INT: So let's just go back to L.A. STORY…That was a part of you as a Director, in terms of your sensibilities and craft and talent, that you hadn't utilized--I mean this is a question--that you hadn’t utilized in any of your previous films, is that--would that be fair?
MJ: No [laughs]. [INT: Okay.] People kind of categorize you as a drama Director; or comedy Director; or romantic Director, which is unfair. And I think I’ve not helped that by trying to choose, each time, something which is very different from the thing I did before. Where you’ve very astutely pointed out the similarities, I’ve tried to follow a comedy, with a drama, with a musical, and so on. I do have a sense of humor. It may not be apparent from my dour exterior, but I’m quite a humorous person in private life. And I think there is some humor in--maybe not in THREADS, but in many of my movies. And this is a chance to let that out; and to let it out in a way which I found very congenial, in a magical realism setting. Steve Martin wrote on the first stage of the screenplay, “L.A. [Los Angeles] at it’s best: no traffic, no smog.” And that of course doesn’t exist. But we’re so familiar with the STARSKY AND HUTCH [1970s television series] L.A.: bright sunshine, harsh sunshine, crime, drugs, and the rest of it. This idea of seeing L.A. as something that it really wasn’t, in fact, but, that brought out qualities--poetic qualities in it--was something that appealed to my painterly sense. And I thought, “My god, in scene after scene here, the landscape and the place he’s describing is not the real L.A. It’s like Matisse [Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse] might have painted it, or Monet [Claude Monet] might have painted it, or Henri Rousseau [Henri Julien Félix Rousseau] might have painted it." It’s not the harsh light of sunlight; it’s the dappled light under the trees that the impressionists loved. It’s that magic of possibility. And, you know, people say about L.A.: it’s a place where you can be whatever you dreamed you were gonna be, where you can reinvent yourself. I knew that from personal experience. My wife came here as a documentary maker from the U.K. [United Kingdom]--there’s very little opening here--she reinvented herself as a sculptor--[Makes hammering gesture] hacks away at marble, and then is a psychotherapist. Which is kind of a perfect example that you can reinvent yourself here. And this is about an Englishwoman, like me, like my wife, coming here and being enchanted through the eyes of Steve Martin by this place. So, I tried to find a visual style that would allow the magic to happen, that would allow the satire to happen, ‘cause there’s some very kind of, very sharp, very observed satire on L.A. ways. We put silk stockings over the lens and lit scenes through camouflage netting and accentuated the greens and the primary colors and softened the look. And did matte painting; I’d never done matte paintings before. And changed the skies and… Not only reversed entropy and made disorder go into order, make it go into a very particular kind of stylized order that is the kind of world that you see when you’re in love. It was a very romantic experience, making the movie, coming to terms with the city and looking for parts about it to love.

INT: What, what, you mentioned in passing about making a movie [L.A. STORY] with a star. And this was something Hugh wrote as well. How did that work?
MJ: Great. Just, just wonderful. I mean, I can’t remember a better collaboration between a Writer and a Director; a Writer’s style and Director, than L.A. STORY. Steve [Steve Martin] was immensely collaborative and I tried to be with him. And he said, “I think I’m at this point with knowledge of comedy and I think you are at this point with the ability to direct something, so let’s kind of infuse each other and inform each other about what we can do.” And I think that happened. He worked--what I normally hate seeing in a written script, you know, we move left to reveal that, but rather things that were so weird and wonderful, you know; the leading characters suddenly becoming children and walking through a garden in which statues nod to them as they pass and flowers open. I thought, “That’s wonderful, it’s like Cocteau [Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau] in the BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.” So I try to use film references there, but just, to use gifts which I had used, if I have any, to horrify and terrorize and inform people about the terrible things in the world, for once just to fall in love with the script, fall in love with the brightness of human nature. [INT: Well that’s what I meant though, that you were using--I didn’t say--I wasn’t suggesting that you didn’t have those qualities, or couldn’t do it, quite the contrary. What I was suggesting was that you had those qualities but you hadn’t been able to use them in a film before.] But that’s what I meant when I say it’s a kind of self-defeating thing in this town, perhaps, to say, “I’ve done that, now I want to do something else to see what else I can do. And I will be terrified because I’ve never done it before, and maybe some other people will be terrified, 'My god, what has he done that’s like this?'” Well nothing. Because I think that actually brings a fresh perspective on things, which is what they hoped I’d bring to L.A.STORY, someone who hadn’t done this before, didn’t know, didn’t like the setting. But it’s that terror again, “Can I do this? I’m not sure if I can do this. But I will do my best.” [INT: Yeah, again, you’re, I think you’re taking my question from the outside in. And I’m talking about from the inside out.] It was lovely to be able to use those parts of myself, is I think the answer that you…

INT: Yeah, and but it was like a switch you had to change inside, right, as a Director [working on L.A. STORY]? I’m not saying you had to manufacture something. But certainly the, the part of you that was making…
MJ: The concern with the visuals is the same, the concern with the palette of the movie, the musical feel of the movie, the pace of the movie, all that was the same. Critically what was the same was the passion. And I think that’s, if there’s anything there for me, and this may be just kind of doing myself a pat on the back I don’t deserve. I love to find something I can be passionate about. I was passionate about the script. And that passion comes out, in the same way as the passion comes out in a different way, in THREADS. [INT: Well, I may not be remembering this correctly, I do have to look at it again, but I guess what I was getting at is that, as I remember it is that the performances contained a bit more fragility than they did in the other things you did. Was that, I am remembering that correctly?] Yeah, as Steve [Steve Martin] says, "Sometimes you need to tell an audience watching a comedy when they don’t have to laugh. But they can just actually feel pathos for the characters in that moment." Yeah, we try to safeguard that. And I use the crane a lot. And dollies, and all the paraphernalia of making movies ‘cause I thought that was part of the enjoyment of it. [INT: Right. So that--how did that film turn out, did it do well?] I don’t think it made a great deal of money. Everybody still talks about it, and I think it’s kind of a cultural marker for that time, before Starbucks. The coffee ordering scene is still quoted by people. [INT: Which scene?] Where people are ordering coffee around the table, it’s meant to be somewhere like the Bel Air Hotel. “I’ll have a double decaf half calf. I’ll have a latte with a…and I’ll have a…[Trails off].” It was the kind of, just when customized coffee ordering was coming in and Steve was smart enough to spot that.

INT: And so then what happened to you after that film?
MJ: The day after the movie opened--well, Dennis Hopper, who was in CHATTAHOOCHEE, came to the screening of L.A. STORY and said, “I love the movie,” and I said “I’m sorry about CHATTAHOOCHEE,” and he said, “Don’t worry, this was great.” The next day, Kevin Costner rang and said, “I saw your movie last night, come and do THE BODYGUARD. You obviously understand; you have a feeling for L.A. [Los Angeles]; this is set in the music industry of L.A., I don’t have a feeling for that. We’ve had this script for 17 years and it’s gone through 35 versions, whatever. Will you come and do it?” How do you turn down something like that? It had been Larry Kasden’s [Lawrence Edward Kasdan], one of his first spec’d scripts that he wrote while he was a copywriter, I think in, somewhere in the Midwest. And although there wasn’t anything wrong with it, it had gone through a number of re-writes and Waylon Jennings re-wrote it and Larry [Larry Kasden] and his brother re-wrote it and lot’s of people re-wrote it. It was a vehicle for Diana Ross; it was a vehicle for Whoopi Goldberg; it was a vehicle for Steve McQueen. It was--she was a standup comedian, she was a singer… They sent me this pile of scripts to read, and the one I settled on was the very first one at the bottom of the pile which was his first draft. And I said, “This is a great movie.” You know, forget all this kind of accretion of stuff and that’s essentially the movie we made. And I was still wet behind the ears and I didn’t understand certain things that I now understand. [INT: So but then you had, how did Whitney Houston get involved in…] She--Kevin was attached as the star and the Producer before I was somebody and Whitney Houston was their choice of leading lady and I think they thought about it very carefully. She was an amazingly successful singer; she had this tremendous voice, which had a dramatic quality on its own, and she was a star. Not a movie star, but a star--singer. And they thought that the chemistry between her and Kevin Costner would be great, and I think it was. And the one thing I said coming in to it is that I didn’t want to make this a racial movie. This is not about a black singer and a white bodyguard, it’s about a guy from the wrong side of her tracks, and a singer. And I think we actually did that. There was no mention of that in the script and I’m pleased with that at least. What I didn’t know, in taking the movie, was that I wouldn’t have the same free reign as I’d had on A VERY BRITISH COUP. That there are certain niceties that you have to observe when you are working in a major Hollywood studio, with a very expensive movie, and with very, very bankable stars, some of whom have won Oscars [Academy Awards]. And you know, it seemed incredible I could be so naïve at the time.

INT: INT: Was it--where did the--when did the problems start?
MJ: At the beginning it was great. In pre-production it was great. The start of shooting was great. I feel somewhat embarrassed about it, ‘cause, you know, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have gotten myself into the situation. But, when the leading Actors make a suggestion about a scene that you think is, a little ‘iffy,’ I would now say, “That sounds interesting, yeah, why don’t we give that a try and see where that leads, and we’ll play it that way and then see if we wanna play with it afterwards.” Instead of which I said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Which is…[Shouts, puts head in hand] terrible, terrible thing to say. And I don’t think we got back to a period--position--of trust by the time we finished shooting the movie. And I think the movie went quite well, it was a tremendous logistical exercise, shooting the Oscars. Just in, to name one part of it. But, in the post-production, it’s one of those strange situations that happens in Hollywood, that you’re, you’re already in pre-production--sorry in post-production on a movie and in the cutting room are four Directors. There’s, there was me, the actual Director, there was Kevin Costner who had won an Oscar, as a Director for DANCES WITH WOLVES not too long before, there was Lawrence Kasdan, one of the--my great heroes as a Director, and there was Jim Wilson who'd also directed movies and so those were the three Producers. You can’t--human nature being what it is--you can’t say, “I am for the purposes of this, not a Director. I’m just one of the Producers.” You can’t help it. You can’t switch off your sensibility that says, “Cut there, use that take.” [INT: Where--was--but they weren’t there during your cut?] No, but I think they felt affronted that they weren’t. [INT: Really?] Most Producers do in my, my experience. You--I think that, although the Guild [Directors Guild of America, DGA] rule says that a Director will have this time, well at least there’s time to explore the material, to make bad decisions, and discover good decisions and find the shape of the thing--everybody else is itching to get in. And they try and be on their best behavior and try not to scrabble up the door with their fingernails, but, you know, I think maybe... I don’t know, I don’t want to put thoughts in their heads, but I think in their ideal world we would all have started to cut it together, as a group. [INT: So when did they come in then?] After the first cut. [INT: And they were all in there everyday, pretty much?] After the first cut, no. We showed it to Warner Brothers [Warner Bros.] who generally--the movie was well received--and they thought I maybe had a future at the studio doing romantic thrillers, like this. I think it wasn’t satisfying to Larry [Larry Kasden], it wasn’t satisfying to Kevin [Kevin Costner]. And so I think they divvied up the time after my first cut. [INT: For same reasons, or different reasons?] Well, you know, a movie’s gonna run at 88 minutes, when it’s cut. And, some people take the long form in a very long, kind of, operatic length, and some people take it tight. And I think Larry’s idea was probably closer to mine about the running time, that this is a thriller, and therefore it has to have a certain amount of pace and 88 minutes is probably about the right time for it, rather than 136 or 140 minutes. And Kevin, I know, liked working in the long form and DANCES WITH WOLVES was kind of, epic, and grand, and spacious and his Director’s cut even longer than that. So, Larry went off a bit and let Kevin have a cut and I stayed at the back of the cutting and watched and Kevin’s cut was quite long. Then after a while Larry came back and had a look at it and did his cut, which is quite short. And there’s this kind of, slightly concertina-ering of the cuts for a bit. [INT: Did Kevin have final cut, did anyone have final cut?] I don’t think they did, I think Warner's [Warner Bros.] did. And I think Warner's, you know, moderated a kind of truce between these conflicting versions that was--was close to all the versions, really. It was a good, diplomatic compromise. And I think the movie did very well, and in its first week it did one hundred million domestically and one hundred million internationally. [INT: Wow] Which is nice, always.

INT: So, but your relationship to the Producer had a profound effect--
MJ: Was less than ideal. It’s hard when it is known that there were tensions, on the set, or in post-production, to not get a reputation as being a difficult Director. [INT: And with that many Directors, I guess there was a lot of competition to who gets credit for it’s success.] I think everybody was pleased that the movie did well. But in terms of if there were a Bodyguard II, would the same team be reassembled again, I think that was a different matter. [INT: So, that was a very big film, I mean, in terms of its visual size and, its physical ambitions and…] Yeah, the most challenging scene I’ve--sequence--I’ve ever had to do was the Oscars [Academy Awards]. That was shot on 36 frame cameras for the big displays and the Oscar auditorium. It was shot on a different system that could take video cameras onto monitors that we could film with 35mm and that was shot with 14, 35mm cameras. [INT: 14?] And I had to script what was happening on stage, in terms of the master of ceremonies and the acts and the presenters coming on and the awards and what was happening backstage, which, kind of, you got glimpses of that--what was happening in the wings of the stage, and what was happening with the drama, of the attempted assassination of Whitney Houston. So--damn near drove me crazy and again I resorted to legal pads, scotch taped end to end with--to try and plan moment to moment what’s happening in these various elements and push them all together. [INT: How long did it take to shoot that, do you remember?] Few days, I can’t remember. [INT: Just a few days?] Yeah, the backstage stuff, the wing stuff, the auditorium stuff. [INT: How long was the shoot on that, do you know?] Can’t remember. [INT: But, pretty good though. No?] [Long pause] I’m a Calvinist. I take the Director’s responsibility very carefully. I take it to heart. And I believe that if someone says, “This is your budget on the movie, do not exceed it, we’ve put in every reserve to this that we can think of to make a good movie, but there is no more. Do not shoot any more than this.” And I was given that lecture by--as Warner Brothers [Warner Bros.] and I took it very seriously and I thought, “Okay, then I won’t.” But the movie was vastly over length and no one wanted to cut it. I wanted to cut it, but…[INT: Oh, you’re talking about the script?] Script, yeah. [INT: Ok, that’s a good thing to talk to--] It just wasn’t shootable, I didn’t think, in that length of schedule. So, we went inevitably over the budget, by a sizeable margin. When you’ve got a script that 140-something pages and you know you’ve got to cut it down to 80-something pages. Kevin had a very interesting point of view, which I can see, which is that, he made the analogy to Thanksgiving turkey. When you prepare a turkey for baking for Thanksgiving, you wind strips of lard and bacon, various things around it, and the juices go into the turkey and make it very, kind of, rich and succulent and you throw that away afterwards and you just eat the turkey. And I think he thought that in terms of the Actor’s experience of doing the movie, there was certain scenes he had to have the experience of played, of playing, that wouldn’t be in the movie, but we had to shoot them anyway, knowing that they would be cut later, but not knowing which ones they were. As a way of giving him the sense of the fullness of the life of his character; and I can see that, but it’s a very expensive way of doing things. [INT: That’s wonderful.] More than that, it’s damaging because if you’re a Director you try and kind of link threads of all kinds of different things happening in scene, so if you pull out this scene, you’re actually pulling out not only the scene, but you're pulling out the connective tissue here and here and here [gestures with hands], so...

INT: Yes, well, I mean it’s, it is to me, maybe it’s inappropriate for me to say this but, to me, it is the iconic example of what happens when an Actor gets to control a film because the film is made to his needs, rather than to the needs of the film.
MJ: Well this was explained to me, at a later part of the process, that I should take whatever time he [Kevin Costner] felt he needed for the scene, and not worry about the schedule. And I should have realized that, and if I’d been a person of any sense at all, I would have. [INT: But you did do it anyway. I mean, you’re saying you did shoot those extra scenes.] I had tried to shoot economically, in the earlier part of the movie, and try and stay within budget, but you know--[INT: So you were not shooting the scenes that the extra--in other words you were trying to eliminate what you thought was not necessary?] There were factors that I didn’t take it into account. Like, even though it makes logistical sense in terms of an AD [Assistant Director] breaking down the day, to shoot this scene here, this scene here and this scene here, and leave this scene till the end; in terms of an actor who’s going to give a performance, being left to the end of the day might not be the best thing. So I tried to schedule it economically in that way. [INT: I see.] That, I didn’t know, was not a terribly productive thing to do, in terms of getting performances. [INT: So but, in regard to the turkey analogy, I mean there are a number of conflicting other sides to that metaphor, because while that might benefit the Actor’s performance, by having all that in there, beside the economics of it, there’s just the drain on everyone else. Mostly, the crew, who is--] Well, here’s another way of putting it, which Steve Martin talked to me about in regard to L.A. STORY. You always write in 12 more jokes than there is room for in the movie, but you don’t know which they are, until you test it. And it may be that this tiny little throw-away thing that you improvised on the set brings the house down and you keep that in; and this elaborately set up gag involving thousands of people, dies flat. So he says, “Rule of comedy, write 12 more gags.” So that in a way is saying…[INT: It’s the turkey analogy. Yeah.] That’s right. But the most expensive turkey. [INT: Yeah, so did you have that, was L.A. STORY, the script long on that one too?] Yeah, but not very long. Really site gags so…and [gestures with hands] like that long, or this long. [INT: I think this is a very important point, not so much in terms of the personalities or the particular experience, because it comes to the--I mean you refer to yourself as a Calvinist, and I think in a way in this particular example you’re selling yourself short, in that, you’re talking about someone being a craftsman, the way I would describe it.] A craftsman and former Producer. In the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] I had been a Producer and Director so I could sympathize with the Producers; that they were trying to bring this in for a price, and I was trying to make it easier. [INT: Yeah, yeah, but there’s something else here. I mean, which is really important; and that is that what you’re really have saying is that all Directors know, particularly those who have experienced television, or in your case the BBC. The deal is: “This is the story I wanna tell.” And they say, “We’ll pay for that story.” What happens in the Hollywood, not in television, but in Hollywood movies is they always want at least a story and a half, and maybe two stories, because they’re not Directors and they can’t make the final cut from the script, to do what you do, inside your head. And they want insurance, but they don’t wanna pay for it.] Yeah. [INT: So, in your frustration was the fact that you were--you knew the story, you know, and you thought that they were agreeing to that story and an Actor comes along and says, “Yeah but in order to do that story, I have to play all the off-stage stuff as well, or much of the off-stage…”] Well, that wasn’t a question of him pulling that in, that was in the script already, but needed weeding out before you go into production, I thought. But that was only my--

INT: This is a very good transition back to television. Because this is where you went next and you went to the MC MARTIN TRIAL [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] and... So in some ways, and maybe this is an overstatement, but in some ways television is almost more of a natural habitat for you, because at least the disciplines that are there are things that you’re much more comfortable working with. Is that fair?
MJ: Here’s the way I think of it: I haven’t done any movies for years now, and that’s because of an impatience for the whole process of development, before you even get near a set, or a camera, or an Actor, or anything. But I do like to think of myself as someone who goes between feature movies and television and that that is a good thing. For me, it’s a good thing in that now I have learned that you can bring the techniques you have to use in television--hand held camera, speed of working, you--lightning fast reflexes, change this, change this, do this over here--to shooting a movie for the cinema, and it will be a better movie for that. It will have all that energy of television in it. And you can bring the ambition of a movie to television, and try and attempt things that nobody’s ever attempted before in television. And in that way they inform each other, and I think if I’ve been able to do that, that’s been something that’s at least very satisfying to me and maybe it has helped the medium a little bit. [INT: Except that you did THREADS [1984 TV movie] and A VERY BRITISH COUP]. And I came back to that; I came back to that. VOLCANO was shot very much in that style, I mean, hugely expensive movie--nearly a hundred million, maybe over a hundred million. But it was shot with handheld cameras and it was shot with that same kind of documentary--let’s get in there and cover it--plus special effects. [INT: But what I meant was that you shot THREADS and A VERY BRITISH COUP before you were informed with all the ambitions of a feature even though you had never done one.] Yes, but I had listened to Wagnerian operas on the way there [Laughs]. That gives you big ambitions. [INT: Yeah. So…] I’m an actually ambitious person, in terms of making movies ‘cause they just thrill me so. I mean, the sheer act of making a movie, I can not think of anything more thrilling in the entire world than being allowed to do that. And that’s what gives me a passion for doing it. And I think that’s what gives you the ambition. And if that ambition is emboldened by what you’re doing on a feature film, where you’ve got millions and millions of dollars to do and you try and do the same thing even though you haven’t theoretically got the time to do it in a TV movie, I’d at least make the attempt. But the other way is also interesting; I see more and more movies now being shot with handheld cameras and very kind of lightweight equipment. [INT: Right. So how did you… BODYGUARD [THE BODYGUARD] was after L.A. STORY; BODYGUARD sort of, stopped your forward momentum you had in the feature world.] Yeah, I had looked at feature scripts and for various reasons, did not get made or I did not get attached to them for a couple of years. And then I got a script through the mail, a call from Robert Cooper [Bob Cooper], who ran HBO Films, who said something I’d dreamed I would never hear, which is, “Here is a script, I’m sending it to you, read it as soon as you get it, we’re making it on this date, the train is leaving the station, you’re either on that train or you’re not!” And that compared with people saying, “Well, you know, when we’ve got the script exactly as we want, it may take several more months of development before we get there and we get someone attached to it,” this was saying, “This movie’s getting made, do you want to be a part of it?” And I said, “Yes.” [INT: That was in ’95 [1995]?] Yeah. And it was something I knew nothing about. I told my hairdresser, “I’m doing a movie for HBO,” and she said, “Oh, what’s it about?” I said, “The McMartin trial.” And she backed away from me with the scissors, thank god. I had no idea what the McMartin trial was about. I wasn’t here, I was in England and it didn’t, kind of, make it across the Atlantic, so I didn’t know- [INT: What you hadn’t moved here yet? When did you move here?] The McMartin experience happened much earlier, as opposed to the movie. [INT: We leaped over, though, when did you finally move here?] I moved here shortly after I started shooting L.A. STORY. We started making plans as a family to move here. I was saying about how I wasn’t aware how loaded a topic this was for most Americans. Until my hairdresser backed away from me and said, “My god, those awful people.” And there’s nothing like hearing someone say, “Those terrible people, those awful people for making you think, why were they so awful, and what don’t I know here and that there may be another story.

INT: INT: So talk a little bit about that process.
MJ: A movie that Abby Mann wrote, the great Abby Mann--JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG--all those things. Who just passed away. Sadly. Had put a lot of research into it, talked to a lot of people, and most people hadn’t. You know, the story hit the headlines, when it hit the headlines, and people formed their judgment about who was goodie and who baddie and this is the story early on. And it kind of slid to second page and bits came out, especially during the trial and nobody really followed it, but they had doggedly, he and his wife, Myra [Myra Mann], had doggedly followed this story and talked to everybody and it’s kind of something that a movie about a subject that happens over many years can do; in bringing it all together you suddenly see the shape of it. And when it’s all spread out and diffused, it’s hard to see what actually happened. And putting all these bits of information and evidence, one after the other was just damning, I thought. And I had a chance to look at some of the interviews with the kids, the allegedly abused kids, that Kee [Kee MacFarlane] and the other therapists had done and it was shocking to me how much words were being put into the mouths, ideas put into the heads, of young kids, very susceptible young kids, about what had happened, that could not physically, possibly have happened. And so I thought this is a, an important movie to do. An important way of telling a story that everybody thinks they know about but maybe they don’t know about. [INT: What was the status of the case at that point?] I think it went through a number of trials, and I think nobody was formally acquitted, but charges were dropped in the end and there wasn’t a further trial. But certainly it was a very hot button issue for many people, indeed on the first day we started shooting Abby Mann’s house was burned down. While he was on the set. People broke into his house, they poured gasoline on his desk and they poured gasoline on his bed and they set fire to the house. [INT: This was--where was his house? Here in L.A.?] Yeah. [INT: And what happened with that?] Everybody got very scared. People had a sort of idea about who might be responsible, but nobody really would talk about it publicly. We were all wondering who was next. So Oliver Stone had a guard outside his house, I had a guard outside my house. [INT: Oliver Stone was producing it?] Yes. Nothing happened. But it was a, kind of, somebody was trying to send a warning, “If you go ahead with this movie, there will be consequences.” We went ahead with the movie. [INT: Did they--just parenthetically--did they catch the people who…] [MJ nods head no] And the movie was successful, it won a Directors Guild award [Robert E. Aldrich Award, DGA] and it won an Emmy [Emmys] and I think it was a, technically a very challenging piece of work, to go back to that period; to try and duplicate some pieces of original footage; to use original footage and meld them together in a way that was true to the material and didn’t distort them but actually--you know, you have to put your own Actor into it. A shot of Ray Buckey doing something, for example, you can’t use the original guy. Great cast, again, great, great cast. Mercedes Ruehl, Jimmy Woods [James Woods], Henry Thomas, Sada Thompson, and Shirley Knight. Incredible, incredible performances. And I got some of my kinda THREADS mojo back again, doing that. Coming out of what was ultimately, not a terribly satisfying experience of doing THE BODYGUARD. I was pleased with the movie, I think the movie was, you know, what it was. It was a good, Hollywood movie; it was very successful and lots of people enjoyed it and still do, and it runs on TV and I get some residuals which is nice, but I felt a need to cleanse something out, and then doing the MCMARTIN [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL] at that point it was very good. And also, you know clawing my way back into being an acceptable Director again and not somebody who made problems.

INT: Did you have any sense why Cooper [Bob Cooper] reached for you at that particular moment?
MJ: He knew my work from the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] and had wanted to work with me. And thought some of the THREADS Mick Jackson might be--I would handle this. [INT: And what was your HBO experience like?] Great. They wanted to rush it out [INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL], they wanted to get it out in time for the Emmys and there wasn’t a lot of time for, “Let’s try doing this a different way and let’s try re-cutting this,” not that they would anyway and I don’t say that in any pejorative sense. It was a good experience and they were full of creative freedom and support and it was good. [INT: And what was the experience of the shooting like, I mean, anything in particular in terms of the fact that it was a very sensitive subject and also you might talk specifically--I’m not clear when you say you used some of the real footage, how that was used.] It's a kind of ZELIG thing, you know, like the Woody Allen movie? Where you have interviews given by, let’s say, the--I’ve forgotten his name--Ira somebody, the Los Angeles D.A. [District Attorney] at the time. [INT: Oh, Ira Reiner?] Ira Reiner [Ira Kenneth Reiner] gave an interview on 40 minutes--60 MINUTES. [INT: 60 MINUTES.] Sorry--with Mike Wallace, but we already had somebody playing Ira Reiner in the movie, so it was a question of splicing together the over-the-shoulder to Mike Wallace for the questions with our guy and the reverse and so on. Stuff like that--I love doing. It’s kinda constructing a reality out of pieces of the past and pieces of the present which you’ve kind of constructed to make them match. Working with child actors was great. There were lengthy cross-examinations of the kids who were allegedly molested in court and I had a very, very gifted Casting Director, Mali Finn, who found these kids who could just do this, and be totally, totally credible and believable. We had to cover our tracks slightly, in that this all happened in Manhattan Beach and that obviously has a definite look. We shot in Redondo Beach, nearby. And we were called the “Playa Project”--“Playa Vista,” as a kind of code, rather than putting up signs that say, “McMartin film, this way. Bombs here please [Points]--fire bombs.” [INT: So you certainly made it with some anxiety. I mean once that fire, once the houses burned…] MJ: With some, but little anxiety. I think just ‘cause things are this kind where there is a deadline, you’ve got to get it ready by a certain date, the budget isn’t everything that you would want and you’re forced to be resourceful, is always fun. It just forces you--I think, one of the things I love doing about movies, and this is a good example, is just problem solving. You know, we cannot get all of this to go into this time, what do we do? In some cases, that is the crucial piece of inspiration that you need. To hark back to something else, THREADS, compared with ABC’s THE DAY AFTER [1983], they had an enormous budget for visual effects--special effects--the moment when the bomb drops, was vast--mushroom clouds, buildings and… [Waves hands] I didn’t have that. But what I did have was the fact that in England every day a man with an electric powered vehicle comes around and delivers milk bottles to the front doorstep. Everyday, that’s the milkman. And he leaves them--the, it’s not something you go and buy in a carton in a supermarket. But they put it on the doorstep. I set that up early in the movie as a kind of symbol of normality, so that when the bomb drops, I played that on a big close up of a milk bottle melting and the milk in it boiling, which is something I would have never thought of doing, if I had all the money in the world. I think one of the things you do as you go through a shoot is: on the second day, you say, “What didn’t I get the first day that I’m never gonna get on the second--think of another way of doing it.” And you think, well, “Supposing we did it in one take?" Or supposing, “We left that element out and we just did this, and we did this point of view shot, or whatever.” And that’s what I think happened to me in doing so much TV work after I got here; being resourceful in a way of hustling resources and finding creative solutions. That didn’t happen to somebody like Ken Russell, I think we were talking earlier, when he went over to the movie world and people said, “Here is an enormous endless box of money, dip your hands into it, take whatever you want.” Sometimes that’s the worst thing you can say to a Director. Sometimes what you want to do is close the lid and say, “Figure out a way of doing it.” And what I derive satisfaction from.