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Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 What film or series lit your fuse and made you have to tell stories on screen?
00:16 The very first film I can remember even going to see was Goldfinger.
00:22 My family went to the Drive-In Theater, the Fairhaven Drive-In Theater, I think it was.
00:27 I grew up in New Bedford, that's the next town over.
00:30 And my dad had a Mercury Comet and it had a back dash board basically.
00:36 And I laid across the back dash and watched Goldfinger and was completely enamored with it.
00:44 You know, and the guy, his henchman throwing the steel brim bowler hat that he wore and all that stuff.
00:54 Yeah, odd job, odd job. And I just couldn't get over it, really.
00:58 And, you know, growing up I never had any concept that people could do this for a living.
01:04 Basically, I thought, you know, I see Alfred Hitchcock on TV and I just assumed all movies were directed by Alfred Hitchcock or made by Alfred Hitchcock.
01:12 So it's like, thank you for making Goldfinger, Alfred Hitchcock.
01:16 And the next, the really next thing I can really remember is I went to Papillon in the theater.
01:25 My dad wanted to see it and he dragged me along with him when I was 12.
01:30 And that had a huge impact on me.
01:34 For a year, when Dustin Hoffman can't jump at the end of that movie,
01:39 when Steve McQueen's figured out that it's every seventh wave will carry you away from Devil's Island.
01:44 And Dustin Hoffman tells him he can't do it, he can't, doesn't have the guts to make that jump into the water and he's staying behind.
01:52 I was kind of staggered by that. I never forgot it.
02:00 And I remember I met Dustin Hoffman very briefly at Show West one year.
02:06 And I was looking at him while he was talking and I was like, you have to make that jump.
02:11 You got to jump off the cliff with Steve McQueen.
02:15 So that had a, it just had an emotional effect on me.
02:19 I realized how a movie could really get you emotionally.
02:23 And it stayed with me.
02:25 And after that, it was really Cool Hand Luke, which was for some reason,
02:29 it felt like every time you turn, put on Channel 56, they broadcast out of Boston, Cool Hand Luke was on.
02:36 And I'd see it from an hour in, 10 minutes left.
02:40 And I remember I have the dialogue memorized from that movie.
02:45 I didn't know it, but it made me aware of writing in a movie,
02:48 especially when the guard makes the big speech about all the things that you can end up in the box for.
02:53 The New Art had a festival of CinemaScope in, I don't know, 25 years ago, 30 years ago.
02:59 And I finally got to see it projected and it was like a religious experience.
03:04 But I think the film that had the sort of the most effect on me was Breaking Away.
03:10 And I forget how I was 18 or 19, maybe, or 17,
03:15 sort of towards the end of high school, I think, when I saw it.
03:18 And it was the first movie I had ever been to that I thought that the main character was me in a way.
03:27 And I had grown up in a fishing town.
03:31 My dad was a fisherman, my uncles were all fishermen.
03:35 And they all did something that I obviously as a kid didn't do.
03:40 And Breaking Away, when the dads are all stonecutters,
03:44 and that occupation has kind of faded away and doesn't exist anymore in the movie.
03:48 And the kids have this yearning to be like their dads, but they can't.
03:54 And the one kid who wants to sort of figure out what the world is
03:59 and make a bigger life for himself.
04:03 It was the very first movie I ever saw that I thought, I'm looking at myself in a movie.
04:09 So that I would say probably of all the ones I mentioned, Breaking Away.
04:14 Wow. And so now, so when you were on your way up, first as a screenwriter, and as a director,
04:22 what movie or series did you watch that was so good,
04:27 that it made you question if you could ever rise to that level, if you belonged in this sandbox?
04:33 Yeah, I think in a lot of...
04:38 I didn't go to film school on a lark, but I kind of did.
04:43 Because I didn't even know there was such a thing existed.
04:46 And I found out about film school and decided to go to film school.
04:50 And I remember going with a friend of mine to see RoboCop.
04:55 And it wasn't so much that I didn't think I could ever do something like that,
05:01 although I had no idea how you made a movie like that.
05:05 But just how clever that movie was.
05:09 And I think groundbreaking in a way when it came out.
05:12 I was so stunned by it, how you could think that way,
05:16 and get in that kind of social commentary so smoothly without preaching at all.
05:24 And with this visceral story at the heart of it.
05:28 I was really like, "Boy, how do you even conceive of something like that and do that?"
05:35 So I was in film school then, and I think probably around 1988 maybe,
05:45 when I first started working and I was making money and writing horror films,
05:50 and earning, so to speak, and hoping checks cleared.
05:53 I got paid for a movie once and the check bounced.
05:56 But I went to see Moonstruck with John Patrick Shanley, who's kind of a genius.
06:04 And I thought that movie was so expertly executed.
06:10 He takes New York and he makes a fantasy world out of it, but just very subtly.
06:15 And then does his sort of fable almost in there with some fantastic dialogue.
06:23 And Nicolas Cage is this character from out of a dungeon someplace, and Cher is great in it.
06:31 But it's like clockwork.
06:34 And it has a huge ensemble, which I really admired.
06:39 It's like the Ed Sullivan show where they used to spin plates on the end of sticks.
06:45 And the one plate that started to wobble, he'd get it spinning again.
06:50 And that was Moonstruck to me because there's so many.
06:53 The parents and the in-laws and Danny Aiello.
06:57 And there's so many characters, and he has them all rolling and going and kind of dancing around each other.
07:05 And I was really amazed by that. I thought, I don't know that I could ever pull that off.
07:10 And several of my movies subsequently were big ensemble pieces.
07:16 And I always enjoyed doing that. Knight's Tale especially, my new movie.
07:21 Is to just see how many characters you can get going all at once and service them all and honor them all.
07:28 But when I saw Moonstruck, I thought, that's something I can't do. I just can't do that.
07:34 Huh. Well now, whether it was the success of something that you did,
07:39 or approval from someone whose opinion really mattered to you,
07:43 what first gave you the confidence that, yeah, you could do this, you did belong?
07:48 Yeah, I had written a couple of specs that sold.
07:57 And I had written sort of a whole series of them.
08:01 And I had sold two of them to Warner Brothers in '92, I think. '92, '93, around there.
08:09 And neither of them ever got made. But they bought these two specs from me.
08:13 And they offered me an old-fashioned writer's deal at Warner Brothers.
08:20 You're writing exclusively. It's one of those crazy things like you have to write three scripts.
08:26 What are they? I don't know. But you have to write three scripts.
08:28 And you can bring us ideas. We'll bring you ideas. Boom.
08:32 And it was literally a writer's deal out of the 1930s, 1940s.
08:38 And they gave me an office on the lot.
08:41 All my favorite movies were Warner Brothers movies.
08:44 Well, a lot of them, Cool Hand Luke being one, Klute being one.
08:49 And I was--but it wasn't that. But I was at Warner Brothers with an office, no toilet.
08:56 I had a parking spot that they were going to put my--stencil my name on someday.
09:02 But they hadn't done it yet. But I knew which part was mine.
09:06 And I was walking through the parking lot. And I looked ahead of me.
09:10 And Dick Gonner was getting out of one of his Rolls Royces.
09:14 And I had one of my kids with me. And he stopped and started talking to one of my kids.
09:18 And then asked me what I did for a living.
09:21 And the next thing I knew, I was working for Dick.
09:23 And I wrote a couple of films for him that got made, a bunch that didn't get made.
09:30 I'd consult on stuff. He'd always drag me in.
09:34 But he--I don't know why. We had very different personalities.
09:39 But Dick took me under his wing and basically was like a dad to me.
09:45 He became a father figure in a lot of ways.
09:49 And he believed in me. And it's the first professional person of that stature.
09:56 That ever--I felt like he thinks I can do something that I'm not sure I can do.
10:02 And to the point where I had written this script, Conspiracy Theory,
10:08 that Dick came on and attached himself to. And we made that film.
10:13 And we were at odds a lot of the time about the tone and how to do it.
10:18 I'd be grumpy and mad.
10:20 And I couldn't figure--I'd heard so many stories about if you disagree with the director, they get rid of you.
10:25 And I couldn't figure out why I was still in the movie.
10:28 And I was walking to lunch. We had broke for lunch and we were in Manhattan.
10:32 And I was walking to lunch.
10:35 And he came driving up. He had a golf cart that he was driving around on the streets.
10:39 And he said, "Get in."
10:42 And he said, "You're not happy with what I'm doing."
10:44 And I said, "You know, I--"
10:46 And I wouldn't say it. And then he said, "Tell me. Tell me you're unhappy."
10:50 And I thought to myself, "Okay, here, I'm getting fired. I'm just sending me home."
10:54 And I said, "Yeah, no, Dick, I'm--certain things, I'm not happy."
10:58 And he said, "Well, then, you've got to direct yourself."
11:01 You know, it's like you have--I see the world through my prism.
11:05 And you see the world through your prism.
11:07 And I can't direct through your--I can only direct through my prism.
11:10 And if you want to direct, you know, you've got to--you've got to--
11:14 if you want it to be the way you want it to be, you've got to direct.
11:17 And I said, "Yeah, sure."
11:20 And he said, "Okay, so I'm going to give you 'A Tales from the Crypt,'"
11:23 which he produced, "and you can go direct it."
11:26 And I thought to myself, "That sounds good."
11:29 And an hour later, my agent called.
11:31 And so they called from Dick Donner's office.
11:33 They want you to do a "A Tales from the Crypt," and that's the first thing I directed.
11:36 And he--you know, he took me with him.
11:41 He's going somewhere on the WarnerJet. It's the Bob and Terry years.
11:44 When Warner Bros. was Warner Bros.
11:47 No offense to Warner Bros. now, but it was once, if you're listening,
11:51 the greatest film studio on the face of the earth.
11:54 And he just wanted me to see how the other half lived.
11:59 And he showed me, and I adore him.
12:02 I adore him. I love him.
12:04 And that's who made me feel like I belong.
12:07 So now you mentioned those specs.
12:10 And when I was just doing a little cursory reading,
12:15 I remember the ticking, man.
12:17 I remember because I was writing about spec scripts all the time.
12:21 Now, so that sold for like a million dollars,
12:24 but it came in a ticking envelope or a box.
12:29 So tell me--you've got to tell me that story.
12:31 Yeah, so I wrote that.
12:34 It was kind of a crazy story.
12:39 I had this friend who died recently, Manny Cotto,
12:42 and we were best friends.
12:44 And we were both working in horror films,
12:46 and we were trying to think of how--you know,
12:48 all these big action movies were coming out.
12:50 We knew we had to reinvent ourselves in order to not get left behind
12:55 because no one would think of us in any other way.
12:58 And we got on the phone one night,
13:01 and he said, "Let's not get off the phone until we come up with an idea
13:05 we can sell for a million dollars."
13:07 Joke--you know, having a laugh.
13:09 And 20 minutes later, we came up with the idea for the Ticking Man,
13:13 which was basically an android that has a nuclear bomb in its chest.
13:18 And it's a crazy first-strike weapon.
13:21 So if you're a Marine Guard at the Russian embassy,
13:24 you can be this android who has a bomb inside of him,
13:27 and you can just--they press a button and you go off.
13:31 And it's an abandoned program, and the guy escapes
13:34 and wants to fulfill his destiny.
13:36 And we were going to send the script out,
13:38 and Manny had this idea to, like, let's send out ticking clocks,
13:42 which he painted--he was an artist--and he did an emblem for the film
13:46 and stuck it in, and we set all the alarms to go off at, like, 4 o'clock.
13:50 And people had--someone called a bomb squad at some little agency
13:55 and they had a package with a ticking clock in it,
13:58 and alarms were going off.
14:00 And anyways, we sold--that night, around 10 o'clock at night,
14:03 we sold the script to Larry Gordon, which was kind of--
14:09 and we loved the script.
14:11 We loved it. It never got made.
14:14 Largo--it was his company, Largo, and they just had made a couple of films
14:18 that didn't work, and they didn't have the money to make Ticking Man,
14:22 so it never got made.
14:24 - That's something.
14:26 That was a good idea, because I remember everybody wanted to read it
14:30 after the bomb squad got called.
14:33 [laughter]
14:35 Those are--
14:37 You mentioned Warner Brothers being the greatest studio,
14:40 but that business was so much more fun to cover back then,
14:44 because stuff like that would happen, like, twice a week.
14:47 - Yeah.
14:48 - You know, the thing I say is I have 40 great stories about Hollywood,
14:55 but I haven't had one in the last 10 years.
14:59 [laughter]
15:02 And that's--anyone starting out, any person starting out right now,
15:08 whether they're trying to direct or write,
15:11 I feel--I just feel terrible for them,
15:14 because they don't--they have no idea what they're missing, you know.
15:18 Executives have no idea what they're missing.
15:20 Producers--it was so much fun.
15:23 It was so much fun.
15:25 - So you say you have 40 of those stories.
15:27 Can you give me one more?
15:30 - Before I did Mystic River, I did a film for Clint called Bloodwork,
15:34 based on a Mike Connelly novel.
15:37 And it was--for whatever reason--I hadn't planned it,
15:42 but for whatever reason, it was the shortest script I had ever written.
15:45 It was about 90-some-odd--it was 94 pages or so.
15:50 And I was looking at it, and I had to go to his office and deliver it to him.
15:54 There's no emailing.
15:55 It's like, "The script's done. You go to see Clint. You hand him the script."
16:00 And I was nervous about the length of it,
16:02 because I was afraid he would think, "What is this?
16:05 You didn't do your job," you know.
16:07 And I go in. I go into his office.
16:09 He says hi, and I hand him the script, thinking in my head, like,
16:13 "Boy, I just hope he doesn't think it's too short."
16:17 And I hand it to him, and as he gets it in his hand,
16:21 he starts to do this with it.
16:23 And he immediately is clocking how short it is.
16:27 And I'm dying. I'm just like, "Oh, no."
16:30 He goes, "How long is this?"
16:33 And I said, "It's 94 pages."
16:36 And I'm kind of wincing.
16:38 And he's got it, and he looks at me, and he smiles, and he goes,
16:41 "It's already the best script I ever read in my life."
16:44 [laughter]
16:47 So what would you say was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome
16:51 to allow you to turn the projects that influenced you into your own language?
16:57 Yeah, I think, oddly, the biggest obstacle I had was--
17:05 and my humble beginnings, if I can use that phrase,
17:09 because I grew up in a loving family, but we were--
17:15 and I don't like the term, but it'll explain things quicker--
17:18 is a blue-collar family.
17:23 The most used book in the house was the phone book,
17:27 because we just didn't have books in my house.
17:29 We didn't grow up that way.
17:31 We didn't sort of think that way.
17:38 Although there was a kind of legacy of tradition, I should say,
17:42 of family stories being told, you know,
17:46 and they'd get more heroic and more funny every time they got told.
17:52 But, you know, we didn't--no one in my neighborhood, none of my friends,
17:56 no one--it wasn't to do something artistic was frowned upon.
18:00 It wasn't even conceivable.
18:02 No one even thought that way.
18:05 So it took me forever to even--even after I was out here working
18:09 and started having success, I could never think of myself as creative even,
18:15 much less, you know, say you're an artist or anything like that,
18:19 which I couldn't do that today even.
18:24 But, you know, for the longest time, if I filled out an application or a form
18:28 and said occupation, I would have to stop and, like,
18:32 will myself to put writer in.
18:37 And only after I became a director could I then say,
18:40 "Okay, I can at least just say I'm a writer.
18:42 I don't have to say I'm a director."
18:46 It was--you know, you felt like a thief in the palace, so to speak,
18:51 and you just didn't belong.
18:53 And I hear other people describe where they came from
18:56 and they went to art school and, you know, they went to drama, this, or whatever.
19:02 I just would think to myself, "You don't know how lucky you are
19:06 that you could even think of yourself in those terms."
19:11 So I think that's the biggest kind of--I struggle with it today.
19:18 So I wish I thought--I wish I was a little more--
19:25 I don't know what the word is.
19:28 Fooling myself about that.
19:30 Yeah, well, you know, and sort of in a similar tangent,
19:36 so you adapted books by a couple of my favorite authors
19:42 and you really crushed them, you know?
19:45 Kind of like when Scott Frank did "Get Shorty,"
19:49 it was really one of the first times that somebody really got Elmo Leonard
19:54 and so here you did "Mystic River" by Dennis Lehane,
19:58 who's just a lights-out, great Boston author.
20:02 And then you did "LA Confidential,"
20:04 which was just the most wonderful, layered, complicated thing.
20:09 And I remember after "LA Confidential," every pitch was like,
20:14 "Okay, so imagine Bud White in a blank," you know?
20:18 It was like a whole thing.
20:20 What would you say is the--what did you learn about
20:27 the intimidating job of adapting work that's that good by authors
20:34 and turning it to something that works on screen?
20:38 Yeah, well, I think there's a few things involved.
20:41 One is don't--only adapt a book that you admire and love in a way
20:49 because you'll have the responsibility of looking out for it, you know?
20:58 In the case of "Mystic River," I'm the same age as Dennis
21:02 and we grew up 40 miles apart.
21:05 And when I read that book, I thought to myself,
21:08 "You know, I recognize that guy. I recognize that guy."
21:13 Markham's father-in-law in the book, I've met that guy many times.
21:18 Just the milieu, so to speak, or the neighborhood,
21:21 the neighborhood he's writing about, I grew up in a neighborhood like that
21:24 and I immediately recognized all those characters.
21:28 So I had that going for me.
21:32 When I turned it in to Eastwood, he--I still had my office at Warner, I think,
21:39 where I was on the line.
21:41 I went in to talk to him and he said, "I got a letter from Dennis LaHane."
21:43 I said, "It's on the script."
21:45 And I was thinking--I hadn't talked to him, I didn't really know him yet at that point, Dennis.
21:50 And I thought, "Oh, boy. Here we go."
21:53 And Clint--it was very complimentary, it was very short,
21:57 and it ended with Dennis saying, "This should be taught at film school.
22:02 This adaptation should be used in film school as to how to adapt a novel."
22:08 - Wow. - And then Eastwood goes, "So I think we're in good shape."
22:10 And I'm like, "Yeah, we're in good shape."
22:14 LA Confidential, I was a huge James Elroy fan.
22:19 His Lloyd Hopkins books,
22:24 LA Homicide Cop that he wrote when they were shorter, kind of detective procedural.
22:30 I love those books.
22:32 And then I--you know, I read all his books.
22:36 When I first met Elroy, I said, "That's what a writer looks like. That's a writer."
22:42 I don't look like that, but boy, does he look like a writer.
22:45 But anyways, he--the Big Nowhere had come out, and I loved that book.
22:50 And there was a book signing at some bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard,
22:57 and he was signing books, so I went down to meet him.
23:00 This was before he's even written LA Confidential.
23:03 And there were three people in line, three people had shown up,
23:08 which made me furious.
23:10 But anyways, he's taken in stride on his 900th book signing.
23:15 And I got to talking to him and talking to him about Blood on the Moon,
23:19 which was one of these Lloyd Hopkins books that got adapted that I thought had completely blown.
23:25 And I was telling him why, and he agreed with me.
23:28 And we didn't become friends, but we had this--there was no one there,
23:32 so we talked for like a half an hour.
23:35 And I left.
23:37 And then when the David Wolper option, the Big Nowhere--I mean, the LA Confidential,
23:43 I just pounded on the door to get that job.
23:49 And finally had a meeting at Warner's to talk about it.
23:52 And at the last second, they called and said they had canceled the meeting
23:56 because they had hired Curtis Hanson.
23:59 And I just wouldn't give up, so I said, "Well, I got to talk to Curtis."
24:03 And we were both at UTA, so they got me a meeting with him,
24:06 and he was doing The River Wild, so he couldn't start the movie right away.
24:10 So I said, "Let me just start, and then it'll be that far ahead when you're done with The River Wild."
24:16 And that's how we started.
24:18 But it was just--it was--just there's endless stories about that.
24:28 But I loved that.
24:29 But I really--speaking of Bud White, I loved him because everyone thought he was not--
24:36 everyone thought he was a dope, you know.
24:38 Everyone thought he's the muscle.
24:40 He's the guy they bring in to scare the other guy, and he was underestimated.
24:44 And as odd as it sounds, I related to that character.
24:48 You know, I'm unexpected, and no one thinks some guy from Podunkville
24:53 is going to show up and know how to do anything.
24:56 And I used that as sort of my guidepost to my end of adapting that book.
25:05 And, you know, the joke was when finally--after how many drafts we turned it into Warner Brothers,
25:12 which is still the great studio at that time, but they passed.
25:16 They just said, "We don't know how to do this," and we passed.
25:20 And they put it in turnaround.
25:23 And Curtis went out with it with a presentation, and he presented it to Arnon Milchan.
25:30 Arnon, in his intrepid way--you know, talk about old-time producers that you can tell stories about--
25:39 said, "Yeah, I'll finance it, and let's do it."
25:41 And his deal was at Warner's.
25:45 So it came--it was like a bad penny.
25:47 Warner's kept trying to throw it away, and they couldn't get rid of it.
25:50 And Arnon--they had to distribute it. Arnon financed it.
25:53 And then everyone loved it when it came out.
25:57 Oh, of course. Yeah, well, I think that's probably close to what happened with the movie Heat also.
26:03 Arnon was like, "Yeah, we're doing this."
26:05 Yeah.
26:06 You know?
26:07 And I did Man on Fire with Arnon.
26:10 Oh, I love that one.
26:12 He's the go-to--he was the go-to guy.
26:15 Yeah, man, oh, man.
26:17 And so my last question--and you had mentioned Bud White and how your own experiences played into that.
26:26 So my last question is, on this new movie, you tapped into your own origin story as well.
26:33 So what burned in you to tell this story?
26:38 Yeah, so, well, Finest Kind is the story of a lot of it--not entirely.
26:44 It's the story of me going fishing and, at the same time, me wanting to see the world and what was out there.
26:54 And it's "write what you know," they always say, right?
27:00 So I fished. My dad had fished.
27:03 But it just ended up--instead of being the--probably it should have been the first movie I made, and it ended up being the last movie I made.
27:10 Or the most recent. Hopefully not the last.
27:13 But it just--for whatever reason, the timing finally fell together, and it was the right time to go and got the cast finally that I thought really worked well.
27:31 So, yeah, I'm very proud of that film.
27:35 And we had a great group of actors--Ben Foster--who we sent out fishing.
27:40 They all went out fishing on boats and were out to sea for a week and had that as a boot camp.
27:49 But it's a story of class in a way, and it's a story of fathers and sons.
27:57 I shot it in my hometown where I grew up.
28:02 Jenna's mom in the film lives about five blocks from my parents where they lived.
28:09 My sister could walk down the set when we were shooting from her house.
28:14 So, yeah, it was very--it was kind of a profound experience, shooting experience.
28:23 I could imagine. And that fishing game changed a lot when you were doing it to now?
28:31 Yeah, it hasn't--the work is the same, and the gear is the same.
28:37 The boats are stronger, but they're the same.
28:42 But I think the kind of money behind fishing is instead of one guy owning one boat or a really successful one guy owning two boats,
28:51 there's now kind of hedge funds that own 35 boats and stuff like that.
29:01 But the romance of it is still, once you leave the dock, you're on a boat that's left the dock.
29:07 So that's still the same.
29:10 Yeah, and it's a young man's game, that's for sure.
29:13 Yeah, your back goes quick.
29:16 Oh, boy.
29:18 (upbeat music)
29:20 [CLICK]