INT: My name is still Jeremy Kagan and today is August 31st, 2004. I am conducting an interview with the master director Joseph Sargent for the Directors Guild of America's Visual History Program. And we are at the DGA in Los Angeles, California, in theatre three.

INT: Your name, Joe.

JS: Joseph Sargent. [INT: And, the… Was that your name at birth? That’s what they’re asking.] No. As a matter of fact, the original name was Giuseppe Danielle Sorgente. [INT: Come va?] Is that; is that an aria or what? [INT: It’s a great, it’s a great… What was your… Do you have any nicknames?] Well, they used to call me Peppino as a kid, my, my folks. [INT: Yeah? That’s cool.] And Peppino is a, is a diminutive of Giuseppe, the last part of Peppe. [INT: Got it, got it. And, birthdate?] July 22, [mumbles]… [INT: Great. And city and state? Where?] Jersey City, New Jersey. [INT: Really?]

INT: So, were your parents into the arts at all?

JS: None. I had an Uncle who was an inveterate reader, a voracious reader, and was a typesetter in Manhattan. And, he gave me a, a little Univex 8mm camera, for a gift. [INT: Wow.] And, it helped change my life. [INT: How old were you when you got the gift?] 11, and that’s when I directed my first movie. [INT: Great.] My first 8mm movie. [Laughs] [INT: Do you remember what the subject was?] Oh, very much so. [INT: What?] Well, for instance, we, I had a gang of, of kids, you know. And so I recruited ‘em all as part of my production team, and my Actors, and so they were everything. Like I was everything. And, but where was the script gonna come from? Well, the other thing that was even remotely available were the fairy tales. ‘Cause, you know, there’s a matter of adapting… Pick a fairytale, adapt it, and modernize it, etcetera. And, and go. So we called ourselves ‘Modernized Juvenile Productions.’ Not juvenal, but juvenile. [Laughs] [INT: Great.] And, so we did our first fairytale, and because we didn’t have any girls in the, in the club, we had to title it, HANSEL AND FRIZZLE. [Laughs] [INT: Great.] So my first production was juvenile modernized production of HANSEL AND FRIZZLE. [Laughs]

INT: When you were a kid, did you go to lots of movies?

JS: Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. I, I go back to a very little known picture that first made an impression on me. So much so, that, you know, I was mesmerized by, by the whole experience. But I was six years old. [INT: Wow.] And the picture was something called HATCHET MAN [THE HATCHET MAN]. Ever hear of it? No. [INT: Wait a minute. Is this, is this an Asian picture or was supposed to be an Asian picture? What he does is he throws…] Not at all. [INT: Okay. This is one of my memories as a kid.] Well what, what’s this? Is it? Is--[Sargent puts hand to forehead] [INT: You’ve now stimulated--‘Cause the axe that he throws goes right into the head…] Yep, that’s it. [INT: And he ends up killing his daughter or something, behind…] No, killing George Raft on the other side of the wall. [INT: Okay. Intentionally? Yeah, intentionally.] No, no. Unintentionally. [INT: That’s wha--okay, so I’m vaguely remembering this movie.] Yeah. Well, for instance, Edward G. Robinson was THE HATCHET MAN, Loretta Young was his paramour, and they were all supposed to be Chinese. [Laughs] [INT: That’s what I--I remember. I remember this movie!] Yeah. But, the thing that has riveted itself in my head, and I’ve never been able to shake it, was when Edward G. Robinson, in a fit of rage, ‘cause he has not been able to capture George Raft, his adversary. He takes his hatchet, and he flings it against the wall. And it buries itself in the wall, and then he cuts, the Director cuts to the other side of the wall, and there’s George Raft leaning against the wall like this [Sargent leans]. And then suddenly he cut back and Edward G. is trying to get his axe out of the wall, do you remember this? And of course then you cut again to the other side of the wall and George Raft is doing it. Well… And of course, eventually he pulls the axe out and George Raft falls to the, to the floor. [INT: And he never finds out though, does he? I don’t think…] I don’t remember. [INT: I don’t think he…] I don’t remember anything after that or before that, not the slightest idea, of what… [Laughs]. [INT: It’s great. I’m glad, I’m glad I remember this movie.]

INT: For you, without having anybody to sort of say, “Oh, this is a world to go into,” how did you, besides the Juvenile Productions, how did you enter into this world?

JS: Well, you know, at 11, it, it fit right into the kind of theatrics that I loved, you know. I also had my own little circus. And, who was the circus master? [Sargent points to himself] And always with the kids, who are delighted to be a part of anything crazy like that, you know. But, in order to populate my circus, I made huge cutouts out of cardboard and, and sticks and whatnot, of elephants and tigers and, and various animals. And we used my dog, for instance. And we charged two cents, so I was an entrepreneur as well as a film--as well as a circus master. So, circus kind of laid an acting… I was a, you know, I did some acting in, in grammar school and whatnot. And then ultimately I got serious about acting. But all of that kind of led up to a fascination with theatrics, I guess. And, I really never seriously pursued directing after my eleventh year because I was more interested in being in front of, of all of the action. In front of the camera rather than… And certainly in front of the spotlight on stage, etcetera.

INT: What did, what did your parents do?

JS: They were wonderful, simple immigrants from Italy. Pop was a laborer, and my mother was a seamstress. And they worked hard and they saw that I never went near the ice-wagon that my father drove, and he saw that I never became an iceman. And, they gave me all the opportunities you could imagine. I was an only child, so I was very lucky and lots of, lots of love from my parents. So, and I had a lot of time on my hands to do all kinds of crazy circuses, films, what have you.

INT: What was your transition into, transition into acting? How did that happen?

JS: After the War [World War II], I ended up with a G.I. Bill. I went to the New School for Social Research, and majored in theater arts. Now, I had no idea who Erwin Piscator was, but he was the head of the department there. Erwin Piscator, for those, for the majority of people who don’t know, or remember his name, was the co-founder of epic theatre [theatrical movement] with Bertolt Brecht. [INT: Wow.] And as two German, brilliant men, they saw to it that they busted out of the proscenium arch and created a kind of theater that was so stimulating, and so, so new for its time, using stage craft that was unheard of. The… [INT: Theater of the round. [theater-in-the-round]] What do they call… [INT: Theater of the round.] Yeah. [INT: Theater in round was part of it.] No, not theater in round, but turntables--[INT: Turntables.]--to change the sets. At one point we did a production where I played a guard that held onto a screen, on a stand with three other guards, and we moved the screen around so that the rear projectors would hit, and change the scenes. So, the seamlessness of the production, of the movement in each of the productions, was outstanding. There was never a moment when people had to run on stage and change scenery, or anything like that. There was never a moment when there was a, a curtain that dropped. Simply because all the lights were exposed, all of the tricks were exposed, and its like saying, oh, it’s the beginning of what Brecht called ‘the theater of alienation.’ And, it did away with all artifact--artifice, rather. It did away with the, the mask that we like to think of as, as theater, behind which you, you preform magical, fascinating tricks. He showed you how he was performing the magical tricks by exposing everything. And it was fascinating. And, out of that theater grew a, a movement really, away from realism in the theater and toward more of an expressionist, an impressionist kind of theater. One with a lot more freedom from the naturalism that, that was pretty much engrained by that time. [INT: Now, it’s interesting…] The Ibsen [Henrik Ibsen], natural, realism theat--the, the theater of Ibsen. [INT: Got it.]

INT: It’s interesting you talk about that, because styles of acting, in terms of what you were learning there, because in the Brecht [Bertolt Brecht] pieces, often times a broader style, a non-naturalistic style of acting was part of the process. So that you were not trying to sort of be, come from inside. Often times it was almost, almost caricature in presentation, ‘cause I remember some of the Brecht pieces, which--

JS: And they kind--They got to those kind of extremes too, which was one of the failings of the, of that approach because they had no… They had really no idea of what the other movement going on concurrent with the epic theatre movement, was all about. And that was the movement of Stanislavski [Constantin Stanislavski]. And what we inherited from, from the Soviet Union at the time, which was an attempt at also knocking out artifice, and also knocking out masking everything in broad theatrical terms, but striving precisely for the kind of realism that Brecht and Piscator [Erwin Piscator] were, were trying to get away from. So, you had two movements going on, almost in conflict, but in a interesting sense, I wound up with the marriage of both, and the advantage of both. Because I went from, that kind of training at The New School [New School for Social Research] and I took, then I took post-graduate work with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. So, I had the good fortune of the best of both worlds. And it really left an impression on my approach to, to film, because film, after all, is quite capable of taking flight and going anywhere. And it was a, a, in itself, it’s a magical medium. And, as a theater director, which is what I ultimately became, I yearned more for that kind of freedom... The difference between film and theater was incredible in the freedom that you could use to express and articulate the inner content of, of the script.

INT: Lets talk about some of the things, if you recall, if they're still with you, that when you were studying with Stella [Stella Adler] and studying with Lee [Lee Strasberg], some of the things you still retain, right now, that you’d say, “I learned this from these people. I still use this.” Are there things that, that come to mind when I ask that? [JS: Very much.] Like what?

JS: Very Much. Well, the whole basis of what they were teaching was the Stanislavski [Constantin Stanislavski], so called ‘method,’ which of course is nothing like the religion that people try to make it. The method is just common sense. It's just the use of natural human experiences, and it's delving into the, basically the inner life of the character rather than play the externals, and rather than play the, the stereotype. But to get past all that and dig into the emotional underpinnings of what he’s all about, and more importantly, to take on all of those emotional needs, the emotional needs of the character, take ‘em on as if they were your own. Now, every once in a while you had a genius, or a near genius, that can do this only with quick prompting, one or two lessons and he’s got it. Marlon Brando. Marlon didn’t study with Stella, I think, after the third week. He didn’t have to. She gave him the key so quickly, that he was able to fit it into his own intuitive consciousness and say, “That’s what I thought, of course that’s the way you do it.” I’m--so the, his ability, and Dean [James Dean], and of course all of the major talents that we have working today, from Streep [Meryl Streep], to Pacino [Al Pacino], to De Niro [Robert De Niro], etcetera. What they do, what they’re capable of doing, is immersing themselves thoroughly into the emotional needs of their characters. And that’s a helluva gift. I, I didn’t have it, and most of the people I know don’t have it. We come close, we have a moment here, a moment there, and, you know, you have, you have Actors who hit moments, but the Actor who stays in every moment, so thoroughly, that its almost like impossible to pull ‘em out, is rare and is, you know… These are, these are our top people.

INT: Did you, in terms of…this is kind of, as you, as a professional now, working with Actors, which is part of what you do… [JS: I go for those values] And, are their techniques that you learned then, from these teachers, that you’d say, “You know, I still use this now.” That there’s a technique that I learned from Stella [Stella Adler] or Lee [Lee Strasburg] that I will now still use with, if there’s an Actor with a certain issue, or a problem, I’ll use this. Is that still active for you?

JS: Oh, very much so. It’s very much part of my, my, my whole conscious approach as a Director. Simply because… And a lot of it has become so second nature that I don’t, that I haven’t even thought about it, one way or another. It’s sessions like this that bring, bring me, force me into really recognizing what I’ve been taking for granted for years, simply because its very much part of my, my approach. But, I would say that Stella was more responsible for most of the approach I have today, than Lee. Lee was more of, of, he leaned more for the intellectual critique, where Stella leaned more to the emotional necessity. And, and what that translates into is a word that I learned in, in, and I learned to apply it, rather… Well, it, it became my litany. And that’s the word, “specificity.” A very fancy word meaning, specifically what you’re doing. What does it mean? What is my objective? What is everything to do with my environment? What am I surrounded with, and how do I approach things so that it’s not overwhelming? Like, for instance, if you had to re-create a door and a wall, off-camera for instance, its not there, because there isn’t room for cameras and crew and everything. But you had to reach and somehow open that door. Do you try to see the whole door and the whole wall? No. She taught us to look for a specific spot on the knob. Make the knob come to life for you, and you got the door. And that’s really what happens. When you reach for a door, you don’t reach for the whole door, you reach for the knob. Now, she was able to translate a specific like that into a very doable thing. And that’s another one of her favorite words by the way, “doable.” [INT: That’s a great story. The door one I hadn’t heard. It’s a beautiful illustration.] Yeah. Oh, she did the same thing with a squirrel in Central Park. That’s… Well you're on stage, right? All you’ve got is a bunch of crew people, folded arms, leaning against the, you know, whatever, and an audience out there, and that’s it. And a park bench. Now how do you create Central Park with that kind of, of nakedness? You have to come from the wings, and really try to re-create the reality of that environment. And, now what do you do? You--did you spend hours trying to visualize and absorb every tree in Central Park? Of course not. You pick one specific that you--Especially coming in cold from the wings. The toughest thing in the world is to make an entrance for an Actor, whether it be on screen or, or on stage. Coming into a scene is always the toughest kick-off to do. So what you need is one tiny little specific, and what she chose, for instance, as an example, is right there, in the wings, there’s a squirrel that starts running, and he runs out there, and you follow it, and your on stage. And you’re in Central Park. You’ve made an element of that park, the beginnings of the reality of that environment, your own. It was very valuable; I’ve never forgotten that example. [INT: Very nice, very nice. Thank you. Thank you.] [laughs] [INT: It’s good for me.]

INT: Transitioning to your first directing job… Talk about that, so we can know how that happened. Your first directing job.

JS: Well, my first directing job was, of course, in Lee’s [Lee Strasburg] directing class. And then, of course, I formed my own theater group and we came out here [Los Angeles] ‘cause as a New York Actor, I wasn’t about, with several of my colleagues, all of whom were starving Actors, we weren’t about to lose the, the, the muscular strength of our craft. So we all banded together, we circled the wagons, and formed our own group. And, since I had done some directing and studying and that was my, my bent, we put together a, an evening of one Actors, of one act plays, and it was a very big hit. And, and one thing led to another. I did about two or three years of, of productions in our own theater, with people like Dennis Weaver and Mary Carver, and, oh god, it was so many; people’s names don’t come to mind right away. Bill Schallert [William Schallert], etcetera. We… I began to impress enough people with those productions, to catch the eye of one very important man. And his name was Adrian Scott, who was a dear, warm, human being who knew that I was looking for a break in film, and that I loved the medium. And he did a very marvelous thing: He generously put my name on one of his scripts. Now, mind you, remember most of these productions I was directing everything from Ionesco [Eugène Ionesco] to O’Casey [Sean O’Casey], to Shakespeare, you know, to some pretty profound stuff. So, what was my name on? And what was my first film? LASSIE [LASSIE: JOEY]… A half-hour of black and white LASSIE that was way beneath my New York training, and oh my god I was embarrassed. But, it was a break, and I was thrilled. But the same time, I didn’t want anybody to know I was directing LASSIE. Well, it was the best thing that could have happened, to any Director, because nobody in the industry, except people with kids, and they wouldn’t be watching anyway, they would just let the kids watch. But nobody watches a show in its seventh year, that’s primarily beamed to kids. So I had a chance to do all of my mistakes, all of my learning process, in the right place. A place where, you know, I didn’t have to answer to it later. It would be buried in history. Well, it’s not been buried in history exactly; they play the damn thing over again. The show… I did about 17 of them. [INT: Wow.] And they, they’re on one of those channels that plays wonderful children’s stuff, ‘cause they; they were very healthy and very good for kids. [INT: 17 shows.]

INT: Did you do them [LASSIE] right--after the first one, did you just keep doing ‘em and were you like--you, you proved it to them and then they wanted to keep you along?

JS: Yeah. The reason for that is, Bob Golden [Robert Golden], the producer… He never found out, by the way, that my--I didn’t really write the story. See, what Adrian [Adrian Scott] did was, he put my name down as “story by,” that he was going to do the script as expected, but that my caveat was that he couldn’t have the script unless I directed it. So, Golden [Robert Golden] had no choice, and had nothing to lose ‘cause the show was in its seventh year. He says, “Even the guy, the kid, doesn’t know a thing about directing or filmmaking, I’ve got a great Editor,” blah, blah…you know, the usual, “We’ll save ‘em.” Well after the first set of dailies, I get called into, to the Producer’s office. He says, “Joe, you move the camera.” I said, “Excuse me?” He said, “You move the camera.” I say, “Well, that’s because the Actor moved, and I want him to go from here to there, and of course its motion pictures.” He says, “Well, we’ve never had a Director on this show who moved the camera.” [Laughs] Now, mind you, this is 1961 when there were a lot of old silent Directors still working, and, and you know, guys that came up through the ranks with no real grasp of the freedom of cinematics. And I was shocked to hear that because I was actually using the wheels on that crab, that this was a novelty. And, then on top of that, he found that I didn’t necessarily always have the dog in the same frame as the adults and or Timmy, although Timmy was easier to keep in the same frame. So I didn’t have to go way back in order to hold the father, the mother, and the family, etcetera, and the dog. I actually panned down to the dog, from a close-medium shot of the adults or Timmy, etcetera. Never been done before. Well, I was beginning to get a sense that I probably knew a little bit more than I suspected about film. ‘Cause I had been playing with 16mm up to that point anyways. So, it, it was a great learning ground for me and I, I cherish it. [INT: You’re luck--you’re lucky.]

INT: Did--Who--If you were thinking about your mentors, your filmic mentors, I mean your directing mentors, as distinguished from the acting teachers of Stella [Stella Adler] and Lee [Lee Strasberg], who would you say, in the beginnings of your career, were your mentors? And they may be, maybe they’re people that you actually saw work, but it may have been also, you know, you love John Ford. I’m just curious who were the--

JS: Oh yeah. Oh, a matter of fact, he, he was one of my hero’s. Ford, Wilder, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges. These were guys… And of course Capra [Frank Capra]. The thing about Capra [Frank Capra], by the way, is that what I learned from him was the incredible vitality and staging. If you re-examine his stuff, in a, in a day, in an age when most films had set shots, yes there was movement, but characters usually walked in, hands at the sides, knocked off the dialogue, and, and left. For the most part, you know. Or, they were so cleverly cut, as in the case of Ford [John Ford] or, or Wellman [William Wellman], that you didn’t miss the fact that they, they stood in the middle of the room talking to one another. What Capra [Frank Capra] did was moving the principles throughout most of the crowd, say, in a newsroom. And at the same time, talking and overlapping one another. Now, most people think that Welles [Orson Welles] was the first to introduce overlapping. He was the first to really capitalize on it and make it his, part of the reality of what he was doing. But he wasn’t the first to use it. It was done by several people, not the least of which was Capra. And so there was a vitality of, of realism there that was just in--inspiring for me. But… [INT: Did you get to actually watch any other Directors work?] Oh, yes. [INT: And who were some of the--and they may have not been the most famous.] I cut most of my teeth on the French, Kurosawa [Akira Kurosawa], Satyajit Ray, Fellini [Federico Fellini], my hero, and of course, Orson Welles.

INT: Now, in terms of actually being in the presence of other Directors and watching them direct: Were you able to do this… And this may have been other television Directors or film Directors. [JS: Yes.] Did you actually get to spend some time and learn something from other Directors by watching them work?

JS: Oh yes, absolutely. I followed Lamont Johnson around, most notably Lamont. I also did that with Bob Altman [Robert Altman], for instance. And, with Arthur Hiller. All of whom I learned something from. [INT: Do--Could you be sp--Can you be specific in terms of, like, Lamont or, or, or…] Yeah, one, I was on the set one time and noticed that the Actor was sitting on a chair, the other Actor… And it was a close-up of the, the man in a chair. The other Actor walked over and dropped into the frame. Again, I had no idea you could do that. One of the problems I had, by the way, in my transition from theatrical directing, where you work to a proscenium arch, in effect you are working to a single frame. It’s a large frame, so you have to move the Actors around; otherwise, it’s quite obvious that they’re not functioning properly. And it’s also very dull. So movement became very much part of, second nature of my work. But what I didn’t understand fully was how do you stage scenes with multiple people, and, and make up for the fact that you couldn’t see everybody at the same time. Now, LASSIE again, the thing I learned so valuably from LASSIE was the time I had Lassie, the boy, his parents, about three or four blind kids, the counselors, etcetera. A sort of a, I tried to shoot it as a tight 17. [Laughing] Because there was 17 people and I didn’t how to separate ‘em, and, you know, how do you do that? Well, I was forced to learn, you know, the simplest of, you know, filmmaking 101. But see, in a sense, all of the advantages I had as a theatrical Director, a theatre Director, in a, paradoxically enough, worked against my falling into the sensible, logical way of using film. What the bottom line becomes is that the camera can go anywhere. The camera can travel with one Actor, who brings you to three Actors, who then brings you to four more over here, and passes through them, and you spread your 17 people around the, [stutters] the set or the grounds and you then give movement instead of the static thing that I was shooting. And the producer, by the way, Bob Goldin [Robert Goldin], was, he was a generous, wonderful man. He laughed when he saw that. He said…[laughs] He said, “You, you got a few things to learn about the capabilities of film.” And that is, the capability of film is that it can go anywhere. [INT: Anywhere, yeah.]

INT: So, Lamont [Lamont Johnson] showed--in terms of Lamont, you were learning some staging issues. Like the example of someone--[JS: Very much so.]--suddenly sitting into…

JS: Lamont and I worked very much, very similarly. We have the same backgrounds, kind of, the same thing, and it’s a, it was a, it was quite…Lamont, as a matter of fact, sponsored my coming into the Guild [DGA]. Yeah. [INT: Oh, that’s great.] He had seen a couple of my productions as well. And I learned an incredible amount of, specifically, how to use the camera a little bit more comfortably. So that--[INT: Do you remember when you, when you, when you were ob-observing Altman [Robert Altman], do you remember anything specific from that experience?] Yes, his looseness, his laissez-faire attitude on the set. Which was deceptive. You think, oh, this guy is really winging it. Well he’s, I learned to observe that he wasn’t quite as winging it as he, he, he liked you to think. That he was quite prepared, but he had a nice ease and a very… And I could see why Actors love him, because he sets a relax--a relaxed attitude of, “Well, lets try it. And if it doesn’t work, so what, to hell with it.” Or, “If it doesn’t work, we’ll find something else.” And that’s a great attitude to have. [INT: Yeah.] Even though he may be churning inside, and of course he always threw his own sets of stresses and, and pressures. What he gives forth on the set was wonderful. Now, it misled me a little bit, as an Actor. He seemed unprepared, he seemed not too specific about direction, and by that time I had already got… By the way, this is was, I was on the set first with Bob as an Actor. I wasn’t following him as a Director at the time. It was only after I began to put two and two together, realized that he was worth observing. But as an Actor, I felt a little abandoned, and I guess that’s one of the reasons that led me to Directing, ultimately. [INT: Wow. But the, but then when you actually were looking at him as a Director, you saw that this was a attitude, right?] Exactly. And the attitude was free enough for him to come up with some outrageously interesting stuff, which he’s still; he’s still at it. [INT: Yep, no question about it, no question about it.]

INT: In terms of, if you looked at, look at your own career, starting doing these half-hour television shows, what shifted so that your--Or how would you describe the career that, as, you know, evolved to the career that you’ve got, how, were there particular breaks, were there particular opportunities that shifted things? What were some of those?

JS: I feel very lucky. Very lucky, very… Sometimes I consider the sun is shining on this Italian boy, quite well, thank you very much. Because I’ve had, I’ve had people helping me along the way, and everybody needs that. There’s no such thing as fighting through the jungle all by yourself. You need some help to get through the brush every once in a while. And my, my ascendency from the half-hour black and white LASSIE stage, came about because of Dennis Weaver, who is a member of my theater group, and who is… Same training, same background, etcetera. We exchanged an enormous amount of, debates on acting and shared conversations and, and specifics, etcetera. And he convinced Norman MacDonnell, the producer of GUNSMOKE, because Dennis was playing Chester [Chester Goode] at the time--[INT: Right, sure.]--that I might know something about directing. And he was putting that very lightly of course. So, he convinced him that he should take a chance. And Norman took a chance. And again, when they were convinced that I was able to communicate with the Actors, and the Actors were quite happy about all that, I did about eight or nine GUNSMOKES. And, I had also done a GUNSMOKE as an Actor, before that, about a year or two before that, so it wasn’t a strange crowd for me. But again, it took somebody with the courage to give me a shot. And that was also a half hour, that was also black and white, and then we went to color. And then one thing led to another, and I wound up on what probably was one of the greatest training grounds since summer stock as an Actor, and that was THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. [INT: And why, why do you say that?] Because THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E was absolutely unfettered by any parameter whatsoever. We could do anything we wanted, and since we were in the mother church, MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer] at the time, with lot three at our disposal, and I mean, literally at our disposal. I would walk with the Writers sometime, looking at the back lot, seeing what sets were available, and we would write the latest Napoleon [Napoleon Solo], Kuryakin [Illya Kuryakin] sequence to the set. It was, you know, a French street for instance, where they shot a lot of combat, or whether it was the showboat, or whatever. We had the richness of all those years of MGM musicals, epics, all of the experimentation that took place at that studio; it was all ours. And, I even had dance crane that I could play with and go for different angles, and crazy stuff. I would start looking down, you know this is when you go through the stage, as a Director, where you wanna push the envelope, try everything you can, play with any toy that’s available. Well this toy was very interesting because a dance crane has no, can go right to the floor, and it can also tilt like this [motions with hands.] So I started with, in once scene, an interrogation of some spy or another, and Solo is, or somebody was conducting the experimentation, or the inquisition, and then you just zoomed down to a different angle. And, you know, you get crazy, wonderful stuff like that. And, did quite a bit of those. [INT: Got it.]