MH: So, anyway, we made the deal to do two westerns [RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and THE SHOOTING]. And you know, going back to what I was saying about, you know, everybody in the crew trying to do and everything, the crew on the two westerns, we had a very minimal crew, I think we had you know had a total of 13 people. And maybe including the Actors, I’m not even sure about that. And nobody was trying to say, “Well, you should do it this way or that way,” but they were surly, they were a surly lot. And nobody had any, they didn’t understand what we were doing, and they had no faith in the projects at all. And we came back to L.A. and we had a screening at Fox [20th Century Fox], and I think showed RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, [siren] and the crew came out after the screening and they said, “My god, is that what we were doing? We had no idea.” And they just, you know, everybody just said, “Well, we’re so sorry we weren’t nicer to you.”

MH: We’d done the same thing in the Philippines. In the Philippines, we did two pictures back-to-back, however, we had three weeks between pictures, and I had a chance you know ideally to prepare the second picture in that three weeks. Well, what happened was, I became deathly ill on the first picture and I was in a hospital the whole time that I should’ve been preparing the second picture. And I think a day or so before we had to shoot, I mean, Jack [Jack Nicholson] had come to the hospital and they had no idea what was wrong with me, it was some strange, you know, bug, and Jack came to the hospital and he put his, you know, hands on my head and he says, “I’m laying hands on you, you will be well.” And I swear, the next day, I was fine. I mean I wasn’t 100 percent, but I was like 80 percent. I went out in a Jeep. I was a little bit kind of weak, so I was kind of like lying on my side, scouting locations. And we went around and we scouted a lot of locations, and a day or so later, I literally got out of bed, and I put my tennis shoes on and I just kind of leaped onto the set. I mean I was like 100 percent and we did the second movie. But we had three weeks between, and should’ve had time to prepare. And the horrible part was that the first movie was edited during the time I was in the hospital, and I got out and I looked at the edit, and I said, “Oh my god, this is awful.” And so, I said, “I’ve got to recut this.” But they had a deadline. And so, I literally, shooting the second movie, I would get up at 5:00 in the morning, leave for the set at 6:00, it was an hour to the set, arrive on the set at 7:00, we would shoot until 6:00 at night, arrive back at the house at 7:00, have dinner, take a little nap, and I slept in the car both ways by the way, take a little nap, have dinner, and then I’d be in the cutting room from 9:00 until 2:00, re-cutting the first picture. Then I’d go home and I’d sleep from 2:00 to 5:00, and then start the process all over again. And did the whole movie that way, three weeks of editing at night and shooting by day. And I finished re-cutting it, and I finished the picture. [INT: Oh my god.] Anyway, that was it. [INT: I am so worn out just thinking about that. I’m like, I’m a lazy, I am a lazy filmmaker, boy.] And that’s the advantage, the advantage of short shoots, though, because you can, you really have, you can get rid of all that energy and it’s not for like five months or, you know. Five months you’d have to pace yourself differently. [INT: Yeah, it’s always a little scary when they give you an extra couple of days.] Yeah. [INT: You’re like, “Oh, god, I’ve got shoot those days.] Yeah, you know if you’re paced for a certain time frame, then… [INT: Right.]

INT: So when you, when you assembled this cast for, for the two films in Utah, for the two westerns [RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and THE SHOOTING], how did that process happen, how did Millie Perkins become involved, and which is just, she’s like such a, she was so underused it seemed always at that period?

MH: Well I think we originally, I think Roger [Roger Corman] wanted… I think Mel Ferrer to play the Cameron Mitchell part in RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, and I think we originally thought of Sterling Hayden and Dana Wynter for THE SHOOTING. And we always had to have some name, you know. And the name, really the name that meant something in RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND was Will Hutchins because he was a TV star, SUGARFOOT. But we were trying to, you know, think about various kinds of people that we could get, and one day I was in, there was a bookstore in Beverly Hills called Martindale’s, and I was you know browsing and I had this like flash. I thought of Warren Oates and Will Hutchins and Millie Perkins, like in a flash, all together. Now, it wasn’t--I mean, they were people that I was familiar with and I knew Millie because she was my next-door neighbor. And I’d met Warren once maybe and he was, I’d seen him in CUCKOO’S NEST [ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST] at the Player’s Ring [Player’s Ring Theater]. And, but I just had the flash. And I called, I was so excited, I went you know out to a phone booth and I called Jack [Jack Nicholson], and I said, “I just had this flash, you know, you won’t believe it, but I just cast THE SHOOTING in one go.” You know, and I him, and he said, “That’s great.” And Roger accepted it because of Will Hutchins, and because of Millie Perkins. [INT: Wow. So it’s exactly the same process that we have to this day? People don’t realize that, I don’t think often, but that that process has always been in place, of where you’ve got a name for whatever is required to sell the picture. And it changes--it’s ironic, isn’t it, that Will Hutchins was the name then, even though now--] Yeah. And of course Cameron Mitchell in RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND.

MH: But I’ve had situations where I was you know given the lead Actor, like in CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37. He [Fabio Testi] was hired before I was. Well almost, I mean I did, you know, they asked me to do the picture and they had a terrible script again. The usual story of my life is when I, you know… I may as well go in… whatever comes up, right? [INT: Yeah, exactly, yeah.] We’ll bounce, we’ll bounce. [INT: We’re both meanderers, so I’m following you, baby.] In CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37, I had been working, talking to Elliott Kastner for a year, and been trying to find something to do together. And he had given me this scripts called A MAN FOR DEGIM’S [PH] WIFE, and I had, you know, vetoed it, you know, a year before, and he had vetoed some of my projects. We never found anything that we wanted. We found one thing, but it didn’t work out. But I get a call from Elliot. Everything always happens around Christmastime for me. I don’t know why, but you know, I get a call just before Christmas, saying, “Can you come to Rome? You know, I’ve got a deal on MAN FOR DEGIM’S [PH] WIFE.” And I said, “Elliott, that script is terrible.” You know, he says, “No, you know, the ending needs a little work, you know, we can fix it.” He says, “Can you come you know tomorrow?” And I said, “Well, no it’s Christmas, you know, I promised my family, my kids…” and I said, “Give me a couple of weeks, I’ll be there the first part, the first week in January.” He says, “Okay.” And so, I quickly, as soon as I hang-up, I called Jerry Harvey and I said, “Jerry, you got to help me, I’ve got a terrible script and they want to do it, but we’ve got to rewrite this.” And so, Jerry called a friend of his, Doug Venturelli [Douglas Venturelli] and the two of them, again, threw out the old script completely, rewrote, you know, a new script, you know based on the germ of the idea. And so I get to Rome, carrying this new script, the two Italian Producers love it, went crazy over it. Elliott read it, said, “That’s a piece of shit. I’m sorry.” So, he left. I mean, so the whole thing was because of Elliott, you know. He left the project, and so I wound up making with you know a couple of guys who were very nice, but the biggest, one of them is like the biggest crook in the world, never met anybody who was so charming, and such a, you know, pathological liar, just totally pathological. [INT: And this was all away from home, in another country once again?] Yeah. Yeah, but what brought it up was that, you know, in the process, they cast Fabio Testi, and so that was a given, you know, then I brought in Warren Oates, and we found, they finally decided on Jenny Agutter, and you know we fleshed it out. But Fabio was there. Well, I mean talk about luck, I mean, he is one of the greatest Actors, one of the greatest people. I mean, he’s like, he and Warren are the two in my life. And again, lifelong friend, you know. So that was, you know, it’s not always bad. [INT: Exactly.]

INT: So, chronologically where is that in relation to the work with Corman [Roger Corman]?

MH: All right, let’s do a time plot. I did, I shot BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, December 1959. So, the picture was released in 1960. I did the additions, you know, the expansions to the various Corman films, which included BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, I expanded my own picture, and LAST WOMAN ON EARTH, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, which was a spin-off of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. Roger kept making the same movie over and over again, just changing the title and the locale. And SKI TROOP ATTACK, which he shot back-to-back with BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. So, when I finished shooting BEAST, he came in, used the same cast, and shot the second movie. So, almost everything I did in those early years, either I did two back-to-back or there was a back-to-back production in some way or other. And then in the Philippines, we did the expansions in ’62 [1962], ’63 [1963], and then, and then I did THE TERROR in ’63 [1963]. [INT: Dear, I paid to go see that many times when I was a child.] And which was kind of like an expanded expansion, in the sense that Roger shot for two days and did all the interiors, and then Coppola [Francis Ford Coppola] shot for five weeks and wound up with about 10 minutes of useable footage, and… Well, he’s, I mean, you know, Francis is one of the great Directors of the world, but he was always, I guess… everything was big, everything was big, and so you know he had a major production. Roger shot two days, Francis shot five weeks, and you know, it was like he went crazy, he was you know shooting WAR AND PEACE. And so--[INT: That was DEMENTIA 13?] I’m sorry? [INT: Was that DEMENTIA 13?] No, no, this was THE TERROR. [INT: That was THE TERROR?] THE TERROR, yeah. And, no DEMENTIA 13 came after that. And in fact, while I was shooting, you know, my scenes for THE TERROR, which I only took five days for, instead of five weeks, each time there was a rewrite. Francis rewrote the script, and then he shot for that script, and then Jack Hill, you know, rewrote for me, and that was the final script. And while we were shooting that, and then that was, I guess there must’ve been quite a bit of a time break, because Francis then made DEMENTIA 13, and when I finished the last day of shooting on THE TERROR, Roger got me to shoot the prologue to DEMENTIA 13--[INT: I love this.]--with this hypnotist who tries to scare the audience, you know, “If you have any heart problems, or anything like that, we beg you not to watch the movie.” [INT: That’s awesome, that’s so funny. God that must’ve been so fun, though?]

INT: When I think just how you guys [Roger Corman and company] were all working together. I can’t even imagine like not having the egos bumping into each other, these days trying to do something like that.

MH: Yeah. No, THE TERROR was a lot of fun because it was again, you know, my unit, you know, writing, producing. Well, Jack Hill wrote it, so I can’t say I wrote THE TERROR. But it was incredible, because, you know, you had this tremendous pressure of time. I mean, it really was a stimulant to know that you had to get so much done in a day. And the first day we got stopped by the police because we didn’t have a permit. We were shooting in Palos Verdes [Palos Verdes, California], and so we had to go down to the police station and you know fill out the forms, and pay the whatever. And so we lost two or three hours. And so we had to make it up in the afternoon. And Jonathan Haze was one of the Actors, and we finished on one location, and we had to move, and we had got the horse from Griffith Park Stables, instead of getting a movie horse. And so, we did the scene and everything, but the horse wouldn’t go back in the cart, the trailer, and we tried everything, couldn’t move the horse. And so, Jonathan came up to me and he said, “You know, I can get that horse in the trailer.” I says, “Really, god Jonathan, that’d be great.” He says, “How much will you give me?” So, we agreed on $50 if he could get the horse in the trailer, and he went up to the horse, and he whispered in the horse’s ear, and the horse just moved right into the trailer. And I said, you know, “Come on, Jonathan,” as I’m handing him the $50. I says, “Come on, you know, tell me how did you do it? How did you get the horse in the trailer?” He just said, “I went up to him and I said, ‘You son-of-a-bitch, if you don’t get in that trailer, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.’” [INT: Oh my god.] Yeah, yeah. [INT: So you shot that in Palos--you know, that every time I’m on the coast, I look for where that was shot.] Really? [INT: Every time, I’m driving up, I go, “Where was THE TERROR, where were those beautiful scenes on the beach?] And it was so, it was so much fun because, and I had a special effects Makeup Artist named Maurice Seiderman, who was the only man who ever did Orson Welles’ nose, Orson Welles had a fake nose in every movie except LADY FROM SHANGHAI. [INT: Oh my god, I had no idea.] And he did all the noses. And he was also an eye surgeon. And so he did the eye makeup when we had the bloody eyeballs, when the hawk, you know, claws out Jonathan’s [Jonathan Haze] eyes, and I mean, it was, you know, fabulous effect for nothing, you know, because… And it was so much fun because you know we did the thing with the hawk and we got, you know, we shot it with the camera upside down, so that we could shoot him holding the talons at his face and then letting go and it looks like the hawk is sweeping down on him. And, you know, we just had a ball. And then, we’d throw the dummy over the cliff, and then we’d have to run down and get it and do it again. And then, go down at the bottom of the cliff and shoot Jonathan, you know, mangled on the rocks. And, you know, it’s just like, you’re going so fast, I mean, it’s just the energy is so terrific. [INT: And what were those, they were 16mm, you were working with a 16mm camera on these?] No, we were working 35. [INT: 35? Wow.] 35mm, yeah, everything was 35. I’ve never worked 16mm, never. [INT: Wow.] Yeah.

INT: So how were you so mobile in such a, in such a tight schedule?

MH: I don’t know, I don’t know how we did it. I mean, we had, you know… I mean, you know, Jack [Jack Nicholson] ran down this path, you know, as fast as he could go. I mean, you know, it was crazy; we did crazy things. [INT: Wow. And it has so much atmosphere [THE TERROR], I mean, it’s still like stands out for me for all that whole group of horror films done at that time, from the same studio [American International Pictures], because it just, there’s just an atmosphere that continues to remain. I think there was like a couple of them, THE HAUNTING in the ‘50s [1950s], and was that the name of it, I’m not sure if that’s correct, I think it was called, maybe that’s not the name of it. But that one in particular has always stuck with me, and just the mood of it is so exquisite really.] Well, it’s, you know, it’s a dumb movie. I mean whenever a movie’s patched together from so many different things, you know, and the stuff that Francis [Francis Ford Coppola] shot that’s still in the movie is all the stuff with the witch, you know, he’s got you know so many things going on in that movie, it’s just really bizarre. [INT: Yeah, but it’s beautiful, too. It’s really great.]

INT: So then you, so then from there you’re now working… yeah, chronologically, yeah?

MH: After, yeah, after THE TERROR, in ’64 [1964] I went to the Philippines and shot the two back-to-back [FLIGHT TO FURY and BACK DOOR TO HELL] there, and then in ’65 [1965], shot the two westerns back-to-back [RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and THE SHOOTING] with only a week off in-between this time. And that was interesting because Jack [Jack Nicholson] and I were partners, we formed a company, and we produced it together, and then he wrote RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and I directed both pictures. And we had to find one location that would work for the two pictures, and they had you know vastly different needs in terms of the kind of locales, and but the two trickiest parts were in RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND we needed a boxed canyon, which, you know, believe it or not is not that easy to find. And in THE SHOOTING, we needed a desert. And so, we went to Lone Pine [Lone Pine, California], we went to what’s the one in Arizona, where everybody shoots all time, I’ve blanked out. [INT: Monument Valley?] We went to Monument Valley too, but there’s another one in Arizona. And then we went to Monument Valley, and then we want to Kanab, Utah, which was called “Little Hollywood”, there was many movies made there. And that was the only place where we could find the two special locations. Even though the desert was about 50 miles from Kanab, so it was, nobody likes to have that big of move, but that was the best we could do. [INT: Now, where is that exactly, is that up around the Four Corners, or is it?] Kanab is, it’s very close to where they did the atomic testing and a lot of people got sick around there. But Kanab is like if you’ve coming from Vegas you go through, you can either go north to Salt Lake City [Salt Lake City, Utah], or you continue going east to Kanab. [INT: Right.]

INT: And so you’ve gathered all the Actors, you’re all on your way there, and you’ve got this crew that is very suspicious of what you’re doing, so what were those days like? What were the shooting days like, what was the time like after shooting, like what would your typical day be like? Not that there’s ever a typical day on a movie but...?

MH: Right. Well, as I recall, we generally shot six-day weeks. We shot THE SHOOTING first. Very close to the time of year, maybe we were a year later or something or two, I don’t know. I remember reading the journal of Fellini’s [Federico Fellini] 8 1/2, you know, while we were preparing, and I think he began like in April. We started writing the scripts in January. We made the deal with Roger [Roger Corman] before Christmas, we started writing the scripts in January, Carole Eastman was writing THE SHOOTING, and Jack [Jack Nicholson] was writing RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND with me. I didn’t, I worked with Carole at night, and I worked with Jack all day. So, Jack and I took an office in the writer’s building in Beverly Hills. Fred Astaire had the office next to us, which was very thrilling, and so we worked in this tiny little, you know, cubby hole of an office, just big enough for you know one of these school teacher’s oak desks, you know. [INT: So, you worked together?] We worked together, except, you know, he physically sat down and wrote, and I paced behind him, you know? And Carole was off by herself. And so I would meet with her at night, and she would give me, you know, maybe five pages at a time. And she writes in a--I mean, Jack and I kind of plotted out RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, and Jack had done a lot of research at the library and had reads a lot of diaries from the period, and so he found a situation where there was a siege, and he wrote that into the script. And Carole writes in a kind of organic way without really knowing where she’s gonna go, and so she just takes a road, and then if that’s the right road then she’ll continue on that road, or she’ll go back and start and take another branch of the road. So, the process at night with her was either, “Wow, this is great, you know, let’s continue,” or “Ugh, you know, I’m not sure if that really works, you know, maybe you know, maybe you can try this or...” So it was like you know, it was really like a little bit like working with an Actor. And I think that working with a Writer is a lot like working with an Actor. And I think Writers--and the funny thing is the two Writers that I was working with were Actors, so it’s not only like working with an Actor, it is working with an Actor. So, you know, but they were two different styles. You know, with Jack, and I’d already worked with Jack on, you know, he wrote the script for FLIGHT TO FURY as well. So, and that we wrote the two scripts on a ship, sailing to the Philippines. And so we arrived in the Philippines with two scripts. And Jack’s way of working on that was to sit in the--and they were, I guess kind of not cruise ships, but they were passenger liners. I’ve since learned to travel on freighters, but at that time we were on ships with other people. And he would sit in the lobby, the lounge, and people would come up and say, “What are you doing?” You know, and he would have conversations, and then he would write the conversations into the script. [INT: Wow.]

MH: Like the whole thing in FLIGHT TO FURY, I’m sorry to digress, but--[INT: No, I love this please.] The whole thing in FLIGHT TO FURY where they’re playing Go was a conversation he [Jack Nicholson] had with a guy on the boat. And including the joke, you know, which you know, Jack… the guy saying, “Yes,” he said, “What are you doing?” He says, “We’re playing gor, G-O, gor.” And Jack says, you know, “Is that Go or Gor?” “Yes.” So, he just wrote it verbatim into the script. But Carole [Carol Eastman], you know, worked alone. I mean, she was like, you know, in a little, you know, room on her own, and so I was the audience that she would bounce it off of. And I remember, we wrote the whole the script, you know, with this kind of day-by-day process of, “Yes, we continue,” or “No we go back,” and we’d take another branch. And then she finished the script. And she gave it to me, and I read you know the final 20 pages or whatever, and she was waiting for a response from me. And so, I got up and I went to the bathroom and I had a kind of choking fit. And I was like coughing, almost throwing up, and she thought I hated it. And so she was like really like very, very nervous, and I come back, and I say, “It was great. It was really great.” And she said, “Oh my god, I thought you were, I thought it was making you die,” you know?

INT: I’m feeling so lazy now listening to this. I’m like okay, he’s working with Jack [Jack Nicholson] during the day, and then at night he meets with Carole [Carol Eastman]. And then meanwhile during the day you’re probably also doing--well, you’ve assembled a lot of your cast, you already know who your cast is for these movies.

MH: No, not yet, not yet. [INT: Not yet? Oh, okay.] Not yet. We didn’t do that until after we had the scripts. [INT: Okay, great.] We had no idea what these scripts were gonna be. Unlike, you know TWO-LANE BLACKTOP where we had a you know a little bit of an idea which direction we were going in, but no we had no idea what these scripts were gonna be. [INT: Wow. Okay.] Literally, two blank pages. You know, Roger [Roger Corman] just said, “You know, make me two--[INT: Westerns.]--make me two westerns,” you know. No, no other restrictions. [INT: Oh god, that’s so...] I mean, afterwards when he saw the scripts, he nearly had a heart attack and was about to cancel the projects, [INT: Tell me about it.] and then being Roger he said, “No, I’ve already invested $5,000 or whatever it was for the two, the creation of the two scripts, and the offices and everything else.” He said, he says, “No, if I make the movies I’m sure I can at least get my money back. Go ahead, but I’m very unhappy.”

INT: And so at that point then you had your casting requirements? [MH: Right.] And who did you work with on the casting? Did you have someone…?

MH: We had nobody. We had nobody. We just did it. Yeah, I mean, we were talking before, you know, you know, the idea of how do you work with a Casting Director, how do you work with? I mean I did have a great Casting Director on TWO-LANE BLACKTOP. I mean Fred Roos was you know as good as they get. But you know, a lot of the pictures that I did, I didn’t have a Casting Director, I didn’t you know rarely had, we did have an Art Director on THE SHOOTING and RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, and we had, you know, some kind of semblance of art direction on the Philippine movies. But TWO-LANE BLACKTOP I don’t even think we had anybody that was called Art Director. Because we shot everyone on real locations. I didn’t have a Costume Designer, I remember going down to the Goodwill, downtown on Main Street or something with James [James Taylor] and with Laurie [Laurie Bird] and with Dennis [Dennis Wilson], and finding faded jeans or else finding jeans that would could, you know, launder 100 times and fade them ourselves, and finding Laurie’s t-shirts and, you know, the little military shirt and so forth. All those things we just, we just kind of did it. You know--[INT: The way that I bought my clothes during that time.] Did you? [INT: Yeah. Yeah, it was authentic, the authentic way to look like that really.] Yeah, yeah. And--[INT: Which would never happen nowadays.] And I didn’t have a Make-up Artist, because I didn’t want them to wear make-up. And generally, and I didn’t, I tried not to have any make-up on, we had to have some special effects, so we had somebody who did special effects make-up on the westerns, but I never… you know, having been--I didn’t mention this, but I was a still photographer and I did a lot of portraits of Actors. And I learned that if you use a base, it’s like a wall between the viewer and the subject. It’s just kind of like flattens everything out, there’s no life to a base. And I just didn’t, you know, so everybody got, in all of my movies, I would just say, “Go out and get a tan, and you know, and well, that’s it.” [INT: Oh, god, that’s so great.] But Millie [Millie Perkins], you know, tried to sneak in make-up on me, and she got away with it, and she got, a lot of times she had a lot of eye make-up, and I’d say, “Oh god, what are you doing, Millie?” And then she would take a little bit off, and then the next day it would could back, you know. [INT: Well, she looked so natural in those movies, too, that’s the funny thing.] Well she still didn’t have--and no base, no base. [INT: Very simple.] Yeah. And that, so then she had to have some make-up. So then she would take the dirt and she would rub the dirt in her face just to feel like she was having some make-up, you know? [INT: Oh god.]

INT: So once the films were complete, I’m trying to think if there’s something else. You had an Art Director, you said you had some--did you have any building on the westerns [RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND and THE SHOOTING]?

MH: Yes, we had--we built a cabin that we burn down. We added to the other cabin. The other cabin where the family lived in RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND was a real historic cabin, but we built the bedroom onto it. It was just a one-room cabin. And so we had set construction on that. I had, we kind of like built the mockup for the airplane on FLIGHT TO FURY, in the Philippines, and we had, you know, a certain amount of construction, and the outlaw camp we built. I’m trying to think. I think BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, I don’t think there was any construction there, except the monster itself. We had a wonderful Art Director on CHINA 9 [CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37], and we had, you know some really good Art Directors, really, I mean, I think we had somebody who worked on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA on IGUANA. [INT: Wow, wow.] So, it kind of varied.

MH: I think, the most crucial member of the crew for me is the Cameraman. [INT: Yeah, that’s talk about that.] And that’s what I’m, you know, most picky about, having been a photographer. I mean that’s like it’s the most important thing, and what I look for is you know holding the mirror up to nature and nobody ever gave better advice than Shakespeare. And so, I look for, I mean, I mean, I’m bothered by things that I think, you know, certainly the average audience would never even see, but if I see the reflection of lights in somebody’s eyes, it takes me out of the movie. Particularly if it’s a period piece. I mean, then it really takes me out of the movie. And so, you know, I just, I like, you know, natural highlights that come from a window or whatever, and I, you know, and I’m bothered by things like you know, he was a great Cinematographer, he just died, you know who I mean. [INT: Oh, Gordon Willis.] No. [OFF CAMERA: Conrad Hall] [INT: Conrad Hall I mean. Yeah.] Conrad Hall, yeah. And he did THE PROFESSIONALS. And you see THE PROFESSIONALS, and not only does Claudia Cardinale have a blouse that’s all, you know, form-fitted which you know totally out of period, and that threw me off, but there were two suns in the sky. And you know, it just, it destroys it for me, destroys it for me. I don’t care how pretty it is, you know, it’s just, you know--[INT: Well, that’s the incredible thing is this kind of authentic look to all of, there’s an authenticity, there’s a feeling of authenticity. I feel like I’m watching real people when I’m watching your movies. I don’t feel like I’m watching Actors. Whether or not I’m madly in love with the beautiful rock stars you cast in TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, to me they’re real people at that point. I forget all of the hype around them at the time, and I was very well-versed in that stuff, and I remember that stuff so much, but when I watch them in TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, I forget. I forget everything about Dennis Wilson; I forget everything about James Taylor. It’s like they’re totally different people.] Well, I mean, I mean, James and Dennis were very upset because I wouldn’t let them sing. And to me, I said, “You know, guys, you know, you’re, you know, that’ll immediately make everybody think, ‘Oh, it’s James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.’ I’m mean, that’s...” [INT: Absolutely.] You know, the term I use is detrimental empathy. And it’s, you know, as much as I would love to have had, you know, a nice soundtrack that we could use to hype the picture, it just wouldn’t have worked in that picture. [INT: Truly. And that’s the other thing is that with each of these, with your westerns, how they, I mean, that’s why I asked about the art direction, because I was like, “Well, what...” I feel like those were really people’s, those character’s homes, you know, that that was really their world that they lived in. I mean there was nothing that made me ever feel. And I think that your work with your DP [Director of Photography] also--] I’m gonna digress for a second, because it’s certainly an ideal that I try to achieve, and whether I do or not is you know we give it our best shot.