INT: The choice of black and white, and if there were any questions about making that choice, once you knew that you wanted to, I mean, from a commercial standpoint. 

JMS: Well I think the point that you make that I was pretty naïve about the commercial future of the film, and since Ray [Ray Silver] had never produced a film before, and you know, he certainly didn’t know either, I looked, did my research in the New York Public Library, which is full of files of black and white films by Jacob Riis, you know, immigrant life. Lewis Hine. And then, at that time, there was a absolutely fantastic exhibit, which I directed all the Actors, and it had to do with Polish life between the wars, but the people still looked just the same, and, as they might have, you know, 30 years earlier. And all this material was in black and white. And I began to think to myself, this is what I should be doing the movie in. So I did. I talked to Ken Van Sickle [Kenneth Van Sickle], and he said, “I think it’s the greatest idea in the world.” You know, cameramen always love it. So, and that certainly didn’t help its release. But beyond that, we sent the film around to everyone, and I mean, nobody wanted to release it. I went through one of the worst winters I’ve ever had in my life. I thought, I’ve made a film and nobody will look at it. The only offer we had were… to release it in 16 on the synagogue circuit. I mean I felt I’d made film, you know, and Ray felt I’d made a film. Then we started getting invited to festivals. And when were at the Cannes Film Festival, Ray sold the rights in several foreign countries, and that amount of money was enough to open the film ourselves, so we did. He called up John Cassavetes, just cold, and he said this is what’s happened, and John Cassavetes said, “Well, distribute it yourself.” And Ray said, “Well, is there, I don’t quite know how to do that, you know.” And he said, “Well, I’m just finishing this, and people that have been helping me on WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE [A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE],” he said, “why don’t I send them your way, and if you like them you can hire them. They’re from New York anyway.” So they came, and these people helped Ray, and you know, that was how it all happened.

JMS: But I remember the day that it [HESTER STREET] opened; it opened at the Plaza Theater, which was a theater that used to exist, one of these wonderful individual theaters. [INT: It doesn’t exist anymore?] It was on 59th Street between, or 58th, maybe. [INT: Isn’t the Plaza still there? The Plaza is not still there? Oh, the Plaza’s right down from the Plaza Hotel, that little…] No, it’s not the one from the... It was called, it was between 5th and Madison. [INT: 58th.] It was either 58th or 59th. And you know, in that day, there used to be these individual theaters. Now, they’re much more… the plexes. But, so it opened on a Sunday. And we had heard, the conventional wisdom, which is that what you want is you don’t want the weather to be bad, because people stay home, but you don’t want it to be too good, because then they wanna go outside, so what you hope is a little, oh slightly gray day, not too nice, nothing. So this was in October. So we woke up that day, and it was pouring. It was one of the worst rainstorms you could ever imagine. And Blaine Novak, who was one of the people working on the distribution, called up Ray [Ray Silver], and he said, “Aren’t you gonna come down and see the film? I mean it’s opening.” And Ray said, “No, I’m gonna stay home and watch the football game,” ‘cause, you know, we were so persuaded that nobody would show up, and Blaine said, “I think you should come,” so Ray said, “All right, come on, we’ll go.” We got on the subway, we go down to the… And there was a line of people with umbrellas, and it wasn’t a figment of my imagination, Carol Kane’s mother took a picture of the people with umbrellas. I mean it was just, it was astounding. How did they hear about it? It was almost like an underground, you know, of people who wanted a film about this particular period, who were interested, who brought something to it themselves, and it became an extremely successful independent film. For its day, it was unbelievable. [INT: Do you remember, I mean did it, did Ray continue with the distribution around the country, or it just…] Yes, yes. [INT: So he became the self-distributor…] So he, he suddenly went into the distribution business. I mean he’s the hero of my story, there’s no question about it. But he just, I guess he gets angry, you know, he said, “I’m not gonna let them stop me from--this is a good film.” And he believed in it. You know, of course by that time, I was, I was really crushed, I was just terribly crushed, ‘cause I just… the thought that nobody, nobody, nobody wanted to release it, you know, that’s an awful feeling.

JMS: Yes, it [HESTER STREET] went all around the country. And then Carol Kane got an Academy Award nomination. And when that happened, that was when the film opened everywhere. I think until then, it was a little bit harder. [INT: At some point, Ray [Ray Silver] passed it on to a company that opened it everywhere?] No, they did it. [INT: Four-walling and that approach, I mean taking… and where investors return their money post profit?] Oh of course, of course. What happened was we got a phone call after the film had begun to play from a man named Max Burkett [PH] who was a public relations man who lived in LA, and he said to Ray, “I like your film, and I think that your film could get some Academy Award nominations,” and Ray said, “Come on,” you know, “we can barely get our film distributed here,” although it had gotten wonderful reviews in the places where it had opened. And he said, “Well, it’s been playing out here, I think I could do it.” He said, “Let me come in and talk to you about it.” And he came in, and persuaded Ray. And Ray said, “All right, let’s do a campaign for Carol Kane.” So at that point, Max, this is pre-cable, pre-DVD. Max Burkett carried the film around, and he took it to Frank Sinatra’s house, and he took it to Jewish old folks homes, I mean every place that he could think of where he could… And she got a nomination. And I was the one who got to call her up on the phone and tell her she got the nomination. So I said, “Carol, I’m gonna take you to lunch, where do you want to go?” And she wanted to go to Sardi’s. So we had a great celebratory lunch at Sardi’s. And then we went to the Oscars and she had invited her manager, Bill Tresh, who was to be her, accompany her. So we seated ourselves, Ray was on the aisle, then I sat, then Carol, and then Bill Tresh, and the idea was if she won, she would get up, and the camera would show her walking, and our kids would see us on camera. However, she didn’t win, so our kids didn’t see us on camera. [INT: Well, I tell you, what an inspirational story, huh?] Isn’t it great? I mean… [INT: I mean, just from a standpoint of, you know, the ups and downs, the ups and downs of that ride. And where it all ended up.]

INT: We really should talk about BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR, which was the next experience, and uniquely so in that you went to television to do it. How did that all come about? Now you were making… 

JMS: You know, I think that the people who were running that company had seen the short films that I’d made, and I think they got in touch with me, along with a number of other Directors. And they had a series; they bought 11 stories that they were thinking of making as a short story series. And they asked me to read the stories, and to come back to them with which one I’d like to do. And the one I wanted to do was this early story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I must say, it’s an utterly charming story, I love the story, and, called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, and I’ve always felt that I was luckier than anyone who’d tried to, for instance, do one of his novels. They’re so complex, and they often depend on a narrators voice, of a passive narrator, like “Great Gatsby” where, Nick, for instance, I mean, he watches everything, but he doesn’t really have anything to do with it, and that’s not useful in screenwriting. So, but I had this little charming story, which he’d written, I think, when he was in his 20s. It had been in The Saturday Evening Post, and I thought, oh perfect. So I wrote it, and I wrote it with the idea that Carol Kane would play it. Carol Kane calls me, she read the script, she loved it, she wanted to do it. Then she called me and she said, “Well I can’t do it.” Her friend, Diane Keaton had called her and wanted her to be in a movie with her. So Carol had backed out, and of course we had our dates… So, meanwhile we had taken HESTER STREET to Telluride [Telluride Film Festival], and at Telluride, was Shelley Duvall. And Shelley Duvall was walking around. If, she’s not an actress who’s been in the public mind for a long time, she hasn’t acted for a long time, but she’s basically, she’s a lovely looking woman, but she has this side to her where she can be very gawky and kind of awkward. She knows how to just dunk her head, and kind of her shoulders come up, and she, she seemed to me perfect to play, it’s basically a country cousin-city cousin kind of a story of a country cousin who comes, and her city cousin takes her in hand and tries to improve her, and set her up, and you know, teach her the ways of the ‘20s [1920s]. And then she gets too good at it, and the cousin turns on her, so that was the story, and it’s a lovely little story; it’s a 45 minute film. But not only did Shelley wanna play it, I wanted to have a reading of the screenplay. I always like to do that if I can with Actors because I hear it, and then I hear things I don’t like, or things that I could do better. So I was in California where Shelley lived, and I said, “Shelley can you get some Actors together,” and she said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” So we go over to Shelley’s and we’re sitting there reading, and who’s there, everybody who’s in the movie: Bud Cort, these were all her friends, you know? So Dennis Christopher; all these absolutely wonderful Actors. And I felt like my god, you know, cast by Shelley Duvall. [LAUGH] [INT: Your casting is impeccable and visionary, because it seems so connected to you and the story, and yet you also are describing another aspect, which is this ability to receive. The openness, you know, in essence to go to a reading, and have Shelley Duvall bring her friends, and you go…] Oh, I thought it was just fabulous. But I’ll tell you, you get such good ideas. As the story was written and in my screenplay, Warren, the boy that, of course, Shelley Duvall falls in love with and that, has been the boyfriend of her cousin but now likes her, he was described as sort of more Fitzgeraldy, and kind of handsome and tall, and this and that. Well, when Bud Cort started to read, Bud Cort is not handsome and tall conventionally. He was wonderful, and he brought something so much more original to it. So I don’t feel that I deserve the credit for that, I mean she was Shelley’s friend, and he showed up, and it was just sort of one of those wonderful serendipities.

INT: Do you feel as a Screenwriter-Director, that it gives you a little bit more of the power to say, “I know it was written that way, but this is so different but so special, let’s go that way….” 

JMS: Yes, because I do that with other peoples’ scripts as well. And shades of Mark Robson and my first experience, but absolutely. I mean, I… Yes, I must say, one thing I will say for myself is I do trust Actors. And I’ve had a lot of perfectly wonderful ones to trust. You know, I was watching a good documentary the other day about Garbo [Greta Garbo], made by Kevin Brownlow. And Clarence Brown was being interviewed. Clarence Brown directed many of her most important films. And he said that she became such a big star, that when he worked with her he would tell her maybe three or four times, they’d do three or four takes, but he said, he didn’t really feel that he could, even though he wasn’t quite getting what he had hoped for. And then he said he would go into the screening room, and he would see that she had given him something that was so beyond what he’d even dreamed of. And it was something that he hadn’t seen with his naked eye, he couldn’t see it through the camera, and I’ve had exactly this experience. Exactly that experience of an Actor who I think maybe is, you know, 85 percent, and then somehow you get into the screening room and you see it’s 120 percent. You see something way beyond what you had even considered or hoped for.

INT: You know, as a Director, you also, because you’re writing screenplays, you can also do some writing in the editing room. And there was also some stuff in the, there was some particular things in the editing of BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR, that I wanted… Oh, the use of the sound in the haircut. Do you remember which… [JMS: Oh, that was good.] Was that something that came, again, in post? 

JMS: The Editor of BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR was the great Ralph Rosenblum, who at that time was doing Woody Allen movies and many other great movies, and I think, was willing to do BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR cause it was a three month job in between his big Hollywood shows. And he and I got friends, and just had an absolutely wonderful time. But, interestingly enough, Ralph Rosenblum was a rather melancholy sort of a person, and never laughed. And I thought I’d written a comedy. And there was a certain feeling of oppression in the, as beautifully as he edited, and he did, he made wonderful suggestions to me. One of the suggestions I remember perfectly was that in the middle of this--the story is the country cousin is, comes and she’s, the city cousin takes her in hand, and she builds her up, she builds her up, builds her up, and then pulls her down. And instead of following that arc up and then down, I had a little up, and then a little down, and then some more up. And Ralph Rosenblum said to me, “Take this scene out.” And I said, “What? Do you know how hard I worked on that scene?” And it was true, I had. I mean it was a scene that I thought was beautifully lit; Ken Van Sickle’s [Kenneth Van Sickle] best lighting. It was gorgeous. Took place at a staircase with one at the top, and one at the bottom, and he explained to me that we needed to go up and then down, and that was better for--and of course, the minute he said it, I said, “Take it out.” And I never saw it again. So, he was responsible I’m sure, for helping me with all those… [INT: So that choice, ‘cause the sound was just great.] He was very helpful with that as well. But you know, I forgot that the thing was funny when I saw the first rough-cut screening, everybody was laughing. And I said, “Right, it’s funny.” You know, in that editing room it didn’t seem so.

INT: You know, there’s something also in HESTER STREET that’s in this film [BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR], and it may have been caused by your budgets, but has become a little bit more of a trademark in terms of an artistic approach, which is kind of an attention to detail of period, that you were able to create period with small things, whether someone-- 

JMS: Thank you for, thank you for that question, because I do feel, you know on HESTER STREET, I had to do a scene in Ellis Island where the wife and the child come, and you see the husband looks, looks at her and wishes that he hadn’t sent for her. She’s so old country. And I couldn’t, obviously, afford to recreate Ellis Island. So, I tried to think of what was the most essential element, and I thought it was the barrier, the fence barrier between the newly arrived and the people who were already here who were meeting them. And I remember that fence cost about 800 dollars. It was a huge expenditure, you know, but it was the thing that helped us create that feeling. And then later on Ray [Ray Silver] and I saw THE GODFATHER II [THE GODFATHER: PART II], and of course they recreated Ellis Island totally, so that you can see the little Corleone, you know, a child sitting there, and oh god, I was so jealous. But in the case of BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR, it opens with a wonderful dance. And you hear the adults talking about the young people who are down below dancing, the adults are all up on a balcony. Well we couldn’t afford dancers, we couldn’t afford a band, we couldn’t afford all the adults, you know. So what I did was to set it so that you were aware of the fact that there’s a dance. The first, one scene takes place in the women’s dressing room. And you hear it, and you know that it’s out there. Another one takes place in a little anteroom, another one takes place in a veranda, and all the while you feel the dance is there. And I think the movie does create that, even though, of course, there was no dance. [INT: Right.]

INT: I just remembered one shot [in BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR] of, I think it was Bud Cort walking down the street with a bicycle, or a tennis racket, and then you pass a car, and just, in those two objects, I felt I was back in that time, and… 

JMS: Oh we had a lot of luck, you know we made it in Savannah [Savannah, Georgia], and that was my first experience with people who own old cars, and, who exist in every city, and who are quite happy to have you use them, and it was wonderful. And once again, we had, you know, I had Ken [Kenneth Van Sickle], and just a wonderful crew, and wonderful… And of course--[INT: So Ken shot, Ken shot that as well, and he shot HESTER STREET, that one, and then in BETWEEN THE LINES. Those were the times that you...] I think so. And he shot the other shorts. [INT: Right.]

INT: Is there anything in style, in the relationship with you and Ken [Kenneth Van Sickle], or maybe other cameramen as well, but I was aware of, which is you love to let things play, and play sometimes in two shots, and there’s a kind of looseness in which you very much stand back and create a world by the size of your image. Of course when you have to be very, very close you’re there, and some of those close-ups are all the more impressive. You know, we’re in a close-up world today. I mean it seems like… 

JMS: I know, but if you have a good actress--you know, I remember in HESTER STREET, I had a scene in which the boarder was sitting in the kitchen, and she’s begun to realize that her husband doesn’t really care for her, and isn’t attracted to her. And she sits down, she goes in and sits down next to the boarder, she has her shawl around her, and she sits across the table from him, and she tries to ask him about this. She doesn’t know who to talk to, and he tries to reassure her. He knows, of course, that her husband has a girlfriend, but he just wants to reassure her; he feels sorry for her. And they have this conversation, and I had shot it really, as a two shot, one, two shot. And I did it a few times, and I thought, you know, there’s something wrong with this scene. It just didn’t, wasn’t coming to life for me, and nothing was making it for me. And I was trying to think of what to do with it, and while I was thinking of what to do with it, the two Actors were still in the mood of the scene, and Mel Howard reached out and touched a piece of her shawl that was on the table that had, it was a big shawl, it had kind of spilled over onto the table. And he began touching, and then took his hand back. And then you understood something that you hadn’t understood, which was that he’s attracted to her, and that he cares for her. So I mean it was like, it was beautiful. So, of course, you know, we did it, and we put that in again, but I mean… Or I remember one on CROSSING DELANCEY, I had a scene in which Amy Irving is telling Peter Riegert, who’s been set up by a matchmaker, that’s very nice, but it’s not the way she lives, and it’s not what she wants to do, and she doesn’t really want a matchmaker, and you know, thank you and I’m sorry, but no. They’re sitting on the same side of the table. And so we shot it, and then we thought we were finished with it, and everybody had to stay put because we were doing some additional sound, you know, room tone, and they were still in the scene. And they both looked devastated. She, out of embarrassment that she’d had to do this to him, he out of the fact that he’d failed, because he was so eager to pursue her. And they sat on the same side of this table, and they just looked… And it’s a very affecting moment. And when we got done taking the additional sound, I said to, Theo van de Sande shot that one, I said, “Theo, turn on the camera.” And we simply caught that as an end of it, and you sort of get the feeling not just that it’s, sorry can’t do it and you know, that they’re full of feeling themselves, and that they’re people with complexity, and… But the Actors gave it to me. [INT: That’s great.]

INT: BETWEEN THE LINES, really, is the next sort of big… Was that also an independent film that you guys did? 

JMS: Well, after HESTER STREET, I was brought to California, and you know, met, I think one studio was interested, and they said, “We wanna make the next thing you wanna make, what do you wanna make?” And I said, “Well, BETWEEN THE LINES, this is the one that I have,” and they didn’t wanna make it. So Ray [Ray Silver] said, “Let’s take our share of the profits of HESTER STREET and let’s make it.” So he was great. So the way it came about was, when we went to Cannes [Cannes Film Festival] we met a reporter from an independent newspaper, I think he--[INT: Excuse me, had Ray given up being in real estate now?] No. [INT: He’s still doing that as well.] Please, we had, you know, children to educate, and… [INT: Okay, I just didn’t…] No, not at all. This guy came up to us, and he was from The Real Paper in Boston, which is an independent--there were two good independent papers of that day in Boston. And he told me that he’d written a screenplay, and he would like me to read it. And I read it, and I really loved it, and I especially loved two, two scenes in it were just, I thought they were fabulous, and I thought I’ve gotta make this. I love this group of people, and I had worked at The Village Voice, and you know, I sort of had a… And I’d always read the independent press with so much interest, but it, what it’s really about is the co-opting of an independent press, as was happening by big companies who were buying them up, and what happened, all the stuff that was happening with the young people. And once again I had just a superb cast of people who hadn’t done much, little tiny things, but… Juliet Taylor cast it, and it just brought to my attention the most marvelous people. And… [INT: Like, who starred in the film again?] Who? [INT: Actors who starred in BETWEEN THE LINES.] You wanna know the Actors? [INT: Yeah, sure.] Oh, John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Stephen Collins, Jeff Goldblum, Lewis Stadlen, anyway, on and on. Jill Eikenberry. And we shot two of the weeks in Boston, because it was supposed to be at a Boston paper. And we went up with the Actors, I think a week before and rehearsed. And out of these--and we did improvs, we did all sorts of things, and I scripted about, about a third of the movie came out of their improvs. And I would listen to them and script them at night and give them the script pages, and they would learn them. And I remember that the AD said to me, “You can’t rehearse on Sunday.” And I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Because you aren’t allowed to by equity rules. By SAG rules, the Actors have to have a day off.” So I was just horrified, you know, I had more to do. So I said to the Actors, “Look, I can’t ask you to rehearse, because of the rules of the union, but I’m going to be in my hotel room, and if anybody wants to come by and say hello, I’ll have some coffee, and who knows what will happen.” Well, every one of them came, you know, because they, they were so young, and so gung-ho, and they were as eager to do it as I was, you know, they were dying to rehearse, and dying to, so I didn’t feel I was taking advantage of them. And we had quite a, I just loved that cast. I did find, though, that it’s, the world at large prefer a single main character. But I love group, I just love groups, I love that in movies, I just adore it. And I love this… [INT: I have a memory of like, them sitting around, talking, all of them, you know, in the scenes, yeah.] All the time. All the time.

JMS: You know, Jeff Goldblum, who’s still one of our dear favorites, came in to audition for the part of this wacky rock critic named Max [in BETWEEN THE LINES]. And you know, of course, as usual, with the audition period, you’ve picked a couple of scenes, and the scenes have been sent to the Actor’s Agent, and the Actor’s supposed to have reviewed the scenes and come in, and either read with you or with a casting person or something like that. And Jeff came in, and he opened up the script, and he started on page one, and he simply told about his character’s relationship to everybody that he saw. He said, “BETWEEN THE LINES starts with a guy selling the paper out in Boston,” played by Michael J. Pollard, wonderful Actor. And he talked about his feelings about that character, and he would, he simply walked through, and when he got to a scene that he was in, he would say a few lines, as he would’ve done it. And so I said to him, you know, and then he would say the line, and he took, it was one of the most gorgeous performances I’ve ever seen in my life. I said, when he finished, I said, “You’re it, I mean, it’s yours. If you want it you can have it.” So that--and it was great, and he was just, he was wonderful. I had an interesting experience, one of his scenes, and this is one of the scenes I loved the most in Fred Barron’s script. He goes to a junior college in Boston, and lectures to the girls on 13 ways of looking at a black bird, and who knows what all, you know. He gives a lecture on music, but he goes off, daftly, into a million other subjects. And I got worried, because we had the extras, and I thought, they’re gonna start laughing at him, and I’m not gonna get the response that I want. So I talked to Ken [Kenneth Van Sickle] about it, and I said, “Ken, before I bring Jeff here, I’m gonna talk to these extras. And I need you to get this, this, and this. And I’ll walk back and forth, so their eyes will go back and forth, and I’ll, you know.” So I wanted to get them looking kind of surprised, and not sure of what they were listening to, because that’s the way he was, you know, they expected a teacher, and here comes this mad man. So I remember saying to them, “You know, this is toward the end of the day, and I find that a lot of Actors lose their concentration. Even extras lose their concentration at the end of the day,” and you know, you saw them kind of like, what’s she going on about, you know, you could… Anyway, like that. So I did this, and I said, “Meanwhile my cameraman’s gonna be looking through the camera and setting up some shots, and don’t look his way, you look at me, I want you to pay attention,” you know, and so on. So, after about five minutes he said to me, “Okay, the camera’s ready.” I mean it went so fast, and so I took him aside, I said, “Did you get this, did you get these?” “Yeah, I got it, I got it, I got it.” So later on I told them that they’d already been shot, and I thought oh, they’re gonna be so angry, and they were thrilled. I’ll tell you another funny story about that. They were supposed to be from a lovely private, like Pine Manor Junior College [Pine Manor College], that kind of school. And the extras came with their own clothes, and they really weren’t dressed for the part. And one of my kids was on the set, and she said to me, “Mom, these are not the right clothes.” And I said, “What am I gonna do?” She said, “I’ll go home, and I’ll get some.” So she went home and she got a few things of mine, and a few things of her older sister’s, and you know, she brought them all, and the kids wore them, so they’re all wearing our clothes in that scene. And then of course Jeff came in, and, believe me, I mean he was just, he was wonderful. It was just a tour de force scene.

INT: So this is already, now, you’re kind of gaining your confidence as a Director, would you say, in that point where you’ve seen the completion of a couple of works, and now you begin to have a better sense of what it is you’re doing. Do you feel a difference about working in this situation [on BETWEEN THE LINES]? 

JMS: You sort of are more familiar with the patterns, and so on, but on the other hand I think it’s like jumping off a cliff every damn time. And you know, I don’t think of myself as a brave person, to be honest with you. I think of myself as a rather timid person--physically timid. And yet I must not be, because I choose a profession where, I mean I see so many other people in other professions where, you know, you get to a certain point, and then that’s it, and you’re, you know, you know how to do it, and therefore you do it. But I guess I must, in my heart of hearts, like that, because it’s… I think… I don’t know how mature you get. I think each time it’s just, it’s all such a mystery, it’s all such a, if it’s gonna come together. [INT: Yeah, yeah.]

INT: The film [BETWEEN THE LINES], what happened? Did it get bought by a studio? Again, you had a… 

JMS: Once again, we distributed it. But by the time, by that time, just in that short period of time it was much harder to do, and we couldn’t afford the ads in the paper, which was where people were--they were huge, you know, and they had to be. And it wasn’t about a theme like HESTER STREET that already had a niche audience, as they say now. And it was much harder to… Although it’s a film that I feel very good about and I’m very happy about--[INT: I think, you know, sometimes with movies--] One of the nice things that happened was, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, we went to, I can’t remember--oh I know, Bob Cristow at The Village Voice had suggested them. And we went down to Asbury Park to see Southside Johnny. It was like a garage band, and he was wonderful. And all of a sudden this wonderful person comes in and plays with them, and I thought, wow, what an attractive person, you know, I wish we could get him. Of course it turned out to be Bruce Springsteen. I didn’t recognize him, but he was a friend of Southside Johnny’s and wanted to help him get the gig. But that was a… I don’t know, I just felt, I had a wonderful rapport with that particular cast, and they brought so much to it; it’s incredible. [INT: So the film got another distribution, or I don’t remember what happened with the movie, do you?] No, I don’t think it did. No, I think we distributed it, and it, you know, played where it played. [INT: Right.]

INT: Then there’s HEAD OVER HEELS, CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, which is a wonderful… 

JMS: Well, I call it CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER ‘cause that’s… [INT: Yes, I know.] “Chilly Scenes of Winter” is, was a book by Ann Beattie. And I had read the book, and I adored it, and I always wanted to make a movie of it, and one day I picked up I think “Variety”, or “Hollywood Reporter”, or something, and it said that three Actors had purchased the rights to “Chilly Scenes of Winter”. And I thought, oh my god, somebody’s bought the rights to my movie, ‘cause I’d always thought some day I would like to do it. It appealed to me. I just loved that book. Fortunately, the three Actors were Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne, and Mark Metcalf. And Mark Metcalf had read for me, for BETWEEN THE LINES I think. So I knew him, so I felt I could call him. So I called him up and I said, “Look, I’d like to write and direct it, how do you all feel?” He said, “Well let me talk to my partners,” and they called back and they said, “Great.” So one of the things that bound us very closely together was I had just worked with John Heard on BETWEEN THE LINES, and they, as young Actors in New York, were great admirers of John Heard. And we all, I said to them, “This is who I would like to play Charles,” and they said, “Done, let’s do it,” you know. And that was also a tremendously lucky… lucky to have someone with that kind of talent playing that kind of role.

JMS: It’s a very odd story [HEAD OVER HEELS, CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER], and the fact that we made it for a studio is amazing. But Amy [Amy Robinson] was friendly with Claire Townsend, a studio executive, a young, very bright, very nice, and who died very young sadly, of illness, but was a wonderful person. She was working at 20th Century Fox. And on the plane going out there, we went out to present the idea to 20th Century Fox, and on the plane, I told Amy how I saw the opening scene, with the clock, and everybody watching the clock, and this came out of my experience at Omaha, you know, the jobs that I had when I was in high school. You know, the low level jobs that you have where you can’t wait for it to be 5 o’ clock. And so I told her. She said, “When you get to the meeting, tell it just like that.” So I did. And they went for it. And then Claire left 20th Century Fox, alas, and she went to UA [United Artists]. And this was a time when UA was in… kind of a, I don’t know. It was--[INT: Free fall.] Yeah. It was very hard to work there. The creative executives were all in LA, but the people who ran the company, who didn’t seem to have a whole lot of respect for the creative executives, were all in New York. And it was not their kind of movie at all. The creative people loved it, but I don’t think the people in New York liked it very much at all. And when it was finished, they kind of, they didn’t give me a chance, which I would have had, ordinarily, to screen it and to see how audiences took to it, and take it to film classes, and I mean get ideas. You know, sometimes I say to myself, I think I could, even if I just make that line louder, so people could hear it, or, you know, you get things out of those preliminary screenings. Especially if nobody’s telling you what to do, if you’re just figuring yourself what you need. And they didn’t like the film, and they just sort of rushed it out as, on a double bill with something, and it went blah.

JMS: Then, to the rescue, came the classics division of the company [United Artists], which was created a couple of years later, and they wanted to re-release it [CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER]. And the only proviso was that they wanted me to leave out the last scene. In the book, Charles, who is, all through this, the lovelorn guy who falls madly in love with a married woman, even lives with her for a while, then she leaves him and goes back to her husband. The book is about his longing for her, and his desire for her, and his eagerness to get her back, his memories of what their affair was like, as well as his ongoing life with a complicated, dysfunctional family. The last--in the book, in the last scene, she comes back. She simply shows up and comes back, and I made exactly the same, the same thing happened in the script. But because a movie has a very different dynamic than a book, you didn’t want it. You didn’t want her to come back. What really gave you pleasure was to feel that he was free of his obsession. And by lopping off that last scene… so, when they said that to me, I said, “Look, you know, I’ve been dying to do this, this is wonderful.” So they brought the original title back, CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, which had been rejected by the big UA, where they felt it sounded like Ingrid Bergman, and, it was just awful. I remember the trailer that they did, and I said, “You know, for good or for ill, my movie has a certain tone, and those people who might respond to it would like to see that tone in the trailer.” And they said, “If we did that, nobody would come.” I mean they just didn’t like the movie at all. But the odd thing is that the movie has its sort of champions and became a sort of well-liked movie. I had a wonderful crew, and it was my first Hollywood crew, and I’d always heard these stories, you know. At that time there was NABET [National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians], which my first films had been, another union, NIA. Well NABET was folded into IA [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees], it’s all IA now, but at that time the stories about the Hollywood crews were that, you know, they stand in the corner and talk about what a piece of junk the film is, and you know, what time’s lunch? Well, nothing could have been farther from the truth, I had such a wonderful crew, and they were so participatory, is that the word, in the film. And I would say about half of them came up to me, sidled up to me actually, at one time or another, during the making of the film, and saying this is the story of my life. Because CHILLY SCENES is a story of everybody’s life; everybody has at one time or another been in love with someone more than that someone loves them. I mean that’s just a human experience. And, so it was just a tremendous collaborative kind of--it was wonderful. [INT: Yeah. You know, Bobby Byrne shot that for you, and I do remember now, we may have even met at that time, ‘cause I was doing THOSE LIPS, THOSE EYES, which was at United Artists, and had an identical experience as you did. I mean it was, like, chapter and verse. And Bobby Byrne shot THOSE LIPS, THOSE EYES, and I remember looking at…] Yeah, CHILLY SCENES? [INT: CHILLY SCENES, yeah.] Did you have a good experience with him? [INT: Oh yeah.] Yeah, he’s wonderful. [INT: He did a great job.] Yeah, he was just was wonderful. And they were all, it’s fun to work with a crew that’s very much for what the material is, ‘cause they really pay attention, and they create a sense of expectancy on the set, instead of, you know, people are going like this, or looking at their watch, or… It’s wonderful when they give you that feeling of, they like it too. [INT: Right.]

INT: The other thing, and this is a more general question, and it’s got to do with material. There seems to be a theme in a lot of these films. Either I’ll throw it out there--[JMS: I can’t wait to hear it.] It has to do with an interest in people. I mean you seem to have a tremendous interest in the characters, their struggles, their humanity. Love plays a big role in all these films.] Perhaps so. [INT: You know, lost love, unrequited, almost in all of the films. Is that… 

JMS: I think that’s true… And, but, and I think in addition, I have that sort of view, which I believe, when things are very sad, I can still see a funny thing in them, and when things are very funny, I still see a sad thing in them, and I’ve always thought that that’s a little bit Jewish, a little bit female, that there’s a kind of a point of view, you know, that sees the material a little bit differently. When I wrote the script to CHILLY SCENES [CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER], and that also went very easily, because I had been thinking about it, and just knew exactly what I wanted to do.