‘Directors
have needed a book like this since D.W. Griffith invented the close-up’, wrote
legendary director John Frankenheimer about John Badham’s first book, ‘I’ll Be
in My Trailer’. ‘We directors have to pass along to other directors our
hard-learned lessons about actors. Maybe then they won’t have to start from
total ignorance like I did, like you did, like we all did.’
Along
with Frankenheimer, there were names like Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, Richard
Donner and Steven Soderbergh weighing in from the directors’s corner. Giving
the actors’s side of events, such luminaries as Mel Gibson, Frank Langella,
Richard Dreyfuss, Jenna Elfman, Dennis Haysbert and Martin Sheen.
Badham
had gathered some of the most celebrated creatives in Hollywood to give us the
benefit of their on-set experiences, and to offer advice about how these two
very different artistic types can work together successfully on a picture. Of
course, there was also plenty of anecdotal evidence that a film-set can be
highly combustable work environment if director and actor are not particularly
simpatico.
He
told me, ‘The first book came about after a talk at the AFI when one student
asked “What do you do when an actor won’t do what you want him or her to do?â€
And the entire room of fifty, sixty people suddenly sat up straight, and I
thought, “There’s a book here!â€â€™
His
second book, ‘On Directing’, presented his own hard-won experiences learned
over a 50 year- long career as a guide for budding young directors who may have
all the technological know-how, but haven’t yet learnt that building a good
relationship with your actors is the most important skill of all.
John
Badham should know. Taking off like a rocket following his second feature, Saturday
Night Fever, his name became synonymous with success after a long run of
big movie hits like Dracula, WarGames, Short Circuit, Blue Thunder and Stakeout.
In amongst those were smaller critically acclaimed films like Who’s Life is it
Anyway? and American Flyers. By the 1990s, he had built up a
formidable reputation as both a hit maker and an ‘actor’s director.’
A
second edition of the book, released in October has been expanded to include
Badham’s more recent experiences as a TV director; a resumé which boasts titles
like ‘Arrow’, ‘Psych’, ‘Supernatural’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Sirens’. The new edition
brings in new voices like Allan Arkush, Paris Barclay, Ryan Murphy and Michelle
MacLaren, who give their own no-holds-barred battle stories from the front line
of blockbuster TV in the 21st Century.
Despite
his brawny, all-American back catalogue, Badham is actually a Brit by birth,
making his debut in Luton while his father served here in World War II. Moreover, he spent many months as a child
staying with his grandparents in my own neck of the woods, North Wales. I
chatted with this highly respected Hollywood veteran (and honorary Welshman)
about his book, and about his 1991 hit The Hard Way, which has just been
released as a special edition on BluRay by Kino Lorber.
As
well as still directing hit TV shows, Badham is a Tenured Professor at Chapman
University in Orange, California teaching Film Studies. ‘I’m teaching directing
remotely which is fun. I’ve got people
doing scenes on Zoom - I’m getting very good at Zoom.’
You’re
the ideal candidate to have written a book about the relationship between actor
and director because you’ve always had a reputation as an ‘Actor’s Director.’ It’s
often the first thing any article about you says, including this one. What do
you think makes you so good at coaxing great performances out of actors?
JB. Well, my earliest training was at Yale
University as an undergraduate and later a director at the drama school. As you
can imagine, theatre is extremely actor-oriented and working with actors is one
of the key skills that you have to learn as a director. A lot of film directors
never really get that initial training with actors. They’re great with
machinery, cameras, lights, microphones: that all does what you tell it to do
but unfortunately actors have this annoying way of being human beings! And they
have ideas - at least a microphone has no ideas and won’t answer back.
So, this is just something that I learned early on.
Was
it a help being the son of an actress and the brother too? Did that give you something of an inside
track on how actors tick?
JB Somewhat. I think I have some acting genes in me, I just didn’t get the best set,
my sister did. (His sister, Mary Badham was nominated for an Academy Award for
her role as young Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962).) But I still love acting. I love to do it when
I get to an opportunity, and every single time it makes me appreciate how
difficult and how stressful it is for an actor, especially the poor guy with
one line. How can you screw up one line? Well, I’ve seen it more times than you
can say.
Hence
your advice in the book, recommending that you take as much time to chat to and
encourage the guy with one line as much as your main cast.
JB That’s right, he or she is the most
terrified one out of everybody! The guys
with big parts have probably long since gotten over their fears. They’re
probably less needy than the poor guy who’s come in for one day, who doesn’t
know any of the players, who hasn’t had a job in a while. Acting, you know, if
you’re not doing it regularly you can get rusty pretty fast.
I
think you’re especially good at getting very naturalistic performances out of
actors. I look back on films like Blue Thunder and Saturday Night
Fever, and no one seems to be acting at all. Is that a style that you
favour?
JB. I do. I want to really believe these
people and in those two particular films, I used a kind of quasi-documentary
technique in the acting scenes in particular. I always encourage the actors to
improvise and ad lib, and they know they have the freedom to try anything which
is very liberating. On Saturday Night Fever, the young cast were just
thrilled to be able to improvise. Many of the scenes that have become kind of
famous were just wonderful improvisations going on in the middle of a written
scene. So we weren’t being quite as stickler about the text as we would have
been had we been doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.
It
does show that you have an innate instinct for what makes a great screen
performance, as opposed to a theatrical performance. It reminds me of the story
of Frank Langella giving an all-guns-blazing performance opposite Olivier in Dracula,
until you showed him what it looked like in the rushes and he redid the entire
scene.
JB Oh yes, and it took him a while because
he’s so skilled as an actor on stage but he was trying to change a performance
that he had been giving for eight months on Broadway, y’know six or eight times
a week. Trying to change that is really tough. It’s like trying to teach a
golfer a new swing; their muscles only go one way after time.
You
talk a lot in the book about a natural animosity that exists between directors
and actors - something that for the most part you’ve managed to avoid. That
surprised me. I would have thought there was if anything a mutual
inter-depencency. Why do you think this relationship is so fraught?
JB I think that many actors have just had
bad experiences with directors who don’t know how to talk to actors, who speak
in terms of results - ‘Be happier, let’s have more fun with this scene,’ and
the actors privately, or publicly roll their eyes and they think that this
director has nothing to tell me.
Some
actors, like Brando, like to test their director on the first day of shooting,
just to see what they are going to have to work with. Brando would give the
director two variations of a performance, one of which he knew to be
terrifically dreadful, and see what the director did. And if he didn’t pick the
right one, in Brando’s mind he was done for the rest of the film. He told Richard
Donner he wanted to play Jor-El as a giant tomato! Before he’d even visited the
set of Superman, he went to visit Richard Donner and the writer Tom
Mankiewicz and shocked them with this, and it took them a while to find a way
around the idea!
(Above: "Blue Thunder" with Roy Scheider.)
Do
you think there’s much difference between directing, for want of a better
expression an ‘actor-actor,’ and directing a movie star who might have the
power to say, ‘No, I think we’ll do it my way’? Have you had much experience with that?
JB. Well, eventually you’re going to run into
that! You have to try to gain their trust and let them know that you think of
them as a creative partner and not as a puppet who happens to be working for
you, because that will set them off quicker than anything. And, sometimes it’s
just going to be plain difficult. A friend of mine directed Steve McQueen in
his early television days, and even back then it was tough because McQueen was
very opinionated and seemed to have an edge of negativity about him a lot. The
director would say, ‘We’ll put the camera here…’ and McQueen would say, ‘No,
no, that’s a terrible idea!’ But then he was the star of a TV series and that’ll
make you grumpy! You have these impossibly long hours. Back then they were
shooting 36 episodes a year and it wears you down.
There’s
a line in the book - which is absolutely true, ‘People tend to reject the
influence of someone they don’t like.’ Are
there any tricks to getting actors to like you?
JB English actors are much more compliant
than American actors though I would not want to go toe to toe with an English
actor with a strong opinion, but I think that English actors respect the
director more and will try things even if they privately think that it’s
insane. And so, I’ve found when I’ve been directing in England that I have to encourage
them to voice their disapproval or disagreement and say, ‘It’s OK! I don’t mind.’ I think the way we find good
ideas is by having a little bit of disagreement. By no means do I think that my
ideas are perfect, they’re just ideas.
It’s
clear from the quality of the collaborators you have offering their own advice
that you have a pretty impressive address book. When you read about their
experiences and suggestions did you find yourself thinking, ‘I never thought of
that? That’s brilliant!’?
JB Well yes, I’ve learned so much from other
directors. So much of my first book, ‘I’ll Be in My Trailer’ was completely
built on conversations that I’d had with other directors and actors and their
points of view. On the subject of rehearsal, say, between Sydney Pollack,
Steven Soderbergh and Francis Ford Coppola, they all had very differing
opinions and things that work for them. One thing I learned is that there’s not
necessarily one right way to do this; there are many different techniques to
get the best performances from your actors and there’s no need to be dogmatic.
We do what works.
Do
you find that you have to change the way you direct, depending on the kind of
actors in your cast, with their different acting techniques?
JB Well, the first and maybe the most
important question to ask is ‘What kind of actor are they?’ Sometimes you don’t
really know until you’ve already started shooting. You can talk to all sorts of
other directors about them, you can get an idea about an actor’s method during
rehearsals, but it’s only when you’re rolling the camera that their real work
nature comes out, and it can be wonderful and they really work hard, or they
can be grumpy or frightened.
You
have to expect anything - it’s a very stressful experience for the actor, so a
lot of their insecurities or fears can come out, or bad experiences with other
directors which they’re now taking out on you! Or perhaps their mind works in
ways that your own mind doesn’t work so they’re seeing the scene in a very
different way and you have to ask yourself, ‘Is this good, is this working,’ or
do you try and steer them away from it?
With
all the technological advances that have taken place of late, a lot of new
directors are probably more tech-savvy than ever, but do you think they even
know about things like giving notes to actors, and how to?
JB Well, a lot of what we’re doing at
Chapman University in the film school there is very much focused on training
the directors to work with actors, and how to give notes, how not to
give notes and working out the best way to bond with actors. That’s what’s
covered in both of my books.
I
got the sense that you still have a fondness for some of the old ways. Playback monitors for example get short
shrift.
JB Yes, I think they’re crutches that people
did without for almost 80 years before video-assist became a thing. Then
suddenly it was like you were at home watching television. Suddenly there’s a
little extra distance between you and the performer, so I try to say, ‘Well I
can make use of it, but I really need to be up close to the actors so I can
really sense what’s going on and really feel what they’re playing. Also to give
them the courtesy of basically saying, ‘I’m right here for you. I’m here to
support you, help you out and maybe rescue you if you need rescuing.’ The actors are the important ones. My dolly-grip is great, God bless him but he’s
not carrying the whole movie.
Like
a lot of directors, I’m thinking people like Richard Donner and Spielberg, you started
off directing TV shows in the 1970s. How
invaluable was that as a film school?
JB Well first of all they were short shoots,
about six or seven days, and you can’t get too screwed up in that time. Then
when the show is finally on, people forget about it two days later, so it’s not
a catastrophe. On the other hand, if you shoot a full movie and make a mess of
it, it’s there forever and keeps popping up in places where you’d rather not
see it any more. Back then, television was a great training school to try out
new ideas and work with skilled cinematographers and actors and wardrobe people
who can support you and protect you from being a complete fool, and you can
learn from your mistakes, so it was really good.
And
now you’ve gone full circle in a way, directing some of the biggest shows on
television. How has the business changed? Or has it?
JB The shooting days have gotten longer,
about eight or nine days which is nice, and the scripts have got substantially
shorter because the programmes are shorter because the commercials are longer,
so something we used to shoot in six days which was 52 minutes is now nine days
to shoot something that’s 42 minutes. This is like, ‘I can breathe!’
However,
the layers of control that have developed over the years have multiplied so it
becomes almost Kafkaesque. When I make a decision on the set, there are going
to be a dozen people in the hierarchy that are going to second-guess my
decisions and choices and when I first started, I only really had the producer
to come and argue with me. In the world of television, you have to be very
aware of politics and know that a lot of your ideas may not meet with favour,
but nevertheless you must keep thrusting good creative ideas forward and not
just say, ‘OK I’ll do anything you want’ because that’s the death of any
creativity.
Now,
sickening as it is to admit, it’s been 29 years since your film The Hard Way
was released. Was it as much fun to make
as it is to watch?
JB Oh it was great fun because the actors
were such a treat to work with. Both Michael and Jimmy Woods in their own
inimitable fashion were wonderful contrasts to each other. A lot of times, I’d
just step out the way and let them have at it, because sometime actors duelling
with each other is great fun. Watching Olivier and Donald Pleasence trying to
upstage each other on Dracula was hysterically funny.
At
the time, James Woods was known pretty much exclusively as an über-intense
actor in dramas like Salvador and The Boost. This was the first
time he’d been in a comedy. Did he enjoy
the opportunity?
JB Absolutely. It brought out a lot of his
funny side. He’s a very, very smart actor, and you have to wake up early and
drink a lot of coffee to keep up with him.
You
wrote in your last book about trying to give Michael J. Fox a few ‘as-if’s in
your direction and you got a cold, hard stare in return.
JB Yeah, if I remember correctly, I was
trying to give him some kind of image that perhaps a Method-trained actor would
totally respond to, but Michael really just wants to know what you’re after,
and then he’ll find a way to get there.
I
teach my students, like I said before, never give your actors result-directions
like ‘More energy’ or ‘Be funnier’ because you’re only going to get clichéd
acting. To actors like Michael J. Fox and Jimmy Woods, all that stuff is…how do
I phrase this, woo-woo. They’ll say ‘Don’t be precious. Just tell me
what you want.’ That’s just something that you have to learn: where on that
scale are your actors? Are they
touchy-feely or are they all technique, but they’ll get there?
(Above: Badham contributes a commentary track on the Kino Lorber release of "The Hard Way".)
Scorsese’s
said that casting is 85-90% of the picture, I don’t know if you agree with
that.
JB. I think that was originally Elia Kazan,
but we all take credit for it because we all believe it!
Because
I read in an old Premiere magazine that originally it was going to star Kevin
Kline and Gene Hackman. Presumably, that would have been an entirely different
movie.
JB. Yes, it would have been. Well, we loved Kevin Kline and felt that at
the time he was a very under-appreciated actor as far as film was
concerned. He had real leading man
qualities and certainly comedic qualities, so who best to put opposite him?
Well, Gene Hackman. And Gene was up for it, Kevin was up for it but for
whatever reason eventually dropped out. So my partner Rob Cohen, thinking way
out of the box said, ‘Let’s try and get Michael J. Fox.’ Then Gene Hackman said, ‘Well now it feels
like I’m acting with a kid, it doesn’t work the same way.’ He’d just done four films back to back, so he
took a break and in stepped James Woods.
I
describe it as a comedy, but it’s a thriller too and it’s rare that you get
both genres to work inside the same movie like that. Stakeout too, which
I think is a perfect movie, is a romantic comedy thriller, which is romantic,
hilarious and thrilling - that’s a miraculous bit of plate spinning. How do you go about getting the balance
right?
JB Well, I’m somebody that has to be
restrained from being funny. So much in
life is funny, even in tragedy there’s comedy in there somewhere. The life we go through is a mixture of
tragedy and comedy. Look at so many of
the great Shakespeare plays, the tragedies, he mixes up the tones so well. My God, even in the middle of Macbeth, here
comes the gatekeeper with a long speech about what a pain in the ass it is to
work for Macbeth! That kind of thing
really appeals to me, and Stakeout worked so well because Richard
Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez also think like that, and a lot of scenes that
might have been more straightforward became funny when they got their hands on
it.
One
of the key aspects about Stakeout’s success, for me is that even though
it is for the most part comedic, the villain is genuinely villainous. Very often in those type of films the
antagonist is played for laughs but Aidan Quinn was genuinely terrifying.
JB Yes he was, he was wonderful. And you’re right: if you make a joke out of
the villain, all the tension goes away. You have to make them a real threat. Also, to get that balance right you
have to make choices that seem unpleasant at the time like in Blue Thunder
when Daniel Stern’s character is killed off - which I still don’t know was the
right thing to do - but I was determined to say, ‘Look, these guys are really
serious.’ I’ve second-guessed myself a
thousand times since then. You know, ‘Well,
he did get hit by the car, but maybe somehow we know he’s going to pull through
and maybe that way we won’t break so many people’s hearts so much…’
You’d
have lost that lovely scene after the murder where Roy Scheider is listening to
Daniel Stern’s puppyish excitable voice on the tape.
JB. That’s right and Daniel Stern just played
it beautifully, and the counterpoint with Dan’s message and then Roy’s reaction
as he was listening to it was wonderful.
Well,
it’s been a great privilege to talk to you, and I hope you have enormous,
highly deserved success with the book. It would be very remiss of me not to ask someone of your experience
about your thoughts on the future of cinema, literally movie theatres,
post-Coronavirus.
JB I’m very optimistic that it will come
back but slowly. There is a great desire, and always will be for our younger
audiences to get out of the house and have a night out so they’re not just
locked up watching television. Even though televisions are getting so enormous,
or they’re getting so small that you can carry them around in your pocket,
there’s still that appeal of the theatres. We’re above all social animals, and
that’s what’s making it so hard to control this pandemic. Staying in quarantine
is really, really difficult for us.
Of
course I’m worried about who might go out of business. Plus now the wall
between movies and television has vanished: first-run movies are coming up on
Netflix and Amazon Prime all the time - good movies too, Spike Lee’s new movie Da
5 Bloods, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and they’re willing to pay the
big bucks to make those big movies. And now the Motion Picture Academy has
altered its rules about having to run the movies in theatres first.
Understandable
this year, perhaps but I thought it was a dangerous precedent.
JB Oh my gosh, yes. We wonder if we’re going
to have enough films to even have an Academy Awards this year. It could be like
in the middle of World War II when they just said, ‘We can’t do it.’ It will
come back, just slowly at first. I did read that smaller independent theatre
chains, like the ones in New York showing a lot of foreign films seem to be
doing better than the bigger chains, in being able to get enough people in to
keep them scrabbling along, so as I say, I’m optimistic.
Interview
October 21st/28th 2020.
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(As
well as Cinema Retro, Cai Ross has written movie articles for HeyUGuys.com,
Scream, FilmInquiry and Taste of Hollywood. He’ll be writing about Damien: Omen II in the very next issue of Cinema
Retro (#49). His
mild-mannered alter-ego is a North Wales-based restaurateur, who has written
for BBC Good Food and whose first cook book La Vie Paysanne was published in
2018. He
can be followed on Twitter @CaiRoss21)