INT: Hi there, I’m Jeremy Kagan. We are at the Directors Guild of America. This is December 9th, 2014. We have been conducting an interview with William Friedkin, and, here at the Guild.

INT: What have you learned, ‘cause here’s the thing. I would’ve think that to direct an opera, your role as Director "versus" rather than "and with" the Conductor, how does that relationship work so that you can, that’s what I wanna know.

WF: The relationship of a Director, a Stage Director and the Conductor of an opera is symbiotic, in that you work together. But there is a definite pecking order that’s different from directing a motion picture. In opera, the most important thing is the composer’s intent, as it’s interpreted, first by the Conductor, and then simultaneously by the Director. The Stage Director, in this case, me, I would come up with a staging plot and a design, for how the show would look, how the costumes would look, whether I would do it period or contemporary. Meanwhile the Conductor is in charge of all the vocalise. The Conductor’s in charge of the tempe, at which it’s going to be sung. How loud, how soft. The Conductor will rarely get into interpretation. That’s the work of the Stage Director. But the pecking order consists of the Composer, even though he be long dead, because he’s made his intentions clear in the opera, which is usually at least a couple of hundred, or 150 years old. He is first on the pecking order. Then comes the Conductor, then comes the singers, and then the Stage Director. So the pecking order is a lot different from directing a motion picture. However, it is every bit as collaborative. When I’m directing a film on the set, my philosophy is, the best idea, no matter where it came from, is what we’re gonna do. Wherever the best idea comes from; it might be a grip, stagehand, Assistant Director, the Actors, the Writer. Somebody else might say, “How about this?” the cameraman. And you say, “Hey, that’s great,” and you do it. But you make the decision to do it or not to do it. So, but the pecking order in the motion picture, is the Director’s first, it’s his concept.

INT: When the singer, ‘cause I’m sort of fascinated. The moment that singer walks onto the stage… [WF: In rehearsal?] In rehearsal. Where that singer goes, and potentially how that singer plays the character, not sings the character, obviously that’s what they’re doing, but, plays that character, that would be your place, right?

WF: Yes, and here’s how it works. I will rehearse an opera for about a week to 10 days without any music. Just as a kind of play, in which I’ll stage it. Now I have to be completely familiar with the, not only the opera, but the composer’s intent. What the composer had in mind when he, and I say he, because I don’t know of any operas written by a woman. I’ve certainly never directed one. And I’m not aware of any. But what the composer’s intent. And because there is a rather limited reparatory of the great classic operas, you can read a lot about how this opera came about, what the composer wanted to do, what his intent was, his purpose, and his technique. So I’ll come in armed with that, and I will then discuss that, not unlike with a motion picture. I’ll discuss it both individually with the Actors, and in a group, so that we’re all on the same page. “This is what we’re here to do.” And I will then give out the staging, being very conscious that the singers have to not only be heard well, but seen well, by the entire audience. And so I’ll set a staging pattern. And I’ll move them around, making sure that it’s comfortable for them to sing in the various positions that I assign them. And I’ll rehearse it like a play with no music for a week to 10 days. Then at that point, a pianist comes in and plays the score, and we stop and start while they move and sing. And I don’t ask them to sing out full, in the same way that you won’t in rehearsal for a film, or a play, ask the Actors to give it all, but just to discover it, slowly. I will use the same techniques that I use in directing Actors, which is primarily sense memory. So that in order to produce an emotion on stage, you have to call on the Actors own memory of when they felt such an emotion in their own life, or lives. And you achieve that in the same way I imagine a psychologist, or a psychiatrist does. And to a great extent, directing is psychologically interpreting what, where an Actor’s emotions come from, by talking to them about their personal lives. [INT: When they--] What made them laugh? What made them cry? what made them be frightened? And I’ve worked that way with film Actors, stage Actors, and now opera singers. So all--those techniques, from cinema and opera, totally intersect. But now, after the staging, you gradually work up to a small group of instrumentalists. And then finally, when you’ve staged the whole thing in a rehearsal hall, with maybe five or six musicians, then you take it to the stage. Meanwhile the lighting has gone on. But I’ve already discussed with the Lighting Designer and the Set Designer, what the set will look like, where the lights should be coming from, the tone of the light, the color of the stage pictures. And so as, while you’re directing the singers, who, by the way, want direction. The great singers that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, want the same thing that really fine Actors want, which is a psychological underpinning for their character, and a staging that works. That’s about it. In the old days of grand opera, singers like Caruso [Enrico Caruso], even up to Pavarotti [Luciano Pavarotti], would come out on the stage like baked potatoes. You know, they’d be placed in a spot, in a costume, make no pretense of acting, and just sing it out, and that was fine. The audience there wants to hear these great voices. But the singers today wanna also give a performance, not a recital. So that opens the gates for a Director to do the same kind of work you do in film.

INT: Now when you run into a singer who’s got a wonderful voice, but really portraying a character that’s not where he or she is. How have you been able to help them?

WF: Well, you perceive that quite early, and you have more work to do. There are some singers I’ve worked with; I did one of the earliest operas of a man who became, for many years, the leading tenor in the world, Rolando Villazon. And he began in a production of mine, one of his earliest, not the earliest, but one of his earliest semi leading roles, was in the opera GIANNI SCHICCHI, that I first directed for the LA Opera, and then in Washington D.C. at Kennedy Center. And Villazon was a great natural Actor. And became, now when he came to me, for the role of Rinuccio in GIANNI SCHICCHI, I thought that this guy was sensational, and a sensational comedian. But I never thought he would develop into the world’s leading tenor, which he was for maybe close to 10 years before his voice gave out. He’s now had, I think, two or three throat operations. And he’s singing again, but not at the level that he had achieved. But he was a natural Actor. And he loved to perform. And GIANNI SCHICCHI is a comedy. It’s the funniest opera ever written by Puccini [Giacomo Puccini]. And so I had very little work to do with him but to turn him loose. Whereas there’d be other people in the cast who I’d have to work harder with. Once you give a basic staging to a guy like Villazon, it’s like giving direction to an Actor like Tommy Lee Jones. He takes it from there. And brings what he has within him to the role. Other singers have to be, as with Actors, directed very closely and carefully. But the ideal situation for a Director in cinema, as well as opera, is to just cast your bread on the waters. Give them a basic staging once you have gotten on the same page about what we’re doing, and what it’s about, and the tone of it. Then you give them a basic staging and let them enhance it. And sometimes the enhancement is better than what you gave them, and so you adjust to it, and other times you have to calmly explain that it’s not what you’re looking for, and try it this other way.

INT: You know, you’re carrying on a tradition; I don’t know how many people have done this, maybe many. But--[WF: No, not a lot of…]--Eisenstein [Sergei Eisenstein], as you probably know, 1939, directed one of the Wagner [Richard Wagner] operas, actually in Germany, before he then did, well, they had the war, and ALEXANDER NEVSKY is the next film. But you’re carrying on this tradition, and you… What have you learned, ‘cause you’ve seen the similarities, but is there something that you’ve learned from this experience of directing opera that you say, “This is different, and I want to apply it”?

WF: For the most part, I learned that the techniques are similar. The difference is that with cinema, you have the ability to change the angle and make cuts. When you stage an opera, there’s no second take when it’s being performed, and there is, you have to create stage pictures, wherein the audience can find what they wanna look at on their own, but with your guidance. Now in a, when you’re making a film, you decide to shoot, let’s say, a master shot with several people in it. Then you decide, possibly, or probably, to break it up with close ups, and to specifically direct the audience’s attention at this moment to that. On stage, you can do that, but with light, and staging. With an Actor in the foreground, a singer in the foreground, others in the background. Lighting that emphasizes maybe someone in the background, as opposed to someone in the foreground. But you are creating stage pictures, that for the most part, allow an audience to decide where to look on their own. And the trick in opera is to get them to look where you want them to look, not at this vast stage filled with people. Especially in something like AIDA, which I have directed in Turin [Italy], and am about to direct again, a revival of my staging next year, at this time, with a new cast. And so very often I come back and restage my operas with a new cast, and I’ll make certain changes in them. [INT: You get to remake an opera if you’re gonna do it again, but you don’t often times get to do that with a film once it’s out there.] No. But with opera, you are constantly trying to draw the audience’s attention, even though there’s a vast stage and it’s often filled with people, or it may be only two people or one person, you wanna direct the audience in the same way that you do with a camera and editing.

INT: Let’s talk about, let’s move to two things that I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about the Tracy Letts pieces that you’ve done. We did talk about BUG, but I wanna talk, obviously, about KILLER JOE. But one really minor technical question I have for you, and you may not even remember, but if you do, there’s a moment when Emile Hirsch is getting beat up by the guys on the motorcycle in KILLER JOE, right? And you come to a top shot looking down at the concrete that is there. And I noticed the graffiti on the concrete; there was this light bulb that said, “Think”. And I was just wondering whether that was accidental, intentional, or even if you recall…

WF: No it was there, and I decided to feature it. I didn’t tinker with the set at all, in that scene or anything else in KILLER JOE.

WF: Let me go back to opera for a second. [INT: Go, go, go.] How I got into it. In 1998, I was having dinner with Zubin Mehta and his wife, and my wife, at Zubin’s house. I’ve known Zubin socially for many, many years. And one day, at this particular dinner, in 1996, he said to me, just out of the blue, “Why don’t you do an opera with me?” And he--‘cause he’s the permanent conductor of several world-renowned operas. And I said, “Jeez Zubin, I’ve never seen an opera.” And he said, “No, come on.” He said, “We’ve talked about opera music, a lot.” I said, “Yes, I’ve listened to performances on recordings, and CDs, but I’ve never seen a staging of an opera.” I wasn’t a fan. And he said, “No, no, you’d be very good. I think you’d be very good.” He said, “What opera would you do, if you had a chance?” And in order really to put him off, ‘cause I had no intention of doing an opera, I said, “Well I would do either one of the two Alban Berg operas.” And Alban Berg was a composer of what you call serial music. He was a student and a contemporary of Schoenberg [Arnold Schoenberg], who invented 12-tone music. And the three major composers from the Second Viennese School, which was shortly after the turn of the 20th century in Vienna, was Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. Berg wrote two operas only. The operas are called LULU and WOZZECK. And I said to Zubin, “Well, I would do WOZZECK.” Now it’s seldom performed, and it’s less performed in Italy, where he was talking about doing it for the Florence opera company, the Maggio Musicale in Florence, which is, in fact, the world’s oldest opera company. Now they don’t like German opera in Italy. They don’t particularly like atonal opera, especially atonal German opera. And so I thought he’s gonna say, “Well that’s crazy and we can…” He immediately got to his feet; he left the dining room. He came back with his diary that had his bookings, it was this thick, and had his bookings for seven years. Which a conductor will have normally, as do the great singers. And he leafed through it, and he said, “Okay. I’ll do WOZZECK with you in two years, 1998, at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, if you will commit to it now.” And I was sort of stunned; I’d never even considered it. But my wife said, “Oh go ahead, it’ll be fun.” So I said, “All right,” and then proceeded to forget about it for a year. After about a year, Zubin called me and he said, “How’s our WOZZECK coming?” I had done nothing. He said, “We’re gonna need a staging plan. You’re gonna have to hire a designer, and a Lighting Designer, and we’re going to need to budget the set and the costumes and stuff.” So at that point, I took German lessons for one year. Now, I can barely order a sausage in Germany, but I know the libretto of WOZZECK, in German. And so I studied it.

WF: As I studied it [WOZZECK], and I went to visit other musicologists and scholars, and a composer in New York named George Perle, who was also, had written, who also had written a lot about Alban Berg. And I spent several days with him, and read all these texts about WOZZECK and Berg, and how this came about. By, within a matter of months, I had a concept, which I then sent to Florence. I hired a Lighting Designer, and I hired a Set Designer. [INT: Were these people who were, come from the opera world, or… So you…] Yes, only from the opera world. But what I did, my concept was to, because WOZZECK is in three acts, they’re short acts, and 12 scenes. Four acts per scene. What I did, was I used cinematic technique. I used dynamic framing. There’s a scene, for example, in a German bar, where Wozzeck comes in after he’s murdered his wife Marie, for having an affair with a drum major. And I brought the set, the masking of the set to a low ceilinged basement bar, with a low ceiling, and it was almost the length of the stage. And as the people in the opera, in the bar, observed that Wozzeck has blood on his hands, I highlighted the blood on his hands, and I had the walls of the set close in on him. And he strains to push them away, while the walls are closing in on him, and he’s now, the rest of the people who are accusing him, are covered. And he’s straining to get loose from the walls becoming a prison. And finally he pushes them away, and you’re in another total environment. You’re back in the forest where he’s killed Marie. And that was the full stage. And he goes into a swamp where he left her body, and he sinks into the swamp. [INT: So you’re, listen, you’re thinking cinematically here.] Exactly. And then there’s the final moment of WOZZECK, in which his young son, who is now an orphan, who is playing on a street in Germany with a bunch of other children. And they all have little bicycles, and whatever. And he is using a broomstick as his horse. And he’s hopping around the stage on a broomstick, which he’s turned into, which he pretends is his horse. The other children are scorning him, because his father killed his mother. And one little girl, who’s running around, is carrying a white balloon. And she releases the white balloon, which to me represented the spirit of his dead mother. The white balloon goes off into the wings. The other children desert the little boy. The only thing on stage outside of the cyc [cyclorama], was a railroad track, going--and they’re playing by this track. A railroad track that’s going into infinity, which to me symbolized the track to Auschwitz, because WOZZECK, I set it between the two world wars, when Germany lost its soul. And so you see this railroad track. And you have the little boy who’s going hip hop, hip hop, which is in the score. And as he gets up stage toward the end of the track, and this is not in the libretto. This was my invention. I had the little boy turn and face the audience. And he takes the broomstick, which he’s used as a pony, and he puts it on his shoulder as a rifle. And you see that he is the future of Nazi Germany. And then I iris the light down on him, like the end of a Chaplin film, so that all you see on the stage is this future German soldier, and holding his rifle. And I used various, the stage was of various shapes and sizes in my scene. [INT: As would be a frame. As would be shots.] Exactly.

INT: I wanna move to the idea that you studied WOZZECK and Berg [Alban Berg], so that you really knew this material. I wanna look at the writing of Tracy Letts, who’s got a, obviously a point of view on life. And I don’t know if when you read his material, his plays, or saw the plays, if you did, whether they immediately spoke to you, and why they spoke to you, and particularly why you then decided to make KILLER JOE.

WF: Well we can, I did BUG first, which Tracy also wrote. I saw it in a little theater Off-Broadway in New York, and I felt it was very powerful. It was about, you know, the transference of paranoia, which not many people understand. But if you were in a deep relationship with someone who’s troubled, very often you take on the beliefs and characteristics of that person, even though they’re paranoid, bordering on, in fact crossing over into insanity. And that’s what BUG is about. And I related to it instantly. I called Tracy Letts. I found out where he lived, which was in Chicago. He was working with the Steppenwolf Company [Steppenwolf Theatre Company]. And not making very much money. It turned out that Tracy had come to Hollywood many years before, tried to get work as an Actor. Got very little, he got only very small parts. And when he failed, when he auditioned and failed to get a job on THE LOVE BOAT, he decided to leave Hollywood after about seven years of failure, and he moved to Chicago, and he became an Actor, getting smaller roles, and he wrote some plays that Steppenwolf put on. The first play he wrote was KILLER JOE. And it was presented in what you call a black box theater, in Evanston, Illinois. Just outside Chicago and adjacent to it, where Northwestern University is. And it was in a 50-seat theater. I didn’t see it then. But it went from there, to a London production, and the play gradually grew and changed, but remained claustrophobic. And I saw it on a, in a little theater on Sunset Boulevard East, in one of those little storefront theaters. And it absolutely floored me, its power. And I’m drawn to claustrophobic works anyway, where people are living without alternatives, and the walls are closing in on them. And, but I called Tracy about doing BUG, and he thought it was a gag, ‘cause he was a fan of my films. And when I said, “It’s Bill Friedkin,” he thought he was being put on. But he had very few resources then. He had done small roles as an Actor, and only a handful of plays, mostly BUG and KILLER JOE. And then he acted in other Steppenwolf productions. I invited him to come out to California. I met with him, and in a course of a weekend, we laid out how I would film BUG, and I then set it up as a feature film with Lionsgate. And we made it, released it, and one day Tracy said to me, “What do you think about KILLER JOE?” And I thought for a couple of days, and I said, “Yeah, okay. Let me try and put it together.” And I did, because Tracy Letts and I are on the same page, in terms of our view of life. It’s, you could say it’s a rather cynical view. I think it’s, I would characterize it as being unsentimental and more realistic. And we are both attracted to the same characters who possess both good and evil, and like most, if not all of us, we are bent in some way. Isaiah Berlin referred to it as the crooked timber of humanity. And that’s how I largely see human nature, as the crooked timber of humanity. And without defining it that way, Tracy does as well.

WF: He [Tracy Letts] has since, of course, become--[INT: HOMELAND.]--a celebrated Actor. Well, he won the best Actor award a couple of years ago on Broadway. He won the Tony Award as best Actor for WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF revival. He’s now on the series, as we speak, he’s on the series HOMELAND. And he’s doing a lot of acting. And less play writing. But he wrote KILLER JOE when he was about 25 years old, and angry, because he wasn’t getting work as an Actor. He was drunk, as he says, through most of the writing of KILLER JOE. And there are things in it, that are really kind of wild and reckless. And, which he may not have written if he was in full control of his faculties. Nevertheless, I think it’s a brilliant contemporary script. And I was very happy and anxious to film it, and I put it together without a cast, but then I had to get the cast together. I was originally thinking of doing it with someone like Tommy Lee Jones in the lead, or Billy Bob Thornton; a more grizzled kind of Texan. And one morning I was, while I was thinking about casting KILLER JOE, I was shaving, and I had the TV on in the bedroom. And on the TV I heard this beautiful mellifluous voice with an authentic Texas, East Texas accent. I didn’t know who the hell it was. And I went out to look and there was a huge close-up of Matthew McConaughey. And he was being interviewed by, I don’t know, it was someone like Larry King, or Charlie Rose--[INT: Charlie Rose, yeah.] Someone like that, I don’t remember who. And Matthew was talking about his childhood, growing up in East Texas. I had not really seen any film with Matthew McConaughey. I was aware of them. In fact, my wife, Sherry Lansing, when she was head of Paramount Pictures, had produced most of what were referred to as his romantic comedies. I had never seen them. And I’m watching this guy and I’m thinking, why shouldn’t Joe be good looking, and charming, and low key, instead of, you know, sort of a grizzled cowboy. And as that thought began to take hold of me, I decided to send the script to McConaughey through his Agent. And he hadn’t worked in two years. He was in the process of trying to change his career from being just a guy in romantic comedies who took off his shirt, and great looking, and how to make convincing love to the leading lady. And I sent him the script, and now I’ll tell you his reaction to having read the script. He thought it was garbage. And he threw it across the room into a large trash bin that he had, wherever he read it, in his office. And his Agent called him about it, and said, what, he said, “This is dreadful, why would you send me a piece of garbage like this?” And his Agent, and his business manager, his lawyer said to him, “Wait a minute. You’d better read this again. Because first of all, it’s a comedy. It’s a black comedy; it’s a very dark comedy. But you grew up with these people. You know these people, you grew up in a trailer, and you know this kind of character. You know them very well, and you’re gonna find that this has really challenging, dark humor.” [INT: This isn’t from you, though. This is from the Agent and the Managers.] No, this isn’t from me. No, he rejected it. [INT: Good, okay.] So his Agent and his lawyer, who he had great respect for, told him that, so he rewrote (reread) it, and he got it. [INT: Yeah.] He got it, and he called me. And he said, “Would you come and meet with me and let’s talk it over.” I met with him. He had just recently been married to a Brazilian woman. His mother-in-law had come over to live with them, and she’s a great Brazilian cook. And she made us a wonderful Brazilian lunch. And we talked about my approach to the script, his understanding of it, and we agreed to do it, and then I put together the rest of the cast. And he was magnificent. [INT: Oh he’s terrific.]

WF: He [Matthew McConaughey] was wonderful to work with, and because of him and the rest of the cast, I seldom did a second take on that film [KILLER JOE]. [INT: Wow.] My whole approach was becoming no take two. That’s what I got from opera. There is no take two. So I tell the Actors, ever since I started doing operas, but even to some extent before, I would say to the Actors, “Do not think of a take as a rehearsal. Let’s not do take after take after take, hoping for a miracle on about take 27.” I had noticed, in editing my films, that the takes that I preferred were the ones like the first printed take; the one that had the most spontaneity. Because I do not do period work. I did one period film, THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY’S. And, set in the ‘20s [1920s], but everything else I do is contemporary. And so I want the characters to be spontaneous. They’re not doing Shakespeare, or a different dialect or something. They’re largely portraying aspects of themselves that exist. [INT: But you’ve got, in this case, in KILLER JOE, you do have a text, you have a play.] Yeah. [INT: So there’s going to be some respect for the words of the author.] Total respect, but you have to learn them. Every opera singer I’ve worked with, they come in knowing the libretto. They don’t try to learn the libretto in rehearsal, or learn--because it’s always in a foreign language. I’ve never directed an opera in English. They’re either in German, Italian, or French. Or Hungarian, sometimes--[INT: Or Russian, yeah.] I’ve directed some Hungarian operas. But Bartok’s [Bela Bartok] BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE.

INT: The lines they know, so that’s not the issue…]But you also, I know that at certain times, you’re saying to an Actor, “Make this yours,” so if the line is gonna change, it’s gonna change. Now, I don’t know when you’re dealing something, like with Tracy’s [Tracy Letts] play, whether you’re saying, “Well, these lines are actually really good, so let’s keep to them.”

WF: Oh we keep the lines, but they learn them before they get… And I’ll tell you something, Jeremy. I don’t really rehearse in the strictest sense. All the work that I’ve done with the Actors is done before we get to rehearsal. It’s the psychological technique, where we’ll sit down, talk about their character, who they are, what they are. I will emphasize that the dialogue must be done as written, but, which means you learn it before you get to the rehearsal set. In rehearsal, all I do is give them the staging. And then I put it in front of… We don’t emote it. We don’t act it. That’s gonna come when the cameras roll. [INT: All right. Now, looking at one of these characters, the guy who plays the father in it, Church.] Thomas Haden Church [in KILLER JOE]. [INT: He, that character that he portrays in it, who I would say, at least on one surface, is not very bright. What were you discussing with him, in terms of the psychological and, let’s say, reality understanding of that character, ‘cause he creates somebody. He really does.] Absolutely. [INT: And I think it’s magical. But, and I think he’s a terrific Actor. But I’m wondering if you remember that discussion with him.] We did it beforehand. [INT: Right.] He knew--he’s from Texas as well, East Texas, as is McConaughey [Matthew McConaughey]. They knew how these characters speak, better than I did. They knew how they thought, and the environment in which they were living. And then, so we had spent days, hours, talking about these characters, while they were learning the dialogue. And then, of course, I didn’t shoot it like a play. You know, I shot it cinematically. And, but you’d have to break it up, you know, you’re not gonna do the whole piece. You’re gonna do maybe two or three pages, or sometimes more at a time. And I would say to them, “A take is a performance. I’m only gonna do take two if by some reason you blow the lines, which you’re not gonna do. And, or if the cameraman tells me the shot’s out of focus, or if a light falls in the shot, or a microphone dips into the shot…”

INT: I wanna go back to character, in terms of the discussion with Church [Thomas Haden Church, in KILLER JOE], in particular, if you remember it. Because he may have known those guys; I assume, this is, he’s much smarter as--[WF: Sure.]--Church than that guy he played. [WF: Of course.] And so what was that, that’s a fascinating moment, ‘cause you wanna make sure that he’s not mocking that guy, he wants to be that guy, which he became. And I’m wondering how he can…

WF: Well here’s the secret. [INT: Okay.] Cast intelligent Actors. The key word is intelligent, who understand character, and the characters they’re playing. I am not looking for an Actor to put on a wig, makeup, a phony accent, and portray someone that he or she is not. I try to cast on the nose. As much as I can. I have, from time to time, not cast on the nose, and I’ve had a difficult time when I didn’t. For example, Gene Hackman was not on the nose to play Popeye in THE FRENCH CONNECTION. He, in fact, did not admire Popeye as a human being. And we had a very difficult relationship, as I’ve told you, in putting together that character. Because he was having to try to become someone for whom he had no liking, and no sympathy. He thought Popeye was a racist. [INT: Got it.] So I have been, ever since then, very careful to try and cast Actors who understood inherently who they were playing. And then I just cut them loose. And if I wanted to make a little correction, or a moderation or something I would, but rarely. [INT: Got it. So--] But I will tell you that the young woman who played Dottie, the girl in KILLER JOE, I was going to cast Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer Lawrence came to me. She had gotten a copy of the script, and she had just done a film called WINTER’S BONE, a little independent film that got a lot of attention, was very good, but it was under the radar. And she had not gone on to become the star she is today. Through her Agent she contacted me and she said, I said, “Okay, come up to the house, let’s talk.” We talked about the character, and she said to me, she was very, extremely confident as a young actress. I think when I met her, she must have been 21 or 22, at the most. And she said to me, “I am the only person in the country that can play this character.” And at that moment I believed her. And I was gonna cast her. And one day my Casting Director sent me a video that was made by a young actress who I’d never heard of named Juno Temple. I didn’t know who the hell she was and had never seen her on film. She made an audition at her home, with her 12 year old brother playing Killer Joe. And she sent me this audition, and her Texas accent was perfect. It was perfection. I looked at this video, and she had the child, waiflike quality of the girl in the script. And so I said to my Casting Director, “Let’s bring her over, I’d like to meet this girl.” We brought her over; she came into my house, and said, “Oh, hello Mr. Friedkin, what a pleasure to meet you.” She had a thick British accent! I mean, she sounded like the queen. You know. And she wasn’t Dottie at all. And I wondered, how in the hell did you, and she just inherently understood Dottie, worked on this accent and perfected it. To the point that I told, when we were on the set shooting it, I told Thomas Haden Church, and Matthew McConaughey, who were from East Texas, I said, “If she ever gets one word wrong in her pronunciation, just stop it. You cut it, and correct it.” You know. It never happened. She never got one word that they didn’t believe was authentic East Texas accent. And so I hired her. And again, with her, I put together this wonderful company of six Actors, and we did it like it was going to be a performance. I would rarely do a take two.

INT: I wanna… There are a couple things that are amazing in this piece [KILLER JOE]. One thing that you have such a grasp of how to take a confined space and make it unconfined, even when you want us to feel the claustrophobia. I’m not saying you try to deny that, but you as a cinema maker understand how to both stage them, you’re Actors, as well as where to put your camera, so that that becomes an incredibly live environment that you were able to--[WF: Yeah.] Even though, as I said, I know you wanted us to feel that it was a trapped space, ‘cause it is about trapped people. But before we go into that, the nudity in this piece is pretty out there. That opening of the door, and there she is with her bush standing out. I mean, I… Was that in the play? Did--

WF: Oh sure. [INT: Wow.] Everything’s in the play. [INT: Wow.] Everything that’s on the script--with the exception, I mean I shot a lot of exteriors. And the little motorcycle chase is not in the play. And a lot of-- [INT: By the way, is the dog off-screen in the play?] Yes, you never see him--offstage. [INT: But you hear him all the time. But yeah, that’s right, yeah.] The dog’s offstage, but the dog was a major character in that the dog only barked at Chris. You know, played by Emile Hirsch. The dog didn’t bark when Joe comes to the house, or any of the other characters. The dog only perceived something fated, and evil about Chris. And so that became an important character. And I found this pit bull, which is what it was, a bastard pit bull, and very directable. So that whenever Emile Hirsch appeared, entering or leaving the trailer, the dog would react, heatedly. And yeah. Almost everything is in the play. [INT: Wow.] And I just moved a lot of it outside of the--[INT: So, were the Actors--] Now the killing of the mother is all offstage in the play. [INT: Offstage. But, and so is that wonderful--the guy who drives the corvette, I don’t think we ever see his face, either, the guy who’s so--] He’s not in the play. [INT: Right. And he’s almost not in the movie; he’s an idea. We see the car, but I don’t think we ever actually see his face, do we? I think we see him from behind.] Oh no, you see him, very clearly. The guy who Chris owes the money to. He’s a wonderful local Actor in New Orleans. [INT: Got it.] And he’s great. He wasn’t in the play. He, but Tracy Letts wrote the screenplay. And added several characters that are not in the play. The play is all set, of course--[INT: In that room.]--in the trailer. In one room of the trailer. I moved around the trailer, and I moved around to show you the environment in which this story took place.

INT: Two questions about… Did any of the Actors, or either these actresses [in KILLER JOE] have, or him too, McConaughey’s [Matthew McConaughey] naked as well. Did anybody say, “Oh--“

WF: No. [INT: And every, just, “We’re doin’ it”?] No, I mean the people I cast understood what was going on. And… [INT: That moment when McConaughey jumps him and he’s naked is, both a surprise for us, of course, and also then to see, then you cut back to the wider shot and we see him naked, and I’m thinking, this is pretty gutsy--on his part. Well, the--[INT: Well your part too.] Well, but we all understood each other, and there is not an intentional exploitation of the nudity. What Tracy Letts was trying to show, when Sharla, the wife, opens the door, and lets Chris in in a rainstorm late at night, she’s standing there, naked from her stomach down. And that is a strong indication of who she is. She’s something of an exhibitionist. She’s a married woman, but she plays around. And she is also not ashamed of her body. And doesn’t really care who sees it. Now, this is also a characteristic of a lot of people who live in those circumstances. They’re not covering anything about themselves; they are who they are. And Gina Gershon, who played that role, understood that that’s what it was about. Not simply to flaunt her private parts, other than the fact that the character was flaunting her own private parts. And so, that’s why they willingly did it. Yes, I talked first to another actress, who’s a great actress, who didn’t wanna do the nudity under any circumstances, and so as good as I think she might have been, I wrote her off. And Juno Temple, who was at that time 21 years old, had no problem doing the nudity. She knew that this nude image of her was in her brother’s mind’s eye; it was in her brother’s dreams of her. And there is a strong undercurrent of the fact that her older brother may have had sex with her, although it’s not shown nor stated, but we sort of indicated it, by his dreams. And I wanted to plant the idea in the minds of the audience. I don’t know whether he had sex with her or not.

WF: When an Actor asks me a question like that, I will often say, “I have no idea; I have no fucking idea. If it isn’t in the script, I don’t know.” Very often Actors have asked me questions, years ago, like, “How did this guy feel about his father, or his mother?” And I would always say, “I have no idea. I could make up some bullshit, and give it to you if it helps you, but I’d be making it up. I don’t know.” And I, that was reinforced in me when I first worked with Harold Pinter. Harold, directed THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Which is another play that moved me as much as KILLER JOE and BUG, which I filmed. And my experience working with Pinter was the best years of my life. And I learned so much from him as a great dramatist that he was. But he had no idea what his characters did, or how they felt before they came into a scene. And that’s how it is in life. We meet somebody, we know somebody, we’re talking to them. I have no idea, for example, I’ve known you for years. I have no idea how you felt about your parents, how you grew up, where you grew up. Yet we can talk, and we can achieve communication on a personal level. But I don’t know anything about you. [INT: But you will still also be able to say, if you’re creating me, or another, helping the Actor create a--‘cause you just said this. In this situation, I may not know, you know, who your parents are and what your history are, but I know who you are.] In this moment. [INT: And as you said, and you can access that character through who you literally are, sense memory, you literally said it.] Sense memory. [INT: So you know how you might feel if you find out your wife’s been fucking around, or you know it all the time, and you’ve accepted it. Now, deal with that, which is the reality of this particular moment in the play.] Right. Play the reality. [INT: Got it.] Now, the script has to be great. The script has to take care of all that. And that’s why I’ve made very few films in, jeez, more than, about 50 years of directing films, I’ve made very few. I have only, on occasion, I’ve done a couple of films for which I had no emotional feeling at all. I just did, early in my career, I did some films to become a filmmaker. [INT: Yeah. But as you said, the script then, really has to know who these people are.] And I have to understand them. [INT: Got it.] If I don’t… I’ve seen some really good scripts where I didn’t understand the character’s motivations, and so I didn’t do them. [INT: Got it.]

INT: A technical thing I wanna talk about though, this is, which is shooting in the rain. Because in KILLER JOE, you’ve shot in the rain. This is just a Director talking to a Director. What’s your experience in shooting in the rain?

WF: You have to backlight or sidelight the rain, or you won’t see it on film. [INT: And how do you--] Especially at night, especially during the daytime, where it’ll be washed out by the sky. And I learned the hard way, doing SORCERER, that the only way you can see rain on film is if it’s strongly sidelit or backlit. If it’s frontlit only, you may, the aperture may not catch it.

INT: Does your experience though, because of the chaos that happens in the rain--there’s the noise of the rain machines, there’s the fact that everybody’s getting wet--I’m just, does it excite you, does it, like, “Oh, I gotta do a rain sequence,” does it… Do you have any relationship to it at all other than the pragmatics of let’s get it right?

WF: Well I’ve done several, and they’re very challenging. [INT: I know.] They’re extremely challenging, because while you’re suggesting that this could be a problem for me as the Director, and am I facing it either with alacrity, or am I saying, “Oh my god, I’ve gotta do another rain scene.” Remember that the Actors have to perform in it as well, so they will have various reactions to it. The main reaction that Actors have had with me, in shooting in the rain, is the wonderful challenge of it, because it’s real. You know, it ain’t gonna be put in later with CGI. You know, you ain’t gonna get those drops, especially on a low budget independent film. And so Actors that I’ve worked with love the challenge of working with, instead of against reality. In SORCERER, they’re literally driving that truck across that bridge. And often they fell in. It was a life threatening experience. But it turned the Actors on, because of that. And it turned me on. If I can achieve this, I thought, this is gonna be something else. [INT: Got it.] But it, today, almost anything, I’m talking about a studio film, not an independent film. A studio film with a comfortable budget can do anything a Director has in mind with CGI. [INT: Exactly.] Now when you and I started this round of interviews, we couldn’t imagine making a film either in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in the Taj Mahal, in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan, you know, where you couldn’t take cameras, you know. You could not take cameras to S--even outer space was a problem, that Kubrick [Stanley Kubrick] successfully overcame without computer-generated imagery. But for the most part, we couldn’t even think of setting a film in certain places where a camera had never really gone. Now it’s taken for granted. All of the places I mentioned, a Director has all of these opportunities because of computer-generated imagery, to his advantage, or hers.