INT: So he [Elvis Presley] gets out there, it's not unusual for performers to throw up before they go on, to get nervous, to say "I can't do it" but of course once they get out there and they're real performers, and Elvis [Elvis Presley] was, he got comfortable.
SB: The minute he heard the audience [for ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] show their appreciation, he got comfortable. But it takes that. It takes- you know Sally Field, when she won the Academy Award, and that famous quote of hers, "You love me, you really love me," she said it all for every actor that ever walked on the stage. Once you know the audience loves you, you can do your best work and I mean that's Elvis -

INT: But you down deep, don't believe it, it's gotta be proved to you.
SB: Yeah, absolutely. But the point is, he walked out there in total fear, forced out there, literally and I really, I was not gonna take "no" for an answer if I had to drag him out there. And the minute he walked out and he heard the applause as he approached the stage, in a way, you know, you could read the expression on his face on the camera that was on him and if you look closely, the whole hour of improv - we actually did two one-hour improv segments, which meant I had two hours more information to pack into a one-hour NBC special that was already running long from just the production numbers. But the minute- if you concentrate on seeing take-one, it was called ONE NIGHT WITH YOU on HBO, you can see the fear dissipating as he starts - when he starts performing, his mouth was so dry, that he had to stop, take a drink of water, clear his throat, and then he started all over again, which I left in. I mean those were the magical moments for me. But you can see his confidence building, and building, and building. By the second take, he was totally comfortable, couldn't wait to get out there and in fact, he said to me, early on he said "Well how do you know when I'm done?" And I was convinced because I was also in the music business, I wanted to try to break some records on this show. So we recorded two original songs, one that Mac Davis and Billy Strange wrote called MEMORIES and the other one was IF I COULD DREAM the closing song that replaced the Christmas song that Earl Brown, our choral director wrote. The- I said "When I feel you've had it, when you're starting to decline a little bit, we'll pre-record the track, MEMORIES and you'll hear it. I'll play it softly in the background and then you get up from where you are in your chair and walk downstage to the steps where all these bouffant hair-do girls are, and you can stand up or sit down on the step or do whatever you feel like and sing MEMORIES and that will be the end of the segment,” which is what we did in both of the hours [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL].

SB: The minute I- he finished and it was hard getting him off, I mean I was really kinda deciding do I let him keep going 'cuz he doesn't look like he's running out of gas, or do I cut him off, enough is enough, and I had to make that decision in the control room. When I showed it [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] to NBC, they hated it. They said "You can't show that. There's sweat under his armpits. You can't show that, his hair's all mussed up" and so forth. I mean completely missed the boat, you know, in terms of they wanted to see this slick, perfect specimen of this plastic Barbie doll, male Barbie doll, I guess Ken is the male Barbie doll, and I loved everything about it that was real, I mean when he made fun of himself making movies, when he talked about, you know he sang a little bit of MACARTHUR PARK which was a record we had just done with Jimmy Webb. You know, he was loving it. He was enjoying it as much as everybody else out there. And NBC hated the fact that I'd humanized Elvis [Elvis Presley] and they were basically saying Singer Sewing Machines, which is our sponsor, you know, they want to see him in a white ice cream suit and you know, singing gospel and you can't put that on the air. This is too heavy-duty, and it's not for prime time. They had this big image of what prime time's supposed to be. So what I basically did in editing is I used it as interstitial. I opened and closed each segment of the production show, you know, the boardwalk, discovering himself as a guitar player, the gospel, and you know, the other elements of the show and then I put this little 30 seconds or 40 seconds of improv into it.

SB: I wasn't happy, I actually went to NBC and said "Can't you extend the show [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] to an hour and a half instead of just an hour?" And long story, but I'd had a lot of confrontations previously with Plymouth asking to waive a commercial, not do any sound in their commercials, and so forth. And I was getting a pretty good Peck’s bad boy reputation at the time but NBC insisted it be an hour show which was about- which in those days, was about fifty one minutes of actual production time. And I did get some of it in and NBC insisted we take out the bordello sequence, because it wasn't right for prime time. They wanted, you know, basically, as little of the improv as possible and the interesting thing is years later, and I had delivered a ninety minute version. I didn't deliver a sixty minute show, and the Colonel [Colonel Tom Parker] was still screaming his head off that we needed to do a Christmas song to end the show and made statements like "Over my dead body." Well, l we not have a Christmas song, so it became a big, you know, Colonel not wanting to lose face. [INT: Pissing contest]. SB: Exactly. And what happened is the Colonel for some reason thought a song that Frankie Laine sang BECAUSE - I don't know if you remember that old standard. And that was his Christmas song he wanted in the show. And I said "What's that have to do with Christmas?" I said, "Besides, these are the songs that Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and these guys are going to sing. We don't want Elvis Presley to sing these songs."

SB: And then I commissioned Earl Brown and Billy Goldenberg, our musical team, to write a song with lyrics that would express what we all saw in the few months that we worked with Elvis [Elvis Presley], and I had read a lot of history of World War II and I read where the German artists during the Nazi regime had basically, they were told they could only paint heroic pictures of Nazi soldiers so they basically secretly disguised some of these paintings with secret messages in them, you know, depicting their artist's take of the horrors of what was going on in Germany and the whole Nazi world. And so I said "Colonel [Colonel Tom Parker] will never have me let Elvis come out and say good night or read a speech or say anything personal, but in a song, he's never gonna know what we're doing." So I commissioned the guys to go write the song and I got a phone call in the middle of the night from Earl Brown saying you know, "I think we got it." Came into the studio the next morning and played me IF I CAN DREAM and I loved the song instantly and the minute Elvis came in I dragged him into the piano room and Colonel Parker was in the other room with the head of RCA Records and his brother-in-law and I could hear them through the thin doors saying "Binder's going at it again and he's never gonna get that song in the show [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL]. Over my dead body" you know? And Elvis loved everything repeated. No matter what he did, he just didn't want to hear it once or see it once, he wanted to hear ten times or three times or whatever. Billy played the piano and Earl sang it, and Elvis listened to it and he said, "Do it again," and they did it like three or four times in this little room. He thought and he thought and he looked at me and he said "I'll do it."

SB: I said, "You'll do it," door opens up and in comes RCA with a contract to give away their publishing rights and so forth. And the great story about the people that I've been blessed to work with is that on the lead sheet it had IF I COULD DREAM written by Billy Goldenberg and Earl Brown and the minute Elvis [Elvis Presley] said he would do the song Billy Goldenberg walked over, took the eraser from the pencil and erased his name and looked at me and said "Earl Brown wrote this song, I had nothing to do with it." It probably cost him in six or seven figures of money he basically just gave away, you know, but that's the integrity of- a lot of people in this business don't get enough credit for their honesty, integrity and so forth. We're just surrounded by so many, you know -

INT: It's, the thing is that this is a really important - as I was saying about THE T.A.M.I. SHOW - to have captured those people at that time which nobody else had don, in a performance situation is a historical document that cannot be taken away. And I think with this instance with Elvis [Elvis Presley] - you know you have- the problem with Elvis is that you see some footage of him early in Mississippi and you see him shaking around. It's great material, it doesn't have sound on it. And you have him on those television shows but as we know they were bogus to begin with. And what you ended up by doing - 'cause in all the movies that we've seen of Elvis Presley, he did I don't know how many movies at MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer], you know. He had a very smart Producer, that the Colonel [Colonel Tom Parker] had made a partnership with, and they made a lot of money. Those people will go nameless, but the fact is that that is in a way of selling out Elvis' potential. What you were able to do with that show [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL], by capturing him in a natural situation, is give, for posterity, of this kind of, let's call him the Ken doll. I mean he was incredibly sexy and you never took anything away from Elvis in terms of his records. 'Cause his voice and his ability- musical ability and his taste for black music and country music and gospel was indelible. The Colonel couldn't destroy that. But on the other hand, you know, the marketing of Elvis and the limitations that were put on him certainly early on in his career as an actor, you got a sense in that show of the personality. The unique nature of the guy that can never be erased. But the thing that's still, that's gotta be galling, is that you're at a network with a bunch of salesmen, a bunch of executives, you know, and the Colonel who, of course, is hand in glove with those people, trying to destroy something that really is inspirational. Do you have that in your career a lot?
SB: A lot. I also feel something that my parents instilled. It's like people who get rich quick and don't know how to handle the money, you know, and they blow it in two seconds. You gotta start out with some kind of- you have to be the same person as an adult as you were in your childhood growing up. You don't just change automatically because your environment changes or your finances change or whatever. When I- and again, I'm not saying this from ego or anything. When I'm directing I don't think about economics, I don't think about how much they paid me, I don't think about any of those. I think about how do I do the best possible job I can do. I don't care if it was Elvis Presley or my next door neighbor who's doing the show. I would put the same exact energy. I never put Elvis on a pedestal, you know? I never - I think that, as a director, you can't stroke people and expect to accomplish what you're out there do to. I think Elvis picked up the vibes that here's a guy knocking himself out to make me look good. There's no other- I mean the Colonel was famous for being an amateur hypnotist. I could tell you a lot of stories about how he would use it with the entourage and half of them were faking it and probably some of them he could hypnotize for real, but it was always to humiliate people, and the Colonel was convinced he could hypnotize me because we had a lot of confrontations and he would just stare at me with those steel blue eyes, trying to will me into doing what he wanted to do. The truth is, he had no power over me, and that was frustrating him more than anything. I didn't care.

SB: You know we had one incident where the Colonel [Colonel Tom Parker] called me in - he had a little broom closet office at NBC off the stage. He called Elvis [Elvis Presley] and myself in to confront us about no Christmas songs. And we walk in and Elvis, who for whatever reasons was in real fear of the Colonel and whatever power he wield over him, and Elvis was, you know, jelly when it came to confronting the Colonel. And we walk in to the office and we're both standing in front of his little desk, there's no chairs to sit on or anything, and Elvis was standing with his arms crossed over his crotch, with his head bowed down like a five year old being told he did something naughty. And the Colonel said "It's been called to my attention that there are no Christmas songs in the special [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] and Elvis wants a Christmas song in the special. Isn't that right Elvis?" And Elvis mutters, so you can hardly hear him saying, "That's right, Colonel." "And so what are we gonna do about it, Bindel [Steve Binder]?" I think at that time he was calling me Binder because he did not like what was going on, and I said, "We're gonna give Elvis a Christmas song." And I said, "I would never make an artist do something they didn't want to do, you know. If he wants a Christmas song on the show, we'll get a Christmas song in the show. That's fine with me." And I meant it. I would have figured a way to do a Christmas song. The Colonel said "Okay, that's resolved. You heard him Elvis, he's putting a Christmas song in the show." And Elvis nodded. He said "That's all, you can go back to work." We had his permission, right. We walked out of the office, we close the door, we start walking back towards the set, Elvis jams me in the ribs and says "Fuck him. We're gonna do whatever we want to do." That's what was going on between his relationship with Colonel Parker. And so I think - and I think, in all honesty, Colonel had the power to fire me every step of the way. I think his instinct said "Elvis' career is basically over unless something happens" and something's going on that I don't really know what's going on and I've gotta let it keep going on" and he didn't fire me. And so from that perspective, I got to do the whole show, finish the show, etcetera. And I think Colonel Parker, except at the very very end, the show now was completed, it was edited, there was no Christmas song in the hour, I'm called up to Tom Sarnoff's office, I go up there and there's all the NBC executives there and Colonel Parker. And his eyes are like bright, bright electric blue. He's staring at me the minute I walk in, I sit down, and it was Herb Schlosser who was the head of NBC at the time, I think he reported to Sarnoff. And Schlosser said "Steve, we have a problem." I said "What's the problem?" He said "The problem is the Colonel here is insisting the show not go on the air unless it has a Christmas song in it." And we're like days away from the broadcast, and I said, "Yeah?" and "Steve, we need to put a Christmas song in the show." Well, we did no Christmas songs on the show except fate, luck, whatever you call it, in the improv two hours that we did, Elvis actually sang a short version of BLUE CHRISTMAS and here's Charlie Hodge the guitar player screaming at him "Sing it dirty, Elvis, sing it dirty!" I can't edit that out of the soundtrack, etcetera and I said "I got a Christmas song I could put in. You know, it's not gonna be the last song on the show but I'll put it in one of the improv segments." They said "Well, does that satisfy you, Colonel Parker?" And Colonel Parker said "Yes, as long as it's a Christmas song." So the initial hour that aired on NBC had "Sing it dirty, sing it dirty" that was BLUE CHRISTMAS.

INT: You know, it is, I think, the nature of every Director in this Guild [Directors Guild of America, DGA] that really tries to do something unique, you're gonna have a lot of people saying no because something that's different, you know, flies in the face of conformity, and the people that put money up for, whether it's feature films or television programs or whatever, are interested in conformity. They're interested in homogenizing whatever it is. And any time you push the envelope, you're gonna end up having a lot of pain. So this show went out and of course, to my way of thinking, and I think general thoughts today, it was the moment to rejuvenate, it reminded people. It was Elvis [Elvis Presley] is charming, he's dynamic, he's sexy. Who chose the black leather in those improv sequences?
SB: It was a combination - Bill Belew was our costume designer. One of Elvis' famous pictures that he had was Marlon Brando on the motorcycle, in the hat, and it was THE WILD ONES, I think was the picture and I said to Bill when we were planning the show [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] etcetera, "It'd be great if he wore the leather suit that Marlon wore and Bill said 'Let me do a variation of it, I know what you're talking about.'"

INT: You know, it was absolutely the sexy, this is Elvis. And of course after that he went to Las Vegas and changed history again. I mean he had a completely rejuvenated career, had a huge, huge career after that until his death. I mean of course a tragedy but it was a turnaround so it ended up by the Colonel [Colonel Tom Parker], in spite of himself, ended up by profiting yet again.
SB: Well the Elvis [Elvis Presley] that I knew told me after we finished the special [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] - it was a private conversation in a screening room at NBC and he looked at the show twice, he said "Steve, you know, I love it, and I'm never gonna sing a song that I don't believe in again. Never gonna make a movie I don't believe in." Went through the whole spiel and I said "Elvis, I would love for all this to happen but I'm not sure you're strong enough to make it happen." When he went to Las Vegas, I was not invited to go see him, I went up on my own with my wife. We sat in the audience and he was every bit as good as he was in the '68 special [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL], he was having the time of his life, he had a bigger orchestra. You gotta realize when I did that special, Elvis had never sang with an orchestra. It was only his rhythm section. When I hired Billy Goldenberg and fired Billy Strange 'cause he was busy on Nancy Sinatra, we had like a forty two-piece rock and roll orchestra, that NBC was trying to give me the Bob Hope staff orchestra and you know, I refused to accept that. That was a big battle. It's always a battle, you know? The key is sometimes you lose the battle but win the war. In this case, this was a no compromise situation. We're gonna bring in the ELVIS rock and roll star onto the screen, not this watered down, you know, pretender.

SB: When Elvis [Elvis Presley] came into United Western [United Western Recorders] with all these top studio musicians, he called me out on the street and said "Steve, I've never sung with an orchestra before." And he'd never heard a Billy Goldenberg arrangement so he didn't know if he'd even like - I didn't know what it was gonna sound like other than I'd worked with Billy three times before, and loved his arranging and skills, etcetera. And Elvis said, "You gotta promise me, if I don't like the sound of what I'm about to do, you gotta send everybody home except the rhythm section. And I'm not going in there unless you promise me that." So I promised him. I said "If you don't like the sound, I'll send 'em all home." We walk into this gigantic studio, forty two musicians, you know, twenty technicians running around, Elvis gets on the podium and Billy says "Okay, we're gonna start with GUITAR MAN" or whatever it is, gave the downbeat and that was it. Elvis never blinked - he loved every minute of it and after the '68 Special [ELVIS, ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL], he couldn't get enough musicians. I mean even his Hawaii Special [ELVIS: ALOHA FROM HAWAII] and Las Vegas and everything were just huge orchestras. And the first time I went to see him he was fabulous. I tried to get up to say "hello," and that's a whole other story and I was not allowed access to his dressing room. I was persona non grata to Colonel Parker [Colonel Tom Parker], he didn't want any part of me around Elvis. Even promised me to direct the movie which was CHARRO! and renamed on that once we had our confrontations. And the next time I went to see Elvis was about, I don't know, maybe four months later I happened to be in Las Vegas on other business, went over to see his show again and it was a metamorphosis. It was no longer the Elvis that I knew. It was this guy who couldn't remember words, turned his back on the audience, and was just performing for the musicians in the orchestra. It was a disaster. And I maintain that Elvis died of boredom, not out of drugs or some kind of serious physical illness. He- Colonel made him a saloon performer in Las Vegas and that was it, that was his life. And who could survive creatively, if you've got the creative juices in you, you wanna use them. He should have toured the world, he should have done all kinds of things. I knew he wanted to -

INT: Well he should have had real audiences, you know. At that era in Vegas, too, you got a bunch of docile, middle class people that could pay-
SB: They were there gamble. But there was also, with Elvis [Elvis Presley], it was totally - Colonel Parker [Colonel Tom Parker] wanted to keep him in control at no matter what cost but he was also trying to sell his contract to somebody else, and Elvis declined very quickly.

INT: You know what I wanna do at this point? 'Cause there's so many, I mean we can go down here through, you know, scores and scores and scores of shows, you know. Jumping, GIVE 'EM HELL HARRY!, you know, Barry Manilow [THE BARRY MANILOW SPECIAL], Olivia Newton John [OLIVIA], THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, Diana Ross Coming Out [DIANA], THE EMMY AWARDS. What I want to do is talk about your technique and you know, you went through a period of time, it certainly wasn't at the birth of television, it was kind of a second generation of television, but in the process of doing what I consider to be pioneering work in Steve Allen Live [THE NEW STEVE ALLEN SHOW], you know THE T.A.M.I. SHOW, ELVIS [ELVIS' '68 COMEBACK SPECIAL] now we're talking about. You started to- you definitely developed a style, you know. And you said, you tailor things for unique artists that you're working with. What about the idea- I love the story about taking a piece of equipment that's developed for the sports world, the ENG [electronic news gathering] camera, the handheld camera that they only use there, and say "No, no I'm taking it and I'm gonna use it in, you know, variety." "Why? It's developed for sports?" Well this is the thing always- an artist taking innovation and adapting it to another thing. What were the things as you saw the growth of this medium? Of, you know, you're doing these shows. What were the things that grew, that challenged you, that forced you - some pieces of technology or otherwise - forced you to change with the times?
SB: My goal and my technique has always been to free up the artist. Get 'em free of technical equipment. And one of the specials I'm most proud of was a Patti LaBelle Special [THE PATTY LABELLE SHOW] where she had Cyndi Lauper in one segment and the stage that we built was designed so it would have not one but two runways and it was a huge - I know I it took up half of the NBC stage. And when Cyndi and Patti went into piano rehearsal with it, etcetera, I realized that Cyndi Lauper, you know, is one of the few people that could sing alongside Patti LaBelle and hold her own. And they said, "Where do you want us to stand? Where do you want us to go?" and so forth and what I did was I configured the cameras so that I said to them, "I don't know where you should stand, just do what should comes naturally." And they did a production number where they covered the stage and both runways, interchanging with each other and moving and it just all - I don't think they thought about where they were, they were just doing what came naturally. And that I've used as sort of a pattern in all my shows is when I talk to my lighting designers you know I say, you know, "Unless we're doing something very specific, is that I want the artist to be able to go anywhere on that stage and we'll follow them. I'm not gonna dictate to them that they have to follow the equipment." And I've had the fortune to work in all medium, I've worked in one camera film. You know Diana Ross in Central Park [DIANA ROSS WORLDWIDE FROM NEW YORK: FOR ONE AND ALL] was, I think we used like fourteen cameras. You know and again, positioning is a great thing. When I have looked at all the Central Park concerts with Barbara Streisand, with Simon & Garfunkel, etcetera. Outside of the open credits, you could have shot those in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. I want to be able to constantly, I want when I configure my cameras I want cameras - one set of cameras looking at the event from the outside in and the other set of cameras to be totally intimate in terms of being able to get right into their faces and body parts. I love - so I said I love reaction. I love to see if Diana Ross is raising her hand up in the air, I want to follow the hand. Forget the face, we've seen the face a whole bunch of times. Things like that. But I wanted people to always know in the shoot, we're in Central Park in New York and there's the skyline, there's the high rise. I had one camera on top of Gulf & Western building in Manhattan that was shooting the Central Park scene you know, and I've spent enough time, again, putting myself in the seat of the audience of what are they going to see, you know?

SB: It's interesting 'cause I did a show for VH1, which is the hip music station for young people, and it was a Diana Ross and it was Donna Summer, Mariah Carey, who's the big country woman that's so beautiful and she's married to a big country star herself? Faith Hill. Get all these acts together, we're now gonna do Divas 2000 [VH1 DIVAS 2000] and each one is obviously trying to out-diva each other so it starts, on paper, as each is having a little band of their own, by the time we finish, each one individually has a huge string section and added percussion and so forth. Whenever they heard the other one added another musician they added two and then three and so forth. The VH1 people came to me and they didn't want to hire me, it was because of Diana Ross that I got the gig because they'd much rather hire somebody for a lot less money and you know, do what they want them to do. And when they hired me they said "Now we're the station that's the music champions" you know, I mean this is the station kids tune in to watch. MTV and VH1. "And we're known for our camera shots. We want a lot of camera shots," you know. "If you're waiting four bars to make a camera cut, do it in two bars. If you're waiting eight bars, do four camera cuts and eight bars, etcetera." And I said "I'm not doing that." I said, "You know, you can do what you want to do but I'm gonna shoot the way I want to shoot. And I don't cut a bunch of camera shots just to be showing that there's a lot of cameras in the room. I'm gonna, you know- I'll do what I normally do."

SB: And I think every show you do as a Director, you're gonna run into people who think because they write the check, they own you, you know. You do it their way or you're out. And God knows how many times I've heard people saying you know, "I'm never gonna hire you again or you'll never get a job" but there's always somebody else who likes what you do, who's there to say "Okay," you know. Early on, I used to think you know there's so many directors I've observed who will do anything just to get the job, you know, because most producers are frustrated directors anyway. That's why I became a hyphenate. 'Cause I want to protect my directing. Not I want- I hate producing. I hate the mechanics and the budgets and everything else. It's a necessity but I want to make sure, you know, when I walk on the stage, I'm the guy that's making the decisions, you know. I've gotta fight the front office and the executives but I don't want to fight somebody I'm on the stage with in terms of you know, "Take that shot instead of that shot," you know, things like that. But you have so many people and especially now, who have no respect for a Director, you know. I remember John Frankenheimer, when I was a young member in the Directors Guild [Directors Guild of America, DGA] and we were locked out of NBC or something as Directors and most of the Directors were afraid to challenge the network for fear they're never going to be hired again and John said, he got up on the podium and said "Look, are we shoe salesmen or are we directors in show business? Because if we're directors in show business then we've got to use our talent and say they can't go hire a guy at Carl's Shoe Stores to replace us," you know. And it made a big impression on me as a young guy and I've always felt that way. When I did Diana Ross on the Superbowl [SUPERBOWL XXX HALFTIME SHOW], the staff Director who directed - had the hard job - he was directing the football game of the Superbowl, came to me and said "Did you hear that they're not going to give us any screen credit? NBC has made a decision that audiences tune out when they see credits come on the screen." That's a whole other issue that I really have strong feelings about and so I called up my attorney and I said, "Tell NBC I'm not going into that control room unless they guarantee me my credit. I work for Diana Ross. I don't work for sports or NBC." When your contract is subcontracted out to NBC they're actually the ones paying you a check. I said "I don't care, just tell them I'm not going in the booth." So the staff Director said "I can't do what you're doing Steve because I may never get hired again if I do that." I said "Well I may never get hired again either but I'm gonna do it, you know." So my lawyer called up NBC attorneys, NBC attorneys in Los Angeles called NBC attorneys in New York and they knew I meant business and got the Guild [DGA] involved and the executive at the Guild who's in charge of credits, they got on the phone together and somehow, Saturday night I got a phone call in my hotel room saying "Okay, you can go into the booth tomorrow. They've worked it out and they promised you your credit." The next day I go in and I'm directing and I come out of the halftime and Diana says "Let's go into the Four Seasons Hotel where we're staying and watch the rest of the game or whatever you want to do." So I went with Diana over to the Four Seasons and now I watch the end of the game and then after the game they're killing time for about 45 minutes with just chatter, with post-game chatter and no credits. No credits for anybody. So I call up my attorney, I said, "Are you watching what I'm watching?" He said "Yeah." So Monday morning I called the Guild and the Guild said you know, "We're gonna sue NBC." I said "Great" and now begins an ordeal of like three months stretched out, a lot of money, attorneys are coming from Radio City Music Hall who are the producers of the halftime show, NBC attorneys, and I'm threatened in the room, or my attorney is threatened that I'll never get another job at NBC if I don't drop the case. Literally threatened. Now I come to the Directors Guild and we have a deposition. We have New York NBC attorneys, we have my attorney, we have all the DGA guys in my deposition I said, "My attorney was threatened that if I didn't drop this," and the NBC attorney is there and he smiles at me. Agreeing with me. And the Guild lost the case incidentally. [INT: Really?] We didn't get credit because we didn't enforce sports directors credits enough on the air.

INT: It's a never-ending battle on that level and I think for those people watching there's nothing new, it's always a sense of we need you when you need you and aside from that we'd like to deny you exist, and I think that's the case on all the different mediums. Incidentally, that Diana Ross half-time [SUPERBOWL XXX HALFTIME SHOW]. I was watching the Superbowl, of course. And I'm thinking to myself, Diana Ross. I mean Diana Ross was great in her day and Diana Ross is a good entertainer so then she comes out and I'm thinking, "God, Diana Ross, I just don't think she's got a big enough thing going to deal with the Superbowl." She was fabulous. And at the end of that sequence, I mean it absolutely blew my mind. They you know- she hooked onto a helicopter, she got on the stretch of the helicopter, she was singing, and it rose up out of the stadium. I mean we went "Whoa."
SB: It flew into the stadium. [INT: It was unbelievable.] We had to make an announcement before the game started, which nobody paid any attention to because they were fearful of, Frankenheimer's [John Frankenheimer] BLACK SUNDAY, that if people saw this helicopter flying in they would think it was a terrorist attack. So they, but that was, Michael - go ahead. [INT: Oh I just meant that was pretty ballsy of her]. Very much so. Very much. [INT: I mean that was something that knocked me out, I mean wow]. And we had two of the greatest bell helicopter pilots in the - Vietnam vet combat pilots, etcetera, they hand-picked those guys because even though we got permission and we needed the FAA permission, we had to rehearse it a hundred times before we did it. You know, I'd been in enough helicopters filming where I realized you're always subject to wind drafts, you know what if something happened? I mean that would have one of the biggest - I mean it was probably a stupid decision to say we could do it, because God forbid something really happened. You know it would have been a national disaster. [It was still pretty impressive]. But those are things that drive us in the business. I mean, God, what an opportunity to do something like that. It was so much fun.

INT: Talk a little bit about just those kinds of things that happened that you have to respond to at the spur of the moment. Another Diana Ross situation, you mentioned a little bit earlier but not very much detail. The big Central Park thing [DIANA ROSS WORLDWIDE FROM NEW YORK: FOR ONE AND ALL], you had 14 cameras and then you had weather interfere.
SB: This whole endeavor was underwritten by Paramount [Paramount Pictures]. Diana was very good friends with Barry Diller, who was president of Paramount at the time. I don't think from an economic standpoint it ever got filmed or made. It was just too expensive and too gigantic and the scope of it. But Paramount was - the industry was being choked in cable television because HBO was by far emerging as the monster in the business. In order to give some clout to Showtime, which was the fledgling HBO. I think Barry Diller made the decision, let's underwrite it and let's let Showtime broadcast it. Live satellite all over the world. When I got to - and this is why you have to do your homework as a Director. I'd normally produced and direct all of Diana Ross' - or most of them - her television shows. And she called me before Central Park, said "I want you to come to New York, only I'm gonna produce the show myself. I just need you to Direct it." You know, fine. If that's what she wants, that's okay with me. Less work, less homework and so forth. And because it's not bringing in a Producer, it's Diana, I didn't have any strong feelings one way or the other. I get to New York and we're having our first big meeting with a hundred and fifty people. I mean you couldn't get another person in the room, we're like packed sardines. The park police, the New York police, the you know, all the promoter of the event, the technicians, everybody's in - she just bought a new building in New York and it's in her new offices. I walk in and, you know, I go immediately to my Technical Director and a few people that I really know well, and we're just going to be the audience. We're going to listen to what's gonna happen and I didn't have any information hardly at all about the event, other than it was announced that she's doing it. And then in walks Diana after everybody's in the room and she's got on a Bergdorf Goodman suit that would kill. You know, pinstripe. She looks like, you're casting a motion picture with a female executive, that would be it. Tailor-made, beautiful. She walks in, "Hello everybody." in her typical way, she gives everybody a hug and a squeeze and she gets up in front of this whole crowd, they have a little microphone set up so everybody could hear. And she says, "We're gonna have so much fun, this is a great project, and if you have anything you want to know about the show, ask Steve Binder." And she leaves. I'm in front of all these people and immediately, those thousand questions, you know, "Where are we gonna place the video monitors?" "Where are we gonna put the sound equipment?" "We've got a million people that they've gotta hear us and see where the screens go." "What's the set?" "What's this and that?" It was, you know, I mean I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I kind of did the thing which made sense which was put people with people. You guys are all focused on the same problem, you work together, you're focused on this problem you work together...