INT: Directors come to films with a different sense of responsibility in terms of getting the script to film, and as you have described your career so far, there's a lot of, an underlying pragmatism to it, depending on where you feel the strength is, whether it's in the script or in the casting that you've done. But there is an underlying force for each Director and a sense of responsibility that runs from film to film that they bring to the job, and I was wondering what that would be for you?

ES: I think a Director has a number of responsibilities, and if he fails in any one of them, he's gonna fail. He has a vision of the script, that white plume, Cyrano's plume. He has a responsibility to the Producer who has trusted him to do this for a certain amount of money and a certain amount of time, it may be all the Producer has, particularly if he's an independent Producer; a great deal trust there, so he's got a responsibility to fulfill that trust. He has a responsibility to the Actors to be sure at best that they give the best performance of which they're capable, but at least they don't look like idiots and amateurs. And the Actors trust the Director. And there is also a, and this is a little harder, I'm sure this is not necessarily at the forefront of a Director's mind, but there's a responsibility to the audience also, in a sense that whatever choices are made have to be choices which will be satisfactory, not only to all the people I just mentioned, but also to the audience and the balance, balancing these things off, I'm sure happens automatically in most Director's minds, and usually it comes out as one directive. But if you parse it all those things are there, there's a conscience there with a Director that I would admire would have all of those elements. And to carry out that responsibility sometimes requires telling Actors something that's not true in order to get them to perform, sometimes telling other half-truths in order to realize a greater truth, always keeping in mind that the responsibility is to get to the absolute truth, and that is the vision that one has that is generally been approved of, although there's a great deal of trust there, too. Because nobody knows, nobody knows what you have in your mind until the film is cut together--it's like a psychoanalyst. It's like, "Describe yellow, what is yellow? What is red?" You can't do it. "What was your dream like last night?" You can only kind of come close to it, but if you put it on film that's the first time anybody's gonna see it, and a lot of people have trusted you. So that sense of moral obligation to the people who have trusted you with money, trusted you with careers, trusted you with a script, and you trusted yourself to go into it is always in the foreground of my mind. Always has been. [INT: That's a good answer.]

INT: What about discovery? [ES: What?] I know you talked about... Discovery? [ES: Discovery?] Yeah, what I mean is do you feel that on a particular project and if you want to use an example you can, although you don't have to, the discovery of what that film is really going to be about, or what the vision, the discovery of the vision is probably more precise. Some Directors discover it on the page, some discover it in rehearsals, and I've had Directors say they don't discover it until they're shooting it--good Directors. And I was wondering where you fell in with all of that?

ES: Well, again, it depends on the script. If I don't discover something early in the reading, I'd rather not do it. It usually come in a scene, usually funny scene, and the humor will spread out over the rest of the script like a kind of beautiful stain or there's a terribly moving moment, where the same thing will happen. Everything will surround that. I mentioned previously the scene in A MAN CALLED HORSE, where this test of man, this torture test, the Sun Vow Ceremony was made. And I said, "That's the reason to do the movie. I've got to have that right. If I don't have that right, the rest of the movie doesn't have any meaning for me." In a way, the key can come in various ways, I'm sure you're absolutely right, sometimes some Directors won't really hit it until they hit the set. I just told you a story, a while ago when I made CAT BALLOU, when I thought I had it, but it wasn't working for me until I had this idea about telling Lee Marvin not to play it for humor, but to play it for the melancholia. That didn't hit me until five feet away from him. So, I don't think there's any rule about that. It's, let the process work itself. That's what's frightening about it sometimes, as you know, I'm sure, you walk into a scene and you're not quite sure where it should go, and it's terrifying, because you have to produce something under fire in a certain amount of time.

INT: What about rehearsals? Do you believe in rehearsals?

ES: Again, it depends. It depends on the Actor; it depends on the scene that you're considering. [INT: Well, let's talk about in pre-production.] Sure, but I mean if you have, if you have terribly difficult scenes, I think it's helpful to Actors if they, you get to know them, they get to know you, and there are some difficult traffic scenes, or maybe there's some difficult camerawork that you might want to get them used to. But not every scene I would think, but whatever. If an Actor said, "I'd like to rehearse this," I'd say, "Fine." I would rehearse as much as I can, as much it seems to me to be productive. [INT: What would exemplify material that you would stay away from rehearsing?] Well, if it were a scene, let's say of… let's take it one of two, both extremes, a scene of great emotional fracture. I'd want to give the Actors the plumbing of where they'll be, you know, what relationship they'll be and maybe get up to like 25 percent to where they'll be and then let it lay, but--[INT: But they would perform, they would rehearse at a very low level--] Very low-level. Yeah. [INT: But they would rehearse, they would rehearse it?] Just for plumbing sake. If it's gonna be a scene, for instance, where you and I were sitting across a desk, and we're gonna have a Willy Loman scene [DEATH OF A SALESMAN], where you're firing me. An Actor's either gonna play that or he's not gonna play it. I mean, you can't, what's there to rehearse? We're sitting across a desk. If you got a capable Actor, he's gonna know that. If he wants to rehearse to kind of warm himself up, that's fine. If you doing it on the st--the theater, you rehearse it, because you got to build up to a long run. But here where you have film, you can do it five, six, seven, eight times before you get it or more.

INT: Well, let me ask you about that, just staying with a dramatic scene, let's say it's a Willy Loman scene [DEATH OF A SALESMAN], but it's new, it's never been done before, you're doing it for the first time, for a new piece of material. And it is a very emotional scene. I mean, you're not worried about making some discoveries about what's really going on, the surprises that we often find.

ES: Sure, I would rehearse the scene, but it would largely depend on the Actor, whether I think that Actor will find rehearsal productive, or will not find it productive. [INT: I see.] Some Actors would prefer not to do that. And I want to get it as much support as I can to a really creative Actor, make him or her as comfortable as possible. [INT: How do you--] The other extreme is if you have an extremely funny scene, a burlesque scene, where if the traffic in and out of doors was important, I think it's important for the Actors to kind of know what the traffic's gonna be, so then they can forget about that, and concentrate on shticks and things that they want to play with, and timing, because that timing is gonna come out best in an improvisational environment I think. [INT: Right, right.]

INT: And have you had, and again if you can think of an example that would be good, movies in which you've had principle Actors who've come from completely different schools of acting, and styles of working, like one who doesn't discover the performance until the sixth take and one who really gets it on the second, and then it's all downhill. Are there situations where you've had that and how do you handle them?

ES: Well, I told my students at USC [University of Southern California], that they have to speak many different languages, because the Actors will sometimes are gonna speak different languages than the ones that they're used to. Some are going to be a straight objective Actors, others are gonna be internalized, Stanislavski [Constantin Stanislavski] devotees, and you have to understand all those languages so you can communicate with them. And none of them are right or wrong. Whichever one works to bring out the result is the one that's best. And I will work anyway that I can get what I want from an Actor, from a scene.

INT: But what about when you've got two Actors in a scene who are really, have competing styles, its there, is there a way you discovered to work that way or is it just on what happens on that day?

ES: Well, we'll see what happens. See what happens, you let them play and then one of them says, "I don't know what he's doing there," and you work it out. You know, I think Actors tend to over intellectualize the process of acting, anyhow. And I don't think they wear badges, say "I come from this school and I come from that school," when they get the lines and they know the scene and they begin to play it, I don't know that one style is gonna be a lot different than the other, unless it is the difference for instance between an Actor who has studied in a system of extreme internalization, playing in terms of yourself, and substitute your mood for your character and your own neurosis for the character, and one who is more objectively trained, say from the British school, then you're gonna see a stark difference between them, and maybe that difference will serve the scene depending on the characters and the situation. I don't find it useful to have rules about that, it's whatever you're confronted with you have to solve.

INT: But do you have taste, do you have taste that you mentioned British/European Actors and you've also mentioned in passing about European sensibility. How, even early in your career, the European sensibility was a more friendly environment to work in for a Director. And the same thing about the acting, I'm sure you've worked with British-trained or European, do you have a feeling about the state of American acting as compared to, or anything thoughts on it compared to the British school of acting?

ES: I do. I think that the Actors and I find many colleagues who'll agree with this, but I think the Actors Studio in the '30s [1930s] was a perversion of the Russian system, and taught the Actors to be more conscious of themselves while pretending to be conscious of the character. There was more self-consciousness, more fetal acting, more, less discipline, more tendency to force the play into their limited molds rather than, or the character into their limited roles, rather than expanding their own abilities to meet the demands or challenges of a character. I used to pride myself when I was in New York, when an Actor would come in for an audition, to guess what school he had come from by virtue of the way he dressed and comported himself. I wasn't in favor of mumblers. I was in favor of speakers. And I could take any kind of crazy invention, if it were along the lines of the character, but if I couldn't... if I had to work to understand what an Actor was saying, I was not happy. I usually tried to steer away from them if I could. I had one Actor, a wonderfully talented man--I won't mention his name because he's still working, blew an entire career because he was so internalized everything. But I had the same problem I was mentioning before about this practical attitude to when we're doing a film in Florida, and he was not happy with the attention that the leading lady was getting. It was her first film, she's was the only woman in the cast, and Life photographers and Look photographers were down there and ba-ba-ba-ba... and he stormed off into a field once, went into a fetal position in the high grass and wouldn't come to work. And I should've spotted this early on, when he, you know, when he was approaching me that way, but I didn't. My error. "How do I get him back to work?" I called the Producer and I said, "Do you have insurance? Medical insurance?" "Yeah." I said, "Please get me a psychiatrist." He said, "What are you gonna do?" "Get me a psychiatrist." The psychiatrist came up, and he said, "What can I do for you?" I said, "There's your patient out there." I said, "But all you need to do frankly to cure him is would you kindly just go out there and introduce yourself as a psychiatrist hired by the company. That's all you have to say. And then do whatever you think you would normally do." And I said, "I'm gonna have these two gentlemen who were my friends at Look photographers go out and they're gonna take a shot of that. And he says, "Well, you're using me." I said, "Yes, because a man is be lingering." And I said, "But if you need to give him any kind of treatment, we will call them off and you give him treatment. But I think just the shock of what's happening will cure him instantly. And so they went out there, bringing the cameras, he went--we could see from a distance he was 100 yards away. He shot up. He stood right up in the grass, and took off and went to the trailer, and the assistant said, walked over there, and knocked on the door, and said, "Ready to work?" He says, "I'll be right out." He came out and went to work again. I mean it was all bull. It was all an act of, "Take care of me, because I'm sick. I can't be sick," when the people paying you enormous amounts of money to be healthy. Oh, I still... it's to overcome your sickness, let's put it that way. [INT: Right.]

INT: Do you feel that vanity is, I mean, sort of what you were saying that vanity is more insidious in American acting today, and is...

ES: The generalization, I don't want to make, but I wouldn't doubt that there's a certain portion of it that's true. But after all, Actors are vain people. They're people who want to look good, and if you think for a minute you're asking them to do things and their faces are gonna be three or four stories high, and they deserve some extra care and attention, and if you're gonna look that closely, we're gonna magnify their eyes and every twitch of muscle to an enormous, enormous extent, they're entitled to be a little nervous. And they probably been denied some love as kids, and need this… what is it, Shakespeare said, "Deep down, liquid gulfs of fire, applause and love and so forth." So, they're not, as a group, disciplined, stable people. Maybe we aren't either, for that matter, but you can even see in the relations with the guilds, who are the people that are stable and disciplined and who have problems in defining themselves, and in dealing with their own problems. I think the Directors Guild [Directors Guild of America] has proven that it is the rock solid organization in the city.

INT: As you were making films were approvals for script, casting, budget, that are now guaranteed in the basic, this agreement, ever withheld from you, which really starts to take us into the contract? [ES: With what?] Where as a Director you had approval of the script, casting and budget? When you started out, all of those, you did not have those, is that correct?

ES: I don't think really if you push it to line, we still have it as a Guild [Directors Guild of America]. I don't think that's ever there. [INT: Approval for cast or script?] There's nowhere in the contract I think that gives a Director approval. [INT: No, not approval, right, yeah.] I mean, we're employees. Which is one of the great evils of the system, because under a work-for-hire doctrine, ultimately if pushed to the wall, we have very few absolute controls. The controls are usually earned or granted by tradition, or by the fear that interference will cost more money. But if lawyers get in on the act, unless there's a personal service contract that gives the Director certain outright approvals, I don't know that on the basic contract that that exists. [INT: Right, right.] That's why I mentioned trust is such an important ingredient earlier.

INT: I left out a question about the casting, I just want to go back to that for a minute. Is there a particular method you choose for casting your Actors, either the stars or even the secondary players, I mean, is there a technique that you use?

ES: Well, I've never given a screen test. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. With secondary parts, I liked to read the Actors myself, read the other parts. What I generally have done is I say to an Actor, "You read it first cold, and then I'm gonna give you another run at it." So that immediately it relaxes the Actors. That first step is not the end all and be all. And the second time, I will read the other part. And by reading it, cue that Actor into what kind of response I want. And if that's approval, if that works I'll maybe give it different direction to see how that Actor will respond to it different--[INT: So, you actually do the performing, you do the off-camera, even though if you had...?] Yeah, yeah, even a Script Director or a Casting Director, I like to do it. [INT: And that's because of why?] Because Actors are made to relate and play scenes, not break a, you know, to... how is an Actor going to deliver a very passionate scene when you're getting a ba-ba-ba-ba reading... ba-ba-ba-ba! They feel like idiots. But if you can read with them and start to play a scene with, they react. [INT: But you could have another Actor in the room to read with him. Is there something that you get by doing it yourself?] Yes, there is. [INT: Which is what?] Goosing. I can provoke another Actor, I can surprise another Actor, I can watch and see which way he reacts if I throw him a curveball. And that’s very valuable [INT: And that's, you have that because you were an Actor yourself?] Because I was an Actor, I could do it, yeah. [INT: Right. So, everything you did in the beginning really contributes.] Sure. Yeah. And I can't imagine an Actor feeling comfortable with somebody giving a very flat reading in what would be an emotional or comedic scene, and trying to keep up the energy level of a reading, and make some kind of an impression, when they're punching against the pillow, constantly. [INT: Right.]

INT: What about in cases like stars where you're not gonna get a chance to read them, is there... how do you approach it, other than the fact, putting aside, a studio requirements and things like that, I mean, strictly creatively now, what do you look for?

ES: You mean, before the decision is made or after the decision? [INT: Before.] Before the decision is made? [INT: Yeah, and the casting of it, yeah.] There isn't. The only time I've... well, let me think. With--in the case of an example Lee Marvin [CAT BALLOU], I was convinced by virtue of his television career and what I've seen in THE WILD ONES, that he was the guy I wanted. In the case of Richard Harris [A MAN CALLED HORSE], he was... it goes back to some of the early things I was saying; he's a big powerful guy, and so I wanted a different Actor. But the studio wanted him. And maybe in the long run they were right. [INT: You would've had someone initially, I mean, at that point you were looking for somebody not quite as strong?] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, who would become strong, in the course of it. A man who's more a effete, who would rise to the occasion and prove that size was not everything, so it relates back to my own vision of my own life, my on neurosis I guess. [INT: Right.]

INT: Okay, and what about in terms of some of the craft people that you hire? Is a… Well what do you look for when you're hiring a Cinematographer [Director of Photography] for example, what...?

ES: Again, it depends on the movie, it depends what's required. Now, I'm about, I think I'm going to be doing a movie shortly, and which is about a painter. So, although it's comedy, I'm gonna try to find a guy I think who will try to make some of the images more, which resemble more of a painting, in terms of lighting and so forth. Whereas, in the case of A MAN CALLED HORSE, I had a guy with a documentary kind of look, this flat and without a lot of special lighting, except in that central scene. CAT BALLOU was Jack Marta, who was a tel--he did a lot of the ROUTE 66's. I was familiar with him, he knew how to work fast. And it was my first movie, so speed was a factor. [INT: Right, so you're not, you don't necessarily like to have the same team that you carry with you, you like to apply the needs of the picture to the...?] Yeah, I did like to use the same group of Assistant Directors… if I could. Because I think that's a right arm. [INT: Right. And the Editor, though, you would use different Editors?] Different Editors I used. Yeah. [INT: The same with the Production Designer?] Yeah, they were different, they were different.

INT: How involved do you get in the product design with the... I mean, what is that process like?

ES: Production design? [INT: Yeah, with the... after you hire them.] Well, that goes to the same, the same thing I talked about before, about that carrying forward the vision of it. I have to communicate that to everybody, including the Production Designer, get them all to help to come together to try to realize that vision. [INT: Yeah, do you have an example? Can you pick one of your movies with, in terms of, how you work the Production Designer?] I don't understand really the question, how you work with a Production Designer? [INT: Well, in the sense, in the sense that do you wait for the Production Designer to come and bring a concept to you? Some Directors have even a vague idea of what they're looking for in terms of style of the film, and...] All right, when I talked to you about that early television movie, I was very specific. [INT: Right.] I could've drawn the blueprints myself, "I want a 30-foot high, five-foot wide doors. [INT: Right.] With the light, I opened up, a stab of light that would come down and fall on this very long table with an exaggerated, like almost expressionistic judge's table, in which he sat at the very top. I was very specific about that, and then black drapes everywhere, I was very specific about that. In the case of A MAN CALLED HORSE, in that central scene in which Richard Harris presented his credentials to undergo this test of manhood, I took that from a book called OH-KEE-PAH, which was a book written by a man who witnessed the original ceremony and painted it in the paintings that are in the Library of Congress. So, it was a question of that's what I want, reproduce that. [INT: So, you're quite specific in what...?] Where it's important. [INT: Yeah.] Where it isn't important, where it doesn't have a historical importance, or it has historical importance, I would be very specific. If it doesn't have a historical importance, if it follows what I communicated what I see for the movie, within that framework a Production Designer can do a whole lot of things. But that, isn't that the same with everyone on a movie that if you have an idea and you communicate it effectively, you take advantage--that you let loose their creative juices. Because if you're going to be a Director, the Cameraman, the Production Designer, the Costumers, well do all that, and don't ask for anybody else's help. But if you want other people who are talented and gifted, they're looking for a Director, they're looking for the direction, they're looking for the road down which they will march. They want to know what you think. How many times, Bob, have you been asked, "How do you see this scene? What's your take on a scene?" What they're asking us is, precisely that. [INT: Right.]

INT: You mentioned the First A.D. [First Assistant Director], let's just talk a little bit about that relationship and how it works, and for example, in pre-production, what is your relationship with him and then how does it evolve during production?

ES: First A.D. to me is my family. There's nobody closer. There's nobody I can trust more, nobody I lean on more, possibly except the Cameraman, but more than the Cameraman, even more the Director of Photography. If I have a headache and I'm having trouble or I feel sick, it's the A.D. I talk to, not to the D.P., not to the Producers, nobody else. The A.D. is family and the closer and the sooner, the better. [INT: And have you always felt that you could trust your First A.D.?] Well, that goes to a discussion I guess we're gonna have on creative rights, and how it came about, that the Director approval of the A.D., precisely for that reason. [INT: Well, maybe we could go to that right now, because the next question here that, is "Hare you ever been prevented from selecting your First A.D.?] Yeah. Sure. In most television shows the A.D. rides with the series or a series of ADs ride with the series, because they know the show, they know the pattern, they know what has to be done. They can help you that way. But no after that, no, I wouldn't say I was represented. But I was confronted with a situation as many of my colleagues were before the Creative Rights Committee negotiated for the A.D. to be the choice of the Director, before that point, the A.D. was a fink for the production office. And was a spy for the production office. And there was nobody to trust, there was nobody to, there was no family there, you were all alone. [INT: And how did all that happen?] That happened to me once and that, I mean, as a matter of fact, I guess we'll talk about what almost 95% of what is in Article 7, which is the Creative Rights article, which result in traumas that I personally suffered. Of which we can go into when we get to that, but the relationship between the A.D. and the Director dramatically changed after we negotiated that requirement that the A.D. be the Director's choice, so that he looked to the Director for his next employment and not to the production office. [INT: Do you remember how long ago that was?] I think it was the early 1970s. [INT: Okay. Well, we'll come back to that. We're getting closer to it now.]

INT: Let me ask you a little about budget issues. How do you work with budget issues? I mean are you the kind of Director who after you agree to a budget do everything you can to live in it or do you feel that it's an evolving process?

ES: It's a question of honesty, simply honesty. As we all know making a film is not like making a Chevrolet. It isn't stamped out with a predictable rhythm and a predictable timetable. But if you've done your best to reach your budget, a Producer has done his or her best to work with you on it, agree with you on it, nobody's playing games, negotiating games, everybody's building up his own department. And if you say, "Look, I'm building at a 10 percent cushion here, or a 15 percent cushion because we have this Actor," and everybody understands going in, then I have a need, a personal need to adhere to it. I really try hard, you know, I'm not exactly sure whether you've come into the penny, but I think, I have--in the case of A MAN CALLED HORSE, I told you about the 90 days, the 78 days? All right, it came to 90 days, except there was three days we were rained out. And the company added time to the budget, but according to my estimates we were on time. CAT BALLOU, we were on time. And another movie I did THE CAR, we were half a day or day over, something like that. I used to do log races with boats, log races, you get in a boat and you make a predicted time between here and this buoy and that buoy and that point. And you're not allowed to have a watch. There’s a coach with you that has a watch. And all you could use was a compass. It was of course a great pride to me to hit the mark, and hit the next mark, be at this or that point within 30 seconds of a time I predicted it. And so I enjoyed very much meeting the schedule. [INT: So, do you shoot that way?] With that in mind? With that in mind, yeah. I mean it comes to a point, for instance, you do a scene, “Boy, if I can make three more takes here I think the problem is it's gonna put the company into golden time, and is the scene that important?” I mean we all do this, don't we? [INT: Right.] Balance that off as… someplace you make sacrifices here and not there. So, I mean, I don't know that anybody doesn't do that. I would be, I would be disappointed to learn that there was a Director who said, "To hell with the budget, to the hell with the studio, to hell with the money people, to hell with them all. I'm gonna ride rough-shot over the whole damn thing.” [INT: Well, there are some who exist--] Who do that, sure. But I'm saying I'm very disappointed when I hear about that. [INT: Oh, you are, yeah. How long was CAT BALLOU, do you remember how long that shoot was, approximately?] Sure it was scheduled 28 days, and then there were two days added by the studio to add some additional scenes after that, so 30 days. [INT: 30 days.]

INT: We've talked about this before, but not in the interview in regard to your experience both as a Director of television movies and theatrical movies, whether, what is the difference for you, if any, in the experience or the approach?

ES: Well, apart from the goal, apart from the depth of quality, if you put that aside for a moment, the difference is in the supervisory personnel, that is the Producers, the networks, the people who generally know nothing, except how to market, they're marketing geniuses. And they try to translate that into being production geniuses. They are, provide the greatest headaches in the world. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that respect. I have received notes from network executives that were nothing short of irrational. I couldn't understand them. Not that I couldn't understand what was being typed, I couldn't understand what was being said. And then it only got worse when I did understand what was being said. I remember a situation I had with a really great television Producer, his name was Herb Brodkin [Herbert Brodkin], in New York. He produced some of the great quality episodic television shows. And I was in his office when he received a sheaf of notes from the network on a pilot, and he brought it and he looked at them… Took out a pen, he wrote something on them, and I said, "Herb, are those notes?" "Yeah." I said, "You want to tell me what you wrote?" He said, "Sure. If this is all you've got to say cancel the series." He threw it back and sent it back. I had some very odd experiences with network censors. I loved those confrontations, those are beautiful, I love those, because they're always a result of fear, not of logic.

ES: I had two examples of censorship, which I can tell you about if that interests you at this point. [INT: Yes, absolutely.] One was a television movie, in which a man was to be supposedly dancing naked with a woman in a room, in a dark room. All right, so it was lighted appropriately. In came the censor, a woman. And she looked at a sequence where the woman's back was unclothed down to her coccyx bone, at that point, framed right there. And the girl turned out of the shot. She said, "That's unacceptable." I said, "Why?" "Her back shot is too sexually suggestive." And I said, "These people are dancing because they're in love, and all you're looking at is a woman's back? And you're saying this is sexually suggestive?" "Yes, I want you to throw an optical shadow over it." "You people are very strange to me." I said, "You will allow scenes of rape and violence and destruction to go on a network unimpeded, without shadows being thrown over them, and here is a scene of love and gentle, and tenderness and only a woman's back is showing, and you want to throw an optical shadow over that?" I said, "You're a woman, how can you talk to me that way?" And she paused and said, "Well, can we have a little shadow?" [LAUGH] A little shadow over the bottom of her back. And that was crazy. But a more important one was a more interesting argument I had. I used to do this kind of thing when I chaired the Creative Rights Committee, when you find an irrational, reaction on the other side it's very easy to deal with if you're in a position or you have equal power. A MAN CALLED HORSE was given a rating at that time, I forgot what it was, which would not allow audience under 18 or 17 to go see it. And that upset the company, it upset me, because I staged it so that I thought Boy Scouts should be able to see it. Well, I asked Gordon Stulberg, who I said was the head of the company, if I could go in and talk to the board. And he was reluctant to let me do it for political reasons, “But I insist on doing it. Please." Eventually, I prevailed. I went in there. And they told me that the scene in which Richard Harris is strung up in the religious ceremony, which he's strung up by his pectoral muscle, was too strong, too violent. And I said, "Let me…” the gentleman's name was an Irish name, a wonderful guy. And I said, "I want to tell you something, I was educated. I was brought up an Orthodox Jew, and I was an educator in a Catholic institution. When I first went in there were representations of crucifixes, and the crucifixion on every wall, and I viewed it as a violent scene, but it had spiritual content to my schoolmates and to my teachers. I didn't question that. I said, "What you're doing is questioning a religious ceremony, perhaps of equal violence among the Native American Indians." I said, "This is religious bias. What is okay for you is not okay for American Indians." I said, "You really don't want to be guilty of religious bias do you, you don't want that story to get out?" The room was silent. And again, they asked me to take that familiar 15 minutes outside, I came back in and they agreed that they would raise the rating and the guy came over to me and said, "You know, you taught me a lesson and have educated me a little bit. We were guilty of bias and congratulations, you taught me something."