Hey there all you tobacco and anti-tobacco fans, Harry here with a public service announcement about Quint and his interview with Curtis Hanson.... Director of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and WONDER BOYS, among many others. It might depress you to no end to realize that Curtis Hanson decided to talk almost exclusively about film, his career and experiences making movies... and seemed to not even give a speck of thought to the question of his favorite Dirty Joke. You know, often times folks laugh about this question or use it to rain down criticism upon our trusty seaman Quint.... Well, your favorite Dirty Joke is instrumental in doing two things with your subject. One, it instantly reveals the inner ID of the person trying to come up with the joke.... Two it loosens their guard and gets them into more of a chat/informal feeling, thereby loosening the bonds of the ME: JOURNALIST, YOU: MISERABLE SOUL... But in not answering that question... are we also not revealing quite a bit more about the interviewee? Think about it! No, seriously... think about it! Does Curtis not have a single favorite dirty joke? Nothing that he tells in the secret corner of the FORMOSA CAFE? Hmmmm.... I wonder, boy do I wonder. Enough with the melancholy, onto the jolly...
Ahoy there, squirts! 'Tis I, the forever crusty seaman, Quint, here once more, this time with a little scar-sharin' with writer/director and Golden Globe nominee Curtis Hanson. You might remember Curtis as the director of The River Wild with Meryl Streep, Bad Influence with James Spader and Rob Lowe, Bedroom Window with Steve Guttenburg (HARRY NOTE: If you fucking remember BEDROOM WINDOW with Steve Friggin Guttenburg please go to MR SHOWBIZ now!), Losin' It with Tom Cruise or more recently as the cowriter and director of LA Confidential. Curtis' last film, Wonder Boys, is up for a few Golden Globes. So, everybody out there think good thoughts about Curtis, Michael Douglas and Wonder Boys tomorrow!
One side note: Those familiar with my interviews know about my favorite question, involving a vulgarity issuing forth from the interviewee in some way shape or form. As is evident at the end of the interview, Curtis couldn't come up with a joke and promised to send it to me via phone line or email box. Alas, it has not gotten to me. I mean, it's not like the guy has to prepare for any big awards cerimony where his film is likely to gather some gold or anything. I promise that if I get his joke in the next few days, I'll zip it right up to Harry who'll smack it on this sucka.
I also wanna add quickly that the damn shark has been at it again and somehow got seawater in my computer, so it's out of service for a bit. I'm currently having to slum off other people with internet access, so if you email me give me a few days to get back to ya'. So, for those Curtis Hanson fans out there, or those just discovering his talent, here's the interview that covers just about every flick he's ever done. Enjoy!
QUINT: WE READY?
CURTIS HANSON: I think I'm ready.
Q: I THINK I'M READY, TOO. LET'S DO THIS, THEN.
CH: You will edit this, I presume.
Q: YEAH, A LITTLE PROBABLY.
CH: OK, good.
Q: YOUR FIRST FILM WAS A HORROR MOVIE CALLED SWEET KILL. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?
CH: (Pause) How much detail do you want, Quint? (laughs)
Q: I'LL TAKE HOWEVER MUCH YOU WANNA GIVE ME.
CH: OK. Well, it really wasn't my first film. Actually, my first screen credit was the Dunwich Horror which I co-wrote. Part of what was good about that experience was I was able to go on location while they were shooting the movie and write scenes that would literally be shot the next day.
So, I learned a lot. I also met the executive producer of the movie who was Roger Corman. We had some conversations about me writing and directing because that's what I wanted to do. He was starting a little distribution company called New World and he said he'd be interested in cofinancing and distributing a picture if it was a motorcycle movie, a movie about women in prison or nurses... candy striped nurses.
I went, "Isn't there anything else?" 'Cause motorcycles... that genre had been going strong for quite a while. The others gave lots of opportunities for bare breasts or what's often called a "Hard R." I said, "Isn't there anything else?" and he said, "Well... A modern horror movie." That appealed to me as having more possibilities, so I wrote very quickly a script about an emotionally confused young woman who kills guys.
Roger read it and his response was, "I liked it, but it was a little too different having a woman be the killer." So, I then basically rewrote it and made the killer male and then we proceeded into this production with Tab Hunter playing the part.
Q: I'VE TRIED TO FIND THIS FILM, LOOKED EVERYWHERE WITH LITTLE SUCCESS.
CH: You won't find it under that tile because... I mean, it actually was a very unhappy experience. It was one of many that I had on early pictures I did. The picture got retitled and became The Arousers. It was recut to some degree and more bare breasts were put into it. It was the first time I learned the lesson that I had the opportunity to learn multiple times after that which is: If you're going to risk being wrong, it's better to be wrong with your own mistakes than with somebody else's.
Unfortunately, to follow through with that you have to have some power. It literally wasn't until Bad Influence that I was able to actually finish the picture the way that I wanted to.
Q: WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF YOUR EARLY FILMS, YOU COWROTE ONE OF MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE UNKNOWN FILMS, WHITE DOG.
CH: Yes.
Q: YOU DID THAT WITH SAM FULLER. I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO SEE IT AT A SAM FULLER RETROSPECT HELD AT THE UT CAMPUS BY THE LOCAL FILM SOCIETY. I SAW 5 OR 6 SAM FULLER FILMS THERE INCLUDING WHITE DOG.
CH: Great! How long ago was this?
Q: ABOUT 3 OR 4 YEARS AGO. IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY THEY WERE GOING TO BRING HIM OUT FOR THE LAST FILM, BUT HE COULDN'T MAKE IT DUE TO ILL HEALTH AND HE DIED SHORTLY THEREAFTER.
CH: Yes.
Q: SO, HOW DID YOU TEAM UP WITH SAM FULLER TO DO WHITE DOG?
CH: Well, again that's one that potentially there's a very long answer to. I didn't go to film school. What I did was I started... In fact instead of going to college, I started writing about movies and taking pictures of the people that made them. I wrote something about Sam Fuller that he liked. I then met him and we really hit it off. This was when I was 19. Over the years we just became friends. He was just a very generous friend and a kind of mentor in a way, if you will.
Then I stared developing my own filmmaking career and as coincidence would have it I was sort of developing this two pronged career. On the one hand, I was trying to direct. On the other hand, I was writing more successfully on bigger projects.
One of these projects I was hired to do was an adaptation of Romain Gary's novella, White Dog. At the time I was writing it Roman Polanski was going to direct it. Then he got into his legal problems and a lot of things happened, but basically the script sat on the shelf for several years at Paramount.
Now, I had talked to Sammy about it at the time I was writing it because he knew Romain Gary and was interested in the story. We had just kind of chatted about it. Then about 5 years later they took it off the shelf and contacted me to see if I would be interested in rewriting it. They wouldn't let me direct it, though. I tried to get it and direct. When that failed rather than rewrite it for somebody else, I said "Well, why don't you get Sam Fuller to direct this?"
There was a strike, oddly enough it was kinda like right now, there was a strike looming and they were in a hurry to make some pictures. Sam, I knew, was not only available, but eager for work. They hired him and then they hired me to work with Sam and write a new script. We needed to write it in 3 weeks because of this potential strike.
So, I ended up in the dream position of collaborating with this guy whose work I had so admired over my entire movie going life who was also a friend of mine. The thing that was unique about it was it was actually the only time Sam ever cowrote anything with anybody. And of course the goal was to produce the script that Sam wanted for his movie because, naturally, this was now a Sam Fuller movie. We used some of the structural elements from my original script, but basically we started over again.
It was a great experience professionally and personally. The unfortunate thing about it is, as you know, the picture came under this cloud of controversy which was totally absurd. It was based on remarks made by people who had never even seen the movie. The picture literally became sort of too hot to handle and Paramount... they didn't release it, they shelved it. Then it was sold to network television and again people made some controversy about it and it was pulled from that showing. Yet, it was released around the world to really tremendous reviews and in the last few years has surfaced intermittently in the United States.
It's tragic. The thing that's so sad about it is it turned out to be the last movie Sam made in Hollywood. Sam fuller, and I say this as somebody, not just a friend of Sam's, but also somewhat of a knowledgeable film fan. I don't think there's any filmmaker who over the course of his career dealt with the racial texture of the United States in as inventive and thought-provoking of a way as Sam Fuller did. Literally, when you start thinking about that aspect of it and go through his movies one after the other, he deals with the ethnic mosaic that is our country. For him to be tarred with a completely absurd charge of racism was not only unfair, but it was ridiculous. The whole point of White Dog is that racism's something that is taught. Of course, the dog is a metaphor, that it can even be taught to man's best friend. So, on the one hand it was a high point of my career, but emotionally it was really disappointing what happened to the movie and to Sam after the fact.
You know, the amazing thing, I have to say one last personal thing about Sam, the amazing thing about it is as disappointed as he was with that and other career setbacks that he had during the length of time I knew him, he never betrayed anger. Disappointment yes, but no bitterness. That was one of the inspiring things about Sammy that no matter how many hardships he faced he would just go back out to his office and his Royal Upright Typewriter and just keep on working on his scripts.
Q: YOU DIRECTED A FILM EARLY ON IN YOUR CAREER CALLED LOSIN' IT, WHICH WAS ONE OF TOM CRUISE'S FIRST FILMS.
CH: Yes. Again, not a happy experience. A picture I'm proud of the work we all did, but it was again taken away, retitled, re-edited and music was stuck in I didn't like.
You know, Bad Influence was the first movie where I did do what I wanted with the music all the way through and then LA Confidential and Wonder Boys were the two other ones.
Music, I think, is a very important part of the filmmaking process and it's really frustrating when songs are jammed in for the wrong reasons and scores are put in, again, not in the most effective way, which gets back to that lesson I told you I learned early on. Better to make your own mistakes then the mistakes of other people 'cause you end up living with them a lot longer than they do.
Q: YOU MENTIONED BAD INFLUENCE. I JUST RECENTLY WATCHED THE FILM AND IT KICKS SOME ASS. I NOTICED IT WAS ONE OF DAVID KOEPP'S FIRST SCREENPLAYS.
CH: Yes.
Q: HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING WITH HIM ON THAT?
CH: What happened on that was first off, David was a big fan of a picture I had written called The Silent Partner. When he wrote Bad Influence, which actually had elements in it that were kind of inspired by The Silent Partner, I think this is something David would be the first to say himself, the people who financed the movie were going, "Who should we get to direct this?" As it happened, one of them was a big fan of The Bedroom Window and said, "Well, what about that guy?" and David went, "That's a great idea!"
So, David and I got together. Bad Influence is a movie that I'm very proud of, actually. It was the first movie where I was pretty much, within the confines of budget and obvious considerations like that, I was pretty much able to follow through with this all the way to the end including the choice of music, right down to the end. Coincidentally it was the first movie that I worked on with the music supervisor Carol Fenclon who also did Wonder Boys.
You know, we really tried to use the music to illustrate one of the themes of the movie which was the Rob Lowe character is introducing the James Spader character not only to the other side of the city in which he lives, which is a city that is multiethnic and so forth and has international or world music, but also to the dark side of himself. So, we tried to get music that would help illustrate that as well as production locations and extras and so forth and so on.
Q: WHEN I WAS CALLED ABOUT DOING THIS INTERVIEW, I SAID, "OH CRAP! I BETTER DO SOME RESEARCH!" AND I RENTED 4 OR 5 OF YOUR MOVIES THAT I HADN'T SEEN AND OF THEM BAD INFLUENCE WAS THE ONE I WATCHED TWICE.
CH: Oh, good. It's a favorite of mine. You know, it comes down to a number of things. Working with actors, you know, character work and working with actors are two of the things I enjoy most about directing and a great part of that is casting. So, I'm really proud, for instance, that Losin' It had Tom's first starring role and also Shelly Long before Night Shift and Cheers. With Bad Influence I'm really proud of the work that Spader and Lowe did.
It was unfortunate for Rob Lowe that his whole video scandal happened the week of rehearsals because Rob's performance and movie suffered from everything being all about that ridiculous video thing that he was stupid enough to get involved with. But I'm really proud of his work in the movie and I'm very happy for Rob that he's outlasted it. By just kind of laying low and making some good choices he's outlasted that.
Q: YOU LOVE WORKING WITH ACTORS, HUH? WELL... I READ THAT YOU TRIED TO KILL MERYL STREEP ON THE SET OF RIVER WILD!
CH: Hardly. (laughs). Hardly. No, Meryl was absolutely fabulous in that movie and what lead to the story you're talking about... when we were filming a scene, she got thrown in the rapids.
Naturally, that was an extremely scary moment., the last thing you want to see happen to anybody, especially your star. But, to Meryl's tremendous credit, she took on that part of a woman who was really defined by her physicality and threw herself into it with complete dedication that one expects from her reputation in terms of other kinds of roles. She really learned to handle the oars and became very sufficient and was able to do almost all of her own rowing.
Naturally, the heavy duty stunts you had a stunt double, but Meryl did a tremendous amount of rowing in that picture. In many ways, in all the movies I've done, the two actors who from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie were my complete partners were Meryl and Michael Douglas.
Without Meryl's enthusiasm and dedication for what we were trying to accomplish that movie never could have been made because it was all real. It was not a movie where it was done with putting actors faces on other people's bodies and stuff like that. It was real.
Q: AND I THINK THAT SHOWS THROUGH ON THE ACTUAL FILM. YOU GET A WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL OF INVOLVEMENT WHEN YOU CAN SEE THE ACTORS ACTUALLY IN THERE DOING IT.
CH: That was what attracted us both to the story. It was an opportunity to tell a story that was reality based with a woman at the center of it with her skills and personal problems as well. You know, the media tended to look on it... they labelled it as Meryl trying to be Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger which wasn't what we were after at all. The gratifying thing is when I do publicity on movies, especially internationally, The River Wild and Meryl's performance are some of the things I get asked about the most. Meryl showed another side of herself in that performance. People really responded to it.
CLICK HERE TO ENJOY THE SPECTACULAR PART TWO OF THE QUINT/CURTIS HANSON INTERVIEW!!! INCLUDING A LENGTHY DISCUSSION ABOUT L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and WONDER BOYS!
