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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Edswick
is a director from Hollywood, a producer,

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a writer as well award winning drama
series Families, where things kind of

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started off for him, but he
also had to do with the Academy Award

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winning Glory, Courage, under Fire, Legends of the Fall, The Last

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Samurai, Blood, Diamond, Love
Another, Drugs, and many many more.

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He's written a new memoir called Hits, Flops and Other Illusions My forty

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something years in Hollywood. Edswick,
good to have you long. Thanks for

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having me so, ed Zwick,
Hollywood producer, writer, director. You've

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had flops, Oh, we all
have. And in fact, if you

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look at anybody's I AMDB, you
see that there's nobody escapes it. In

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fact, I think they're a really
important part of the processes. I can

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think of in terms of baseball.
You know, if you hit one out

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of three and you hit three thirty
three, and you means you're going to

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make it to the Hall of Fame, and that meant that you popped up

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or grounded out or struck out two
out of three times. I've always been

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the type of person that has to
learn through experience. I have to have

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a certain amount of failure to learn
from. And whenever I found myself in

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situations where I wasn't allowed the latitude
to make a few mistakes, I didn't

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learn anything and I didn't get I
didn't get better at my craft. That's

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right. I mean success is mystifying. You know, it makes you a

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little anxious. You don't know what
would happen right, and you tend not

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to examine it. But boy,
you take a long look at failure,

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and I think that's where you get
better. Ed Zwick's with us my forty

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something years in Hollywood, hits,
flops and other illusions. It isn't just

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a how to book or a motivational
piece either. You tell some you tell

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some backroom stories. I tell him
more than a few. I mean,

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that's where it all happens. It's
you know, what the audience sees is

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the polished product, but I know
what goes on backstage, and you know,

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And that's what I wanted to talk
about. So, uh, you

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also are responsible for the careers of
many of our Hollywood heavy hitters these days.

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Well, I don't know about responsible. They're the talented ones, but

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I was kind of the midwife.
I got to meet a lot of people

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young, and I got to work
with him, and maybe I had some

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hand in helping, but you know, it's it's a privilege, it really

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is. There's so many talented people
that I've been able to work with.

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I remember the scene with Denzel Washington
and Glory where he's being whipped for miss

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for behaving badly in the Union Army, and the defiance in his face when

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it's going on. I remember watching
that and thinking if he didn't get an

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Academy Award for that, I don't
know. I don't know who will.

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Well. I think we all knew
at the time that's something very extraordinary was

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happening. It's a rare moment when
everyone on the set is utterly immersed in

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that way, and you know,
grizztal veterans of fifty years suddenly stop and

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stare, and that's what we all
knew was happening at that moment. Yeah,

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was it all him or did he? Did he have to really be

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put into the scene. I think
it's in alchemy. I think that it's

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it's him, It's it's the moment, it's the other actors, it's certainly

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me, and you create a setting
in which he could thrive, in which

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he could do that kind of work. It takes some time to push away

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the entropy of life and create that
little slice of your own reality. Ed

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Zwick Hits, Flops and Other Illusions
My forty something years in Hollywood. When

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you're in the midst of producing a
film like Glory or Blood Diamond, do

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you know at some point this is
going to be a big hit or is

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it still a guessing game right up
until the showtime. I think most of

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them are guessing games. I think
there are moments. I think there are

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movies you may sometimes you realize they
are not going to be that way because

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they just haven't jumped off the page. But every now and then you find

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a thing that strikes audiences in a
way and you can start to smell something,

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you know before you get to the
gate. And I've had all different

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versions of it. Edswick Hits,
Flops and Other Illusions, my forty something

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years in Hollywood. Putting together a
memoir can be an enormous task. How

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did you decide what to include not
and what not to include? You know,

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There's a great writer man named Elmore
Leonard who said, he said,

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I tend to leave out the parts
that other people skip, for instance,

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Well, you know, I don't. I didn't think the audience would be

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so interested in I was born in
the little town of the kind of childhood

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stuff that's certainly important to but may
not land with audiences the same way.

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I really wanted to jump into the
middle and let let the audience catch up

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as we went along. And did
you have any major surprises along the way

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writing? Absolutely, I was surprised
by some of the things that actually came

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to me that I never thought I
would remember. One way was to look

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at some of the movies and not
look at the plot, but just look

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at what we had to do to
get there. And that brought me back

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to the process and all of these
extraordinarily talented people that I had been able

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to work with, and a whole
world of memory came back to me because

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of that. And how different was
it then, writing, say, a

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script for a movie. It's very
different. A script is you know,

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it's a prescribed form. It's two
hours, it's one hundred and twenty pages,

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it's as many scenes, and then
you know a book is as big

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as you wanted to be, as
small as you wanted to be. There's

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nobody watching, there's nobody listening.
This imbody telling you that you have to

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take less time or less money and
you are free. But that freedom is

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terrifying because you know it's it's just
you and and you really there. It

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could require some some soul searching creatively
but also personally, hits, flomps and

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other illusions. The name of the
book my forty something years in Hollywood,

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ed Zwick, And as with a
good film, the magic probably happens in

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the editing room. Did you do
a lot of editing along the way of

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the book? I think I think
I'm I'm very much of a self editor

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as i'm as I'm shooting. But
I actually got very lucky in this.

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I mean, I wrote the book, and I encountered a very talented editor,

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someone who is actually my son's age, And it was kind of great

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to have somebody unimpressed by what I'd
done or who I was, or maybe

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hadn't even seen the news. And
that that that that gave a certain kind

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of gave him a certain kind of
moral authority to say, well, what

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does this really mean or help assume
that I'm a viewer doesn't really know what

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you're talking about, Hits, flumps
and other illusions my forty something years in

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Hollywood. Ed Zwick is the writer, and he's also the writer and producer

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and director of many of your favorite
films. It's a great backstory home and

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I think you'll enjoy it for a
summer read. And thanks for joining us,

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Ed, thanks for having me.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee

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Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven.
And iHeartMedia presentation.