WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 805 - Walter Hill

Episode Date: April 23, 2017

Poor health kept Walter Hill out of the Army in the '60s, but that twist of fate led him into filmmaking during the tumultuous end of that decade. Walter tells Marc about being there for the major shift in cinema during the '70s, making his own influential films like The Driver, The Warriors and 48 Hours, and working closely with actors like Steve McQueen, Eddie Murphy, and Richard Pryor. Walter also explains how he helped kick off the Alien franchise. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at TorontoRock.com

Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast got some very exciting news that i'd like to share with you don't freak out it's not it's i'm not getting married i'm not there's no baby but before i talk to you about it walter hill the director is on the show which was pretty fucking exciting for me because i i like walter hill i like a lot of his movies and back when i was a younger person i was always excited to see his movies. When I was, I guess I would have been in high school. Yeah, I was a little high school film nerd.

And I remember being excited to see Walter Hill movies. But I'll talk about that in a second. What I want to talk about, big news to announce right now you can officially pre-order waiting for the punch words to live by from the wtf podcast it's the wtf book that brandon and i have been working on for the last two years and i'm holding it right now i'm holding a galley copy of our book and your book soon to be your book and all and a book of all the people that that were part of it this book it's like how can i explain it it's not just a collection of interview transcripts right we took quotes and stories and conversations from about 200 guests from this show

and created sort of a a running narrative about life. You can go to markmarronbook.com or just go to wtfpod.com and click on the book on the top of the page to pre-order this amazing thing. I couldn't believe it when I read through it. I mean, it's so fluid and it's so exciting to read. And to be honest with you, I don't really remember a lot of the conversations I have here. Some of them were a while ago and I only listened to them in real time. Brendan is the guy that does the polish and the cutting on the thing. Now, the way it's organized is that each chapter covers a different topic.

You got childhood, relationships, sexuality, success, failure, stuff like that. All right. So we put it together that way. And what we were trying to do by weaving all these conversations together is just make it feel like everyone is part of this big conversation. It's sort of like a guide to life, if that's possible. And I think some of you feel that way about this podcast, a certain number of you. Now, the weird thing about it is, like I said, I read it. And when we were editing it, obviously, Brendan did a, how do you say it? A lion's share of the work on putting this together. But the weird thing is, is when you read all of these things together, the impact is,

But the weird thing is, is when you read all of these things together, the impact is it's like pretty powerful. It's funny. It's tragic. It's joyous. It's heartbreaking. It's really strangely profound. And we're very proud of this book. I was just astounded because, like I said before, I have these conversations, but I don't know if I process them in the same way that you you do when you read something you know and it's very interesting to read pieces of conversations uh that were spoken as opposed to written you get you engage with it in a totally different way and it all works like

it all works together i couldn't i couldn't put it down and i was the one that had the fucking conversations uh it's a nice big book it's 400 pages long. There's 12 new essays in it by me. John Oliver wrote the foreword for us. Very nice of him. And if you're a listener of the show, it's really the best possible physical representation of what we do. And that's how we feel about it. Also, talking book stuff, on June 3rd, I'm going to be at the BookCon in New York City with Brendan McDonald, my collaborator and business partner and producer. And this event will be the first public unveiling of the book. And if you're there to see us talk about it, you will get an advance copy. Go to thebookcon.com for tickets.

If you order tickets now, they're still doing an early bird price, and it's still early enough to get the tickets mailed to you. So get on that now if you want to see us at the book con and get an advance copy of Waiting for the Punch. That's thebookcon.com. It is fucking awesome. I like to cover. You know, this whole process was really a pretty amazing thing.

Because, you know, we've talked to so many people. And, you know, Brendan, like I said, who has an incredible memory. And is a very skillful putter together of things. Man, it's just, it's very exciting so so i'm looking forward to you guys getting it now you can go to um markmarrenbook.com or use the book link at wtfpod.com or just go to wherever you order books online very exciting oh my god so i was in portland and i did three shows at the aladdin i love the aladdin and i'm trying to work out this special and it's coming along good i tell you the uh the part of the job where you organize and pull things together and uh you know polish things up it's it's exciting

but it's a little tedious and and i have to be careful that it doesn't suck the fun out of it for me but it is part of the job and i'm trying to hone up or hone down or hone in on or hone a uh a set that's been running an hour and a half an hour 45 minutes and that leaves room for a lot of improvising but for Netflix they kind of want about a 70 minute thing 75 minutes all in for the special so that's probably about 70 minutes of stand-up so I have to trim like 25 minutes and it's not so much that I'm more attached to bits than others but it's like how's it all gonna flow together so now i'm like finally you know less than a week away from the special and i'm like maybe i should tighten this up a bit so portland was very helpful in uh in in letting me do that and the audiences were great that

aladdin i've worked there many times and i'll always go back there it seats about 600 sold out three shows and the audiences were just fucking amazing. I had a local comic open for me, Barbara Holm. She did a great job. I love going to Portland, even though every time I go there, I directly and immediately connect with some sort of pervading old-timey darkness that I believe just simmers under the entire city. I don't know what the apparitions are or what the spirits are or what they're kind of mildly aggravated about, but I always feel it there, and it's not a negative thing. I'm not saying anything negative about Portland.

It adds to the charm. The weird old timey darkness is constantly sort of engaging with the fancy facial hairs and coffee shops and artisanal occupations to create an interesting but kind of heavy vibe, man. This is how I read it. I have a poetic experience every time I go to Portland. Generally have some good coffee, some good food. But I walk over bridges and I'm like, man, there's something here, man. There's something going on here. And it never goes away. But I feed on it.

I think I have a good relationship with the Portland spirits that just lie beneath the city. Maybe also in the water there. So, oh, yeah. I was at the Portland airport today. And I had a beautiful moment. You know, sometimes I'm a little punchy, I'm a little tired. Things are a little shaky around the edges. You know, because I don't do drugs anymore. So I have to exhaust myself in order to relax in that way.

But there was just there was just something happening at the Portland airport I uh I went to the main area and there was a guy playing classical guitar it was amplified but just a man sitting there playing a classical piece on an acoustic classical guitar it sounded like. I don't know the piece. I would never know the piece, but you know what I'm saying. It sounded like a guy playing classical guitar. He had it perched on the wrong knee if you're a regular guitar player, but it looks more disciplined. Everything about playing classical guitar looks earned. And he's just playing, and it's pretty. You know, it's nice.

It's classical guitar music. It's okay. It was relaxing. But, like, I didn't know exactly where it was coming from at first. And I look over, and I see the guy just over there off to the wherever, the side, sitting perched with his guitar and his guitar case. They obviously allow entertainers to play in the foyer there at the Portland airport. But what was beautiful is there was this little boy.

I guess he's around two. I don't know how to read that because I don't have children of my own, but he was a little boy, probably about two. He was walking and standing, you know, looked like he was excited to be standing up, but he was just standing there in front of this classical guitar player, just entranced, you know, just like, you know, could not shift his eye, like just hypnotized by the classical music. little kid you know who's got no preconceptions got no understanding you know of what he's watching or what the sound is or what it's like just complete

engagement with this beautiful uh elegant music and and i was completely fascinated and engaged with the kid watching the guy play guitar. I was engaged and fascinated in almost a childlike way watching a child who was engaged and fascinated in a childlike way because he's a child with a classical guitar player. to see a kid that innocent so taken with something so elegant and beautiful and sounds so amazing. And then I look over to the right and there's his mother also fascinated and engaged with her kid. I'm assuming watching the guitar player while he was fascinated and engaged. And she was smiling. And then I started to think like i just am i being weird right now no no i didn't want to look weird but i couldn't stop looking at this kid looking at the guitar player because he was so into it and then every once in a while he'd do a little kid dance that didn't quite match up with the music but i think it's just an excitement thing. And all I could think was like, this might be the moment. This kid might,

you know, this might be the deciding factor of the future of his life. This moment right now might be wiring something into him that may guide him for the rest of his life. I don't know how, I'm not going to make any assumptions, but yeah But maybe he'll become a composer or a conductor or, at the very least, a guitar player. I don't know. But I felt it was happening, that there was some sort of deep discovery going on. And I was very happy it was that and not something on a screen or maybe a puppet show it just felt deeper and like it made me uh made my morning really and like i said i witnessed the moment where he disengaged but he was locked in for like a couple of minutes you know and i think that's kind of

rare for kids that age. And then I saw him get distracted with nothing. It went away. The circuit was broken. But I think something was delivered, man. It was something to see. And I know some of you are thinking like, oh, Mark, you should have a kid.

So Walter Hill. I'll tell you what I remember most. like outside of seeing warriors when it came out which was what yeah where where was i in my life when warriors came out 1979 so i was in high school how fucking great. Can you dig it? Warriors, come out to play. Come on. I didn't realize that he was so active in the 70s and he wrote The Getaway and The Macintosh Man, The Thief Who Came to Dinner.

He wrote and directed Hard Times. There was a lot I learned and a lot i talked to him about but he was one of those guys when me and my buddy devin jackson were just sort of young film nerds we dug him we dug walter hill i remember when the long riders was was coming out we were just sort of like how can this not be great man walter hill all the james gang but it's all brothers and they're really brothers in real life. Southern Comfort with Powers Booth. I was excited about that. He did 48 Hours.

I mean, I don't know, man. He's from the old school, and it was just a thrill to talk to him. I like talking to directors. And his new movie is sort of a messy trip, man. It's called The Assignment. It's available on iTunes and video on demand. It's a slasher movie, and he's very aware the assignment it's available on itunes and video on demand it's a slasher movie and he's very aware what it was and what it is and how he made it and why he wanted to make it that way and it's uh of that genre which i don't watch a lot of i think it's pretty

pretty uh pretty disturbing and uh kind of good you know in that way that the slasher movies are i guess you call it slasher, horror. It doesn't matter. If you want to watch it, go watch it. I didn't even realize when I talked to him that he was, that he directed Geronimo, which I don't know, like, it's one of those movies that, like, I, John Milius

wrote it. It's a very big movie with Jason Patrick and Robert Duvall, Gene Hack. It was just, he's a real deal director, and it was a real honor to have him. This is me talking to Walter. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series,

FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+.

18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city, home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers. The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative.

And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. So your movies, when I was younger, I always looked forward to your movies. I remember, it's funny, I was going over them and I'm like, holy shit, I remember how excited we were for the Long Riders. It was a great movie. Thank you.

Where'd you start out? Here? I mean, did you grow up here? Yeah, I'm from, well, I always say Long Beach. Yeah. My family worked in Long Beach. I actually grew up in Bellflower and went to Bellflower High, but nobody knows where the hell Bellflower is. Where is Bellflower? Let's solve it. It's basically in North Long Beach.

Okay, so it's down there. Yeah. And you just, was your family in the business? No, my family's been in Southern California a long time. Since the Cowboys? No, my mother was born downtown Los Angeles, the back of a grocery store. Her parents owned a grocery store. She was born in Slauson in Vermont, downtown.

They moved into the Long Beach area. Grocery store didn't do terribly well. Got out of that racket. got out of that racket yeah and my father's father was a Wildcat oil oh really and he ended up in the Signal Hill area of Long Beach which of course was a big oil field back in the 1920s 1930s no. No kidding. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah. A lot of oil. Yeah.

It was the wonder field of the world at the time. And so... He was the guy on the machines? He was a driller, and then he became an owner, an operator, you know. He always said as long as he wasn't drilling for his own, for himself, they were all big winners. But as soon as he drilled't drilling for his own for himself they were all big winners but as soon as he drilled one for himself yeah the um you come from a big family no brother yeah my folks had two kids yeah brother and i he going to show business no yeah he uh ran the transportation department city of Long Beach for years. If it had wheels on it or was a boat in the harbor, I mean, buses, police cars, fire engines and all that,

he was in charge of maintaining and purchasing. For the city. For the city. For the city. For the city. And it was a socially enormously useful job, and one that I probably couldn't handle for even a day. And he was very good at it, and he finally retired a couple years ago.

Oh, that's good. Had a good life, retired. Yeah, he now devotes himself to the sports page. Relaxing. Yeah. So how'd you get into pictures? You told the story before obviously but i i'm curious about the era i you know i don't get the opportunity to talk to people about hollywood when it was sort of a small town well i usually just say you know i flunked my army physical uh i was supposed to go in the army i got out of school uh but you wanted to go i was i was certainly

willing to go and uh the but i i was childhood asthma so they said the last second uh uh i remember this guy the guy came but we were all standing there yeah uh and uh in the raw and the guy comes and says jesus christ they're not going to take us to fucking fort ord they're going to take us to fucking fort poke louisiana oh oh you don't understand i mean you have no idea how it's the worst fucking place on earth really yeah well the weather's horrible and uh but after you're done with basic at fucking fort poke they put you right into the light artillery it's the place where the light artillery comes out of. Light artillery? Yeah.

Yeah, he says, that's everything with the infantry, except you have to wear three times heavier pack. You got to lug the fucking mortars around and the fucking mortar shells. He says, it's the worst thing in the army. Oh, you know, geez god almighty port poke louisiana for the next introduction well and then uh you get to the last table and the doctor says well i don't think we're gonna need you services mr hill and uh we're uh a childhood asthma we don't want to need a lot of allergies and. So we'll make you one Y. So you probably dodged a bullet, literally.

I guess so. So anyway, I was at liberty. I thought I might get into journalism somehow. But through a series of kind of accidents and small, got i got connected to uh people making uh educational films and suddenly and i was a great fan of movie i just never could imagine making a living doing movies doing movies really even though there were movie stars and i guess it seems like a far a stretch long beach was forever uh yeah distant from from all. But were you a movie fan as a kid? Oh, yeah. Yeah?

Yeah. It was, you know, my brother and I, every weekend, four movies a week. Who were your favorites when you were a kid? Well, let's see. I guess I liked the Westerns the best. Yeah. But, you know, I think I was pretty eclectic in my taste. On Saturdays, you saw the first-run movies,

and on Sunday, you went over to the other theater that showed B-Westerns. And so we saw whatever came around. So you weren't so locked in that you had favorite directors necessarily? Oh, I didn't know what a director did sure i knew it was the last credit yeah uh but uh but love love loved the whole experience and yeah you know it was like a religious temple or something you went in and they were gods and they were larger than you know You know, my kids get cheated out of this. You know, you couldn't miss anything. You know, you weren't going to come back.

You weren't going to see the movie again. So, you know, you had to hold a pee and, you know, you either took food with you or, but you weren't going to, because anything you missed. And now, of course, course you know and the size of the screen was enormous and uh so the experience was very special but now you know they they buy the buy the film and they can stop at any time they want watch on the computer watch on the computer they can uh watch on something's not bigger than their uh than their watch and

and also they can run it run it in slow motion they can run it sideways they can do anything they want with it and if they think they miss something they'll just run it right back and yeah i think that has diminished uh the the specific power of the movie going experience yeah it's it's uh it's taken taken away the magic of it so much yeah it's it's it's a shame i think the magic is leaving everything slowly yeah i suppose so but i do believe uh look i do think the human beast has a tremendous need for stories, for entertainment. You know, I believe you go to the smallest village in Tibet, not that I have, but there's an aerial on the small house and they're in there watching I Love Lucy or something.

And so that we're obviously living through a time where the delivery system is changing and where the story is being delivered is changing. And the neighborhood theaters that I grew up with, I mean, they're vanishing. Yeah, there's a few around. I guess Tarantino's doing something with that new Beverly. And some of the higher end theaters are good but you're right I never really thought about it like that because lately I've been thinking just for myself when I watch something am I avoiding something else is this a distraction

am I doing this as some sort of uh uh you know pseudo drug experience to detach myself but I think that there is a a need within it's an emotional journey it's it's necessary it's sort of fortified it's it's nourishing to the soul well you know yeah we we have to somehow get our imaginary lives and it's some kind of wish dream fulfillment right i've never it's too deep for me but uh you know i uh i say that everybody has three lives. There's the, you know, you and I meet today. We're doing this, and I present a certain framework to you. You present a certain framework to me.

Our public persona. very much to me, our public persona. Then we have our private life that we share with people that are very close with us, usually. Someone we drag through it. Yeah, drag through. And then you have your secret life of where it's inside your head, and you basically share it with no one, I think, just glimmers of it a bit. The safe glimmers. Yeah.

That won't cause too much trouble. Yeah. But I think that that part is what needs to be satisfied by the stories. I think that's good. That's a good way. That's deep. That works for me. So you're making educational docs. Well, I never did. I mean, I just worked on them.

In what capacity? I did research. Oh, yeah? But I immediately said to myself, what the fuck am I doing? I don't even like these movies. They're basically people sitting at a desk, as they used to say, writing with a feather. What was the company? It was an offshoot of Encyclopedia Britannica movies. They used to make these 16-millimeter films for students, schools. And suddenly I was in this environment of around filmmaking and i somehow within i don't know a very short amount of time i knew exactly

what i wanted i went from zero understanding to i wanted to write and direct movies and i i thought i'm gonna do it so you can make the connection now that you know you're a little behind the scenes like oh this is and it's not as daunting necessarily. And I was a good reader about films. I was not only a good viewer. Yeah. And my taste had improved a lot in some ways in the last, in that few years from the time I was, say, maybe 17. What was the indicator of that?

I think what we used to call foreign films. They were coming in. They were coming in, and I was a great, I loved Kurosawa, and I loved to watch a Bergman or a Fellini or something. Like Seven Samurai, kind of like that movie? Seven Samurai. Yeah. Rashomon. Is both on the all-time list. Sure. bergman or yeah felini or something like seven samurai kind of like that seven samurai yeah rashomon is uh both yeah on the all-time list sure rightfully yeah and uh i think when i really started to work and get going it was somehow i would never have defined my own dream or anything

and which already sounds pretentious but was was to somehow, I always wanted to do action films, genre films. Sure. But to kind of inform them with what seemed to me to be this new vision coming out of Europe and Asia that there was a less melodramatic, they were smart, the movies were smart. A little more than meets the eye, essentially. And they weren't, you know, Kurosawa could do an action movie. They were so good that they weren't even called action movies, they were dramas.

But they were done with a superior intelligence and greater visual styles and more advanced editing and uh so that was to me the paradigm to be kind of reaching for and then some of the directors i fell in with uh most particularly working with peckinball i suppose so yeah you know shared that yeah he was something else how did you so how did you eventually make it onto sets and start, you know, engaging with the film business? Well, I became an assistant director. I was, well, I was trying to make a living as a writer. I would write at night, but I got a job as a,

well, at first an apprentice assistant director, what we now call production assistant. And then I got into the Director's Guild as a second assistant. Yeah. And I worked on a number of films. I worked on Bullet and Take the Money and Run. Take the Money and Run, the Woody Allen movie? Yeah. Yeah.

Woody's first film. I was the second on it. Really? That must have been kind of funny because they were all bits and there's a lot of sketches almost. They were very funny. Well, he shot a lot of the movie. We shot the movie in the summer of 1968.

Yeah. In San Francisco. Oh, this must have been crazy. Well, it was. And it looked like the country was falling apart. We were on the streets a lot of the time. But Woody then, I don't know what, they evaluated the film they had when he went home at the end of the summer.

And then they shot a lot more in New York. They shot a lot more of the bits. Because it was a fake documentary, right, in my recollection. Yeah, it was the Virgil Starkwell, I think his name was. Yeah. Yeah, they were. It was the Virgil Starkwell, I think his name was. Yeah.

Which was a play on the Starkweather, who had been a real. Horrible killer guy. Yeah, and he was fun to be around. And Bullet, that's a whole other experience. They shot that in San Francisco, too, didn't they? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was up there for the better part of a year. Yeah, I was up there for a better part of a year. And then I took off after Bullitt started in February of 1968.

Yeah. And we went about eight weeks over, I think, or something. Who directed that one? Peter Yates. And we shot the chase right at the end. That was the chase that established the modern car chase. It sure did. That and the French Connection, I guess, were the two big ones.

Absolutely. And then Take the Money was shot in the summer of 68. And then I took the fall and winter off and stayed up there. And I started writing. I had enough money in my bank account for it. Take the time to do it. Yeah, that I could. Now, were you reading scripts and stuff? Were you doing, did you do television as well at that time?

No, I never did. Yeah, I did read, of course. I read scripts. I had several complicated notions about all that. One, I thought, well, Christ, I think I can do this. Sure. If that's what they were buying. The arrogance of youth.

I also was somewhat distressed. It seemed to me that almost all these scripts seemed to have been written by the same person. There was a kind of uniformity of style and approach to screenwriting that made it seem like it was coming out of some big machine yeah occasionally that's it's like anything you'd try to generalize about this business or something like that there There are exceptions. I think everyone's trying to do what makes money.

So if someone's not particularly gifted, they're just going to format the thing. And also they were not particularly reader-friendly. So I, taking these as my watchwords, tried to resist. One, I wanted to kind of make a mark with my scripts i think and yeah i wanted to give them a certain style that uh that evolved uh i thought they were almost all overwritten and all melod way too melodramatic well too much information on the page yeah yeah and uh also because i had worked on movies i knew nobody paid any goddamn attention to this stuff. It's stage direction. Yeah.

They just knew when the new scene was. So, listen, I don't mean to demean. There were a lot of very talented, very hardworking screenwriters that had to work for very difficult people. Yeah. And I didn't understand the full… Spectrum of it at that time. Indeed. Yes. The wide… I forget they can it at that time. Indeed, yes.

The wide, I forget, they can't see my hand. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It was good. I got it right away. So what was that script that you wrote? Well, the first script that I wrote that became a film, I had sold a Western that did not get made. And then my problem was I never could finish anything.

I must have written 20 scripts and never quite and then i finally said look you know if you're going to do this you better finish the goddamn what was it was it a fear thing was it just a like a i mean i used to be like that and then it's something weird there's something weird about finishing things i think probably that may have been part of it i just attributed it to i had written myself into a box you know painted myself into a corner didn't know how to end it yeah and just the strategy was wrong or i felt that the it was headed in a wrong direction and the only way to finish it was a kind of compromise. And what the story was wouldn't even accept the compromise. Yeah, yeah.

You build up all kinds. Sure, sure. Very complicated reasons for non-performance. A lot of reasons. Yeah, there's a lot of very solid reasons for your failure. That's how some people use their imagination. Exactly. So I had the buckle down moment where we better start.

And luckily, once I really started finishing scripts, I started selling almost right away, making a living at it right away. I started selling almost right away, making a living at it right away. And I think the second thing I sold became a movie. It was called Hickey and Boggs with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. And I did a couple of, I got hired to do a couple of rewrites. And then I was hired to write The Getaway. Peter Bogdanovich hired me to write The Getaway. I talked to him.

You did? I did. He's a character. He is. He is indeed. Well, I imagine at that time, judging by my experience with him here, is that he had a very,

not unlike you're talking about, he had a true respect for film, the medium and the power of film and the genre movie, because he was very adamant in not necessarily being connected to that generation of directors that he came from, because he saw himself as a guy that didn't want to necessarily break the mold, but wanted to make amazing studio pictures. Yeah, he saw himself, I think, I don't want to speak for him, but is continuing the chain of great directors in the tradition of Leo McCary and John Ford and Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh, etc. And he did not feel the rush of 1968 and the need to swing the hammer and

smash the cement and kick it all aside, go on to some new plane that was very much the fashion. Did you? I was probably a little more on Peter's side of the argument than the other side, but because I really did have great reverence for so many really good directors of the past. You could see that the times were changing and that something was going on and you weren't going to be able to. My feeling was that you were not going to reinvent the cinema, that that was insane.

But it was a lot of the talk at the time. It's hard to imagine how crazy things were back then. But I certainly thought that genre filmmaking, although it was going to change, could be redone in a way, pulling things inside out and mixing genres, that you could make them fresh and that an audience would grab onto them. And if you're working here, you have to be thinking about, am I going to be able to find an audience for this? Because otherwise, you don't get, you don't come back to the party. And in those days, you know, the means of production, to use the great Marxian term, the means of production were totally held by the studio, so you had to kind of somehow get into this club and function within it. And it was so, you know, what's an audience?

What do they want? Well, there was an old expression that if you're going to tell a new story, you had to put the characters in old clothes. And if you're going to tell an old story, you had to put the characters in new clothes. I've never heard that. Yeah, old clothes, old story, dead. Yeah.

New story, new clothes. Nobody knows. Nobody can attach themselves to it.'s too far new story old clothes new story you might be in business or old story new clothes you know sure you might be in business and then it turns out they're all old stories and new clothes well you know borges says there are only two stories. Yeah. So when you boil them down. What are they? The Crucifixion. Yeah. And the Odyssey.

Okay. That's probably about right. It's pretty hard to think of anything that doesn't. Fall within that. You might also say if you make your categories wide enough, everything will. Sure. Well, it's interesting you said that so many people, they had this this vision that they were going to reinvent cinema but what they ultimately did was just expand it you know broaden an audience right i mean the 60s did something i mean they didn't

reinvent cinema but they certainly you know created a shift right absolutely yeah you know there was a paradigm shift that uh in storytelling you know, there were so many, well, you know, Friedkin's French Connection, Billy's movie, just the ending was such a, you know, yeah, the technique of making the film and the approach to character, the Popeye. And, you know, finally, it's a really good example of New Clothes' old story, except there was a new ending, a much different and very adult, and we're still trying to figure out what the hell happened. And the whole approach to character that Hackman played. And you'd never seen a cop like that. So the getaway. So you start that with Peter, and then how does it move?

Well, Peter and Steve had a separation. McQueen a nice guy? He a nice guy? I liked Steve. I did. He was a very wary personality. He was aware of the pitfalls that can be followed. An actor.

He saw himself very much as, it doesn't sound kind what I'm about to say, but I don't mean it that way. He saw himself very much as a star. Yeah. And he thought of a star as being, as most people did in those days, a lot more than being an actor. And he felt his responsibilities as a star. He felt his responsibilities to his audience. Right. And they wanted to see him win.

Right. They wanted to see him be. Right. He wasn't going to dirty himself up. Well, he wasn't going to not be what he felt the image of McQueen was. And he didn't because he was not going to let his fans down. And he would justify a lot of things in terms of, no, they don't want to see that. He was a very generous actor in the sense of

he didn't care that much about taking the dialogue. He would quite often give dialogue away. And he was certainly masterful at saying, we don't need to say this. Oh, yeah. Well, he's a pretty subtle actor. Oh, yeah. He was a great, you know, he understood his power.

He could dominate a scene with a look. Yeah. Or just a simple gesture. You know, somebody would be talking away, and he could just reach over and grab an apple and start to peel the apple. Right. Now, some might say that's a cheap way to upstage,

and others would say, you know, it was an absolute reflection of his persona and who he was playing in that particular uh film yeah they're both can exist those interpretations yeah and uh but he was a wary personality yeah he uh he didn't uh he didn't allow a posse to build up that so many of the very successful superstars do. Sure. He was not like that. I think he was really at most comfortable around his friends that had to do with cars and motorcycles. Yeah, that was his thing, yeah?

Well, but it was more than a hobby. I mean, he had a tremendous gut instinct for mechanics, making something go fast. I mean, that was... That's what made him good for the getaway. That's what made him very good for it. And he felt it right down to the essence of it. Yeah. Did you write it?

So you were working with Peter on it, but you ended up writing your own script for it. Well, it was an adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel. Jim's great, huh? He just passed away, didn't he? No, it's been a few years now. Yeah. No, it's been a few years now.

And Peter was directing Barbara Streisand in the What's Up Doc. Yeah. And Steve decided that he couldn't wait and that we had to get rolling. So they encouraged me to quickly finish the first draft, which I did. And Sam came in. Sam agreed, read the script, and was willing to work with Steve again. They had had a somewhat explosive relationship on Junior Bonner, I think it was. But they had great respect for each other. But they had great respect for each other.

And although Steve threw a magnum of champagne at Sam's head in one story conference, I remember. I actually was not there, but I saw the hole in the wall the next day. Really? He meant it. Really? He meant it? Yeah, it was one of the few times where Sam really was, he said, you know, motherfucker would have killed me. No kidding. So when you did the getaway, it sounds like you were pretty engaged with the whole process.

I mean, were you on set as well? I got called off. I was going to be on set, but I got called off. I had to do a thing for Warner Brothers, and i went to england and ireland to work with john houston on a script that paul newman ended up doing a movie that paul newman holy shit john houston that must have been something it was uh the experience was a lot better than the movie i'm sorry to say which movie was that well it ended up being called the macintosh man oh yeah it was uh it was called uh the the novel was the freedom trap but um but it wasn't a terribly good movie i like no i liked working with john that was a lot of fun well with with someone like sam as

you said that he had some uh influence on your approach to filmmaking because like i think like i i love peckinpah movies, and there was a period there in my life where once a year I'd watch about five of them. You know, because he'd come from the old studio system and then really broke the mold, right? Absolutely. And there was something that I can see, like, even in the getaway, that the kind of, you know, exploring the emotions or the, you know,

the possibilities of male characters is something he was really good at. And I think that that character, it seems, in the getaway, was a thoughtful, kind of intense, a lot under the surface kind of guy. Right? I mean, what did you really pick up from Sam? Well, I think more than any, I think I understood through him how committed you had to be to what you were doing. Yeah.

He demanded, he was a rather fierce personality. He was not an easy fella to be around. Yeah. You always, somebody said, and I know exactly what they meant, it was like you were in some movie except only he knew the dialogue and you didn't. And there were kind of odd pauses and interesting but we got along well i i certainly like he knew how much i admired him which is always a good start i suppose and um he uh smart director man he was he was very He was very smart. He was his own, as the old thing, worst enemy.

But I don't think The Getaway is his finest effort. I think it's a good movie, and it did very well. It was the most commercial movie he ever made. But he was – I really think it was the last movie he did where he was fully in control of his medium, that his drinking hadn't gotten out of hand yet. I mean, he was certainly drinking a lot. But I don't think it got to him uh on that film the way it did but he was a very complicated guy yeah and he uh he had a and he was constantly searching for those not loyal and uh you know there was a lot of that paranoia yeah he had a he had an alcoholic's kind of paranoid personality, something that I had observed a great deal in my own family.

You avoided it. I never wanted to be – Sam and I never – we were always friendly. He was very encouraging to me after we did the movie. He'd call me every once in a while. I'd call me every once in a while. I'd call him every once in a while. He was very encouraging about me. Well, first he would say, you sure you want to get into this shit?

But about directing. But he was very encouraging, but he was tough. Yeah. And he'd say, sometimes he'd say, what the fuck were you thinking of? You know, that was... About when he started directing? Yeah. So you stayed in touch with him?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Not a lot. We were not close. Yeah. It was just never going to work that way. I'm not a hangout kind of guy. And he wanted more than almost anybody could give. He didn't hang out with anybody except he had a small coterie of very close, very devoted friends.

Right. And they would drink together almost every night. I remember Warren Oates telling me, he said, you know, everybody always thinks I'm one of Sam's guys. He said, I can't, he said, I love him, but he said, I can't take it. He said, you know, those fucking guys,

they just, they get in trouble every night. Smarter than that. Yeah, he just said, you know, I can't deal with it. So what was the first movie you directed? I did a movie called Hard Times. Oh, yeah, Charles Bronson. Charlie Bronson and Jim Coburn. Boxer movie.

That's right, Street Fighting back in the 30s. Yeah, and how did you feel about that one? Well, it got me going, and the movie was well-received, and it did pretty well. Got you started. Got me started. I liked the movie. I thought Charlie was very good in it. I thought Jimmy was good in it.

Yeah. Charlie and I had a kind of problem in post-production. His wife, Jill, was in the movie, he felt that i had uh not been particularly kind to her in the editing and uh so charlie and i had a rather sharp breakup on that did you get into a fistfight no he'd have killed me but uh but uh and i didn't seem for uh but it certainly destroyed our our relationship but people often ask me you know why didn't you ever work with him again? That was it? I was just like, that son of a bitch wouldn't even speak to me.

So when, and then you're sort of on your way and you do the driver, which you worked with Ryan O'Neill a few times, didn't you? Well, I had written, I had rewritten a script called The Thief Who Came to Dinner that Ryan did. But he and I really didn't know each other then. We had met, but then he, yes, he agreed to do The Driver. The Driver was my second film. It was somewhat experimental in nature and probably um had i not been making another film at the time it came out would have drummed me out of the business but uh it was a complete financial and critical failure in this country but it was but what it was sort of it was a respected film

though i mean it had found an audience right overseas or it was a it became yeah it did all right like a cult movie yeah and it it slowly has built up a reputation in this country I'm happy to say Edgar Wright has just made a movie called baby driver that is in some ways derivative. I'll leave you to talk. He's a great guy. He's a great guy and very funny. I'm good friends with Edgar. And I sometimes hate to think what would have happened had I not been shooting the Warriors

when the Driver came out because the reception to it was not very good. I think those days studios would send you reviews. They would collect them over the weekend and everything. I got in the American reviews, and it's, Christ, it's about the size of a small phone book. Came after you, huh? I got one good review. I got one fucking review that was any good.

It was Dave Kerr. I remember very well. Dave Kerr in the Chicago Reader gave it a beautiful review. He got it. He got it. Yeah. But it was actually very well reviewed in Europe. And it did well.

It's the old joke. Yeah. Well, it did well in Japan. What do you think the drop-off was? I mean, like, if you were to look, like, really considerate at that time, what was the aversion? I mean, for their well i think there were several things i think in the first place i i think the movie just stylistically wasn't particularly audience friendly uh it was a rather abstract way to tell the story uh i think

also and i i have no i think ryan is very good in the movie. I thought he did everything as well as I could ever hope an actor could do with the part as a writer-director. I was very pleased with Ryan. But I don't think the audience accepted him. I think they wanted the guy that was in Love Story. Right. They couldn't accept him in a grittier role. No. They didn't accept him in the Steve McQueen role.

Right. I think that was a problem he had a lot. Well, I suppose, you know, his previous film had been the Kubrick. Barry Lyndon. Barry Lyndon. Yeah. And that had, you know, at the time.

It's not an easy movie. It's not an easy movie. And it was, at the time, perceived to be not a success. But I liked Ryan. And he liked doing the movie, you know. Yeah. He liked driving. Sure.

He was a very physical guy. Yeah. So he had this tape. You know, he, Ryan was a very physical guy. I saw him. He had this tape. Ryan was a good boxer and he worked out. He did. He fought three rounds, three or four rounds with Joe Frazier. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. No kidding. Well, I don't think Joe was, you know, turning on the steam. But still he ryan looked quite credible you know he yeah he had the moves sure sure he knew how to do it he knew how to do it yeah but the warriors that was the one i mean that was the one when i was a kid you know we went and we're like what the fuck this is insane like i i can still remember it you know the power of it uh uh

you know it was because we well i don't i don't know how much we knew about New York or the possibilities of that. But the costumes and everything was just sort of a it was pretty spectacular movie. What was that guy's name? That little guy. He shows up in Spike Lee movies and stuff. Well, his character name was Luther. Yeah. And David Kelly is David Patrick Kelly.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was great. Oh, he's a wonderful actor. Yeah. With the bottles. Oh, yeah. Yes, that moment that is often quoted,

I have to give him the credit for. The car was coming down and I said, you know, Jesus Christ, this is not what we need. I said, you know, you see him, I don't want to just coming down, and I said, Jesus Christ, this is not what we need. I said, you see them. I don't want to just do a reaction. I said,

they wanted me to go over here and check this out. I said, think of some fucking thing to say. I don't care. Sing to them if you want. But make them know your presence and taunt them. And then I went over to the camera that we were getting ready to do on the next shot.

And then I came back, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I saw him. He jumped out of the car, and he ran under the pier, and he grabbed some old beer bottles that were there, just trash. And he ran back into the car and so I said okay ready to shoot let's rehearse one more and then we'll shoot action and he does the

clinking and I thought this is what a real director is about you don't get in the middle of this just shoot it but that was very much well know that was all him huh well it was you know in a way it's kind of what directors do it's what actors are supposed

to do yes he he deserves the lion's share of the credit uh-huh but at the same time i created an opportunity right sure and and uh i was open to something that wasn't in the script and so i give myself a little i'll give myself 20 on that and what was the base where'd you get that story i mean like you know those guys with the baseball bats and the makeup i mean obviously you know i'd been to new york and i you know if that if that world existed it was outside of my periphery but you for some reason you wanted it to exist yeah it was i wanted to do, it was outside of my periphery, but for some reason you wanted it to exist. Yeah, I wanted to do something that was a little bit sci-fi, a little bit futuristic, but at the same time it had to have the crack of reality to it. And it's almost a musical in some ways.

Yeah, the costumes. Yeah, and I just thought of it as it was a crazy place, and I wanted it to push the envelope. There was a scene. It was from a novel by Saul Urich. The novel is meant to be fairly realistic, and it's kind of a Trotskyite vision, I would say. But there was a scene in the novel where one of the characters is reading a comic book,

and the comic book is the Xenophon story from classic Greek literature. But it was in a comic book, and the character in the book says, hey, these guys are just like us. Hey, you know, they're running away from us. And I said to myself, that's how to do the movie. Do it like a comic book. Do it weird and strange. Yeah. And let the Greek stuff jump if it's there for anybody who wants to see it.

But I think really, you but i think really you know the why did you react the way you reacted you asking me yeah because i think it was not you were not unique in the uh it would have gone whoa you know hey this is really something and i think a lot of it was really, it was a movie where, you know, they had made a lot of gang movies before and all that kind of business. But what was different that we did was we didn't examine it as a social problem movie. It was… You just took it, you amplified it to like... Yeah. We suggested that the gangs were

a rational choice for people in survival situations. And also each gang had their own personality and there were so many of them, you were excited to see what the theme was. And the movie didn't suggest that it was tragic that these characters were not going to become

lawyers and doctors and college graduates, et cetera. They accepted them on their own terms. It wasn't a societal problem. They were their own society. That's right.

And I think that was a very different thing at that moment. Yeah. Now it's very commonplace. I guess, but there was still never, I've never seen anything with that many gangs.

It's just that each, you know, it took that old 50s riff, you know, of territory to this other degree. Like there were all these people that had territory, but there were so many gangs and they were so specifically different through their uniforms and, you know, their approach to being a gang.

And the Warriors were sort of a throwback. They were like a classic, you know, just a leather vest, right, being a gang. And the Warriors were sort of a throwback. They were like a classic, just a leather vest kind of gang. And the other ones were sort of spectacular. And it just created something different. They were the simple folk. And just a few internal problems, but basically. Young James Remar. Yeah, he was.

He had internal problems on top of internal problems who uh who elected you war chief yeah yeah yeah that guy was uh yeah had the harsh voice yeah remar's very good at it and he was wonderful for me in 48 hours and wonderful for me in several other films you know jimmy's good yeah jimmy's a terrific actor he really is man yeah very intense very focused he's uh you know he's he's it hasn't had an he hasn't had an easy road but he's yeah he's uh he's a tremendous talent i love him yeah and and that started the role there warriors then you go to the long riders and that was one we're just so thrilled at because of the brother thing the casting all the all the brothers, the Carradines with the Quades, the Christopher Guest and his brother, and who was the other one, the other big Carradines, Quades? The Keeches.

Oh, yeah, the Keeches. I got a chance to make my first Western, and I was happy as a pig in the shed. Yeah. I was just, loved making it. Loved shooting it, having the horses out. Well, I was, you know, I'd always wanted to make West Coast, and so I got my first chance at it. And the casting was your idea? No.

I'd love to tell you it was, but James Keech had been in a play, some off-Broadway thing, where he played Jesse James. So he had the notion that it would be good to do a movie where he was Jesse James. And he went to Stacy and said, you could be Frank. And he said, they had all these friends.

And he said, well, you know, these gangs were all related, the Youngers and the Millers, and they were all related, and they all came from the same area in Missouri. So it's really a Midwestern, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's, as I said, a Green Western. So they got an agreement among all these brothers, and they got to Tim Zinnemann, who was an old friend of mine, and Tim brought it all to me.

And I said, well, I think we got a lot of work on the script here. Yeah. I always said, you know, we never really worked the story out very well, but there's a lot of good scenes, and the characters are good. Yeah. And they're good actors. They're good actors, yeah. Yeah, and then like Southern Comfort, I remember that coming out because Powers Booth was so intense and menacing. I don't remember the story, but I remember being scared of the swamp.

It was a tough movie to make yeah the swamp was unforgiving and yeah powers and keith yeah were the leads and uh they were both very good at it and uh and then and then the then the huge 48 hours was a game changer for for movies in a way well you're very kind i think uh the um uh yes for good or bad i think i i always say this about that i'm sure they're better movies than 48 hours i thought it was a really good one um but i've never i've never seen a movie that's been imitated more i mean it's just well that the you know taking the good cop, bad cop thing to this area of comedy where you don't remove the menace

and the stakes are still kind of high, I don't think that was done very much. I noticed not long ago, I rewatched like Freebie and the Bean with Khan and Arkin that there was a time where these movies that were essentially comedies, there was a time where these movies that were essentially comedies there was still a lot of body there's a pretty

high body count you know and I just thought that that dynamic between the two of them it was a real gift I always said that look the we're going to make it like a real tough thriller yeah and if you accept

it as an action movie it'll be very funny yeah if you try to tell everybody it's a comedy they're gonna get a little mixed up and and also I always said when we're making it that don't play a joke don't play jokes you know the the humor will be there it's in the attitude in the character so when you had Eddie I mean like you know that the humor will be there it's in the attitude in the character so when you had eddie i mean like you know that guy was see eddie was just there was the perfect moment for him to make a debut yeah he was coming out of saturday night live and uh he did something that there had been a series of people coming out of Saturday Night Live and

having great movie careers, instantly great Belushi, Bill Murray, et cetera, et cetera, Dan Aykroyd, all those guys. They had these fabulous careers. But what they had done was they had jumped from Saturday Night Live to comedies. Eddie jumped to a very different kind of movie, which opened up a whole new world for him of choices. Yeah. He could make movies. Well, for instance, Beverly Hills Cop would never have happened had he just done a conventional comedy as his debut, in my opinion.

Right. Well, because he was able to go, to have an edge uh you know not just be a broad comedy character no he could credibly yeah carry a gun yeah uh have tough attitudes yeah uh et cetera et cetera which that that dynamic between him and nolte was too much nolte is too much he's something else man well you know he um he I remember when he's the only guy in the world that calls me Walt which I don't like but but I quite happy to take it from him but he'd I came back from New York I'd gone back there to meet Eddie because he was shooting yeah Saturday Night Live and I said I'm gonna

go with this guy Nick nick and uh i said you know he's it's gonna be his first movie and he's he's tremendously talented i said he's not an actor you know he's not gonna be maybe he'll be an actor by the time the movie's over right and he's gonna need your help but i'm gonna tell you this nick It's going to be like doing a movie with a little kid or a dog. You've got to be good every take. Yeah. Because the one take he's good, we're printing it. Yeah.

Oh, that's not fair, Walt. God damn it. I want to, you know. And I said, that's the way it's going to be. Did it turn out that way? I mean, Darryl, did he show up in ways you didn't anticipate? Number one, Nick was good in every day. Eddie was not good in every day.

Eddie was all over the place. Oh, yeah. But it's the old thing. You only use the good one. Right. He was all over the place in that he wanted to riff. Yeah, and he was not comfortable. There was a very different world for him.

Yeah. But, you know, he was, look, the guy is an enormous talent, you couldn't hold it down. Yeah. But Nick was good. You know, we always, when we were editing the movie, we always said, anytime Eddie's in trouble, cut to Nick. Yeah. Because Nick was always doing something interesting interesting or he was always writing in character and yeah yeah um he's and uh and they loved each other yeah they they did oh yeah they they got

along great yeah nolte was like i don't know he's some he's he's always interesting i'll tell you that and that well you wrote that one and then i if am i wrong in noticing that like there was some did you start to sense i don't know if it was if it was who you used as a cinematographer or your own sense, that there was a style to your movies. Do you believe that in lighting and whatnot? Because I remember that when Remar comes out of the smoke almost. I remember there was some sort of vibe that you could see in Streets of Fire, i can see in the new one i don't always know how that happens with directors well it's uh part of the job mark i mean that's uh yeah i mean yeah i do you know we work very hard on the getting the look right yeah it's always a little difficult uh i mean that's two-thirds of what you do. I think people are always

you know there's a famous story about William Wyler who was one of the four or five probably historically most successful important directors in the history of Hollywood and he was always known as this fabulous director of actors. Yeah.

The performances in Wyler's movies. I think he still has the record of most nominated performances and things like that. And the young actor that comes over to him and says, my first day, Mr. Wyler, just like know what you'd like me to do in this scene. And he said, fuck, you get in there and act. I'll tell you if it's good or not.

But don't, he said, I'm a movie director. I'm not a goddamn acting coach. Get your ass in there and we'll see how it works. And now that's an extreme example. But there is a kind of – a lot of people think what a film director is is closer to their conception of what an acting coach is. Right. I think that's right. That you're sitting there talking to the actors about, well, do you think that maybe if he was motivated to do this based on whatever. It's not like that. I was always very taken by how often actors in discussing working with great directors,

whether it was Hitchcock or John Ford or Howard Hawks or many, many. The one common thing they'd always say is they never directed. They never talked. Right. They just put the cameras up. Well, I remember Paganbaugh. You ask about Paganbaugh. Paganbaugh told me about 75% of the job is casting.

He said, if you cast it right, then you've got to shoot it, and shoot it in a good way, stage it. Well, yeah, you're paying for them to do the thing that they do right yeah you said you know it's casting yeah and uh so um but it leads you into uh it's more complicated now like it's uh you know i i think i really think this that the actors and directors there's there a, shall we say, a natural tension between the two crafts. Actors tend to believe that they can play anything. They're not often given enough of an opportunity for the breadth of their talent. And directors tend to believe that if they haven't seen the person do it before, they can't do it.

Right. And therefore, they don't want any fucking mistakes when they go out there. But because if you make a mistake in casting, the price you're going to pay is very high. Yeah. So if you've cast somebody that can't do the part in a reasonable way in the way you want then you gotta get them out yeah and I think in it you know the the really the truth is they're both they're both wrong actors can't play just anything you know yeah do have limitations. I think they're right. They can probably play a lot more than they're given a chance to a lot of times.

And the directors are wrong. They are too limiting quite often. Although there is another. See, again, we're talking in cliches, which is my fault, since I'm doing the talking here. fault but since I'm doing the talking here but so many of the young directors now want to cast against the type yeah so they'll in in my estimation often foolishly cast so far against the type that the part lacks credibility I'm not going to give any examples yeah I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings but but is that part of it? Is that an ironic position that they're taking? I mean, do you think they know that?

That's the defense. Yeah. But you think it's like, yeah, they fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you, like, and also, like, I don't want to just, obviously, we can't go movie to movie. But you did work with Pryor. And, you know, you work with Murphy.

You work with Pryor on Brewster's Millions. How was that experience? Well, it was mixed. I probably, I was, I think, my own arrogance. I had gotten, I had this feeling that I could get laughs when I wanted in movies because we had good, there was a lot of humor in The Warriors. Yeah. And there was a lot of humor in the warriors yeah and the uh there was a lot of humor in the long riders and of course 48 hours had sure oh um but you didn't write that

as a comedy 48 hours you just thought you you were you shooting uh you were writing a straight no no i thought we'd get i thought we'd get laughs yeah but i just didn't want to play a joke right but so i, I was presented the idea of Brewster's Billions. I, so I thought, okay, I'm going to show I can do this. Yeah.

And a pretty much straight ahead comedy. And I, but I think that was part of it. The other part of it was a lot more positive than that, which was I had

a tremendous respect and admiration i didn't know him for richard yeah and richard at that time had uh was just coming but he'd only done one movie since what they those close to him always said his accident sure and so he was in a fragile state of mind I think that was pretty much a constant with him he was usually either very defensive or very agitated yeah and but the experience, Richard felt that if he didn't take drugs, he probably wasn't funny. Yeah. And he also felt that if he took drugs, he'd die. Tough position.

That's about as tough a position and and the problem was compounded by uh the persona of john candy yeah who was in the movie had an enormous part in the movie wonderful guy yeah wonderful guy but yeah and john was one of these guys as soon as he walked through the stage door he was on and he was funny and he loved being funny to the crew and yeah you know he knew everybody's name yeah and uh and he would make jokes about you know your family and they say he just learned and he was always on and he was just loved and funny and a great guy. Great guy. And very good in the movie.

Well, Richard was not an outgoing person. Richard was very much a performer when he performed, but he was not a funny guy just off. And he would stand kind of hunched over. Yeah, off. And he would stand kind of hunched over. He spent most of his time in his trailer, but I remember he would be this kind of hunched over, watching Candy.

Getting the laughs. Yeah, getting the laughs. And then every once in a while, it was so sad, he'd kind of try to turn something on with the crew. Yeah. And you could feel, it was just awkward. Yeah. You could feel. Competition and.

Yeah, and people would try to laugh because they, and Richard would realize they're not really laughing. Yeah. They're trying to laugh to indulge me. Yeah. So it was like, aye, aye, aye. Yeah. What the fuck. Sad.

Sad. Yeah. So, but Richard liked the movie. He told me several times that, and as years went by, and he became very, you know, it was his favorite, he felt. I don't think it's his best by any means, but I know why he,

because the movie took him on as an actor. He played a comedic, you know, it was a comedic lead as an acting role. Yeah, right. And he liked that. He didn't have to be a low comedian, I guess is the… Right, and he didn't have to be the guy. And he didn't have to be the guy. And he didn't have to be the guy, yes. And so he had this enormously warm spot in his heart for the movie. Right, he's probably grateful, too, in that transition period.

I think he grew to trust me. He started out, he was, again, a very wary personality. Yeah, yeah. And he, you know, I was always pretty straight with him i think you know there's always moments where you probably are feathering the truth yeah but uh but uh but i liked him a lot and i certainly i had great respect for him and uh so it was picture did well uh was not terribly well received, but Picture did well. And then it became this other thing.

It became, on television, it became this kind of enormous success. Kids loved it. Oh, yeah. Little kids liked it. And so it had a second life. Oh, that's good. Yeah. How did you get involved with the Aliens franchise?

I was sitting around the office one day, and a guy I knew, Mark Haggard, literally handed me a script through the windows. A hot day. Yeah. The window was open. I said, hey, Mark. He said, hey, what have you been looking for? You couldn't find the office there. And he said, I want you to read this script.

And I read the script and called him. I said, you know, it's not very good, but I think something. I had my partner, David Geiler, read it. And David, I remember it was from the Democratic National Convention, Carter was giving his speech. Yeah. And David called me about 10 minutes into the speech, and he said, I'm reading this script. Who gives a shit what's going on in the convention? And he said, I'm reading this script.

He said, this is terrible. And I said, keep reading. And three minutes later, he calls back, because I think it was on page 35 or something. And he says, I see what you mean. We ought to see if we can get this. And it was the chestburster scene. So we had this notion, if you could take the script, turn the script into a solid something, solid something.

Yeah. We could get it on that if you treated a B movie like an A movie, made it real slick. Yeah. That it would, could be a real commercial movie. Because the framework was there.

But you liked the egg laying in the stomach thing. Oh yeah. That was, that was, and the instincts were there so uh we redid the studio had actually already seen the script and it passed they couldn't even believe that we wanted to oh really yeah they did and uh and then it became a a trek

to get it on you know and you did a pass on the script? Yeah, I did several. I did several passes. I made the lead character a woman, worked out several things. Then David came back. He had gone off to Hong Kong with his girlfriend, and David came back.

Then we did a couple of drafts together. But by then the studio had read what we were doing and they were, they were now, they, they, they, they kind of saw what we saw. Yeah. And then, um, so then the hunt became, uh, first the hunt became who was the filmmaker going to be? And we offered it to about 35 directors. I didn't want to direct it myself. I didn't think I was really going to be good at the kind of model work and effects work that was then.

This was long before the CGI revolution and all that. Yeah, sure. And I didn't think I either had the patience or the technical expertise to pull that off. And so we offered it out to about 35 directors, I think. They all passed. And then we sent it to Robert Aldridgeridge and aldridge called called us over incidentally i think the characterization of robert aldridge on this thing that they're doing on television now is uh is an outrage and a travesty which one uh uh feud oh yeah he did you know robert aldridge You know, Robert Ulrich was a tremendous man, courageous man, and the idea that they're doing this to his memory.

What are they doing to him? I didn't watch it. Oh, they're making him a weak second-rate director who didn't even develop the property, which is an outrageous lie. Yeah. And they're presenting him as this weak, vacillating person that does whatever the studio wants him to do. Yeah.

Does whatever the, sleeps with the leading ladies to make the film go a little smoother, takes orders from the actors on the set. I mean, especially Robert Aldridge. This is one of the toughest guys in the actors on the set. I mean, especially Robert Aldrich. This is one of the toughest guys in the history of the Guild. And they just took liberties? They are taking unbelievable liberties. The other thing is Aldrich was the president of the Director's Guild for a couple of terms. Every director in the Guild is indebted to Robert Aldrich.

He got the greatest breakthrough contracts. He went locked up for two weeks with Lou Wasserman, slugged it out, and got the greatest advances we ever got in our creative rights and minimums, et cetera. And to do this to the reputation of, I'm all for the First Amendment, and I don't want to be a censor, and I don't want to say that you can't do something. But I think to do this to the reputation of a guy that didn't do anything but make really good movies and gave his whole life to the American film is, to me, without purpose and shameful. It's just shameful. I can't see that. Just to service a story.

Yeah, to service the story in a childishly melodramatic way, in my opinion. That's a shame. I wonder if his family is pushing back at all. Well, his daughter called me, as a matter of fact, this morning. Oh, really? I guess it's one of the reasons I'm heated up about it. Yeah. Yeah, they're in great pain over it.

That's a shame. And, you know, millions of people watch this. It might be their only exposure to this guy. That's right. Right. It's going to be the memory of Robert Aldrich to millions of people who otherwise don't know about his career. Right.

And I just think it's not illegal, I guess, and all that, but it's shameful. Are they calling him Robert? And I think somebody ought to say it's shameful. Yeah. So I guess I'm- You're the guy. I guess right now I'm the guy. And they're calling him by name in the movie?

Yeah. That's too bad. It really is. Sorry, what would- Well, he had the guy. And they're calling him by name in the movie? Yeah. That's too bad. It really is. Sorry, what would... Well, he had the alien script. Oh, yeah. And he said, I like... He was a tough old guy.

Yeah. And he said, I like the script. He said, you know, you got the monster and you got a patrol movie. Yeah. And he said, you know, and all that. And he said, yeah, you know, he said, I know how to do this. And he said, but he said, the movie will succeed or fail on the conception of the beast. He said, we got to come up with something really unique.

Yeah. And, and he said, he said, I don don't know just off the top of my head this may not be a good idea but you know we maybe we get like an orangutan and shave it and we're going god almighty that's one we hadn't thought of yeah and uh and you know then uh train the son of a bitch and and we just because you know you shouldn't see it very much you know, then train the son of a bitch. And we just, because you shouldn't see it very much. You know, he said, it's got to be really weird and strange. And so we always thought, Ridley did a wonderful job. Bob agreed to do the movie, but then he had a movie come out.

Well, he couldn't shoot the movie in England where the movie, where Fox wanted to make it. Yeah. Because he couldn't leave the presidency in England where Fox wanted to make it because he couldn't leave the presidency of the director's guild. Right, right, right. So it went on to Ridley, who David had seen the duelist at the Cannes Film Festival and was very impressed with it. Beautifully shot. Sound work was great. So Ridley liked the script he came over and well how'd you get from

a shaved orangutan to the uh geiger stuff well the uh i guess i wasn't kind in my assessment of the original script but the fellas that wrote the original script yeah had uh had were familiar with Giger's work. Giger, sorry. And they showed us the pictures and then and the picture books of Giger's work and we showed it to Ridley and Ridley said, well this is

our problems are solved. Yeah. And so it went from there. And you were involved with all of them. You didn't direct the first one, but obviously we had a big part in the script. And then... I was involved in the first three. Yeah. I'm listed as one of the producers on everything since. But Fox and I got, as usual, we got in a fight with the studio.

And we negotiated a uh settlement yeah uh we're still listed as producers by their insistence uh but we still maintain some ownership in the franchise uh jim cameron direct oh that's right too that's right yeah yeah i saw jim just monday, at Bill Paxton's memorial. Paxton was in here two weeks before he passed, talking to me. I ran into Bill at my doctor's office with some irony. I hadn't seen Bill in a couple years. Bill and I were very good friends. Great guy.

Wonderful guy. Yeah. Yeah, your moment with him was wonderful. Oh, I was so happy it happened, man. Well, it really got the essence of him, too. Oh, I was so happy it happened, man. Well, it really got the essence of him, too. I mean, that's the way he was. That's great.

Good to hear. Yeah, sweet guy, man. Just a shame. Real sad. I really like the movie Geronimo. I wanted to tell you that. Thank you. I don't know where it went or how it did, but I— Not well.

Yeah. It didn't do well for a couple of reasons, but it—you know, I was very pleased with it. I thought it accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. And I thought the story was a moving one. Yeah. And I thought the camera work on it was well done. And I thought... It looked beautiful.

I thought Rykuder's score was wonderful. He's great. Are you friends with him? Sure. How's he doing? He's doing great. He's still living over there in Santa Monica Canyon. And he tours. Yeah. He's a real. He's still living over there in Santa Monica Canyon, and he tours.

Yeah. He's a real wizard, that guy. He may be the most talented person I've ever worked with. I always say that about Rye. He lives wonderfully inside his own head, and he lives in this world of music, own head and and he lives in this world of music and he's wonderfully uh adaptive of taking strains of great american music yeah and then making it uniquely his own yeah and um he's a joy yeah he's a joy yeah he's a's a real gift to music. And there's such a huge catalog to sort of like get to know him through. But I like that movie.

Jason Patrick I thought was great. Jason was very good at it. And Milius is something about that guy. I don't know him, but ever since I saw that documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, and they interviewed Milius, and he's like, Francis had convinced us that we were making the first film to win the nobel prize like there was just such a swagger to his writing and like i i just uh i like that thing oh he's a wonderful writer i would say that uh my generation of screenwriter i think that uh john's scripts read the best.

If you wanted to read a script, John was absolutely the most powerful storyteller. He wrote beautiful scripts. Yeah. How's he doing? He's got health problems, and they've prevented him from working in the last few years. Uh-huh. health problems and they've prevented him from working in the last few years. Uh-huh. So now the new one to get up to speed, The Assignment, I hear you already got into a little trouble with that or no?

No, I think yes. The movie's been attacked roundly. I mean, it's also been defended. Yeah. I hasten to point out, but, uh, but there were people that felt that the movie,

uh, uh, treaded on ground that should not be, uh, examined. And the movie was rounded, criticized before it even was not only not seen, it was even made.

But the, uh, uh, the subject matter was perceived to be verboten by several people, and they didn't want the first place. It is not a movie about transgender. No. It is. I'm sorry. Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, it is a movie that deals with genital alteration. Yeah, but it's so, you know, it is a movie that deals with genital alteration. Yeah, but it's so clearly a horror trope. Yeah. And it's a take. It's a revenge. It's a comic book. It's a take on, you know, something creepy. There's a lot of elements in there that are very familiar to everyone. But that turn, that bizarre turn of that script where this vengeful doctor gets back at the man who killed her brother in this bizarre way, it can't be seen as really connected to reality on some level. No.

And I don't even think you did a disservice to either character, the male or the female character. Well, I'm a great believer that, you know, look, what is fundamentally the most important thing that any director or any storyteller can have, and that is sympathy for the human condition is ultimately sounds grandiose, but it is the fundamental. Now, you may approach it through many different ways. You can approach it through comedy or serious drama or irony or comedy. But I leave both. The movie pits a trained medical doctor who's also an intellectual who has an agenda an intellectual who has a agenda and has a tragic past herself against the lowest form of criminal Darwinian survivor on the to use one of Bill Paxton's favorite

phrases on the food chain yeah they don't come any lower uh than frank kitchen and these two diametrically opposed types are thrown up against each other in a double revenge thing and the movie finally it seems to me shows sympathy and elevates both characters yeah again through a comic book format yeah graphic it is a graphic novel that that um i co-wrote but um it started as a graphic novel didn't start started uh dennis hamill wrote a script wrote a story and script in 1977 yeah and i read it then and i i always said god this is a hell of an idea. And I didn't do a goddamn thing for 15 years, I think it was. Then I optioned it and I co-wrote a script which I didn't go right. And I never really did anything with it. I just abandoned it and gave the story back to Dennis.

And then another 10 years went by, and I was stumbling around the basement, and I ran across his original, and I thought, you know, this is, I always loved this thing. And suddenly, and it's one of those, I don't think anybody ever believes you when you say it, but within about an hour, I figured out how I wanted to do it. Now, I knew certain things. I wasn't going to get a big budget. I wanted to do it neo-noir. I wanted to do it comic book. I wanted to do it as a kind of somewhat larger version of one of the tales from the crypt yeah that i had done in the past where you take nasty people uh pit them against each

other and leave them in a chastened condition yeah and uh so i think the film accomplished that i i've seen it with audiences they. It seems to play very well. But again, the movie is within a certain off-center format. It's not very realistic. It has nothing to do with transgender. And it's kind of a – there's a lot of would-be humor in it as well as the little – especially the stuff between Sigourney and Tony. And where does the graphic novel come into this? Oh, while I was in – I turned the script in when I finished

my version of the script. Yeah. I gave it to my agent and he said, well, Jesus Christ, nobody's going to make this. Yeah. And I said, well, great.

Good news. Yeah. And he said, well, he said, well, look, I was on my way to Munich. They were doing a retrospective

of my movies at the Munich Festival. He said, on your way back from Munich, stop in a retrospective of my movies at the munich festival he said on your way back from munich stop in paris he said i know a producer there maybe he'll go for it he's kind of an odd guy he'll go for it he's chance yeah go for it so i did i stopped in paris and while i was in paris and and it turned out he was quite right yeah the french uh producer Saeed bin Saeed, decided to back the movie as long as I promised that I would make it very quickly and very cheaply. Yeah. And that we got some kind of name casting in it.

Yeah. And at the same time, I had written another graphic novel a year or so before, a gangster piece, which was published in France. And so I called up the publishers and said, I've got another one here that I think will probably make a graphic novel. They agreed. And so simultaneously, the graphic novels started being put together. And you used some elements of that in the film. Oh, yeah. Some comic panels. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And it's definitely a genre piece. It is indeed. Yeah. Was it another sort of, was the concept to take that sort of b-movie vibe and elevate it again yes i'm not even sure uh elevate is the right it is you know as soon as somebody says this is low and this is lurid yeah i say absolutely yeah it is yeah you know that's that's part of the fun of it i think michelle's very good in it i think sigourney's very good yeah i'm very proud of the fun of it i think michelle's very good in it and i think sigourney's very good at it yeah i'm very proud of the acting in it yeah and the lead michelle that's her name uh michelle rodriguez yeah yeah she's great yeah as usual everybody told me oh she's you know very difficult you don't want

to cast her and we met for lunch and i said everybody tells me not to cast you because you're so difficult i'll them. And so we talked about, I liked her right away. She really is a very, she comes from a very hard background, and she is a real off-the-streets girl. At the end of the lunch, she stood up,

and she said, well, I don't know who the fuck you're going to cast in this thing, but I'll tell you one thing. Guy or girl, you're never going to find anybody that can handle the guns better than me. And she walked away.

And she was right. I, of course, cast her. Yeah. And how do you like shooting, like, quick and fast? Was it all digital? Yeah. We didn't use film. Yeah, it's digital.

Well, how do I feel about it? I've always, I'm not one of those directors that likes lots of takes. Yeah. So that wasn't particularly a challenge. But at the same time, you know, I'd like to have had another five days or something like that. Yeah. Another slug of money. Yeah.

You always think you could, you know, movies is, in the end, you know, they're never everything that you want them to be. Yeah. They have problems. Sure. And you think you could have done this a little better.

That's a little better, you know. But I, I certainly think I wanted to do something very neo-noir. I wanted it, again, within the graphic novel framework. And I wanted to work with women.

So many of my films, people always say, you know, he's a very masculine director and all that. So, you know, it's that human instinct that whatever people say, you want to show them the opposite is true. And there it is. Listen, nobody makes movies that please everybody.

That's just not. And you should never complain. I've had a very lucky career. Don't ever complain about this. about this. There's a great quote that I'm probably going to get wrong. Yeah. Dr. Johnson saying that we come uncalled into the arena to seek our fortune and hazard disgrace.

And that's exactly right. Nobody asked you. You came into it. Yeah. You play the goddamn cards you're dealt and you take your chances yeah and you can't see it coming necessarily no that's right and you you know you do what you can with what you got and uh you take your chances and you've weathered some storm i mean warriors got i mean that people are getting killed right yeah no we've you know that's right you know somehow well they always say the same thing yeah the the the biggest trick is to stay in the game and uh i've been i can't believe him you know i've actually been a director now for uh

over 40 years uh-huh and i've been making a living in the town for 50 years. Showbiz. Showbiz, yeah. Yeah. And what do you got coming up? I've just optioned a play that was off-Broadway, another female lead. Uh-huh. I'm becoming a director of women.

Good. And I'm working on that script with the author of the play. What play? It's called Bethany. Uh-huh. And it's Laura Marks is the M-A-R-K-S, not like Carl, and is the author of the play. And it's a psychological thriller, I guess, for lack of a better. Oh, cool.

Excited about it? Yes. Well, great. Well, it's certainly a great honor talking to you, Mr. Hill. Well, thank you. Again, and thanks for the... You know, at Bill's Memorial, they played some of the podcast. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, I think they asked us. That was very nice of them to ask. And it was, you know, it helped inform, and it was terribly moving, the service for those of us that knew him. He was a very special person. Well, I'm sorry for your loss, and you know, and I was thrilled

that I got to spend that time with him, and honored that they used it at the memorial. Well, I think it's your show with him is going to be you know probably the most fitting testament you know to those that want to look back oh good you well i'm glad i i i provided that sure great talking to you thank you that was exciting, right? A little history for you.

What an amazing life. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour. I've got a few more dates coming up. Madison, Wisconsin this week. Milwaukee, Minneapolis this Saturday for the special. Then a little later and a few weeks after that, I got Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. If that would sound good to you or you're in the area, go to WTFpod.com slash tour.

For that, go to WTFpod.com to pre-order the new book, Waiting for the Punch. Words to live by from the WTF podcast. I can play some dirty guitar. I brought the magic instrument out here, and I'm going to plug it into an old thing. Boomer lives! on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

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