By Jerry Roberts

Reindeer Games stars Ben Affleck, Gary Sinise, Charlize Theron, Dennis Farina and Clarence Williams III in the story of an ex-con who, in order to gain the favors of a girl, impersonates his former cellmate, triggering three days of mistaken identity.

DGA Magazine talked with Frankenheimer about the film, his career and his work with the DGA as a Guild Vice President and Co-Chair of the Creative Rights Committee.

I loved the script. It was so well written, so smart - I loved the story. It was brilliantly conceived and fleshed out and the dialogue has quite a bit of humor. It sort of has the best of everything with all of these elements alive throughout. Bob Weinstein sent me the script thinking I would like it and I did. The writer's name is Ehren Kruger. And he's working on another script for me right now, also a thriller.

I sought Ben Affleck because I needed an everyman for this role. Ben appeals to men and women. He gives you a sense of intelligence, the notion of a guy who can think on his feet. And he's a leading guy playing someone who has been in jail, yet he wasn't a hardened criminal. Ben gives you all of this. And a big important part of casting is the ability to get along and go through the picture on the same wavelength. I have gotten to a point in my life where I don't want to have dinner with someone I don't like. I like sitting down to dinner with Ben and with Charlize Theron, Gary Sinise, Clarence Williams III and Dennis Farina. We all hung out together and had a good time. I have had experiences in which I've loathed one of the leading actors and that doesn't make for a good way to face the day. This cast was one of the best and we enjoyed each others' company.

Casting is 65 percent of directing. If you cast the picture correctly, you have a whole lot of leeway. You can make mistakes in other aspects but pull it off with the right actors. If you don't cast well, you can be in real trouble. I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel. I work very, very hard with casting people to get the best possible ensemble I can.

[laughs] The snow. I had to have snow. We shot in gray weather and we were shooting in March. So, we had to shoot the exteriors first and fit them in before the weather changed. We were able to hang on and get it all done. We worked like hell for a few of those days.

Snow - it is what it is. You just work through it. And you take advantage of it when you have it, make it work for you and for the picture.

Oh yeah. The choice of the UPM I leave to the line producer because, as I told you, the UPM is completely overshadowed in a feature film by the line producer. But I really am very active in the choice of the line producer with the producer of record and the distributing company, because I've had some terrible, terrible experiences with some line producers, particularly in cable. On the other hand, I've worked with some great ones, like Marty Katz and [Robert L.] Bob Rosen, in features. So that's the first choice that has to be made - who is the line producer? - because, as the director, one of your main relationships on the movie is going to be with the line producer.

The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie. You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it. The first assistant director runs the set. The whole mood of the movie, the whole tenor of the set comes off that person, and it's just a critical choice.

Then I usually leave the choice of the second assistant director and any other assistant directors to the first assistant director, who will choose because he or she is responsible for the conduct and the efficiency of the second assistant directors. So I don't impose anyone on the first. I let him or her choose their own team.

I've been very fortunate in the fact that I have done five movies now, including Reindeer Games, with the man whom I consider to be a brilliant first assistant director. That's a guy named James D. Sbardellati. He's brilliant. He is absolutely terrific.

And I had a very, very good guy in Europe on Ronin who's trilingual, an excellent man named Michel Cheyko. He was superb. So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies. The importance of the assistant director cannot be overemphasized.

The first thing I can really tell you is I really love the work. I really, really love directing films. It's something that fuels me. It's something that gives me back a hell of a lot. And I kind of feel that I have a responsibility to the people that invest their time and money with me to show up on the set every day and do the best of which I am capable. To do that I try and keep myself in pretty good shape physically and I try to lead my life in such a way that I'll be able to be as strong at the end of the movie as I am in the beginning. I think that's very important. But I don't have any great secrets for anybody, you know, I really don't. I don't do anything that lots of other people don't do.

The whole thing of this business is to retain your enthusiasm and in a sense retain your innocence and try and practice as much humility as you can.

One of the other things I think that I've been able to do in my life, is to listen well. I do. I think that I'm able to listen to what people say and then make a decision after I've heard what people have to say. One of the first lessons you learn as an actor is to listen. I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say. It helps, let me tell you.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

But I really try to examine anything that's remotely violent in my movies and ask myself: "Is it necessary?" and "How do I want to depict this? How far do I want to go with it?" If it can be implied, I'll do it that way. If it's a plot point that I have to really show a certain thing happening, then I'll do it that way. But I hope that in my own particular case I am able to exercise some element of good taste in what I do and hopefully it's responsible.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks. It's a very, very real problem and we're going to have to face it and we're going to have go come to grips with it. The Writers Guild in particular is becoming very confrontational, very contentious using things like the possessory credit to erode the director's role.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that. I mean, this whole digital revolution is really eroding the director's importance on a movie because, number one, just from a practical standpoint, with floppy disks and the ability to put all of the film onto a disk, more people have access to the movie. A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies.

There are so many effects and so many things that are done digitally now that it's so hard for the director to really control the process, because there are more and more experts that come in. I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has. And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit. That's just an aside to illustrate that you've got this continual invasion into what's always been the director's territory.

I have great respect for the writer. I think that you can't make a movie without a script. But you also can't make movies without actors. You also can't make movies without technicians. And there has to be just one person in charge of everybody, and to me that one person is the director. The producer's job ends, as far as I'm concerned, creatively, on the first day of shooting. Many times the producer will develop a script with the writer and they'll help cast it and so forth, but then the producer has to let go and be there to support the director. More and more, the age-old problem of second- guessing has become a disease. This is the main problem that the Directors Guild faces - to protect the position and the dignity of the director.

Yes, and the Directors Guild faces a tremendous number of problems in creative rights. The Directors Guild is a very diversified guild in the fact that you have people that are called directors who do completely different jobs. For instance, the person who directs a three-camera situation comedy on television has very little to do with what the director of a feature motion picture does. The two jobs are not interchangeable. I'm just talking about the directors. You have a person who is a stage manager of a TV sitcom who has very little in common with the first assistant director of an A-budget feature film. The role of the production manager, the UPM, is one that has to be defined because the UPM in feature films is being replaced by the line producer. Whether they like it or they not, that's what's happening. In television, the UPMs have extraordinary power, because they go from one show to the next to the next to the next, while the director comes in and is only there for one or two episodes. In other words, the director is the guy who's the least familiar sometimes with what the show is. That's a terrible position to be in.

We have many problems as a Guild, and the thing we have to do as a Guild in order to survive is understand that the Guild was founded by the feature directors. That the strength in this Guild is directly related to the strength of the feature directors and that the membership must support the feature directors. If it comes to a strike over the preservation of the possessory credit, the associate director in television who has nothing to do with the possessory credit and may never be able to negotiate for it, has to support the feature directors who do get the credit. We cannot have a fragmented Guild. We are coming to a point where I think that this is going to be very, very hot. I can see it heading toward a real showdown with the Writers Guild, with the Producers Guild, and eventually with management. I may sound as if I'm being as rough as I can get, but that's what I see.

The DGA is a great, great Guild. What it has done for members in the area of creative rights is enormous. It has merged many disparate groups into a force to be reckoned with, from sitcom directors to Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. A lot of credit goes to [National Executive Director] Jay D. Roth, who has done a wonderful, wonderful job. The DGA is out to really protect the rights of the director, who can come under siege in many ways. It has been a very positive organization for me and I'm going to remain very active with the Guild.

I am a grateful man. I've had a helluva long run. I have been able to do what I've wanted to do. I'm tired of people taking shots at this business, that it's a shitty business. To hell with them. We live a dream almost every day of our lives. I've gone places, done things, met people. If I had never had this career, those things never would have happened. If I had followed through on a tennis career, it would have ended around age 30. Thank God I didn't do that. If there is a secret, it's just keep working. You don't become a better director by talking about movies you never make and having endless meetings with studio chiefs. I've been fortunate to get better at what I do and to keep doing it. Be active, whether it's cable, feature, network or in the theatre - direct it.

I've always thought you have to be a plumber before you can be an artist. By that I mean I think you have to know the tools of your trade. I mean, the great impressionist painters who did all these abstract things drew very, very well. It's only after you've mastered the tools of your trade that you can go off and try and experiment, in my opinion. And it's only after you know technically exactly how you're going to do something that you can really have the time to really spend with the actors and really talk to the actors and really have the leisure to make sure of what the actors are doing to get the effect on the screen.

I want to be known as a professional. When I say that, what I mean is that I have done all of the groundwork and all of the homework that there is to be done. Each movie is a different experience, a different learning arc professionally. It has never, ever gotten any easier. I know what's involved technically and emotionally to make one of these things happen, to realize a movie. I have done my best to understand and utilize all of the tools at my disposal - script, camera, editing and postproduction. I also learned and understand fighting my way through the executive jungle, which is an acquired skill. This is my definition of a professional: An amateur only does things he or she wants to do, and a professional does what he doesn't want to do. I'm an amateur cook, an amateur race driver, an amateur tennis player. But I'm a professional movie director. If it was up to the amateur in me, I wouldn't have shown up on a lot of occasions. But I did show up and I got the job done, because I'm a professional.

Table of Contents     Top of Page