JS: When it’s not working for an Actor, because basically, you know, you’re not helping the Actor every step of the way, unless they're real, they're in real trouble, or that they're just not right for the role. An Actor is bringing you at least 75 percent of the character to begin with. That 25 percent that’s troubling him or her that seems to be some kind of an obstacle is usually where, you know, I have to step in as a Director and help overcome. And it can be a variety of different reasons why that block is there, or why there’s a funny plateau that’s built up. There’s a vague kind of curtain that’s dropped there, that you have to cut through. Now, is some of the ways that you combat it is to re-invigorate the Actor’s relationship to the people around him, as a beginning, and stimulate the emotional response that that might produce. And there’s a variety of different improvisations you can use as well. I’m not a big promoter of sense-memory, which is one of Lee’s [Lee Strassburg] tools, but it has its place. There are any number of tools that you can hopefully reach an Actor with, that are extreme in some cases that are not the kind of normal work-progression that, that you would expect to have. But, when, when it’s necessary.

JS: And what comes to mind is, this Lithuanian Actress in OUT OF THE ASHES, that we did for Showtime [Showtime Network]. A wonderful Actress. I mean, she was immediately cast the minute I saw the tape, and she’s one of the leading actresses in theater, in Vilnius, Lithuania. She had a scene with Christine Lahti, where she had to--Have you seen the film? Where she has a--accuse her, you know of, of avoiding reality. And it involved, you know, a certain amount of emotion. But she was wonderful up to a point, and then all of a sudden, in the middle, at the peak of where she should be emotionally; she completely dropped, completely drained out. Not loss of words, but she just plowed on with the dialogue as if it was something else. Now poor Christine [Christine Lahti], who was one of the great, full, emotional Actors of our time, was already worked up for the confrontation that never happened! Well we--the first time, okay. Well, she’s kind of, she dried up a little bit; it happens. And in my usual approach, I make no big deal about it and assure the Actor, etcetera, everything is okay. Take five, she’s still reached that point and dropped it. I mean it was bizarre because as a fine actress, you never expect that she couldn’t follow through. And then she finally said, “Joe, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Aha! Well, that’s a start. So I had to revisit, with her, all of the reasons--Well, for instance, I asked the most absurd question. I said, “Why are you walking from here to there?” Thinking she could answer it like that [snaps], right? She didn’t know. Now this is after rehearsals, after all the, the usual approaches and I was faced with an actress who did not know why she was crossing the room. And I must say, I tried every trick in the book. Pulling her aside, consoling, we would go into a private little whispering ses--Re--Again, re-invigorating her motivations, her emotional feelings about Christine, the character of Christine; nothing worked. So, finally I figure, well, let’s, let’s try it again, ‘cause I didn’t want to beat the thing to death and talk about it intellectually too much. So, we rolled. Well, she got to the point, just before the point where she usually dries up, and Christine, who by that time had had it, and who was such a mensch of a human being that she would never yell at another Actor, no matter tied up she was emotionally. But staying inside the character, she began to flail the Actress with this towel she had in her hand. Do you remember that scene? [INT: Yeah.] Where she hit her like this [attacks the air] using the very thing that the actress had trouble with as a motivation for the natural anger in the scene. And it worked, because that just snapped her out of it and she reacted with her own instrument, with her own sense of survival, etcetera. And they were off an away, and what happened, ultimately, is a wonderful, wonderful scene, especially for Christine’s character, where she wound up beating the wall and saying, “I will not die here, I will not die.” And it all came out of the anger directed… So sometimes you luck out. [INT: Well, it’s also the perseverance.] But when somebody freezes like that, there’s no guarantee. You can try every trick in the book, and I’m sure there are a lot of tricks I could have used that I didn’t.

INT: When you--I’m curious about some of the tools and the language that you use with Actors. Some people think that anybody can be a Director, and actually, I think because you’ve acted as well as done theater, that there is a language. Not--Everybody’s different, of course, but there is a way of communicating that can elicit an emotional or active response from somebody. Are you aware, yourself, of using a language with Actors?

JS: Yeah, but I don’t--I try not to use it in the, in the fraternal sense, the religious sense if you will. You know, words that have filtered down through the method and through the practitioners who have all contributed to my training. Words like, “What’s your action? What’s your objective?” Well, you see “objective” is a fairly clear, rather neutral, and easily understandable word. “What’s your action?” is not. It has a tendency of sounding like something else, like action instead of intention. So words like “objective, what’s your intention? What do you want from her?” All of those are very much part of the terminology and very much part of the usage of what came out of that kind of training. Motivation. Now, again, it’s all common sense. These aren’t magical words that were produced by some Russian, somewhere, to be used religiously. All he was doing was, was delving into the very natural, very common sense functions, really, of a human being. So, any one of those, the use of those semantics, is not as important as tapping into the Actor’s consciousness a little bit, hoping to reach his, his subconscious. Get into that emotional thing. I don’t believe in intellectualizing too much, ‘cause that can lead to hours of debate and can tie an Actor up quicker than anything else. It’s so much better to deal, primarily, with emotional terms and emotional content in: What does she want? What does she need? How important is it to her? And it’s surprising, by the way, a simple thing like, “What is your objective?” can become elusive when you think… I mean, lets face it, most Actors are very intelligent people. I would say 98 percent of ‘em are. They make a selection, as I would as a Director, but the minute I ask, “What, what’s your objective in this scene?” They’re suddenly exposing, for themselves, as well as to me that their selection is wrong. That what they thought was their objective in the scene, what they thought was what the character’s needs were, were not that at all. That was a, sort of a, the upper level, the façade of something much deeper underneath. And that’s always fascinated me because the, the subtext is always more fascinating than the text. And you have to recognize that there is in every scene, virtually, a certain theme, a thematic subtext that you should be aware of. And specifically, if you nail that, for both yourself as a Director, as I had to do, you’re nailing it for the Actor as well.

INT: Now it’s interesting. In the rehearsal period, before shooting, will you actually talk about some of these subtextual themes? Will that come up in either conversation?

JS: When necessary. I don’t announce my methodology or any of the key buzz words, simply because it tends to put everybody whose not had that background into a defensive mode, you know. They know, “Christ, I’m not in this club.” And again, its not necessary to have had any training in that at all if the Actor is a subjective, functioning, emotional human being. Intuitively, they’re gonna fall into their characters and their needs very easily. And they’re there because they come close to that in the, the casting, in their reading. [INT: Right, but in that 25 percent that you’re talking about, and in this rehearsal period, I’m curious… In terms of the kinds of adjustments and the language that you might be using with your Actor to help that other 25 percent so that when you’re on the set, you know, you’ve got what you wanted. I mean I know some people who use words that end up being words that the Actor has to translate. Like, you know, somebody says, “Well, you’re much sadder here.” And all of a sudden, its like, “Oh, okay, what does sadder mean?] Yeah [laughs]. [INT: And I’m curious, what you do--] Now I’ll play sad. [INT: Right, exactly. I’m curious what you do--For example, lets say you had a moment that--where you needed an emotional shift, how will you…] Need an emotional…[INT: An emotional shift, like, yeah he’s got--he understands what he’s doing but I wanted to see another color here, I wanted to see something deeper, I wanted it touch on a richer emotional space. Now, yes, maybe the result would be, “And I’ll feel sad if he’s done that,” but you may… Now sometimes, I’ve seen great Director’s say, “I’d like you to do that and make it sadder,” and it’s worked. I’m curious…] Yeah, well I never… Again, almost religiously avoid using result terminology, like “be sad, faster, slower,” those kind of things. Although faster sometimes is not as devastating to an Actor as calling for an emotion. To phrase an emotion, in intellectual terms, is really doing a disservice to the Actor, because you’re asking them to produce a result that they may not be prepared to produce or may find, psychologically, blocking. So, you dig… You're forced to work a little harder, but it pays off. If you’re digging into the character’s needs, the character’s reasons for those needs, and all of the relationship interaction that, that the scene requires. With their instruments, they’ll find it; they’ll get there.

INT: But, if in fact, you’re thinking about yourself in a moment in either rehearsal--either on or off, or when you’re shooting, when you see that you need to… I mean will these be the kind of things you’ll be saying actually? Where, you know, let’s examine… I mean if I, if I failed to reach, if I’m one of your Actors now and let’s say you wanted me to, let’s say, be more sympathetic, and I’m still, I’m being too hostile at this moment. Would--What would you--How would treat me, just to, sort of--What kind of things might you say to me to change my mood, if I, you know, I’m using it as an example?

JS: Well, first of all, what’s making you so hostile? You, meaning the character. That’s another thing: I never relate to the Actor, the Actor’s character as, in a second person; it’s always in the first person. You, as opposed to him. Actors, before they really get immersed in their characters, usually start off by referring to their characters as the guy next door, you know? Rather than me. And I encourage that, that’s one of the rules we begin with. So its, you know, its like, why are you hostile? What’s pissing you off? Why… What did she say, or he said? What do you intend--what do you hope to gain by it? ‘Cause if you’re gonna be hostile, you’re gonna trigger something. You’re gonna probably produce something you don’t really need or want, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And you could…but always dealing with the Actor as the character, not… [INT: Got it.] In fact, some Directors, I understand, call their Actors not by their real names, but by their character names, which is also a good technique. [INT: Yeah, yeah. I like that though, I see that part of the process, that if I’m understanding it is, you’ll ask a number of questions.] Yeah. [INT: I’m just looking at that, rather than say, “Do this differently.”] Oh yeah, yeah. Now, in the, in certain circumstances, I found myself calling for a result term because time is running out, we’re losing the light, we’re over budget, whatever. You do get pressured into trying to speed up the process. And it, you know, again, you have to be very selective as to what situation you can do that with, without sacrificing a performance. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: Let me ask you one other question about this issue. Do you feel there’s a difference, as your looking at a character, that there’s a difference between what a character wants, as it seems what a character needs? And do you feel there is--‘cause you’ve used both words, and I’m curious for you, are they similar words for you or do you feel that they are actually are different?

JS: Well, they’re pretty similar--[INT: Okay.]--because, although they’re…you very astutely made a separation, ‘cause it can be confusing. What a character wants and what she needs can be two separate things, but they usually kind of feed into each other, because if the emotional need produces a want, then they’re married a little bit. [INT: Right.] One feeds the other. [INT: You know, I think one of the things that you said earlier about getting, giving conscious direction that gets to the--that gets the unconscious flowing…] Yeah. [INT: The unconscious may be the need.] Yeah. [INT: And that’s what we’re trying--] Yeah, ‘cause the want can be intellectualized. [INT: Yeah, exactly.] Yeah. [INT: Yeah, well, maybe true.]

INT: Alright, lets talk about something else, because you were speaking to that last day of rehearsal where you bring in your cameramen. I’d like to talk about your crew now, and start with your cameraperson. ‘Cause you really were, and are, but I remember were in, specifically, one of the innovators in camera usage in television. It just, I mean, you were freer with, it was a storyteller, you were braver with it, I mean, you are! But this is something that I just, I remember being aware of, you know, as I was aware of your work and seeing, “Whoa, look where he’s going with this thing, and how he’s”--and this, this is before steadicam days! [JS: Yeah, yeah.] So I’m--Now you did say, in terms of, your just natural, sort of, inclination to say the camera now can be anywhere…

JS: That’s it. [INT: But--] The day I learned that, I was free. [INT: Got it.] It was a liberation. The day I really understood that the camera can go anywhere that the Actor can go, and probably beyond, was the most liberating moment I’ve had as a Director. And it’s true, ‘cause that’s exactly…and I don’t mean that in terms of action only. In, just in terms of real, really realizing the emotional experience that’s going on. A camera moving can underscore, and aid and abet an emotion. You know, the one we always overuse of course is the push-in [zoom]. Look at how much that produces, emotionally. The push-in to something like this [frames his face] can speak volumes and the Actor doesn’t have to do a thing. But, the overuse of that can dilute…the overuse of any of our tools…I believe in using everything, every tool ever conceived in the making of motion pictures.

INT: Except when--one of the things that I’ve noticed about, I mean, I think you really use the camera as a great storyteller, but I don’t think you use the camera where, at least--now I may be wrong, because… I’m think--There are lots of images that I think of from your films that are all part of the storytelling. I mean, there’s some people who use camera so that you can say, “Oh, look at the camera shot!” That I don’t feel from you. I mean--[JS: Good.]--I feel from you, well…

JS: Good, because the one thing we don’t want to be is, is certainly obvious in our craft. There is a tendency, certainly in the early stages, of wanting to show off with everything. And I mean, that’s, that’s natural. And I still have a tendency to be as, a little more theatrical probably, but you have to be. I mean its--I caught myself for a couple of years, slipping into a very logical, realistic mode, and losing the poetry of the medium. This is a very poetic medium and it’s--to lose that is to lose--is again, not to liberate, but to trap yourself into a, into a, into confinement. And I found myself doing that, and luckily I shook out of that very quickly. Simply because, if you address the--each scene, each Actor, each element in a picture, strictly on the basis of the logic and the common sense and the true emotional understanding that we have been trained to use… In a word, the method, if that’s the basis of the training, you quickly fall into a super-realism, a reality that you’re after in the first place, you want very much to create that reality, and you suddenly feel that if I get too poetic, I’m gonna lose that reality. And I, that’s what I caught myself doing. And that’s always, you know, there’s that paradox. If we get so locked into creating, the logic, the reality, the super-naturalism, the blah--We’re doing what happen to theater from the time of Ibsen, which is get to the truth, to get to reality. And for a long time that became the bible, and so theater--Stella Adler once said, “The worst thing that ever happened to theatre was Ibsen [Henrik Ibsen],” for that very reason. [INT: Sure. What’s interesting too when, ‘cause you said Fellini [Federico Fellini] is your, is your man, is your hero. If you think about the evolution of Fellini as a film Director, and the naturalism and neorealism of the early pieces, and then he goes deeper. And now comes an amazing world that he’s suddenly showing us…] Well Benigni [Roberto Benigni], for instance, with that incredible piece of work [LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL]. [INT: Yeah.] Look what he did with the most devastatingly profound subject matter, and had you laughing; charmed the shit out of you. It was… And the fantasy level almost, with the kid, where he had you weeping while doing all of the, this clown work. Now that’s, that’s busting out of the box, and that’s I guess the best way to describe what I was getting into for a while. I was getting--I suddenly felt I’m in a box, and I’ve been spending all my life trying to break barriers, you know, go for it. Use all the elements of theater craft, of cinema craft, and to what end? To get a depiction of realism? Well, it’s nice when you have realism in the kitchen, but that can’t be the end result--that can’t be a whole world. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: Now, how do you go about selecting your cinematographer?

JS: Basically, what I look for, what I’ve, you know, I fortunately have wound up with in say, somebody like Don Morgan [Donald Morgan]. And, at the moment, Don is doing a picture that I wound up with another fortunate colleague, Robbie Greenberg, who’s wonderful. [INT: Great, that’s great.] Now, what’s wonderful? I like to call it--its--what I look for is the light they take away, which is a definite, a marvelous definition of good lighting that Robert Edmund Jones gave many years ago--[INT: The theatre Direc--]--one of the top, top scenic designers on Broadway. He said, “Good lighting is the light you take away.” You know what that is? That’s the definition of good art, of any art. It’s what we do when we make our selections, cinematically. What are we doing? We’re taking away the unnecessary. And whether our film is good or bad depends on how much we’ve thrown away to get there. [INT: That’s actually--that’s very, that’s nice and profound.] Yeah. [INT: That’s really…] So, the cameraman, who has learned how to take away the light instead of adding more, more, more, is the cameraman that we should all have, you know. And that’s, that’s what a good cameraman--that’s what a good painter does.

INT: Now, how do you work… As you said, the cameraperson is there for you in the last day of rehearsal to see the first scenes. What other work do you do before you start shooting with a cameraman?

JS: Oh, much, much collaborative work on, the overall content of the piece, the style, the use of filtering if necessary… Do we have to saturate, de-saturate? Again, poetic choices that will enhance the emotional content of the film, and of course then re-examining each of the sets and the locations and dealing with what photographic problems we’re gonna run into, what we can avoid and should avoid, are the walls too light? If they are, we can’t go for the kind of Caravaggio [Michelangelo Caravaggio] lighting that we want. And by the way, that’s a big hero of mine too. [INT: Caravaggio?] Caravaggio, Vermeer [Johannes Vermeer]… It’s the Rembrandt [Rembrandt van Rijn] approach that, well he was the master at taking the light away. Getting to that definition. [INT: Yeah, literally.] And, basically, the give and take that a good collaboration requires is set into motion with this. I’ll come up with a camera angle, for instance, that I feel will service the scene. The DP [Director of Photography] will come up with a suggestion. If it’s a better suggestion than what I had, that’s the input, and I’m happy to have it. And, so we’re feeding each other all the time.

INT: Do you go through the process early on of, and did you of storyboarding so that you had a, sort of idea of where--and your decision to sort of like, where you’re going to put camera and how many angles you’ll do for a sequence. How does that evolve for you?

JS: That evolves rather as loosely as I can keep it. Simply because, even though I prepare very meticulously the night before, in terms of staging, in terms of the activities that’ll motivate the moves, also produce the reality for the Actor, what he’s doing with objects, with what belongs and doesn’t--even what doesn’t belong in the scene. Sometimes counter-logic works with an activity. You know, you could be playing tennis against the wall. That’s not called for in the scene, but it might stimulate a wonderful kind of reality. All that stuff, as much as possible, I wanna work out; and of course, the moves. However, that’s my private little wisdom. If the Actor finds that uncomfortable, for whatever reason, or has a different instinct and he can show me that that’s a better instinct than what I had, I instantly take the input because, again, he’s my major resource. The Actor, after all, when you look at all the elements in the making of a motion picture, the Actor is the major resource. And to ignore an Actor’s input and arbitrarily force a staging on him, or a shot, or an angle that was conceived in a flash of brilliance at home at night, at 11 o’clock, after listening to the 11 o’clock news maybe, is so absurd. Because you then are sacrificing the kind of input that may enrichen the moment and richen the picture, and to shoot it down arbitrarily is nonsense. However, that doesn’t give license… You know, the other side of the coin is to give license to the Actor to come up and do it his way only. It’s give and take. If it’s better than my suggestion, I take it. If mine is better than yours, you’ll take you, you know. And you create that kind of relationship instantly and comfortably, in most cases. There is the case where, like the Writer who is determined not to change a word, there’s the Actor who’s determined to do it his way only. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: In terms of--I’m going back to the, sort of, camera for a second. In terms of the styles that, if you can think of examples of where--What you were, how you were stimulating the, a look of a picture. I don’t know why PELHAM ONE TWO THREE [THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE] is on my mind, I guess it is at this second, but, I mean, you know, advertised a specific look as well. I’m curious whether, you know, what goes on in your mind visually? I mean, you’ve mentioned some concepts here, but I was wondering, sort of specifically, if there are any pictures that come to your mind of, this was a visual issue that I really did want to deal with. Anything hit you?

JS: Yeah, and I, again, it’s the collaboration with the, the Cameraman on it. [INT: Right.] Discussing, for instance, heavy filtering to give a sense of, of time, of another era, another time. For a while it was very popular to do sepia for, for anything in history. That became overused. It’s a good tool, but overused. I found that, you know, by heavy, using a heavy fog two, or a one, gives a soft, lovely feeling that can be used in certain, in certain milieus, in certain situations. If you’re doing noir, you don’t want to go with soft filters. You then stylize the thing as black shadows as you can get, as sharp edges as you can make it because its got mystery, its got some kind of violence attached to it, it has that hard-edge feeling. That’s why most of the cop shows that you see on the air have that look. And it’s right for it. That’s exactly the milieu that you want that, that look for. So each one gets an examination as to what better to convey emotionally to the audience without their realizing it. I mean, they shouldn’t sit there and analyze what style this is in or why it looks like that. And if you just roll with, with whatever emotional reaction they’re having, ‘cause that’s ultimately the bottom line. You’re trying to reach them emotionally.

INT: In the, in choices of lenses for you, have there been stories where you felt, okay this should be wide angle, and close here, and other stories where we want, you know, this is a story that we want to be using, you know, longer lenses. Does that ever been, sort of, an issue for you, or…?

JS: Oh, yeah. Well, again, you choose the tool that presumably will produce the effect you want, the underscoring, whatever the beat calls for. But I’m reminded, again in my, growth period, back in LASSIE, when I was making all, all my…I was flexing all my muscles. I feel in love with John Frankenheimer’s use of the 25 [25mm lens], as most of our colleagues have, you know. And he fell it--in love with it because Orson Welles showed the world how to do it with Gregg Toland. The deep depth of field had a dramatic magnificent presence to it, and he brought it to a refined art. And John [John Frankenheimer] picked it up and used it also in a very effective way in most of the work. The low angles, the deep splits, putting the outside line right past the ear in the foreground. It’s all very dramatic and very effective stuff. Again, a wonderful tool. Well, I didn’t know it was just a tool. I thought, “This is the way to make motion pictures.” So I went to Bob Golden, I said, “ I wanna tell the cameramen, I wanna do the whole, this next episode, with a 25mm lens.” He looked at me for 30 seconds. He said, “You mean, the whole episode?” I said, “The whole episode.” He said, “You really wanna ask the cameraman to do that?” Well I said, “Why? What’ the problem?” He says, “Well, talk to ‘em and see what he thinks.” Well…First of all, they’d never heard of a 25 at the LASSIE thing, they’ve shot’n with 40 [40mm lens], you know, almost exclusively. Maybe a 50 [50mm lens] and a 75 [75mm lens], and that was it. And you didn’t need it. Who’s doing splits on, you know, a half hour kiddie show. Well, I insisted on it and I was, you know, I had to be diplomatic of course, but so, he humored me. He knew I was, you know, feeling my oats and he knew that the producer liked me, etcetera, so he wasn’t gonna be a hard ass either. So he humored me. I just didn’t know, really, how to work the splits, because I would be asking a cameraman whose never done it, you know, to boost his lights and go for the, for the depth-of-field. And create a split--And it was just so wrong for the style of the movie. I mean, you can’t take a show that’s been running seven years and suddenly transform it into a John Frankenheimer film. [INT: Great, great.]

INT: The, the use of, sort of, cameras and equipment has changed over the years--[JS: You bet.]--And where are you with it? What are you--I’m talking both, sort of like--

JS: Well, for years I yearned for lighter cameras, ‘cause, you know, I--most of my directing career has been with the heavy Mitchell [35mm camera], you know. And with handheld Arriflex [film camera], that you could do a few shots with before you give the operator a cardiac arrest, but the Arriflex was our only hope. But, the--we had to blimp it. It was noisy. So, you had to then loop whatever you, whatever dialogue there was. So, to me, if I could, if somebody would only invent a camera that we can go all over the place with, and finally somebody did. And the--I can’t remember the time we didn’t have it anymore. [INT: Right, yeah.] Because its so important, its so necessary and it saves time, and it--[INT: Do you find yourself now having a steadicam with you all through the show?] Oh yeah, yeah. Standard, standard equipment. You get the operator--And this--well this is because also, most operators have taken on the steadicam as part of their equipment so they get a higher rate, and because they like it. [INT: Will you find yourself using it everyday, do you think now?] Everyday, no. Not necessary. No, only when there’s a considerable amount of walk and talk, or you want to do something rather special going upstairs or anything like that. I think one of the most; one of the earliest, most dynamic usage of the steadicam was in ROCKY. Remember? When he runs up all those stairs. [INT: Stairs, stairs, yeah. Yeah. Simple shot in a way, and elegant.] And of course, one of the most stunning shots of all time was in the Soviet film, called THE CRANES ARE FLYING. Do you remember it? [INT: Very well.] Do you remember the shot when the girl gets on the bus? [INT: But actually, I think there’s an even better one, where actually, well there’re two…] Were you one of the, the bright ones that figured out how they did the shot? [INT: I thought--No, I was one of those guys that asked the question.] A-ha. [INT: This is the one where they step off--I can’t remember what he steps on, because I remember, vaguely, the answer. Do you remember tell the answer to this?] Well, the whole shot started on a close-up of her, with Moscow going by, and she’s on a bus, it's moving. She then gets up, pays the fare, the camera is behind her now, comes down the steps of the bus, she steps onto the street and the camera does too, starts to walk faster and faster, camera goes faster and faster, she begins to run, camera begins to run, and as she gets to the edge of the crowd, the entire--the camera suddenly raises and we see the entire Red Army in the square. I mean, outrageous. Leave it to the Russians.