INT: Good morning. My name is Michael Caton-Jones, today is 22nd of April, 2013, and I'm conducting an interview with John Glen, for the Directors Guild of America's Visual History program. We're at BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in London, England.

JG: My name is John Malcolm Glen. I was born on the 15th of May, 1932 in a town called Sunbury-on-Thames, which is a suburb of London, England.

INT: Great to see you, John, glad you're here; this is going to be fun. First, I just want to ask you to speak a little bit about your early life, your education, the background of where you come from and what have you, just a bit about your early existence. 

JG: Yeah. Thank you, Michael, for doing this interview. Yeah, I was born in Sunbury-on-Thames, which is a suburb of London. I was born to a working class family. I was one of four children. I was the youngest, I was the only boy, so I was kind of spoiled by my sisters if you like. And I was educated at the local Kenyngton Manor Primary School and then the elementary school that followed it. This was during the war [WWII], I was seven when I heard the historic speech from Neville Chamberlain, declaring war on Germany. And I had, I was 14 when the war finished. And that coincided with me leaving school. So I didn't really have a very good education, because the war interrupted; our school was burned down and we were moved to an orphanage and then we had the whole of the summer off, which was wonderful. So really speaking, I sort of, it was the university of life if you like, that I attended. But it was a very exciting childhood, and I think in a way it fostered an awful lot of the action ideas that I developed later on in my career. [INT: Do you think you were different from anybody else at that time? Or was it, like some kids got taken to the country to get away from the bombing and what have you. And Sunbury was, I guess, still within range?] Oh yes, we had our fair share of bombs and we were evacuated at one point, but only for about three or four days because most of the incendiaries and most of the shells that came, bombs that came down were self-inflicted. They had these mobile guns that used to tear around the streets, and send up Ack-Ack shells at these aircraft; they never hit anything. And we had one that landed and tunneled into the ground, and they thought it was an unexploded bomb, so we were all evacuated for three days. It was a bit of a laugh really. But it was fun. And I suppose it was fun for us kids, because we adapt very easily if we're children, to a war situation and it could have been a lot worse. The house opposite of where we lived was demolished and the family were killed, which wasn't fun, but it was a thing that happened quite often. [INT: And you know, a lot of people who went through the war, or who were kids through the war, often say they weren't particularly frightened, it was just quite adventurous, it was quite fun in many respects. I'm thinking, again, like John Boorman's film HOPE AND GLORY, kind of summed up for a lot of people.] Yeah, HOPE AND GLORY I found was almost a mirror of my life as a child. The playthings we used, shrapnel and fire bombs that we dug out of the pavements and there was a local prisoner of war camp at Kempton Park and the more daring amongst us used to tunnel under the wire and steal German jackboots and one guy in particular had an SS dagger, which was a prized possession.

INT: So tell me about your family, John. Your Dad, your Mom; do you have any brothers or sisters? 

JG: Yeah, I had three sisters. I was the youngest of four. My dad was a toolmaker, engineer, and he was so, you know, obviously concerned with the war [WWII] effort and making various munitions and so forth. And my mother had a part time job as an inspector in a factory, which was quite close by, as an inspector. And you know, generally the…my two sisters joined the Air Force, and they became WAAFs [Women's Auxiliary Air Force], and they disappeared off, but not until sort of almost 1944 I think they joined up. And they were posted to Egypt. I was a member of the Sea Cadets, and that was really how I got interested in film, mainly, because my friend in the Sea Cadets was a guy called "Whacker" Williams, that was his nickname. And he was a year older than me, and he already had a job at Nettlefold Studios [aka Walton Studios], as a messenger boy. And he was being promoted to the camera department. And he said, "If you get down there real quickly on your bike, you might get the job." Well, I went down as fast as I could to Nettlefold Studios, and the commissioner looked at me, he took one look, and I was a tall, lanky lad, and he said, "No, the uniform won't fit you, you got no chance." He said, "But I've got a friend at Shepperton Studios." And he got on the telephone, and sent me over to Shepperton Studios, and they took my name and address. No telephones in those days. And about three weeks later I got a little letter to go for an interview at Shepperton Studios, where I managed to get the job as office boy, or messenger boy. I was one of 15 messenger boys. They used to take works orders around and what have you, on their bicycles. And I remember, I think my second day, I came tearing 'round the corner in the studio, and I bumped into this figure, and we both fell to the ground. And Anthony Asquith got up and dusted himself off. He was wearing a boiler suit, which-- 'cause he always considered himself one of the workers. And he was the son of a past Prime Minister, and was very much a man of the people, lovely man, actually. So that was my first introduction, if you like, to films, and the way that there is no, in films there's no class distinction, there's no racial problems, there's, you know, everyone's very open, even in those days. I was interested to see that a lot of the Directors in those days used to wear collar and ties and trilby hats to work. [INT: Were they considered management?] Not really. I think Directors…I mean one of my early experiences with Directors was Carol Reed of course. Eventually when I became numbering boy, eventually, I used to empty film bins and burn nitro film. I burnt my eyebrows off on several occasions. Nearly set the studio alight on one occasion as well. And I eventually managed to survive, and I became a numbering boy. I used to encode the film, and then eventually I got promoted to the junior assistant on THE THIRD MAN. And of course they had a tremendous fire on that, in the cutting rooms. And they lost seven reels of cutting copy. And they all had to be recut and they pulled in every editor in the business to try and keep to their original schedule; they reprinted everything and I made a small fortune as numbering boy, 'cause I was there day and night. I mean there was no child protection in those days; I was working 'til midnight. And Carol Reed used to come in and bring me a bottle of beer, which was very nice.

INT: Now, the kind of description you've got of how you got started, just makes me sort of remember that there was a lot of studios around London. Much more than there is today. Maybe you could describe, because it's also, it was like an apprenticeship system, and it was a very hierarchical in many ways. It was very structured, which is kind of gone now. Maybe you could describe how that whole world worked. You know, it was all in the periphery of London I guess. 

JG: Sunbury-on-Thames was ideally situated really, for film studios. We had Nettlefold's [Nettlefold Studios] down the road, three or four miles; we had Shepperton [Shepperton Studios], about the same distance. There was Teddington [Teddington Studios], there was Gaumont-British [Gaumont-British Picture Corporation], there was Pinewood [Pinewood Studios]. There was also Denham Studios [Denham Film Studios]. [INT: And these are generally in the west and north of London in the periphery, yeah?] Oh yes. And towards the north of London, of course, you had the Elstree Studios, there were about five studios in Elstree, including MGM, had a big studio, very modern studio there, which I was to work in later on. And there, they were the ABPC [Associated British Picture Corporation] at Elstree. There was the Gate Studios; there was masses of studios. [INT: And they were all busy?] Periodically, I mean there was also an awful lot of unemployment. Alexander Korda was in charge at Shepperton, and he'd brought up, come over from Denham Studios and he brought up his main technicians with him. John Cox was in charge of the sound there, and Poppa Day [W. Percy Day] was there, doing the scenic artwork. Lovely characters. And Jack Drake I worked with, he came over, he used to be a projectionist and then there was early days of trick photography. He brought Mann, an American guy called Mann, who was in charge of that. And it was a nice, it was a good time and Korda was terribly popular with the workforce. And he was a very nice man, and I don't think Prudential Insurance Company would agree with me, but… He cost them quite a lot of money, but he made some very good films. Of course he was a Hungarian refugee and he and his brother, or two brothers, actually, Zoltan and Vincent [Vincent Korda] was an Art Director. And of course Alexander was a very good film Director. While I was in my early days there, he directed THE IDEAL HUSBAND, and I used to go on the sets there and watch them, and make with the camera cranes you know, all the lights and the extras. You forget how hot it used to get on those stages, with all the brutes, you know, they have all these huge lamps generating a huge amount of heat, and it wasn't unusual to hear snoring come from the gantry. And the electricians had fallen asleep and they're snoring in the middle of a shot! [INT: I think you can still get that today.]

INT: But essentially, it was a kind of world [British studio system], where there was a continuity, especially of learning how to make films, that kind of has disappeared now in a way. 

JG: Yeah. I think that was the thing, it was almost, I mean it was the only time in my career that I've ever been permanently employed, and I was employed as a Second Assistant [Second Assistant Director] eventually. There was no contract, but there was a continuity and I got to know every department, every department head. I got to know the master carpenter, Percy Rohanson; I worked for him for a while as an office boy. And when you're at, you start at that age, people are very kind to you. And they want to help you, and every department I used to deliver my works orders to, you know, I got interested in the makeup, the hair, and particularly the editing department. And the editing department attracted me because I loved the smell of pear drops, and the amyl acetate we used to use as cement in those days. It had this particular smell, which attracted me funny enough. And I got to know the people in the editing rooms, and the projectionists, and they were all in one block. And the theaters there and the Red Law was the recording, the sound dubbing was on a much smaller scale in those days.

INT: So, let's just move on to, how you got here, section B. What was the first movie you ever saw, or certainly that made an impression on you? 

JG: I think honestly that WAGES OF FEAR (1953), I was about 16 when I saw it, and I remember I saw it at the cinema in Ashford, and it made such a huge impression on me, and it was such an unusual film. He [Henri-Georges Clouzot, director] spent about 20 minutes just establishing the atmosphere in this remote town in North Africa somewhere, some mining town. And he very cleverly portrayed the desperate situation for all the unemployed people there. And he took his time, you know? And it was interesting, and particularly as it was a French film somehow. And then what I noticed was when one of the characters went in to get the job, to carry this nitroglycerin in a truck up this mountainside; very dangerous job, and it was demonstrated on screen how dangerous it was, when they got an eye dropper, with a little piece of nitroglycerin, and he dropped it onto the concrete floor and it blew a hole in the floor. And it was at that point I realized the value of inserts. That tiny little shots where you see the drip of the eye dropper, you'd see the drip going, volume and then drops, and then you see the explosion, and that set up the whole danger of this film. [INT: Were you aware of it, as you were watching it, or was it by studying it lately, later?] I was aware of it, I was aware of the importance of the insert, so somewhere inside me, it was something I could do if you like. You know, something that was possible that one day I would get to do those little shots. Not a big film, but you know, little isolated shots. And the second one that I thought was wonderful, was the way he managed to show the power of the explosion when one of those trucks blows up. There's a chap who's rolling a cigarette, and he's just got the cigarette paper and the tobacco, and suddenly, the tobacco gets blown out of the, without any sound, just the tobacco is blown out the cigarette paper. Then comes the explosion. And funny enough, I was to experience this, during the war [WWII], when I was in the orphanage; we were evacuated when our school got bombed. And I was sitting at the back of the class, and suddenly the window burst open, and there was a goldfish bowl on the window ledge, and that emptied all over me; I was at the back of the class, being the tallest boy. And that was followed by the explosion, followed by the sound of the rocket arriving, and that was the first rocket that fell in England, the V-2. And it was interesting, 'cause it was a similar analogy if you like, between the two incidents. [INT: Not what you consciously expect actually.] No, but I mean the devastation of that, I mean later on in the day a friend and I went through the police lines and cordons and we went to Ashford [Ashford, Kent, UK] and I was horrified with what I saw, you know, the whole street was demolished. Houses both side, were completely demolished, so let's hope it never happens.

INT: So before you ever got into the film business, did you have any idea what a Director does? Or did? 

JG: Not really, I mean I just, I've always loved film. I used to watch the Saturday morning fleapit [run-down theater] at Falton, I used to go to the Roxy Cinema there. All the kids would be there and it was unruly, you know, there were people were hurling things at the screen and shout; talk about audience participation! But of course most of them were American serials and each episode would end with some chap in a terrifying position. You know, where the ceiling was coming down to meet the floor and he was going to get squashed to death. "Come back next week!" [LAUGH] A bit like a Bond [James Bond] film, really. [INT: Yeah, it's amazing, there is a whole, you know, 'cause I grew up doing the same thing, Saturday morning pictures was such a social event.] Oh yeah. [INT: And it was really noisy. The people forget as an introduction to the movies.] Bottles rolling down the floor, you know. [INT: And very simple formulas, that did rely on a cliffhanger, you know?]

INT: Why do you think it's difficult for most people to understand what a Director does? 

JG: I can understand that because, I mean a Director does many things, and basically to put it in its simplest terms, the Producer does the money, the Director does the creative, he makes the movie. But their paths cross quite often, but generally there is that separation. It certainly was true on the Bond [James Bond] films. The Producers never bothered me with money matters, only if I went over budget, which I never did, actual fact. But if I had of done, they would have called me in the office and say, "We gotta do something about this." But generally they, you know, we work a budget out, we work a schedule out, we make sure that we keep to that schedule, because if you don't keep to the schedule it can get horribly confusing for the production office. And become very expensive.

INT: What do you think, I mean this is a general one, but what do you think the Director's creative contribution is? I mean, you know, you kind of said it there, that they make the movie, but what overall, if you can give a bit more detail about that. 

JG: Yeah. Well you start off with, you know, most films start off with a script, which is adapted maybe from a book. If you're lucky, a successful book, like the HARRY POTTERS for instance, you know? You've already got a successful book, so you're one step ahead anyway. Then you have to script the films, and then you have to then sometimes condense a huge, like GONE WITH THE WIND for instance. Huge book. And they did such a superb job of condensing it down into two hours screen time, which is, you know, quite a task on times. I know that on the Bond film, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, big book, one of the best Bond, one of the best Fleming [Ian Fleming] books, and Peter Hunt's biggest problem was the length of the film, because there was so much in it, and I always remember he said to me, the bob run sequence [bobsled race], which I directed, he'd come in and I cut it as well, and he'd come in and he'd say, "You've got to clip a few more feet off, you know, we gotta do it." And it was working so well, and it really hurts, you've gotta go through and clip a few more frames off, to try and keep the film down to a reasonable length, because if the film becomes too long, if it's two and a half hours long, then you know, you're losing one showing a day, so it's costing money. So it's important you don't go over about two hours, 10 minutes. And that was I think the ideal length really, for an action movie. And that's what we tried to do, but Cubby [Albert "Cubby" Broccoli], used to every time we ran on ON HER MAJESTY'S [ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE], Cubby would say "How long is it?" And Peter would lie through his teeth and say, "Oh it's two hours, 10 minutes." It was two and a half hours! And there's a clock in the cinema and you could see he was lying, and Cubby, you know, tongue in cheek, he just sort of didn't say anything about it, but he kept on, you know, "You've gotta keep it down, the length." [INT: It's a long 2:10.]

INT: I know you mentioned WAGES OF FEAR, but can you remember when it was that you decided that, "I want to become a Director." 

JG: I think probably, I didn't really think then that I would ever become a Director, but the lessons of that film, I never forgot. And all the way through my career I realized the importance of inserts. And that is what I really was started me on the path of directing, because after a career as Sound Editor, then I became after a long period, many films as Sound Editor, I became a picture Editor, starting on a documentary and then I gradually got onto television series. And I really learned how to edit films working on TV series, because the process used to come 'round every four or five weeks, whereas if you do a feature film, it's every year. So it takes you, you don't get that much practice at it, but when you're doing TV, you know you have a constant barrage of film being thrown at you and you have to work fast and you have to find shortcuts. And you have to really work very fast and very hard. It's great practice. [INT: You gotta get to the essence of this story quickly.] Yeah. You know, in a lot of ways it can be frustrating, TV, but it does give you practice and it brings on talent. But it's interesting how I've always looked for shortcuts. I've always looked at new ways, innovations to try and speed up the editing process if you like. And it happened really, it started with sound editing. THREE MEN IN A BOAT. I'd just got married for the first time, and I had to cancel the honeymoon, 'cause I got a job on THREE MEN IN A BOAT, the job's were very scarce. And Ralph Kemplen was the Editor, and he had two other sound Editors, Gerry Hambling and Stan Hawkes were the other two, and they needed all the help they could get, because they had a very rushed post-production schedule. So, I got the job of doing Montmorency's [dog] barking, which I got Percy Edwards in to do. I looped the whole film and it was quite amazing to watch this Percy Edwards sitting in front of the microphone doing all these dog barks. I had an awful job to keep a straight face half the time, I must admit. But Ralph said to me, he said, "Look, I'm having to recut the film all the time, so you won't be able to lay up all your tracks, because it will all be out of sync when I recut the film. So, I took that on board, and I thought well I've got to find a way, where I can actually make the date and cope with the film being constantly recut. So what I did was, I just adopted a new system. It was new to me. I pre-fitted all my sound effects, and without actually laying them out into tracks, into reels. And I just put them in cans and waited until the weekend before we would go in the dubbing theater, when I thought it was pretty safe, that they weren't going to recut anymore, I then spent the whole weekend laying up the first few reels and then during that first week of dubbing I laid up the rest of the reels. And my assistant nearly had a nervous breakdown, 'cause he had to make out all the cue sheets and the dubbing sheets. But I made it, and I didn't have to change, I didn't have to alter too much, and I think Ralph Kemplen was very impressed with the way I coped with it, because he came in to my cutting room in the week before dubbing and he looked at the rack and there weren't any reels laid up. And he looked twice at me, and as much as, "I hope you know what you're doing." 'Cause I had never worked with him before, but he had faith and it worked.

INT: Of course nowadays a lot of that is computerized [sound editing] and you can move it around really quickly. [JG: It's all changed, yeah.] I wonder how much that's changed the approach, because it is so easy to move things around, whereas before, I remember like when I was working with Jim Clark, every single cut you made in the film had to be thought through and chosen. 

JG: Yeah. But I think the modern technology, certain things have improved, usually. I think the sound has, I mean, I think the business where we used to lay out the soundtracks, you know, sometimes you'd have 105 soundtracks going through simultaneously, and you had to pre-dub and every time you pre-dubbed, you lost quality. And I mean, go back even further, for instance THE THIRD MAN, I had to paint out every join. Every join on the soundtrack, on the dialogue track, I would have to paint out. Sometimes--[INT: How do you mean when you say paint out, what do you mean?] Well you have an ink, and on the celluloid, where the join is, if it goes through unaided it makes a pop, so you have to put a line through, a tapered line, so that gradually it doesn't make a sound going through. And I was very young, and I had a very steady hand, and I was chosen to be the blooper. [INT: Which is different nowadays.] Yeah.

INT: When and how, apart from being a runner or a general factotum, when and how did you get your first, what you would consider your first professional film job, a kind of break for you? 

JG: Yeah, I think it was probably on television. I did about three or four different series. [INT: When was this?] This was in the ‘50s [1950s] and ‘60s [1960s]. But I did I think four TV series: DANGER MAN with Patrick McGoohan, who incidentally would have made a wonderful James Bond. He was a terrific Actor. [INT: And your job on these was?] Editor. Yeah. And what would happen is, they would pull the plug on the Director after 10 days, you know, we had the two week schedule. And if the Director hadn't finished his film, the Producer would cut, give a signal to the electrician, and all the lights would go out. And he was gone. So what happened then was they used to, the Producer would call me in and say, "You're gonna finish that film." And it was usually lots of inserts and things, it wasn't that important, but I would get the job to go on the floor with a crew, a small crew, and finish that episode. And that would be fitted, you know, I would fit that in with my other work. And sometimes if you got a particularly troublesome episode, like Sid Cole [Sidney Cole] was very good at saying, "Look, put that on the shelf and we'll go on to the next episode, and we'll keep that there for a little while, and then we'll think about it, and then we'll re-do certain scenes." And I would get the job to go and direct that, so that's how I really got the break from editing and directing. It was through inserts, and I used to, I remember the effectiveness of WAGES OF FEAR, the inserts, and I used to try and bring imagination to these shots, because you'd ring Central Casting to get someone to come and do hand, you know, to...we had a filly razor thing, you know, which had a round head and Patrick McGoohan used it as a tape recorder, you see, like a spy you know, tape recorder. And you had to lace up a tiny little bit of magnetic film, and I used to have to cut the film up like a little bootlace, and lace up this little spool that we made. And the guy from Central Casting used to, they used to send someone down that invariably had the shakes, you know? And so I would say, "Look, you sit there and have a cup a tea." And I used to go and do it myself, so I not only did the inserts, I used to act in them as well. [INT: But it's a very good lesson in the importance of good storytelling, how to put things together, how to compress a storyline, or how to illustrate the storyline.] Yeah. It's so important, particularly, you know, if you're building tension in a scene, you know, there's nothing better than the fraying rope, keep cutting on the fraying rope. It's very inexpensive to shoot and it works very well. [INT: It always interests me, because different people come into the film business as a Director in different ways; some come from scripts, some come from acting, shooting, whatever. And they tend to focus on one or two little aspects of that, that you can see in their work somehow or other.] Yes, yeah. I think Directors come from all backgrounds, don't they? I mean I was lucky; I came from the editing department. I got my first break directing an episode of Sid Cole's series, MAN IN A SUITCASE, and I went two days over schedule, and that was fatal; they never asked me again. [INT: The thing about editing is, that I always find is that's where the film is made to me, everything else is conjecture up to that point. You can do this, you could do that.] I think it's true, I think you can... I don't think you can make a great film out of a poor film, but you can minimize the embarrassments, put it that way. [INT: Yeah, which we all do.]

INT: Mentors. Who were your mentors and teachers that were particularly significant to you? 

JG: Well, I worked with Charlie Crichton [Charles Crichton]; you may remember him. He did lots of Ealing [Ealing Studios] films. THE LAVENDER HILL MOB I think was one of his. [INT: What was he like?] He was a fantastic man, and he said to me, he said, "You know, Mickey Balcon [Michael Balcon], he paid us 50 pounds a week," and they made these wonderful films--the Ealing comedies. And I edited some episodes of TV that he was doing, DANGER MAN and what have you. And he was getting on, getting quite old then, and I remember him in the cutting room, ecause he used to be an Editor, a film Editor; a very good one. He worked with Korda [Alexander Korda]. And I used to run the film for him, and he would say, "Stop." and I'd stop, and he'd clutch his head, and he'd... I thought he died, I really did. 10 minutes, not a word or a breath or anything, like this, and I thought, I thought I better say something, so I said, "Uh Charlie..." and he said, "Shut up, I'm thinking!" He was quite a character, and I'm glad that at the end of the day, that he did A FISH CALLED WANDA. And John Cleese made a wonderful gesture and gave him the full credit, 'cause they were co-Directors and John at the end of the day said, "No, you take the full credit," 'cause he was a great admirer of Charlie's work. [INT: If you look at it technically, it's an extremely well put together film, it really is.] Oh yeah. Alan Hume, of course, photographed it; he was my cameraman lots of times. [INT: So Charlie Crichton was one, and I guess there were a lot of other Directors and what have you, around it were, because it was such an industry.] Oh yes, yeah. Well, of course I was a great admirer of films like David Lean's movies. I thought they were wonderful. I mean, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is one of my favorite films, I mean Alec Guinness was so superb. What a wonderful story, but beautifully directed. I think probably his biggest problem, as a Director, was he took too long between films. I mean, he would spend like seven or eight years sometimes, you know, perfecting the script and it's too long, you don't live long enough to do, you know, that few films.

INT: And any other filmmakers [influences & mentors], particularly in Britain but also... 

JG: Yeah, I think John Huston was a Director I admired very much. I remember them doing THE AFRICAN QUEEN. I was a young lad down at Shepperton Studios and I watched them do some of the exterior scenes of the boat with Humphrey Bogart, who's one of my favorite Actors. And he just... What I loved about him was that he brought humor, so much humor. I mean THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE is one of my favorite films; the characterizations are beautiful in the film. And of course Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock] was wonderful, the way he used humor in his action, which is a lesson to me, and I think it was FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, where he, Cary Grant, whether it was a stupid chase through a village, you know, where there was an ambulance, a car, and the spies; there were like three vehicles. And he took the curse off it by having a drunk step out of a bar to cross the road, and the first vehicle goes through and he steps back, the same thing happens with the second vehicle, and when the third one comes along he turns around and goes back in the pub. I just think that was absolutely wonderful way to take the curse off of a corny situation. [INT: Yeah, 'cause often I mean not just with action, but with anything you're trying to find light and shade, 'cause of it's all full on...] Oh yeah. Yeah, well humor is so important, certainly in action movies. You know, there's nothing better than when you have a very exciting sequence and at the end of it there's a climax and something that surprises an audience. And because they're so tense and so pent up in the sequence, when they get an opportunity to release the tension, they will laugh, you know, if you give them an excuse to do. I think that worked very well in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. I directed the pre-title sequence with the ski parachute jump. That was a perfect example of how, you know, there was a surprise at the end where the Union Jack comes out. [INT: And did it generally get a laugh?] It had this wonderful tension with the fantastic stunt, which Rick Sylvester did, oh yeah. Death defying stunt! And I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the skis, what would happen; I tried to think of everything, but when you go off the cliff, your skis act like a parachute. So we knew that would happen, so we arranged to release the skis. But what I didn't realize, was, of course, at the certain point, the skis will catch up with the parachute, and they did and one of them hit the canopy. And it was a nasty moment there, fortunately it hit it at the right angle, and it shot off into space, but it could have been, it could have been disastrous. But you try and think, as a Director you try and think of every eventuality, everything that could possibly go wrong, and you try and make plans for that. But on that particular stunt, we didn't have a rope long enough if he'd got hooked up in the mountain, it was 7,000 feet, sheer face. We didn't have a rope long enough and there was no way we could have got down to him, so it's the only thing I couldn't figure out how we'd ever get 'round it; I'm sure some clever guy would have gone down with, climbed down the face or something. But the helicopter couldn't help him.

INT: Your work, you've touched on this, but see if there's anything specific that your work as an Editor, prepares you for directing. As we said, you know, some people come as one way, some people come another; is there anything that you can think of that as an Editor you learned or informed you for when you become a Director? 

JG: Yes, I think so. I think editing is a great help, obviously. I don't think it necessarily makes you a great Director, or a good Director, but it's an advantage. You know you have to have setups. You know, in the Bond movies I mean, we did a survey once about how many cuts there were in a reel, which means setups and there's, like, two seconds don't go by without a cut. You know, it's very, very fast moving, ‘cause you're defying continuity all the time. So you have to have setups. I think that what you learn is that, and Peter Hunt I think was a great Editor for the Bond movies. He created a whole new style, an abbreviated style of editing. And Sean Connery only had to look towards the door and you cut into the corridor, and he came out into the corridor. Well that was quite a revolution in its day, because before then, people used to use real time. It would take as long as it would take for a man to walk across the office, open the door and go into the corridor. And Peter Hunt developed this style. I'm sure Terence Young must have had something to do with it as well, but basically the first film they did, anything that was boring had to be cut out, you know? [INT: It's not a bad thing to bear in mind. You know.]

INT:You said you did a lot of inserts, but you also worked as a Second Unit Director, separately. Was there anything in that that prepared you? 

JG: Oh yes, very much so. Yeah, because I mean I did SUPERMAN. I was lucky enough. I had just come back from doing second unit on another film, and I got a call from Dick Donner [Richard Donner]. And I went down to Pinewood [Pinewood Studios], I hadn't even unpacked my bag and he was sitting in his office, you know, in the middle of a shooting day; a very relaxed guy, Richard, I must say. And he had his feet up on the desk and then John Williams, the composer, was in there and I met him and he was getting set up. Told me what he’d, he said, "I have to get back to shoot some material. I've got to go out to Canada next week, but I've got to get back after three weeks, and will you come and help me out?" And so I went out there. He came back, left me with his unit and I shot for another four weeks there with Margot Kidder. Kidder? And I shot a lot of the earthquake stuff for that. [INT: What kind of stuff do they ask as a second unit? Do they ask you to be within the style of the rest of the way they're shooting, or is it specifically inserts or is it?] Well, Dick was very laid back, he just said, "You know what you're doing, go out and do it," basically. He said, "You can have my Winnebago and the driver." And the location was about a two hour run, to this place we were shooting, which was the worst place; they always had a cloud over the top of this particular town. It was in this kind of a depression in the prairie, and there was this cloud sitting on top of this place, and it was, you know, you go five miles down the road it was beautifully sunny, but where we were it was always in the shade. But that was an experience, working with him, and I did some good shots, and I think what I always used to try and do is put the audience in the driving seat, be as realistic as possible. And I remember when I blew up the garage in that film, I put a camera in the car, in Margot Kidder's car, in the back. And then I timed it, so that the explosion took place in the rear, through the rear window of the car. So we were on the move, and the garage exploded, filled up the whole of the back windscreen. And it was a beautiful shot, and Dick loved it. A lot of stuff you do as a Second Unit Director doesn't ever appear in the film, you know? I mean, for one reason or another, but that appeared in the film, and so did quite a lot of the other shots I did. Margot Kidder was very nice to work with, and I didn't realize she had a problem with her eyes; she was wearing contact lenses. And they were in the early days of contact lenses, and she kept blinking all the time, and I'd say, "Yeah it was great Margo, can you do it again. Can you not blink this time?" And, "Oh, did I blink?" I said, "Yes you did." So that was a bit of a problem. [INT: People aren't aware of it, yeah.]

INT: Here's an easy one. What is the job of a Director? 

JG: Well, I mean you hold the whole thing together really, I mean you plan the film. You prepare all the action, the storyboards. You concentrate a lot on the things you're not going to do. In other words, if you're a Director of the main unit, you can't do everything yourself. You know, you have to delegate to an action unit. And you pick your Second Unit Director and you brief him on what you want, and you prepare storyboards, which show every cut that you require. And then you go through it with him in detail, so you explain exactly what you're trying to get. And then you say to him, "And of course, if anything better comes up when you're shooting, shoot it, don't feel restricted to the storyboard!" It's a guide only and you'll find things will happen; there may be a better way to do something. Maybe the light's in a better situation to do it in a different way, feel free to go ahead. And of course you'll see in the rushes coming through to you a couple of days later. They're shooting somewhere else in the world. And you can look at the stuff and if it's not right, you go on the phone, you say, "Do it again." Because it's a cheap operation, compared to the main unit. I mean they've got... Well, our second units were pretty big. But compared to the main unit, they were quite small, and inexpensive. [INT: So you still feel you can keep control, even as you're delegating, I guess that's part of an art in itself.] Yeah, you have to. That's a big problem I think with modern technology. We didn't have CGI in my day. And it was just coming in I think, as I finished. But the thing is that you do tend to lose a bit of control with CGI, because it takes sometimes three months for that scene to be completed, and it's virtually like a month to go 'til the premiere, so you haven't got a lot of time. And they're so expensive, I mean, some of those shots are costing a hundred thousand dollars, and you can't... You do lose control 'cause you're not quite sure what you're going to get until you get it, you know? [INT: I do know that problem.]

INT: Now, it's another tricky one; what are the essential qualities of a Director? What kind of qualities should they have in the look over the psychological? 

JG: I suppose the most important thing is man management. Your personality, how you convey your dream to everyone on the crew, and make them feel as though they're part of a team, which they are. I mean, you're not making the film on your own; you're getting a lot of help. And certainly, like, on the Bond films, you're getting the best help, you know, and sometimes people come up, you tell them you're going to do a scene a certain way, and they come up with a suggestion which is better. And you grab it with both hands, you know. So they do, everyone contributes. It's interesting really, but I was thinking of the pre-title sequence in OCTOPUSSY. And we were all gathered 'round a table, trying to work out how we were gonna do these shots, which I'd storyboarded. I'd written the scene myself, and I'd storyboarded it. And we were discussing each segment, how we were going to achieve it. And we came to the one where the jet was, the Bede jet was flying around, pursued by a rocket, a missile in the sky. And everyone advanced their theories about how we were going to achieve this. And I sat down and I said, it all got very complicated, and I said to them "What would happen if you flew a model airplane?" We were going to use models anyway. "If you flew the model airplane, and towed a firework behind it?" And everyone stopped and looked at me for a minute, and looked at each other, and Johnny Richardson, the special effects guy said, "Well we'll give it a try." And they did a test on the lot and it worked fantastically well. They just towed this, they had this pilot, they call them pilots, the model airplane. And he took off, towing this firework and they electronically set the thing off and it belched smoke out and wherever the plane went, the thing followed it, and it was fantastic in the movie, it worked so well. [INT: Sometimes the easiest thing is the answer.] Yeah, simple.

INT: The job of the Director, has it changed since your first direction job, or the perception of the Director? It's two separate. 

JG: I think so, yeah. I think that, I think it all stems from Actors, really. I mean I think the top Actors in the world have such power now. They all, most of them have Director approval. So, you know, a Producer could want you or me to direct a film, but they go and try and get an Actor to be in this film, they need it, 'cause he can't make a hundred million dollar film without having an Actor that will put bums on seats, so you know, they find someone and he says, "No, no I don't want John Glen to direct this, I want someone else to direct it." And at the end of the day, money talks and that's it. You haven't got that job. But no, the Directors have a lot of power; they never had that power in years gone by. And I think in some ways it works against a film. You know, I mean, I suppose I'm, if you're a Director that has a terrific reputation with Actors, you know, they talk about someone being an "Actor's Director," I don't think I was ever in that class, but an Actor's Director, but I loved Actors. I love working with Actors, they contribute so much to the film. But nowadays I think, you know, to raise the money that you need to, that the Producer does, he really has to get an Actor on board that's a famous Actor, and the Actor brings a lot of baggage with him, including approval for everything, you know? There's a lot of them, have approval for Director, approval for Writer, approval for cameraman, everything, you know? And it's taken a bit away from the Director's power if you like, his dream; how he's going to present that film on the screen. You know, I never, as a Director, I never ever thought about money personally; it never bothered me at all. It's like, when Michael [Michael G. Wilson] offered me, when Cubby Broccoli [Albert Broccoli] offered me FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, the last thing on my mind was money. And it wasn't until I was on the Recce [Location scout] with Michael and we were on a boat and he said, "We've ought to talk about your salary, better talk about your money." I said, "Michael, I'm gonna do this film, you can pay me what you like, I'm going to do it anyway." And that's exactly the words, he will tell you, then I said... You know, my theory is don't worry about the money; money will take care of itself. And it's true. [INT: Again, that's changed.]

INT: Now, I want to move on, to the actual process, I think. Making a film. And of course, everything, I guess, starts with a script. So, for you what are the elements of a good story? What constitutes? What things do you need to have to make a good story in your opinion? 

JG: Well, as Cubby [Albert "Cubby" Broccoli] always used to say, "Where are the bumps?" You know? We'd write an outline for a film, and he would look at it and he'd turn around and say, "Where are the bumps?" And what he meant by that was, where are the high points? So it's like a piece of music really, you've got to orchestrate the scripts so that you have the drama, the low points, the high points, the action. You know, it's a pop tale of various elements and you need to have, to surprise the audience. It's very important that you do that. So you need a good twist, you need a good story. And then it fit relatively easy then to map it out, what you want, but it is, it's just like, you see a good film, it's like a piece of music. It's highs and lows and moments of suspense, moments of humor--[INT: You can almost see it as a shape, on a graph, you know?] Yes, you can, yeah. [INT: With the peaks and valleys and whatnot.] Yeah, it's difficult to analyze, but you need that variety. Also, I mean, the great thing about the pre-title sequences was, I know in the Bond films they were so important, because the audience they would be dying to see the pre-title sequence, and it would give them a feeling, you know, particularly when the titles, Maurice Binder's opening gun barrel thing would start and the wonderful music, and Monty Norman and John Barry between them. It would put you in that mood, you know? I think that John added something. John Barry added something tremendous to those films.

INT: Were the pre-title sequences [James Bond films] already iconic by the time you came on? 

JG: No. They started, I think FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE was the first time I think that they had that scene where they think they've killed James Bond in the grounds apartment, and that was quite a small sequence, but I guess that was the start of it, and I just developed it. I mean, for instance, OCTOPUSSY was eight minutes; it was hugely long for a pre-title sequence. It was very exciting, and you know we felt that we--and it had nothing to do with the story, at least the early ones had something to do with the story. And MOONRAKER we had that free fall sequence where Bond is pushed out of the airplane. And I went out to Los Angeles and then on to where they make the wine, the wine country there, and I shot it on an airfield with these skydivers. And none of them were experienced in making movies or anything. And they were all camped out on the airfield in their tents with their girlfriends, and I went along with them, and the first morning I got there about eight o'clock, ready to brief them, what I wanted them to do. And I had to go and wake 'em all up. And I had to give 'em a lecture, I read out the riot act. I said, "You know, you want to become professional filmmakers, you've got to get up with the light, so I want you all up here ready to go at eight o'clock every morning." And I had to really read out the riot act. And I shot there for about three weeks, shooting that sequence. And I assembled it, as I went along I was getting the film processed in San Francisco and having it shipped down, and I was cutting, editing as I went along. And it worked out. Rande DeLuca was the cameraman, and he had a seven pound camera on top of his helmet, and when he pulled his parachute of course, you get a terrific jerk, so if you've got seven pounds sitting on top of your head, you're gonna break your neck. So Rande had to put a rope 'round his parachute so he would get a slow deploy of the parachute, I mean it’s suicide, isn't it? And we'd go up to about, I don't know, we weren't shooting that high, probably 8,000 feet or 9,000 feet, and had to get everyone in position. And he had to get in position, and he had this little viewfinder, which was very rudimentary. And then, he had about two seconds to get the shot, before the ground's looming up, so it was quite an adventure. And it worked out very well.

INT: Are you like a daredevil in your normal life? [JG: No, not really. I mean it's been forced on me, I think, making Bond movies that normally I wouldn't--] So with these pre-title teases, did you find that they became successful and then there was a little more pressure to make them... 

JG: Well, you had to maintain that standard, you had to find a new idea. And it's very, very difficult to find original ideas. Everything's been done, you know? And you look back on the Keystone Kops and stuff like that and you can learn something from them. I remember on OCTOPUSSY coming up with this idea about the Mercedes, getting its tires shot out and swerving onto the train line, and becoming a train. So now he's driving along on his rims of his Mercedes, and of course you have to meet a train coming in the opposite direction don't you? So I developed all that, and that I think was hugely successful. And I remember we did a shot where he meets the oncoming train and he manages to leap out in time, and the train hits the Mercedes and knocks it off a bridge into a river. And we had three stunt men, or two stunt men I think there were, fishing in a boat. And we timed this, we fired this Mercedes out of a big cannon, an air cannon, and it came down and it was aimed at the boat, and these stunt men were in there supposed to be fishing. And it very nearly hit the boat, I mean it was a real near miss and these guys sort of dived overboard. I don't know what they hoped to do by diving overboard, but it was very close thing. [INT: I don't think there was much thinking going on.]