INT: If you were talking to a person who said, "I want to be a Director." Qualities of a Director that you know about yourself that you might say, okay, here are things that you want to be able to either have as your capacities or recommend that you develop. What qualities do you think are good for being a Director? This is sort of self-reflective, but still. 

JL: That are mine, or that I... [INT: Well they're yours or that you observed, either way.] Well, I... it is amazing how many Directors don't know what they want, and I've just worked on many movies where you realize the Director doesn't know what he's doing. I mean, he knows what he's doing, he just doesn't have the movie in his head, and is sort of like flumping around, and that's very strange. And you know, Carl Reiner, I saw an interview with Carl Reiner once where they said, "You know, what's the hardest thing about being a Director?" And he said, "You know the hardest part about being a Director? [LAUGH]" They said, "What?" "In the morning, when they come up to you and say, "Where can we park the trucks?" And I thought that's really brilliant, cause it means we can't look that way. [LAUGH] Gee...

INT: Well, it's interesting you just said that, all right. For you, then, when you've picked a script to work on, do you have the movie in mind cause of what you just said? 

JL: I have a version of the movie in mind. It can change during production. And it can change for many reasons, sometimes cause the Actors are not giving you the movie you had in mind, or the physical limitations of the weather or the equipment, or the crew, or the... whatever it was, you know. I forgot, but one of the famous Directors said movies are constant compromise, and it's true, you're constantly solving problems, and moving forward. [INT: In your mind, will you visualize, for example, when you read the script for ANIMAL HOUSE, and I remember that script. And you made a totally different movie, at least from my mind, I mean, I read an earlier version of it.] Well, I was gonna say, I was hired originally on ANIMAL HOUSE to supervise the rewrite, and I did have it rewritten, I made a lot of changes. It's still very much Doug Kenney, Harold Ramis and Chris Miller's movie, I mean they wrote it. But I did make a lot of changes. [INT: And the question here that I'm asking is, in the process of, as a Director, you know cause some Directors do not visualize. They do when they're working, cause they're actually, then, working with the physicality of the stuff, but they don't necessarily see the movie in their head. Some do a great deal, and some hire people to show them the movie in their head and whether it's pre-vis today or storyboards yesterday.] Well one of the, my wife designed a big movie for a big Director, I won't say who, but I was quite taken aback, because he hired... he had like seven or eight different storyboard, really expensive big storyboard guys, this is years ago. Storyboarded the entire movie, and then he sort of picked and chose, and I always storyboarded where I told 'em what to draw. So I was like, "Can he do that?" [LAUGH] I was thinking, "Gee." But why not, I guess, you know. [INT: If you can pay him.] Yeah, sure, if it's a better idea than you had. [INT: So for you though, then, you do see the movie in your head?] Sometimes, sometimes not. I mean, I have a vision of... [INT: I mean, did you see your first movie in your head, when you were doing SCHLOCK?] I had specific parts of it I saw in my head. I didn't have the skills to realize a lot of it, but SCHLOCK is a low budget parody of low budget movies, and so I could get away with a lot of bad acting and bad looking things because that was accurate, you know. [LAUGH]

INT: Now, how did you get that one going [SCHLOCK]? 

JL: Well, SCHLOCK... see, I always wanted to be a Director when I grew up, so long story, but I was a mail boy and when I was 18, I was a mail boy for a year, then I went to Mexico on CATCH-22, I was there for a month, I hated it. I hated it because the first unit with Mike Nichols was over there with Orson Welles and Alan Arkin and Jack Gilford and all these amazing... Richard Benjamin and, you know, Bob Balaban and Art Garfunkel and these like... Marty Balsam, I mean Normal Fell, Bob Newhart, there were like... Jon Voight, with all these people over there, but I was with the Confederate Air Force and these Brits and Bundy [Andrew Marton], this old Hungarian, and we were in B-25s taking off and landing and flying and circling and it was horrible, beautiful place, but it was... I just thought I'm learning nothing about filmmaking. And so I went back to the mail room, I quit, and about six months later, Bundy said, "I'm going to do this MGM movie, second unit on an MGM movie in Yugoslavia called THE WARRIORS, which was released as KELLY'S HEROES, Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Don Rickles, big World War II comedy. [INT: Is this how you got Sutherland to...] Yeah, that's how I met... well, I met Donald Sutherland when I was a mail boy at Fox. I was carrying my round, and they were shooting M*A*S*H and it was outside stage 17, I think, but there was.. That was something I learned, was seeing the first cut of M*A*S*H, I saw what was presented to the studio, rejected by the studio, and then I saw it again, and when you see M*A*S*H, they keep cutting to this loud speaker and there's all these announce... that was all done later in post. All that really funny stuff was done later by a loop group. And it was interesting it was like, "Oh, you can do stuff like that," you know.

JL: So Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are forcing around, fooling around, I don't know what they were doing, they were probably under the influence. But they were outside the stage in their fatigues, and I'm walking by, and Elliott kinda tripped me, and my stuff went all over the place. And I was like, "Fuck you." I was furious, and I was 17. And Donald was really upset, he said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, look my friend didn't mean, he's really a nice guy." [LAUGH] Donald Sutherland going on and on and on, I'm thinking, "Who the fuck are these guys?" You know, I just thought, oh, I hate these guys, Actors. But he helped me... anyway, so that's when I first met Donald Sutherland. And then, KELLY'S HEROES, a year later or two years later, whenever I was in Yugoslavia, spent nine months in Yugoslavia with Don... I babysat for Kiefer, you know, and spent nine months with Don, and we became very good friends. And he remembered, he said, "Oh, you know Elliott's," I remember his first words were like, "You know, Elliott's really a good guy. I mean he didn't, I mean I know that was kind of a jerk, but he didn't mean..." [INT: So how's this leading to SCHLOCK.] Well, that's how I got... that's how ANIMAL HOUSE got made, because I knew Donald Sutherland, we were friends, and he was a big star then, big star. And you know, this is two years, many years later, you know, many years later, cause Donald did a walk, a cameo in KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, you know. Which at the time was a big joke. Now when you see it I don't think it's big, but at the time it was like, "And Donald Sutherland as the clumsy waiter in this parody of a movie trailer." And it would be like now, saying, well, there is no star that big, I mean, Brad Pitt I guess, or Tom Cruise, I don't know, as the clumsy waiter. [LAUGH] But anyway, so now I'm making ANIMAL HOUSE, and the studio really hated my cast, they were very upset with most of who I was casting. They had very specific ideas and I had very different ideas. And when I cast... I asked Jack Webb to be Dean Wormer, who thought I was crazy. He would have been great, but I saw OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, the movie, and John Vernon had this black beard and these blue eyes, and I remembered him from POINT BLANK. But in THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES he has a line of dialogue where he says, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining." [LAUGH] And I thought, "Dean Wormer," because you know he's got lines like, you know, I don't, "The time has come for someone to put their foot down and that foot is me," or shit like that, and I just thought... so when I hired John Vernon, Ned Tanen who was head of the studio went nuts. "He's a TV Actor, what the hell are you doing?" He was furious, he was furious that I cast Cesare Danova as the mayor of the town, the mob boss. I said, "But he was the Godfather in MEAN STREETS. He was in CLEOPATRA." "It's Cesare Danova, he's in Elvis movies," you know, just hated my cast.

INT: How did you get away with getting the cast? [for ANIMAL HOUSE] 

JL: Well I got, well John Belushi and Chevy Chase, it was not gonna be made if I didn't get John or Chevy, who were the break out names from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. And I didn't want Chevy, because I was actually probably wrong, but I felt at the time I wanted people to accept these people as the characters. I didn't want, you know, Chevy Chase, you know, he's always Chevy Chase and he's not, you know, he's a personality. And by the way, I think Chevy's wonderful in THREE AMIGOS, I was very happy with him in that. But still, for my own brain at that time, I didn't want him. So who did I cast, oh, Tim Matheson, and they were like, "He's been on television, you know what the hell," you know, I mean, they just hated my cast. And when I cast Vernon [John Vernon], that was the straw that.. [INT: No, but you had Belushi though, so therefore they were letting you now cast it?] I was casting away, but I hadn't gotten a green light. I'd, you know, and I'd gone to work on that movie, we were in pre-production. [INT: All right, we gotta go back.] The end of the story is he said, Ned Tanen said, "If you don't get me one goddamn movie star, I'm not makin' the picture." So I thought, well, the only movie star I know really well is Donald Sutherland. So I called Donald and I said, "I want you to be in Animal House," and he said, "What's ANIMAL HOUSE?" I said, "It's a movie for Universal," and I explained it to him. And he said, the famous story about that is he said, "Well that's MCA, I can't do that for scale, you gotta pay me," and you know, and he was shooting for Phil Kaufman, he was shooting THE BODY SNATCHERS, INVASION OF [INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS]... In San Francisco. So we're in Eugene, you could just fly up. So the part was not in the movie, I had Doug Kenney invent the part, basically. There was a teacher that Katy slept with, but the actual scene where Donald's teaching, that wasn't in the script, Doug made that up. [INT: And the smoking scene?] That was in the script, the teacher she slept with. But so Donald agreed to do it, and you know, the famous story is he said, "But it's Universal, they gotta pay me." Now, I was paid as Director, 50,000 dollars. John Belushi as the star was paid 50,000 dollars. The highest paid individual on that movie was the horse and the horse trainer, cause that cost about 100,000 bucks cause you had a teamster and a trainer and the horse. That was the highest paid talent on that show. And everyone else were people like, you know, Kevin Bacon and Peter Riegert and Karen Allen, people who had never made movies. So they were scale plus 10, where as Donald Sutherland, to do one day's work, it ended up being two day's work, but one day's work, he said, "Well, I'll do it for 50,000," so the studio offered 35,000 and 15 net points. Now you've gotta remember, no gross players on this. And Donald said, "No, I want 50,000," he ended up, I think he got 45,000 dollars, and he gave me a day, so it was one day for 45,000 plus a free day. And he's wonderful in the film, and those points would be worth 35, 40 million dollars. He turned them down. [INT: He didn't know, nobody knew.] Nobody knew, but he likes telling that story.

INT: All right, KELLY'S HEROES, SCHLOCK. 

JL: So all right, so I'm on KELLY'S HEROES. What happened was, I went... Bundy said, Andrew Marton said, "If you can get to Belgrade, I'm pretty sure I can give you a job." I was so ignorant that I didn't realize how far away Belgrade was. I was able, I had 800 dollars. Actually I had about 11 hundred dollars but I remember the one way ticket to London, TWA, was 800 dollars. So I got a passport, and I bought the ticket, and I showed the ticket to my mother and said, "Look, I have a job, Bundy's, you know," if I hadn't shown her the ticket she wouldn't have... and I told that story, oh, 10 or 15 years later on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH... no, it wasn't that long later, it was like five years later on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON. And she went crazy. "You lied to me." I said, "Mom, I'm doing well now." "I don't care, you lied to me." Anyway, so I flew to London, and in London, I had gone to school with Chris Hardman and Greg Gus and Chris's dad was Rick Hardman, who was working for Carl Foreman writing a film. So I stayed with them for two weeks, and I figure, how do I get to... I happened to be in London, this is 1969. I happened to be there, and Chris and I happened to turn on TV and see the pilot for MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS. It was like... it had as big an impact as 2001 [2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY], I just went, "Wow, is this great, what is this?" You know, just turned it on, and we knew nothing. [INT: You know, it's interesting how you've landed into those moments, because I remember visiting your office and you said, "You've gotta see this." And you shoved in a VHS of the very first SOUTH PARK.] It wasn't SOUTH... it was... [INT: It was the, no cartoon, it was before Jesus.] Cartoon about Jesus, JESUS AND SANTA [SOUTH PARK: JESUS VS. SANTA], yeah. [INT: And I remember thinking, "This is spectacular."] Well they were still two kids from, you know. [INT: I got it, but the point is you seem to land just as the transitions are happening if you're just watching MONTY PYTHON.] They sent it to me, and... [INT: Okay, so go on. So you're in London, about to get to Belgrade, which is not next door.] Anyway, so then I go, "Okay, I didn't realize Belgrade was [LAUGH] not, you know I thought, isn't it like... don't I take a cab?" [LAUGH] It's a long story, but it took me about three weeks to get to Belgrade cause I hitchhiked, those were the days... I rode the rails, I rode under the Orient Express. I learned how to ride the rails where it's kind of an exotic. [INT: Did you do that?] Yeah, I don't think you can now, but then I did. [INT: How far did you get?] Oh, I went through the Iron Curtain, under the rails, with a bunch of Swiss and German hippies, yeah. And I got to Belgrade and that was really shocking. I mean, it was 1969, but you know, behind the Iron Curtain meant something, and it really was like going from color to black and white. Cause we, the Marshall Plan rebuilt France and Italy and England and you know, but behind the Iron Curtain it was World War II. [INT: You know it's so interesting, because I was in Belgrade in 1969 as well, but I had been in the Soviet Union in Poland beforehand, and Belgrade was luxurious compared to Poland.] Absolutely, absolutely, but you know what I mean, and it was. But what really took me, you know, the hammers and sickles and machine guns and the hobnail boots, and the cobblestone, it really was like... I mean I related everything to the back lot. It was... the first time I was in New York City, I remember going, "Gosh, this looks just like the back lot." [LAUGH] That's how I related to everything, you know, and anyway, so I got to Belgrade and lucky for me, the production was in chaos. Not lucky for MGM. MGM changed management, I think, four times during the course of that movie [KELLY'S HEROES], and ownership twice, or something, and it was... this is a picture that was like, I think it ended up costing something like 12 million, I mean some huge amount of money. And it was big, and Tito [Josip Broz Tito] gave them... [INT: The Army?] Yeah, and they bought a town, Vižinada, Venetian town that we literally blew up. It was a big movie, it was international, it was basically British crew but with French wardrobe, Italian hair and makeup, Mexican cameramen, the great Gabriel Figueroa was the DP, what the hell was... it's still weird to me that he did that picture, but wonderful for me, and, gosh, I mean it was... [INT: What did you learn from him?] Gabriel Figueroa? Do you know he never used a meter? Look at that movie, we're doing huge night exteriors with 50 arcs and miles of cable, would hold up his hand and look at the back of his hand like that, and he had his operator and his focus puller, Pablo Rios and Danny Lopez, both they look like Mayan sculptures, perfectly round with this like Olmec heads. And Gaby was a very dapper guy, in his 70s then. And you know, he shot all of Buñuel's [Luis Buñuel] films in Mexico and... [INT: By the way...]

INT: Were they doing multiple cameras for this thing [KELLY'S HEROES]? 

 JL: On the big action stuff, these were giant Panavision cameras, you know the big ones, the only Pana... before Panaflex, these were these big cameras, and for the big action stuff I remember once we had all three Panavision cameras that were in Europe, and usually we had a lot of Eyemos, you know those combat cameras. And we did huge stuff, hundreds and hundreds of peop-... [INT: And your responsibility?] Well, what happened, it was fortunate for me, unfortunate for Metro [MGM], but the production was in chaos. There was an American First Assistant Director, the Director was Brian Hutton, wonderful guy, real New York guy, who just knew how lucky he was, you know. He had made WHERE EAGLES DARE, which was a big hit, so he was sort of like given. And he hired everybody from the neighborhood, so we had so many Actors that had no reason or right to be there. People who, you know, from the candy store, who couldn't act. One of his buddies was like Al Ruddy, those kinda, wow these guys. And Brian, he was wonderful to me and wonderful with the Actors. He wore a black cowboy hat, a V-neck sweater and a black t-shirt, I think he still dresses that way. And he was chewin' gum all the time, and he had bad ulcers. So one of my jobs, one of my first jobs is bringing... they had milk in plastic bags, and I'd bring him the milk. Couple of times we got in huge, I remember once production halted because we got in such a huge milk fight with these bags. It was insane, and you had this, you know, Telly Savalas, Clint Eastwood, Don Rickles, Don Sutherland, Carroll O'Connor before... [INT: The TV show.] Yeah, ALL IN THE FAMILY, Gavin MacLeod, I mean you know it was this big cast, a bunch of American guys, you know it was Communist, I mean it was, there was nothin'. And we were there, the Actors were there for, some of them, seven months behind The Iron Curtain. And they were nuts, I mean, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeff Morris, all these guys. And I was, you know 18, I turned 19. No, I turned 18, no it was 1960... no I turned 19 on that picture. And it was fabulous for me, because it was a big movie with a huge production. Karli Baumgartner, who was called Karli Boom Boom, who was an Austrian... this is absolutely true, Karli Baumgartner was the pyrotechnics guy, and his assistant was a German named, I swear to God, Willy Hamadinger and Willy wore... you know Kenneth Morrison, the Producers, he wore a Nazi helmet. That was his helmet that he wore. And Karli Baumgartner used to, huge explosions, look at that movie, huge explosions. And they would tie these big bags, big plastic bags of Benzene, and they would tie them with primer cord, with cigarettes with ash like this and I would say, "Isn't that dangerous?" "Ya, ya, ya." [LAUGH] What the fuck. And it was nuts, you know we had Sherman tanks and it was...

INT: Do you think, by the way, having been on that big a production, it allowed you to imagine, later, being on big productions as THE BLUES BROTHERS, as an example. 

JL: Do you know, I've worked on huge movies and little movies, they're exactly the same. And that's another misnomer about Directors. They say, "He does big pictures." Excuse me, a Director's job, put the camera there, you guys do this, [LAUGH] is exactly the same if it's BEN-HUR or you know, three guys in a closet, because it's put the camera there, you 4,000 guys do this, but it's the same job. And that, hey we're in the Directors Guild [Directors Guild of America], you have the First Assistant [First Assistant Director], the Second Assistant [Second Assistant Director], the Third [Third Assistant Director], the PA, it's set up in a way that's evolved to handle it. And you have PAs, you have the logistics. I was now, on KELLY'S HEROES I guess I would be called a PA now. Then, we were called gofers, go for coffee, go for this... first day of shooting, Telly Savalas comes up to me with a styrofoam coffee cup and he says, "Kid." "Yes, sir?" "Hold this." I bet I was standing there for 45 minutes before I realized he's not coming back. [LAUGH] He was throwing it away, that bastard, you know it's like... [LAUGH] [INT: Actually he was eco-conscious, it was styrofoam, he didn't want it to be wasted. [LAUGH]] No, I don't think so. The Golden Greek. I mean the stories on that movie, it was really... I guess, you know, there's a lot of guys, they talk about the military, you know, as the great years of their... the best years, they talk about the Army as the great, you know. Or equally, a lot of guys talk about college, you know, gosh, the best years of my life. Well, the truth, my college experience was ANIMAL HOUSE and my military experience was KELLY'S HEROES. [LAUGH] You know, and the drawback was I was with adults all the time, I was always the kid with adults. And you know, meanwhile my friends were going through, you know, while we were in Yugoslavia, back in America was the Manson [Charles Manson] murders, Woodstock, we landed on the moon, you know [LAUGH] there was a lot goin' on. I was behind The Iron Curtain, you know, and the one experience I had that was just incredible. It was pouring rain and we were doing big night stuff, so we had about 700 German soldiers, they were Yugoslav, but this gives you an idea of time. When we made KELLY'S HEROES, all the G.I. uniforms, thousands, and all the Nazi uniforms, thousands, were real. They were surplus, and they came from Rome and from Texas, and they were all real in THE LONGEST DAY. Not the principals, you know, but everyone else is real, it's real stuff. When they did SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, they had to make everything. It was really, you know. [INT: That's fabulous.] It was interesting.

JL: Anyway, but so on KELLY'S HEROES, I had many amazing experiences and the story about Karli Baumgartner that was so interesting, he was a tiger tank commander in World War II. And that's fascinating, there should be a movie about that. But do you know about tiger tanks? [INT: The German tiger tanks?] The German tiger tanks, it's a big thing in the movie, the tigers. And they were Russian T-34 tanks with fake bodies on them. But real tiger tanks, do you know they were all, order of General Eisenhower [Dwight D. Eisenhower], they were all dismantled, cut up with torches at the end of the war. They were indestructible. There used to be divisions of tiger tanks they would just go okay, we're driving through this town, and they would just drive through the town. They were amazing machines. Anyway... [INT: How you were gonna get to SCHLOCK from...] Sorry [INT: No, this is fabulous, because you know what's interesting...] So here's the luck, this is, you said how did I do it, I still always thought I'd be a filmmaker when I grew up, you know, I was just so happy to be there and it was the greatest nine months. I was there nine or 10 months, it was great. It was just amazing. And I was supposed to work with the second unit, I ended up, the First Assistant Director who was American, who then had a very distinguished career much later in television. But at the time, the principal photography, there was tremendous pressure, it was very screwed up, there was a lot of corruption from the Yugoslavs. It was chaos, and he had a nervous breakdown. And for the first two weeks of filming, he'd be driven to the set and he'd sit in the car and cry. And they finally sent him home, so for over a month I was the First, and I was 18. [INT: Now you know how to do this because you've been on enough sets so you knew what a First did?] Well, also, I was, you know, there was the Production Manager and there was this British Second [Second Assistant Director] and the British Third [Third Assistant Director], and the Director. And there was the... you know, all the forms were done, and we figured, you know. And then another one came, but I became, I did everything. And I also was one of the few people everyone trusted. That sounds ridiculous, cause I was 18, I was really a punk, but the Americans trusted me, the Yugoslavs trusted me, the Brits, the Germans, the French, the Mexicans, everyone trusted me. [INT: Why did they trust you?] I think because I was guileless, you know, I was 18. I mean the stories from KELLY'S HEROES... [INT: I want to stop there for a second, because there's something of real value here, John, cause I think this is also true to some degree about who you are and also possibly about who a good Director can be. Not all, we've got Directors who are just the opposite in terms of whatever the opposite of guileless is, there's a whole bunch of them.] Well, I've worked for them. [INT: Yeah okay, but my point is that your openness is a way of being that... no Director's gonna be like you, and no Director's gonna be like any other Director, they're all gonna be just like Actors that are gonna be their own versions of it. But there are certain things we do learn from each other. And the idea of being open to hear everybody and listen to everybody and not be judgmental, at least at that moment, is a very powerful tool.]

INT: So how does SCHLOCK come from any of this? 

JL: Because I... while I was on that movie [KELLY'S HEROES], now I'm on that movie for a long time, I made huge, you know, I met so many people who I then worked with later, and connections in London, in Spain, in Mexico. I mean I... just all these connections. Not only with Actors, but with... and friendships, but also with technicians and stunt guys and mostly British stunt guys, but... [INT: And the two Germans.] Karli Baumgartner, those guys. [INT: I don't want to get you lost on Boomie] They were like, insane. Anyway... [INT: SCHLOCK] So, what happened was this was my good fortune, which it was. In 1969 was in the middle of what's called the Spaghetti Boom. The Spaghetti Boom really was Spanish and what it was, was Franco [Generalissimo Francisco Franco], like all good fascists, understood the power of film, and he made a deal first with Samuel Bronston. In fact, you know those great Samuel... EL CID, FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE [THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE], 55 DAYS AT PEKING, CIRCUS WORLD... Spain, once they started making these big movies there, the Italians, who made a lot of westerns and things, but they used to make 'em in the boot, you know. And they went, "Gee, let's get some of this Spanish money." They went to Spain, and Almeria became, you know FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was made there and now this is all during the Spaghetti Boom. So this town of Almeria, which is in the desert in Spain. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, some of it was shot there, all the Leone [Sergio Leone] westerns were shot there, 90 percent of the spaghetti westerns were shot there, everything was shot there. It was just, nothing, it was a bull ring and it was a pen, it was a shit hole, and they had three western towns that everyone used. Well, there was a, I'm trying to think of the movie, there was a movie that I was trying to get on after this. I'm in Yugoslavia, the movie's [KELLY'S HEROES] coming to a close, they're gonna go back to L.A. and cut the movie, or maybe to London and cut, I forgot where they did post. But probably Hollywood, but they go back to L.A.

JL: So I got a letter from Brian Hutton that was really sweet, trying to get me a job on CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, Tony Richardson picture. [INT: Oh yea, I like that movie.] And... wonderful movie, wonderful movie. [INT: The animation is spectacular in that film.] Yeah, I'm in it, I'm a lancer in that film. Anyway, I had to learn the British [salute]. Anyway, the thing was is that this guy named Jim O'Rourke, James Cornelius Patrick O'Rourke from Ventura County, California. James was this... I was, how old was I, I was now 19, he was 25 at the time, or 26 I guess. He had been a football player, very handsome guy, curly black hair, blue eyes, very good looking. And somebody said, "Hey, they're hiring, they need a double for Clint Eastwood," so that's how I met Jim O'Rourke, and at the end of the thing he had gotten the movie bug and thought, "Gee, maybe I could be an Actor or something." And I had now gotten in with these stunt guys. There was a movie going in Almeria [Almeria, Spain], and so we decided... he bought a VW Bug, and we drove, Jim O'Rourke and I, drove to Madrid, had adventures along the way. One of the things we used to do in Madrid was the Ritz Hotel, which is still wonderful, but that was the nicest hotel. And because we were Americans with long hair, we used to go and have a meal and sign it to our room. Of course we weren't staying there. [LAUGH] I don't think you could do that now. Anyway, we got to Madrid and the job we were supposed to get, we didn't get, but we got another one, and then another one, and then they started working. I was, gosh, so many movies, and I ended up in Almeria for another 10 months and in Almeria, there were always at least four pictures shooting, always at least four pictures shooting. So I worked on so many Italian, German... [INT: You worked different roles?] I did everything, I did whatever they asked me to do. [INT: Actor as well?] I did a lot of dialogue coach stuff, of course, I speak no other language, but I did speak American, and I did stunts, I got very good. I mean, it sounds funny, but am I a good horseman? No, but I am terrific at falling off a horse. I learned to do a running W, you know I did stunts. [INT: A running W, which is?] They're banned now, but a running W, Yakima Canutt invented, you see them in every John Ford picture. It's when the guys, usually the Indians, but it's when a guy riding and the horse goes down like that, his two legs, you have a rope, and it's tied and you pull it like this and it pulls up his front forelegs, so he goes on his chest and flips over and you go flying. It's in every John Ford picture. [INT: And why is it called the W?] Cause of the way the rope was tied, it was a running W... if done correctly, the horse was never injured, injured. But if tied wrong, or you didn't pull it right, you'd break the horse's leg. They are definitely not, but they were banned in the states, but they still did 'em in Spain, and..

INT: All right, you were going from movie to movie to movie.. 

JL: So I worked on, and I'm not exaggerating, 50 to 60 movies, cause sometimes I'd work one day, sometimes I'd work three weeks. I got hired on a picture because of Alf Joint, a British stunt guy, he said to me, "John," you know he's this big muscle guy with this high voice. "John," there was a guy named Remy Julienne who was a French stunt driver, and he was doing a big action sequence with Mini Coopers in Rome, so I flew to Rome, I was in Rome a week, and it turned out I saw the movie, it was called THE ITALIAN JOB with Michael Caine and Noel Coward. Pretty good movie, remake's terrible, but the first one's good. And I'm one of the guys jumping out of the way of the cars on the Spanish steps. [LAUGH] And so I got all these great jobs, I worked on French movies and German movies and Italian movies, and American movies. [INT: And you're also watching a whole bunch of Directors.] Oh, many, I worked with like Robert Parrish and Sergio Leone. [INT: And Tony Richardson you just mentioned. Do you remember anything from him as a Director?] No, I mean, Tony Richardson was kind of intimidating, you know, there were certain Directors who didn't want to... the one that I... Michael Winner who just passed away, Michael was doing a picture called CHATO'S LAND with Charles Bronson, and that picture, even though I only worked on it three weeks, it was big in my career because I did stunts. But the DP was Robert Painter, Bob Painter, and Bob, years later when I made AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, which is a British film I had to hire British... I said, "Look, if you can work with Michael Winner..." and Bob ended up doing, for me, THRILLER, TRADING PLACES, INTO THE NIGHT, I did like six or seven movies with Bob, and unfortunately he got very elderly, and it's like, "Bob, we're gonna have to put you down," you know. He was just a great British DP, I really loved him, and he's in BURKE AND HARE as an Actor, and then died. [INT: Who'd he play in BURKE AND HARE?] He's one of the doctors, yes Michael Winner's in BURKE AND HARE, do you know the coach that goes off the cliff? He's the guy who says, "Can't this bloody thing go..." That's Michael Winner. Michael just died, but Michael, who I thought was wonderfully funny, the Brits hated him and the Spanish hated him, but I just thought he was...

INT: And do you know why they [Spanish crewmembers] hated him [Michael Winner, on set of CHATO'S LAND]? 

JL: Well he was a pig, I mean he was so rude and so... he smoked a big cigar, he was like a comic character. Michael Winner used to have this kid, this very posh Brit upper-class English kid who was 18, 19, his father was Lord somebody. We're in Almeria [Almeria, Spain], so we're in the desert, you know. His job was to follow Michael around with a canvas chair in case he sat down. It was like a comic opera. And Michael was very abusive. I thought he was funny, but I worked with two Directors, oh you know the... who directed TRUE GRIT? He's a wonderful American Director. [INT: I'm blocking at this moment, go on.] Okay, but the guy directed a lot of movies. I worked on a movie with him and the first thing I was told was, "Don't get in his eye line." [LAUGH] [INT: It's not Henry Hathaway, but I know...] It was Henry Hathaway, Henry Hathaway, he was so mean, he was the meanest person I ever met. I mean, he was so hateful, one member of the crew would be in tears at the end of the day. He would just chew someone and just be hateful to them. I've never forgotten it. But the first time, "Don't get in his eye line." [LAUGH] Anyway, but good Director though, made a lot of good movies. Anyway, the story about Michael Winner was Charles Bronson had to be 50, but he was more maybe, but he was naked. He just wore a loincloth the whole movie, looked great. Never spoke, never said anything to anyone, just sit there. And he and Michael Winner would have lunch every day in what they called a marquis, which was a little tent with ostrich feathers at the top on fine China, crystal, sterling, with a butler guy with gloves and a thing. Their lunch would be flown in from Paris from Fauchon every day, they had wine, dessert, like that. We were given, like, a soggy paper bag with, like, an orange and that, and I just remember the British crew just sitting there eating, hating him, hating Michael Winner. But I thought he was funny, I did two movies with Michael, and anyway. So I've met a lot of... [INT: Any tricks Michael had?] No, he was just... he was an outrageous character, he was outrageous. And he was outrageous later, Deborah [Deborah Nadoolman Landis] and I were, you know, in London he became a big celebrity because he became the restaurant critic for THE LONDON TIMES. And his whole shtick was to be rude [LAUGH] and outrageous.

INT: Are you gonna ever get your first job as a Director? 

JL: What happened was, Brian Hutton was gonna make a movie called X, Y, AND ZEE that was released as ZEE AND COMPANY [ZEE AND CO.], and it was Michael Caine, Elizabeth Taylor, Susannah York, it was kinda this drama thing. And he asked me if I'd like to be the First AD [First Assistant Director], and I, "Yes, please." Well, the Brits, I flew back to London and the bottom line is that was my... I was gone for almost two years. And those two years, between KELLY'S HEROES and all the other movies, I just really had an amazing time. But I still thought I'd be a Director when I grew up. And being a First I thought, "Wow, wow." So I came back and I come to the DGA [Directors Guild of America] and it's a long story, but basically they wouldn't do it because I didn't have a high school diploma and I had nothing, qualifica-... they just, they wouldn't do it. I met Robert Aldrich, who was the president. He had these amazing eyebrows, like Mephistopheles like [MAKES NOISE] and he was actually quite nice, and talked to him a lot, cause he had just made I think VALDEZ IS COMING, which I think is a terrific movie. Anyway, but he was nice to me, he and Mervyn LeRoy. They were nice to me but basically went, "No." And I was so angry, because I had this job, Pinewood [Pinewood Studios] was fine with it, the British government was fine, would have given me a work permit if I had my DGA card, the DGA says, "Why should we give you a DGA, you're not... no." [LAUGH] You know, and you know, and I think there was maybe if you pay, and I was so angry. And that night, I went to Hollywood Boulevard like I always did, and I saw this picture with Jim O'Rourke called TROG, which was Joan Crawford's last film, and Freddie Francis directed it. It is a terrible movie about an ape man and it's actually wonderfully funny, but it's terrible. And watching it, I just said, "You know, I could make a better movie... in fact," and I went home and I wrote SCHLOCK. And then in my two years away I had saved about 35, 40,000 dollars, and so I'd come back and SCHLOCK cost 60,000 dollars. 30,000 was mine. [INT: Did you spend all of your money?] Yeah, most of it, and 30,000 was mine and then the other 30 came from... 10,000 from my Uncle Ben, the judge, and other people gave 1,000, 15 hundred, 500, you know, and Jim O'Rourke produced it. And my original intention was a bad gorilla suit, and I went to John Chambers who said well, they could give me one for 150,000 dollars. I was said, "John, that's more than..." So he sent me to Don Post who make those rubber masks in Burbank, and he would do it for 100,000 dollars. And as I was leaving, Don Post Jr. was painting a mask, you know those pull over rubber masks. And he said, "You know, there was a kid in here yesterday who was trying to get a job who I think's very..." and he gave me a card. Rick Baker, Monster Maker. He was 20, he lived with his parents in Covina. And that's how I met Rick, and he did... his budget on SCHLOCK I think was 2,000 dollars. [INT: Interesting the idea that you actually...]

INT: I want to understand the logic, you're still only 20 or 21. [JL: I was 21.] But the interesting issue is this is, "All the money I have, I'm gonna do this. I've now been denied what I really wanted, which was to have this AD [Assistant Director] job and England would have been great." 

JL: Well you know, here's the interesting thing about being a filmmaker, when you go to a film class, I've talked at film schools all over the world. And I always say, "Who is a motion picture Director?" And you get very esoteric, and sometimes really interesting answers, but the correct answer is someone who has directed a motion picture. And you know, this new technology stuff is incredible, because now they're making films with flip top cameras and, you know, you cut it on your laptop, the whole thing is different. But you know, filmmaking, it was a bizarre thing, because you never got to practice. I mean, when I was a teenager I made the 16 millimeter and the 8 millimeter films and I did the stop motion, you know, I did all that shit. But to make a movie with, like, Actors, and like make a mov-... I remember that, I remember thinking, like on ANIMAL HOUSE, I remember thinking it was like, "Okay, kid, practice, here." [LAUGH] [SCREAMS] You know, what prepares you for that? How do you... and I just felt I'm just gonna, you know, I won't be a Director when I grow up, I'll be a Director now, you know. Now, by the way, I made SCHLOCK when I was 21. I finally got a distributor in '73 [1973] [LAUGH] and the next movie I made, the next two movies I made, was in '77 [1977]. So it wasn't like I made SCHLOCK and then, I mean, you know I was parking cars and did a lot of stunts and worked as a Writer quite a bit, and I got good jobs. I mean, I'm one of the 12 Writers of, big James Bond movie, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, and you know I wrote a lot of TV, and I mean, I had all this experience, and you know, I worked for Roger Corman as a stunt guy, and you know, I did jobs. I'm in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES as an Actor. I play a human, I'm sorry, no I'm not. I'll start again. I am in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES as an Actor. J. Lee Thompson's picture, I play a human slave to Roddy McDowall, which everyone thought was terribly funny. [LAUGH] And I'm in the movie, and I get the credit, but I mean I'm in DEATH RACE 2000.

INT: Now when you did this first movie, SCHLOCK, how many days did you shoot? [JL: Eleven.] And in 11 days, did you know you were gonna shoot 11 days, did you figure it out? 

JL: That's all the money we had. Well what happened was we shot it in 11 days, I made the movie, and it was, like, 79 minutes or something. Tried to get a distributor, hopeless, hopeless, finally this guy Jack H. Harris, who's famous as the Producer of THE BLOB. Jack H. Harris was a Schlockmeister so it was perfect, you know. He said, "You know, if this was 10 minutes longer, I would take it." And I said, "Well, I'll shoot 10 minutes." And so a year later, I mean a year after, I got another 10 minutes in one day, so it's 12 days. [INT: Did he take it?] Yeah, he paid for the day, the day was like 35,000 dollars because it was like, you know it's cheaper. That's what's so interesting is it's cheaper to make a movie than a one, cause you know, you get... so anyway. And he paid for it, and I finished the movie, and he distributed... he made a lot of money, I got totally shafted on that picture.

INT: What got you into KENTUCKY FRIED [KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE] then? 

JL: Well what happened then was, it's complicated. I was on a radio show on like KPFK or one of those radio shows, you know, one of the Pacifica stations or something, to promote, to talk about SCHLOCK. I was still trying to get a distributor. And a booker named Bob Shayne from THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JOHNNY CARSON heard me on the radio, found me, and said, "I want to see the movie." So I showed him the movie, and he thought it was very funny, and he showed it to Johnny Carson, and Johnny Carson liked it. And in 1973, I was a guest on THE TONIGHT SHOW. You know people, now it's hard to imagine, but that's when THE TONIGHT SHOW got 25, 30, 40 million people. I mean, a third of the country watched it. And it's the only movie Johnny Carson ever gave a quote, "Really wild, really funny. Johnny Carson." He was very kind to me, and liked the movie, and Don Rickles was on THE TONIGHT SHOW two days later and said, "I know that kid, I know that kid," and he said, "You know, they showed his movie on an airplane, and when it landed there was no one on it." [LAUGH] [INT: Well you got two good reviews.] Yeah, but because of that, Jack Harris then basically distributed the movie, that really... and then, but also because of that, now I had worked as a stunt guy and as a Writer and as a Director at a company called Video Systems. The guy who ran Video Systems was Bob Weiss, Robert K. Weiss, you know. And Bob Weiss, they did training films for Parker Center, for the Police Academy, these are the VHS days, and they did training tapes, I guess, for trucking safety. So we had a lot of fun with those, cause it was like the right way to descend from a forklift, you know, the wrong way [SCREAMS] you know we were doing stunts and [LAUGH] I remember... [INT: You mean actually, you mean in these promos?] Oh yeah, we were doing... [INT: You actually would do the stunts?] Oh yeah, we were doing stunt... [INT: That would be part of the promo, it would actually get shown?]

JL: I directed a series of training films for Parker Center, for the LAPD, 30 half hours with Bob Weiss for Video Systems. And I'll never forget, at that time, we... [INT: 30?] Half hours, and they were like how to take a... you know, all this stuff. "Dealing with Negroes," I mean there was one thing, "How to Talk to African-Americans." I mean, just outrageous. And some of them were so stupid that we just made them broad comedies. They never seemed to care, they never seemed to notice, and my favorite was... one of the things that cops used to get was the leather billy or sap. Which was a hard spring coil of steel, you know, laced over in leather. It was a billy club like [MAKES NOISE] totally like a horrible thing. So I was supposed to do a thing on how to use that, and the guy who was our expert was a minister of some kind, a cop who was a minister, and he said, "You know, no police officer uses these because you'd have to be in close. Everyone likes to use a billy club cause you're far away. You know, so I don't know how to use this." And I said, "Well, find me the expert." I never forget, he goes to the phone, he calls Parker Center, and he talks a minute, and he comes back and he goes, "I'm the expert." [LAUGH] So we did stuff like, you take the leather billy and throw it back, catch it in your left... I mean we were like doing like ridiculous cheerleading stuff. And I brought in martial artists and we were doing flips and you know. [INT: How big a crews were on these things?] We had like six people and it was like this, you know. [INT: Shooting 16 millimeter?] Shooting on video. [INT: Oh it already was a video.] Shooting video, it was VHS cassettes, that they would come out and we'd cut on, but big, you know, reel to reel stuff and anyway, so I was working for Bob Weiss at that moment, but I was on THE TONIGHT SHOW. David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrams had the Kentucky Fried Theater on Pico [Pico Boulevard], right near Fox [Fox Studios]. Their uncle owned that building, they're from Madison, Wisconsin, and they went to school together, and they had Kentucky Fried theater, which was a comedy theater, and they came to L.A. And you know, they did quite well there. They lived upstairs, they made a theater, and they would gross, like, you know 75, 100 thousand dollars a year split between them. They did well, they were there for four or five years doing these skits, and very funny stuff.

INT: All right, so the Zuckers [David Zucker, Jerry Zucker] are doing Kentucky Fried Theater, and you… 

JL: Well so David Zucker comes in the next day and says, “I saw a kid on THE TONIGHT SHOW last night who made a movie. He’s our age, and he made a movie.” And I go, “What do you mean you saw a kid?” And they used to play basketball with Bob Weiss. And Bob Weiss said, “You mean SCHLOCK?” They went, “Yeah.” He goes, “That’s John Landis, he works for me.” And they went, “You know him?” He went, “Yeah." "We’d like to meet him.” So I met them for lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet on San Vicente [San Vicente Boulevard] and Beverly [Beverly Boulevard] that’s not there any more, and it was Jerry, David, Jim, and Bob, and they literally said, “How do you make a movie? What did you do to make a movie?” And I said, “Well, you need a script.” And they said, “What do you mean?” I said, “A screenplay. I got one in the car.” And I went and I got, I had written AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON while I was in Yugoslavia, it was a script I was trying to sell, so I had it, so I gave ‘em a copy of AMERICAN WEREWOLF, I said, “Well that’s the form,” and they borrowed it, and they came back and said, “Okay, we’ll write a script,” and over the next two and half, three years, basically, two years, three years, what happened was they finally wrote a script called KENTUCKY FRIED AIRPLANE, and gave it to me to read, and I read it, and it was very funny, and I said, “But isn’t this a real movie?” “Yeah, it’s ZERO HOUR.” Did you know that? Mel Brooks' best film, not funniest film, but best film as a filmmaker is YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, because it’s a remake of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. The Zuckers’ best film is AIRPLANE because it’s a remake of ZERO HOUR, which means the structural problems in the screenplay are solved. They’re real stories. They’re funny, they’re, all kinds of stuff put on ‘em, but the structure there, the… So I read this, I said ZERO HOUR, so I watched ZERO HOUR, it stars Robert Stack and some of the people who were in AIRPLANE, and ZERO HOUR is about, the plane takes off and the guy, there’s poisoning, and it’s the same, it’s the same movie. Maybe 25, 30% of the dialogue is the same too. And then they just make jokes, and I said, "You know, I think there’s a difference between parody and plagiarism." Turns out ZERO HOUR was produced by Howard Koch, Paramount Pictures, and they go to see Howard Koch, and he says “Get the fuck out of here,” so Bob Weiss, now Bob claims it was me but I think it was Bob, but someone suggested why don’t we just do your show. Why don’t we just do skits? And so about half of KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE comes from skits that they had done in their show that were reworked. We had this script called KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, and we got it made.

INT: Here’s an interesting thing, you just talked about structure, which means that you know from, both as a Writer and as a person that’s seen many, many movies, and also as a Director, there is something to that, in other words, there is a structure that’s gonna hold all of the rest of the movie together. [JL: The story, absolutely] When you say the story, how are you defining that? 

JL: Well, the, I mean the structure, like when you build a house, you need a foundation to build a house, you know, you know, you can’t put a roof up unless you have the walls. And, again, I don’t want it to sound like they’re rules, because there are no rules, but there are some rules. [INT: But when you say, okay, but it’s interesting, when you think the story of a movie, using the structure story, there for a second, can be told quickly? Or does it take a while to tell the story?]It depends [INT: I mean the movie itself takes a while, I’m not saying…] It totally depends, because for instance... Oh, I just had a wonderful analogy that… Just out of my head, fuck. [INT: Was it one of your movies, or somebody else’s?] No, no, no, I’m trying to think. [INT: ‘Cause I’m really interested in the idea of sort of knowing, you know, ‘cause sometimes someone will say here’s what my movie’s about, and they’ll say a story…] Here’s something no one understands, and I don’t know how to explain this, that ideas, everyone has had the experience of seeing a movie and going, “That’s my idea. That was my idea.” And I think it’s sincere, I think you do have similar ideas, it’s like the zeitgeist. I wrote AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON [AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON] in 1969, I didn’t get it made until 1981. There hadn’t been a werewolf movie in 12 years. When I made mine, there were like four werewolf movies this year, so it’s this zeitgeist, you know, but my point is, what people don’t really understand is it’s not the idea. I’m sorry, but ideas are cheap, and a dime a dozen. It’s the execution of the idea. So, you now have a monster on a spaceship. A gorilla in a big dark house, so it can be IT! THE TERROR FROM OUTER SPACE, or it can be ALIEN. Same movie, just one is brilliantly done, one is clumsily done. Same movie. Acid blood, the monster fights its way up, they open the hatch, I mean just… Same movie. Just one is cheap and clumsy, one is elegant and expensive. It’s the execution of ideas, and that’s something, I don’t know how to make that any clearer.