INT: For you, if you think about it, what's the worst part of being a Director and what's the best part of being a Director?
JR: The best part is getting a script that you know is going to work. It's a delight. You look at it --Even if it's not complete, you say, "This will work." The second best thing is getting a cast that knows how to make it work. And when you make it work and the cast goes together with a script that's worthwhile and the rehearsal goes well and you get a Cinematographer that you trust and an Assistant [Assistant Director] that's pleasant to work with, and there are many of those, it is such a feeling of elation. Particularly on a week-to-week series, when you say, "We got through another one and it's going to work." What's really wonderful is when an Actor of the caliber of Carroll O'Connor would say to me, at the beginning of the week, "This will never work." He was always somewhat pessimistic. And at the conclusion, he would say, "You know? This is going to be a prize winner." And that is a feeling of satisfaction that you don't get too often. And what I loved about doing a weekly series is that you can get that high and low each week. You might start off very low, but by the end of it, it would be a high that was indescribable because you'd say, "I knew we had done something that pleased me." And not that it's gonna win prizes. Not that it's--well, it was nice to make a living. And by the way, we weren't making much money in those days, and it didn't matter. It was a nice job. Not very remunerative, the way it is today. You talk about the Directors Guild [The Directors Guild of America], the salaries have gone through the roof since I did that show. The worst thing is if you get too much interference from a network or a studio, because you have to walk a fine line, even though you can be somewhat arrogant if you've got a record after awhile, you can say, "No, I'd rather not do that," or, "No, I don't agree with you." At some point, you have to listen; and it's okay as long as they know it is sensible. But when it's stupid, I'm afraid that I have often said, "This is not going to work." I remember--did I tell you about Hunt Stromberg, Jr. and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND? [INT: Tell.] Well, Hunt Stromberg, Jr. was the executive at CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System] and I think I went through that I didn't want to do GILLIGAN'S – [INT: Yes, you did talk about that] -- and wound up working with Sherwood Schwartz, who I adore. He's a wonderful man. And one day we had a meeting at Hunt Stromberg's office and he said, "I've got a great idea for an episode of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND." And we said, "Okay." We're always willing to listen to something new. He said, "A helicopter comes." He’s very enthusiastic. "And it comes to rescue the stranded people on the island." "Yeah." "And it whirls itself down and first we create a big, big pit of quicksand. And when the helicopter comes down, it screws itself into the ground and it sinks under the quicksand, see? And when the helicopter comes down itself into the ground and sinks under the quicksand! Huh? How about that?" And I said, "Well, what do you do if you have to do a second take?" He said, "Oh, that's your problem." Now, that's the worst of being a Director, to listen to garbage like that, where a man knows nothing about what he's talking about, and gives you a note as if it's sensible. And then will ask you later, "What happened to my helicopter shot?" And really believe that he's giving you something to work with. I mean, that's the worst. And I can't think of anything that's more dismal than to have to listen to some of these--did I ever tell you the other Hunt Stromberg story about when he was angrily found out what my contract was? I had gone through the GILLIGAN'S contract – [INT: Yes.] -- where I said I didn't want to do it – [INT: Right.] But they insisted on giving me such -- my agent made a deal that they cannot accept, and they accepted it. And one day, I was in New York and my secretary called and said, "Something strange is happening here. Your office is being measured for somebody else's use. And they're moving you out someplace." And I said, "Where?" She said, "I don't know yet. And your name is off the board announcing where your office is." This is at CBS in the Valley [CBS Studio Center AKA CBS Radford]. [INT: Right.] By the way, that used to be Mack Sennett Studios. Did you know that? [INT: No, I didn't.] Yeah. It used to be Mack Sennett, then Republic Studios, and then it became CBS. And I said, “Well-- ” She said, "Did I say they moved your parking place?" Well that's the kiss of death at a studio. Away from what my office was. Someplace. So I said, "Well, I'll straighten it out when I get there." So I came back and sure enough, these things had happened and I called the studio manager and I said, "What's going on?" He said--it was like an interview with Don Knotts, [stutters] "Do-do-don't you know? Quivering. I said, "I don't know. What's happening? You moved my parking." He said, "I didn't do it. I didn’t." "Well who did it?" He said, "You better talk to CBS Fairfax." I said, "Who?" "Hunt Stromberg." I hadn't known him at this time. This was before that other incident. So I called him and I said, "We've never met, but I'd like to talk to you." He said, "Oh yeah. I want to talk to you." There was a hostile note in his voice. So I said, “Okay.” So I came over to CBS, at Fairfax. And he said, "We have just taken over your contract from United Artists." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Nobody could live with a contract like that." He said, "I can't believe anybody signed this." He said, "The contract says you don't even have to show up. You have a surrogate, Hal Cooper, that we have to pay an enormous sum as Associate Producer, and he is not allowed to talk to anybody but you?" I said, "Yes, that's in the contract." "We can't talk to him?" I said, "That's right. You have to talk to me." But you don't have to be there if you're making a movie or a pilot." I said, "That's right." "And we're paying you all this money." I said, "Yeah, that's in the contract." "And you own 10% of the show?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "We cannot live with this – this is --" Sputter, sputter. So I said, "Let me tell you a story." So I told him the story about how it came about. How I offered to be all of the things that CBS--about what United Artists wanted. I would help Sherwood Schwartz, but I want no compensation. And nothing. No credit. He said, "Oh. Then we don't have a problem." He immediately became soft. I said, "No, I think you do have a problem." I said, "If you had called me and said you had just appropriated this contract from United Artists and you wanted to get out of it.” I said, “I might have agreed with you very simply to get back to my own status quo. But you didn't.” I said, “You did a stupid thing. You scared my secretary and you moved my parking place." I said, "This is unforgivable in our business." He said, "Well what do you want?" I said, "You want to buy the word Producer back, you pay me my entire Producer fee for the first 13 weeks." [Yells] "Also Hal Cooper." [Yells] You know? Screams. He said, "We'll sue you! We'll sue him!" I said, "Wait a minute. If you sue me, all I have to do to show compliance with this contract is not show up. So, okay. I'm not showing up, try to sue me, you won't get anywhere 'cause it's an ironclad contract. I didn't make it up, United Artists did. You stupidly bought the thing without reading it, so sorry." He said, "Well okay. So we'll pay you this, we'll pay you that, we can get the word Producer back." I said, "Yeah." He said, "What about this 10%?" I said, "You know, I don't think it's going to go anywhere. I don't think the show will survive, but I like to keep that for routing interest, just in case.” "You'll never work in this town again!" I said, "Listen. I will work in this town long after you're dead." By the way, that happened. He left before I had. And I said, "I have no qualms about walking away from the show, but I will certainly work and believe me. I'm keeping the 10% just to be an irritant in your throat." It probably will mean nothing. By the way, the show has paid me more or the equivalent of ALL IN THE FAMILY through the years. It's amazing. And as I started to go, he said, "One more thing." I said, "Yeah?" "Will you direct the first six episodes?" And I stared at him, I said, "What happened to, 'You'll never work in this town again?'" Well the man was a master of network speak. He said, "Oh, that was then." Can you imagine? I never told you that story? I mean, you talk about a feeble gene in the network pool. He was the epitome, I mean, just, okay. Now, now you wanted to talk about the Guild [The Directors Guild of America] again.

INT: You were gonna tell us the Russian story.
JR: Hold on [sips drink] Okay. The year, I think, was 1964 or 5. I'm not sure. But it was the height of the Cold War. And the United States State Department asked the Directors Guild [The Directors Guild of America] if we would be willing to receive a delegation of Soviet [Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR] Directors and give them a lunch or something and tour the studios, or whatever. And [Joe] Youngerman said, "Great." So it happened that we were having an art show at that time, in our old building. Many of our Directors who had art collections at the time had loaned them to the Guild to be a kind of gallery. It was very beautiful stuff. You know, Billy Wilder himself had so many. And George Sidney had a great collection. Anyway, a lot of good stuff, and so the Russians came and they were walking around with us doing a cocktail hour and looking -- admiring the pictures. I noticed something strange. While we were all having alcoholic beverages, they were drinking tomato juice or orange juice. Nobody was having an alcoholic beverage. And I thought, "That's a little odd, but okay." Then, we went into—you remember the old theater? We had taken out the front seats and created a very long banquet table, lavishly set, and serviced by Chason's. Silverware, goblets, white linen. All of that. Beautiful. But we came in and because I was a vice president that year, so I was assigned one of the two or three interpreters to sit next to me. And we all took our places. And there was a kind of strange pall that had come over the group. Particularly the Soviets. They were not talking. It was kind of a coldness in the air. So I said to my interpreter, I said, "What's going on?" "Nothing. What do you mean?" I said, "There's a chill in the air." I said, "Look. Nobody's talking." I said, "Has anybody done anything to hurt your feelings? Have we committed some kind of gaff? If so, it's easily fixed. But I want to assure you, we're doing all of this in friendship. I don't want anything like this to go on." He said, "No. No. It’s alright." But the way he said it, led me to be persistent. And I kept saying, "Look. I have a feeling for this." I said, "Something is amiss. Will you please let me straighten it out, whatever it is." So he kind of smiled wanly and he said, with some diffidence, "Well, in our country, it's customary to have the liquor on the table when you're having lunch." I said, "Oh, god. Is that it?" Oh, my first thought was, that year, a Khrushchev [Nikita Khrushchev] had been deposed and the delegation was in the air during – [INT: That time?] Yeah. And I said to the guy, I said, "Could this be something to do with the premiere of the Soviet Union being deposed?" 'Cause I said, "If we were the delegation in Moscow at this point, and our president was out of office, we would be a little bit restrained as well." He said, "No, no, it's got nothing to do with that." And then he went into this thing, "In our country." So I said, "Oh, it's a social, cultural difference. So I called Ronnie, the head waiter from Chason's over. I said, "Ronnie, get all the booze from the cocktail party and put it on the table." Well he was horrified. "What? In the regular bottles?" "Don't bother with decanters. Get the booze and put it on the table." So the waiters descended on us with bottles of scotch and bourbon and vodka. And immediately, the crowd erupted into conversation as the drinks—[INT: Right.] That was a cultural thing. They like to drink with their food. Okay. The head of the delegation was an older Soviet Director named Mark Donskoy. Remember the name? [INT: Yeah.] Well Donskoy looked at me and said through the interpreter, "I like -- I know what you did." From the other end of the table. "Very wise. Very perceptive. And now --" And he got up and he walked over, I remember in our old arena, there was a travel bag with the word Aeroflot, the Russian airline on it, and he unzipped it and brought out two bottles of vodka. And he put--no, it was one bottle of vodka. Excuse me. And it was something called Stolichnaya, which I had never seen before. All in Russian, of course. And he placed it in front of me and opened it and he said, "Because you were wise to promote this friendship, you will drink Russian vodka and I will drink American vodka and we will toast each other." And he went back to his seat and as he did, I think, "My god, there's an alcoholic onslaught about to hit me. I don't know anything about this vodka." But I grabbed a piece of bread – [INT: Good.] --to kind of line my stomach. [INT: Right.] Meanwhile, he goes over, now there's a bottle of Smirnoff. Well who got the best of that deal? [INT: Duh.] So I drank a tumbler, half a tumbler full of Stolichnaya in one gulp and he drank his. Well he sputtered. It's American vodka. It ain’t that good. My vodka was like sweet cream. [INT: Yup.] It went down, not even, no, hey, nothing. About a count of eight, it hit me and the flush started. To this day, has never left because that's what we drink at home. And toast after toast, he manfully put down the Smirnoff and I did the Stolichnaya. And during that dinner -- that luncheon, excuse me -- another question was asked. Do you remember THE CRANES ARE FLYING? It's a wonderful Soviet film. [INT: Phenomenal.] And there was a shot that was made on that film. I don't know if you recall. [INT: I do. I know which shot you're talking about.] You know what shot I’m talking about, with the girl in the bus? You do know? [INT: Yeah] God bless you. Do you know how they do it? [mimes interviewer, shaking his head] For the record, he's shaking his head no. I didn't know how they did it. Nobody at our table knew how they did it. We had talked about this long before their arrival. It was a shot, and I'll describe it as best I can, but you're inside a bus. You're on the face of the heroine and she is eagerly trying to get to Red Square where her lover is about to depart for the Red Army. Now you know you're in the bus 'cause the camera's on her and the movement is behind her. It doesn't feel like process, it feels like the real thing, and what you're seeing is the bus coming in to multitudes of people in the background all filling in. You can't fake this. This looks like the real thing. It looks like Red Square. And now, the bus comes to a halt and the girl gets up and starts to run. Now, the camera backs away from her and she's running and it's backing and presently the camera has stepped down the two or three steps of the bus. You now see the sides of the bus with the folding doors are, and then the bus itself, and then the camera is panning the girl as she's running through a crowd and suddenly the camera is elevating and you're on a crane and it's moving and you don't lose the girl. It's all one shot. So I said, at the luncheon, "We've talked about this. How did you do it?" Well, they loved to hear that. And the answer was, they called it a very strong and daring cameraman, was holding a full-sized camera. This was in the days before steadicam. It was hand-held. So he's in the bus and he backs off and I said, "My god, how does he get on the crane?" What happened is he, with assistants, he would be walked onto the platform of the crane and of course they had to take off his exact weight and the weight of the camera to balance the crane and then it was able to roll and lift. I mean, the timing. Talk about timing. [INT: Yup.] And I said, "Well what about focus?" They said, "Ah, yeah." They had a long cord and the guy was running alongside focusing. And I said, "And the shutter! How do you go from inside to bright sunlight?" They said they wrangled the shutter, they made all those movements. I said, "It was a phenomenal shot." But they loved it. More toasts, more toasts. Well, as I wrote in my book, I said, "That day, I told myself that having to drink all that vodka was my contribution to achieving peace in the world. I said I knew it was a difficult job, but somebody had to do it. At least that's what I told myself when I woke up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers. [Laughter] But it was really a lovely day, and it was a kind of comradeship that exists around the world among Directors. [INT: Yeah, I think it does.] I was really able to talk the same language, which is what it's all about. [INT: I think it’s so well spoken.]

INT: Well, you certainly are making and have made your contribution to peace in the world as well, my dear.
JR: Well you're a wonderful interviewer, I must tell you. [INT: You're very sweet.] You're the best. [INT: You're sweet. Thanks, dude.] Thank you. [INT: This is great.] Let the record show he shook my hand. [Laughter]