FILMCRAFT Interviews from the 80’s By Michael Ventura Copyright by Michael Ventura, all rights reserved. 2 for James “Big Boy” Medlin who knows the answer to “Why not?” 3 These interviews, originally published in LA Weekly, were conducted between 1980 and 1985. They document a fruitful period when filmmakers of vastly varying styles worked in the mainstream or just at its edge – as such, this volume is part instruction manual, part time capsule. We hear Francis Ford Coppola say, in 1982, “I don’t feel I’ve really begun” – but his greatest work was behind him. Richard Rush, Peter Bogdanovich, Nicolas Roeg and Jeanne Moreau were essentially finished as major directors and didn’t know it. John Cassavetes would direct his last significant film the year after our interview. Candy Clark, that unique actress, would never again get the opportunities afforded her in American Graffiti and The Man Who Fell to Earth. On the other hand, for Stephen Spielberg and Martin Sheen, among others, much of their best work lay ahead of them. The technologies of filmmaking have changed since the 80s (as Coppola predicted they would), but the essentials of filmcraft have not. These artists have much to teach anyone interested in cinema. I’ve arranged the sequence to create an interplay between these conversations. Sometimes I’ve cut or revised my original introductions, and/or trimmed the interviews, sometimes not. They are dated as originally published. Ginger Varney and I spoke with Richard Rush; our interview is used with her permission. Michael Ventura April, 2008 4 Table of Contents John Huston……………………………. 5 Jack Nicholson…………………………. 9 Stephen Spielberg……………………… 15 Peter Bogdanovich…………………….. 24 John Cassavetes……………………….. 29 Gena Rowlands……………………….... 38 Peter Falk………………………………. 42 Vanessa Redgrave……………………… 46 Dennis Hopper………………………….. 50 Jeanne Moreau…………………………. 54 Richard Rush…………………………... 58 Bertrand Tavernier & Philippe Noiret.. 66 Nicolas Roeg……………………………. 72 Peter Weir……………………………… 77 Louis Malle…………………………….. 83 Martin Sheen…………………………... 89 Francis Ford Coppola………………… 95 Robert Altman……………………….. 105 Candy Clark…………………………. 113 5 John Huston 24 July 1981 “He was very tall, with the immense lean frame of an old giant who has for long stooped to hear men talk.” The words are Ford Madox Ford’s, describing W.H. Hudson, but they serve very nicely for a description of John Huston, stepping with his slow, stooped walk into the living room of his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, graciously greeting a stranger – the practiced graciousness of a gentleman used to coming upon a fool or a devil in his suites. The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Roots of Heaven, The Misfits, The Man Who Would Be King, Wise Blood… tales of fools and devils. It is hard to come across anyone in the John Huston gallery who lives a normal life or would want to. The stories he likes best to tell begin long after his people have left the average run behind. Danger is a given in his films, not so much the danger of flying bullets as the danger of wanting more than you’re expected to want, whether it’s looking for a treasure in the Sierra Madre or looking for something like love somewhere like Reno. Houston, at 75, speaks slowly and deliberately, with the care of a stylist. In the last two years this old gentleman has made Wise Blood, Victory, and is now at work on the Hollywood extravaganza Annie. At home with big budgets or small, at ease in or out of fashion, and working in his age as hard as he when he began, Huston has the air of someone who could not be made afraid. Which doesn’t mean that that he would not be frightened in a falling elevator, but that he has seen it all and is still eager for the game. VENTURA: There’s a big nostalgia among many filmmakers for the Old Hollywood – for crews that have been together a long time, for producers that would say to a director, “That’s the script I bought, that’s the one I want to see on the screen!” It’s easy for us to be nostalgic but I want to ask you, do you miss it? HUSTON: The Old Hollywood? Yes. And I was as big a bellyacher as anyone at that time. The things that are deplorable today had their equivalents then, I suppose, but… let’s say the lines were a bit better drawn. The process of putting a picture together today is especially painful and one that I have as little to do with as possible. I see people trying to put [and here his voice was distaste itself] ”packages” together. It’s a kind of shameful proposition. Humph! Depending on so many factors. They get a script – whether they write it or not write it, whether they buy it or not buy it – but they get hold of a script and then want to interest some actors. So they go through the roster of actors. This is usually the producer I’m talking about. And he may pretend to be looking for exactly the right actor for the script – but he’s not. I mean the truth is, the bald, unvarnished truth is the poor bastard is looking for a name that will enable him to get financing for the picture. Well, now he’s got the actor. Sometimes he adds a director to it. They’re not quite so particular about who directs a picture as they are about who acts in a picture. And presently, when he thinks he has a combination that is viable, commercial, he submits it to a studio. And for the most part, the people who are in sway are ex-accountants or 6 bookkeepers or gamblers of one sort or another in stocks and bonds, or they may even have a background in the Mafia. VENTURA: I’m glad you said that. HUSTON: Or some connection remote or otherwise. [At which he gave a chuckle, quite a knowing chuckle.] Well, certainly this is… to have to go through all that is a painful, embarrassing proposition. That isn’t the way to make pictures. Eventually we’ll decide for ourselves this afternoon what is the way to make pictures [that chuckle again], or it may taken even another day. But that sure as hell isn’t. And the old formula was, I think, infinitely superior. VENTURA: How? HUSTON: Well, a property was decided upon, their [the studio’s] actors were available – they were under contract; they could take the property and give it to writers, under contract as well, and the writers would turn out a script. In turning out a script they were perfectly willing to take all the time in the world for the simple reason that they were being paid by the week. Nowadays I’ve noticed that writers will write a script – the best writers will write a script – and will turn it over and want to get on to the next one, because that’s where their profit lies. So a degree of perfectionism existed before that doesn’t obtain today. VENTURA: It’s often in the writer’s contract that you write it in six or ten weeks. HUSTON: And that’s all that’s required of you. That’s hardly the way to get a fine script. I spent, one time I remember, and working very hard, most industriously, almost a year on a script. And this was not just me, but two other men. This was the script for Juarez [co-scripted with Wolfgang Reinhardt and Aeneas Mackenzie, produced in 1939 at Warner’s]. And we were defended during this period by Henry Blanke. That producer was our champion, and he kept the studio from riding us or getting on our backs, and kept reassuring them that something good would come out. And I think it was probably the best script that I ever had anything to do with. It took the better part of a year, and I remember our high moment – I got a note from Hal Wallis [Warner studio head] saying that he had just finished reading the script and it was perhaps the best script he had ever read. Well, you can’t imagine what this meant to us as writers. But things, however, could happen to a script even then, and did to this one. Stars, especially certain stars, were beginning to exert some degree of power, and Paul Muni wanted more lines and a bigger part in the script, and the thing was thrown off balance. One of the reasons I decided to become a director is that it wouldn’t have happened that way if I had been directing the picture. 7 VENTURA: You hear a lot of stars now saying they want to be actors, they don’t want to be stars. Looking hard at old pictures to try to learn what the hell the craft is about, I see a lot of stars doing amazing acting. More technique than today. Did stars like Bogart, like Hepburn, consider themselves stars before actors, or actors before stars? Is that a distinction they were in the habit of making? HUSTON: I think that the stars liked to think of themselves as actors. For instance, Gable. He wanted to be a fine actor. And he was – a very, very good actor. But Gable didn’t have many aspects. Gable played Gable, but did it superbly. Now Bogart was an excellent actor, an extraordinary actor. There were so many aspects of Bogart, so many departments, and you call up one, evoke one, almost press a button, and he would appear.