INT: So, picking up what you wanted to say.
MJ: I just finished a movie called MEMORY KEEPERS DAUGHTER, which one character is played by Emily Watson, and I spent a long, long phone call persuading her to do the part and a long conversation over the telephone line about the character and what drove this character. And one of those things was picking up on a line from the book on which it’s based, "Even before she realized what she was doing she was out of the room." And that seemed to be a very interesting insight into the character that this wasn’t a woman, who’s the nurse in the story, who has an overview of her life; who has a clearly defined set of moral values of right and wrong, but just there’s some kind of body instinct--gut instinct--not necessarily that tells her what’s right, but what’s wrong and what she’s not going to do. And I’d like to try and find a way of making this apparent with the camera, as if you are--I said this over the phone to her, “As if you are in league with the Steadicam. You are psychically linked with the Steadicam so that a fraction of a second before you start walking out of this scene which you’re gonna go out of like a bat outta hell, the camera starts easing in front of you. So it’s as if the form of the thought is there given cinematic expression.” And Emily was really happy with that and we repeated it several times in the movie and that’s an example where I come with a sort-of blocking--you know the character’s gonna walk out, but just the way of walking out, in fact, can be tied in to something which is very central to the straight ahead, like a, like an arrow shot from a bow that doesn’t know where it’s heading. [INT: As if the camera were clearing a path for her.] As if the camera were her thoughts saying, “Come on, come on, go.” [INT: Right.] And urging her, sort of magnetically drawing her into the walk. Works very well.

INT: How do you feel about the, one of the, I don’t know whether to call it a rule or not, but one of the philosophy that the Actor’s first responsibility is to advance the narrative?
MJ: I never heard that said before. Really, I’ve never heard that. I would have said that the Actor’s first responsibility is to be true to their character. Not to advance the narrative, that’s the Director’s job, if anything. And so it surprises me. [INT: Well what it has to do--it was something an Actor once told me. And it became my own mantra, meaning that, to use a very bad example, of Actors who will, who before they say the line that they’re supposed to say will spend a great deal of time ruminating in front of the camera and we’re all waiting that next line before the story can move forward. I mean I think that’s where it comes from.] Right. [INT: So, okay, last question about the business with the act--I mean for the moment--with the acting and the…Given the short shooting time, do you ever find yourself with the problem of the competing needs of your desire, because you’re certainly are a visual Director, as well as an acting Director, with the fight between who’s going to get the most time, whether it’s the visualization of the film or the performances?] That’s a floating thing; it’s a floating thing. I think you need to have a very clear sense of what the film is doing, at any moment, and to know the answer to the question, “What’s telling the story at this point? Is it the camera that’s telling the story? Is it this face that’s telling the story? [Frames face with hands] Is it this face that’s telling this story?” And give all your attention to that. It’s just like, is this piece of music carried by the woodwinds at this point, or by the cellos? Simple as that. And not, you know, stint on that. [INT: Right, and so that on a case by case basis you’re making that decision and spending that time where you’re creating your own priority there. I mean the film is telling you what the priority is.] Yeah, because, you know, the film is probably becomes known for this great central performance that you hope you get out of the Actor, but not in every moment. That’s an accumulation of things, accumulation of things act synergistically with each other and you need to keep all those things in play, all those worlds in play, to support that performance.

INT: Okay, so let’s, let’s, now we’re prepared to go to one of your most successful films, which involves all of these things: acting and strong visualization and style. And that’s A VERY BRITISH COUP. So why don’t you give us a little background on that and how all that happened and that’s still at the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation]?
MJ: No, that was at Channel 4. [INT: Okay, but it’s still in U.K. [United Kingdom] you’re still in U.K. at this point?] Yeah, right. Television U.K. I was very lucky, I did THREADS, which won a BAFTA [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] award. And then I did LIFE STORY [Alternate title: THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX and DOUBLE HELIX (U.S.)] which won a BAFTA award, and that made me, in terms that these things mean anything, “Hot,” as a Director. And so I got offered a chance at participating in an adaptation by Alan Plater, a great Writer, whose work I loved, in a mini-series based on Chris Mullin’s book A VERY BRITISH COUP, about British politics, a deadly dull subject usually. Alan’s [Alan Plater] a very, kind of, tart and juicy Writer. Chris Mullin was a Labor MP [Member of Parliament] so he knew the background of politics. And the idea that--A VERY BRITISH COUP comes from a phrase in the script, yeah? The revolution was carried out without tanks, without torture or retribution, or people being shot in the streets--a very British coup. This is the way things happen in Britain, the levers are pulled behind the scenes and things happen without anybody really realizing what’s happened. The idea of having a Sheffield steel worker was very appealing to me; to have someone who was an outsider coming into this world of politics who didn’t abide by the rules and whose chief delight for the audience would be that he was always changing the rules to discomfort people who thought the rules were set in stone, that they can manipulate. Ray McAnally, an Irish Actor, had been doing a television thing for Irish television, I think, and found himself in a scene with a kid and the kid was very kind of restive in the scene, very nervous. And Ray thought to himself--this is gonna lead somewhere, just a second--Ray thought to himself, “I’ve gotta calm this kid down or we’re gonna be shooting this damn scene all day.” So he fixed the kid with a stare [stares intensely], straight like that, and Ray has a really, kind of, overbearing stare when he puts it on. And the kid kind of quieted down and they got the scene and the shot. In his hotel room, some weeks later, Neil Jordan was watching television and saw this scene with Ray McAnally and said, “By god that’s a stare! I want that guy for THE MISSION.” And he cast him as the cardinal in THE MISSION, really on the basis of this tremendously charismatic look that he did. And Ray did it in THE MISSION, and I saw it and I thought, “That’s Harry Perkins, that’s the character for me in A VERY BRITISH COUP. He’s Irish, but what the hell, he can be that Sheffield steel worker.” He came for the first meeting, walking up the stairs, speaking in a broad Sheffield accent, that he’d been rehearsing for three weeks. And that was the start of it, I mean, he was just a force of nature, and I encouraged him so to be and to be very blunt spoken and…I felt as I like to feel about things, that this was a work that I could do with passion. And I could put the best of myself into it; in terms of virtuosity of storytelling, an unexpected quality of the play and a sense that the audience would be constantly surprised by the turn of events, or the character’s reactions. And there are many scenes, I think, just turned things around in a way that’s unexpected, but real. When Harry Perkins, Ray McAnally’s character’s Prime Minister, is wrong-footed by an illicit affair of his foreign secretary that’s been discovered, the foreign secretary comes to his office and says, “I’m sorry, here’s my resignation if you want it.” And you expect him to say, “It’s okay, we’re all buddies here, I accept your resignation.” And he’s steely in that moment, which is I think shocking to your sensibilities. Every time working class people from Sheffield are portrayed on British television they have a background in the mine workers union, or in Sheffield brass bands. I wanted him to have a love for Mozart, which is kind of central to my conception of the whole thing, that the formality of Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor would be somehow the glue that bound this whole thing together and made him a man unexpected and not easily defined as a stereotype. And in fact, credo, which we used as the title and means we were in--in religious terms, also in political terms: “This I believe.” A man of conviction, and god knows we have reason to be afraid of men of conviction, but a man who had a conviction that he could up-end the system and make it afresh and make a fresh start with things. So there are all kinds of, again, resonances, with the Catholic mass that’s blaring out chorally on the soundtrack and the drama that’s taking place, and I loved that; that you could shoot a political drama and have religious music in the background and it gave it a kind of scale.

INT: Yes on that particular mini-series the thing that struck me that music was the most overt, of any of your films, at least the ones that I saw. It was, it was, as you say, film is--has as many elements as music to begin with which is a metaphor that I like to use as well. But in this case, the element of music was in some ways, I don’t want to use the word loudest, or strongest--it was very dominant. It sometimes anticipated scenes before they happened. And it certainly took scenes and emphasized them--that’s not the word I mean, but what is the word when you make something bigger? Anyway--[MJ: Aggrandize them, or?] No, no, well it’s not important, in any event, they were--it was the music was much much more a character in this film than in any of your others. I mean did you…?
MJ: I saw it that way. I saw it as giving scale to the movie; giving an epic scale to the movie that was indeed about the politics of state, in Shakespearian sense. Always, nearly always, when I start a movie I have a piece of music in my head. Before I start shooting. For NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB] it was two pieces of music, it was the Haydn “Mass in the Time of War,” which I happened to know was a favorite of the real character that Tommy Lee Jones was based on, and the “Death March from Saul” which was played at the funeral of John F. Kennedy, and that became like a funeral march for the loss of innocence of Tommy Lee Jones’ character through the movie. [INT: So music more than painting is--] No, no both, both. Don’t ask me about painting yet, but I do try and bring the other arts to a--it’s not necessarily for the understanding of the movie for everybody, but I think if the movie exists on several levels, it’s there accessible, that the painting references are there, the references to other movies are there, the music references are there. CLEAN SLATE, which is kind of an homage to '40s [1940s] detective movies, kind of comic noir, I always heard big band '40s music on the soundtrack. The Sakharov [Andrei Sakharov] movie [PEOPLE FROM THE FOREST] I heard the Shostakovich String Quartet, kind of long phrases and Alexander Nevsky [Orpheus] music in my head. Always there was some kind of musical starting point. For the INDICTMENT movie [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] I had something like Carmina Burana, kind of, slightly gothic, choral music. For LIVE FROM BAGHDAD I heard a mixture of rock-n-roll and Islamic music, so there’s always something there to start…[INT: And all that happens fairly early on in the process?] Yeah.

INT: So your process is, I know that you, that you say it’s means of preparation and that it liberates you, but you begin to, you begin to make choices very early in your process along the way.
MJ: I need to draw myself into the movie, to make it not a script that any number of Directors have seen and maybe rejected but something that I make my own and I make my own by investing--an emotional investment of what I could bring to this, so it takes me actually a long time to read a script. I don’t turn the pages very quickly, I want to try and imagine each page, each scene before I turn to the next one. So usually by page seven I know where the script is gonna be one I--‘cause I’m just so tired from putting all this in--imaginative energy into it. It’s one I’m gonna do or not. [INT: Just in passing, Neil Jor--you misspoke, Neil Jordan didn't do THE MISSION.] Roland Joffé. [INT: Roland Joffé did it, right.] But in between the two of those, Neil Jordan saw Ray McAnally and put him in ANGEL. [INT: Oh.] So, it was--it’s another stage in the process. [INT: I see, right.] And then I think Roland Joffé saw him in ANGEL and…[INT: Right.]

INT: So, okay, just getting back to A BRITISH COUP [A VERY BRITISH COUP]. Also, this one up until now is the one where the camera is--this is where the camera really does take off in the series, I mean it has a great deal of movement. What was the schedule like on it, do you remember?
MJ: [Nods head no] British television schedules aren’t very long. [INT: Are they comparable to the U.S.[United States]? Are they…] It was so many years ago, I really can’t remember. It was okay. You know it was a rush; it’s always a rush. I worked on a hundred million dollar movie and it was always a rush, with 100 and something days shooting, it’s, it’s a rush. Because--[INT: BODYGUARD [THE BODYGUARD] was over 100 days?] No VOLCANO. I think actually in ’96 [1996] or something like that, but your ambitious grows with each thing that you do so you’re always pushing against the limits. [INT: Right. So--] You were talking about earlier--I’m sorry I didn’t mean to--[INT: Go ahead.]--head off the question, but about working with a Writer. Working with a lot of political advisors and with Alan Plater on that, I think I contributed a certain feeling to the movie, to the series. One of the things I thought would be a great invention would be the televising of the dismantling of a nuclear warhead. And that’s a scene which I think I haven’t seen before, and that done to the Latin mass, and the words in Latin mean, “Who taketh away the sins of the world.” And to see that shot with this, kind of, brilliant light, hands reaching almost in sacrament for the missile. It moves me, I get choked up feel--I shot it, but--I felt at the time I was shooting it that this was something that was important for the world that should happen and therefore I think I invested a great deal of personal emotion in the scene. [INT: Well it’s clear that the whole nuclear issue is something that’s very deep--] It was then, it was then. And it seems to have gone away and then, I get the sense recently--[INT: Except you brought that out.] Sorry? [INT: You brought that out.] I did. Everybody should have one. [Holds up paper wheel nuclear bomb effects calculator] [Laughs] [INT: Well I mean the fact that, that you did--] It’s not gone away. [INT: What?] It’s not gone away. [INT: No...]

INT: I made a Holocaust film and I never got over it. I mean I had the same kind of experience you did; the images took literally years to get out of me. So, but the fact that you made--that I know of anyway, at least two films, right: one, THREADS, which was graphic beyond imagination, and it was like even though this is not what the film was about, the VERY BRITISH COUP [A VERY BRITISH COUP] was like the dismantling of that. It’s almost as if, and I had an interesting thought, it’s almost--maybe I’m being over psychological here but it was, it’s almost as if that in A VERY BRITISH COUP you were able to undo what you did in THREADS.]
MJ: Oh yeah. I think very much so, but I think as one of the reviewers said about that particular sequence in A VERY BRITISH COUP, it was an example of how television and film can have transformative powers. And I go back again to the fact that many people do not have the imagination to see that things can come to pass in this world and if they do what they will be like. And what links A VERY BRITISH COUP and THREADS is that very same sense that you need to imagine things for people, and sometimes only when they’ve been imagined and they can see them on their TV set can they bring them in their own heads into the realm of possibility. And yes, undoing THREADS indeed. [INT: So was there, before we use A VERY BRITISH COUP as a bridge to your own career, was there anything else about that film that you wanted to remark about, anything about the experience, or anything that--] I felt for the first time I was a Director. That I could feel confidence in going this brashly into something, knowing what I was doing, knowing what I was doing with Actors, knowing what I was doing with the camera and just using everything that I’d learned up to that point. [INT: Is another way of saying it, is it was af--it was in that film where you finally felt at home on the set?] Yeah, I guess so. If there was a set, I guess--we moved around a lot. But--[INT: Well, in a figurative sense.]

INT: How did you--the next thing that I have is the American film CHATTAHOOCHEE, right? Is that was--so this is where the big transition in your career--how did all that happen?
MJ: It happened because of A BRITISH COUP [A VERY BRITISH COUP]. A BRITISH COUP [A VERY BRITISH COUP] was seen in the U.K. [United Kingdom] of course, but over here it became a very oddball MASTERPIECE THEATER. MASTERPIECE THEATER tended to be kind of very sedate adaptations with Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or something and here was something very much more contemporary and done in a much more contemporary style. And so it got noticed. Various people noticed it. Gary Oldman noticed it, in England, and Dan Melnick [Daniel Melnick] noticed it here in the States [United States]. Gary Oldman talked Hemdale [Hemdale Film] into having me as the Director on CHATTAHOOCHEE, which is his next project. [INT: And you hadn’t known him at that point?] No. They said, “Who do you want as Director? He said, “I want the guy who did A VERY BRITISH COUP. Whoever he is.” And Dan Melnick saw it here who was recently ex-head of Columbia [Columbia Pictures] and who was doing another project with Steve Martin. They’d done ROXANNE and they were about to do L.A. STORY, and Dan showed Steve Martin a tape of A VERY BRITISH COUP and said, “I want you to see this guy, I think he has a visual vocabulary that isn’t often used here. And this may be a kind of outside eye on Los Angeles that we particularly don’t want to come from a native.” So, two things happened almost--well, three things happened. The other person who saw A VERY BRITISH COUP was David Puttnam, who offered me MEMPHIS BELLE to direct. The timing didn’t work out and Michael Caton-Jones ended up doing MEMPHIS BELLE, I ended up doing CHATTAHOOCHEE--kind of mixed experience, and in the meantime, I was being pestered is the wrong word, but being constantly telephoned by Dan Melnick or Steve Martin saying, “Come and do this movie.” And to my shame and kind of chagrin and embarrassment I kept saying, “No. I don’t really think I want to come to the States [United States].” And I couldn’t do anything ‘cause I thought the script for L.A. STORY was so beautiful and perfect that I said to Steve [Steve Martin], “I don’t think I can bring anything to it that isn’t there already.” I mean it’s just so wonderful and beautiful and funny and lush and magic, as it happened, maybe I did, but I didn’t know that at the time, and I didn’t know that because I was innocent in the ways of Hollywood. That you don’t say no when a major star or the head of a studio calls you up in England in the middle of the night and says, “Come to America.” I was stupid. [INT: But you did do it.] Sorry? [INT: But you did--] I did eventually, yes. Before that the first thing I did was CHATTAHOOCHEE. [INT: Right.] And I tried to bring some of the, the sensibility of THREADS, and of A VERY BRITISH COUP to CHATTAHOOCHEE, in that, I felt I had my mojo going as a Director. And that’s what I bring to it and I give it this tremendous energy and I did a lot of research and I looked at Fred Wiseman’s celebrated documentary TITICUT FOLLIES about mental health in the '60s [1960s] in the States [United States], and a lot of it was based on that research. I had a good time shooting the movie. I had a great cast: Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand, Pamela Reed, Ned Beatty. It was a terrific cast, and they were all at the top of their game, and they gave me the performances that I couldn’t have dreamed of getting. So I’m pleased with the performances. One of the things that attracted me to it was it was written as a black comedy. You wouldn’t know would you? You wouldn’t know; it’s so grim and bleak when you see it. People have different ideas about what wins Oscars, and I think that the Producers thought that the comedy was a kind of distraction from its Oscar winning potential. So when they, the studio, got their cut, they ruthlessly pulled out all the dark comedy scenes and what’s left, you know, by default is very imbalanced; it’s very dark, very grim. You get some comedy in the Frances McDormand character, but… It was difficult is that I wasn’t a member of the Director’s Guild [Director’s Guild of America, DGA] at that time, and I think if I’d had sage advice from someone in the Director’s Guild I wouldn’t have gotten myself in the situation that I got myself into, which was essentially being horrified when I saw what had been done to the movie. The performances, they were great I thought, and I’m proud of those, but the actual movie itself is so unrelentingly bleak I wanted to take my name off it. I didn’t want this to be my first feature. And then I was told that I couldn’t do that. I could not do that and still be paid the rest of my fee. Which made me have pause for thought. Part of the agreement was, you know, to do with how this was to be characterized in any interviews with the press, and I tried to stick by that agreement, but I got paid my fee. And the movie was very short-lived in theaters and I think it was in some ways a satisfying experience, you got to sense of a character triumphing against adversity, but I think the richness of being able to contrast that with the black comedy was missing from it, and made it rather difficult movie to watch. [INT: Yeah and it was pre-Cohen Brothers.] Yeah, though Frances McDormand was married to Joel Cohen at the time. [INT: Right, right.] It would’ve been a better movie. [INT: Yeah, yeah I’m sure. It was a great cast, but hearing your explanation, you know, you can see where you’re problem was--

INT: Do you, do you ever give any thought to this question, which is particularly in the latter part of your career, do you, do you--how mu--let me put it in a form of a question. How much weight--if you see a piece of material that you really like, that really speaks to you, how much weight do you give to the question of who you’re going to make it with as weight against how much you like the material? And I’m not even--I’m not necessarily talking about the Actors, I’m talking about the people you’re going to have to make it for or with, in terms of their sensibilities versus yours. What do you tell yourself--first of all, first part of the question: in those early meetings are you checking out the sensibilities of the person who’s asking you to come make the film? And two: how much weight do you give to that in your decision as to whether to make the film?
MJ: Nobody knows anything. Unless you’ve worked with a Producer or an Actor or a production company before, or a studio before, you don’t know who the players are. I didn’t know; I was coming new to this town and so you take a certain amount on trust and as a Director you come into the room with arms that wave around and you look out of the window with a kind of distant stare and you try and convince people that you have some kind of inspirational vision for the movie and they respond saying, “Great, great, great. We love that. We love that.” They may be lying through your teeth; you may be lying through your teeth--I try not to. But you don’t know until you’re actually in the doing of it, and particularly when you deliver your first cut. How much what you sold them as the vision of the movie was what they really wanted? Or whether they wanted something that was like that, but which could be pushed in to being something else. [INT: Well do you check out these people before, I mean, you talk to--you call the Directors or--I mean, I'm not talking about CHATTAHOOCHEE, which is a very special situation ‘cause you were new to a whole new country, but since then? I mean in the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] you always knew who you were dealing with and… But did you, did it become even to today, does that become an element in your decision as to whether or not you’re gonna take a film?] I think it will from now on [laughs]. More than it was then. I was very innocent then in the ways of Hollywood, I mean, the British experience that Channel 4 has been--British television experience was really very gentlemanly in a quaint sort of way, and I wasn’t prepared for quite the ruthlessness of living in the town [Los Angeles]. Now I love it, but then I was kinda out of my depth, and I made a lot of bad decisions, I think, out of inexperience, on various movies which I’ve regretted over the years and I hope I would finish things better these days, but yes, of course I check things out. I checked out Dan Melnick [Daniel Melnick] and he’d done ROXANNE with Steve Martin--they were in love with each other still, and anxious to collaborate on another thing. Hemdale [Hemdale Film] had made things with Oliver Stone and Arnold Kopelson and although there’s some residual legal issues, you know the movies had turned out well, I thought. Warner Brothers [Warner Bros.] you know, I’d heard they were a reputable studio and Kevin Costner had won the Oscar for DANCES WITH WOLVES and Whitney Houston was not inconsiderable as a singer and I thought well these will be good people to collaborate with. I mean, I’m understating it, I was over the moon--the idea of being offered something like this. Again it’s this train of things, you know I when I was talking about Ray McAnally going from trying to quiet a small child to being seen by--[INT: Neil Jordan]--It wasn’t Roland Joffé it was--[INT: Neil Jordan]--Neil Jordan, Roland Joffé and then by me, and I made L.A. STORY and Kevin Costner saw L.A. STORY and rang me up the next day and said, “You seem to have such a feeling for L.A. [Los Angeles] and this is a story set in L.A., I’d like you to direct it.” I couldn’t believe I was talking to Kevin Costner on the other end of the phone. I was just blown away by it--the fantasy of it all. I don’t know what else to say. [INT: Oh, okay, that’s okay--no that basically answers your question I just didn’t want to interrupt you. Okay so--] Should I have checked out more? Yes, probably. [INT: Well it’s not a should of, I just--I was just curious as a--]

INT: So, did you know that CHATTAHOOCHEE was gonna be troubled--at what point in that film did you come to realize that you had a problem, not until after you did your cut?
MJ: Yeah. I do not know what was happening with the dailies in the States [United States] while I was cutting in England, in London. [INT: Oh you were cutting CHATTAHOOCHEE in London?] In London with an Editor I’d worked with on A VERY BRITISH COUP. [INT: I see, so you hadn’t made the move here, you just came here to make the movie? And you didn’t assume you were gonna make the move here?] That’s right. [INT: Okay. Alright. I’m glad we discovered that. So what happened?] I need to be careful about what I say here, I do not know if it was being simultaneously cut in a different version with a different sort of dailies. At times when I’m feeling less than generous to humanity I suspect it might have been the case, but I was as I say very ignorant in the ways of this country, this industry, and I didn’t know that there were set rules--this is how long you have for a Director’s cut, you have this number of previews and so on. None of which was particularly spelled out for me and I just came from being the person who runs the show, essentially, on A VERY BRITISH COUP and it seemed it would be the same here and it wasn’t. And it was a rude awakening. But then, then I had a good dream, rather than a nightmare, which was L.A. STORY. And that was everything a good movie experience should be. You may not want to go there yet. [INT: Well, no I just--I had a question, let’s see whether that dropped out of my mind or not. Yes, I remember the question. Does it, isn’t it always--it's rhetorical, but--surprising when the passion with which someone, some studio, some executive, some Actor comes at you to--of course they’re convinced that you’re the only one who’s going to be able to execute this script into a film, to a place, to a level that they want and they know you’re the only one, isn’t it amazing how all those elements can collapse upon themselves until finally, or not so finally, but at some point they do a complete 180 and think of you as the worst choice they could have made?] I don’t know they felt that, but you have to ask them, but I didn’t know the expression, which I’m now formulating in my head, “We love what you do, come quickly and don’t do it here.” [Laughs] “Do something else here.” [INT: So, okay, so that--] That was again the--so there were these twin experiences and they happened to be separated in time by a little time, but not very much. As a result of A VERY BRITISH COUP I got a number of offers, those were the three main ones. CHATTAHOOCHEE was the one that was meant--supposed to go immediately and then during that, and the way that ended, I got progressively more pursued by Steve Martin and Dan Melnick. [INT: Were they aware of the problems with CHATTAHOOCHEE when you--?] I don’t know. I said, “I’m not very happy with it and I would be happy if you didn’t see it.” And Dan said, “Then I won’t see it.” And I have every reason to believe that he didn’t. And we just took it from square one: I’m the guy who did A VERY BRITISH COUP, I’d like to do this.

INT: So, okay now you can start talking about--what about, what was that experience [working on L.A. STORY]--I know it was a positive experience, was--
MJ: It was a positive experience, a very positive experience. [INT: What was the process?] The process was driving around late at night with Steve Martin, round L.A. [Los Angeles] and playing all kinds of music on the CD player of his car and being taken to places that I’d never even heard of in L.A., and being told why he loved them, and shown them. He was kind of like courting me. You have to know, if you are part of my generation and you’re British, when you grew up in post-war England, it’s a black and white place, it’s gray and there’s no food in the stores and the only thing you have access to that is at all exciting and stimulating is American cinema. And you watch these movies--I watched every Saturday morning I went to, when I was a kid, to the Saturday movies where they played two, maybe three old features for kids mostly. And I was enraptured. I knew by heart the shape of stoplights, the shape of road markings, street furniture, architecture, costumes, everything about America as if this was some distant and magical land across the sea. So, being asked to come into that with someone who said, “It is that magical land. Look, here’s the magic of it,” was just seductive for me. I think he wanted me to fall in love with it, as he had fallen in love with an English woman, Victoria Tennant, and his love story to L.A. was a love story to her, it was a love gift to her, and he wanted me to fall in love with L.A. and by god he succeeded. I now adore the place and I’ve made many movies about it, but before that I had just associated it with the CHATTAHOOCHEE experience and coming here on other projects and I thought it was shallow and horrible and venial and vulgar. And looking at it through Steve Martin’s eyes on those few trips around and going to Fred Segal’s and going to Boys Town and going to Mulholland Drive at night, I thought this is, this is a wonderful, magical place; this is un--some places you go to like New York and they give you everything full blast immediately and you [throws head back] “Whoa, what a fantastic place, I’d hate to live here, but it’s wonderful.” And Los Angeles isn’t like that, you think, "Well did I see it, was there anything there? It’s gone, where’s the middle of it?" And the longer you’re here and the more you have a guide like Steve Martin, the more you see that in all these little secret places there are pieces of magic, that don’t exist somewhere else. I mean I’m talking not literally, but there are places where I feel very English. English are known for their eccentricity and I think there’s so many things that are eccentric about Los Angeles--it’s sort of quirky in a very agreeable way to my sensibility. I also think that if you come to a place here that’s so geographically un--geologically unstable, has earthquakes and floods and fire and mudslides and civil insurrection and all these things, you’d be crazy to live here. So that craziness is a kind of energizing thing for me.