INT: I was going to ask about... the space, working within a confined room and staging so that you have the cinematic freedom that you want. KILLER JOE is one of those situations. 'Cause there’re some long, long sequences, well not long, but long enough sequences in that trailer, and yet I feel like you're really sort of fluid and free. What have you learned about working within? Like even from the Pinter [Harold Pinter] plays on, what have you learned about working within the room?

WF: Well you're not, for the most part, going to literally shoot in a room that size without removing the walls. These are sets. If you're gonna do long series of takes where you want the Actors to have the freedom to move around with a camera, no matter how small or self-contained is in that room and a microphone being operated by a boom operator, you're going to have to be able to... and they're long periods of time in this confined space, you've got to do it on a stage. You've got to do it with a set, where the walls can fly out; the ceiling can fly off. And so that you're maybe gonna shoot… two angles, you know, where you see only two, possibly three walls, and the fourth wall is free for the technical equipment. So you must do it that way, if you have long scenes, and more than one, in a confined room. I very often filmed in actual tight spaces, but not with extensive things going on. So I give myself that freedom, but I'll usually shoot with longer lenses, so as not to reveal to the audience that there's a ton of space out there to put the camera. And there were times when I will actually clear the set of everyone but the cameraman. And the boom's hanging in over the top of the set, and so that the Actors can move 360 degrees, and there's no Crew to be photographed or around. I very often did that. But for the most part, I would shoot with wild walls and a ceiling.

INT: Within the space here, particularly because if you're going to utilize all 360 degrees of the space, knowing that you're going to shoot, let's say, in this direction and then turn around. Where are you in that sort of process? And this is sort of a Technical Director question of, "Okay, we've got this small room, there's a long scene, we're gonna be shooting this way for some of it and we're gonna shoot that way some of that." What's your process in terms of dealing with that kind of challenge, like in KILLER JOE?

WF: In terms of the Actors? [INT: Well, in terms of both the Actors and how you'll--'cause, you know, some people actually do this thing, "I'm gonna shoot this part, and then we're gonna turn around, and then I'm gonna come back and turn around because that's the nature of the scene."] It's different strokes for different films. With something like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, I had no sets at all. Everything was location. The police station was real; the apartment where the drug dealer is testing the drugs was at The Pierre Hotel. It was my then fiancé’s mother's apartment. She didn't know what we were doing up there. But most Actors have to do this on every film they make. They have to create the reality that's supposed to be off-camera, but isn't. Usually, if I'm sitting here and I'm talking to you in a set supposedly, what is out there, the fourth wall, is not the set often. It's a bunch of crewmembers milling around, some of them drinking coffee, reading the newspaper. The boom man--

INT: By the way, I gonna interrupt. What do you do about that? [WF: Well--] I'm interested because some people say, "Look, I need my Actors to really be concentrated." [WF: Yeah, sightlines.] "I don't want you," not only the sight lines, “If you're going to have a cup of coffee, or you're gonna, you know, play a game on your cell phone, off the set.” And I’m wondering whether you, because--

WF: Oh, I enforce that. I enforce the idea that there's no people really off-stage who are doing their own thing, or even staring at the Actor. I get rid of that, because the Actor needs to have his or her sight lines cleared. But very often the background, it has lights, it has certain other... excuse me. [INT: It has those things.] The background has technical things going on that... equipment is back there, either stored… There's lights that, like there's lights behind us, that are illuminating me, from out there. They're not on the camera. There's a light over here, there's a light over there. Whatever is behind me, a bunch of chairs supposedly in a theater, which is what it is. The opposite direction is obviously not the same as what's behind me. It has technical equipment. The Actor has to put that out of sight and out of mind, and that's called concentration. When I'm talking to you, I'm looking in your eyes. I'm not conscious of all the technical... pardon me again. I'm not conscious of all the technical gear. I know that Chris is on a camera over there, but I eliminate that from my consciousness.

INT: Let me ask you, let me grab at something though. Off-camera lines. What are you asking your Actor who's not on camera, let's say I'm not on camera, so it's not me. And you know some Actors won't give as much as they did when they're on camera, and sometimes they even give better than when they were on camera. What’s your…

WF: Well I want the Actor who's on camera to do the lines with the Actor who will then be photographed from this side, and they share that responsibility. I think it adds much more of a reality to performance, to have the Actor who's off-camera, be the one that the camera's photographing, be there to give both moral support and character support. [INT: Have you ever done that thing where you suddenly realize that she or he off-camera just did it better than they did after it was turned around? [LAUGHS]] I'm sure you're right, I have no specific memories of it, but I'm sure you're right.

INT: You have, in this movie, in KILLER JOE, and in a number of your movies, you end with an open ending. [WF: Yeah.] What's been your attitude about this? What have you learned about it? Because, you know, some people, maybe some studios would say, "Wait a minute, you can't do that. You've got to tell it that he's not gonna get shot at the end of KILLER JOE," or whatever. First of all, why have you so liked that idea? 'Cause you've done it a number of times here.

WF: Because I believe that the performance of a film or a play is a collaboration between the creators and the audience. And I want the audience involved. I don't want to tell an audience how they should think, about these people, or about this situation. I want, for example, the ending to go out into the audience, to be somewhat ambiguous. The ending of THE EXORCIST is ambiguous. Some people think that the devil triumphed, killed the two priests. I get thousands upon thousands of emails now, and letters before, saying, "Isn't it true that the devil wins at the end of THE EXORCIST?" Well that was never my idea, but I can understand that someone could take that from the film. What I learned is that people usually take from a film what they bring to it. If you believe that the world is a dark and evil place, surrounded by, and we're surrounded by serial killers, and terrorists, and demons, and the devil, you are going to take that from THE EXORCIST, or any of my films. If, on the other hand, you believe that there is hope in the world, and therefore optimism, and that life is not necessarily open ended with closure, then you can take that from the film. If you want to believe, that belief is there for you to take in THE EXORCIST, and in all of my films. But it's up to the audience. I don't want to tell the audience, for example, that this guy's bad, that guy's good, I don't like those kind of films. I really don't. There's some cases in which I do, for example SHANE. It's obvious who the good guy is and who the bad guys are. It's pretty damn obvious, and it's a pretty great film. But for the most part, dealing with contemporary life--[INT: You know what's so interesting, you just pulled SHANE on that, because in one way you've got, first of all Shane is a character that's got both sides, 'cause he--] He's a gunfighter, he kills people. [INT: Right. But you also, when he's wandering off at the end, you don't know is he alive or is he dead? It's interesting that you just picked that, because you do this in THE FRENCH CONNECTION, you do this in THE EXORCIST, you certainly do it in KILLER JOE.] Pretty much all of my films. [INT: Did the play in KILLER JOE, out of curiosity, also end with his excitement, "You're pregnant?" And that's the end?] Yes. [INT: Wow.] And you know, when I'm attracted to a work, either from a novel, or a play, or maybe an original source, or from a true story like THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST were, I'm attracted to the overall of it. Not one aspect of it. I'm attracted... As I told you earlier, Tracy Letts and I are on the same page in our view of humanity. There's good and evil in everyone.

INT: You said something about, in your memoir, a comment about the American character being, "Psychotic, fearful, and dangerous." I'm quoting you now. So you said, you know, "The American character is psychotic, fearful, and dangerous." And, you know, I don't see you as only that. In other words, I see that you understand the complexity of humanity, meaning that you know that there is, just to use a word, a dark and a light side to each one of us, that that's just who we are as beings. And I think you get that, and I think you get that, and you show that in your heroes are failed heroes--[WF: Flawed.] Flawed if you will, is which I mean. And your villains are often times have even nobility to them. I mean if KILLER JOE is, "A killer," he's actually the most, in many ways, civilized person in that entire play. At least the way-- [WF: And he's charming.] Exactly, and that's the way you guys portrayed him. So I see this conflict, but I don't see you judging us by that.

WF: No. You're absolutely right, Jeremy. The point is that those things you quoted that I have said about the crooked timber of humanity, that people are paranoid and obvious-- [INT: Dangerous, fearful.] Dangerous. That is obviously parts of human nature. It's not for the most part all that they are. I mean we could sit here for hours and I could tell you some things about Adolf Hitler's life that would be in absolute conflict with what we know about the dark aspects of Hitler. Hitler was a human being; he was not the devil incarnate. He was a human being. You know, as was Mao and Stalin and all of the other villains of history. They all contained aspects of goodness and evil within a very complicated nature. We are extremely complex.

WF: Well I've had tremendous support from people who run the studios. I wouldn't say that they always understood what I was doing. The people at Warner Bros., Ashley, and Wells [Frank Wells], and John Calley, for the most part, the shooting of that film [KILLER JOE], they thought I was completely bonkers, crazy. And they wanted to fire me. But they realized that I controlled the Cast, and the Writer. And if they had gotten rid of me, the whole thing would have collapsed. They wanted to. They had serious meetings, because they thought that what I was doing in searching for that film while I was making it, they thought that I had lost my grip. And they actually sent the head of production out to the set several times to observe what the hell we were doing. Because the film was coming back very slowly, and they weren't... they couldn't see how it would go together as I did. Because in order to make a film, for me, I have to see the whole film in my mind's eye. I have to see it before I shoot it. If I can't see it, I don't want to do it. And I don't mean literally shot-for-shot, but close to it. For example, THE FRENCH CONNECTION chase scene, I had that in my head. I didn't storyboard it. I knew what I was gonna do, having visited the locations that appealed to me, where to shoot it. As a Director, you must open yourself to everything, to all possibilities. The locations speak to you. And later in the editing room, the film itself speaks to you. Literally. It is saying to you--you put two shots together, and you see them… And this has happened to me. The film will scream at me, "No, no! These two shots don't go together like this. One's too long, the other's too short." And the film is cons--THE FRENCH CONNECTION especially was saying to me, "I am not this. I am not what you're doing. I am that. I am nothing more than an action film." I had shot nine scenes for THE FRENCH CONNECTION that I later took out in the cutting room as being scaffolding, as being unnecessary. But I shot them. I didn't know it at the time. I try to be more judicious about that now, but it still happens. Some scenes that I think are essential, I find in the cutting room that the film has taken on a new life and discarded its old skin.

INT: Well now, here’s the thing, you know, it's so fascinating because you said to some degree every picture that you've taken on, you see, not shot-for-shot, but close. And yet, you also know it's totally evolutionary--[WF: Yes.]--as when you walk in there. One of the things that you said to me and you've written about is the concept of, and you use the word "the movie gods". And what I’m… I'm interested in your belief system now. Just you as, who grew up a Jewish kid in Chicago, who had a Bar Mitzvah, who had that background, who made something as dealing with the issue of evil and its potential incarnateness and making something like THE EXORCIST, dealing with characters that would seem to be so non-moral or amoral, I would say, you know, to some degree Popeye in a way, just as a character. And certainly, you know, all the characters in KILLER JOE to some degree. [WF: And BUG in a... what--] What is, and it may have changed. And I’m…

WF: What is my belief system? [INT: Yeah.] I strongly believe in a God, a creator. I don't believe in a Big Bang theory. My mind rejects that. I have read the New Testament and many parts of the Old Testament. I believe strongly in the teachings of Jesus, who after all was born, lived, and died a Jew. But that's not why I believe in it. I find myself closer to Christianity than to Judaism, but not enslaved to either one. Mostly what I'm referring to is my interest in the story. I think the story of Christianity is extremely powerful and the teachings of Jesus, that were set down by others, not by Him, although the entire New Testament quotes from the teachings of Jesus, but very often they were written by people decades after his death. About the only gospel I believe that was written shortly after the lifetime of Jesus was Paul, the Epistles of Paul. And a large part of the teachings of the Catholic Church derive from Paul, rather than Jesus. It's Paul who very-- [INT: Another Jew by the way.] Another Jew, who was a Jewish thug by the way, who was sent around to the diaspora to beat the hell out of all of those members of the various synagogues that didn't conform to the draconian demands of the rabbis. But they all quote from the words, the teachings of a man who died at about the age of 32. He was fairly unknown at the time of his death, although he is mentioned in a couple of the histories of first century Jerusalem. He's mentioned by Josephus, and by Philo in this way: Josephus speaks about a man who walked among the people, and was beloved of the people, and healed the sick. That's all that Josephus says about him, he doesn't go in--and Josephus was a Jewish historian. He doesn't go into the supernatural; he doesn't go into the virgin birth, the resurrection. He talks about a man. There was such a man. The teachings of Jesus are beautiful. They are something to be aspired to. Difficult to adapt to and achieve. But I think that these teachings are very powerful. Now, I don't buy into, this may be part of my cynicism or my tendency toward comprehending some sort of reality, I don't necessarily buy into a lot of the supernatural aspects. It's fairly obvious to me that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, that that was created because Bethlehem was one of the cities where David lived, and the prophecies in the Old Testament of Isaiah were that the messiah would return to Earth, but he would return, he would come from one of the places where David, King David lived. I believe that Jesus was born in Nazareth, because he was called the Nazarene. He was not called the Bethlehemite. Usually people were referred to in first century Jerusalem by their place of birth.

INT: I want to deal with something that you just said. The teachings [of Jesus] are really powerful for you; the supernatural is not necessarily something that you may believe. But you have been able to create it for us so that we, if we want to as you just said, will believe it. In fact, certainly in BUG and certainly in THE EXORCIST, we're believing it. I mean your storytelling is not, I don't find you saying, "Oh, I'm gonna do an interesting trick here, but you're not gonna buy it." You're making me totally believe it.

WF: And the reason I am able to do that in some way, Jeremy, is because I believe one of the most profound statements I've ever heard is in the play HAMLET. Hamlet's advice to Horatio, his friend, where he says to him, "There are more things in heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." Which simply means, we can't understand anything. We understand so little of what is around us; we take for granted so much. To me, the whole idea of birth is a miracle! But it happens every second of every day somewhere. It's a constantly recurring miracle. And if you think about the lack of knowledge, you know, actual technical or book learning, that existed in the time of Jesus and long before, those people knew nothing about where they came from. [INT: Or where they were going.] Where they were going, what was happening. It took these great philosopher-poets to create a kind of an environment that people could grasp or grab on to. And so a lot of organized religion is just that to me. I mean, I believe that the whole... some of my favorite writings are by García Márquez [Gabriel García Márquez]. García Márquez, it's pronounced. Especially his novel, “Cien años de soledad”, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. And in which he didn't introduce the idea of magic realism, that was first a Mexican Writer called Juan Rulfo, in a novel called, “Pedro Páramo”, where the whole idea of ordinary things, brought to a little village, an isolated village of unlearned people, becomes magic. He writes, for example, about a man who used to visit this village and was considered a magician. His name is... in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” his name is Melquíades. And Melquíades is the first one to bring a brick of ice to this South American village, Macondo. And the people have never seen ice before; it's a miracle to them. There is this clear brick that is cold! It's actually below zero, and they can take off pieces of it and make a drink cold. Or they can put it on their skin and feel the cold. And it becomes a miracle, but it's real. It's real and it's a miracle to people who don't understand it, because there are more things in heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophies. So my work tends to believe in the idea of magic realism. THE EXORCIST is magic realism. Did this happen? Or is this hallucinatory? There are many instances of mass hallucination. Now, if you believe it happened, you have to suspend disbelief. And that's what all religion is about. [INT: And it also may be all good storytelling is about.] Maybe all good storytelling is about that, but what is also about that, Jeremy, the whole concept of love. We don't understand love. You might meet a woman and fall in love with her. And I meet the same woman, and I think, "Well, she's okay, but I'm not in love with her." And you enter a relationship with her, or maybe it's a man. I don't know. That's possible as well. A man meets a man, falls in love with this man. I meet the same man, and I may not even like him, or have any emotional feeling toward this man or this woman. But love is a miracle!

INT: But then go back to Christ now, and the Christ is saying to you, that the possibility of understanding that that is the foundation of existence, like the miracle even at birth, that you just said, and that is our responsibility, to be able to, in fact, love everybody. Impossible, we would say. [WF: Impossible.] But, you know, as you sort of know those teachings, 'cause, you know, watching this, even in this family that you created, or you and Letts [Tracy Letts] have created in KILLER JOE, I'm looking at that family. And there's both total hatred and actually I think even connection and togetherness. And they even speak that way about each other.

WF: Look at any family, and you'll find that, to some extent. The whole concept, I've come along at a time when we no longer subscribe to the Norman Rockwell theory of the American family. That it's perfect, that father knows best. Father can be a serial killer, or a brute, or someone who may have brutalized his children. Father doesn't necessarily know best. Each child of man and woman has to find what's best for themselves. They can take examples from their parents, and if those examples hold water later in life, fine. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't hold water. But in the days in which I grew up, in the early ‘50s [1950s], father knew best. And Normal Rockwell's drawings of the American family, the idealized version of a family that lives together in a loving and productive relationship, we now realize in the time that I'm making films, and since I've been making films, that that's a kind of an ideal, if not a myth. And so there is much more to that dynamic.

INT: Did it shift for you when you were young? So that, in other words, we grew up with a certain mythology, there's no question. And that mythology was often in terms of the entertainment we saw, whether it was that television show or even certain movies. Now, yes of course there were other movies that were insightful and there was the evolution, if you will, of the European movie that came in that gave us another look. You're looking at an Antonioni [Michelangelo Antonioni] movie, all of a sudden it's not father knows best anymore. And so that there was, there was art that was coming in via cinema, when you were younger, that may have also have literally said to you, "Oh wait a minute, this is a new way of looking at life." So your shift from that mythology of, there's a certain kind of Norman Rockwell nature to existence, to people are far more complex, was it a process for you? Was it a revelation?

WF: It was a long process. I would say that the work of cinema, as I've told you, that had the most profound effect on me in that way, like this, was CITIZEN KANE. Where, before I saw CITIZEN KANE, I was watching movies as entertainment. Mostly as a child. Saturday afternoon cartoons. Everything looked like STAR WARS, you know, FLASH GORDON, and all that stuff. And great little short comedies by The Three Stooges and whatever. And then I saw CITIZEN KANE. And I saw an incredibly complex canvas of human nature. Both good and bad, and how in, let's say, in one person there were all of these complexities to be found in, that were both good and bad but human. And ultimately it's a portrait of a human being with warts and all. And that started me to think about cinema's power to capture that, to portray that. That was... now that film came out in 1941, but that was the new reality. And since CITIZEN KANE, I believe that what has happened is a major deterioration in American cinema, about human nature. I believe that American cinema as we sit here today on December the ninth, 2014, is largely about guys flying around in spandex suits with capes and often masks. And they are flying around, solving all the problems of the world. [INT: Back to that mythology.] Back to a mythology that's similar to the religious ideas with which most of us grew up. There is an all-powerful figure that will save us. [INT: Right. You know the other side of that, by the way? I've just been watching sort of the new movies that have just been coming out, now the other side of that movie, and the other side of that, these films that I've seen like three or four of them, are so dark in terms of human nature. So in a way we're seeing that contrast, literally that contrast, not the middle ground that I think you've been playing in, which is, and CITIZEN KANE is, where we are complex beings with both positive and negative. Now, I want to talk about two things--] And we're not superheroes. [INT: Right.]

INT: And I want to talk about two things though, about your own capacities in terms of yourself and directing. One is what you do with doubt, and the other is where you find courage. So let's talk about first. What do you do with doubt? [WF: Well, be more specific.] As a Director, you're about to start a project. You cast a moment, you're even about to make a shot. Sometimes you, "Well I wonder, should I?" Or whether doubt ever enters your consciousness, in that process. Obviously doubt enters our consciousness, as human beings, because, you know, we don't know our own mortality level, so the doubt's there. But the doubt in terms of the work. When does it enter and what do you do with it?

WF: Let's de-mythologize the role of the Director. [INT: Go.] He is not an all-seeing, all-knowing individual. The doubt that you talk about that a Director goes through before, let's say, he makes a shot, decides where to put the camera, what to have the Actors do, where to place them, there's always a sense of doubt even if you work along time. I've been doing this work for 50 years, and the doubt that you have mentioned raised, is always there. But it's also there with an assistant. Not an Assistant Director, a secretary. Who is given a complex series of notes to digest and transform into a coherent document. This person who is a secretary has a certain amount of self-doubt. Everybody in every task does that. Someone takes your order at McDonalds for a cheeseburger, and it must be going through their mind that they don't want to fuck this up. They don't want to bring you a chicken sandwich if you've ordered a cheeseburger, 'cause they could get fired. So let's demythologize the role of the Director. Everyone who performs every task in life will go through a period of doubt. Now you can argue that a Director's work is more creative, but I argue that it's work. It is work. And that I don't, in any way, consider myself an artist. I don't think of myself as an artist. I recognize that there are many works in painting, in literature, and in music that over the centuries have risen to the level of art, because they've spoken to generation after generation. And this is usually more than what is going to occur with someone who's flipping burgers, let's say. [INT: All right, so if you're--] But, there are, because cinema is a relatively young art form, I would argue that there are a handful of films, and it's argumentative that they've risen to the work of art. But I believe that many have. And off the top of my head I would say CITIZEN KANE, 2001[2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY], ALL ABOUT EVE, THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE [THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE], just off hand, are, for me... [INT: Cinema that's art.] …works that can be called works of art. But that's just to me! [INT: I got it.]

INT: In terms of, it's interesting because in making that movie [THE PAINTER’S VOICE] about the restoration of the Oudry [Jean-Baptiste Oudry] paintings, who did you identify with? Did you identify, 'cause it sounds like not the painter, because that may be the artist, and I'm using your word, "I'm not an artist, but I do identify with the guys who were doing the restoration."

WF: Yeah, I identify in that little documentary that I made pro-bono for the Getty [Getty Trust], THE PAINTER'S VOICE it's called, which has had wide distribution at many of the museum--at all the museums where the Oudry's are shown, I identified with the guy who was doing the restoration. And trying to... he was in a way a Director, as a restorationist of painting. He was trying to recapture what Oudry, the original artist, had in mind when he first painted this enormous portrait of a rhinoceros. And he did so so skillfully. I saw that work when it came in. It was in rags. It was ripped up, the back was ripped, the paint was faded, and crusted over, and falling off. When they unrolled it, which is at the opening of this little documentary, it looked like it was dead. And he performed the Lazarus act on it, over a period of a couple of years, with his staff at the Getty Museum, and restored it to how it certainly must have looked when it was originally painted. Now that's what a Director is doing, for example, in opera. What I'm doing is taking a work that was written in 1913, for example, and trying to make it live and breathe on a stage in the year 2013, a 100 years later. And so I identified with the work of that preservationist, and not the painter. The painter's intent was clear, but the interpretation of how to choose the right pigment, how much paint to apply, how to clean the painting carefully, using the example of the surgeon, which is, “First, do no harm." That's what the restorationist has to do. That's what I do as a Director, let's say, of a classic opera, or even a play. I've directed I think four plays on film, I think I made, I'm not sure how many films I've made, I think about 18 maybe. I've done some television, but feature films I think I've only done about 18, in 50 years. But some of them, four of them are plays, and my operas, of course, were written decades, centuries ago. [INT: Do no harm.] My approach is first, do no harm, which is the surgeon's creed. And by that I mean I'm not trying to apply Bill Friedkin's view of those works. I'm trying to recapture the author's intent. You know, I can't rewrite Shakespeare. I can't rewrite Harold Pinter. I can't rewrite Tracy Letts. But I am trying to interpret them for a contemporary audience.

INT: Let's talk about the issue of courage. You know, when I hear what you've done, whether it's in a moment of riding that car in THE FRENCH CONNECTION to, you know, down the streets of New York in order to get those incredibly exciting shots, which I know your cameraman said, "I got a family, I'm not doing it." But you did it. To confronting, you know, someone who's got the power and money and saying, “No,” and you're saying, "No, this is the way we're going to do it," or to taking on an Actor at a moment who's got doubts and saying, "I can't," or, "I won't," there's courage that you have, to say, "This is what I believe, this is what I know, this is what we're going to do." Where does it come from?

WF: It's inherent. When I first did my documentaries, I don't recall whether we spoke about them or not, but I got into the cage with a lion tamer, and about a dozen ferocious lions that one month later, one of those lions took the shoulder off the lion tamer that I had been in the cage with. His name was Chet Jessick. And I did many things. There was a documentary I did called THE BOLD MEN, from which that derives, but there's a scene in it where there was a 14-year-old boy in a little village in Mexico, who was a sharpshooter, he used the facet of a diamond ring, as a mirror, to shoot an apple off his father's head at 50 paces. And in order to film him, his father said to me, "You trust my son?" after he showed me what his son could do, he's 14-years-old, his father was a local sheriff. I said, "Yes, I trust your son." He said, "I want you to prove it to me. I'm going to take a cigarette, unlit, and put it between my lips and yours. And we're going to stand together with a cigarette between our lips, and my son will shoot and split it at 50 paces." And I said, "Okay." I had no doubt whatsoever, that I would live through that experience. And he did it, and I remember feeling a great deal of anxiety in that moment, but then finally that anxiety was burst by the sound of the shot, and a moment later, the flurry of tobacco that had come out of that cigarette, in which he had about, this much space between... [INT: The two of you.] …his father and me, and he was at 50 paces, with a .38. [INT: Courage.] I had that inherently. SORCERER, I was in the truck on the bridge--I’d never, I have never asked an Actor to do anything that I wouldn't do. Now, I'm not sure--

INT: Now when you say inherent, do you mean just, that's who I am?

WF: Well, I never gave in to fear, as I was growing up. Initially, in my life, as I write in my book, and I'm sure I never told you, initially I was a, when I was a little boy at Hebrew school, I was brutalized by this guy. [INT: And then you took him on.] You know, and I took it for a long time, must have been a year. I didn't understand that it was incumbent upon me to fight back, and I was terrified of what might happen. Until one day, I remember getting up in the morning, and I sat on the edge of my bed, I lived in a one-room apartment with my mother and father, and I remember as though it was a voice, saying to me, "You know, you don't have to be afraid. And you don't have to be afraid of this guy," whose name was Joel Fenster [PH], who was bigger and stronger than me. "You don't need to be afraid, and you have nothing to lose, unless you are afraid." And I remember that day-- [INT: You actually "heard" this?] Oh yeah, it was, yeah. The way you hear voices in your mind's ear. I remember that feeling as though being verbalized, and I had the same experience when I was dying on one of the two or three occasions when I actually died, but I remember... the verbalization of that idea. And I knew when I went to Hebrew school that day, that this guy was gonna attack me after Hebrew school again, take my books, throw 'em into the gutter, take money from me. And at that moment, to his shock and surprise, I grabbed him around the neck, I wrestled him to the ground, and he was sort of shocked. And I took his head in my hands, and I beat his head against the pavement of the sidewalk. And I remember wanting to kill him. I literally experienced the desire to kill this 12 or 13-year-old boy. I would’ve killed him. I was without restraint at that point. And I wanted to inflict the same kind of damage on him that he had inflicted on me, and if people hadn't pulled me off, I might have killed him. But he never did that again. And that was a great lesson to me. In fact, he became my new best friend, you know? And so, when I tell you that's inherent, now I'm of an age today where I'm not gonna go out looking for a fight, a physical fight. There were times when I did, when I expected it. And had trained myself with the ability to defend myself. I've since had a large portion of my chest removed, and I don't know that I could take a blow [LAUGHS] to the chest anymore, or that I could handle myself physically in that way, nor do I think that I would ever want to do another film where I put either my own life or someone else's life in danger. But I've made films where I have actually put people's lives, including my own, in danger.

INT: Now I want to talk about something that relates to the issue of the Christ and His compassion for, and His turn the other cheek, and violence in our time, and your feelings and whether they've changed, evolved about just the issue of violence. You've made movies that have had people shot, you've made movies, obviously, that have had some, I don't know, some, you know, horrific violent scenes, I think, that has ever been maybe filmed. You had this experience when you were young when the voice... the voice didn't tell you to fight him, but the voice said, "Do not be afraid. You don't have to be afraid anymore." [WF: That's right.] You then went to the next stage and took him on, which you did. My question to you is about the issue of violence itself. And whether you've evolved over time about it, whether you say, "That's part of the nature of nature, or that's part of the nature of human beings." What have been your feelings about this issue of violence?

WF: I think, basically from the beginning, my attitude has not changed, although I believe that the world has become much more violent, and that it's tolerated. There was a time, World War II, when the United States would not tolerate aggression, aggression to our allies, let alone to ourselves. We are not, this interview we're doing is only two days from the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And the United States responded with overwhelming force, to an inherent act of evil against our own people, and subsequently against the Europeans, or prior to that, the Europeans, but we entered the war against Japan and Germany in World War II. It seems to me that the United States has lost that sense of mission today. And therefore evil thrives all over the world. In the Islamic world you regularly have people being beheaded--for no reason. The reason stated is, they are not faithful to their beliefs, as Muslims. I just don't buy that. The reason for those inordinate violent killings, is that a part of human nature has been let loose and is running wild, and has to be destroyed by somebody, or it's going to engulf the entire world. As Hitler said, "Today Germany, tomorrow the world." That's what I believe is happening in the Middle East and elsewhere. You know, today Iraq, tomorrow the world. As I grew up I believed that the United States was like Superman, the caped man of superior strength and intelligence, flying around in a spandex suit with a cape, saving the world. As a child I bought into that. I, of course, no longer do. But I always felt that America would act firmly and specifically against aggression. And I no longer believe that. And I don't know why, because those people who attempt to achieve that kind of hegemony, will destroy anything in their path. It seems to me imminent that it's at our shore.

INT: So then the issue for you about violence itself, is that when it gets absurd like you were describing this, the appropriate response and human response is a, if you will, I'm gonna use a word, violent reaction to it.

WF: Absolutely. My hero is Harry S. Truman. Harry Truman was not liked by Franklin Roosevelt. He was forced onto the Democratic ticket as vice president. Roosevelt not only didn't like him, he didn't keep him informed of what they were doing. Truman had no idea that we were developing the atomic bomb in Roswell, New Mexico. Roosevelt dies, 1945. Before the end of the war. Truman is sitting at a conference in Yalta, with our allies Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. An aide hands him a message that said in effect, “Try to finish this meeting quickly and then come up to your suite, we have something to show you.” He goes up to his room and he [LAUGHS] finds, they're running a film for him of the testing of the atomic bomb. And Truman's never heard of this, and he's never seen it. And he asks his aides and experts, "Does this thing work?" "Yeah. It works and it will take out an area, you know, the size of a major city. It will kill all the human life within it; destroy human life to come. And it's possibly the only way out of what could be an endless war," because the Japanese, at that time, were prepared to fight to the last babe in arms. They would not surrender under orders of the Emperor, and General Tojo [General Hideki Tojo], who was the military head of the country. The Emperor Hirohito. And the United States warned Japan, they leafleted Japan, they broadcast to Japan, they met with their leaders, they showed them this film and explained to them what was going to happen, if the war continued. And the Japanese ignored it--their leaders, you know, not the people, the leaders. You know, at the highest authority in the country. They persisted in the war, and Truman unleashed hell. Two atomic bombs, that in today's world this is thought of as an act of extreme violence and brutality, but it ended the war. And you look at a photograph of Tokyo today, and look a photograph of Detroit today, and you have to ask yourself, who won that war? We rebuilt Japan! Japan is now a peaceful nation. The people who were running it and living there then were not, and Truman using... who unleashed an act that is beyond human comprehension, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of people and their property, ended the war. As Ulysses Grant ended the Civil War in this country, after a million deaths on both sides of that war. Grant ended that war; Lee [Robert E. Lee] had the good graces to understand it was over. And they signed a peace treaty, and we now have a United States of America, a better country. Japan has a better country. They overcame their loss of civilization…

INT: So would you then say, that as human beings, either, even between the interpersonal relationships, 'cause this is also in your movies, as well as nation states, that violence is part of the toolbox?

WF: Yes, it can be. It's unfortunate, but true. Movie violence doesn't bother me at all. I know that it isn't real. You know? I know that those people aren't dying up there, or getting wounded or getting injured at all. It's a story. And there have always been violence in the greatest of plays ever written: Shakespeare and before, you know, Sophocles. Violence has always been portrayed. It's part of the vernacular of a playwright, of a filmmaker, whoever. That doesn't--and I don't think people are influenced by that. I wasn't. I can watch these movies and not want to go out and do the same thing. But actual violence, there comes a time when it's necessary. I've seen it in history. It comes a time when you gotta capture Napoleon and imprison him and if necessary, get him off the face of the Earth, 'cause he's gonna take out the whole world. And Hitler, and Stalin, and Tojo and Hirohito. And there is a force of evil out there, just as there is a force for good. And the people who have the power and the experience of doing good have to realize that when they're confronting these ultimate bad Actors, they've got to do something!