JS: The influences I had as a Director, I, I neglected to mention, the great theater Directors that influenced my wanting to be a Director. At the time, it was primarily for theater, and Kazan [Elia Kazan] was a big influence in that, in that respect. I saw A STREETCAR [A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE], and that was when I decided this is the kinda work I wanna do. And, and of course that was in addition to what I’d seen on Broadway, everything from DEAD END, as a kid, to, to the THE TENTH MAN by Guthrie [Sir Tyrone Guthrie]. And what’s fascinating, what fascinated me about THE TENTH MAN was that it took place in a Synagogue, and that’s it. One set. Do you remember the play? [INT: I know the play.] Yeah. But what Guthrie did to make it really exciting, in addition to all of the values that the Actors were presenting, he took the sun and moved it. Do you remember that? He moved it, almost in real time, so that by the end of the two-hour play, the light from the sun changed as it would normally. And he almost went in real time. He kinda goosed it a little bit, I’m sure, because after all, he wanted to show the passage of most of the afternoon, etcetera. And those kinds of wonderful, rich, theatrical experiences gave me a hunger to exercise my muscles in that direction. [INT: You were lucky to get exposed to that great theater] Yeah. [INT: You were.]

INT: In the… Working as a television Director, in the early part of your career, did you feel then that there was, “Oh, well this is the world of television and over there is the world of film, and never the two will meet.” What--When you were, you know, in the early parts, what was going on for you in that, and did you have ambitions to be making…

JS: Very much so. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to do television. I wanted to bypass it. As I mentioned before, as a New York trained Actor/Director, I was not about to lend my talents to something as lowly as TV. Well, I had no idea until I actually got my first break, how difficult it would be to do that. Now I was a dialogue Director on two productions, and while making, while hoping to get a break, so that when it came, I was so delighted, I didn’t care whether it was television or what. It could have been a comic book for all I cared. Simply because I recognized, by that time, how very difficult it is for a first time Director to get started. Then when I started features, I understood that there was absolutely no difference because we used the same camera, the same film, the same crews, and in most cases, the same Actors, and the same stress, and the same pressures. You fantasize, when your doing TV that someday I won’t have to try jamming it all into eight days, when your episodic. That, oh, let me do features where I have all the time in the world. I actually used to wonder: What do you do with all that time, in theatrical features? What they do for 60 days and 80 days, and months at a time? I would probably go to sleep and take a nap most of the time. Well, doesn’t work that way. I was shocked, on my first feature, to see how absolutely stressful, same thing as TV, pressure? Same as TV. And of course all the other accouterments of putting a film together, it’s precisely the same. The difference: Yes, a little bit more time, a little bit more money, and it certainly gives you a chance at making a better product, in some cases. No, no guarantee. [INT: At least not in your case.] You can make a, a lemon in theatrical features just as quickly as you can in a, in an eight day schedule in episodic. [INT: And in, in your case], in terms of being, you know, one of the eminent masters of, of movies that have, movies that have been broadcast on television, the kind of stories that you’ve been able to tell, I mean, there’s no, there’s no feature filmmaker who can list a bunch of stories like this.] Well--[INT: This is really interesting, Joe. There isn’t...] Yeah, well, as a matter of fact, what’s happening lately, is very quietly, the bar has been raised far higher than anybody would have suspected, on T--on episodic. Never mind the features for TV, the HBOs, and the, the Showtimes, and, and you know, the very notable ones, and the miniseries. But in episodic, the work that’s going on now is on such a high level, the cameramen, the Directors, the acting, they’re, they’re doing far more than I certainly remember doing in episodic, and having the time to do it. And certainly far more than most theatrical features, you know, that are being ground out with, with their franchises and their sequels, and their merchandising, etcetera. [INT: Yeah, it’s true.]

INT: Let’s talk about the issue of working as a Director with script and Writers. What have you learned over the years, and is there a general process that you have gathered over the years? And lets talk general first, and then we’ll look at some specific things, but, in terms of the Director’s work with the Writer, what’s, what’s that been for you?

JS: Well, first of all, I… Because when you start out in black and white half-hours, your not getting the kind of scripts that you would like. And, you jump around from one show to another, and you’re working with some less than brilliant practitioners of the art. And so you develop… I suppose I had the same bias, the same contempt for Writers that most of our colleagues have, or had. And I should keep that in the present, there’s still a lot of that feeling, about Writers. Lumping them all together as if the entire Writers Guild [Writers Guild of America] was composed of idiots, and illiterates. Well, the truth of the matter is, I began to realize, as my, as my experiences grew, that I was suddenly getting scripts that were on a higher level. And it was primarily because I was moving into a more prestigious areas in terms of the shows, even in episodic. And it grew that way until I started my first long-form career, and the two-hour, and the pilots, and, and the mini series. Where it became rather obvious that the bias that we, or at least that I carried, was unfair; was reserved for those few hacks, and maybe they’re not so few, but for those hacks who really are working in a different area than the kind that I was now being elevated to, which was very fortunate. So I knew I had to somehow work a relationship with a Writer that made it, that would make sense in terms of how do I get through this motion picture, on this budget, on these amounts of days, unless I had some kind of a rock-bottom relationship with the, with the Writer. And all that amounts to is a collaborative experience. And I learned, because I had my own experience as a Writer, on LASSIE, again, my training ground, I actually went through the agony of putting together a script, that was only 23 minutes ‘cause it was a half-hours worth, were that short, but the decision-making process wore me out. The working-out all of the specifics of what are the character needs, what am I doing, what does LASSIE herself [laughs], what is she doing, etcetera. It’s just was a horrendous experience for me. Since then, I developed a respect, that I carried with me over all the years, but it didn’t come into fruition until I got to the kind of Writers that I knew I could develop a collaborative relationship with. And that’s, fortunately when I got into the two-hour and long-form area.

JS: So, what is a true collaboration? A true collaboration with a Writer, or with a cameraman, or with anyone else, is give and take, is the ability to trust each other to a point where you become a collaborator and not an adversary. I think so many of the working Writers and Directors, take an adversarial position, instantly, because Writers have been wounded, and they’re basically wounded animals, and Directors have been, have been disappointed. And, so there’s a kind of a tribal stigma that we, we keep feeling inside of us that has gone necessarily, that is not necessarily current. It’s like the tribal wars in the Middle East. They have nothing to do with present reality. Well, it’s the same thing, in many cases, for Writers and Directors. And I found that it was very, very beneficial, and very successful in terms of the, the stature of the film to form that collaboration. Now, what has to be understood about collaboration is that the Director’s position is still captain of a ship. There are some Writers who haven’t quite worked that particular problem out yet. And that’s unfortunate, but the reason why the captain of the ship is the analogy, is because you can’t possibly see how a ship can maneuver through all the shoals, and all of the storms, and all of the wave violence, with two people at the wheel.

INT: In terms of when you are first working with a script, or a script has come to you: What are the issues that you often will deal with as you approach either, lets say the Writer, at your first meeting? Here’s a script that you’ve read, that you’ve liked. Presumably, every script needs some evolution. How will you begin about it, and, and maybe we can be specific if there are a couple movies that would be specific, where you say, “Yes, here was the issue, loved the issue, worked with the Writer to get it, to get to this place.” So, looking at the process of you as a Director working with a Writer, and you know, maybe examples would be best, but you know, as what comes to mind first?

JS: Interesting that you should point out that it’s a script that attracted me. Now, when I graduated into the area where I could pick and choose, and turn things that, down that were simply not interesting, I then realized that a lot of Directors who pick a piece of material and are ready to direct it, also go to the other extreme and condemn the Writer for a bad script. I think it should be understood that once a Director, and I made this a creed for myself: Once the Director accepts a script and likes it, presumably, it really should be his responsibility to make it as, as improved, and as effective, and as dynamic as he can with the help of the Writer. It’s hard for me to say to a Writer, “This is a piece of, of crap and I don’t want this whole section, get rid of it,” etcetera. The minute you take that attitude on, you become an adversary. But if you join hands to fix something, and you’re specific about the logic of the reasons for that fix, you then get back to a collaborative existence. Now, I’m thinking specifically of one instance. On CAROLINE?, for instance.

JS: CAROLINE? had a fascinating thing that pulled me into it and a lot of other people. But it had a flaw; the flaw being that there were two pictures there, two motion pictures. And there had to be only one, obviously. Picture number one, was, was, is the daughter real? Is the daughter really his daughter? Picture number two was the child abuse that was going on in the family and the lack of cohesion between father and daughter, and mother and stepmother, and, and this daughter with MS [multiple sclerosis], etcetera. So, it was almost like two separate plot lines that had to be married. And with the Writer [Michael De Guzman], we managed to form the kind of, of welding that was necessary to bring both disparate elements together. And it became one motion picture. And it worked. It got--[INT: Now did, did the Writer initially object since you had the script that way or do you think--And again, this always depends every personality that you deal with is different. But, I’m curious about the process in which you approach a Writer saying, “Here, I like this material. I also see that this or that could be changed.” How do you go about that? Is there a, is there a style of relationship that you can, that you build with them?] Yeah, it, it’s pretty much like I approach Actors, and cameramen, and you know, every, all of the departments, which is a, a sense that I’m taking them in as a collaborator rather than issuing commands, rather than being the captain on the bridge who’s yelling out orders in the tube. There is a difference, and people will respond to the feeling that, that they’re being asked to contribute as opposed to the they’re being told what to do. It’s as simple as that. And it isn’t a device or a… I found it quite natural to work that way, simply because I believe in a happy set anyway, and happy, as happy of a relationship between everybody in a making of motion picture. But it’s, it, it’s, it’s the bottom line as to how a medium that is as collaborative as motion pictures: You’re not out there as a documentarian doing your own, your own thing, where you’re the cameramen, the Director, the Editor, the Writer, etcetera. And you could care less about the rest of, of humanity. No, you’re in a medium where you have to deal with some pretty bright people who have something to offer. And not to take of advantage of that input, is ridiculous.

INT: When you read a script, do you see it right away? Or are you reacting more to what the theme may be? I mean, how’s that process work for you?

JS: It varies, but by and large I’m visualizing certain images, but not necessarily locking into ‘em. But, I would say the normal thing that happens when you read a book, or when you read any script, you, you tend to form images of what the author is talking about. But I think the initial reading I haven’t really gotten quite that specific about, what those images should finally be realized as. [INT: Will you get an emotional response on that first read? Or, I’m curious whether… I’m curious also for you because, you know, you are preeminent here. When you were offered something, its gonna be made. The question is, do you; will the first read do it for you? Will you have to read something two or three times before you say, “I wanna get involved.” Where does, when do you say to yourself…] Usually, first read. I guess, that’s, yeah, that’s about it, yeah. [INT: And will it be both, will it be… I’m curious because your work as a Actor and Director, will there be an emotional quality, will something happen to you, besides the theme, ‘cause I know you’ve done many, many pieces that are really about, you know, real social, political issues, without a question. So that may be enough. But I’m curious if even some of the ones that you may say, “I--This even got me attracted more because of an emotional response.” Or, is that something that comes later for you?] No, no. It’s because, if it happens… I’m trying to remember the script where I literally wept, at the penultimate moment when something, it was a thing between a boy and a father, I don’t remember which, which one was it. But I instantly connected, emotionally, with that. And, yeah, you--part of the, the accepting of the project, leans heavily on how you feel emotionally about it, as well as how you feel intellectually, and even politically about it. I tend to lean towards social content, simply because there, there is a correlation between social content and emotional content, obviously. And, so, intellect of course is always paramount, and always important, but without emotional content, you have, you have a wonderful dynamic mask that’s rather lacking something. So… I was fortunate one time in working with a Producer who used “emotional content” as a phrase, and I instantly knew that this was a man I wanted to work with, because very few Producers ever worry about that, or even think about what’s the emotional content of, of the piece. And, and Bernie understood that. Bernie Sofronski was his name, yeah. Very sensitive, and very hip to what works and what especially is necessary in any given motion picture. And that’s if you can emotionally hook an audience, you’re 50 percent of the way the there.

INT: In… Do you like to read the script out loud before you, sort of work with the Writer? Or, I’m just curious, in the work with the Writer, will you be talking about scenes, but talking about them without reading them, or will you actually say, “Let’s hear this and, lets, so that we can deal with issues.” I’m curious in the various experiences with Writers, how you get to inspire them to go to the next step, once… [JS: When you say out loud, you mean…] Literally. [JS: Reading scenes to each other?] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JS: Only if, if I’m confused as to what the Writer is trying to articulate. And, reading the scene as he wrote it, and as he feels it, would clarify and clear the air. But generally, no. Generally, you know, you say, “This is unmotivated. This is out of key with what preceded it,” or “this is not true to the character,” or any number of critical problems that pop up. And, and the Writer either agrees or disagrees. If he disagrees, he’s gotta come up with a logical reason why he would not do that, which is my, my only parameter, my only caveat, really. Whether it be the Actor, the Cameraman, the Writer: If you have a better way, and if you, if there’s logic and motivation behind that, how can you fight that? It’s perfectly fine. It’s perfect input. [INT: Logic and motivation.] Yeah. [INT: I’ve got it.]

INT: In, have you ever been in a situation where the--there’ve been multiple Writers? [JS: Yeah, of course.] And?

JS: Well, usually one doesn’t have any relationship to the other, you know. [Laughs] And its not like you’ve got ‘em all in the same room. So you approach the new Writer with the hope that he will, he will repair some of the stuff that needs repairing, and which, in most cases, the original Writer either resists heavily, and, or has hit a plateau and can’t quite get out of it. Now we’ve all seen that happen. Good Writers, it can happen to any, any level of a Writer. They get to a point where they're no longer able to exercise a perspective that’s anything more than a narrow view of what they originally felt was right. And unconsciously, I suppose, and in some cases consciously, they are resisting going any further. And when that happens, and if it’s a serious enough breach in the, in the logic of progression, you have to bring somebody else in.

INT: It’s an interesting issue. I’ve had the experience, I suspect you have too, where you believe, you, as a Director, you really believe you have contributed to the next stage of this piece; that you’ve translated it into a movie that works, and you’ve known that. And there’s been times when the Writer has said, “Thank you, you really did that.” And there are time when the Writer has said, “You didn’t do it.” I’m talking about when you feel, this movie works, and the Writer--[JS: Doesn’t agree.] Yeah. That’s such a--I, I find that a very, sort of, painful place because you know, you’ve, you know, if I feel I’ve missed it, of course! But when I feel I’ve got it, and I’m curious whether you’ve had the, both sides of that.

JS: Well, the truth of the matter is, and, you know, lets talk reality here, that the Director, certainly not in any of my experiences, is not the only guy in the arena who’s making one criticism or another. Mine is only, my voice is added to several other voices, notably the 10 Producers that are also on the project, and story editors, and god knows who. But, you’ve got a committee, and in most cases, you have to respect their input, whether you do or not, you have to at least go through the protocol of accepting the conversation, if not the actual substance. But, the Writer isn’t being criticized or guided solely by the Director. That’s not the reality that we’re dealing with. We tend to, in even framing that question, tend to isolate Writer and Director as if they’re working in a vacuum, or working in a lovely, in a lovely creative nirvana that excludes everybody else. No, you have, you have studio heads, you have all of the Executive Producers, Supervising Producers, etcetera, etcetera. We’ll talk about proliferation later. [INT: Yeah, really.] [laughs]

INT: What, as you look at a script and you were to sort of step back and say, “What are the elements that make me say this is something I want to do?” Do you know what el--I, I…we talked a little bit about the political and social responsibilities. I’m curious if there are other things that you would also say, that this is important, in a, in a script, for me to feel that I can, you know…

JS: Well I lean, basically to films that can make some kind of comment, some kind of contribution to the condition of man, and to social justice, which somehow I’m pulled toward. I’ve never been able to figure out why, cause I was raised under fascism, because both my parents absolutely were convinced that Mussolini [Benito Mussolini] was the best thing that ever happened. And of course, they, they didn’t really. They weren’t that passionate about it, but they, they just followed the herd on that. And I was also in a city run by a guy named Mayor Hague [Frank Hague], who ran Jersey City like a good ole fashioned fascist would. Other than that, I don’t know… And of course then it was World War II, but the sense of violating a human being’s right to express himself, right to, to be, to be, to be functioning in a, in a society, for whatever reason, always struck me as being unfair. So when we talk about social justice, we’re talking about people who’ve been deprived of one thing or another, one right or another, one opportunity or another, unfairly. And, so that plays with you. But essentially, the thing I had to learn over several experiences, was that without good emotional content, the most well-intentioned, beautifully, politically correct comment and message you have in a film, stays up there with intellectual emptiness rather than the fullness that comes from, from emotional underpinning. [INT: Do you find yourself in each… Will there be a character, as your reading, that you personally will identify with?] You mean, in terms of the, of the protagonist of the, the film, for instance? [INT: Well, I guess, yeah. Or maybe, maybe not even the protagonist. Maybe it’s somebody else in relation to that protagonist. But there’s somebody that you say, “Somehow, this character has become me, or I’ve become that character.” Does that, does that happen?] Oh, I’m sure it does. I never gave it too much thought, but I’m sure we see ourselves in, in a favorable relationship to other human beings, or would like to be, anyway. Which is really the essence of what the hero of, or the protagonist of any dramatic event does for an audience, they can identify with his needs. Although, as a Director, I think we have to… Well, in my case, I know that I’m more gifted being objective than I am being subjective, which is why I never really was fulfilled as an Actor.

JS: Did I tell you when I became a Direc--when I knew that it was inevitable that I had to direct? [INT: Tell me, what you feel you haven’t told.] It was the day I realized, as an Actor, that I was now too old for the parts I used to be too short for. [Laughs] And, it was true. I mean, there was always an excuse, you know. Eyes are too blue, or they’re not blue enough. Too much hair, not enough hair. Too short, too tall, too this, too that. There was always too something or other, because it was a convenient way to dismiss an applicant for a job, you know. Of course, we all do it. In a sense that, that encapsulated for me, symbolically, what was wrong with just acting, for me. It wasn’t… A: it wasn’t that satisfying, because I couldn’t realize the full potential of what I knew, intellectually. ‘Cause with my training, I knew far more than I could execute. And I found, one of the reasons for that, is that I was much more capable, my, my, I guess my… I leaned more toward seeing an overall perspective. Seeing a larger picture than just one character. So, having that objectivity is a must for Directors anyway. I think one of the reasons why some people can’t direct, or find it hard to, and can be brilliant Actors, is because precisely the reverse of what happened to me. They’ve, they lean, their aptitude is more in the area of emotional response than, subjectively than, than an objective one.

INT: Lets look at one, one more question sort of about dealing with writing, one more about that. [JS: Yeah.] And, when do feel, if it has, in your communication with Writers, that it’s worked? And when has it not worked? What have you learned from, oh, you know, I tried to do this and it didn’t work? I’m curious if anything comes to mind, at all.

JS: Well, every once in a while, and quite fortunately it’s been--and happily, it’s been rare with me. You run into the recalcitrant Writer, the rock, ridged, “You cannot change one word of anything I wrote,” kind of Writer. And, there’s no hope of ever reaching someone who’s that adversarial, because obviously the wounds of the past are too deep for him, or her, and, and there’s not any, any way you can transcend it. I’ve, I’ve only had really one, maybe two, of those experiences. They were, they were far back though. And there is, there’s a point at which you have to realize that the hope of collaboration has gone out the window, there’s no way of doing it.

INT: Let’s talk about the issue of when you’re actually in the process of making a picture. And, I think, I once asked a, a group of Directors, of about 30 in the room, or 20 in the room, “How many of you, when you are working on your picture, have written scenes or re-written scenes?” and every hand went up. “How many of you get accredited for that?” No hand went up.

JS: You know why, because re-writing is part of the Director’s craft. No one ever said that a Director had no right to re-write, because re-writing is very much akin to directing an Actor for a particular moment. What you’re doing is approaching material, and hopefully bringing it to life. Now, the material is no different than any of the rest of the material, which is the camera, the Actors, the costumes, the set, etcetera. And, you certainly, the Director’s input is very important to how all of those elements can be pulled together properly. So, part of that pulling together is re-writing and making a moment that is not working, work. The confusion between re-writing and writing is, I think where some of the, some of the rub is. Some of the, the tribal warfare comes. There was a period there during the ‘70s [1970s], ‘80s [1980s], and probably still hanging around in some of the, in some of the Director’s consciousness, where they suddenly took on the French romance of calling themselves “auteurs.” This is, obviously, it’s, it’s gasoline on the fire, as far as Writers are concerned. We have to define what we mean by “auteur,” because there is a definite, and a far cry between re-writing and writing. Re-writing is directing, is part… Writing is auteurship. Now, if you’re gonna, and… One involves working with existing material, and writing involves starting from a blank page. So, you have to be very definite about which of those two mediums you’re in. If you start with a blank page, and you write, successfully, a full scene, that scene is yours, and you’ve been an auteur on that scene. Most of the time, yes, there are some of us who’ve written full scenes. Not necessarily brilliantly, but certainly competently enough to further the progression of the story. But that doesn’t make us an auteur, that makes us a, somebody who can legitimately repair a moment so that it works in the rest of the mosaic that we’re putting together. And I consider it exactly the same in terms of the Director’s craft, as correcting a prop, correcting a camera angle, correcting this, that, or, you know, any of the other--[INT: Got it.]--allied arts.

INT: Talking the allied arts, lets talking about casting. Let’s shift to casting. If I were an Actor now, coming in, not the star, we’ll talk about stars too, but an Actor coming in for one of the roles in your piece. What’s the process that you work with an Actor, or you’ve learned to work with an Actor over the years, for you to make a decision whether this is the right person to play a part? What do you do?

JS: Well I, frankly I, I’m probably disagreeing with a lot of people who are still doing it the old way, but I, almost exclusively, cast from videotape. Simply because, more and more, the energy and time spent in amenities, and shaking hands, and going through all of the litany of what you’ve done, and what you haven’t done, etcetera, I found that all time wasting and, and futile, because what they’ve done has nothing to do with why they’re in that room. Because, presumably, they’re in the room either because you know their--you’ve been attracted to their work, or the Casting Director has been attracted to their work. And, in most cases, they come in physically being close to the type your looking for. Well, I discovered, quite early, that I can tell, in maybe 60 seconds, what the training and what the potential is like for an Actor, but especially what the approach is. And, so there’s no need to go through all of the, the rest of the mechanics. So I, I learned to trust the instincts of watching Actors on tape, and I’ve been doing it now for, for about 20 years and it’s worked. [INT: Wow.]