INT: People who were effective in terms of your mentorship?
AD: Yeah. Well, the mentorship starts really with being an Assistant Cameraman and growing from there, you know? And I think one of the things that I was lucky to have was being involved in two worlds, which was the kind of traditional world of apprenticeship, respect for the process, learning detail, follow through, you know? I think being an Assistant Cameraman was really good because they're good life skills, you know: put things back where they belong, make sure they're working right, you know, clean things up, second guess, have a backup for things, which is very much a part of, helps, helps the logistics of life. You have to assume, you have to assume the worst. And the military does, and in making movies you have to assume the worst. So, this, in college, this guy John Weir, who taught me how to load my first magazine, was a young, was a filmmaker working for the University of Illinois and Tom Holman [Tomlinson Holman], who became very important. And then I got out of school and a cameraman took me under his wing named Frank Miller, who later became my operator on many films. And we did all kinds of stuff. We did industrials, we did testimonials about Jacuzzis, we did sport films for Schlitz [Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company], you know, all kinds of stuff. And then Haskell Wexler was probably the most important person, ‘cause he was not only a great guy and great talent, but there was a personal connection between my parents and Haskell [Haskell Wexler], so he sort of looked at me as like a step-son. And having somebody who gives you the time of day or believes in you or is gonna help you who’s made it is so important. You don’t feel like an outsider and I don’t know how kids come to Hollywood today and break in and, you know, you’ve got to have tremendous drive, you know? And then in Chicago, there was a guy named Gordon Weisenborn, who was famous Director of industrials and children’s films that I worked with whose father [Rudolph Weisenborn] was a renowned artist in the Cubist era. And Walt Topel [Walter G. Topel], who’s a guy who gave me my start, Jim Dennet and Mike Grady. These are all people who were very much a part of my Chicago becoming a young cameraman. And then when I came out here, I started working with Roger Corman’s brother, Gene [Gene Corman]. And he gave me four movies in a row to do. I was his in-house cameraman and this is the school that Scorsese [Martin Scorsese] and Nicholson [Jack Nicholson] and Coppola [Francis Ford Coppola] all came out of the Corman school. This was the classier brother, you know? But then Mike Medavoy very early on saw STONY ISLAND and he was the one who sort of got me going as a Director. He got me, he was very supportive when I did BEAT STREET and he was very, he was the one who offered me CODE OF SILENCE. I became an action Director ‘cause Mike Medavoy gave me CODE OF SILENCE. And then we did THE PACKAGE together. And then we did HOLES together, so as a studio head Producer, he’s been very much a part. And then I had a great run with Bob Daly [Robert A. Daly] and Terry Semel at Warners [Warner Bros.]. We did five or six movies together. And those were the days when, you know, we liked these guys, we liked the idea, “Go make the movie.” It’s very different than I think it is today where you have a committee of twelve sitting around from marketing and pre-production and all these different, the way decisions are made about how movies work today. And Warners [Warner Bros.] in those days were very happy to hit doubles. They didn’t have to hit homeruns. And we kept making, you know, movie after movie for them and then a few of them just took off, you know, so there was a great…So those are some of the people that really were very much involved in helping me get going.

INT: It’s interesting knowing these people. What do you think Medavoy [Mike Medavoy] saw in you?
AD: Well, I don’t know. I met Medavoy [Mike Medavoy] when he was Haskell’s [Haskell Wexler] agent. He was Spielberg’s [Steven Spielberg] agent, Jane Fonda’s agent, you know, and we were working on, we worked on THE BOOK OF DANIEL together, Haskell and I, we did a draft of the Doctorow [E.L. Doctorow] novel. I think he saw a kind of grittiness that was part of that world of Jewison [Norman Jewison] and reality based films, and STONY ISLAND had something in it that resonated with him about, you know, this kid could get in the streets and do that kind of realistic kind of stuff that United Artists was famous for. [INT: Right.]

INT: Video cameras. Have you used them, have you been shooting with them? Digital cameras and doing that instead of 35mm? [AD: Talking about playback, you mean or--] No. No. 35mm moving into, you know, digital?
AD: I haven’t really done it. I haven’t done it yet. I’m not opposed to it. I just got my first digital camera about a year ago, my still camera and I love it. And I love manipulating the colors now and the saturation. I just did my first iMovie with stills, branding a couple weeks ago in Santa Barbara, you know? And I have no problems with that. I mean, I don’t like, I like the idea of having control of the iris, not having this thing changing on camera, you know, but I’m sure there are certain ways to control that. I mean, the idea that you can shoot and it doesn’t cost a lot of money and you can go back and refer to it, it’s great. The preservation part of it scares me because I’m seeing with my own library now, you know, we’ve got formats and software and hardware that’s out of date and you have to constantly have to be bumping it. Whereas if you have a negative, or an internegative, or an IP or something like that, it’s gonna stay for awhile. [INT: Yeah. In fact, what they’re starting to do, I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but they are beginning now to take digital masters, DIs [Digital intermediate] and actually making them into negatives.] Oh, yeah. [INT: in order to preserve.] I mean Disney [Walt Disney Pictures] does all of that. It’s on a computer, it’s in a salt mine somewhere, you know, they’re making YCMs [yellow-cyan-magenta] out of the-- [INT: Yeah.] They’re going back to preserving because that’s the only way know to keep it. [INT: It was interesting that I don’t think anybody realized the decay rate in terms of digital and the way, so that, that’s what they’re doing.] Right. They don’t know. [INT: But you haven’t shot with the Viper [Thomson Viper] or the Genesis [Panavision's Genesis] or anything of that stuff yet?] No. I haven’t done it yet. I’ve shot, now, that being said, there is footage in THE GUARDIAN that was shot with an $800 video camera that blew up...DI mean, some of the training stuff we just shot and you can mix and match it and, you know, and in using old stock footage or coastguard rescue footage and mixing it with stuff that you’ve shot that recreates it. So, I’m setting myself up now to be able to shoot and cut and post all in my basement. [INT: Got it.] You know? Or, you know, in a way that I can take an idea, I think there several movies I’m never gonna get to make, but I’m gonna make the movie anyway because I’m gonna, I’m gonna just tell the story. I’m gonna take a subject and say, “Okay. I’m committing x number of weeks or months to this. I’m gonna spend my own money and I’m gonna put this down.” And if I did a series about a Director who wants to make movies that just is, these are the stories, you know? I saw a bunch of documentaries at the festival recently and I said, “There’s no reason to make any of these into features. These are the real people. This is much more exciting and dramatic than anything I could recreate with Sean Penn or anybody else. [INT: Interesting.]

INT: The, you, when you did your commercials, which you’ve done, you were also shooting them on film?
AD: Yeah. They’re on film. Now, that was a couple years ago, I mean, today, I don’t know. It, you know, I think that video doesn’t offer you any great advantage. You can’t deal with the temperature and the moisture as well as film even though the film camera are so electronic now they have computers in them anyway. And you still have to have cables usually and you’ve got to have a monitor set up and someone, a technician to run it, so what’s the great advantage? I mean, they both work fine. I think, I think super 16 is becoming something very interesting. [INT: I find, I’ve shot two things now. I’ve shot a little mini-feature last year with the Genesis [Genesis by Panavision], but it was all against green screen and therefore it was perfect because of the electronic issues. I shot something else with the Viper [Thomson Viper], a PSA [Public Service Announcement] that I did for Paramount [Paramount Pictures] and I must say with the DI [Digital Intermediary] and the screening back and forth because, you know, it slowed things down, so it didn’t make it any faster because everybody’s running to look at that big monitor in that dark room, you know? It reminded me of what it must have been like when they had those, you know, the giant cameras and sound cameras and the first sound cameras that were monstrous.] Ah ha. [INT: It’s sort of the same, it’s become more cumbersome, but nothing’s on the set.] Right. Right. And at the same time, people can go off, I mean, was SLUMDOG [SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE] shot on video? [INT: I think it was.] Yeah. I think so, so it doesn’t matter anymore. I think what really matters is the image and the sound, you know, it doesn’t matter how grainy it is or how, you know, and kids are watching things on their phones now, so that’s…

INT: When you arrive on the set, where do you go first?
AD: Well, if I’m, I usually have a trailer. I dress for the weather. I usually, if we’re gonna get wet or we’re gonna be cold or we’re gonna be hot, so I gotta get ready for that. And then I, I usually eat a breakfast burrito first thing, and then I go see the Actors. They’re usually in make-up and I go walk in the makeup trailer and I say good morning to them or go to their trailers, and just sort of, you know, lay out what we’re gonna do today, and see how they’re doing and see if there are any problems, and whether the clothes and the hair and everything is what we thought about as working. And then I got to the set and I sort of, you know, depending on what the day, somebody may say, “Give them a setup first and then you can go do that ‘cause they’re gonna need a couple of hours to get ready whatever they need done.” So it depends, but I generally like to say “hello” to the Actors first.

INT: And if they’re still in makeup, what are you doing on the set? Would you be lining up the first shot with them, with the stand-ins?
AD: I’m doing, I’m working with everybody. I’m working with the props and set dressing and lighting and getting the camera, you know, just making sure that it’s all, getting sure that everything in front of the camera is gonna be there, so when the actors show up we don’t have to worry about that.

INT: Now, when the actors do show up, what are you doing? Do you have a rehearsal, do you have a rehearsal with full crew?
AD: Once again, it’s always, sometimes-- [INT: Again, I’m not with effects stuff.] Sometimes you’ll do the rehearsal before they even go into the makeup or hair if that’s required. Yeah, you’ll rehearse. You know? You get the set as close as you can before the rehearsal and then you rehearse and the crew needs to see where they’re gonna go depending on how refined the lighting has to be. You do a rehearsal for the crew and then the crew fine-tunes whatever they have to fine tune so you can shoot.

INT: Now, is there a time where you will rehearse? Let’s say it’s not a particular action moment, but let’s say it’s some kind of confrontation moment, will you rehearse with your Actors, with your crew around or will you let your crew go for a little bit and work with your Actors? How do you, you know, how do you handle that?
AD: I think it depends on the type of scene, how the Actors feel about being observed during rehearsal process. It’s, it’s always different. And how much I want to play around with the scene, you know? Something’s you want to be private and quiet about, work out your issues and differences or focus things and then bring the crew in. And other times it’s just not that heavy and, you know, and then watching the rehearsal process, the prop man may come up with--, “I’ve solved that problem while you weren’t even discussing it.”

INT: And, okay, now you rehearse the scene. I’m gonna take a specific scene just for a second, which is the scene where, in PERFECT MURDER [A PERFECT MURDER], where Gwyneth Paltrow is attacked by our man in black. [AD: Yeah.] Do you remember shooting that sequence, I mean, is that-- [AD: Oh, yeah.] Okay. So, do you remember how, how’d you set that one up? Did you rehearse with her and whoever was doing--
AD: Well, that was complicated because we had, you know, there were stunt doubles involved in that, right? There were very specific props that had to be used because there’s a, I believe there’s a thermometer that goes in the guy’s head and it was, the logistics of the sink and all that stuff and the phone and, dancing around, so that was quite well prepared. And-- [INT: And when you say well prepared, does that mean it was well prepared before that day?] Yeah. I’m sure we had rehearsed that in terms of, well, the sets were up that we kept going back to the same place all the time. There was a stand, that whole apartment was one set in an armory in Jersey, so we were able to shoot something and then go walk through it or I would do a rehearsal just with the stunt coordinator and his team, you know, and the camera man or, and then, or Gwyneth [Gwyneth Paltrow] would, and then we would bring Gwyneth in and we’d see how she felt about it, so there was worked out quite a bit ‘cause in a big important scene, plot wise, we knew we were gonna be intercutting it with Michael [Michael Douglas] playing cards, you know, and how that was gonna go together.

INT: So, you’ve got your Actors and you’ve worked out the scene. Now, have you got a shot list at that moment? Will you, you know, will you put together, okay, now we’ve just rehearsed whatever this particular scene is and we know we’re sort of shooting majorly in this direction, breaking this up into the pieces that you want to do, have you preconceived that the night before or are you here now? I’m not talking about obviously a storyboard in sequence.
AD: I’m trying to remember. I think I may have had a few storyboards for that sequence because of the doubling, you know, and what had to be done by Gwyneth [Gwyneth Paltrow] and where she had to wait around for us or what was gonna be done with the stand-in. But I think we pretty much, you know, we acted, we went through the logistics of where the actors were going to be in the kitchen and we shot whatever we could, I think it was Steadicam also, we shot whatever we could from one direction and then we came back around and did a little bit of relighting and shot it from the other direction. And I knew I couldn’t do it over and over. It was too intense. And there was, the big issue for me with that sequence was the surprise because she’s on the phone and there’s a big, there’s a blur that comes in that shocks you and every gasps and was something was important to catch.

INT: Interesting about that idea of the shock, preconceived idea? [AD: Oh yeah.] Okay, I want a close-up here, guy is gonna come in from out of, off stage and attack as distinguished from all other versions of how you’re gonna do that. So this is something that your mind had already--
AD: Oh yeah. Well before, I mean, weeks before. I mean I put the phone on that wall knowing that that was going to be like that. And I wanted that depth and I wanted her to sort of turn away, being frustrated, “Hello, Hello. Who is this?” and then have this thing come through and shock you. [INT: The knowledge that her looking one direction would take our eyes in this direction, so we’d be surprised coming from the other direction? I don’t know if you logic'd it out, but it certainly did happen.] AD: Yeah. It was a blind spot. [INT: Literally] Yeah. [INT: Got it.]

INT: Do you, will you give a shot list then to your crew after you’ve rehearsed whatever scene, forget this scene, let’s say it’s a scene between, you know, a dialogue scene, will you break it down?
AD: Well, during the rehearsal, after, once we’ve got the actor there in rehearsal, we’ll do a walk through let’s say and I’ll sort of be with the camera. I’ll do my hands and “We’re gonna do it from here and we’ll come around here,” and I’ll talk it through and then my script supervisor will probably just write down those notes, unless it’s like I say, it’s really storyboard and she’ll just make some notes and I’m saying, “Give me this and I want to make sure I get an extra shot of this and I want to have something from below here,” and I’ll walk through and describe the coverage I want and everybody pretty much gets it. [INT: So then the day then follows that way, right?] Yeah.

INT: In terms of your sort of language with your Actors, if you need to change something, what kind of language will you use? I know it depends on the Actor, but I’m curious, you know, when you know it’s worked and when it’s not? I mean, are you a person who’ll say, “I really didn’t like that.” I mean, how will you communicate?
AD: Generally, I don’t speak to the actors about changing performance in front of the crew. I’ll take, I’ll go up to the actor and quietly talk to that person. I mean, if I’m being critical. And just, you know, try to use words, I’m not, I don’t have a big background in, you know, Stanislavski [Stanislavski’s system] or, you know, all that kind of stuff, but I’ll just say, you know, if it’s not, if it’s not ringing true to me, I’ll say, you know, “Take it down a little, back off a little bit. Be a little more emotional about it.” I don’t, it’s so hard to say, but in terms of ‘cause everything is so different, but just put it into terms that they can understand what I don’t like about it and how I want it to change. And use their, you know, and also, it’s getting flavor. Sometimes they’ll do it fine, and I’ll say, “Well, give me one a little bigger,” and sometimes a little, “Back off a little bit, throw it away.” “Throw it away” is a term, you know, it’s an off-handed remark.

INT: Now working with some of these guys who are essentially also not studying Stanislavski [Constantin Stanislavski], Schwarzenegger [Arnold Schwarzenegger] and, you know, Seagal [Steven Seagal] are not people, I assume, that have actually studied acting. I may be wrong, maybe they have, but if they haven’t then, and yet you know you want something different from them and I suspect that there’re times when you did, how do you get it? I’m even thinking like for example, I think that Seagal’s [Steven Seagal] performance in UNDER SIEGE, you know, particularly the opening sequences when he’s, you know, being the chef and all the rest, he’s very understated, and--
AD: You know it's so funny you mention that ‘cause I’d worked with him on ABOVE THE LAW and then we had, he’d gone off and that sort of put him on the map and then he’d done a couple other pictures, they were pretty successful. Now, we’ve gotten back here, now he’s a big star and his head was like this. And I wanted him to laugh and smile and he was so serious and I remember jumping around off camera to make him laugh. I wanted him to smile at the kids’ break dancing in this kitchen. And I had a, almost had to be a monkey to jump around and make gestures to get him to laugh and smile. “C’mon Steven [Steven Seagal], smile.” I’d make fun of him, you know, and he smiled. So, I think a lot, and I have done line readings. I’ve literally read the line the way I want it to be said with rhythms and attitudes and accents, you know? And sometimes people are very comfortable with that, you know, and they get it. They hear, you know, it’s interesting, you know, Kevin Costner doesn’t like to improvise. He likes to, he likes to know his lines and he likes to be able to be prepared, and he almost does it like music. He can, he can get it to the point where he’s like singing the song, he knows the lyrics, the words to the song. Other actors are not that way, you know, and they can change on the spot and so, it depends on who you’re dealing with. Now- [INT: And when the two of them were in the scene together? So you’ve got two different actors, I assume, Kutcher [Ashton Kutcher] does it-] Ashton [Ashton Kutcher] improvises all the time. [INT: So then how did you handle it? And you’ve got three or four major scenes with these, just the two of them.] Well that, those heavy scenes were very scripted, very scripted and they stayed right to pretty much scripted. There would be little variations of readings and where certain tones and accents would come in, you know, and you basically back off and let them do their thing until you start either you get an idea of how it can be better or different and you talk to them about it quietly or you, you know, you give them an example of what it’s like. I mean, I think one of the great things with Voight [Jon Voight] was, who I didn’t have to teach a thing to, but he loved my coming up with bits, you know, “You wanna talk like this,” [Andrew Davis speaks with a southern accent.], “you know, give them a little rhyme,” and, you know, “how you doing over there,” you know? And I’d give this kind of attitude ‘cause I had it from being around people in the South and West Virginia. I sort of inspire his craziness and he’s, “Oh, yeah. Let’s go! I’ll do that.” And Tommy Lee [Tommy Lee Jones] the same thing, you know, you know, there’s a great speech in UNDER SIEGE about the ‘60s [1960's] and I missed the ‘60s and I could have made a difference, you know? We talked about how to give it some content. This guy joined the CIA, you know, and is wiped out and they dare to kill him. “I miss the ‘60s,” you know? So, Tommy [Tommy Lee Jones] wrote a lot of that, but it was inspired by a conversation we had.

INT: What gets you angry or do you?
AD: Well, I don’t, I’m not a screamer, you know? I’ve got some colleagues who I really respect who are known for screaming and scaring the shit out of people. I don’t get it. You know, I mean, they make good films, but, I think when people are not willing to experiment and get rigid, arrogance, get insecure, you know, I haven’t dealt with much of that. I haven’t dealt, you know, I don’t like to hire assholes. And I’ve been treated fairly well by most of the people I’ve worked with, you know? I think that there’s, they realize I’m working hard and I’m gonna shoot them, I’m gonna make them look good and I must say that, you know, in spite of, you know, I’ve had huge hits and I’ve had films that have done just okay or not that great, but I feel that the actors I’ve worked with have had a chance to do some of their best work with me. And it’s creating this environment that allows them to bring what they can to the table and let the other actors around them, inspire them.

INT: When an actor gets stuck, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that, “I don’t know how to do this,” have you ever had that, where it’s been a problem? “How am I suppose to treat her, I don’t, I don’t get what I’m doing in this scene?”
AD: Yeah. I don’t, not on the set. I mean, I may, there may have been a couple things like that, but usually they’re, the actors, either you find a solution or the actor that’s working with them finds a solution, they work it out together or you come up with something, you know? But I haven’t, I haven’t come to a standstill where I just, “This doesn’t work for me. I can’t make this work,” you know?

INT: When, okay, when shooting, in terms of, you’ve now said the various places you’re gonna put the camera and now that you’ve blocked the scene, do you find that you now, will you shoot, I guess, this is the question, how much will you shoot on each of those setups?
AD: I don’t do, I don’t shoot, I never shoot multiple takes on the same setup. I’ll do it a couple, two or three times and I’ll say, “Move the camera over here.” I get bored with that, you know. And, you know, knowing that you could possibly cheat a line from another take in there or you can loop it or something like that, I’m more interested in visual diversity and trying to keep giving the editor all kinds of different choices or freshening up the perspective of the view than having the person do it over and over. Now, if there is something that’s critical that you wanna, I mean, I know there’s, I’ve given up on things where I’ve said, “I really want to make it per, I’d lot make it perfect, but it’s not that important,” you know, “let’s move on.” There’re other directors who will shoot seventy takes of, you know, an insert of something and I just, it’s not, you know, as Robert Altman says, “It’s only a movie.” [INT: Right. Right. Right. You almost got it right.]

INT: The, so, will you shoot more than you need? [AD: Yes.] And do you, when I say that, I don’t know if that actually ends up being true because- [AD: When you say, “More than you need,” meaning?] Well, if you’re looking at a scene that’s cut, how, what percentage of what you’ve shot, and I’m not talking in terms of actual footage, but shots, will end up being used?
AD: A lot. [INT: Explain this.] I mean, well, you know, I mean, you count the number of cuts in THE FUGITIVE or in my movies, there’s a lot of cuts. You know, the camera is not, it doesn’t hold on one thing for a long time and certain movies, I mean, I’ve seen some Woody Allen movies where you’re staying on a wide shot for ever, he’s not doing, not recently, but in recent past, and I say, “Woody [Woody Allen], you got great actors, I’d love to see her face.” You know? And we’re watching this on television now, you know? There was a , there was a, that’s a big issue, you know, are you watching it on a big screen, are you watching, now the home screens are getting bigger, thank God, so our vision is more appropriate to what we intended. But I like, I like to be changing perspectives and seeing things from everybody else’s point of view.

INT: Are you looking at material, are you looking at dailies while you shoot? Are you looking at them at night or what’s happening?
AD: If I’m, if I’m, if I’m able, we haven’t gone to see film dailies in a long time, that’s sort of done with, nobody’s making film dallies. You’re watching DVDs or you’re watching, and generally the schedules, if they get so grueling and you’re so exhausted by the time you come home, you’re barely have a chance to watch stuff. And because you have video playback now, where you have monitors, you’ve seen it. The question is to watch it with a fresh eye and a perspective to sort of say how is this all coming back. Are the actors living up to what you think you’re getting? Is the look of the film what you think you are getting? And, you know, I used to, I mean, I remember going to dailies, it was great, but then, you know, people’d be exhausted at the end of the day, you know, if you shoot two cameras, it’s like, “Okay.” And we didn’t have high-speed forward and that kind of stuff.

INT: Where do you put yourself when you’re shooting? Are you by monitor, by camera, by both, where do you put yourself? I mean, obviously if there is something special that you need to see-
AD: Well, no. I don’t rely on watching the performance directly there. I watch the monitors, which I remember Hackman [Gene Hackman] got very upset with me because I was watching the monitors, so, you know, we were in a restaurant, I couldn’t get close to him because of the booths and everything and he wanted me to watch, sit right next to him, watch him. And, but I was getting a big close-up exactly what the camera was seeing. This is in the early days of, you know, and, you know, and so, I think that with the headphones and the two monitors, I’m seeing exactly what I’m getting. Now, I like to be on the set. I don’t want to leave the set. I don’t go off and say, “Call me.” I’m sitting there keeping things going and I want the actors to feel that I’m there for them, but, you know, it’s a problem, you get this kind of video village and everything sort of gets, where’s the chair and the monitors, and, I can’t start working until you get that set-up for me because otherwise I gotta be on the camera and if you get the cameras set up like in, the operator can be watching the rehearsal rather than me watching the rehearsal, you know? It goes faster if you’re watching the monitors, so I don’t mind watching the monitors. I mean, it depends, you know, on a small, small movie, I’d probably be operating.

INT: Playback?
AD: Not a lot. Not a lot, you know? If there’s, if you want to explain to somebody why there, why it’s not working and you can say, you know, you can show the actors, you see, especially with logistics and blocking, you know, “You gotta wait ‘til this happens before you cross over here or for the dolly operator or for the boom man or something to see what the problem is,” it’s very valuable.

INT: Let’s talk about special effects in terms of how you work with them? How do you, you know, you’ve done so many- [INT: Visual effects or special effects?] Let’s talk about special effects first and visual effects second. Let’s talk about special first, which is a mechanical effects. [AD: Right.] How do you design something, then we’re going to look at a sequences there, but I’m curious if there’s a pattern in terms of you having done a number of these things, what you know you know you’ll do and you may say, “It starts with the storyboard and then,” but walk us through.
AD: Well, you know, I started off working with, wow, who’s the guy who used to work doing YOU ASKED FOR IT? It was an old hooty special effects guy who used to invent these things and then go do it, shoot himself out a canon. He was an old time, forget his name [unidentified], but anyway, it started with him with Corman [Roger Corman], you know, and he had some high school kid who didn’t know how to wire things and would just blow up and things like that. A.D. Flowers, I don’t know, something like that? I don’t know his name. And then, you know, I was very aware, I remember Buddy Hooker did HAROLD & MAUDE, so the first time I saw a real stunt guy and a real car thing was with Hal Ashby, you know? I was very impressed with how safe they were. And then over the years, I’ve just, Peter Macgregor-Scott has been my Line Producer on most of my pictures and he, Peter’s [Peter Scott-Scott] made 100 movies and he, he introduced me to Tommy Fisher. Tommy Fisher is one of the great special effects guys. He did, you know, all kinds of huge movies including TITANIC and, so Tommy [Tommy Fisher] worked with us on UNDER SIEGE and Roy Arbogast did THE FUGITIVE, who’s another great guy. Worked with some really top special effects guys who come from, you know, military munitions stuff, or mechanical stuff in Hollywood, you know? And you just sort of learn how experienced they are and how they prepare and how safe they have to be. And there’s always a back up to a backup. And the special effects guys usually are very tied in to the stunt coordinators, so you have teams of people who learn how to trust each other and how to work together with stuff. And you have to understand the logistics, you have to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, how it’s supposed to work, what the timing has to be, what the AD [Assistant Director] is gonna have to do to make it safe to let everybody know what’s happening. And it’s just a very disciplined process, you know, and the fact that the Guild [Directors Guild of America, DGA] now requires all these safety discussions before it happens and, you know, I’m very lucky that there’s never been anything serious happened on any of my pictures in spite of all the action.

INT: Will you preconceive though, will you know, okay, I know he’s going to slip down the side of the mountain and, I mean, I’m curious how, you know, a sequence might evolve. So, that, let’s take the final?
AD: The holes? The holes? The kids on the rocks you mean? [INT: That was one but I was also thinking the, you know, in UNDER SIEGE the sort of, the shoot out near the end of it in which there’s all, you know, a whole bunch of effects going on all across the ship.] Yeah. [INT: How does that get designed? I mean are you, you know, is this the storyboard? You and the storyboard artist back and forth and then walking that real set? I mean, just talk us through a sequence.] Well, you know, when you’re dealing with, you know, actual live explosions you gotta place them, you have to know how far people are going to be from them, where the hits are gonna to be, the pops, and all that kind of stuff. It all has to be done ahead of time. I mean, there’s certain things that can be done on the day but they basically have gotta have everything sort of, you know, plastered in, and hidden, and painted. You know, you want to know how long it’s going take to do take two if that’s required. So you can go off and do something else and come back if necessary. You know, when we did UNDER SIEGE those sixteen inch guns didn’t work, you know, and Tommy Fisher [Thomas L. Fisher] had to figure out a way to make it look like they worked. The ship was a stationary ship in the bay of Mobile that we had to make, this is pre-digital, you know, we didn’t, today we would have spent a lot more money with the waves and motion and stuff like that but we just sort of cheated it. And there was, there’s a, Steven [Steven Seagal] has to take the microwave and turn it into a bomb. That was pretty scary. Where that thing blew. He says, “Well, don’t worry it’ll be fine.” And Tommy Lee Jones is like whoa, you know? But it worked out. They trust each other, it was safe, you know? So, working, it’s a lot of trust. You’re dealing with people who are, know things, and understand things you’re never going to know or understand. And how to go about, you know, preparing a set and keeping people away from things that, you know, till they get hot and you spend a lot of time waiting to make sure that if there’s going to be something big happening so, you know, one of a, it’s only going to happen once, you know, the trains only going to go off that track once. We’ve prepared to do it twice but it’s only going to happen once. So you gotta get really prepared for that. [INT: And how many cameras did you use?] There probably were twenty cameras set up on that. A lot of them buried in holes and things like that. [INT: And then the explosion, let’s say in the opening of COLLATERAL DAMAGE, multiple cameras there too?] Yeah. Just once. [INT: And you had one shot at it? Wow.] Yeah. We didn’t do it more than once. [INT: That’s amazing because there are like twenty cuts of it. You must have had a number of cameras then because there’s wide and tights--] Well, it wasn’t worth it because you had to replay, you had to rebuild the whole vestibule, and reset it, and, you know, it was just, figure out where to put the camera. You can only be, you know, it’s only going to last two or three seconds so you can’t be, we extended the time with editing and stuff like that but just once.

INT: Obviously the physical effect of the train crash is probably one of the biggest things you’ve done. What else was a real challenge for you in terms of a special effects and stunt effects?
AD: Well, all the stuff with the ocean in THE GUARDIAN, you know, I mean, having a helicopter crash in the ocean, and being in the water with the waves, and the sinking of everything, and being on a fishing boat that’s trying to get down the rigging of a fishing boat that’s banging around, and sinking. That was really complicated. We didn’t talk a lot about STEAL BIG STEAL LITTLE but I had to do a balloon sequence where Andy Garcia’s flying around in a balloon, you know? And he falls out the side of a balloon and being dragged and go from a balloon onto a horse and with a twin brother. And we had Peter Donen was the visual effects supervisor-- [INT: Now was this a combination of blue screen and effects the balloon sequence? Or was it all just effects?] All effects but then when Andy had to come down with his brother we had a double and we did a face replacement later after that. Yeah. Lizards. Dealing with lizards crawling up on kids and they were real lizards but then we had to have a digital lizard bite, you know? That kind of stuff.

INT: Talk about blue screen stuff. What’s that been like for you? Is that, do you feel it’s any different from what we just talked about in terms of, you know, the physical stuff?
AD: Well, I hadn’t really done a lot of blue screen until THE GUARDIAN. I’d done some but not a ton. On THE FUGITIVE we didn’t do any blue screen at all. [INT: But you used the Introvision though, so it’s not--] Used the Introvision but that was just for a few shots, yeah. The train chasing him from behind was Introvision, which is rear projection really what it was. But there was extensive amounts of blue screen especially on the wire at the end of THE GUARDIAN and they were hanging on, and talking, and, you know, we had to put all that stuff in behind. So, it’s hard keeping, you know, it’s hard for actors to not have that reality, you know, you want to feel like you’re under a hundred mile an hour downdraft, you want to feel cold, you want to have wind, you know, you want to be screaming, and yet, you need to create this all in the stage. And I just feel so bad for these actors that have to be talking to monsters up in the sky that don’t exist, you know, and doing all this kind of stuff. [INT: I remember Dreyfuss [Richard Dreyfuss] talking about yelling at the shark and Steven [Steven Spielberg] saying, “It’s over there.” Okay, that’s all we need.]

INT: What’s the relationship that you’ve had with Producers? Because you’ve gone from working with the Arkoff [Samuel Z. Arkoff] and the Corman’s [Roger Corman] to working with, you know, studio guys. If you’re recommending, again, talking to a new Director, about how to work with Producers who have power what do you recommend? How do you work well with them?
AD: Well, there’s different kinds of Producers. You know, they’re the Producers who put the deal together, and develop the script, and get the studio behind it, or help deliver the star. And then there are the Producers, and very few of those guys know how to literally make the production run and work. There are a few guys who can do both but who really understand the logistics. Now, I remember my Dad [Nathan Davis] was in THIEF, Michael Mann’s movie, well the Line Producer was Jerry Bruckheimer. And he was, he came out of production I believe. Right? [INT: He was an AD [Assistant Director] for…] So, there’s a guy who was on the set and understands what it takes to make a movie. And you know the development process, the agent-ing process, is one thing and then the production is the other. It’s nice if you can find somebody who knows both because you can do a shorthand, you know, with a lot of times you know people talk today about, “Well we can make it for this?” “How do you know you can make it for that?” “Well, that’s what we want to make it for.” “Yeah, but can you make for that much money?” So, I don’t know, I mean, Arnold Kopelson was a guy who was in foreign sales who, you know, just had a real, he was very successful with Oliver Stone and PLATOON although I don’t think he had a lot to do with the movie but he got the Academy Award and he kept turning that into finding commercial material and putting packages together. Well, you know, PERFECT MURDER was sitting on a shelf at Warner Bros. and I looked at the coverage and I said, “I read it,” and I thought this is pretty interesting, and his name, I called up Arnold, Arnold called up Michael Douglas, and the thing started happening. They weren’t going to make the movie. It was a package that he put together with and he helped me get Gwyneth [Gwyneth Paltrow], and Viggo [Viggo Mortensen], and, you know? So, he was very instrumental in putting that movie together as a Producer. And we had done THE FUGITIVE and he was very, you know, we had the, we were, we had done our best work together, you know? There are other Producers who are young and they’re trying to cut their teeth and they don’t really understand what it means to, for a Director to do his best work and they’re just nervous about what the studio thinks about them and, you know, that kind of stuff. So, I think there’s a wide variety of what people bring to the table and I think that, you know, in many ways, you know, Directors or Producers whether they like it or not because they have to be aware of the money. They have to be aware of the talent, they have to be aware of the script. All those things, you know? And I think what’s happening now is there are a few heavy duty Producers who seem to have a real sense of material and packaging who are like these kind of superstars who get very well paid. And then there a lot of Producers don’t, sort of get ignored and they leave it up to the filmmaker to do it. So, you know, it all has to do with what the pecking order is at the studio where it sits on everybody’s list, you know, and the independent film world is a whole other ballgame. Producers who can be creative, who can find a little bit of money from this country a little bit of money and put together hard to make projects that can take off. Or die.

INT: What about your relationship with agents? What’s that been like?
AD: That’s interesting. I’ve had, I was at CAA [Creative Artists Agency] for a long time and I had four agents who all left to go run companies for Directors or Producers. You know, so they didn’t want to, you know, it was much better to work for one person and not deal with the day-to-day Hollywood stuff. And, you know, I, Arnold Schwarzenegger said to me [doing Schwarzenegger impression], “Andy, when was the last time your agent got you a job? You always get your own jobs right?” Well, it’s relationships with people you’ve worked with before, you know, and actors, and stuff like that. And at the same time agents can be really instrumental in fighting for you, for getting you a good project, you know? I mean-- [INT: Does that happen?] THE GUARDIAN came through Josh Donen who’s the one who sorta put me into that slot, you know? Most of my other films I’ve done on my own, you know, or came out of relationships that I had because of studio heads or people who said, you know, this or that, you know? I don’t know how many, there aren’t that many open directing assignments anymore. You know, they’re usually a Director’s attached by the time the material even arrives at the studio. They come with it themselves so I think it’s important for Directors to develop material, own and control the material. I mean one of the biggest problems we have today is a Director can spend a year preparing a movie with storyboarding, budgeting, supervising rewrites, casting, and it never happens, you know? And there’s a battle I want to take on with the Guild [Directors Guild of America] which is they call this pre-production or development, development, it should be called pre-production and we should be getting our benefits because I know, I mean, I think Michael Apted’s been trying to prepare a movie for Walden [Walden Media] for two, three years now. Well, is he getting his health plan paid for? You understand? This shouldn’t be cause the process of making a movie is not just the shooting. It’s putting it together and Directors now, what happens is they come to Directors now and they say, “We want you to be a part of this,” well, they’re using you to get the talent, they’re using you to get the studio involved and so you wind up becoming the glue or the Producer sometimes that puts it together. It’s different every situation of course. But I think that, you know, the Directors need to be very wise about the insecurity of the business. And how hard it is to get movies made today and how few movies actually make money back, you know? And how they can somehow how we can evolve a system of distribution where there’s not so much on the line. You know, in Europe it used to be if a movie made it’s money back it was successful. And now today, you know, they’re looking to make movies that make a lot of money and I don’t’ think they are making a lot of movies that make a lot of money. If a picture costs two hundred million dollars and they’re spending seventy to open it domestically, how much does it have to make world wide for it to break even? So the producing is, producing is a very, very tricky role these days in terms of, you know, putting together the right material with the right talent.

INT: Let’s go to post production. How do you get into it? When do you start doing work with your Editor? What’s your process?
AD: Well, it’s a dilemma because I really would love to watch dailies with my Editors. I usually work with more than one Editor. On THE FUGITIVE, which was a rare event, because we finished all the postproduction was done in seven or eight weeks. We finished the movie, it was in the theaters in August, and it was like, and everybody was pissed at us because we did it. It was nominated for Best Editing, Best Music, all kinds of stuff. But that was before Avid and I was like a dentist going from room to room but I was able to watch most of the dailies on that film with two of my main Editors. Dov Hoenig and Dennis Virkler. And that was valuable because as you’re watching it and you’re getting that immediate reaction off the big screen about moments and Hal Ashby used to say to me, he liked to watch his film over and over and over because you remember things and how to utilize those moments. Now if you’re shooting eighteen, twenty hours a day you don’t have time, your Editors not necessarily being on location with you, you barely get to see them on a weekend. And you don’t really get to examine things until you’re in the cutting room and I think where they give the Editors two or three weeks after you finish shooting to put a first assemblage together and you’re supposed to have ten weeks. But they usually try and push that schedule up. Most of the films I’ve had they’re taking them out of my hands, they want to move the dates up, they want them in the theatre they want the picture. So, your ten weeks isn’t even protected sometimes because you have to go to preview and if you’re going to preview you’ve got to do a temp mix, you’ve got to put your visual effects in there, you’ve got to do some looping so the time for you to actually make the movie and screen it and test it is very, very tight. We have had private screenings before the ten weeks are over under cover of our own just to get a reaction from people whether it’s the sound effects and the sound crew who have to start working on the movie or a small, little audience that we bring in to listen to stuff. But what I like to do is basically, if the Editor’s got an assemblage of a scene I’ll give him my quick reaction to it and then I just like to study the footage real quickly, go through what you can do now digitally so easy, you know, and say, “What am I missing? What are the size, what are the rhythms and the sizes that are missing?” Or if I remember a certain reading or a certain attitude that I don’t feel that is there I’ll ask to sort of look for that. But I’ve been very lucky to work with some really fine Editors. Tom Nordberg [Thomas J. Nordberg], and Dennis Virkler, and Dov Hoenig have been sort of the main guys who I’ve worked with over the last few years.

INT: So, but you’ll go from scene to scene? In terms of the work meaning that you just said you’ll look at a scene, get a reaction to it, then look at the original material--
AD: What I’ll do is I’ll, the Editor keeps working. I go off, I have my own cutting room, I mean, I have an assistant and an Avid of my own. So, I can go back and search and I’ll make selects; I’ll take pieces, and I’ll pull these things out on my own. I’ll say, “Give it to Dennis, give it to Tom. Let’s work these things in. Or let’s compare these pieces to what they’ve got in there.” So I try to work sort of to not slow them down or get them off their creative vision of the thing but give them things to work with. [INT: Is your process to look at the whole, at their first cut though? Will you stay away? Or get the whole picture or will you be already working, you know, getting in there with, seeing the scene before you’ve seen the whole picture?] Depending on the time. If there’s time on a weekend for them to show me some cut stuff I’ll look at it, you know? I remember seeing when, I remember James Newton Howard came to visit me in Chicago and I showed him, I don’t know, twenty or thirty minutes of THE FUGITIVE before it was, we’ve only been shooting a few weeks. And he went, “Whoa.” He said, “This is gonna be, this is great. This is gonna be big.” And I sorta, I hadn’t sorta looked at it in the right perspective. I realized grandmothers are going to like this, they take their grandkids to see this. It had a big kind of audience because of Harrison [Harrison Ford], and the story, and it was compelling, and you had empathy for the guy. So, that was one of those early moments when having some cut footage was very helpful and I think we were down on, we were down shooting the train crash and everybody was tired and the trailer guy sent us some footage or we saw some footage of the train crash and we showed it to the crew and everybody spirits just sort of got, you know? So, having footage ahead of time to sort of inspire people is good.

INT: What do you do with music? When does music enter your consciousness besides doing a musical?
AD: Well, I’m taping my toe on the set. I’m singing to myself usually. If there’s an action sequence, especially if it’s some kind of a visual sequence, I’m humming and there’s a rhythm that’s going on inside of me. I’m imagining what this is gonna look like, you know, or with the track next to it. And Editors are working with music very early on. It’s both a blessing and curse because it’s the same thing as like once you sorta get a click going and the sequence, the Composer sort of has to sort of inherit what that click is. Doesn’t necessarily have to stay that way but it helps sometimes to have a track going. And I think I learned a lot about music from Hal Ashby because he used to, you know, with, who did MOONSHADOWS? Who was that? [INT: Cat Stevens?] Cat Stevens, he used early, really creatively. And he would use Stones [The Rolling Stones] and songs early on. And, you know, I worked the first movie I did was STONY ISLAND and it was a film about kids making music but the score was written by a guy named Dave Matthews [David M. Matthews], David Matthews, not Dave Matthews the, David Matthews worked, he was the guy who did all those James Brown horn parts. And then he worked for Creed Taylor at CTI [Creed Taylor Incorporated] and produced all kinds of great jazz artists. And I heard an album he did, produced and wrote for David Sanborn called TAKING OFF and it had this kind of modern Aaron Copland big city sax sound and I said, “That’s, this guy’s got to do the score.” He’d never done a score before and I went to New York and talked him into it and we did that whole score for twenty thousand dollars with Sanborn and all these guys. And that was a great experience because I was a musician. I worked my way through college playing in a band. Irving Azoff used to book my band and I was a singer, I mean, a guitar player and a singer, and so I love Composers. I love music and it’s, you know, if you’re into picture and music that’s movies.

INT: Are there scores that, how will you work with your Composer then? You said you show them a piece with temp track. What will happen?
AD: Well, it depends. Usually I try to use music that they’ve done if I’ve chosen a Composer because I want to work with that person. Then you try to use as much of their music that they’ve done from other movies in the score if it’s appropriate. You know, why I keep wanting, using a lot of Thomas Newman [Thomas Montgomery Newman], that guy’s incredible, you know? And you try to find things that are, you know, fresh, unique, appropriate that you can use emotionally for whatever you need, and then the Composer listens to it and says, “I get what you’re talking about,” or, “How about this?” I like the Composer to come in and work temp. I work with a couple of really good music Editors who come up with all kinds of ideas. So, I think temping a music, temping the music on a movie in post production really sets the tone for what the score’s going-- You get, it’s a problem. You fall in love with a piece of temp music, you can’t get it, it’s too expensive, you’ve got to come up with something else. HOLES was a lot of fun. Joel McNeely did the score and a very eclectic score. And yet we produced a really great amount of the music ourselves and found pieces of music that were existing from Keb’ Mo’ and had Keb’ Mo’ re-record a song and Doctor John [Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack Jr.] and all kinds, and the album wound up becoming the number two album for Disney [Disney Music Group] that year, the soundtrack to HOLES, which was very eclectic, you know? So, I really, that’s the fun part. [INT: What do you want music to do?] Everything. The Composer’s the last writer of the movie. The Composer has such an effect on the movie and it really pin points the emotional stuff, it helps the comedic aspects of a movie, the overall tone and nature of it. I mean it’s really the finished paint, the varnish, the gloss, it’s all of that. It’s really critical. I mean and it should not get in the way and yet when you think about how important certain scores are to certain movies you go, “Wow.”

INT: It’s interesting that you mentioned about tone. We didn’t really talk about that that much but, it’s, HOLES has a number of tones in it. You’ve got three different stories, you’ve got the tone of the family, which is definitely comic, you’ve got, you know, somewhat comic tone with-- [AD: Madame Zeroni.] Yeah, and yet, you know, the boy’s situation, there’s moments of humor but that’s not what that is. It gets much more--
AD: Oh, no. It’s a, you know, the Warden’s willing to let these kids die. You know, they get bit by those yellow spotted lizards they burn up out there, you know? Who’s gonna know they were here? Nobody will miss them. You know, so it’s very scary stuff and there, I tend, I love Aaron Copland. I love the fact that he has these major key Americana folk themes that are so humanistic and I just am drawn to that, you know, I maybe was watching the Walter Cronkite [sings], you know? The twentieth century, is that what’s the theme? [INT: I know the piece of music because it’s a famous American folk song which then Copland--] It was a Shaker song. SWEET AND SIMPLE THINGS and free and simple things. And I remember I was lucky to, Donnie Zimmerman [Don Zimmerman] was one of the Editors with Billy Weber on THE PACKAGE and Donnie knew James Newton Howard and he had never done anything like that before and he was able, in that film, to do a very dramatic, serious score which was the template for THE FUGITIVE. And then we did PERFECT MURDER [A PERFECT MURDER] after that. So, we did three films together too. [INT: Do you have a, have you been able to get final cut? Or you’ve got close to it?] Yeah. [INT: Where have you been on that?] I’ve had it, I’ve had it. And I think the definition of my final cut is if my, I have a way of testing my, if my version tests better than their version, but I’ve never had their version done. I’ve never had to deal with that issue. At least so far. [INT: Did you get it after FUGITIVE or before?] You know, I didn’t have it I’m sure on CODE OF SILENCE and I don’t remember what happened on it. You know what? It was after THE FUGITIVE I’m sure but it wasn’t an issue. I never really had any big battles about that stuff.

INT: And talk about mixing. The two last chances you have for the picture, mixing and color timing. Let’s talk about the mix.
AD: Well, I’ve been very involved in that because my relationship to Holman, Tom Holman [Tomlinson M. Holman]. I mean I’ve been in involved in sound from the beginning and we actually built a THX dubbing room in Santa Barbara, which Dennis Sands [Dennis S. Sands] is now mixing scores in. And, you know, sound became very important. I remember when I did STONY ISLAND it was, you know, eight thousand k roll off, there was no stereo, it was mono, you know? And then all of a sudden sound started taking over and the feeling in the sound of a movie is very, very important to the ambience of the story, almost overpowers some movies these days. But I, you know, mixing is great, you know, because and I think people tend to over do, you know, I think I’ve seen some big movies recently where, you know, they were bored with the movie and the score came in and they just smeared the score all over the dialogue, you can’t understand what people are saying, you know? But that balance is very critical and-- [INT: Are you precise choosing your sound effects like explosion effects of which there a [?]. Do you get in there with that sound effects person and start to listen to ten different explosions or you wait till he brings them to your mix?] No, no, well, the Editor’s usually get them first and put them in, you know, so you get used to them and if you don’t like them or the, I mean, we had two nominations I think, two or three nominations for Best Sound and they won a BAFTA [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] I think in a couple for UNDER SIEGE and THE FUGITIVE. But I’m not that, I was never that into bullet hits or gunshots and this. I’m more interested in the emotional atmosphere that effects can give you and I also, I mean if I remember it used to frustrate me because I remember CODE OF SILENCE there was the opening there’s a bus and they’re going up to this apartment and in the background there were real church bells. And I went to one of the temps I said, “Where’s my church bells? Those great church bells.” “Well, it cleaned them out cause they broke,” “Get 'em back in here.” You know? And I was always frustrated, it’s getting better where you’d have Editors doing these temp mixes and finding pieces and then you go to the mix or the temp and it’s all gone. And you say, “Why did you waste it? Those Editors knew what they were doing?” They were building some kind of an ambience there so now with the digital world and keeping track of EQ’s and stuff that stuff doesn’t have to get lost. [INT: Quite true, quite true.]

INT: Color timing?
AD: I usually time all my movies. I have timed all my movies. [INT: It’s one of the things that I find one of the most frustrating because you walk in there and there may be two days and you may have spent two years and the last creative moment is in the hands of somebody who’s, “Yeah, sure.” And so I’m curious…] Well, I, Bob Putynkowski was the guy who timed most of the film stuff at Technicolor. He was a really fine timer. And, you know, having been a DP [Director of Photography] I was able to use a language with him in terms of, and they couldn’t control that much. Brighter, brightness, and color was about all you could. THE GUARDIAN was my first digital negative and it was, oh boy, it was amazing because in terms of contrast, in terms of where things were now on a set, “Don’t worry about setting that flag. Don’t worry I’ll take care of that later,” you know? We can knock that wall down without spending an hour getting a flag set for that corner, you know? So, that’s a real learning curve for me but it costs money but I don’t think films look that good anymore because by the time they get to the theater now through a couple generations, and this digital stuff, and the projectors are always a little dim, and the skin tones are pale, and I prefer digital projection now. There’s no chatter, there’s no scratches, it’s rock steady, it’s usually consistently bright, you know, and even. So, it’s the film world is going fast. [INT: Yeah, for sure.] Not necessarily for shooting but for distribution, for exhibition. [INT: And also with color timing controls that you have now are enormous.] Right. [INT: I mean, you know.]