They thought he was some kind of narc.

1053
00:53:46,483 --> 00:53:49,033
You know, he went into
really dangerous territory.

1054
00:53:49,110 --> 00:53:51,450
And I wanted that reflected in the movie.

1055
00:53:51,529 --> 00:53:55,409
I mean, this was a dangerous level
of mob violence

1056
00:53:55,492 --> 00:53:58,042
that they had never seen before.

1057
00:53:58,119 --> 00:54:01,869
I had been battling with the ratings board
since <i>Greetings.</i>

1058
00:54:01,956 --> 00:54:05,876
And it came to a conclusion over <i>Scarface.</i>

1059
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,880
I submitted it three times
and it kept on getting X's

1060
00:54:09,964 --> 00:54:13,184
and then I said, "Absolutely,
I'm not changing it anymore."

1061
00:54:13,301 --> 00:54:14,931
And everybody was very unhappy with me.

1062
00:54:15,011 --> 00:54:17,311
And what I did
that really drove them all crazy,

1063
00:54:17,388 --> 00:54:20,518
which is always the big controversy
on <i>Scarface,</i>

1064
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,730
is that I put everything back in.

1065
00:54:23,812 --> 00:54:27,902
Because I said if I'm going
to get an X on version three,

1066
00:54:27,982 --> 00:54:31,032
I'm going with the original version.
It's all X to me.

1067
00:54:31,111 --> 00:54:35,121
I never showed the chainsaw
cutting into the flesh.

1068
00:54:35,198 --> 00:54:36,448
We had it there to do,

1069
00:54:36,533 --> 00:54:39,333
but it was always...
as soon as the chainsaw goes down,

1070
00:54:39,410 --> 00:54:40,830
it pans away from it.

1071
00:54:40,912 --> 00:54:43,962
The audience half loved it and half hated it.

1072
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:45,750
Very controversial.

1073
00:54:45,834 --> 00:54:48,384
Now the leg, uh?

1074
00:54:48,461 --> 00:54:51,591
And everybody thought
<i>Scarface</i> was about Hollywood.

1075
00:54:51,673 --> 00:54:54,973
And they just really disliked it.

1076
00:54:55,051 --> 00:54:59,811
It did... It did good. It didn't do great.

1077
00:54:59,889 --> 00:55:01,849
But, you know,
it wasn't like a breakaway hit,

1078
00:55:01,933 --> 00:55:05,193
but it, you know, it was...
it was commercially successful.

1079
00:55:10,150 --> 00:55:11,780
A decade or so later,

1080
00:55:11,860 --> 00:55:14,530
it found its audience
with the hip-hop generation.

1081
00:55:14,612 --> 00:55:18,452
Well, since I'm not a big fan of hip-hop,
I knew nothing about it

1082
00:55:18,533 --> 00:55:20,543
until people basically told me about it.

1083
00:55:20,618 --> 00:55:24,868
Universal came to me
and asked if I would approve

1084
00:55:24,956 --> 00:55:29,636
a hip-hop soundtrack to <i>Scarface,</i>
and I said absolutely not.

1085
00:55:37,385 --> 00:55:40,255
It's something that gets
into the music culture,

1086
00:55:40,388 --> 00:55:43,768
the hip-hop culture and then
into the game culture.

1087
00:55:47,729 --> 00:55:51,229
Now, somehow, I'm a hot director.
I don't know why.

1088
00:55:51,316 --> 00:55:52,896
It didn't really make that much money,

1089
00:55:52,984 --> 00:55:56,204
but I developed this script
called <i>Act of Vengeance,</i>

1090
00:55:56,279 --> 00:55:58,359
which Paramount seemed very excited by.

1091
00:55:58,448 --> 00:56:01,028
And I think, "Wow! They're going
to actually make this movie."

1092
00:56:01,117 --> 00:56:05,537
And Don Simpson
calls me up the next day, and says,

1093
00:56:05,622 --> 00:56:07,252
"I got one word for you."

1094
00:56:07,332 --> 00:56:09,542
And I said, "What?"

1095
00:56:09,626 --> 00:56:11,536
And he said, <i>"Flashdance."</i>

1096
00:56:11,628 --> 00:56:13,588
So, I said, "What about <i>Flashdance?"</i>

1097
00:56:13,671 --> 00:56:15,761
And then he said, "We want you
to do <i>Flashdance."</i>

1098
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:17,470
I said, "What about <i>Act of Vengeance?"</i>

1099
00:56:17,550 --> 00:56:19,720
He said, "No, no, we're not really..."

1100
00:56:19,802 --> 00:56:22,062
I was so irritated at them

1101
00:56:22,138 --> 00:56:26,938
that I made them pay me a lot of money
to do <i>Flashdance.</i>

1102
00:56:27,018 --> 00:56:29,908
I wanted to really run up a big deal
and then I walked away from it.

1103
00:56:34,275 --> 00:56:36,105
I had this <i>Body Double</i> idea,

1104
00:56:36,194 --> 00:56:38,244
so I made a deal with Columbia.

1105
00:56:38,321 --> 00:56:40,161
I had an office. I had a parking space.

1106
00:56:40,240 --> 00:56:43,280
You know, my marriage broke up,
so I was living out in California.

1107
00:56:43,368 --> 00:56:46,578
So, this sounded like
this would be fun to do.

1108
00:56:46,663 --> 00:56:48,923
First I get this whole kind of, you know,

1109
00:56:48,998 --> 00:56:52,128
elaborate visual and story construction.

1110
00:56:53,628 --> 00:56:56,128
A bit of <i>Dressed to Kill.</i>

1111
00:56:56,214 --> 00:56:58,724
A little bit of <i>Rear Window.</i>

1112
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:00,510
A bit of <i>Vertigo.</i>

1113
00:57:00,593 --> 00:57:03,263
The story tells about playing sardines

1114
00:57:03,346 --> 00:57:06,846
and being behind the icebox.

1115
00:57:06,933 --> 00:57:10,403
You know, a lot of the stuff in the movie
comes from obviously stuff I've lived.

1116
00:57:10,478 --> 00:57:12,858
I mean, I played sardines with my brothers

1117
00:57:12,939 --> 00:57:14,819
and I did get caught behind an icebox.

1118
00:57:14,899 --> 00:57:16,859
I was in acting classes,

1119
00:57:16,943 --> 00:57:19,953
where you would see people
break down on stage

1120
00:57:20,029 --> 00:57:23,949
as the acting teacher
tried to unlock their emotions.

1121
00:57:24,033 --> 00:57:25,913
The way you people make movies,

1122
00:57:25,994 --> 00:57:29,124
which you start with character
and build outward...

1123
00:57:29,205 --> 00:57:31,575
I start with construction
and then fill it in.

1124
00:57:31,666 --> 00:57:34,996
I'm driven by unrealistic ideas.

1125
00:57:35,086 --> 00:57:37,376
You have to get the actors to ground it

1126
00:57:37,505 --> 00:57:39,545
and try to make it seem real,

1127
00:57:39,632 --> 00:57:42,552
so you got to get the audience
grounded with the actor.

1128
00:57:42,635 --> 00:57:45,045
Then the whole Holly Body character...

1129
00:57:45,138 --> 00:57:48,388
I wanted to use somebody
that would be used to doing nudity.

1130
00:57:48,516 --> 00:57:51,056
So, I thought, "Well why not
get a porn star?"

1131
00:57:51,144 --> 00:57:55,694
I'd become very close to Annette Haven,

1132
00:57:55,773 --> 00:57:57,283
who was a fascinating character

1133
00:57:57,358 --> 00:58:00,568
because she was
an adult actress, entertainer.

1134
00:58:00,653 --> 00:58:03,953
I basically created the whole character
based around Annette.

1135
00:58:04,032 --> 00:58:06,832
She'd never, of course, auditioned
for a movie in her life.

1136
00:58:06,909 --> 00:58:08,159
It was all news to her.

1137
00:58:08,244 --> 00:58:10,584
It was a big scandal
when I wanted to test Annette,

1138
00:58:10,663 --> 00:58:13,536
because Annette was a porn star
and the head of the studio heard

1139
00:58:13,624 --> 00:58:17,304
I was testing a porn star down on stage 7.

1140
00:58:18,713 --> 00:58:22,683
Then they said to me, "You can't do that."

1141
00:58:22,759 --> 00:58:25,599
This is when Columbia was owned
by the Coca-Cola Company.

1142
00:58:25,678 --> 00:58:28,768
And I said, "Sorry, I'm doing it."

1143
00:58:28,848 --> 00:58:30,478
And I did. I tested her and Melanie.

1144
00:58:30,558 --> 00:58:33,638
I couldn't get anybody else
to do the part basically.

1145
00:58:33,728 --> 00:58:35,228
There was so much nudity.

1146
00:58:35,313 --> 00:58:37,423
The big thing that came out
of <i>Body Double</i> was Melanie.

1147
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:38,860
That's what everybody wrote about.

1148
00:58:38,941 --> 00:58:41,611
And I had all this material from Annette.

1149
00:58:41,694 --> 00:58:44,164
All those stories all came from Annette.

1150
00:58:44,238 --> 00:58:45,948
I do not do animal acts.

1151
00:58:46,032 --> 00:58:49,952
I do not do SandM or any variations
of that particular bent,

1152
00:58:50,036 --> 00:58:51,786
no water sports either.

1153
00:58:51,871 --> 00:58:53,461
I will not shave my pussy,

1154
00:58:53,581 --> 00:58:56,881
no fist-fucking and absolutely
no coming in my face.

1155
00:58:56,959 --> 00:58:59,129
And thus, she studied Annette.

1156
00:58:59,212 --> 00:59:01,512
We had Annette come down
and she was on the set.

1157
00:59:01,589 --> 00:59:03,929
She was the bright spot in the movie

1158
00:59:04,008 --> 00:59:05,928
that everybody sort of felt very happy about.

1159
00:59:06,010 --> 00:59:09,140
After beating me down,
all they could talk about was Melanie.

1160
00:59:10,139 --> 00:59:13,269
You got to get the witness to watch
what you want them to see.

1161
00:59:13,351 --> 00:59:16,481
Best way to do that
is have a woman undressing.

1162
00:59:16,604 --> 00:59:18,944
And once you've got that person
watching there,

1163
00:59:19,023 --> 00:59:20,783
then you can stage the murder

1164
00:59:20,858 --> 00:59:24,198
to make him the witness
to what you want them to see.

1165
00:59:24,278 --> 00:59:26,068
I wanted to do a really long walk,

1166
00:59:26,155 --> 00:59:28,655
a long following sequence,

1167
00:59:28,741 --> 00:59:33,961
like, sort of an extension
of the museum walk in <i>Dressed to Kill.</i>

1168
00:59:34,038 --> 00:59:37,538
I mean, I think <i>Body Double</i> has,
like, the longest walk in cinema.

1169
00:59:40,211 --> 00:59:42,631
I love photographing women.

1170
00:59:42,713 --> 00:59:45,513
I'm fascinated by the way they move.

1171
00:59:45,633 --> 00:59:47,393
I love to follow them.

1172
00:59:47,468 --> 00:59:53,098
I love to make the audience
get involved in their dilemmas.

1173
00:59:53,182 --> 00:59:56,352
This was the era you put
a pop song in and made a video

1174
00:59:56,436 --> 00:59:58,976
that would promote the movie.

1175
00:59:59,063 --> 01:00:02,863
So, then I thought, "Well,
I'll just put the video into the movie."

1176
01:00:18,666 --> 01:00:21,086
You got to understand that
I was producing the picture.

1177
01:00:21,169 --> 01:00:23,049
It was, you know, like I could do anything.

1178
01:00:23,129 --> 01:00:24,379
They gave me like a...

1179
01:00:24,464 --> 01:00:27,514
I had like a carte blanche
to make this movie.

1180
01:00:27,592 --> 01:00:30,802
And it was all great,
of course, until they saw it.

1181
01:00:34,265 --> 01:00:37,225
I will never forget the press screening
for <i>Body Double.</i>

1182
01:00:37,310 --> 01:00:41,310
The head of the public relations
calls me up and says,

1183
01:00:41,397 --> 01:00:43,147
"They are going to kill you tomorrow."

1184
01:00:43,232 --> 01:00:44,232
<i>Hello?</i>

1185
01:00:49,322 --> 01:00:51,602
<i>I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Please...</i>

1186
01:00:54,577 --> 01:00:58,117
<i>Could you please tell me
the nature of your emergency?</i>

1187
01:00:58,206 --> 01:01:00,706
<i>I'm sorry, I can't hear you.</i>

1188
01:01:01,709 --> 01:01:03,129
My graphic sensibilities

1189
01:01:03,211 --> 01:01:06,011
had angered women's groups in the past.

1190
01:01:06,088 --> 01:01:09,418
You know, and here
I drilled a woman with a...

1191
01:01:09,508 --> 01:01:11,758
a rather long drill.

1192
01:01:11,844 --> 01:01:15,014
"They are going to kill you tomorrow."
I'll never forget that phone call.

1193
01:01:15,097 --> 01:01:17,307
Why was the drill bit so big?

1194
01:01:17,391 --> 01:01:19,271
Well, it had to go through the floor.

1195
01:01:19,352 --> 01:01:21,312
You know, we never see
the drill bit go into her.

1196
01:01:21,395 --> 01:01:24,372
It had to go through the floor so he
could see it while he was, you know...

1197
01:01:24,398 --> 01:01:26,358
It made perfect sense to me,

1198
01:01:26,442 --> 01:01:29,652
but, you know, when you do
some of these things, you know,

1199
01:01:29,737 --> 01:01:31,487
they make perfect, logical sense to you

1200
01:01:31,572 --> 01:01:33,372
and then you put them
in front of an audience,

1201
01:01:33,407 --> 01:01:37,117
they go, "Holy cow. That's just too much."

1202
01:01:37,203 --> 01:01:39,003
Well, it didn't occur to me to be too much.

1203
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:40,330
I thought it was perfect.

1204
01:01:40,414 --> 01:01:42,124
You've always got to realize

1205
01:01:42,208 --> 01:01:46,458
you're being criticized against
the fashion of the day.

1206
01:01:46,546 --> 01:01:50,876
And when... and when the fashion changes,
everybody forgets about that.

1207
01:01:50,967 --> 01:01:55,097
As I told you before, I don't know
how many people come to me...

1208
01:01:55,179 --> 01:01:57,679
up to me and talk about
<i>Body Double,</i> you know?

1209
01:01:57,765 --> 01:02:01,095
And all the stuff that people were yelling
about when it came out

1210
01:02:01,185 --> 01:02:02,595
is like completely forgotten.

1211
01:02:02,687 --> 01:02:06,607
Let's try to make one thing clear
in director's careers:

1212
01:02:06,691 --> 01:02:09,321
we don't plan them out.

1213
01:02:09,402 --> 01:02:12,112
We happen to be working on one thing,

1214
01:02:12,196 --> 01:02:15,776
and then another thing happens,
and then another thing's delayed.

1215
01:02:15,866 --> 01:02:18,366
And we do the thing
that we can do at the time.

1216
01:02:26,460 --> 01:02:28,000
I knew Jon Landau.

1217
01:02:28,087 --> 01:02:29,707
He was managing Bruce Springsteen.

1218
01:02:29,797 --> 01:02:32,087
So, Jon came to me and he said,

1219
01:02:32,174 --> 01:02:34,224
"Can you think of something to do?"

1220
01:02:35,636 --> 01:02:36,886
And then I got this idea

1221
01:02:36,971 --> 01:02:39,391
of pulling this girl out of the audience
to dance with him.

1222
01:02:39,473 --> 01:02:41,733
That's where Courteney Cox came from.

1223
01:02:41,809 --> 01:02:44,019
After the disaster of <i>Body Double,</i>

1224
01:02:44,103 --> 01:02:46,523
you start thinking about what you're doing,

1225
01:02:46,606 --> 01:02:49,686
and why are you getting
these kind of reactions.

1226
01:02:49,817 --> 01:02:53,737
So, it was like, "I got to do something
completely different."

1227
01:02:58,117 --> 01:03:00,747
I hadn't done a comedy in a long time.

1228
01:03:00,828 --> 01:03:04,288
And I really liked Danny DeVito.
He was attached to the movie.

1229
01:03:04,373 --> 01:03:06,043
It's very difficult to make a movie

1230
01:03:06,125 --> 01:03:09,495
where the studio administration
did not sponsor it initially.

1231
01:03:09,587 --> 01:03:12,297
We got through it.
They didn't want to release it.

1232
01:03:12,381 --> 01:03:14,801
They didn't like the previews.

1233
01:03:14,884 --> 01:03:16,764
It was just a struggle all the way through.

1234
01:03:16,844 --> 01:03:19,354
I liked it, it was a lot of fun.
It was a cute little comedy.

1235
01:03:19,430 --> 01:03:22,850
It got some very good reviews,
so a lot of people really liked it.

1236
01:03:22,933 --> 01:03:24,313
No, no, my friend.

1237
01:03:24,393 --> 01:03:26,523
Thank <i>you</i>, Mr. Acavano.

1238
01:03:26,604 --> 01:03:28,864
In the 80's, I was working all the time.

1239
01:03:28,939 --> 01:03:30,519
You know, I was writing scripts.

1240
01:03:30,608 --> 01:03:32,988
I was selling things.

1241
01:03:33,069 --> 01:03:35,739
Some would get made. Some wouldn't.

1242
01:03:35,863 --> 01:03:39,283
Then I got involved with developing
<i>Fatal Attraction.</i>

1243
01:03:39,367 --> 01:03:41,907
I was not sold on the way
the script was going

1244
01:03:41,994 --> 01:03:43,544
and I said, "I'm out."

1245
01:03:43,621 --> 01:03:47,041
Fortunately, about 24 hours later,

1246
01:03:47,124 --> 01:03:49,134
somebody over at Paramount

1247
01:03:49,210 --> 01:03:51,340
suggested me to do <i>The Untouchables.</i>

1248
01:03:54,006 --> 01:03:55,836
Art developed the script before I arrived

1249
01:03:55,925 --> 01:03:59,255
and the three of us
worked on the script after that.

1250
01:03:59,345 --> 01:04:01,925
Well, first we had to find Elliott Ness.

1251
01:04:02,014 --> 01:04:03,524
And I wanted to use Don Johnson,

1252
01:04:03,599 --> 01:04:05,309
because I knew Don

1253
01:04:05,393 --> 01:04:07,733
and he was very big in <i>Miami Vice now.</i>

1254
01:04:07,812 --> 01:04:10,362
And Art felt very strongly about Kevin.

1255
01:04:10,439 --> 01:04:13,529
And then I called Spielberg,

1256
01:04:13,609 --> 01:04:16,449
I called Larry Kasdan,
who had all worked with Kevin before,

1257
01:04:16,529 --> 01:04:19,619
to reassure me about... this guy's
going to carry the whole movie.

1258
01:04:19,699 --> 01:04:24,159
So they said, "Yes, this guy's
going to be something. Feel confident."

1259
01:04:24,245 --> 01:04:27,535
Then we had Bob Hoskins playing Al Capone.

1260
01:04:27,623 --> 01:04:28,963
And then we got Sean in,

1261
01:04:29,041 --> 01:04:30,881
because Sean is always looking for things

1262
01:04:30,960 --> 01:04:33,880
to get him out of his James Bond character.

1263
01:04:33,963 --> 01:04:37,173
And I saw Andy Garcia
in <i>8 Million Ways to Die.</i>

1264
01:04:38,718 --> 01:04:42,428
And I was down in Chicago,
you know, with my boards,

1265
01:04:42,513 --> 01:04:45,103
and figuring out how we're going
to shoot all this stuff.

1266
01:04:45,182 --> 01:04:48,352
Meanwhile, I'm thinking we've got this movie,

1267
01:04:48,436 --> 01:04:52,356
except we... it's... to me, it's like a...

1268
01:04:52,440 --> 01:04:55,780
some kind of sophisticated
English playhouse theater.

1269
01:04:55,860 --> 01:04:58,860
We need an American gangster actor.

1270
01:05:00,990 --> 01:05:03,280
What draws my admiration?

1271
01:05:03,367 --> 01:05:05,687
What is that which gives me joy?

1272
01:05:11,208 --> 01:05:12,878
Baseball.

1273
01:05:14,754 --> 01:05:17,044
Bobby takes a long time
to decide to do things.

1274
01:05:17,089 --> 01:05:19,279
You go out to dinner with him,
you talk about the script.

1275
01:05:19,300 --> 01:05:22,180
And it took many,
many weeks until he finally said,

1276
01:05:22,261 --> 01:05:24,561
"Yeah, I think that I can make this work."

1277
01:05:24,638 --> 01:05:26,968
Except the last thing Bobby said to me was,

1278
01:05:27,057 --> 01:05:28,557
"It's going to be expensive."

1279
01:05:28,642 --> 01:05:31,062
And it was extremely expensive.

1280
01:05:31,145 --> 01:05:33,355
Well, it's a little different
with the movie stars

1281
01:05:33,439 --> 01:05:34,899
that you've kind of discovered.

1282
01:05:34,982 --> 01:05:39,032
The thing about Bobby is that I've known
him, like, what? Since the mid-60's.

1283
01:05:39,111 --> 01:05:43,241
On <i>The Untouchables,</i>
Bobby was not learning his lines.

1284
01:05:43,324 --> 01:05:46,664
And I just went with him to...
when he was putting his make-up on,

1285
01:05:46,744 --> 01:05:51,334
and I'd rehearse these lines over and over
again with him until he knew them.

1286
01:05:51,707 --> 01:05:54,207
Plus he had to put on some weight
to play Al Capone

1287
01:05:54,293 --> 01:05:56,673
and he had his hair shaved back.

1288
01:05:56,754 --> 01:05:59,554
He wore the kind of silk underwear
that Al Capone wore.

1289
01:05:59,632 --> 01:06:01,552
You never saw it, but he had it on.

1290
01:06:11,477 --> 01:06:14,897
1634 Racine.

1291
01:06:15,022 --> 01:06:17,902
You know, I used to have a friend
who lived there.

1292
01:06:18,025 --> 01:06:20,605
What's good about a sequence for a composer

1293
01:06:20,694 --> 01:06:25,164
is that you give him this thing
that builds up cinematically

1294
01:06:25,241 --> 01:06:29,911
that works very well with something
emotional in the music.

1295
01:06:30,037 --> 01:06:35,037
You give him the time and the space
to develop that thing in the music

1296
01:06:35,125 --> 01:06:36,915
that really connects with the audience.

1297
01:06:37,044 --> 01:06:38,044
No!

1298
01:06:38,087 --> 01:06:39,557
Morricone is like one of those composers

1299
01:06:39,588 --> 01:06:42,168
that's impossible to get
and I was very lucky to get him.

1300
01:06:50,724 --> 01:06:51,984
He looks at the movie

1301
01:06:52,059 --> 01:06:55,729
and then we went back to a studio
and he just played four themes.

1302
01:06:55,813 --> 01:06:58,903
Four of which were, like, right on the nose.

1303
01:06:58,983 --> 01:07:01,573
And then, I told you, the fifth one...

1304
01:07:01,652 --> 01:07:04,112
He sent me about six, seven,
eight or nine versions

1305
01:07:04,196 --> 01:07:05,446
before I said, "Ah, that's it."

1306
01:07:05,531 --> 01:07:08,161
I think it was
the "duddle-lun-dun-dun" thing.

1307
01:07:15,666 --> 01:07:19,546
Normally, when I set up those sequences,
and with the music and everything,

1308
01:07:19,628 --> 01:07:23,128
they're very emotional and they do work.

1309
01:07:27,177 --> 01:07:29,217
The Odessa Steps sequence was done...

1310
01:07:29,305 --> 01:07:32,515
was because Mamet refused
to write anything more

1311
01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:34,890
after we couldn't afford the train chase.

1312
01:07:34,977 --> 01:07:37,647
I said to Eric, my location manager,

1313
01:07:37,730 --> 01:07:39,110
"Find me a staircase."

1314
01:07:39,189 --> 01:07:40,979
I had <i>Battleship Potemkin</i> in mind,

1315
01:07:41,108 --> 01:07:43,188
the whole idea of a baby carriage

1316
01:07:43,277 --> 01:07:45,607
going down a staircase
in the midst of a shootout,

1317
01:07:45,696 --> 01:07:48,336
and I just made it up as I went along.

1318
01:07:51,952 --> 01:07:54,912
My baby!

1319
01:08:02,630 --> 01:08:05,340
The sequences inspire the composer.

1320
01:08:05,424 --> 01:08:07,894
You want to pare back the sound effects

1321
01:08:07,968 --> 01:08:11,758
and just use them to underline
certain things.

1322
01:08:11,847 --> 01:08:14,387
Because you've got 97 tracks now,

1323
01:08:14,475 --> 01:08:17,475
you put all this sort of stuff on,
it gets in the way of the music.

1324
01:08:17,561 --> 01:08:22,021
Very seldom the composers have the
chance to develop something musically

1325
01:08:22,149 --> 01:08:27,449
that's not constantly getting contradicted
by the dialogue and the effects.

1326
01:08:34,745 --> 01:08:38,785
I constantly have all these, you know,
techniques in my brain

1327
01:08:38,874 --> 01:08:40,464
and I'm trying to figure out,

1328
01:08:40,542 --> 01:08:45,512
"Well, can I use this here? Is this the
best way to use this?"

1329
01:08:45,589 --> 01:08:47,509
It's the old horror techniques.

1330
01:08:47,591 --> 01:08:49,801
The point of view shot
following somebody around.

1331
01:08:49,885 --> 01:08:51,845
You know how I feel about coverage.

1332
01:08:51,929 --> 01:08:55,179
"Oh, take a wide shot. Guy walks up to house.

1333
01:08:55,265 --> 01:08:59,265
Guy goes through a window.
Guy hides behind victrola."

1334
01:08:59,353 --> 01:09:01,443
I mean, you're going,
"Boy, is that interesting!"

1335
01:09:01,522 --> 01:09:03,152
I'm always trying to find a way

1336
01:09:03,232 --> 01:09:07,952
to visually make the thing exciting.

1337
01:09:11,506 --> 01:09:13,696
Isn't that just like a wop?

1338
01:09:15,744 --> 01:09:17,624
Brings a knife to a gunfight.

1339
01:09:22,292 --> 01:09:24,462
Get out of here, you dago bastard!

1340
01:09:26,338 --> 01:09:27,918
Go on, get your ass out of here!

1341
01:09:39,518 --> 01:09:41,448
Well, when I put all those hits on Sean,

1342
01:09:41,478 --> 01:09:43,728
he was so mad at me.

1343
01:09:43,814 --> 01:09:45,694
He'd never had hits put on him before.

1344
01:09:45,774 --> 01:09:48,614
I said, "You're James Bond
and you've never been shot?"

1345
01:09:48,694 --> 01:09:51,704
"No." And he'd gotten some dust in his eye.

1346
01:09:51,780 --> 01:09:53,420
They took him to the hospital immediately,

1347
01:09:53,490 --> 01:09:58,330
and I had to beg him to come back
and do a second take.

1348
01:09:58,412 --> 01:09:59,662
He hated it.

1349
01:10:00,122 --> 01:10:04,462
We were very concerned because
we had some bad numbers about interest

1350
01:10:04,543 --> 01:10:06,093
and who was going to show up.

1351
01:10:06,170 --> 01:10:09,130
And our big competition was that movie

1352
01:10:09,256 --> 01:10:12,836
where John Lithgow lives with
some kind of monster in the house.

1353
01:10:12,926 --> 01:10:14,756
Everybody thought <i>Harry and the Hendersons</i>

1354
01:10:14,845 --> 01:10:16,135
<i>was going to be huge.</i>

1355
01:10:16,263 --> 01:10:18,933
And we kind of blew everybody away
the first weekend.

1356
01:10:19,016 --> 01:10:22,436
You know, <i>The Untouchables</i> was
another one of those magical movies.

1357
01:10:23,437 --> 01:10:26,107
And very few happen in your career.

1358
01:10:27,524 --> 01:10:30,364
Then I get them to make a movie
that nobody wanted to make.

1359
01:10:30,444 --> 01:10:34,204
This is the one, sarge. She's the pretty one.

1360
01:10:34,281 --> 01:10:35,741
Take the pretty one.

1361
01:10:35,824 --> 01:10:37,744
I always felt that <i>Casualties of War</i>

1362
01:10:37,826 --> 01:10:40,616
was the best story about the Vietnam War.

1363
01:10:40,704 --> 01:10:42,664
It was a great piece of journalism.

1364
01:10:42,748 --> 01:10:45,538
It had a really dramatic arc to it.

1365
01:10:45,626 --> 01:10:48,626
It felt very much the way I feel

1366
01:10:48,712 --> 01:10:52,512
about these type of wars that we get into
and nobody knows why.

1367
01:10:52,591 --> 01:10:54,511
To me, it's a metaphor for what we're doing.

1368
01:10:54,593 --> 01:10:56,393
We are raping these countries.

1369
01:10:56,470 --> 01:10:57,720
This is a weapon.

1370
01:11:02,768 --> 01:11:04,018
This is a gun.

1371
01:11:04,103 --> 01:11:06,773
And then you have a...
you know, a real incident

1372
01:11:06,855 --> 01:11:10,225
in which an innocent is raped and killed.

1373
01:11:10,317 --> 01:11:13,277
This is what we're doing,
and we don't ever want to admit it.

1374
01:11:13,362 --> 01:11:15,202
Nobody ever talks about it anymore.

1375
01:11:15,322 --> 01:11:17,532
We don't understand these people.

1376
01:11:17,616 --> 01:11:19,656
We don't understand their culture.

1377
01:11:19,743 --> 01:11:24,333
We're being fed a lot of mumbo jumbo
of the reasons that's important

1378
01:11:24,414 --> 01:11:27,584
for our country's self-interest to be there

1379
01:11:27,668 --> 01:11:31,258
that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

1380
01:11:31,338 --> 01:11:33,298
And no wonder these people,

1381
01:11:33,382 --> 01:11:38,552
these soldiers trying to do
the right thing, go crazy.

1382
01:11:38,637 --> 01:11:41,677
People had been trying to make
<i>Casualties of War</i>

1383
01:11:41,765 --> 01:11:43,425
since the early 70's.

1384
01:11:43,517 --> 01:11:45,557
It's one of these properties that was bought,

1385
01:11:45,644 --> 01:11:48,114
developed, sat on a shelf,

1386
01:11:48,188 --> 01:11:50,148
bought, developed, sat on a shelf.

1387
01:11:50,232 --> 01:11:52,822
Fortunately, Dawn had left Paramount

1388
01:11:52,901 --> 01:11:54,441
and became head of Columbia,

1389
01:11:54,528 --> 01:11:59,028
and she was looking for a project
with a lot of big names.

1390
01:11:59,116 --> 01:12:01,786
And Dawn used to run
Michael J. Fox's company,

1391
01:12:01,869 --> 01:12:04,449
and she got Michael interested
in playing Eriksson,

1392
01:12:04,538 --> 01:12:06,558
which is the only way the movie
would have ever gotten made.

1393
01:12:06,582 --> 01:12:09,882
See, these people here,
they confuse themselves.

1394
01:12:09,960 --> 01:12:11,270
Are they Cong, are they not Cong?

1395
01:12:11,295 --> 01:12:15,375
Sean came up with this
very kind of macho Brooklyn guy

1396
01:12:15,465 --> 01:12:17,215
and was literally the sarge.

1397
01:12:17,301 --> 01:12:21,141
I mean, he treated the other actors
like they were in his squad.

1398
01:12:21,221 --> 01:12:22,471
He never talked to Michael.

1399
01:12:22,556 --> 01:12:25,116
His attitude about him was like
how he felt about him in the movie.

1400
01:12:25,142 --> 01:12:26,702
Eriksson here don't wanna ball the dink.

1401
01:12:26,768 --> 01:12:28,058
- How come?
- I don't know.

1402
01:12:28,145 --> 01:12:29,935
- He's a chickenshit.
- Is that it?

1403
01:12:30,022 --> 01:12:31,482
Is that your problem, Eriksson?

1404
01:12:31,565 --> 01:12:33,725
Michael's a very amiable guy,

1405
01:12:33,817 --> 01:12:36,027
and he felt very much like an outsider,

1406
01:12:36,111 --> 01:12:38,361
you know, because of Sean and his guys.

1407
01:12:38,447 --> 01:12:39,947
But it worked very well for the movie.

1408
01:12:43,327 --> 01:12:47,407
There was a moment in the movie
where Michael hits Clark with a shovel.

1409
01:12:47,497 --> 01:12:49,627
And Sean's kind of taunting him, you know,

1410
01:12:49,708 --> 01:12:51,998
with that wise-ass look he's got.

1411
01:12:52,085 --> 01:12:53,415
And we did a couple of takes.

1412
01:12:53,503 --> 01:12:57,423
And then Sean walked up to Michael J.
and knocked him to the ground.

1413
01:12:57,507 --> 01:13:00,637
Just knocked him down.

1414
01:13:00,719 --> 01:13:03,219
And I thought Michael was going to kill him.

1415
01:13:03,305 --> 01:13:04,555
And then we shot the scene.

1416
01:13:07,559 --> 01:13:09,349
It did bring something out in Michael

1417
01:13:09,436 --> 01:13:12,936
that... that he was having
some difficulty getting to.

1418
01:13:13,023 --> 01:13:14,273
I mean, he had all that anger,

1419
01:13:14,358 --> 01:13:17,608
and then just Sean just pushed it
right over the top.

1420
01:13:17,694 --> 01:13:19,784
And then, when he whispers to him
when he leaves,

1421
01:13:19,863 --> 01:13:21,413
you know, about payback,

1422
01:13:21,490 --> 01:13:24,160
I think he whispered once
to him, "Television actor."

1423
01:13:29,957 --> 01:13:32,327
Good old Sean. Very exciting to work with.

1424
01:13:32,459 --> 01:13:35,709
It... it was a very difficult movie to make

1425
01:13:35,796 --> 01:13:37,456
with the weather and the heat,

1426
01:13:37,547 --> 01:13:41,467
and to understand Vietnam,
you've got to understand the terrain.

1427
01:13:41,551 --> 01:13:42,931
You got to understand the heat.

1428
01:13:43,011 --> 01:13:44,681
Once you get the heat,

1429
01:13:44,763 --> 01:13:47,523
you can't imagine how that affects
the way you think.

1430
01:13:47,599 --> 01:13:50,809
Then Thailand, I built the whole jungle set

1431
01:13:50,894 --> 01:13:54,904
because, the jungle, you walk three paces
and you could be anywhere.

1432
01:13:54,982 --> 01:13:57,072
There's no orientation in the jungle.

1433
01:13:57,150 --> 01:13:58,940
So, I said, "Let's build a jungle set

1434
01:13:59,027 --> 01:14:01,277
and just basically move the trees around."

1435
01:14:01,363 --> 01:14:03,533
And Dawn actually traveled all the way there.

1436
01:14:03,615 --> 01:14:06,825
I think she lasted about five hours
and got in a plane and went home.

1437
01:14:06,910 --> 01:14:08,910
It was awful.

1438
01:14:12,541 --> 01:14:14,081
I wanted to have that sense

1439
01:14:14,167 --> 01:14:17,297
that if you thought things
were bad above ground,

1440
01:14:17,379 --> 01:14:20,419
you should see what was going on
below ground.

1441
01:14:20,507 --> 01:14:23,757
And the only way to do that
is to crane directly down

1442
01:14:23,844 --> 01:14:26,474
and show a cutaway of the tunnel

1443
01:14:26,555 --> 01:14:30,305
and the threat moving through it,
like an ant colony.

1444
01:14:32,310 --> 01:14:34,770
Well, Columbia made me preview the movie,

1445
01:14:34,855 --> 01:14:37,515
but the previews
don't really help much at all.

1446
01:14:37,607 --> 01:14:39,357
You get all this pressure to do things,

1447
01:14:39,443 --> 01:14:41,533
and, in retrospect, you regret it terribly.

1448
01:14:41,611 --> 01:14:43,241
At the end of <i>Casualties of War</i>

1449
01:14:43,321 --> 01:14:45,451
I took out a couple
of the interrogation scenes,

1450
01:14:45,532 --> 01:14:47,202
especially the one where they...

1451
01:14:47,284 --> 01:14:50,584
They ripped Michael apart
on the stand by the defense attorney.

1452
01:14:50,662 --> 01:14:51,972
Isn't it true that what you went out to do

1453
01:14:51,997 --> 01:14:54,767
is to figure out how to use this incident
to get the hell out of the infantry?

1454
01:14:54,791 --> 01:14:56,171
- Objection.
- Can you find...

1455
01:14:56,251 --> 01:14:57,541
And I took that thing out.

1456
01:14:57,627 --> 01:14:59,957
I ultimately put it back
in the revised version.

1457
01:15:00,047 --> 01:15:04,587
Because if you put anything that makes
the audience react too strongly,

1458
01:15:04,676 --> 01:15:05,966
they want you to take it out.

1459
01:15:06,053 --> 01:15:08,223
My movies tend to upset people a lot,

1460
01:15:08,305 --> 01:15:11,805
so you can imagine the things
they're trying to take out of my movies.

1461
01:15:11,892 --> 01:15:13,562
And I have to fight them tooth and nail.

1462
01:15:14,811 --> 01:15:18,821
A preview for this kind of movie
really doesn't tell you anything.

1463
01:15:18,899 --> 01:15:23,239
I mean, the material is <i>so emotional</i>
and <i>so depressing.</i>

1464
01:15:23,320 --> 01:15:24,910
What's a preview going to tell you?

1465
01:15:24,988 --> 01:15:27,448
I don't want to see the movie?
It disturbed me too much.

1466
01:15:27,574 --> 01:15:29,414
I don't know what to tell my friends?

1467
01:15:29,493 --> 01:15:31,243
I find it hard to look at it myself

1468
01:15:31,328 --> 01:15:35,038
when you deal with material
that's very heartbreaking

1469
01:15:35,123 --> 01:15:38,383
and you got to go to a mix and look
at that stuff over and over again.

1470
01:15:38,460 --> 01:15:40,000
It's like <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i>

1471
01:15:40,087 --> 01:15:41,587
was on television the other day.

1472
01:15:41,671 --> 01:15:43,431
There's an hour of those poor guys, you know,

1473
01:15:43,507 --> 01:15:45,427
just trying to adjust to where they are.

1474
01:15:45,509 --> 01:15:47,639
I mean, how do you look at that movie?

1475
01:15:47,719 --> 01:15:49,429
It's so upsetting. Imagine making it.

1476
01:15:49,513 --> 01:15:52,313
That's the feelings I have
on <i>Casualties of War.</i>

1477
01:15:52,390 --> 01:15:54,480
Pauline wrote a great review.

1478
01:15:54,601 --> 01:15:58,061
But it didn't do well and there were a lot
of mixed reviews, you know.

1479
01:15:58,146 --> 01:15:59,556
Nobody went to see it.

1480
01:15:59,648 --> 01:16:04,988
It was a terrible disappointment after
all that work, and it was a lot of work.

1481
01:16:07,155 --> 01:16:08,665
- There he is.
- There he is.

1482
01:16:08,698 --> 01:16:11,448
Let's go!

1483
01:16:11,535 --> 01:16:13,785
People never thought I understood the book.

1484
01:16:13,870 --> 01:16:15,500
I understood the book perfectly.

1485
01:16:15,622 --> 01:16:18,672
Warners came to me
with <i>Bonfire of the Vanities.</i>

1486
01:16:18,750 --> 01:16:20,710
And it was a chance to go back to New York,

1487
01:16:20,794 --> 01:16:22,384
make a big studio picture and, you know,

1488
01:16:22,462 --> 01:16:25,172
you go to work sometimes
just so you don't have to think.

1489
01:16:25,257 --> 01:16:27,627
You see, my problem with
<i>Bonfire of the Vanities</i> is,

1490
01:16:27,717 --> 01:16:30,797
it should have been like
<i>The Magnificent Ambersons.</i>

1491
01:16:30,887 --> 01:16:33,637
You know, Sherman McCoy
is basically an asshole

1492
01:16:33,723 --> 01:16:36,693
much like the lead character in <i>Ambersons,</i>

1493
01:16:36,768 --> 01:16:40,478
who destroys everything
because of his arrogance.

1494
01:16:40,564 --> 01:16:42,694
And that's the way the movie should've been.

1495
01:16:42,774 --> 01:16:44,534
But then we wound up with Tom Hanks,

1496
01:16:44,651 --> 01:16:47,491
and so I think, "I'll take a gamble,
try to make him nicer."

1497
01:16:47,571 --> 01:16:48,631
Just don't want to do anything stupid.

1498
01:16:48,655 --> 01:16:51,485
If we keep our heads,
we'll be perfectly fine.

1499
01:16:51,575 --> 01:16:53,085
Oh, Jesus Christ, Sherman!

1500
01:16:53,118 --> 01:16:54,828
We're in the middle of a goddamn war zone

1501
01:16:54,911 --> 01:16:57,001
and you're worried about
doing the right thing?

1502
01:16:57,080 --> 01:16:59,420
I had all these sort of thoughts in my mind.

1503
01:16:59,499 --> 01:17:01,669
This is a very big, expensive movie.

1504
01:17:01,751 --> 01:17:04,461
I knew what could go wrong with it.

1505
01:17:04,546 --> 01:17:06,966
It could go the way of the Welles picture

1506
01:17:07,048 --> 01:17:09,838
and it could also go the way
of <i>Sweet Smell of Success,</i>

1507
01:17:09,926 --> 01:17:12,006
the greatest picture Mackendrick ever made

1508
01:17:12,095 --> 01:17:13,815
and it basically put him out of the business.

1509
01:17:13,847 --> 01:17:16,447
- You want some cheap, gruesome gags?
- You print them, don't you?

1510
01:17:16,516 --> 01:17:19,806
<i>Bonfire</i> should have been
that tough, that cynical.

1511
01:17:19,895 --> 01:17:23,055
But I said, "If I make that picture,
it's going to be a career ender."

1512
01:17:23,148 --> 01:17:26,818
Like Welles, like Mackendrick,

1513
01:17:26,902 --> 01:17:28,952
I'm going to be like, unemployable.

1514
01:17:29,029 --> 01:17:31,319
And the irony is, it still bombed.

1515
01:17:31,406 --> 01:17:33,196
It should have been tougher, harder.

1516
01:17:33,283 --> 01:17:35,793
Everybody that read the book hated the movie.

1517
01:17:35,869 --> 01:17:38,329
The problem of working
in the Hollywood system

1518
01:17:38,413 --> 01:17:40,083
is the people are paid a lot of money

1519
01:17:40,165 --> 01:17:42,165
to get you to do what they want you to do.

1520
01:17:42,250 --> 01:17:43,880
That's why they have those jobs.

1521
01:17:43,960 --> 01:17:45,670
And you can lose your way

1522
01:17:45,754 --> 01:17:48,224
and go along with their concepts.

1523
01:17:48,298 --> 01:17:53,548
I mean, I'd never seen stacks
of notes from the studio.

1524
01:17:53,637 --> 01:17:56,767
That was like you know, "Wow."

1525
01:17:56,848 --> 01:18:01,058
I made a lot of compromises
and it was disaster.

1526
01:18:01,144 --> 01:18:05,324
And Julie Salamon wrote every move in it.

1527
01:18:05,398 --> 01:18:09,028
I feel the movie, by itself,
stands up perfectly fine.

1528
01:18:09,110 --> 01:18:11,320
Nothing wrong with the movie,
just don't read the book.

1529
01:18:11,404 --> 01:18:16,374
I was leveled by the response
to <i>Bonfire of the Vanities.</i>

1530
01:18:16,451 --> 01:18:19,661
Catastrophe. Time to leave town.

1531
01:18:19,871 --> 01:18:22,041
So, I got married.

1532
01:18:22,123 --> 01:18:23,463
I had a child.

1533
01:18:23,541 --> 01:18:25,631
And I went back to a genre

1534
01:18:25,752 --> 01:18:29,092
that I had developed in the 70's.

1535
01:18:31,883 --> 01:18:33,133
I'm sorry.

1536
01:18:34,552 --> 01:18:36,222
I'm sorry.

1537
01:18:39,474 --> 01:18:42,194
My wife made a deal at Universal

1538
01:18:42,269 --> 01:18:45,479
for us to make a movie together.

1539
01:18:45,563 --> 01:18:47,403
I had two ideas basically.

1540
01:18:47,482 --> 01:18:50,822
One was a multiple personality character.

1541
01:18:50,902 --> 01:18:52,492
And many years before,

1542
01:18:52,570 --> 01:18:55,820
I was having a relationship
with a woman that was married.

1543
01:18:55,907 --> 01:18:59,197
And she used to come by after work

1544
01:18:59,286 --> 01:19:01,496
and, you know, we would make love

1545
01:19:01,579 --> 01:19:03,339
and because she was tired, she'd fall asleep.

1546
01:19:03,373 --> 01:19:05,333
And I remember
watching her sleeping, thinking,

1547
01:19:05,417 --> 01:19:08,627
"What would happen if I just let her
sleep all night?

1548
01:19:08,712 --> 01:19:11,172
How would you explain that to your husband?"

1549
01:19:11,256 --> 01:19:13,506
Oh, my God.

1550
01:19:13,591 --> 01:19:17,261
But the problem was that
the Lolita Davidovich story,

1551
01:19:17,345 --> 01:19:20,305
which should have been
the first story in <i>Raising Cain,</i>

1552
01:19:20,390 --> 01:19:22,180
not the John Lithgow story

1553
01:19:22,267 --> 01:19:26,227
with the kidnapping children
and the multiple personalities.

1554
01:19:26,313 --> 01:19:28,233
That's what's supposed to emerge later.

1555
01:19:28,315 --> 01:19:31,815
It should have started with her
going to the shop to buy the clocks.

1556
01:19:31,901 --> 01:19:33,651
She meets Steven Bauer.

1557
01:19:33,737 --> 01:19:36,067
But when I was putting the movie together,

1558
01:19:36,156 --> 01:19:39,366
the John Lithgow stuff
was so strong, and the sort of...

1559
01:19:39,451 --> 01:19:41,831
I guess you'd say soap opera love story

1560
01:19:41,911 --> 01:19:44,251
was not the strongest element.

1561
01:19:44,331 --> 01:19:48,671
I had to pull the whole John Lithgow stuff
forward into the movie.

1562
01:19:48,752 --> 01:19:53,262
And that's why it has
a particular oddness to it.

1563
01:19:53,340 --> 01:19:55,970
Because it's not put together
the way it was conceived.

1564
01:19:56,051 --> 01:19:59,051
I don't know why I always cast
John Lithgow as villains.

1565
01:19:59,137 --> 01:20:03,477
It's like, why did Billy Wilder
always cast Fred MacMurray as a villain

1566
01:20:03,558 --> 01:20:06,728
when everybody else wanted him
as the professor in <i>Flubber?</i>

1567
01:20:06,853 --> 01:20:08,983
And it was all shot in our backyard.

1568
01:20:09,064 --> 01:20:13,234
I mean, all the locations are
around the corner from where we lived.

1569
01:20:13,318 --> 01:20:15,318
Gale and I got houses up there.

1570
01:20:15,403 --> 01:20:17,073
Lolita was born, my daughter,

1571
01:20:17,155 --> 01:20:20,445
and we were literally walking
outside the house and shooting.

1572
01:20:20,533 --> 01:20:23,203
It was one of my most
financially successful movies,

1573
01:20:23,286 --> 01:20:26,826
because I had, like, 10%
of the gross from the first dollar.

1574
01:20:26,915 --> 01:20:30,245
It's interesting to look at the movie now
because it's like a family album.

1575
01:20:30,335 --> 01:20:32,165
Where's Daddy?

1576
01:20:32,253 --> 01:20:34,963
Daddy's not here, sweetie. He's gone away.

1577
01:20:35,048 --> 01:20:38,508
- Daddy's here.
- No, he's not.

1578
01:20:38,593 --> 01:20:40,553
Come on, honey, we've got to get back.

1579
01:20:40,637 --> 01:20:42,957
Come to Mommy.

1580
01:20:50,063 --> 01:20:52,733
Gale and I fell together
at a certain time in our lives

1581
01:20:52,816 --> 01:20:57,276
and then basically went back to the lives
that we hadn't finished.

1582
01:20:57,362 --> 01:21:03,492
And we had this remarkable daughter
in the process, so...

1583
01:21:05,412 --> 01:21:08,372
it worked out rather well,
as strange as it may seem.

1584
01:21:09,999 --> 01:21:12,709
That's when I got the <i>Carlito's Way</i> script.

1585
01:21:15,088 --> 01:21:18,168
And I thought, "Oh, boy, here we go.

1586
01:21:18,258 --> 01:21:22,548
Al Pacino, Spanish speaking gangsters."

1587
01:21:22,637 --> 01:21:25,427
But the script was so good
when I finally read it,

1588
01:21:25,515 --> 01:21:28,225
I said, "I know how to make this
into a great movie."

1589
01:21:30,145 --> 01:21:33,645
Dick Sylbert is one of the great
production designers,

1590
01:21:33,731 --> 01:21:35,941
a magical guy to work with.

1591
01:21:36,025 --> 01:21:37,985
The idea of the club being like a boat

1592
01:21:38,069 --> 01:21:41,609
came from the first
exterior location we found,

1593
01:21:41,698 --> 01:21:45,788
which was a nightclub that was
in the shape of a boat.

1594
01:21:45,869 --> 01:21:48,999
So then Dick designed the interior
to go with that exterior.

1595
01:21:49,080 --> 01:21:52,000
And of course what happened was
that we lost the location.

1596
01:21:52,083 --> 01:21:54,633
So, we didn't have that boat-like exterior,

1597
01:21:54,711 --> 01:21:58,551
but then it became an image
for Carlito going to the Caribbean.

1598
01:21:58,631 --> 01:22:01,681
Sean, he did that hair thing,
just surprised us all.

1599
01:22:01,759 --> 01:22:05,719
I had no idea he was going to come back
with the frizzed, shaved back head.

1600
01:22:05,805 --> 01:22:10,185
Look at you, huh?
Really made something of your life.

1601
01:22:10,268 --> 01:22:13,058
You know, I don't know if you've had
this experience with actors,

1602
01:22:13,146 --> 01:22:15,316
but there's one scene they fixate on,

1603
01:22:15,398 --> 01:22:17,778
and that was the hospital scene
in <i>Carlito's Way.</i>

1604
01:22:17,859 --> 01:22:21,449
We were rewriting that scene
to the day we shot it,

1605
01:22:21,529 --> 01:22:23,619
and they were still unhappy with it.

1606
01:22:23,698 --> 01:22:28,078
Relax, Dave. It's your pal.

1607
01:22:28,161 --> 01:22:30,041
We've got to get all the mechanics

1608
01:22:30,121 --> 01:22:31,751
of this movie-making out of the way

1609
01:22:31,831 --> 01:22:33,461
so the actors can act.

1610
01:22:33,541 --> 01:22:36,291
If I see something
that's distracting somebody

1611
01:22:36,377 --> 01:22:39,377
or making them lose their concentration,

1612
01:22:39,464 --> 01:22:41,634
you got to get to it
and get it out of their way.

1613
01:22:41,716 --> 01:22:44,086
Being a director is being a watcher,

1614
01:22:44,177 --> 01:22:47,927
in the sense that you have
a lot of egos in the room

1615
01:22:48,014 --> 01:22:51,394
and you have to sort of watch
how they interact with each other.

1616
01:22:51,476 --> 01:22:54,096
Because when you're on a set,
you're basically concentrating

1617
01:22:54,187 --> 01:22:57,647
on what's happening at the moment
and you've got to look at everything.

1618
01:22:57,732 --> 01:23:00,192
You don't have time, you know,
say, "How's the coffee?"

1619
01:23:00,276 --> 01:23:03,356
Or "Did you have a nice night last night?"

1620
01:23:03,446 --> 01:23:06,366
Your job as a director
is to get the movie made.

1621
01:23:06,449 --> 01:23:08,789
You know, if somebody loses their temper

1622
01:23:08,868 --> 01:23:12,158
or you lose your temper, everything stops.

1623
01:23:23,675 --> 01:23:25,175
You know, that chase we shot

1624
01:23:25,260 --> 01:23:28,010
like, in the depths of the summer

1625
01:23:28,096 --> 01:23:32,306
and I was trying to get
this shot from train to train.

1626
01:23:32,392 --> 01:23:35,522
And of course, Al's wearing this
very heavy leather jacket.

1627
01:23:35,603 --> 01:23:36,853
Now, it's, you know,

1628
01:23:36,938 --> 01:23:41,818
110 degrees in the subway
in the middle of the summer,

1629
01:23:41,901 --> 01:23:43,821
and I'm in one train, you know,

1630
01:23:43,903 --> 01:23:46,913
trying to get a shot of him
racing through the other train

1631
01:23:46,990 --> 01:23:48,450
being followed by these guys

1632
01:23:48,533 --> 01:23:50,213
and, of course, you're going train to train

1633
01:23:50,285 --> 01:23:52,285
and then you've got all the posts.

1634
01:23:52,370 --> 01:23:55,620
And do you... Is your train going fast enough

1635
01:23:55,707 --> 01:23:59,587
to just hold him in the shot
or does it get like this?

1636
01:23:59,669 --> 01:24:02,959
So, we literally tried to get
this shot all night.

1637
01:24:03,089 --> 01:24:05,549
And Al is running up and down this train.

1638
01:24:05,633 --> 01:24:08,473
And finally, it was about,
I don't know, 4:00 in the morning,

1639
01:24:08,553 --> 01:24:13,353
and suddenly the train that Al's in
suddenly keeps going.

1640
01:24:13,433 --> 01:24:15,993
Just disappears.

1641
01:24:16,769 --> 01:24:20,769
And I said to my AD, Chris,
I said, "What happened?"

1642
01:24:20,857 --> 01:24:24,437
And he said, "Al took the train home."

1643
01:24:27,572 --> 01:24:31,372
"And he thinks you're crazy.
He doesn't know what you're doing."

1644
01:24:31,451 --> 01:24:36,121
So, I had to get in my train
and go back to where Al's train was.

1645
01:24:36,205 --> 01:24:40,125
And I went up to Al's trailer
and he's like, red,

1646
01:24:40,209 --> 01:24:43,249
because he's been sweating with his coat,
you know, for hours.

1647
01:24:43,338 --> 01:24:46,508
And he says, "What are you doing?"

1648
01:24:51,763 --> 01:24:54,353
You have to deal
with what happens on the day,

1649
01:24:54,432 --> 01:24:56,892
and, of course, adjust your vision

1650
01:24:56,976 --> 01:25:00,806
and come up with something that works
and maybe something that's better.

1651
01:25:00,897 --> 01:25:06,027
I had elaborate storyboards
of this whole shoot-out on the escalators

1652
01:25:06,152 --> 01:25:08,712
that were in the World Trade Center
that went down to the subway.

1653
01:25:08,780 --> 01:25:12,780
I'd spent weeks and weeks photographing.

1654
01:25:12,867 --> 01:25:15,657
And I had an architectural program

1655
01:25:15,745 --> 01:25:18,115
and I built everybody in all the positions.

1656
01:25:18,206 --> 01:25:21,416
And then about a couple of days
before we were supposed to shoot it,

1657
01:25:21,501 --> 01:25:24,251
they blew it up. The first terrorist attack.

1658
01:25:24,337 --> 01:25:26,317
So then, everybody said,
"What are we going to do?"

1659
01:25:26,339 --> 01:25:29,629
And I said, "Suppose he goes
to Grand Central Station

1660
01:25:29,717 --> 01:25:31,837
and gets on a train to go to Florida.

1661
01:25:31,928 --> 01:25:34,388
So, we'll do it in Grand Central Station."

1662
01:25:34,472 --> 01:25:38,432
And then I worked out that incredibly
complicated Steadicam shot with Al.

1663
01:25:52,115 --> 01:25:53,615
Hey, Vinnie.

1664
01:25:53,700 --> 01:25:55,450
Vinnie, wait up.

1665
01:26:01,457 --> 01:26:03,707
The thing you learn about the long take is

1666
01:26:03,793 --> 01:26:09,923
that you can document the emotion
happening on the screen in real time.

1667
01:26:10,007 --> 01:26:11,877
And once you start cutting things up,

1668
01:26:11,968 --> 01:26:15,298
you lose the emotional rhythm of things.

1669
01:26:15,388 --> 01:26:18,018
He ain't up here, let's go down. Come on.

1670
01:26:18,099 --> 01:26:21,119
The whole way the movie is set up
with the death being a flashback

1671
01:26:21,144 --> 01:26:22,404
was an idea, you know,

1672
01:26:22,478 --> 01:26:26,148
from the 27,000 <i>noir</i> pictures I'd ever seen.

1673
01:26:26,232 --> 01:26:28,572
That extremely tricky opening shot

1674
01:26:28,651 --> 01:26:31,991
which we had to, you know,
design a piece of equipment to do.

1675
01:26:32,071 --> 01:26:34,411
You would wind up going
the wrong direction once,

1676
01:26:34,490 --> 01:26:37,370
so it's not how you usually operate things.

1677
01:26:37,452 --> 01:26:40,582
We had to do this many times to get it right.

1678
01:26:40,663 --> 01:26:43,883
I wanted to get back to the same scene

1679
01:26:43,958 --> 01:26:46,168
with the audience not realizing it.

1680
01:26:46,252 --> 01:26:47,732
I wanted to, you know, do a whole thing

1681
01:26:47,754 --> 01:26:49,714
where it comes all the way back
to the beginning,

1682
01:26:49,797 --> 01:26:52,927
but you don't realize you're in that scene
until you're, like, halfway into it,

1683
01:26:53,009 --> 01:26:54,779
and you go, "Oh my God,
I've been here before."

1684
01:27:05,646 --> 01:27:07,896
Again, it was getting kind of mixed reviews,

1685
01:27:07,982 --> 01:27:11,152
you know, "tired genre gangsters."

1686
01:27:11,277 --> 01:27:13,277
You know, and I was
kind of very disappointed,

1687
01:27:13,362 --> 01:27:16,242
because I remember when I went to Berlin

1688
01:27:16,324 --> 01:27:19,164
and I was watching it in Berlin
after it opened

1689
01:27:19,285 --> 01:27:21,155
and did okay in the United States,

1690
01:27:21,287 --> 01:27:23,617
I remember watching in Berlin,
and said, "I can't make...

1691
01:27:23,706 --> 01:27:25,706
I can't make a better picture than this."

1692
01:27:38,721 --> 01:27:41,809
Again, it's a matter of being
in the right place at the right time.

1693
01:27:41,891 --> 01:27:43,811
Mike Ovitz called me up and said,

1694
01:27:43,893 --> 01:27:46,903
"You interested in doing
<i>Mission: Impossible</i> with Tom Cruise?"

1695
01:27:46,979 --> 01:27:50,439
I said, "Are you kidding? Of course!"

1696
01:27:50,525 --> 01:27:53,895
Because I was... I was determined
to make a huge hit.

1697
01:27:53,986 --> 01:27:55,526
I said, "With Tom Cruise?

1698
01:27:55,613 --> 01:27:57,323
<i>Mission: Impossible?</i> I'm ready."

1699
01:27:57,406 --> 01:28:01,656
So, this was a situation
where whatever Tom wanted to do,

1700
01:28:01,744 --> 01:28:04,084
they would make. They didn't care.

1701
01:28:04,163 --> 01:28:06,793
They just want to make Tom Cruise
in <i>Mission: Impossible.</i>

1702
01:28:06,874 --> 01:28:10,004
Tom, on the other hand, of course,
his first picture he's producing,

1703
01:28:10,086 --> 01:28:11,666
wanted it to be exactly right.

1704
01:28:11,754 --> 01:28:13,634
So, I got a hold of David Koepp,

1705
01:28:13,714 --> 01:28:16,054
who wrote <i>Carlito's Way,</i> to do the script.

1706
01:28:16,133 --> 01:28:18,643
When we got through the David Koepp script

1707
01:28:18,719 --> 01:28:21,259
and they liked the script,
Tom, of course, had...

1708
01:28:21,347 --> 01:28:23,927
he had things, character things
that were bothering him,

1709
01:28:24,016 --> 01:28:25,846
he wasn't happy with.

1710
01:28:25,935 --> 01:28:28,395
I said, "Tom, you've got to walk
into Shari's office with me

1711
01:28:28,479 --> 01:28:31,319
and say you want to make this movie
or we're going nowhere."

1712
01:28:31,399 --> 01:28:35,949
And I finally got him
to say yes, he'd make...

1713
01:28:36,028 --> 01:28:37,608
he would make this script.

1714
01:28:37,697 --> 01:28:41,907
The next phone call I got the next morning
was a call from Paula,

1715
01:28:41,993 --> 01:28:44,503
and she said, "The good news
is we're go picture.

1716
01:28:44,579 --> 01:28:47,119
The bad news is we're firing David Koepp

1717
01:28:47,206 --> 01:28:49,576
and we're bringing on Robert Towne.

1718
01:28:49,667 --> 01:28:52,627
Tom felt that Towne could bring
some character things to it.

1719
01:28:52,712 --> 01:28:57,552
Well, how do you convey this to your... pal?

1720
01:28:59,302 --> 01:29:03,312
"Dave, the good news is
we're making the picture.

1721
01:29:03,389 --> 01:29:06,119
The bad news is you're fired."

1722
01:29:06,934 --> 01:29:10,154
So, we're getting to make the movie,
but I'm keeping in touch with Dave.

1723
01:29:10,229 --> 01:29:12,109
I'm telling him everything that's going on.

1724
01:29:12,189 --> 01:29:14,439
I'm not happy with what Bob Towne is doing.

1725
01:29:14,525 --> 01:29:17,945
Towne's attitude basically was
to rewrite the whole script,

1726
01:29:18,029 --> 01:29:19,609
which was wrong.

1727
01:29:19,697 --> 01:29:21,907
And I'm getting to a point
where we're building sets

1728
01:29:21,991 --> 01:29:24,041
and we don't know if these are
in the movie or not.

1729
01:29:24,118 --> 01:29:27,788
What happened ultimately was that
I had made it quite evident to them

1730
01:29:27,872 --> 01:29:30,922
that we could not go with this Towne script.

1731
01:29:31,000 --> 01:29:33,380
Dave had to come back and rewrite the script.

1732
01:29:33,461 --> 01:29:36,211
I literally had one screenwriter in one hotel

1733
01:29:36,297 --> 01:29:40,177
and another screenwriter
in another hotel writing simultaneously.

1734
01:29:40,259 --> 01:29:44,309
Never in my history of making movies
has this ever happened to me.

1735
01:29:44,430 --> 01:29:47,270
<i>Mission: Impossible</i> was originally set
in the United States and I said,

1736
01:29:47,350 --> 01:29:50,690
"Tom, this is <i>Mission: Impossible</i>!

1737
01:29:50,770 --> 01:29:52,270
We can go all over the world!

1738
01:29:52,355 --> 01:29:55,035
You know, there are these big,
huge movie stars in all these countries

1739
01:29:55,066 --> 01:29:56,316
who are dying to be in this."

1740
01:29:56,442 --> 01:29:58,902
Because Tom wanted to star
in <i>Mission: Impossible</i>

1741
01:29:58,986 --> 01:30:00,526
and because <i>Mission: Impossible</i>

1742
01:30:00,613 --> 01:30:03,623
is basically about a team of specialists,

1743
01:30:03,699 --> 01:30:06,079
now, we've got to turn this
into a Tom Cruise movie.

1744
01:30:06,160 --> 01:30:09,370
So I said, "Well, the first thing we have
to do is kill off the whole team."

1745
01:30:15,169 --> 01:30:18,509
I saw Tom Cruise
in three incredible set pieces.

1746
01:30:18,589 --> 01:30:21,009
Most spy thrillers are crime thrillers,

1747
01:30:21,092 --> 01:30:23,802
where you have a lot
of interesting character scenes

1748
01:30:23,886 --> 01:30:26,926
where you're kind of unwrapping the onion.

1749
01:30:27,014 --> 01:30:29,144
Wrapping, another wrapping,
oh, and you find out,

1750
01:30:29,225 --> 01:30:30,535
then you go over there and you find som...

1751
01:30:30,559 --> 01:30:31,809
Oh, but he really was...

1752
01:30:31,894 --> 01:30:33,524
You know, all this sort of stuff.

1753
01:30:33,604 --> 01:30:34,864
But that isn't essentially

1754
01:30:34,939 --> 01:30:40,359
something you can put
into a great visual set piece.

1755
01:30:40,486 --> 01:30:41,856
I mean, the whole idea of McGuffin

1756
01:30:41,946 --> 01:30:44,336
just doesn't make any difference
what they're chasing after...

1757
01:30:44,365 --> 01:30:47,785
<i>He has stolen one half of a CIA NOC list,</i>

1758
01:30:47,868 --> 01:30:50,908
<i>record of all our deep cover agents
working in Eastern...</i>

1759
01:30:50,997 --> 01:30:53,327
Our little treasure here
has a belly full of microfilm.

1760
01:30:53,416 --> 01:30:55,136
...before we can get them moving.

1761
01:30:55,167 --> 01:30:56,497
Oh, Mount Rushmore!

1762
01:30:56,585 --> 01:30:58,185
What a great place to have a chase scene!

1763
01:30:58,254 --> 01:31:00,174
How do I get them to Mount Rushmore?

1764
01:31:00,256 --> 01:31:02,126
You get a really strong visual idea.

1765
01:31:02,216 --> 01:31:03,676
And then get the writer to come in

1766
01:31:03,759 --> 01:31:06,219
or yourself to figure it out
to fill in the character

1767
01:31:06,303 --> 01:31:08,433
that will get you to Mount Rushmore.

1768
01:31:08,514 --> 01:31:13,354
And I came up with the idea of going
into the CIA and the silent sequence...

1769
01:31:18,899 --> 01:31:21,189
...getting the NOC list
out of the computer...

1770
01:31:24,238 --> 01:31:27,238
...catching the sweat, all that stuff.

1771
01:31:38,127 --> 01:31:41,127
I had worked out this very elaborate
end sequence

1772
01:31:41,213 --> 01:31:44,883
with this helicopter chasing
the train into the tunnel.

1773
01:31:44,967 --> 01:31:47,847
And Towne had thought
that it should be resolved

1774
01:31:47,928 --> 01:31:54,058
with this pulling masks off
in the boxcar room.

1775
01:31:54,143 --> 01:31:57,063
And we were getting into a big...

1776
01:31:57,146 --> 01:31:59,686
how should I say? Conflict over it.

1777
01:31:59,774 --> 01:32:01,864
I said, "You can't end <i>Mission: Impossible</i>

1778
01:32:01,942 --> 01:32:05,452
with people pulling masks off in a boxcar!"

1779
01:32:05,571 --> 01:32:07,821
And then, I think Towne said, you know, like,

1780
01:32:07,907 --> 01:32:11,117
"What are we going to have, helicopters
flying into tunnels or something?"

1781
01:32:11,202 --> 01:32:14,412
I mean, brushing off all these pyrotechnics

1782
01:32:14,497 --> 01:32:18,327
as some kind of cheap action sequence

1783
01:32:18,417 --> 01:32:22,167
that had no emotional
or character thrust to it.

1784
01:32:22,254 --> 01:32:26,014
So, we were basically
sort of arguing in front of Tom,

1785
01:32:26,091 --> 01:32:28,551
and I finally said, "Okay, guys.

1786
01:32:28,636 --> 01:32:31,056
Boxcars, I love them.

1787
01:32:31,138 --> 01:32:33,848
Masks pulling off, let's do it.

1788
01:32:33,933 --> 01:32:39,773
I'll throw out... I won't have to shoot all
this helicopter and tunnels and trains.

1789
01:32:39,855 --> 01:32:43,275
We'll just have this wonderful
three-character scene in the boxcar.

1790
01:32:43,359 --> 01:32:45,779
It'll be fantastic." And I sort of left.

1791
01:32:45,861 --> 01:32:49,321
And Tom basically decided

1792
01:32:49,406 --> 01:32:53,486
that he thought that maybe
the action end of the movie

1793
01:32:53,619 --> 01:32:55,499
would be better than the boxcars.

1794
01:32:55,621 --> 01:32:58,921
So, we had an abbreviated scene
in the boxcar.

1795
01:32:58,999 --> 01:33:02,749
And then we got on top of the train
and did the end sequence.

1796
01:33:02,837 --> 01:33:04,257
We built three cars,

1797
01:33:04,338 --> 01:33:06,798
and it's all green screen and, you know,

1798
01:33:06,882 --> 01:33:09,012
all the ILM guys were there,

1799
01:33:09,093 --> 01:33:11,433
you know, putting marks all over everything.

1800
01:33:11,512 --> 01:33:14,052
Very easy to make because I have
all this technical background.

1801
01:33:22,481 --> 01:33:25,401
Here's... Here's a very bad thing
that's going on now

1802
01:33:25,484 --> 01:33:29,034
in relation to sort of the action sequences,

1803
01:33:29,113 --> 01:33:33,283
and this is why they're so boring
in so many of these big movies,

1804
01:33:33,367 --> 01:33:36,197
is that they're previsualized.

1805
01:33:36,287 --> 01:33:40,957
Otherwise, well, we have the chase,
the car, and the dinosaur jumps over.

1806
01:33:41,041 --> 01:33:45,301
And they throw it over to the...
you know, ILM, whoever does it.

1807
01:33:45,379 --> 01:33:48,969
And the guys previsualize it for you,

1808
01:33:49,049 --> 01:33:51,299
because the shots are so expensive.

1809
01:33:51,385 --> 01:33:54,965
And they've got it all on their computers,
so what are you going to get?

1810
01:33:57,892 --> 01:34:00,772
Many visual clichés.

1811
01:34:00,853 --> 01:34:04,773
Something blowing up
and it coming right by the camera.

1812
01:34:04,857 --> 01:34:07,607
All these little things
they have in their computers.

1813
01:34:07,693 --> 01:34:09,703
Mission: Impossible's <i>like</i> The Untouchables.

1814
01:34:09,778 --> 01:34:11,528
I mean, it was like... It worked.

1815
01:34:11,614 --> 01:34:13,824
<i>Dressed to Kill,</i> it worked.
Everything worked.

1816
01:34:13,908 --> 01:34:15,578
Everybody was overjoyed with it.

1817
01:34:15,701 --> 01:34:17,751
They all knew it was going to be a huge hit.

1818
01:34:17,828 --> 01:34:20,328
And they basically left us alone.

1819
01:34:20,539 --> 01:34:22,539
I had the biggest hit of my career

1820
01:34:22,625 --> 01:34:25,875
but unfortunately, my marriage fell apart

1821
01:34:25,961 --> 01:34:29,011
and it was in the tabloids,
so I went into hiding.

1822
01:34:29,089 --> 01:34:31,759
And from there, in New York,

1823
01:34:31,842 --> 01:34:34,472
I started to come up with the idea

1824
01:34:34,553 --> 01:34:36,143
with David for <i>Snake Eyes.</i>

1825
01:34:36,221 --> 01:34:38,271
I always want to do something in a casino.

1826
01:34:38,349 --> 01:34:41,599
It's a whole insular life
and it's a corrupt world.

1827
01:34:41,727 --> 01:34:43,727
See, when we have these little visits,

1828
01:34:43,812 --> 01:34:46,732
- I allow you, I permit you...
- Ow!

1829
01:34:46,815 --> 01:34:49,145
...I give you the opportunity to pay

1830
01:34:49,234 --> 01:34:51,494
for all the extra police work
that you create!

1831
01:34:51,570 --> 01:34:54,700
And doing this incredibly
complicated Steadicam shot,

1832
01:34:54,782 --> 01:34:57,282
where it goes on for,
I don't know, 16, 18 minutes,

1833
01:34:57,368 --> 01:35:00,158
you know, with all these cuts
buried and swish pans.

1834
01:35:00,245 --> 01:35:03,615
So, you get a sense
of the world that he is king of

1835
01:35:03,749 --> 01:35:07,499
before the secretary is assassinated.

1836
01:35:07,586 --> 01:35:11,046
We got this kind of <i>Rashomon</i> idea
that I always wanted to do.

1837
01:35:11,131 --> 01:35:14,181
And we have to see it
from three different points of view,

1838
01:35:14,259 --> 01:35:17,009
which is always something
that fascinates one.

1839
01:35:17,096 --> 01:35:19,556
You know, again, this is a very
Hitchcockian thing.

1840
01:35:19,640 --> 01:35:23,020
I had this idea,
"Well, I'll just show the prize fight

1841
01:35:23,102 --> 01:35:25,852
from Nic Cage's point of view
but I'll never show the fight."

1842
01:35:25,938 --> 01:35:27,388
Everybody will hear it.

1843
01:35:27,872 --> 01:35:29,192
All right!

1844
01:35:29,274 --> 01:35:30,904
- Yeah!
- Holy cow!

1845
01:35:30,985 --> 01:35:33,635
Everybody will be reacting to it.

1846
01:35:36,699 --> 01:35:38,239
But nobody will see it.

1847
01:35:38,325 --> 01:35:40,445
Hello? What?

1848
01:35:40,536 --> 01:35:43,286
Who are you? Where?

1849
01:35:43,372 --> 01:35:44,922
My lucky number?

1850
01:35:46,333 --> 01:35:47,843
What?

1851
01:35:56,301 --> 01:35:58,301
You have to know where everything is.

1852
01:35:58,387 --> 01:35:59,967
And, you know, and when you...

1853
01:36:00,055 --> 01:36:02,425
So many times when, you know, somebody fires

1854
01:36:02,516 --> 01:36:04,846
and somebody falls down, I mean, you know,

1855
01:36:04,935 --> 01:36:06,805
it's like, "Where is everybody?

1856
01:36:06,895 --> 01:36:10,225
How close are they?
How close is the jeopardy?"

1857
01:36:10,315 --> 01:36:12,565
I'm scrupulous about that.

1858
01:36:12,651 --> 01:36:16,531
My concept, and the concept
that Dave and I had,

1859
01:36:16,613 --> 01:36:19,583
is that when you're dealing with
such corruption,

1860
01:36:19,658 --> 01:36:22,288
you need God to come down

1861
01:36:22,369 --> 01:36:24,709
and... and... and blow it all away.

1862
01:36:24,830 --> 01:36:26,830
It's the only thing that works.

1863
01:36:26,915 --> 01:36:29,415
That was the whole idea of the wave.

1864
01:36:29,501 --> 01:36:31,341
Holy shit.

1865
01:36:40,095 --> 01:36:42,305
I'm sorry, baby. I tried.

1866
01:36:44,349 --> 01:36:46,639
- Look out!
- Jesus Chri...

1867
01:36:48,187 --> 01:36:49,437
Look out!

1868
01:37:07,873 --> 01:37:11,495
And, of course, nobody thought it worked,
so we came up with something else,

1869
01:37:11,585 --> 01:37:14,875
which I never particularly thought worked
as well as the original idea.

1870
01:37:20,761 --> 01:37:22,891
Endings are tough. They're always tough.

1871
01:37:22,971 --> 01:37:26,811
In your career, if you can get two or
three great endings to your movies,

1872
01:37:26,892 --> 01:37:29,312
you're... it's a miracle.

1873
01:37:29,394 --> 01:37:30,984
It was basically a disappointment.

1874
01:37:31,063 --> 01:37:33,273
It didn't get reviewed particularly well.

1875
01:37:33,357 --> 01:37:35,857
<i>Snake Eyes</i> wasn't that expensive.

1876
01:37:35,943 --> 01:37:40,453
I don't think it cost more than
$30 or $40 million or something.

1877
01:37:40,531 --> 01:37:43,201
<i>Mission to Mars</i> was very expensive.
It cost 100.

1878
01:37:43,534 --> 01:37:46,510
That's another situation where they
have a director on <i>Mission to Mars</i>

1879
01:37:46,537 --> 01:37:49,827
and he came with a budget of $115 million.

1880
01:37:49,915 --> 01:37:52,415
And they said, "No,
we can't make it at that."

1881
01:37:52,501 --> 01:37:55,841
So, I walked into that picture
where everybody was sort of hired.

1882
01:37:55,921 --> 01:37:57,881
Literally, there was a whole staff there

1883
01:37:57,965 --> 01:38:01,925
and I started storyboarding
the big set pieces immediately.

1884
01:38:02,010 --> 01:38:03,430
But it was like, relentless,

1885
01:38:03,512 --> 01:38:07,102
I mean, because it was so many
of those really complicated shots

1886
01:38:07,182 --> 01:38:09,232
and I had to think up all these sequences.

1887
01:38:09,309 --> 01:38:10,639
We basically ran out of money.

1888
01:38:10,727 --> 01:38:12,687
Those shots are so expensive.

1889
01:38:12,771 --> 01:38:14,651
You do one of those shots the first day

1890
01:38:14,731 --> 01:38:16,321
and you're seeing it every week

1891
01:38:16,400 --> 01:38:19,490
as they add one incremental thing to it.

1892
01:38:19,570 --> 01:38:21,990
And that goes on for a year, basically.

1893
01:38:22,072 --> 01:38:24,832
I mean, I was always amazed that
people were able to do these things,

1894
01:38:24,950 --> 01:38:26,910
like Steven or Zemeckis.

1895
01:38:26,994 --> 01:38:31,054
I mean, holy mackerel, endless repetition.

1896
01:38:32,166 --> 01:38:35,205
But you have to stay with it,
you know, it's all this pressure.

1897
01:38:35,294 --> 01:38:37,844
Everybody's trying
to save themselves basically.

1898
01:38:37,963 --> 01:38:39,173
When it gets so big,

1899
01:38:39,256 --> 01:38:42,126
nobody wants to be the father
of this huge thing.

1900
01:38:42,217 --> 01:38:45,757
And if it doesn't work out,
you know, heads are going to roll.

1901
01:38:45,846 --> 01:38:48,636
Though I love some of the stuff I did in it.

1902
01:38:48,724 --> 01:38:50,374
You know, it's like, "What am I doing here?

1903
01:38:50,392 --> 01:38:54,192
I'm trying to beat a budget,
a schedule with sort of a..."

1904
01:38:54,271 --> 01:38:56,191
You know, I sort of got in way over my head

1905
01:38:56,273 --> 01:39:01,533
because it was so much work
for such a long period of time.

1906
01:39:01,612 --> 01:39:05,282
And then you think,
"Am I really enjoying this?

1907
01:39:05,365 --> 01:39:07,985
You know, I just turned 60.

1908
01:39:09,578 --> 01:39:12,748
This... Is this... Is this what
I want to be doing?"

1909
01:39:12,831 --> 01:39:16,671
The Hollywood system we work in,
it does nothing but destroy you.

1910
01:39:16,752 --> 01:39:19,552
There's nothing good about it
in terms of creativity.

1911
01:39:19,630 --> 01:39:23,010
So, you're battling a very difficult system,

1912
01:39:23,091 --> 01:39:27,681
and all the values
of that system are the opposite of...

1913
01:39:27,763 --> 01:39:31,023
to what goes into making original,
good movies.

1914
01:39:31,099 --> 01:39:32,679
When I finished that movie,

1915
01:39:32,768 --> 01:39:34,608
that's when I got on a plane
and went to Paris.

1916
01:39:34,686 --> 01:39:36,976
I said, "I don't want to make movies
like this anymore."

1917
01:39:37,064 --> 01:39:38,524
So, <i>Mission to Mars</i>

1918
01:39:38,607 --> 01:39:41,277
was the last movie
I made in the United States.

1919
01:39:41,360 --> 01:39:44,030
That's the upside of being a loner,
for the most part.

1920
01:39:44,112 --> 01:39:47,412
You can suddenly say, "This isn't working."

1921
01:39:49,243 --> 01:39:50,793
Well, I love to make movies

1922
01:39:50,869 --> 01:39:56,119
that are basically created
on pure cinematic ideas.

1923
01:39:56,208 --> 01:39:59,458
<i>Femme Fatale</i> is all about
visual construction in storytelling.

1924
01:39:59,544 --> 01:40:01,424
I'm a very polarizing figure

1925
01:40:01,505 --> 01:40:05,215
and the critics just thought
I was just hopeless and a hack.

1926
01:40:05,300 --> 01:40:06,800
And then there are the critics

1927
01:40:06,885 --> 01:40:08,595
that sort of understood what I was doing,

1928
01:40:08,679 --> 01:40:10,139
at least I felt they did.

1929
01:40:10,222 --> 01:40:14,062
It never sort of bothered me
when they didn't like the movies,

1930
01:40:14,142 --> 01:40:15,892
because they were, you know,

1931
01:40:15,978 --> 01:40:20,108
seemingly unkind to women
or too violent or...

1932
01:40:20,190 --> 01:40:21,950
I just felt, to me, it was always seemed like

1933
01:40:21,984 --> 01:40:23,864
the right thing to do for the material.

1934
01:40:23,944 --> 01:40:25,544
You know, the fact that Pauline liked me

1935
01:40:25,612 --> 01:40:28,242
made people argue about me constantly.

1936
01:40:38,917 --> 01:40:44,007
I have a kind of very complicated,
intricate way of looking at things.

1937
01:40:44,089 --> 01:40:48,589
I have to force myself to work
in very straight lines

1938
01:40:48,677 --> 01:40:52,597
because, believe me,
when it gets in my hands,

1939
01:40:52,681 --> 01:40:55,231
it's going to start getting twisted

1940
01:40:55,309 --> 01:40:59,899
and seen through reflections and refractions.

1941
01:41:01,523 --> 01:41:03,193
A lot of creating suspense

1942
01:41:03,275 --> 01:41:07,445
is creating distraction
from the impending tragedy.

1943
01:41:07,529 --> 01:41:08,839
You know, it's like a magic trick.

1944
01:41:08,864 --> 01:41:10,204
You want them to look at this hand

1945
01:41:10,282 --> 01:41:12,082
while the other hand is doing something.

1946
01:41:12,159 --> 01:41:16,659
So, you have to create a whole texture

1947
01:41:16,747 --> 01:41:20,247
that draws the audience's eye
away from the rabbit

1948
01:41:20,334 --> 01:41:22,134
that you're pulling out of a hat.

1949
01:41:42,272 --> 01:41:44,022
<i>The Black Dahlia</i> was an example

1950
01:41:44,149 --> 01:41:46,569
of where, unlike <i>Bonfire the Vanities,</i>

1951
01:41:46,651 --> 01:41:49,361
I said, "I'm just going to do
<i>The Black Dahlia</i>

1952
01:41:49,446 --> 01:41:51,316
the way <i>The Black Dahlia</i> is

1953
01:41:51,406 --> 01:41:53,986
and like a lot of those
Dashiell Hammett mysteries

1954
01:41:54,076 --> 01:41:56,236
that nobody can quite understand."

1955
01:41:56,328 --> 01:41:59,498
I said, "I guess that's part of this genre."

1956
01:42:00,999 --> 01:42:03,629
I said, "I'm going to try to follow

1957
01:42:03,710 --> 01:42:06,300
the original novel and all its complexities,"

1958
01:42:06,380 --> 01:42:09,050
and of course, everybody says
about <i>The Black Dahlia,</i>

1959
01:42:09,174 --> 01:42:10,474
they can't follow anything.

1960
01:42:11,676 --> 01:42:14,886
I started prepping it
in Los Angeles, where it takes place.

1961
01:42:14,971 --> 01:42:16,221
Then we went to Germany,

1962
01:42:16,306 --> 01:42:19,176
then we wound up going to Italy
and prepping it there.

1963
01:42:19,267 --> 01:42:20,977
And we wound up being in Bulgaria,

1964
01:42:21,061 --> 01:42:25,151
where we finally got the final piece
of financing to get the movie made.

1965
01:42:25,232 --> 01:42:29,072
If I'm going to put somebody
in a dangerous situation,

1966
01:42:29,194 --> 01:42:32,664
I'd rather be following around
a girl than a guy.

1967
01:42:32,739 --> 01:42:34,409
It's part of the genre.

1968
01:42:34,491 --> 01:42:35,911
The woman with the negligee

1969
01:42:35,992 --> 01:42:38,292
walking around the house with a candelabra.

1970
01:42:38,370 --> 01:42:39,960
You see in a lot of my movies.

1971
01:42:40,038 --> 01:42:42,958
You see the character's helplessness
to stop this...

1972
01:42:43,041 --> 01:42:45,211
this madness going on.

1973
01:42:45,293 --> 01:42:48,423
I lived in a family full of these
incredible egotists

1974
01:42:48,505 --> 01:42:50,045
who seemed to be very insensitive

1975
01:42:50,132 --> 01:42:52,972
about the kind of damage
they were doing to each other

1976
01:42:53,051 --> 01:42:55,931
and my middle brother is very sensitive.

1977
01:42:56,012 --> 01:42:59,722
I don't feel that he was powerful enough
to stand up to these forces.

1978
01:42:59,808 --> 01:43:02,768
I used to protect him all the time.

1979
01:43:02,853 --> 01:43:05,613
He doesn't have the kind of combativeness
that I have.

1980
01:43:05,689 --> 01:43:08,109
So, it would be like this little kid
trying to say,

1981
01:43:08,233 --> 01:43:10,653
"Stop shouting, it's not his fault."

1982
01:43:10,735 --> 01:43:12,295
And nobody would pay any attention to me,

1983
01:43:12,320 --> 01:43:13,860
and I was basically ineffective,

1984
01:43:13,947 --> 01:43:16,237
and I became very tough because of that.

1985
01:43:16,324 --> 01:43:17,584
Slow down! Slow it down.

1986
01:43:17,659 --> 01:43:19,079
- Hey. Hey, hey.
- Slow down!

1987
01:43:19,161 --> 01:43:20,681
You know, the story of <i>Redacted</i>

1988
01:43:20,704 --> 01:43:22,424
is basically the story of <i>Casualties of War,</i>

1989
01:43:22,456 --> 01:43:24,346
you know, these things
that sort make no sense to you,

1990
01:43:24,374 --> 01:43:28,214
like, "Why are we in Vietnam?"
or "Why are we in Iraq?"

1991
01:43:28,295 --> 01:43:31,045
And we're worried about Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction

1992
01:43:31,131 --> 01:43:35,221
after we have completely destroyed
their army in a prior war.

1993
01:43:35,302 --> 01:43:37,262
They have no air force.

1994
01:43:37,345 --> 01:43:40,685
We've been starving them
to death for a decade or so.

1995
01:43:42,142 --> 01:43:44,772
Well, Zahra played the part of the girl

1996
01:43:44,853 --> 01:43:47,523
that gets raped in <i>Redacted.</i>

1997
01:43:47,606 --> 01:43:50,356
And she was a refugee,
you know, living in Amman.

1998
01:43:50,442 --> 01:43:52,782
But I'm dealing with a culture
I don't understand,

1999
01:43:52,861 --> 01:43:56,201
so when we had her do
all this stuff, you know,

2000
01:43:56,281 --> 01:43:58,031
like the soldiers pretending to rape her,

2001
01:43:58,116 --> 01:44:01,616
I mean, I don't know what kind of cultural
mores I'm crossing here,

2002
01:44:01,703 --> 01:44:03,963
but this... Zahra was very understanding

2003
01:44:04,039 --> 01:44:06,959
and did the kind of things
that I asked her to do,

2004
01:44:07,042 --> 01:44:10,302
and I felt that she was really
going out on a limb here.

2005
01:44:10,378 --> 01:44:12,878
These are things that her family,
upon seeing the movie,

2006
01:44:12,964 --> 01:44:14,224
were horrified by.

2007
01:44:14,299 --> 01:44:20,389
I mean, she's kind of been
rejected by her whole culture.

2008
01:44:20,472 --> 01:44:24,232
But she's an actress
and she felt that this was right.

2009
01:44:24,309 --> 01:44:26,479
And I got her into it, basically,

2010
01:44:26,561 --> 01:44:28,101
because I'm the one that directed her.

2011
01:44:28,188 --> 01:44:32,568
And then rather than leave her there
with a very uncertain future,

2012
01:44:32,651 --> 01:44:36,111
and because she's a talented girl
and a very wonderful girl,

2013
01:44:36,196 --> 01:44:38,616
I brought her over here and put her in school

2014
01:44:38,698 --> 01:44:41,408
so that she can pursue her dream,
whatever it is.

2015
01:44:44,579 --> 01:44:47,619
Well, I think I'm returning to the kind
of movies you guys are making.

2016
01:44:47,707 --> 01:44:49,037
You're adjusting to the system.

2017
01:44:49,125 --> 01:44:53,915
If you want to make personal movies,
with your own personal ideas,

2018
01:44:54,005 --> 01:44:56,795
you have to make them at a budget.

2019
01:44:56,883 --> 01:44:58,553
You make a certain kind of movie

2020
01:44:58,635 --> 01:45:01,135
because that's the way you see things.

2021
01:45:01,221 --> 01:45:06,141
And these images keep reoccurring again
and again in your movies.

2022
01:45:06,226 --> 01:45:08,576
And that's what makes you who you are.

2023
01:45:14,651 --> 01:45:16,951
People talk about Hitchcock all the time,

2024
01:45:17,028 --> 01:45:19,408
you know, being so influential.

2025
01:45:19,489 --> 01:45:22,079
I've never found too many people

2026
01:45:22,158 --> 01:45:25,038
that followed after the Hitchcock school
except for me.

2027
01:45:25,120 --> 01:45:29,368
Here's a guy that developed those
incredible visual storytelling vocabulary,

2028
01:45:29,457 --> 01:45:31,327
and it's sort of going to die with him.

2029
01:45:31,418 --> 01:45:36,919
And I was like, the one practitioner
that took up the things that he pioneered

2030
01:45:37,007 --> 01:45:40,797
and built them into different forms
in a style that I was evolving.

2031
01:45:40,885 --> 01:45:43,465
It's like a whole modern form
that he created.

2032
01:45:43,555 --> 01:45:45,265
Having studied a lot of directors

2033
01:45:45,390 --> 01:45:49,640
and having lived now to practically being 70,

2034
01:45:49,728 --> 01:45:52,268
you see that your creative periods are in...

2035
01:45:52,397 --> 01:45:54,727
most directors' are in... in their 30s,

2036
01:45:54,816 --> 01:45:57,236
their 40s, and their 50s.

2037
01:45:57,319 --> 01:45:59,739
They, and obviously, they can go on

2038
01:45:59,821 --> 01:46:03,071
and make another 20 movies or 10 movies,

2039
01:46:03,158 --> 01:46:05,988
but you'll probably only be
talking about those movies

2040
01:46:06,077 --> 01:46:09,287
they made in their 30s,
their 40s, and their 50s.

2041
01:46:09,414 --> 01:46:12,504
You know, and I've always thought
Hitchcock was a great example,

2042
01:46:12,584 --> 01:46:16,764
because, you know, after <i>Vertigo</i> and <i>Psycho,</i>

2043
01:46:16,838 --> 01:46:19,918
and you can talk about <i>The Birds</i> all you want

2044
01:46:20,008 --> 01:46:21,888
and all the other movies he made after that

2045
01:46:21,968 --> 01:46:25,888
and then of course, the critical
establishment finally caught up with him

2046
01:46:25,972 --> 01:46:29,562
and started to write about
what a genius he was.

2047
01:46:29,643 --> 01:46:31,483
Except those movies aren't as good

2048
01:46:31,561 --> 01:46:36,581
as the ones he made
in his 30s, his 40s, and his 50s.

2049
01:46:39,319 --> 01:46:43,319
You got to be a strong,
physical person to do it.

2050
01:46:43,448 --> 01:46:46,528
It physically wears you down.
There's no question about it.

2051
01:46:46,618 --> 01:46:48,618
I think William Wilder said, you know,

2052
01:46:48,703 --> 01:46:51,003
"When you can't walk anymore,
you've got to stop."

2053
01:46:52,332 --> 01:46:53,712
The thing about making movies

2054
01:46:53,792 --> 01:46:56,542
is every mistake you made
is up there on the screen.

2055
01:46:56,628 --> 01:47:00,298
Everything you didn't solve,
every shortcut you made,

2056
01:47:00,382 --> 01:47:02,432
you will look at it the rest of your life.

2057
01:47:02,509 --> 01:47:07,099
So, it's like a record of the things

2058
01:47:07,180 --> 01:47:09,470
that you didn't finish, basically.

2059
01:47:11,810 --> 01:47:16,310
People in your life can be threatened
by your intense concentration,

2060
01:47:16,398 --> 01:47:19,438
your complete immersion in what you're doing.

2061
01:47:19,526 --> 01:47:21,946
My true wife is my movie, not you.