I was making a film called The White Tower at the foot of Mont Blanc - the one thing I learned from that experience was that it's more difficult to go down a mountain than to go up. A lot of people don't realize that.
Ford didn't know what to do with Mister Roberts that wasn't repeating what was successful in New York. He was trying to do things to the play that would be his in the film.
Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.
The bosses of our mass media, press, radio, film and television, succeed in their aim of taking our minds off disaster. Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster.
I haven't seen the film yet because I just got in from London. In the scenes where the two characters are bantering with each other, it is like bobbing at the net in tennis.
I mean, I did a film, a musical of 'Scrooge', in '70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don't have to turn up at all.
We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life.
I've held onto little musical sketches that I thought could be useful, and the more time that I spend doing them for each film, then the more I have to draw on.
Each film is different. Time Code was very quick - a matter of months. Miss Julie has been on my shelf as a script for some seven or eight years. But then the shooting process was very quick - 16 days.
Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success.
You make sure that there's a structure that's interesting for them to play on top of, then do temp versions and try it on the film. By the time the players come to the recording session, I've found what works. So I'm not wasting their time.
