All language subtitles for De.Palma.2015.720p.WEB-DL.x264.AC3-.eSc.PRiME.utf8.eng

I saw Vertigo in 1958.

I saw it
at Radio City Music Hall.

I will never forget it.

Give me your hand.

That left
an incredible impression

upon me.

What's so compelling

about Vertigo?

It is the...

He's making a movie about
what a director does.

Which is basically create
these romantic illusions.

It makes you fall in love
with it.

And then kills it. Twice.

And it's what we do
as directors.

We create
these beautiful women,

these exciting virile men.

We get audiences involved
in their stories

and emotionally attached
to them.

And Hitchcock made a movie

which is, you know,

it's so "Brechtian."

It's showing what
we're doing

as we're doing it.

And it is something

that has fascinated me
you know,

since I saw Vertigo.

I was the youngest.

I was born
in North New Jersey.

When I was about five

we moved into
suburban Philadelphia.

Right off the main line

in a kind of fairly nice
suburban house.

My father
was a very successful

orthopedic surgeon,

and then my mother
was very close

to the three of us.

She was over at school
a lot.

You know going
to our football practices

and soccer practices.

My father basically
drove into the city

and operated very early
and was teaching

and then writing his books
when he got home at night.

So, we didn't see
a lot of him.

And we didn't have much
of a relationship with him.

I went to a Quaker school,
Friend Central.

And I went to that school
for 12 years.

Well, I'd say the thing
that left

the most impression on me
was, you know,

meeting
at this Quaker School.

Sitting in silence
and thinking about

the moral aspects
of your life,

and if you had anything

you wanted to share
with the community

you stood up and talked.

There was a lot of turmoil
in my family.

My parents
were not happy together,

and at one point I got up

and talked about
the difficulties going on

within my family.

I was very chummy
with the girls.

I got along with the girls
very well.

I would do
sort of crazy things

occasionally, like taping
the girls sex education class.

Debbie Deming
as I recall her name,

she dared me to do it

and then of course I did it
and then of course I told her

and then she turned me in.

I went to Columbia
to study physics

and math and Russian.

I was basically
a science nerd.

I mean I wasn't
really interested in movies,

not until
I went to Columbia.

There was a lot
of excitement

because of course
we had the war.

Had to worry about
getting drafted.

And we had all this

French new wave stuff
coming in.

All these foreign movies.

So, it was
a pretty exciting time.

It was like, that's what you
talked about.

That was like,
the new thing.

There was no place
you could take film

at Columbia.

I signed up
for a cinema society

called Cinema 16
run by Amos Vogel.

And they would show all these
very avant- garde shorts.

That was... That's what
you signed up for.

I submitted my shorts
every year

until the third year
I won it

with Woton's Wake.

Bill Finley was a classmate

of mine at Columbia.

So, I began to craft pieces

for his particular kind
of characters

he could portray.

And that was the genesis

of Woton's Wake
where he played everything

from a Phantom of the Opera
to King Kong.

I'd seen a casting notice

for a graduate project
at Sarah Lawrence

and I said,
"Oh, this looks like

a good idea."

So, I went up
to Sarah Lawrence

and I got into
a graduate play.

And that's when
I met Wilford Leach,

who was very influential.

And he was like my mentor.
He was a brilliant director.

That's what really
started me going,

in the sense of learning
all the things I had to learn

in order to, you know,
be a director.

My first feature came out
of Sarah Lawrence.

We brought Will on to sort of
oversee the whole thing.

And a lot of the people
in it came right out

of the Sarah Lawrence
workshop.

Bobby was in
the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

Jill was in
the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

Jennifer Salt was in
the Sarah Lawrence workshop.

Well,
that sounds like free love,

what about purity?

The wedding party

was De Niro's first movie.

Bobby came into
a casting session

and Will and I were
in the loft on Broadway.

He's like the last guy
in the room.

And he's very quiet, shy.

And then he said
he had something

he prepared in class.

Then he went out,

and Will and I
were sort of

looking at each other

and like,
20 minutes from...

We thought he'd left.

It was at night.

And then he burst through
the door

and does a scene
from Clifford Odets's play.

Strike, I think about
the cab strike.

And it was like...
You were like

watching Lee J. Cobb

rant in front
of the union guys.

It was like holy mackerel.

The one place
where there's life, the beach.

The dock,
where there's something...

A connection
to the mainland.

And you walk... Start walking
around the beach.

The great irony was

that we co-directed
The Wedding Party.

That's when I saw
and knew more

about motion picture
directing

than Wilford did.

We had the scene
with Bill Finley,

Bob De Niro
and Charlie Pfluger

where the two boys
are trying to convince him

not to get married.

We were shooting it

and I could see
that we were

never able to do the shot.

Plus, it was not
a good shot.

Because basically
we're shooting

three guys
against the hedge.

You know, you weren't getting
any value

out of the motion
of the camera.

And Will kept on insisting
that we do it this way.

And then Will
kind of got frustrated,

and I said,
"Will, let me block this act

because this is not the way,
this is shit work.

So, I blocked it out
a whole different way.

Broke the whole thing up
into a whole bunch of shots.

And... And I made
the shot work.

And he was wrong.

I shot a lot
of documentaries

in that period
in order to support myself

while I was
in graduate school.

I shot a documentary
about the OP Art opening

at the Museum of Modern Art,
which was pretty successful.

I was
a very good cameraman.

You know, and I had
a really good sense

how to follow a scene
and see what was happening.

Well, the advantage of doing
everything yourself

is that I did everything.

I figured I'd really hit
the big time

when I didn't have to pack up
the equipment

at the end of the day
and take it back

to the rental house.

You see a lot of the sort of
Hitchcockian things

in Murder a la Mod.

A lot of stylistic madness
going on.

You have the scene
of Jennifer,

you know,
me trying to talk her

into taking her clothes off
for the camera.

Is this
supposed to be sexy?

Well, yeah,
you're supposed to be,

you know, doing sort of
strip tease for us.

Which is very much like
the same scene

that I did
in The Black Dahlia

where I'm interviewing
an actress.

- How long have you lived here?
- Two years.

- You lost your accent?
- Yeah.

So, some of that stuff I,

you know,
started to play with

in Murder a la Mod.

We had to release it
ourselves

over on 12th Street
and Second Avenue.

I was literally pulling people
off the street to go see it.

When I was a graduate student
at Sarah Lawrence,

Universal Pictures
paid my tuition.

When I got out
of Sarah Lawrence

I got into
a new talents program

at Universal,
and again I was writing stuff

but nobody
ever read anything.

And we became so frustrated,
Chuck Hirsch and I,

that we decided
to make a movie ourselves.

Greetings was

the more Godardian
influenced movie.

Of course we were seeing
all the Godard movies

at the New York
Film Festival.

They were all a revelation
one after another.

I especially remember Weekend,
going "Holy mackerel."

And very much influenced

by what was
going on politically.

What you... What are you
finding space for?

Well, you know,
I'm trying to get

in my pre-induction
physical side.

I mean, if you wanted

to stay out of the war

and you were
a middle-class kid

you could figure out a way
to do it.

I finally had to go in

and I had a letter
from a doctor.

I took everything
to make me allergic

so I could hardly breathe.

I was up all night

and I was running around
wheezing.

We kept him awake
for two days.

We can't keep him
going like that.

They took me right

to the psychiatrist.

Hey, Lloyd.
You be the psychiatrist.

I had to dead stare
right at his forehead

and talked about
my homosexual feelings.

Just walk right up
to the sergeant.

You gaze.
Just walked right up to him.

Get as close as you can.
Look him straight in the eye.

Seduce him with your eyeballs
and say, "Hi."

I was a communist.
I was a homosexual.

I was crazy.

And I think with my letter

from my doctor
that got me out.

Greetings opened
in December,

and was crucified
in The Times.

Fortunately what happened was
the review was so bad

a guy wrote a reply
in The Sunday Times

which was huge.

Saying was that a way
to greet Greetings.

And then at that same week
Pauline Kael's review came out

in The New Yorker and suddenly
the movie became a hit.

I feel very strongly
about these political movies

when I get into
that area.

This... This clearly shows
that Officer

was in the front
and firing from the front

with a Russian
6.76mm rifle, see.

Causing a neck wound
in the president's neck

7/8ths of an inch
below the collarbone.

And it's the very
anti-establishment,

usually comedic in the case
of Greetings and Hi, Mom!

You know, looking around
and saying, "This is crazy."

I'm studying people and I,

you know,
when you took the book

and everything,
it was amazing.

It was just beautiful.

And it was what I called

a private moment, you see.

And I study people
like this.

Okay, now... Now, don't
you think you're hot?

Don't you want
to go to bed now?

- Ah, I'm tired.
- Yes, you're tired.

- I'm tired. And I want to go.
- You want to go to sleep.

So, don't you think
you should

take off your dress?

- Sure. Take it off.
- My dress?

And remember
this is a private moment,

and no one is watching.

Bobbie emerged

as the most captivating
character.

We said let's... I think
we've got to make him

like, the main character.

This guy is fantastic.

So, that's what happened
with Hi, Mom!

Which is basically a son
of Greetings.

The whole idea
of Be Black Baby

came as an environmental
theater piece.

It was supposed to put you
through a race awakening.

We want to take you through
the black experience.

Where you experience

what black people experience
in America

of the mid 60's.

This is at the... The height
of, you know, Black Panthers

and, you know,
burn, white guy, burn.

These guys came up...
They were so scary

and they were so like,
"You motherfucker,

what do you know about
race relations?"

And then you go,
"Holy smackerel."

So, I didn't rehearse them
with the troop.

When we shot the sequence
in that freight elevator

the other actors
had never seen them before.

When the thing opens
and they see us go on

and grab her throat
and throw her down

and start to rape her.

Everybody's like,
"Oh, my .

This is like,
really happening.

Turn that fucking camera off!
Turn it off!

Get it down!

Get that camera down!

Oh, please, stop.

- Shut the fuck up.

My hair!

I was in the back
of the elevator

with Chuck, my producer,
and I looked over to him,

he was like, terrified.

And I had this big smile
on my face.

So, I said,
"This is really working."

I'm going to tell
all my friends

they've got to come.

They really got to come.

Except they should have
called it...

- It was really something.
- Humiliate the honky

or hump the honky.

But it was great theater.

So, when
I went to Hollywood

at Warner Brothers,

Marty was out there editing
The Medicine Ball Caravan

which was Woodstock on wheels
basically.

I sort of
introduced him around.

There was Marty and I,

then there was George
and Francis, and Steven.

The thing about Steven

I think he was
the first person

I ever saw
that had a phone in his car.

I'm trying to call
Brian De Palma, New York City.

Hello Brian, this is Nancy
and Amy and Steve.

- Hi Brian.
- Hi Brian.

- Happy Thanksgiving.
- It's 1976, Brian.

We're photographing this
on 8mm sound film.

And we want to say
Happy Thanksgiving.

Sorry you're not home
to enjoy it.

Steven and I
were so close back then.

This is the whole
Warner Brothers youth group.

Schrader was out there.
Schrader was a critic.

He brought me the script
of Taxi Driver.

I didn't think
it was commercial.

But it was extraordinary.

And I thought it was more
to Marty's taste.

That was basically
our group.

And we were all
very supportive of each other,

and passing these scripts
back and forth

and looking
at each other's movies.

And what we did
in our generation

will never be duplicated.

We were able to get into
the studio system

and use
all that stuff in order

to make some
pretty incredible movies

before the businessmen
took over again.

But I was making
my Hollywood movie now

so I thought, "Well, wow,
I'm in the big time."

It's this is sort of
whimsical thing

where a guy drops out
of a corporation

and he decides he's going
to change his life

and become
a tap dancing magician.

Tommy Smothers had just been
fired from his show

because he did all these
sort of anti- war things

and all
this political humor.

Our government
is asking us

as citizens, good citizens

to refrain from traveling

to foreign lands.

Okay, all you guys in Vietnam,
come on home.

This is this big kind of
anti-establishment movie.

So, I wanted
to use Orson Wells

as the tap dancing magician
instructor.

I found that Orson Welles
was not learning his lines.

We had cue cards
all over the place.

And I'd never seen
this before.

You just looked at him,
you say, "This isn't right.

This is sloppy."

I kept on shooting
until he knew the lines.

To work that hard,

would be unfair
to your rabbit.

Here's Brian De Palma dealing
with Orson Welles, you know,

I'm in my 20's and I'm going,
"Holy mackerel."

I'm telling Orson Welles

he's got to do
this thing again.

It's like, "Whoa!"

You know, when I was working
in somebody else's material

I would try to direct it.

I would try to find ways
to make it work

within the way
it was written.

So, I didn't try
to change it

into whatever my style was
at the time.

I basically tried to interpret
the material as best I could.

And Smothers got disenchanted
with it very quickly.

Wound up disliking me.
Disliking the material.

Disliking the establishment
he was working for.

Literally one time
he just left.

Nobody could find him
for four or five days.

We finished the movie
and it didn't work.

And I had written
a whole bunch of stuff

to make it work

but I said,
"Hey, it's either

my way or the highway,"

and I got on the highway
the next day.

I was devastated.
I was finished.

I mean,
in my career I've had

these devastating things
happen

where you basically have
to start from scratch,

and I was finished.

So, I went back
to New York

and we started
making Sisters.

Sisters, I got the idea

from a picture
in Life Magazine

They had these
Russian Siamese twin sisters

called Masha and Dasha

as they're sitting together
on a couch.

One looking kind of gay
and happy,

and the other one sort of
slumped over to the side

looking
completely psychopathic.

And the caption was, "Although
they're physiologically

perfectly normal
as they develop

into adolescent,
they're developing

certain mental problems.

Conjoined twins
called Siamese

challenge life
with their first breath.

There was nothing
easy about it.

When we started
with $150,000,

we were non-union.

We were shooting
in Staten Island.

We were on such
tight budgets.

I mean, you know,
it had to be all figured out.

I'd rehearsed the stuff
with the girls.

I mean, you know,
all the actors I knew.

Charlie Durning,
I'd him put in Hi, Mom!

It was his first movie.

Finley, I'd worked
with many movies before.

Jennifer Salt,
Margot Kidder.

Who I was working with

essentially
my repertory company.

- You're the lady of the house?
- Yes I am.

- You live here alone?
- Yes.

Have any company
this morning?

- Oh, no.
- Well, a split screen

I got
from Dionysus In '69.

Where I shot the narrative
of a play

and Bob Fury shot
the audience's involvement

with the players
and the play.

And I got this idea,

"Well, we'll show them
simultaneously."

The thing about movies
is that

you're telling the audience
what to look at.

When you... You know,
cut to something

you're saying, "Ooh!

There's something important
going on here.

Look at that."

The thing about split screen
is the audience has a chance

to sort of put two images
together simultaneously

and something happens
in their head.

You're giving them
a juxtaposition

as opposed to this.

Split screen
is a technique

that can take you out
of the experience.

The idea is where
it is appropriate.

In Sisters of course,
it worked quite well.

Can I get the blood
cleaned up

before this Jennifer
comes around with the police?

Makes perfect sense to me.

May be completely alien
to some other viewer

but you take something like
Barry Lyndon.

I could see these
huge, slow zoom shots.

And when I first saw the movie
I disliked it intensely.

After having seen it
a couple of more times

I can see that Kubrick...

He's getting you
into the time sense

of the period you're in.

In order to get people
to understand this century

you have to slow time.

To him, I'm sure
it makes perfect sense.

To a guy that just
walked off the street

you say, "Oh, wait a minute.

This is not like movies.
What is this?"

And that's very much some
of these techniques

that I developed.

Came from what looked like
perfectly logical way

to portray what I was seeing
and feeling.

When we were doing Sisters,
my editor, Paul Hirsch,

laid a lot of Benny's stuff
from Psycho in a temp track.

As we were looking at it,
it worked so well.

We sort of looked
at each other

and we said,

"Where's
Bernard Herrmann now?"

So, we brought him to New York
to look at the film.

When he arrived, you know,

Benny's, you know,
with his cane

and he's hunched over
and he's been on a plane

and he's very grouchy.

And he comes off the elevator
in Movielab

and, you know, said,
"Hello Mr. Herrmann,

- it's an honor."
- "Where's the movie?"

Okay, so,
we go and we sit him down.

Of course I had all this

Bernard Herrmann music
on the temp track.

So, of course,
as soon as he hears...

I forget what it was.

I think it was either
Vertigo or Psycho.

When he starts
to hear the music

he starts shrieking.

He said,
"Stop the projector!

Stop it, stop it!
I can't hear that!"

And I said, "Oh, my God,"
so we stopped the projector.

He says,
"I can't look at your movie

and listen to that!"

So, we frantically pulled
all the temp track off

and then played the movie
silent for him.

So, we didn't have
any score

on the movie for him
to listen to.

But he... He was scary.

You don't sit there, you know,
going through note by note

with the composer
with Benny.

He just...
He sees the movie

and goes home
and writes the score.

Consequently, having been
involved with so many movies

that were not a hit,

I was trying to make
a successful movie.

Fortunately,
it was successful

and I was able to sell it
to American International.

This is before
The Rocky Horror Show,

about a year before
The Rocky Horror Show.

Again,
I just got this idea.

I mean,
just hanging around

and watching, you know,

the whole
kind of music business.

You know,
I was living in L.A.

We were going
to the rock clubs

where personalities
are so colorful.

The idea came from Muzak
in an elevator.

When I heard a Beatles song
in Muzak in the elevator.

And I said, "You can take
something extremely original

and turn it into syrup

and it's
completely commercial."

And the whole idea of Swan
sort of taking the Phantom's

very original music

and then, you know,
first you hear it

as 50's rock and roll,

then it's Beach Boys,
then it's horror rock.

I mean, it just it doesn't
make any difference.

You just... Then you hear
the same song

basically
in three different forms.

Mr. Paul Williams.

I don't know how
we came upon Paul.

But the idea
of him playing Swan

because he's such
an interesting

looking character.

And he was able to write

all these parodies
of all these forms.

No, no.

Wrong. Wrong again.

Pretty, but no.

No.

I always had
the idea of Finley

playing the Phantom.

Try it again.

Phoenix.

And he plays
that kind of character

in Woton's Wake basically.

And then I had
to find Phoenix,

which, she turned out to be
a Sarah Lawrence student.

And that's where
Jessica came from.

The terrible thing
about Phantom was

when we finished it,
we made it

for about
$1.2 million or something,

and Fox offered us $2 million
to buy it

and I was like,
"Holy mackerel."

Unfortunately,
we had not taken out

E and O insurance.

So, we were hit with like,
four lawsuits immediately.

Universal said
we were infringing

on their
Phantom of the Opera.

I had a company
called Swan Song Records

that was a name
of a real record company.

Our picture
was called Phantom.

We had to change that because
of the Phantom comic strip.

It was very successful
in L.A.

It was very successful
in Canada.

In France, it played
for like, ten years.

But like, New York,
it just died.

I mean, I remember
going to the theater

and like,
there was nobody there.

Finley and I just outside
the theater

looking for a line
that didn't exist.

The whole coming about
of Obsession

happened when
Marty was working

I think on Mean Streets

and I was helping edit
one of the scenes.

The scene where Bobby
comes into the bar

and then he and Harvey talk
in the back room.

- How much you got?
- Charlie, I'm going to pay him

next week,
I'm going to pay ya!

Where ya going,
you don't do nothing.

- How much you got there?
- Schrader came over

and began to play cards

or Schrader lost
a whole bunch of money.

And I said, "Come on,
I'll take you out to dinner."

And that's when
we got the idea

to do Obsession

because
we both seen Vertigo.

They'd recently shown it

at the L.A. County Museum.

The first time
it had been shown

in 20 years or something.

I went home
and wrote up the story

and then Schrader took it on
and did the script.

The original script
of Obsession,

which is called Déjà Vu,
was in three acts.

And there's a whole act
in the future.

So, I got rid
of the third act

which Schrader always
was very unhappy with me.

Well, the tough one
was getting an actor

that could get it
financed.

And we were trying to get

a kind of Hitchcockian
leading man in this.

And finally, we managed to get
Cliff Robertson,

which was not
my first choice,

but that's like, the best guy
we could get for the movie.

And I think the weakness
of the movie is Cliff,

and what the greatness
of the movie is Genevieve.

I mean,
she carries the movie.

Cliff was very difficult
to work with.

And he did things

that I'd never thought
were possible.

He could see that Genevieve
was taking the movie over.

I mean,
we got to a part where

they could hardly
work together

because he was affecting
her performance.

Not only not feeding
her lines well.

"I love you, I feel
very strongly about this.

You mean more"...
I mean, literally, you know,

not giving her anything
to work off of.

He would just start
doing this.

So, her eye line
would be like over here.

Well,
Vilmos lost his temper.

Because, you know,
Cliff always used

this kind of brown,
you know,

he looked like...
Well, this is a guy

that's
supposed to be haunted

by the unfortunate death
of his wife.

He's supposed to be pale.

He's got this brown stuff
on his face.

And I remembered
Vilmos grabbing him once

and literally backing him up
into the mahogany wall

and saying,
"You are the same color

as this wall.

How can I light you?"

That took me many hours
to paper that over.

You about ready to go back
to old U.S. of A., Court?

What is the technique

that will work
for this particular

theatrical event
happening in front of you?

Dionysus gave me the whole
split screen idea

then I went on with
the split diopter idea

from those split screens.

I mean, I edited Dionysus

so I was
constantly putting

two images
against each other.

And I thought,
"Well, how can I do this

in a regular movie?"

You're putting something

very big in the foreground

juxtaposing it against

some other piece
of information

in the background.

I used it in Carrie too
in the classroom

when Billy
is reading his poem

and you see Carrie
at the back of the class.

Then the diopter
sort of cutting

on Billy's hair.

I have long silent sequences
that need to be scored,

so I need
big orchestral scores.

Fortunately, because Benny
was such a genius

9/10ths of it was there

and there was very little
you had to change.

This was the same year
that Benny

was working on Taxi Driver
with Marty.

He conducted the score,

went back to his hotel,
and died.

I was there.

It was like
almost Christmas Eve.

Benny was my first...

One of the greatest composers
ever.

So, I started
at a high point

now I had to find somebody

to pick up
the slack basically.

And I was fortunate enough
to find Pino

because I liked his score
to Don't Look Now.

When I discovered him,
he lived in Venice.

And brought him in
and the first score

he did for me was Carrie.

And then
we did eight more films

after that.

Carrie and Obsession's
the same year,

'76 was a very big year.

Apart from Get to Know
Your Rabbit,

the first ten features I made
were independently financed.

I had
the Orson Welles problems.

I had big ideas.

And I needed a lot
of that stuff.

So, I had to get back
into the system.

And I only managed to do it
again with Carrie.

Carrie came to me
in a steam room

over on 12th Street

where a writer friend
of mine

suggested this book
by Steven King called Carrie.

I discovered it
was at United Artists.

Mike Medavoy
was head of the studio.

He knew who I was
and liked my movies

and that's how
I got the job.

Larry Cohen had written
the script.

It was
in pretty good shape.

But I got rid of the brackets
immediately.

You know, it's all told,

Sue Snell
was being interrogated.

And it's all done
in flashbacks

about what happened.

We kept on coming in
with a budget

of a $1.8 million
and they said,

"We're not making it
at $1.8 million.

It's got to be
$1.6 million."

And I said...
You know, just like

my Get to Know Your Rabbit
experience...

I said,
"Guys, that's what it costs.

It's $1.8 million."

And they said fine.

And then
they started moving

the furniture
out of my office.

The movie
had been cancelled.

So, I went home that weekend
and thought about it.

And I somehow came back
and said,

"You know,
I've been thinking about it.

If we moved this
and changed this around,

maybe we can do it
for $1.6 million.

And they said,
"Great. It's a go."

And of course
it cost $1.8 million.

George and I were casting
Star Wars and Carrie

at the same time.

George was doing like,
a huge cattle call,

because he was looking
at every young actor

in Hollywood.

And I said, "George,

let's do this together.

We're looking
at the same types

of actors.

I think Amy
got pretty close

to playing Princess Leah.

All the data banks in R2

- are still secure.
- And that's where these

two casts came from.

I'd seen a young actress
that was in some movie

about a teenager
that gets pregnant

and has an abortion.

And I was sure
she was like,

perfect for Carrie.

And I had... And I worked
with her very hard.

You know,
because we had to shoot

all these screen tests.

Sissy came to me and asked

if she could try out
because I knew Sissy

from Phantom
because she was

Jack Fisk's girlfriend,

and, you know,
was painting sets.

But then she got a commercial
that same weekend

we were shooting these tests

and said, "Should I go do
the commercial

or stay here and try out?"

And I said "Sissy,
I'm really leaning towards

this other girl but..."

And the studio
didn't even want me

to try out Sissy.

They just thought she was just
physically wrong.

And I... And Sissy said no,
I'll do the tryout.

And of course,
when she did the test

she made everybody
look silly.

I don't know where
I got the idea

for the slow motion
in the shower.

Big problem
with all the nudity

because the girls
are all very self-conscious.

But the fact that we shot
like two days before

with Sissy completely naked
doing all the close-ups,

you know, with the blood
that comes down.

So they figured,
"Hey, if Sissy

can do it... we'll do it."

- Help.

You know,
I get a lot of criticisms

because of these
kind of juxtapositions,

but to me
they seem perfectly logical.

I mean, she has her period.
She's hysterical.

She goes for help
and the girls

basically, you know,

beat her down
in the corner of the shower.

A very difficult scene to do.

That's what Hitchcock
always said.

I mean,
it's always the run-up

to what happens
that's interesting.

And you obviously see
in my movies

the run-up
goes on forever.

Yes, they did.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

You know,
many times I'd be doing

very complicated shots

and nobody would understand

what I was doing.

You know,
that figure eight shot

where, you know, you go
with the ballads,

brings you all the way up
to the side.

You go over the top
of the blood

then zoom back to Sissy
and she gets up.

I give you Tommy Ross

- and Carrie White.

That shot took a day to shoot.

Literally, the head
of the studio came down

and asked what the hell
I was doing.

And it's like, "You want
to shoot this?

Be my guest."

I did grow up
in an operating room.

I saw a lot of blood.

My father was
an orthopedic surgeon.

And I used to go
to the hospital

and watch him operate.

You can't imagine
how much blood

is flying around
in an operating room.

With the sawing
and the wrestling

and it's not
like eye surgery,

it's really physical.

You know, our movie blood

was all some kind of
corn syrup and dye.

This theatrically red.

It isn't like what real blood
is which is brownish.

And when it dries
it's almost completely brown.

When Carrie starts to knock
everybody off,

I shot the whole thing
in split screen.

But what I discovered
was split screen

it is not good for action.

So, Paul Hirsch
and I pulled out

a lot of the split screen.

You see it occasionally.

But it's not good for,
you know,

action, reaction,
action, reaction.

It's too much

of an intellectual form
basically.

Endings
are extremely important

and that was one
of the great endings.

In the wide shot where you see
the traffic in the street

and she walks down
the side

and then goes into
the graveyard.

That we shot backwards.

I wanted it
to look strangely odd.

There was something strange
about it

but you're not
exactly sure what.

There was a similar sequence
in Deliverance.

When Jon Voight
dreams about

the bodies coming up
from the lake

where he's buried them.

I remember
that was quite a...

Quite a shocking moment.

But that's the only thing
I think that could possibly

have gotten me thinking about
the hand out of the grave.

The executives
at United Artists

were very classy.

They had Rocky that year.

And Carrie was like...

was like an AIP picture
to them.

It was like, "Well, it's...

You know,
we'll distribute it,

but let's not talk about it
too much."

Carrie...

A new film
by Brian De Palma.

So, they put it a lot

in a bunch of theaters
on Halloween

expecting it to play
for a week or so whatever.

And then it made
a tremendous amount of money

and they started to take it
more seriously.

But I was always fighting

for, you know,
money for the campaign.

And against all odds,

Sissy and Piper were both
nominated for Oscars.

What's great about Carrie

is they made so many versions
of it now.

And they've made
so many mistakes

that it's wonderful to see
what happens

when somebody takes
a piece of material

and makes all the mistakes
that you avoided.

There's a three-hour
television version

of Carrie, which is exactly
like the book.

Instead of crucifying
Mrs. White

they give her
a heart attack.

And I remembered
in a script meeting

saying,
"This is what happened,

she clutches her heart
and falls down?

That's dramatic."

That's where I came up
with the flying utensils.

Well then, I got offered
another studio picture.

Or a couple...
Just different studios,

and the best one I could get
was The Fury.

We suddenly had
a huge budget,

which was like,
$5 million or something.

Unheard of,
and we suddenly had

all these movie stars,

you know, Cassavetes
and Kirk Douglas,

and I said,
"Wow, let's do this.

I've never
done this before."

Plus, we had a whole bunch of
charming girls in this.

And even though it's kind of
not the movie

you would have top
on your list to make,

there were a lot of things
in it

I really liked.

I liked the scene
where Amy's on the steps

and she touches the scar
in Charlie Durning's hand

and then remembers Robin
being chased up there

and going out the window.

And I loved
the Johnny Williams score.

I thought Johnny did
a great job with the score.

That's one
of my favorite scores,

that score.

I had to do a car chase
in The Fury.

I don't like car chases.

I find them
a very boring thing.

I'm not a car person.

I don't get excited
taking shots

of wheels turning,

point of views
out of windshields

or cars banging into...

It just doesn't do anything
for me.

You know,
you're forced because

of the script
to do certain things.

You have to figure out how
am I going to do this?

And how
can I make it interesting?

And after
The French Connection

there are no car chases.

It's just ridiculous
to even

think about
doing a car chase.

It's the best idea
in the world,

subway, car underneath.

I mean, you know, there's not
a better idea than that.

But I like...
I like Cassavetes

and it was interesting
working with him.

He hated a lot
of what he had to do.

The only time that John
really sort of went ballistic

was when we had to do
a body cast of him

and stick him
in all this gook

for the blowing up
of himself.

He hated that.
Drove him crazy.

You know, it's on the page

and you gotta figure out
how to do it.

But it doesn't come from you
essentially.

You're basically directing
somebody else's ideas.

And you're trying to do
the best that you can.

But it's not one
of my favorite films

by a long shot.

I'm Dennis Bird.
And this is my life.

I had this idea
about the way to teach film

would be to actually make
a low-budget feature.

I decided to try this idea out
at Sarah Lawrence

and see if I could
just teach a class

which consisted of what
you have to do

in order to create
a motion picture feature.

What's the point
of film school

if you don't know how to make
a low-budget movie?

Because that's what
you're going to be

faced with eventually.

I had this idea
based on stories

about my family
and with the class

we developed the script.

- Oh, hi, Dad.
- Hi.

I thought it was
just going to be

"Oh, we'll go
to Sarah Lawrence

and we'll teach this, and..."

Well, it was like
making a movie.

I mean,
it was just as exhausting

as when you make a movie.

Hey! You're zonked out
in your own rushes.

You realize
how dangerous that is?

We had to raise the money.

And of course,
as you know,

when you're raising money

for independent features

you know,
the tax shelter dentist

fell out
at the ninth hour.

And I called up Steven
and George and I said,

"You guys are going
to contribute

some money to this
because... the dentist

just fell out."

I had a couple of people
offering to buy it.

It only cost $300,000.

I was trying to make a deal
with United Artists

but this was the great year

of Cimino's catastrophe
over there.

We finally made a deal
with them

and they opened it up
on 57th Street.

It got some good reviews

and played
for about two weeks.

I bought
The New York Times ad.

What's disappointing about
teaching film

is that, you know, 99% of them
are going nowhere.

Anybody that has a career,
it's a... It's a miracle.

Dressed to Kill
was a very hot script.

And I sold the script
for a million dollars,

which is like,
"Holy mackerel."

It all went
extremely well.

The picture, you know,
previewed well.

It's one of those pictures
where everything worked.

You know, and sometimes I have
these ideas in my head.

And until they gel
into a whole movie,

they sort of circle around.

I'd written a script

based on
the book Cruising,

which ultimately
Billy Friedkin made.

And then, you know,
from my days at Columbia

where my roommate and I

used to go
to the Museum of Modern Art

and look at the pictures
and the pretty girls,

I got this idea
of this pick-up

at the Museum
of Modern Art.

And you know,
this dissatisfied,

you know, housewife

and she's cruising along
and she gets picked up.

And I think it came together
when I finally got

the whole transsexual section
of it.

The idea of
"I'm a woman living

in a man's body."

There's a lot
of macho things there.

This is very common
among transsexuals.

- You find, um...
- You know,

it was sort of perfect
kind of Sisters,

the good half,
the bad half.

The fact when
he gets aroused, you know,

that means his penis
is growing

and he can't be a woman.

Do you find me attractive?

Of course.

Would you want
to sleep with me?

And he's got to stop

whatever is making,
you know, him get aroused

and of course, leads to him
murdering Angie.

There's a big controversy over
Dressed to Kill

because of my fight
with the ratings board.

And that got
into the press.

And I got a lot
of angry protests

because of the violence
against women.

You know,
again it's structured

with, you know, Psycho,

bumping off
the lead character

in the first 20,
30 minutes of the movie.

In the elevator scene,

it's Michael's double
that is slashing Angie.

I just knew
you wouldn't recognize him

with the dark glasses
and the wig and everything,

and I wasn't going to show
that much of him.

And I said, "You know,
why get Michael in this outfit

if you're not really
going to see him."

The whole
Keith Gordon character

came from, you know,

me and my science fair
projects,

and following
people around.

I used to follow
my father around

when he was cheating
on my mother.

I took photographs of him.

You know, could see

a woman going in and out
and stuff like that.

It was all taking place
at his office,

which was down the street
from our house.

And I'd broken
into the office

by ramming my fist
through the glass door.

And I was carry...
I had a knife with me

and I threatened him,
and I said, "Where is she?"

And I had to search
through the office

and I finally found her
in a closet

on the third floor.

Well, he was
a little bit surprised

to say the least.

I mean, you know,
that is me.

I was following around
my father for my mother.

He's following around
the murderer

because his mother
got bumped off.

Yeah!

The waiting
is very important.

You know, so you could
ground yourself.

So the audience
gets very customed

to where everything is.

Well, I got the whole
psychiatrist idea

because that was based on
the psychiatrist I had

when I was first going out
with Nancy.

I met Nancy on Carrie

and we started
to go out together

while I was working
on The Fury, I think.

I thought she was very good
in Carrie

and then I wrote the part
for her in Dressed to Kill.

The story was getting
to the point

where I thought I made
enough movies

with my wife

and what was becoming
kind of a strain

in our relationship.

But John loved working
with her so much

that when we did Blow Out,

it was like,
"Let's do it with Nancy."

The first idea
for Blow Out,

it was a very
low-budget movie

and suddenly,
John wanted to do it,

then the whole movie
changed.

It went from like,
a $5 or $6 million movie

to close
to a $20 million movie.

Well, steadicam
was Vilmos's idea.

I mean, Vilmos knew
about this new camera

and he said,
"Why don't we try it out?"

I mean, we used
to handhold those shots

but I never liked that
kind of shaky camera stuff.

Once the steadicam
came in,

you could work out
these long kind of shots

where you would take
your characters

through environments

and have things
interacting with them.

As I was mixing
Dressed to Kill,

the sound guy
had to go out

and get different...
I kept on saying to him,

"I'm tired of that sound
of wind in the trees.

Could you please
get me something better?"

And then, he would go out
in his backyard

and record
new stuff for me.

So, that concept of him

recording sounds
and then the idea

that the sound he records
is the key to the murder

of the assassination
of the candidate.

And it has, of course,
it has that

little Chappaquiddick
in it.

Was the governor
driving the car?

- Was he in control?
- Control?

It went into the drink,
didn't it?

- He wasn't in no control.
- Was he alone?

- Was he alone in the car?
- Well, I didn't see anybody.

A little of Blow Up.

Putting the pictures
together

that you saw
from the Zapruder film,

syncing it with the sound
is what we do

in the editing room.

Having sunk up
so many movies myself,

all that stuff
sort of came together

and the whole idea
of using the techniques

of making the film
in making the film.

- Kill it.
- I was a big

assassination buff
and I read all the books

about the assassination.

What's interesting about
the Kennedy assassination

is it's the most intense
investigation ever done.

No murder was ever
investigated like this

in the history of crime.

But Blow Out gets down

to somebody
trying to find out

what actually happened,
and my conclusion was

even if
they could figure out

who was
on the grassy knoll,

no would care anymore.

The thing about
the 360 shot

was I wanted to create

the sense
of a reel of tape turning,

so I made the camera turn

as of all the reels
of tape turning.

And every time we made
a revolution around the room,

more stuff was erased.

Vilmos and I were peering
over the set.

The camera operator
was running around

panning the camera
360 degrees.

Nobody saw the movie
until it was finished

because I had a lot of power
off of Dressed to Kill.

When they saw that ending,
oh, it died.

I'll never forget,
we showed it

to the executives,
they just were like, appalled.

You know,
many of my movies

which were considered
great disasters at the time.

You know, there was
no bigger disaster

than Blow Out.

It's always surprising.

You always think
they're gonna come...

Come out
and see your movies

even as odd as they ultimately
wind up being.

When you take in a... A very
moving, emotional experience

like the death of a girl
he put into jeopardy,

and you use her cry
in a, you know,

tawdry horror picture.

I guess
I got the idea of that,

you know,
when you cut soundtracks

and you're doing footsteps,
you put all the fill

in-between each
of the magnetic tracks.

Well, when I picked up
the fill once

and it was like
Lawrence of Arabia.

And I said,
"My God, Lawrence of Arabia

is being used as fill."

Oh, jerk.

Now, that's a scream.

- A track, you know.
- But

all that suffering
is just reduced to

a scream
that's put on a soundtrack.

That's wonderful.

That moves me
every time I see it.

The way John
plays the scene.

"It's a good scream.
It's a good scream."

It's a good scream.

It's a good scream.

It's a good scream.

Say hello
to my little friend!

Most of my movies
are about megalomania

and guys living
in insulated universes

and the crazy things
that happen

within those
insulated universes,

which is something
that continues

to fascinate me.

Marty Bregman came to me

because Al wanted to do
a version of Scarface.

And the original idea
for Scarface

was to do Al Capone,
Chicago.

Marty told me
that he and Al

wanted to develop a script
with David Rabe

and I had recently worked
with David Rabe

developing a script,
Prince of the City,

on a corrupt
narcotics cop,

that I ultimately
didn't get to make.

But we had spent a year
working on the script,

so I was very familiar

with working with David
and his process.

David, when we started to do
the script

said, "I will do the script

but I don't want
to have to work

with Bregman and Al.

We'll do it together
like we did

Prince of the City.

And then Al
came to meet with me

to see
how things were going

and I explained to him
how it was going

and I got a call from Bregman
later that night

saying Al's all upset
about the script.

He wants to have a meeting
with David tomorrow.

I told Marty Bregman
David will quit

if I ask him
to come to a meeting.

I couldn't convince him
that David would quit,

so I called David up

and I said
they want to meet tomorrow

about the script,
and David says I quit.

You know,
I came up with an era

that you went down
with the writer.

If the writer got fired,
you walked.

You didn't say,
"Well, let's get

three or four more writers
that you happen to like."

So, I called up Bregman
the next day

and said "I'm sorry,

this doesn't look like
it's going to work out.

I can't do the movie."

And then they hired Sidney
and Oliver

and Sidney and Oliver came up
with the whole, you know,

Cuban Scarface
set in South Florida.

Well, the terrible irony
of that is

that I developed the script
of Prince of the City,

which I thought
was a great script.

I spent a year and a half
with Bob Lucy,

the cop
that it's all based on.

And when Matt
got interested in it

and through another writer,
wanted to do the project

and the United Artists people
fired us.

The next thing I knew Sidney
and Matt was making the movie

with somebody else.

So, I feel Sidney
had basically,

you know, stolen this movie
from me.

And the irony, of course,
is a year later

they offer me the movie
that Sidney had developed.

Well, first we started
in Florida

and got run out
by the Cubans.

They just ran us
out of town.

They didn't like the...
What the script was about.

They thought we were making
all Cubans gangsters.

I was there for months,
you know, scouting things

and... And then
we ultimately had

to pull the whole picture back
to California.

And I said
I wanted to have this

very acrylic
tropical look.

I don't want
these Godfather gangsters

where everybody's, you know,
with dark rooms

and you can hardly
see anything.

This should be bright.
This is Miami.

And white suits, pastels.

So, I had a very strong idea
of what it should look like.

Well, what happened when
we were doing this shoot-out,

Al grabbed his gun
and grabbed it by the barrel,

which was red hot,

and seared his hand.

And he had to go
to the hospital

and we couldn't shoot
with him

for two weeks, so it...

So basically, I had two weeks
to shoot everything but Al.

So, needless to say,
I shot every conceivable way.

If somebody could shoot
at somebody else

while I was waiting
for my star to return.

Steven wandered over.
We did a few shots.

"What do you think
about this Steve?

Should we put
another camera up here?

Why not?"

I mean,
everybody was shooting.

People shooting at people.

I'm working
as an interpretive director.

Oliver had directed
one movie,

and he felt
that I wasn't doing the movie

the way
he wanted to do it.

And I ultimately
had to have him

taken off the set.

Because he was talking
to the actors.

You can't have an actor

getting two different
points of view

from two different people.

It just confuses them.

They need a single voice.

Script's all based
on real material.

You know, Oliver almost
got killed researching.

They thought
he was some kind of narc.

You know, he went into
really dangerous territory.

And I wanted that
reflected in the movie.

I mean,
this was a dangerous level

of mob violence

that they had never seen
before.

I had been battling
with the ratings board

since Greetings.

And it came to a conclusion
over Scarface.

I submitted it three times
and it kept on getting X's

and then I said, "Absolutely,
I'm not changing it anymore."

And everybody
was very unhappy with me.

And what I did
that really drove them

all crazy, which is always

the big controversy
on Scarface,

is that I put everything
back in.

Because I said if I'm going
to get an X on version three,

I'm going
with the original version.

It's all X to me.

I never showed the chainsaw
cutting into the flesh.

We had it there to do

but it was always as soon

as the chainsaw goes down
it pans away from it.

The audience half loved it
and half hated it.

Very controversial.

Have the leg, huh?

And everybody thought

Scarface
was about Hollywood.

And they just really
disliked it.

It did... It did good.
It didn't do great.

But, you know,
it wasn't like a breakaway hit

but it, you know, it was...

It was
commercially successful.

A decade or so later,

it found its audience
with the hip-hop generation.

Well, since I'm not
a big fan of hip-hop

I knew nothing about it

until people
basically told me about it.

Universal came to me
and asked if I would approve

a hip-hop soundtrack
to Scarface,

and I said absolutely not.

It's something that gets
into the music culture,

the hip-hop culture

and then
into the game culture.

Now, somehow
I'm a hot director.

I don't know why.

It didn't really make
that much money,

but I developed this script
called Act of Vengeance,

which Paramount
seemed very excited by.

And I think,
"Wow! They're going

to actually make
this movie.

And Don Simpson
calls me up the next day

and says,
"I got one word for you."

And I said, "What?"

And he said, "Flashdance."

So, I said,
"What about Flashdance?"

And then he said,
"We want you

to do Flashdance."

I said what about
Act of Vengeance?

He said, "No, no,
we're not really."

I was so irritated at them

that I made them pay me

a lot of money
to do Flashdance.

I wanted to really
run up a big deal

and then
I walked away from it.

I had this
Body Double idea,

so I made a deal
with Columbia.

I had an office.
I had a parking space.

You know,
my marriage broke up,

so I was living out
in California.

So, this sounded like
this would be fun to do.

First I get this
whole kind of, you know,

elaborate visual
and story construction.

A bit of Dressed to Kill.

A little bit
of Rear Window.

A bit of Vertigo.

The story tells
about playing sardine

and being
behind the icebox.

You know, a lot of the stuff
in the movie

comes from obviously
stuff I've lived.

I mean, I played sardine
with my brothers

and I did get caught
behind an icebox.

I was in acting classes

where you would see people
break down on stage

as the acting teacher

tried to unlock
their emotions.

The way you people
make movies,

which you start with character
and build outward.

I start with construction
and then fill it in.

I'm driven
by unrealistic ideas.

You have to get the actors
to ground it

and try to make it
seem real,

so you got to get the audience
and grounded with the actor.

Then the whole
Holly Body character.

I wanted to use somebody

that would be used
to doing nudity.

So, I thought, "Well why not
get a porn star?"

I'd become very close
to Annette Haven

who was
a fascinating character

because she was
an adult actress, entertainer.

I basically created
the whole character

based around Annette.

She'd never
of course auditioned

for a movie in her life.

It was all news to her.

It was a big scandal

when I wanted
to test Annette

because Annette
was a porn star

and the head
of the studio heard

I was testing a porn star
down on stage 7.

Then they said to me,
"You can't do that."

This is when Columbia
was owned

by the Coca-Cola Company.

And I said,
"Sorry, I'm doing it."

And I did.
I tested her and Melanie.

I couldn't get anybody else
to do the part basically.

There was so much nudity.

The big thing
that came out

of Body Double
was Melanie.

That's what
everybody wrote about.

And I had all this material
from Annette.

All those stories
all came from Annette.

I do not do animal acts.

I do not do S&M
or any variations

of that particular bent,

no water sports either.

I will not shave my pussy,

no fist-fucking and absolutely
no coming in my face.

And thus,
she studied Annette.

We had Annette come down
and she was on the set.

She was the bright spot
in the movie

that everybody sort of felt
very happy about.

After beating me down,

all they could talk about
was Melanie.

You got to get the witness
to watch

what you want them to see.

Best way to do that
is have a woman undressing.

And once
you've got that person

watching there,
then you can stage the murder

to make him the witness
to what you want them to see.

I wanted to do
a really long walk.

A long following sequence

like, sort of an extension
of the museum walk

in Dressed to Kill.

I mean,
I think Body Double

has like,
the longest walk in cinema.

I love
photographing women.

I'm fascinated
by the way they move.

I love to follow them.

I love to make the audience

get involved
in their dilemmas.

This was the era you put
a pop song in and made a video

that would promote
the movie.

So, then I thought, "Well,
I'll just put the video

into the movie."

You got to understand that
I was producing the picture.

It was, you know,
like I could do anything.

They gave me like a...

I had like a carte blanche

to make this movie.

And it was all great,
of course, until they saw it.

I will never forget
the press screening

for Body Double.

The head
of the public relations

calls me up and says,

"They are going to kill you
tomorrow."

Hello?

- I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

Please...

Could you please tell me
the nature of your emergency?

- I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

My graphic sensibilities

had angered women's groups
in the past.

You know, and here
I drilled a woman

with a...
A rather long drill.

"They are going to kill you
tomorrow."

I'll never forget
that phone call.

Why was the drill bit
so big?

Well, it had to go
through the floor.

You know, we never see
the drill bit go into her.

It had to go
through the floor

so he could see it
while he was, you know...

It made perfect sense
to me

but you know when you do

some of these things,
you know,

they make perfect,
logical sense to you

and then you put them
in front of an audience

they go, "Holy cow.

That's just too much."

Well,
it didn't occur to me

to be too much.

I thought it was perfect.

You've always got
to realize

you're being criticized
against

the fashion of the day.

And when... And when
the fashion changes,

everybody forgets
about that.

As I told you before,

I don't know how many people
come to me...

Up to me and talk about
Body Double, you know.

And all the stuff
that people were yelling about

when it came out
is like completely forgotten.

Let's try to make
one thing clear

in director's careers,

we don't plan them out.

We happen to be working
on one thing

and then
another thing happens

and then
another thing's delayed.

And we do the thing
that we can do at the time.

I knew Jon Landau.

He was managing
Bruce Springsteen.

So, Jon came to me
and he said,

"Can you think of something
to do?"

And then I got this idea
of pulling this girl out

of the audience
to dance with him.

That's where Courteney Cox
came from.

After the disaster
of Body Double,

you start thinking about
what you're doing

and why are you getting
these kind of reactions.

So, it was like,
"I got to do something

completely different."

I hadn't done a comedy
in a long time.

And I really liked
Danny DeVito.

He was attached
to the movie.

It's very difficult
to make a movie

where
the studio administration

did not sponsor it
initially.

We got through it.

They didn't want
to release it.

They didn't like
the previews.

It was just a struggle
all the way through.

I liked it.
It was a lot of fun.

It was
a cute little comedy.

It got some
very good reviews,

so a lot of people
really liked it.

No, no my friend.

Thank you Mr. Acavano.

In the 80's,
I was working all the time.

You know,
I was writing scripts.

I was selling things.

Some would get made.
Some wouldn't.

Then I got involved
with developing

Fatal Attraction.

I was not sold on the way

the script was going
and I said, "I'm out."

Fortunately,
about 24 hours later,

somebody over
at Paramount suggested me

to do The Untouchables.

Art developed the script
before I arrived

and the three of us
worked on the script

after that.

Well, first we had to find
Elliott Ness.

And I wanted to use
Don Johnson

because I knew Don

and he was very big
in Miami Vice now.

And Art felt very strongly
about Kevin.

And then
I called Spielberg,

I called Larry Kasdan,

who had all worked
with Kevin before,

to reassure me
about this guy's

going to carry
the whole movie.

So, they said yes,
this guy's

going to be something.

Feel confident.

Then we had Bob Hoskins
playing Al Capone.

And then we got Sean in

because Sean is always looking
for things

to get him out
of his James Bond character.

And I saw Andy Garcia
in 8 Million Ways to Die.

And I was down in Chicago,
you know, with my boards

and figuring out
how we're going

to shoot all this stuff.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking

we've got this movie
except we...

It's to me, it's like a...

Some kind of sophisticated
English playhouse theater.

We need an American
gangster actor.

What draws my admiration?

What is that
which gives me joy?

Baseball.

Bobby takes a long time

to decide to do things.

You go out
to dinner with him.

You talk about the script.

And it took many,
many weeks

until he finally said,
"Yeah,

I think that we can make
this work."

Except the last thing
Bobby said to me was,

"It's going
to be expensive."

And it was
extremely expensive.

Well, it's a little different
with the movie stars

that you've
kind of discovered.

The thing about Bobby
is that

I've known him, like,
what, since the mid-60's.

On The Untouchables,

Bobby was not
learning his lines.

And I just went with him

to when he was
putting his make-up on

and I would
rehearse these lines

over and over again
with him

until he knew them.

Plus he had
to put on some weight

to play Al Capone

and he had his hair
shaved back.

He wore
the kind of silk underwear

that Al Capone wore.

You never saw it,
but he had it on.

1634 Racine.

You know,
I used to have a friend

who lived there.

What's good about a sequence

for a composer is that
you give him this thing

that builds up
cinematically

that works very well
with something emotional

in the music.

You give him the time
and the space

to develop that thing
in the music

that really connects
with the audience.

- No!
- Morricone

is like one
of those composers

that's impossible to get

and I was very lucky
to get him.

He looks at the movie

and then we went back
to a studio

and he just played
four themes.

Four of which were like
right on the nose.

And then, I told you,
the fifth one...

He sent me about six, seven,
eight or nine versions

before I said,
"Ah, that's it."

I think it was

the "duddle-lun-dun-dun"
thing.

Normally when I set up
those sequences

and with the music
and everything,

they're very emotional
and they do work.

The Odessa Steps sequence
was done...

Was because Mamet refused
to write anything more

after we couldn't afford
the train chase.

I said to Eric,
my location manager,

find me a staircase.

I had Battleship Potemkin
in mind.

The whole idea
of a baby carriage

going down a staircase

in the midst
of a shoot-out

and I just made it up
as I went along.

My baby!

The sequences
inspire the composer.

You want to pair back
the sound effects

and just use them to underline
certain things.

Because you've got
97 tracks now,

you put all this
sort of stuff on,

it gets in the way
of the music.

Very seldom the composers
have the chance

to develop
something musically

that's not constantly
getting contradicted

by the dialogue
and the effects.

I constantly
have all these,

you know,
techniques in my brain

and I'm trying to figure out,
"Well, can I use

this here,
is this the best way

to use this?"

It's the old
horror techniques.

The point of view shot
following somebody around.

You know
how I feel about coverage.

"Oh, take a wide shot.
Guy walks up to house.

Guy goes through a window.
Guy hides behind victrola."

I mean, you're going,
"Boy, is that interesting."

I'm always trying
to find a way

to visually
make the thing exciting.

Isn't that just
like a woppie.

Brings a knife
to a gunfight.

Get out of here,
you dago bastard!

Go on, get your ass
out of here!

Well, when I put
all those hits on Sean,

he was so mad at me.

He'd never had hits
put on him before.

I said, "You're James Bond
and you've never been shot?"

No. And he'd gotten some dust
in his eye.

They took him to the hospital
immediately,

and I had to beg him

to come back
and do a second take.

He hated it.

We were very concerned
because

we had some bad numbers
about interest

and who was going
to show up.

And our big competition
was that movie

where John Lithgow
lives with

some kind of monster
in the house.

Everybody thought
Harry and the Hendersons

was going to be huge.

And we kind of blew
everybody away

the first weekend.

You know, The Untouchables

was another one
of those magical movies.

And very few happen
in your career.

Then I get to make a movie
that nobody wanted to make.

This is the one, sarge.
She's the pretty one.

Take the pretty one.

I always felt
that Casualties of War

was the best story
about the Vietnam War.

It was a great piece
of journalism.

It had a really dramatic arc
to it.

It felt very much
the way I feel

about these type of wars

that we get into
and nobody knows why.

To me, it's a metaphor
for what we're doing.

We are raping
these countries.

This is a weapon.

This is a gun.

And then you have a...

You know, a real incident

in which an innocent
is raped and killed.

This is what we're doing.

And we don't ever want
to admit it.

Nobody ever
talks about it anymore.

We don't understand
these people.

We don't understand
their culture.

We're being fed a lot
of mumbo jumbo of the reasons...

That's important
for our country's

self-interest to be there

that makes absolutely no sense
whatsoever.

And no wonder
these people,

these soldiers trying to do
the right thing,

go crazy.

People have been
trying to make

Casualties of War

since the early 70's.

It's one of these properties
that was bought,

developed, sat on a shelf,

bought, developed,
sat on a shelf.

Fortunately,
Dawn had left Paramount

and became
head of Columbia,

and she was looking
for a project

with a lot of big names.

And Dawn used to run
Michael J. Fox's company

and she got Michael interested
in playing Erickson.

Which is the only way
the movie

would have ever
gotten made.

See, these people here.

They confuse themselves,

are they Kong
are they not Kong.

Sean came up with this

very kind of macho
Brooklyn guy.

And was literally
the sarge.

I mean,
he treated the other actors

like they were
in his squad.

He never talked
to Michael.

His attitude
about him was like

how he felt about him
in the movie.

Erickson here
don't wanna ball the dink.

- How come?
- I don't know.

- He's a chicken shit.
- Is that it?

Is that your problem,
Erickson?

Michael's
a very amiable guy,

and he felt very much
like an outsider.

You know, because of Sean
and his guys.

But it worked very well
for the movie.

There was a moment
in the movie

where Michael hits Clark
with a shovel.

And Sean's
kind of taunting him,

you know, with that
wise-ass look he's got.

And we did
a couple of takes.

And then Sean walked up
to Michael J.

and knocked him
to the ground.

Just knocked him down.

And I thought Michael
was going to kill him.

And then
we shot the scene.

It did bring something out
of Michael

but that... That he was having
some difficulty getting to.

I mean,
he had all that anger

and then just Sean
just pushed it

right over the top.

And then whispers to him
when he leaves,

you know, about payback.

I think he whispered once
to him,

"Television actor."

Good old Sean.
Very exciting to work with.

It... It was a very
difficult movie to make.

With the weather
and the heat.

And to understand Vietnam,

you've got to understand
the terrain.

You got to understand
the heat.

Once you get the heat,

you can't imagine how that
affects the way you think.

Then Thailand, I built
the whole jungle set

because, the jungle,
you walk three paces

and you could be anywhere.

There's no orientation
in the jungle.

So, I said,
"Let's build a jungle set

and just basically move
the trees around."

And Dawn actually traveled
all the way there.

I think she lasted
about five hours

and got in a plane
and went home.

It was awful.

I wanted to have that sense

that if you thought things
were bad above ground,

you should see
what was going on

below ground.

And the only way to do that
is to crane directly down

and show a cutaway
of the tunnel

and the threat
moving through it,

like an ant colony.

Well, Columbia made me
preview the movie

but the previews
don't really help much at all.

You get all this pressure
to do things

and in retrospect,
you regret it terribly.

At the end
of Casualties of War

I took out a couple
of the interrogation scenes.

Especially the one
where they...

They ripped Michael apart

on the stand
by the defense attorney.

Isn't it true that what
you went out to do

is to figure out
how to use this incident

to get the hell out
of the infantry?

Objection.
- Can you find...

And I took that thing out.

I ultimately put it back
in the revised version

because
if you put anything

that makes the audience
react too strongly,

they want you
to take it out.

My movies tend
to upset people a lot

so you can imagine
the things

they're trying to take out
of my movies.

And I have to fight them
tooth and nail.

A preview
for this kind of movie

really doesn't
tell you anything.

I mean, the material
is so emotional

and so depressing.

What's a preview
going to tell you?

I don't want
to see the movie?

It disturbed me too much.

I don't know what
to tell my friends?

I find it hard
to look at it myself

when you deal with material
that's very heartbreaking.

And you got to go to a mix

and look at that stuff over
and over again.

It's like The Best Years
of Our Lives

was on television
the other day.

There's an hour
of those poor guys, you know,

just trying to adjust
to where they are.

I mean, how do you look

at that movie,
it's so upsetting.

Imagine making it.

That's the feelings I have

on Casualties of War.

Pauline wrote
a great review.

But it didn't do well

and there were a lot
of mixed reviews, you know.

Nobody went to see it.

It was
a terrible disappointment.

After all that work
and it was a lot of work.

- There he is.
- There he is.

Let's go!

People never thought

I understood the book.

I understood the book
perfectly.

Warners came to me
with Bonfire of the Vanities.

And it was a chance
to go back to New York,

make a big studio picture
and, you know,

you go to work sometimes

just so you don't
have to think.

You see, my problem with
Bonfire of the Vanities is

it should have been like
The Magnificent Ambersons.

You know, Sherman McCoy
is basically an asshole.

Much like the lead character
in Ambersons,

who destroys everything
because of his arrogance.

And that's the way the movie
should've been.

But then we wound up
with Tom Hanks

and so, I think
I'll take a gamble,

try to make him nicer.

Just don't want to do
anything stupid.

If we keep our heads
we'll be perfectly fine.

Oh, Jesus Christ, Sherman.

We're in the middle
of a damn war zone

and you're worried about
doing the right thing?

I had all these
sort of thoughts in my mind.

This is a very big,
expensive movie.

I knew
what could go wrong with it.

It could go the way
of the Welles picture

and it could also go the way
of Sweet Smell of Success.

The greatest picture
Mackendrick ever made

and it basically put him out
of the business.

You want some cheap,
gruesome gags?

You print them, don't you?

Bonfire should have been
that tough.

That cynical.

But I said
if I make that picture

it's going to be
a career ender.

Like Welles,
like Mackendrick,

I'm going to be
like, unemployable.

And the irony is
it still bombed.

It should have been tougher,
harder.

Everybody that read the book
hated the movie.

The problem of working
in the Hollywood system

is the people are paid
a lot of money

to get you to do
what they want you to do.

That's why
they have those jobs.

And you can lose your way

and go along
with their concepts.

I mean, I've never seen stacks
of notes from the studio.

That was like you know,
"Wow."

I made a lot of compromises
and it was disaster.

And Julie Salamon wrote
every move in it.

I feel the movie, by itself,
stands up perfectly fine.

Nothing wrong with the movie,
just don't read the book.

I was leveled by the response
to Bonfire of the Vanities.

Catastrophe.

Time to leave town.

So, I got married.

I had a child.

And I went back to a genre

that I had developed
in the 70's.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

My wife made a deal
at Universal

for us to make
a movie together.

I had two ideas basically.

One was a multiple personality
character.

And many years before,

I was having a relationship
with a woman that was married.

And she used to come by
after work

and, you know,
we would make love

and because she was tired
she'd fall asleep.

And I remember
watching her sleeping

thinking,
"What would happen

if I just let her sleep
all night?

How would you explain that
to your husband?"

Oh, my God.

But the problem was that
the Lolita Davidovich story

which should have been

the first story
in Raising Cain,

not the John Lithgow story

with
the kidnapping children

and
the multiple personalities.

That's what's supposed
to emerge later.

It should have started
with her

going to the shop
to buy the clocks.

She meets Steven Bauer.

But when I was putting
the movie together,

the John Lithgow stuff
was so strong

and the sort of... I guess

you'd say
soap opera love story

was not
the strongest element.

I had to pull
the whole John Lithgow stuff

forward into the movie.

And that's why it has
a particular oddness to it.

Because it's not put together
the way it was conceived.

I don't know why I always cast
John Lithgow as villains.

It's like,
Why did Billy Wilder

always cast Fred MacMurray
as a villain

when everybody else wanted him
as the professor in Flubber.

And it was all shot
in our backyard.

I mean, all the locations
are around the corner

from where we live.

Gale and I got houses
up there.

Lolita was born,
my daughter,

and we were literally
walking

outside the house
and shooting.

It was one of my most
financially successful movies

because I had like, 10%

of the gross
from the first dollar.

It's interesting to look
at the movie now

because it's like
a family album.

Where's Daddy?

Daddy's not here, sweetie.
He's gone away.

Daddy's here.

No, he's not.

Come on, honey,
we've got to get back.

Come to Mommy.

Gale and I fell together

at a certain time
in our lives

and then basically
went back to the lives

that we hadn't finished.

And we had
this remarkable daughter

in the process.

So, it worked out
rather well

as strange as it may seem.

That's when I got
the Carlito's Way script.

And I thought,
"Oh, boy, here we go.

Al Pacino,
Spanish speaking gangsters."

But the script was so good
when I finally read it

I said,
"I know how to make this

into a great movie."

Dick Sylbert
is one of the great

production designers.

A magical guy
to work with.

The idea of the club
being like a boat

came from the first
exterior location we found

which was a night club
that was

in the shape of a boat.

So then,
Dick designed the interior

to go with that exterior.

And of course
what happened

was that we lost
the location.

So, we didn't have
that boat-like exterior,

but then it became an image
for Carlito

going to the Caribbean.

Sean, he did that hair thing,
just surprised us all.

I had no idea
he was going to come back

with the frizzed
shave backed head.

Look at you. Huh?

Really made something
of your life.

You know, I don't know

if you've had this experience
with actors

but there's one scene
they fixate on,

and that was
the hospital scene

in Carlito's Way.

We were rewriting
that scene

to the day we shot it,

and they were still unhappy
with it.

Relax, Dave.
It's your pal.

We've got to get
all the mechanics

of this movie-making
out of the way

so the actors can act.

If I see something
that's distracting somebody

or making them lose
their concentration,

you got to get to it
and get it out of their way.

Being a director
is being a watcher

in the sense that you have
a lot of egos in the room.

And you have
to sort of watch

how they interact
with each other.

Because when
you're on a set

you're basically
concentrating

on what's happening
at the moment

and you've got
to look at everything.

You don't have time, you know,
say, "How's the coffee?"

Or "Did you have
a nice night last night?"

Your job as a director
is to get the movie made.

You know,
if somebody loses their temper

or you lose your temper,

everything stops.

You know,
that chase we shot

like, in the depths
of the summer

and I was trying to get
this shot from train to train.

And of course,
Al's wearing this

very heavy leather jacket.

Now, it's, you know,
110 degrees

in the subway
in the middle of the summer.

And I'm in one train,
you know,

trying to get a shot
of him

racing through
the other train

being followed
by these guys

and of course,
you're going train to train

and then you've got
all the posts.

And do you... Is your train
going fast enough

to just hold him in the shot
or does it get like this?

So, we literally tried to get
this shot all night.

And Al is running up and down
this train.

And finally, it was about
I don't know,

4:00 in the morning
and suddenly the train

that's Al in,

suddenly keeps going.

Just disappears.

And I said to my AD, Chris,
I said, "What happened?"

And he said,
"Al took the train home.

And he thinks
you're crazy.

He doesn't know
what you're doing."

So, I had to get
in my train

and go back to where
Al's train was.

And I went up to Al's trailer
and he's like, red

because he's been sweating

with his coat,
you know, for hours.

And he says,
"What are you doing?"

You have to deal
with what happens on the day.

And of course,
adjust your vision

and come up with something
that works

and maybe something
that's better.

I had
elaborate storyboards

of this whole shoot-out
on the escalators

that were
in the World Trade Center

that went down
to the subway.

I'd spent weeks
and weeks photographing.

And I had
an architectural program

and I built everybody
in all the positions.

And then about
a couple of days

before we were
supposed to shoot it,

they blew it up.

The first
terrorist attack.

So then, everybody said,
"What are we going to do?"

And I said, "Suppose he goes
to Grand Central Station

and gets on a train
to go to Florida.

So, we'll do it
in Grand Central Station."

And then I worked out
that incredibly complicated

steadicam shot with Al.

Hey, Vinnie.

Vinnie, wait up.

The thing you learn
about the long take

is that you can document
the emotion

happening on the screen
in real time.

And once you start cutting
things up,

you lose the emotional rhythm
of things.

He ain't up here,
let's go down.

- Come on.
- The whole way

the movie is set up
with the death

being a flashback
was an idea, you know,

from the 27,000 noire pictures
I'd ever seen.

That extremely tricky
opening shot

which we had to, you know,

design a piece of equipment
to do.

You would wind up going
the wrong direction once,

so it's not how
you usually operate things.

We had to do this many times
to get it right.

I wanted to get back
to the same scene

with the audience
not realizing it.

I wanted, you know,
do a whole thing

where it comes
all the way back

to the beginning
but you don't realize

you're in that scene
until you're like,

halfway into it
and you go,

"Oh my God,
I've been here before.

Again, it was getting
kind of mixed review,

you know,
tired genre gangsters.

You know, and I was
kind of very disappointed

because I never...

When I went to Berlin

and I was watching it
in Berlin

after it opened
and did okay

in the United States,

I remember
watching in Berlin

and said, "I can't make...

I can't make
a better picture

than this."

Again,
it's a matter of being

in the right place
at the right time.

Mike Ovitz called me up
and said,

"You interested
in doing Mission: Impossible

with Tom Cruise?"

I said, "Are you kidding?

Of course."

Because I was...
I was determined

to make a huge hit.

I said, "With Tom Cruise?

Mission: Impossible?
I'm ready."

So, this was a situation

where whatever Tom
wanted to do

they would make.

They didn't care.

They just want
to make Tom Cruise

in Mission: Impossible.

Tom, on the other hand,

of course,
his first picture

he's producing,
wanted it to be exactly right.

So, I got a hold
of David Koepp

who wrote Carlito's Way
to do the script.

When we got through
the David Koepp script

and they liked the script,
Tom of course had...

He had things,
character things,

that were bothering him,
he wasn't happy with.

I said,
"Tom, you've got to walk

into Shari's office
with me

and say you want
to make this movie

or we're going nowhere."

And I finally got him
to say yes he'd make...

He would make this script.

The next phone call
I got the next morning

was a call from Paula

and she said, "The good news
is we're go picture.

The bad news is
we're firing David Koepp

and we're bringing on
Robert Towne.

Tom felt
that Towne could bring

some character things
to it.

Well,
how do you convey this

to your... pal?

"Dave, the good news is
we're making the picture.

The bad news is
you're fired."

So, we're getting
to make the movie,

but I'm keeping in touch
with Dave.

I'm telling him everything
that's going on.

I'm not happy with what
Bob Towne is doing.

Towne's attitude basically was
to rewrite the whole script,

which was wrong.

And I'm getting
to a point where

we're building sets
and we don't know

if these are in the movie
or not.

What happened
ultimately was that

I had made it
quite evident to them

that we could not go
with this Towne script.

Dave had to come back
and rewrite the script.

I literally had
one screenwriter

in one hotel
and another screenwriter

in another hotel
writing simultaneously.

Never in my history
of making movies

has this ever
happened to me.

Mission: Impossible
was originally set

in the United States
and I said,

"Tom, this is
Mission: Impossible.

We can go
all over the world."

You know, there are these
big, huge movie stars

in all these countries
who are dying to be in this.

Because Tom wanted to star
in Mission: Impossible

and because
Mission: Impossible

is basically about
a team of specialists.

Now, we've got to turn this
into a Tom Cruise movie.

So, I said,
"Well the first thing

we have to do is kill off

the whole team."

I saw Tom Cruise

and three incredible
set pieces.

Most spy thrillers
are crime thrillers

where you have a lot

of interesting
character scenes

where you're kind of
unwrapping the onion.

Wrapping, another wrapping,
oh, and you find out,

then you go over there
and you find som...

Oh, but he really was...

You know,
all this sort of stuff.

But that isn't essentially
something you can put

into a great
visual set piece.

I mean,
the whole idea of McGuffin

just doesn't make
any difference

what they're chasing after.

He has stolen one half
of a CIA knock list,

record of all
our deep cover agents

- working in Eastern...
- Our little treasure here

has a belly full
of microfilm.

Before we can get them moving.

Oh, Mount Rushmore.

What a great place
to have a chase scene.

How do I get them
to Mount Rushmore?

You get a really strong
visual idea.

And then get the writer
to come in

or yourself
to figure it out

to fill in the character

that will get you
to Mount Rushmore.

And I came up
with the idea

of going into the CIA
and the silent sequence.

Getting the knock list
out of the computer.

Catching the sweat,
all that stuff.

I had worked out

this very elaborate
end sequence

with this helicopter chasing
the train into the tunnel.

And Towne had thought
that it should be resolved

with this pulling masks off
in the boxcar room.

And we were getting
into a big...

How should I say,
conflict over it.

I said, "You can't end
Mission: Impossible

with people pulling masks off
in a boxcar."

And then, I think Towne said,
"You know, like,

what are we going to have,
helicopters

flying into tunnels
or something?"

I mean, brushing off
all these pyrotechnics

as some kind of cheap
action sequence

that had no emotional
or character thrust to it.

So, we were basically
sort of arguing

in front of Tom

and I finally said,
"Okay, guys.

Boxcars, I love them.

Masks pulling off,
let's do it.

I'll throw out... I won't have
to shoot all this helicopter

and tunnels and trains.

We'll just have this wonderful
three-character scene

in the boxcar.

It'll be fantastic."

And I sort of left.

And Tom basically decided
that he thought

that maybe the action end
of the movie

would be better
than the boxcars.

So, we had
an abbreviated scene

in the boxcar.

And then we got
on top of the train

and did the end sequence.

We built three cars,

and it's all green screen
and, you know,

all the ILM guys
were there.

You know, putting marks
all over everything.

Very easy to make
because I have all this

technical background.

Here's... Here's
a very bad thing

that's going on now,

in relation to sort of
the action sequences.

And this is why
they're so boring

and in so many
of these big movies

is that
they're pre-visualized.

Otherwise,
well, we have the chase,

the car, and the dinosaur
jumps over.

And they throw it over
to the...

To the, you know,
ILM, whoever does it.

And the guys
pre-visualize it for you

because the shots
are so expensive.

And they've got it all
on their computers,

so what are you
going to get?

Many visual clichés.

Something blowing up

and it coming right by
the camera.

All these little things
they have in their computers.

Mission: Impossible's
like The Untouchables.

I mean, it was like...
It worked.

Dressed to Kill, it worked.
Everything worked.

Everybody was overjoyed
with it.

They all knew
it was going to be a huge hit.

And they basically
left us alone.

I had the biggest hit
of my career

but unfortunately,
my marriage fell apart

and it was in the tabloids,
so I went into hiding.

And from there,
in New York,

I started to come up
with the idea

with David for Snake Eyes.

I always want to do something
in a casino.

It's a whole insular life
and it's a corrupt world.

See, when we have
these little visits,

- I allow you, I permit you...
- Ow!

...I give you the opportunity
to pay

for all the extra police work
that you create.

And doing this incredibly
complicated steadicam shot

where it goes on for,
I don't know, 16, 18 minutes,

you know, with all these cuts
buried and swish pans.

So, you get a sense
of the world

that he is king of

before the secretary
is assassinated.

We got this
kind of Rashomon idea

that I always
wanted to do.

And we have to see it

from three different
points of view.

Which is always something
that fascinates one.

You know, again,
this is a very

Hitchcockian thing.

I had this idea,

well, I'll just show
the prize fight

from Nick Cage's point of view
but I'll never show the fight.

Everybody will hear it.

- All right!

- Yeah!
- Holy cow!

Everybody will be reacting
to it.

But nobody will see it.

Hello? What?

Who are you? Where?

My lucky number?

What?

You have to know
where everything is.

And, you know,
and when you...

So many times when,
you know, somebody fires

and somebody falls down.

I mean, you know,

it's like,
"Where is everybody?

How close are they?
How close is the jeopardy?"

I'm scrupulous about that.

My concept, and the concept
that Dave and I had,

is that when
you're dealing with

such corruption

you need God to come down

and... And... And blow
it all away.

It's the only thing
that works.

That was the whole idea
of the wave.

Holy shit.

I'm sorry, baby. I tried.

- Look out!
- Jesus Chri...

And of course,
nobody thought it worked

so we came up
with something else,

which I never
particularly thought worked

as well
as the original idea.

Endings are tough.
They're always tough.

In your career, if you can get
two or three great endings

to your movies you're...
It's a miracle.

It was basically
a disappointment.

It didn't get reviewed
particularly well.

Snake Eyes
wasn't that expensive.

I don't think
it cost more than

$30 or $40 million
or something.

Mission to Mars
was very expensive.

It cost a hundred.

That's another situation

where they have a director
on Mission to Mars

and he came with a budget
of $115 million.

And they said, "No,
we can't make it at that."

So, I walked
into that picture

where everybody
was sort of hired.

Literally, there was
a whole staff there

and I started
storyboarding

the big set pieces
immediately.

But it was like,
relentless.

I mean,
because it was so many

of those
really complicated shots.

And I had to think up
all these sequences.

We basically
ran out of money.

Those shots
are so expensive.

You do one of those shots
the first day

and you're seeing it
every week

as they add one
incremental thing to it.

And that goes on for a year
basically.

I mean,
I was always amazed that

people were able to do
these things

like Steven or Zemeckis,
I mean,

holy mackerel,
endless repetition.

But you have
to stay with it,

you know,
it's all this pressure.

Everybody's trying
to save themselves basically.

When it gets so big,

nobody wants to be
the father

of this huge thing.

And if it
doesn't work out,

you know,
heads are going to roll.

Though I love
some of the stuff

I did in it.

You know, it's like,
"What am I doing here?

I'm trying to beat
a budget.

A schedule with sort of a..."
You know,

I sort of got in way
over my head

because it was
so much work

for such a long period
of time.

And then you think,
"Am I really enjoying this?

You know,
I just turned 60.

This... Is this... Is this what
I want to be doing?"

The Hollywood system
we work in,

it does nothing
but destroy you.

There's nothing good about it
in terms of creativity.

So, you're battling
a very difficult system,

and all the values
of that system

are the opposite of...
To what

goes into making original,
good movies.

When I finished
that movie,

that's when I got on a plane
and went to Paris.

I said, "I don't want
to make movies

like this anymore."

So, Mission to Mars

was the last movie
I made in the United States.

That's the upside of being
a loner for the most part.

You can suddenly say
this isn't working.

Well,
I love to make movies

that are basically created
on pure cinematic ideas.

Femme Fatale is all about
visual construction

in storytelling.

I'm a very
polarizing figure

and the critics
just thought

I was just hopeless
and a hack.

And then
there are the critics

that sort of understood
what I was doing,

at least I felt they did.

It never
sort of bothered me

when they didn't like
the movies

because they were, you know,
seemingly unkind to women

or too violent or...

I just felt to me,
it was always seemed like

the right thing to do
for the material.

You know, the fact
that Pauline liked me

made people argue
about me constantly.

I have a kind of
very complicated,

intricate way
of looking at things.

I have to force myself to work
in very straight lines

because, believe me,
when it gets in my hands

it's going to start
getting twisted

and seen through reflections
and refractions.

A lot of creating suspense
is creating distraction

from the impending tragedy.

You know,
it's like a magic trick.

You want them to look
at this hand

while the other hand
is doing something.

So, you have to create
a whole texture

that draws the audience's eye
away from the rabbit

that you're pulling out
of a hat.

The Black Dahlia
was an example

of where,
unlike Bonfire the Vanities,

I said, "I'm just going to do
The Black Dahlia

the way
The Black Dahlia is."

And like a lot of those
Dashiell Hammett mysteries

that nobody
can quite understand,

I said, "I guess that's part
of this genre."

I said, "I'm going to try
to follow

the original novel
and all its complexities,"

and of course, everybody says
about The Black Dahlia,

they can't follow
anything.

I started prepping it
in Los Angeles

where it takes place.

Then we went to Germany,

then we wound up
going to Italy

and prepping it there.

And we wound up being
in Bulgaria,

where we finally got
the final piece

of financing
to get the movie made.

If I'm going to put somebody
in a dangerous situation

I'd rather be following around
a girl than a guy.

It's part of the genre.

The woman
with the negligee

walking around the house
with a candelabrum.

You see
in a lot of my movies.

You see
the character's helplessness.

The stop this,

this madness going on.

I live in a family

full of these
incredible egotists

who seem to be
very insensitive

about the kind of damage
they were doing to each other

and my middle brother
is very sensitive.

I don't feel
that he was powerful enough

to stand up
to these forces.

I used to protect him
all the time.

He doesn't have
the kind of combativeness

that I have.

So, it would be like
this little kid

trying to say,
"Stop shouting,

it's not his fault."

And nobody would pay
any attention to me,

and I was
basically ineffective

and I became very tough
because of that.

Slow down!
Slow it down.

- Hey. Hey, hey.
- Slow down!

You know the story of Redacted

is basically the story
of Casualties of War

but you know these things
that sort make no sense to you

like, "Why are we in Vietnam
or why are we in Iraq?"

And we're worried about Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction

after we have
completely destroyed

their army in a prior war.

They have no air force.

We've been starving them
to death for a decade or so.

Well, Zahra played
the part of the girl

that gets raped
in Redacted.

And she was a refugee,
you know, living in Amman.

But I'm dealing with a culture
I don't understand,

so when we had her do
all this stuff, you know,

like the soldiers pretending
to rape her,

I mean, I don't know
what kind of cultural mores

I'm crossing here,

but this...
Zahra was very understanding

and did the kind of things
that I asked her to do

and I felt that she was really
going out on a limb here.

These are things
that her family,

upon seeing the movie,
were horrified by.

I mean, she's kind of been
rejected by her whole culture.

But she's an actress

and she felt that
this was right.

And I got her
into it, basically,

because I'm the one
that directed her.

And then rather than
leave her there

with a very
uncertain future

and because
she's a talented girl

and a very wonderful girl,

I brought her over here
and put her in school

so that she can
pursue her dream,

whatever it is.

Well, I think I'm returning
to the kind of movies

you guys are making.

You're adjusting
to the system.

If you want to make
personal movies,

with your own
personal ideas,

you have to make them
at a budget.

You make
a certain kind of movie

because that's the way
you see things.

And these images keep
reoccurring again and again

in your movies.

And that's what makes you
who you are.

People talk about Hitchcock
all the time,

you know,
being so influential.

I've never found
too many people

that followed after
the Hitchcock school

except for me.

Here's a guy
that developed

those incredible visual
storytelling vocabulary,

and it's sort of going
to die with him.

And I was like,
the one practitioner

that took up the things
that he pioneered

and built them
into different forms

in a style
that I was evolving.

It's like a whole modern form
that he created.

Having studied
a lot of directors

and having lived now
to practically being 70,

you see that
your creative periods are in...

Most directors are in...

When their 30's,

their 40's,
and their 50's.

They, and obviously,
they can go on

and make another 20 movies
or ten movies.

But you'll probably only be
talking about those movies

they made in their 30's,
their 40's, and their 50's.

You know, and I've always
thought Hitchcock

was a great example,

because, you know,
after Vertigo and Psycho,

and you can talk about
The Birds all you want

and all the other movies
he made after that

and then of course,
the critical establishment

finally caught up with him

and started to write about
what a genius he was.

Except those movies
aren't as good

as the ones he made
in his 30's,

his 40's, and his 50's.

You got to be a strong,
physical person to do it.

It physically wears you down.
There's no question about it.

I think William Wilder said,
you know,

"When you can't walk anymore,
you've got to stop."

The thing about making movies
is every mistake you made

is up there on the screen.

Everything
you didn't solve,

every shortcut you made,

you will look at it
the rest of your life.

So, it's like a record
of the things

that you didn't
finish basically.

People in your life
can be threatened

by your intense concentration,

your complete immersion
in what you're doing.

My true wife is my movie,
not you.