RA: I've worked with all sizes and types and kinds of guys. Usually, you have a little love affair, probably goes 3 pictures. Like with ZSIGMOND [Vilmos Zsigmond] it was his choice not to do, I've got to fill in that hole. It's the most important comrade that you have, you will also defer to that person. I never talk to the cameraman very much. [INT: Do you design shots beforehand?] No. It's of the moment. Only occasionally will I say we have to do this because in 3 days we're going to do this shot. .... Next morning we're going to shoot in same space and DP will come to me and say can I get a setup for tomorrow, I'll say no, we'll do it tom morning. Night, churning, maybe do this. I take each day, very little planning.

INT: So you rehearse with actor when you do camera setup?
RA: Most common thing, actors involved, 4 minute scene. I'll come on set, get DP, get everyone off the set and just fuck around for a while. We work it out and then we say that's it, then they'll light it, the area, set the cameras, the props. Then we'll come in and then we'll rehearse so we know what everybody's doing. Then we'll shoot before everyone knows too well what we're doing.

INT: Production designer?
RA: My son, most successful. Done more than half of my films. LEON ERICKSEN, brilliant, concepts were so different. Where he put the importance on what he did, maybe under the chair, a hairpin. Bring me back to reality. With STEVE, with whom I'm the most comfortable. If I said this is the set, he would give me the whole set. He knew that we'd get on there and if the light was changed and we didn't anticipate it right, something changed in actor or me, he knew we might need. GOSFORD PARK, whole upstairs shot on location. Downstairs totally built on sound stage. We shot first 6 weeks upstairs and exteriors while building downstairs in studio. I remember coming over and seeing set, comment, we finished shooting on location, I walked on set, I wept. I thought my god I'm in this place, turned right away to AD and said add a week. It's better for me to discover something and let me work out how to shoot it, than have them figure out what I'm going to shoot and build and design what's in my mind, no one has access to. You see something real and it changes the text. Preserve room...

RA: There's things I do on set and costumes that no single soul on Earth will ever notice, yet there's always somebody that will. IMAGES, parquet floor, I want to put together in same kind of pattern a London crossword puzzle will put together. LEON ERICKSEN not only did design on floor, but he had puzzle and related it to story, not filled in. No pundit knew, but everybody on the crew, actors knew. Doesn't mean act different or light different but helps with mystique, digging deeper than what's on the surface. And from that, steam rises, ambience, and audience does get it. They don't know what they're getting but they get it.

INT: Costume designer? AD?
RA: ADs are different, depends what I'm using them for. Some are mechanics, do all the things I won't take time to do. Bad AD is someone who doesn't have change in his… An AD should be exactly what the A means. Should assist, help.

RA: Sound guys most complicated thing of me doing work, I pay the least attention to. I want everything, we invented that 8 track, we built the machines, CALIFORNIA SPLIT first, then went to 16. GOSFORD PARK, biggest problem going to London, I thought, they're not going to get the sound. And I was referring to way we did sound 20 years ago in England, got this old guy, minute we did 8 track stuff, he was following what I did for 20 some off years, and when I got to England, he knew more about what I wanted to do more than I did. I recognized him, I said I'll see you at the end of the movie. All it is is recording the truth. What's happening.

INT: I know you don't use screen tests for actors…
RA: I have. On occasion I've had, when I use actors I don't know about them, or mainly when there's a part and I'm not sure what it should be, I've had screen tests where we shot. One case, in THE LONG GOODBYE, we were getting ready to do that and I saw on JOHHNY CARSON show, this blonde NINA VAN PALLANDT, girlfriend of that IRVING guy, wrote HOWARD HUGHE'S fake diary. That's the girl, went to UA, I want to use her. They said, will you test her for us. They asked me to do that so they didn't say no to my face, plan was to say no, but seeing test, they loved her. She was a performer.

INT: How do you prepare the night before first day of shooting?
RA: I prepare the night before by, nothing. You always worry about that first shot. I know that I never get up on morning of shoot, I know what I'm going to wear. Once it starts, then you're playing catch up usually. [INT: First day, actors are always very nervous. I always thought the director is so prepared.] You're wrong. They might be prepared but he's not prepared for what he's going to get. [INT: Homework?] I don't know quite what that means. The only really planning ahead and we're going to be shooting the waterfall and we need to make sure the water's on. Things that take time to get ready.

INT: When you're not getting what you want… ?
RA: NASHVILLE was the most extreme of those. BARBARA we shot first day, done for a million 9, under 2, it was a big film, music and … We shot it in 7 weeks. [INT: You really know schedule and budget?] I'm very good at it. I do know what I get done and know how to adapt. One of the first films I made, THIEVES LIKE US, had a million and a quarter, opening scene, shot in MI, whole thing one shot. Did it again. Important for me, set a tone for actors, for me, for the crew. If something's important, we want to get it right. I think, I don't know. I've done that a couple of times where I've said, this isn't good enough but I doubt I would do that today.

INT: What's been your relationship with producers?
RA: There's always pressure. I'm going to give them what I'm going to give them otherwise I'll pick up my baseball hat and go home. I've been aware that I'm in a struggle and I have to convince them or do something but ultimately the work is done, and to redo it is out of the realm of reasonableness. [INT: Do they come on the set?] Yeah. I like it. I show off kind of. [INT: Never had a power struggle?] I've had power struggles but usually comes through the editing process or casting process or these kinds of things but I've always though I'm going to win. In some cases, I haven't won and they were right. Can't give you example of that. I threw a guy in a swimming pool. NASHVILLE, one guys from CALIFORNIA SPLIT came up and said something about cutting. Don't take it well when they say this is the picture I want. My job is to do picture I want and that they've agreed to. They hired me. I assume they mean it. [INT: Or you'd walk?] I don't know if I'd walk, I compromise but I also knew actors, artists on my side. Didn't in MASH and didn't know it. Certain things you know aren't negotiable.

INT: The 80s, after POPEYE, were a hard time?
RA: No they weren't. Everyone assumes that because I wasn't doing, POPEYE is considered a failure. POPEYE is the 3rd largest grossing picture I made. MASH, GOSFORD, POPEYE. So I got really interested in theater. From when I did COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME JIMMY DEAN. I did STREAMERS. I could take a theater piece, just add the fourth wall, and never have a screenplay written. Just shot the play. Used to carry the SAMUEL FRENCH book in my pocket. MUTINY. Experimental time for me where I was trying to see how far could I go with that. A lot of fun. None of these were big pictures. All the big pictures are what everybody's judged by, everyone's judged by TROY today. I'm interested in how I'm considered in the neighborhood. HUGH JACKMAN is enormous star in the neighborhood, get off of anybody that knows anything about Broadway, don't know who he is. Not a movie star. Flattering, but it doesn't interest me to know that I've won best film director in Peru. I'm more interested in my friends and world I really live in.

INT: THEO and VINCENT, how did that come about?
RA: Dutch producer in France, he had the script, 4 hr thing for the BBC and I forget what time it was or where it was and things I'd been doing but I like idea of it, new territory, hadn't done an historical kind of thing, or dealt with art in that way, biographical things in that way, and I did it. 4 hr piece, never meant for the movies. I said, listen, there's a great film here. You can cut that part, you can still release it in England, but let's end up with this movie and we did, fairly successful. On the basis of that that I got THE PLAYER.