Episode 805 - Walter Hill
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Got some very exciting news that I'd like to share with you.
Marc:Don't freak out.
Marc:I'm not getting married.
Marc:There's no baby.
Marc:But, before I talk to you about it, Walter Hill, the director, is on the show, which was pretty fucking exciting for me.
Marc:Because I like Walter Hill.
Marc:I like a lot of his movies.
Marc:And back when I was a younger person, I was always excited to see his movies.
Marc:I guess I would have been in high school.
Marc:Yeah, I was a little high school film nerd.
Marc:And I remember being excited to see Walter Hill movies.
Marc:But I'll talk about that in a second.
Marc:What I want to talk about...
Marc:Big news to announce right now.
Marc:You can officially pre-order Waiting for the Punch, Words to Live By from the WTF podcast.
Marc:It's the WTF book that Brandon and I have been working on for the last two years and I'm holding it.
Marc:Right now I'm holding a galley copy of our book.
Marc:And your book, soon to be your book, and a book of all the people that were part of it.
Marc:This book, it's like, how can I explain it?
Marc:It's not just a collection of interview transcripts, right?
Marc:We took quotes and stories and conversations from about 200 guests from this show and created sort of a running narrative about life.
Marc:You can go to markmarinbook.com or just go to wtfpod.com and click on the book on the top of the page to pre-order this amazing thing.
Marc:I couldn't believe it when I read through it.
Marc:I mean, it's so fluid and it's so...
Marc:And to be honest with you, I don't really remember a lot of the conversations I have here.
Marc:They were some of them were a while ago.
Marc:And I really only I only listen to them in real time.
Marc:Brendan is a guy that does the that does the polish and the cutting on the thing.
Marc:Now, the way it's organized is that each chapter covers like a different topic.
Marc:You got childhood, relationships, sexuality, success, failure, stuff like that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So we put it together that way.
Marc:And what we were trying to do by weaving all these conversations together is just make it feel like like everyone is part of this relationship.
Marc:Big conversation.
Marc:It's sort of like a guide to life, if that's possible.
Marc:And I think some of you feel that way about this podcast, a certain number of you.
Marc:Now, the weird thing about it is, like I said, I read it.
Marc:And when we were editing it, obviously, Brendan did a, how do you say it, a lion's share of the work on putting this together.
Marc:But the weird thing is, is when you read all these things together, the impact is, it's like pretty powerful.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:It's tragic.
Marc:It's joyous.
Marc:It's heartbreaking.
Marc:It's really strangely profound.
Marc:And we're very...
Marc:proud of this book.
Marc:I was just astounded because like I said before, I have these conversations, but I don't know if I process them in the same way that you, you do when you read something, you know, and it's very interesting to read pieces of conversations, uh,
Marc:that were spoken as opposed to written.
Marc:You engage with it in a totally different way.
Marc:And it all works together.
Marc:I couldn't put it down, and I was the one that had the fucking conversations.
Marc:It's a nice big book.
Marc:It's 400 pages long.
Marc:There's 12 new essays in it by me.
Marc:John Oliver wrote the foreword for us.
Marc:Very nice of him.
Marc:And if you're a listener of the show, it's really the best possible physical representation of what we do.
Marc:uh and you know that's how we feel about it also talking book stuff on june 3rd i'm going to be at the book con in new york city with brendan mcdonald my collaborator and business partner and producer and and this event will be the first public unveiling of the book and if you're there to see us talk about it you will get an advanced copy go to uh
Marc:Thebookcon.com for tickets.
Marc:If you order tickets now, they're still doing an early bird price and it's still early enough to get the tickets mailed to you.
Marc:So get on that now if you want to see us at The Book Con and get an advanced copy of Waiting for the Punch.
Marc:That's thebookcon.com.
Marc:It is fucking awesome.
Marc:I like to cover, you know, this whole process was really a pretty amazing thing because, you know, we've talked to so many people and, you know, Brendan, like I said, who has an incredible memory.
Marc:and is a very skillful putter together of things.
Marc:Man, it's very exciting.
Marc:So I'm looking forward to you guys getting it.
Marc:Now, you can go to markmarinbook.com or use the book link at wtfpod.com or just go to wherever you order books online.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So I was in Portland and I did three shows at the Aladdin.
Marc:I love the Aladdin.
Marc:And I'm trying to work out this special.
Marc:And it's coming along good.
Marc:I tell you.
Marc:The part of the job where you organize and pull things together and polish things up, it's exciting, but it's a little tedious.
Marc:And I have to be careful that it doesn't suck the fun out of it for me.
Marc:But it is part of the job.
Marc:And I'm trying to hone up or hone down or hone in on or hone a set that's been running an hour and a half, an hour, 45 minutes.
Marc:And that leaves room for a lot of improvising.
Marc:But for Netflix, they kind of want about a 70 minute thing, 75 minutes all in for the special.
Marc:So that's probably about 70 minutes of stand up.
Marc:So I have to trim like 25 minutes.
Marc:And it's not so much that I'm more attached to bits than others, but it's like, how's it all going to flow together?
Marc:So now I'm like, finally, you know, less than a week away from the special.
Marc:And I'm like, maybe I should tighten this up a bit.
Marc:So Portland was very helpful in letting me do that, and the audiences were great.
Marc:That Aladdin, I've worked there many times, and I'll always go back there.
Marc:It seats about 600, sold out three shows, and the audiences were just fucking amazing.
Marc:I had a local comic open for me, Barbara Holm.
Marc:She did a great job, and I just always, I love going to Portland, even though
Marc:Every time I go there, I directly and immediately connect with some sort of pervading old timey darkness that I believe just simmers under the entire city.
Marc:I don't know what the apparitions are or what the spirits are or what they're kind of mildly aggravated about.
Marc:But I always feel it there.
Marc:And it's not a negative thing.
Marc:I'm not saying anything negative about Portland.
Marc:It adds to the charm.
Marc:The weird old timey darkness is constantly sort of engaging with the the the fancy facial hairs and coffee shops and artisanal occupations to create an interesting but.
Marc:kind of heavy vibe, man.
Marc:This is how I read it.
Marc:I have a poetic experience every time I go to Portland.
Marc:Generally have some good coffee, some good food, but I walk over bridges and I'm like, man, there's something here, man.
Marc:There's something going on here and it never goes away.
Marc:But I feed on it.
Marc:I think I have a good relationship with the Portland spirits that just lie beneath the city, maybe also in the water there.
Marc:So,
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I was at the Portland airport today.
Marc:And I had a beautiful moment.
Marc:Sometimes I'm a little punchy.
Marc:I'm a little tired.
Marc:Things are a little shaky around the edges.
Marc:Because I don't do drugs anymore.
Marc:So I have to exhaust myself in order to relax in that way.
Marc:But there was just something happening at the Portland airport.
Marc:I went to the main area and there was a guy playing classical guitar.
Marc:It was amplified, but just a man sitting there playing a classical piece on an acoustic classical guitar.
Marc:It sounded like that.
Marc:I don't know the piece.
Marc:I would never know the piece, but you know what I'm saying.
Marc:It sounded like a guy playing classical guitar.
Marc:He had it perched on the wrong knee.
Marc:If you're a
Marc:regular guitar player but it looks more disciplined you know everything about playing classical guitar uh looks earned and um and he's just playing and it's it's pretty you know it's nice it's classical guitar music it's okay it was relaxing but like i didn't know exactly where it was coming from at first and i look
Marc:And I see the guy just over there off to the wherever, the side, sitting perched with his guitar in his guitar case.
Marc:They obviously allow entertainers to play in the foyer there at the Portland airport.
Marc:But what was beautiful is there was this little boy
Marc:I guess he's around two.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know how to read that because I don't have children of my own, but he was a little, a little boy, probably about two.
Marc:He was walking and standing, you know, look like he was excited to be standing up, but he was just standing there in front of this classical guitar player, just entranced, you know, just like, you know, could not shift his eye, like just hypnotized.
Marc:by the classical music, this little kid, you know, who's got no preconceptions, got no understanding, you know, of what he's watching or what the sound is or what it's like, just complete engagement with this beautiful,
Marc:elegant music and and I was completely fascinated and engaged with the kid watching the guy play guitar I was engaged and fascinated in almost a childlike way watching a child who was engaged and fascinated in a childlike way because he's a child with a classical guitar player it was just so beautiful
Marc:To see a kid that innocent, so taken with something so elegant and beautiful and sounds so amazing.
Marc:And then I look over to the right and there's his mother also fascinated and engaged with her kid.
Marc:I'm assuming watching the guitar player while he was fascinated and engaged.
Marc:And she was smiling.
Marc:And then I started to think, am I being weird right now?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:I didn't want to look weird, but I couldn't stop looking at this kid looking at the guitar player because he was so into it.
Marc:And then every once in a while, he'd do a little kid dance that didn't quite match up with the music.
Marc:But I think it's just an excitement thing.
Marc:And all I could think was like, this might be the moment.
Marc:This kid might, you know, this might be the deciding factor of the future of his life.
Marc:This moment right now might be wiring something into him that may guide him for the rest of his life.
Marc:I don't know how.
Marc:I'm not going to make any assumptions, but yet maybe he'll become a composer or a conductor or at the very least a guitar player.
Marc:I don't know, but I felt it was happening, that there was some sort of deep discovery going on, and I was very happy it was that and not something on a screen or...
Marc:maybe a puppet show it just felt deeper and like it made me uh made my morning really and like i said i witnessed the moment where he disengaged but he was locked in for like a couple of minutes you know and i think that's kind of rare for kids that age and i saw the and i saw him get distracted with nothing just like something it went away the circuit was broken
Marc:But I think something was delivered, man.
Marc:It was something to see.
Marc:I know some of you are thinking like, oh, Mark, you should have a kid.
Marc:So Walter Hill.
Marc:I'll tell you what I remember most, like outside of seeing Warriors when it came out, which was what?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where was I in my life when Warriors came out?
Marc:1979.
Marc:So I was in high school.
Marc:How fucking great was that?
Marc:I don't know if the movie holds up, but like at the time it was fucking great.
Marc:Can you dig it?
Marc:Warriors, come out to play.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:I didn't realize that he was so active in the 70s and he wrote The Getaway and The Macintosh Man, The Thief Who Came to Dinner.
Marc:He wrote and directed Hard Times.
Marc:There was a lot I learned and a lot I talked to him about.
Marc:But he was one of those guys when me and my buddy Devin Jackson were just sort of young film nerds.
Marc:We dug him.
Marc:We dug Walter Hill.
Marc:I remember when The Long Riders was coming out and we were just sort of like,
Marc:How can this not be great, man?
Marc:Walter Hill, all the James gang, but it's all brothers and they're really brothers in real life.
Marc:Southern Comfort with Powers Booth.
Marc:I was excited about that.
Marc:He did 48 hours.
Marc:I mean, I don't know, man.
Marc:He's he's from the old school and it was just a thrill to talk to him.
Marc:I like talking to directors and his new movie is is sort of a it's a messy trip, man.
Marc:It's called The Assignment.
Marc:It's available on iTunes and Video On Demand.
Marc:It's a slasher movie, and he's very aware what it was and what it is and how he made it and why he wanted to make it that way.
Marc:And of that genre, which I don't watch a lot of, I think it's pretty...
Marc:Pretty disturbing and kind of good, you know, in that way that slasher movies are.
Marc:I guess you'd call it slasher, horror.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:If you want to watch it, go watch it.
Marc:I didn't realize when I talked to him that he directed Geronimo, which...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Like it's one of those movies that like I, John Milius wrote it.
Marc:It's a very big movie with Jason Patrick and Robert Duvall, Gene Hack.
Marc:It was just, he's a real deal director and it was a real honor to have him.
Marc:This is me talking to Walter Hill.
Marc:so your movies when i was younger i i was uh i was looking forward to your movies i remember i it's funny i was going over them and i'm like holy shit i remember how excited we were for that uh for the long riders ah it's a great movie thank you where'd you start out here i mean did you grow up here
Guest:Yeah, I'm from, well, I always say Long Beach.
Guest:My family worked in Long Beach.
Guest:I actually grew up in Bellflower and went to Bellflower High, but nobody knows where the hell Bellflower is.
Marc:Where is Bellflower?
Guest:Let's solve it.
Guest:It's basically in North Long Beach.
Marc:Okay, so it's down there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just, what was your...
Marc:Family in the business?
Guest:Was anyone in the... No, they were... My family's been in Southern California a long time.
Guest:Since the Cowboys?
Guest:No, my mother was born downtown Los Angeles, the back of a grocery store.
Guest:Her parents owned a grocery store on... She was born in Slauson in Vermont, downtown.
Guest:They moved into the Long Beach area.
Guest:Grocery store didn't do terribly well.
Guest:Got out of that racket.
Guest:Got out of that racket.
Guest:So...
Guest:and my father's father was a wildcat oil miller and he ended up in the signal hill area of long beach which of course was a big oil field back in the 1920s 1930s no kidding i didn't know that oh yeah yeah a lot of oil yeah it was the wonder field of the world at the time and um
Guest:He was the guy on the machines?
Guest:He was a driller, and then he became an owner, an operator.
Guest:He always said as long as he wasn't drilling for himself, they were all big winners.
Guest:But as soon as he drilled one.
Guest:For himself.
Yeah.
Marc:You come from a big family?
Guest:No.
Guest:Brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My folks had two kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Brother and I. He going to show business?
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He ran the transportation department in the city of Long Beach for years if it...
Guest:If it had wheels on it or was a boat in the harbor, I mean, buses, police cars, fire engines, and all that, he was in charge of maintaining and purchasing.
Guest:For the city.
Guest:For the city.
Guest:And it was a socially enormously useful job and one that I probably couldn't handle for even a day.
Guest:And he was very good at it, and he finally retired a couple years ago.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Guest:Had a good life, retired.
Guest:Yeah, he now devotes himself to the sports page.
Marc:Relaxing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So how'd you get into pictures?
Marc:You've probably told this story before, obviously, but I'm curious about the era.
Marc:I don't get the opportunity to talk to people about Hollywood when it was sort of a small town.
Guest:Well, I usually just say, you know, I flunked my army physical.
Guest:I was supposed to go in the army.
Guest:I got out of school.
Guest:But you wanted to go.
Yeah.
Guest:i was i was certainly willing to go and uh the but i i was childhood asthma so they said the last second uh uh i remember this guy the guy came but we were all standing there yeah uh and uh in the raw and the guy comes in says jesus christ they're not going to take us to fucking fort or they're going to take us to fucking fort polk louisiana
Guest:Oh, you don't understand.
Guest:I mean, you have no idea.
Guest:It's the worst fucking place on earth.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the weather's horrible.
Guest:And but after you're done with basic at fucking Fort Polk, they put you right into the light artillery.
Guest:It's the place where the light artillery comes out of.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Light artillery?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, that's everything with the infantry except you have to wear three times heavier pack.
Guest:You got to lug the fucking mortars around and the fucking mortar shells.
Guest:He says, it's the worst thing in the army.
Guest:Oh, you know, geez, we go, God almighty, Port Polk, Louisiana.
Guest:Tell us your introduction, huh?
Guest:Well, and then you get to the last table, and the doctor says, well, I don't think we're going to need your services, Mr. Hill.
Guest:And we're a childhood asthma.
Guest:We don't want a lot of allergies, et cetera.
Guest:So we'll make you one why.
Yeah.
Marc:So you probably dodged a bullet literally.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:So anyway, I was at Liberty.
Guest:I thought I might get into journalism somehow.
Guest:But through a series of kind of accidents and small, I got connected to people making educational films.
Guest:and suddenly and i was a great fan of movies i just never could imagine making a living doing movies doing movies really even though there were movie stars and i guess it seems like a far a stretch long beach was forever uh yeah distant from from all that but were you a movie fan as a kid oh yeah yeah yeah it was you know my brother and i every weekend four movies a week oh who are your favorites
Guest:Well, let's see.
Guest:I guess I liked the Westerns the best.
Guest:But, you know, I think I was pretty eclectic in my taste.
Guest:On Saturdays, you saw the first-run movies, and on Sunday, you went...
Guest:over to the other theater that showed B-Westerns.
Guest:So we saw whatever came around.
Marc:So you weren't so locked in that you had favorite directors necessarily?
Guest:Oh, I didn't know what a director did.
Guest:I knew it was the last credit.
Guest:But...
Guest:Loved the whole experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it was like a religious temple or something.
Guest:You went in and they were gods and they were larger than... You know, my kids get cheated out of this.
Guest:They...
Guest:You know, you couldn't miss anything.
Guest:You know, you weren't going to come back.
Guest:You weren't going to see the movie again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, you had to hold a pee.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And you either took food with you or – but you weren't going to – because anything you missed.
Guest:And now, of course, you know – and the size of the screen was enormous.
Guest:And so the experience was very special.
Guest:But now –
Guest:You know, they buy the film and they can stop it anytime they want.
Guest:Watch on the computer.
Guest:Watch on the computer.
Guest:They can watch on something that's not bigger than their watch.
Guest:And also they can write it...
Guest:run it in slow motion.
Guest:They can run it sideways.
Guest:They can do anything they want with it.
Guest:And if they think they missed something, they'll just run it right back.
Marc:Yeah, I think that has diminished the specific power of the movie-going experience forever.
Marc:It's taken away the magic of it so much.
Marc:Yeah, it's a shame.
Marc:I think the magic is leaving everything slowly.
Guest:Yeah, I suppose so.
Guest:But I do believe...
Guest:Look, I do think the human beast has a tremendous need for stories, for entertainment.
Guest:You know, I believe you go to the smallest village in Tibet, not that I have, but there's an aerial on the small house, and they're in there watching I Love Lucy or something.
Guest:And so we're obviously living through a time where the...
Guest:the delivery system is changing and where the story is being delivered is changing.
Guest:And the neighborhood theaters that I grew up with, I mean, they're vanishing.
Marc:Yeah, there's a few around.
Marc:I guess Tarantino's doing something with that new Beverly.
Marc:Some of the higher-end theaters are good.
Marc:But you're right.
Marc:I never really thought about it like that because lately I've been thinking –
Marc:Just for myself, when I watch something, am I avoiding something else?
Marc:Is this a distraction?
Marc:Am I doing this as some sort of pseudo-drug experience to detach myself?
Marc:But I think that there is a need within... It's an emotional journey.
Marc:It's necessary.
Marc:It's nourishing to the soul.
Guest:Well, you know, we have to somehow get our imaginary lives...
Guest:It's some kind of wish, dream, fulfillment.
Guest:I've never... It's too deep for me, but, you know, I... But you like a good story.
Guest:I like a good story.
Guest:And I don't know, I always say that, you know, everybody has three lives.
Guest:There's the...
Guest:You know, you and I meet today.
Guest:We're doing this, and I present a certain framework to you.
Guest:You present a certain framework to me.
Guest:Our public persona.
Guest:Then we have our private life that...
Guest:We share with people that are very close with us, usually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Someone we drag through it.
Guest:Yeah, drag through it.
Guest:And then you have your secret life of where it's inside your head, and you basically share it with no one, I think.
Guest:Just glimmers of it a bit.
Guest:The safe glimmers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That won't cause much trouble.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I think that that part is what needs to be satisfied by the stories.
Guest:I think that's good.
Guest:That's a good way.
Guest:That's deep.
Marc:That works for me.
Marc:So you're making educational docs.
Guest:Well, I never did.
Guest:I mean, I just worked on them.
Guest:In what capacity?
Guest:I did research.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I wrote parts of them.
Guest:But I immediately said to myself, what the fuck am I doing?
Guest:You know, I don't even like these movies.
Guest:They're basically people sitting at a desk, you know, as they used to say, writing with a feather.
Guest:What was the company?
Guest:It was an offshoot of Encyclopedia Britannica movies.
Guest:They used to make these 16 millimeter films for students, you know, schools.
Guest:And suddenly I was in this environment around filmmaking and I somehow within, I don't know,
Guest:A very short amount of time.
Guest:I knew exactly what I wanted.
Guest:I went from zero understanding to I wanted to write and direct movies.
Guest:I thought, I'm going to do it.
Marc:So you can make the connection now.
Marc:You're a little behind the scenes.
Marc:And it's not as daunting necessarily.
Guest:And I was a good reader about films.
Guest:I was not only a good viewer.
Guest:And my taste had...
Guest:improved a lot in some ways in that few years from the time I would say maybe 17.
Guest:What was the indicator of that?
Guest:I think what we used to call foreign films.
Guest:They were coming in.
Guest:They were coming in, and I was a great...
Guest:uh i loved kurosawa and i loved uh to watch a bergman or a fellini or something like seven samurai kind of like that movie seven samurai yeah rashomon is uh both yeah on the all-time list sure rightfully yeah and uh
Guest:I think when I really started to work and get going, it was somehow I would never have defined my own dream or anything, which already sounds pretentious, but was to somehow I always wanted to do action films, genre films.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But to kind of inform them.
Guest:with what seemed to me to be this new vision coming out of europe and and uh and asia that there was a less melodramatic uh they were smart movies were smart a little more to the to than meets the eye yeah essentially yeah they weren't uh you know curacao could do an action movie yeah
Guest:They were so good that they weren't even called action movies.
Guest:They were dramas.
Guest:But they were done with superior intelligence and greater visual styles and more advanced editing.
Guest:So that was, to me, the paradigm to be kind of reaching for.
Guest:And then some of the directors I fell in with, most particularly working with Peckinpah, I suppose, shared that.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was something else.
Marc:So how did you eventually make it onto sets and start engaging with the film business?
Guest:Well, I became an assistant director while I was trying to make a living as a writer.
Guest:I would write at night, but I...
Guest:Got a job as a, well, at first an apprentice assistant director, what we now call production assistant.
Guest:And then I got into the Directors Guild as a second assistant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I worked on a number of films.
Guest:I worked on Bullet and Take the Money and Run.
Guest:Take the Money and Run, the Woody Allen movie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Woody's first film.
Marc:I was the second on it.
Marc:Really?
Marc:That must have been kind of funny because they were all bits in, there's a lot of sketches almost.
Yeah.
Guest:They were very funny.
Guest:Well, he shot a lot of the movie.
Guest:We shot the movie in the summer of 1968 in San Francisco.
Guest:Oh, this must have been crazy.
Guest:Well, it was.
Guest:And it looked like the country was falling apart.
Guest:We were on the streets.
Guest:a lot of the time but Woody then I don't know what the evaluated the film they had when he went home at the end of the summer and then they shot a lot more in New York they shot a lot more of the bits because it was a fake documentary right in my recollection yeah they were it was the Virgil Stark
Guest:uh starkwell i think his name was yeah and um which was a play on the starkweather who had been a real very straight horrible yeah yeah and uh he was fun to be around and uh and bullet that's a whole other experience they shot that in san francisco too didn't they oh yeah yeah yeah i was up there for better part of a year and then i took off after uh bullet started in uh
Guest:February of 1968.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we went about eight weeks over, I think, or something.
Guest:Who directed that one?
Guest:Peter Yates.
Guest:And we shot the chase right at the end.
Marc:That was the chase that established the modern car chase.
Guest:It sure did.
Marc:That and the French Connection, I guess, were the two big ones.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And then Take the Money was shot in the summer of 1968.
Guest:And then I took the fall and winter off and stayed up there.
Guest:And I started writing with, I had enough money in my bank account.
Guest:It would take the time to do it.
Guest:Yeah, that I could.
Marc:Now, were you reading scripts and stuff?
Marc:Did you do television as well at that time?
Guest:No, I never did.
Guest:Yeah, I did read, of course.
Guest:I read scripts.
Yeah.
Guest:I had several complicated notions about all that.
Guest:One, I thought, well, Christ, I think I can do this.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's what they were buying.
Guest:The arrogance of youth.
Guest:I also was somewhat distressed.
Guest:It seemed to me that almost all these scripts seemed to have been written by the same person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a kind of uniformity of style and approach to screenwriting that...
Guest:made it seem like it was coming out of some big machine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Occasionally, it's like anything you'd try to generalize about this business or something like that.
Guest:There are exceptions.
Marc:I think everyone's trying to do what makes money, so if someone's not particularly gifted, they're just going to format the thing.
Guest:And also, they were not particularly reader-friendly, so I, taking these as my watchwords, tried to
Guest:resist uh one i wanted to kind of make a mark with my scripts i think and yeah i wanted to give them a certain style that uh that evolved i thought they were almost all overwritten
Guest:and all melo way too melodramatic a little too much information on the page yeah yeah and uh also because i had worked on movies i knew nobody paid any goddamn attention to this stuff direction yeah so uh they just knew when the new scene was so uh listen i don't mean to demean there were a lot of
Guest:Very talented, very hardworking screenwriters that had to work for very difficult people.
Guest:And I didn't understand the full spectrum of it at that time.
Guest:Indeed, yes.
Guest:The wide.
Guest:I forget they can't see my hand.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:It was good.
Guest:I got it right away.
Guest:So what was that script that you wrote?
Guest:Well, the first script I wrote that became a film, I sold a Western that did not get made.
Guest:And then my problem was I never could finish anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I must have written 20 scripts and never quite.
Guest:And then I finally said, look, you know, if you're going to do this, you better finish the goddamn thing.
Marc:Was it a fear thing?
Marc:Was it just like, I mean, I used to be like that.
Marc:And then it's something weird.
Marc:There's something weird about finishing things.
Yeah.
Guest:I think that may have been part of it.
Guest:I just attributed it to I had written myself into a box, painted myself into a corner.
Guest:Didn't know how to end it?
Guest:Yeah, and just the strategy was wrong.
Guest:Or I felt that it was headed in the wrong direction, and the only way to finish it was a kind of compromise, and this...
Guest:And what the story was wouldn't even accept the compromise.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You build up all kinds.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:Very complicated reasons for non-performance.
Guest:A lot of reasons.
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot of very solid reasons for your failure.
Guest:That's how some people use their imagination.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So I had the buckle-down moment where we better start.
Guest:And...
Guest:luckily once I really started finishing scripts I I started selling almost right right making a living at it right away and I think the second thing I sold became a movie it was called Hickey and Boggs with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby and I did a couple of I got hired to do a couple of rewrites and then I was
Marc:hired to write the getaway peter bogdanovich hired me to write the getaway i talked to him you did i did he's a character he is he is indeed well i imagine at that time you know judging by my experience with him here is that he had a very you know he not unlike you're talking about he had a true respect for uh
Marc:For film, the medium and the power of film and the genre movie, because he was very adamant to not necessarily being connected to that generation of directors that he came from, because he saw himself as a guy that didn't want to necessarily break the mold, but wanted to make amazing studio pictures.
Guest:Yeah, he saw himself, I think, I don't want to speak for him, but is continuing the chain of great directors in the tradition of Leo McCary and John Ford and Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh, etc.
Guest:uh he did not feel the this great uh the the rush of 1968 and the need to uh swing the hammer and smash the cement and kick it all aside yeah go on to some new plane that was very much the fashion did you uh i was probably a little more on peter's side of the argument than than the other side but uh
Guest:Because I really did have great reverence for so many really good directors of the past.
Guest:You could see that the times were changing and that something was going on and you weren't going to be able to.
Guest:My feeling was that you were not going to reinvent the cinema, that that was insane.
Guest:But it was a lot of the talk at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's hard to imagine how crazy things were back then.
Guest:But I certainly thought that genre filmmaking, although it was going to change, could be redone in a way, pulling things inside out and mixing genres, that you could make them fresh and that an audience would grab onto them.
Guest:And, you know, if you're working here, you have to be thinking about, am I going to be able to...
Guest:find an audience for us because otherwise you don't get you don't come back to the party right and in those days you know the means of production to use the great marxian term the means of production were totally held by the studio so you had to kind of somehow get into this club and and function within it and it was so uh you know what's an audience what do they want well there was an old expression that if uh
Guest:If you're going to tell a new story, you had to put the characters in old clothes.
Guest:And if you're going to tell an old story, you had to put the characters in new clothes.
Guest:I've never heard that.
Guest:Old clothes, old story, dead.
Guest:New story, new clothes.
Guest:nobody knows nobody can attach themselves to it it's too far new story old clothes new story you might be in business or old story new clothes you know sure you might be in business and then it turns out they're all old stories and new clothes well you know borges uh says there are only two stories yeah so when you boil them down what are they
Guest:The Crucifixion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And The Odyssey.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's probably about right.
Guest:It's pretty hard to think of anything that doesn't fall within that.
Guest:You might also say if you make your categories wide enough, everything will.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Well, it's interesting you said that so many people, they had this vision that they were going to reinvent cinema, but what they ultimately did was just expand it.
Marc:You know, broaden an audience, right?
Marc:I mean, the 60s did something.
Marc:I mean, they didn't reinvent cinema, but they certainly, you know, created a shift, right?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, there was a paradigm shift that in storytelling, you know, there were so many...
Guest:Well, you know, Friedkin's French Connection, Billy's movie, just the ending was such a, you know, yeah, the technique of making the film and the approach to character, the Popeye.
Guest:And, you know, finally...
Guest:it's a really good example of new clothes old story except he put a there was a new ending a much different and very adult and we're still trying to figure out what the hell happened uh and the whole approach to character that uh hackman played and you'd never seen a cop like that so the getaway so you start that with peter and then how does it well peter and uh steve uh had a separation uh mcqueen a nice guy
Guest:Is he a nice guy?
Guest:I liked Steve.
Guest:I did.
Guest:He was a very wary personality.
Guest:He was aware of the pitfalls that can be followed by an actor.
Guest:He saw himself very much as...
Guest:It doesn't sound kind, what I'm about to say, but I don't mean it that way.
Guest:He saw himself very much as a star.
Guest:And he thought of a star as being, as most people did in those days, a lot more than being an actor.
Guest:And he felt his responsibilities as a star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He felt his responsibilities to his audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they wanted to see him win.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They wanted to see him be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He wasn't going to dirty himself up.
Guest:Well, he wasn't going to not be what he felt the image of McQueen was because he was not going to let his fans down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would justify a lot of things in terms of, no, they don't want to see that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a very generous actor in the sense of he didn't care that much about taking the dialogue.
Guest:He would quite often give dialogue away.
Guest:And he was certainly masterful at saying, we don't need to say this.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Well, he's a pretty subtle actor.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He was a great...
Guest:You know, he understood his power.
Guest:He could dominate a scene with a look.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or just a simple gesture.
Guest:You know, he could... Somebody would be talking away, and he could just reach over and grab an apple and start to peel the apple.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now...
Guest:Some might say that's a cheap way to upstage, and others would say it was an absolute reflection of his persona and who he was playing in that particular film.
Guest:Both can exist, those interpretations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was a wary personality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He didn't...
Guest:He didn't allow a posse to build up that so many of the very successful superstars do.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was not like that.
Guest:I think he was really at most comfortable...
Guest:around his friends that had to do with cars and motorcycles yeah that was his thing yeah well it was but it was more than a hobby i mean he had a real he had a tremendous gut instinct for uh mechanics uh making something go fast i mean that was that's what made him good for the getaway that's it made him made him very good for uh and
Guest:He felt it right down to the essence of it.
Marc:Did you write it?
Marc:So you were working with Peter on it, but you ended up writing your own script for it.
Marc:Well, it was an adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel.
Marc:Jim's great, huh?
Marc:He just passed away, didn't he?
Guest:No, it's been a few years now.
Guest:And Peter was directing Barbra Streisand in the What's Up doc.
Guest:And Steve decided that he couldn't wait and that we had to get rolling.
Guest:So they encouraged him.
Guest:me to quickly finish the first draft, which I did.
Guest:And Sam came in.
Guest:Sam agreed, read the script, and was willing to work with Steve again.
Guest:They had had a somewhat explosive relationship on...
Guest:Junior Bonner, I think it was.
Guest:But they had great respect for each other.
Guest:And although Steve threw a magnum of champagne at Sam's head in one story conference, I remember.
Guest:I actually was not there, but I saw the hole in the wall.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He meant it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was one of the few times where Sam really was... He said, you know, this motherfucker would have killed me.
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:So when you did The Getaway, it sounds like you were pretty engaged with the whole process.
Marc:I mean, were you on set as well?
Guest:I got called off.
Guest:I was going to be on set, but I got called off.
Guest:I had to do a thing for Warner Brothers, and I went to England and Ireland to work with John Huston on a script that Paul Newman ended up doing, a movie that Paul Newman.
Guest:Holy shit, John Huston.
Guest:That must have been something.
Guest:The experience was a lot better than the movie, I'm sorry to say.
Guest:Which movie was that?
Guest:Being called the Macintosh Man.
Guest:It was called, the novel was The Freedom Trap, but it wasn't a terribly good movie.
Guest:No, I liked working with John.
Guest:That was a lot of fun.
Marc:Well, with someone like Sam, as you said, he had some influence on your approach to filmmaking.
Marc:Because I love Peckinpah movies, and there was a period there in my life where once a year I'd watch about five of them.
Marc:Because he come from the old studio system and then really broke the mold, right?
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And there was something that I can see, like even in the getaway, that the kind of exploring the emotions or the possibilities of male characters is something he was really good at.
Marc:And I think that that character, it seems in the getaway, you know, is a thoughtful, kind of intense, you know, a lot under the surface kind of guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, what did you really pick up from Sam?
Guest:Well, I think more than any, I think I understood through him how committed you had to be to what you were doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He demanded, he was a rather fierce personality.
Guest:He was not an easy fellow to be around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You always, somebody said, and I know exactly what they meant,
Guest:It was like you were in some movie, except only he knew the dialogue and you didn't.
Guest:And there were kind of odd pauses and interesting.
Guest:But we got along well.
Guest:He knew how much I admired him, which is always a good start, I suppose.
Guest:Smart director, man.
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was very smart.
Guest:He was his own, as the old thing, worst enemy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think The Getaway is his finest effort.
Guest:I think it's a good movie, and it did very well.
Guest:It was the most commercial movie he ever made.
Guest:But he was... I really think it was the last movie he did where he was fully in control of his...
Guest:medium that he uh that his drinking hadn't gotten out of hand yet certainly drinking a lot yeah but i don't think it got to him uh on that film the way it did but he was a very complicated guy yeah and he uh he had a and he was constantly searching for those not loyal and uh you know there was a lot of that paranoid
Guest:Yeah, he had an alcoholic's kind of paranoid personality, something that I had observed a great deal in my own family.
Guest:You avoided it.
Guest:I never wanted to be – Sam and I never – we were always friendly.
Guest:He was very encouraging to me after we did the movie.
Guest:He'd call me every once in a while.
Guest:I'd call him every once in a while.
Guest:He was very encouraging about me.
Guest:Well, first he would say, you sure you want to get into this shit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About directing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was very encouraging, but he was tough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'd say, sometimes he'd say, what the fuck were you thinking of?
Marc:You know, that was... About when he started directing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you stayed in touch with him?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Not...
Guest:Not a lot.
Guest:We were not close.
Guest:It was just never going to work that way.
Guest:I'm not a hangout kind of guy.
Guest:And he wanted more than almost anybody could give.
Guest:He didn't hang out with anybody except he had a small coterie of very close, very devoted friends.
Guest:And they would drink together almost every night.
Guest:I remember Warren Oates telling me,
Guest:He said, you know, everybody always thinks I'm one of Sam's guys.
Guest:He said, I can't.
Guest:He said, I love him, but he said, I can't take it.
Guest:He said, you know, those fucking guys, they just, they get in trouble every night.
Guest:Smarter than that.
Guest:Yeah, he just said, you know, I can't deal with it.
Guest:So what was the first movie you directed?
Guest:I did a movie called Hard Times.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Charles Bronson.
Guest:Charlie Bronson and Jim Coburn.
Guest:Boxer movie.
Guest:That's right, Street Fighting back in the 30s.
Marc:Yeah, and how did you feel about that one?
Guest:Well, it got me going, and the movie was well-received, and it did pretty well.
Guest:Got you started.
Guest:Got me started.
Guest:I liked the movie.
Guest:I thought Charlie was very good in it.
Guest:I thought Jimmy was good in it.
Guest:Charlie and I had a kind of problem in post-production.
Guest:His wife, Jill, was in the movie, and he felt that I had...
Guest:Not been particularly kind to her in the editing, and so Charlie and I had a rather sharp breakup on that.
Guest:Did you get into a fist fight?
Guest:No.
Guest:He'd have killed me, but... And I didn't seem for... But it certainly destroyed our relationship.
Guest:People often ask me, you know, why didn't you ever work with him again?
Guest:That was it?
Guest:I was just like, son of a bitch wouldn't even speak to me.
Marc:So when... And then you're sort of on your way, and you do the driver...
Marc:which you worked with Ryan O'Neill a few times, didn't you?
Guest:Well, I had rewritten a script called The Thief Who Came to Dinner that Ryan did, but he and I really didn't know each other then.
Guest:We'd met, but then, yes, he agreed to do The Driver.
Guest:The Driver was my second film.
Guest:It was...
Guest:Somewhat experimental in nature and probably had I not been making another film at the time it came out would have drummed me out of the business, but it was a complete financial and critical failure in this country.
Marc:But it was a respected film, though.
Marc:I mean, it had found an audience, right, overseas?
Guest:It was a—it became—yeah, it did all right.
Guest:Like a cult movie.
Guest:Yeah, and it slowly has built up a reputation in this country, I'm happy to say.
Guest:Edgar Wright has just made a movie called Baby Driver that is—
Guest:in some ways derivative.
Guest:I'll leave you to talk.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:And very funny.
Guest:I'm good friends with Edgar.
Guest:And I sometimes hate to think what would have happened had I not been shooting the Warriors when the driver came out because the reception to it was not very good.
Guest:I think...
Guest:In those days, studios would send you reviews.
Guest:They would collect them over the weekend and everything.
Guest:I got, in the American reviews, and it's, Christ, it's about the size of a small phone book.
Guest:Came after you, huh?
Guest:I got one good review.
Guest:I got one fucking review that was any good.
Guest:It was Dave Kerr.
Guest:I remember it very well.
Guest:Dave Kerr in the Chicago Reader gave it a beautiful review.
Guest:He got it.
Guest:He got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was actually very well reviewed in Europe, and it did well.
Guest:It's the old joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it did well in Japan.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What do you think the drop-off was?
Marc:If you were to really consider it at that time, what was the aversion?
Guest:Well, I think there were several things.
Guest:In the first place, I think the movie just stylistically wasn't particularly audience-friendly.
Guest:It was a rather abstract way to tell the story.
Guest:I think also, and I have no... I think Ryan is very good in the movie.
Guest:I thought he did everything as well as I could ever hope an actor could do with the part as a writer-director.
Guest:I was very pleased with Ryan.
Guest:But I don't think the audience accepted him.
Guest:I think they wanted...
Guest:the guy that was in Love Story.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They couldn't accept him in a grittier role.
Marc:No.
Guest:They didn't accept him in the Steve McQueen role.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think that was a problem he had a lot.
Guest:Well, you know, he had...
Guest:His previous film had been the Kubrick.
Guest:Barry Lyndon.
Guest:Barry Lyndon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that had, you know, at the time.
Guest:It's not an easy movie.
Guest:It's not an easy movie.
Guest:And it was, at the time, perceived to be not a success.
Guest:But I liked Ryan.
Guest:And he liked doing the movie, you know.
Guest:He liked driving.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was a very physical guy.
Guest:He had this tape.
Guest:Ryan was a good boxer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:he worked out he did he he fought three rounds three or four rounds with joe frazier yeah yeah oh really yeah and i'm kidding well i don't think joe was uh you know turning on the steam but uh still he ryan looked quite credible you know he yeah he had the moves sure sure he knew how to do it he knew how to do it yeah but the warriors that was the one i mean that was the one when i was a kid you know we went we're like
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:This is insane.
Marc:Like, I can still remember it.
Marc:You know, the power of it.
Marc:You know, it was because I don't I don't know how much we knew about New York or the possibilities of that.
Marc:But the costumes in everything was just sort of it was pretty spectacular movie.
Marc:What was that guy's name, that little guy?
Marc:He shows up in Spike Lee movies and stuff.
Guest:Well, his character name was Luther.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And David Kelly is David Patrick Kelly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:Oh, he's a wonderful actor.
Guest:Yeah, with the bottles, warriors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, that moment that is often quoted, I have to give him the credit for.
Guest:The car was coming in, and I said, you know, Jesus Christ, this is not what we need.
Guest:I said, you know, you see them.
Guest:I don't want to just do a reaction.
Guest:I said, they wanted me to go over here and check this out.
Guest:I said, think of some fucking thing to say.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:Sing to them if you want.
Guest:But, you know, make them know your presence and taunt them.
Guest:and uh then i went over to the camera that we were getting ready to do on the next shot yeah and then i came back and i saw him out of the corner of my eye i saw he jumped out of the car and he ran under the uh pier and he grabbed some uh old beer bottles that were there just yeah trash yeah and he ran back into the car and uh so i said okay uh
Guest:ready to shoot okay let's rehearse one more and then we'll shoot action and he does the clinking clink clink and I thought this is what a real director is about you don't get in the middle of this just shoot it but that was very much that was all him huh
Guest:Well, in a way, it's kind of what directors do.
Guest:It's what actors are supposed to do.
Guest:Yes, he deserves the lion's share of the credit.
Guest:But at the same time, I created an opportunity.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:And I was open to something that wasn't in the script.
Guest:And so I give myself a little I'll give myself 20 percent on that.
Marc:And what was the base?
Marc:Where'd you get that story?
Marc:I mean, like, you know, those guys with the baseball bats and the makeup.
Marc:I mean, obviously, you know, I've been to New York and I, you know, if that if that world existed, it was outside of my periphery.
Marc:But for some reason, you wanted it to exist.
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to do something.
Guest:It was a little bit sci-fi, a little bit futuristic.
Guest:But at the same time, it had to have the crack of reality to it.
Guest:And it's almost a musical in some ways.
Guest:Yeah, the costumes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just thought of it as it was a crazy place.
Guest:And I wanted it to push the envelope.
Guest:There was a scene.
Guest:It was from a novel.
Guest:by Saul Urich.
Guest:The novel is meant to be fairly realistic, and it's kind of a Trotskyite vision, I would say.
Guest:And
Guest:But there was a scene in the novel where one of the characters is reading a comic book, and the comic book is the Xenophon story from classic Greek literature.
Guest:But it was in a comic book, and the character in the book says, hey, these guys are just like us.
Guest:Hey, you know, they're running away from...
Guest:And I said to myself, that's how to do the movie.
Guest:Do it like a comic book.
Guest:Do it weird and strange.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And let the Greek stuff jump if it's there for anybody who wants to see it.
Guest:But I think really, you know, the...
Guest:Why did you react the way you reacted?
Guest:You asking me?
Guest:Yeah, because I think it was not... You were not unique in the... You were going, whoa, you know, hey, this is really something.
Guest:And I think a lot of it was really... It was a movie where...
Guest:They had made a lot of gang movies before and all that kind of business.
Guest:But what was different that we did was we didn't examine it as a social problem movie anymore.
Guest:You just took it, you amplified it to like... We suggested that the gangs were a rational choice for people in survival situations.
Marc:And also each gang had their own personality and there were so many of them.
Marc:You were excited to see what the theme was.
Guest:And the movie didn't suggest that it was tragic that these characters were not going to become...
Guest:Lawyers and doctors and college graduates, et cetera.
Guest:They accepted them on their own terms.
Guest:It wasn't a societal problem.
Guest:They were their own society.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I think that was a very different thing at that moment.
Marc:Now it's very commonplace, though.
Marc:I guess, but I've never seen anything with that many gangs.
Marc:It took that old 50s riff of territory to this other degree.
Marc:There were all these people that had territory, but there were so many gangs, and they were so specifically different through their uniforms and their approach to being a gang.
Marc:And the Warriors were sort of a throwback.
Marc:They were like a classic, just a leather vest kind of gang.
Marc:And the other ones were sort of spectacular.
Marc:And it just created something different.
Guest:They were the simple folk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, just a few internal problems, but basically.
Guest:Young James Remar.
Marc:Yeah, he was.
Marc:He had internal problems on top of internal problems.
Guest:Who elected you war chief?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy.
Guest:He was, yeah, had the harsh voice.
Guest:Yeah, Remar's very good at it.
Guest:And he was wonderful for me in 48 hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:wonderful for me in several other films you know he's good yeah oh jimmy's a terrific actor he really is man yeah very intense very focused he's uh you know he's he's it hasn't had an he hasn't had an easy road but he's yeah he's uh he's a tremendous talent i love him yeah and and that started the role there warriors then you go to the long riders and that was when we were just so thrilled that because of the brother thing the casting all the brothers the carradines with the quades the
Guest:christopher guest and his brother and who is the other one the other big carradine's quads uh the keych's oh yeah the keych's i got a chance to make a western my first western and i was happy as a pig in the shed yeah i was just love love making love shooting it having the horses well i was uh you know i i'd always wanted to make west yeah and um uh so i got my first first chance at it and and the casting was your idea
Guest:No.
Guest:I'd love to tell you it was, but James Keech had been in a play, some off-Broadway thing, where he played Jesse James.
Guest:So he had the notion that it'd be good to do a movie where he was Jesse James.
Guest:And he went to Stacey and said, you could be Frank.
Guest:And he said, they had all these friends.
Guest:And he said, well...
Guest:You know, these gangs were all related, the Youngers and the Millers, and they were all related, and they all came from the same area in Missouri.
Guest:So it's really a Midwestern, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's, as I said, a Green Western.
Guest:And so they got an agreement among all the...
Guest:of all these brothers, and they got to Tim Zinneman, who was an old friend of mine, and Tim brought it all to me.
Guest:And I said, well, I think we got a lot of work on the script here.
Guest:I always said, you know, we never really worked the story out very well, but there's a lot of good scenes, and the characters are good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they're good actors.
Guest:They're good actors, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and then like Southern Comfort, I remember that coming out because Powers Booth was so intense and menacing.
Marc:I don't remember the story, but I remember being scared of the swamp.
Guest:It was a tough movie to make.
Guest:The Swamp was unforgiving.
Guest:And, yeah, Powers and Keith were the leads, and they were both very good at it.
Marc:And then the huge 48 Hours was a game changer for movies, in a way.
Guest:Well, you're very kind, I think.
Guest:The...
Guest:Yes, for good or bad, I think... I always say this about... I'm sure there are better movies than 48 Hours.
Guest:I thought it was a really good one.
Guest:But I've never seen a movie that's been imitated more.
Marc:I mean, it's just... Well, taking the good cop, bad cop thing to this...
Marc:this area of comedy where you don't remove the menace, you know, and the stakes are still kind of high, you know, was I don't think that was done very much.
Marc:You know, I noticed not long ago, I rewatched like Freebie and the Bean with Khan and Arkin that, you know, there was a time where these movies that were essentially comedies, there was still a lot of, there's a pretty high body count, you know, and I just thought that that dynamic between, you know,
Marc:The two of them, it was a real gift.
Guest:Well, I always said that, look, we're going to make it like a real tough thriller.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you accept it as an action movie, it'll be very funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you try to tell everybody it's a comedy, they're going to get a little mixed up.
Yeah.
Guest:uh and also i i always said when we're making it that don't play a joke don't play jokes you know the the humor will be there it's in the attitude in the character so when he had eddie i mean like you know that guy was on fire see eddie was just it was the perfect moment for him to make a debut yeah he was coming out of saturday night live and uh
Guest:He did something that there had been a series of people coming out of Saturday Night Live and having great movie careers instantly.
Guest:Great Belushi, Bill Murray, etc., etc.
Guest:Dan Aykroyd, all those guys.
Guest:They had these fabulous careers.
Guest:But what they had done was they had jumped...
Guest:From Saturday Night Live to comedies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Eddie jumped to a very different kind of movie, which opened up a whole new world for him of choices.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He could make movies.
Guest:For instance, Beverly Hills Cop would never have happened had he just done a conventional comedy as his debut, in my opinion.
Marc:right well because yeah he was able to go he to have an edge uh you know not just be a broad comedy character no he could credibly yeah carry a gun yeah uh have tough attitudes yeah uh etc etc which that that dynamic between him and nolte was too much nolte is too much he's something else man well you know he um
Guest:I remember when he's the only guy in the world that calls me Walt, which I don't like.
Guest:But I'm quite happy to take it from him.
Guest:But I came back from New York.
Guest:I'd gone back there to meet Eddie because he was shooting Saturday Night Live.
Guest:And I said, I'm going to go with this guy, Nick.
Guest:And I said, you know, it's going to be his first movie.
Guest:And he's tremendously talented.
Guest:I said, he's not an actor.
Guest:You know, he's not going to be, maybe you'll be an actor by the time the movie's over.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's going to need your help.
Guest:But I'm going to tell you this, Nick.
Guest:It's going to be like doing a movie with a little kid or a dog.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to be good every take.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the one take he's good, we're printing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's not fair, Walt.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:I want to, you know.
Guest:And I said, that's the way it's going to be.
Marc:Did it turn out that way?
Guest:I mean, or did he show up in ways you didn't anticipate?
Guest:Number one, Nick was good in every take.
Guest:Eddie was not good in every take.
Guest:Eddie was all over the place.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But it's the old thing.
Guest:You only use the good one.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was all over the place in that he wanted to riff.
Guest:Yeah, and he was not comfortable as an actor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was a very different world for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, he was... Look, the guy is an enormous talent.
Guest:You couldn't hold it down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Nick was good.
Guest:You know, we always...
Guest:when we were editing the movie we always said anytime eddie's in trouble cut to nick yeah because nick was always doing something interesting or he was always writing in character and yeah yeah um he's and they loved each other yeah they did oh yeah they they got along great
Marc:Yeah, Nolte was like, I don't know, he's always interesting, I'll tell you that.
Marc:Well, you wrote that one, and am I wrong in noticing that there was some, did you start to sense, I don't know if it was who you used as a cinematographer or your own sense, that there was a style to your movies.
Marc:Do you believe that?
Marc:in lighting and whatnot?
Marc:Because I remember that when Remar comes out of the smoke almost.
Marc:I remember there was some sort of vibe that you could see in Streets of Fire, I can see in the new one.
Marc:I don't always know how that happens with directors.
Guest:Well, it's part of the job, Mark.
Guest:I mean, that's... Yeah, I mean... Yeah, I do.
Guest:You know, we work very hard on getting the look right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's always a little difficult.
Guest:I mean, that's two-thirds of what you do.
Guest:I think people are always... You know, there's a famous story about...
Guest:William Wyler, who was one of the four or five probably historically most successful, important directors in the history of Hollywood.
Guest:And he was always known as this fabulous director of actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The performances in Wyler's movies.
Guest:I think he still has the record of most nominated performances and things like that.
Guest:And the young actor that comes over to him and says, my first day, Mr. Weiler, just like know what you'd like me to do in this scene.
Guest:And he said, fuck, you get in there and act.
Yeah.
Guest:I'll tell you if it's good or not.
Guest:But don't.
Guest:He said, I'm a movie director.
Guest:I'm not a goddamn acting coach.
Guest:Get your ass in there.
Guest:We'll see how it works.
Guest:And now that's an extreme example.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there is a kind of... A lot of people think what a film director is is closer to their conception of what an acting coach is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think that's right, yeah.
Guest:That you're sitting there talking to the actors about, well, do you think that maybe if he was motivated to do this based on whatever he had... It's not like that.
Guest:I was always very taken by how often...
Guest:actors in discussing working with great directors, whether it was Hitchcock or John Ford or Howard Hawks or many, many.
Guest:The one common thing they'd always say is they never directed.
Guest:They never talked.
Guest:They just put the cameras up.
Guest:Well, I remember Paginpah.
Guest:You ask about Paginpah.
Guest:Paginpah told me about 75% of the job was casting.
Guest:He said, if you cast it right, then you just, you got to shoot it and shoot it in a good way, stage it.
Marc:Well, yeah, you're paying for them to do the thing that they do, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, you know, it's casting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, but it leads you into, it's more complicated now.
Guest:Like it's...
Guest:I really think this, that actors and directors, there is a, shall we say, a natural tension between the two crafts.
Guest:Actors tend to believe...
Guest:that they can play anything.
Guest:They're not often given enough of an opportunity for the breadth of their talent.
Guest:And directors tend to believe that if they haven't seen the person do it before, they can't do it.
Guest:And therefore, they don't want any fucking mistakes when they go out there.
Guest:Because if you make a mistake in casting, the price you're going to pay is very high.
Guest:So if you've cast somebody that can't do the part...
Guest:in a reasonable way, in the way you want.
Guest:Then you've got to get them out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, you know, really the truth is they're both wrong.
Guest:Actors can't play just anything.
Guest:They do have limitations.
Guest:I think they're right.
Guest:They can probably play a lot more than they're given a chance to a lot of times.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the directors are wrong that they're...
Guest:They are too limiting quite often.
Guest:Although there is another... See, again, we're talking in cliches, which is my fault, since I'm doing the talking here.
Guest:But so many of the young directors now want to cast against the type.
Guest:So they'll, in my estimation, often foolishly
Guest:cast so far against the type that the part lacks credibility.
Guest:I'm not going to give any examples.
Guest:I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
Marc:But is that an ironic position that they're taking?
Guest:Do you think they know that?
Guest:That's the defense.
Guest:Yeah, but you think it's like, yeah, they fucked up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did you like it?
Marc:And also, like, I don't want to just obviously we can't go movie to movie.
Marc:But but you did work with Pryor and, you know, you work with Murphy.
Marc:You work with Pryor on Brewster's Millions.
Marc:How was that experience?
Guest:Well, it was mixed.
Guest:I probably I was I think my own arrogance.
Guest:I had gotten.
Guest:I had this feeling that I could get laughs when I wanted in movies because we had good... There was a lot of humor in The Warriors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a lot of humor in The Long Riders.
Guest:And, of course, 48 Hours had... Sure.
Marc:But you didn't write that as a comedy, 48 Hours?
Marc:You just thought you were writing a straight thriller?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I thought we'd get laughs, but I just didn't want them to play a joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was presented the idea of Brewster's Billions.
Guest:So I thought, okay, I'm going to show I can do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pretty much straight ahead comedy.
Guest:But I think that was part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The other part of it, it was a lot more positive than that, which was I had a tremendous respect and admiration.
Guest:I didn't know him for Richard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Richard at that time was just coming back.
Guest:He had only done one movie since what they...
Guest:Those close to him always said his accident.
Guest:And so he was in a fragile state of mind.
Guest:I think that was pretty much a constant with him.
Guest:He was usually either very defensive or very agitated.
Guest:But the experience...
Guest:Richard felt that if he didn't take drugs, he probably wasn't funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he also felt that if he took drugs, he'd die.
Guest:Tough position.
Guest:That's about as tough a position.
Guest:And the problem was compounded.
Guest:by the persona of John Candy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was in the movie, had an enormous part in the movie.
Guest:Wonderful guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wonderful guy.
Guest:And John was one of these guys.
Guest:As soon as he walked through the stage door, he was on, and he was funny.
Guest:And he loved being funny to the crew, and he knew everybody's name, and he would make jokes about your family.
Guest:He just learned, and he was always on, and he was just loved and funny and great guy, great guy, and very good in the movie.
Guest:Well, Richard was not an outgoing person.
Guest:Richard was very much...
Guest:a performer when he performed but he was not a funny guy just off yeah off and and he would stand kind of hunched over he spent most of his time in his trailer but but he i remember he would be this kind of hunched over watching candy getting the laughs yeah getting the laughs with uh
Guest:And then every once in a while, it was so sad, he'd kind of try to turn something on with the crew.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you could feel... It was just awkward.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You could feel... Competition and... Yeah.
Guest:And people would try to laugh because they... And Richard would realize they're not really laughing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're trying to laugh to indulge me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was like... Yeah.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So... But Richard liked the movie.
Guest:He...
Guest:He told me several times that, as years went by, and he became very, you know, it was his favorite, he felt.
Guest:I don't think it's his best by any means, but I know why he, because the movie took him on as an actor.
Guest:He played a comedic, you know, it was...
Guest:It was a comedic lead as an acting role.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And he liked that.
Guest:He didn't have to be a low comedian, I guess.
Guest:Right, and he didn't have to be the guy.
Guest:And he didn't have to be the guy, yes.
Guest:And so he had this enormously...
Guest:uh warm spot in his heart for the movie this is right he's probably grateful to that transition pay period i think he grew to trust me he started out he was again a very wary personality yeah and uh he you know i was always pretty straight with him i think you know there's always moments where you probably are
Guest:feathering the truth yeah but uh but uh but i liked him a lot and i certainly i had great respect for him and uh so it was picture did well uh was not terribly well received but picture did well and then it became this other thing it became on television and
Guest:It became this enormous success.
Guest:Kids loved it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Little kids liked it.
Guest:And so it had a second life.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How did you get involved with the Aliens franchise?
Guest:I was sitting around the office one day, and a guy I knew, Mark Haggard, literally handed me a script through the windows.
Guest:A hot day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The window was open.
Guest:I said, hey, Mark.
Guest:He said, hey, I've been looking for you.
Guest:Couldn't find the office here.
Guest:And he said, I want you to read this script.
Yeah.
Guest:I read the script and called him.
Guest:I said, you know, it's not very good, but I think something.
Guest:I had my partner, David Geiler, read it.
Guest:And David, I remember it was when the Democratic National Convention, Carter was giving his speech.
Guest:And David called me about 10 minutes into the speech, and he said,
Guest:And he said, I'm reading this script.
Guest:Who gives a shit what's going on in the convention?
Guest:And he said, I'm reading this script.
Guest:He said, this is terrible.
Guest:And I said, keep reading.
Guest:And three minutes later, he calls back, because I think it was on page 35 or something.
Guest:And he says, I see what you mean.
Guest:We ought to see if we can get this.
Guest:And it was the chestburster scene.
Guest:So we had this notion, if you could take the script, turn the script into a solid something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:we could get it on that if you treated a B movie like an A movie, made it real slick, that it could be a real commercial movie.
Guest:Because the framework was there.
Guest:But you liked the egg laying in the stomach thing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was.
Guest:And the instincts were there.
Guest:So we redid.
Guest:The studio had actually already seen the script and it passed.
Guest:They couldn't even believe that we wanted to pick it up.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They did.
Guest:And then it became a trek to get it on.
Guest:And you did a pass on the script?
Guest:Yeah, I did several.
Guest:I did several passes.
Guest:I made the lead character a woman, worked out several things.
Guest:Then David came back.
Guest:He had gone off to Hong Kong with his girlfriend.
Guest:And David came back.
Guest:And then we did a couple of drafts together.
Guest:But by then, the studio had read what we were doing, and they were now... They kind of saw what we saw.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then... So then the hunt became... First, the hunt became who was the filmmaker going to be, and we offered it to about 35 directors.
Guest:I didn't want to direct it myself.
Guest:I didn't think I was...
Guest:really going to be good at the kind of model work and effects work that was then.
Guest:This was long before the CGI revolution and all that.
Guest:And I didn't think I either had the patience or the technical expertise to pull that off.
Guest:And so we offered it out to about 35 directors, I think.
Guest:They all passed.
Guest:And then we sent it to Robert Aldridge.
Guest:And Aldrich called us over.
Guest:Incidentally, I think the characterization of Robert Aldrich on this thing that they're doing on television now is an outrage and a travesty.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Feud.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, Robert Aldrich was a...
Guest:tremendous man courageous man and the idea that they're doing this to his memory and what are they doing to him i didn't watch it oh they're making him a weak uh second-rate director who didn't even develop the property which is an outrageous lie yeah uh and they're presenting him as this weak vacillating person that uh
Guest:does whatever the studio wants him to do, does whatever the... sleeps with the leading ladies to make the film go a little smoother, takes orders from the actors on the set.
Guest:I mean, especially Robert Aldrich.
Guest:This is one of the toughest guys in the history of the Guild.
Guest:And they just took liberties?
Guest:They are taking unbelievable liberties.
Guest:I just don't... The other thing is, Aldrich was the...
Guest:president of the Directors Guild for a couple of terms, got us, every director in the guild is indebted to Robert Aldrich.
Guest:He got the greatest breakthrough contracts.
Guest:He went locked up for two weeks with Lou Wasserman, slugged it out, and got the greatest advances we ever got in our creative rights and
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Minimums, et cetera.
Guest:And to do this to the reputation of – I'm all for the First Amendment.
Guest:I don't want to be a censor and I don't want to say that you can't do something.
Guest:But I think to do this to the reputation of a guy –
Guest:that didn't do anything but make really good movies and gave his whole life to the American film, is to me without purpose and shameful.
Guest:It's just shameful.
Guest:I can't see it.
Guest:Just to service a story.
Guest:Yeah, to service the story in a childishly melodramatic way, in my opinion.
Marc:That's a shame.
Marc:I wonder if his family is pushing back at all.
Guest:Well, his daughter called me, as a matter of fact, this morning.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I guess it's one of the reasons I'm heated up about this.
Guest:Yeah, they're in great pain over it.
Guest:That's a shame.
Guest:And, you know, millions of people watch this.
Guest:It might be their only exposure to this guy.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:It's going to be the memory of Robert Aldrich to millions of people who otherwise don't know about his career.
Guest:Right.
Guest:uh i just think it's it's it's not illegal i guess and all that but it's shameful are they calling him and i think somebody ought to say it's shameful yeah so i guess i'm you're the guy i guess right now i'm the guy and they're they're calling him by name in the in the movie yeah oh that's too bad it really is sorry what would well you well you he he he had the aliens oh yeah and he said uh he said i like he was a tough old guy yeah and he said uh
Guest:I like the script.
Guest:He said, you know, you got the monster and you got a patrol movie.
Guest:He said, you know, and all that.
Guest:And he said, yeah, you know, he said, I know how to do this.
Guest:And he said, but he said the movie will succeed or fail on the conception of the beast.
Guest:He said, we got to come up with something.
Guest:really unique.
Guest:And he said, I don't know, just off the top of my head,
Guest:This may not be a good idea, but maybe we could get like an orangutan and shave it.
Guest:And we go, God almighty.
Guest:That's one we hadn't thought of.
Guest:And then train the son of a bitch, because you shouldn't see it very much.
Guest:He said, it's got to be really weird and strange.
Guest:And so we always thought that Ridley did a wonderful job.
Guest:Bob agreed to do the movie, but then he had a movie come out.
Guest:Well, he couldn't shoot the movie in England where Fox wanted to make it because he couldn't leave the presidency of the directors.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:So it went on to Ridley, who David had seen The Duelist at the Cannes Film Festival and was very impressed with it, beautifully shot.
Guest:The sound work was great.
Guest:So Ridley liked the script.
Guest:He came over and
Marc:Well, how'd you get from a shaved orangutan to the Geiger stuff?
Guest:Well, I guess I wasn't kind in my assessment of the original script, but the fellas that wrote the original script were familiar with Giger's work.
Guest:Giger, sorry, yeah.
Guest:And they showed us the pictures and the picture books of Giger's work, and we showed it to Ridley.
Guest:And Ridley said, well, this is, our problems are solved.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so it went from there.
Marc:And you were involved with all of them.
Marc:You didn't direct the first one, but obviously we had a big part in the script.
Guest:And I was involved in the first three.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm listed as one of the producers on everything since.
Guest:But Fox and I got, as usual, we got in a fight with the studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're still listed as producers by their insistence, but we still maintain some ownership in the franchise.
Guest:Jim Cameron directed Settlement.
Guest:Oh, that's right, too.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I saw Jim just Monday, sadly, at Bill Paxton's memorial.
Guest:Paxton was in here two weeks before he passed talking to me.
Guest:I ran into Bill at my doctor's office with some irony.
Guest:I hadn't seen Bill before.
Guest:in a couple years.
Guest:Bill and I were very good friends.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:Wonderful guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, your moment with him was wonderful.
Marc:Oh, I was so happy it happened, man.
Guest:Well, it really got the essence of him, too.
Guest:I mean, that's the way he was.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Good to hear.
Marc:Yeah, sweet guy, man.
Marc:Just a shame.
Marc:Real sad.
Marc:I really like the movie Geronimo.
Marc:I wanted to tell you that.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:I don't know where it went or how it did, but I... Not well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It didn't do well for a couple of reasons, but it... You know, I was very pleased with it.
Guest:I thought it accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, and I thought the story was a moving one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought the camera work on it was...
Guest:Well done.
Guest:It looked beautiful.
Guest:I thought Ry Cooter's score was wonderful.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:Are you friends with him?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:How's he doing?
Guest:He's doing great.
Guest:He's still living over there in Santa Monica Canyon, and he tours.
Guest:He's a real wizard, that guy.
Guest:He may be the most talented person I've ever worked with.
Guest:I always say that about Rye.
Guest:He lives wonderfully inside his own head, and he lives in this world of music, and he's wonderfully adaptive of music.
Guest:taking strains of great American music and then making it uniquely his own.
Guest:And he's a joy.
Marc:He's a joy.
Marc:Yeah, he's a real gift to music.
Marc:There's such a huge catalog to sort of get to know him through.
Marc:But I like that movie.
Marc:Jason Patrick, I thought was great.
Marc:Jason's very good in it.
Marc:And Milius, there's something about that guy.
Marc:I don't know him, but ever since I saw that documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, and they interviewed Milius, and he's like, Francis had convinced us that we were making the first film to win the Nobel Prize.
Marc:There was just such a swagger to his writing.
Marc:I like that thing.
Marc:Oh, he's a wonderful writer.
Guest:I always say that my generation of screenwriter, I think that John's scripts read the best.
Guest:If you wanted to read a script, John was absolutely the most powerful storyteller.
Guest:He wrote beautiful scripts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How's he doing?
Guest:He's got health problems.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And they've prevented him from working in the last few years.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So now the new one to get up to speed, The Assignment, I hear you already got into a little trouble with that or no?
Guest:No, I think, yes, the movie's been attacked recently.
Guest:I mean, it's also been defended.
Guest:I hasten to point out.
Guest:But there were people that felt that the movie treaded on ground that should not be examined.
Guest:The movie was roundly criticized before it even was not only not seen, it was even made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The subject matter was perceived to be verboten by several people, and they didn't want the – in the first place, it is not a movie about transgender.
Guest:No.
Guest:It is – I'm sorry, have you seen it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it is a movie that deals with genital alteration and –
Marc:Yeah, but it's so clearly a horror trope.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's a take.
Marc:It's a revenge.
Marc:It's a comic book.
Marc:It's a take on something creepy.
Marc:There's a lot of elements in there that are very familiar to everyone.
Marc:But that turn, that bizarre turn of that script where this vengeful doctor gets back at the man who killed her brother in this bizarro way, it can't be seen as really connected to reality on some level.
Guest:No, absolutely.
Marc:And I don't even think you did a disservice to either character, the male or the female character.
Guest:Well, I'm a great believer that...
Guest:You know, look, what is fundamentally the most important thing that any director, any storyteller can have, and that is sympathy for the human condition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ultimately sounds grandiose, but it is the fundamental.
Guest:Now, you may approach it.
Guest:through many different ways.
Guest:You can approach it through comedy or serious drama or irony or comedy.
Guest:But I leave both.
Guest:The movie pits.
Guest:a trained medical doctor who's also an intellectual who has an agenda and has a tragic past herself against the lowest form of criminal Darwinian survivor, to use one of Bill Paxson's favorite phrases, on the food chain.
Guest:They don't come any lower than Frank Kitchen.
Guest:And these two...
Guest:diametrically opposed types are thrown up against each other in a double revenge thing.
Guest:And the movie, finally, it seems to me, shows sympathy and elevates both characters.
Guest:Again, through a comic book format.
Guest:It is a graphic novel that...
Guest:that I co-wrote.
Guest:It started as a graphic novel?
Guest:It didn't start.
Guest:It started Dennis Hamill wrote a script, wrote a story and script in 1977.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I read it then, and I always thought, God, this is a hell of an idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't do a goddamn thing for 15 years, I think it was.
Guest:Then I optioned it.
Guest:And I co-wrote a script, which I didn't go right.
Guest:And I never really did anything with it.
Guest:I just abandoned it and gave the story back to Dennis.
Guest:And then another 10 years went by.
Guest:And I was stumbling around the basement.
Guest:And I ran across his original, and I thought, you know, this was, I always loved this thing.
Guest:And suddenly, and it's one of those, I don't think anybody ever believes you when you say it, but within about an hour, I had figured out how I wanted to do it.
Guest:Now, I knew certain things.
Guest:I wasn't going to get a big budget.
Guest:I wanted to do it neo-noir.
Guest:I wanted to do it comic book.
Guest:I wanted to do it as a kind of somewhat larger version of one of the tales from the crypt that I had done in the past where you take nasty people, pit them against each other, and leave them.
Guest:in a chastened condition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think the film accomplished that.
Guest:I've seen it with audiences.
Guest:It seems to play very well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But again, the movie is within a certain...
Guest:off-center format it's not very realistic it has nothing to do with transgender and it um it's kind of a um there's a lot of there's a lot of would-be humor in it as well as yeah you know the little um especially the stuff between sigourney and
Guest:and shalhoub and tony yeah yeah and where's the graphic novel come into this you wrote oh uh while i was in uh i turned the script in when i finished my version of the script yeah i gave it to my agent he said well jesus christ nobody's gonna make this yeah and uh well great and good news yeah and he said uh well he said well look uh
Guest:I was on my way to Munich.
Guest:They were doing a retrospective of my movies at the Munich Festival.
Guest:I said, oh, you're way back from Munich.
Guest:Stop in Paris.
Guest:I said, I know a producer there.
Guest:Maybe he'll go for it.
Guest:He's kind of an odd guy.
Guest:He'll go for it.
Guest:He's a chance.
Guest:He'll go for it.
Guest:So I did.
Guest:I stopped in Paris.
Guest:And while I was in Paris, and it turned out he was quite right, the French producer, Saïd Ben Saïd,
Guest:decided to back the movie, as long as I promised that I would make it very quickly and very cheaply, and that we got some kind of name casting in it.
Guest:And at the same time, I had written another graphic novel
Guest:a year or so before a gangster piece, which was published in France.
Guest:And so I called up the publishers and said, I've got another one here that I think will probably make a graphic novel.
Guest:They agreed.
Guest:And so simultaneously, the graphic novel started working.
Marc:yeah being put together and you use some elements of that in the film oh yeah some comic panels and yeah yeah absolutely and uh and it was it's definitely a a genre piece it is indeed yeah it was it was it another sort of uh was the concept to to take that sort of b-movie vibe and elevate it again
Guest:yes i'm not even sure uh elevate is the right it is you know as soon as somebody says this is low and this is lurid yeah i say absolutely yeah it is yeah you know that's that's part of the fun of it i think michelle's very good in it i think sigourney's very good yeah i'm very proud of the acting in it yeah and the lead michelle that's her name uh michelle rodriguez yeah yeah she's great yeah
Guest:As usual, everybody told me, oh, she's very difficult.
Guest:You don't want to cast her.
Guest:And we met for lunch, and I said, everybody tells me not to cast you because you're so difficult.
Guest:Oh, fuck them.
Guest:And so we talked about...
Guest:i liked her right away she's she really is a very she comes from a very hard background and she is a real off the streets girl and at the end of the lunch she stood up and she said well i said i don't know who the fuck you're gonna cast in this thing but uh she said i'll tell you one thing guy or girl you're never gonna find anybody gonna handle the guns better than me and she walked away and she was right i i of course cast her yeah and uh
Marc:And how do you like shooting quick and fast?
Marc:Was it all digital?
Guest:Yeah, we didn't use film yet.
Guest:It's digital.
Guest:Well, how do I feel about it?
Guest:I've always... I'm not one of those directors that likes lots of takes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that wasn't particularly a challenge.
Guest:But at the same time, you know, I'd like to have had another five days or something like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Another slug of money.
Guest:You always think you could... You know, movies is...
Guest:In the end, you know, they're never everything that you want them to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They have problems.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And you think you could have done this a little better, that's a little better, you know.
Guest:But I certainly think I wanted to do something very neo-noir.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I wanted it, again, within the graphic novel framework.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I wanted to work with women.
Guest:I mean, you know, so many of my films, people always say, you know, he's a very masculine director and all that.
Guest:So, you know, it's that human instinct that whatever people say, you want to show them the opposite is true.
Guest:And there it is.
Guest:Listen, nobody makes movies that please everybody.
Guest:That's just not...
Guest:And you should never complain.
Guest:I've had a very lucky career.
Guest:Don't ever complain about this.
Guest:There's a great quote that I'm probably going to get wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to seek our fortune and hazard disgrace.
Guest:And that's exactly right.
Guest:Nobody asked you.
Guest:You came into it.
Guest:You play the goddamn cards you're dealt and you take your chances.
Guest:Yeah, and you can't see it coming necessarily.
Guest:No, that's right.
Guest:And you do what you can with what you got.
Guest:And you take your chances.
Marc:And you've weathered some storms.
Marc:I mean, warriors got... I mean, people were getting killed, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:no we've you know that's right you know somehow well they always say the same thing yeah the the the biggest trick is to stay in the game and uh i've been i can't believe you know i've actually been a director now for uh over 40 years uh-huh and i've been making a living in
Guest:the town for 50 years.
Guest:Showbiz.
Guest:Showbiz, yeah.
Guest:And what do you got coming up?
Guest:I've just optioned a play that was off Broadway, another female lead.
Guest:I'm becoming a director of women.
Guest:Good.
Guest:And I'm working on that script with the author of the play.
Guest:What play?
Guest:It's called Bethany.
Guest:And Laura Marks is the M-A-R-K-S, not like Carl, and is the author of the play.
Guest:It's a psychological thriller, I guess, for lack of a better term.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:Excited about it?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Well, great.
Guest:Well, it's certainly a great honor talking to you, Mr. Hill.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:Again, and thanks for the, you know, at Bill's Memorial, they played some of the...
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I think they asked us.
Guest:That was very nice of them to ask.
Guest:And it was, you know, it helped inform.
Guest:And it was terribly moving, the service, for those of us that knew him.
Guest:He was a very special person.
Marc:Well, I'm sorry for your loss.
Marc:And, you know, I was thrilled that I got to spend that time with him and honored that they used it.
Guest:Well, I think it's...
Guest:your show with him is going to be, you know, probably the most fitting testament, you know, to those that want to look back.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, I'm glad I provided that.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:That was exciting, right?
Marc:A little history for you.
Marc:What an amazing life.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com slash tour.
Marc:I've got a few more dates coming up.
Marc:Madison, Wisconsin this week.
Marc:Milwaukee.
Marc:Minneapolis this Saturday for the special.
Marc:Then a little later and a few weeks after that, I've got Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Marc:If those sound good to you or you're in the area, go to WTFPod.com slash tour.com.
Marc:For that, go to WTFPod.com to pre-order the new book, Waiting for the Punch, Words to Live By from the WTF Podcast.
Marc:I can play some dirty guitar.
Marc:I brought the magic instrument out here, and I'm going to plug it into an old thing.
Guest:.
Guest:.
Guest:.
Guest:Boomer lives!