Capone With HONEYDRIPPER's John Sayles And Maggie Renzi!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. I don't say this very often about a filmmaker--almost never--but John Sayles is quite simply one of my absolute favorite filmmakers of all time. I've seen every single one of his movies, and nearly every one of them is worth watching more than once. His stories are layered, textured, and always well research. He never repeats himself. He's as interested in educating his audience on a situation or injustice as he is entertaining his audience. He employs working-class ethics to filmmaking, and it's clear that his blood and sweat infuses every frame of his works. He is fiercely committed to making his films free of the Hollywood system, but earns the bulk of his money rewriting and polishing Hollywood films, often without credit. RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7; BABY IT'S YOU; THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET; EIGHT MEN OUT; CITY OF HOPE; LONE STAR; LIMBO; SUNSHINE STATE; SILVER CITY; and many others have come to define Sayles as a gifted writer and a director who adapts his style to suit the material rather than forcing his style on it. Each film almost looks like it was made by a different director. But in his early years, he was all about genre screenwriting, penning such classics as PIRANHA, ALLIGATOR, and THE HOWLING. But more on his genre efforts later. When I heard that Sayles would be coming to town to show his latest work, HONEYDRIPPER, at the Chicago International Film Festival, I began my mission to make certain he and I ended up meeting face-to-face for an interview. Here is the result. I was also fortunate enough to have Sayles' long-time production (and life) partner Maggie Renzi on hand to join in the discussion. HONEYDRIPPER is about the blues, so it's appropriate that we all met at the Sax Hotel (formerly the House of Blues Hotel) in a luxurious bar setting. The film is just now starting to make its way into theaters around the country (it opens in Chicago this Friday), but it's as solid a work as anything Sayles has given us, plus it's got some fantastic music. Enjoy this talk with Sayles, a true hero of independent films and a shining example of a master storyteller.

Capone: You’ve got a little history here in Chicago, with EIGHT MEN OUT being about the White Sox. John Sayles: Yeah, we do.
C: Have you been back much since then? JS: We were at the Chicago Blues Festival with this Honeydripper All Star Band [essentially made up of the musicians from the film] this year. It was really fun. It was beautiful, an incredible day. The weather that day, and everybody in Chicago was out on the water. Maggie Renzi: I want to say it was, like, around July 4. It was spectacular. And, boy, people turn out.
C: For Blues Fest, they definitely do. MR: Yeah, and it was first time we pulled this band together, because they’re not really…Have you seen the movie, yet?
C: Yeah, sure. MR: Okay, you know, they don’t all play together, so Mable [John] doesn’t play with Eddie [Shaw], because Mable said in the story before the band is put together…So, if we put together this band, which is Mable; Eddie; the harmonica player, who is Arthur Lee Williams, who plays with Mable in the beginning of the movie…The little boy who’s the drummer was too young, we couldn’t bring him on the road, so Eddie Shaw’s drummer, Joe, drums; and, Eddie’s bass player, Shorty Gilbert, are part of the band. And, Gary Clark, Jr., and then Henderson Huggins is Danny [Glover's] hands. When you see Danny's hands [his character plays piano in the film] it's this a guy named Henderson Huggins, who lives in Tuscaloosa. So, that’s the Honeydripper All Stars. They played the Monterey Jazz Festival a couple of weeks ago. JS: They’re really good. The Chicago festival was their first gig. And, I think we had a one-hour rehearsal, the first time they’ve ever played together before. “Oh, I know this one.” “Oh, yeah, I know how to play that.”…da-da-da. And, they go off, and they did, like, an hour and a half set that was incredible. MR: Yeah, the joy of seeing people who know what they’re doing. We were just at the San Sebastián Film Festival, which was the European premiere of HONEYDRIPPER. And, Gary Clark came over with Yaya [DaCosta], who plays China Doll. The press loved them. And, the fantastic publicist put together…I found a couple people through the San Sebastián Jazz Festival, which is the connection we have from John and Clint Eastwood at the Monterey Jazz Festival…Gary played with two young musicians. These guys don’t speak any English, but speak Blues lyrics… JS: …with a Southern accent when he sings English lyrics.
C: John, I just want to say that, like any red-blooded American kid growing up in the '80s, of course, I discovered your films through your Bruce Springsteen music videos, but I kept going from there. I was in high school then, and I lived near the University of Maryland. They have a pretty great film program, just in terms of the movie theater on campus and what they would program there. So, right around that time, they played RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7. And I was, like, Okay, this is the guy who did the Bruce Springsteen videos; let’s see what his movies are like. And, I continued on from there. But, I was always kind of curious…Somehow, introducing sort of story elements to his videos, which he really hasn’t done much of since, and he certainly hadn’t done before. JS: You know what’s interesting, he told us. He had done a couple of videos of his songs, and then one of his nieces said, “Well, when are you going to do a real video?” He said, “What’s that mean?” She said, “One that you’re in.” And, so Brian De Palma did that… MR: “Dancing in the Dark.” JS: “Dancing in the Dark,” and then he called us up, and he said, “So, I want to do something with 'Born in the USA,' and I want it to be gritty.” I said, “Well, we do gritty.” And, so must of it was documentary stuff that Ernest Dickerson shot; he went on to shoot Spike Lee films. And, then we covered three shows, I think, and shot…Michael Ballhaus came on to be a camera operator. And, Bruce said, “Well, I don’t want to lip synch. So, I’m going to sing ‘Born in the USA’ all three nights, and I’ll wear the same clothes.” So, it’s rough synch, if you see the videos. [laughs]
C: I have noticed a few times where the lip-synching doesn't quite match. JS: …He goes away from the microphone, and the sound stays on. But, we got to see three Bruce Springsteen concerts. MR: And, I remember…John’s been asked before to do videos, not lately, but in those years, and what you talked about is that Bruce is a storyteller. So, it’s not such a big leap, but since I haven’t actually followed his career after, he’s stopped telling stories in videos? Probably lost interest.
C: Not really, but most of them have become performance clips again, some variation thereof. JS: Well, he’s got the guys who do his big screen for his concerts, and they usually just put something together, you know, from that. And, then with “I’m on Fire,” because he was going to really play a character in that, we decided, How should Bruce Springsteen have an entrance into his first movie? …From under a car.
C: Rolling out from under the car, right. JS: Right, like a Jersey guy should. MR: And, I’m the voice of the woman in that.
C: Oh, really! MR: But, not my beautiful legs. Those are not my legs. We realized we needed to cover the voice, and so I got to do that, which was really fun…to sort of pur-r-r.
C: Was it true…I seem to remember that you won an MTV Award for directing, right? And, I remember you making some reference, you said it was the first time you had ever used a crane? I thought that was so funny, I don’t know why it sticks with me, too. JS: Yeah, well, we had only made three or four movies at the time. MR: And, we got a big budget. Well, you had already made EIGHT MEN OUT, right? JS: Had I? I don't think so.
C: I think the newest one up to that point was THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, 1984. JS: Yeah, BABY, IT’S YOU and THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. So, yeah, those were actually fairly low budget for rock videos. You’re only shooting three minutes, and we had to hire a real crew. MR: It was $50,000, I remember. And, we shot SECAUCUS 7, a feature, for $40,000. So, it was a lot of money for a video. JS: Yeah, for three minutes. Yeah, those were a lot of fun.
C: Let’s talk about HONEYDRIPPER a little bit. I’ve been fascinated with the way that filmmakers have treated the mythology of the Blues. I thought Craig Brewer did a very good job of it earlier this year with BLACK SNAKE MOAN, but this is a little bit more grounded in the reality and the times and, certainly, in the place. Why is 50s Alabama the focal point of this film? JS: Well, some of it is just the technology, which is that…kind of going back through it, the technology made a huge difference. Music is going to change, because life must change and getting faster and kind of attacking you or whatever, so music is going to change one way or the other. But, the technology, very specifically…In 1950, a kid like Sonny Blake in the movie could have gone to a…He wouldn’t have seen an electric guitar, he would have heard of one. He probably wouldn’t have heard one yet on the jukebox. But, he could go to “Popular Electronics,” and there would have been an article about how to build one and what the guys on the West Coast and what the guys on the East Coast were doing. And, he would have said, “Aw, I got to try that.” Because at that point, there had been a few…T-Bone Walker had been playing pretty incredible stuff with a pickup on an acoustic. And, that’s what Guitar Slim--who the Guitar Sam character is based on--was playing, still a pickup on an acoustic. And just, it was hard, even with a good amp, to get a sound out to compete with the sax and a piano, but the minute you had that solid body guitar and a good amp, you could be the front guy, and the piano had to get in the back. So, it’s really that point that I’m talking about with music. Also, I was interested in playing with this idea of that before there was a Civil Rights movement, there were these peaceful stirrings, you know, before what we start calling the Civil Rights movement was happening. And, one of the big deals was the integration of the combat troops in the Korean War, and most of our army bases were still in the South. And, how nervous those towns next to them always were: “Oh god, they’ve got guns over there, and they think they can walk around with the rest of us, because they let them do that on the army base. What’s going to happen when they come into town?” MR: It always interests me that people don’t set a movie in an exact moment and in an exact place, because it raises all those specific questions, and then the questions all get answered specifically. And, that’s by every department, you know, by the actors, by the director, but absolutely, by the art department, by props, by wardrobe. We were really clear that this movie was set in 1950 in Alabama, which was the 40s. For example, when you see the cars, the cars--I didn’t know this--there were no private cars made during the war years, because all of the materiel went to the war. So, the cars that you see are actually cars from the late 30s. And, of course also, most of the people are poor, and the machines are basically recycled. And, a lot of them are actually trucks, and not cars, and that kind of thing just lays these layers of reality on it, and locates people, I think. JS: They’re still hand picking cotton. There was still an itinerant force that would go from place to place and pick it, as well as…almost everybody, white and black in the towns very often, would come out and pick. But, one of the things we had to do in Alabama was have a little seminar on cotton picking where the older people would come and tell the younger people how to do it, because nobody’s hand-picked there for 30 years now.
C: You mentioned the sense of place, and that is something you are always doing, even if you don’t name the place specifically or the country where your stories are taking place, to the point where a lot of your film titles somehow name the place where this is happening. Why that’s so important to you? JS: I started as an actor before I was a writer, or certainly a filmmaker, and one of the things that you’re always looking for as an actor is any little bit of information that helps you figure out how you think and how you see the world. And certainly, the time and place that you come from, you know, so the coming from Harmony, Alabama, in 1950, whether you’re black or white, is very different than coming from urban Chicago in 1992 or Alaska in 1999. So, that’s one of the main reasons, is that I always have this kind of theory that race is an illusion, but culture is real. And, where you come from and what time you were born into really affects the way you see the world. When you do a period movie, you say, Okay, is this before or after Freud? Because that makes a big difference in the way that people kind of figure things out. MR: And, before or after Jim Crow. JS: Right, before or after women’s suffrage, all those kinds of things. EIGHT MEN OUT--one of the things that starts the movie is that Prohibition was coming. So, this is like a kickoff of the Jazz Age. But, it hasn’t quite cut in yet. By 1928, people wouldn’t have been surprised by any corruption. Al Capone was running Cicero and half of Chicago. People would have been, like, “Oh yeah, the baseball players, they’re on the take like every cop we know.” But, in 1919, when that story broke, it was, “No, that can’t be, that can’t possibly be.” The corruption that came with Prohibition hadn’t hit quite yet. MR: You’re not a fantasist. Even THE HOWLING or PIRANHA or any of them is really about…
C: Fine films, though. I love them. MR:…is really about the biology of those fantastic animals, as real as the biology can get. The same thing is true with your other movies. I don’t know what you are, a naturalist or a realist or whatever, but you enjoy exploring the reality. That’s one of the things that John says, that he likes to make a movie about something that he doesn’t know everything about, so he gets to investigate it.
C: I do get a sense every time I watch one of your films that you have done a tremendous amount of research, that you just really dove in headfirst. JS: Yeah, we always do…Mason Daring, the composer, and I, musically, so we listen to everything we can from that area and period. And then, talk about the philosophy and the soundtrack. For instance, for MATEWAN, we really listened to a lot of hill music and then just said, “Okay, but we’re going to take the banjo out,” you know, because of [composers Lester] Flatt and [Earl] Scruggs with BONNIE AND CLYDE, and just the feel of the banjo. This isn’t a banjo [film]. DELIVERENCE. So, we’re taking the banjo out. But, yeah, I do that. And, on top of that, the kind of realism that…In a lot of our movies, there’s been this tiny little touch of magical realism. So, Keb’ Mo’s character in this, he’s not really real. He’s only seen by two characters, you know. MR: THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH isn’t real.
C: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. You’ve got a whole movie that is a fairy tale. MR: BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. JS: But in SUNSHINE STATE, there’s the golfers who are probably not, you know? In MEN WITH GUNS, there’s the woman who can kind of see into the future. MR: Not that you don’t employ it. JS: Or, THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET.
C: It’s certainly based in reality. I mean, what happens if… MR: And, I think that’s what you mean about actors. The characters aren’t real, but if you can locate them in a real place, you have a better shot at making a character who feels flesh and blood. It often happens to us when we see movies. They’re like forms of characters, but there’s no heart and soul. I tend to say this. MICHAEL CLAYTON I saw the other day, and I thought, you know, Who’s real in this? Who’s really real? I know the Mommy’s making lunch and things like that, but who’s real in this? JS: And, that was a movie you liked. MR: That was a movie I liked. But, I often think how hard it is for actors to make all the decisions that you need to make in every scene that you’re making, if it’s not really located. JS: Yeah. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been disappointed. I think I’ve written five or six movies for other people than myself set in Chicago. And, not one of them has been shot here.
C: Really? JS: Yeah, …in Toronto. We ended up shooting EIGHT MEN OUT in Indianapolis and Cincinnati. And, if they’re period movies, the city has changed. But also, it’s just a little bit more expensive, and so they go to Toronto, or they go somewhere else. It doesn’t look like Chicago. C: But still, a lot of movies have been shooting here this year. I don’t know if any of them have been period films, but they certainly take advantage of the older looking buildings and stuff. MR: Good.
C: In this film, you have a nice mix of very established actors and then some unknowns, musicians. How do you work differently with those people? JS: You know, you don’t really work differently with them. They don’t even get paid differently. This is a fairly low-budget movie for how ambitious it is, so people are all getting paid the same. And, we just try to find with actors what’s going to help them. What you find is that you’ve got to handicap them very quick, if you haven’t worked with them before, and it’s, like, Okay, is this an actor who wants a lot of information? Is this an actor who wants no information at all? Are they good on their first couple of takes? Or, do they need some warming up? And so, you have two or three actors in a scene and maybe one you say, “Well, he always likes a little warming up, so let’s not point the camera at him first. Let’s have the camera over his shoulder first.” And, he gets to do it off screen or over the shoulder four or five times before we turn over, and then he’ll be really kind of hitting on all cylinders, whereas there’s other people who…their first couple of takes are brilliant and then they start to second guess themselves or whatever, and you want to get them on right away. So, really, it’s not about whether they’re well known or not. It’s about whether they’re somebody who wants to sit and philosophize for a while the day before they do it, because we don’t have time on the day, or do they really come very prepared, and they just want to be left alone until you need to adjust something, through the whole scene? A lot of it is, I think, with very well-known actors…is how generous an actor they are. And, the great thing about this one was that all of our well-known actors are really generous actors, so when they’re in a scene with somebody who is not so well-known, who they haven’t worked with before, or even sometimes brand new actors, people who have never acted before, these guys were very generous, you know, Mary Steenburgen and Stacy Keach and Danny [Glover] and Charles Dutton.
C: I was so happy to see Dutton in this film, because I feel like I haven’t seen him in a long time. And, I love the guy. JS: On screen, yeah. The only other movie that I ever had anything with him to do with was I did a couple drafts of MIMIC, the giant cockroach movie, and Charles was in it. And, the studio kept changing the best-friend role that Charles played from a nerdy Jewish guy to a streetwise Black guy. And, when I saw the movie--and I had written both versions in early scripts--there were lines from both of them. And, somehow Charles pulled them off. MR: It was a very collegial group. I mean, I think it just blew everybody away. Like when Danny showed up, because we had a five-week shoot and he only came for the last three and a half weeks, so he was the lead, And, I have to think that when he came onto the set, he realized “It's all black folks, all black folks.” Except for Stacy Keach, he virtually…and they became a really great society. And, I think it was a great experience, if you talk to, like, Kel Mitchell, who’s from Chicago and we saw him last night, or Sean Patrick Thomas, and certainly people like Gary Clark. He was so lucky to be in this group of older actors who really looked out for him. Brent Jennings, who has the small part of the guy who’s cotton picking with him, he came to us and said, “I could give him a little seminar, if you’d like, on how to read a script and how… JS: …to get more comfortable. MR:…yeah, and study a scene and get more comfortable. And, they spent a Saturday together. It really helped. JS: Walking around the parking lot doing their scene.
C: You mentioned a few of the writing assignments that you’ve had, especially the genre films, but you’ve never directed one of those. I don’t know if I’d necessarily put THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET in that category. Has that never interested you? JS: No, it’s a year of your life, one way or the other. And, a lot of those movies are getting made.
C: Yeah, now. JS: But, even when I started, there were a lot of those movies getting made, so I didn’t feel like I need to make one of these movies, because there’s a lot of them on the screen. And, certainly, there’s elements of them: so there’s element of Western in MATEWAN, and there’s elements of sci-fi in THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, and every once in a while, there’ll be a shootout or something like that, that has elements of other genres. And then, actually, I like writing them, so I kind of get the fun of writing them, and then it’s somebody else’s problem to shoot all this stuff and afford how to do it. I worked for James Cameron. I did this big science fiction movie, and the great thing about writing for him is you could write anything, and if he likes it, he’ll invent it. It doesn’t even have to exist yet. And, they haven’t made this movie yet. I wish they would. MR: Is that the giant termite movie? JS: Yeah, it’s called BROTHER TERMITE, not GIANT TERMITE. MR: Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. JS: It’s bulb-headed aliens who have taken over the White House--since the 50s. And, they’re just coming out of the closet, pretending like they just arrived and really need help. MR: It’s a really great script. JS: But, it was really fun to write, partly because….you know, when I was writing for Roger Corman, he would always say, “Oh, don’t worry about the budget,” but then you get this panicked call from the director, saying, “I’ve only got four weeks to shoot this.” But, working for Cameron, literally, he was inventing new technology.
C: How long ago was that? JS: That was right before he did TITANIC. I don’t know what year it was. So, we went off to Mexico to shoot our little MEN WITH GUNS for a million dollars, or whatever it was, two million dollars. And, he went off to shoot TITANIC.
C: I know that you wrote a draft or a rewrite of JURASSIC PARK IV. Is that still the one they’re working off of? JS: I have no idea.
C: I’ve heard some pretty crazy things about what’s in that. JS: Yeah, if they’re working, what they’re working on…As a screenwriter, you kind of do your drafts, and I did two or three drafts of it, and then, they may put the thing on hiatus for a while. And, I’ve worked on a screenplay for Sydney Pollack that he had had work done on, like, 15 years earlier. He had bought the book, and then, 15 years later, said, “Here’s an actor who might be good for this.” And then, you revise it for a while, and then he put it on the shelf again. So, who knows. It’s, like, EIGHT MEN OUT, I started with Martin Sheen at third base and ended up with Charlie Sheen in centerfield. John Huston, when he made that Kipling one [THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING], he ended up with Sean Connery and Michael Caine, and he had started with, like, Cary Grant, trying to make it. Basically, sometimes it’s that they keep working, and sometimes, they actually say, “Well, let’s rethink this” or “We don’t have time to do this now.” And, when they come back, they come back with new guys. MR: And, they don’t stay in touch. JS: No. MR: I mean, you never hear, “That’s over, or…” It’s interesting to me, I mean, we’ll hear that a movie is going into production with a completely different writer, or, like this JURASSIC PARK thing, because it was on imdb has gotten… JS: A life of its own. MR: It’s been dead, as far as John is concerned, but… JS: People think that it’s already come out. MR: So, you literally have no idea. JS: No. I wrote two animated films for Fox, and on the second one, [I thought] It’s taking them a long time to ask for another draft. I had done two or three drafts on it. And, finally, I called them, because usually they call you with their notes, and it was really like they were.…It was like the end of PATTON, where you heard all this furniture being moved in the background, and it was, “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t you know we dropped our animation department two weeks ago.” But, they weren’t going to call me. Not that I didn’t have other things to do.
C: I have a list of things that I wanted to ask you about that supposedly you had some hand in the writing of, like THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. JS: Yeah, I actually am going to get a credit. They gave three writers credit on that. I hope it’s good. I’m looking forward to it.
C: It comes out early next year, I think? JS: Yeah.
C: And then, A COLD CASE. JS: …a long time ago. I have no idea if, or…I imagine they’ve had other writers on it since then, but that’s Tom Hanks’s company.
C: Yeah, and I know that at least the director they originally had attached to it was doing at least one other thing before that. JS: Yeah, I don’t know, but it’s several years ago. So, actually, Tom Hanks was about eight years too young for the part. By the time they do it, maybe, he might be the same age as the guy it’s written about. Maybe they’re waiting for him to be the same age.
C: Speaking of monster movies, at least the director that’s attached to that project now is making a WOLF MAN remake with Benicio Del Toro. I was at a screening here in Chicago of LIMBO many years ago. I think you were actually there for it, at the old Art Institute Film Center. JS: With a lot of Siemaszkos and Mastrantonios. [Casey Siemaszko and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio were both in LIMBO] MR: …because those are from here. JS: A lot of their clans showed up.
C: I’m sure you heard, at the time, the collective gasp at the end of the movie, and then the moaning that quickly follows. JS: It was interesting. I would say, as the reactions came in, about one-third of the people got it right away. About another third got it the next day, and said, “Okay, okay, I get it now.” And, a third never… MR: …have not forgiven you. JS: To the point where we’ve talked to people who own video stores. They say, “You know, people take the movie back to us and say, ‘There’s something wrong with this DVD' or 'The last reel is missing'” or something like that. MR: We were amused by the end of “The Sopranos.”
C: I was just going to say, I don’t think people have been that… MR: There’s a little blog conversation about it. JS: We thought that was very elegant, in a way, because you know exactly what’s going to happen with “The Sopranos.” You don’t need to see it.
C: In both cases, if they had actually traditionally written an ending, people would have inevitably been disappointed it. JS: And the family is together, And, I think [David Chase] wanted that, and he gave everybody a little curtain call. So, it’s, like, Okay, we’re off now. But, there were people who said, “And, my TV went on the fritz, but then it…”
C: That’s what I thought, yeah. Is doing a rewrite or a polish a less stressful job than something you’re aiming to direct? JS: Well, you certainly don’t have the emotional involvement, or you shouldn’t have the emotional involvement, When I’m going to direct something, I have to think, We’re really going to have to do this thing, and we’re going to have to find the money to do it. Whereas, when I’m writing for somebody else, they’re going to have to find the money to do it. But, literally, I don’t think about production while I’m writing for other people, unless they’ve asked me to do very specific things. So, in some ways, I have a little bit more freedom to just kind of go crazy with the production value. Well, it’s a different job. You’re helping somebody else tell their story. So, I’ve had movies where, John Frankenheimer, on one movie, just before I took the job, he said, “Oh, yeah, everybody’s Chinese in the script. Make ’em Japanese, because I can get Toshiro Mifune to do this. And, three days later, they were all Japanese, and so were the martial arts, and so was the culture. Whereas, if that were my movie, I’d say, “No way. I’m making a movie about Chinese people.”
C: Because you had researched the hell out of Chinese culture? JS: Because it’s a different story, you know. Even if it’s just a martial arts story, it’s a different story. So, your job is so different. You really are an employee, and you’re trying to help them, usually get a green light, is what you’re trying to do. Sometimes, it’s more specific than that. As a writer, a screenwriter for hire, sometimes I just get a book, sometimes just an idea and just start from scratch, and sometimes it’s been five or six screenplays in before I get it, and they say, “Forget all this, and here’s the idea we want to do.”
C: One of these days, I would just love to sit down and talk about all the writing work you’ve done, because it’s all other…life, almost. MR: I wish you would, partly because I would’ve said somebody--and it’s got to be you--starts telling people that this word ‘script doctor’ is a misnomer. It’s not like John comes in and, like, tinkers with two or three scenes. Now, there’s a couple times you’ve done that, I would say the Sharon Stone one, what was that called? It had a silly name. JS: THE RAPID AND THE VAPID? Oh no, it was THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. I actually did the whole… MR: Did you do the whole relay with that? Okay. JS: I’ve done a couple of things where I’ve come in and they wanted to just…I did something over a weekend. But THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, I actually did a couple drafts. MR: Because people have this idea of there’s ‘script doctoring’, and then there’s ‘rewriting’. Well, basically, it’s from the ground up all the way through, on every one of them. I feel sort of fierce about that, because people say, “What’s about this script doctoring?”
C: I’m fascinated by it, because that version of your career seems much more well documented. But still, every time you mention a new project, it’s, like, I’ve never heard about that one. That sounds great. MR: Let’s try to find some time to do that, on the phone or something like that, if you’d like to, because I think it’s an interesting story.
C: I'd love to make that happen. Thank you so much.

Here's hoping that second interview comes through. I’m still working on it.

Capone