This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Edswick is a director from Hollywood, a producer,
a writer as well award winning drama series Families, where things kind of
started off for him, but he also had to do with the Academy Award
winning Glory, Courage, under Fire, Legends of the Fall, The Last
Samurai, Blood, Diamond, Love Another, Drugs, and many many more.
He's written a new memoir called Hits, Flops and Other Illusions My forty
something years in Hollywood. Edswick, good to have you long. Thanks for
having me so, ed Zwick, Hollywood producer, writer, director. You've
had flops, Oh, we all have. And in fact, if you
look at anybody's I AMDB, you see that there's nobody escapes it. In
fact, I think they're a really important part of the processes. I can
think of in terms of baseball. You know, if you hit one out
of three and you hit three thirty three, and you means you're going to
make it to the Hall of Fame, and that meant that you popped up
or grounded out or struck out two out of three times. I've always been
the type of person that has to learn through experience. I have to have
a certain amount of failure to learn from. And whenever I found myself in
situations where I wasn't allowed the latitude to make a few mistakes, I didn't
learn anything and I didn't get I didn't get better at my craft. That's
right. I mean success is mystifying. You know, it makes you a
little anxious. You don't know what would happen right, and you tend not
to examine it. But boy, you take a long look at failure,
and I think that's where you get better. Ed Zwick's with us my forty
something years in Hollywood, hits, flops and other illusions. It isn't just
a how to book or a motivational piece either. You tell some you tell
some backroom stories. I tell him more than a few. I mean,
that's where it all happens. It's you know, what the audience sees is
the polished product, but I know what goes on backstage, and you know,
And that's what I wanted to talk about. So, uh, you
also are responsible for the careers of many of our Hollywood heavy hitters these days.
Well, I don't know about responsible. They're the talented ones, but
I was kind of the midwife. I got to meet a lot of people
young, and I got to work with him, and maybe I had some
hand in helping, but you know, it's it's a privilege, it really
is. There's so many talented people that I've been able to work with.
I remember the scene with Denzel Washington and Glory where he's being whipped for miss
for behaving badly in the Union Army, and the defiance in his face when
it's going on. I remember watching that and thinking if he didn't get an
Academy Award for that, I don't know. I don't know who will.
Well. I think we all knew at the time that's something very extraordinary was
happening. It's a rare moment when everyone on the set is utterly immersed in
that way, and you know, grizztal veterans of fifty years suddenly stop and
stare, and that's what we all knew was happening at that moment. Yeah,
was it all him or did he? Did he have to really be
put into the scene. I think it's in alchemy. I think that it's
it's him, It's it's the moment, it's the other actors, it's certainly
me, and you create a setting in which he could thrive, in which
he could do that kind of work. It takes some time to push away
the entropy of life and create that little slice of your own reality. Ed
Zwick Hits, Flops and Other Illusions My forty something years in Hollywood. When
you're in the midst of producing a film like Glory or Blood Diamond, do
you know at some point this is going to be a big hit or is
it still a guessing game right up until the showtime. I think most of
them are guessing games. I think there are moments. I think there are
movies you may sometimes you realize they are not going to be that way because
they just haven't jumped off the page. But every now and then you find
a thing that strikes audiences in a way and you can start to smell something,
you know before you get to the gate. And I've had all different
versions of it. Edswick Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, my forty something
years in Hollywood. Putting together a memoir can be an enormous task. How
did you decide what to include not and what not to include? You know,
There's a great writer man named Elmore Leonard who said, he said,
I tend to leave out the parts that other people skip, for instance,
Well, you know, I don't. I didn't think the audience would be
so interested in I was born in the little town of the kind of childhood
stuff that's certainly important to but may not land with audiences the same way.
I really wanted to jump into the middle and let let the audience catch up
as we went along. And did you have any major surprises along the way
writing? Absolutely, I was surprised by some of the things that actually came
to me that I never thought I would remember. One way was to look
at some of the movies and not look at the plot, but just look
at what we had to do to get there. And that brought me back
to the process and all of these extraordinarily talented people that I had been able
to work with, and a whole world of memory came back to me because
of that. And how different was it then, writing, say, a
script for a movie. It's very different. A script is you know,
it's a prescribed form. It's two hours, it's one hundred and twenty pages,
it's as many scenes, and then you know a book is as big
as you wanted to be, as small as you wanted to be. There's
nobody watching, there's nobody listening. This imbody telling you that you have to
take less time or less money and you are free. But that freedom is
terrifying because you know it's it's just you and and you really there. It
could require some some soul searching creatively but also personally, hits, flomps and
other illusions. The name of the book my forty something years in Hollywood,
ed Zwick, And as with a good film, the magic probably happens in
the editing room. Did you do a lot of editing along the way of
the book? I think I think I'm I'm very much of a self editor
as i'm as I'm shooting. But I actually got very lucky in this.
I mean, I wrote the book, and I encountered a very talented editor,
someone who is actually my son's age, And it was kind of great
to have somebody unimpressed by what I'd done or who I was, or maybe
hadn't even seen the news. And that that that that gave a certain kind
of gave him a certain kind of moral authority to say, well, what
does this really mean or help assume that I'm a viewer doesn't really know what
you're talking about, Hits, flumps and other illusions my forty something years in
Hollywood. Ed Zwick is the writer, and he's also the writer and producer
and director of many of your favorite films. It's a great backstory home and
I think you'll enjoy it for a summer read. And thanks for joining us,
Ed, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee
Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
weekday afternoons from five to seven. And iHeartMedia presentation.