INT: I was asking you about advice, and you were saying that in our day, your day, a long apprenticeship, true for me too, and nowadays you're finished if you haven't made it at 28.
GH:To me, a Director's a storyteller. I mean that's what it's all about. I also think of it, it's the second oldest profession in the world. It started in Baghdad with the begging bowl. you know, you sat down and you said, "Children I will tell you a story." And they all cluttered around and if you told them a good story, they filled your bowl up. If your bowl wasn't filled up, give up being a storyteller and go and build a pyramid, that was the only job you could get. I do think that I care about the audience, I think about the audience. And I'm telling this story for them, and I've got wonderful things called Actors, and I've got some great technicians who make the Actors look even better. But if I don't tell the story right, or it's the wrong story, forget it.

INT: Have you been in a position, doing a piece of work and you've realized, I'm not doing this right, or this--I shouldn't be telling this story?
GH: Yes, several times, I've thought not solved a way of telling the story, really. Or it's too intricate, or the story interests me too much, but not enough other people, I don't think.

INT: And, what--It was a lovely story about COLDITZ [THE COLDITZ STORY], about your own brave war, but are there other films that relate to your own life that...?
GH: Strictly not, I mean I don't believe in politics, I don't believe in getting too involved in your personal politics. I mean, some of you is bound to leak through, your attitudes in life, your attitude to things, to people. But preaching is not what I'm about. [INT: But do you--I can tell from what you said about COLDITZ [THE COLDITZ STORY] that you brought a passion to that film, because of what you lived through. Did you--Is there other work that you managed to bring passion because of what you've lived through?] BATTLE OF BRITAIN was a tough one, because that was an assignment of trying to humanize, I mean this vast story, this piece of history that happens in 12 weeks, and trying to be loyal to history, and absolutely the truth, with all the studios down your neck saying, you know, they've all got masks on and you can't tell, whether that's John Wayne or, because if you ever see an American, okay fellas, here we go. Yeah. And then you put the mask on, but you can recognize it. Character. That was--Working on that script was, well actually I mean the script was difficult, but the help that we got from all the people. I mean all of Britain knew. You knocked on a door, and you said, you know Mrs. Buggins lives there, and she was a wife, and she knows what, she was at Biggin Hill when it--Oh come in, you know. And she'd get the photographs out and, absolute marvelous time. Because no question, during the blitz and during the war, people were infinitely nicer than we are today. [INT: I can believe that.]

INT: Do you miss England?
GH: No. I miss, I think a little bit of the theatre. A few friends, but they come out here occasionally, and I used to go much more often to UK [United Kingdom] than I do now. No.

INT: Has the DGA [Directors Guild of America] meant anything to you? Has it been helpful, or...?
GH: Well, it's meant an enormous amount to me in the sense that, when I was making a picture in America, I had to join, and they welcomed me and I've wished I'd been a member, or contributed for many, many years. But their health scheme is very excellent. And I keep in touch with, and they're basically all new people. I don't know J.J. Abrams and people. They're all sort of very new to me. But it does keep me in touch. [INT: Do you read the quarterly and the magazines?] Yeah. [INT: What do you like about them?] Well, obviously some articles more than others, but I think it's so beautifully produced, and the photographs are sensational. [INT: Yeah. When you say you'd wish you knew about it earlier, I suppose you're talking about your creative rights, or economic rights, or...?] Oh creative rights, I mean they've defended them so marvelously. I mean I now sign up to anything that says piracy; join up and do something, I don't really know what I can do here, but if anybody can think of anything I can do, I'd be happy to do it. [INT: And what about the economic rights? Residuals and stuff like that?] They seem efficient, and then there's the British end. 'Cause the--I was an original BAFTA [British Academy of FIlm and Television Arts], I was the vice-president of BFA [British Film Academy], which Korda [Alexander Korda] started it with Carol [Carol Reed] and David Lean. And it was largely in those days, whether it was Cinemascope or Vista-vision, what the hell size film are we shooting? But Carol and the original mob were much too lazy to go to the meetings and I was on the committee for a few years, a short time. And it then, rank was the problem, because you could only borrow the Odeon [cinema], and you had to give away an awful lot, which I thought was much too much. And then television came in, and I wasn't all that keen on television, because stupidly I thought there was a division between the one and the other. And so I was away, and never joined BAFTA, nobody ever asked me to, and I never did.

INT: You speak of the days with Korda [Alexander Korda] and all that; was the whole idea of a studio system, in a sense where you're all there, you're under contracts, you're under the same roof, was that a golden age for you?
GH: Yes, it was a golden age. Certainly for Directors, well everybody, because if you were a assistant cameraman, or a clapper boy or something. If you got a job there, and the cameraman would say, yeah go to clapper boy, and you would move up to focus puller, and operator, and so on. Ted Moore was an operator on several of the pictures that I worked on as an assistant. Ken Adam is a draftsman on the first picture that I directed. We're all a sort of family. Korda [Alexander Korda] was unique, in that he was a Producer who knew about the making of films and the distribution of films, and the financing of films. And he stole with the greatest ease any talent from J. Arthur Rank, who poor darling, knew nothing about anything. Meant well, and John Davis [Sir John Davis] did his best to destroy the British film industry, or the whole British industry such as it stood. And if you were a real half-wit, you worked at ABC [American Broadcasting Company]. [LAUGH] Which was a terrible studio, I mean that was civil service stuff. Across the way there was MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Myer], that looked after their own. The--You talked to one man, you talked--I want to make this story. Or, why don't you make this story? And it was a yes or no, there and then, and off you went. There were limits, you know. But just much more stable. [INT: Yeah. And was it nurturing to have, obviously with you and Carol [Carol Reed], but were there other Directors around who. who you would talk to, who...?] Yes, I mean, I worked for Sidney Gilliat, who was a...And then you work with a lot of Actors, you know, who were small part actors in those days, that became stars, or British stars. [INT: Is David Lean part of that group?] Yes, very much so, but he had his own little clique around him. I stood in on a couple of occasions, doing second units or something like that. Funny enough, I was stand-by director on David Lean's last picture, that he never made. [INT: Oh really? Was he an inspiring fellow?] Well, he was...Compared to Carol, no, because he was very, very selfish. I mean hugely selfish. And impractical. And he didn't care whose money he spent. I mean, he was really up there, a top monster. Sam Spiegel, who I had a lot of time for, kept him under control, but the sort of thing he would do; They're in Ireland, and they've got something to do on the cliffside, on the hills or something. And for a week it's been pissing with rain. There was absolutely nothing they can do about it, it's good Irish weather. They have a cover set, but they haven't got the huli dancers. They haven't got the...and the costumes and what have you. But anyway, in a big rush at the end of the week, they've got the stuff there, and David [David Lean] goes in on the Monday, and they rehearse the huli or the, whatever happens in the hall. Tuesday the sun is shining bright, it's fantastic. David, no, no, no, now I know what I'm going to do, and he stays the whole effing week, in the hall, sun shining bright. And at the end of the week, all right on Monday I'll come out. Rain again. I mean, that is standard David, all the way through. I mean, cooperative.

INT: I mean, what would you say if someone says, well I don't think I know whether I want to do that job or whatever? What advice would you give or what advice were you given?
GH: Oh, anybody starting, do anything! I mean, because you're going to learn something, you never know. You may work on a picture that you don't want to be on, but it's work and on that picture you'll learn something, and then, when your break comes, suddenly you're, hey, I know how to do that, because I worked on a picture where they made a terrible mess of it and I know why. You--Keep working anything, anything to do with movies.

INT: What's the--What has been the toughest thing about doing movies do you think, for you?
GH: I suppose, truth be told, it's getting your first break. It takes a long time, and on the way you have lots of disappointments. But keep on, keep at it. [INT: Yeah. Because someone said to me, the first film is okay to get, the second one's the difficult one.] That's absolutely what Carol [Carol Reed] told me, you know. Worry about your second one, because I mean, the number of Editors who made onto the floor and directed a picture, but they never made another one. Cameramen are the same story. I mean it wasn't until about my third; I made a picture called TOUCH OF LARCENY [A TOUCH OF LARCENY]. Very personal, because it's a charming story with James Mason, George Sanders, and Vera Miles. Ivan Foxwell gave me a book, called THE MEGSTONE PLOT, and it was quite an ingenious plot of a naval officer, distinguished naval officer, but he's now stuck in the Admiralty, and just working out time and is ultimately on a pension and nothing. And he falls in love with a upper class young lady, and would love to marry her, but he hasn't got any money to keep her in the manner to which she should be accustomed. And he engineers a plot. And the plot is very ingenious, so ingenious that I thought it was, you cannot but smile. Stop making this man a villain, stop making this a hard, this is pre-Bondian and Bondian, this is a charming rogue, who has found a scheme, perfectly legitimate, to make a fortune. And I'll shoot it as a light comedy and the writer took the book and wrote the script beautiful, light comedy, and it was a joy to make. Mason [James Mason] fell into it like butter, he loved the part, and so we, and technically by now I knew how to ride the bicycle with no hands. So that was to me, a really happy, first really happy picture I directed. And I think some of the Bondiana came from that subsequently. [INT: You just had a feel for it? You just had a--] What? [You just had a feeling for that subject.] Yes, because he had a little boat that he sailed, and his plot was to sail it up to Scotland, where he knew of a tiny little island, or a large rock really, 100 feet by 500 feet. And he was going to do a few odd things in his office in the Admiralty, put a secret file and drop it behind the back of the safe, not in the safe, and then disappear. But he stops on the way up, at Liverpool [England] and there's a Russian ship in, and he goes and picks a row with the--So commander so and so, is missing and is suspected that he has defected to the Russians, because he was a distinguished submarine commander in the war. And his idea is to spend a month on this little rock, and he's got all the bows, a little radio, fishing rod, pajamas all day, straw hat. Comfortable music to play. And the radio keeps him, the BBC keeps him posted about, there's a sighting in Turkey or somewhere, Burgess [Guy Burgess] and Maclean [Donald Maclean] time. And then when, I'll come, I'll sink my boat and say that I was shipwrecked, I couldn't contact anybody, and oh they said terrible things about me in the press, I will sue the press, for millions. He also threw some bottles, with help. And of course, a nice smart detective begins to smell a rat. But anyway, he sort of gets away with it. [INT: Does he get the girl?] Yes, of course he does. [LAUGH]