INT: What about test screenings and try outs? Tell us about that in your experience. Testing a film in front of an audience?
DM: I think a lot of the films I have done, the studios have done that. Taken the pictures out for a screening before the picture is actually released. I have found that reasonably helpful at times, I have found it misleading at times. Sometimes an audience in that artificial kind of situation will react differently than a normal audience. I have had several pictures taken to test screenings that the studio found slow. I think THE OUTSIDER was one that was definitely hurt by the amount of cutting we had to do. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT was a 3 hour picture for HALLMARK, and was also to be released theatrically abroad. After I finished my cut of the picture, Sir LEW expressed the desire that more be cut out. The editor and I took out about 15 minutes of material. I went back to SIR LEW and told them I took out what I could. Then I had to leave London and Lou got with the editor and had them take out another 15 minutes, which was dialogue scenes. The London critics did not like it.

INT: How about publicity and promotion? How do you approach that?
DM: The promotion publicizing a picture, is really not an aspect of picture-making that I normally have anything to do with. That's pretty much an area that the director is not consulted in. I know that some of the publicity and promotion things, the artwork for the posters and advertising is very important. INT: Have you been surprised positively or negatively by the advertising for any pictures? Oh have I ever. I did a picture for a network called A DEATH IN CALIFORNIA which involved a very brutal murder and a very bizarre relationship between the murderer and a woman in the piece. I wanted to do it as tastefully as I could. I believe it was ABC, put out an ad campaign that emphasized everything that I had tried to do gently. It was the most atrocious, most awful campaign I have ever seen. The film clips for the trailer could not have been more misleading.

INT: Any positive experiences along those lines?
DM: A simple campaign such as WALTER SELTZER and GEORGE GLASS devised for MARTY which was simply a pencil sketch of Marty sort of seen from the back was the hallmark of the campaign. I think it helped that picture enormously. It did capture in a very tasteful manner, the essence of what the picture was about.

INT: To double back on the man-woman relationship in that strange picture that I think SAM ELLIOTT played the lead in if I'm with you.
DM: Yes, CHERYL LADD and SAM ELLIOTT. [INT: That's a relationship that's almost beyond what we dramatize, it's so strange. Was there any particular attack you used with the two of them to bring them to it?] It is the strangest mixing of feelings that I know of anywhere. The attack scene, we actually did it in the bedroom of the house where we were shooting. And I had to reshoot it at least a couple of times. SAM was very strong, and he threw her around on the bed, stripped her clothes off of her, she was bruised black and blue by the end. He apologized for hurting her, but they both threw themselves into it. It was up to me to make sure it was photographed in a manner that was tasteful.

INT: How was it received?
DM: He was finally tried for the murder in the last hour of the piece. The picture did quite well, it was a two-parter. I think the network was very happy with it, despite the truly awful ad campaign. [INT: Do you remember what the critics thought?] Not a whole lot, other than a lot commented that this is a very strange picture for Delbert Mann to be doing. And I said, yes, it's unlike anything I've every done before. But I was fascinated with the problems of doing something so horrid, but doing it within acceptable bounds of good taste. [INT: Did you get rehearsal time?] No, we did not. I think we maybe had a day or two. But not a whole lot beyond that.

INT: You've mentioned your favorites and a few of your disappointing experiences. As a young person about to be in the business, or in theater, what about the DIRECTOR'S GUILD? What was your first awareness that there was a guild for directors?
DM: I knew nothing about it, nothing about Hollywood, I had never done a film until I came out to do MARTY and was told at that time that I had to join something called the SCREEN DIRECTORS GUILD. Just the initiation fee for the guild took a large percentage of what I was making on the picture. But I've never regretted it, it's been so important to my career, to Hollywood, and to every director, assistant director, and all who belong to the GUILD. It has done so much for the industry and all of us.

INT: I agree completely. Who sponsored you?
DM: I think GEORGE SIDNEY who was president of the guild at that time signed for me, and two or three others who I didn't know at all. I don't have any memory of it. [INT: Who were some of the names that you remember, perhaps being in awe of, that were in the organization?] Some of the founders like KING VIDOR, FRANK CAPRA, GEORGE SIDNEY, GEORGE STEVENS, JOHN FORD, JOHN STURGES, JOSEF VON STERNBERG, there were several others, ROBERT WISE became prominent about the same time. WILLIAM WYLER. They were all intensely interested in the guild, gave their time to activities, their energies, their interests to the guild, and were responsible for building it from a very small beginning of 13 directors to the organization that it now is.

INT: Are there issues beyond the idea of possessive credit? What other milestones or good moments of accomplishment do you remember?
DM: The establishment and the growth of the pension plan and the health and welfare plan. Both of those plans, directors guild and the producer's association together, have done so much for the members. The pension that one gets when he retires are really kind of staggering. The funds have grown enormously. The health plan, the medical expenses that are cared for by the health plan are just staggering. And I've been through 10 years of my wife going through Alzheimer's and I understand the costs.

INT: What about creative rights? They seem to have become more well-defined and move more to the forefront. Tell us about that evolution as you've seen it.
DM: I do know that so-called creative rights, the right of every director to have certain things available to him, to be taken care of, that his creative abilities are not impeded by outside pressures, has become one of the more important parts of the guild's activities in recent years. And the creative rights committee, headed by ELLIOT SILVERSTEIN, have done an amazing job. MARTHA COOLIDGE and JOHN FRANKENHEIMER are now heading that committee and have for some time for negotiations with the producers.

INT: Personal tragedy. You've had I think an unusual amount of that. Has that affected your work? How has that related to your career and your professional life?
DM: I don't think I've had more tragedies in my life than a lot of people, but we lost our daughter when she was 23 and my wife's recent illness, Alzheimers for 10 years, and I know that the last film I did, which was about 5 or 6 years ago, at that time I was so worn down by my wife's condition that I went through a period of several years where I said I don't ever want to work again. I didn't have the energy or the desire to put that much into a project and I really shied away from even considering working again. Only within the past 3 or 4 years have I come around to saying yes I'm ready to go to work again. I have my old energy back and I'm ready to attack another project.

INT: Your advice to young directors? And the single most strong principle guiding light, slant of your own?
DM: I could only say that I'm very grateful for having spent my life as a director of film, television, theater, some opera. I'm fortunate in the extreme, in the friends I have had who have given me a helping hand, guided me along, have helped me in every way. I am extremely lucky and very grateful. Advice to young upcoming, would be directors. I think most people in this business would say go to a good film school. AFI is a major institution, and yes, when one is ready for those places, they probably would be very helpful. But I on the other hand have always been very grateful that I never went to film school. I never learned how to use a camera, how to cut film, how to light film, etc. My training was strictly theater. I trained at YALE drama school intending to be a theater director. I got sidetracked, I have enjoyed every theatrical directing experience I had. I still feel that is my home and gave me the best training for working with actors that I could possibly have gotten anywhere in the world. Directors and actors is what theater is all about. And the rest of it is simply mechanics, which one can learn by doing, and practicing. But I have been and still am grateful that my whole thought was theater. And I've never changed my mind about that at all.