WEBVTT

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Dark Destinations may be end times Night's
preacher. Why would a few more casualties

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struggle me because of their blood?
Will join yours? A radio drama anthology.

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You are wrong how you figure?
Every mark on Longo is hunting you

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down, not you, your partner, he said, I didn't have a

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ray gun. Full cast performances set
in the haunted corners of the globe.

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Darkness is coming for you. That's
the fear that taunts me. Dark Destinations

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by fatherm Alone at Weirdingwaymedia dot Com. Weird In Welcome Back Midnight doers to

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a very special segment of the show, I'm follow them Alone and Joining Me

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Tonight. Is a filmmaker, producer, actor who not only was responsible for

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dozens of features, including the classics
He Knows, You're Alone and Cameron's Closet,

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but he also directed eight episodes of
Friday the Thirteenth series, two episodes

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of Dark Shadows. Over a long
and illustrious career, he's worked with illuminaries

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like John Palito, Kenneth McMillan,
Joe Morton, Talia Balsam, Michelle Nichols,

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Olivia Hussey, Steve Railsback, Piper
Laurie Eddie, Albert Mel Harris,

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Chuck McCann, Bobby the Chico,
TJ. Castronova. If you know you

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know Midnight Viewers, Annabeth Yesh Hector, Alissando, this is ridiculous, Jurgen

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proc Now, Ali Sheety, Meat
Loaf, Luke Perry See, Thomas Howl,

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Tiffany ambertheas and personal favorite of mine, Fay done Away, My God,

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sir. It goes on and on. And while he directed the Clairvoyant,

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he himself had clairvoyance enough to cast
mister Tom Hanks in his first theatrical

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feature. He is a dark Side
bit of royalty, having directed four episodes

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of the series. Please join me
in welcoming mister Arma Mastriani to Midnight Viewing.

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Welcome Sarah, Hey, what a
pleasure to be here. It is

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entirely ours. Tell us how obviously
you were. You were making movies before

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you got to Dark Side. Dark
Side was your first television series. But

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what got you? What got you
there? What got you into the movies?

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Where'd you go to school? Where'd
you grow up? Man? I

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grew up in Brooklyn, Brooklyn,
New York, and I guess I was

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always fascinated with movies. I remember
going to see a film when I was

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maybe five or six years old,
and I just watched the curtains open and

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I saw that giant screen and then
all of a sudden these images on the

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screen, and I said, wow, that's amazing, look at that.

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You know, I want to do
that. And I, you know,

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just on my own, I never
studied or went to film school. I

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kind of like, yeah, I
tuk my dad into buying me a eight

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millimeter camera, not even super no, not even super. And in those

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days, it was one of those
magazine type cameras that you put it in

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twenty five feet, take it out, turn it around, put it back

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in, and shoot the other twenty
five feet, and then send it out

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to be developed. They'd splice it
all into one reel, fifty foot reel.

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So he kept asking, he kept
saying to me. My dad would

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say, like, what do you
what do you want a camera for?

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What are you going to do with
the camera. I said, well,

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you know, I want to make
movies and stuff, and he and he

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goes, movies, what do you
mean of the family, And I was

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going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know that was

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not his you know, not his
vocation. You know, he came from

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Italy with his two brothers and they
founded a jewelry business in New York City

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and they were very successful at it, and he had aspirations of me taking

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over the business, and naturally I
worked for him, yeah, during the

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summer vacation and stuff like that,
but my heart wasn't in it. Although

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when I used to go out and
sell for him, I used to,

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you know, sit down and start
talking to the buyers and I'd be I'd

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say, hey, by the way, do you see this movie? Wasn't

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that amazing way they told the story? And they, you know, and

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they get so wrapped up into my
enthusiasm. They order and order and order

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stuff. But they love the stories
I tell. And I found that I

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was a good storyteller too, because
when I was in the boy Scouts,

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I used to they always always picked
me to tell a campfire story at night,

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and then everybody was too scared to
leave and they didn't want to go

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off to their tents alone, you
know. And in the middle of the

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night. I'll never forget this,
I heard one guy, mister Flanning,

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who was our scout master, Please
I need to go to the bathroom.

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Come and come with me. He
just you know, we used to go

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out and pee in the woods or
whatever. But you know, yeah,

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I'd create these stories. You know, a lot of them, you know,

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were stories you know, you heard, you picked up on, and

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I'd always embellished them somehow. And
then the twig snaps heard and he turned

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around and there was something that looked
like a person standing there, you know,

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like I'd always I had very very
vivid imagination. And you also have

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an incredible attention to detail. Well, I've been I've been looking at a

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lot of your stuff over the past
few days and and you're you're you're very

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meticulous actually in your in your presentation
and your shots. Yeah, well,

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I I enjoy that because I think
the whole experience of making a film is

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telling a story visually. And you
know, if you can say it through

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through visually, you don't need to
you don't need to say it verbally.

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And and that's how I learned,
because I when I made these super eight

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more the eight millimeter films, I
used to get my friends together and we'd

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I'd come up with some scenes or
I'd write a little story and that I

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wanted to direct, and I wanted
to make and we'd shoot it and I'd

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splice it together and then i'd show
it to them and i'd play music from

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a tape recorder in the background,
and you know, and that evolved into,

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you know, becoming involved in school
with the projects and making short little

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films, and one of them won
an award at a festival, and that

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prompted me to go into another one. And then I did a sixteen millimeter

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film because I formed a club in
Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Arts and Cultural Association.

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They paid for they funded us as
a film club, and all the

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kids came to work on films there
and I was able to make a film

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there and I made a short film
called The Private Worlds of Sophie and Bernie

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Schwartz. It was sort of a
comedy and this was the first time I

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was able to use sound and stuff
like that, and it was sixteen millimeter

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in French. At this point,
well, I mean, I was just

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starting in college. I had the
other ones I had made were in high

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school, right right, But this
is like an actual short film, you're

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yeah, twenty minute film. And
it really turned out good because I had

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this concept, I said, I
want to tell a story about a middle

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aged couple that are really no longer
attracted to each other, and they exist

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in the same household speak but not
really to each other. They speak at

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each other. They they're like,
she's got the curlers in her hair and

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a bathrobe, and she's making the
coffee in the morning, and he's eating

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his breakfast, you know, getting
ridy, and he's like an overweight guy

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and she's this mousey looking woman and
they you know, the spark has gone

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out of their marriage and they just
talk. But they don't talk to each

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other. They talk at each other
like she'll say, you know, Stewart's

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is having a great shoe sale today. I'm going to go there and check

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them out out. And he goes, yeah, you know, look at

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this nine o'clock tonight hangover Square.
I gotta watch that. I like that

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movie larrd Krieger, you know,
And that was their existence. Now once

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they are separated from each other,
my story was that they had to survive

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somehow, but they created fantasies.
So she imagines the gardener in the backyard,

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so she's looking through the Venetian blinds
and she's looking at the gardener doing

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the and he takes his shirt off
because it's hot, you know, and

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she's like studdying his torso, you
know, and she's like and then the

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doorbell rings and all of a sudden
it's the delivery boy. This young guy

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comes in. Hey, missus Schwartz, I got your stuff, you know,

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and he brings the bags and she
goes, put him on the table

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there, Jimmy, you know.
And as she's going, you know,

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tell us Saul that the last week
those vegetables were a little And as she's

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speaking, her fantasy takes over and
she suddenly says, you know, missus

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Schwartz, you're one of the nicest
looking women of all of my mom friends.

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And he's not opening his shirt a
little, you know, and she's

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going Jimmy and goes, yeah,
come over here, missus Schwartz, give

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me a hug. I want to
hug it, you know. So they

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had these wild sexual fantasies, and
he is on his way to work and

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he sees the woman at the fruit
stand and she's she's playing dumb dun dun

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dun da da da d Hey fresh
fruite today, and he goes, not

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today, I'm late, and but
in the minute he gets on the elevator

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as he gets as he's getting off
to get on his floor to work,

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and she's standing there in this Carmen
Miranda dress with all the fruit in her

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hair and everything, and they start
to dance together, and they dance off

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into his office, which becomes something
else, and it's a story about that,

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and ultimately at the end, the
two of them meet at that end

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of the day, and they've gone
through four or five different fantasies, and

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they meet at the end of the
day and the music is playing on the

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radio and he's clipping his toe nails. She's putting new rollers in and they

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kind of step backward and looking at
each other in the mirror, and they

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hit each other and he looks at
her, and the music says, starts

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taking off with his beautiful waltz,
and he takes her in his arms,

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and he starts dancing with her,
and he's dancing, and suddenly he's dancing

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with his fantasy, and then she's
dancing with her fantasy. Then she's dancing,

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and it keeps changing, changing,
changing, until they stop and they

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look at each other and he says, Sophie, she's Bernie. So they

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discover each other through their fantasies and
the Walsaw Well. This film got entered

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into the Fordham University Film Festival.
The judge was Auto Preminger. Good lord,

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okay, stops the festival and says, this is the winner and I

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want to meet the director. I
get a telephone call in Brooklyn, New

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York. My mom says, Columbia
Pictures want to say, Auto Premenger's office

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is on the film that speak.
I said, are you kidding me?

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And they said, mister Premenger would
love to meet you. Would you kindly

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come into Manhattan to the so and
so la. So I did and I

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was like, wow, I can't
believe this. And I get there and

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his attendant, his office person,
says to me, just a moment,

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please, he'll be with you in
a few moments. He's on the phone

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and then he got I heard the
buzzer and she says, you can go

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in now. And she opened the
door and there's this beautiful office and he's

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sitting naturally against this gigantic window and
he's shading his bald head with an electric

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rage and he goes, come in, come in. Your picture made me

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laugh and made me cry. It's
so beautiful. How did you make this

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movie? It's so perfect? I
said, well, thank you so much,

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Thank you so much. He says, I am going to make sure

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everyone sees this movie. He got
on the phone in front of me,

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called Paramount Pictures, United Artists,
Columbia Pictures, and another company I forgot,

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and I went that day. I
brought my film to Columbia Pictures,

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which was in the building, and
when they watched it, they came back

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to me. I said, you
know, we love the short, but

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we don't make shorts, we make
features. Why don't you write a script

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or something, or come up with
a script you want to do, bring

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it to us and let's see.
So that encouraged me to and then Otto

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was so generous what he did.
Invited me on a Sunday afternoon to his

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home on someton place. He had
about maybe thirty or forty people there,

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all from the industry, had a
huge buffet laid out, and he showed

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my film to them. Oh my
gosh, generous thing I've ever experienced.

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And it encouraged me to become exactly
like that, not the monster that he

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was called all the time, the
screamer and all those things, because I've

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experienced this with a number of directors, including Auto premacher, William Friedkin,

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Francis Ford Coppolak. They were so
wonderful and generous to me. So I

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ended up making writing a script called
Rapallo and Sons, which was a comedy

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almost like Moonstruck. And it was
way before Moonstruck. This was nineteen seventy

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something, and I gave it to
an actor who lived in the neighborhood.

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I never met him. I just
happened to call him up. See this

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kind of I persevered, you know. I went after people, you know,

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like I called Vincent Gardinian and I
said, listen, he's listened.

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A lot of people send me scripts. I'll read it. I'll let you

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know, I figured. But two
weeks later, I get a telephone call.

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Hello, my mom, this is
Vince Gardenia. I loved your script.

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I laughed so much. It's so
wonderful. How do you write this

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thing? It's so good? Blah
blah blah blah blah, I said,

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well, I wrote it with a
Franciscan monk, brother Jonathan, Who's who

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he wrote. He used to write
plays for the Ensemble Studio theater, but

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he was a si Franciscan monk.
Wow, and we worked together and we

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wrote the script. Anyway, he
says, by the way I gave it

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to I hope you don't mind.
I gave it to my agents at the

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William Morris Agency. They loved it, and they want to meet you and

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they want to sign the script.
I want to sign you as a client,

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I said, are you kidding me? Wonder? So I went up

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and I met, and I sure
enough signed with the William Morris Agency.

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And before I knew what the picture
was set up at Palomar Pictures. Yvonne

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Passer was going to direct. Since
I was a I had not directed a

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feature yet. Wit isn't that the
whole idea? Yeah? Well, I

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mean what happened The guy who was
breaking the script down for them, George

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Manassei, their production manager, came
to me and said, listen, do

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you want to make a movie because
I got these two guys, these two

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Broadway producers who have some money.
They want to make a horror film.

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I said, sure, of course, So I went in met with them.

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They had seen my shorts film shorts
and and my and so what happened

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is they summertime, you know,
they said yeah. They said, so

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what's the movie? And I'm going
the movie? He said, the movie

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the horror film you want to make. I thought, yeah, So I

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started pitching the story that I used
to tell at the campfire in the and

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they and they're eating their lunch and
they're like kind of nodding, like they've

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heard this one before. And I
swear to God I that moment I said,

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this is they're not buying this.
They're not buying this. And I

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said, but then we pulled back
and that's on a screen in a movie

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theater and there's people sitting in the
theater watching this, and the real killer

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sits oh. And that's the beginning
of he Knows You're Alone. And I

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wrote that with my dear friend Scott
Parker, who was also working for his

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dad in the jewelry business, and
we used to meet together and write write

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the story, and we used to
come up what's scary? And I said,

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look, I don't want to make
a gore movie. I want to

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make a very scary psychological thing,
you know, a thriller where where it's

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all implied, but I mean you
might see that that knife and all that

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stuff, kind of like psycho because
I was very influenced by Hitchcock and even

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Halloween. You know, so you
weren't ripping end trails out of co eds

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were no, no, no,
you're making a suspense picture. I hadn't

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seen Friday the Thirteenth yet, but
that was a lot of talk about that.

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So we made this film and it
was it was dirt cheap because they

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were going to they were getting another
investor named Sam Arkoff who used to run

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AIP Pictures. But he calls the
last minute. We're starting production, pre

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production, and he says, I
can't do it. Fellas he says,

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you're going to you know, I
have to bail on you because I'm involved

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in two other pictures and I'm not
going to have that. So they said,

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well, we can't make it,
you know, because we were going

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to make it like I think six
hundred thousand dollars or something like that.

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And I said, no, no, no, we'll still do it.

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We'll still do it. We'll make
it for three hundred that, you know,

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for just whatever you have. And
they said you can't, you can't,

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and we'll shoot on Staten Island and
I know people and he knows,

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my friend knows people will put it
all together guerrilla style. Finally they said

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all right, all right, let's
give it a shot. And that's how

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that happened. And I just say
that, I love how scrappy you were

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in this situation where you're having,
you know, being feted by auto premanger

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and your film is being shown and
you're at every studio and yet you're on

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the ground making it happen. I
just loved that. I was very very

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fortunate. I just had a path
that was very open to me, and

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it just kept Anyway, the film
gets made and they bring it out to

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Los Angeles. The two producers bring
it out to Los Angeles ahead of the

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con Film Festival because they were going
to go to conn to sell the foreign

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rights. You know, they figured
they'd make a few dollars with it.

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Well, the studios were supposed to
see wanted to see it because it was

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still a week before, so they
figured, all right, let's invest some

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money, we'll go out there.
So they showed it. The first one

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to see it was supposed to be
twentieth Century Fox, but they cancel the

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screening because they had a conflict,
So they said, who's next in line?

254
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We don't want to waste a day
MGM. So they brought it to

255
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MGM and MGM loved it. They
watched it twice because when they went to

256
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pick it up, the picture was
just starting again. So they knew something

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was up because there was a packed
house of executives and all the people there

258
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and the guys stood up at the
end, said, Wow, this movie

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was fantastic. Loved it. It's
scary. Oh God, excuse me.

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Who are you guys in the back? Oh, we're the producers. We're

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here to pick up the print.
Oh would you please step outside, we'll

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call you. And they did and
they got a call and they said,

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look, well buy the film as
long as you don't show it to anybody

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else or put us in any bidding
war with this. And they got a

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fortune for that movie. They got
a lot of money up front. And

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I know that because they didn't pay
us that much. And they gave me,

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like, ey take seven points.
You know, it was the producers

268
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seven points seven points. Once they're
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you

269
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know, investment was paid off or
close to two hundred thousand out of two

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million dollars. You know what the
profit was? It was phenomenal. I

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bought it. I was able to
put it down payment on a house.

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You're just telling me the American dream
over and over. Yeah. Yeah,

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Well, immigrant father and no formal
training. Just love love for cinema I

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learned on my own. I was
cutting in my own films. I used

275
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to splice them together and play with
the sound so match. And the first

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note I wrote about your work when
I was watching This Weekend is this man

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is a visual storyteller. Well,
I hope so, because that's what I

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aspire to be. Yeah. Are, But it just seems like so many

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directors are just telling the story and
setting up some shots and getting the coverage

280
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and everything. Ever, no matter
the media, if it was a theatrical

281
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feature, it was an episode of
television, And no matter what the genre

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of television, I noticed jumping from
one to one more often than not.

283
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It's what you said before. It's
less about dialogue and more about just telling

284
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the story. If you don't have
to say anything, you don't have to

285
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I noticed, particularly in the Friday
of the thirteenth, where there seemed to

286
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be passages that lasted like six seven
minutes with maybe one word, and I

287
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just marveled at that because I love
that. So few filmmakers kind of believe

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in just the power of the moving
image. You know, George Miller's out

289
00:20:11.920 --> 00:20:17.680
there making you know, basically silent
movies set with sound effects and music.

290
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These days, he seems the only
other guy out there doing it. So

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I don't know if that's a question. It's just an observation I had about

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your work that I really admired.
There's a Korean filmmaker who made him film

293
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called Morbius Mobius or Morbius Unbelievable.
It's Oedipus complex, but it's done.

294
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It's all done between a mother,
father, and a son, and not

295
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one word has spoken. Grunts usually, you know, sound effects and stuff,

296
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but nobody opens their mouth and says
one word. It's all employed.

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You could. You don't need a
word. You don't. There's no subtitles

298
00:20:53.599 --> 00:20:59.119
to read, and it's it's a
shocking film, but it's very graphic,

299
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very But I loved that because it
was conveying everything through visuals. And you

300
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know, it's interesting you said that
because the first review I had, which

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was a very good review on the
first TV movie I directed with Michelle Lee

302
00:21:14.839 --> 00:21:18.279
and James Farantino, was exactly saying
that, saying that the way you know

303
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he sets up these shots, they're
very visual without having to inform us in

304
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any other thing. You get the
feeling that she's walking on eggshells. You

305
00:21:26.559 --> 00:21:30.640
get the feeling that there's something about
to happen. Even with the way he

306
00:21:30.759 --> 00:21:34.359
frames the tea kettle in the foreground, that the steam starts to intensify or

307
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you know, they picked up on
those things, and I feel very happy

308
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about that because that's my ambition is
to tell stories through pictures. So essentially,

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you know, he knows you're alone. Got sold to MGM, And

310
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oh, one more thing before you
continue. The logo for that movie is

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one of my favorite logos, really, that the drawing with the hands coming

312
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down to form form the h It's
fantastic, right right, right right,

313
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Well that wasn't my design, I
know it. I'm just saying I made

314
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a movie and that logo exists and
it's awesome. Well, our original title

315
00:22:07.720 --> 00:22:11.240
was either the Uninvited Shriek. I
know Tom always is a kid with me,

316
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he writes. In fact, he'll
write me letters and remembers every single

317
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one. I used to try a
new title on everybody while we were shooting,

318
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and so we released it as blood
Wedding and a Skull with a veil

319
00:22:23.039 --> 00:22:26.559
on it and MGM said, well, we don't, can't do that.

320
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Plus there was a famous Garcia Lorca
play, so they said they're what do

321
00:22:33.359 --> 00:22:37.079
you call their public City department worked
on it and the head guy came over

322
00:22:37.119 --> 00:22:40.799
to me and a guy named Ira
Tello'll Never Forget, and he shows me.

323
00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:44.400
He says, here, here's the
name of your movie. He Knows

324
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You're Alone? And I said,
yeah, who does isn't that the tagline?

325
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Like a stalker watch out? He
Knows You're Alone? Oh yeah.

326
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In fact, it played next to
another friend a film called When a Stranger

327
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Calls on the same bill. It
said when a Stranger calls, he knows

328
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You're alone. You know it sounded
level. So yeah, we were in

329
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and they did this whole promo.
They brought us out for interviews and everything,

330
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put us up at the Beverly Hills. He'll tell first class per diem,

331
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which I never heard of. And
the next thing I know, I

332
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:22.200
get a telephone call from Warner Brothers
saying William Friedkin wants to meet with you.

333
00:23:22.839 --> 00:23:26.319
Esuys. Oh my god. The
guy who made The Exorcist French connection.

334
00:23:26.920 --> 00:23:27.599
So I said, how do I
get there? And they told me

335
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go over the drive and blah blah
blah blah blah. They in rented me

336
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.079
car, a car and everything.
I'll never forget this. I go in

337
00:23:34.200 --> 00:23:38.279
again. It was like the Auto
premature thing. I walk in and assistant

338
00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:41.400
said, Billy will be with you
in a couple of minutes. He's on

339
00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:44.559
the phone. All of a sudden, she said, armand Mostriani is here

340
00:23:44.759 --> 00:23:48.519
and he's okay. And the door
opens and he's wearing this white jumpsuit like

341
00:23:48.559 --> 00:23:51.279
Hannibal. He comes out. He
goes, come over here, and he

342
00:23:51.279 --> 00:23:53.480
gives me a big hug. He
says, your picture scared the shit out

343
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of me. He says that film
was so good. How did you make

344
00:23:56.319 --> 00:23:59.599
this film? Blah blah blah blah. I said, oh my god.

345
00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:03.359
And we sat down and we started
talking a little bit and he hands me

346
00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:06.599
a script. He goes, I
want you to make this one. And

347
00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:08.799
I took the script and said the
Night of the Full Moon. I went

348
00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:12.480
wow. He says, do you
you know you'll direct it? And I

349
00:24:12.519 --> 00:24:15.680
said, you mean you're not going
to direct anymore? He said no,

350
00:24:15.759 --> 00:24:18.519
I'm going to still make films,
but I want to produce some films too,

351
00:24:18.599 --> 00:24:22.000
and I'm want to find very interesting
filmmakers like you, like yourself,

352
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and I'm going to do that.
I said, fantastic. He says,

353
00:24:23.279 --> 00:24:26.359
I'll tell you what read the script, and we'll have dinner tomorrow night.

354
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You want to do that, I
said, with you, of course.

355
00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:34.440
And so imagine getting out of that
room with the script in your hand.

356
00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:37.880
Are you going to drive all the
way across the over the hill. Of

357
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:41.839
course not. I sat in the
car and I stopped the meeting, and

358
00:24:41.839 --> 00:24:47.400
I'm going, oh, okay,
okay, oh no, this is bad.

359
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:49.839
And then I said, you know, I think it's a psychological test,

360
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:52.359
because he gives you a bad script
to see if you know what you're

361
00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:56.759
doing. So I go home and
I did finish it, and I called

362
00:24:56.759 --> 00:25:00.519
back and I said I read the
script. And she said, well,

363
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:04.000
Billy's on the phone. He'll he'll
get back to you. I've scheduled you

364
00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:07.680
guys for dinner tomorrow night, and
blah blah blah. Okay, great,

365
00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:08.920
he does call. He does call
me back and goes, hey, so

366
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.640
what do you think. I said, Well, it's pretty bad. Long

367
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:15.519
silence, and he goes, you
know, any script can be fixed,

368
00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:18.759
and I went, oh, he
likes it. Oh, oh god.

369
00:25:19.079 --> 00:25:22.319
So I said, he said,
look, are we going to have dinner

370
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:25.920
tomorrow? And I I said,
yes, definitely, And so he was

371
00:25:26.039 --> 00:25:29.160
so nice. I sat there with
him Andnute we were ordering and he's he

372
00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:30.519
had his hand uff to his face
like this, and he's going, what

373
00:25:30.559 --> 00:25:33.079
do you want to do? And
I go, well, I have some

374
00:25:33.160 --> 00:25:37.680
ideas for a film. I want
to do a story about New York City,

375
00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:38.960
and I want to do that.
There's a killer loose in New York

376
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.160
City, kind of like a Jallo
film, you know, Tanyan. And

377
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:48.319
he goes, huh. And I
see a scene in a swimming pool where

378
00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:52.799
guy is all by himself and the
lights go out, almost like in cat

379
00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:57.519
People, and suddenly he's yanked down
under the water and his handcuff is his

380
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:03.119
ankles handcuffed to the bottom rung of
the ladder so that his face is inches

381
00:26:03.160 --> 00:26:06.519
away from but he can never breathe, and he's trying to pull himself.

382
00:26:06.559 --> 00:26:08.400
He's trying to rip his ankle off, and blood's coming in the water,

383
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:11.759
and he goes, I love it. I love it. And then I

384
00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:15.839
see the woman in a scene later
on, because I always see these bed

385
00:26:15.880 --> 00:26:19.200
sheets flapping at night in the wind, and this woman is running through away

386
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:22.960
from the killer, and she's pulling
the bed sheets like this, and you

387
00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.319
never know if he's going to appear
in front of her or whatever. And

388
00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:30.480
so he loved it, and he
called my agents at the William Morris Agency

389
00:26:30.519 --> 00:26:33.359
the next morning and he set up
the whole development of The Killing Hour and

390
00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:38.200
I wrote it again with the one
I wrote. We Apollo and songs with

391
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:44.480
the Franciscan Monk, and we wrote
the story. And he kept calling and

392
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:47.559
he'd say, I like this scene. I like this scene, he says,

393
00:26:47.599 --> 00:26:49.880
But all your victims are men.
He says, is this a gay

394
00:26:49.920 --> 00:26:52.640
film? I said, no,
no, no, no, no,

395
00:26:52.440 --> 00:26:56.880
no, it's not gay. There's
a reason that all these men have to

396
00:26:56.920 --> 00:27:00.480
be killed within a certain period of
time because they're all involved within it,

397
00:27:00.920 --> 00:27:04.720
with it with something with an individual
who does not want to be exposed.

398
00:27:04.799 --> 00:27:10.119
And it turns out that individual is
the head of a like a NewsCap He

399
00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:12.599
was like, I had Heraldo Rivera
in my mind because he was very popular

400
00:27:12.599 --> 00:27:18.359
at the time. So Perry King
plays this talk show host but very cocky,

401
00:27:18.519 --> 00:27:21.920
very brave, but he's involved in
the murder of this girl. And

402
00:27:22.279 --> 00:27:25.680
with four other men, they decided
to do this kinky thing, this kinky

403
00:27:25.759 --> 00:27:27.920
knight, and they pick up this
girl. They hire this girl who's like

404
00:27:27.960 --> 00:27:33.319
a into all kinds of s and
m and stuff like that. But she

405
00:27:33.440 --> 00:27:37.440
dies, she's killed while this is
happening, and so they throw her body

406
00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:41.359
in the river and they leave handcuffs
on her, and there becomes the killings,

407
00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:47.200
the handcuff killings. But then when
he realizes that these people also know

408
00:27:47.279 --> 00:27:51.160
who he is and can expose he's
got to go out and continue these murders.

409
00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:55.319
And his best friend is a cop
who wants to be a comedian,

410
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:59.880
a stand up comic who does stand
up comic stuff. And that's the story,

411
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:03.759
very popular at the time, stand
up. Yeah. And so what

412
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:11.640
we did was we made this film, but Billy unfortunately got very sick.

413
00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:14.759
He had a heart attack, a
major heart attack, and he said,

414
00:28:15.480 --> 00:28:18.200
I'm not able to move forward right
now, and I'm not going to be

415
00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:21.960
for a long time, but if
you're able to get this movie started.

416
00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:25.119
This all came through his assistant because
he couldn't. He was in the hospital,

417
00:28:25.640 --> 00:28:29.440
it's yours. You don't know me
anything except what we paid for development.

418
00:28:29.920 --> 00:28:33.400
And I went holy. So I
called the guys from He Knows You're

419
00:28:33.400 --> 00:28:34.920
Alone, who were very wealthy right
now, and they said, sure,

420
00:28:36.279 --> 00:28:38.599
we'll do it, we'll do it. So we made the Killing Hour and

421
00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:42.920
then you know it continued. I
got called and from Los Angeles to do

422
00:28:42.920 --> 00:28:47.799
a movie called Supernaturals. And then
can I just say the swimming pool scene

423
00:28:47.799 --> 00:28:51.559
that you mentioned, Yeah, it
fucking horrified me as a child. Oh

424
00:28:51.599 --> 00:28:55.680
you saw the Oh yeah, I
was already tripidacious about getting in a pool.

425
00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:57.720
But like things like that. And
there was another film, I think

426
00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:02.160
Ghost Story they had a swimming pool
steam where like there was a sheet of

427
00:29:02.200 --> 00:29:06.960
glass had gone over. Yeah yeah, yeah, Like those didn't did me?

428
00:29:07.039 --> 00:29:11.960
No favors, come friend, thank
you? Well there are things that,

429
00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:15.359
you know, leave an indelible mark
on you. I mean, like

430
00:29:15.400 --> 00:29:18.160
the shower scene in Psycho Jaws.
How many people were afraid of going in

431
00:29:18.200 --> 00:29:22.839
the water after that? You know, this dark object underwater with a gigantic

432
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:26.359
mouth that's going to come and grab
you. You know, it's like whoa.

433
00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:30.839
So you know, but I was
able to be I have to say.

434
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:33.960
I think I was blessed to be
able to move on from one to

435
00:29:34.079 --> 00:29:38.559
another to another, and and and
While I was in Los Angeles doing the

436
00:29:38.599 --> 00:29:42.359
Supernaturals, I got a call from
somebody who said, listen, we're putting

437
00:29:42.359 --> 00:29:48.279
something together called Distortions and Olivia Hussey
and Edward Albert Jr. And all this

438
00:29:48.279 --> 00:29:51.000
stuff. We want you to direct
it. I said, oh, sure,

439
00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:53.440
sure, you know I Meanwhile,
I'm not in the director's guild at

440
00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:56.960
this point, so I was I
was able to work. You know.

441
00:29:56.039 --> 00:30:00.359
They liked that because they didn't have
to go through all the in the paperwork

442
00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:07.279
of hiring assistant directors and all that
stuff. So that led to Cameron's Closet

443
00:30:08.599 --> 00:30:14.359
and then Double Revenge for the See. I usually ended up doing a couple

444
00:30:14.319 --> 00:30:18.079
of movies for these companies because they
liked the way I worked. I was

445
00:30:18.519 --> 00:30:22.160
always very respectful of the budget because
I realized, Hey, it's like sending

446
00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:26.599
a kid into a candy store and
saying you got five dollars to buy candy.

447
00:30:26.640 --> 00:30:29.079
You could spend it all on one
thing, or you could take your

448
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:30.720
time and spend it on this and
this and this, but that's it.

449
00:30:30.759 --> 00:30:33.799
You're not getting any more, you're
not getting six dollars or eight dollars.

450
00:30:34.119 --> 00:30:37.880
So I always kept that in mind, and I always said, no matter

451
00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:40.240
what I have to do, I
have to stay to the close to this

452
00:30:40.319 --> 00:30:45.319
budget. I have to stay right
on it or less if I can and

453
00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:48.240
still make a good movie. And
if I have to, I have to

454
00:30:48.279 --> 00:30:52.920
make shortcuts or I have to combine
things to make things work. So I

455
00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:59.160
did. After those couple of films, Double Revenge and Cameron's Closet, I

456
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:03.920
started getting called for. I think
it was Tales from the Dark Side.

457
00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:07.400
Yeah, Tails from the Dark Side, which was still again non union,

458
00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:10.440
so they were able to do it, and we were able to do a

459
00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:14.200
couple of Tales from the Dark Side. And what was so nice about it?

460
00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:17.880
I see, this is how I
learned from other directors. There was

461
00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:21.240
a kid on the set who used
to was from the office and he used

462
00:31:21.279 --> 00:31:23.240
to make deliveries and he used to
come and just like spend as much time

463
00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:26.039
as he could, just watch him
before he had to leave. And I

464
00:31:26.039 --> 00:31:27.720
called him over. I says,
what do you want to do? One

465
00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:30.440
day? He said, well,
I'd love to write. I want to

466
00:31:30.559 --> 00:31:32.759
make movies too. I want to
I said, well, why don't you

467
00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:34.519
come in spend a little time on
the set. And he goes, can

468
00:31:34.599 --> 00:31:37.559
I is that all right with you? I said, of course it is,

469
00:31:37.079 --> 00:31:41.279
and and he did and he started
we started talking, and he says,

470
00:31:41.319 --> 00:31:42.319
you know, I have an idea
for one of these, And I

471
00:31:42.359 --> 00:31:47.200
said, what kind of I have
an idea about a politician who has to

472
00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:48.680
go and make the speech and he
has to go, you know, to

473
00:31:48.759 --> 00:31:53.240
this He goes to this town and
they take his clothes away to be pressed

474
00:31:53.240 --> 00:31:57.960
and everything and everything comes back exaggerated
into clown suits and stuff to make he's

475
00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:02.000
because he's really a buffore, you
know. And I said, okay.

476
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:06.400
And I said it's got to end
like in a circus then, because I

477
00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:12.039
want to do like a Fellini thing, you know. And and I actually

478
00:32:12.079 --> 00:32:14.720
think he should a car should come
to pick him up, and it should

479
00:32:14.720 --> 00:32:16.839
be a little tiny clown car,
a little red car with a battery operator.

480
00:32:17.160 --> 00:32:22.039
And he can't understand. And we
got this fabulous dick Sean to be

481
00:32:22.119 --> 00:32:25.279
in it. This guy was over
the over the top when he realized I

482
00:32:25.319 --> 00:32:29.000
was going to take his story,
we were going to adapt it. He

483
00:32:29.039 --> 00:32:31.880
and I adopted it, and they
bought this the episode and we made it.

484
00:32:31.880 --> 00:32:36.640
It's cool. I think it's the
shoe fits. Shoe fits absolutely with

485
00:32:36.759 --> 00:32:39.119
Dick Sewn, who was terrific.
But the first one I did, I

486
00:32:39.160 --> 00:32:45.759
think was Painkiller for them Oby and
Peggy Cass and Farley Granger. My god,

487
00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:50.759
he's fantastic in the episode. He's
wonderful. And you know what I

488
00:32:50.839 --> 00:32:54.720
said to him. He would he
would pivot on the exact word at the

489
00:32:54.880 --> 00:33:00.680
same moment, like he go,
nor would you you had then and he'd

490
00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:02.319
used that same thing, and I
stopped and I one day I said to

491
00:33:02.359 --> 00:33:07.480
him, Parley, how did how
is it that you there's no like variation?

492
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:08.720
He said, oh, my god, Armand we could never do that

493
00:33:08.799 --> 00:33:14.039
in the old studio system. We
had to match constantly for the editor because

494
00:33:14.079 --> 00:33:16.960
then if we change things, it
wouldn't matter in cutting. They wouldn't be

495
00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:21.279
able to cut you back to us
because I'd be doing something different. I

496
00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:23.319
said, yeah, but it's amazing
how good you are each time, you

497
00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:29.279
know, and that those are the
old trained Hollywood stars, which were you

498
00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:31.440
know, the newer ones that I
worked with, like when I did Supernatural,

499
00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:35.480
for example, I loved him.
Maxwell Calfield was great, but he

500
00:33:35.519 --> 00:33:37.880
would never do the same thing twice. You would never even hit his marks

501
00:33:37.880 --> 00:33:40.759
because he wasn't worried about that.
He was worried about his moment, you

502
00:33:40.799 --> 00:33:46.400
know. So the one thing I
also learned was everybody's different, and you're

503
00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:50.440
going to work with a lot of
different people in this in this industry,

504
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:53.440
and you're going to have to be
able to adapt to all the different personalities

505
00:33:53.440 --> 00:33:57.319
that you're working with. Some are
going to want to listen to you,

506
00:33:57.319 --> 00:33:59.599
some of them not going to want
you to tell them anything, and some

507
00:33:59.759 --> 00:34:01.000
are if you start suggesting too much, I'm going to tell you to go

508
00:34:01.039 --> 00:34:06.559
away. So you got to know
who to play and who to befriend and

509
00:34:06.599 --> 00:34:09.239
who how to you know, So
I learned all that. That was part

510
00:34:09.280 --> 00:34:15.719
of my you see, the blessing
when I say it's a blessing, was

511
00:34:15.719 --> 00:34:20.519
that I without having gone to school
for filmmaking and directing and all that stuff,

512
00:34:20.559 --> 00:34:23.760
I learned through the process of doing
it. And I always said,

513
00:34:24.519 --> 00:34:28.199
when I do a film, I
always want you to call the film schools

514
00:34:28.199 --> 00:34:30.559
and ask if any kids want to
intern on my sets because I want them

515
00:34:30.599 --> 00:34:35.840
to watch and see, because that
they're going to learn more watching and experiencing

516
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:38.519
how movies are made and seeing the
problems that arise and how they're dealt with.

517
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:43.159
And I would always call the interns
over and say like, Okay,

518
00:34:43.159 --> 00:34:45.800
did you see now we just set
up this shot? Would you have done

519
00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:47.760
it any differently? He goes,
well, I would have maybe done this

520
00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:51.480
and then this, And then I
said, but you see what you just

521
00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:54.960
did. You added two extra three
extra shots now and those three shots,

522
00:34:55.119 --> 00:34:59.440
those three shots are you know,
going to cost you more time to do

523
00:34:59.480 --> 00:35:01.960
them. If you combine them into
one, you get it all done at

524
00:35:01.960 --> 00:35:07.400
once. So so important to have
angels, isn't it. Yeah. I

525
00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:10.199
mean you've had some in your life
and here you are doling it out as

526
00:35:10.239 --> 00:35:15.159
well. But the most one of
the best experiences for me, I mean,

527
00:35:15.199 --> 00:35:17.400
working with Billy Friedkin was phenomenal.
And Billy, you know, was

528
00:35:17.480 --> 00:35:22.400
even until he passed away recently,
but he used to be so kind.

529
00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:24.159
Even took my son and when he
was signing books at book Sop, he

530
00:35:24.199 --> 00:35:29.519
spent a half hour talking to Paul
my son about filmmaking and what do you

531
00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:31.440
want to do Paul, And it
was just so generous of him. You

532
00:35:31.480 --> 00:35:36.719
know. Freakin has a reputation for
being rather cantankerous, and well, you

533
00:35:36.760 --> 00:35:38.199
know what he tells me, No
fools, But you know what he said

534
00:35:38.239 --> 00:35:40.440
to me, armand you know what
you do. On the first day.

535
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:47.719
I assemble the entire crew and I
find someone thing. Everybody's there, and

536
00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:52.119
I say, oh, by the
way, is this who wears props?

537
00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:57.800
Is this your idea of something?
And yes, sir, do you know

538
00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:00.280
what I think that stinks? You're
fired? You're off this movie. I'm

539
00:36:00.280 --> 00:36:04.920
going to get somebody else in front
of the whole crew. And I said

540
00:36:05.079 --> 00:36:07.760
why, He says, because it
sets up who's in charge and they know

541
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:10.840
immediately from day one. I said, yeah, But Billy, they also

542
00:36:10.920 --> 00:36:15.960
come to work each day with their
stomach in knots, not whether or not

543
00:36:15.960 --> 00:36:17.679
they're going to get fired or not. And he says, doesn't matter.

544
00:36:17.719 --> 00:36:22.440
He says, you have to always
maintain control. Well, I maintained control

545
00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:25.000
on my films, but I didn't
do it that way. So I learned

546
00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:30.000
another thing too. When I heard
they were going to shoot The Godfather on

547
00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:36.239
Staten Island up on the wedding sequences. They had a picture in the newspaper,

548
00:36:36.239 --> 00:36:38.360
the Staten Island Advance. I'll never
forget this of a bearded man with

549
00:36:38.360 --> 00:36:42.760
a scarf around him, a little
heavy set, I said. Director Francis

550
00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:47.440
Coppola sets up shots scouting location here
on Longfellow Avenue. Photo said, I've

551
00:36:47.440 --> 00:36:51.880
got to go. I've got to
go. So I your Italian American alarm

552
00:36:51.960 --> 00:36:54.960
go off, like, Holy God, well I'm right here. It wasn't

553
00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.519
that. It was more of wanting
to be around the making of movies because

554
00:36:59.559 --> 00:37:00.960
I used to be. I used
to when I was working for my dad

555
00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:04.280
in Manhattan, a lot of films
were being made. I was on the

556
00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:08.519
set of Marathon Man. I saw
Laurence Olivia. You know, cut that

557
00:37:08.559 --> 00:37:13.000
guy's start zell zell. You know
that woman's screaming prosstry. I was there

558
00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:15.719
when they were shooting that. I
was on the set of Midnight Cowboy,

559
00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:21.559
Saint John's Lessinger film where they're in
the subway and John Voyd has spilt some

560
00:37:21.679 --> 00:37:24.280
ketchup on his pants and he walks
over to one of those little machines where

561
00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:27.960
he used to put five cents in
and get some gum or something, and

562
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:30.639
he just looks in himself in the
mirror, you know, And they kept

563
00:37:30.719 --> 00:37:32.440
They shot that about ten twelve times
that I was going, like, I

564
00:37:32.719 --> 00:37:37.880
keep doing this. They're not talking, but anyway, And I used to

565
00:37:37.039 --> 00:37:43.480
love just being around the whole environment
of movie making, watching the cameras,

566
00:37:43.480 --> 00:37:47.599
how they moved them and all that
stuff. So when The Godfather happened,

567
00:37:47.760 --> 00:37:52.920
I remember I got there and I
saw that everything was cordoned off. You

568
00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:55.360
couldn't get in, but there were
a lot of extras waiting to be bust

569
00:37:55.480 --> 00:37:59.639
up to the location. So I
kind of meandered and fit my way into

570
00:37:59.639 --> 00:38:02.039
the extra. And when we got
off the bus, they had us wait

571
00:38:02.199 --> 00:38:06.599
on one side, and I saw
this guy, Francis Coppola, walking back

572
00:38:06.679 --> 00:38:09.079
and forth, and Gordon Willis was
there, and he kept looking at this

573
00:38:09.159 --> 00:38:12.920
guy. He says, no,
we can't shoot, and Francis just going,

574
00:38:12.960 --> 00:38:15.400
why gardon god, damn it.
You know we got to shoot this

575
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:17.440
thing. I'm behind you gotta he
was yelling, and I said, oh

576
00:38:17.519 --> 00:38:21.199
God, oh God, Well,
I guess this is the time I got.

577
00:38:21.280 --> 00:38:23.400
Let me go up to him.
Yeah, worst time. So he

578
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:27.920
walks away from it like in a
huff, and all of a sudden I

579
00:38:27.960 --> 00:38:30.159
tapped his arm. I said,
excuse me, Can I ask you a

580
00:38:30.239 --> 00:38:31.679
question? He goes, yeah,
what and He looks at me and I

581
00:38:31.679 --> 00:38:36.880
said, look, I'm a student. I make films. I make super

582
00:38:36.920 --> 00:38:39.320
eight and eight milimeters in sixteen millime. I started sixteen, and I just

583
00:38:39.360 --> 00:38:42.400
want to learn as much as I
can. I want to watch. Is

584
00:38:42.679 --> 00:38:45.639
there any way you could let me
just hang out here and just watch?

585
00:38:46.199 --> 00:38:50.559
Yeah, no problem, Oh,
thank you, thank you so much.

586
00:38:50.760 --> 00:38:52.440
I walk He walks away, and
somebody puts the hand omies, what are

587
00:38:52.480 --> 00:38:54.559
you doing here? He turns right, It's okay. He's with me.

588
00:38:54.840 --> 00:38:59.679
I'm over here, and he used
to get me box lunches. I'd sit

589
00:39:00.079 --> 00:39:05.199
right next to him, right by
the camera while he's directing. Remember this

590
00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:09.800
scene, Diane Keaton, I didn't
know your father knew Johnny Fonteine that my

591
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:16.039
father knew him, because he's at
the camera going like to Diane Keaton,

592
00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:21.360
So she go, I didn't know
your father knew Johnny Fontaine because it's just

593
00:39:21.400 --> 00:39:24.400
on them, no extras in the
background shooting. They're reversed like I'm like,

594
00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:28.159
I'm looking at you right now,
that kind of thing. And then

595
00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:30.239
later on when they turned around,
they put all the people back there,

596
00:39:30.280 --> 00:39:35.079
all the extras. So he kept
going, that's the way you direct you

597
00:39:35.159 --> 00:39:37.119
make faces at them. I got
to talk to Malon Brando, who had

598
00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:44.000
your plugs in his ears and he
was drinking slowly and he would go around

599
00:39:44.039 --> 00:39:45.239
going like, I said, you
know what, I saw your film One

600
00:39:45.239 --> 00:39:49.960
Eye Jack's and everything you get?
Oh you like that? That good?

601
00:39:50.039 --> 00:39:52.760
Yeah? Because he had this thing
in his mouth and he said, is

602
00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:54.320
he going to direct another one?
He goes, I'm on no more,

603
00:39:54.320 --> 00:39:59.440
I'm just going to do this doing
this And he was fun, he was

604
00:39:59.519 --> 00:40:02.480
nice, and he signed something for
me. Malon Brando and I spoke to

605
00:40:02.519 --> 00:40:06.599
all the other people up there al
Pacino. Everybody was so much fun.

606
00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:09.039
And I was there for three days
because they he kept telling me to come

607
00:40:09.079 --> 00:40:14.400
back, come back, come back. He watched Oh my gosh, this

608
00:40:14.599 --> 00:40:16.800
was the most incredible thing. I
watched the scene where they shot in the

609
00:40:16.840 --> 00:40:23.320
garden. So tell me, Michael, this guy who comes to you this

610
00:40:23.400 --> 00:40:29.119
pars anything, how's your kid doing
her? He reads the funny papers,

611
00:40:30.320 --> 00:40:36.320
well all that is on giant cue
cards over al Pacina's shoulder, and and

612
00:40:36.519 --> 00:40:45.320
and Brando would do something like he
go, Michael, so read the lines

613
00:40:45.400 --> 00:40:47.559
right and come back to him and
say tell me something. And it looked

614
00:40:47.599 --> 00:40:50.880
like he was thinking, you know, it looks like he was. It

615
00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:54.039
was beautiful. The ultimate thing about
Marlon Brando, because you hear that story

616
00:40:54.079 --> 00:40:58.039
about him putting lines here or having
it fed into his ear and stuff,

617
00:40:58.119 --> 00:41:00.119
and it just sounds like, oh, he's being lazy and whatever. But

618
00:41:00.159 --> 00:41:02.679
there is a method there, like
it was. He was super effective.

619
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:08.519
He was doing it for he was
doing it as a he wanted that spontanety.

620
00:41:09.719 --> 00:41:14.760
Here is a shot from the Godfather, and look at that who the

621
00:41:14.800 --> 00:41:20.440
lines are on Robert Duval's chest.
Yeah, Branda reading them. I mean,

622
00:41:20.559 --> 00:41:24.280
he really did stuff like that.
So it was I took a few

623
00:41:24.320 --> 00:41:28.760
pictures and I hit them, you
know. But and then I remember Coppola

624
00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.480
inviting me to Godfather too, and
I met with Robert de Niro and all

625
00:41:31.800 --> 00:41:36.000
when they were shooting the Feast of
Saint Rocco. Yeah, amazing. They

626
00:41:36.079 --> 00:41:39.559
invited me to the screenings the two
premieres, and so he was so nice

627
00:41:39.599 --> 00:41:42.960
to me. I said, I
want to be just like him. I

628
00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:46.280
want to encourage other young people to
make films and come up and participate.

629
00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:50.599
So I've always done that every time
I make movies. I've always got young

630
00:41:51.559 --> 00:41:53.840
film students and stuff. On the
set. And you know, I was

631
00:41:53.960 --> 00:41:57.920
very fortunate for you know, the
companies to allow me to do that,

632
00:41:57.960 --> 00:42:00.239
because a lot of them would have
said, no, we don't want more.

633
00:42:00.239 --> 00:42:04.039
People would have to feed them and
you know, right, But you

634
00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:07.159
know, I had fun doing the
Talales from the Dark Side and that led

635
00:42:07.199 --> 00:42:10.960
into a few other things other well, if I can ask you some specific

636
00:42:12.079 --> 00:42:19.159
questions. Today is Ernest Dickerson's birthday? Oh yeah, and now he was

637
00:42:19.159 --> 00:42:22.960
your DP on at least two of
your episodes, and I'll never forget he

638
00:42:23.159 --> 00:42:28.760
had to. He was laughing so
hard when we were filming If the Shoe

639
00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:31.880
Fits, because Dick Sean made us
laugh that the camera would jiggle so you'd

640
00:42:31.880 --> 00:42:36.159
have to get away from the camera. And the same thing with the Painkiller.

641
00:42:36.639 --> 00:42:38.119
I don't think he shot Painkiller.
I think that was somebody different.

642
00:42:38.239 --> 00:42:42.840
No, it was at the Shoe
Fits Dick Sealman, because I remember him

643
00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:45.519
laughing so hard. And I see
Ernie once in a while because we get

644
00:42:45.559 --> 00:42:51.039
together with the other film directors at
Mick Garris holds a thing sometimes we haven't

645
00:42:51.079 --> 00:42:52.960
done it in a while. We
like Quentin Tarantino, all these people.

646
00:42:53.239 --> 00:42:59.920
Gameroo del Toro was crave and when
he Masters of Horror, you that's what

647
00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:01.480
we were. They called the Masters
of Horror. So we used to get

648
00:43:01.519 --> 00:43:06.440
together and do that. But you
know, and then I get a go

649
00:43:06.440 --> 00:43:07.880
ahead, So you were asked,
well, that's well, that's his that's

650
00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:13.880
his first gig on Twnesson The Dark
Side, and could you tell me a

651
00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:17.519
little bit about that? This involves
him obviously the house style, were you

652
00:43:17.639 --> 00:43:24.400
dictated a a like how and how
you could shoot basically? No, not

653
00:43:24.519 --> 00:43:28.880
so much on that one. I
to have Robert Draper, who's one of

654
00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:31.199
the dp's on the show. I
worked with rob you work. He shot

655
00:43:31.199 --> 00:43:36.719
a couple of my movies. No, I mean they did want to be

656
00:43:36.760 --> 00:43:38.480
able to cut it for time,
you know, because these had to fit

657
00:43:38.559 --> 00:43:42.599
into a certain category, so we
didn't have to have a certain amount of

658
00:43:42.599 --> 00:43:50.000
coverage. And if somebody started to
get too artsy and make long, you

659
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:52.079
know, moving takes that you can't
cut out of, then they come like

660
00:43:52.119 --> 00:43:57.280
Tommy Castronov would come down or or
I shot one in New York. Yeah,

661
00:43:57.320 --> 00:44:00.800
the Painkiller was in New York.
That was a different But but in

662
00:44:00.199 --> 00:44:04.920
California, I know TJ. Who
we became such close friends in fact I

663
00:44:04.960 --> 00:44:07.800
made his movie Double Revenge. He
had a script is armand I want you

664
00:44:07.840 --> 00:44:09.320
to make this for me, and
I brought it to the company who did

665
00:44:09.480 --> 00:44:16.119
Cameron's Closet, so in that as
well. Is he not who TVA?

666
00:44:16.400 --> 00:44:19.840
He passed? No? No,
was he in the film? I mean

667
00:44:19.880 --> 00:44:23.199
the no, no, no no. We we do little walk ons here

668
00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:25.440
and there, but I don't remember
him being in any of the of the

669
00:44:25.519 --> 00:44:31.119
shows. Coincidentally, I co host
another podcast that's about the television series Taxi,

670
00:44:31.239 --> 00:44:35.360
which he was a regular on that
show for many of the he worked

671
00:44:35.360 --> 00:44:38.079
at Mario's there he was. He
knew Tony and all those guys over there

672
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:43.760
very well. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of stories with TJ. But

673
00:44:44.280 --> 00:44:46.199
here a few though, just like
what's what what is your relationship with him

674
00:44:46.199 --> 00:44:50.119
on the show, Like how are
you interacting with him? From directors,

675
00:44:51.199 --> 00:44:53.480
we were like buddies, he was. I mean, he'd yell, he'd

676
00:44:53.559 --> 00:44:57.079
yell at people, come on,
we got to move this thing. Guys,

677
00:44:57.079 --> 00:44:59.679
we're not doing gone with the win
here, you know. And but

678
00:45:00.440 --> 00:45:05.239
he never had a problem with me
because I think he requested me. He

679
00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:07.199
had seen the Painkiller one that I
did with lu Jacobe. You know,

680
00:45:07.280 --> 00:45:09.480
he said, I want this guy, bring him out. Let's bring him

681
00:45:09.519 --> 00:45:14.239
out. And because I was living
in New York at the time, I

682
00:45:14.239 --> 00:45:20.039
was living in Staten Island and he
was, so can I just I'm sorry

683
00:45:20.079 --> 00:45:23.480
to interrupt, but you filmed both
on the East and West coast. Yeah,

684
00:45:23.599 --> 00:45:28.159
for the show, okay, because
they were shooting in Manhattan. They

685
00:45:28.159 --> 00:45:30.360
were shooting some and it was Mitchell
Galic No I think, yeah, and

686
00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:36.039
somebody else. And of course who
was running George Romero's company there at the

687
00:45:36.039 --> 00:45:40.840
time, those Richard, of course
Richard and yeah, we did that in

688
00:45:40.880 --> 00:45:44.320
New York and then they saw it
in LA and they said, we want

689
00:45:44.360 --> 00:45:46.800
this guy out here. And that's
really what's happened for me. I mean,

690
00:45:46.960 --> 00:45:51.400
even with Tales from the Dark from
Friday the thirteenth and More of the

691
00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:54.400
Worlds all those things, people would
see things that I did and I want

692
00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:58.440
this guy, and I'll never forget. I mean, I became very close

693
00:45:58.440 --> 00:46:01.519
friends with John Anderson, who was
a seek at the time, and he

694
00:46:01.639 --> 00:46:04.960
just loved me. He said,
I gotta get armand on this one.

695
00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:07.480
Our mom's got to do this one. And it was it was. It

696
00:46:07.519 --> 00:46:13.119
was very fortuitous for me because the
actors I would work with would really like

697
00:46:13.239 --> 00:46:15.199
me because I would be very considerate
of them. I'd listen to them,

698
00:46:15.199 --> 00:46:20.880
and I give them options and not
tell them how, and words spread and

699
00:46:21.079 --> 00:46:24.440
and so that's why when it became
time to do my first TV movie,

700
00:46:24.559 --> 00:46:29.079
the network would not approve me because
I was doing feature films at the time,

701
00:46:29.199 --> 00:46:30.960
or you know, independent feature films, and they said, we need

702
00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:36.159
a guy who knows how to shoot
TV right, which is generally what's faster,

703
00:46:36.360 --> 00:46:39.119
I mean overall. Yeah, Michelle
Lee said, I will not do

704
00:46:39.159 --> 00:46:45.639
it unless you get this director.
And they were so reticent to do it,

705
00:46:45.679 --> 00:46:47.519
but they finally bent and they got
it and they were very happy.

706
00:46:47.519 --> 00:46:51.440
It turned out to be a huge
hit. It's called When No One Would

707
00:46:51.480 --> 00:46:53.840
Listen, originally called My Husband Is
Going to Kill Me, and it was

708
00:46:54.119 --> 00:46:59.840
based on a true story of a
woman who was who leaves her abusive husband

709
00:46:59.840 --> 00:47:02.199
with the kids and he finds her
and ultimately does kill her. And it

710
00:47:02.280 --> 00:47:06.360
was but it was, it was, it was. It was an interesting

711
00:47:06.440 --> 00:47:09.639
film and there you know, tell
James Farantino, right, James Farantino was,

712
00:47:10.599 --> 00:47:15.880
yeah, very it was see talk
about taking visual chances. This is

713
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:20.719
my first TV movie. I think
I should follow the book and follow no.

714
00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:22.559
I told him, I said,
I want to do theatrical lighting,

715
00:47:22.639 --> 00:47:27.119
like when they go when she takes
the kids to the shelter and we go

716
00:47:27.199 --> 00:47:30.679
into this big room and know there's
all these women on cots, kids sleeping

717
00:47:30.719 --> 00:47:36.199
next to them and everything, and
Cecily Tyson takes them through all these things.

718
00:47:36.239 --> 00:47:40.119
I want three pools of light on
the wide shot, and as they

719
00:47:40.400 --> 00:47:45.239
leave, let that pool of light
diminish slowly, and then the next one

720
00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:50.239
they go through, then that one
diminishes, and Toni's just one pool of

721
00:47:50.320 --> 00:47:52.880
light over them, and you know
what what's in the room, but you

722
00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.880
don't really get to see it.
You're just you're with these two kids.

723
00:47:57.119 --> 00:48:01.320
The mother and Cecla will talk in
the morning and then she comforts the kids.

724
00:48:01.320 --> 00:48:06.000
The camera slowly pushes and pushes in
in the in the light fades fad,

725
00:48:06.239 --> 00:48:09.320
fads to black. And that was
a theatrical thing you do on on

726
00:48:09.599 --> 00:48:14.280
a stage, not in a film. But everybody loved it. They said,

727
00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:17.679
this looks really different. It's it's
doesn't look like a TV movie.

728
00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:22.360
And I did that also with when
she gets killed at the end, it

729
00:48:22.519 --> 00:48:27.360
suddenly she she looks at the cigarette
that she smokes. She's been telling us

730
00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:30.199
the story and you don't know where
she is. And she looks and the

731
00:48:30.199 --> 00:48:31.960
ashes have gone down, and she
she reaches out a frame and you see

732
00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:36.519
a little tin and she just puts
it out in the tin and it cuts

733
00:48:36.599 --> 00:48:40.599
back and she's on a gurney and
her body is laying flat and there's this

734
00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:45.719
big white light over the over the
gurney and it says Jessica Cochran was killed

735
00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:52.519
on such and such a night with
bullets to the heart. And then the

736
00:48:52.559 --> 00:48:58.559
camera the lights fit slowly dimmed black, and it was I opened the movie

737
00:48:58.679 --> 00:49:00.119
on a black screen again. And
they didn't want to do that, but

738
00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:06.719
they loved it because then she lights
a match and the glow illuminates her face

739
00:49:06.719 --> 00:49:09.000
and she lights a cigarette. This
is the opening shot of the film and

740
00:49:09.039 --> 00:49:17.079
she the first time she looks right
at the camera and starts talking. I

741
00:49:17.079 --> 00:49:21.559
think I was seventeen or eighteen when
he hit me, but I thought,

742
00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:27.159
boy, he really loves me.
Anyway, I met Gary and we start

743
00:49:27.199 --> 00:49:29.800
going into the film and it was
like, and you don't know where we

744
00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:34.320
are. We're in the mark.
She's telling us that from her why.

745
00:49:35.039 --> 00:49:39.280
So I did take a lot of
chances. Yes, And I do remember

746
00:49:39.360 --> 00:49:43.199
a couple of the series that I
got on. And I wasn't a fan

747
00:49:43.239 --> 00:49:47.039
of doing series because spirit series had
established people in it, had kind of

748
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:50.960
looks that had been established and stuff, because I like to bring my own

749
00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:53.119
stuff, my own style to it. But there were a couple that said,

750
00:49:53.119 --> 00:49:58.239
look, we like to shoot everything
with long lenses and that's the style

751
00:49:58.280 --> 00:50:00.639
of this series. I said,
okay, I'll keep that in mind,

752
00:50:01.159 --> 00:50:07.320
and you know I did. I
kind of did. But the other very

753
00:50:07.320 --> 00:50:12.840
interesting thing was the call for Dark
Shadows. I was at home. Let's

754
00:50:12.840 --> 00:50:15.119
be not dark Shadows. I watched
that when it was when it was run,

755
00:50:15.199 --> 00:50:17.760
I was about fifteen years old,
and I was glued to my television.

756
00:50:17.880 --> 00:50:21.840
I was talking about the black and
white one, the early no I

757
00:50:21.880 --> 00:50:27.079
had already consumed that. I'm talking
about the revival with the men crossed.

758
00:50:27.920 --> 00:50:35.360
I get a call from Dan Curtis's
office and and they my wi. My

759
00:50:35.360 --> 00:50:37.280
wife comes out and says, do
you have a call from Dan Curtis wants

760
00:50:37.320 --> 00:50:40.039
to speak to you? I said, really, okay, So I get

761
00:50:40.079 --> 00:50:44.559
on Hello. Hello, I love
Wins of War. You have great film,

762
00:50:44.599 --> 00:50:45.960
great show, great meal, thank
you, thank you very much.

763
00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:50.679
He's I got to tell you something. I was watching TV the other night.

764
00:50:50.800 --> 00:50:54.079
I saw your your Friday the thirteenth, the one you did about the

765
00:50:54.119 --> 00:51:00.920
Marquis de Sade. He says,
no house pit. Yeah. I love

766
00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:05.519
the way you shot that, with
those very low angles and foreground, and

767
00:51:05.599 --> 00:51:07.440
he says, that's the way I
shoot. I love that you. I

768
00:51:07.480 --> 00:51:10.159
said, maybe I copied your style. I was influenced by the way you

769
00:51:10.159 --> 00:51:13.400
shoot, and he says, I
love it. He says, I want

770
00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:15.880
you to come out and work on
Dark Shadows. You'd be interested. I

771
00:51:15.920 --> 00:51:20.400
said, you mean the series you're
doing, and he explained to me,

772
00:51:20.480 --> 00:51:24.239
yes, yes, yes, So
I remember coming out and taking the job,

773
00:51:24.320 --> 00:51:28.960
and I did the first two after
him because he did the pilot and

774
00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:30.639
the first one. Then I did
the next two. And he says,

775
00:51:30.679 --> 00:51:35.880
I wish I could fire all the
other directors because I want you to keep

776
00:51:35.880 --> 00:51:38.280
this look going. So what I'd
like you to do. I'm not going

777
00:51:38.320 --> 00:51:40.880
to let you go home. I
want to make you the producer of the

778
00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:45.480
show and you stay on and you
control the other directors. I said,

779
00:51:45.599 --> 00:51:46.920
Dan, I can't do that.
I don't want to tell I don't want

780
00:51:46.960 --> 00:51:51.480
directors telling me how to shoot,
and I don't. He says, you

781
00:51:51.519 --> 00:51:55.199
teach them, you show them you
so but reluctantly. And I've always did

782
00:51:55.239 --> 00:51:59.719
it with a very nice way,
because I also knew what he was looking

783
00:51:59.760 --> 00:52:02.360
for. He wanted to keep the
style of the show. But again I

784
00:52:02.400 --> 00:52:07.960
took huge chances there. In that
one, I did something that you know,

785
00:52:08.079 --> 00:52:10.519
everybody says, and he bites her
on the neck. Boom. That

786
00:52:10.719 --> 00:52:13.519
was the shot. And I said, this has got to be a very

787
00:52:13.599 --> 00:52:17.760
sexual seduction. She has to lure
him. He's out there in the garden

788
00:52:17.800 --> 00:52:21.800
waiting for her, and she's sleeping, and she could feel him, she

789
00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:24.119
could sense him, and she had
this very low cut thing, you know.

790
00:52:24.239 --> 00:52:28.559
And I said, I want to
do a shot where she's walking barefoot

791
00:52:28.599 --> 00:52:32.480
through the leaves and she's moving and
she senses his presence in that distance and

792
00:52:32.519 --> 00:52:36.679
she goes up to him and they
stare at each other, and then she

793
00:52:36.840 --> 00:52:39.679
opens his She reaches up and opens
his shirt and she rubs her hands on

794
00:52:39.760 --> 00:52:46.360
his chest and then slowly turns her
back to him and offers her neck like

795
00:52:46.440 --> 00:52:51.920
this, you know, and like
she offers do me. And I said,

796
00:52:52.039 --> 00:52:54.639
I want her breast to be heaving
and heating, and the camera will

797
00:52:54.679 --> 00:52:59.280
move down, move down, move
down. After he bites, just drop

798
00:52:59.360 --> 00:53:01.639
lit of blood, like an orgasm
of blood. And it was and it

799
00:53:01.719 --> 00:53:12.599
worked, and in fact, it
took the headline of the newspaper that's they

800
00:53:12.599 --> 00:53:15.000
went nuts. Hold on one second, I gotta show you this. I

801
00:53:15.079 --> 00:53:23.880
can't wait. The newspaper. I
did this. The newspaper USA today,

802
00:53:24.039 --> 00:53:29.599
it said, a very sexy dark
shadow and that's the shot they used.

803
00:53:29.760 --> 00:53:32.880
Awesome, that's fantastic. And I
recognized the shot. Yes, I remember,

804
00:53:32.960 --> 00:53:38.239
Oh my god, and how wonderful. And I became such good friends

805
00:53:38.239 --> 00:53:42.440
with Ben for us. We used
to go to Rosa Rito Beach on a

806
00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.880
Friday when we'd wrap, and he'd
have Margarita's waiting for us and we'd all

807
00:53:45.920 --> 00:53:49.599
have fun. And it was a
way to make and even Barbara Steele,

808
00:53:49.840 --> 00:53:52.599
you know, she was always playing
everything. So I said, Barbara,

809
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:55.800
I want to do something. I
want I want him to like reach in

810
00:53:55.880 --> 00:54:00.440
and undo your hair with fingernails.
I want him to like really just take

811
00:54:00.480 --> 00:54:05.559
you apart and as though he's going
to crush your skull. She says.

812
00:54:06.239 --> 00:54:08.719
I love that. I love that
oh, Felini used to do stuff like

813
00:54:08.760 --> 00:54:15.920
that. Well, I just want
to try this. And I remember getting

814
00:54:15.960 --> 00:54:21.440
a call from MGM saying that I
spent the half a day shooting this one.

815
00:54:21.559 --> 00:54:24.119
You know, this this particular thing, and it's only a quarter of

816
00:54:24.119 --> 00:54:28.599
a page. I should have knocked
it off in like an hour. So

817
00:54:29.119 --> 00:54:31.960
they said, what the hell's going
on there? And I said, well,

818
00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:35.960
I'm just trying to do something.
And when they watched the dailies,

819
00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:39.239
Lynn Loring was there, she says, oh my god, I'm getting so

820
00:54:39.400 --> 00:54:43.679
hot watching this. This is so
good. This is so good. And

821
00:54:43.719 --> 00:54:46.280
they loved it, and so there
was no problem with, you know,

822
00:54:47.840 --> 00:54:52.880
telling me to take over the show. And that's what I did. I

823
00:54:52.159 --> 00:54:55.360
became a producer on the show and
worked with all the other directors who I'm

824
00:54:55.360 --> 00:54:59.239
friendly with, you know, because
I was never interfering. I was never

825
00:55:00.039 --> 00:55:01.679
I always said, look, we
got to kind of hold this, look

826
00:55:01.800 --> 00:55:05.440
through the thing. We've got to
try to make your shots, try to

827
00:55:05.480 --> 00:55:08.320
design stuff that has those four grounds. And well it needs to have a

828
00:55:08.360 --> 00:55:13.559
style. I mean, that show
in particular is one thousand style. So

829
00:55:13.639 --> 00:55:16.280
it only makes sense that somebody which
should be you know, minding the rudder.

830
00:55:16.800 --> 00:55:20.840
Yeah. Yeah, but Dan loved
the ideas I brought to it,

831
00:55:21.119 --> 00:55:22.800
you know, because I said,
let's, you know, let's let's bring

832
00:55:22.840 --> 00:55:27.679
it up to the nineties, let's
make it. Let's sexualize this show,

833
00:55:27.719 --> 00:55:30.559
because I mean it is you know, the other one, the black and

834
00:55:30.559 --> 00:55:34.559
white one, wasn't at all sexy. It was just boom boom boom.

835
00:55:34.639 --> 00:55:37.440
It was just creepy and fun.
And I think when I did one of

836
00:55:37.480 --> 00:55:40.679
the tales from the Dock now tells
me Friday the thirteenth, I did a

837
00:55:40.760 --> 00:55:45.440
vampire one called night Prey, Night
Prey. Yeah. I did this kind

838
00:55:45.480 --> 00:55:50.280
of lesbian love scene with these two
girls, and I got it's fantastic.

839
00:55:50.760 --> 00:55:53.079
Yeah, And again that's that's a
long period of time with no talking.

840
00:55:53.159 --> 00:55:57.400
The husband's watching this. It's like, I just love that it kind of

841
00:55:57.440 --> 00:56:01.199
may of changing people around and seeing
what would you know, putting like,

842
00:56:01.840 --> 00:56:06.159
how would I feel if I saw
my wife and some other woman making out?

843
00:56:06.239 --> 00:56:09.960
I mean it would be like what
But would I be morbidly fascinated by

844
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:15.960
it? And you know, erotically
charged watching it? You know? So,

845
00:56:16.039 --> 00:56:20.440
by the way, like I'm watching
the show again because I watched all

846
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:23.000
of your Friday the thirteenth, because
that's another show I watched when it was

847
00:56:23.559 --> 00:56:30.199
airing rather religiously and have not really
revisited it until just this past week.

848
00:56:30.360 --> 00:56:34.119
And now I'm going to revisit the
entire series because I find it remarkable.

849
00:56:34.840 --> 00:56:37.440
One of the beginnings of your episodes, it's a man, he's driving and

850
00:56:37.440 --> 00:56:40.159
he's looking for a prostitute. Again, just visual storytelling. Just oh.

851
00:56:40.199 --> 00:56:47.320
That was the first one I did
that was called Dead No very first episode

852
00:56:47.320 --> 00:56:53.880
of tales, and that is I
ended up doing what eight more because Nick

853
00:56:54.440 --> 00:57:01.280
frank Mancuso Junior and producer John Anderson
said, oh my god, look what

854
00:57:01.320 --> 00:57:06.880
this guy did. You know,
It's like they loved what I was doing.

855
00:57:06.960 --> 00:57:08.000
So and better Off Dead, by
the way, it's the name of

856
00:57:08.239 --> 00:57:13.559
better Off Dead, Yeah, Neil
Neil Monroe. And then his daughter has

857
00:57:13.639 --> 00:57:20.000
got this horrible disease that only a
prostitutes. And then I came out the

858
00:57:20.039 --> 00:57:22.679
idea that we had to drive this
needle all the way through the neck,

859
00:57:22.840 --> 00:57:27.960
and that the mother when they watched
that, Franklin Cusso's mother said, oh,

860
00:57:28.039 --> 00:57:30.559
I can't watch this, I can't
watch it. They had this the

861
00:57:30.559 --> 00:57:34.519
first time. They put a disclaimer
at the beginning of the show, saying

862
00:57:34.519 --> 00:57:38.000
tonight's episode contains you know, and
I like that, Oh my god,

863
00:57:38.039 --> 00:57:42.400
you should. The thing is,
you know, the show was kind of

864
00:57:42.440 --> 00:57:46.639
advertised is like aimed for adolescents,
when when as I remember it and now

865
00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:50.480
what I'm getting at is I'm rewatching
and I'm like, my god, this

866
00:57:50.599 --> 00:57:53.440
is really subversive, Like how is
he getting all of this on the air?

867
00:57:53.679 --> 00:57:58.480
Like you know, you know,
I know you'd hear trouble about it

868
00:57:58.599 --> 00:58:01.760
nowadays. Never mind, you know
what, they allowed me to push the

869
00:58:01.800 --> 00:58:07.639
boundaries, even with the Mesmer's Bobble, you know, the one with Vanity

870
00:58:07.639 --> 00:58:14.000
in it, Yes, totally totally
naked in those scenes and the guy's crawling

871
00:58:14.039 --> 00:58:20.360
inside her, you know, And
and she would walk around but naked around

872
00:58:20.360 --> 00:58:22.639
the set because she was just she
said, I got to be naked.

873
00:58:22.639 --> 00:58:27.039
What the hell everybody's seen me already, so let's keep going. And Vanity

874
00:58:27.559 --> 00:58:31.119
Vanity, Yeah, name is Vanity, but she was that whole idea of

875
00:58:32.559 --> 00:58:36.239
it came to me and I worked
with Jim Henshaw, who was the writer.

876
00:58:36.559 --> 00:58:38.920
I kept saying, Jim, let's
let's ever want to get inside her.

877
00:58:38.920 --> 00:58:42.320
He literally wants to not only wants
to become her. He wants to

878
00:58:42.360 --> 00:58:45.320
crawl under her skin, which he
kind of does at the end, and

879
00:58:45.360 --> 00:58:50.320
then it starts to But of course
we didn't I or anything like that in

880
00:58:50.360 --> 00:58:53.039
those days. We had to make
everything practical and you know, there was

881
00:58:53.079 --> 00:58:57.440
no AI or anything. You know, everything was done on the set.

882
00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:02.440
So yeah, I think I was
very fortunate that they They wouldn't do that

883
00:59:02.480 --> 00:59:06.519
without the directors though. I remember
that one of the directors wanted to do

884
00:59:06.559 --> 00:59:10.079
something in John said nope, nope, follow the script. They allowed me

885
00:59:10.280 --> 00:59:15.159
to branch out and do stuff.
They really you were bringing flair to it

886
00:59:15.239 --> 00:59:20.320
and telling a story more efficiently,
Like who cares if it took you a

887
00:59:20.440 --> 00:59:23.280
day to shoot that one quarter page
of the script? It's in USA today,

888
00:59:23.400 --> 00:59:28.719
Man, Sure I was the headline. Can I just say, of

889
00:59:28.760 --> 00:59:32.559
all the Friday the thirteenth episodes,
mightier than the Sword with comb FIORI Yeah,

890
00:59:32.719 --> 00:59:39.480
yeah, Fountain pen Yeah. I
loved that episode and immediately well done.

891
00:59:39.480 --> 00:59:44.519
And and what I really love about
the show and a lot of your

892
00:59:44.519 --> 00:59:47.719
episodes do this. It sort of
shunts the main cast to the side and

893
00:59:47.760 --> 00:59:52.239
you just tell the story. Yeah, yeah, because I never I shouldn't

894
00:59:52.239 --> 00:59:57.719
say this I mean, I felt
like the main cast were the staples that

895
00:59:57.880 --> 01:00:02.400
just held the piece together. But
the the story and how those characters were

896
01:00:02.400 --> 01:00:07.599
living through the story, the characters
in the story that these guys are investigating

897
01:00:07.599 --> 01:00:12.239
because they had to go and find
the cursed object that these characters, these

898
01:00:12.480 --> 01:00:17.320
characters had, I always found them
more fascinating because it was a wild kind

899
01:00:17.400 --> 01:00:22.039
of fantasy world that they were going. They were existing, and and our

900
01:00:22.079 --> 01:00:27.239
guys were like the police coming in
to solve the murder, like where were

901
01:00:27.239 --> 01:00:32.960
you last night? You know,
Jack and Roby and uh and John LeMay

902
01:00:34.119 --> 01:00:38.440
which was what was da Ryan Jack? No, Jack was the old man

903
01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:43.239
I met, Yeah, Ryan and
Yeah. So I mean, yeah,

904
01:00:43.320 --> 01:00:47.079
like those those were the kind of
fun things and and I really enjoyed the

905
01:00:47.119 --> 01:00:51.800
fact that I was able to take
such liberties and and do stuff like even

906
01:00:51.840 --> 01:00:55.599
in Mightier than the Sword, there's
a an ending is a nightmare, it's

907
01:00:55.599 --> 01:01:00.960
a dream. I think she wakes
up screaming and wonderful. By the way,

908
01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:04.000
because it was it felt like an
after shot that wasn't there, that

909
01:01:04.119 --> 01:01:06.400
was there. That's something I said
to Jim, I said, you know

910
01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:07.880
what I want to do here.
I want to make this happen like and

911
01:01:08.159 --> 01:01:12.360
fool the audience and make it think
it's really but it's it's her nightmare.

912
01:01:12.519 --> 01:01:15.679
She's never going to forget. Yeah, so yeah, that was that was

913
01:01:15.800 --> 01:01:22.599
enjoyable. I used to I used
to be very very aware of shot lists

914
01:01:22.599 --> 01:01:24.400
in those days. They used to, Oh good, I meant to ask

915
01:01:24.440 --> 01:01:29.280
you, because it seems like you
would have a massive shot list, and

916
01:01:29.360 --> 01:01:32.320
I didn't, because it happened.
They never used them. I never used

917
01:01:32.320 --> 01:01:37.599
them. I would sit down and
sketch all these things and design shots and

918
01:01:37.880 --> 01:01:40.039
say I got fourteen shots that I
got to do fifteen shots. When you're

919
01:01:40.079 --> 01:01:44.760
on the set, everything changed for
me. Everything would become like, oh

920
01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:46.679
wait, wait, wait, why
don't you go over here, and why

921
01:01:46.679 --> 01:01:50.039
don't we go over there with the
camera and push this in? And that

922
01:01:50.440 --> 01:01:53.800
you know, all that inspiration was
happening spontaneous, and so I've never used

923
01:01:53.800 --> 01:01:59.719
shot lists after that. I did
everything from here. It was shocking.

924
01:02:00.039 --> 01:02:02.960
Yeah, I know, and I
know people meticulously, like you know,

925
01:02:04.079 --> 01:02:08.320
Hitchcock does it, but I would
find that very boring to them. Once

926
01:02:08.360 --> 01:02:13.400
the film's made, then you've made
it already, it's all sketched out.

927
01:02:13.400 --> 01:02:16.000
What are you drawing? Now,
oh yeah, I find it actually very

928
01:02:16.079 --> 01:02:20.679
very inspiring that you say that,
because I think you can overthink it.

929
01:02:20.719 --> 01:02:23.360
You can't. I mean, you
know, look, unless you're doing animation,

930
01:02:23.960 --> 01:02:28.519
there's no reason to not improvise.
If you're on a set, correct

931
01:02:28.679 --> 01:02:32.159
like it. Just you know,
all these different factors are going to come

932
01:02:32.239 --> 01:02:36.719
up the performance, what the room
looks like, how they decorated it.

933
01:02:37.280 --> 01:02:39.880
If you over rehearse your actors too, it's the same thing. They become

934
01:02:39.920 --> 01:02:45.159
a little you know, so used
to it that everything you know is done

935
01:02:45.199 --> 01:02:50.199
by rote and there's no like spontaneity. And sometimes what I like to do

936
01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:52.960
is whisper into the actor's ear or
something, give them, you know,

937
01:02:53.079 --> 01:02:57.360
an adjustment or some kind of a
choice to make, and not let the

938
01:02:57.400 --> 01:03:00.320
other actors know, and I'll shoot
that take and see what happened, because

939
01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:04.880
sometimes they'll be a surprise that's so
wonderful that you know, you get a

940
01:03:04.920 --> 01:03:09.079
genuine reaction that you know wasn't done
five times already, you know. So

941
01:03:09.159 --> 01:03:12.880
I like doing that kind of stuff, and I think that's why the actors

942
01:03:13.039 --> 01:03:15.880
liked me. And actors always would
recommend me, to recommend me, to

943
01:03:15.960 --> 01:03:19.199
recommend me. So when I started
doing a lot of the television movies.

944
01:03:20.559 --> 01:03:28.000
I I had just finished doing a
big epic film called The Ring in the

945
01:03:28.039 --> 01:03:35.039
Prague and Austria and London and Switzerland, and then we came to New York

946
01:03:35.079 --> 01:03:37.719
to shoot. It was all in
the forties and it was about the World

947
01:03:37.760 --> 01:03:40.159
War Two. It was a Nestasia
Kinsky, Michael York, it was a

948
01:03:40.239 --> 01:03:45.360
huge cast. It's one of my
favorite films that I made. I feel

949
01:03:45.360 --> 01:03:47.599
deficient for not having seen it,
but I'm going to rectify that as soon

950
01:03:47.639 --> 01:03:52.480
as they get out of here.
There we are shooting at the hotel and

951
01:03:52.519 --> 01:03:54.880
there's Michael York in the background,
and it was, Oh, it's one

952
01:03:54.920 --> 01:04:00.159
of my favorite films. It's based
on a book by Danielle Steele called The

953
01:04:00.320 --> 01:04:03.440
Ring. Danielle Steals The Ring,
and they are parts of it on YouTube.

954
01:04:03.440 --> 01:04:06.639
I don't know if there's there's DVDs
floating around and I'll find it.

955
01:04:08.360 --> 01:04:12.920
But it is an amazing film because
everybody. I mean, I don't want

956
01:04:12.920 --> 01:04:15.920
to say it's an amazing film because
I made it, but I loved making

957
01:04:15.960 --> 01:04:18.559
it so much because when I got
there first, I was relocked and I

958
01:04:18.599 --> 01:04:21.159
saw Danielle steal all this's got to
be a love story of some sort,

959
01:04:21.199 --> 01:04:24.480
and I don't want to do it. But it was this thing the script,

960
01:04:24.519 --> 01:04:27.079
you know, because it was two
nights. It's a four hour movie,

961
01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:32.719
so three hours and something. So
I opened up thing that I'm exhausted.

962
01:04:32.719 --> 01:04:35.239
I don't want to do this because
I just finished a movie and my

963
01:04:35.320 --> 01:04:40.000
agents had just read it, and
I said, Berlin nineteen thirty three Hitler

964
01:04:40.079 --> 01:04:43.239
is just coming to power. Oh
oh oh, and I'm reading. I'm

965
01:04:43.239 --> 01:04:48.440
reading that period and thirty three.
I'm in eazing. And I discovered I

966
01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:53.159
don't know if you know the actor
Alessandra Novola, I do. Yeah,

967
01:04:53.239 --> 01:04:57.119
he was just in Many Saints of
Newerk. Yes, he is somebody I

968
01:04:57.199 --> 01:05:00.719
wanted so desperately played a Nastasia's son
because it moved so many years ahead at

969
01:05:00.719 --> 01:05:04.280
the end, and the producer,
Doug Kramer, did not want him.

970
01:05:04.280 --> 01:05:10.800
He wanted some I don't know surfer
guy from Los Angeles who was on tape.

971
01:05:10.800 --> 01:05:13.079
And I said, I don't like
this guy, Doug, I don't,

972
01:05:14.320 --> 01:05:15.239
and he said, well the other
guy can't. It looks like a

973
01:05:15.280 --> 01:05:17.320
ferret. I don't. I don't
think. I said, what are you

974
01:05:17.400 --> 01:05:20.760
kidding? I said, he's wonderful. There's a natural quality about him.

975
01:05:21.320 --> 01:05:25.079
But then Doug bowed and he said, you get him, you know,

976
01:05:25.599 --> 01:05:29.440
you make him look good, and
he was wonderful. Alessandro. Then right

977
01:05:29.480 --> 01:05:32.800
after that, Alessandro got to play
Pollocks in Face Off. He got he

978
01:05:32.840 --> 01:05:40.000
played the brother of Nicholas Cage yea
and so you know, and and and

979
01:05:40.440 --> 01:05:44.519
making a film of that stature was
a huge, huge effort for me.

980
01:05:44.559 --> 01:05:46.119
I mean it was shot, we
scouted all over the place, it was

981
01:05:46.239 --> 01:05:49.719
hundreds of extras. It was all
about the Nazis. I had to blow

982
01:05:49.800 --> 01:05:54.280
up all these buildings and everything,
and it's all in the Film's very big

983
01:05:54.280 --> 01:05:58.079
budgeted film. So I come back
and I'm editing the film and I can't

984
01:05:58.079 --> 01:06:01.360
wait to go back home to Staten
Island, my house. And I get

985
01:06:01.360 --> 01:06:03.519
to call my agent and says,
they want to have breakfast with you,

986
01:06:03.760 --> 01:06:06.559
these two producers that have a project. And I said, now, I'm

987
01:06:06.559 --> 01:06:09.880
not going to do anything for a
while, going to take a break.

988
01:06:10.960 --> 01:06:12.760
So he called them and they said, no, no, no, we

989
01:06:12.840 --> 01:06:15.000
have to talk to him. Just
have breakfast at least. So I said,

990
01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:17.719
all right. So I met them
and they put a script in front

991
01:06:17.719 --> 01:06:23.639
of me called Robin Cook's Virus and
I said, guys, thank you so

992
01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:26.119
much, but I really don't.
No, no, no, we have

993
01:06:26.159 --> 01:06:29.360
to make this movie with you.
And I said why, He said,

994
01:06:29.400 --> 01:06:31.199
no, we will. And I'll
tell you what. If you make this

995
01:06:31.280 --> 01:06:34.239
movie for us, you can go
home and we'll bring your family out here.

996
01:06:34.280 --> 01:06:38.639
We'll do everything. You can take
a break, and we'll guarantee you

997
01:06:38.679 --> 01:06:42.400
a second movie right after it.
How's that? I said, it sounds

998
01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:45.639
great, but I'm just tired.
And I said, oh, I'll go

999
01:06:45.719 --> 01:06:46.719
read the script. So I called
my agent. I said, well,

1000
01:06:46.800 --> 01:06:50.599
what's up here? Why is this? So this as well? The actress

1001
01:06:50.639 --> 01:06:55.559
who they is the lead is Nicolae
Sheridan, and she won't do the movie

1002
01:06:55.599 --> 01:06:58.360
unless you do it. And I
said, I don't know her. I've

1003
01:06:58.400 --> 01:07:02.599
never met her. She she's all
the girls women you worked with all those

1004
01:07:02.599 --> 01:07:06.000
other movies. They were raving about
you to her. She's got to get

1005
01:07:06.039 --> 01:07:10.559
you. And she saw some of
the stuff and she went. So I

1006
01:07:10.599 --> 01:07:13.599
said all right. And they paid
me a fortune too, a lot more

1007
01:07:13.639 --> 01:07:17.599
than I was making. And so
I made it was like, yeah,

1008
01:07:17.639 --> 01:07:23.239
so it was good. I watched
it when it aired. Yeah, I

1009
01:07:23.280 --> 01:07:29.840
guess your your you know, your
enthusiasm hopefully is put in on film too.

1010
01:07:29.920 --> 01:07:32.760
Your your your love of making the
films. And I'll be honest with

1011
01:07:32.800 --> 01:07:35.480
you, a lot of them were
really bad scripts. I mean a lot

1012
01:07:35.519 --> 01:07:40.639
of these TV movies were so formulaic
and stuff. And I do remember that

1013
01:07:40.679 --> 01:07:45.320
when I got hired to do Gone
but Not Forgotten. It was a big

1014
01:07:45.480 --> 01:07:47.960
epic mini series with Brookshield, Scott
Glenn. There was a lot of people

1015
01:07:48.000 --> 01:07:53.599
in it, Lou Diamond, Phillips, I cast my friend John Pallito,

1016
01:07:53.760 --> 01:07:57.360
there was a lot of people,
Juck McCann. I remember getting up there

1017
01:07:57.400 --> 01:07:59.840
the Sacramento. They flew me up. I read the script. I said,

1018
01:07:59.840 --> 01:08:01.320
wait, wait a second, wait
a second, big holes here,

1019
01:08:01.360 --> 01:08:05.599
guys. Big Holds is based on
a famous novel by Philip Margalin. So

1020
01:08:05.679 --> 01:08:09.039
I said, let me call the
writer. So I called the writer up

1021
01:08:09.079 --> 01:08:12.360
and he says to me, he
says, you're making I understand you're making

1022
01:08:12.360 --> 01:08:15.679
my film Gone but not Forgotten.
I said, yes, but Philip,

1023
01:08:15.719 --> 01:08:17.000
let's I want to talk to you
about a couple of these sequences here.

1024
01:08:17.439 --> 01:08:19.479
And he says, you know,
I got to be totally honest with you.

1025
01:08:19.560 --> 01:08:23.159
I'm on a way ahead of you
guys, I'm on another book.

1026
01:08:23.279 --> 01:08:26.359
My head isn't in that one.
I'm sure you'll figure it out, you

1027
01:08:26.399 --> 01:08:30.800
know. And so I brought a
friend of mine up and we held up

1028
01:08:30.800 --> 01:08:35.039
the picture for two weeks and did
a lot of extensive rewriting, and then

1029
01:08:35.159 --> 01:08:40.760
I got my cast and we started
making the movie and I took I went

1030
01:08:40.960 --> 01:08:44.680
really dark in this film, and
I did stuff that was very visual,

1031
01:08:44.720 --> 01:08:47.159
where you know the face, and
I would push in on the person's face

1032
01:08:47.159 --> 01:08:50.239
and her eyes would move and would
have to she'd have to hold that moment.

1033
01:08:50.319 --> 01:08:55.600
Everybody would measure that. And then
I'd cut to another place where where

1034
01:08:55.600 --> 01:08:58.439
she is in a completely different time, and I pick up the same shot

1035
01:08:58.840 --> 01:09:00.520
and pulled back. And when they
blended it, we blended it. We

1036
01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:04.439
put one face over the other.
It almost melded right into became another scene

1037
01:09:04.479 --> 01:09:09.880
without a cut, and it was
beautiful. It was Patty McCormick from The

1038
01:09:09.920 --> 01:09:16.800
Bad Seed Yea, and she plays
a woman who shoots her husband and Brooks

1039
01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:24.439
Shields is an attorney and Scott Glenn
is a psychopathic killer. And boy,

1040
01:09:24.520 --> 01:09:30.560
there's some very very very dark stuff
in that movie. Rape is He has

1041
01:09:30.600 --> 01:09:35.239
women tied in barns that that are
urine stained and he goes in and sexually

1042
01:09:36.520 --> 01:09:41.720
uses them at his pleasure, you
know, like he brands TV movie.

1043
01:09:42.079 --> 01:09:46.319
Yeah it was a musical, it
was, but when they saw that,

1044
01:09:47.079 --> 01:09:50.680
and that's how I started working for
that company. And I did. I

1045
01:09:50.760 --> 01:09:56.720
forgot how many movies, maybe twelve
fifteen, A lot of the miniseries like

1046
01:09:56.760 --> 01:10:01.039
Nowhere, Final Approach, Pandemic,
r h I, you know those who

1047
01:10:01.039 --> 01:10:04.359
were They just gave me like carp
Blanche, do what you want, You've

1048
01:10:04.399 --> 01:10:06.840
got free ring And I did a
lot of movies with them, a lot

1049
01:10:06.840 --> 01:10:14.439
of big miniseries for them. You've
worked with Chuck McCann a lot, including

1050
01:10:15.079 --> 01:10:17.039
Tales from the Dark Side, And
tell me a little bit about your experiences

1051
01:10:17.039 --> 01:10:21.399
with mister McCann. We're big fans
of his. Well, we became best

1052
01:10:21.439 --> 01:10:24.880
friends. We were like I used
to go and have dinner with him all

1053
01:10:24.920 --> 01:10:27.319
the time up in the house with
him and his wife Betty, and and

1054
01:10:27.359 --> 01:10:30.000
when he used to bring me always
to the Playboy Mansion because he was best

1055
01:10:30.000 --> 01:10:35.439
friends with hef and I went there
like dozens of times, and in fact

1056
01:10:35.439 --> 01:10:40.119
I even came, my wife came, and and for Easter they had an

1057
01:10:40.119 --> 01:10:43.119
Easter egg hunt, and my son
came out and he, you know,

1058
01:10:43.159 --> 01:10:45.800
he was seeing this place and all
the actors were there and everything, and

1059
01:10:45.800 --> 01:10:48.279
and even you. Hefner was really
great to talk to you. We'd sit

1060
01:10:48.319 --> 01:10:53.880
down and have some really interesting conversations. But Chuck, Chuck was always the

1061
01:10:53.880 --> 01:10:57.720
sweetest guy. I mean, you
know, like he you know. I

1062
01:10:57.760 --> 01:11:00.800
did the Impressionists with him. I
think that was the first, and I

1063
01:11:00.920 --> 01:11:02.560
used them again and again. I
used them in Cameraon's Clauset. I used

1064
01:11:02.560 --> 01:11:06.199
them in Invasion. There was another
big movie I did, four Hour for

1065
01:11:06.439 --> 01:11:11.479
NBC with Luke Perry about an alien
invasion. It was kind of like Bodies

1066
01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:17.479
snatches. Oh, I remember again
a lot of visual style in there that

1067
01:11:18.359 --> 01:11:20.920
they wanted to fire the cameraman because
I said, no, I want,

1068
01:11:20.960 --> 01:11:25.520
I want this kind of green light
to spill onto this and I want I

1069
01:11:25.520 --> 01:11:28.880
want when she steps close, I
want her face to slightly have that green

1070
01:11:28.960 --> 01:11:30.880
cast. And they starting, what
the hell is going on up there?

1071
01:11:30.880 --> 01:11:34.359
What are you guys shooting? It
looks horrible. It's these colors are weird,

1072
01:11:34.680 --> 01:11:39.479
I said, intentionally, so they
said, look, they flew out.

1073
01:11:39.520 --> 01:11:42.560
The two producers flew out. This
was the guys who hired me from

1074
01:11:42.640 --> 01:11:45.279
the First one Buyers, and they
said, look, we want to fire

1075
01:11:45.319 --> 01:11:46.760
the DP. I said, well, okay, and then fire me too,

1076
01:11:46.920 --> 01:11:50.039
because let's I'm going to go with
them. No, what are you

1077
01:11:50.079 --> 01:11:53.199
talking about? No, no,
no, no no. We just can't

1078
01:11:53.239 --> 01:11:55.880
look at this because we don't know
if these studios are going to the network

1079
01:11:55.880 --> 01:11:58.880
will accept this. And I said, let me finish the movie. Please,

1080
01:11:58.960 --> 01:12:01.000
let me finish. And they loved
it when it was finished because it

1081
01:12:01.039 --> 01:12:06.439
was very eurie. It was very
dark and wild. Why do they keep

1082
01:12:06.640 --> 01:12:10.520
doubting you? It's so crazy.
It's not that they're doubting me, it's

1083
01:12:10.560 --> 01:12:15.319
they you know, everybody has a
protocol. Everybody has a safe place that

1084
01:12:15.319 --> 01:12:17.880
they exist in and if they want
to get hired again as producers, they

1085
01:12:18.319 --> 01:12:24.680
fulfill, you know, the wishes
of the network. But the network came

1086
01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:28.960
back to say, hey, this
is really good, so they shut up,

1087
01:12:29.000 --> 01:12:30.920
you know. Yea, everybody knows, you know. And and of

1088
01:12:30.960 --> 01:12:35.119
course, when you're making something that's
a little off the path of what's been

1089
01:12:35.159 --> 01:12:43.159
tested, you become fearful that you
might be treading on ground that is not

1090
01:12:43.439 --> 01:12:45.199
solid anymore, and that you're going
to fall or you're going to make something

1091
01:12:45.279 --> 01:12:48.760
terrible. And that, of course
is always the case. And I always

1092
01:12:48.760 --> 01:12:51.000
worry that, you know, the
film, the last film I make is

1093
01:12:51.039 --> 01:12:54.880
going to be my last, because
who knows if I'm ever going to get

1094
01:12:54.920 --> 01:12:57.720
hired again, you know so,
And that was my and that's why I

1095
01:12:57.840 --> 01:13:00.960
ended up doing so many films,
because I always have felt, this is

1096
01:13:00.119 --> 01:13:02.399
my last one. I bet this
is going to be my last one,

1097
01:13:02.600 --> 01:13:08.439
and but it would always work out
and I would be able to somehow take

1098
01:13:08.520 --> 01:13:11.640
the storyline and change it a little
bit. And oh, I'll give you

1099
01:13:11.640 --> 01:13:14.119
an example. I had a film
that I was brought out. It was

1100
01:13:14.199 --> 01:13:17.560
a huge budget, and I mean
I loved the concept, but the story

1101
01:13:17.680 --> 01:13:24.479
was ridiculous. Here's a guy who's
in jail and he keeps calling his girlfriend,

1102
01:13:24.479 --> 01:13:29.760
who's free, and he stole a
lot of money. Now she has

1103
01:13:29.800 --> 01:13:32.039
the money, she's holding it for
him, but he's telling her, you

1104
01:13:32.119 --> 01:13:34.279
got to you got to, you
got to break me out of jail,

1105
01:13:34.319 --> 01:13:38.479
you got to come here. And
I said, if that were me,

1106
01:13:38.560 --> 01:13:40.960
if I was the girlfriend, say
hey, you know, tutelut boy,

1107
01:13:41.399 --> 01:13:44.600
Because I got the money, I
don't need to put my life at risk.

1108
01:13:45.239 --> 01:13:46.960
So I. So they said,
well, how can you fix this?

1109
01:13:47.039 --> 01:13:49.520
What can you do? I said, well, let's think for a

1110
01:13:49.560 --> 01:13:54.840
minute. I said, well what
if what if he has the money someplace

1111
01:13:55.039 --> 01:13:59.640
buried out in the desert and she
wants that money as much as he does.

1112
01:14:00.199 --> 01:14:03.079
So now he's got an advantage.
He can lure her and she gets

1113
01:14:03.079 --> 01:14:05.840
in the helicopter and puts a gun
to the guy's head and says, you

1114
01:14:05.880 --> 01:14:12.560
fly me into that prison yard and
you get that guy free. Now that

1115
01:14:12.560 --> 01:14:15.079
it works, you know, so
much better the story, you know.

1116
01:14:15.239 --> 01:14:19.840
So that's that's what I enjoy doing
that though, because then it makes me

1117
01:14:19.840 --> 01:14:24.439
feel like I'm putting my creativity their
work. Let me bring it back to

1118
01:14:24.439 --> 01:14:27.399
Telson The Dark Side, your final
episode tests in the Dark Side, which

1119
01:14:27.479 --> 01:14:34.000
is social Climber, right right?
That was with Rob Robert Ramanezmans Yes,

1120
01:14:34.279 --> 01:14:44.640
and Albert Haig and oh, isn't
she effortless? She's wonderful. It's like

1121
01:14:44.720 --> 01:14:48.159
she's on another plane of existence acting
wise. It's just it's like watching Robert

1122
01:14:48.159 --> 01:14:53.319
Devall. It's like, is there
acting involved? No? Some of that.

1123
01:14:53.439 --> 01:14:57.560
Some of these people just make it
look so effortless. It's an amazing

1124
01:14:57.600 --> 01:15:01.760
episode because you get away with an
ending with a character dying off screen and

1125
01:15:01.800 --> 01:15:05.960
then when we cut to him with
all smoking and such. It's it's it's

1126
01:15:06.039 --> 01:15:13.439
wonderful. It doesn't feel like a
cheat at all. Well, I vaguely

1127
01:15:13.479 --> 01:15:17.239
remember that one. I haven't seen
it, probably since I made it.

1128
01:15:17.439 --> 01:15:20.319
Oh you know, it's a story
of a cobbler and the kid. Yeah,

1129
01:15:20.720 --> 01:15:24.800
the man who teaches him. Yes, he's got to he's got a

1130
01:15:24.840 --> 01:15:29.039
magic shoes. Yeah, like a
little magic spike that he puts into each

1131
01:15:29.079 --> 01:15:32.319
of the shoes. Yeah. It
was fun. It was fun. It

1132
01:15:32.920 --> 01:15:39.199
was and then you know they were
you know, but but this is my

1133
01:15:39.279 --> 01:15:43.119
experience with all these shows, like
you know, you go on like even

1134
01:15:43.119 --> 01:15:46.239
more of the worlds. I ended
up doing the last one. I did

1135
01:15:46.239 --> 01:15:50.199
the last one for Friday the thirteenth, and Frank minke Cuso said, we

1136
01:15:50.279 --> 01:15:54.520
want to go out in a blast
here, so you're going to direct it

1137
01:15:54.600 --> 01:15:59.600
and it's the Charnel Pitt and and
break the bank on me. I don't

1138
01:15:59.600 --> 01:16:02.640
care because they're not going to renew
the show. So I was wondering about

1139
01:16:02.640 --> 01:16:05.439
that because I was watching the episode
and I was like, I can't believe

1140
01:16:05.479 --> 01:16:10.319
that he got away with like this
much production value on this show, so

1141
01:16:10.399 --> 01:16:14.199
that's interesting. And the same thing
with War of the Worlds. I did

1142
01:16:14.399 --> 01:16:15.960
a couple of things there, and
one of them was about an eighty year

1143
01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:19.960
old woman that gets pregnant and she's
the thing is growing inside her from an

1144
01:16:19.960 --> 01:16:27.680
alien and it was like, yeah, mister Mastrioani, you're a master of

1145
01:16:27.720 --> 01:16:30.520
horror. Master of horror. No, I don't think so. I think.

1146
01:16:30.640 --> 01:16:35.720
I had a dinner one night with
Wes because Wes and I worked on

1147
01:16:35.800 --> 01:16:41.119
Nightmare Cafe together. He did two, I did two you and we still

1148
01:16:41.119 --> 01:16:44.840
we were always good friends. And
he said to me, you know,

1149
01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:46.119
I really envy you, and I
said, you envy me? Why?

1150
01:16:46.520 --> 01:16:50.199
And he is, because you get
to do diversified stuff. You don't always

1151
01:16:50.239 --> 01:16:54.600
make horror film and if I make
something different like Music from the Heart,

1152
01:16:54.680 --> 01:16:58.680
nobody goes to see it. And
you get to do movies like The Ring

1153
01:16:58.840 --> 01:17:02.760
and then you you know, a
faith based story, or you did this

1154
01:17:02.840 --> 01:17:05.279
and you did that, and you
did you know, Virus, and then

1155
01:17:05.319 --> 01:17:09.079
you did an action film, then
you did a western. Then he said

1156
01:17:09.079 --> 01:17:13.520
I would love that. I said, well, you want to switch places,

1157
01:17:14.319 --> 01:17:15.960
you know. Mister George A.
Rameiro used to have the same complaint

1158
01:17:15.960 --> 01:17:19.199
that he had been locked into the
horror hole, but he always said,

1159
01:17:19.279 --> 01:17:23.199
like a good thing. I like
scare shows. Did you have any interaction

1160
01:17:23.279 --> 01:17:29.199
with mister Romero early once? I
met him only once. Yeah, No,

1161
01:17:29.319 --> 01:17:32.079
he wasn't really on the set or
anything like that. It's my understanding

1162
01:17:32.079 --> 01:17:35.000
that he was putting together Day of
the Dead while before I let you go.

1163
01:17:35.399 --> 01:17:39.920
Would you like to tell me anything
about some animated Dante shorts that I've

1164
01:17:39.920 --> 01:17:44.119
been seeing and I'm looking forward to
more upcoming ones. I did a film

1165
01:17:44.159 --> 01:17:48.000
called The Celestine Prophecy, which was
based on the book, which sold so

1166
01:17:48.079 --> 01:17:54.479
much stuff, and at the screening
at Chinese Theater here in Hollywood, this

1167
01:17:54.800 --> 01:17:58.359
gentleman came up to me and said, listen, I wanted to meet you.

1168
01:17:58.479 --> 01:18:00.319
I want to talk to you.
I want you to work with me.

1169
01:18:00.399 --> 01:18:01.960
I want to do I want to
tell the story of the divine comedy.

1170
01:18:01.960 --> 01:18:04.920
It's my passion. It's this and
that. So we've you know,

1171
01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:09.399
interacted in the last few years,
and he's been he always puts stuff together,

1172
01:18:09.520 --> 01:18:13.079
and he asked my opinion, and
he wants my involvement in it,

1173
01:18:13.159 --> 01:18:16.199
and somehow and and and that's the
extent of it. In fact, he

1174
01:18:16.239 --> 01:18:20.439
actually just spoke to me before about
an hour ago. Before we spoke,

1175
01:18:20.479 --> 01:18:24.359
he was asking me about you know, he's working on the opening and he

1176
01:18:24.399 --> 01:18:27.439
said, should I use this or
that? What do you think? And

1177
01:18:27.439 --> 01:18:30.159
and you know, it's it's been, it's been, it's you know,

1178
01:18:30.199 --> 01:18:32.720
it's nice to help other people.
I feel that it's always you know,

1179
01:18:33.560 --> 01:18:38.680
we should, we should collaborate because
that's how we learn from each other,

1180
01:18:38.800 --> 01:18:43.359
you know. I mean even I
learn every day when I'm making a film,

1181
01:18:43.439 --> 01:18:46.239
I learn new things I learned and
every film is different because I'm working

1182
01:18:46.239 --> 01:18:49.159
with new, new, new team, new actors knew this, knew that,

1183
01:18:49.600 --> 01:18:53.840
and you learn how to work with
them. You know. You you

1184
01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:59.520
see who's going to give you trouble. And and the ones I was warned

1185
01:18:59.560 --> 01:19:02.439
again ended up liking me so much. We had such a great relationship.

1186
01:19:02.520 --> 01:19:06.880
Like they said, don't make that
film with Sybil Shepherd, She's horrible to

1187
01:19:06.920 --> 01:19:13.079
work with. I met Sybil.
There wasn't one moment of tension. She

1188
01:19:13.359 --> 01:19:15.000
just had me over for dinner.
She said, Carmen, come over,

1189
01:19:15.239 --> 01:19:18.359
I'm gonna cook, and Michael's coming. She was going out with Michael Bolton

1190
01:19:18.399 --> 01:19:21.680
at the time. And he came
to the set. Oh no, that

1191
01:19:21.760 --> 01:19:27.680
was Nicholas Sheridan. That happened.
But Sybil used to We used to go

1192
01:19:27.720 --> 01:19:30.439
out. We used to go to
movies together and stuff. While I was

1193
01:19:30.439 --> 01:19:33.840
making Missus Washington goes to Smith and
she was the sweetest person. The same

1194
01:19:33.840 --> 01:19:39.239
with Nicola Sheridan. They said she's
a monster, and oh well, she

1195
01:19:39.359 --> 01:19:44.880
was so nice. In fact,
she was so concerned about this one actor

1196
01:19:44.920 --> 01:19:48.520
who we hired to play a doctor
and had all his stuff was medical jargon

1197
01:19:48.560 --> 01:19:51.319
and he had to get it out
fast. And the two of them were

1198
01:19:51.359 --> 01:19:57.720
looking at each other and he says
the contract says a little bit of and

1199
01:19:57.760 --> 01:19:59.960
he was sweating, and she was
going, it's okay, it's okay,

1200
01:20:00.039 --> 01:20:03.720
it's okay. And I realized the
guy was having tremendous problems, and I

1201
01:20:03.720 --> 01:20:06.000
said, we can't shoot this.
And I know we can't because well,

1202
01:20:06.239 --> 01:20:10.079
he's never going to be comfortable.
He's just going to barely eke it out.

1203
01:20:11.279 --> 01:20:13.079
So I said to them, and
I said, you know what,

1204
01:20:13.760 --> 01:20:17.720
what is this moment about. You
are getting ready to go into to see

1205
01:20:17.760 --> 01:20:23.079
one of the victims of the virus. So I want you to play this

1206
01:20:23.159 --> 01:20:25.800
scene while you're getting dressed. I
want you to I want the gloves to

1207
01:20:25.800 --> 01:20:28.720
be being put on. I want
you to put your masks on like that.

1208
01:20:28.760 --> 01:20:30.520
And once that was, once his
mouth was covered, I was in

1209
01:20:31.439 --> 01:20:36.720
room him a much more interesting scene
because I was photographing their hands, their

1210
01:20:36.760 --> 01:20:42.079
hands tying things, him putting the
cap on, She's putting this on,

1211
01:20:42.239 --> 01:20:45.640
and he's going and throwing. And
later on he was able to read exactly

1212
01:20:45.720 --> 01:20:48.840
what he had to say with the
right pace, and we just dubbed it

1213
01:20:48.880 --> 01:20:57.520
in amazing. So, I mean, I can I can tell you so

1214
01:20:57.600 --> 01:21:00.960
many experiences that I've had in so
many wonderful moments on the set. I

1215
01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:03.039
mean, there have been moments where
the tension was very, very high too,

1216
01:21:03.560 --> 01:21:08.920
But most of the times it's when
you love something as much as I

1217
01:21:08.960 --> 01:21:13.359
know I do, you never see
flaws in it. You always it's like,

1218
01:21:13.399 --> 01:21:15.760
you know, looking at the children. Your children are always beautiful,

1219
01:21:15.119 --> 01:21:17.680
even some people might say, well, that's not such a good looking kid.

1220
01:21:18.439 --> 01:21:24.680
You know, you are a visual
stylist who's very good with actors,

1221
01:21:24.720 --> 01:21:28.279
evidently, and we're huge fans of
yours of midnightteen. Do you have any

1222
01:21:28.359 --> 01:21:30.920
projects coming up you want to you
want to plug for me head on out.

1223
01:21:31.239 --> 01:21:34.800
You know, none that are really
going. There's always lots of stuff

1224
01:21:34.840 --> 01:21:39.720
in the hopper, you know,
there's all kinds of projects that we're playing

1225
01:21:39.720 --> 01:21:42.760
with. I mean of a friend
of mine from back East who's written a

1226
01:21:42.760 --> 01:21:45.800
couple of very good scripts. One
of them is called The Butterfly, and

1227
01:21:45.800 --> 01:21:51.000
it's it's a story about a woman
who discovers how father was secretly trading illegal

1228
01:21:51.079 --> 01:21:55.760
stocks in the stock market, and
he left all the stuff and he passes

1229
01:21:55.800 --> 01:21:59.159
away, and she's cleaning out all
the stuff and she finds all these pieces

1230
01:21:59.199 --> 01:22:03.239
of information and she becomes so you
know, involved with it. She starts

1231
01:22:03.239 --> 01:22:08.399
doing the same thing and she becomes
it's almost like do you see a movie

1232
01:22:08.399 --> 01:22:14.319
called Emily the Criminal. It's Plaza, right, Aubrey Plaza. And then

1233
01:22:14.319 --> 01:22:20.760
he also wrote something hilariously funny called
Santa Must Die, very very funny script.

1234
01:22:20.800 --> 01:22:27.119
I mean it's it's it's a real
slapstick kind of Adam Sandler, you

1235
01:22:27.159 --> 01:22:29.840
know, almost a mel Brooks kind
of thing. It's way over the top.

1236
01:22:30.399 --> 01:22:32.199
I love that. And then he
wrote something called John the Painter,

1237
01:22:32.359 --> 01:22:35.600
which I really like. It's based
on a true story where this family gets

1238
01:22:35.640 --> 01:22:41.279
together to tell the story and they
all watch these old films of their dad,

1239
01:22:41.399 --> 01:22:45.680
and they find out her father was
actually involved in a murder of a

1240
01:22:45.119 --> 01:22:48.960
mafia guy who wanted to kill his
own who wanted to kill his son,

1241
01:22:49.279 --> 01:22:54.640
and he protected his son by Oh, it's a really good story. I

1242
01:22:54.640 --> 01:22:57.279
hope each and every one of those
gets made, and I hope you're the

1243
01:22:57.279 --> 01:23:00.000
one behind the camera. Oh,
it would be fun because I'm not retired.

1244
01:23:00.319 --> 01:23:04.560
Good now. We need you in
this world, and I just wanted

1245
01:23:04.560 --> 01:23:08.640
to thank you so much for joining
us here tonight on the Midnight VI Pleasure.

1246
01:23:09.079 --> 01:23:11.159
You know, if it's okay with
you, We're probably gonna hit you

1247
01:23:11.239 --> 01:23:14.960
up again. I'm gonna eventually a
little more in depth with with some of

1248
01:23:15.000 --> 01:23:17.840
the some of your other projects that
you've been working on. We'd love to

1249
01:23:17.840 --> 01:23:26.439
speak to you again. I will
be your guest anytime. Midnight Viewing.

1250
01:23:26.520 --> 01:23:31.039
The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud
member of Weirdingway Media. Our theme song

1251
01:23:31.159 --> 01:23:38.079
was composed by HP with an assist
from Donald Rubinstein and Erica Lindsay. If

1252
01:23:38.119 --> 01:23:41.560
you want to hear these episodes early
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1253
01:23:41.560 --> 01:23:45.399
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1254
01:23:45.439 --> 01:23:50.000
early, but we have extended interviews
and bonus podcasts where we spotlight the best

1255
01:23:50.039 --> 01:23:55.640
episodes of horror anthologies from every series. But if you just like the show

1256
01:23:55.680 --> 01:23:57.920
and want to help, please share
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1257
01:23:58.000 --> 01:24:01.319
rating on your favorite podcatcher. Together, we'll keep journeying through the places that

1258
01:24:01.399 --> 01:24:04.399
are just as real, but not
as brightly lit.