Dark Destinations may be end times Night's preacher. Why would a few more casualties
struggle me because of their blood? Will join yours? A radio drama anthology.
You are wrong how you figure? Every mark on Longo is hunting you
down, not you, your partner, he said, I didn't have a
ray gun. Full cast performances set in the haunted corners of the globe.
Darkness is coming for you. That's the fear that taunts me. Dark Destinations
by fatherm Alone at Weirdingwaymedia dot Com. Weird In Welcome Back Midnight doers to
a very special segment of the show, I'm follow them Alone and Joining Me
Tonight. Is a filmmaker, producer, actor who not only was responsible for
dozens of features, including the classics He Knows, You're Alone and Cameron's Closet,
but he also directed eight episodes of Friday the Thirteenth series, two episodes
of Dark Shadows. Over a long and illustrious career, he's worked with illuminaries
like John Palito, Kenneth McMillan, Joe Morton, Talia Balsam, Michelle Nichols,
Olivia Hussey, Steve Railsback, Piper Laurie Eddie, Albert Mel Harris,
Chuck McCann, Bobby the Chico, TJ. Castronova. If you know you
know Midnight Viewers, Annabeth Yesh Hector, Alissando, this is ridiculous, Jurgen
proc Now, Ali Sheety, Meat Loaf, Luke Perry See, Thomas Howl,
Tiffany ambertheas and personal favorite of mine, Fay done Away, My God,
sir. It goes on and on. And while he directed the Clairvoyant,
he himself had clairvoyance enough to cast mister Tom Hanks in his first theatrical
feature. He is a dark Side bit of royalty, having directed four episodes
of the series. Please join me in welcoming mister Arma Mastriani to Midnight Viewing.
Welcome Sarah, Hey, what a pleasure to be here. It is
entirely ours. Tell us how obviously you were. You were making movies before
you got to Dark Side. Dark Side was your first television series. But
what got you? What got you there? What got you into the movies?
Where'd you go to school? Where'd you grow up? Man? I
grew up in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York, and I guess I was
always fascinated with movies. I remember going to see a film when I was
maybe five or six years old, and I just watched the curtains open and
I saw that giant screen and then all of a sudden these images on the
screen, and I said, wow, that's amazing, look at that.
You know, I want to do that. And I, you know,
just on my own, I never studied or went to film school. I
kind of like, yeah, I tuk my dad into buying me a eight
millimeter camera, not even super no, not even super. And in those
days, it was one of those magazine type cameras that you put it in
twenty five feet, take it out, turn it around, put it back
in, and shoot the other twenty five feet, and then send it out
to be developed. They'd splice it all into one reel, fifty foot reel.
So he kept asking, he kept saying to me. My dad would
say, like, what do you what do you want a camera for?
What are you going to do with the camera. I said, well,
you know, I want to make movies and stuff, and he and he
goes, movies, what do you mean of the family, And I was
going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know that was
not his you know, not his vocation. You know, he came from
Italy with his two brothers and they founded a jewelry business in New York City
and they were very successful at it, and he had aspirations of me taking
over the business, and naturally I worked for him, yeah, during the
summer vacation and stuff like that, but my heart wasn't in it. Although
when I used to go out and sell for him, I used to,
you know, sit down and start talking to the buyers and I'd be I'd
say, hey, by the way, do you see this movie? Wasn't
that amazing way they told the story? And they, you know, and
they get so wrapped up into my enthusiasm. They order and order and order
stuff. But they love the stories I tell. And I found that I
was a good storyteller too, because when I was in the boy Scouts,
I used to they always always picked me to tell a campfire story at night,
and then everybody was too scared to leave and they didn't want to go
off to their tents alone, you know. And in the middle of the
night. I'll never forget this, I heard one guy, mister Flanning,
who was our scout master, Please I need to go to the bathroom.
Come and come with me. He just you know, we used to go
out and pee in the woods or whatever. But you know, yeah,
I'd create these stories. You know, a lot of them, you know,
were stories you know, you heard, you picked up on, and
I'd always embellished them somehow. And then the twig snaps heard and he turned
around and there was something that looked like a person standing there, you know,
like I'd always I had very very vivid imagination. And you also have
an incredible attention to detail. Well, I've been I've been looking at a
lot of your stuff over the past few days and and you're you're you're very
meticulous actually in your in your presentation and your shots. Yeah, well,
I I enjoy that because I think the whole experience of making a film is
telling a story visually. And you know, if you can say it through
through visually, you don't need to you don't need to say it verbally.
And and that's how I learned, because I when I made these super eight
more the eight millimeter films, I used to get my friends together and we'd
I'd come up with some scenes or I'd write a little story and that I
wanted to direct, and I wanted to make and we'd shoot it and I'd
splice it together and then i'd show it to them and i'd play music from
a tape recorder in the background, and you know, and that evolved into,
you know, becoming involved in school with the projects and making short little
films, and one of them won an award at a festival, and that
prompted me to go into another one. And then I did a sixteen millimeter
film because I formed a club in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Arts and Cultural Association.
They paid for they funded us as a film club, and all the
kids came to work on films there and I was able to make a film
there and I made a short film called The Private Worlds of Sophie and Bernie
Schwartz. It was sort of a comedy and this was the first time I
was able to use sound and stuff like that, and it was sixteen millimeter
in French. At this point, well, I mean, I was just
starting in college. I had the other ones I had made were in high
school, right right, But this is like an actual short film, you're
yeah, twenty minute film. And it really turned out good because I had
this concept, I said, I want to tell a story about a middle
aged couple that are really no longer attracted to each other, and they exist
in the same household speak but not really to each other. They speak at
each other. They they're like, she's got the curlers in her hair and
a bathrobe, and she's making the coffee in the morning, and he's eating
his breakfast, you know, getting ridy, and he's like an overweight guy
and she's this mousey looking woman and they you know, the spark has gone
out of their marriage and they just talk. But they don't talk to each
other. They talk at each other like she'll say, you know, Stewart's
is having a great shoe sale today. I'm going to go there and check
them out out. And he goes, yeah, you know, look at
this nine o'clock tonight hangover Square. I gotta watch that. I like that
movie larrd Krieger, you know, And that was their existence. Now once
they are separated from each other, my story was that they had to survive
somehow, but they created fantasies. So she imagines the gardener in the backyard,
so she's looking through the Venetian blinds and she's looking at the gardener doing
the and he takes his shirt off because it's hot, you know, and
she's like studdying his torso, you know, and she's like and then the
doorbell rings and all of a sudden it's the delivery boy. This young guy
comes in. Hey, missus Schwartz, I got your stuff, you know,
and he brings the bags and she goes, put him on the table
there, Jimmy, you know. And as she's going, you know,
tell us Saul that the last week those vegetables were a little And as she's
speaking, her fantasy takes over and she suddenly says, you know, missus
Schwartz, you're one of the nicest looking women of all of my mom friends.
And he's not opening his shirt a little, you know, and she's
going Jimmy and goes, yeah, come over here, missus Schwartz, give
me a hug. I want to hug it, you know. So they
had these wild sexual fantasies, and he is on his way to work and
he sees the woman at the fruit stand and she's she's playing dumb dun dun
dun da da da d Hey fresh fruite today, and he goes, not
today, I'm late, and but in the minute he gets on the elevator
as he gets as he's getting off to get on his floor to work,
and she's standing there in this Carmen Miranda dress with all the fruit in her
hair and everything, and they start to dance together, and they dance off
into his office, which becomes something else, and it's a story about that,
and ultimately at the end, the two of them meet at that end
of the day, and they've gone through four or five different fantasies, and
they meet at the end of the day and the music is playing on the
radio and he's clipping his toe nails. She's putting new rollers in and they
kind of step backward and looking at each other in the mirror, and they
hit each other and he looks at her, and the music says, starts
taking off with his beautiful waltz, and he takes her in his arms,
and he starts dancing with her, and he's dancing, and suddenly he's dancing
with his fantasy, and then she's dancing with her fantasy. Then she's dancing,
and it keeps changing, changing, changing, until they stop and they
look at each other and he says, Sophie, she's Bernie. So they
discover each other through their fantasies and the Walsaw Well. This film got entered
into the Fordham University Film Festival. The judge was Auto Preminger. Good lord,
okay, stops the festival and says, this is the winner and I
want to meet the director. I get a telephone call in Brooklyn, New
York. My mom says, Columbia Pictures want to say, Auto Premenger's office
is on the film that speak. I said, are you kidding me?
And they said, mister Premenger would love to meet you. Would you kindly
come into Manhattan to the so and so la. So I did and I
was like, wow, I can't believe this. And I get there and
his attendant, his office person, says to me, just a moment,
please, he'll be with you in a few moments. He's on the phone
and then he got I heard the buzzer and she says, you can go
in now. And she opened the door and there's this beautiful office and he's
sitting naturally against this gigantic window and he's shading his bald head with an electric
rage and he goes, come in, come in. Your picture made me
laugh and made me cry. It's so beautiful. How did you make this
movie? It's so perfect? I said, well, thank you so much,
Thank you so much. He says, I am going to make sure
everyone sees this movie. He got on the phone in front of me,
called Paramount Pictures, United Artists, Columbia Pictures, and another company I forgot,
and I went that day. I brought my film to Columbia Pictures,
which was in the building, and when they watched it, they came back
to me. I said, you know, we love the short, but
we don't make shorts, we make features. Why don't you write a script
or something, or come up with a script you want to do, bring
it to us and let's see. So that encouraged me to and then Otto
was so generous what he did. Invited me on a Sunday afternoon to his
home on someton place. He had about maybe thirty or forty people there,
all from the industry, had a huge buffet laid out, and he showed
my film to them. Oh my gosh, generous thing I've ever experienced.
And it encouraged me to become exactly like that, not the monster that he
was called all the time, the screamer and all those things, because I've
experienced this with a number of directors, including Auto premacher, William Friedkin,
Francis Ford Coppolak. They were so wonderful and generous to me. So I
ended up making writing a script called Rapallo and Sons, which was a comedy
almost like Moonstruck. And it was way before Moonstruck. This was nineteen seventy
something, and I gave it to an actor who lived in the neighborhood.
I never met him. I just happened to call him up. See this
kind of I persevered, you know. I went after people, you know,
like I called Vincent Gardinian and I said, listen, he's listened.
A lot of people send me scripts. I'll read it. I'll let you
know, I figured. But two weeks later, I get a telephone call.
Hello, my mom, this is Vince Gardenia. I loved your script.
I laughed so much. It's so wonderful. How do you write this
thing? It's so good? Blah blah blah blah blah, I said,
well, I wrote it with a Franciscan monk, brother Jonathan, Who's who
he wrote. He used to write plays for the Ensemble Studio theater, but
he was a si Franciscan monk. Wow, and we worked together and we
wrote the script. Anyway, he says, by the way I gave it
to I hope you don't mind. I gave it to my agents at the
William Morris Agency. They loved it, and they want to meet you and
they want to sign the script. I want to sign you as a client,
I said, are you kidding me? Wonder? So I went up
and I met, and I sure enough signed with the William Morris Agency.
And before I knew what the picture was set up at Palomar Pictures. Yvonne
Passer was going to direct. Since I was a I had not directed a
feature yet. Wit isn't that the whole idea? Yeah? Well, I
mean what happened The guy who was breaking the script down for them, George
Manassei, their production manager, came to me and said, listen, do
you want to make a movie because I got these two guys, these two
Broadway producers who have some money. They want to make a horror film.
I said, sure, of course, So I went in met with them.
They had seen my shorts film shorts and and my and so what happened
is they summertime, you know, they said yeah. They said, so
what's the movie? And I'm going the movie? He said, the movie
the horror film you want to make. I thought, yeah, So I
started pitching the story that I used to tell at the campfire in the and
they and they're eating their lunch and they're like kind of nodding, like they've
heard this one before. And I swear to God I that moment I said,
this is they're not buying this. They're not buying this. And I
said, but then we pulled back and that's on a screen in a movie
theater and there's people sitting in the theater watching this, and the real killer
sits oh. And that's the beginning of he Knows You're Alone. And I
wrote that with my dear friend Scott Parker, who was also working for his
dad in the jewelry business, and we used to meet together and write write
the story, and we used to come up what's scary? And I said,
look, I don't want to make a gore movie. I want to
make a very scary psychological thing, you know, a thriller where where it's
all implied, but I mean you might see that that knife and all that
stuff, kind of like psycho because I was very influenced by Hitchcock and even
Halloween. You know, so you weren't ripping end trails out of co eds
were no, no, no, you're making a suspense picture. I hadn't
seen Friday the Thirteenth yet, but that was a lot of talk about that.
So we made this film and it was it was dirt cheap because they
were going to they were getting another investor named Sam Arkoff who used to run
AIP Pictures. But he calls the last minute. We're starting production, pre
production, and he says, I can't do it. Fellas he says,
you're going to you know, I have to bail on you because I'm involved
in two other pictures and I'm not going to have that. So they said,
well, we can't make it, you know, because we were going
to make it like I think six hundred thousand dollars or something like that.
And I said, no, no, no, we'll still do it.
We'll still do it. We'll make it for three hundred that, you know,
for just whatever you have. And they said you can't, you can't,
and we'll shoot on Staten Island and I know people and he knows,
my friend knows people will put it all together guerrilla style. Finally they said
all right, all right, let's give it a shot. And that's how
that happened. And I just say that, I love how scrappy you were
in this situation where you're having, you know, being feted by auto premanger
and your film is being shown and you're at every studio and yet you're on
the ground making it happen. I just loved that. I was very very
fortunate. I just had a path that was very open to me, and
it just kept Anyway, the film gets made and they bring it out to
Los Angeles. The two producers bring it out to Los Angeles ahead of the
con Film Festival because they were going to go to conn to sell the foreign
rights. You know, they figured they'd make a few dollars with it.
Well, the studios were supposed to see wanted to see it because it was
still a week before, so they figured, all right, let's invest some
money, we'll go out there. So they showed it. The first one
to see it was supposed to be twentieth Century Fox, but they cancel the
screening because they had a conflict, So they said, who's next in line?
We don't want to waste a day MGM. So they brought it to
MGM and MGM loved it. They watched it twice because when they went to
pick it up, the picture was just starting again. So they knew something
was up because there was a packed house of executives and all the people there
and the guys stood up at the end, said, Wow, this movie
was fantastic. Loved it. It's scary. Oh God, excuse me.
Who are you guys in the back? Oh, we're the producers. We're
here to pick up the print. Oh would you please step outside, we'll
call you. And they did and they got a call and they said,
look, well buy the film as long as you don't show it to anybody
else or put us in any bidding war with this. And they got a
fortune for that movie. They got a lot of money up front. And
I know that because they didn't pay us that much. And they gave me,
like, ey take seven points. You know, it was the producers
seven points seven points. Once they're one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you
know, investment was paid off or close to two hundred thousand out of two
million dollars. You know what the profit was? It was phenomenal. I
bought it. I was able to put it down payment on a house.
You're just telling me the American dream over and over. Yeah. Yeah,
Well, immigrant father and no formal training. Just love love for cinema I
learned on my own. I was cutting in my own films. I used
to splice them together and play with the sound so match. And the first
note I wrote about your work when I was watching This Weekend is this man
is a visual storyteller. Well, I hope so, because that's what I
aspire to be. Yeah. Are, But it just seems like so many
directors are just telling the story and setting up some shots and getting the coverage
and everything. Ever, no matter the media, if it was a theatrical
feature, it was an episode of television, And no matter what the genre
of television, I noticed jumping from one to one more often than not.
It's what you said before. It's less about dialogue and more about just telling
the story. If you don't have to say anything, you don't have to
I noticed, particularly in the Friday of the thirteenth, where there seemed to
be passages that lasted like six seven minutes with maybe one word, and I
just marveled at that because I love that. So few filmmakers kind of believe
in just the power of the moving image. You know, George Miller's out
there making you know, basically silent movies set with sound effects and music.
These days, he seems the only other guy out there doing it. So
I don't know if that's a question. It's just an observation I had about
your work that I really admired. There's a Korean filmmaker who made him film
called Morbius Mobius or Morbius Unbelievable. It's Oedipus complex, but it's done.
It's all done between a mother, father, and a son, and not
one word has spoken. Grunts usually, you know, sound effects and stuff,
but nobody opens their mouth and says one word. It's all employed.
You could. You don't need a word. You don't. There's no subtitles
to read, and it's it's a shocking film, but it's very graphic,
very But I loved that because it was conveying everything through visuals. And you
know, it's interesting you said that because the first review I had, which
was a very good review on the first TV movie I directed with Michelle Lee
and James Farantino, was exactly saying that, saying that the way you know
he sets up these shots, they're very visual without having to inform us in
any other thing. You get the feeling that she's walking on eggshells. You
get the feeling that there's something about to happen. Even with the way he
frames the tea kettle in the foreground, that the steam starts to intensify or
you know, they picked up on those things, and I feel very happy
about that because that's my ambition is to tell stories through pictures. So essentially,
you know, he knows you're alone. Got sold to MGM, And
oh, one more thing before you continue. The logo for that movie is
one of my favorite logos, really, that the drawing with the hands coming
down to form form the h It's fantastic, right right, right right,
Well that wasn't my design, I know it. I'm just saying I made
a movie and that logo exists and it's awesome. Well, our original title
was either the Uninvited Shriek. I know Tom always is a kid with me,
he writes. In fact, he'll write me letters and remembers every single
one. I used to try a new title on everybody while we were shooting,
and so we released it as blood Wedding and a Skull with a veil
on it and MGM said, well, we don't, can't do that.
Plus there was a famous Garcia Lorca play, so they said they're what do
you call their public City department worked on it and the head guy came over
to me and a guy named Ira Tello'll Never Forget, and he shows me.
He says, here, here's the name of your movie. He Knows
You're Alone? And I said, yeah, who does isn't that the tagline?
Like a stalker watch out? He Knows You're Alone? Oh yeah.
In fact, it played next to another friend a film called When a Stranger
Calls on the same bill. It said when a Stranger calls, he knows
You're alone. You know it sounded level. So yeah, we were in
and they did this whole promo. They brought us out for interviews and everything,
put us up at the Beverly Hills. He'll tell first class per diem,
which I never heard of. And the next thing I know, I
get a telephone call from Warner Brothers saying William Friedkin wants to meet with you.
Esuys. Oh my god. The guy who made The Exorcist French connection.
So I said, how do I get there? And they told me
go over the drive and blah blah blah blah blah. They in rented me
car, a car and everything. I'll never forget this. I go in
again. It was like the Auto premature thing. I walk in and assistant
said, Billy will be with you in a couple of minutes. He's on
the phone. All of a sudden, she said, armand Mostriani is here
and he's okay. And the door opens and he's wearing this white jumpsuit like
Hannibal. He comes out. He goes, come over here, and he
gives me a big hug. He says, your picture scared the shit out
of me. He says that film was so good. How did you make
this film? Blah blah blah blah. I said, oh my god.
And we sat down and we started talking a little bit and he hands me
a script. He goes, I want you to make this one. And
I took the script and said the Night of the Full Moon. I went
wow. He says, do you you know you'll direct it? And I
said, you mean you're not going to direct anymore? He said no,
I'm going to still make films, but I want to produce some films too,
and I'm want to find very interesting filmmakers like you, like yourself,
and I'm going to do that. I said, fantastic. He says,
I'll tell you what read the script, and we'll have dinner tomorrow night.
You want to do that, I said, with you, of course.
And so imagine getting out of that room with the script in your hand.
Are you going to drive all the way across the over the hill. Of
course not. I sat in the car and I stopped the meeting, and
I'm going, oh, okay, okay, oh no, this is bad.
And then I said, you know, I think it's a psychological test,
because he gives you a bad script to see if you know what you're
doing. So I go home and I did finish it, and I called
back and I said I read the script. And she said, well,
Billy's on the phone. He'll he'll get back to you. I've scheduled you
guys for dinner tomorrow night, and blah blah blah. Okay, great,
he does call. He does call me back and goes, hey, so
what do you think. I said, Well, it's pretty bad. Long
silence, and he goes, you know, any script can be fixed,
and I went, oh, he likes it. Oh, oh god.
So I said, he said, look, are we going to have dinner
tomorrow? And I I said, yes, definitely, And so he was
so nice. I sat there with him Andnute we were ordering and he's he
had his hand uff to his face like this, and he's going, what
do you want to do? And I go, well, I have some
ideas for a film. I want to do a story about New York City,
and I want to do that. There's a killer loose in New York
City, kind of like a Jallo film, you know, Tanyan. And
he goes, huh. And I see a scene in a swimming pool where
guy is all by himself and the lights go out, almost like in cat
People, and suddenly he's yanked down under the water and his handcuff is his
ankles handcuffed to the bottom rung of the ladder so that his face is inches
away from but he can never breathe, and he's trying to pull himself.
He's trying to rip his ankle off, and blood's coming in the water,
and he goes, I love it. I love it. And then I
see the woman in a scene later on, because I always see these bed
sheets flapping at night in the wind, and this woman is running through away
from the killer, and she's pulling the bed sheets like this, and you
never know if he's going to appear in front of her or whatever. And
so he loved it, and he called my agents at the William Morris Agency
the next morning and he set up the whole development of The Killing Hour and
I wrote it again with the one I wrote. We Apollo and songs with
the Franciscan Monk, and we wrote the story. And he kept calling and
he'd say, I like this scene. I like this scene, he says,
But all your victims are men. He says, is this a gay
film? I said, no, no, no, no, no,
no, it's not gay. There's a reason that all these men have to
be killed within a certain period of time because they're all involved within it,
with it with something with an individual who does not want to be exposed.
And it turns out that individual is the head of a like a NewsCap He
was like, I had Heraldo Rivera in my mind because he was very popular
at the time. So Perry King plays this talk show host but very cocky,
very brave, but he's involved in the murder of this girl. And
with four other men, they decided to do this kinky thing, this kinky
knight, and they pick up this girl. They hire this girl who's like
a into all kinds of s and m and stuff like that. But she
dies, she's killed while this is happening, and so they throw her body
in the river and they leave handcuffs on her, and there becomes the killings,
the handcuff killings. But then when he realizes that these people also know
who he is and can expose he's got to go out and continue these murders.
And his best friend is a cop who wants to be a comedian,
a stand up comic who does stand up comic stuff. And that's the story,
very popular at the time, stand up. Yeah. And so what
we did was we made this film, but Billy unfortunately got very sick.
He had a heart attack, a major heart attack, and he said,
I'm not able to move forward right now, and I'm not going to be
for a long time, but if you're able to get this movie started.
This all came through his assistant because he couldn't. He was in the hospital,
it's yours. You don't know me anything except what we paid for development.
And I went holy. So I called the guys from He Knows You're
Alone, who were very wealthy right now, and they said, sure,
we'll do it, we'll do it. So we made the Killing Hour and
then you know it continued. I got called and from Los Angeles to do
a movie called Supernaturals. And then can I just say the swimming pool scene
that you mentioned, Yeah, it fucking horrified me as a child. Oh
you saw the Oh yeah, I was already tripidacious about getting in a pool.
But like things like that. And there was another film, I think
Ghost Story they had a swimming pool steam where like there was a sheet of
glass had gone over. Yeah yeah, yeah, Like those didn't did me?
No favors, come friend, thank you? Well there are things that,
you know, leave an indelible mark on you. I mean, like
the shower scene in Psycho Jaws. How many people were afraid of going in
the water after that? You know, this dark object underwater with a gigantic
mouth that's going to come and grab you. You know, it's like whoa.
So you know, but I was able to be I have to say.
I think I was blessed to be able to move on from one to
another to another, and and and While I was in Los Angeles doing the
Supernaturals, I got a call from somebody who said, listen, we're putting
something together called Distortions and Olivia Hussey and Edward Albert Jr. And all this
stuff. We want you to direct it. I said, oh, sure,
sure, you know I Meanwhile, I'm not in the director's guild at
this point, so I was I was able to work. You know.
They liked that because they didn't have to go through all the in the paperwork
of hiring assistant directors and all that stuff. So that led to Cameron's Closet
and then Double Revenge for the See. I usually ended up doing a couple
of movies for these companies because they liked the way I worked. I was
always very respectful of the budget because I realized, Hey, it's like sending
a kid into a candy store and saying you got five dollars to buy candy.
You could spend it all on one thing, or you could take your
time and spend it on this and this and this, but that's it.
You're not getting any more, you're not getting six dollars or eight dollars.
So I always kept that in mind, and I always said, no matter
what I have to do, I have to stay to the close to this
budget. I have to stay right on it or less if I can and
still make a good movie. And if I have to, I have to
make shortcuts or I have to combine things to make things work. So I
did. After those couple of films, Double Revenge and Cameron's Closet, I
started getting called for. I think it was Tales from the Dark Side.
Yeah, Tails from the Dark Side, which was still again non union,
so they were able to do it, and we were able to do a
couple of Tales from the Dark Side. And what was so nice about it?
I see, this is how I learned from other directors. There was
a kid on the set who used to was from the office and he used
to make deliveries and he used to come and just like spend as much time
as he could, just watch him before he had to leave. And I
called him over. I says, what do you want to do? One
day? He said, well, I'd love to write. I want to
make movies too. I want to I said, well, why don't you
come in spend a little time on the set. And he goes, can
I is that all right with you? I said, of course it is,
and and he did and he started we started talking, and he says,
you know, I have an idea for one of these, And I
said, what kind of I have an idea about a politician who has to
go and make the speech and he has to go, you know, to
this He goes to this town and they take his clothes away to be pressed
and everything and everything comes back exaggerated into clown suits and stuff to make he's
because he's really a buffore, you know. And I said, okay.
And I said it's got to end like in a circus then, because I
want to do like a Fellini thing, you know. And and I actually
think he should a car should come to pick him up, and it should
be a little tiny clown car, a little red car with a battery operator.
And he can't understand. And we got this fabulous dick Sean to be
in it. This guy was over the over the top when he realized I
was going to take his story, we were going to adapt it. He
and I adopted it, and they bought this the episode and we made it.
It's cool. I think it's the shoe fits. Shoe fits absolutely with
Dick Sewn, who was terrific. But the first one I did, I
think was Painkiller for them Oby and Peggy Cass and Farley Granger. My god,
he's fantastic in the episode. He's wonderful. And you know what I
said to him. He would he would pivot on the exact word at the
same moment, like he go, nor would you you had then and he'd
used that same thing, and I stopped and I one day I said to
him, Parley, how did how is it that you there's no like variation?
He said, oh, my god, Armand we could never do that
in the old studio system. We had to match constantly for the editor because
then if we change things, it wouldn't matter in cutting. They wouldn't be
able to cut you back to us because I'd be doing something different. I
said, yeah, but it's amazing how good you are each time, you
know, and that those are the old trained Hollywood stars, which were you
know, the newer ones that I worked with, like when I did Supernatural,
for example, I loved him. Maxwell Calfield was great, but he
would never do the same thing twice. You would never even hit his marks
because he wasn't worried about that. He was worried about his moment, you
know. So the one thing I also learned was everybody's different, and you're
going to work with a lot of different people in this in this industry,
and you're going to have to be able to adapt to all the different personalities
that you're working with. Some are going to want to listen to you,
some of them not going to want you to tell them anything, and some
are if you start suggesting too much, I'm going to tell you to go
away. So you got to know who to play and who to befriend and
who how to you know, So I learned all that. That was part
of my you see, the blessing when I say it's a blessing, was
that I without having gone to school for filmmaking and directing and all that stuff,
I learned through the process of doing it. And I always said,
when I do a film, I always want you to call the film schools
and ask if any kids want to intern on my sets because I want them
to watch and see, because that they're going to learn more watching and experiencing
how movies are made and seeing the problems that arise and how they're dealt with.
And I would always call the interns over and say like, Okay,
did you see now we just set up this shot? Would you have done
it any differently? He goes, well, I would have maybe done this
and then this, And then I said, but you see what you just
did. You added two extra three extra shots now and those three shots,
those three shots are you know, going to cost you more time to do
them. If you combine them into one, you get it all done at
once. So so important to have angels, isn't it. Yeah. I
mean you've had some in your life and here you are doling it out as
well. But the most one of the best experiences for me, I mean,
working with Billy Friedkin was phenomenal. And Billy, you know, was
even until he passed away recently, but he used to be so kind.
Even took my son and when he was signing books at book Sop, he
spent a half hour talking to Paul my son about filmmaking and what do you
want to do Paul, And it was just so generous of him. You
know. Freakin has a reputation for being rather cantankerous, and well, you
know what he tells me, No fools, But you know what he said
to me, armand you know what you do. On the first day.
I assemble the entire crew and I find someone thing. Everybody's there, and
I say, oh, by the way, is this who wears props?
Is this your idea of something? And yes, sir, do you know
what I think that stinks? You're fired? You're off this movie. I'm
going to get somebody else in front of the whole crew. And I said
why, He says, because it sets up who's in charge and they know
immediately from day one. I said, yeah, But Billy, they also
come to work each day with their stomach in knots, not whether or not
they're going to get fired or not. And he says, doesn't matter.
He says, you have to always maintain control. Well, I maintained control
on my films, but I didn't do it that way. So I learned
another thing too. When I heard they were going to shoot The Godfather on
Staten Island up on the wedding sequences. They had a picture in the newspaper,
the Staten Island Advance. I'll never forget this of a bearded man with
a scarf around him, a little heavy set, I said. Director Francis
Coppola sets up shots scouting location here on Longfellow Avenue. Photo said, I've
got to go. I've got to go. So I your Italian American alarm
go off, like, Holy God, well I'm right here. It wasn't
that. It was more of wanting to be around the making of movies because
I used to be. I used to when I was working for my dad
in Manhattan, a lot of films were being made. I was on the
set of Marathon Man. I saw Laurence Olivia. You know, cut that
guy's start zell zell. You know that woman's screaming prosstry. I was there
when they were shooting that. I was on the set of Midnight Cowboy,
Saint John's Lessinger film where they're in the subway and John Voyd has spilt some
ketchup on his pants and he walks over to one of those little machines where
he used to put five cents in and get some gum or something, and
he just looks in himself in the mirror, you know, And they kept
They shot that about ten twelve times that I was going, like, I
keep doing this. They're not talking, but anyway, And I used to
love just being around the whole environment of movie making, watching the cameras,
how they moved them and all that stuff. So when The Godfather happened,
I remember I got there and I saw that everything was cordoned off. You
couldn't get in, but there were a lot of extras waiting to be bust
up to the location. So I kind of meandered and fit my way into
the extra. And when we got off the bus, they had us wait
on one side, and I saw this guy, Francis Coppola, walking back
and forth, and Gordon Willis was there, and he kept looking at this
guy. He says, no, we can't shoot, and Francis just going,
why gardon god, damn it. You know we got to shoot this
thing. I'm behind you gotta he was yelling, and I said, oh
God, oh God, Well, I guess this is the time I got.
Let me go up to him. Yeah, worst time. So he
walks away from it like in a huff, and all of a sudden I
tapped his arm. I said, excuse me, Can I ask you a
question? He goes, yeah, what and He looks at me and I
said, look, I'm a student. I make films. I make super
eight and eight milimeters in sixteen millime. I started sixteen, and I just
want to learn as much as I can. I want to watch. Is
there any way you could let me just hang out here and just watch?
Yeah, no problem, Oh, thank you, thank you so much.
I walk He walks away, and somebody puts the hand omies, what are
you doing here? He turns right, It's okay. He's with me.
I'm over here, and he used to get me box lunches. I'd sit
right next to him, right by the camera while he's directing. Remember this
scene, Diane Keaton, I didn't know your father knew Johnny Fonteine that my
father knew him, because he's at the camera going like to Diane Keaton,
So she go, I didn't know your father knew Johnny Fontaine because it's just
on them, no extras in the background shooting. They're reversed like I'm like,
I'm looking at you right now, that kind of thing. And then
later on when they turned around, they put all the people back there,
all the extras. So he kept going, that's the way you direct you
make faces at them. I got to talk to Malon Brando, who had
your plugs in his ears and he was drinking slowly and he would go around
going like, I said, you know what, I saw your film One
Eye Jack's and everything you get? Oh you like that? That good?
Yeah? Because he had this thing in his mouth and he said, is
he going to direct another one? He goes, I'm on no more,
I'm just going to do this doing this And he was fun, he was
nice, and he signed something for me. Malon Brando and I spoke to
all the other people up there al Pacino. Everybody was so much fun.
And I was there for three days because they he kept telling me to come
back, come back, come back. He watched Oh my gosh, this
was the most incredible thing. I watched the scene where they shot in the
garden. So tell me, Michael, this guy who comes to you this
pars anything, how's your kid doing her? He reads the funny papers,
well all that is on giant cue cards over al Pacina's shoulder, and and
and Brando would do something like he go, Michael, so read the lines
right and come back to him and say tell me something. And it looked
like he was thinking, you know, it looks like he was. It
was beautiful. The ultimate thing about Marlon Brando, because you hear that story
about him putting lines here or having it fed into his ear and stuff,
and it just sounds like, oh, he's being lazy and whatever. But
there is a method there, like it was. He was super effective.
He was doing it for he was doing it as a he wanted that spontanety.
Here is a shot from the Godfather, and look at that who the
lines are on Robert Duval's chest. Yeah, Branda reading them. I mean,
he really did stuff like that. So it was I took a few
pictures and I hit them, you know. But and then I remember Coppola
inviting me to Godfather too, and I met with Robert de Niro and all
when they were shooting the Feast of Saint Rocco. Yeah, amazing. They
invited me to the screenings the two premieres, and so he was so nice
to me. I said, I want to be just like him. I
want to encourage other young people to make films and come up and participate.
So I've always done that every time I make movies. I've always got young
film students and stuff. On the set. And you know, I was
very fortunate for you know, the companies to allow me to do that,
because a lot of them would have said, no, we don't want more.
People would have to feed them and you know, right, But you
know, I had fun doing the Talales from the Dark Side and that led
into a few other things other well, if I can ask you some specific
questions. Today is Ernest Dickerson's birthday? Oh yeah, and now he was
your DP on at least two of your episodes, and I'll never forget he
had to. He was laughing so hard when we were filming If the Shoe
Fits, because Dick Sean made us laugh that the camera would jiggle so you'd
have to get away from the camera. And the same thing with the Painkiller.
I don't think he shot Painkiller. I think that was somebody different.
No, it was at the Shoe Fits Dick Sealman, because I remember him
laughing so hard. And I see Ernie once in a while because we get
together with the other film directors at Mick Garris holds a thing sometimes we haven't
done it in a while. We like Quentin Tarantino, all these people.
Gameroo del Toro was crave and when he Masters of Horror, you that's what
we were. They called the Masters of Horror. So we used to get
together and do that. But you know, and then I get a go
ahead, So you were asked, well, that's well, that's his that's
his first gig on Twnesson The Dark Side, and could you tell me a
little bit about that? This involves him obviously the house style, were you
dictated a a like how and how you could shoot basically? No, not
so much on that one. I to have Robert Draper, who's one of
the dp's on the show. I worked with rob you work. He shot
a couple of my movies. No, I mean they did want to be
able to cut it for time, you know, because these had to fit
into a certain category, so we didn't have to have a certain amount of
coverage. And if somebody started to get too artsy and make long, you
know, moving takes that you can't cut out of, then they come like
Tommy Castronov would come down or or I shot one in New York. Yeah,
the Painkiller was in New York. That was a different But but in
California, I know TJ. Who we became such close friends in fact I
made his movie Double Revenge. He had a script is armand I want you
to make this for me, and I brought it to the company who did
Cameron's Closet, so in that as well. Is he not who TVA?
He passed? No? No, was he in the film? I mean
the no, no, no no. We we do little walk ons here
and there, but I don't remember him being in any of the of the
shows. Coincidentally, I co host another podcast that's about the television series Taxi,
which he was a regular on that show for many of the he worked
at Mario's there he was. He knew Tony and all those guys over there
very well. Yeah, yeah, a lot of stories with TJ. But
here a few though, just like what's what what is your relationship with him
on the show, Like how are you interacting with him? From directors,
we were like buddies, he was. I mean, he'd yell, he'd
yell at people, come on, we got to move this thing. Guys,
we're not doing gone with the win here, you know. And but
he never had a problem with me because I think he requested me. He
had seen the Painkiller one that I did with lu Jacobe. You know,
he said, I want this guy, bring him out. Let's bring him
out. And because I was living in New York at the time, I
was living in Staten Island and he was, so can I just I'm sorry
to interrupt, but you filmed both on the East and West coast. Yeah,
for the show, okay, because they were shooting in Manhattan. They
were shooting some and it was Mitchell Galic No I think, yeah, and
somebody else. And of course who was running George Romero's company there at the
time, those Richard, of course Richard and yeah, we did that in
New York and then they saw it in LA and they said, we want
this guy out here. And that's really what's happened for me. I mean,
even with Tales from the Dark from Friday the thirteenth and More of the
Worlds all those things, people would see things that I did and I want
this guy, and I'll never forget. I mean, I became very close
friends with John Anderson, who was a seek at the time, and he
just loved me. He said, I gotta get armand on this one.
Our mom's got to do this one. And it was it was. It
was very fortuitous for me because the actors I would work with would really like
me because I would be very considerate of them. I'd listen to them,
and I give them options and not tell them how, and words spread and
and so that's why when it became time to do my first TV movie,
the network would not approve me because I was doing feature films at the time,
or you know, independent feature films, and they said, we need
a guy who knows how to shoot TV right, which is generally what's faster,
I mean overall. Yeah, Michelle Lee said, I will not do
it unless you get this director. And they were so reticent to do it,
but they finally bent and they got it and they were very happy.
It turned out to be a huge hit. It's called When No One Would
Listen, originally called My Husband Is Going to Kill Me, and it was
based on a true story of a woman who was who leaves her abusive husband
with the kids and he finds her and ultimately does kill her. And it
was but it was, it was, it was. It was an interesting
film and there you know, tell James Farantino, right, James Farantino was,
yeah, very it was see talk about taking visual chances. This is
my first TV movie. I think I should follow the book and follow no.
I told him, I said, I want to do theatrical lighting,
like when they go when she takes the kids to the shelter and we go
into this big room and know there's all these women on cots, kids sleeping
next to them and everything, and Cecily Tyson takes them through all these things.
I want three pools of light on the wide shot, and as they
leave, let that pool of light diminish slowly, and then the next one
they go through, then that one diminishes, and Toni's just one pool of
light over them, and you know what what's in the room, but you
don't really get to see it. You're just you're with these two kids.
The mother and Cecla will talk in the morning and then she comforts the kids.
The camera slowly pushes and pushes in in the in the light fades fad,
fads to black. And that was a theatrical thing you do on on
a stage, not in a film. But everybody loved it. They said,
this looks really different. It's it's doesn't look like a TV movie.
And I did that also with when she gets killed at the end, it
suddenly she she looks at the cigarette that she smokes. She's been telling us
the story and you don't know where she is. And she looks and the
ashes have gone down, and she she reaches out a frame and you see
a little tin and she just puts it out in the tin and it cuts
back and she's on a gurney and her body is laying flat and there's this
big white light over the over the gurney and it says Jessica Cochran was killed
on such and such a night with bullets to the heart. And then the
camera the lights fit slowly dimmed black, and it was I opened the movie
on a black screen again. And they didn't want to do that, but
they loved it because then she lights a match and the glow illuminates her face
and she lights a cigarette. This is the opening shot of the film and
she the first time she looks right at the camera and starts talking. I
think I was seventeen or eighteen when he hit me, but I thought,
boy, he really loves me. Anyway, I met Gary and we start
going into the film and it was like, and you don't know where we
are. We're in the mark. She's telling us that from her why.
So I did take a lot of chances. Yes, And I do remember
a couple of the series that I got on. And I wasn't a fan
of doing series because spirit series had established people in it, had kind of
looks that had been established and stuff, because I like to bring my own
stuff, my own style to it. But there were a couple that said,
look, we like to shoot everything with long lenses and that's the style
of this series. I said, okay, I'll keep that in mind,
and you know I did. I kind of did. But the other very
interesting thing was the call for Dark Shadows. I was at home. Let's
be not dark Shadows. I watched that when it was when it was run,
I was about fifteen years old, and I was glued to my television.
I was talking about the black and white one, the early no I
had already consumed that. I'm talking about the revival with the men crossed.
I get a call from Dan Curtis's office and and they my wi. My
wife comes out and says, do you have a call from Dan Curtis wants
to speak to you? I said, really, okay, So I get
on Hello. Hello, I love Wins of War. You have great film,
great show, great meal, thank you, thank you very much.
He's I got to tell you something. I was watching TV the other night.
I saw your your Friday the thirteenth, the one you did about the
Marquis de Sade. He says, no house pit. Yeah. I love
the way you shot that, with those very low angles and foreground, and
he says, that's the way I shoot. I love that you. I
said, maybe I copied your style. I was influenced by the way you
shoot, and he says, I love it. He says, I want
you to come out and work on Dark Shadows. You'd be interested. I
said, you mean the series you're doing, and he explained to me,
yes, yes, yes, So I remember coming out and taking the job,
and I did the first two after him because he did the pilot and
the first one. Then I did the next two. And he says,
I wish I could fire all the other directors because I want you to keep
this look going. So what I'd like you to do. I'm not going
to let you go home. I want to make you the producer of the
show and you stay on and you control the other directors. I said,
Dan, I can't do that. I don't want to tell I don't want
directors telling me how to shoot, and I don't. He says, you
teach them, you show them you so but reluctantly. And I've always did
it with a very nice way, because I also knew what he was looking
for. He wanted to keep the style of the show. But again I
took huge chances there. In that one, I did something that you know,
everybody says, and he bites her on the neck. Boom. That
was the shot. And I said, this has got to be a very
sexual seduction. She has to lure him. He's out there in the garden
waiting for her, and she's sleeping, and she could feel him, she
could sense him, and she had this very low cut thing, you know.
And I said, I want to do a shot where she's walking barefoot
through the leaves and she's moving and she senses his presence in that distance and
she goes up to him and they stare at each other, and then she
opens his She reaches up and opens his shirt and she rubs her hands on
his chest and then slowly turns her back to him and offers her neck like
this, you know, and like she offers do me. And I said,
I want her breast to be heaving and heating, and the camera will
move down, move down, move down. After he bites, just drop
lit of blood, like an orgasm of blood. And it was and it
worked, and in fact, it took the headline of the newspaper that's they
went nuts. Hold on one second, I gotta show you this. I
can't wait. The newspaper. I did this. The newspaper USA today,
it said, a very sexy dark shadow and that's the shot they used.
Awesome, that's fantastic. And I recognized the shot. Yes, I remember,
Oh my god, and how wonderful. And I became such good friends
with Ben for us. We used to go to Rosa Rito Beach on a
Friday when we'd wrap, and he'd have Margarita's waiting for us and we'd all
have fun. And it was a way to make and even Barbara Steele,
you know, she was always playing everything. So I said, Barbara,
I want to do something. I want I want him to like reach in
and undo your hair with fingernails. I want him to like really just take
you apart and as though he's going to crush your skull. She says.
I love that. I love that oh, Felini used to do stuff like
that. Well, I just want to try this. And I remember getting
a call from MGM saying that I spent the half a day shooting this one.
You know, this this particular thing, and it's only a quarter of
a page. I should have knocked it off in like an hour. So
they said, what the hell's going on there? And I said, well,
I'm just trying to do something. And when they watched the dailies,
Lynn Loring was there, she says, oh my god, I'm getting so
hot watching this. This is so good. This is so good. And
they loved it, and so there was no problem with, you know,
telling me to take over the show. And that's what I did. I
became a producer on the show and worked with all the other directors who I'm
friendly with, you know, because I was never interfering. I was never
I always said, look, we got to kind of hold this, look
through the thing. We've got to try to make your shots, try to
design stuff that has those four grounds. And well it needs to have a
style. I mean, that show in particular is one thousand style. So
it only makes sense that somebody which should be you know, minding the rudder.
Yeah. Yeah, but Dan loved the ideas I brought to it,
you know, because I said, let's, you know, let's let's bring
it up to the nineties, let's make it. Let's sexualize this show,
because I mean it is you know, the other one, the black and
white one, wasn't at all sexy. It was just boom boom boom.
It was just creepy and fun. And I think when I did one of
the tales from the Dock now tells me Friday the thirteenth, I did a
vampire one called night Prey, Night Prey. Yeah. I did this kind
of lesbian love scene with these two girls, and I got it's fantastic.
Yeah, And again that's that's a long period of time with no talking.
The husband's watching this. It's like, I just love that it kind of
may of changing people around and seeing what would you know, putting like,
how would I feel if I saw my wife and some other woman making out?
I mean it would be like what But would I be morbidly fascinated by
it? And you know, erotically charged watching it? You know? So,
by the way, like I'm watching the show again because I watched all
of your Friday the thirteenth, because that's another show I watched when it was
airing rather religiously and have not really revisited it until just this past week.
And now I'm going to revisit the entire series because I find it remarkable.
One of the beginnings of your episodes, it's a man, he's driving and
he's looking for a prostitute. Again, just visual storytelling. Just oh.
That was the first one I did that was called Dead No very first episode
of tales, and that is I ended up doing what eight more because Nick
frank Mancuso Junior and producer John Anderson said, oh my god, look what
this guy did. You know, It's like they loved what I was doing.
So and better Off Dead, by the way, it's the name of
better Off Dead, Yeah, Neil Neil Monroe. And then his daughter has
got this horrible disease that only a prostitutes. And then I came out the
idea that we had to drive this needle all the way through the neck,
and that the mother when they watched that, Franklin Cusso's mother said, oh,
I can't watch this, I can't watch it. They had this the
first time. They put a disclaimer at the beginning of the show, saying
tonight's episode contains you know, and I like that, Oh my god,
you should. The thing is, you know, the show was kind of
advertised is like aimed for adolescents, when when as I remember it and now
what I'm getting at is I'm rewatching and I'm like, my god, this
is really subversive, Like how is he getting all of this on the air?
Like you know, you know, I know you'd hear trouble about it
nowadays. Never mind, you know what, they allowed me to push the
boundaries, even with the Mesmer's Bobble, you know, the one with Vanity
in it, Yes, totally totally naked in those scenes and the guy's crawling
inside her, you know, And and she would walk around but naked around
the set because she was just she said, I got to be naked.
What the hell everybody's seen me already, so let's keep going. And Vanity
Vanity, Yeah, name is Vanity, but she was that whole idea of
it came to me and I worked with Jim Henshaw, who was the writer.
I kept saying, Jim, let's let's ever want to get inside her.
He literally wants to not only wants to become her. He wants to
crawl under her skin, which he kind of does at the end, and
then it starts to But of course we didn't I or anything like that in
those days. We had to make everything practical and you know, there was
no AI or anything. You know, everything was done on the set.
So yeah, I think I was very fortunate that they They wouldn't do that
without the directors though. I remember that one of the directors wanted to do
something in John said nope, nope, follow the script. They allowed me
to branch out and do stuff. They really you were bringing flair to it
and telling a story more efficiently, Like who cares if it took you a
day to shoot that one quarter page of the script? It's in USA today,
Man, Sure I was the headline. Can I just say, of
all the Friday the thirteenth episodes, mightier than the Sword with comb FIORI Yeah,
yeah, Fountain pen Yeah. I loved that episode and immediately well done.
And and what I really love about the show and a lot of your
episodes do this. It sort of shunts the main cast to the side and
you just tell the story. Yeah, yeah, because I never I shouldn't
say this I mean, I felt like the main cast were the staples that
just held the piece together. But the the story and how those characters were
living through the story, the characters in the story that these guys are investigating
because they had to go and find the cursed object that these characters, these
characters had, I always found them more fascinating because it was a wild kind
of fantasy world that they were going. They were existing, and and our
guys were like the police coming in to solve the murder, like where were
you last night? You know, Jack and Roby and uh and John LeMay
which was what was da Ryan Jack? No, Jack was the old man
I met, Yeah, Ryan and Yeah. So I mean, yeah,
like those those were the kind of fun things and and I really enjoyed the
fact that I was able to take such liberties and and do stuff like even
in Mightier than the Sword, there's a an ending is a nightmare, it's
a dream. I think she wakes up screaming and wonderful. By the way,
because it was it felt like an after shot that wasn't there, that
was there. That's something I said to Jim, I said, you know
what I want to do here. I want to make this happen like and
fool the audience and make it think it's really but it's it's her nightmare.
She's never going to forget. Yeah, so yeah, that was that was
enjoyable. I used to I used to be very very aware of shot lists
in those days. They used to, Oh good, I meant to ask
you, because it seems like you would have a massive shot list, and
I didn't, because it happened. They never used them. I never used
them. I would sit down and sketch all these things and design shots and
say I got fourteen shots that I got to do fifteen shots. When you're
on the set, everything changed for me. Everything would become like, oh
wait, wait, wait, why don't you go over here, and why
don't we go over there with the camera and push this in? And that
you know, all that inspiration was happening spontaneous, and so I've never used
shot lists after that. I did everything from here. It was shocking.
Yeah, I know, and I know people meticulously, like you know,
Hitchcock does it, but I would find that very boring to them. Once
the film's made, then you've made it already, it's all sketched out.
What are you drawing? Now, oh yeah, I find it actually very
very inspiring that you say that, because I think you can overthink it.
You can't. I mean, you know, look, unless you're doing animation,
there's no reason to not improvise. If you're on a set, correct
like it. Just you know, all these different factors are going to come
up the performance, what the room looks like, how they decorated it.
If you over rehearse your actors too, it's the same thing. They become
a little you know, so used to it that everything you know is done
by rote and there's no like spontaneity. And sometimes what I like to do
is whisper into the actor's ear or something, give them, you know,
an adjustment or some kind of a choice to make, and not let the
other actors know, and I'll shoot that take and see what happened, because
sometimes they'll be a surprise that's so wonderful that you know, you get a
genuine reaction that you know wasn't done five times already, you know. So
I like doing that kind of stuff, and I think that's why the actors
liked me. And actors always would recommend me, to recommend me, to
recommend me. So when I started doing a lot of the television movies.
I I had just finished doing a big epic film called The Ring in the
Prague and Austria and London and Switzerland, and then we came to New York
to shoot. It was all in the forties and it was about the World
War Two. It was a Nestasia Kinsky, Michael York, it was a
huge cast. It's one of my favorite films that I made. I feel
deficient for not having seen it, but I'm going to rectify that as soon
as they get out of here. There we are shooting at the hotel and
there's Michael York in the background, and it was, Oh, it's one
of my favorite films. It's based on a book by Danielle Steele called The
Ring. Danielle Steals The Ring, and they are parts of it on YouTube.
I don't know if there's there's DVDs floating around and I'll find it.
But it is an amazing film because everybody. I mean, I don't want
to say it's an amazing film because I made it, but I loved making
it so much because when I got there first, I was relocked and I
saw Danielle steal all this's got to be a love story of some sort,
and I don't want to do it. But it was this thing the script,
you know, because it was two nights. It's a four hour movie,
so three hours and something. So I opened up thing that I'm exhausted.
I don't want to do this because I just finished a movie and my
agents had just read it, and I said, Berlin nineteen thirty three Hitler
is just coming to power. Oh oh oh, and I'm reading. I'm
reading that period and thirty three. I'm in eazing. And I discovered I
don't know if you know the actor Alessandra Novola, I do. Yeah,
he was just in Many Saints of Newerk. Yes, he is somebody I
wanted so desperately played a Nastasia's son because it moved so many years ahead at
the end, and the producer, Doug Kramer, did not want him.
He wanted some I don't know surfer guy from Los Angeles who was on tape.
And I said, I don't like this guy, Doug, I don't,
and he said, well the other guy can't. It looks like a
ferret. I don't. I don't think. I said, what are you
kidding? I said, he's wonderful. There's a natural quality about him.
But then Doug bowed and he said, you get him, you know,
you make him look good, and he was wonderful. Alessandro. Then right
after that, Alessandro got to play Pollocks in Face Off. He got he
played the brother of Nicholas Cage yea and so you know, and and and
making a film of that stature was a huge, huge effort for me.
I mean it was shot, we scouted all over the place, it was
hundreds of extras. It was all about the Nazis. I had to blow
up all these buildings and everything, and it's all in the Film's very big
budgeted film. So I come back and I'm editing the film and I can't
wait to go back home to Staten Island, my house. And I get
to call my agent and says, they want to have breakfast with you,
these two producers that have a project. And I said, now, I'm
not going to do anything for a while, going to take a break.
So he called them and they said, no, no, no, we
have to talk to him. Just have breakfast at least. So I said,
all right. So I met them and they put a script in front
of me called Robin Cook's Virus and I said, guys, thank you so
much, but I really don't. No, no, no, we have
to make this movie with you. And I said why, He said,
no, we will. And I'll tell you what. If you make this
movie for us, you can go home and we'll bring your family out here.
We'll do everything. You can take a break, and we'll guarantee you
a second movie right after it. How's that? I said, it sounds
great, but I'm just tired. And I said, oh, I'll go
read the script. So I called my agent. I said, well,
what's up here? Why is this? So this as well? The actress
who they is the lead is Nicolae Sheridan, and she won't do the movie
unless you do it. And I said, I don't know her. I've
never met her. She she's all the girls women you worked with all those
other movies. They were raving about you to her. She's got to get
you. And she saw some of the stuff and she went. So I
said all right. And they paid me a fortune too, a lot more
than I was making. And so I made it was like, yeah,
so it was good. I watched it when it aired. Yeah, I
guess your your you know, your enthusiasm hopefully is put in on film too.
Your your your love of making the films. And I'll be honest with
you, a lot of them were really bad scripts. I mean a lot
of these TV movies were so formulaic and stuff. And I do remember that
when I got hired to do Gone but Not Forgotten. It was a big
epic mini series with Brookshield, Scott Glenn. There was a lot of people
in it, Lou Diamond, Phillips, I cast my friend John Pallito,
there was a lot of people, Juck McCann. I remember getting up there
the Sacramento. They flew me up. I read the script. I said,
wait, wait a second, wait a second, big holes here,
guys. Big Holds is based on a famous novel by Philip Margalin. So
I said, let me call the writer. So I called the writer up
and he says to me, he says, you're making I understand you're making
my film Gone but not Forgotten. I said, yes, but Philip,
let's I want to talk to you about a couple of these sequences here.
And he says, you know, I got to be totally honest with you.
I'm on a way ahead of you guys, I'm on another book.
My head isn't in that one. I'm sure you'll figure it out, you
know. And so I brought a friend of mine up and we held up
the picture for two weeks and did a lot of extensive rewriting, and then
I got my cast and we started making the movie and I took I went
really dark in this film, and I did stuff that was very visual,
where you know the face, and I would push in on the person's face
and her eyes would move and would have to she'd have to hold that moment.
Everybody would measure that. And then I'd cut to another place where where
she is in a completely different time, and I pick up the same shot
and pulled back. And when they blended it, we blended it. We
put one face over the other. It almost melded right into became another scene
without a cut, and it was beautiful. It was Patty McCormick from The
Bad Seed Yea, and she plays a woman who shoots her husband and Brooks
Shields is an attorney and Scott Glenn is a psychopathic killer. And boy,
there's some very very very dark stuff in that movie. Rape is He has
women tied in barns that that are urine stained and he goes in and sexually
uses them at his pleasure, you know, like he brands TV movie.
Yeah it was a musical, it was, but when they saw that,
and that's how I started working for that company. And I did. I
forgot how many movies, maybe twelve fifteen, A lot of the miniseries like
Nowhere, Final Approach, Pandemic, r h I, you know those who
were They just gave me like carp Blanche, do what you want, You've
got free ring And I did a lot of movies with them, a lot
of big miniseries for them. You've worked with Chuck McCann a lot, including
Tales from the Dark Side, And tell me a little bit about your experiences
with mister McCann. We're big fans of his. Well, we became best
friends. We were like I used to go and have dinner with him all
the time up in the house with him and his wife Betty, and and
when he used to bring me always to the Playboy Mansion because he was best
friends with hef and I went there like dozens of times, and in fact
I even came, my wife came, and and for Easter they had an
Easter egg hunt, and my son came out and he, you know,
he was seeing this place and all the actors were there and everything, and
and even you. Hefner was really great to talk to you. We'd sit
down and have some really interesting conversations. But Chuck, Chuck was always the
sweetest guy. I mean, you know, like he you know. I
did the Impressionists with him. I think that was the first, and I
used them again and again. I used them in Cameraon's Clauset. I used
them in Invasion. There was another big movie I did, four Hour for
NBC with Luke Perry about an alien invasion. It was kind of like Bodies
snatches. Oh, I remember again a lot of visual style in there that
they wanted to fire the cameraman because I said, no, I want,
I want this kind of green light to spill onto this and I want I
want when she steps close, I want her face to slightly have that green
cast. And they starting, what the hell is going on up there?
What are you guys shooting? It looks horrible. It's these colors are weird,
I said, intentionally, so they said, look, they flew out.
The two producers flew out. This was the guys who hired me from
the First one Buyers, and they said, look, we want to fire
the DP. I said, well, okay, and then fire me too,
because let's I'm going to go with them. No, what are you
talking about? No, no, no, no no. We just can't
look at this because we don't know if these studios are going to the network
will accept this. And I said, let me finish the movie. Please,
let me finish. And they loved it when it was finished because it
was very eurie. It was very dark and wild. Why do they keep
doubting you? It's so crazy. It's not that they're doubting me, it's
they you know, everybody has a protocol. Everybody has a safe place that
they exist in and if they want to get hired again as producers, they
fulfill, you know, the wishes of the network. But the network came
back to say, hey, this is really good, so they shut up,
you know. Yea, everybody knows, you know. And and of
course, when you're making something that's a little off the path of what's been
tested, you become fearful that you might be treading on ground that is not
solid anymore, and that you're going to fall or you're going to make something
terrible. And that, of course is always the case. And I always
worry that, you know, the film, the last film I make is
going to be my last, because who knows if I'm ever going to get
hired again, you know so, And that was my and that's why I
ended up doing so many films, because I always have felt, this is
my last one. I bet this is going to be my last one,
and but it would always work out and I would be able to somehow take
the storyline and change it a little bit. And oh, I'll give you
an example. I had a film that I was brought out. It was
a huge budget, and I mean I loved the concept, but the story
was ridiculous. Here's a guy who's in jail and he keeps calling his girlfriend,
who's free, and he stole a lot of money. Now she has
the money, she's holding it for him, but he's telling her, you
got to you got to, you got to break me out of jail,
you got to come here. And I said, if that were me,
if I was the girlfriend, say hey, you know, tutelut boy,
Because I got the money, I don't need to put my life at risk.
So I. So they said, well, how can you fix this?
What can you do? I said, well, let's think for a
minute. I said, well what if what if he has the money someplace
buried out in the desert and she wants that money as much as he does.
So now he's got an advantage. He can lure her and she gets
in the helicopter and puts a gun to the guy's head and says, you
fly me into that prison yard and you get that guy free. Now that
it works, you know, so much better the story, you know.
So that's that's what I enjoy doing that though, because then it makes me
feel like I'm putting my creativity their work. Let me bring it back to
Telson The Dark Side, your final episode tests in the Dark Side, which
is social Climber, right right? That was with Rob Robert Ramanezmans Yes,
and Albert Haig and oh, isn't she effortless? She's wonderful. It's like
she's on another plane of existence acting wise. It's just it's like watching Robert
Devall. It's like, is there acting involved? No? Some of that.
Some of these people just make it look so effortless. It's an amazing
episode because you get away with an ending with a character dying off screen and
then when we cut to him with all smoking and such. It's it's it's
wonderful. It doesn't feel like a cheat at all. Well, I vaguely
remember that one. I haven't seen it, probably since I made it.
Oh you know, it's a story of a cobbler and the kid. Yeah,
the man who teaches him. Yes, he's got to he's got a
magic shoes. Yeah, like a little magic spike that he puts into each
of the shoes. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. It
was and then you know they were you know, but but this is my
experience with all these shows, like you know, you go on like even
more of the worlds. I ended up doing the last one. I did
the last one for Friday the thirteenth, and Frank minke Cuso said, we
want to go out in a blast here, so you're going to direct it
and it's the Charnel Pitt and and break the bank on me. I don't
care because they're not going to renew the show. So I was wondering about
that because I was watching the episode and I was like, I can't believe
that he got away with like this much production value on this show, so
that's interesting. And the same thing with War of the Worlds. I did
a couple of things there, and one of them was about an eighty year
old woman that gets pregnant and she's the thing is growing inside her from an
alien and it was like, yeah, mister Mastrioani, you're a master of
horror. Master of horror. No, I don't think so. I think.
I had a dinner one night with Wes because Wes and I worked on
Nightmare Cafe together. He did two, I did two you and we still
we were always good friends. And he said to me, you know,
I really envy you, and I said, you envy me? Why?
And he is, because you get to do diversified stuff. You don't always
make horror film and if I make something different like Music from the Heart,
nobody goes to see it. And you get to do movies like The Ring
and then you you know, a faith based story, or you did this
and you did that, and you did you know, Virus, and then
you did an action film, then you did a western. Then he said
I would love that. I said, well, you want to switch places,
you know. Mister George A. Rameiro used to have the same complaint
that he had been locked into the horror hole, but he always said,
like a good thing. I like scare shows. Did you have any interaction
with mister Romero early once? I met him only once. Yeah, No,
he wasn't really on the set or anything like that. It's my understanding
that he was putting together Day of the Dead while before I let you go.
Would you like to tell me anything about some animated Dante shorts that I've
been seeing and I'm looking forward to more upcoming ones. I did a film
called The Celestine Prophecy, which was based on the book, which sold so
much stuff, and at the screening at Chinese Theater here in Hollywood, this
gentleman came up to me and said, listen, I wanted to meet you.
I want to talk to you. I want you to work with me.
I want to do I want to tell the story of the divine comedy.
It's my passion. It's this and that. So we've you know,
interacted in the last few years, and he's been he always puts stuff together,
and he asked my opinion, and he wants my involvement in it,
and somehow and and and that's the extent of it. In fact, he
actually just spoke to me before about an hour ago. Before we spoke,
he was asking me about you know, he's working on the opening and he
said, should I use this or that? What do you think? And
and you know, it's it's been, it's been, it's you know,
it's nice to help other people. I feel that it's always you know,
we should, we should collaborate because that's how we learn from each other,
you know. I mean even I learn every day when I'm making a film,
I learn new things I learned and every film is different because I'm working
with new, new, new team, new actors knew this, knew that,
and you learn how to work with them. You know. You you
see who's going to give you trouble. And and the ones I was warned
again ended up liking me so much. We had such a great relationship.
Like they said, don't make that film with Sybil Shepherd, She's horrible to
work with. I met Sybil. There wasn't one moment of tension. She
just had me over for dinner. She said, Carmen, come over,
I'm gonna cook, and Michael's coming. She was going out with Michael Bolton
at the time. And he came to the set. Oh no, that
was Nicholas Sheridan. That happened. But Sybil used to We used to go
out. We used to go to movies together and stuff. While I was
making Missus Washington goes to Smith and she was the sweetest person. The same
with Nicola Sheridan. They said she's a monster, and oh well, she
was so nice. In fact, she was so concerned about this one actor
who we hired to play a doctor and had all his stuff was medical jargon
and he had to get it out fast. And the two of them were
looking at each other and he says the contract says a little bit of and
he was sweating, and she was going, it's okay, it's okay,
it's okay. And I realized the guy was having tremendous problems, and I
said, we can't shoot this. And I know we can't because well,
he's never going to be comfortable. He's just going to barely eke it out.
So I said to them, and I said, you know what,
what is this moment about. You are getting ready to go into to see
one of the victims of the virus. So I want you to play this
scene while you're getting dressed. I want you to I want the gloves to
be being put on. I want you to put your masks on like that.
And once that was, once his mouth was covered, I was in
room him a much more interesting scene because I was photographing their hands, their
hands tying things, him putting the cap on, She's putting this on,
and he's going and throwing. And later on he was able to read exactly
what he had to say with the right pace, and we just dubbed it
in amazing. So, I mean, I can I can tell you so
many experiences that I've had in so many wonderful moments on the set. I
mean, there have been moments where the tension was very, very high too,
But most of the times it's when you love something as much as I
know I do, you never see flaws in it. You always it's like,
you know, looking at the children. Your children are always beautiful,
even some people might say, well, that's not such a good looking kid.
You know, you are a visual stylist who's very good with actors,
evidently, and we're huge fans of yours of midnightteen. Do you have any
projects coming up you want to you want to plug for me head on out.
You know, none that are really going. There's always lots of stuff
in the hopper, you know, there's all kinds of projects that we're playing
with. I mean of a friend of mine from back East who's written a
couple of very good scripts. One of them is called The Butterfly, and
it's it's a story about a woman who discovers how father was secretly trading illegal
stocks in the stock market, and he left all the stuff and he passes
away, and she's cleaning out all the stuff and she finds all these pieces
of information and she becomes so you know, involved with it. She starts
doing the same thing and she becomes it's almost like do you see a movie
called Emily the Criminal. It's Plaza, right, Aubrey Plaza. And then
he also wrote something hilariously funny called Santa Must Die, very very funny script.
I mean it's it's it's a real slapstick kind of Adam Sandler, you
know, almost a mel Brooks kind of thing. It's way over the top.
I love that. And then he wrote something called John the Painter,
which I really like. It's based on a true story where this family gets
together to tell the story and they all watch these old films of their dad,
and they find out her father was actually involved in a murder of a
mafia guy who wanted to kill his own who wanted to kill his son,
and he protected his son by Oh, it's a really good story. I
hope each and every one of those gets made, and I hope you're the
one behind the camera. Oh, it would be fun because I'm not retired.
Good now. We need you in this world, and I just wanted
to thank you so much for joining us here tonight on the Midnight VI Pleasure.
You know, if it's okay with you, We're probably gonna hit you
up again. I'm gonna eventually a little more in depth with with some of
the some of your other projects that you've been working on. We'd love to
speak to you again. I will be your guest anytime. Midnight Viewing.
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