INT: What do you do, though, when in the school of acting--and there are many of them, Actors, talking about good Actors now--whose technique is such that they don't really get to the underside of the characters in their performance without digging in by doing it a number of times?
MJ: That's very interesting and I mentioned to you on another occasion that casting is so vital when you can actually cast a Director--sorry an Actor--who has this approach to his work and an Actor who has this diametrically opposite approach to his work against each other; in a scene in which they are meant to be different personalities, interacting with the world in different ways, you can get wonders. And I try and exploit that. Two examples come to mind. Tommy Lee Jones and Oleg Rudnik in NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB]. Tommy Lee Jones was a, is a very kind of method Actor, but also very American and proud of it. And Oleg Rudnik was a Russian Actor who'd come out of Soviet Russia. In the movie [YURI NOSEKNO, KGB], Tommy Lee Jones plays a CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] guy based on a real person, and Oleg Rudnik plays a Soviet defector just after the Kennedy [John F. Kennedy] assassination who claims to have some information on Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time we did the movie, we were in the middle of the Cold War. Tommy [Tommy Lee Jones], as I said, was a full-blooded--is a full-blooded, proud of it, American. At the time the adversaries were the Soviet Union and he [Oleg Rudnik] was an Actor from the Soviet Union. In the story, he’s suspicious of this defector and doesn't know whether the defector is his friend or his enemy. Is he a false defector? Is he come to spread false information about the Kennedy [John F. Kennedy] assassination? And yet he has to cultivate this person and be friendly with him. And I didn't realize ‘til afterwards 'til we were taking the publicity stills by the Jefferson Memorial in Washington [Washington D.C.] and the photographer said, "Now I need a photograph of you, Tommy [Tommy Lee Jones], and Oleg together," and Tommy [Tommy Lee Jones] said, "No, I don't think I wanna do that. I don't think I wanna have my photograph taken with him. It occurred to me that he had been using that kind of sense of almost visceral animosity between him and Oleg [Oleg Rudnik], or I don't think he was aware of it, to get his performance in the movie. But a much more interesting one was Jeff Goldblum and Tim Pigott-Smith--this what you were talking about--in THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX [British title LIFE STORY]. Jeff Goldblum, I'd seen and loved his kind of offbeat machine gun rat-a-tat-tat delivery with the stresses in odd places that you don't expect that takes you by surprise and the kind of energy of his performance. Tim Pigott-Smith, who I was at university with, was a very accomplished Shakespearean Actor and well trained in the English sense. You know, you get deeply into your character, you think it out, you're aware of the technical requirements of the shot, you know you got to hit this mark and turn around so that they can pull focus to and then track with you to and so on. So the two of them would be waiting to do a scene and they would in their various ways be getting ready to do the scene. And Tim [Tim Pigott-Smith] would be standing there thinking, "Okay, take a deep breath, remember my first line is, and then I'll do that little mannerism here, and then…" And Jeff [Jeff Goldblum] had an upright piano brought onto the set and he would be playing it, standing up playing ragtime on the piano and singing, and declaiming at the top of his voice from a P.G. Wodehouse paperback anything, anything to deflect his mind from the fact that I'm about to do a take, so that when I would say, "Action," he would throw the paperback away and there would be this flood of adrenaline into his head, which he used: "Jesus, I don't know what I am doing. Why am I here? Where's my character, What am I supposed to do?" And that energy and that panic would give him the energy needed to do the scene. And Tim Pigott-Smith would be trying keep up with this and remember where his mark was and how many inches of focal depth he had to take. But it was wonderful because that was exactly the dynamic between the two characters. That one was a brash American who was instinctual and the other was a very, kind of, cerebral and carefully modulated Englishman. And it was wonderful; they played off each others acting styles. The same thing happened with David Suchet and Michael Keaton in LIVE FROM BAGHDAD. One was a method Actor and the other was a very trained Shakespearean Actor. And not only did they not get thrown by each others' acting styles, but they actually thrived on it. You know, David [David Suchet] would love the way that Michael [Michael Keaton] would do something unexpected in the scene, and Michael [Michael Keaton] was kind of in awe of David's [David Suchet] control in these minimal gestures. So that kind of casting can really work with you and, you know, I try and give both Actors the support to do whatever they do in the way that they need it. You know, if one of the Actors does need to go over lines I'll do that with them and, you know--

INT: But what about--? Yeah, but what about the Actor who needs the rehearsal?
MJ: Well, maybe they don't need that much rehearsal, and let's see. I think terror is a very good motivating factor to creativity. I practice it on myself and most of the time I try and get the cast and the crew to be afraid a little bit. If you're, if you’re not afraid you're complacent, you know you can do this. If you, if you have, or you think you have, one or two takes to get this then maybe, just maybe, you will pull something out of your instinct, your gut reaction as an Actor which you didn't know was there, and maybe that's the take that we used. Maybe not, but it's a chance I like to take. [INT: Because you feel that over time you’ve been successful with it?] Yeah, and had abysmal failures with it. [INT: Well did any of the failures make you question the technique?] No, no. [INT: So obviously it was an overwhelming percentage of success.] I think the Actors enjoy it. I think everybody is on a movie set to work. [INT: Right.] And the saddest places to visit are the sets of movies that have too much time. Where everybody is sitting around waiting for the star to come out of his trailer and maybe we'll get a set up in before three in the afternoon, and maybe we'll get two more after that and maybe not ‘cause that may be it. [INT: Right.]

INT: So, you sort of, in terms of learning to work with Actors, just to close that off for a minute, you sort of learned in a de facto way, I mean you didn't--did you do anything to educate yourself or did you learn it in process?
MJ: I learned it in process, but I mean not like I was dumb about acting. You know, I mean was raised in London, which is one of the great theater centers of the world. British television drama is great and a great place to be in proximity to. I knew something about acting, but I don't think any Director unless they've come up through the ranks of being an AD [Assistant Director] ever gets to see another Director working. I don't know whether I'm doing it right. Even now, and I've been doing this for forty years, I have no idea if this is the way to do it. It's only the way that I found is successful for me, and that is to do it this way. And maybe somebody will tell me at the end of the day, "Okay, here's your score card. I'm afraid you did it wrong 90 percent of the time." [INT: Right. So, but when you're working, in terms of learning the language of acting, I mean in ways to communicate with Actors and language of that they understand, you pick that up along…] I feel tremendous compassion for Actors. They’re very vulnerable out there on the set. They are in front of the camera and they got to do their best work often when they don't feel like it, you know. Everything else has to be right, and that they have to wait while everything else is right. On one occasion I was shooting [LIVE FROM BAGHDAD] with Michael Keaton in southern Morocco and it took so long to set up this very complicated scene in an airport with the release of hostages that by the time we came to shoot the scene, it had gone. I mean his whole feeling that he had the scene inside him had shriveled away in that time it took to get everything else ready. And I had to say, "Do you think you'll get it Michael, [Michael Keaton] today, or should we just leave these close-ups?" He said, "I had it, but I think it's gone." And we left it. And we came back to do the rest the shooting in L.A. [Los Angeles] and we made a little corner of that airport exactly, exactly as it was in Ouarzazate in Southern Morocco and we re-did the scene and the performance shots are those close-ups of him and Helena Bonham Carter. So sometimes you have to be very nurturing and very compassionate towards an Actor. [INT: That was in 2002 when you were there?] Yeah. But, there are things that may not be the right things to say an Actor, but I think, "Hey, whatever works," and some of them are sneaky.

MJ: In TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE I wanted a reaction that wasn't an acted reaction from Hank Azaria at one point during a speech by Jack Lemmon and I didn't know what to say to him except, "You know the speech I'm talking about Hank [Hank Azaria]. You know as we come up to it, I just want you to imagine that your throat's very dry, and don't swallow. Do everything you can to not swallow." And that was all it took. It's a magical moment and it's a completely mechanical direction. [INT: Where is that in the film?] I'm not going to tell you. [laughs] Watch the movie and find out for yourself. [INT: Well I have seen it.] Right, but see if you can find out where the moment is. [INT: Okay.] Okay, ‘cause he did swallow. And it’s where he’s being called on his, kind of, aloofness to emotion, by Jack Lemmon’s character. 'You pretend this isn’t so and you try not to think about it but really you’re not at all sure that your life is going in the right direction.' And I just wanted something that was physical but not acted, and that sort of worked. Otherwise, Angelica Houston was playing the President of the United States in a scene, in a Robert Ludlum miniseries, at the end of the scene she started to leave, she was in conversation with someone--intense conversation--it was supposed to be the head of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]. I said, “Stop! You don’t walk around him, you’re the President of the United States, you don’t walk around anybody. Play the scene again and wait for them to step aside." Again it’s very mechanical direction, but it gave her something that she could use as the authority of the character. Sometimes--I mean, can I just pursue this for a little bit? [INT: Sure.] Jack Lemmon in TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE had made a great success of playing with Walter Matthau in GRUMPY OLD MEN. So he has somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain, a grumpy old men persona and that was in some ways Morrie and in some ways, not. And so I would just whisper into his ears, sometimes, those little things that you don’t even--you’re not even aware that you’re doing, are GRUMPY OLD MEN things. You know, there’s someone who’s frail in their body and a little bit frail in their, [makes mumbling noises] kind of vocal mechanisms, just to remind him that this was a character who is almost without the use of their body, but who’s mind was razor sharp. So there were no hesitations in the performance, no kind or stumblings for words. And that was helpful I think to him. [INT: Yes, because that would get him over his habit of doing that. I mean that’s sort of…] But I mean, it is whatever works and sometimes it’s going at length into the motivations of a character and sometimes it isn’t, it’s just…[INT: Just results.] Well, no it’s more than just results. It’s bringing out in the Actor what you know they can do, but using subterfuge sometimes to get it. [INT: Right, right.]

INT: THE RACE FOR DOUBLE HELIX [THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX], I mean that was the next thing that you did after NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB]? [MJ: Yeah.] And how did that come about?
MJ: I had been working with the same Writer that wrote NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB] and I wanted to do the DOUBLE HELIX [THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX]. It’s the obvious, great story of science in the twentieth century, it’s the equivalent of the bomb. [INT: The idea originated with you?] Yeah. And together we travelled around the States [United States] and we spoke to Linus Pauling [Linus Carl Pauling], we spoke to a couple of scientists, but it didn’t work out, partly because of tensions lingering from NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB]. I started working with another Writer, Bill Nixon, with whom it was a much more intimate and fruitful collaboration, which I’ll talk about at another time maybe. But, Watson [James Dewey Watson], who was one of the main proponents of, you know, the team that solved the double helix structure of DNA, Watson [James Dewey Watson] and Crick [Francis Crick, born Francis Harry Compton Crick], had written a book called THE DOUBLE HELIX, it was a fantastic, phenomenal book--very successful and he wanted it to be... You know, it was his life’s work as a book, as DNA had been his life’s work as a scientist. He wanted a big movie to be made of it, big screen movie, and he had this idea that John McEnroe, or maybe Billy Joel would play him, god knows why. But I think because some of the energy that they had. And so he wouldn’t part with the rights to the book for the measly amount, I mean it was about a hundred pounds or something--whatever, I exaggerate--that the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] could afford to pay. And so he would talk to us about the thing, but not sell the rights to the book, so I again spent the sort of long amount of time that the BBC can afford to give you travelling to all the people, even small bit part players in this story, and the major players in the story who were still alive, including Linus Pauling in California--like visiting Einstein [Albert Einstein]--and just got their story. [INT: Einstein did you say?] No it’s like--it was like for me. [INT: Oh, oh, yes.] Linus Pauling who was then very, very old and living at Big Sur in a kind of retreat down by the sea, and for me as an ex-scientist that was like meeting one of the great figures of history--deeply impressive. But anyway, from all these people I got their various facets of the story, which of course all joined in together and make the story, even if it doesn’t come from this one source at the center. So that was the basis of the script, but then working with the Writer on that script was much, much more exciting because DNA is about pairs, it’s about two halves of a spiral that join and when they separate like a zip they make another copy. And it was about two pairs of pairs, it was about the successful pair of scientists who worked kind of hand in glove, like that, and who came up with the secret, and the two who should have got it who missed each other ‘cause they couldn’t bond, and there’s kind of--DNA’s about sex and kind of two guys and the man and the woman is sort of about sex. And so I said, “Well let’s see if we can exploit this in the way that we write it, and have it so that Watson and Crick are finishing each other’s sentences and Rosalind Franklin and Watkins are missing each other’s signals, so they start to interrupt each other before the other one’s finished speaking and not answering the question that the other one was asking, and so on. And we found that was actually very successful and so the whole structure of the movie grew from that way of thinking of the two characters, and then the casting of Jeff Goldblum and Tim Pigott-Smith--great--because they were two opposites, but the kind of opposites that were, kind of, chemically attracted to each other, because their personalities sort of meshed. And Juliet Stevenson and Alan Howard who were just such wonderful actors that they could play this kind of two people who tragically missed each other. So I love the--I lied my way into that project. I didn’t have any of the Actors and I went to each one of them and told them I had all the others--that’s all I had.

INT: Those were--so those were the Actors you told the Actors that you had? They were all your first choices?
MJ: They were all my first choices. Absolutely. And I went to Pigott-Smith [Tim Pigott-Smith] and said, “We’ve got Jeff Goldblum. Would you play Francis Crick?” And I went to Jeff Goldblum and said, “I’ve got Alan Howard and Juliet Stevenson." It’s shameless, but…[INT: What would have happened had you lost one of them after you had--] Well that movie wouldn’t have gotten made in the way that it did, I was just really happy to have them all, but you know, desperate. [INT: And this was, was--] I think, you know, the desperation of Directors is a factor, often. “What am I gonna do to get this movie made? What am I gonna do to get the performance out of these people. How am I gonna get this cast together?” Fear, terror. If you’re not complacent, I mean, it drives you and the combination of terror and passion, I think is, you know, a wonderful combo. For me. [INT: Yes, and this--and the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] knew you were doing this?] They didn’t know I was lying quite so much about it, but…[INT: So that was a film--what was that experience like, making that film?] Wonderful, wonderful. Terrifying to the department I was in, the science department again, made this movie--never made anything as big as this before. [INT: How--do you remember what the schedule was for that?] No I don’t, more than 17 days, but it had shooting in Naples [Italy] which is kind of unheard of, even with a BBC drama production, let alone a drama that is coming out of this factual department. [INT: Why in Naples?] Oh the first meeting of Jim Watson and Morris Wilkins was during a guided tour of the ruins of the Temples of Paestum just outside Naples during a conference. And that was where Jim Watson first saw the pictures that Wilkins was projecting of the structure of DNA as a kind of shadow x-ray. So that’s where it all started. [INT: So did you shoot it all in Naples, or not?] No, no just--[INT: Just that part of it, right.] But the whole time people were saying, “You can’t possibly afford to go on shooting like this, you know, it’s using up all our resources and we won’t get these Nova's made if we do this.” And I said, “Trust me, you’ll be pleased with this when it’s done. Please just give me that extra day.” And you know, it was described as one of the milestones of television. Not by me, but by somebody else. And they were pleased. [INT: Why was that considered one of the milestones, because of the subject matter?] Because of the subject matter; it was taking something unknown to most people who are not scientists and shooting it like, as one reviewer described it, THE MALTESE FALCON with microscopes. Shooting with a great deal of panache and style and showing that scientists, like everybody else, are people who lust after girls, who cheat and lie and connive and steal all of these things. And that they are just like the rest of us and sometimes out of this appalling mix of moral ambiguity and people missing connections becomes something which is so beautiful, it justifies everything--the secret of life. I talked to the Actors about this, you know. My passion for this is that this is something so wonderful, you should understand this and talk to them about the microbiology and why it’s so wonderful. This secret which had been hidden from human view for eons is suddenly unleashed--brought into the light of day, with pieces of cardboard pinned together with paperclips in a dowdy lab room in the height of austerity Britain, just after World War II, accidentally as it were, all the things came together and this thing, this bright shining thing--you see I get almost teary eyed as I say--talk about it now--was brought into the light of day, and justified all the pain and the heartache and the death that came with it. Of course then Franklin [Rosalind Franklin] died of ovarian cancer probably by taking too many risks with the x-ray machines. [INT: Oh, I didn’t make that--I saw that she died, but I didn’t make that connection.] Or being too driven.

INT: Yeah, course this again, I just wanna point these out to you. That this was another case of outsiders. [MJ: Yeah.] Very often the--
MJ: It’s true but they’re the most fun people to be with. [INT: Yeah, most of these outsiders are outsiders who are in pursuit of something that they’re passionate about.] Yeah. [INT: Now as I remember, that film didn’t have a lot of camera work either, it was, if I’m remembering correctly, that was fairly static.] No, no. [INT: No? Am I remembering--mis--un-correctly?] I remember it differently as being very much cutting from a scene just before the scene had ended, cutting into the scene just after the scene had started. [INT: Yeah, but I’m talking about the camera not moving.] I’m talking about the camera as well. It was movement on dollies, so it was unlike THREADS which is movement on the hand held cameras, well you’re maybe more aware of it, but…[INT: Yeah, in THREADS there are--] Fairly elaborate camera moves in it. [INT: Yeah, THREADS is just a handful of moves.] Yeah. [INT: I mean the reason I now remember it is because of the fact that there are so few of them. It was a shock to see the--I can almost tell you the first one, when the first move was. So, I mean these are all very effective, that’s the only reason I’m--the static quality and the why--and would you agree that you were, I don’t remember about HELIX [THE RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX] but, it seemed that during that period you were partial to wider angle lenses. I mean, I remember I loved it in NOSENKO [YURI NOSENKO, KGB], the fact that you were always seeing these characters in their environment. You--were those conscious decisions at that point? Was that just a style you were shooting, or…?] I think I moved away from it just because of a frustration with the actual quality of the image on 16mm; most of these things were shot on 16mm. And on a wide shot you really don’t get, particularly when it’s, you know, blown out to any reasonable size, you don’t get the effect of a cinema wide-shot, you don’t get more detail, you just get less. You get more blur. [INT: Okay, let me come back to NOSENKO again because there are a couple of things in there that I really wanna ask you about. Yes, I felt that it was grainy, NOSENKO, but it was to the advantage of the film. It made it feel more real to me. I thought the casting, by the way, was--I know this is not one of your favorite films--but it doesn’t matter. I thought the casting was just so real feeling. Particularly all of the subsidy roles, I mean that--] Oh Josef Sommer I think was wonderful. [INT: He was great playing Angleton, yes, but even all the others, even people I’d never seen before. I mean they just, they were, you know they were Brit [British] Actors and they had just had it nailed down, the bureaucratic quality, which of course is easy for them. But anyway, I also made a note here, and there were--‘cause this is the one I did see last night, the others I saw during the week. I made a note that there were a lot of very Hopper-esque [Edward Hopper] shots in there. I mean really Hopper-esque.] That was my start of a love affair with the U.S. [United States]. I wanted to make it look very American. [INT: Well, it was very successful and let me just ask you about one little bit of business in there, and that is if you remember this, is at the end of the film where, where Tommy Lee Jones is sitting in the bathroom--] Pulling out the…[INT: Pulling out the tissues, right. Calling off--explaining in the most--it was just wonderful, the most plain, but graphic way about how in the spy world how one thing leads to another. Where did that idea come from?] The Writer. Good idea, very good piece of business. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I wish I’d thought of it. [INT: Yeah, it was just--] And Tommy just made it his own in the scene. [INT: Yeah, he must have loved it. Yeah, that was great.]

INT: So, you wanted to say something about how you get performances.
MJ: It’s my experience, probably most Director’s experience, is that at the moment when the Director and the Actors first meet, he knows more about the script ‘cause he’s been with it longer, and has more developed ideas maybe about the characters because he’s been living with it longer than they have. And in general, Actors at this stage, in forming a performance, are omnivorous and kind of desperate for what pieces of information, what clues, what thoughts you can give them that will help them find the character, or will help them find the performance, or help them find the arc of this story. What I see the first process that some people call rehearsal as being essentially--is planting seeds. It’s talking about things, the Actor brings ideas, you have ideas; you don’t necessarily act those out in the rehearsal, but these are seeds to be planted because usually it’s a while before you arrive on the set. And what I’m always excited about is the first time you block a scene, on the set. What the Actor has brought from what’s been germinating in their head over the intervening period from what you’ve said in the previous discussion. So, in many cases that’s not what I had thought of and in many cases it is, but it’s a very kind of vitalizing part of the process I think that, you play a scene and you think, “Oh, that’s strange, because I think that’s quite good, but he or she has forgotten that before the scene, this has happened.” So what I try and do is act as a sort of coach--a sporting coach--in a sense. I’m always at the Actor’s side in between takes, kind of whispering things in their ears which are mostly supportive things, and just reminding them about things which will have happened in the story, or haven’t happened yet. And I think one of those main things I like to say which is something you can easily lose in a performance is: “You are not carrying the entire movie on your shoulder with this performance. It may end up that way in the finished product, but the story telling itself is helping. You don’t have to tell the entire story of the character in this one shot. You don’t have to do what the composer is doing, you don’t have to do what the cameraman is doing, you don’t have to do what the Writer has done in setting up this scene. Just be in this moment and trust that the rest of this, the Editor’s work, the cameraman’s work, the Director’s work will help the audience to fill in. Don’t fill it in, don’t act it, think it.” I mean that’s the thing I would say to any Actor, however experienced they are, “I want you to just think this, because that is the magic thing that people have just discovered about movie cameras--they can photograph thought. And as long as you are true to that moment, what you are thinking, comes across.” The audience is bringing their own story telling ability to it. They know where you are in the story, they know you must be going through, [makes quotation marks with hands] “Must be going through,” without you acting, “I’m going through this.” So I think that’s a very useful thing for a character to hear from a Director, “The load is not entirely on your shoulders, relax into the scene a little more.” The other thing is, “Be afraid, be very afraid. Use your instincts because you may not get as many chances to do this as you think you’re going to and it’s not something that’s gonna happen over a lengthy period of time and I want you to be at the top of your game in this.” And I think the third thing is if something is going really wrong, or in wrong--by wrong I mean, the way that you hadn’t seen it going--don’t just try and stop that happening, but ask yourself, why do you think it’s wrong, why is the Actor making that choice at this moment, and do they know something with their instincts as an Actor that you don’t know as a Director? And maybe you should take--you’ve got this hellish schedule to get through and you’ve got 15 scenes to do the rest of the day, maybe you should just take a couple of takes to follow this through and see whether they know something that you don’t and that’s the right thing that they know, that should be in the movie. So all the preparation I do with Actors, all the preparation I do with the script and everything is to get to that moment which is, to me, the heart of making a movie. It’s the first block through and the first couple of runnings of the scene where suddenly you’re all in the moment together, you’ve got to make it before that camera starts running again, you’ve got to make this good and it’s coarse corrections, it’s taking this idea, taking this idea, changing that idea--it’s very much an interchange between you and the Actors that doesn’t happen--what could happen in rehearsal, for lots of Directors it happens in rehearsal, for me that seems to be premature, because there isn’t the adrenaline that makes it real that I find happens when you're on the set, and the crew has just taken five minutes break while you block it though. Magic happens in those moments for me. Jack Lemmon always says before the camera runs, “Magic time.” And I think that’s what I feel too, that’s the moment when you reverse entropy. As a scientist I know this is--you know entropy the scientific concept? When you drop a glass bottle onto the floor and it shatters into a million pieces, that’s the way the universe goes, from order to disorder, from order to chaos--never do all those pieces come together and form a glass bottle, except in movies. And what you’re trying to do with Actors’ performances with the scene that you’re doing, I think, is for one 25th of a second reverse entropy--to bring all those things that aren’t meant to be together and controlled into that one movement, and then they’re gonna fly apart again ‘cause things do in the universe fly apart. [INT: And entropy is the flying apart of it?] Entropy is the process of the universe from order to disorder. And in making a movie, you’re trying to make water run uphill, you’re trying to make things quiet that are normally noisy, you’re trying to make things make a different noise, you’re trying to get people to fly who don’t normally fly, you’re trying to--all kinds of things you’re trying to happen. And that requires an enormous amount of energy put into it and I, arrogantly perhaps, because arrogance is one of the things that makes a Director, try and offer myself as a source of that energy on the set. As someone who seems to have limitless energy to get this right and sometimes that’s right and sometimes it’s an act that you have to do for everybody, but it’s an act I gladly do--

MJ: And I never sit down on a set. I am in constant motion and I hope that that is a kind of, if not an inspiration, than an example to everybody that we are here to work and we’re here to work to our best ability as fast and as intensely and economically as we can. [INT: The energy, let’s just pick that up, because as every Director knows it’s a very physical job, both physical in the strict definition but also internally, mentally. How do you--and the schedules, particularly in television are just brutal--how do you maintain your energy?] Coffee [laughs] is one way. A principal way of maintaining my energy: passion. I try not to take a project that I don’t feel passionate about. There’s something I can bring to it that I believe passionately, and it may be a small thing, it may be the whole project, but I try and have that passion available in the form of energy to everybody on the set. I want people to make this movie as good as they can make it because I want it so much and they can see I want it so much. So I try and demonstrate that--it’s a form of acting, I guess, except I do want it so much to be good, but I literally leave the Director’s chair there to gather dust. I do not ever sit down, if I’m standing up, I’m working; everybody else is working. It sends a--sorry, I’m always you know, sometimes I do this unconsciously just out of kind of a desire to get the movie done but, especially on a short schedule, I do everything. And I shouldn’t, but I do. I run backwards and forwards across the set, I move furniture, I adjust the costume, I paint things that should be painted. [INT: You actually do other department work?] Everything. I think the Director’s the only person who’s allowed to do this without causing a strike. [INT: Yeah. Do you shoot also?] No. But I like to think I could at a moment’s notice pick up the sound recordist’s gear or the camera and do it. So I know what they’re going through. [INT: So between set-ups you don’t sit down?] No! Never. Never. From--I’m trying to get on the set before anybody else in the morning, so I can walk the set and run the scene in my head and I try and be the last person on the set at the end of the day, thanking everybody in their trailers and trucks and things. [INT: The last person on the set?] Yeah. Well, not until I’ve thanked everybody for what they did that day. [INT: Literally, everybody?] Well some people I--who I can’t stand the sight of maybe--[INT: No no no no, but I mean--] Perfunctory, but yes, yes. [INT: In other words, your--part of your daily routine is to thank each and every--] Go and thank the grips and go and thank the electricians and go and thank the camera crew and--[INT: Individually?] Yes. Yes. [INT: So how many hours of sleep do you get?] Three. Whatever--no I don’t know, I don’t know. I live my life between, you know, coffee--caffeine in the morning and sleeping pill at night. During the course of the shoot [pantomimes hands shaking] that’s the kind of result. But that actually is a motivating thing, I find, on the set that the Director is--he seems to be living much faster than we’re used to living. I always try if I can to schedule a movie so that the most difficult single set up in the movie is the thing that you do with this raw crew; it’s the first thing on the first day of shooting. Incredibly difficult--and do it and then do another 25 set ups. That would be my ideal. Sometimes I get to do that. But in some way like that to send a signal to everybody, “This is the way this movie is going to be. This guy seems as if he knows what he’s doing, he seems to want it very, very badly, so badly that it will be a shame not to give it to him if we can give it to him.” [INT: This is a serious question, I mean what is--] That’s a serious answer. [INT: No, no. I believe it, but what would you say is the average number of hours you sleep at night?] Oh that’s an unfair question, I’m a notorious insomniac; I don’t think I’ve had eight hours sleep since I was 12. [INT: Well, give me a number.] Four or five. [INT: So you make films on sleeping four or five hours a night?] Yeah. It’s hard, you know, as a Director when you get home in the evening, the movie’s still going around in your head, it doesn’t kind of sink down to normal levels--sleeping levels for a while. And then it’s time to get up and do it again. But that’s the kind of sacrifice in terms of my physical health I’m prepared to make for a movie that I believe in; is to just generate this kind of--John Patrick Shanley told me once I walked on to the set like a cyclone. And I take that as a complement. I try and do that, to generate a source of energy for the crew and the cast.

INT: Let’s just--talking about--let’s just go back to--we were still talking about acting now, here. The blocking. Have you done, in your little story board system on napkins, I mean, now the Actors have not--they come to the set, there’s been virtually no rehearsal other than basically character analysis. How do you approach the blocking, have you preconceived that?
MJ: Mmm hmmm. But I don’t tell anybody that. [INT: You don’t’?] Necessarily. Sometimes I do. [INT: Okay so tell me what your system’s like.] Sometimes I will say, “I need to get you by some means to here, by the end of this scene, ‘cause the next scene which we’ve already shot starts...” Whatever, some technical reason why. “And we’re lit here, so this would be a good playing area, but we can’t easily, it will take longer--[points] light over there. But let’s just see how it goes." And the more--[INT: But you haven’t pre-lit? I mean you just--] Sometimes. Sometimes. [INT: Sometimes you’ll pre-light before you even rehearse?] Well, yeah, sometimes you have to. It doesn’t mean you’ve got--the strategy I’ve developed, ‘cause this is obviously something that is manipulative more than it should be, is to shoot more and more on available light, and with hand held cameras, and very fast stops or digital cameras, so that you can follow anything. And make that the style of the movie; which is very freeing to the Actor. But my experience, you know, as with most things is if you have a little box to break out of, it’s actually a more freeing thing to the creative imagination, than to have everything in the world--do whatever you want. So I try and make a little, kind of box to start with and I explain why I think that’s a good way of blocking the scene and--[INT: But you don’t--you said you don’t--go back to the fact that you said you don’t tell them what the blocking is.] No, not necessarily, ‘cause I know the way I would like it to come out. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but if I say immediately, “I want you to stand here, then move over to there, then turn here.” That’s intolerable. I wouldn’t take that as an Actor. I will play the scene and then try and--gentle suggestions--get it to come close to that if I think that’s the way it should go in terms of cinematic storytelling. And if that’s at total odds with what the character wants to do, the Actor wants to do, the character telling the Actor, “This is what you want to do in this scene.” Then there is some give and take of a very free and generous nature that happens. [INT: Don’t you find though when you’re working for television especially the Actors are there to be told--they just assume you’ve blocked it already?] That may be true, and if it helps for them to say, “Here’s how I see the scene, try it moving across here.” I try and sneak up on it a little, because I don’t want people to feel that the whole thing is decided before they get there and why the hell are they on the set and why are they being paid this big money to act if someone’s telling them how to do it and how to move.

INT: Well, I’m getting really finite in these questions here because--this question--‘cause it, I think it’s interesting. When you say that you know the blocking beforehand it means that even before they run the lines, right; even before they run the lines, you know what the blocking is?
MJ: Know is too strong a word. I have an idealized version of the scene in my head, in which this will happen. And I think all--in terms of the storytelling--will be very fruitful. But, if the movie is this parallel lines of score and some of it is the camera movement, some of it’s lighting, some of it’s the music, some of it’s the dialog and some of it’s the stuff that happens between the dialog; it’s always an uneasy fit until you get the thing finally composed, so it’s a process of adjusting what’s in your head to the Actor, and the Actor may be adjusting a little--does it make any difference to you whether you deliver this line on the move or static? And sometimes it does. That’s where the dialog happens, that’s why for me, I say this is the heart of moviemaking, is the set; the first few minutes on the set, where these things are negotiated. And negotiated freely, and sometimes--not because I want to deceive somebody and sneak up on them with a blocking that they haven’t heard about at the last minute and they have to fall in with it, but because I don’t want to inhibit them.