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- I'm a broken person.

At about seven years old I fell in love with movies.

The movies, as a whole, allowed me to find my way.

I fell in love with going to the movies,

Robert Redford and Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen.

For me, everything's romantic.

I was always looking at movies to really take in

what other people's version of life was, with romance.

I live in a fantasy world because I love

the idea of creating.

Building a legacy is to include my family.

And if you get lucky, you get to live that dream.

I'm always praying

that I'll be remembered fondly.

Life is by design.

You create who you're going to be.

My old buddy, my mentor, Warren Beatty always told me,

"Jonathan, making a movie, it's not a democracy.

"And once you learn that, you'll understand

"how to be true to your vision."

It becomes a them versus you on an island.

There's no enjoying making a movie.

It's a war.

- I remember the first time I was doing a television show

when I was about six, "The Courtship of Eddie's Father",

and one day I came in to do something,

and the actor, Bill Bixby was suddenly the director.

And I was completely confused and my mouth was open

and I thought "Oh wow, they let actors be directors?"

And I "Oh yeah, that's what I'm gonna do".

- [Jonathan] Elliot Silverstein is a famous director.

Worked with Richard Harris.

Richard Brooks, even more famous director.

And Warren Beatty, all, at one point or another told me,

"You're gonna have to eat shit."

And I had no idea what that meant.

Like eat shit, what the hell does that mean?

I'm strong, nobody can tell me what to do.

I'm gonna do what I need to do

and I'm gonna get my movies done

we're gonna make some magic here!

- We had a meeting I remember at United Artists,

and he started screaming, incoherently.

I mean I couldn't understand a word he was saying,

but he, what came over was that he was so passionate

about getting this fucking movie off.

- Oh I mean my god, it's your first chance

of making a feature film, it's a dream come true.

On the one hand.

On the other hand, it becomes quickly apparent

when you start getting into the professional world

of Hollywood, that you're probably gonna have one shot,

and that's it, so you better make sure that it works.

- I still have these moments where I'm like,

oh, I don't know if this is gonna be right,

I don't know if this is gonna work.

I only know if it's gonna be good

if we're stretching and trying to do something

a little bit outside the envelope.

I'll tell 'em to stand naked on the ceiling upside-down,

if that's what you want.

I think no director ever lived who didn't wake up,

a week, a month, a year, 10 years later and go,

"Oh no, if I had only just..."

- Take control, or they're gonna take control of you.

What you're saying you're gonna be able to do,

and deliver, if it's successful we're a team.

If you fail, it's all on you.

And as scared as I was, I was just happy

to have all the control.

I was ready to fail on my own terms,

I was ready to succeed on my own terms.

(gentle music)

"Inconceivable", and my film-making career started,

with my mother, who wanted to be an actor.

This journey, she'd been on the journey, as an actor.

She would be watching me, for a long time,

write the scripts, raise the money,

put together the production deals.

I grew up in New York City, circa 1960's.

At about seven years old I started this journey.

Like anybody else who fell in love with movies,

I fell in love with going to the movies.

At six and seven years old, I'd get to go

to Mount Everest, or I got to go to Bangkok,

or I got to go to California.

My escape was always the environment.

I'm a lone wolf.

I've always been a lone wolf.

I was taking the subway, and I was gettin' up

and going to school all by myself.

Yeah, I always got into trouble.

The difference between a bus and a subway.

Subway will take you uptown and downtown.

Bus is a little bit safer, at least for the times where,

I was a very curious kid.

They would leave for like three hours, come back

and everything would be torn apart,

they'd be like "What are you looking for?"

I'm like "I don't know".

Somebody once asked me, "Where are you gonna go?",

I was 11 years old.

I said, "I'm going to California."

Once I make this movie, there's like, 1% left.

Everything and anything I ever wanted, or made happen, left.

And then again, I don't know what I'm gonna feel like

when I'm 88 years old, but,

Hugh Hefner told me his life didn't start

until he was 52 years old.

Hugh Hefner's life is a very fascinating one.

And the fact that I got to intertwine, live,

inside of his world, as he loved movies,

appreciated movies, and listened to me talk about movies.

When you come to the front door, you are equalized.

Included.

And I strive to write movies, direct movies,

and produce movies.

And I've met all the celebrities and the giants

that have come through there.

Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott.

These are the greatest directors of our time.

These guys know how to make movies, tell stories!

It's amazing to me!

More important,

they don't have to eat shit.

I know that I will be a good director.

I had to learn it, and this documentary

has been a great self-reflection on what I can do.

And how I'm growing, with the projects.

As I'm becoming the person that I set out to be

when I was seven years old.

Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you fight.

Why go to the end of the road when it's blocked?

Because you can.

Because you wanna see what's there.

Who cares if it doesn't go through to the other side?

I'm not afraid of anything.

- [Interviewer] Forces of nature, god.

- (laughs) Yeah, well, I'm not immortal.

(unsettling music)

I'm always amazed that these people lived

in a time that's twice my lifetime.

1886, 1896, 1859, 225 years

before I was born.

This is what I consider Trump Row.

Most iconic street in New York.

Luis Vuitton, Tiffany, Bergdof Goodman, Trump Tower.

This is the best reticle you're gonna find.

Fifth Avenue, 57th Street.

Success is success.

It doesn't travel up and down.

Success travels across.

So when you hit it, you'll be successful forever.

You just have to hit it once.

Success is getting to a place that other people

appreciate and contribute to what it is

that you made for them, and you're rewarded financially.

Affluence is how you spend the money, or,

if you never had to work for it.

I don't follow the same path as most people.

Back then they might've thought it was dyslexia, it's not.

It was just because I was running the streets.

My brain would work so much faster

than the mechanics of what I wanted to do.

My grandfather used to always say to me,

"You can sell anything in New York, to anybody".

And I went into the garbage, like everybody throws away,

and sell it for a dollar or two.

When I was six, I was running the streets by myself.

When you have no restrictions by the time

you get to be 13, what type of a person you are.

I was 27 years old when I was 11 years old.

New York City kids are the smartest kids in the world.

And you're independent at a very young age.

I learned how to be a fighter.

Survivor.

I was taking the bus to school at six and a half years old.

During that time everything was under construction.

And so, it made for the greatest scenes.

And I would light all the firecrackers,

and I'd throw 'em into the lead pipe,

and I'd throw marbles on top,

and I'd watch 'em go boom boom boom boom boom boom boom!

Or I would be James Bond, as I would jump from water tower.

I was not your typical kid.

These buildings were never here.

And all I did was see that bridge,

which is the Triborough Bridge, this was my set.

Right there was my, was my bedroom, which is amazing.

Okay.

You can imagine what I could do with just this.

It would be a bank, it would be,

I mean, look at the vertical, look at the water

that's coming down.

I'd throw a rope down.

My mother was a single mother.

I'm a broken person.

My father left when I was seven.

Now my dad, from what I understand was

a very charismatic person.

Very charismatic.

People would tell me all the time,

he was just too much a partier.

He wanted to go out and have fun like in that time.

It broke my heart, but it wasn't my fault.

I never, maybe I thought it was my fault when I was six,

but it broke my heart.

Every Saturday we'd sit on this stoop

and wait for my father to come,

and I'd sit here, and I'd wait for an hour and,

when he didn't come, I'd go back upstairs.

(sad music)

I went to escape.

Movies, as a whole, allowed me to find my way.

My movie stars were Robert Redford and Paul Newman,

Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen.

Being in love is an idea that you have with yourself.

Romance is something, you are romantic or you're not.

For me, everything's romantic, so starting

at a very young age, I was always looking at movies

to really take in what other people's version

of life was, romance.

I started to bleed everything together.

It wasn't until MTV showed up that I was able to see

music with visuals, and I went "Oh my god, this is amazing!"

People were spending millions of dollars on music videos.

In the 70's, really, were taking the art

of characterization and bleeding it

into the art of film-making where it wasn't just

independent films, it wasn't just studio films.

All of a sudden, we had a commercial aspect of propaganda

that was hitting the nerve of the American public.

I love propaganda and I love the fact

that we can tell character arcs, story arcs,

and then bleed that with pop culture.

And, when you hit a nerve you know you've done it right.

Just because you do something and nobody sees it,

it doesn't make a difference.

It's a great way for you to keep track of yourself.

Some people do it with picture books, scrapbooks.

Some people do it with blogs.

Some people do it on Facebook.

I'm just doing it in film, television, fashion and music.

I want to be larger than life because the journey

is larger than life.

Money is just a way to make something amazing.

My grandfather was very good to me.

He died looking at me in 1980.

In that moment, I'm having somebody

close their eyes and die, I remember that it was final.

And I remember

that at that point I had a choice,

to celebrate life, or to cry about it.

And I'm always praying that I'll be looked at fondly,

that I'll be remembered fondly.

I have a very complicated life.

By design.

Jenny, my wife wants to live here.

- [Jenny] And his heart was pining for LA

and mine was pining for New York.

- We go back and forth, we're bicoastal.

You know, for a long time I wouldn't give myself the credit

that I deserve.

What does the end look like for me?

It means that I can create films, create the product line,

and then, my hotel the Maidstone in the Hamptons.

And, there's the Maidstone house and then

there's the palm down the street.

We're in East Hampton, Stockholm.

I'd like to think of myself as Tom Ford in reverse.

Films, music, fashion.

I'd like to be a fashion designer for men.

Building a legacy is to include my family.

Jenny and I are opposite ends of the same coin.

We're so different, we're so the same.

Opposites attract.

- [Jenny] I had the platform.

Together we could do this.

He likes to see us somehow collaborate,

and he's extremely particular

about how he wants to do the journey.

- 'Cause I wanted to be a brand.

I wanna be a filmmaker.

I wanna be a brand.

I wanna be a storyteller.

The Maidstone allows me

to have a voice, outside of the film industry.

We're so dynamic, we love each other's journeys.

That's what really holds us together.

And then having a family.

We're here in Central Park, and my wife and I

have bought these benches.

Today's the unveiling.

It's very emotional.

For me it was very emotional.

Because when I got here Jenny had put cards on the bench

for all the children, I didn't see mine.

But it's all on the cards, and I read all the cards,

and they were very touching and very poignant,

and that's why I married her, because,

as she said, in my card, when I finally got to it,

she's an angel, or, you know,

we're together because we've been together

before in a past life.

And I will say that she's an angel.

'Cause what I get from her I never got from my own mother.

Trying to make FATE and Icon, because they talk about

what I believe is important

to everyone on this planet, family and love.

I love everything about creating,

I love everything about doing business,

I love everything about marketing,

I live in a fantasy world because I love

the idea of creating.

I'd like to believe that life is by design.

You create who you're going to be,

and if you get lucky, you get to live that dream.

I went to the cemetery with my 10 year old.

And there in front of us was Marilyn Monroe's grave.

She died in 1962.

Above Marilyn's grave, there's another person,

that was born in 1962.

And that person was me.

And everyone asked, "Why did you put your name

"on a grave when you're not dead?"

It's my sense of humor.

Warren Beatty is and has been my mentor

for a couple of years now.

If it wasn't for Warren,

I wouldn't have the strength to fight Hollywood.

The truth is, if it wasn't for Warren Beatty

I wouldn't be a director,

I would just be a writer and a producer.

Warren sat me down and he said,

"You'll regret it the rest of your life, Jonathan."

The house that I bought from Warren,

first of all, he's never sold anything in his life.

So I felt very honored that I actually got the house.

He lived there for 22 years.

He had many studio heads, famous actors,

dignitaries, come through.

It represents an era gone by.

The end of Hollywood, before it became corporate.

Every day I walk on the property

and every day I think about,

him passing the torch to me.

When he sold me the house he was getting involved

with me as a filmmaker, because,

that's why he sold me the house, because,

together we would talk about movies and

we would talk about really what meant something,

what didn't mean anything, what was commercial,

and what was failure.

You make a bad movie that doesn't mean

you're a bad director.

You make three bad movies, you're a bad director.

He taught me how to have a backbone.

- I've done a couple of shorts,

I did a short called "Mr. Smith",

and another short called "The table",

that were both in the London Film Festival.

So that sort of helped me, and also my reel of commercials

was actually quite good.

And that's really what helped me here.

Petrified, absolutely petrified.

I mean, you have no idea.

I had friends who came round.

I was staying in a hotel called

"The Regency Apartment Hotel",

and it's not there anymore, very seedy place.

And I had friends from London in my office,

came round and were all sort of exuberant about the film.

And, I remember sort of looking at them

and hearing them almost through a sort of film,

through, like a haze, you know?

I just couldn't hear them, very strange.

Because I was so involved mentally in the film.

This was a film about kids at school

growing up in the valley, so I sat in a school

in the valley at the back of the classroom,

I sat back there for quite a long while,

two or three weeks, watching people

and learning that the surfers for example

all had combs in the back of their jeans

and they all had jeans that were too long.

They trod on the ends.

So you started to learn about what you were doing,

what I was doing.

- I started at three, and I'm 53,

so that's 50 years (laughs).

It's a long time to be on movie sets

and to do the job, and to see what it takes

to start with a script and what ends up on screen.

Because there were no other women,

that I ever saw, except in Europe,

I just assumed I would have a hard time directing.

And I thought the only way to do that

would be to write, so, that's what I focused on.

I did my first movie when I was 27.

I don't think the transition from acting

to directing is difficult.

In fact, I think it's probably the best position

you can be in to learn what a director really does.

Certainly more than the writer,

who mostly sits along in a hotel room by himself

with a computer.

As an actor you really understand why a scene works

and why it doesn't.

And, how the moment applies to the whole.

And there really isn't any other position

on a film that gives you that point of view.

I picked my first project, it probably picked me.

I, reading through scripts as an actor,

I found Little Man Tate, and I said,

"I might wanna act in this,

"but mostly I'd like to direct it."

And I said to the producer, "If I can get this set up,

"for a decent budget, with me as a director,

"will you say yes to me directing it?"

He said yes, and I went full.

- All my documentaries and the awards

didn't mean anything in Hollywood,

but this dramatic film, they thought, "Ooh".

You could maybe work with actors,

which was, they don't know how hard it is

to get real people to reveal themselves in a documentary.

In any event, I got an agent,

because of this short dramatic film.

And, they were gonna get me a television episode,

and I was gonna learn that process.

That woulda been, I mean listen,

when you make documentary films,

that was a dream come true.

But then I got a call from the agent saying,

"Listen, there's these two young producers,

"who are making a film in United Artists.

"A cheap film, but a very interesting subject".

It was about the making of rock 'n' roll idols

in the late 50's, based on the life Bob Marcucci

who discovered Frankie Avalon and Fabian.

And I happened to know a lot about rock 'n' roll.

I played when I was in high school,

I taught a history of rock 'n' roll class

in the alternative university at USC where I went,

when I was a senior in college.

And when I met these guys, Hawk Koch Jr and Gene Kirkwood,

they were young like I was,

and they had had more experience,

they'd worked at Howard and Penn and AD,

and Gene had been a producer of Rocky.

They listened to what I had to say

and they realized that I did know what I was talking about.

So they hired me to rewrite the script.

And the idea was, if you rewrite the script

and can get us a green light, you can direct the movie.

- My first theatrical film was the "Bingo Long

Traveling All-stars and Motor Kings".

And that followed on a half a dozen or more

of different movies of the week,

that some were television pilots,

some were just movies, standalone movies of the week.

So the success of some of those is what got me

"Bingo Long Traveling All-stars".

I think that there are musical numbers

in "Bingo Long Traveling All-stars" as this team,

this baseball team is barnstorming through the countries

and they realize that they have to put on a show,

it's like a traveling circus to get people

to come to the ballgames.

And that, strangely enough, got me Saturday Night Fever.

- I walked into a meeting at Lionsgate

and they introduced me to the production company

that had a deal with them.

And they said, collectively,

"We'll do your movies,

:but you have to do one of ours first".

Took home a stack of scripts about this big.

And went through them.

Said, "I don't wanna make these movies.

"I don't wanna do shoot 'em ups".

They happened to say to me, "We have this one film

"that's sitting on the shelf, it's all about women

"and IVF, and mayonnaise".

I said, "That sounds interesting."

I said, "If I can rewrite it, I'll do this with you."

I always wanted to make films with women in 'em,

because I think women actors are kind of underrated,

when they stand by themself.

This is what, it's got men in it, though I wrote Icon,

which has got the biggest character arc about women

and their journey of that time.

I had said to Lionsgate,

"Let's start going after the women".

And they were like, "No, you can't go after the women

"without hiring the guy".

I started meeting with different

Hollywood actors around town.

And the first question I would get, would be,

"Who's the male lead?"

I had to adjust, and believe that,

the system of Hollywood was broken,

and that, water only went one way, down.

So I had to find a way to create the security

of the film around a male lead.

And we bumped up against Kevin Costner,

he was very close to taking the role.

Nick Cage had always been my number one pick.

And Nick came into the picture knowing

that we wanted to help women in billing.

- It's no secret that, there is a certain lack

of great roles for females, for ladies.

- My vision was something he was going to support,

and he signed on.

From there, all the actors signed on,

it was just a question of dollars and cents

and making sure, go back to Warren Beatty,

that 50% of your movie is your actors

and make sure that they gel.

- All of a sudden I got the script to a point

where they said, "Okay, now you're gonna make it."

And, it was a dream come true

but also a very daunting experience.

Because you make documentaries, I know the camp,

I knew how to, I know how to edit, I knew how to shoot,

I knew, sometimes I'm doing sound.

I know all that process.

But when you go onto a set and when you've been

making documentaries, you have to have a certain style

and taste, but the idea of costumes?

Never worried about that.

Sets, never worried about that.

All of these things I had,

spent, probably six, seven years of intense

going to feature films, looking at them

and learning from them, but now practically applying

the knowledge that you need on a movie set,

was very interesting.

- I rang up a friend of mine called Howard Zieff,

who was at that time quite a successful director.

He'd also done commercials, but he was doing feature films.

And I said, "If there was one word of advice,

"what would it be, to me, before I shoot?"

And he thought for quite a long while,

and then he said, "Be on it at the end."

Which is smart, really.

- Preparation is everything.

I mean, a lot of people get confused

and they start talking about spontaneity.

Well, spontaneity is a great idea,

but you better be prepared because spontaneity

doesn't always work.

- I was told that I had

40 days to prep, and,

20 days to shoot.

Most people have three months to prep, and,

three months to shoot.

Eventually I wound up shooting everything in 15 days.

I knew I'd have to work fast.

And I don't know how fast I had to work

but I knew that in order to survive

I'd have to be ahead of the wave, kind of like surfing.

Starting Monday, pre-prep turns into real prep.

Everybody starts coming aboard.

And, every friend, and the DP's here,

and everybody starts.

Like a torpedo, this thing takes off and everything starts.

The announcements, the press, the criss-cross

of the documentary.

Being in pre-production was like watching a storm

from a distance, coming towards me.

First it was this windstorm, and then it was

a snowstorm, and by the time we got close

to production, maybe a couple of days out,

maybe a week out, it looked like a tsunami'

was on the horizon.

And I would sit every night after a full day's of work,

and I would look out into my own mind's eye,

and I'd see the tsunami of information

and just the amount of inertia from all the things

that happened in a 12 hour day

that turned into a 14 hour day become

so overwhelming, because, the crew is basically saying,

"We're here to support you, it's all on you".

And you very quickly move on to your own island.

And when you look out, it has the feeling

of the eye of the tiger.

The middle of the storm.

And then, you're in it.

And now, I'm literally inside of a wave

that is forcefully erupting as it's carrying me,

and I have to figure out how to kind of swim through this.

I heard this from John Badham, and,

when he said it a light went on,

and he was like, "Why do it yourself

"when you got all these people

"that really want to do what it is that they wanna do?"

So what I've done is I've isolated everybody.

And I've empowered them.

And I said, "Listen, I'm gonna give you this opportunity

"and you're in control of it."

You finally get what you want, it's a big moment

and it looks much different.

Transition is always the hardest.

Transition is the most exciting.

Today a big swell is coming up.

Storm is coming in.

I am a firm believer that what's on the page

shows up on the screen.

As a writer, I had to rewrite the script

so that I could actually direct it.

Nobody wants to do the script changes.

I don't want the writer to do the script changes.

I've got a list, literally a mile long,

changing it from the Hamptons to Cincinnati,

to the opening scene, to omitting all these things from Nick

that are in the scene so that I can cut down

the pages and really, again,

and it's amazing how many times a director

has to rewrite a script.

There's the script that you write to yourself,

there's the script that you write that people

are actually performing,

and then there's the script that you actually

are writing to the locations that you find.

So I wound up, so I finished the script.

18 hours, four days in a row,

went through line by line by line,

for the first time in this process of signing anything,

even stars, nothing has charged me up

until I know that the content was right on paper.

Now I have the hospital, which is amazing.

I have the Reynolds' house.

I have the Morgan house.

Now the gallery gets locked.

The whole thing right now is are these actors

going to go sideways, their performance,

can I be able to deliver the performance

that I can't see?

- You know one in five guys

enjoy mowing their own lawn, and I'm one of 'em.

- [Jonathan] You do?

- You have a (multiple people speaking over each other)

- I enjoy it, it relaxes me.

Well listen, let's all raise a glass,

and toast to the beginning of another wonderful summer,

and all our friends who always make it so special,

the tried and true--

- Thanks bro.

- I see you there, and the new.

- Everybody started laughing, they're like,

"Ha ha Jonathan, you're about to see what it's really like."

And I looked at them all, and I stopped, and I said,

"Why do you think I put myself in the movie?"

And they just shut up, because,

at that point, they have to respect me

whether I'm gonna do a bad job or not,

I'm sitting literally right in between Faye Dunaway

and Nick Cage on, my scenes.

And I said, "I'm gonna try my hardest,

"but you got me doing 13 pages a day!"

I said, he goes, "Oh, that's nothing!"

"Like, okay, I get it,

"but that's not what we're doing here."

He goes, "Oh, we need Robert De Niro,

"we had him for four days."

And we really only had him for two days

and he stayed for an extra two days.

I'm not sure that I can move that fast.

I'm gonna try.

I mean, you got me doing so much.

It didn't make a difference what they threw at me.

I was going to do it the way that I wanted to do it,

with whatever resources I had,

and I was going to make sure that I had a fighting chance.

In this business, if you're emotional,

if you're straightforward, people will always say yes,

and then they do what they want.

I just have to try to be as authentic

and as specific as who I am,

and be the only transparent one

and pray that they're transparent.

Their hands were tied, and they never met somebody

that was such an out-of-the-box thinker.

And I gave them an opportunity to be part of making history.

- [Faye's Father-in-Law] I just don't wanna be so coarse about it,

I just wanna say as as I love and respect

my daughter-in-law, and she's achieved so much, hasn't she?

Know what I mean?

And Faye just goes on to say well,

I was just this restaurant cook

and she was saving lives, so,

and that is between you and me.

She's not good enough for our son.

- [Man] And on top of it she had a drug problem at one point

and you were like, "Wait, you're having a baby,

"why did you have a drug problem, why did you,

"what could you possibly have wrong with the way you live?"

- The end of the day conversation.

I'm like, "And by the way, I just talked to Warren today,

"and I told him that you're joining the cast,

"and he was so happy for me."

And she stopped, and she thought for second,

just, "Warren, yes, I like Warren".

(unsettling music)

What happens in a day that you straddle the line

between having to deal with line producers and production.

For some reason, it's a known fact

that you have to give up to direct.

But directing is a beautiful accident.

What I ran into was line producers,

and the representative of the studio.

I'm trying to recap a day that I gave up.

Jonathan, Jonathan, is this true?

Did you really give up this day?

I said, "Well, I didn't really give it up,

"I needed a travel day, and I didn't wanna work

"on the travel day, and then what we're gonna do

"is split your crew up at the lake where I wanna go

"and you'll pitch at me", "No problem."

He took it off the schedule, never to be seen again.

Sucked in to the fucking black hole

with production which I did not know.

We started with 20 production days.

When the film was over, I had 15.

It was extremely hard for me to shoot that fast.

But more important, I had to give up other days

in other to get things that were important to me.

The lake scene, they wanted to shoot in the woods,

and I'm like "No, you can't do that."

I would make these compromises, and one by one,

as I made a compromise, the days,

the production days would disappear.

Nobody cared, because I was the one

that had to make the day, I was the one

that had to make the schedule,

and I had no choice but to work smart

to make lemonade out of lemons.

When you have an entire crew that has been mandated

to make a movie a certain way,

it becomes quite apparent really quickly

that all of that onus is on my shoulders.

They were like, "Hey, Jonathan, enjoy your movie,

"you know, you're in control."

Because I was a first-time director,

I was dictated to, and when I would call Taylor,

and John, Jodie, Warren, and say,

"Hey, did this happen to you, is this real?

"Should this be happening?"

Not one of them ever said, "Jonathan, this is the way

"you eat shit."

They're like, "You're the director.

"Nobody should be talking to you like this."

Not only did I eat shit, but,

I think they rubbed my face in it (laughs).

But I am strong, and I'm a creator,

and I believe that I'm artistic, so,

I took what I had, and I made a movie

with what was given to me.

Being a team player at this point was to my disadvantage.

But it'll never happen again,

because now I know better.

Always handpick your team.

They report to you, and if somebody else picks them for you,

it becomes a them versus me.

There's only one way to prevent it.

Make sure that everybody's on your team.

Lesson one, never say fucking yes to anything.

Having to move hotels, having to move cities,

having to find our way after I got started,

and then they would break me 10 days into it,

and say "You have to change."

They're basically saying "You're the first-time director

"we can abuse the shit out of him."

And quite frankly, because I don't know any difference

or know any better, that's why they're doing it.

I allowed it to happen because I said I'd be a team player.

But there was a point where,

I needed to become the leader,

and I needed to let them know, very hard very clear,

that not only am I the writer,

not only am I the director, I am also the producer,

which means that I really am their boss.

If you don't hand-pick your team,

it becomes a them versus you on an island.

We have eight days before we shoot

and four weekend days.

And nobody works on the weekend.

They do work, they just don't get paid for it.

I've not stopped since September first.

I was getting beat up on by the bond company.

I was getting beat up on,

by second guessing myself at times.

And I'm a loner, I'm a lone wolf.

I like to create, but there was an isolation.

The day my daughter was born, very emotional day.

First time I haven't been with her in 10 years.

I have a wife and two kids that live in New York.

My four year old Sienna, I put into this film

because I thought she'd be great at it.

I started training her three months before.

My other child is doing the music for the film.

It's my way of making my connection with them.

I'm a single father.

Every two weeks, with the other child in LA,

and then, I work, I play, I work.

I had a lot of emotions running through me,

I called my mother.

I'd not spoken to my mother in about a year.

We've had some disagreements.

Hey, it's me.

- [Mom] Nice to hear from you from all this time.

- [Jonathan] Yep, so, Monday, I start my film.

I think that calling you up and having you complete this--

- [Mom] Journey.

A lot of hurdles to jump, huh?

Oh, I know, I know, it's taken a lot.

I love you.

Is this tears of happiness or release?

Okay, take your time.

Yeah.

- [Jonathan] I'm trying to speak, Momma.

- [Mom] I'm here.

- [Jonathan] (clears throat) I got what I wanted.

Nothing comes without a price.

So, just trying to get my voice back on set.

I've been here for 45 days.

I mean, look, I took it on myself,

I'm shooting the documentary.

I just got off the phone with Warren Beatty.

So, that was interesting.

- [Mom] Where are you now?

- [Jonathan] I'm in a hotel, I'm getting ready

to go to work.

I just was, you know.

- [Mom] Where are you, Cincinnati?

- [Jonathan] What, I'm in Cincinnati,

I've been here for 45 days.

- [Mom] Well how's the filming doing?

- [Jonathan] We haven't shot the film yet.

- [Mom] Oh oh oh.

- [Jonathan] I have a vision.

I've been very clear about my vision.

I've had a vision about the way I want it shot,

and the way the colors, and the art,

and I've pulled all the art from the Maidstone.

- [Mom] My god, I just woke up,

I can't believe I'm talking to you.

- [Jonathan] You know, I started crying

because I couldn't get it out.

Because I was...

I guess I wanted somebody to understand

where I was and what I was doing, it didn't happen.

And she understood.

I mean, you know.

Your mother's your mother, whether you like it or not.

Your father's your father, I guess.

I don't have a father so I don't know,

but I would assume it's the same thing.

I saw myself as a kid.

I saw myself as a seven year old, as an eight year old.

My mother would tell you that I live inside of a movie.

Dreaming, and moving, and twisting and turning

and following the aether of this business

and the fate of who I'm supposed to be.

When I look at this I think of Wall Street.

I think of Michael Douglas walking on this beach,

with these waves going "Money never sleeps, kid."

If I'm fighting an uphill storm,

that will be an interesting moment.

Little did I know, the worst was yet to come.

Went into work, the bonding company still hadn't closed.

Three days away from production,

because there's children, there's a first-time director.

And so above the line basically,

split to the side, nodded to the bond company,

and said, "We've released the project.

"Here's the final script that you're gonna bond,

"and here's Jonathan, go and meet him,

"go and decide for yourself

"whether or not you want to bond the company,

"or bond the film".

And the doctor showed up to the bonding company,

that lasted for about an hour.

It's not over.

We've just got a letter from the bond company

that they all wanna have a legal meeting regarding you,

and the responsibility that you've basically chewed off.

Everybody is kind of worried that you have now

taken the position of producer,

taken the position of director,

taken the position of doing the documentary,

taken the stance of basically, one-manning this movie.

(ominous music)

We are making a bigger movie with a bigger breadth

than what we are budgeted for.

We're just outta time.

There's nothing we can do, what do you wanna do?

Every time I say I'm doing something,

it's another thing, they just erased the needle.

It's not like good job, we're just doing it to you

to make your film.

It always comes across like

I'm just being too aggressive, and I am.

I'd like to be a better person.

I'm not sure many people could multi-task as fast as me,

probably more efficient than me.

I don't know whether they're fighting for the film,

fighting for the bond, fighting for the budget,

all I know is that, they're not coming to me,

and realizing my dream.

Even if I was the top of my food chain,

you still have to rely on your team.

I was gonna command a crew of 300 people.

They just wanted to know that I had a plan.

And on the day that the bond company showed up,

they were going to deliver some bad news to me,

and they wanted to do it in front of the bond company,

and I really didn't know that they were setting me up.

I was sitting out in front of one of the locations.

And it was set for Christmas, as quiet as a mouse.

Snow, dripping, falling.

That was the opening of the movie.

I didn't know who the bond company was,

but he was walking up, and these guys basically

said to me, knowing that he was walking up,

"Jonathan, we just wanted to tell you

"you can't shoot Christmas.

"You can't have any fire, you can't have any snow,

"you have to change the entire beginning of the movie."

And I, I was like, "Hell no."

I was like, "Go fuck yourself".

And the bond company heard it.

And heard the turmoil between me and the line producer.

It was like, well, most people they come in,

they do their first-time stuff, are controllable.

Most people that are directors are controllable.

You're not.

We understand that your child is in the movie,

and we can't have that.

She has an acting coach, she's coming here,

and you think you're gonna replace somebody

that I've been working with for months.

Good luck, I don't wanna do the movie.

They took all these different chains

and they tried to chain me down, in every way

they possibly could.

Financially, emotionally, contractually.

I don't work well when people tell me what to do.

There's a cocktail here that we're afraid of.

You're gonna blow up the set.

I won't compromise my vision, and they went

"Great, put your money where your mouth is,

"sign everything away".

I got a call from Lionsgate,

"We're not gonna bond the movie."

Well, they just feel like you're

not gonna be able to deliver,

you're not gonna be able to work well together

with the line producer, the production crew

that's supposed to toe the line for the bond.

And they didn't believe, the bond company didn't believe

that the bond company was given proper budget.

And so the bond company left, went home.

The lawyers, everybody, just kind of went away,

the next thing I know, the line producer calls me up,

says, "I've been told to shut down the production.

"We're shutting down, you can leave tomorrow."

I just wanna point out that that conversation

happened where I got out in the middle of a freeway.

And they all freaked out in the car

because I wouldn't talk in front of them.

If I'm sitting in the car, and the director

gets out of the car and does what I did,

I'd think, "Wacko! Okay, red flag".

Nobody knew that this was going on in the production,

except for the two producers, and then eventually,

I told the DP, because he was in the car,

and I just said, "I can't just let my behavior

"go unnoticed here.

"You gotta understand why I got out

"in the middle of the street", 'cause I did,

I got out in the middle of the street,

I called an Uber.

It took 17 minutes to come, and in that time

I had the last conversation regarding

the bond company and the acting.

If they don't believe in me,

they're betting against themself.

If they do believe in me, it's the well that keeps giving.

And then they realized that they were tied to me.

And tied to me in a big way.

It was a very sombering moment,

knowing that I had two million dollars.

Of a nine million dollar budget in this movie,

and I was being dictated to.

I don't get paid any day unless this is a success,

I've deferred the investment to the end of production,

I took the deed of my house

and I placed it against that bond.

I put up, $1,800,000.

I took a giant step backwards and kind of looked at it,

from the outside looking in.

And signed my (drowned out by music), my history away.

If I fall behind, I would agree to be replaced.

I got a call from the studio saying "Congratulations,

"you're gonna make your movie".

I really wanna make a movie.

It was the moment of clarity.

That you either put up or shut up.

If you're a success, we love you.

If you fail, we're gonna devour you.

I don't think that anybody ever wants to, fail.

- You have to work from a position of total paranoia.

If you assume that everybody's trying to fuck you,

you'll be just about right.

- Everyone wants to get their first feature film.

Everyone is clamoring.

And it's no different now than it was back then.

- Producers just want to bring it on, in on budget.

They don't really care about, I mean they do up to a point,

but they don't care about the quality,

the performance, like you do.

- The first day on set of Little Man Tate was,

probably one of my worst days of shooting in my life.

It was a major, major rainstorm.

- You realize the enormity of the responsibility

that's on your shoulders.

Now you either like that or you don't, I loved it.

I'm one of those hands-on, I wanna control everything

kind of people, which I believe directors need to be.

- I had designed the film so that I wouldn't have to act,

first day as an actor.

And of course, there I was, first day.

- I had all my biggest scenes scheduled for day four,

with Nick Cage.

The line producer decided that it would be easier

to move it to day one.

My biggest scenes of the entire film were on day one.

Scene two.

Very interesting, that I had to do all my dramatic work

up front, that I had to do all my dramatic work

with Nick Cage, and, for me I was just trying

to make sure that there was enough room for me to direct

before I started really acting.

And then I showed up and I saw Nick Cage,

and I was like, "Oh boy.

"He's not phoning this in", so,

it took everything for me to take the director's hat off,

and put the actor's hat on.

It all happened on the first day, second scene.

I didn't expect it.

- I am so sorry.

(Nick Cage sobbing)

- I was sitting there, emotional,

really emotional, just because I had to fight so hard.

Because everybody I was calling that were superstars

were telling me, "Nobody goes through this".

Most people shoot a movie in two pages.

Most television shows are four pages a day.

I had to shoot 13 pages in a day.

- I think the longest schedule that I had had

up to that point, on a television movie of the week

was 24 days.

So here was a movie with 38 days,

and, I have the production manager telling me,

"I know it's supposed to be 38 days

"but it's really gonna be 52".

And none of the actors had come together.

I'd spoken to them all individually,

made it part of my contract that I would do a table read,

which they didn't wanna pay for.

- Table read,

- what's that? - You don't know a table read?

- What's that, they bring a table in, you read the table?

- [Interviewer] No, nothing.

- Nothing.

I haven't had a table read since I was doing The Shield.

And those actors had to table read for every episode.

But on these shows it's just show up and do it.

- [Jonathan] The table read wasn't for them to read,

it was for me to say to them,

"Look, when you get to the set,

"there will be no working this out on the set,

"let's work it out now, you have five hours

"to go through it, tell me what your concerns are,

"tell me what you need to do,

"tell me what you wanna change",

and what was supposed to take two or three hours

became six, seven, eight hours.

But it was the best thing I ever did.

(somber music)

- Collaboration is really more the order of the day,

than domination.

I mean, we hear about the dominating directors,

the ones who just, it's my way or the highway.

In the olden days, it was John Ford,

Otto Preminger, or Henry Hathaway,

and nowadays there are others.

Who are dominating

and those are the ones we hear about.

But, the people who have a wonderful way

with their actors and their casts

and know how to work with people like Sydney Lumet,

Sydney Pollock, people like that,

or actors like Robert Redford.

Or Eastwood.

These are wonderful directors who know

how to collaborate and listen to people around them.

- If you have the opportunity to take this army of people,

and start to organize them to fit your vision,

it's both, as I said, daunting,

I wouldn't call it frightening, but it is like,

oh my god.

And at the same time, if you are I think built for it,

if your psychology is built for it,

and I mean directors are more, directors are a unique breed.

And every writer wants to be a director,

and god knows writers are really important.

But not every writer is a director, very few are.

And the same goes for everybody else in the film business.

Director has an ability to make decisions

and to coerce or charm, let's use those two C-words.

The group that you are putting together

into delivering your vision.

And when you get your first feature film,

it's a very very explosive,

in terms of psychology, explosive moment.

Because you realize, all of this is going on

and it could be chaos, what your job is to do

is to get it out of chaos and bring it down and focus it,

so that you can get your vision on the screen.

- When you're a director, you make it your business

to find out everything about the movie.

I mean, if you're making a movie called "Das Boot"

about a submarine, and you don't,

there isn't a situation where you shouldn't make the movie

'cause you're not a submarine commander,

you just learn about it.

A director immerses themself in a project.

- When you are working for the first time,

and like I said, I made documentaries,

I won awards for documentaries, I knew what a crew was.

But a crew that does a documentary

is a minuscule amount in terms of the whole pie,

that is involved in making a feature film.

You have a costume designer, you have a set designer,

you have the DP who is the quote photographer,

but he has an army working for him.

Or her, now.

But gaffers, and grips, and all those people,

and dolly grips, and all these people that,

are going to be used to deliver your vision.

And if, then on the other side you got the sound department

and the idol maker.

I had to pre-record the music.

It was a musical, it was an original musical.

And that fit right into my bailiwick

because I knew a lot about music.

So, in this instance, you've gotta organize all that.

And if you don't organize it,

it's gonna be apparent on the screen.

So I, I couldn't say that I wasn't a little frightened.

But on the other hand I was just, my god,

it's like I said, it's a dream come true.

And so my sense is, I've always been a worker.

I'm not somebody that kind of sits back

and lets other people do it.

So what I immediately did was plunge in

and choose a group of collaborators,

that I felt would be helpful to me.

And who had more experience than I did

in making feature films.

- You know, the really smart piece of advice

is to make sure that you sit down,

because by day two your feet are done.

Your hamstrings have knots in them,

and you can't walk anymore,

so you really do have to sit down.

- My day one was this.

It was a scene in a bedroom with the girls at night.

And they were, it was a scene in the bedroom, nighttime.

And we went to the rushes, and I said,

and I'm sitting there, with the crew,

and I'm saying "Okay, let's start the rushes."

And somebody said to me, whispering in my ear, "They're on."

And I looked again at the screen

and it was coal black,

there was nothing on the screen at all

other than a blindingly bright square

which was the window, right?

At night, so you couldn't do anything with it,

know what I'm saying?

Because the balance was all wrong, it was black,

there was nothing to see.

So, I think, I think good advice would be really,

to think that maybe you won't use the day's shooting

in your movie, the first day's shooting in your movie.

- There was no air conditioning and it was one of those

monsoon things, and it was terrible first day.

I think we might've reshot part of the first day, actually.

- When a film runs through the camera,

you can just say it's a euphemism for dollars

running through the camera.

You're making a feature film, there's all these people

out there, they're saying, "He's got my money,

"he's never made a film before.

"He's gonna blow it!"

And so there's huge pressure.

And what you have to do every day,

is make your day.

You give it a schedule,

you have to shoot a certain amount of material

in that schedule, but if you don't, you're falling behind.

And if you fall behind, the forces

are gonna come down on you,

and it's gonna destroy you.

- People are petrified because

you're a first-time director.

So there's a lot of interest in maybe replacing you.

So I think that's the foremost thing.

Don't be behind in the first two weeks

if you can avoid that,

because they'll really start panicking

if you're three days behind in 14, or 10.

Which I by the way usually am.

But, (laughs).

- [Jonathan] I called Warren Beatty,

and he is the reason why I am a director.

Warren, how do you merge production with creative,

direct yourself,

and make sure that the safety nets are there?

How do you use your king correctly

so that the actors can bleed,

and how do you get production out of your face to do this?

He alone, has done everything.

And he's the reason why I'm doing what I do.

Well you're the director, you make that call.

And I look at them and I'm like,

"Well you're the professional.

"It's my job to tweak you, it's my job

"to make sure you stick into the model

"that I'm presenting to you.

"I hired you all so that you can bring your expertise."

My mother wasn't bad to me.

She just didn't feed the child in me.

My grandfather was very good to me.

He died looking at me in 1980.

In that moment, of having somebody close their eyes and die,

I remember that it was final.

(tense music)

The only thing that I worry about is my stamina.

(sirens wailing distantly)

And I have this thing called sarcoidosis.

And what it is, it's runaway inflammation of the lungs,

you can hear it in my voice if you really listen.

And I have to deal with that daily.

Guess it's better than having a heart attack,

it's better than having cancer, but,

what I have, 54 years old,

is what I think about when I get tired,

and the only way to fix it is to sleep.

I showed up the next day, there were,

two producers from the production company.

Two people from Lionsgate.

Two people from the bond company.

The director who was going to replace me.

But I wasn't supposed to be on it at the end.

Adrian Lyne said, "Be on it at the end".

And that's what I was thinking about.

How am I gonna be on it at the end?

They line their chairs up, and they just watched.

And for me it was,

it was very challenging, but that was the love affair.

That was why I did it, because I loved

every aspect of it.

And I felt very good about the first day.

Probably the best that I've felt of the entire shoot,

'cause it went my way.

I had to do this now for another four days,

because it was four days, five days,

of 13 pages a day, and then it dropped to seven pages a day,

and then at the end it would drop

to a normal three to four pages a day.

I just remember watching Nicky have her breakdown,

the lead character.

And thinking "Wow, that really looks good."

I really fought for this hospital, and it looks amazing.

'cause the bigger the better.

I had 15 feet panes of glass by 20 feet long,

that used to be a classroom that I made into a,

a baby ward.

- The truth I think with anybody making a film is that,

everything that you have, is in the script.

And your job really is to just sort of coax it out of there.

And to be inspired and to watch things happen

in front of you and recognize the good ones

and discard the bad ones.

I can't change an actor in 20 minutes.

If I cast somebody and they arrive,

I absolutely can't change them in 20 minutes,

it's really about trying to be a good parent

and to coax a good performance out of people,

whether that's a performance by the technicians,

it's being a good communicator, communicating

what you're looking for and then hoping

other people will add their voice onto that.

It's not anybody doing everybody's job for them

or having every answer, in fact just the opposite.

It's about asking enough questions so that people

can keep being inspired and delivering new options.

- The key to a director, all the things you talk about,

oh he's got an eye, he's got this,

you gotta be able to make decisions, and live with them.

You know, you gotta be able to say,

"That's what I wanna do, that's where I wanna go,

"and I don't care, I'm gonna get to the end of the day".

That's the best advice you can get.

If you say, "Oh gee, I can make it better,

"I've gotta sit and think and talk about it",

there's no time to think and talk.

You can think, your thinking process,

instead of, oh, I gotta take an hour out and think.

An hour, forget it.

Minutes, seconds, think through it, make a decision, go on.

And that's the process of making a first film.

- At that moment I knew I was a director.

Because I looked over at the person that they got,

and he came up to me and he said,

"Jonathan, you don't need me.

"I just have to be here, and then I'm gonna go home.

"You got it all under control."

I did this for another four days, and they all went home.

One by one, the bond company went home.

The production company went home.

The studio went home.

They finally left me to myself.

And I was able to make the movie, called "Inconceivable".

- On my first movie, I think that I was just amazed

that I survived the whole thing,

and that I hadn't imploded or something.

And I think it's sort of like having your first child,

where you're so exhausted by the experience,

by the time you have a second child

you realize that you don't,

you can take a shower.

And if they cry, they're not gonna die, it's fine,

it's all gonna be fine.

And as time goes on I think you become more comfortable

with that and you start realizing

that there's a lot of energy that you had expended

that was unnecessary.

- And like Madonna, said when she got to the top,

"Once you're there, what do you have to say to everybody?"

'Cause that's the real question.

What do you have to say now that you're there?

Anybody say, (mumbles), Madonna.

Stand closer, okay.

I just want you closer, (shushes).

Where's Leanne?

Cluster cluster cluster, okay let's go.

Okay, that's fine perfect.

'cause she has to follow you in here.

All right, let's go.

Let's go.

Redo that, Gina, please.

- [People] Surprise!

- [Gina Gershon] What is this?

- It's a baby shower, it's your shower.

- (breathing heavily) Oh, don't tell me,

this is her idea.

- [Nick Cage] Wanted you to feel special.

- [Gina Gershon] Oh was that really,

is that how you want me to

(drowned out by Nick Cage stammering)

- [Nick Cage] We got a party, we got a party here, okay?

- [Gina Gershon] She's tryna kill me.

- She drugged me. - What?

- [Nick Cage] What, what.

- [Gina] She's Cora's biological mother,

and Gabriel's biological mother--

- [Nick Cage] What the hell are you talking about?

- [Gina] Katie is our donor.

- [Nick Cage] You are an addict!

- You are an addict! - Listen!

- Look at!

Look at this creature!

- This is her, this is her! - Okay, all right.

- Please, give it up. - You have to believe me!

- And she's taking my picture, - Yeah sure.

- She's taking my picture. - Calm down!

- You have to believe me! - Angela shut the fuck up!

- [Nick Cage] All right, come on, let's go,

let's go, everybody out!

Come on, let's get out!

Let's get out! (Gina sobbing)

Dammit!

- Just let me get through to her.

- Okay, out.

I'm sure there's a lot worse out there,

I'm sure there's a lot of directors

that are worse than me.

It's good all the way around.

All the way around.

Nobody I'd ever spoken to.

Not Warren Beatty.

Not Jodie Foster, Taylor Hackford, Adrian Lyne.

Calling each of them, is this normal?

John Badham, is this normal?

None of them have ever heard

of a first-time director having to go through

what I went through.

They were so afraid of me because I'm so controlling

or demanding, aggressive, I don't know what the word is.

But, they were so afraid,

to allow me to be me.

To protect themself, the corporate entity,

to protect the corporate dollar, the bond company,

the studio, the production company,

that they didn't give me the tape,

that they started out with.

And the irony of the whole thing is that,

I brought the film in,

under budget, under the days that were needed,

under the page-count.

- Nothing is as good as the rushes,

or as bad as the first cut,

which I think is totally true, totally true.

And you need to be able to say, "My god he's shit,

"this guy is a fucking disaster",

the actor or actress or whatever.

Brings something up, take their advice if it's good.

Take their idea if it's good.

And he said, "Maybe if I'll get some cream cheese

"on my nose, or whatever, when I'm eating it,

"and she points out to you that you've got it on your face",

and that made the scene.

- I look at my first film now

and I think the same way writers look

at their first novels, or first screenplays,

and I see it as a really young effort.

That the way that I saw the world,

which was absolutely true to me at the time

and felt very authentic to me at the time,

was really simplistic, and was appropriate

for somebody who was in their 20's.

That hadn't had a lot of experiences.

- If I only knew then, what I know now,

it would be a better film.

Because when you start you know zip.

When you finish, you've learned,

you've had the test of fire, and you know,

and you think back, "God, if I'd only gone,

"first day I had all this knowledge".

Not the way it works.

The first film is a complete learning process.

And for people to come in and say,

"Man, I knew exactly what I wanted to do,"

I drew every image that I was gonna shoot

I didn't know what I was gonna do.

You go into it and you're now faced

with that kind of pressure.

- It was the moment that I became a director.

I don't know anybody that can do 13 pages in a day.

Do I wanna do 13 pages in a day, going forward, no.

But I've been schooled.

I really appreciated Nick Cage.

He was the only guy I had on the cast with me.

- Jonathan is very enthusiastic,

he's extremely excited about the material,

he cares so much, he's a very sincere filmmaker.

- [Jonathan] And he's the only one that got me.

My style, my sophistication.

- [Nick Cage] He really wants this to fit within his vision,

and he doesn't, he's not afraid to speak his mind

and stand his ground and get what he needs,

and that's rare in modern filmmaking.

- The art that I brought to the house.

Everything that you see, I brought with me,

because I couldn't find it in Ohio.

- He's really trying to make a movie, not a TV show.

He wants this to be a movie in a grand tradition of cinema.

He cites the 70s, he talked about St. Elmo's Fire,

with Joel Schumacher, he wants it to have style,

and he's very clear about that,

and I think we're gonna see a lot of Jonathan.

- I'm thankful that it fell my way.

Can I Excalibur, pulling the sword from the rock.

- [Interviewer] How many first-time directors

have you worked with?

- I don't know, three or four, five?

Maybe 10 (chuckles).

- [Interviewer] Are there certain hurdles

that you always have to face when you're dealing

with somebody who's out for the first time?

- No yeah.

They're interested, they sometimes get daunted by the work,

and other times they're really interested

just in working with you,

because they like your work so much, or,

you know, most of the jobs are very interesting though

because they're very innovative

and they're looking to do something new.

That's true of Jonathan, I find him very impressive,

I think he's got a lot of interesting work that he's done,

and that he will be doing in the future.

- [Jonathan] It's the journey.

It's how you embody the creative as you take the steps.

- [Interviewer] Anything else

about working with Jonathan specifically,

strong personalities, is there bumping heads at all?

- Not really, no.

He's a strong personality.

I mean it's important, you know, butt heads

with a lot of strong personalities, and,

I think that it shows you how good they are.

You know, because they're convinced of their own views,

and their own beliefs, and their own desire

to get the movies right.

And I think that's true of Jonathan as well.

- When you get there,

it's just product.

It doesn't make a difference what the product is,

I mean this is "Inconceivable" behind us, rendering.

So how do you represent your product?

How do you represent yourself?

How do you become what you want to be?

- [Interviewer] Had some great actors that were with you

on set today.

When you're in a scene with someone like Nick Cage

or Gina Gershon, do they defer to you a little bit?

Do they, take your advice, your perspective,

or are you guys all peers?

- No, no, they don't.

We are all peers.

That's the point, I don't think that any of those kinds

of people do feel that.

I think they're interested in working with somebody,

not just be overly impressed by everybody.

All these people, I mean Nick is amazing.

He's so great, and Gina's got so much guts and energy,

and I love her.

And, it's been a great cast,

I've enjoyed the work very much.

- [Interviewer] Any words of wisdom for Jonathan?

- Oh Jonathan.

Well, keep going.

Keep on going, he works out with Warren Beatty,

he's told me, and Warren would say

"Just keep on doing it" and I say the same thing to him.

He's talented, no doubt about it.

He's going to succeed,

and he's gonna do some wonderful films.

- [Interviewer] Would you work with him again?

- Absolutely.

- It's just like falling in love.

You meet somebody, you fall in love with them,

you create a project, you fall in love with it.

You take it as far as it will let you take it,

so you can be truthful to the journey

and the self-discovery will teach you so much,

no matter what it is.

You have to become the leader in order

to get what you need.

The industry will build a circle around you,

and they will try to squeeze you,

because they want their handprints all over your work.

That's been a fight from Hollywood from day one,

it's why directors are so kind of, headstrong,

about not wanting to be in Hollywood,

and not wanting to play the Hollywood game.

I actually love the Hollywood game.

- I learned a lot working for first-time directors,

and I feel like that's the advice

that I always like to pass on.

First-time directors often,

they really get stuck in the words,

they get stuck in that concrete thing that they know.

She must have a chipped tooth!

She doesn't have a chipped tooth, then that character

just is not the same!

They hang on to one thing that for some reason

has been this anchor for them.

And in a collaborative process,

very often that one thing just needs to go.

- You can do all the prep you possibly can,

and it doesn't prepare you for walking on the set

the first day, and the volume of energy.

And you're saying "Oh my god, I have it all laid out, but,

"is this the right way to go?"

- I think that directing for the first time

is like having sex for the first time.

You just don't know where things are,

and where the parts go, and how they fit together.

It's very unnerving.

After a while, you get the hang of it.

Now after you finish the picture,

you will have a lot of regrets about I could have done this,

I should've done this, but you have what you have,

and you try to make the best of it,

and make it work as well as you can.

And look forward to the next film that you're gonna make.

- You don't see, when you have film,

you don't see dailies until the end of the second day.

So for two days, I'm kind of ameliorating my vision,

and going "Well, they've got all the experience,

"I guess they know what they're talking about."

At the end of the second day, you look at dailies

from the first day.

And I looked at this, and I went,

"Oh, that's not very good, eugh, I don't like that".

And I realized, if I sit around and take, all these quote,

all these experienced crew members' point of view,

and it's wrong, I can't sit in the lobby

of a movie theater as people are walking out saying

"Oh, you don't understand, it's got my name on it

"as director but it's really these other people's ideas".

You can't do that.

I think the problem is you can be intimidated

by the experience of your crew.

Yeah, let 'em say what they're gonna say.

But have your vision, because you're gonna have

to live on the reputation that your film does.

And it's gotta be your vision, better or worse, it's yours.

Take everybody's opinion, take good ideas,

work it into your own, but don't be following

someone else's point of view.

- I knew it was gonna come out to be a good film.

I was confident.

I did my rewrite, I did my prep.

It didn't make a difference to me.

Movie could've been shot on automatic,

it would've been almost the same movie.

Because I am the type of director

that allows the actor to create,

and bring in what they need to bring in.

- Sometimes you walk in to a room with a first-time director

and they're like, say nothing, they have nothing to say,

they look at their shoes, you think "Oh my gosh,

"this guy's gonna make a terrible movie, who is this guy?"

And then they make this extraordinary, beautiful film.

- Having the platform to be creative

and hoping your ideas are correct.

And when everybody is second-guessing

because you're the first-time director

and everybody goes through that.

I know 'cause I've asked.

Everybody gets the first-time director syndrome,

which is, you don't really know what you're talking about

because you've never done this.

But I've always had enough confidence in myself,

no matter what I do, to know that

when I step into something,

I know what I want.

And magic is what you get from it.

Everything that you create is by prep.

There's nothing you can do except prep a movie.

This is what I got from Taylor Hackford.

I was very very schooled by the people that taught me.

I was schooled by the best.

Jodie Foster.

Nicholas Cage, Faye Dunaway.

Taylor Hackford, John Badham, Adrian Lyne.

- Really appreciate the information,

and what I'd like to do is introduce you

to our director.

- Oh, you're the director?

Oh shit, I didn't know that.

Oh fuck, it's great, it's great.

- Yeah--

- Isn't that funny, isn't that funny,

because I didn't know, are you still?

- [Jonathan] I tried to sit there.

- That's so smart.

Now you're clever, that's a good idea, I like that.

- How you doing?

- [Jonathan] Thank you.

- Oh, my heart goes out to you.

- I wanna thank you so much for doing this,

and hopefully will help a lot of first-time filmmakers.

- Listen, the thrilling thing is,

you don't know when you come into an interview like this,

is it gonna be on television or someplace,

and there's a lot of duffers sitting

in their living rooms that'll never get behind a camera.

And you hope that it will reach actual filmmakers,

or inspire people who would like to become filmmakers.

Little did I know that somebody

who's gonna make their first film

was actually connected.

- I didn't realize you were the guy.

Cool!

- We started this as a project of love,

to kind of coax out all the directors and their work,

so that I could actually learn from--

- Oh wow, fun.

- And I thought you gave amazing advice.

So, I was sitting there going, "You know, that's really..."

When anyone asks, why did you put your name

on a grave when you're not dead?

But I look around the cemetery,

and everybody in it is dead

but they all have a funny statement.

And so mine says, "Life is by design. Stay tuned".

I'm never gonna change the grave

'cause I get to be immortal.

That's why I put it up there.

- [Man] We are wrapped for the third day!

At 10:30.

- [Jonathan] Beautiful morning.

It's gonna be a beautiful day.

- [Taylor Hackford] Listen,

you don't start a first feature film

without having all of those experiences,

and I envy him, because you only do it once.

After your first film you know,

you're gonna survive, or you're not.

And if you survive, you know more

but you're never gonna be quite as alive,

and quite as attenuated to every little thing

that's happening as when you make your first film.

It's a terribly exciting experience,

and at the same time, like I said,

I wish him all the best.

- [Jodie Foster] It was great.

It seems like he's asking all the right questions.

I've worked with lots of first-time directors, in my life.

I did Alan Parker's first movie,

Adrian Lyne's first movie.

They always bring joy to the process, and,

every experience is different

and how they approach it is always different,

but it's always really rewarding to see,

to see them find themselves

in some ways through that process.

- [Adrian Lyne] He's got great enthusiasm,

and he reminds me of myself a bit when I was starting.

So I cannot believe that he won't do well.

- [Jonathan] I'm proud of "Inconceivable".

More, because of "Inconceivable" I get to do Icon.

A film that I have been trying to get made for 10 years.

The greatest part about this entire experience

is I get to arrive.

(unsettling music)