INT: My name is Michael Peyser. Today is March 6th, 2017 and I'm conducting an interview with Ezra Swerdlow for the Directors Guild of America View [Visual] History Program. We're at the DGA in New York City.

ES: My name is Ezra Swerdlow, I was born on March 2nd, 1953 in New York City. I really don't have any nicknames, do I Mike? I don't think so. [INT: No.] Maybe E? [INT: E or Ez.] Yeah, E or Ez, but basically Ezra.

INT: Ez? [ES: Yes?] How did you get into the movie business and where are you from and what happened? What wrong turn did you take? 

ES: A major one. No, it's a good question. So I was born on Long Island. Actually, I was born in New York City, lived in Queens for a little while as a little boy and moved out to Long Island in a classic progression. I went to school out on Long Island and high school, and then I was growing up in the late ‘60s [1960s], early ‘70s [1970s], sort of came of age right at the peak of the anti-war and civil rights and very political time. And I ended up finding a college called Hampshire College, which was the second year of the college. It was set up particularly to attract a kind of independent thinking student who was sort of engaged in the world, and at that point, I would say, to some degree, that's who I was, and I went to Hampshire. And my interests at Hampshire had no, nothing to do with film. Though some of my best friends, including the one sitting across the table here, were the film, you know, the people who are interested in film. We had Ken Burns there, Michael [Michael McDonnell] was there, but I was really a sociologist, a political historian, a you know, and on my way to trying to become an academic. That was the trajectory I was on, so I was going to get my degree in philosophy and history, which at Hampshire kind of overlapped. And then I took a couple of years off and kicked around San Francisco and had some fun.

ES: And then I went to graduate school at Rutgers [Rutgers University] in European history. I think that was in the mid-‘70s [1970s], I guess in the '76 [1976], '77 [1977] era. I went back to graduate school and I was working on a master's, which I did get. I got a master's in European history. And it was the summer of 1979, and I was going to begin a PhD program, and in fact I had a sense of the PhD I was going to do, which I think it was going to be about Josephine Baker and sort of American, black presence in Paris in the early 20th century and mid-20th century. So that was where I was headed. And I had a summer off, and this really crazy person I was friends with, named Michael Peyser, sitting across the way, we had still, you know, maintained, you know, a very close friendship. And Michael at that point, you know, fulfilling something he had some expectation of doing, had worked his way up to becoming Woody Allen's Production Manager [UPM], and sort of running, with Bobby Greenhut [Robert Greenhut], Woody's production and operation. And I don't know how this really happened, but I needed a summer job and maybe Michael was looking for somebody with a little different take on, you know, how to scout, how to be part of our office, and he introduced me to Bobby, and they agreed, "Why don't you come over for a day or two, and see what happens." So I went over, we started on STARDUST MEMORIES, 1979, the summer. I went over to 130 West 57th [New York City], like five minutes from here to the Rollins and Joffe production [Rollins-Joffe Productions] office, which was really at that point one of the core centers of New York production. There were a couple of different teams. And Michael and Bobby were one really extraordinary team doing Woody's films, there was teams doing Sidney Lumet's films, there were teams doing Martin Scorsese's films, and it was a great era. A great era in New York that I kind of stumbled into.

ES: So I had the summer off and I was planning on going back to school, and I walked into the office [Rollins-Joffe Productions] and it turned out that what Michael [Michael Peyser] needed me to do and what I had some talent for was scouting locations. So that's where I started. I started by, you know, getting this incredibly top secret script, which no one in the world was allowed to read and many of the settings were not even defined. They were visually described, but not specifically described as what they were. They were like “a great place to shoot still photos for Charlotte Rampling,” or “a great location for a chase,” or “a great location for,” you know. So that was the exciting part, they weren't even really like, "Go find a restaurant," even. It was like, "Find something visually interesting." And under Michael's guidance and eventually working up to meet Mel Bourne and his guidance, and then actually meeting the great Gordon Willis and his guidance, and then Woody [Woody Allen] himself, we would send me out and I would come back with pretty good pictures, I guess, 'cause I stayed there, so. And I do remember one particular location that I think is the reason I'm still in this business, which there was... in STARDUST MEMORIES there was a scene with Charlotte Rampling as a photographer, that was like her hobby or her professional hobby, 'cause she was a very disturbed woman in the picture. And she was taking pictures, so Woody was asking for a great location for someone to take still photos. And I don't remember whether it was Michael or Gordie or somebody was talking about big circles. So first place I went to was the oil tankers out at, on the Jersey Turnpike [New Jersey Turnpike]. And I got myself in, I have some amazing pictures of just fields of giant oil tankers, and those pictures were good. And I think we did a scout out there and then-- [INT: No, but--] There was a little fire or something, right? Gordie said... [INT: No, and Woody and Gordie ran back to the car and he said, "Get us out of here, we're gonna die."] Right. We scouted it, and it was like toxic or, I mean it was definitely not an appropriate place to shoot. So Gordie was like, "I don't think so," but… So we had to go back to square one, and then I think I saw this, or I don't know, these are all stories from now 40 years ago, so but the idea was I think on the side of the road, we saw a giant sewer pipe that was not yet underground, that you could basically stand in. So the mission was to find where those sewer pipes were manufactured and I found that out in Deer Park [New York], I went out and I took some pictures and I brought them back. And I thought, I really knew Gordie liked 'em, 'cause he was like, "Look what the kid brought in." We showed 'em to Woody and that was it. And I will say I still have, I still have the Polaroids. These were actually Polaroids. Sometimes I was taking 35 millimeter, sometimes we were taking Polaroids. It wasn't, you know, there was no anything else. And I did, one of my shots is the place Gordie put the camera, so I was very proud of that. And I think I just, you know, fell into an organization, plus having known Michael personally, I had a nice rapport with Bobby Greenhut, I think Woody liked my presence, and Gordie and Mel, so I was incredibly fortunate because I became part of this team really almost immediately and then I didn't have to go back to graduate school. So the graduate school is like, "Where did he go?" It was like I didn't go back, and everybody was like, "What happened?" And then they would call me, you know, 'cause I withdrew from school, and got out of the idea of becoming a professor at a college, and we're ironically speaking here with Michael who's now a professor, and...

INT: How many movies, since STARDUST MEMORIES, how many movies do you think you've been involved with? 

ES: I think at least 40. I would say from start to finish. You know, I think I would average, I mean it was 1979. We're now what? 2017, 38 years or something like that. So I probably did one a year. They were basically eight to nine month gigs for my job, 'cause I had the full prep. So I never came on, you know, two weeks before shooting, I always came on... so that's the genesis.

INT: And in New York, you got into the Directors Guild [DGA] in... How did that work? 'Cause you were just working as like an assistant to the production department and the art department to begin with, yeah? 

ES: What happened was on... the next movie I did, I think was ARTHUR. We were doing ARTHUR next, and at that point I had sort of learned enough on STARDUST MEMORIES to become the Location Manager for the Greenhut [Robert Greenhut]/Peyser [Michael Peyser] operation. And at that point, the Directors Guild in New York made a play, and a successful play, to organize Location Managers. And 'cause I know we all know in LA they're teamsters, but in New York they were no, they were nothing. They were non-union. And right at the point at which I started my career, they organized the Location Manager, and since I already was the Location Manager, I was able to get in on a provisional basis because I didn't have to accumulate... You can't kick me out now; it's too late. But I didn't have to accumulate the same kind of days, 'cause I was the Location Manager for that film. Greenhut and the team, the Rollins [Jack Rollins] and Joffe [Charles H. Joffe] team agreed that we would allow our Location Managers to be organized by the DGA, if you let Ezra be the, you know, so I was very fortunate that way. I didn't really have to kind of accumulate the same-- [INT: Working through being a Second Second [Second Second Assistant Director], a Second [Second Assistant Director], and a First [First Assistant Director] and…] Right, and that's a very specific New York trajectory that probably, I don't even know if it still exists. I think it does still exist, because I was not... I came in officially as a Second AD, 'cause there was no Location Manager category, so you were officially a Second Second I think or Second. And we were kind of playing around with the credits at that point, because I think on ARTHUR, my credit is Assistant Unit Production Manager, which I don't even know if was a real credit at that point either. But we were not, Location Manager was not an official DGA credit, but it was an official DGA job. So that's what happened. And I really am not, I didn't really work my way up through the assistant directing ranks. I worked my way up through the location/production managing ranks.

INT: And as you were not just finding the locations, you were literally running the full set, the behind, behind the camera operations and moving the army to do battle on that field every day. 

ES: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean the interesting part of the job, and I did it for a number of very interesting films right back to back in the late ‘70s [1970s] and early ‘80s [1980s], incredibly fortunate time for me, was the prep period really had a fully engaged creative life to it. And where I would say that I have, you know, made a significant contribution to a number of classic New York films, as a Location Manager, because we built very few sets in those days. You know, there is a lot more set construction right now. There's a lot more set, a lot more studios and stage space. There were very few full-scale stages. We had to kind of get them out of mothballs to use them or use the little stages in New York, where, you know, one of Michael's [Michael Peyser] biggest jobs was like finding stages that, you know, hadn't been worked on since 1932 with Charlie Chaplin or something, you know? Like getting rid of the rats and the pigeons. But so the locations were very significant for movies like TOOTSIE and KING OF COMEDY and ARTHUR and BROADWAY DANNY ROSE and ZELIG, those were movies where the location scouting was very significant. And in fact, on KING OF COMEDY, Boris Leven was the Production Designer, who was a classic guy. I mean Boris is, you know, he came into New York, and I think he was probably close to 80 at the time he did KING OF COMEDY, and he had really never done this kind of location picture before. He would, you know, had built sets his whole life in LA for classic movies of an old style, and he amusingly said to me how dependent he was on me. You know, like, in other words, he suddenly realized that what I found and what my team found and the people scouting with us were going to be what this movie looked like.

ES: And so the significance in the New York period that we were working with in that era before, you know, the enormity of set construction kind of took over and you know, Astoria [Kaufman Astoria Studios] got rebuilt, Steiner [Steiner Studios] got built, now there's, you know, in Brooklyn there's, you know, 50 stages probably. There were like two or three full sized stages at the most in New York, so we did, we shot on location and we found the locations. And then managing them was very, very exciting and interesting. And it was a very different job back then. I would say one of the most significant differences, I mean I'm just jumping to this, is the scale of the operation. We were so much smaller, so much leaner and more mobile and a Woody Allen production, a full-scale Woody Allen production, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, looks like a NYU film now compared to even a routine B television show. We had no tractor-trailers, they were not allowed. We had very few motorhomes. We put people in hotel rooms. We didn't have all of that kind of facilities for the Actors. We would use hotel rooms, we'd have like two banger [two banger trailer] on a day we needed it, but we didn't have permanent 12 trailers for supporting Actors and any of that. And our trucks were five-ton and 10-ton trucks, we had, you know, so we could park a lot easier. When we had to take space we needed two, three blocks not 20 blocks, so. And you know, we always joke, I've... being an old veteran, I've been able to say to many Cameramen that, you know, "Manhattan didn't look good enough for you?" Or you know, like... [INT: Or THE GODFATHER.] You know, THE GODFATHER didn't look good enough? You know, we didn't have that on those, you know, but it never worked. They always said, "Well, things have changed. Things are different." So. [INT: We'll get back to how things have changed even again, but...] Yeah, we'll get back to that. Yes.

INT: So you're working with this group [Rollins-Joffe Productions], and they're, the Woody Allen group is somewhat self-contained, a bit of a family organization, 'cause it was very discrete. [ES: Right.] Otherwise the notion of what the movie was was the antithesis of the modern, "We're promoting it from..." 

ES: Right, it was... First of all, there was, you know, our effort to keep the script secret was really one of the major efforts we put in. I have, you know, a copy of I think it's ZELIG, you know, coming right from studio duplicating, I mean like three scripts were made. You know, and it was just like we figure out how to break one down and get the location breakdown from that one, and--[INT: And the Crew didn't necessarily got a script.] Crew never got scripts, no. [INT: And the Cast didn't get a script.] No. The Cast might got... other than like someone like Michael Caine on HANNAH AND HER SISTERS would get a script, 'cause, you know, he'd have to read it. But a lot of the Cast would get their sides. They would not see the entire script on the more supporting parts. I don't know, you know, with the leads I'm sure Woody has his own relationship with those Actors, and but the Production Department did not distribute scripts in a sense that they used to be distributed, they're distributed now. We had a very tight organization. [INT: But that in a way created an opportunity for cohesion among the production and the various crafts.] Yeah, I mean there was... I have never experienced it again. There are people who've done 25 Woody Allen movies in a row: Bobby Ward [Robert Ward] the Key Grip, Jimmy Mazzola [James Mazzola], Jimmy Sabat [James Sabat]. You know, they were key Crew people who had done, you know, all of the movies in New York until maybe this very late era where things started to really change. So for me I think I did seven or something like that. I didn't really have to find a Crew, which was an incredible blessing. I mean, we had the Crew and it was a great Crew, it was a Crew that was a team, they waited for Woody's films. So we were really like a troupe more than what you do now which is putting together people who've never met each other and the trust factor, the efficiency, the sort of knowing what everybody did, what their skills were, I have not duplicated since then. I mean it was a rare treat. And I think, and those of us like when we talk about it, we go back and it's hard not to look very fondly upon that period in New York. And that team also expanded beyond Woody. And we did some movies, you know, we did THE KING OF COMEDY, a different Production Manager with, you know, the great Bobby Colesberry [Robert F. Colesberry], but Bobby Greenhut [Robert Greenhut] still did that. So we were sort of not just, we were doing Woody's films, but we were also doing other films at the same time. [INT: If you were in New York, you were working... you'd ring a couple of doorbells to get the full service.] Right. Yeah. I mean, there was Kenny Utt [Kenneth Utt], fantastic man doing his films, and there was, you know, the Burt Harris world, and there was the Bobby Greenhut world, and you know, I was privileged to be part of that.

INT: And on those early pictures you worked you said with Gordon Willis. What was that like? 

ES: That was an honor to start with. I mean there was no smarter, more talented, greater filmmaker ever. I mean that's just a fact. There's Gordon Willis and yeah. [INT: But he wasn't verbal, voluble--] Oh no, no, this is my, he was the most regular guy, I mean he was like a working class guy, Gordie. I mean, Gordie-- [INT: Right. But he couldn't explain what he was doing.] No, it was... well it was a funny, yeah. Scouting for Gordie was very exciting. I mean, Gordie was just a privilege to work for, I mean there was one moment on STARDUST MEMORIES that I still, that was really a funny story, because, you know, I was new at this, and I didn't really know what I was going to do. And I didn't really understand quite yet the separation of the departments and where the Production Department, how separate it, as you grew up in the business you separated from the Crew. You know, from the technical Crew, from the 52 Crew [Local 52], from the 600 Crew [Local 600]. So one day we were up at Filmways, which we had, you know, gotten out of moth balls and we built some sets up there. And everybody's telling me, "Gordie's looking for you, Gordie's looking for you." I was so excited, you know, I was like, I don't know, I was running around the stage and like five people said, "Hey, Gordie wants to see you on the set." I was thinking, "Well, he's going to say, 'Look, I need you to be like, you know, my junior G-man, I want to make...'", you know. And he said, "Hey, here, I want you to move my car." He said, "Like I think it's parked badly." So like... So it was like, you know, but I did it incredibly happily and with an honor to just get in his car and drive it. So remember the VW Fox or something that he had. So...

INT: And in those days the production team would go to dailies with the Director and the Script Supervisor and the Editors? 

ES: Yes. [INT: Every night so...] Well with Woody [Woody Allen] it was a little smaller group than in other films I worked on. You know, with Woody it was a pretty tight little group at his screening room. You know, other films it was a little bit more of a public thing at the lab screening room and it was really sort of more open to anybody who wanted to come. You know, Woody's thing was pretty, you know, pretty small group.

INT: And your communication with the outside was done with a roll of quarters, right? [ES: Yeah, we...] There were no cell phones; there was none of that. 

ES: No, there was no, there was no cell phones; I don't even know how we did it. I mean, there were no cell phones, the pay phone, you know, we worked out of the office, there was a lot more footwork. I mean you were never in the office as a Location Manager. When I go to movies now, and like there's six location people sitting in the office on their computers going through files or going through real estate sections or going through, I mean I'm just, it's not what I did. You know, and not because they're doing anything wrong, I just had no choice.

INT: Did you have locations where you just had to knock on the door or show up and find out who was really in charge? 

ES: Oh yeah. Yeah. We, you know, that was the job. The job was a lot of public relations. I mean I had, you know, the calling card of doing a Woody Allen movie or a Martin Scorsese film, or TOOTSIE with Dustin Hoffman and Sydney Pollack. You know, I was not being, you know, coming in with a kind of fly-by-night operation. And also New York just had not been shot the way it is now, ‘cause there was very little television, so there wasn't like, this was before Dick Wolf, and before the whole generation of LAW & ORDERS, which really saturated the city, in a good way, 'cause it provided great work for everybody. But every location, every building in New York has been scouted, you know. There's not one building you're going to go up--now even the boroughs. You know, it's a whole different world now. It's more like LA, 'cause when I went out to LA, LA has location files pretty much of everything. Like Location Managers start with files in LA. We started with scouting. Like I didn't have any files, I didn't have any Swerdlow location files. Every movie I started I just went out, started from scratch, scouted. There was no database of locations. There was just the city. [INT: And nothing was out of bounds, right? You could try to get the city, or a landlord, or anybody to let you shoot in FAO Schwarz.] No, we were... Right, right. [INT: Or you know, on the top of somewhere. And this is all pre-9/11 too, right?] Yeah. No, we could shoot, you know, we were turned down some places, but we could usually get into places. New York has always had very difficult time shooting on the upper income residential buildings. That was always the trick; it's the trick for Location Managers now. You know, it's very--you can't shoot at 740 Park Avenue, you can't shoot at, you know, you can't shoot at the white glove buildings. So if you're going to do that you have to find buildings in other neighborhoods that you can double for them. And I know people who've gone into the suburbs for apartments, in houses to make 'em look like apartments, stuff like that.

INT: Before you did STARDUST MEMORIES, you did, I know you helped me out on the opening of MANHATTAN. 

ES: Yes, we... [INT: I... You want to....] Well, we had, you know, my parents had moved back from the island into the city when... We don't even want to talk about what apartments cost in the early ‘70s [1970s] 'cause it'll make you all weep beyond control. But they ended up with a great apartment on the Upper West Side, and the fireworks, the bit, you know, there's the opening montage to the Gershwin from Manhattan. Before I was in the movie business, I was in graduate school at this time. But you sort of snuck in with the camera somehow. [INT: I saw in the New York Times on an ad that there was going to be a fireworks display on the Sheep Meadow.] Right. [INT: And we were shooting in The Public Theater with Diane Keaton and Joe Papp [Joseph Papp], I think in a scene that got cut out, thank god.] Right. [INT: But I pointed it out to Gordie [Gordon Willis], and I said, "Would you want to shoot this?" 'Cause we used to finish early and all that stuff.] Right. [INT: And I said, "I think I know a good place to shoot it," and I couldn't get that, and then that's where I remember calling you.] But I think what we did was, we just did it with like a couple of-- [INT: We had no permission, we carried--] Yeah, we just came to my apartment. Yeah, yeah. [INT: We wore raincoats and we carried the Panavision cameras up under the raincoats.] Yeah, yeah. [INT: And the doorman looked the other way.] It was like bringing a, you know, a delivery, a pizza delivery to my house, you know? [INT: Right. And we shot it out of your, we shot the big fireworks scene out of your, this little bathroom windo--] I think the--oh the bedroom, yeah. Right. [INT: On 81st Street.] Yes. So that was my first taste of it. And also I think I remember visiting the set of HAIR, which you were working on and being very intrigued. It wasn't like I had no interest. The interesting part of it is, I was a film fan. It wasn't that I had no interest in cinema or film; I just didn't see it as a career. I didn't understand like most people who are not in the business, that films get made. I thought they just came from the ground up and they grew. And they just somehow came to be. And now I do know they get made. That's something I know.

INT: Speaking about that because as you're working in these early days, you're starting to get plugged into schedules, budgets, beyond the going into the battlefield, you're actually back at headquarters planning the campaign. [ES: Right.] Talk a little bit about what that was like for you, and what it was like to work with Production Managers [UPM], ADs [Assistant Directors], as you became and sort of transitioned into... how did you get the opportunity to become a Production Manager, to step up into that role and what had you learned about working with the so-called Director's team? 

ES: That's a good question. Well, I would say, you know, I was in a great learning environment because things were much, we were all working much closer together. The office at Rollins and Joffe [Rollins-Joffe Productions], you know, we all worked in one basic room. So we had the Location Manager, the Production Manager, and the Line Producer in the same room, so. And I learned my training was that the Line Producer, production team, 'cause many times we'd be on before the First AD actually was engaged, would do the first board. So I, while I didn't AD a lot, I did a lot of reshooting, I did, you know, some ADing, but it was not my career.

ES: My career was Location Manager to Production Manager [UPM] to Producer. But I became very good at doing boards [schedules]. And I always felt it was a huge responsibility, 'cause I think Bobby Greenhut [Robert Greenhut] was particularly adept at doing schedules. And we were doing them by hand, so you know, you would be filling out, you know, I learned to do the board in the original way of breaking the script down by hand on a breakdown sheet, and then taking that sheet and transferring the material on that sheet onto a strip. [INT: A little strip of--] You know, a physical strip, and then putting that physical strip--everybody's seen, they're museum pieces now, but I, probably the first five years of my career we used strip boards. And there was a way of visualizing the film with a strip board that I think still serves me well. Because you could open up, on a computer you really never open up the whole schedule. You're still working in, no matter how big a screen you have, you might still be working in the two or three week period. But we would lay out the whole schedule and then it was just a puzzle and… I think I quickly got to understand through working with very good First ADs [First Assistant Directors], Tom Reilly [Thomas A. Reilly] and working with Michael, working with Bobby Greenhut, working with Bob Colesberry [Robert F. Colesberrgy], to just understand what a production plan had to be. What are the elements? What are the priorities? And no two boards would come out alike, which is what I always find fascinating. If I did a board with the same script that Michael did, or the top AD in the world, or a Line Producer, or a Second AD, the board would be different. There isn't one board, 'cause there's still no computer program for a board. There’s a computer program for almost anything, but no one has perfected something where you just take the script and the computer spits out the shooting schedule. There's just too much interpretation that--[INT: Plus, you're channeling Marty [Martin Scorsese] or Woody's [Woody Allen]...]--technique. [INT: Mishpucha.] Yeah, yeah, what they needed to do. So the priorities of weighing shooting location, shooting out locations, cast, consolidating cast so cast aren't spread all over the board, day and night, weather, creative deeds, like, "You can't shoot this scene before that shoot, it's just not fair to the team to do that." I mean, you never shoot completely in continuity, but there are Directors and Producers where maybe an Actor really will be very demanding on continuity. I've been through that. So you know, I think I learned it by observing it done very well and then being asked to do it--and then the only way to learn.

ES: And the way I think I grew up in the production managing ranks quickly is because we were very busy, you know, there was PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO shooting while ARTHUR was shooting while TOOTSIE was shooting while... so there was, you know, we were covering a lot of ground. [INT: We were almost a studio.] And then I think you were kind of, had to go and, you know, you were sort of moving into Producer yourself, so there was a quick opportunity. So the way it worked was, you know, it was Greenhut [Robert Greenhut], Michael [Michael Peyser], me, and Joe Hartwick was the accountant, and Helen Robin was the coordinator. And then Michael sort of graduated and I became the Production Manager. And then I graduated and Joe became the Production Manager. Then Joe graduated I think, then Helen became the Production Manager. So we all sort of were trained in the same cauldron. And the way I moved up was just because the room became available. [INT: You mentioned Bobby Greenhut and Burt Harris before, they're two notable New York guys who were ADs [Assistant Directors].] Right. [INT: And Production Managers and Line Producers, but they did it from the camera often.] Right, right, exactly. [INT: Meaning they could run a whole movie and have that strip board in their mind.] Right, I mean I think the AD/Line Producer, which I wasn't, except a few times, you know, on some reshooting and some smaller productions, but that is a very... that's a great job. I remember Bobby did that on ARTHUR with a first time Director and was able to, you know, really... it was a perfect position in many ways. I mean it's not, it's a little harder now because the scale of movies, and the scale of the cast needs, and the scale of sort of the way movies are made, and the scale of the interaction with studios really would make it harder right now to really be the Line Producer and the First AD [First Assistant Director]. There's still a few people doing it but it's pretty rare.

INT: Also part of the role of the whole DGA team feeding through the Production Manager to the funders, the Studio, the Network, whoever it is, what was unique about these early days for you was in some way, it was self-sufficient. In other words, we didn’t answer so much to… 

ES: No, I would say, I would call it... Right. I would say, you know, what I think was valuable for me, and I think it served me well even when things began to change, which we will talk about, was the requirement to solve the problems yourself and the requirement to deliver the film complete for a budget, without a whole army of people supervising you from a studio production department, you know... [INT: Bond company.] And you know, or whatever entity which now has, you know, a giant department to kind of monitor what we're doing, we were alone out there. There were very--the physical production departments, even at the Studios, were tiny. They might have like one person there. Some of the movies were just, there was just a number given to us by, you know, the Orion days, "Here, this one had to be nine, that one had to be 11." You know, we would just... so it was our job to make that work and we took it upon ourselves. So it wasn't like we had anybody to say, you know, "Fix this for us," or, "We need more," or, "We have to do this." It was like, "This is the movie, and this is how we have to make it." And I think that is a wonderful training, you know, because you're really responsible for--so when I, you know, when I think of the budgets I used to do early on in my career, they were not necessarily, you know, backing into a number. You know, most movies now have, you know, targets. There are very few movies where you're given a script and somebody says to you, "What do you think this is going to cost?" I don't think that even happens anymore. But you know, that used to happen. Used to be like, "You're a professional, what do you think it's going to take to make this movie?" Maybe we would have to finesse that, but at least we'd start with like, "What does the movie look like it costs?" and you know. [INT: And I get a sense of why people came back to you and trusted you, is you treated it like it was your own money.] Yeah. I actually had somebody... yeah. Denzel [Denzel Washington] on EQUALIZER said to me, you know, even late in my career, one of my last, you know, most recent movies, Denzel said, "You really, you know, you really treat this like it's your money." And I said to him, "Well, you know, it is kind of my money, because if I don't deliver this I don't keep working." So to some degree, I have to look at it like it was that way, but I never was cavalier ever with the budget. [INT: Or with the creative people who are trying to find their vision.] Right. [INT: You were the mediator of that purpose.] Well that is... that's the job when we get to the, you know, the sort of the final explanation of what we're trying to do.

INT: Let's talk about the transition into becoming in charge as Production Manager [UPM] and then actually taking whole movies over. What was the, was THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN the first time you really ran, like had, you're the guy on a day to day basis? 

ES: It might've been. It's hard to remember. It was one of the first full like Senior Production Manager [UPM] jobs where I was much more on my own because, you know, there was no, you know, Bobby [Robert Greenhut] was involved but not, you know, a hundred percent. And David Lazer who was their Producer was not any kind of Physical Production Producer, so I would say yes. THE MUPPETS OF MANHATTAN--I love that film, THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN. [INT: It's a musical with the Muppets in Manhattan.] Right. It turned out to be a phenomenally interesting and great learning experience. It had everything. And particularly I learned how to do a musical. And that's stood me very well, and with playback, pre-recording, rehearsing, finding time for all of that. Even though it was puppets, it was a full scale musical. And it was also one of the first films, and we were talking about this last night, that used video assist. 'Cause the Muppet people, Henson [Jim Henson] and his team basically invented video assist. They required it. A guy named Ian Kelly, a brilliant-- [INT: That's how they did their Muppetry, was by watching a monitor.] Right. The way the Muppets created their work was we built sets on stanchions, and we had to build like hundreds and hundreds of stanchions that were about three feet high that could be pulled, and the sets were little sort of three by three squares, so that the operators, meaning Jim Henson, Frank Oz, these geniuses were crawling around the floor and sticking their arm up, and looking at a monitor. And that's exactly how they worked. And the video assist was, you know, very primitive, but as we, you know, Ian Kelly was sort of working on it daily and trying to figure out how to get the flickers out or trying to figure out how to make it so you could actually see the image. But those guys were amazing, 'cause they were also doing it in reverse, because they were seeing a reverse image. So not only--I mean it was a very highly technical film even though it was a sweet little comedy. It was very complicated set construction where we had to be able to pull trenches off the set floor so that they could, like, you know, move through... [INT: Dance.] You know, and if you know, Kermit was walking, you know, you had to find a trench for Jim to be able to kind of like scoot through, and sometimes he'd be on a little roller, or on a little dolly, somebody'd be pulling him and it was a very interesting wonderful film. Wonderful people. One of the saddest things ever was Jim Henson dying that young, incredibly sad. 'Cause the best picture, I have a lot of pictures, a lot of great, great pictures of me on set, 'cause we all do and it's very fortunate. But by far my favorite is a picture of me in the center and I have Jim Henson with Kermit on this shoulder and Frank Oz with Miss Piggy on this shoulder, and I definitely treasure that shot. [INT: I remember the first meeting Bobby and I had, 'cause we were sort of ghost Producers of that movie.] Right. [INT: 'Cause we were the New Yorkers, and we sort of threw you to the wolves.] Right. [INT: And said, "Go get 'em, kid.” It was like, "Great, let us know if there's any problems." But it was called THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN, but we couldn't get a budget that would work because of all this building, and all this construction and they kept saying, "Well, we can go to Toronto where we have an operation." But we'd have to make THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN in... There was a meeting at the Muppet mansion and Jim and Frank got so upset that they couldn't do it, that they started talking in their character voices. Which we discovered that Kermit and Piggy were actually Jim and Frank when they were genuinely like fricked out. And they're like having this, we're in a budget discussion and we were on the floor laughing and they're looking at us like, "Why are these guys laughing?"] Well, you know, that was Frank Oz's first film actually as a Director, that was a privilege to get to work with Frank.

INT: And you've worked with a lot of first time Directors, but we were talking before about how you started with some of the great filmmakers. 

ES: Well, let me just finish one thing before I go to that. The other thing that I felt was very nice about the old days and very good for me from an educational point of view is we would go through the answer print, which we used to deliver a film in those days. And production managing and even line producing now, it's iffy whether you go all the way to through post. But on MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN, I supervised the finishing of that film, which required the most fantastic scoring with Ralph [Ralph Burns]... I forget the guy's name. Anyway, the composer. And you know, and I learned, so I learned... and being around the Woody [Woody Allen] operation, you know, we were finishing a film and then going into prep on the next one. Having the full knowledge of how post works was really served me well. Even when some of the films I didn't go all the way through the answer print, my understanding of that process, my ability to communicate with the Editor, what he was going to need. My understanding of finishing a film still has like served--I mean, obviously films I've produced I finished them, but sometimes production managing and line producing literally you get cut off like, you know, four, six weeks after... [INT: There was no actual job of post-production manager as I...] Right, right. [INT: You know, or post-producer. No, there was... And to some extent Line Producer was an inflation of Production Manager's title.] Right, right. [INT: You know, it was like...] Exactly. I mean we could talk about that a little bit. [INT: There were less people in the production chain, but they actually accomplished more, because there were less people to talk, took care of you.] Right.

INT: So you're starting to do movies where you're off as the Production Manager [UPM] and you're putting together a team. And all of the sudden it's not the family per se. [ES: Right.] Or you're dealing with, "Yeah, we worked with that guy five times, but he's an idiot, let's bring..." [ES: Or not available.] Not available, or, "We made him too famous, so now we have to replace him with the next genius." [ES: Right.] How do you do that? 

ES: Well that is the job. I think, you know, the way I would start, my approach was always high priority, you know, first. I always felt, you know, obviously we needed to hire a Cameraman before we could hire grip and electric, at least traditionally. I would maybe have somebody in my hip pocket who I felt, "You cannot reproach the guy I would have," and I would maybe try to put a few people on hold even before we had a Cameraman. But if we start with, you know, the camera department we would certainly obviously need to hire a Cameraman first. And then... So there was a combination of the Cameraman's interests, he may have an Operator or she may have an Operator, or a whole team depending on the stature of the camera, or maybe they'd be coming into New York or a city for the first time and have nobody. So each production had its own thing, but it was really led by the department head. So for camera, that would include grip, electric, assistant cameramen, video assist. That team would sort of be triggered by dialogue with the Cameraman, with the Director of Photography, and then some combination of our interests, which would be people who were local if they were good, people who we knew and trusted, their team, they had to be comfortable, I was never going to jam some gaffer down a Cameraman's throat and then, you know, that would come back to haunt us. So it was a department head driven conversation. Then the Production Designer would hopefully come on, and that would inform the prop department, the set decoration department, the art department itself, that staff. That staff would be built out in conjunction with the same situation: Our references, people we knew, whatever local community we went into, plus the leader of that department's own needs.

ES: In terms of my own team, you know, I would either have people or I'd find--I've gone to a lot of places just by myself, and really have been willing to, not even with an assistant, and willing to start from scratch in New Orleans, or in Atlanta. And you know, sometimes it works out better than others. But it's really a, you know, in terms of the Assistant Director [AD], that's the key hire for me in terms of who I am going to interact with. And sometimes the Assistant Director would precede me. If there was a relationship with a Director, there would be an Assistant Director who I would be handed, and I would try to make the best out of that. [INT: And then you'd work together on the board, on the schedule.] Yeah, I mean usually what would happen, in my experience, and I would say that if you spoke to the Assistant Directors who've worked with me they would back this up, but I generally did a board. I've had very few movies where I didn't do the first board and the first production plan, but there have been a few recently because it's changed a little bit, where you can sometimes hire Assistant Directors early enough in the process, just even non-consecutive. You know, you just hire them to do a board and then maybe they go away for a while. But I always did the first board. So then the first interaction with the AD would be them looking at my board. And it was always a tremendously positive reality check. 'Cause, you know, sometimes I'd be overly optimistic 'cause I was trying to hit, you know, hit a number, hit a number of days, and they would be very honest saying, you know, "This doesn't work." Or they say, "Look, I think this is a great start, maybe you could look at it this way." So that's... the central collaboration for me in terms of production, as a Production Manager [UPM] or a Line Producer is the First AD. And the quality and the communication skills of the First AD in terms of interacting with the production department, not just with the Director and on set and what they have to do day to day separates them, and you know, can make my life much easier or more difficult depending on who that is, and what their agenda is, and what their experience is with production needs. 'Cause the thing about ADing is, ADs get to control what's going on on the set. People have to listen to them. You know, and that is their authority. And it's fantastic and it's what they do. They tell someone to go somewhere. People who are dealing with the outside world, whether it's the Studio, or the Agents for the Actors, or the location, you know, the owner of the mansion, you know, are not dealing with people who have to listen to them. You know, so that's the tension and the interaction. The AD is looking for complete control of the environment. And to be able to do anything when they want to do it that would make the schedule as efficient, make the shooting schedule as efficient, make the Director is happy, keep the Actors as happy, that's their agenda and that's what it should be. So they're... but that can come into conflict with production problems. You know, an Actor whose availability is really wonky, the AD's like, "You can't be telling me we only have him on the 23rd and the 27th." "Yes, we only have him on the 23rd and the 27th." You know, like figure it out. You know, so that...

INT: Let's jump forward to a movie that you produced. I don't know if you, where you were in the production management, but which was ZOMBIELAND, where you only had Bill Murray for a couple days? [ES: A day.] A day, right? [ES: Yeah.] Like one day, but he went missing. [ES: No, that's not really exactly what happened.] Is that true? [ES: No, no, no.] What is that story? 

ES: No, no, the story was more... we had this slot for that character who had been written for someone other than Bill who ended up with some, you know, really sad, serious health problems and couldn't do the movie. And then it was just obviously a necessity for ZOMBIELAND to have a really cool, you know, zombie star cameo. It just felt right in the script. And at one point we were really up against it, I mean everybody was trying, you know, the Producer, the Studio, and eventually it was really Woody Harrelson who reached out to Bill and you know, got Bill to say yes. But I was really someone he knew to some degree through our whole New York experience, so I kind of chaperoned Bill through that whole thing. But no, he didn't... we didn't lose track of him. [INT: You didn't lose track of him?] No. [INT: But you actually got him for the day that you needed him.] Yes, we got him for the day we needed him. He was fantastic. And you know, we went out that night, that's where I kept, you know, we had some fun that night in Atlanta the night before. We actually shot him, I think we got him, the day he came in we actually shot a little bit, so we sort of had a day and a quarter. And that was one of the most brilliant moments, just Bill, you know, figuring out… And it was his, we were on the phone, and originally it was supposed to be a zombie who couldn't, who was in the state of already have been infected and didn't speak, and just sort of like, you know, so Bill said, "You could hire, you know, anybody for that." It's like, "That's not funny." So the idea was, which you know, a lot of people claimed credit for--[INT: The Director was, what's his name? Fleischer?] Ruben Fleischer, yes. [INT: Ruben Fleischer.] In the context of the conversation, I give myself a little credit for this, but we'll leave that alone. The idea that he was faking being a zombie came up. That was not in the original script. The original idea was that he was already a zombie and he was sort of more of a monster. But you know, what would you get out of Bill? He kept saying, "Why bring me down?" So the idea of him being not infected, but trying to pretend he was, and you know, navigating through the zombie world as a fake zombie came up, and that's where the whole thing took off.

INT: And that [Ruben Fleischer] was relatively a new Director [of ZOMBIELAND], right? [ES: Yeah, first time Director. I was the Production Manager [UPM] on that actually.] First time Director and the Cast was who? 

ES: The Cast was Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin I think, and yeah. And yes, young Emma, and she was incredibly talented and I'm very happy for her and proud of her. You know, she was really a pleasure to work with, did a great job, has true comic timing and she was about 20. And she was really funny and very, very much a pleasure to work with. [INT: A breath of fresh air.] Yeah, and Woody was... It was great, we were lucky Jesse, we were really... it was one of those things that just came together. I do think if we want to just jump around a little. As far as using the skills that I had accumulated, at that point I had probably done 30 movies. I would consider that to be one of the more special jobs I was able to do to bring to Ruben the understanding of what the production of a film is. He had done little five-minute films that were extraordinarily funny, that I think Amy Pascal saw, and Gavin Polone. And Gavin and Amy kind of like, I don't know who came to who with Ruben, but he had never done a feature film. Beyond that, he had only done these little five-minute lobster movies. They were very funny, but he was hired on the basis of this new world of basically being able to make your own film, you know, inexpensively and get it onto some kind of medium that people could see. I mean, this couldn't have happened in 1975, you know, it's like the technology didn't exist. So Ruben came on, and you know, it was a complete learning curve for him. He'd be the first to admit it, of what a feature film looked like. What were the elements? How did you schedule it? How did you work with it? And we had, you know, Kim Winther [Kim H. Winther] I think was the First AD [First Assistant Director] and George Aguilar [G.A. Aguilar] was the Second Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator, and I think never more did a team sort of, you know, do more for a Director, but we all said it was Ruben's vision. Like none of us directed that film. Ruben-- [INT: The vibe was--] Ruben directed the film. Ruben got that tone, understood what the tone was, what he was going for, sort of the combination of the humor and the whatever real scariness there was, or... he understood that. So it was our job with someone who really didn't understand yet the mechanism of like how the big operation worked, to get that vision through. And I'd say that that with first time Directors is the biggest challenge, and it's something I'm proud of. You know, it's like you want to... they don't know and you know…

ES: You know, the other version of that I felt, you know, that I'm particularly proud of, 'cause it's relatively recent, was first 21 JUMP STREET, with two brilliant guys, you know, who are now, you know... oh yeah, well Phil Lord and Chris Miller [Christopher Miller], you know, two really great guys who are-- [INT: And had they done a movie before?] No. They had done CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, they had done animated films. They were animators, and you know, artists. And you know, they're two extraordinary, wonderful people and really smart. But they were the first to say, "We have no idea what we're doing." And I kept saying to them, "Don't say that so much. It's not like a, you can say it to me, but don't quite say it in every public meeting." You know, "Like keep that down a little bit." But they certainly know what they're doing now. And I think again, when we talk about the DGA team, we had George [G.A. Aguilar] again, and Jonathan Watson who is, you know, a fantastic First Assistant Director. And built around them, you know, giving them the tools, giving their, letting their vision get through, but putting it into a form where, you know, these were aggressive budgeted films, aggressively budgeted, aggressively scheduled. You know, they were taking fliers by Sony; there were certainly nothing in either of them that was a guaranteed success. It was all in the execution. And I think when we think about the team that our organization provides, you know, Second Unit Director or a great First Assistant Director, production management, it can have an indelible creative impact, even though none of us are officially responsible for what the creative vision is. There's creative Producers who technically have more authority over what the film's supposed to look like, there's the Director themselves, there's the Cast, and their, you know, creative prerogatives, there's the studio creative team that has their opinion. So really our opinion of what the film should be is not the primary creative vision. It's really kind of getting all those people somewhere where they're happy. Where they're getting what they want, but we're actually getting the machinery there, and putting people in place. Crew, schedule, production plan, you know, Actor availability, and trying to, you know, somehow understanding that the things we're doing that look pretty routine or pretty, you know, ordinary have to contribute and have to create the environment. And sometimes it's hard, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes, you know, films are scheduled too aggressively, or the weather just goes too far South, or you know, things happen and you're not getting that. And you know, films can suffer when the production plan sort of starts to unravel.