This conversation between Bob Rafelson and Neil LaBute took place at the Directors Guild of America, following a screening of Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens. The screening was part of the DGA/IFP series "Under the Influence" which teams directors of pivotal films from the '70s with independent filmmakers who were influenced by them.

Neil LaBute: Thank you for joining its tonight. I bit all my fingernails off, actually. It was a beautiful print to get a chance to see. I was told that it was in not such fine shape a few weeks prior to this. And they generously struck another print, and we were able to see what we did tonight. I guess the place to start, although it's probably best at some point to just throw into any of you who are interested. It's always interesting, I'm sure, to hear questions answered and things that come up after seeing a film for the first time, or after seeing it again, direct some of those questions to the person who was responsible for making a picture like this. I was going to say they don't make them like this anymore Blood and Wine when it was coming out, about how one thing he was so proud of was that there wasn't a frame that had any joy in it. And I would imagine he would say the same thing cubed about a picture like this. Which couldn't make me happier, really, as a viewer. To see a film that kind of boldly says, "I'm going to tell you a story, and take you along for the ride, but you are there with us by our courtesy of being there." Not, "We are thereto pander to you." And so I guess the best place to start is, for you I know, having spoken with you briefly, that you haven't seen this picture in quite some time.

Bob Rafelson

I got the chance to sit just ahead of you, and it was actually very nice to hear you laughing. Not inappropriately. At places that other people were laughing at. But to hear someone who made the work, and still responding to it. What was funny. And I imagine what's desperate about it.

It's a nervous kind of laughter. I thought the writing of the picture was funny. A lot of it. In a surreal manner. A kind of off humor. But I remember that when this picture came out, it only showed in theaters for about a week. This was a very much decried movie. :And I remember that most of the critics, they didn't find anything funny about a grandson watching his grandfather die on a fishbone. I thought it was hilarious. But some people don't have that kind of humor. And they showed that to me by staying away in droves.

That's an amazing monologue, actually, at the beginning of the picture. I don't know exactly how long it is.

It is long. But I'll tell you very briefly a story about that. I had gone to college, and in my freshman year, on the first day of the English class the professor asked all the students if they would write something about some member of their family. And I wrote that story practically word for word. And when he read it, he threw me out of the English class and sent me--and this is no joke, this is really quite serious. He sent me to a special group for slightly autistic students to master writing skills. So by way of retribution, I decided to open the movie with it. It's practically the same. The only thing that was different--And just by the way, it's a true story. With the exception that my brother was not involved. It was me alone who annihilated Grandpa. And you see now -- I don't have to tell the story anymore, because it's in a movie.

We were talking earlier about the origin... Maybe we should send this print on. Was it Dartmouth?

It was Dartmouth.

Should we send it on, perhaps? We were talking earlier about the genesis of this project. This came after Five Easy Pieces. It was perhaps, somewhat for the time, probably, but to filmmakers who today are creating films through any number of means. Still an interesting situation, how you became involved with the man who wrote the screenplay, and developed the story with you.

Bob Rafelson & Neil LaBute

When you mention the first picture, around the same time as The Graduate, that was sort of the impetus for the production company as a whole. Or was that in place before that?

I had started a production company with Bert Schneider. I had this idea that there were such wonderfully original movies being made in Europe, for example. I don't want to limit it to Europe because my favorite movies were in fact Japanese. But in Europe, and the New Wave that existed. Wood Fall's English productions, Tony Richardson's movies, Karel Reizs's movies had been made already. Why was it that we weren't doing this sort of thing in America? And we had these long long talks about this. And that I would like to make a company. I thought he was really brilliant, and the perfect person to build the company. And that we would find directors who more or less had not made movies before. And so we started. And meanwhile I had written a treatment for a television show, and that became The Monkees. And before we had a chance to make a movie, we made The Monkees. Well that became a big success. We took it off the air, that was another act of suicide on my part. Instead of letting it last on the air when it was at a pretty successful moment. But they sold a lot of records. And probably most of you have heard of The Monkees, or seen The Monkees. It's been on the air practically ever since. And therefore, because it was sort of a rock n' roll show. And by the way, the first thirty some-odd episodes were directed by directors who had never directed before. So that the notion was even being carried over into television. Some people got it in their minds that we must know what we were doing. But our terms were that we would make pictures, Bert and I would, we would try to make pictures that were completely independent of influences. And by that I mean there was to be no supervision of the script or the cast. In fact nobody would even know what the pictures was about, who was going to be in them, or who indeed the directors were. And Columbia wound up after-- this is a long maturation period, but for example when they say Easy Rider, which was the second movie the company made. The first was Head.

Head was with the Monkees. And Nicholson wrote Head with me. And produced it with me. He had thought of himself somewhat as a failed actor at that point, and wanted a different kind of career. And Jack and I sat down and wrote this thing. And the reason we called it Head was because we wanted to be able to say, of the second picture, which turned out to be Easy Rider, "From the producers who gave you Head." But nobody went to see Head, so the ploy didn't work very well. But people weren't going to hire folks like Dennis Hopper to direct movies at that point. He was just too weird. And Nicholson was too, and so was Bogdanovich, who made a picture for the company, and Jaglom. About six movies, six or seven movies in all were made.

Did that include documentary...

And the final one was a picture called Heart and Minds, which was a documentary about the Vietnam War. And then we busted up the company because I think we were afraid of becoming something that in fact we had assailed and attacked. And that we were getting too successful, and too good at it. And also Bert had asked me to collect the rent from the various strange people who were inhabiting the building. And I thought, "Well, I'm just too creative for that sort of work." And so we rather amiably decided to go our separate ways.

When you say that Columbia was behind - - ?

Columbia distributed the pictures, and they would put up money for the pictures. But anything that was spent over the amount of money agreed upon, which was very small, was then to come out of my pocket. Bert's and my pocket. So we in effect financed whatever the overages were. But there were no overages on any movie. And part of what I think was our responsibility for the privilege of making any movie we wanted to make, was to make it on budget. And I quite honestly believe in that as a principle to this day. I mean sometimes you don't have control over these things, but I've been very lucky that way. And so was the company. Because it could have been rather costly. The gamble was enormous.

And I guess we should mention that... You'd mentioned some of the directors, but other work that came out of that included The Last Picture Show...

The Last Picture Show, by Peter Bogdanovich.

Easy Rider came out of that.

Easy Rider. Drive, He Said, by Jack Nicholson.

Directing. It's a good thing he did some of this work, because the whole acting thing didn't really work out.

Well he was sort of like a partner in the company in a sense. He wrote the first one, he co-starred in the second one, starred in the third one, starred in this one, directed one. He was in Jaglom's. He was part of the whole deal.

This is outside of what you would still probably consider the studio system, because you were working independently in terms of--'We have this budget'--but you really aren't looking at script or making notes about it, anything like that. In fact not seeing necessarily what the project was.

They didn't even know what they were about. And the first time they saw a picture was the finished picture. Now you can imagine what that was like for a studio, looking at the finished picture of Easy Rider, for example. It was four o' clock in the afternoon in New York City, in Columbia Pictures projection room. And about fifty guys, of an age now approximating mine today, who were sitting around in there, and a couple of younger people. And by the time the picture had finished, there was only one person left in the room; one young guy. They'd all walked out. And they said they would not distribute the picture. That this is not something that they were interested in being a part of. That picture cost $385,000. And we hadn't made the deal final yet. I think the deal came final after that picture. We then went to Cannes. The picture was a huge success. And then of course Columbia was very interested in distributing the film. And it was then that we were able to kind of work out the details. That they would see nothing, they would react precisely as they did to this one, to all of the pictures, and we would try to have some hand in the marketing and distribution of the films as well. And we did. We were very lucky.

And that lasted for a period of how long?

A few years. I think the last film was '73 or '74. When Hearts and Minds was done. And what can I tell you... I've tried to make independent movies ever since then. I've only made one picture, in effect, for a studio. And I've tried to make independent pictures. And it hasn't gotten easier than that. Nothing could have been easier than that. I had a great partner, and it was a very exciting time to be making movies.

At the time that we were making the movies, the studios... The typical fare I suppose would be a picture like Darling Lili or something. They didn't quite know what to do. And they weren't aware of this young audience. And because we were somewhat young at the time, they thought, "Well, maybe this would be a good idea, to have young guys making pictures for a younger audience." Even if it was about cocaine, or what have you, or something like this. They were actually right about this one. But there was an audience waiting for this kind of film. And what happened I think is that they then decided that, "Why should BBS have this to themselves? They're smart, but they're not geniuses. We'll do this on our own." And so the studios in effect began to hire many young directors who would make films that seemed only two or three years ago verboten at a studio like that. And they would be things like The Strawberry Statement, films about student rebellion, and so on and so forth. And in some instances, these pictures were--Well I'll tell you very briefly, I remember a guy from Universal called when Dennis Hopper was making his second movie. Which he was making in Peru. And Dennis indeed had gone very much over budget, and was acting a little bit out of control. As were all the actors. They were making up the movie as they went along. And this executive called me, and he said, "Listen, how in the hell do I talk to Dennis Hopper?" So I said, "Well if you have to ask me that question, then you shouldn't be making a movie with him. That should have been first." Studio execs reached out to new young directors for the wrong reason; because they thought it would be profitable, not because they "believed." Well what happened for a bit was that there was a director movement going on in America, and the studios sort of conceded to that a bit. And that included people like Francis Coppola, Scorsese, lots of people started to make movies that were staggering. And many of them made good movies. Some of them didn't, but many did. And then those guys who were making them seemed a bit ungrateful to the studios. And so they spent a bit more money than they were supposed to. And they became a bit more reckless. And they defied the studio system in sometimes very outlandish and immature ways. And the studio closed that system down. And now they wanted to prove that they were back in charge. People actually talk about Heaven's Gate being the turning point, or Jaws being the turning point where they were making very marketable pictures. Merchandisable pictures. Pictures that were made for mass audiences. And succeeding on a quite different level from anything that had ever happened previously. Then came another generation of independent filmmakers. None of this ever stops. There was continuity in the independent film movement long before I arrived and long after it. And will even outlast you, Neil.

I can guarantee that.

There will always be independent films. I think there will. And the terms of it will change, the quality of the pictures will change, and the aspirations of the filmmakers will change. But how would I define it through all is not so much where the money comes from, whether it's Miramax, and Miramax in fact is owned by a major, so therefore it is not an independent by any stretch of the imagination anymore. And all of the sub-independents. Searchlight at Fox. I don't think that's what it's about. I think it has to do with the spirit with which the film is made. The degree of autonomy, the degree of hearing your own voice, and not listening to a marketing structure, and being counseled forever on who to hire in the movie, the actors. I've gone to meetings, or a meeting with an independent company, that said to me, "We would like to have the choice of the cameraman. Because we know who's hip and who's good." And I just about flipped out. I'd worked with six--I haven't made that many pictures--seven cameramen. And just about every one of them's won a major award, if not the Academy Award. And I didn't think that that was something that should be their choice. I didn't even want to discuss it, to be frank with you. I felt like, my God, if you're in a meeting with me, and you want to have a dialogue with me about making movies, it's presumably because you've seen them. And do you find fault with Sven Nykvist's work, or Laslo Kovac's work, or Conrad Hall's work. Is there some reason why you're bringing this up? And it was unfathomable. And in fact that ended all relations with that one place for "independence." But I didn't think that was so independent, by my definition of it. And I think that that has changed a little bit in the independent movement today. There are people I asked, when the Directors Guild asked me to do this, I had declined several times, and then finally I said, "OK, yea, OK I'll do it." And they said, "Well there's a young director involved. Who would you like?" And I said, "Well, I saw a picture a month ago that I really liked," and it was your picture. I know a little bit about it, although he and I have never discussed it, it was made for twenty-five thousand dollars, and it was made from probably the same kind of creative desperation that I was going through when I was making my picture. And that picture is, not because of its price, but because of the spirit that motivated the film, and the spirit that made the film, an independent movie. And that's my regard for independents. Stanley Kubrick gets financed entirely by Warner Brothers. Ain't nobody in this room who's more independent. Or better.

We should probably shift back to King of Marvin Gardens. And one thing I wanted to ask about was the casting. Not only the leads, but throughout. Maybe that's the place to start with. Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson.

Shot from The King of Marvin Gardens

The grandfather included?

The grandfather had never acted before. And I was struggling to remember his story tonight, because I had forgotten all about him. But yes, he had never acted before. He was some local character that I ran into in Philadelphia who told me that he was a direct descendant of John Wilkes Booth when I met, and that he carried with him this incredible acting tradition. And I could not deny him.

He had the cough.

Yes. He had the right credentials.

Going into it, did you know the boardwalk was going to be in repair like that? It's such a beautiful image.

There's almost no margin for error at a time like that.

There isn't. And it's how to exploit what could be construed, in another richer film, as an error. And make it into a virtue.

It's true, I found the first time I attempted shooting something, how the dividends that paid off by planning and planning and overplanning things. Do you find yourself to be a big pre-production planner; or did you then do shot lists, all those kinds of things, or was it more just organic? The film is so

That's true of almost ...well, a lot of my movies. There was a reason for it. While I was very dogmatic about it, it's completely specious. It's a stupid reason, but I'll tell it to you. I started this because, first of all, I liked it. Let's start with that. I have never made a picture that has a lot of flamboyant camera work. And I'd like to try it someday, because I think it might be great fun to do that.

Well I'm the man to talk to. I've moved it three times, so I pretty much understand it now.

I had this feeling, which Laslo of course did not share with me, that the best way to create tension in a film of this sort, and even in Easy Pieces where the same thing is true, is the opposition of the frames. The way one frame opposed another frame. And that Laslo's job was primarily to light after we made the choice of the shot, was to light, but not to spin the wheels. In fact, I once threatened him with a loss of a finger if I ever detected any camera movement. And Laslo says, "Oh, c'mon, let's just turn it a little bit here and there." And what not. But once you get into this as a mode, then if you do move the camera, you'll se it right away. So this is a series of still pictures. But more importantly, for this one, I also

And I think a really noticeable, in terms of thematic evidence in the picture, is the loading of the brother onto the train, and the shot on Nicholson as the children playing in the background. But really it looks to be, where he's standing, there's should be the building behind him. And yet there's this large open, through that great industrial landscape behind it. But it's very beautiful, and played nicely into it.

I'm sorry. The time has gotten to ten o'clock. I should see if there's any questions.

Audience: The relationship with the brother, did that inspire the story?

Yes. Because I had made a picture with Nicholson, which was Five Easy Pieces and it had a relationship with his sister, and with his mute father, and very very minimally with his brother, I was interested in making films about somewhat dysfunctional families I suppose. But that's what I started with, was wanting to make a picture about brothers. But then again I also started with the monologue situation. It was about brothers.

Audience: When you look at the film now, do you see things in it that horrify you, or other things that you are impressed with?

Well you're asking a very difficult question, because this is the first time it's ever happened. I've never seen one before. And I probably

Audience: How did she die, the actress?

Well it's not a very pleasant story. She was in the theater in Oregon, acting, and it was the opening night of the theater, and she asked if she could go back to her room to change. And they found her, apparently as a result of smoking a cigarette in bed, the house burned down.

Rafelson meets his fans

I thought Five Easy Pieces was too conventional. I felt that I wanted to make a picture that sort of probed more the subconscious relationship in a family than the conscious stuff. And looking at the film I think Hunter was right, in some way. It does sit there a bit. It gets kind of heavy. But there's a lot of the actors working real hard to make every single moment of the picture mean something to themselves. And I think they, in a large part, succeeded. I was really impressed with Ellen Burstyn. When you don't see something like this for a long time, but you do see the actor over the years working in other pictures, and Dern I thought was really splendid. They did good work in the picture, and they worked real hard. Things went on during the making of this movie, and every movie, it seems. If you have any friends who are actors, or if there are actors sitting in the room, think twice before you make a movie with me, because people tend to go through radical change. They go a bit insane. All these characters became the characters that they were in the picture. And that made for a feeling of discomfort sometimes. We all used to stay in the same rooms together, and the same hotel.

I think the picture took about thirty, thirty some odd days. I don't remember. Thirty-four, thirty-five. So I don't know if I've answered your question, but that was sort of what I wanted to do. I wanted the picture to be a little bit more difficult to make than Easy Pieces. For me, more difficult to make. And for the actors. I wanted everybody to work a bit harder.

Including the audience, I think. Which is a good thing. It's nice to see an audience... It's not going to school, but it kind of--you 're working, and they should be working as well.

Well, nobody likes to pay money and work at the same time. So maybe this was a rather lofty notion, for me to expect of an audience. But I didn't expect an audience. My hope was, for any picture that I made, and for the company, was that it would pay for itself. It wasn't like we were dreaming of vast profits or anything like that. God Almighty, you can imagine when you mortgage your house and you put up the money for Easy Rider and suddenly it grosses all that money, how surprised we were. Or about Easy Pieces, or Last Picture Show. Nobody expected these things. Last Picture Show, for example, was test marketed here in Los Angeles. They took the thing and they put it in front of an audience, and it got some horribly grim

Was there any tinkering because of those scores, or was it, at that point of in the process

All of our pictures opened quietly, at our request, our contribution so to speak to marketing was that our films should be discovered. They shouldn't be marketed, and people shouldn't know about them before they came out. An audience should go hopefully as a result of a critic's liking the picture, and go to one theater, where the picture would be playing in New York, and one theater in L.A., and so on and so forth. Like independent films often are today. And an audience. And if they flocked to that picture, than the picture would be a success, and would grow. In the case of Marvin Gardens, I think it showed in a few cities, and that was that. It lasted about one week. Everybody said I had lost it. They were very severe about it and me. They were expecting another Easy Pieces, I suppose. They said that. But I wouldn't know how to do that.

Anything else? In the back, and we'll finish with that.

Audience: I was really impressed by the sides and back of the frame. Like the film projector/snowball fight. All the things you had going on. Were those in the script originally?

The camera's sitting there completely still, it's like an 1890's guy putting his head behind the curtain and squeezing a bulb. The camera's set, and now I'm trying desperately to imagine what colors should be there, where the ash tray and the table should be, what would make that frame oppose the other frame in some way where there's a kind of tension, what background will inform the movie. For example, the guy who--I can't remember his name--the young black actor who puts the gun up against Nicholson's face. He's in the whole first twenty minutes of the movie. He's way in the background, watching everything all the time.

With that young woman, eating lobster.

Yes, in the lobster scene. But also the production designer, the art director, was extremely influential. Laszlo was influential about these things. She was my wife, and so she knew the kind of colors I was after. I never slept. I trained myself at a very early stage in making movies to sleep only two hours a night, and then take a nap every ten minutes on every hour or so, or something. So I would just stay up all day long thinking. You can't imagine. None of that is an accident. That is not an accident. That stuff is all thought about. And dwelled upon. And made to feel as if it's --hopefully--it's an accident. For example, I noticed tonight, in the credit shots... There's no music in the movie, by the way. There's no score. So that music is also, for the most part, background music that's on the stage. Minus the inevitable thing that would happen in movies, which is that there's a radio on in every scene, and top 40 playing all the time. I wanted this movie to be mute. And there are mute actors in the background early on.

At the table.

Sitting in the background. And I doubt if you could hear, but they were uttering their sounds as they were doing sign. I saw them when I was setting up the camera, getting ready to leave a restaurant. And I asked if they would stay and act in the movie. Things of that sort. And some things that you sort of look at and you go

Director Miguel Arteta, guest, Rafelson, DGA Asst. Exec. Director Elizabeth Stanley, LaBute and Alex Nohe (formerly of IFP West)