I was able to lean on people for favors and things to help out because their budget was so low. It was half of what John Travolta's perk package is on a film. Our whole budget was half of what his staff makes on a film.
I've heard that Alfred Hitchcock said that by the time he was ready to shoot a film, he didn't even want to do it any more because he'd already had all of the fun of working it out. It's the same thing with these Frank comics.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
But with the right kind of coaching and determination you can accomplish anything and the biggest accomplishment that I feel I got from the film was overcoming that fear.
The Sand Pebbles has always been one of my favorite films, I suppose because its the most difficult film - from a physical and logistical standpoint - that I've ever made.
You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.
With Fever, the film was so made for the screen, and there's so much surround sound that was done for the film - enormous detail paid to that. I wasn't thinking video, because I didn't know how it was going to turn out.
The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth.
