INT: I understand that your first six, seven years as an Assistant Director, you were at, you were at Universal [Universal Pictures], and did you also move up to First [First Assistant Director] at Universal [Universal Pictures]? [TJ: Yes.] Okay. So, the question is can you identify any one person who was really instrumental in your career?

TJ: Well, I think certainly Jim Fargo [James Fargo] was a First [First Assistant Director] that I emulated, and followed around, and learned a great deal from. As a, as a First AD [Assistant Director], he kind of, he taught me a great deal. I think Wally Worsley [Wallace Worsley, Jr.], as a production manager, gave me a lot of guidance as well. Bill Gilmore [William S. Gilmore] was produc--a Unit Manager [UPM, Unit Production Manager] that I did several pictures with. He was a great influence on me. There were, there were--and then I learned from all the, I guess, different Unit Managers [Unit Production Manager, UPM] that I worked with up and down--up and down the hall; from Wilbur Mosier to Joe Cavalier [Joseph C. Cavalier] to just all the, all the guys that worked up and down that, that Universal [Universal Pictures] hall. [INT: The old studio, the old studio--there’s a lot to be said for the old studio system.] Sure. Yeah. [INT: In fact, there’s a lot to be said for the old studio. [Laughs]] [Laughs]

INT: Let’s see, could you, could you expound upon the different styles of assistant directing; I mean are there, are there different styles? I mean, you’ve worked with, like, you know, Jim Fargo [James Fargo] and other--

TJ: Sure. I think every AD [Assistant Director], every Assistant Director has his own unique way of working. There are the screamers that don’t seem to be quite as popular and--but what’s interesting now on a set, all the ADs [Assistant Directors] are on headsets, so you don’t have the loud voices. The sets are much quieter than they used to be. Before, there was a lot of shouting and screaming going on, and the crews had to holler back and forth to be heard. But now that everybody has a walkie-talkie, instead of four, there’s 50, 60, 80 walkie-talkies on a set and everybody’s on a headset. The departments are communicating very quietly and you don’t have that noise. [INT: Instead of having two channels, now you have 12 or 15 channels or 16 channels.] Eight, yeah, for sure, yeah. And it’s just a much quieter way of working, but you do have, I think, some ADs who work more aggressively, some who work more gently, and some work more with personality and some of ‘em are more deferential. But it’s kind of horses for courses and I think you sort of adapt your style to the show that you’re working on and whatever the needs are, but I think you--there are some guys that like to be very stern. There’re some people that like to disseminate and make sure everybody knows what’s going on. There’s some people that like to keep all the information close to the vest and just partial it out as it needs to know, so everybody--I always like to make sure everybody knew what I knew, ‘cause they would help me remember what I forgot. But there are different styles of ADs and there’s probably certain merits to every style of working and I think different Directors like different styles of ADs. There’s--

INT: Do you think ADs [Assistant Directors] adapt, change styles depending upon the Director they’re working with?

TJ: Probably in a limited sense. There may be certain Directors who wanna set run in a certain way and you’ll run, you’ll run the set in the fashion that the Director wants to run it. But I think, personality wise, pretty much I think that the AD has an innate personality. If he’s a, if he’s a pleasant person or if he’s a, more of a disciplinarian or more of an autocrat, I don’t think those characteristics change so much. [INT: Is there any--how would you characterize your style when you were an Assistant Director?] I was always very open and I always like to work with a sense of humor and always like have fun. We spent far too much time, far too many hours doing what we needed to do, doing what we do, not to enjoy the work. So I always wanted to make it a pleasant experience, and always be supportive and open to and just encouraging to, to, to the whole crew. And I think--well, I always felt that the crew wouldn’t work for you; they’ll work with you. And they’ll—you get much better work out of encouraging the crew to work with you. And they knew far more about electric than I’ll never know; far more about grip than I’ll ever know and I want to encourage them to bring the best of their knowledge and to work at the best of their abilities. So I was always very encouraging and always trying to learn, which I think you learn on every show, from every department head, new and different things. At least I always found myself learning on every show. But I always tried to be encouraging and trying to get the best of people.

INT: What was the first show you did as a First [First Assistant Director]?

TJ: I think it was--one of the first ones I did was a--well, was it one of the first? It was a movie of the week called SCREAM, PRETTY PEGGY with Bette Davis. [INT: Oh wow!] And this was, of course, late in her career and she was rather advanced age. And because it was a movie of the week, we were shooting in an old mansion and we were shooting splits: half day, half nights. And it was a marvelously expensive, this wonderful spiral staircase. And we had asked for Miss Davis to come to the set and she--I was up toward the top of the stairs and she came up this winding staircase and about half way up from behind her back, she produced a bull whip and she said, “Here! Why don’t you beat us? You shoot my close ups after midnight, you make us work well into the night, and you’re driving this crew into the ground.” And I didn’t know if she was serious or not. I was just totally flummoxed. [Laughs] [INT: Who was the, who was the Director?] You know, I don’t recall who the Director was at the time. But, and she went on to say that if it was back in the days, she would have gone to the studio and demanded many more days be added to the schedule, but it was a memorable experience working with Bette Davis.

INT: How, how did you make your transition from Second [Second Assistant Director] to First [First Assistant Director] and how--first of all, you know, wow a days, you know, Second ADs work years before most of them ever get an opportunity to be a first. How, how many years or how many days did you work as Second before you made the transition and how did you make the transition?

TJ: I worked two years. I had my, I think it was 104 weeks, whatever was required and I moved up immediately. And again, it was just supply and demand. Universal [Universal Pictures] was so busy at that time with all the television shows and all the features that what they were doing and there weren’t that many ADs [Assistant Directors] to go around that I moved right up. And even the transition wasn’t as difficult as you might think, because, in the course of being a Second and being a key Second, especially when there’s only a First and Second on the set, the First gets called away from the set from time to time, so you have experience rolling the camera; you have experience prepping and making the scripts, you know, breaking down the--doing the breakdown; and you’ve rolled the camera for a day, occasionally, if their First was out for the day or, you know, so it’s not totally a new experience or a sudden shock. Certainly during the prep period, you’ve ridden through the van and gone through the scouting experience with a, you know, with a scouting crew. You’re just going as a First as opposed to the Second. So that transition really wasn’t, wasn’t that great. You did feel the burden more. Of course, you know what was interesting? I always felt the burden of the days work was my responsibility, even as a trainee. I used to go home really dejected if we didn’t get the day’s work as a trainee, feeling that it was, “Oh, what did I do wrong?” or--and I felt that as a Second and I think you even feel it more as a First, because, you know, you’ve scheduled it, this is what you set out to accomplish this day and you want your game plan to work. And if your game plan doesn’t work, you feel it, it’s your fault or somehow you failed. And now there’s always, you know, reasons for that to occur, be it a late Actor or a mechanical failure or what have you, but it just, you always wear the pressure of that schedule.

INT: So how did you make--once you had your 520 days, how did you make your transition?

TJ: It was just assigned to me. I was just assigned, just boom--[INT: It was just—they just said, you know, “Tom,” you know, “Tom is, Tom is ready. We’ll make him a First [First Assistant Director]?]--Right. And then, and then you’d get a call on your last couple of weeks; there’s another project coming up or there’s a feature coming up and you just kind of, “What’s my next assignment?” It was just--[INT: It was a much different--yeah.]--a totally different industry at that time, totally different industry. And I just kind of went where I was told. I know there was a lot of talk of, “Well,” I know there were a lot of ADs [Assistant Directors] who were working considerably over scale and here I was working for scale at Universal [Universal Pictures], but I was content. With a wife and a child, I was content to be working and I was making very good money and I used to feel, “I’m just a scale AD,”-- you know, I'm not making over scale, but then I began to realize that working 52 weeks a year, or 50 weeks a year was--I was earning as much or more than guys who were working 40 weeks or 30 weeks a year, making big over scale. So I was content to stay at Universal and I was there ’til-- [INT: And again, what was your first assignment as a First?] Oh gosh! I think SCREAM, PRETTY PEGGY was one of the first. One of the first features I did as a First was JAWS. [INT: I was gonna get to that. [Laughs]]

INT: Let's talk about that right now [JAWS]. So, so you did--Steven Spielberg's very first movie as a, as a trainee--[TJ: As a trainee] Then you did Steven Spielberg’s second movie as a Second AD [ Second Assistant Director]--[TJ: As a Second. And now this was his third picture.] And now you become his first AD [Assistant Director]--[TJ: His First [First Assistant Director]--on his biggest, on one of the biggest hits in Hollywood, ever.

TJ: Right, right. Bill Gilmore [William S. Gilmore] was the Executive Production Manager on that and Jim Fargo [James Fargo] was the Unit Manager [UPM], started out as a Unit Manager, and I started as the First [First Assistant Director]. So, it was just kind of everybody moved up a notch. It was the same production team from SUGARLAND EXPRESS. [INT: Did, did Spielberg have any say of who he wanted to assist him or--because he had worked with Fargo, you know, did he have any influence of Fargo being a Production Manager and you being the First [First Assistant Director]?] I think, I think they---you know, I’m honestly not sure of what happened in the executive offices, but I think the production team was presented to Steven, and he willingly accepted it. And I think Bill Gilmore being the production executive or sort of, he was--he didn’t get producer credit, ‘cause Zanuck [Richard D. Zanuck] and Brown [David Brown] [The Zanuck/Brown Company] weren’t giving Producer credit at that time, but he got a production executive credit that--or associate producer credit on it. I’m not sure. But I think he was instrumental in putting it together and his relationship with Zanuck and Brown and--from SUGARLAND and on JAWS, I think Steven accepted their recommendation and we went out with that team. It was great! [INT: What a different, what a different, different business.] It was great. It’s a different business. It is a different business today.

INT: Now you shot that totally on location on the East Coast?

TJ: That was totally shot on Martha’s Vineyard and then, of course, there was underwater footage that was shot in--Ron [Ron Taylor] and Valarie Taylor shot in Australia--some of the underwater footage. And then we shot a fair amount, we came back and we shot in the MGM [Metro-Goldwyn Mayer] Saucer Tank. Did a lot of the underwater close-up work with the shark and Richard Dreyfuss in the shark cage.--[INT: Is it there on the Stage 15 or was it--] No. it was a Saucer Tank. It’s a big tank that sits outside, over on the back lot--over, now, the Sony lot. I don’t know if it’s still there quite frankly. [INT: I don’t recall it.] And then we did some underwater photography in Catalina. We brought the Orca over here and one moonlit night... We left at midnight and Freddy Zendar [Fred Zendar] and I took the, drove the Orca over to Catalina. [INT: Now, the Orca being the boat?] The Orca was the, was the main picture boat, yes. [INT: Right.] And we had quite a search on that. Joe Alves, the Production Designer, and I--[INT: How did they get the boat form the West Coast to the East Coast? Did they have a double? Or from the East Coast to the West Coast.] No, they actually shipped it back. [INT: They shipped it back?] They shipped it back, yeah. They, but Joe Alves and I went out on a search for the Orca. And the studio was [Universal Pictures]--this was a very small picture. They really--everybody involved in JAWS had totally underestimated the scope of the project. [INT: Who wrote it?] Peter Benchley. But we--Joe [Joe Alves] and I drove from Massachusetts up to Maine, along the coast, trying to find the picture boat. And we came from Portland, Maine all the way down--[INT: That’s also a change of the role of a First AD [First Assistant Director], because it’s not often that a First AD gets involved in--]--early location scouting, right. [INT: Early location scouting or anything, like, as creative as, you know, picking one the charac--you know, basically one of the characters of a movie, which the boat was.] And Jim [James Fargo] was involved in prepping the, in prepping the picture and budgeting. And it was just an opportunity for me to go… But it’s interesting; pictures, I think, had a lot more prep in those days. It was, it wasn’t usual to be on for an extenuated period of prep time there. The--instead of sending a Location Manager out scouting, the Production Designer or the Unit Manager [UPM] would go out scouting for locations. And they’d make all those decisions and then the location manager would come in--if you had a location manager at that time--just to tie up whatever permits we needed. But now there’s, there’s a totally different procedure.

INT: Did, you know, after SUGARLAND EXPREES [THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS], which is a fairly successful movie, did you see any difference in, in Spielberg’s [Steven Spielberg] directing style or manner or prep or…

TJ: No. Well, we had a, we had really storyboarded. SUGARLAND [THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS] was pretty much shot straightforward. Again, Joe Alves was the Production Designer on that as well. But when we got to JAWS, because of the complicated nature of the shark, we really storyboarded almost every sequence at sea. And the entire picture was storyboarded. There were certain, certain land sequences that weren’t; they were just fairly straightforward that were not storyboarded. But everything on the water was storyboarded. [INT: Yeah, water, water work is very difficult--] And what was interesting instead of shooting, after a while we started shooting picture numbers--the sketch numbers, which--we had all the sketches put up and would, you know, we’d publish them and pass them out to the crew and we’d go out and shoot the sketches with eight or 10 sketches or six sketches, or two sketches, or maybe one sketch today, depending on the complexity of the shot.

INT: You wanna--do you wanna talk a little bit about the preparation and the complexity of shooting on water?

TJ: Sure. Well, water is--[INT: I might as well add the complexity with shooting with a mechanical shark.] Well, the mechanical shark was the big complex issue. Shooting on the water is always interesting, ‘cause, of course, the water’s always moving and the sun is always moving, so you’re main light is always moving--but what--Freddy Zendar [Fred Zendar] was our deck advisor on the show and what a brilliant man he was. He was a, he went, had gone through all of our boats. And what we’d done on the Orca, we’d put four points, tie-up points beneath the waterline, so that we could go off and anchor the boat with four different lines and control it. And then by just shifting the anchor lines, we could position the angle of the boat to the sun as the sun moved across, so we were able to just shorten, let the lines in, let the lines out and maintain the stability of the boat in the--[INT: Now, did you have one or more other boats as support vessels and as, like--] Well, we had the picture boat and we had, we took one of the two-car ferries that went from Martha’s Vineyard to Chappaquiddick. We had one of those that worked as a camera barge and we had had a lot of, we had a generator on board it and we had also, and a couple of arcs, and then our--so the crew sort of sat on that and that’s where they had all their equipment. And that would be out adjacent to the boat. It was difficult to get more than eight or 10 people on the boat at a time. Oftentimes, the sound mixer was on the barge or sometimes you’d try to, you know, get across to the, to the Orca itself. But it was difficult moving around the boat and back and forth. And then we had--

INT: And how do you--how do you prep in advance, I mean, how do you anticipate your needs; how does a crew anticipate their needs during prep and then how do you go about executing your--[TJ: Well, the picture was shot--] your vision or the Director’s vision, I mean, your logistical vision and his creative vision?

TJ: Well, what happened: it was continuously changing, because we had pretty much scheduled the picture to shoot, you know, do different portions of the shark work and then come to shore and go back and forth as it seem to fit continuity and the show. But because of the delays of the shark being ready, we had to keep altering the schedule. And so we ended up shooting the entire land portion of the picture, so before we even went to sea, because the shark just wasn’t working. And the poor special effects guys went to work and did not have a day off from first of January to July, ‘til the fourth of July. Fourth of July was their first day off. They just said, “Enough. This is not--we’re not working this day.” And they were working 14-hour days, six days a week. It was just, they were walking around like zombies; they were just exhausted. [INT: And this is prior to, you know, like, what’s his name who does all the mechanical monsters and stuff. I mean this was…] Well, this was all World War II [Second World War] valves and hydraulics, and they were air driven--air driven with big air compressors trying to make this work, which is interesting. Electronics and seawater doesn’t work very well, so we kind of had the protection of we weren’t--salt water was still an enemy, but it was--[INT: Did anybody anticipate how difficult it was gonna be to work on water with a mechanical shark?] Not at all, not at all. It was, it was originally a 54 day schedule it, which was an average schedule for a picture at that time. And by one thing or another, on our 54th day, we rescheduled the picture, because by then, we really knew what we were into. And we ended up being 54 days behind schedule on our 54th day. It was a 108-day schedule. I think we finished at about 110 days. But it was just, just absolutely astronomical. We--Martha’s Vineyard was picked, because we wanted a clear horizon in about 30 feet of water with a minimal rise and fall of the tide. And Martha’s Vineyard, after great research up and down the coast, we realized that Cow Bay, between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, had about a three-foot rise and fall of the tide. But one of the biggest things that wasn’t thought about, of course, the time of the year we were shooting, that clear horizon was cluttered with sail boats. [Laughs] So we had, we had Boston whalers with a…and we’d be sailing out encouraging people to change their course; would they mind heading off in a different direction and, of course--[INT: Who manned those--] We had PAs [Production Assistants] or water, boat handlers that we had hired locally to go out and do that and...You know, you’d sail up to Walter Cronkite on his yacht and said, “Would you mind not sail--" he’s gonna, he’s gonna sail where he wants to sail. [Laughs] So we spent substantial time, you know, watching sailboats go across the horizon. But we were able to and Steven [Steven Spielberg] did compromise some shots, sometimes, by just adjusting, you know, pointing up a little bit or pointing down, so the top line would not see the horizon or not see the boats going by. There was some compromises made that way. [INT: What size staff did you have as an AD [Assistant Director]?] Oh gosh. We had First [First Assistant Director], a Second [Second Assistant Director] and a trainee. [INT: First, Second, and a trainee?] Yeah, yeah. I was the First; I think Andy Stone [L. Andrew Stone] was my Second--[INT: Oh really?] No, Barbara Bass was my Second; Andy was a trainee, Andy Stone was a trainee on the show. [INT: Oh my word.] Yeah.

INT: How did, how did you and how did Jim Fargo [James Fargo] and how did Steven Spielberg adjust to the stress of--I’m sure that the studio must have been going berserk.

TJ: Well, I give a lot of credit to Zanuck [Richard D. Zanuck] and Brown [David Brown], the Producers. They really backed Steven. I mean nobody told him to compromise, “You gotta cut, you gotta compromise, you gotta simplify. We gotta get this…” No. They really backed him, backed the picture that he was doing. And I think one of the smartest things, in retrospect, that Steven did was casting Lorraine Gary as Chief Brody's wife. Lorraine Gary was, of course, Sid Sheinberg’s wife. And, of course, Sid Sheinberg, being head of the studio, it would be probably difficult for him to not support the picture. He did make several trips to the, to come out. But I really support Zanuck and Brown for really fighting and defending Steven and Steven’s vision. And Steven really maintained his vision throughout the picture, and really didn't compromise with it.

INT: Now when you, when you started a day and you went out and you had the mechanical shark and the cast was there and everybody was there and suddenly the shark didn’t cooperate, did you stand around waiting or did you shift to shoot something else?

TJ: There was--we always, wherever possible, tried to have alternate game plans and we would always try to have an alternate call sheet wherever we went. And even within the call sheet, have alternate opportunities to go to, inserts to pick up, or other shots, or other sequences we could do and keeping the cast on a "we’ll notify" and always trying to have something else we could go to. But once you make a commitment to the ocean and to a certain site of the ocean, it’s difficult; you lose a lot of that flexibility, ‘cause you can’t move the entire company back and go to a land sequence or to go to something else. You lose, you just, the time you get there, it’s time to wrap. But there was a lot of changes and things we did do, but unfortunately, we exhausted all of those things due to subsequent shark breakdowns. And eventually, we got to a point where it was just shark shot after shark shot after shark shot. Steven [Steven Spielberg] and Verna Fields, the editor, were very creative in coming up with the concept of the barrels. That once a barrel was shot in to the shark, we could track barrels across, so we did a lot of times going off shooting barrels, shots of barrels going back and forth. And that was a wonderful way of creating that heightened fear with the John William’s music, of course. Seeing the barrels coming through and you felt the ominous presence of the shark. We didn’t have a shark that worked so, well, all we could do was shoot a barrel. [Laughs] [INT: And how did you drag the barrel under water?] The barrel was pulled by a, by a Boston whaler--one of our outboard motorboats--and there was a boat, a line coming down through a--[INT: With a weight, probably.]--I think was, like, a one ton block of concrete with an eye on it and then the rope would come up to the barrel and we’d just pulled it through the water.

INT: Did you see any kind of transition, did you see any kind of development or change in Steven [Steven Spielberg] between DUEL, SUGARLAND EXPRESS [THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS], and JAWS?

TJ: I think he became more confident. And by, certainly by JAWS, he knew exactly what he wanted to do and he was, he was very adamant about what he wanted to do in shots. I think on DUEL, he was probably a little tentative, but, you know, as a trainee, I don’t think I was aware of that. And SUGARLAND was, he and Joe were very collaborative, Joe Alves and he were very collaborative on the, on the project. And he was very much in control and really knew what he was doing and SUGARLAND as well, so I think he was just more--Steven always seemed to work very close with his initial group of Actors, with Robert Scheider [Roy Scheider], and Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss really were a very tight knit group, and they would spend a lot of time in conference. I think they virtually, you know, had dinner together and, you know, spent a great deal of the time together on the show and working and collaborating and Steven’s idea’s developed. But he was, I think very much, very much always in control of what he wanted to do, certainly on SUGARLAND and JAWS. And say, on DUEL, I was probably so green, I wouldn’t have known the other, known the difference.

INT: Who were some of your mentors you learned the most from and helped you the most and also, what was it that you learned from them?

TJ: Wow. Well, I think, as I’ve said before, Jim Fargo [James Fargo] was a First [First Assistant Director] that I worked with; basically learned about how to be an AD [Assistant Director] from Jim. Having done several shows with him, I learned a great deal about scheduling, about budgeting, about working with people. Ernie Wehmeyer [Ernest B. Wehmeyer] was a Unit Manager [UPM] that I did a couple of shows. He worked at--he was a terrific guy. Boy, I’m trying to pull specifics. Wally Worsley [Wallace Worsley, Jr.] was a true mentor that I did several shows with, as was Bill Gilmore [William S. Gilmore]. But trying to pull out specific lessons--I know on a boxing picture, TOUGH ENOUGH, with Bill Gilmore [William S. Gilmore], we--it was his idea; we came up with a way to work with--we had a boxing sequence to do. Of course, filling a stadium and it’s always a question of how do you, how do you get the extras and promoting them just didn’t seem to work. And we ended up--we were paying extras, I think, $30 a day at that time, so we figured if we could bring them in for a half a day and pay them all $15, could we encourage them to come in if we needed 3,000 extras. If we, say, brought them in at six o’clock at night, then they could, everybody could go to work, get off work, go home, get your wife and your child and the three of you come in, bring your wife and children in and get $45 or $60 for sitting there for half a day, watching a movie being made. Sounds like a deal. So we promoted that, and we...spent the morning with the camera crews getting their first camera position; everybody getting into their focus marks and lens sizes and working with the stand ins to go through what the action would be. And then going to the second camera position for camera A through E and getting their focus marks. And so we spent the morning doing that, so by the time six o’clock after lunch, the extras came in,, they all, we had our 3,000 vouchers printed, and the first 3,000 people that came in, they got a voucher and they were all numbered, so when the vouchers were gone, we closed the door and we had our people. And each voucher had a ticket attached to it where they can get a hot dog and a coke, which we promoted. So they all got their hot dog and a coke, went and sat in the stands. And then when we dismissed them at the end of the day, the production office had spent the day stapling a $10 bill and a $5 bill together. And, of course, outside the stadium, they had all the ticket booth windows and we were there with stacks of money. At the end of the day, when they were dismissed, we would just take a voucher, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” We had 3,000 extras paid in 45 minutes. It was beautiful. [INT: I’m not sure you could do that anymore, today.] And that was all Bill’s, Bill’s genius of putting that together, so I mean that was--[INT: I’m not sure you can do that anymore today. I think now you need to have a 1099 form, not a 1099, but a--] Well, actually, I think if you’re, if you’re paying them under $600, you know, I think, the total earnings, I think you can make a minimal cash payment. If it’s a one-day situation, I think you can probably get by with it. [INT: That’s terrific.] It worked very well.

INT: So who were some of the other Directors that you assisted as a First AD [First Assistant Director]?

TJ: Oh gosh. I worked with, as I mentioned, I worked with Clint Eastwood as a First [First Assistant Director]--[INT: How many, on how many shows?] I did BRONCO BILLY with him as a First and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN as a First. When I did, I think when I did BEEZY, which he directed, I was a Second [Second Assistant Director] again with Jim Fargo [James Fargo], and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and JOE KIDD. Those were the five pictures I did with him. [INT: Now, he didn’t direct HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, did he?] No. That was John, that was…[INT: Was it Frank, wasn’t it--] Don’t recall the Director. [INT: Wasn’t it an Italian Director, wasn’t it?] No, no. We paid homage to him ‘cause he was, his name appeared as we passed by it in the graveyard, but he didn’t direct it. It may come to me in a minute here. [INT: What was it--now, these were three shows that you worked with, as a Director, with Clint Eastwood?] Yes. [INT: Okay. And what was he like as a young Director?] Well, he was fairly established in his career--[INT: But more as an Actor.] Right, more as an Actor. But as a, as a--BRONCO BILLY, well, you know, because the great thing about Clint, which I learned from him with his Actors, is, well, first of all, he was very, very prepared. And Clint was, did not like to do a lot of takes. He’s liable to print take one and maybe do a back up take two, maybe not, just move on. So the crew knowing this knew that they had to be ready when Clint came on the set to direct. Often times on a feature, you’ll say, “Well, we’ll ride the first couple and then get the kinks out and then we’ll get serious. And maybe by take three or four or five, we’ll be ready to print something.” And that’s really not unusual in features, where the operator will kind of ride the first one and just, “You know, okay. Now we’re ready.” They may not admit it, but they sort of like to do that. But with Clint, if after take one, if it’s not ready to print, he wants to know why. [Laughs] So the crew, I think, was really learned to be ready when Clint came on board. And Jack Green [Jack N. Green] was his Cinematographer many times and if there was a problem, he would just--Clint would want to know why, “Just spring broke, we need to go again," or just some little line to cover whatever went wrong if there was a lighting situation or something. But that and so the crew was always ready to print that first take, ‘cause he was liable to want to do it. And—[INT: How did the Actors adjust to that?] Oh I think the Actors loved it, ‘cause they weren’t having to repeat and repeat and repeat and they call came to work ready. They knew that that was the order of the day. And that’s the way he worked, so nobody wanted to exasperate him.

INT: Now, did he act in those movies also? [TJ: Yes, absolutely.] And in those days, how did he, did he just, did he just trust the operator and DP [Cinematographer, Director of Photography]?

TJ: Pretty much, the operator and the DP--[INT: ‘Cause you didn’t have video assist.]--and I would be very, you know, reluctant to tell him, you know, to criticize his performance. But again, that was something that Jack Green used to do was just say, “Well, we need another one.” “What was it?” “It was, well, it was a, it was a mechanical thing. We need to go again,” as opposed to saying it was a performance issue, so--[INT: Oh really?] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [INT: So Jack [Jack Green] would, Jack would make those kinds of com--] He’d take the hit for the crew. [Laughs] [INT: No, but when you said performance--] He was, he was, yes. I think he was making performance judgments, certainly. [INT: Well, that’s interesting.] Yeah. But the other thing I was gonna say about Clint [Clint Eastwood] is what was so wonderful about him, he was so natural. He used to, you know, people would come up, “Why is, what’s my motivation and why are we doing this, what’s going on?” Clint would just say, “Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. It is what it is. Just get out and say your words. Do it,” you know; it just worked beautifully. He just went boom, right through it. [INT: Now, did he--was he shooting short hours in those days too?] Yes. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was wonderful--well, of course, Clint’s films had had such success for the studios, people really didn’t, you know, as you go through preproduction, we used to scheduled a picture in what we felt they wanted to do it and then it was not unusual for the studio to come back and say, “Well, I want you to cut four weeks,” oh excuse me, “four days out of the schedule,” or “cut the schedule by three days,” figuring that well, who knows, you might make it. But they didn’t do that with Clint’s pictures. Clint was always able to schedule his pictures in the amount of times that he felt he needed. So as a result, his pictures were well scheduled and well thought out. And then Clint was just incredibly efficient, and it was not unusual for him to get his work done and go home at four o’clock; "Well, we’ll go home, it’s enough for today." [INT: Well, it’s also, you know, truly is, I mean if you’re acting and directing, I mean, that’s an exhausting, you know, to do it for 12 hours is a very exhausting experience.] That’s right. That’s right. And then he had his work as an actor to prepare and his work as a Director to prepare for the next day. And the crew loved it because they were all, most of them were on 12-hour guarantees in any event, so they can get out and go home in 10 and they loved it.