INT: Well as we continue, Gene, can you characterize your relationship with Writers; let’s talk about that for a while, or Writer-Producers?

GR: Well, one thing that I had thought was, would be helpful just in terms of the relationship between Writers and Directors, which is in terms of the politics and so forth is fraught with problems. We have some real problems. And we’ve had problems over the years with the Writers. But I have advocated one institution, which I think would help. The Writers have this great desire, the sense of entitlement, to be on the set, to be in casting, to be on the set, to be in dailies and so forth and so on. And I think the Directors, quite rightly, have an apprehension of… not the Directors--not the Writers who would be sensitive to what they're doing, and understand the process of getting it off the page, and that what they get, the results may be different from their concept. But that there are some that would be, with whom they would be very compatible. My thought was that we should institutionalize with two-hour movies and with features--now this may be in the works--a meeting between the Director and the Writer before any feature film, before any two-hour movie for television in which the Director would sit down with the Writer and elicit from the Writer, “What did you have in mind?” Of course the Director has read this and so forth, but it would be very interesting to see if the Writer says, “Well, I saw a blonde, I saw this for the guy, I saw the location, I saw this tone.” At any rate, get this sense of--to take advantage, really, first of all, take advantage really of what the Writer can communicate, but to satisfy the Writer's need to at least say, “This is what I had in mind and so forth.”

INT: But isn't this something you already do? I do. [Referring to speaking with the Writer in pre-production.]

GR: But it’s not always done. [INT: Oh, I think it’s a terrific idea. You said institutionalize it. That’s terrific.] Institutionalize it. It should be institutionalized, in other words, urged by both guilds [DGA; WGA], that these meetings take place, because some times a Director will go off on a show and the Writer, the Writer doesn’t have that opportunity. Or the meeting, they don’t really formalized it, so that the meeting--there may be a greeting and a “How do you do, how are you?” and so forth. There may be some working together, but that idea of really finding out what the Writer, what the Writer’s interest is and so forth. Now, if in that relationship, it’s cordial, it’s welcoming, it’s interesting for the Director--the Director recognizes that he has in the Writer a person who understands his problems, and with whom he can be compatible, he can bring him along, I mean he can take him, he can bring him along for whatever he wants as long as the Writer is able and interested and able to do that. The very thing--now we offered this to the Writers many, many years ago. It was turned down because they felt that it was… well, it wasn’t enough. They were looking for a whole lot more and they felt that by taking that would limit their progress. But I think--and some Writers have said to me, “I think we should have nailed that at the time,” because it would have meant that the whole process perhaps would have been a little further down the road where the possibility of Director-Writer collaboration in those cases where it’s compatible. Because very often, I’ve been with Writers, I've worked on series in which there was always the Writer of the episode on the set. In other words, there’d be a huge, there was on this particular show, the show called LIFE GOES ON, there was a huge, in my terms, nine or 10 Writers on salary, which is ridiculous. But at any rate, whenever you did a show, there would be the Writer on the set. Now some of them, and I take my friend Ron Rubin [Ronald Rubin] was on there, Paul Wolff was on there and so forth, they were great. They were terrific… and great to work with. Paul was always saying, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” I had to explain every setup I’d do. But at least when I explained it to him, he would back off, but it was always--[INT: But why would you have to explain it?] “She’s saying the line and she’s walking away.” “That’s right.” There was one interesting set we went to in which there was scaffolding. And I started the scene underneath, and the guys are walking and talking and so forth. He says, “What are you doing down here?” He says, “You can't see what they’re… you can’t see them. They’re talking.” I said, “That’s right.” I said, “I’m not going to stay here forever, but it'd be an interesting way to start the show.” “Oh, oh, oh.” As acquainted as he supposedly was with film and so forth, that was kind of...

INT: But to me that's tragic, that you have to stop and explain everything. [Referring to the Director explaining to the head Writer his motivations for setups.]

GR: Well, the explanation was not, in his [Paul Wolff] case, was not laborious, was not a big invasion of my time. But with Ron Rubin [Ronald Rubin], he dug all the way. Somebody could turn to him and say, “This line is a little weak,” and he would say, “Yeah, okay,” and we would come up with something else. [INT: That's good.] That is good. But then there were others… other Writers where I would have an idea for a line, and I would say, “You know what’s much better right here is so and so and so and so.” And as I remember this one Writer would say, “No! No, no, no.” I would go and shoot it anyway. But that idea of they had felt kind of unappreciated by the Producer and they were in there to defend the script. Now the basic problem is the Writer feels very hurt when his concept is not realized. But, that's the idea, really. That business of what the Writer has written and what the Director takes and fulfills, they can be very well--they won’t be the same. They don’t have to be the same. With all the productions of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, for example, that we have seen, we see some incredibly varied interpretations of this great material. This doesn’t invalidate. It’s the Director interpreting in terms of the time that we're living in, in terms of the Director’s own sensibility and so forth, finding different things in a different concept. It never turns out as the Writer expected and the Writer should allow for that. If the Writer is the Director and he, because of the serendipity of shooting, the weather, the Actors, the… god knows what, the budget and so forth, you always kind of have to modify and adjust. The Writer doesn't get what he expected, so the Writer can turn to the--Writer can turn to the Writer-Director and say, “What are you doing to me? What am I doing to myself here?” One great example of the fact that material can be modified constructively and interestingly and with validity--there was two productions of same play of Chekhov [Anton Chekhov] in St. Petersburg at one time--or Moscow. [INT: In St. Petersburg or Petersburg?] St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg. Or Moscow. Let’s say it’s Moscow. Two productions of the same play, and the word was they were very different, and they heard, the cognigenti heard that Chekov himself went to see each play. And they rushed to him and said, “Who got it right?” He said, “They both did.” [INT: Oh that’s great. That’s great.] Very different interpretations. And Tennessee Williams said… Kazan [Elia Kazan], he took this material, “What did you think?” “Well, it shocked me. I had no idea that he was going to do that but isn't it wonderful. That's where it is. And getting it off the page and filtering through the Actors, and through the different locations, the different concepts, you’re fulfilling the material in a different way. It’s never going to be the same as you pictured it, even if you could do it yourself.

INT: This whole war about the possessory credit, which to me is such nonsense. You know, that the Writers deem that everybody… that only a Writer can get a possessory credit. And I say if they can argue for it, why not? We say let them have it--but argue for it.

GR: The Writers are not arguing for the possessory credit. They are arguing for the Directors not to have it. [INT: That’s what I mean. But they're saying you must be a Writer in order to get it, though, is what they’re saying.] But how can a Writer get it? [INT: Oh, easily.] How would it be expressed? [INT: Well, William Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.] Oh, I see what you mean. Well in certain cases we do. [INT: That’s what I’m saying.] It’s Neil Simon's--[INT: Neil Simon’s plays or whatever--] It’s King, Stephen King's so and so. A few get it. [INT: And they're reasonable from our point of view. But what they're saying is it can't be a Director and I say, and we say as the Directors Guild [DGA], “The Director is the moneyman or the moneymaker.” It's John Ford's program, but it's also Walt Disney's.] The way I rationalize it, and I must say, I’ll comment on it later on, the Director with each frame has such control, such responsibility I should say, to contribute in choice of emulsion, in terms of the lighting, in terms of the staging, in terms of the costume, in terms of the location, in terms of the acting. All of these different elements, in terms of the music, he has so much responsibility that certainly it reflects, it reflects the Director. Now, there’s a lot of cases where the Director's actual creative contribution is not that great, somehow, because they just don’t have that much to say or whatever. In that case I question a 'film by'. They wake a guy up and they say, “Okay, you’re shooting in Miami.” “Point me in the right direction,” and they go out and they shoot it. [INT: No, I quite agree with you.]

INT: The point I think that we have taken as a Guild [DGA] is that anyone can argue for this possession, this credit. If they can get it, grant it, because maybe their name brings people--Steven Spielberg’s name certainly brings people into the theater. That should be okay. But so does, as I say, Neil Simon’s plays. But the Writers--

GR: The problem is that a lot of Directors who really don’t--you see I think a 'film by' means what, that in a way, that the Director is an author. The Director is an author. And the derivation of it from Cahier du Cinema, the French New Wave saw that the Director was an author, an auteur, because of the influence he had in terms of selecting so much, control of so much, of performance, of casting, of location, of lighting, certainly of staging and so forth, that he had so much to contribute that… And they saw difference between a Godard [Jean-Luc Godard] and Joe Jones. They could see where one Director was really an author and the other Director was not. So they said in these cases he certainly should get a 'film by' because it is so much him. I mean you see the personality of John Ford in his work and of Capra [Frank Capra]. If there’s one guy that makes the case, which the Writers are always debating because Bob Riskin [Robert Riskin] who is a fine Writer did so much work with Capra and didn’t get the kind of celebrity that Capra got, but I must say that Capra is a great example of an auteur because the personality of Capra is in the work. My god! You certainly see it in Ford, Bill Wellman [William A. Wellman] was very wonderful, talented Director. [INT: George Stevens.] And George Stevens. They certainly have their… I know I directed a two-hour movie one time and Peggy Feury, who’s a wonderful teacher, went to see it. We had a little running of it someplace and she went to see it. And she said to me afterwards, and this really flattered me and surprised me. She said, “I could see you constantly through that film.” [INT: Really?] She saw me and my sensibility, my choices coming out of my personality, whatever there is, which was really kind of very interesting. And of course she was a very fine, Peggy Feury was a very fine dramatic teacher and a very good actress as well. But anyway, it's a dreadful problem. I am, I am… this business of 'film by' being, gaining all the kind of intensity that it does, because their sense is when they see a 'film by' they say, “Well, nobody else had anything to do with it,” but I don't think it says that. [INT: No, I don’t think it says that at all. I think it’s more like a conductor of an orchestra. It's interpretation rather than... And of course the argument about, you know, what was the thing about “Let Capra direct this”?] They gave him a ream of blank pages--[INT: A ream of blank paper--] Blank paper. [INT: And the answer is you put the ream of blank paper through a projector and see what happens.] That’s right. This business of the 'film by', it has been a terrible conflict.

INT: I absolutely feel with you that there should be meetings with Directors--before you start a project, I always meet the Writer. Absolutely. I’ve got great respect for the word. I want to know where they’re going and what they want to say. And sometimes you can point out to a Writer, just as we talked about acting before, you can point out to a Writer where they might be going and don't realize themselves they haven't achieved a particular point. [GR: Quite right. That the point hasn’t been made.] So it’s more than useful to have that meeting, because I want to have no ambiguity about where I’m headed. I have to understand what the Writer meant. And I think to what you said to institutionalize, how would you go about that?

GR: You would have to urge… I don’t think you can make it a law--can’t make it a law, but you have to urge, as we do with editing and so forth, on both parties that we have to have that meeting. [INT: I loved that.] And you do that through your periodicals, and you do that through letters to the individual Directors saying, if you're going to do a movie or a two-hour whatever, “Let's get together.” Both guilds [DGA; WGA] do that; they write letters so everyone gets a letter, a personal letter, explaining the concept, and the purpose of it. [INT: Do you think it’s possible?] Sure. Now it doesn’t mean that all are going to do it. There are certain Directors say, “I don't want that Writer anywhere near me.” But it’s so interesting how some Writer-Directors find such great compatibility. There’re some Directors say, “I want the Writer on the set.” Some Directors do that. They want them there because they’re always saying, “You know something, the last line I need a little something here,” or, “I would love to lose this, “ or whatever. To have the Writer there sensitive to what's going on. And so that it does work beautifully in certain cases.

GR: Can I tell you a little story? [INT: Yes.] A little story about a very good, a very good relationship between a Director and a Writer. There was that wonderful… You know my hero, Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch and Sam Raphaelson [Samson Raphaelson], and they worked together a great deal. You know, they worked together in a number of pictures and they had a great friendship. As a matter of fact the relationship, as Raphaelson referred to it, was called freundschaft, which is more than friendship. It’s a friendship, but it’s a deep, a deep relationship; a really meaningful friendship. And on one occasion… It so happened that Raphaelson was alerted by Ernst Lubitsch's secretary, she called him and said… Raphaelson was back in Bucks County. He used to--between pictures he would go and live in Pennsylvania. And Lubitsch’s secretary called and said, “Ernst, the old man, is very, very sick. He’s very ill. As a matter of fact, we think we’re going to lose him.” There was a magazine at the time that came out once a month that was supplied by Writers in the film colony. They wrote this magazine about anything: the work, about themselves, about whatever. And it was very respected. And she said, “The magazine is going to go to press at any moment, but it would be wonderful if we could have a tribute by you, a dear friend, on Ernst.” And so Raphaelson, of course, was very distressed. She said, “But we have to have it right away. You’re going to have to wire it.” So he said, “Fine, fine.” So he sat down and dashed off this tribute to his dear friend, sent it off. Well, Lubitsch recovered. He recovered. Not only did he recover, but there came a time when he called Sam, he says, “Come on, I want to make a picture. I’ve got a great idea, come on out.” So he came out and wrote another screenplay for Lubitsch. And when they’re up at the--they used to go up to Lubitsch's house, and they would work all morning and so forth. They’d have a little lunch, then they’d have a little nap. And on one of these occasions, Lubitsch turned to him, and it was on the final day when they were just potchking, they were just doing a few little, a few little adds, little fill-ups, some scenes, some very little stuff, and Lubitsch turned to him and he says, “You know, my secretary showed me that tribute that you wrote for me.” He says, “It was very touching.” And Raphaelson was very embarrassed. He said, “She never should have shown you that. She never should have shown you that. I dashed it off. I wrote it--I’m very embarrassed about this. I wrote it in five minutes, six minutes and so forth.” And Lubitsch said, “It's okay, we'll rewrite it.” [LAUGHS] Very sweet. [INT: That’s very dear.] But they had a great relationship. [INT: “We’ll rewrite it.”] “We’ll rewrite it.” They had this great, great, deep friendship. And two artists working together beautifully. Raphaelson had an enormous respect for Lubitsch, enormous respect, and vice versa. [INT: Lubitsch was so far ahead of the world.] Very gifted man. Really, really, really. [INT: Just great. That’s a great anecdote. I’m glad you recall that.]

INT: We wanted to talk, if you don’t mind, we’ll go back to something we may have touched before about television genres. [GR: Okay.] Which formats or genres have you worked in?

GR: Well, the first thing I did was one camera film. It was half hour, one camera--film. And then I did some multiple-camera… I guess it was tape. Then I did hour, hour series. I directed hour series. And then I directed, also, two-hour movies. The thing that--it depends on the material. I had, on occasion, I had great material on half-hour… M*A*S*H, for example. I directed LOU GRANT and it had some very good material there. And then the two-hour movies, I had one thing called IN DEFENSE OF KIDS. It was about a woman lawyer all of whose clients were children; and a thing called DOING LIFE, which is about Jerry Rosenberg who was a Brooklyn hoodlum, and he got involved in a felony murder. He went to jail, and in jail he became a lawyer. Tony Danza played it. Had a very good script by Steve Bello. [INT: The story’s not true?] Yeah. The guy’s still in jail. He's suing people constantly. He’s got all kinds of clients. He’s got plenty of clients. [LAUGHS] That worked very well. Then I did a thing called THE WHEREABOUTS OF JENNY with Ed O’Neill. But all those scripts were good. And in all of those cases I was able to spend time--we had, IN DEFENSE OF KIDS I had Blythe Danner, and she was wonderful. And Waterston [Sam Waterston] was in it, Waterston, so I had some… And Ed O'Neill was wonderful, and Danza did a great job. So anyway, I enjoyed those two-hours movies a great deal even though, you know, the pressure is terrific. [INT: How many days did you have to shoot those?] Well, I guess about 18. I may have had 20 days on the first one… IN DEFENSE OF KIDS, which I shot in Toronto. I shot DOING LIFE in Toronto. I shot WHEREABOUTS OF JENNY here, here in L.A. But it’s always 18 or 19 or 20 days. I guess 18 now becomes, is very common, but it's a rush.

INT: How was the Crew [on IN DEFENSE OF KIDS]?

GR: Well the Toronto Crew, the first time I had Bill Jurgensen [William K. Jurgensen] with me for first couple of weeks, but then he had to leave because of some union problems and he had to leave. The other cameraman, I wasn't as close to him. I didn’t have--Jurgensen I had met on HOGAN'S HEROES. He was a slate boy on HOGAN’S HEROES, and then he became an operator. Ed Feldman [Edward H. Feldman] used to call him ‘search and destroy’ when he was not operator. And then I hired him as the… he came over and he did M*A*S*H. He did the pilot, he worked with us on M*A*S*H for five years, and then he swung over and worked on LOU GRANT for, like, the first 13 shows or whatever, and then he retired. At any rate, the Crew in Toronto on DOING LIFE… That was on DOING LIFE, I had Jurgensen for a while. That was, it was a good Crew. The other show, THE WHEREABOUTS OF JENNY, I guess it was… they were all pretty good. I was very disappointed on one occasion, in a situation in Toronto, where a stuntman let me down. He was a kind of a stunt-gaffer and I took him off being a gaffer ‘cause I didn’t need him, and I think he resented that. And he put himself in a scene--I was going to use him for a very important piece of stunt work in which he comes in in the felony murder, and he’s one of the guys. I needed a stuntman to take a hit and fall down and so forth. And so he put himself in another scene earlier on in the movie, and then everybody said, “Well, you can’t use him now.” So I said to him, “I can’t use you now,” and he said, “Well, I'll get you somebody else.” But somehow he had this resentment from being taken off as gaffer, so he showed up with a guy as his replacement with an enormous mustache that he would not shave and so forth. You know, one of those cute tricks. At any rate, that was very unprofessional, and I had to turn around and use somebody that was not really a stuntman. [INT: Oh, that’s too bad.] Yeah, it hurt. The first time. And you never encounter that here, that kind of bush-league stuff. You never encounter that here, and I don't know how often you encounter that in Toronto, but… [INT: Was this a Canadian stuntman?] This was a Canadian incident. This was purely Canadian.

INT: Well how do you feel in general about shows running up to Canada?

GR: At the time--this is some time ago. At the time, there was very little going, but clearly an enormous amount of work has gone up there. Hundreds of millions of dollars… It’s very tough. It’s tough on our Directors, but really tough on our Crews, really tough on our ADs [Assistant Directors], and they just don't take them. So they’ve really been hurt by that transfer of work. And so I’m very much opposed to it, and I’m very enthusiastic about the investment tax credit; hopefully that’ll work. [INT: I think we're a long way from getting help from the congress, although we’re trying.] Yeah, right. [INT: It does seem to be an unleveled playing field, doesn’t it?] Yeah. It's a terrible problem, yeah. [INT: A lot of people are losing their homes here because… production having flown away, so to speak, it’s not runaway so much as flying away. Anyway…] Yeah.

INT: I wanted to ask you something earlier, which we didn’t talk about, was casting. How you’re involved in the process and what are the methods of casting?

GR: Well casting can be extremely creative. It’s extremely important. I think Directors are very dependent on casting well, if they don't work with Actors well, because they damn well better cast it properly because if they’re not able to really help Actors, then they're kind of helpless at that moment when… And every Actor in every part is lost for a moment; some are lost for more than a moment. But, the casting process, it takes… I got a great deal of pleasure out of working casting, when I would cast MATINEE THEATRE. Because, as I think I pointed this out before, you’d be doing such a variety of shows, and you’re looking through all different types of Actors and so forth. But what I always found most interesting--first of all, I knew these Actors very well. I knew a lot of Actors and I knew what they could do, and I knew what they could that a lot of people did not know they could do. And so I would cast them in something that they’re not usually cast doing. And also I love to cast, I love to cast a little off of what was called for, to turn the character a little bit. To turn the character a little bit.

GR: And in those first days of MATINEE THEATRE, when I first had the job, a very lovely woman whose name I forget, an African American woman came by, and she was a friend of mine… woman, a mature woman--not an old woman, but a mature woman, very wise and she said, “You don't always have to cast white people in white roles. Sometimes a black person could play that part.” It was a very sweet… something I knew, but here was a very sensitive, thoughtful reminder of the possibilities. And so I was always conscious of that. And all the time that I was casting and all the time I was shooting, I was always trying to do that. To find some way--[INT: Going against casting.] Looking and saying, “Wait a minute now, isn’t this an opportunity for African American rights?” There was not much work given to them. You know, there was not enough. Not enough. They wouldn't write black parts, so very often you’d say, “This could be a black guy. This could be an African American woman.” I know I used Kim Hamilton as the librarian on MY THREE SONS, and she worked all through out that series. Kept coming--I went to the library and there she was. Very beautiful woman. [INT: Yes she was.] But the business in terms of… and sometimes women can play male roles. You know, you have a bartender, and if it isn’t someone that jumps over the bar and knocks somebody out, I mean it could be a woman bartender, whatever, or as we see now, we see women judges. We see… but we were doing that some time ago. But the idea of casting, it can be extremely interesting to go a little bit different. For example, I remember using an Actor Rollie Winters [Roland Winters], when Rollie Winters was kinda in his prime and so forth, as a grandfather. He was a young vital grandfather. I remember McCleery [Albert McCleery] coming into my office and saying, “I love that! Rollie Winters,” he says, “a young grandfather!” ‘Cause usually, “Well, here’s grandpa,” and he comes in with a walker. And of course you have young grandfathers. And it made the whole thing, made the whole family warmer and more alive and so forth. But most of all, I think the business of turning the character psychologically, of seeing something a little off type. That the banker is not portentous. The banker is a slight little man or whatever. You don’t go along with… avoid cliché and you try to find something different. That same thing went into the writing on M*A*S*H, on LOU GRANT, and so forth. We were always turning the character a little bit to find out what was on the other side. [INT: Very good.] Turn the character. And not just say, “Well this is what this one is.” I remember somebody said to me one time, “You got to write a bible on this show, you know, who they are, what--” And I said, “I don’t want to write a bible because I don’t want to be held down by it. I want to contradict the character a little bit. I want to find some contradiction, something where there’s really something kind of interesting about the fact that they have dimension.

INT: You know it’s interesting, ‘cause I think I learned that lesson when I was interviewing the warden of the Eastern State Penitentiary for a crime show I was doing. And I thought I was going to have, in my own mind, some burley guy. And it turned out to be a man who’s the size of a jockey, who wore loafers and yellow socks. And he was the warden, and he was a tough guy. [GR: Very small, very small.] Very small. He looked like Jimmy Gleason, the Actor, a very small person. And from then on I always tried to cast against type. It was a great lesson.

GR: A little Irishman can be very tough. [INT: Oh boy, this guy was a real warden. But to look at him, you’d say, “You should be riding in the fifth race in Santa Anita.] Yes, right, very different, very interesting. I cast, in DOING LIFE, the warden of this prison, where Jerry Rosenberg supposedly was, a very young guy, a young guy, and you usually have the Charles Bickfords, you know, the big 60-year-olds, six, 55-year-old portentous guy. And this was a guy who was a good looking guy, a good size, but young. He could be 38, 37 years old. And of course that happens. You get a guy who’s in criminology, and he has some education and he has some experience, they might very well make him the warden of a prison instead of--[INT: I used that when I was doing ALL IN THE FAMILY. I had an undertaker to cast, and I went completely against type and made him a guy about the size of Jimmy Gleason. It was Jackie Grimes [Jack Grimes].] Oh I know… [INT: He was a good comic Actor, but you’d never think of him as an undertaker. And he was wonderful. He was wonderful comedically.] At any rate, that’s very interesting. The business of contrast, and not doing it on the nose…

INT: Now when you come in as a freelance Director, and you're facing the idea of casting, how are you treated or what happens?

GR: Well, it varies. It varies. Sometimes--I know I’ve… When I was freelance directing, I was given a cast. I’d show up and they’d say, “Here’s your cast. Here’s your cast,” because the Producer wanted to have that kind of control. Other times, you know, you’d sit down and you're involved. It would vary, in my experience, from show to show. But the Director definitely should be involved. [INT: Absolutely, has to be there.] Sometimes they’ll say, “Well, he’s been on the set, so we’ve cast it for you.” With stuff when they’re doing multiple cameras sometimes, they will cast behind the Director.

INT: What do you think about the number of people in the room when you're casting?

GR: Very few. I was going to do--I was doing this hour show, turned out to be a pilot which sold very quickly, a thing called HOMECOMING or something or HOMETOWN at Paramount [Paramount Pictures]. This is something that relates to an arbitration I had later on. But it was one of those periods when the secretaries became assistants and each person--there were a couple Writers in the show, and there was I guess an Associate Producer and so forth, and they all had their “assistants” in the room. And I came in there, there was a long table, and there were about 11 people there. And one Actor would come in and sit down. And so I said to the Actor, “Please wait…” And I said, “There’s too many people here. It's intimidating. All you need is the essentials: the Producer, myself and casting person.” I said, “Three is plenty,” and so we had to send them away. They all felt a little hurt. They all wanted to be participating and involved, but it's intimidating for the Actors. It should be as… And I said, “Let’s get rid of this table.” We picked the table up and got that out of the way, so that it became a more…

INT: Did you want to expand a little bit on women and minorities? I know that you were very useful, pardon the expression, as the president of our Guild [DGA] in promoting that, so do you want to discuss that a little further?

GR: Well, one of the things that I did as president, I think it’s a very good idea, as president, that I would visit the committees. Now there's a Hispanic committee [Latino Committee], there’s an African American committee [African American Steering Committee], there’s a Women’s committee [Women’s Steering Committee] and so forth. I used to drop in, sit away from the table. Occasionally I was invited to the table, but I would, in the boardroom, and I would decline or occasionally I would join. But the idea was--I remember on one night, it was in the women’s committee, I believe, that somebody--they were talking about opportunity, and how perhaps we could… I forget where I got the idea, but I got the idea of having the Guild give an award to a student, a woman or a minority student, in one of the film schools. Now, the idea of giving awards to film schools, can be, is very difficult because it can be very expensive. There so many damn many film schools, so many communication schools. At any rate, I started that business of women and minority student film awards [DGA Student Film Awards], and we have it each year. And it’s one of the most rewarding, and one of the warmest events. It’s so wonderful, and we can only do it locally. No, but it expanded. We started off locally, then we go pretty much California. Then we reached out for schools that had African American filmmakers and so forth. So we’d go all the way to, we’d include Howard [Howard University] and get some schools in Texas and so forth. So now there's 50 or so schools. But it’s a wonderful evening, a wonderful evening. [INT: Well done.] Now the business of African American and Hispanic filmmakers, we're still failing there. That is a very stubborn… Women are doing a bit better. That too is an uphill battle, but we could do better in terms of our minority filmmakers. And I think one thing that the Guild should get behind, and it may be in existence, but I don’t think it’s too effective. And that is a mentor program where you get some African American, some young filmmakers, some guys that are just starting, people out of film school or people that are in our Guild and tie them up with somebody who is successful, who does have connections, who is active and so forth, and just so that there is somebody that can kind of take them to the studio with them and so forth, give them some help, somebody that will be… well, the advantages of creatively and in terms of progressing their career, career wise, just in terms of administration of career, that we don’t do enough of that mentoring.