INT: Talk briefly about special effects, not a major department but I think people underestimate the amount of trickery in your films sometimes, are you a blue screen person or would you rather do it physically?
AP: You got to do it in front of camera. [INT: What about the finale of BONNIE AND CLYDE, were poppers going off?] On both of them, it took all morning to rig it. [INT: How many takes?] Three days, maybe six takes. [INT: Were you at all worried having that amount of stuff on them?] WARREN was worried. I ganged four cameras together, different magazine sizes, some were at normal and some were sped up. Had to be structured, all at the same angle. We didn't want to move the angles, the motion inside the shot has to have the spastic variety. WARREN was concerned, he had a lot of hits on him, and a piece of his head coming off. When he did the first take, because the cameras were running so fast, we decided when WARREN squeezed the pear that was the go for everybody, the special effects guys. WARREN froze on the first take. FAYE was going full blast and he was just standing there. I never saved that take.

INT: What about stuff like MISSOURI BREAKS when they think they are out of Canada? Handling the horses and staging that scene, must have been difficult.
AP: Well it was, but I had good wranglers and good people on that picture. Terrific crew, with the cameraman I liked so much. [INT: Is the trick to work with the DP to get the best coverage? How many cameras did you have?] Yeah, I don't remember there were several. [INT: Then I think of stuff like the car chases with HACKMAN and MATT DILLON in TARGET and the plane crash at the end of NIGHT MOVES.] That was for real. [INT: I knew that wasn't photo workshop.] Yeah that man was very brave. We figured it out. That one pontoon would go when it hit JENNIFER in the water, then we figured he would take off. Where it would land would be over the boat where GENE HACKMAN was, and there were the rescue crews. I asked him did he know how to do it and he said no. He said I'll do it I just don't want to do it. [INT: Did he know the wing would break off?] He didn't know it would hit the water, from the pontoon off to the take off was out of control. [INT: How did he survive?] The plane landed and it didn't sink, wasn't going that fast. [INT: Stand in for HACKMAN?] No. [INT: Dangerous shot, I'm impressed. How did you do, the actual harpooning of HARRY DEAN STANTON? You feel that you see it, but its already embedded?] Sound effects helped. You swear you’ve seen it going in.

INT: Is there anything else you want to say about your relationship with producers? Tell me about good ones like FRED COE?
AP: FRED COE was marvelous in theater film and television. I'm working with good Broadway producers right now. There is a Hollywood producer that is a different function. I was used to the producer supporting another perspective, somebody who could discuss with you. In some instances it becomes a vanity contest, my vision should prevail and you're an indentured servant. That's an impossible situation. I've had it very seldom, actually only once. The rest of the time I've either produced myself or – [INT: It's always surprising when the producer gets the best picture award, but that's all part of the same thing?] We know.

INT: What about studio relationships, have you been bugged by studio heads much?
AP: No, my introduction to that was on LEFT HANDED GUN, the first film. All these big films being made, we were well on the way for our picture, the dailies would go upstairs and I would get a memo saying too many close ups, too many long shots, but it was the same scene. You knew then that knowledge did not reside up there.

INT: How about agents, have you had a good experience with your agents and also when you are trying to persuade an actor to do a project, do you find actors and managers to be counterproductive?
AP: The manager phenomenon hadn't really occurred when I was starting out, they certainly do now. Actors have done a transfer to this manager so these self-declared managers offer opinions because that is their stock and trade, but they don't have the knowledge to back that up. But they have the power with their client, almost a psychoanalytic transfer that has taken place. In the films I did I spoke with the actors directly. I called BURT, should have saved that nickel. I called DUSTIN, had to talk him into LITTLE BIG MAN a little bit. I thought this was the best part anybody was going to see.

INT: What was it like making MISSOURI BREAKS, how did NICHOLSON and BRANDO gel?
AP: They gelled because they were good friends, lived opposite each other. With each you have a deeply improvisatory actor. Wonderful thing to just sit and watch what they are doing. The scene in the garden where BRANDO comes in with the gun is almost all improvised. All I did was say, “Let's have a garden we have to irrigate.” That keeps them from getting close together. It was really that way. Those two guys, all you got to do is get out of the way, don't over-direct them, give them room. [INT: I thought that was one of the strangest performances, no little tricks.] One of the things about JACK is he is a great friend to other actors. When I cast all his buddies he felt great. That scene in the cabinet right in front of the picture, that is where they all joined and from then on they were a gang. Then I said we're going to pick them off one by one, make each time more ignominious. That's how we figured those things out. Leading up to HARRY DEAN. That was MARLON's attempt to go the last kick. He said, “Get me a dress, let old granny do it.” [INT: Whose idea was that strange harpoon?] His. It's a tire iron. We took all the sockets off the end and made the points. He described it and we made it.

INT: I'm interested, wanting to talk about that area, BONNIE AND CLYDE finally. I think the major massacre of the Indian village in LITTLE BIG MAN was one of the most chilling things. All your movies have one quite strong moment of violence. What do you feel about violence on film, if it is integral to the story lets make it real and not pretty?
AP: That's exactly what I feel. I don't think it should be in any way sanitized. When you see somebody really hurt you are astonished at the amount of blood. What we are seeing in Iraq right now. I had seen some of it in the war, not real killing as such but I had seen the after effect, and I saw the German prisoners who were wounded. I just think that there were so many restrictions before, until BONNIE AND CLYDE you couldn't have in the same frame a gun shot and the person being hit. Distancing it by a cut made it more bearable. I thought if we were in Vietnam and seeing the evening news, this is what is in the body bag. I was so adamant, it has to be one shot. [INT: Is it something that obsesses you as something you need to exorcise?] No, I'm anything but a violent person. It's stuff I've grown up with. I was a kid in the big world war, next thing I knew I was in the army.

INT: Let's jump to post production. I know you work with DEDE ALLEN on editing, can you talk about that relationship and what makes a great editor?
AP: Well she is wonderful. DEDE has an enormous respect for the actors. She can look at four takes and pick the right one. That is part of her gift. The other part is she is the most hard working person I know. She is not content. It looks right and feels right, I would come in some nights and there would be DEDE trimming frames. She invests everything in that film. She has a terrific sense of rhythm. Her favorite expression is it is so sad. Even the comic scenes. [INT: It's a great gift to know your editor can discern the actors performance, does she assemble as you go along?] Usually, she doesn't come out to the set much. She did on LITTLE BIG MAN. I would send the stuff back with my notes, having seen dailies, but then she would look more carefully. She would look and say that was the wrong take.

INT: Does she try to get you to look at assemblies of scenes while shooting?
AP: Not usually, she knows I will cover sufficiently for there to be enough material. She is assembling, but not settling down. You can't bear to look at an assembled streak of film at that point. [INT: Viewing of the first assembly is purgatorial?] It is hell, and DEDE is at her best at that moment. She says, “Don't worry, it's there.” I think I have blown it. That's true of every first assembly. [INT: That's why anyone who doesn't understand that has to be kept out.] You don't know right up 'til the very end what cutting does. That point we made earlier about rhythm, nobody can understand that. Everything changes character once it develops its own internal velocity.

INT: Do you find there is a problem area that you concentrate on, then everything else has to be changed?
AP: Yes, that's the hardest thing to convince anybody of, that you're watching a movie in one day's increments. And you know in your head now it's going to go together and it doesn't. That mysterious capacity to begin to speak back to you, that's why I, as I've said, I worry about the swiftness of the AVID. I missed the luxury, but the problem is it is so expensive. [INT: You're right, the speed of it is dangerous.] All it does is reinforce your worst characteristics. [INT: I agree].

INT: How important is music to you?
AP: When I make good use of it its wonderful. FLATT & SCRUGGS in BONNIE AND CLYDE, not my idea at all, it belonged to BENTON AND NEWMAN. When writing for ESQUIRE they did a piece on FLATT & SCRUGGS. In the early days, going back to MIRACLE WORKER. In those days because of the whole audio aspect of the film was by today's standards so primitive, you had to do the whole reel in one pass. I didn't know that I had to much music until the whole picture was done. Then there was no way to lift it out. It was there, it disguised certain glitches, good score, but it was too much. [INT: Well what I admire, in BONNIE AND CLYDE, you play scenes completely without music, but you don't need to, you know you're on the edge of trouble, I also think the opening of the movie with no pictures was terrific.] I wish I could take credit for that. I can't remember the man who did that. It was the guy in charge of titles. I picked all the photographs, we shot that, and he said there is something missing. I didn't know what he was talking about. He took away the film and put in the clicking. [INT: Would you have put music to that otherwise?] No, I would have left it dry. [INT: Something else, with sound on the homecoming, everything is muted and held back?] Yes, in that scene we foreshadowed that ending and the boy rolls down the window. I just thought we should just set something awry here. [INT: Again, just the standing on the tombs with the gun. It's beautifully built.] It's a lovely scene, TOWNE wrote a lovely scene there.

INT: Do you enjoy mixing, do you like all those refinements?
AP: I do, but I enjoy mixing in New York. You get a crew in California still. Here you get one really good guy. LEE DICHTER or TOMMY FLEISHCMAN. [INT: Do you work closely with the sound editor on what affect you want?] Yeah, with DEDE, when we were doing those films, so many of these people were training with her. They all learned the craft by doing sound and then moving slowly towards picture, now they are all ACADEMY AWARD editors. They were learning the craft, she would pick them carefully, they would make a real contribution.

INT: Have you ever done test screenings, or had to do them?
AP: I did them once, I'm trying to think. It was a WARNER BROTHERS picture, I hated it so much. The reason I hate it so much is because you're testing the audiences sense of the familiar. If there is something they are not familiar with they think it should be excluded. Point of fact, that is what a good picture is, it pushes the envelope, goes beyond that. Takes them some place they don't really want to go. The force of the film and the narrative should move them. It's an exercise in the familiar. [INT: I think those results are incredibly dangerous] Just terrible. [INT: I don't need to ask anymore about test scores or focus groups, I know what you think.]

INT: Have you managed to have any kind of control over the release and publicity of the pictures which we now know is at least a third of the battle?
AP: No, I'm not good at it, WARREN is wonderful and he did it on BONNIE AND CLYDE. He really did it. LITTLE BIG MAN was not well done. The studio didn't like the picture, they were eluded by it. They were afraid of it. That happens to me regularly. I'm not good at that. [INT: It's tough to get control even if you know how to do it.] When you see warren operate, he is superb. He knows more than everybody, knows everything about that side of the film. That film was a flop, when we showed it to BENNY KALMENSON, he was head of distribution. He came out and said its a piece of shit. We knew we were in trouble. Conversely, BOB TOWNE came out and said 30 million. They released it with no requirement on the part of exhibitors to keep it in their theater for any time. So bookings were split weeks. It was just the ground swell and WARREN re-doing the campaign. Getting into New York and working New York. He just got it rolling. Once I got it rolling they couldn't stop it. Kids demanded it of the theater owners. Back it came. As an example of the others, THE GRADUATE which came out the same year, they had a five week minimum. MIKE and the producers held out, booked a lot of money. We booked it later. Didn't look that way the first few weeks.

INT: Could you put your finger on, what do you think are the three or four qualities a director most needs?
AP: First of all imagination. A sense of the ability to take a lot of fragments and see the whole throughout that. That’s also an act of imagination. And then, I think to borrow the title UTA HAGEN's title RESPECT FOR ACTING, I think that is a very important part of the film. Too few directors appreciate or cherish that part of it. Consequently we get films that are formulaic. White hats and black hats. All films that are interesting veer from the expected. I think that that capacity has to be there. Then they have to be crazy. You have to be crazy to walk out and think you're going to take a few pages and make a movie. It's an insane act of megalomaniacal ego, but you have to have it. If somebody else knew how to do it better, they would be doing it. It got to you somehow. I remember my mother came onto the set of THE CHASE and said that this vast assemblage of people really listens to you?

INT: Do you think the job has changed radically since you started, it's more difficult or less difficult?
AP: Yes, I think it's more difficult. Making films until recently out of less and less human texture, and more and more special effects. There is a finite amount of that kind of stuff that you can have being effected. After a certain point saturation sets in. We have had human beings to deal with, and that is an endless bounty. [INT: JAMES CAMERON wouldn't agree.]

INT: What do you think is the worst and best part of being a director?
AP: The easiest part is the best part. When a picture comes together, coherent and moving, takes you and the audience to a place that you haven't been sure you were ever going to get too. The worst part, the labor. The sheer labor. The hard work. There is no gratification during the making of the film. Not in the shooting, nothing that feeds back to you except difficulty. Then you see dailies. It's a constant sense of personal defeat. Chaos is beating you down. TRUFFAUT was right, that middle portion of the movie is never ending.

INT: Do you, this is a side bar question, it's interesting that INGMAR BERGMAN and then CARL RICE in England said it's too tough, we're directing for the theater. I don’t think theater is any more of a cakewalk, how do you feel coming back to it?
AP: There is something about the theater that is collegial. You don't have that feeling in film. It's shot in so many segments, people come in and are gone. Constant pattern of disappointment and failed friendships. There is nonetheless that continuity. The sense we are all here, all in the same space. [INT: And the growing process in editing happens all the time.] I understand BERGMAN very well, his theater work is terrific. [INT: I guess it is a little less strenuous.] It's more immediately rewarding. A year and a half.

INT: Talking about the fact that it's always tougher, one of your movies which has escaped coming into any of these answers is ALICE'S RESTAURANT, which I hadn't seen until two weeks ago. I think it's quite extraordinary. Prescient, how you made it, a celebration but also an elegy for a vision that can never happen. Jacobian in a marvelous way, looks like the shoot was a ball, was it difficult?
AP: There were aspects that were difficult. I was working in some instances with the real people who had been in ARLO's song. ARLO said recently we made the first music video. It was true, that was the police chief. [INT: Was all that in your backyard?] Really quite close. ALICE's is in the same town, I knew the kids. Somebody after ARLO performed it, he then recorded it. One of the kids from the group brought it by and played it. The next night we went to a posh dinner party, the hostess played the song. I thought if it can span that distance we are on to something.

AP: I called DAVID PICKER at UA, he said the trouble is I would make it in a minute but I'm sure it was in ARLO's contract that WARNERS would have first crack. WARNER BROTHERS turned it down, DAVID said “Let's make the picture.” [INT: Had ARLO acted?] No. [INT: He's extraordinary.] VENABLE HERNDON was a playwright, the two of us wrote the script. I knew the church and the area, I also knew, going back, I went to college at BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE. Small, not accredited, nothing about it belonged to the education system. When people from the BAUHAUS left Germany, the American institutions wouldn't accept them. They made doctors go back and take the exam. All the poets in this wonderful place. Then the schools woke up, and asked GROPIAS to come to HARVARD. The place died. I had that model in my mind. Spiritual elevating place. You look at the intellectuals of the period, they came down. The place was a miracle. It belonged to a time that was really – [INT: How could you see so close to it?] I wasn't so close to ALICE'S RESTAURANT. I knew the hippy thing couldn't stay where it was; it was to innocent. Sexually free. You can't stay there. [INT: The film does that without being judgmental. I thought it was bold of casting RAY, he was on the verge of being unattractive.] Yeah, that was JAMES BRODERICK, young MATTHEW BRODERICK's father.

AP: The interesting pieces was the end shot of ALICE. The idea was in my mind to pull away from her but she has to stay the same size. [INT: How did you do that?] Dolly and zoom, that was easy, looked terrible. Then I realized we had to buy an object, but couldn't get anything like that. We had tree trunk pieces we were able to grip in, all this while ALICE was staying the same size. It was one of those translations that is the magic of cinema. You can do something poetic, the constancy of the image that is present and fading. And we have to leave it behind. That is a portrait of all of us. We're all going to die, that was a good part of that experience. [INT: Lots of non actors?] Almost all.