INT: Before we get into BULLITT, I wanted to go to what was kind of a, something that led ultimately towards that direction, some more. And that was your experience on the, working on THE GREAT ESCAPE. Again, it was with John Sturges, right? [RR: Yes it was.] And, on that one you were an, not an Assistant Director anymore, you were an Associate Producer and also Second Unit Director. Was that a shift for you? Was it... And tell me more about that one and how that all came to being and your role in that.
RR: I think THE GREAT ESCAPE experience was just a natural development of having been an Assistant Director and a Production Manager [Unit Production Manager] and then being back with a Director that I got along with well and could shoot, you know, shorthand and all of a sudden he brought me into his company and he, John Sturges, and we were off and running. He came to me one day and said, "I got a book I want you to read. It's called THE GREAT ESCAPE by a RAF [Royal Air Force] pilot. It's about a prisoner of war camp." And I said, "Well, okay." And on the following Monday, I came, I came in and he said, "How'd you like the book?" And I said, "I liked it a lot." And he said, "What did you think of it as a movie?" And I said, "I think it'd be just great, John." And he said, "You know, what do you think it cost to make?" I said, "No, no. Hold it. Hold it. Don't ask me what I think a picture would make based on reading the book. I'd have to see who was in it. We'd have to..." And he said, "No, no. Wait a minute. I'm just talking about you and me. I'm not talking about taking an ad in the trade paper. I'm just talking about what do you think off the top of your head?" And I said, "No, not off the top of my head. Don't give me that." I'm sure that John was the captain of the debate team in college 'cause he could talk you into this isn't Monday. He was very good at it. And he kept wearing me down, wearing me down, and I said, "I don't know. It's probably around four million dollars I guess today." And he said, "Did that hurt? I mean, was it like pulling a wisdom tooth? Are you offended?" And I said, "No, but you shouldn't do that when..." And he said, "Forget it. I ask you a little question and you make a big deal out of it. Can't believe it." And I said, "Well, I never know what you're..." And he said, "I'm not gonna say anything. I'm just..." And I said, "Okay." So, we had adjoining offices and he closed the office--this was at the Mirisch Company [Mirisch Corporation]. And I swear he closed the door and my phone rang at the same moment and I picked it up and said, "Bob," you know, "This is Harold Mirisch." And I said, "Yeah?" He said, "How in the hell can you say a picture will cost four million dollars just based on reading the book?" And I said, "Harold, let me put you on hold just for a second." And I ran through the door and he was gone. And on Sturges' desk was one of those pen stands and on the pen was pushed a piece of paper that said, "I've gone to lunch, sucker." And never again did I ever volunteer what I thought off the top of my head a picture would cost. Bad news, of course, the damn thing did cost about four million dollars, so I got to say, "I told you so."

INT: Now, were you brought in by Sturges [John Sturges] at that point to function as an Associate Producer--[RR: And the Mirisches [Walter Mirisch, Marvin Mirisch, Harold Mirisch], who--] And the Mirisches, so you had a--[RR:--who also wanted me along to be a counter balance to John and whatever John would do.] And you'd already been working for the Mirisches for a good while, hadn't you?
RR: I had because I'd done WEST SIDE STORY after THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. And then I had done, then I had done THE CHILDREN’S HOUR with Willie Wyler [William Wyler] and KID GALAHAD with Elvis again. And then they had sent me to England to test the Eady Plan [Eady Levy], the subsidy plan, with a little picture called 633 SQUADRON and a big picture called THE PINK PANTHER--A SHOT IN THE DARK, the second Pink Panther. But THE GREAT ESCAPE was viewed by many as a big gamble, because it violated so many rules. There were no women in it. It was, seemed to be downer because it was about a prisoner of war camp. But John didn't see it that way. He saw it as a picture about valor. And under that leadership I looked upon it as he did, that this is not about a prisoner of war camp; this is about what people do what they have to do. And he said, "You know, well, we really don't want to ever make anything outside of home do we?" And I said, "Absolutely not." And he said, "So can you find something that would work?" And I said, "Sure I can. I'll find something where we can make this picture that's supposed to be in the Black Forest." So I looked around and I found between Idyllwild and Palm Springs, I found six pine trees. They were kind of scraggly, but they were together and use your imagination they could be a forest. And I said, “Well, we could build the camp there.” And he said, "That's great. That'll be perfect." He said, "Now, would, do you want to take a Art Director and go to Germany and look at the real camp,” which is no longer in Germany. After the war, it's actually Poland now. “And then look around Germany, where the escapes took place and tell me what you think. 'Cause you could go there and shoot a second unit for six weeks and then we can jump into Idyllwild and do our prisoner of war camp." [INT: Now this was approximately when? 1961 or '2?] ’62 [1962]. So I went to Germany and said, called John up and said, you know, “There's a problem here. You know what Germany looks like? It looks like Germany. It's, the little railroad stations look like German railroad stations. The Black Forest looks like the Black Forest. I'm afraid this really looks like..." I went to the Screen Extras Guild and said, "Help us, 'cause we don't want to go away to make this picture. Just give us...'Cause we'd take people out of Palm Springs, now we're inside the zone so I know we're supposed to bring everybody, but we're gonna have, you know, 600 prisoners every day, every time we show the outside of the camp, so tell you what, you tell me that for every, for every 500 that we bring in we can hire one local. And that'll help me build the case with you guys to make it here." And they thought about it and they called me back and said, "You know, you signed the contract." I said, "The contract does not exist beyond the continental United States. Please, don't do this to me." And they said, "Well, let us think about it." And they called back and said, "No. You gotta bring 'em all." I said, "Don't do that to me, please." And then I said, "John, they're gonna make us bring all the extras from Los Angeles and Germany looks so much like Germany." And he said, "Well, damn it, I guess we better go make it in Germany." So off we went, hiring nobody from the Screen Extras Guild and went to Munich and found, right outside the studio is a Black Forest. So I took the Minister of the Interior up on a crane and said, you know, "Take a look. What we'd like to do is, we'd like to tear out, just think California. We'd like to tear out about a thousand trees and build a prisoner of war camp, so that when it rains we can just run down the path and we're into the stages and our offices. And we'll replant two for one. We'll replant trees wherever you want us to." And he said, "Okay. Tear 'em out." So we did. Built the camp and we were off and running on a very difficult picture, ‘cause it was what can go wrong went wrong, making it even more challenging.

INT: For example? [referring to challenges faced while filming THE GREAT ESCAPE on location in Germany.]
RR: For example, we didn't have a script, which was a John Sturges' trait. When John Sturges got any script he started taking it apart. Fix a little thing here, but that led to something else and as a result, Writer 11, which was John Gray, was working on the script the last weekend before the final week of shooting on the picture. And in between were 10 other people who had worked on it, including Clavell [James Clavell] and Roberts, and everybody else. But the script was a giant problem. The second problem was it was the worst summer and weather in Europe's history. It rained on July 1st, so we were constructing in total downpour. And we were painting in total downpour. And I'd go out in the afternoon and watch the painters painting on the camp and their ladders would be sinking in the mud 'cause it was all loose having torn up all the trees. And then they'd step up a rung and they'd paint some more. And then we had the little minor problem where the lead, Steve McQueen, wouldn't come to work, which created some handicaps. He didn't have a thing. [INT: What do you mean a thing?] Jim Garner [James Garner] was ‘The Scrounger’; he stole things. Donald Pleasence was ‘The Forger’; he forged things. Charlie Bronson [Charles Bronson] was the ‘Tunnel King’; he built tunnels. But Steve didn't have a thing, so he wouldn't come to work, and he wouldn't come to work, and he wouldn't come to work. So after seven weeks--[INT: This must have played havoc on you and the UPM [Unit Production Manager], the Assistant Directors and so forth, figuring out what to shoot when and how.] We kept ducking his scenes and ducking them. But after six weeks, you're about ducked out. So I got a call that--[INT: And no finished script.] And no finished script and no place to go. And I got a call that I better get out to the set, first unit set, because John had announced to the cast and crew that Steve was out of the picture. He was combining the Garner and McQueen roles together. Very bad idea, but he'd decided to do that and he announced it to everybody. So when I got out to the set I said, "You can't do that. I mean, what are we gonna do about this picture?" And he said, "Well, I just can't go through this anymore." And I said, "Well, you know, I got a call saying that there is a 707 flying in from Beverly Hills and it's loaded with the William Morris Agency, so this'll straighten it out." And two days later Steve was back on the set and his ‘thing’ would be, his ‘thing’ would be, he would be ‘The Cooler King.’ The guy who keeps being thrown in the cooler for trying to escape. And that would be his ‘thing.’ And we would sort out the rest later on.

RR: And my first assignment, after Steve came back, was to get into the set that was the cell and try to give Steve shtick to do. And I came up with the baseball. "Now," I said, "you understand for baseball fans..." 'cause Steve knew nothing about athletics though he was terribly nimble and very, very athletic, he still knew nothing about it. I said, "We're doing something wrong here. You wouldn't scuff a baseball on concrete. You just wouldn't do that." He said, "Will anybody know?" And I said, "Yeah, every baseball fan would know." "Ah," he said, "It'll be okay." So we got into bouncing the ball, which was his method of resistance. And we used it all the way through the picture and as a matter of fact, we closed the picture when they, the guard throws him in and is walking away, you don't see Steve, all you hear is the ball plunking, which means he hasn't given up. So that worked out okay. [INT: Yeah.] And then when we went to do the escape units, we, when we finished the picture in the camp, the Mirisches sent us a telegram saying, "You're fired and you guys are off the picture and close it up and come home." And John, the captain of the debate team, sent back a telegram saying, "You're absolutely right. We're totally to blame. And in two weeks, we're breaking into two units and we're dividing the escapes, in two weeks we'll be back and the picture'll be done." And they sent back a telegram saying, "No, no. No. You don't understand. You're fired. Come home. Stop shooting. Do not shoot one more frame." And John would send back another telegram, "You're absolutely...You have a right to be angry. We just will be, in two weeks it'll be over and I, you'll be so glad." "No, you don't understand." Then John said, "Think about it." And I learned a big lesson. What are they gonna do? Are they gonna get on a plane, fly over, get a German policeman and say, "Please arrest those people because we're paying for this. Take those cameras away from them and put 'em in cufflinks, in handcuffs." And I said, "You're right. They can't do anything about it." He said, "What will happen is there'll be a period of time where they won't speak to us and no one will even acknowledge us in the world, but they'll get over it after we have our first sneak preview." And he was right, of course. [INT: [LAUGH]] So we... [INT: That was still quite risky, don't you think?] It certainly was. Because we're by the, if the picture didn't work, we'd still be sweeping stages at United Artists. [INT: That's true.]

INT: But you had some very, very unique experiences with the action on that [THE GREAT ESCAPE], which the action was mainly there, doing that at the end. And you directed that action.
RR: I did the McQueen [Steve McQueen], Garner [James Garner] and Bronson [Charles Bronson] escapes and John [John Sturges] did Attenborough [Richard Attenborough], Coburn [James Coburn] and the other escape. So I went out with Steve with no script and said, "What'll we do?" And of course Steve shot his hand in the air and said, "Why don't we steal a motorcycle?" And that was the total script for the whole chase of string a wire across, trip up a German motorcycle, Steve steal the motorcycle and we're off and running. Then they chase Steve and the infamous jump. And people always ask me, "Did Steve do a lot of his motorcycle work?" Well, if you look real close, we had a couple of German outfits for Steve too. So we'd do the old western trick. We'd shoot Steve zooming by on the motorcycle and around a dangerous curve and then here'd come the German. Look close, the German, 'cause Steve had a very distinctive style of riding, that's Steve chasing Steve in a German outfit. [INT: And this was all decided afterwards. This is part of the thing of not having a script completed.] Yeah. Being absolutely clear that doing something like that, going without a script and making a good picture is luck. We should have failed completely, but we didn't. We, I like to say that we executed extremely well, and we worked very hard. I got the guy who was the Charlie Bronson character. He was at the time, 1962, he was an insurance executive in Canada. He's a Canadian, not an Englishman. His name was Wally Floody. And I brought him to Germany. And in my office on the door was a schedule and you could, as the Assistant Director or as the prop man or as the Production Designer, you could sign up for him and get him for a two-hour period. And he would instill what, how he remembered. The reason that he's still alive is he got claustroph--he designed all the tunnels, Tom, Dick and Harry. He got claustrophobic the night of the escape. As the Bronson character started to get claustrophobic, he really did get and he couldn't go through with it. So he came back out and as a result his life was spared. But we would do things like, the Assistant Directors would say, "Now what are we gonna do with the guards?" And Floody would say, "Well I remember one thing. They'd stomp their feet in the wintertime to keep 'em warm, 'cause it was cold. But in the summer they'd stomp 'em anyway 'cause they got in the habit." And he said, "It gives you something to do. They just constantly were stomping their feet. And they were always walking around the camp at night trying to see if something was going on." So the inmates would all rig up things to do to drive 'em crazy like they'd open a window and say to the guard, ‘The Russians will be here in five minutes,’” and slam the window and then listen to the alarms go off and the guards all scrambling for cover. And he said to me, we, a prop man for example, the Production Designer would take him and put him in the tunnel set and he would say, "No, my shoulders were a little more pinched, so you gotta make it a little smaller." And they'd make it a little smaller. "That's too much because I couldn't turn this freely." And he said to me, we were having dinner after he'd been with us for eight weeks prior to production starting, and the night before we started to shoot, he said, "You know, you guys got it right." And I said, "How can you tell?" And he said, "Because I'm starting to have terrible nightmares. I just have nightmares every night that I'm back in the camp, so I'm sure that you got it right."

INT: Did the story get personalized for you and the others who were working on it [THE GREAT ESCAPE] then as much as it was a very, it was a true, real to life story and the fates of those characters? Was there an, a feeling of involvement in that story and…
RR: You definitely felt involved because you not only got involved with the people who were still alive who were in the camp, and, of course, they were the first people that we showed it to. The camp commander played by James Donald, he was still alive and we showed him the picture and he loved it. But we also got involved with the Germans, like the fellow who, Til Kiwe, the white-haired Actor who discovered Steve coming out of the hole when they're escaping, he was interned in our equivalent, which was in the middle of the desert in Arizona where we figured, if they got out of the camp they couldn't get any place. And he was interned there. The guy who played the Gestapo, head of the Gestapo, Hans Reiser, he was interned in a troublemaker camp in Kentucky and had marvelous stories to tell that gave us insights. And I can't specifically say where it helped on a particular scene, but it was fascinating to get their point of view when they were on the other side. [INT: So the research was going on throughout the making of the movie?] Completely. [INT: And people learning about the story you were telling and it was, it was a complete evolving experience, wasn't it?] It was. And-- [INT: Amazing you got a picture out of that.] The enjoyment of having people involved seeing it and being able to give us assistance was really invigorating. And the Hollywood writer Nelson Gidding, close friend of Robert Wise's, he was interned in Stalag Luft III. And he would give us tidbits of how they would get a chess set and say, "These idiots, the women of Chicago are sending us these things, like a case of ping pong balls or a chess set." And he'd say, "You know, if I ever get out I'm gonna go there and strangle these people." Until one day a guy got mad and threw the chess set against the wall and it broke and it was all radio parts. Every man had a piece in it and they put together a radio and they could listen to the BBC every night. And after the war, several of 'em went back to Chicago, there's no such organization, there's no such address. The ping-pong balls had German money in them and little files to make saws out of and things like that. [INT: Wow. That's great stuff.]

INT: Now, THE GREAT ESCAPE, obviously, was a fabulous experience. And it was a, it represented a more prominent role maybe than the others, although you'd done it before, with the second unit directing. I mean did, was that something where you wanted to pursue, you had desires to be a Director?
RR: No, I didn't. I had no desire to get into that field because the action was just too tough to do. It was too nerve wracking and it, you were so afraid things were gonna go wrong. And every time we'd do something with the motorcycle, I was afraid something was gonna happen. We had a shot where Steve [Steve McQueen] goes over a little culvert and the German chasing him has a sidecar and they won't fit and they go into the fence and it breaks up. And the way the fence broke up, a piece almost impaled the rider in the sidecar. Didn't, but just barely missed. And I got, I got so jumpy about, this is really dangerous and this is such tough work that I had no desire to keep doing it. [INT: That was an interesting thing because at the end of, towards the end of filming THE GREAT ESCAPE, you wound up doing a stunt yourself.] Well--[INT: And what, how’d that come about? What was it?] Our problem was that in the Garner [James Garner] escape would be for him to steal an airplane and take off. Well, there's not a lot of World War II airplanes around. We found a Bücker 181, which is a little observation plane, in Hamburg. And I went and saw it and bought it from the guy for 250 dollars. So that tells you something about its airworthiness. It was in terrible condition, but we wired it together and painted it gray and put the swastikas on and I would go out with my Jim Garner wig on and a, that made me a dummy, and a stuffed dummy for Pleasence [Donald Pleasence] and--[INT: Why you?] Because I was the only one that had a pilot's license. ‘Cause none of the stunt guys had a pilot's license. [INT: Oh, and couldn't get any local people to fly.] Couldn't get any of the locals to fly the, 'cause the only way you can start the plane is to be outside and crank it. Four times that damn plane died on me over the city, over some strategic place. And you can't get out and crank it, so you then have to try to make it to a pasture someplace. And I got to hate that airplane very much. And in the end, after we'd done all the shots where they presumably lose gasoline and they keep dropping lower and lower, we'd done all those, then I got a call that John Sturges had them make a mock up of the body of the plane with the wings torn off and the prop torn off and he was shooting the scene where Garner lifts Pleasence out of the crashed airplane. So I drove out to the first unit and said, "John, you're the one who taught me never do something after a stunt. Do something after you've done the stunt. Don't do it before you've done the stunt." 'Cause maybe the car lands right side up or maybe it's on it's left side, or maybe whatever. But no. He said, "Don't worry about it, Pops. It'll be fine. You--" And I said, "Oh, how do I get the airplane in that road with no wings and no propeller?" "Well, you'll work it out. It'll be fine."

RR: So I put that shot off. I got the plane as low as you need to, just hedge hopping, coming in as if it'd lost it's power. And then I put off the actual shot of it crashing because I was afraid. So finally, when we had nothing left to shoot and the first unit had long gone, gone back to the United States, we drove out to do it and, the crash scene, and of course the weather was all socked in and the scene was shot in sunlight. So I got off the hook. The next two times we came out it was foggy and I was off the hook. Third time we went out the weather matched perfectly and you couldn't put it off. So I got ready to do it and every time I'd go behind a hedge, I'd see German firemen with crushed ice to put on the flaming body, which made me more frightened. And eventually, I practiced in an open field of getting it up to speed, lifting the tail up, not the front end up, and then diving between two flagpoles, little flagpoles that were seven feet apart, which is what those two trees were apart. Because if you don't go between the trees, if you hit a tree, then it's a single engine aircraft, the engine would pass through the cockpit on its way to the tail if you don't get between. [INT: You’d be toast.] It'd be, it'd be over. So I was doing real well until the Assistant Director, Jack Reddish said, "Let's just practice once more." And I hit a flag straight on, which would have been a tree and I thought, "No more rehearsing. That's it." I got on my stupid James Garner wig. I'm talking to the stuffed dummy; I'm so frightened. I got in the plane after I'd set the cameras and it was anchored down by a chain. So I'd get up to speed, cut it loose and I would get it up, get the tail up, so it's a little bit more maneuverable, just barely touching with your front wheels, and then go between the trees and land in the road. Except as I got ready to go, here comes Jack Reddish running across, got the signal that all six cameras were up to speed and he climbed up on the wing and according to a book I read, 'cause I'm sure it was accurate, he said, "Camera four thinks you better look again because maybe you'd like a 50 instead of a 70 millimeter." And I said, "You can put a Coca-Cola bottle in it for all I care, because if you don't get off the wing, you're gonna be in the shot. 'Cause I'm going right now or I'm not going ever." And he said this obviously crazed man was about to take off anyway so he jumped off. And I rammed the power home, power's on the left, not on the right like an American plane. I was afraid I'd cut it trying to save the crash. So I rammed the power home and it got going so fast it lifted up off the ground. It was flying. And it was much easier to steer. So I would be on one tree, right at it and then I'd be on the other. And I waited until the very last second and I stabbed the rudder and waited and there was nothing. There was no crash. There was a shudder. That's all I could feel. And as I looked around, I thought, what happened? Where was the crash and the pain and everything else? And all I could see is blue sky because the damn thing was heading for Salzburg without its wings and without its propeller. And it cleared the road. It cleared the embankment on the far side. It doesn't match at all. And of course then it came down with a thud 'cause it didn't fly very well with no wings. And next thing I knew I started waking up and there were about eight people. And the only time I was really hurt badly was, there were about eight people in the cockpit trying to cut through all the safety straps they'd put on me and they were trying to get me out before it burst into flame. And they were okay--[INT: People would, people would consider you a daredevil.] No, they would consider me stupid. [INT: [LAUGH] Well you weren't exactly risk averse there to doing, as directing it and then, and then doing the gag yourself.] Well, there just wasn't another way to do it. If we'd a had another way, I would have done it. But if we'd a put it on a--[INT: But you were gonna get the shot.] I was gonna get the shot and we only had one airplane. So you can't put it on a ski jump. You can't pull it by cable. You gotta fly the thing into the trees.

INT: Now you had worked with McQueen [Steve McQueen] on that picture [THE GREAT ESCAPE] and on THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and probably something else as well. [RR: NEVER SO FEW.] And, yes, and at that, and then late, after a few years, he asked you to be his partner. You want to talk about that, because it led to a great film that I want you to talk about, which is BULLITT.
RR: Well, Steve and I had known each other over a number of pictures and after he was, he was getting ready to finish SAND PEBBLES [THE SAND PEBBLES] through the William Morris Agency that represented all of us. He suggested that we go into business, and that he would star in the pictures and I would produce them, and we would make six pictures. And we made that agreement and the Morris office sold it to Jack Warner, and we didn't do anything for about four months. And finally, I went to see Mr. Warner and said, "We're gonna get off our tails and make a picture." And he said, "Good. What?" And I said, "We're gonna make that thing called Mute Witness about the policeman in Chicago, but we're gonna change the name to BULLITT." And he said, "Why does what's his name want to do a establishment picture when it's a time of anti-establishment and anti-war demonstrations and everything else?" And I said, "Well, what's his name who's name you should really learn 'cause you pay him a fortune, thinks he can do something special with the policeman." And Warner in this long, long meeting said, "Listen, what do you think it'll cost?" I said, "Four million." He said, "When can I have it?" I said, "Christmas." And he said, "The meeting's over. Go." And that was it. That was the entire meeting. That's not a synopsis--[INT: That's pretty incredible.]--which will never happen in today's market. [INT: No, and that's not bad because that was, that was your first film as a full Producer, wasn't it?] It was. [INT: And embarking on a very interesting, you know, go with the, with the biggest star in Hollywood at that point, just about.] And he worked so hard on it. I mean he rode for a month before we started shooting; he rode in a police car at night with a couple of homicide guys. And everybody worked so hard to figure out what to do, particularly the Director, who was an Englishman and had never seen San Francisco before. He'd never seen the United States before. And he thought it was fascinating that every other--He said, "United States is all liquor stores and parking lots." And he said, "I'm fascinated by this and we'll make something out of it." And then we decided to put a chase in and see if that would work, through the hills of San Francisco. [INT: Which became one of the most famous car chases in history of filmmaking.]

INT: And which leads me to the thing that everybody wants to know about is, how did the whole scheme for doing it [BULLITT] get concocted and planned and prepared and how did you manage it? You were doing something incredible in the streets of a fully active city [San Francisco].
RR: We had assigned to us each day two policemen, two big Irish policemen, who would go with us and we'd say, "Tomorrow we want to run from this intersection to that intersection, or up this hill." And they'd say, "That's gonna be tough, but we'll get it done. How much crew have you got?" I said, "Well, the wardrobe man, the prop man, all the make-up men." So they'd hide 'em behind hedges and everything else, so that a guy didn't back out of his garage and something like that happen. So the two cops had that support. I had Steve [Steve McQueen] and Bill Hickman, who drove the Charger, go out in an abandoned airfield and they would practice together going at high speed with their windows rolled down and high five each other, so that they got used to each other and they got confidence in each other that they were safe to work with. And from then on it was just rehearsal and shoot it. [INT: Wow. That's pretty incredible because it just goes on and on and some of the most difficult driving. And wasn't anybody concerned about the star being hurt in those sequences?] They really weren't because Steve's first love was driving. And just to convert it to a Mustang instead of a Formula car wasn't that difficult. And he enjoyed it. He and Hickman had total confidence in each other and he was, he was thrilled doing it. Hickman, who is a professional stunt driver, we just put big black horn-rimmed glasses on him to make him look different and he never had a line and he's fine in the part. [INT: And the studio had no concerns about McQueen, you know, their high, their high investment getting hurt in these things?] Well, frankly, the studio didn't have any interest in the picture because Jack Warner sold Warner Bros. to Seven Arts [Seven Arts Pictures]. He left and a new head of the studio came in who wanted to be extremely active creatively on every project. We didn't exactly see it that way and we hadn't had that kind of arrangement with Jack Warner, so he and I, the new head of the studio, met in the Fairmont all day on a Sunday about a week before the picture started, and at the end of that meeting we excused everybody from the room, then he and I talked another hour, and then it was decided that we would go ahead and make BULLITT. The other five pictures would be cancelled and we would please, when we got an answer print, as he put it, "Get the hell off the lot and take your cars with you." And when I--Steve came to me about a week later and said, "Why don't you be a big person? Why don't you call Mr. Hyman [Elliot Hyman] at the studio and say, 'Why don't you come and look at our film? We've got a couple of weeks work and we've cut together in a rough cut and why don't you take a look at it?'" I said, "All right. All right." And I called and he said, "I'll tell you love, I'd just as soon see the picture in the theaters." And I said, "Fine." That was it and they never spoke to us again. And we got it cut, got an answer print, moved off the lot with our cars and that was the end of it.

INT: Now with the car chase sequence like that, planning and execution is everything. You have to plan it well. You have to execute it well. And for many of our Assistant Directors, UPMs [Unit Production Managers] and Directors in planning to do something as bold as that car chase was, what would you advise them to do in planning and executing that kind of a sequence?
RR: I think what you have to do is you have to prepare it 'til you think you're gonna go crazy. And you gotta go over it again at quarter speed and then at half speed. And you've gotta have maps and you gotta have little toy cars that you do on a, on a piece of sheet wood just to show what you're gonna do, so that everybody clearly understands what it is. And then the police have to be involved very carefully to say, "Okay, what are we gonna do about that hedge? Well the makeup man's not doing anything. We'll hide him behind the hedge and he can protect that garage door." It's just preparation, preparation, preparation.

INT: Now you made a number of films with McQueen [Steve McQueen] until it came all apart, which was on LE MANS. And you were producing in all these situations, but I'm sure that your work as a, as an Assistant Director, as a UPM [Unit Production Manager], you only did a couple pictures as a UPM, if I'm not mistaken. [RR: That's correct.] And, but nevertheless, you were involved in this whole structuring and production management situation working with the ADs [Assistant Directors] and all of your background was coming at play. How did you work with the members of the Director's team on those things as a Producer?
RR: Well as a Producer, I think I worked pretty close with the Assistant Director team. The problem is, anybody who has been an Assistant Director, it's really tough to keep your hands off things. And I've had more than one Assistant Director over the years say to me, "Will you please take your hands off the board? Quit moving the strips around." I'd say, "I'm gonna put 'em back. I just want to see what if?" because you can't get out of that habit. You just want to see, what if I did this, would it be okay? And it… You'd also keep them, I always kept, having been an Assistant Director, I always kept them informed of everything that was going on because I respected their job and their responsibility.

INT: Well you have had many experiences and I'm kind of leaping ahead a little bit but for a reason, because you did a lot of films as a Producer and then you were a production head at Mel Simon Productions [Melvin Simon Productions], Keith Barish Productions, Lorimar Pictures [Lorimar Motion Pictures]; you were head of physical production for Paramount and then for many years at MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer], which is a, you know, you're famous amongst all of us for having been at the helm of those things for those many years. But in looking at that and thinking of the Unit Production Managers of today, what is it that you would expect of a UPM? What qualities would you look for in a UPM?
RR: I would look for awful high qualities because having done it, you know how much it affects the outcome of a film, including its quality. 'Cause if you do it right, you take pressure off the Director. If you do it right, you give the Director more time to do his thing. If you do it right, you're not endangering people. If you do it right, everybody gets a chance to do their job properly, if you organize it properly. So I expect an awful lot out of a UPM. And I don't' expect him to be the Producer's guy or the studio's guy. I expect him to be the project's guy, who is looking out for the best of the project and being honest about it. And I have never told somebody that, "The UPM told me this or told me that." Any time they told me something, it was kept in absolute strict confidence.