Bryan Singer: The Hollywood Interview

Bryan Singer: The Hollywood Interview

USC  

Filmmaker Bryan Singer.


BRYAN SINGER:
AN APT PUPIL GOES TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.


Bryan Singer was born in New York in 1966, and raised in suburban New Jersey. Following the path of his idol Steven Spielberg (Singer's production company Bad Hat Harry Productions, is a direct reference to a line from Jaws, his favorite film), Singer started making 8mm films in his early teens, as well as experimenting with still photography. After graduating high school in 1984, Singer spent two years at New York's School of Visual Arts before transferring to the University of Southern California's prestigious School of Cinema-Television after being accepted to its Critical Studies program. Singer quickly made a name for himself at USC among his classmates as the one to watch in his class. His 8mm films stood out from the pack with their bold visual imagination and polished presentation.

After graduating from 'SC, Singer wrote and directed Lion's Den, an award-winning short chronicling the lives of five high school friends who come together after graduation. It starred Singer's childhood friend Ethan Hawke, and was shot on 16mm for the bargain price of $15,000. With the success of Lion's Den, Singer found financing for Public Access, which he co-wrote, produced and directed. The film, a thriller/character study, told the story of a mysterious drifter who arrives in a small town and sets its inhabitants against each other by means of a public access cable talk show. The film took the Grand Jury Prize at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, which opened the flood gates of opportunity for the young filmmaker. Singer broke ground in Hollywood in 1995 with the double Oscar-winning thriller The Usual Suspects, which had the world asking "Who is Keyser Söse?" and quickly established Singer as the leading filmmaker of his generation. Singer's latest is an adaptation of Stephen King's novella, Apt Pupil, a thriller about an all-American boy (Brad Renfro) discovering that a Nazi war criminal (Sir Ian McKellen) lives in his neighborhood. In exchange for keeping the old man's secret, the boy demands that the Nazi teach him all he knows about the war, Nazism, and the nature of evil itself. Apt Pupil boasts virtuoso filmmaking from Singer and top-notch performances from its stellar cast, including chilling turns by McKellen and Renfro. Produced by Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy (Natural Born Killers), the Tri-Star release hits theaters October 23.

In person Bryan Singer is the antithesis of the self-absorbed, pretentious filmmaker. He appears much younger than his 32 years and carries himself with a humility that is refreshing, becoming animated and passionate when discussing his greatest love: film.

All three of your features have rather dark subject matter. Have you always been drawn toward that sort of material?
Brian Singer: Yeah, I think so. Most of my little student films I made were filled with despair and had these unhappy endings.

How did you come by Apt Pupil?
I read the story when I was in college and I always thought it would make an interesting movie. I think the thing that most interested me is that the terrible deeds that occurred so long ago could somehow manifest themselves into contemporary society.

Was it difficult adapting the story?
Very, yeah. The book takes place over four years and involves a lot of reoccurring violence from both characters. I found that as I was adapting it and trying to bring it to the conclusion that the book had, I found it very difficult. Although it works very well on the page, the written word allows you more room for imagination, whereas on film the experience has to be more believable, I think. If I had shot it like it was in the book, it would have come off as repetitive and exploitative, which was definitely not the way to go given the subject matter. So I tried to capture the essence of the book, the theme of the book, the terror of the book and celebrate that. It was difficult, though. We went through a lot of different drafts (of the script) and explored staying closer to the book, but in the end it took some time before we came up with something that worked. But I love the book. I'll always love the book.

The thing I always loved about the book was that it was a perfect metaphor for how easily innocence is corrupted by evil.
Yeah, I agree. And the other thing is, it's important to realize that this film is not about fascism. It's not about racism. It's not about Nazism per se. It uses that as a device to talk about evil or evil deeds. I think that the character of (the Nazi) Dussander easily could have been a serial killer, a degenerate, Pol Pot...or any number of incarnations. It's about what the character represents.

It must have been interesting working with a relatively new actor like Brad Renfro and a seasoned veteran like McKellen.
Yeah, it wasn't that much different from doing The Usual Suspects, where I had actors coming together from different backgrounds and levels of experience. It's what made (Apt Pupil) exciting to me: that mixture of oil and water, the coming together of two completely individuals is what intrigued me most about the book, so why not try to recreate some of that energy in casting? I auditioned a number of young people and I found Brad to be, by far, the most real and raw, and simultaneously, the most intelligent and talented. With Ian McKellen, we were actually introduced by a mutual friend early on. I had a list of a number of the sort of obvious older, European actors...I wanted, like with Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, to have this character played by someone who wasn't as familiar to mainstream audiences, which Kevin wasn't at the time. I also thought that Ian brought a degree of British charm and flamboyance to this otherwise stoic German character.

Do you generally give a lot of direction to actors, or just sort of let them go and watch it happen?
It depends on the actor. It depends on the day. It depends on the moment. It depends on the shot. Sometimes the actor isn't aware of where the camera is, or how important the blocking for a scene is. Sometimes the actor might forget where we are in the course of the movie. They feel where they are in terms of the arc of their character, but they don't see the movie in their head the way I do. So sometimes certain things are called for which I try to fill in, but otherwise I try to give them as much freedom as possible.

How much do you rehearse?
I don't rehearse. We do a run through with blocking and on this movie we did a read-through with part of the cast to see how it sounded. Richard Dreyfuss was nice enough to read Ian's part, who couldn't make it because he was in London doing a play.

What's the trick to adapting a book for the screen?
The trick is your movie is separate from that book. Do whatever it takes to make the story make sense on screen. The biggest mistake a filmmaker or screenwriter can make is to get mired down in details from the book that don't work on-screen. A film is written three times: once on the page, once on the set, and once again in the editing room. You're constantly recreating what that movie is every time you go in to work with those materials.

How did you become interested in film?
My neighbor was a photographer for the high school yearbook and he was really cool, so I thought it'd be cool to be a yearbook photographer. That's how I started.

Who was the filmmaker who inspired you initially?
Steven Spielberg. Actually, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but it was really when I was 16 and E.T. came out I was blown away by the film, then they profiled Spielberg's life on "Nightline." And all of the sudden a personality was given to the man who made the movie that moved myself and so many people. Here he was a Jewish kid from the suburbs, like me, sort of a nerd, like me, a drawer full of 8mm movies...and I thought, hey, maybe I should do that too. It was such a relief because I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, even though it wasn't being a pilot, or marine biologist, like a lot of the people I'd grown up with.

Have you met Spielberg?
Yeah, he had seen The Usual Suspects before it came out, and I got word when I was at a film festival in Thailand that he wanted to meet me and (screenwriter) Chris McQuarrie. So Chris and I went to Amblin', he walked into the room...for twenty minutes I was nervous, then I was completely comfortable, felt like I was talking to a fellow filmmaker. I mean, I'll always be starstruck around him. I saw him at Deauville a couple weeks ago and it was still like "I'm talking with Steven Spielberg!" He's been great to me. He, Robert Altman and John Schlesinger are my DGA sponsors, which was amazing! I also went on the set of the new Star Wars film when I was in London, which was an incredible experience, because I'm doing this very effects-intensive film next (X-Men). I also got to go down to the Titanic set in Rosarito and watch Cameron work, which was a real treat. I learned a lot. All these people have been very accommodating and helpful to me. It's good to talk to those sorts of people about these sorts of movies because they have a better sense of how to do them. They also don't let the effects govern them. Story is always the most important thing to them. Then of course, you forget everything you've heard and make it your own! (laughs)

Do you think it's crucial for young filmmakers to have a mentor?
I think exposure to these filmmakers is crucial, but I don't know about mentoring. I've never really had a mentor. I've never really spent that much time with any of these gentlemen to consider them a mentor. But I think exposure, and conversation and questions to them are important to give, if anything, a feeling that they've overcome the same hurtles you're trying to and how they did it. It can be anything from informative to inspiring.

How was your experience at USC?
It was great. I was exposed to so many great films. It's been really great being an alumnus. I was down there recently for a ceremony, and afterwards myself, Randal Kleiser (Grease), John Milius and George Lucas went over to the film school and surprised the kids who were up all night editing their final thesis projects. It was a real thrill to be able to waltz into the editing area with these people and watch the kids react. Lucas and Milius just poured out the stories to the students. Each finished the other's stories, it was great. A once in a lifetime kind of thrill. I felt kind of in the middle. I've only done a few films and these guys are like, history! So I just sort of stood back, listened and enjoyed the moment. It was one of the best nights I've had.

What's surprised you most about success?
I guess the fact that you think it will change everything for you, and it doesn't. I went back to my high school reunion thinking I'd be "Ha, ha, ha, look at me," and it just wasn't like that. I sat at the same table the whole night with the same three geeks who I was best friends with. For the first twenty minutes there were people who talked to me who'd never talked to me before, then there were others who just ignored me, thinking it wouldn't be cool to talk to me at all. It's hard to know how to act in situations like that, I guess. I never had any real bitterness or resentment. I just tried to stay focused on the work. But success doesn't take away any of your fears, or anxieties. Those things stay put, regardless.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Once you have a great script, get a great producer, one who can be very objective. And remember, a film is written three times: once on the page, once on the set and once in the editing room. And don't ever be a slave to something just because you wrote it, or shot it. You have a chance to remake your movie in the editing room. Take advantage of it. If you look at any of your favorite movies really carefully you can see where they were cut, and they're great because of those decisions. Don't be afraid to cut.

Ian McKellen: The Hollywood Interview

Ian McKellen: The Hollywood Interview

theater  

Sir Ian McKellen.

SIR IAN MCKELLEN: A KNIGHT OUT IN L.A.
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the May 1997 issue of Venice Magazine.

When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher showed our class a videotaped performance of a one-man show called Acting Shakespeare, which starred a young English actor named Ian McKellen. In it, the actor talked about his life, his love of the theater and how performing Shakespeare had become his singular passion in life. Then, after talking about it for while, he showed us.
Up until that day, I viewed Shakespeare as a dead guy who wrote insomnia-inducing plays, whose characters wore tights and talked funny, and whose plots were, to say the least, incomprehensible to a 14 year-old kid in Tempe, Arizona. Two hours with Ian McKellen changed all that. Acting Shakespeare demonstrated that the Bard and his works were every bit as funny as The Blues Brothers (this was 1981, remember), every bit as relevant and timely as the evening news, and every bit as riveting dramatically as The Godfather. In short, he made Shakespeare accessible for me, which in turn aided me immeasurably as a writer, as a lover of the theater, and as a person. It is a gift for which I will always be in Ian McKellen's debt.
Sir Ian McKellen was born in 1939 in the north of England. In 1961, he majored in English Literature at Cambridge University and became a professional actor without going to drama school. Throughout the 1960's he worked non-stop, on stages in London and all over the United Kingdom and starred in the BBC-TV production of David Copperfield. He made his Broadway debut in 1967 with The Promise, one of his West End hits.
The 1970's saw him continue to triumph in the world of the theater, culminating with his winning three Olivier Awards in a row for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Next, he conquered Broadway as Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, winning every available award in the 1980-81 season and "loving every minute of it." On his return to London, he was the Royal Television Society's Performer of the Year as the mentally handicapped hero of Stephen Frears' Walter. He also garnered raves for his portrayal of disgraced British Cabinet Minister John Profumo in Michael Caton-Jones' Scandal in 1989.
After his award-winning Iago for the RSC, he starred in and produced the National Theater's world tour of Richard III, which ended at UCLA's Royce Hall in 1993. Sir Ian and the production were lauded for their innovative modern interpretation of Richard as a 1930's fascist dictator. His screenplay adaptation was filmed for MGM/UA and he was voted European Film Actor of the Year, with a Golden Globe nomination. Since then, he has acted exclusively for the screen in Six Degrees of Separation, And the Band Played On, Jack & Sarah, Restoration, Cold Comfort Farm, Bent, Amy Foster, and is currently filming Bryan (The Usual Suspects) Singer's Apt Pupil, for Mike Medavoy and Phoenix Pictures. In the Fall, Sir Ian returns to the London stage with the National Theater's new production of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.
In 1990, Sir Ian was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the performing arts and made international headlines by coming out as an openly gay man just before the knighthood was bestowed. He is co-founder of the Stonewall Group, which lobbies for the legal and social equality of lesbians and gay men in the UK. His new one man show, A Knight Out in Los Angeles, directed by Gregory Cooke and being staged at LATC, is an evening of chat, reminiscence and performance telling the story of two parallel journeys. Alone on-stage, Sir Ian recalls his childhood fascination with the theater and his experience of acting in London's West End, on Broadway, in Los Angeles, and beyond, as well as his early awareness of being gay and how that awareness affected him. All proceeds earned for the performances will be donated to: GLAAD, the Ian McKellen Scholarship in Acting at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Highways Performance Space and Gallery, The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center Youth Services Department, and the Hobart Boulevard School Shakespeare Program.
Journeying up to Sir Ian's home in the Hollywood Hills, I felt a bit apprehensive. After all, I'd never met a knight before, much less an actor whom I've admired since childhood. Do I call him 'Sir,' 'Mister,' 'Ian,' 'Sir Ian,' maybe 'S.I.'? I was confused. That confusion was soon put to rest as Sir Ian, his hair dyed gray for his role in Apt Pupil, greeted me warmly at his door with "Hello, I'm Ian. What can I get for you? Coffee, tea, maybe some scrambled eggs?" I admitted that the prospect of having scrambled eggs prepared for me by a genuine British Knight did sound intriguing, so I happily accepted and so began our conversation. In addition to being a most gracious host, Sir Ian proved to be a delightful, witty and fascinating conversationalist. And besides, he makes the greatest scrambled eggs in the world!

Let's start at the beginning with your childhood...
SIR IAN MCKELLEN: I grew up in South Lancashire, a part of Northern England which we called "the dirty South," heavily industrial. My father was a civil engineer who worked for the local authority and was in charge of housing. And after the war you can imagine how many houses were being built. He was in charge of designing the houses and building them. He was in charge of all the roads in the town, all the sewers in the town, all the lights in the town, all the architecture of the town...it was a wonderful job because he could just mold what the place was going to look like twenty-five years down the road. But unfortunately he made a mess of it. Like a lot of people of that era, he was very excited about high-rises and did away with most of the lovely old architecture that did exist there.

Any siblings?
I've got a sister, who's five years older than me. She's married, has a family, kids. She just retired. She was a teacher. But my family's not a big part of my life, which I touch on in the show. I went off to Cambridge to study English and I've not really been back (to South Lancashire).

So how does a boy from 'the dirty south' fall in love with the theater?
Easily! In the town where I grew up there were five theaters for 150,000 people. There were movie theaters and also a repertory company, which means a group of actors who stay together for a year and do a different play every week. Under-rehearsed. Dreadful. But my parents and I used to go to that regularly. The two other theaters, one took touring companies in and stayed for a week, ballet companies, opera companies...again, not first rate, but the B tour rather than the A tour. But next door to that was the Grand Theater which really was the one that made the most impression on me. It had variety acts, vaudeville, stand-up comics, soloists, dog acts, armless man shaving himself with his feet acts...(laughs). And my father knew the man who owned the Grand and I was allowed to go backstage. So by the time I was 10, 11, 12 I was mad about the theater, not as a performer, but as part of the audience. That's probably been one of my saving graces as an actor is that I initially didn't do it for ego's sake but because I was fascinated by the process and wanted to see how it was done. And I suppose what it was, was when I went backstage and saw them all getting ready to go on, nervous, or angry with each other...but when they stepped out on the stage, they were different people entirely. The line in the wings between reality and the entertainment itself was a sort of magic area, and I still feel it backstage. So that really hooked me and then I started acting in school and then the clincher as far as being a professional actor was when I was at school there was a headmaster who thought it was perfectly appropriate for boys to do theater or whatever else they wanted. So I got a lot of encouragement there, as well. Then I met a group of people at Cambridge who were as mad about the theater as I was. That group included Sir Derek Jacobi, Trevor Nunn, Peter Cook, most of the Monty Python troupe, David Frost...Funny story about David, during final exams he stumbled into my room, borrowed all my notes, of which he had none, went back and took his purple hearts, or whatever it was they took in those days to stay awake. Then with my notes, took his final exams and got the same degree that I did. I've never really forgiven him for that! There should be some sort of recompense, don't you think?(laughs) But there is no drama program at Cambridge. You just have students putting on amateur productions. And in those days you had national critics coming down to see our productions. And by the time I left, I had been in 21 productions and had a clutch of very good reviews. So I could go into a work situation and present this evidence and drama school didn't really seem necessary. (pause) That was a really long answer, wasn't it? (laughs)

I know that part of A Knight Out deals with the fact that you're an openly gay man and you talk about that experience. Did you always know you were gay?
Yes. I think as soon as you start being sexually aware at four, five, six it just keeps coming into your life. Then one day you put it all together, your experience, and give it a name. Most people, being straight, don't have to give it a name because they just think of themselves as going through what everybody else is going through...and family and society and everything else is set up to encourage them to think this way and what they're going through is normal and that everything's going to work out all right, which eventually it won't if you're gay. And not only do you usually not have any support from your family, but society at large is telling you that what you are and what you think and what you feel about other people is wrong. I think it explains why, from such an early age, I clung to this hobby of theater-going and then turned it into a passion and then an obsession and then an absolute way of life. Then the most important thing in my life. And I was only really released from the stranglehold of my career over me when I came out...but the first erotic images I ever remember seeing in books, magazines, film was always the male. I went through a little heterosexual phase, but I grew out of it! (laughs)

You've played a number of very dark, disturbing characters: MacBeth, Richard III and now the Nazi war criminal Dussander in Apt Pupil. Do you ever find yourself taking your work home with you when have to go into these dark places?
I take my work home with me in the sense that I worry about it. I'm a dreadful friend when I'm working, especially the closer I get to opening night. But no, if you're playing MacBeth or Richard III or Iago, you don't say to yourself 'Okay, here I am. I'm playing a really evil man, so now I have to be evil as well.' On the contrary, you stick up for your characters. You look for the humanity in the character. MacBeth's ambition. Well, we can all relate to that. He just takes ambition too far. You really shouldn't kill to get the job. I'm sure everyone in America is taught to kill to get the job, but you musn't take that literally. (laughs) And (MacBeth) is puzzling away because he knows what's right and wrong, and he can't quite understand why he keeps doing what he knows is wrong. He's terribly self-aware. But he has a lot of humanity in him, as well. He has a wonderful sense of humor, as Iago has as well, of course. Iago's inner troubles, I think, are sexually based. He's got a marriage he finds unsatisfactory and is clearly sexually jealous of Othello's happy marriage. He says "I don't like him because I think he may have fucked my wife." A man who can say that out loud to an audience has got real problems, and then he does dreadful things. So the darkness you take home with you is of a man who's unhappy and what you're going into and discovering in yourself are those humane things like "I can't relate to my wife any longer." "I'm jealous because that man got what should have been my job." Richard III the same. Another ambitious man who's trying to overcompensate for a physical handicap. So we're talking about very ordinary people, really. And that's what's so wonderful about Shakespeare.

The thing that characters like MacBeth, Richard III, Iago and Salieri (from Amadeus) all have in common is the main fear that we all have, especially artists, and that is that they're mediocre, and not special. Do you think that's what taps into so many people and what's kept these plays alive for so many years, that universal feeling we all have?
Could be. I think the plays that are popular, if you're talking about the classics, differ from generation to generation. They go in and out of fashion. The Merchant of Venice, for example, hasn't been done for quite some time, especially in this country. At times people have enjoyed Richard III as a one man show. Now people are starting to do the full text again, realizing it's not just about one man, it's about an extraordinary, charismatic man who is very typical of the group that he lives amongst, who are all ambitious, angry politicians who are related to each other by blood. And he's one of them. And I think that's what's we get interested in now, it's a play about politics. And we can look at our own politics and politicians in the likes of Richard III and get a bit nervous. But in years past, I don't think people were particularly interested in that. For some people Hamlet has to be the prince, he has to be about nobility. I don't think many Hamlets these days think of him like that. I think they think of him as a troubled teenager. The plays were about so many things really.

I watched Richard III again last night. The thing that struck me about it was, I had just seen the re-release of The Godfather a few days before, and how many parallels there are between the two stories.
There are, aren't there? When I was trying to raise money for Richard in Hollywood, I went to Sam Goldwyn and he said "It's too dark, Ian. The public wants Pollyanna Shakespeare." He had just produced Much Ado About Nothing, which is a much darker play than that film really is. I said 'Well you're right, it is dark, but it's about the same things that The Godfather is about.' It's about a group of people who detach themselves from society and then try to run society. They're people who are full of energy and will and all those things that we'd like to have control of ourselves. You'd have to say, of course that The Godfather is like Richard III, and not the other way around. (laughs)

If you look at the characters of Richard III and Michael Corleone, they're both men who are really dying to be loved, but wind up destroying everyone and everything that could have loved them.
Yes. Yes. Absolutely right. "Since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain." That's about it. Nobody loves me. Therefore, I'm going to hate.

And therein monsters are created, right?
Well...I hate it when people say things like "McKellen is the embodiment of all evil." That's really not a good analysis. It won't do to say someone is evil full stop as a sort of pat answer to the problem. "The man who blew up that building in Oklahoma is mad full stop." Well yes, he may be deranged in some way, but where does that derangement come from and why did it have this particular expression? You have to work it out to stop it from happening in the future. It's not enough to say Hitler was evil. Or Satan. Or the "evil empire" of Russia. How can you stop relating to evil? You have to start relating to humanity, to people who are doing evil things. The people themselves. They're human beings.

It's about gray areas. Things are not black and white. It's all gray.
Exactly. And if I take any message from Shakespeare it's that all the world's a stage, all its men and women merely players. We all act many parts. Good, bad, all at the same time. We're all confused. We're all mixed up. We're all capable of doing anything.

Do you have a preference for working on stage as opposed to working on film?
I've done a lot more theater than film and I've always been aware of that. I used to think I preferred the theater to film, but then I realized that it was because I understood the theater, I felt very comfortable there and it was something I was good at doing. And film, I didn't know much about. And this past six years, since Richard III closed at UCLA, I decided I was going to devote this period of my life to becoming a film actor. Which meant that I've done all sorts of odd jobs. Small parts. Odd parts. Working abroad. A western! So now, six years later, asking which I prefer is like asking me whether I'd like to have a holiday in Florence or Miami.

I know how I'd answer that one!
(laughs) I really like them both. The crucial difference, of course, is that in the theater you have to project your performance whereas on film, you just have to be your character. Deep down at the bottom they are the same. You have to use your imagination, your playfulness. Like when we're kids playing cowboys & Indians and cops & robbers. Human beings are wonderful actors. It's what separates us from the animals. Animals don't disguise themselves. You look at a dog, it's always in character. It's always itself. It's just: dog. But human beings...put on costumes every day. 'What am I going to wear today? What disguise am I going to put on? What side of my personality am I going to express today?' That's what the entire fashion industry is about, people being actors. We all act and behave differently depending on the people we're around. The way you cope with pressure and day-to-day life, acting. Not showing what we feel. That's why people are so fascinated by actors and acting, because they're actors themselves! It's all part of our nature and Shakespeare is really up on that.

What's your opinion on some of the other recent Shakespeare films?
How I judge other people's Shakespeare is, have they genuinely done the translation. Of course they can adapt to their heart's content. I have no problem with people taking a Shakespeare text and using it for their own purposes. That's what Shakespeare did with other people's stories. But if you're really going to try to do Shakespeare on film, you can do it the (Kenneth) Branagh way, which is 'I am going to do every word of Hamlet and make it very clear and very available and not get in the way.' But I'd much rather go for the current Romeo and Juliet, for example...

Did you like that?
Oh, I loved it. Well...not all of it, but I loved the intention of it. It was deliberately cinematic and not in a crude way of saying 'Oh, I don't trust this play.' (The director) just found what he wanted in the play and made it cinematic. You know when Romeo goes back into the garden to find Juliet when she appears up on the balcony, my heart sank. I thought 'Here we go again, another bloody balcony scene.' Shakespeare never mentions the word 'balcony.' It's just a device that some theater director chanced upon and everyone's been doing it ever since. Why?! Why is she up there? There's nothing in the text to say that! But then of course in the film she didn't stay on the balcony, she came out of the house. But then you've got a problem because they can't touch. That's the point of the scene. They want to have sex but they can't because she won't. And then the two of them went into the pool, started swimming and could quite touch...I thought it was a wonderful metaphor, wonderful. What's really encouraging is the number of young people I've met who think it's the best movie they've ever seen. I wish they'd seen Richard III. (laughs)

Let's talk about Richard some more. How did you come up with the conception of Richard as a Fascist dictator in the 1930's?
That came from the director, Richard Eyre, and the designer Bob Crowley. We all met over a period of months and talked together, and as very often happens when you do that when you're going to release the characters and understand them you talk about them in modern terms. But what really is the historical period of that play, is it the period that Richard lived in or the period that Shakespeare lived in? I think it serves the characters to have the play take place in as modern a setting as possible...I tend to always want to perform Shakespeare somewhere in the last hundred years, so we can relate. You don't want to get bogged down with making it all fit in some particular period, that wasn't the point. I think we were borrowing the 1930's and its social attitudes to explain the sort of people that they were and what was at stake.

Tell me about the experience of playing a real modern figure, John Profumo, in Scandal.
I did that because I had just publicly come out. It was a film at a time when I wasn't doing any films and the only thing anybody knows about John Profumo is that he was a raging heterosexual. The assumption is when you've come out that you'll never be able to play anything but gay characters again. So, I thought that was a nice message to the world that a gay actor could play a straight man. That's why I did it. It still makes me smile a bit that nobody objected to it.

Tell me about the experience of being knighted.
You'll have to come and see the show, because I talk all about it there. For me, there were two things about being knighted. In America you really don't have anything to compare it to, although most countries do. It's not like an Oscar, for example, which are just given to people in the world of film. Knighthoods are given to all sorts of people from various walks of life. I rather like the idea of a nation saying to somebody 'Thank you.' But I was openly gay. And there had only been one man before who was openly gay before he was knighted, Angus Wilson. So I knew that it would be taken as a symbolic thing by many people, and indeed that was true. Some people, some gay activists, (the late director) Derek Jarman in particular, thought I was doing absolutely the wrong thing by accepting any prize from a homophobic government. Of course he was right, it was a homophobic government. But I think that for most people, gay and straight alike, it was a genuinely hopeful sign that if an openly gay man could be invited to the palace and knighted by the Queen, then that was the establishment at last having to accept that there were in their midst people on the Queen's staff, running the Queen's army, running the Queen's government, certainly in the Queen's National Theater, gay men and women who were valued members of society as much as anybody else. And that there should be no barriers to their careers or what contributions they could make it they chose to come out and say that they were gay. And also as an activist in class-conscious Britain, it's very useful to have that handle on your name. It opens doors that otherwise wouldn't be opened for you. It gets you invited places. You are utterly respectable. They can't deny you exist. So I've been able to use (the title) to help people who've been trying to get into through these doors that they've been banging on for years.

What was your inspiration for creating A Knight Out?
I was asked to do a show at the Gay Games in New York three years ago to raise money for the games and a couple other organizations. I thought if I were going to do a show on Broadway, I'd do it about being in the theater and about being gay. I know from the questions that people ask me, they all want to know what it feels like to be an actor and what it feels like to be a gay man. And since then I've done it several times, but always as a benefit. I never take any of the profits for myself. Most excitingly, I did it in South Africa at a time when they were trying to ensure that in the equality clause in the permanent constitution sexuality was listed along with gender and race and religion...as grounds on which you could not discriminate. And there was a gay organization set up to lobby for that happen, and I helped to raise money for their campaign. I got to meet Mandella and talk with him about gay issues. That was a really remarkable moment! And here I am doing it here. I looked in my schedule when I was back in London and saw that May was free and there's a lot of theater in this town and it gets neglected sometimes. And among the other charities I'm raising money for are a scholarship in my name at UCLA, as well as a school in Koreatown I go to that has little 9, 10, and 11 year-olds who do Shakespeare after school. It's a really amazing teacher and class. On Shakespeare's birthday recently I went down and cut a cake for them, watched them perform some of A Winter's Tale ...it was wonderful because each of them understood every single word they were speaking.

Let's talk about Apt Pupil and your role as Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander.
Well I took that because it's a big, terrific part in a big Hollywood movie. I had seen Usual Suspects and admired Bryan Singer's work a lot. It seems to be the fate of middle aged English actors to get stuck playing Nazis, but I've really enjoyed working on the film. It's a pleasure going to work every day. It's a wonderful thriller and I think it'll be a really good film, as well.

Tell me about the Stonewall Group.
At the time I came out, the Thatcher government was introducing an initiative that I'm afraid was based on an American law in some states that it would be illegal to spend any public money on the promotion of homosexuality. And out of the experience of trying to stop that law, which we didn't succeed in doing, we realized there was a need, rather late in the day, for a permanent, professional, set-up lobby group. I suppose our model was Human Rights Campaign Fund to a certain extent. We've had huge successes with our group. We've turned the British media around. I mean, you don't hear any anti-gay stories any more in the straight press, or a prejudiced story. When we get covered in the mainstream press, which we didn't ten years ago, we are on the political agenda now. More and more people are coming out, and I think Stonewall has helped with that. London is now the gay capital of Europe. The country is really waking up. The only people who're behind the times are the politicians because they don't know what's going on. To raise money for the group I put on a variety show every year at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with big stars...Melissa Ethridge, Richard Gere, Antonia Banderas and Melanie Griffith came up, Elton John often does it for me, the Pet Shop Boys, Sting...it's like a political rally with lots of entertainment! That's probably the most important job I do each year. It's doing what I know best, the theater. It's a sort of variety show like the shows I used to see at the Grand Theater in Bolton, but it's made of awareness of what it is to be gay. So it's an utterly fulfilling job for me, really because both sides of my life come together. A Knight Out is the solo version of it, really.

Any final thoughts?
Well I'm thrilled to be in L.A. at the point when Ellen DeGeneres comes out. And Anne Heche (Volcano), her girlfriend. It's probably more significant in the history of gay awareness not that a famous comedian comes out, because solo artists have always found it easier, K.D. Lang, Elton, because they're their own people. But an actor like Anne Heche, she's just a working actress and like all actors depends on being employed, which is dependent on other people's attitudes. Producers. Directors. Advertisers. And the fact that she's come out, when she's got more than a burgeoning career, it'll be more interesting to see what happens to her career. Ellen can always go out on her own on the stage as a comedian and continue making a living. It's a bit more difficult for a regular actor. But it's terrific being here with the whole nation talking about it...this is big stuff, it's great. And reverberations for the world. It's a great time to be alive as a gay person.

Frank Darabont: The Hollywood Interview

Frank Darabont: The Hollywood Interview

Tom Hanks  

Filmmaker Frank Darabont.


FRANK DARABONT GOES THE DISTANCE
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1999/January 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Frank Darabont was born January 28, 1959 in a French relocation camp, the son of Hungarian refugees. After moving to the U.S., the family lived in several different cities, before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1971, when Darabont was 12. A voracious reader from an early age, Darabont was especially drawn to fantasy and horror stories, as well as classics by such writers as Dickens. While a student at Hollywood High, Darabont was active in the theater department, and this soon blossomed into a love of film. Following graduation, Darabont skipped college and started at the bottom of the ladder on low budget film crews, learning the craft while working as a P.A., set dresser and gofer.

In 1983, Darabont directed his first film, a short based on a Stephen King short story entitled The Woman in the Room. The relationship with King, who granted the fledgling filmmaker the story rights for a dollar, would prove to be a fortuitous one for Darabont, who would keep struggling for another four years working on film crews, while continuing to hone his skills as a writer. The persistence paid off, with his first produced credit A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987. From there, Darabont penned two more horror pics, the remake of the classic The Blob (1988) and The Fly II (1989). Although he was now making a living as a screenwriter, Darabont longed to step back behind the camera and make a feature. After cutting his teeth directing two made-for-TV movies (Buried Alive and Til Death Us Do Part), Darabont made what many feel was the greatest feature film debut of the decade.

When The Shawshank Redemption hit screens in 1994, it took everyone by surprise, especially everyone in Hollywood. Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, it told the story of a friendship between two convicts (Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins) in a maximum security prison over a period of 30 years. A straightforward drama with none of King's trademark supernatural or horror elements in sight, the film was nominated for a total of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor. Shawshank left audiences around the world spellbound, asking themselves "Who is this Darabont guy, and where did he come from?" There was no doubt that a major new filmmaker had arrived.

Darabont waited five more years before he stepped behind the camera again, however. His additional credits during this period include penning several episodes of the acclaimed Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for TV, co-authorship of the screenplay for Kenneth Branagh's unfortunate retelling of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), the cable TV film Black Cat Run in 1998 and uncredited re-writes on several high-profile films, most notably Steven Spielberg's masterpiece Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Darabont's venture back behind the camera proves the filmmaking genius that brought Shawshank to life was no flash in the pan. The Green Mile is quite simply the best film of 1999, and the one to beat at this year's Oscars. Many who feel that Darabont deserved a writing or directing statuette in '94, might well see their wishes come true with this modern day classic. The Green Mile is based on another Stephen King novel, this time a serialized group of books that told the story of one Paul Edgecomb (played in the film by Tom Hanks), a prison guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1935. Edgecomb is head guard on the pen's death row, nicknamed "the green mile" for the color of its floors. When a gigantic black man named John Coffey (played brilliantly by newcomer Michael Clarke Duncan) convicted of murdering twin girls arrives on the mile, his childlike demeanor doesn't strike Edgecomb as that of a killer. Edgecomb investigates the man's case on his own, and comes to discover not only might John Coffey not be guilty of murder, but that he carries a gift deep inside him, the likes of which humanity has never seen before. The Green Mile is world-class filmmaking straight down the line. The cinematography, editing, production design, writing, direction and acting from the fine ensemble cast which includes James Cromwell, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey de Munn, Bonnie Hunt, David Morse, Patricia Clarkson and Gary Sinise, are all seamless. The Warner Bros. release opens December 12. This is a film that will stay with you long after the final fade out.

Frank Darabont sat down recently in a Century City hotel suite after an exhausting three day press junket. In spite of his fatigue, Darabont offered up an easy smile and warm handshake, and became increasingly energized as he talked about his new film.

I haven't seen a film that has affected me this much since L.A. Confidential (1997).
Frank Darabont: It's interesting that you should mention that. It's one of my favorite films, and I actually watched it quite a bit before I started shooting The Green Mile. I loved the way Curtis Hanson shot those scenes. He's an old-fashioned filmmaker in the best sense of the word.

Both of those films, and Shawshank, were so wonderful because they took their time! They're all anti-MTV school of filmmaking, which is very refreshing to see. It was like pages turning in a book.
The filmmakers that I admire so much...most of them are dead: Buster Keaton, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra would be at the top of that heap. William Wellman, William Wyler...those guys.

What would you favorite films be from each of those guys?
Let's see...Capra: It's a Wonderful Life (1946), one of my all-time favorites. Buster Keaton: The General (1927), an awesome piece of filmmaking. Ford: My Darling Clementine (1946). Wellman: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Wyler: The Big Country (1958). Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 (1953), hands down.

How about modern-day directors?
Well, Spielberg, that's a no brainer. I'd have to pick Schindler's List (1994) as my favorite of his films. What a journey that was, and a theme that really sparked me, that I'm continually drawn to...issues of human potential. I love Scorsese. With Goodfellas (1994) alone, we should probably hand him the keys to the Ferrari and say "Here, you the man!" James Cameron, I think possesses a virtuosity that's rare, and is a much better writer than people give him credit for. This man knows how to tell a screen story like nobody's business. I'm leaving a lot of people out, I know. I hope I don't piss them off. (laughs) It's not intentional!

Really you've named recent directors whose style is very much a throwback to the older guys you just named.
That's true, probably because I'm a throwback. I'm a dinosaur. (laughs)

I heard you wanted to turn The Green Mile into a film after only reading the first book in the series.
Yeah. I actually flew to Colorado to see Steve King after I read it, that's how much I loved it. The genesis of it was, during an otherwise innocuous phone conversation Steve and I were having one day, he out of nowhere said "I've been thinking about this story, and I think you'd be great for it. I know you don't want to make another prison movie, but let me just tell you this idea." And he gave me a very brief thumbnail description of The Green Mile. I was so intrigued by this idea that I said 'If you ever sit down and write this thing, give me first crack at it.' Six months or so later, the first book arrives in the mail. I got a week or two sneak peek at it before it hit the stores. I read that first volume and thought 'Oh! Here I go! I'm back in the joint again!" (laughs) I've been a huge fan of Steve's since high school. I've read everything he's published and a few things he hasn't and I can sense it when he's speaking so to my heart. So I jumped on a plane to Colorado, to visit him on the set of The Shining (TV version), which he was executive producing and my friend Mick Garris was directing. It was being shot at the Stanley Hotel, which is where Steve stayed when he got the original idea for the book. So I drove up this mountain looking for a job, just like Jack Torrance in The Shining! (laughs) I get there, and there are ghosts everywhere! Hundreds of extras done up in ghoulish make-up, wearing period costumes, and I thought 'I have come home! This is where it all began!'

Because The Shining was the first book of King's that you ever read, right?
Right, I read it in high school. I just thought that this too much delightful synchronicity. I walk into the ballroom, and there's Steve King up on the stage in a white tux, leading the band in this great swing tune, shaking his ass like Cab Calloway. He turned around and saw me and said "Frank, what are you doing here?" I grabbed him and said 'I'm here for The Green Mile, and I'm not leaving without it!" (laughs) I'm also happy to say he gave me the rights for our usual fee of a dollar.

I've always felt that Stephen King has been our most underrated American writer.
He's the most Dickens-like of any living writer. He always deals with the themes of humanity. Like Dickens, he's been dismissed by the literary intelligencia of his day, as a populist and therefore not to be trusted and endorsed, because how dare he tell a really entertaining and involving story with a plot! Steve's work will outlive all the critical darlings of today, I can promise you, just like Dickens did. Some people also forget that Dickens was a great fan of the supernatural, and was renowned for his ghost stories.

This is the second film you've done with Castle Rock.
Castle Rock has been a blessing in my life, a boon to my career. It is one of the few places in this business, actually they might be singular in this business in how they view the films they want to make. They lead with their hearts. They're so supportive and afford filmmakers the most precious commodity in this town, which is creative trust, which leads to creative freedom, which leads to one hell of a satisfying experience if you're making a movie for them. You've got some smart people there making decisions based on gut, creative instinct. They're not depending on their marketing department to tell them which films they should make. And if they can't get one of the six movie stars everyone's trying to get, they're willing to make it with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, bless their hearts.

Tell us about working with Tom Hanks.
I first met Tom at the Oscar nominees luncheon. He was there that year representing Forrest Gump, I was representing Shawshank. I had so admired his work for so many years, and he knocked me out with Gump, so I went up to him and told him so, and he was very complimentary in turn about Shawshank, and said if I ever had anything for him, he'd love for us to work together. So a few years later, after I'd finished the screenplay for The Green Mile, I sent it off to him and he committed to it within 48 hours...There's nothing I can say about Tom as an actor or a person that hasn't been said before. I've been trying to come up with some great smart-ass answer like 'He's a Satanist,' or something. (laughs) He's got so much integrity and so much inherent decency. And what a generous actor, my God. We always try to draw comparisons when someone great comes along, but I think Tom's a real original. He's the Tom Hanks of the 90's. (laughs) By the time all is said and done, people will be saying "He's the Tom Hanks of the 22nd century." Spielberg said to me "He's gonna spoil you," and he was right. Tom shows up for work every day like it's his first job. That might be a boring answer, but it's the truth. Having said that, I have to say that the whole cast down the line was the most generous group of actors I've ever seen. Everyone wanted the other person to look good, too, and wanted the movie to be something special. Which goes to show that the old theory of the more chaos and animosity on the set, the better the movie will be, is bullshit. I think it's just the opposite.

Michael Clarke Duncan is a revelation in this film. Tell us about him.
Finding him was so significant to this film, because if that part was even slightly less than optimal, it wouldn't have worked. I didn't know if there was a guy out there who fit that physical description who was that good. He came to us through a very surprising source: Bruce Willis. I have to credit Bruce and thank him for steering Michael toward this movie. Bruce was a big fan of the books, and was avidly reading them on the set of Armageddon (1998), which Michael was in. Bruce pulled Michael aside and said "Michael, you have to read these, and there's a part in here you have to play." Bruce called us up saying "I'm sending you John Coffey." Bruce as yenta! Bruce as matchmaker! (laughs) Michael not only rose to my hopes, he exceeded them.

The rest of the cast was amazing, too.
I was able to cast my first choice in every single role. I don't know that that's ever happened before. If you get one or two of your first choices in a movie, you're lucky. Getting your first choice in every role is like winning the lottery! I'm a lucky guy.

The other thing I liked is that there are no easy answers at the end.
As there isn't in life. I love the ambiguity of the ending, and I was pleased to be able to make a film where I wasn't made to force-feed the audience a conclusion to draw. At the end of the day, I call this movie "the world's longest Twilight Zone episode. It's got this wonderful sort of monkey's paw irony to it that is very tasty to me. I'm really looking forward to hearing people's interpretations of the film. That's part of what's exciting about making movies.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born in France in a refugee camp. My parents left Budapest in 1956 when the Russian tanks rolled in. They snuck over the border to Yugoslavia, where they met in a relocation center. I was born three years later. I have an older half-brother, and half-sister, both of whom I'm very close to. Talk about a cinematic sequence: my mother had all her possessions and this little child, my sister, that she's dragging on a little toy sled through the snow while there are squadrons of soldiers in the woods shooting at anything that moves! It was a really courageous thing she did. My first memories are when we were living in Chicago. Then the folks split, and both came west. Mom located here, and my old man located to the Bay area. I bounced back and forth through grade school, then settled her permanently once junior high started, so I feel like a native.

How did you first fall in love with film?
For me it was a continual and cumulative process of being transported to other places by great storytellers. Not just in the movies, but in literature as well. Let me list some of my gods: Dickens, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Mark Twain, Richard Matheson, and Harlan Ellison whose book I am Legend really redefined an entire genre, and Steve King credits as one of his biggest influences. The Universal monster films were big influences on me, as well. One moment in particular stands out to me. I saw George Lucas' first feature THX-1138 (1971). It's so underrated and overlooked. One of the glossy newsstand magazines did their "100 best sci-fi films of all time" things, another one of these pointless lists. When I see a list that Tron (1982) is on, and THX isn't, it makes me want to kill somebody! This movie is one of the most amazing, brilliant sociological statements I've ever seen. I was 12 years old when I went to see, not that, but The Brotherhood of Satan (1971), a cheesy horror movie with L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin, to just show you how badly THX was dumped by its studio. My mind was so blown when I saw THX-1138. It really spoke to me. I was so impressed with it, I sat through Brotherhood of Satan again, so I could watch THX again! I think my mother had the cops out looking for me by then! (laughs) But that's when I realized for the first time that movies don't just happen by magic, that there was a storyteller at work there. That there was somebody pulling the strings, whose perspective on life and whose world view was stamped on every frame of that film. I remember thinking 'If I could get up and walk up to the screen and stick my head into the world of that movie, I could look of to the side of the camera, and see whoever the hell that is!' I didn't know who George Lucas was, but I knew that I wanted to be that storyteller. So being able to work with George later on (on Young Indiana Jones) was full-circle, it was amazing.

After graduating Hollywood High, you skipped college and went to work as a P.A.?
It wasn't quite that clean a jump. I didn't realize that if you were willing to be a P.A., that there are ten people that will hire you today! (laughs) To me, Hollywood was this vast Olympus that was impenetrable. It took me three years to get a gig as a P.A. on a picture called Hell Night (1981), with Linda Blair. At the end of 1980, I remember this very clearly because John Lennon had just been killed, another big touchstone in my life. I got a call from a guy I went to high school with named Steve Ringel, who was going to University of Redlands. He said "They're shooting a movie out here and I hear they're hiring P.A.'s. I remember that you wanted to be in the movie business, so maybe they'll hire you if you drive out here." So as I sit here, at the end of the century, having directed The Green Mile, let me just point out that Steve Ringel is responsible for all this! If he hadn't been thoughtful enough to pick up the phone and call me, who knows what I'd be doing for a living! So Steve, if you're reading this, thank you! So I hopped in the car with a couple friends of mine, drove two hours to Redlands, finally found the set. We jump out of the car and say 'Hi! We're here to be P.A.s!' I didn't even know what "P.A." stood for at that point, although later I found out that it stood for "pissant." (laughs) "Production Assistant," for those that don't know...It was there that I first met Chuck Russell, who was line producing that film. The following year he hired me again on my second gig as a P.A., on The Seduction (1982). It was on that shoot where I became friendly with the costume designer and showed her this little spec script I had written for MASH, which obviously never went anywhere, but she liked it, and passed it on to Chuck, unbeknownst to me. Chuck read it, and called me after the film wrapped, and said "Let's talk. I'm looking for a writing partner." And we're great friends to this day. So Chuck and I started writing, and I moved out of the P.A. business into set design and construction, and that was my film school. I just tried to absorb the process through my skin. Then, in 1986, Chuck had the opportunity to direct Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and we rewrote the script that they had. I got paid scale, got to join the writer's guild. We did the rewrite in 11 days, and three weeks later Chuck was on the set calling "Action." And I've never really looked back from there.

Let's talk about The Old Woman in the Room, your first film.
I was 20 years old and wrote Steve King a letter. He said 'Okay kid, go ahead.' He gave me the option for a buck. He's been known to do this for young filmmakers. It's his way of giving back. So I spent the next three years making that film with my friends. Steve was very happy with the film. A few years later, in '86, I asked him for the rights to Shawshank, thinking that would be my first picture. So he gave me that option as well, for a buck. Then I waited until my ambitions as a writer caught up with my actual skill to adapt Shawshank. I did the script in two months, took it to Castle Rock, and we were off to the races. There was some conversation with my agent once I was done with the script, who felt that we could get a bidding was going with the studios. I didn't want to do that because I had a feeling about Castle Rock. I didn't know a soul there, but after I'd seen what Rob Reiner had done with Stand by Me (1986), I thought it was the most intelligent adaptation of the most unlikely Stephen King story, that was ever filmed. Its success also allowed Rob and his partners to form Castle Rock. I thought, if anybody gets this, it'll be them. I also knew that there were certain studios in town where, if I took it there, it would be totally re-written into some testosterone fest. You know, kickboxing behind bars or something. (laughs) Luckily my instinct about Castle Rock was right. They really are my home.

How was it working with Morgan Freeman?
Very no nonsense. No monkeying around. He showed up, and he was ready to work. He made it look so easy, the really good ones always do. I had the same experience with Tom. No muss, no fuss. Roll the cameras and let me break your heart. (laughs) Cool!

What happened with Frankenstein?
I think Ken Branagh will probably think I'm after him now (laughs). We've all heard stories about their work didn't turn out the way they wanted when it hit the screen. This is my prime example of a movie I wrote going down the shitter. In my opinion, I think Frankenstein was one of the best things I ever wrote. Easily equal to The Green Mile. And that wasn't the movie that Ken Branagh wanted to make. He wanted to make something else. What he made I thought was a dunderheaded, ham-fisted mess. But I wasn't the director on that, so...I felt like he tried to reinvent the wheel every step of the way. It's so dumbed down. It's so bombastic, that I was just flabbergasted. And let's describe Mary Shelley's novel: very understated, very smart, conceptually brilliant. I don't know what happened there. Had I known how it was going to turn out, I never would have done it. My all-time favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein.

What about your favorite music?
Beethoven's ninth symphony is, I think, one of the great reasons we have for being alive. It is so sublime, so touched by God. I'm wild about Mozart. Bach has certainly woven his spell. Those are the big three, like G.M., Ford and Chevy. (laughs) Then there's the Beatles, of course. I'm also deeply steeped in 20's, 30's and 40's jazz. Everything in that era is wonderful. Fats Waller, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, the Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, they're all great. Louis is the king! I got to use some of my favorite tunes in this picture, including "Stardust," one of my favorite songs.

Any advice for first-time directors?
I went to Steven Spielberg before I started shooting Green Mile, because it had been a while since I directed. I asked him his advice. So he looked at the ceiling for a minute, and you know what he said? "There's this pair of shoes you should buy, they're called Etonic Summits. Buy yourself a pair of those. You'll thank me!" (laughs) So I bought a pair, and they were great. They were my good luck charm. It was like crawling up the mountaintop to ask the wiseman the meaning of life and having him say "Don't forget to floss." (laughs) But in all seriousness, the toughest thing for me my first time out was knowing I could rely on my instincts, that they'd do right by me and carry me through. The self-doubt creature in you never goes away, so all you can ever do is trust your instincts. They're there for a reason, and usually your first instinct is the correct one, so don't second guess yourself to death.