INT: Okay, so you were talking about… You, for the first time, you were questioning, after you did MCMARTIN [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] or around that time, you were questioning whether you should stay here.
MJ: No, I wasn’t questioning whether I should stay here, but whether this television movie genre was a natural home for me, coming from my British experience, rather than feature movies, here. [INT: You were asking yourself that question?] Yeah, ‘cause I thought MCMARTIN [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] had been the kind of serious subject that I dealt with at the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] and Channel 4 in England--done in serious fashion. It had been illuminating in a way that people needed it to be illuminating, and told them things that they didn’t know, or had thought were the opposite of what is true--made a big splash and I thought well there are other big issues that I should be doing and I would maybe be better able to do them in the TV movie format, than in feature films. [INT: Oh, so you meant in a positive sense?] In a positive sense, yeah. It was a good discovery that this movie was--felt like a natural home, to be doing this kind of stuff. [INT: And that feeling--] The feeling of reality to it. [INT: Right. And not feeling those enormous, Hollywood pressures as well.] Yes. Except, that the very next thing I did, I think, was a Hollywood movie. [INT: Which was?] CLEAN SLATE. [INT: Right. Okay, do you want to talk about that?] You haven’t seen it? [INT: No, I haven’t seen it. We can wait on it. So, was there anything else about the MCMARTIN [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] film that you wanted to talk about?] It’s so long since I’ve seen it. I couldn’t find a copy of that either last night, which is a result of remodeling in our house. Things have gotten put in odd places. Is there anything that you want to talk about? [INT: No, I think, I mean, I think we did cover that, other than--what about, yeah, let’s just talk about--let’s talk about how you work with--let’s just talk about directing Actors there, ‘cause that’s, I mean, that’s some of it--courtroom scenes are fairly straightforward, but not necessary as applied to the children and also you worked with Jimmy Woods [James Woods], who has his own special way of working as well so... Let’s talk about how you approached the performances of the children in regard to such an incredibly delicate matter, in which you are directing children as children. How did you approach that both a Director and a father?] What I tried to do was respect the children and even when it was obvious that they were not telling the truth. Not that they were lying, but they had been the unwitting victims of a presupposition of guilt on the part of people who had supposed to have molested them. And had had ideas put into their heads. I didn’t want to make the kids 'baddies,' it was obvious when they were lying, when they used kind of anatomically impossible expressions, or said things that could not possibly have happened, given physics and things. But to make the kids feel at home with the dialog that they’d been told to learn as these kids were. And just to try and make them feel they were having an interesting time. Jimmy Woods is very good in that respect, very good at talking to the kid Actors in between takes and joking with them, so that when he cross-examined them in the later scenes, they felt comfortable with him. And in those moments came across as children, just kind of innocent victims, smiling at--[INT: What kind of things though did they have to say and describe?] They had to describe what had happened to them in graphic detail. [INT: And how old were the children, that you--how old were the--] They were nursery school kids, and that was about the age of the kids, a little bit older in some cases. [INT: And so probably most of them hadn’t had--they weren’t child Actors, they were probably…] Kids. [INT: Kids, right.] Yeah, maybe done some modeling work or commercials or whatever.

INT: Did you have a process in terms of how you--before we get into their performances--how you approached casting children, was there a certain way you measured, how did you address that?
MJ: I worked with Mali Finn, the Casting Director, who had some very good children that she knew and kids who trusted her and worked through some scenes through her, with the kids before even got into rehearsals, but explaining to them what was necessary in the set and what these words meant and in some cases, not what these words meant, ‘cause they were meant to be unaware. At one point, I’m trying to remember the exact line--“And what did he do with the so-and-so?” was the question, and the kid answered, “He put it in my penis.” And that didn’t make sense, obviously the child didn’t know what penis was, and what was being talked about and that was kind of a turning point in the case where everybody noticed that in court. I don’t know that I treated them any differently except to give them respect. [INT: But how did you cast them? I know you mentioned this, that you just let her cast them for you, or you did?] Well, cast a short list. [INT: So you didn’t audition them in any way?] Talked to them. [INT: And what were you looking for in talking to them?] A kind of naturalness. A lack of self-consciousness, a lack of being an 'Actor brat.' [INT: Did you try to establish whether or not they had an imagination, I mean whether or not they had, as children do, how they function in a make-believe world, or you basically just talk with them?] Just talk with them. [INT: Just talk with them.] I assume that all kids live in a make-believe world and…[INT: Right. Right. So, and were there any difficult moments in the course of either in rehearsal, or shooting with them, given the nature of what it was?] No I didn’t think so. I did learn a lesson--not about the kids--but about Actors and Actresses [Actors], that there are some people who the camera loves and however close you are to the lens, you may not necessarily see what the camera sees. Lolita Davidovich, who has since become a great friend, was--played the therapist--I was as close to the camera as I could get and I couldn’t see what she was doing and then I saw the dailies and I thought, “Oh my god this is--this burns up the screen--I mean, she was one of those…like Monroe [Marilyn Monroe], has this ability to just direct what she’s doing right down the middle of the lens. That was a wonderful discovery to make.

INT: Do you, do use video assist?
MJ: Sometimes. But not as a, kind of, spectator sport. So I’d rather not have a video, than have people gathered around looking over my shoulder. [INT: Right, well just talk a little bit--] I’ll just talk about the worst thing that ever happened to me, which was, when we were shooting VOLCANO, which we haven’t talked about, it was the biggest fire set ever in Los Angeles, even bigger than the burning of Atlanta [Georgia] in GONE WITH THE WIND, it was a quarter of a mile long, just solid flame. And so it was a big deal, the set was a big deal, and people came out to look. And the Producer had invited all the Directors that she’d ever worked with to come out and drop by without telling me. So I was--she just forgot, I guess--so I was looking at the monitor and aware that there was someone over my shoulder and when I turn around it was Bryan Singer, or it was Dick Donner [Richard Donner], or--tremendously intimidating, ‘cause you think of yourself as being in a sort of privileged space where you’re almost invisible, but to have a well-known Director looking over your shoulder. It’s like Mike Nichols describes being on the set of CATCH 22 with Orson Wells, terribly intimidated by the fact that wherever he put the camera, he knew Orson Wells would have a better place to put it. [INT: And would tell him.] And would tell him, yeah. [INT: Well, let me--well, you know, you’ve made a lot of references to this and this is something that’s parenthetically is also pretty close to my heart. In regard to the privacy of the Director, there’s a wide range of different ways of working. On one extreme, or one end--I won’t even call it extreme--on one end is the Director who just feels from the moment he or she gets to the set, it’s his. There is--the only collaboration, is the collaboration that the Director elects to allow to happen. Whether it’s with the Actor, whether, you know the collaboration is kind of ongoing, but what people like the Producers or the network executives, or any other person who is outside the nucleus of making the film; that they don’t want to hear from those people, certainly not during the shooting. And then there are Directors on the other side, who while they are directing the film, they are open to hear suggestions, maybe they’re--it’s not necessarily they welcome them, but that they accept the fact that the Producer is there and it’s his or her film too when they’re--they have to be allowed freedom to do input. Where are you in all of this?] Here’s where I am: there is a critical time, while you’re running a take, or whether you’ve just finished the take, when you’re thinking about what you’ve got, when you need silence. And you need silence to hear the little voice in your head that’s running it and saying, “Did I--do I want to do that again? How do I feel about that? Am I slightly unsure about that line? Would it get better if I gave a direction, should we just go again without me saying anything?” And you need the most absolute silence to hear that voice in your head. And if someone is right by your elbow saying, “I think we should go again!” It’s gone and you don’t know what you think about it. But, having had that dialog with yourself, you say, “Yeah, I think, I’m unhappy about that. If I see this movie 10 years in the future I will still be unhappy about that line. We’re going again.” "Okay, but what do you think of that--to the Producer?" [INT: Oh you will do that.] Yeah, of course I’ll do that. I mean, I used to be stupid, but now I’m not so stupid. I used to be un-decisive and now I’m not so sure. [Laughs]. [INT: So do you do that as a matter of course?] Yes, of course. And if the Producer comes up to you, you know I’ll try to sneak out of the way for that crucial moment when I need to be alone with my very self-critical faculty that’s saying, “How did that go, what do you feel about it now in this moment? Do you feel you want to do it again, is that what you wanted?” And you listen for very, very slight nerve ending tremors to make that decision. What you don’t want is noise, at that point. [INT: Right, now but and what happens if you’ve decided that, that you’ve got it, right, and the clock is ticking and you don’t need to take the next take, do you still turn to the Producer and ask that question, and if they say, “Boy I think you should do another one,” do you do it?] Depends. How loudly the clock is ticking and how much they’re aware of the clock ticking. And they’re going to be affected by that too, by what they want to go over that day and I try to be honest and say, “What is it you think wasn’t there that you think we should try and get?” [INT: You do this on every take?] No, oh no, no. I’d be super human if I did, but I try and have a dialog going with the Producer--sometimes I will go to them, sometimes they will come to me, but what I’m saying is that there is a critical moment where you want to be private and you want to be alone. You’re asking yourself, “Did I get it?” [INT: Right. Do you--is this, is this a process that sort of evolved in terms of your…] Listening to the voice? Yeah I think so--[INT: No, no listening to the voice is something I think that--] Everybody does. [--is inbred, yeah, but I’m talking about in regard to the collaboration part.] Well, yeah I’ve learned the hard way that it’s about collaboration and it takes you up to a thousand people to make a movie and they all have their part to play. Sometimes you just want to be the person who says, “This is what we’re gonna do.” But I think an essential part of a Director, what makes a Director, is the ability to know when to say, “When.” And when to say, “Again.” I mean, it sounds like a catchphrase but, I mean, just thought of that, but… Nobody else can make that decision. A Producer can say, “Are you sure you got that?” And I can say, “Yeah, I think I’ve got that and I think I’ve got that on two other takes and I think I’ve got in the two shot and I think we can cut between the two shot and the big close-up.” And in editing you’ll have something that you’ll be pleased with.

INT: And does--the reason I’m continuing this, ‘cause I think it’s a really important thing and it’s how things, at least in my observation, how things have changed. Let’s say you have a Producer, I mean you may like the person and everything, but who just loves participating, you know, it's to me those are the Producers who really want to be Directors except they have to--they don’t want to direct the whole movie. They just wanna direct the scenes they like. What happens if you get to a situation where that starts to become exhausting? Or do you find it exhausting?]
MJ: No. [INT: You don’t?] No, I don’t. I know if I’ve got it. And if I’ve got it and they want to use the time to do something else then it can only be beneficial. But it’s sometimes it's useful when you’re not sure and even the little voice inside you can’t tell you whether you’ve got it or not--it’s really borderline. And then I will actually seek out the Producer and say, “What do you think? Do you think we’ve got it?” [INT: Do you turn around and ask them in the open, or is it private, or…] Private, yeah. [INT: And how does that--how do you think that affects--I mean, these are not rhetorical questions, I’m just curious--how do you think that affects your relationship to the Actor?] Not at all, I think. I try and keep that very, very private. [INT: So that the Actor knows about when you…] If I’m being asked to do something which I think is a crazy suggestion, but the Producer is insistent, I will go to the Actor and say, “I thought what you did was great, and I think we have it, but would you do me a favor, the Producer would like to see it a different way and this is their suggestion.” [INT: Oh, I see.] So I don’t see what the down--apart from the time--what the downside of that is. And maybe they’re right. But I don’t want to compromise my relationship with the Actor by saying what I know to be a half-assed suggestion is coming from me, ‘cause I just lose their trust. [INT: Where would--where do you feel--how would you define where you feel the Producer’s stepping across--we’re talking about movies now, not series--about stepping across the line where you feel that you have to push them back to the other side. What would be an example of that?] Some of that’s already happened before I get taken on, you know, creative decisions have been taken about who’s in the movie, how it’s gonna be shot, where it’s gonna be shot, that I really have no control over. And some of those are disastrous, really disastrous. Of course, Producers are always gonna, you know, disguised as whatever they disguise it as: casual conversation, having a coffee, putting ideas into the air that they want into the air. Sometimes they can’t find me, which I always ask them to use as their preferred route to the Actor, and sometimes they’ll go directly to the Actor. And I get mad as anybody would. [INT: When they go directly to the Actor?] Yeah. And I say very frankly to the Producer, “You have a great point there, but just in order to avoid confusing the Actor with too many voices if you bring it through me, I’ll pass it onto the Actor and we’ll talk about how we can achieve that.” [INT: Okay, good. That’s a good way of explaining it. What was STRANGE WORLD?] It was a pilot by the guy who was one of the writers on X-FILES. It was about USAMRIID, United States Army Medical Research for Infectious Diseases [United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases]. It’s an actual outfit. They’re the people in OUTBREAK that Dustin Hoffman belongs to. But he gave them another role in that they were supposedly in charge of investigating criminal aspects of science, like illegal cloning, or, things like that. Very interesting idea and very dark in an X-FILES kind of way. [INT: Was it a Fox thing?] Yeah. I loved it. I had a great time on it. [INT: So did it go to a series?] Yeah. [INT: Oh it did?] All the pilots except two that I’ve done have gone to series; they haven’t necessarily all continued running but I’ve got NUMBERS running but… THE PRACTICE went for a long time, I did THE PRACTICE--[INT: You did the pilot for THE PRACTICE?] Yeah, while I was prepping VOLCANO, can you believe that? [INT: Oh my god.] Same Director of Photography, same Designer--we just kind of did it. [INT: Who was the Director?] Theo van de Sande who shot TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, who shot VOLCANO, who I just worked with on MEMORY KEEPERS DAUGHTER.

INT: You know what, this is--I’ll tell you something we haven’t done which is a good thing, before--
MJ: DPs [Director of Photography]? [INT: Yeah.] Yeah, I mean that, especially, as applies to Actors, unless you’re there beside the camera when an Actor comes to the end of a take and they’re not at all sure of what they did, their eyes go to the DP and you want someone who’s sufficiently in tune with you; for them to be a) able to reassure the Actor, in a way that they don’t take it as negative if it wasn’t good and b) being able to say, “Yeah you’re great.” If it was. And I’ve been privileged to work with three amazing DPs who had that ability to convey trust to the Actor and who are terrific, brave DPs. Bravery being I think my prime quality I look for in a DP. Ivan Strasburg, South African; Theo van de Sande, Dutch; Andrew Dunn, Scott. [INT: The first one was whom?] Ivan Strasburg. [INT: And he’s from where?] From England and South Africa. He shot BLOODY SUNDAY for Paul Greengrass, you know, that thing about the IRA march…and actually turned down one of the BOURNE [THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, THE BOURNE LEGACY] movies ‘cause I already asked him to do something for me. That’s loyalty. [INT: Wow.] Theo van de Sande who was one of the Dutch film school mafia who came across with Paul Verhoeven and Jan Dupont and all the other Dutch people. [INT: How--describe what the process is with working with a DP, both in pre-production, you know, and in picking locations and then what the process is in anything--I don’t know whether you involve them in rehearsals, I guess you don’t ‘cause you don’t do those--and then what is--how--what is your relationship with the DPs in terms of setting up shots and…?] I think he’s the closest person that you have contact with emotionally, creatively, on the set. I spend a long time, hopefully working with someone that I’ve worked with before, so you have a kind of shorthand. On THREADS I worked with Andrew Dunn and we shot one sequence in the aftermath with a patrol of soldiers stopping looters and frisking them and shooting one of the looters. And when they searched the body they came up with a packet of potato chips and one said to the other, “What flavor is it?” “Prawn cocktail.” “Oh I hate those.” And threw it away and left the guy dead on the ground. The way we shot that was I thought, “Well how do we shoot this, keep it real and not try and shoot a matching shot, a matching shot, a matching shot?” So we just did it handheld camera and we did it three different times, but just treating it fresh, with no reference to the fact that we’d ever shot if before, so three different sets of dailies for this scene and they were cut together and it gave it tremendous vivacity. Then after on sets I said, “I think we’ll do a prawn cocktail here,” and he said, “Yeah, sure.” [Gestures picking up camera] So that became a shorthand. The other shorthand that you have with them is what you’re prepared to take as acceptable cinematography, and sometimes you can push them to the very, very limit and I love doing that. I’ve said to Ivan Strasburg, “Ivan, I want to shot this with a single, hanging, 40 watt bulb and nothing else,” and he’ll say, “Okay I’ll show you myself, let’s go.” Knowing that you’re on the very edge of what you’re gonna get, but it’s gonna be something striking if you do. I would rather have a striking image than a perfect image. Or Andrew Dunn I talked about with the camera on his shoulder walking backwards over rubble, through smoke and steam and flames, knowing that there’s gonna be something in there that’s extraordinary. But not knowing what it is. [INT: What about though, shot design, I mean, is that you, is that the DP, is it a collaboration?] It’s more me and the operator. [INT: More you and the operator?] Yeah, but the overall look of the movie, I spend a long time before we shoot looking at photographs, looking at paintings, discussing various lighting styles, various pictorial references. For example, LIVE FROM BAGHDAD, I have a very clear idea in my head that there are going to be two worlds in this movie. And this is what I talked to Ivan Strasburg about. One world is set in CNN, and it’s blue, it’s cold--it’s like the inside of a Vegas casino, there’s no natural daylight, it’s all artificial light and it’s blue florescent light. The temperature’s a constant 72 degrees, nobody’s sweating, everybody’s wearing Brooks Brothers shirts and ties and nothing from the outside world comes in except through monitors. That’s one world. The other world is much more handheld, and gritty, and dirty, and people are sweating and the windows are burned out because of the--you’re exposing for the interior--and you see nothing but white outside the windows and the smoke everywhere in the atmosphere, and it’s hot and humid and… And that’s what we got. And it’s useful to have that kind of shorthand in your head. He knows how to do it; he knows when I say, “Let the windows go” what I mean.

INT: But the shot, the setup for the shot basically is [MJ: Me and the operator.] blocking--is you and the operator?
MJ: Yeah, and the operator is that you trust. And sometimes, you know, if it’s Theo [Theo van de Sande], or if it’s Ivan [Ivan Strasburg] they will pick up the camera themselves and do some of it--something particularly…[INT: But do you, do you--what is--between, I know there’s something in between, but generally in between the two schools of blocking it with the operator and then the operator saying, “Okay, this is...” Or you--you as the Director, after you’ve blocked the blocking, are you the one standing there with the camera position and moving and the operator is following you, I mean, where…] It’s give and take. [INT: It’s give and take.] We’re kind of compadres. I like to think of it as being like--this is being very grandiose and I don’t mean it literally, but being like Jean-Luc Godard and Raoul Coutard. You know you’re joined at the hip. And you think the same way about what makes a good shot and what’s the right way to cover the scene. And one of them will say to me, I mean these are all wonderful, world-class cinematographers, will say to me, “If we did it from here then we get some terrific backlight and that will flare out as you came out of the corner and that would be good.” And I say, “Yeah, if you sank down a little bit lower so that you got some of the flare from the florescent lights and we didn’t correct them for daylight, that would be great wouldn’t it, ‘cause it would be a big splash of green?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, that’s great I’ll do this.” It’s an ongoing conversation and there’s a creative excitement there that is akin to working with Actors. [INT: Right, right. And would you say that on balance, and maybe there is no black and white answer for this, but on balance--] Or is it Technicolor? [Laughs] [INT: That on balance, yeah, that you are setting the blocking basically to enhance the performances or advance the story, I mean, those two together and having the camera and then trying to build interesting camera movements off of that?] Or the other way around? [INT: Or the other way around?] Both. Both. And it’s the hardest part of it, my kind of Director’s job, is to make sure that none of those takes precedence over the other. And it’s really hard to do. But so that there is a symbiosis between what the Actor is doing and what the camera is doing that seems so natural you can’t imagine it any other way. That’s when it works. I have this phrase I use, it’s called the poetry of the imperfect image. Which is about something which is striking and mysterious in a way, but not perfect. I love shooting through rainy windows, I love shooting through foreground things that are soft-focus--shooting when half of the frame is obscured by something that you’re not sure what it is. I only realized how important that was when I started shooting A VERY BRITISH COUP with a DP [Director of Photography] I hadn’t worked with before, and I saw this wonderful shot: press photographers are getting some covert shots of the British foreign secretary with his mistress through a window, from a high vantage point on the opposite--the other side of the street. And it was wonderful ‘cause the shot was a long, long line shot--telephoto--you were aware of the reflection of the milkman going by in the street in the glass, in the front--the whole world going on outside and this secret tryst happening just behind it. And I think, “Oh great, this is going to be a great scene, great shot.” And then the DP got in and he put lights here and lights here and lights here and lights here and the reflection he shot it off with some duvetyn of the flag and that was like shooting a commercial. And all the magic went out of it in that moment. Again, it’s what I was talking about earlier and I think, I’m talking now as a visual Director, not as a Director of Actors, but, the audience watching the movie shot by shot, wants you to draw them in to it. And if you’re--are we there yet, or can I finish this thought--the example I always take is that you’re at a party, booze is flowing, you’re on one side of the room, across the other side of the room is a beautiful girl and you’re really quite attracted to her, but you can hardly see her ‘cause there are people moving across the room, dancing, talking, drinking and what you do mentally is you sort of do that, [gestures parting a crowd] move everything out of the way. What I like to do is sympathetic magic--put all that stuff in there. So you find the focus and it makes--I think this kind of magnet that draws you into the picture. [INT: It’s sort of like the famous shot in ROSEMARY’S BABY, right? With Ruth Ford sitting on the bed and the telephone, you remember that shot? And you only--] I haven’t seen it for a long time. [INT: Well, it’s a very famous Polanski shot--the camera is outside the bedroom, she’s sitting on the bed, she’s on the phone, but you only can see half of her. So when the audience saw that shot because the door jam is in the way, everyone in the audience went like this [leans to one side.] I can imagine that, yeah. Yes, that kind of thing. It’s hard to engineer ‘cause it can be very, very frustrating if you don’t get it right. And you can’t see anything ‘cause there are people in the way, but if you get it just right, you feel you are a voyeur into this world, there is no fourth wall, you’re in the world and it continues everywhere, top and bottom, left and right of frame. [INT: But those are the kinds of shots, are they not, that really are the most time consuming to get right?] Well, you can do, I mean, there are so many different variables, you can’t legislate exactly who moves where and what but you can put the elements together and be lucky, sometimes. [INT: Right, right.]

INT: Let’s talk a little bit about TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. I mean because in between INDICTMENT and TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, which is about four years, you were mostly tied up with episodic right--pilots? [MJ: Pilots, yeah.] Pilots, right. That was another whole world. Maybe you know what, maybe we should spend the 10 minutes talking about that. [MJ: Pilots?] The pilots, yeah. Explain how you got into that world and what your experience was with that world and how it’s different from anything else you’ve done.
MJ: The first pilot I did was for THE PRACTICE, with David Kelley [David E. Kelley] and it was done because that was a Fox pilot and I was doing the prep work on VOLCANO. It was an immensely complicated movie to prep so there was a long prep period and it occurred to somebody in a kind of flash of inspiration at Fox: “We got this pilot for David Kelley, we’d like it to be good, we’ve got Jackson DeGovia who’s working as a Designer on VOLCANO, we’ve got Theo van de Sande as DP [Director of Photography] on it, we’ve got Mick Jackson--why don’t we put them onto doing the pilot, while they’re prepping?” Someone my age now would not even consider that, I was arrogant enough and young enough to say, “Let’s do it, let’s go for it.” I love doing pilots. It is totally unlike doing episodic. Nobody has set anything, you have a completely blank slate and you can say, “Here’s how I see it, here’s how I think the visual style should be.” And you can discuss that with the Writers and the Producers and either excite them or not, in which case you’re out of the door and they’ve got the next person in, pitching to them. But if they like it, you can develop that and say, “Here’s who I see in this role and I think this person would be great for it and I think we should shoot in L.A. [Los Angeles] if we could ‘cause I think we could use locations here to great effect.” And it’s a mini movie, and it lasts an hour--boom. And I didn’t want to do any more of them after that, I just wanna do that one and have the satisfaction of saying, “This is a perfect jewel.” And it worked. And if anybody wants to see that and pick it up, this is a kind of template for it. It’s a completely discipline--different discipline than anything else I know, it’s immensely satisfying, it’s the most pressured work I know and you make discoveries all the time about things you didn’t know worked. I mean, THE HANDLER was another pilot I did with Joe Pantoliano--very interesting idea, written by Chris Haddock, a Canadian Writer. An FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigations] handler of undercover agents, who is much like a Director, these agents have to take roles, they have to prep themselves for their roles--get into their character, act only in character, never give away their cover--set in Los Angeles. And I got a great, great cast, you know, Joe himself was the lead. Hill Harper was in it, Anna Belknap--not well known faces but really supremely versatile Actors. I wanted to use the city itself as a kind of character in the way that I’d used it in one way in L.A. STORY, and another way in THE BODYGUARD, and one way in CLEAN SLATE, but use the dirtiness, the underside, the messy underbelly, the drug culture--KNOCK [THE KNOCK] was a good reference point, starting this. Shooting on handheld cameras, lightweight film stock, fast film stock, so you could shoot with virtually no illumination except streetlights--a lot of night shooting. You see all the streetlights working, see the lights in the office buildings, you’ve got this very odd light that comes from passing cars and things. Came across a way of doing the soundtrack which I’ve used ever since which just struck me with a thunderclap, you know. There’s a kind of music of the streets, these are multicultural streets--supposing instead of writing a score, you had an Indian raga running and you had African drumming running and you had salsa music running and you had something else running and they’re all just mixing in a kind of wash there, as if coming from different parts of the street. Wonderfully energetic--energizing, I mean it’s just a completely different way of looking at L.A. I love doing that, I loved using the found chaos of the street, not building a set, but just saying, “That’s a great corner there. Look at those neon signs over there, reflected in here and that’s…” So that was something I hugely enjoyed doing. I hugely enjoyed doing STRANGE WORLD for the kind of X-FILES, spooky look of Vancouver. One day shooting that, we shot at the main railway station in Vancouver--I hit my record, I think it was 68 set-ups in a day, including moving trains, slow-motion pigeons, child Actors and the stalking match with an assassin through a crowded station. And I did that by moving the benches myself and painting things and moving props and--that’s what I mean, on a pilot you can be on, I think there’s one, possibly two. Since then, I’ve started to use two cameras regularly, we had I think two cameras on that day because it was such a big day but… I love it, the controlled chaos, the hands-on nature of it, that it’s like Dziga Vertov, it’s like making a movie in that moment, contemporaneously--spontaneously. You can sometimes do on a pilot, indeed you have to, to get through a schedule on a pilot. I had situations on a pilot and situations on TV movies where it’s the end of the day, and you’ve got a scene to do, and the Production Manager is looking at his watch and saying, “Well you’ve got time for one shot, you’re not gonna do it, let’s pull the plugs.” And I say, and it works--something I learned from a DP long ago, “Okay, turn the camera on.” Say to the operator, “Whatever I--whatever happens, do not cut that camera. Do not cut it until I say cut the camera.” You shoot the first shot, which is maybe somebody coming into the room; camera’s still running, you say okay change the lens, put a different lens on here, slide the tripod across here to here, move that light over there, tell that person to go out…

INT: So when’s the lens change is taking place, while the camera’s running?
MJ: While the camera’s running. You’re directing the Actors while the camera is running, you’re moving the camera from here to here, sliding on the tripod and on the legs if necessary and then you do the reverse. And then you still, without cutting the camera, come across here, you re-light and tell the person to come out again, you shot across them. [INT: Wait, you re-light with the camera running?] Yes. [INT: So what is the point of that?] The point is they can’t stop you shooting. You haven’t cut the camera yet. [INT: I see, so this is…] So, you--the cheapest thing in this situation is film, running through the camera, with a digital camera it’s virtually cost-free. But you’re actually getting the whole scene, in one continuous take--you take out all the bits in the middle while you’re directing the Actors and…[INT: But [laughs], so this is…] It’s wonderful! It’s a wonderful thing. I don’t know anybody else who does it, I learned it from a Scandinavian DP [Director of Photography] called Begda Lunda [spelled phonetically] who was used to covering crisis situations in the Congo and he got what he called a “secret shot”--he’d get a shot here handheld, then he’d run, run, run to the other side and get another angle then he’d run on, without cutting the camera. [INT: Yeah, but don’t you--aren’t you still going past the clock with that?] Do you know how much time--you do know how much time you lose when you say, “Okay, cut it.” Everything falls apart. You have to call for silence, you have to get everybody back--makeup and costume will come and do that…it’s just a way of getting it in a very, very compact way. [INT: And have you ever--has anyone ever stopped you when you’ve done that?] They daren’t. The camera’s still running. It’s just one last take, and that’s it. I did it on the last movie. [INT: What about when you talk about pilots, the fact--] Pilots are sort of--what I’m trying to say is, is a kind of buccaneer world in many ways. They’re--[INT: Buccaneer?] Buccaneer. [INT: But what about the fact that there are so many, there's so many people to satisfy? How do you handle that, or do you just live with it?] Live with it. I mean, my defensive mechanism, as you probably gathered from this interview, is to be like a puppy dog on the set. To run around all over the place--unstoppable force and just do stuff. And hope that people are so, kind of, amused by it, or charmed by it, or just don’t know how to handle it that they let you do what you want to do. And just make the making of this the most important thing to everybody else as it is to you. It’s sort of a charm thing. [INT: So if you’re gonna have problems--] Charm in a magical sense. [INT: Okay. Last question, so if you’re gonna have problems with that it really has to do in post production, right?] [MJ shakes head no] [INT: Where we have all these other--you don’t have problems? They just take your cut, and you don’t have to…] Oh, you mean with people? [INT: Yes.] I thought you meant with doing the sequence shot. [INT: No no no no no. I’m talking, I’m talking…] No they don’t take a cut, sometimes they ruin it. [INT: In the politics of it.] Yeah. [INT: So you can get chewed up in the politics of it in the end and also in maybe the casting or the script in the beginning? But mostly--] Usually not, usually not, 'cause you’re working very closely with the Writers and all involved in the casting and--[INT: So it’s all in the post?] In the post, yeah. And what the expectations of the studio and the network are. [INT: Do you think it’s gotten worse?] Yes. I think everything’s gotten worse. Which is an old fuddy-duddy thing to say, but its...[INT: That's a really good place to stop and pick up on the next time we do this...] MJ: Ok. [INT: That was terrific.] MJ: Thank you.