INT: In one of our DGA magazines you alluded to earlier, you wrote a paper and a part of it had the discussion about independent filmmakers. You want to expand on that a little bit please?

GR: Well, the business of non-Guild [non-DGA] production is really what I think I was referring to. And I think that business of non-Guild production is one of the biggest problems that we have in the Guild. And we approach--and really we're looking at low budget agreement as a solution, that we accommodated people who have been working with very, very low budgets, and trying to--how can we get them in because they’re not financially able to follow all the requirements of our Guild. [INT: And they’re the big filmmakers of the future, of course.] And very, very important. And that whole pool is growing, growing and growing. And so with great… So I always pushed it. And I think some of the very early… very often low budget agreements would come before the council, not even get to the national board. But it was opposed because, understandably, Directors in television or whatever would say, “Well, you're going to compromise me,” because the editorial periods were less and the budgets were… the compensation was less, something in order to reach out to these filmmakers who are working on low budgets. There was… eventually we got some of these low budget agreements through. And now more and more of them are coming. Very recently we passed, we accepted an agreement that had been worked out with great pain by Warren Adler and Bryan Unger with a company that does a lot of low budget work. I forget the name of it, but that was a real step. And of course it went to national board and it was approved in the national board; that was really very progressive. We have to do that. And this idea of we want to reach out and bring these people in so that they’re within the Guild, so that the whole crew--and the whole crew becomes DGA, and working under limited budgets, but at least they are members. And as the budgets grow and they’re able to--eventually these guys will be active regular DGA members working on conventional budgets. It’s extremely important to us. [INT: It’s well done.]

INT: Now you mentioned Bryan Unger and--[GR: Warren Adler.]--and Warren Adler who both work for a man named Jay Roth [Jay D. Roth].

GR: Yeah, it’s very interesting--let me just say one comment about that. What they have is they fight, with these budget agreements; they fight a two front war. First of all, they're negotiating with people who are not accustomed to the Creative Rights, to the money that Directors are accustomed to that work within the Guild [DGA]. So they’re dealing with people who are not accustomed to paying the price and so forth, and recognizing that the editing time and whatever Creative Rights that we expect, that we’re accustomed to. Then once those agreements become reasonable, they have to turn around and they have to sell, you know, sell the councils in the Guild and the board. So they have a very good, they have a difficult chore. We’re really indebted to Warren and to Bryan doing damn good work. [INT: They did a heck of a good job.] But at any rate, your question relates to Jay Roth. [INT: Jay Roth, yes.] When I was, I guess, into my second term [president], Glenn Gumpel said that he was leaving the Guild and that he had--he was going to leave in five weeks, so I had to--[INT: He got an offer that he couldn’t refuse from Universal [Universal Pictures].] That’s right. It was really a crisis because I had a very brief amount of time to find somebody in an extremely important position for welfare of this Guild. For the welfare of this Guild it is extremely crucial that we get the right man and so forth. There were a number of candidates and so forth. To give Gumpel credit he said to me, he said, “I think Jay Roth is the guy.” And so I knew him--[INT: Jay had been one of our attorneys.] Jay had been an advisor, an attorney, an outside attorney to the DGA, the WGA and the Actors [SAG-AFTRA]. He’s a man all of whose labor, all of his legal experience, professional experience, was in labor law. And everything I learned about him and the more I got to know him and so forth, the more enthused I felt toward him. But there was strenuous opposition to Jay Roth, especially in the East. [INT: Not from me.] Not from you, but especially in the East, which I didn't buy. I didn’t buy. We went back to New York, and we had--first of all, I think the Western Council [Western Directors Council] had met and approved of him. We went back to New York to the national board meeting and we talked it out. It was so important to me that we get this very fine man, this really capable man. And as it turned out in the final voting, he was voted… they approved of him with the exception of three men. And I remember Delbert Mann with his dignity and his credibility stood up and said, “Let us make this unanimous,” he said, “for the good of the Guild, and for the good of the unity of the councils and so forth,” and so it became unanimous. [INT: A very wise choice.] A very wise choice. And I think, for myself, if I pride myself at all, I would say that is something that has been the best thing that I've probably done for the Guild. [INT: It’s a tremendous achievement because Jay has been a wonderful, wonderful…] Outstanding. I believe he's the best executive director the Guild’s ever enjoyed. We haven’t had many, but--[INT: Although, Joe Youngerman who started everything was, I thought was just wonderful for his time.] Right, for his time. [INT: But Jay is in the 21st century and really knows his stuff. He’s great.] That’s right.

INT: You started to talk about Creative Rights; I want to go a little further on that if you would, please.

GR: The era of Creative Rights. Well, in terms of my own history--[INT: Your own or--] I was talking earlier about as a freelance Director around town, I remember I was so thwarted very often in area of editorial. But even before that, I would go to work--I’d get an assignment, I’d go to work, go to a job and I found that there was no office. There was not even a desk. The resident Assistant Directors, they would all be set up with tables and desks and so forth and so forth, and I would go out and find a chair some place, if I was lucky, where I could kind of do my homework, do my preparation. And that was really very, very strange. I remember being on the Creative Rights Committee, and this somehow; this had been brought to the attention not just by me, but by other freelance Directors and Elliot Silverstein saying--[INT: I remember this.] One of our tenants, he says, “The Director will have, in preparation, will have an office. The office will have a roof, it will have a door”--[INT: Well, you know why he did that, because he actually set up a coffee table, a folding table on the Universal [Universal Pictures] lot as his office, outside.] I was doing this show, MY THREE SONS; I did 74 of them, worked on it for two years, and I never had… I had an office upstairs, but I said to the UPM [Unit Production Manager], I said, “Could I have a…” He was kind of one of the vice presidents in charge of production, but he was kind of like a UPM. I said, “I'd like to have an office or I’d like to have some place when I come to the stage, not just sitting in a folding chair near the camera or whatever, someplace I can go up by myself and do a little thinking, do a little preparation and so forth on stage.” He gave me a desk way behind the back end of the stage by a cyc [cyclorama], and there were all these bright lights where they had these banks of lights and so forth. And all he gave me was a chair and a desk. He’d be damned if he would put up, you know, the three sides or the four sides of little set with no roof on it; one of those little… using just those flats. He wouldn’t even do that for me. At any rate, that was just one of the things that Creative Rights--In those early days, those early days, there was a lot of things to be achieved. A lot of things to be achieved. And we still don't have them. We still don’t have a universal custom in the casting. A lot of Directors say to me, “Well, I’m on the stage and they’re casting upstairs and so on.” And of course this whole business of working with, on multiple-camera stuff, working with Actors. If the Writers come down, they should work everything, all their suggestions should go through the Director--through the Director. They can say anything they want and so forth, but it should go through the Director instead of them rushing the Actors themselves and saying, “When you’re over here, why don’t you do this,” and so forth. That unfortunately is something that hopefully, hopefully that preferred practice will be achieved. But there’s great variation in it. Now, and I don’t know if… First of all, there’s new people come in and new people have to be educated as to proper procedure. Not only that, but there was a certain kind of contempt that has grown up, and a lack of respect for the Director, and a lack of utilizing the best process. These things are only suggested because they make sense; they make sense for all the direction to come from one person. It happens more often in multiple camera because the Writers have access to the Actors constantly, because they come down three, four times during the rehearsal period and see run-throughs. [INT: Very confusing.] But somebody just told me… Zane Buzby told me that she was, a friend of hers, a woman Director who’s a very good Director, came off a show and she said, “I just had the worst experience of my life.” The Producer stood by her during the shooting, during the whole thing and said, “Don’t do that, do this.” Just incredible. [INT: What’s the point of having a Director?] Just incredible. [INT: That’s… I used to… I don’t think it works anymore, but I used to insist on three days of privacy when my rehearsal. I welcomed the people on a Friday night to see a run-through, but prior to that, I’d work out everything by myself and nobody was allowed to be on the set.] That’s ideal. That’s wonderful.

INT: Well, that came about--that wasn’t my idea. It came from Sheldon Leonard, and Carl Reiner, and Norman Lear, all of whom as Producers understood the value of letting the Director alone.

GR: That’s right, that’s right. That whole process, that multiple-camera process, and the half-hour camera, half-hour one film camera shows, one-camera shows, that was all devised, that whole process was devised by some very bright men you’ve just mentioned, starting with Sheldon Leonard. Some very bright men. It reminded me of my experience in the Navy, in which the saying was that the Navy, the Navy rules and the Navy procedures were written by geniuses to be followed by ordinary guys and so forth. There was a degree of truth in that. When I went to Fox [20th Century Fox] and I got M*A*S*H on, there was a very zealous production chief. What happened was he had a show called ARNIE, and… [INT: Called what?] ARNIE, with Herschel Bernardi. And the show, like all shows, was scheduled: you read and rehearse on Monday; you shoot Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; Friday you come in and you read Friday morning, the Actors go home and you rewrite. So he walked on to the stage one time on a Friday morning and nobody was there. And they said, “Where is everybody?” He says, “Well, Herschel doesn't come in on Friday.” So he said, “Well, if Herschel doesn’t come in on Friday, start your next show on Friday.” Because why? So that maybe at the end of the year he can fire people--he’ll shorten the schedule, he’ll fire the hairdresser four weeks early and conceivably reuse the stage during a little longer period, whatever, which they never did. So they call me in; they said, “You have to do this on M*A*S*H.” And I had terrible misgivings about it, but I did it. I said, “Give me one pick up day every third show.” And so I did that on M*A*S*H. I'd do six shows, then I’d take a week off. [INT: I remember that man. I know who you’re talking about.] He was one of these zealous production chiefs who did not know the difference between economy and hurting the show. He would invade that area. He would go over the line. Whereas Charlie Greenlaw [Charles F. Greenlaw] at Warner Bros., for whom I worked, he never went over that line. He was very economical, he was very wise, he was saving money for the studio, but he says, “You gotta have this. You need that.” And that is really a good filmmaker. Those guys belong. But at any rate, the whole life of M*A*S*H, as long as I was on the show, had that concentrated, that kind of compacted schedule, which was not right, ‘cause we would have benefited--because they had the finest rewrite Writer in America that they… and they lost that. What we did is we did a lot of rewriting before we went over it on the stage. We would have the Writers, usually we’d have a couple, Larry [Larry Gelbart] and I and a couple Writers, and we would sit there and we would go through the scripts, and each one taking parts and so forth. So, we were doing our readings ahead of time, but it would have been even better if we had an orthodox procedure. [INT: Always makes more sense, but it’s--] What else in Creative Rights I guess… [INT: I’m sorry?]

GR: I guess as far as Creative Rights go, I think Elliot [Elliot Silverstein] brought us a long way, and there still is a… They do something today where they have the Director--they hire a Director and put him on staff. He really becomes a Producer, ‘cause he’s working for the Producer, in which he walks around with the Director and says, “How do you plan to shoot this?” And the guy says, “I’ll do this and that.” He says, “No, we don't do that.” So I question this. I mean I hear this argument… at the Guild [DGA] they say, “Well, it exalts the Director. He’s a Producer and so it makes our own Guild, it helps us.” And I said, “It does not help us.” [INT: Now what shows are you referring to, for example?] Well, they used to do that on HILL STREET [HILL STREET BLUES], they do it I think on ER--[INT: NYPD [NYPD BLUE].] I think--huh? NYPD BLUES and I think they do it on ER. I think they do it on a number of shows; they hire a Director and they become the resident cop, and they…. [INT: You're talking about style of shooting.] Style. Let’s preserve the style. Now, that is somewhat of a problem, but what it does, you preserve the style, but I think you inhibit the Director. [INT: Oh, there’s no question.] I think you inhibit the Director. You rob yourself of something, “Well, we've never done that.” “Wonderful!” “We’ve never done that.” “Wonderful!” Every time I sat down to write a story when we were on M*A*S*H or on LOU GRANT, I’d say, “Let's do something we've never done before. You don't always achieve it.You know Bob Butler [Robert Butler] did a great job on HILL STREET. He shot the first four shows and he really established that style, for which he does not get as much credit as he should. And that’s great. And so they say, “Look, we use a long focal length lens. We use the long lens whenever we can, so we don't open it all up and so forth.” That's fine, but when it is monitored too closely, I think there is the danger of their saying, “We haven’t done that before, therefore don’t do it.” And I think that's a mistake. [INT: Yup, I quite agree. A question I had is about--] Because what we're looking for, always, what we’re looking for in terms of our direction, we’re looking for with Actors, what we’re looking for with story, is let's do something, let’s shock--let’s surprise ourselves. Let’s surprise the audience. Let’s do something untoward--let’s break the damn form a little bit. Let’s bus through. Let’s do something we haven’t seen before. That's really what it's all about. There’s so much… there’s really artistic necessity of being unorthodox and doing something arbitrary. [INT: First time I directed GUNSMOKE in 1957 when it was a half-hour black and white, I wanted to deliver a highwayman, and I said, “Put the camera up on top of the stagecoach, over the driver, and then as it comes around a bend or a hill, there’s the guy holding us up.” And they said, “We’ve never done that before. And the camera will shake.” I said, “Yeah.”] That’s right, ‘cause you’re on a stagecoach. [INT: You’re on a stagecoach. “What a great idea.” And it came out beautiful.] Oh I bet. [INT: But there was great opposition.] “We’ve never done that before--we don’t do that!” [INT: Yeah. And I said, “Why?” They said, “Well, how do you run the camera?” I said, “How do you run it right now?” They said, “It’s the sound truck that runs it.” I said, “So get a long cable and have the sound truck follow us.” “Oh, we’ve never thought of.] That’s great. [INT: [LAUGHS] 1957.] That’s great. I remember on LOU GRANT we had Roger Young, when he first started directing out here; he was the Associate Producer, and then he directed some second unit, and he directed beautifully, and so he really kind of got launched on LOU GRANT. He’s had a wonderful career as a Director. And one time he found a wall in the city room and so forth, that had never come out. He said, “Let's shoot it through here,” and the whole crew was excited. They said, “Hey, we've never done this!” [INT: [LAUGHS] Isn’t that wonderful.] “Oh great!” [INT: It is a great moment when you can find a breakthrough.] “Look at this!” “Put it over here.” “Look at this.” It’s a fresh look. [INT: “What? Where you’re going to put this…” “Okay.” “Hey, let’s try that.”] That’s right.

INT: Have you ever been involved in creating the overall style? The visuals--

GR: Well, every time wrote--shot a pilot--[INT: When you did a pilot, of course.] Of course with M*A*S*H, I mean, M*A*S*H, that style had been somewhat established by Bob Altman [Robert Altman]. Altman shoots ev--shoots it. He’s a wonderful filmmaker and so forth. [INT: Sometimes.] Sometimes, I guess. Well, I guess that’s true of all of us. So you might say, “Well, there was a certain style established there.” But when I shot the pilot of M*A*S*H… [INT: I think you brought your own style to the TV.] I think perhaps as adapted to television, probably a good deal different. [INT: I thought it was better, frankly.] But I shot THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR. I shot that pilot, and I think that… I didn't produce the show. Had I produced the show perhaps I would have been more are and more sensitive to that style. There was a great case for innovation and experimentation.

INT: That leads into question about the visual style and special effects, particularly on GHOST & MRS. MUIR.

GR: It was interesting. On that pilot of THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR, I used no special effects. [INT: Really?] There was opportunity for it, but I got resistance and so forth, and I shot the whole thing without any special effects. We did interesting stuff like we would have the candle in the foreground very sharp, and he was out of focus in background, and even so the operator--not the operator, but the focus puller hurt me a bit by not throwing him out enough. You know, kind of like, gee, you don’t want it all together. Soft. I looked at dailies and said, “It should have been softer.” I should have gone back and picked that shot up again. But it’s interesting I did that all without special effects. But had I had stayed on Producer I definitely would have gone in where they open a cigarette box and the ghost face would be in the cigarette box saying, “Watch it!” you know or something. That would have to be a special effect of putting the picture in this cigarette box. I would definitely have used much more of it. I would have gone... You know, they were wondering what was wrong with that show… I only worked the first three shows and then the other people that they put in charge never quite made it work. But I would have said that show should've had more fun with the spirituality, the special effects. [INT: Well again, they probably ran into that old bugaboo budget, and said, “Oh, we can’t afford that.”] They might have, yes. [INT: And time.] No question.

INT: Speaking of time, have you worked with electronic editing much after traditional editing?

GR: Well, I've worked in the AVID, if that’s what you mean. [INT: That’s what I meant.] Yes I have. God knows we were on that Moviola for years. [INT: That’s right.] The first time I worked--it wasn’t an AVID; it was--[INT: Montage [Montage Extreme].] It was WordPerfect I think. [INT: No, that’s…] No, it wasn’t WordPerfect. It was… [INT: It was Montage.] Perhaps it was Montage… with all the cassettes? [INT: Yeah. It had 28 or 29 cassettes.] The first time I saw a show and the Editor said to me, “You want to take it from the top?” I said, “Yeah.” He pushed a button and it went to the top, and all I could picture was the guy pulling the reels off, putting the reels on the tight wind, and [MAKES NOISE]. And I said, “I think this is here to stay.” The speed. The speed. [INT: What about the business of splicing, and taking it next door, and running the… oh god!] Right. The only problem is that Producers assume that because you’ve got this fast process you need less time to do it. But you still need time to ruminate and say, “I like this. I don’t like that.” [INT: You still have to think it through.] Yes, you have to suffer through it. It takes time. [INT: But it is a tremendous innovation I think.] Oh, it is great.

INT: What's the worst part of directing?

GR: Well, I would say fatigue is a very strong element, and the clock. [INT: Feeling it now?] No, I’m not feeling it now. But the fatigue, ‘cause you’re on your feet; at least I’m always on my feet all the time. I very rarely sat down. And--[INT: Wait a minute. Talk about that for a little bit, for new Directors.] For new Directors. [INT: Don't ever sit down. A lot of people don’t understand that. If you sit down, the crew sits down. Talk about that for a minute, about being on your feet.] Well, I was on my feet because I was compulsive and because I was jazzed up and so forth. [INT: But wait a minute. Compulsive is the name of the game. [LAUGHS].] I don't quite agree with that. I think that… I don’t think that there's certain times that a Director definitely should not be sitting down, but there are certain moments, which I never took until later, until I got a bit more mature and more confident and so forth and a little less revved up, where the Director should sit down and relax, and save his energy for--it’s not a moment when you’re filming, not a moment when you’re rehearsing. [INT: That’s what I’m talking about.] Oh no, all that stuff, you gotta be right there by the camera. I also believe strongly that unless you have a scene in which there’s a lot of weaving in and out, and the staging is very precise and so forth, I like to stand right by the camera and watch the performance. I can see if they’re connecting, if they’re working, if they’re responding, if they’re getting that response and so forth by being close. When you get on that monitor, you know, a 100 yards away or 50 yards away, whatever, there's a flicker in there and so forth; you don't see the performance. Now, when you do stuff where the camera is backing up, and people are folding in, and this line comes, and it’s got to fall right… it’s got to clear all that kind of stuff, then you need that monitor. You have to fall back on it. Otherwise, I like to be right in there, close to them. Very close to them. And I think they like you to be there. You’re the one man… you're the audience. [INT: You’re the audience.]

INT: You know you bring up a point that I have noticed lately with all the rewrites that are taking place, particularly in comedy, I look at television that’s being broadcast and I look at the Actor, and you know, as a Director, I always look at their eyes. And I think, “Oh, that poor Actor. They're not in the character. They're thinking, ‘What is that damn line they just gave me.’” The character has flown away and it’s just a struggling performance saying, “What am I supposed to say? What is that line?” [GR: ‘Cause they just gave him something new a few--] They gave him something to read and it’s just awful. And you see this often where people just absolutely leave the performance and go into the human mode of trying to recall something. It takes you right out of the--

GR: The struggle is much different, that kind of tension is much different from being in the character and being relating… [INT: It takes you right out of the play. And I lay it right at the fault I think is this constant rewriting that the Actor's process is denigrated or not considered at all.] That’s right. Its very strange, isn’t it, how they don’t appreciate that. [INT: It is so strange because the Actors have to be--] And the changes often are changes rather than improvements. They’re just changes. [INT: Well, I call it lateral writing.] Correct, it is lateral writing; you’re not progressing. [INT: You put in--] It is a lateral. It’s not down field pass. [INT: And all it does is make the Actors stop and think, “What am I going to say next.” Why can't we get this point across to our friends the Writers?] One of the great moments I had, I was directing a couple of these episodes of a half-hour episodes for multiple-camera show, and the people from Walt Disney showed up Wednesday night to look at a run-through. Then they would come down--they didn't come in Monday morning. You know, we'd start Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; Wednesday night, they were all ready to go before the cameras Thursday morning, right, and the whole thing is already laid out with a 150 shots and so forth, and they would say, “You need a complete rewrite. This is not the show we bought.” That’s the kind of thing you’d say, “Where the… you don't understand the process,” because if you begin to rewrite, that means restaging, and the restaging--[INT: Changes everything.] And the Actors haven't had the staging, and yet they're supposed to go in front of cameras and do the camera blocking. [INT: That’s why the place is called mouse switch or duck owl. I’m talking about Disney.] Very crazy. But here were some very bright guys who did not know a damn thing about the business, and very, very cocky and very contemptuous. [INT: They’re not so bright--actually, if they don't know enough about the business, why are you in it? Why are they in it?] Well, they’ve been chosen for some reason. I mean they can be very good in a room, but if they really don't know the business, it's a great disadvantage.

INT: So is that the worst thing about directing beside fatigue?

GR: Well, no, the clock. The pressure of the clock, the pressure of the clock is always there. What else? One thing they would do, as a freelance Director, I would get my cut, I would go in there and implement all my--had all my suggestions implemented and so forth, and then when it got on the air, get some disappointments. This is from… actually after I had left it, the Producer, Associate Producer and so forth, would get in there and improve it to the point of really hurting it. And as I knocked around, the latter part of my career I was knocking around doing some episodes and so forth, and you’d get some real disappointments. And if you call up, as I would do, foolishly; I’d call up and say, “What the hell was that all about?” Very defensive, very annoyed, and often auf Wiedersehen. [INT: Yeah, they won’t hire you again.] Yeah. You’re the, “This guy’s a troublemaker.” [INT: But of course, losing the troublemaker is losing classic television. They don’t understand that. The troublemaker is what makes classic television.] That’s right. The troublemaker is the person, you know, that makes it just a little bit better, just gets to that point. I remember a lovely guy, Norm Abbott [Norman Abbott]. I don’t know if you know that Director--[INT: I knew Norman very well.] When I was first directing, I knew Norman; we were working on the same shows, and I used to talk to him and so on. And he said, “I'm always looking for that golden moment. I’m looking for that thing that really clicks. The moment that’s really funny, that really is a crackup.” You know, there’s a whole lot of stuff; you say, “This line, that’s kind of cute, that’s kind of cute.” But he says he was really looking for that breakthrough moment. And that of course is caring, is really caring, and seeing the potential in the material and realizing it. [INT: You know, Carl Reiner used to say, “You might have a relatively weak script, but if there was one great moment, it was worth coming to work for.” Interesting. Of course you could build on that; once you had that great nugget you could always say, “We can do better. Let’s get up to that scene.”] Of course you were always looking for more than the golden moment. You were looking for the whole thing to work. But, as close as possible. And that really comes from understanding, working to find out what is the scene all about; what is the script all about. Getting a sense of what is underneath; what is it all about. And if it isn’t quite there, talking with the Writer and saying, “You know what it really needs, is we need a little more tension here, a little bit more problem here, so that this person--we really care about this person getting there.” A little bit understanding of the motivation, what this person needs, what this person wants. So if you buy that and embrace that, then the whole struggle that the hero is going through somehow is joined by the audience. They want to know how it works out. But in order to have them care about how it works out, you need that foundation; you need that story. You need that understanding of what human frustration or need or goal or desire, appetite is there to send it through. [INT: Don't you find that more and more of these Writer-Producers, and I use the word Producer loosely because they just are given the title; they’re not, as you pointed out before, they’re not really producing. They are writing, but they’re in charge, and I find, I think is what’s happening is they're hiring young Directors that they can push around. They don’t want people with those innovative ideas.] It's possible; I don’t know that. It’s possible. [INT: Well, just look at the way television is… with the exception of two or three brilliant shows that are still out there, like THE WEST WING, of course, shows like that… the standard is low.] They want to control the Director. [INT: The standard is low and we have to fight that with our new talent, I hope.]

INT: Now, what's the best part of directing in general?

GR: Well, the best part of it, of course, is the creative achievement. When you come away from dailies or you come away from having shoot a scene and you say, “God, that really worked. She was beautiful in that scene. I love what she did there, and so forth. And he responded, and the two of them, and the relationship works.” And you get that thing where the… I mean there's nothing better. There’s nothing more beautiful than an Actor really in stride and working well. [INT: And getting it.] And getting it and fulfilling his or her talent; fulfilling the material and so forth. It is such a joy when you get through a damn scene like that; it’s a holiday. They come through the material and you say… you know, you play something in a piece and it really works and so forth, that’s really such a great reward. And you go to dailies, and you come away and you say, you don’t say if often, but you say, “God, I felt good about that day's work. It really felt good.” That is, of course, the great thing. And of course the final thing when it all goes together. But it’s the creative, the realization of the creative possibilities within the material, and with the Actors, and with the technicians and so forth, where it all falls in. [INT: And getting there is so much fun, in the rehearsal when you find it. Or when you can find a tangent to develop in a rehearsal.] Right. When you've created something. When you said, “You know, there’s something that is not too obvious, but let's use it. Let’s go for this and so forth. Don’t make this so easy. Let’s hang this up. Let’s have people struggling to go through this moment.” [INT: And what I always say, let's use the Actor. That's what's missing nowadays is the Actor is being pushed off into a corner and said, “Read these words exactly as written, and don’t add or subtract anything.” This is a terrible mistake, I think. So go on.]

INT: So go on, so you’ve had that wonderful creative moment…

GR: Not so much the creative moment, but let’s say the creative scene. But moment in a way; moment is describing; it could describe a scene, an act or a whole show. But that, of course, is the great reward. [INT: It is indeed.] And of course the rewards--there's a great fraternity too, often. Sometimes it’s not so nice. But very often, there's a great fraternity on the set of the crew, of the cast and so forth. You get a sense of--and there’s nothing better than that. Very often, you know, that’s one of the great things of working on a show as a Producer or a Writer, you have that little fraternity of people. You have that four or six people with whom you’re working and so forth. And that’s is great. That is where they're kind of sparking each other, reinforcing each other. And you have communication, and you’re doing some good work. That’s a wonderful thing to have in your life. [INT: Again, you remind me of Carl Reiner who used to say, “If the lunches are good, everything's good.” If the lunches are good, meaning… as you get together and just kind of chatted with each other.] That’s right. [INT: And it’s true.] That’s right. And that’s a big thing. I know that a friend of mine, Ed Jurist, who had retired, and I said, “Ed, how’s it going?” He says, “Well, I miss the gang. I miss the gang. I miss the time with the, on the show, you know, arguing, saying ‘I don't like that joke; it doesn't work.’ Fighting over a joke.” But it's quite a lovely experience; very rewarding. A lot of enjoyment involved in working with a group creatively. [INT: I’m thinking the same thing. It was just wonderful.] Yeah, we had a great group on M*A*S*H. Of course Gelbart [Larry Gelbart] is incredible company. You know, this guy is just--[INT: Who is that you just said?] Larry Gelbart is just as entertaining, and just as amusing, and just as--and it’s all spontaneous, you know. Very interesting, he says that his humor is a defense mechanism. It’s a response to the realities of life, which somehow he bounces off of. But at any rate, I had Metcalfe [Burt Metcalfe]. I had Reo [Don Reo] and Katz [Allan Katz]. I had Levine [Ken Levine] and Isaacs [David Isaacs]. I had all those wonderful--[INT: Oh my god! You had some good guys.] Levine and Isaacs were clients of my Agent. I constantly was saying to my Agent, “You have a couple young ladies who are subagents, and I’ve never met them.” So finally he sends the girls in; we have lunch and finally I say to the girls, “Do you have any Writers for me?” They said, “Well, we have a team we think is very good.” “What’s their name?” “Levine and Isaacs.” So I said, “Well, let me meet ‘em.” I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’m looking for Writers; have them come in with a couple of ideas.” They came in with about 11 ideas--very brief. One of them was Hawkeye loses his eyesight temporarily. And of the 11, it was toward the end of the season, so I didn’t have much, I said, “Let’s go after that one.” So we worked together on the story; it’s one of the best shows we ever did. And it really happened in MASH units where they had these awful kind of a barrel, oil barrel they would light and it’d be a heater, but occasionally they would explode. It would not, it would not des… it would blind people, like, for three or four days. [INT: Really?] I mean it was just kind of like that actuality, that fact--[INT: Without destroying the retina?] Without destroying it. You would kind of get over it in maybe a week’s time. Very strange, isn’t it? It was a vapor or some damn thing. And it would be, so that the people would be… At any rate, out of that we whipped up a story, and it turned out to be one of our best shows. I think it was their first show, their first show. [INT: Well, they certainly turned out to be a hot team.]

GR: And of course, you're in pretty good company when you’re with Bob Ellison and David Lloyd, right? [INT: And we were doing a show [MR. SUNSHINE] about a blind professor, which is pretty daring for its time.] That’s right. [INT: I always look for something where the protagonist always had some big obstacle.] Exactly. [INT: I said, “What’s worse than being blind? Let’s go for that.” Well, of course the network was nervous, but we got ratings. And we were going…] They should have stayed with that show. You know why it went, is because the guy who was kind of in charge when that thing came in; he was the administrator, he was the big shot in development at ABC. He left and so they threw it all out, which was very unfortunate. [INT: Stupid.] People were saying, “Well, I’m squeamish about the blindness and so forth.” It did happen to some people, but it’s really--[INT: But we didn’t do blind jokes per say.] The idea of looking at real obstacles in life, and finding humor, finding a way to overcome them through humor by rising above them and so on. [INT: And wasn’t Jeffrey [Jeffrey Tambor] wonderful?] Jeffrey was terrific. [INT: When he first came in to read, he came in bald with that Smith Cough Drop [Smith Brothers Cough Drops] beard, and I looked at it and I said, “Oh for goodness sake, what are they sending me?” Mentally, in my mind, I said, “Alright, I’ll be polite. Read this,” you know. And of course when he read it, I just jumped out of my skin. I said, “This man is terrific.”] How great. Isn’t that a great experience, when an Actor lights it up for you. [INT: He hit it, and he hit it so well. And I said, “Well, this is it. I don’t want to look any further.”] Bobstack? No? Barbara [Barbara Babcock]? [INT: Barbara… Oh, we’re back to that again.] We may never get that one. [INT: A very lovely lady, by the way.] Beautiful. Lovely lady. [INT: And why can’t we think of her name? And she was terrific. They’re going to help us with this one. And they’re going to dub my voice and say, “And her name is Barbara…” But it did begin with a ‘B’, I think. [LAUGHS]]

GR: What other great things? Of course… are we still talking about what’s great about directing? [INT: Yeah, what’s the best thing about directing?] The joy of seeing these Actors, you know, full out galloping, running wild, going crazy and so forth. [INT: Running wild but able to be restrained…] Oh yeah. But when I say running wild, is kind of the beautiful talent unleashed. The beautiful, expressive--[INT: I used to watch them unleash themselves and I’d say, “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s pull back a little bit.” Sometimes you’d have to say that. And they’re wonderful starting and standing and doing their thing. But it was wonderful to watch. It was just great.] I just really mean when I say that, an Actor being fulfilled, being fulfilled. Finding the groove, and wailing away, and doing something beautiful. And, of course, I got a great enjoyment myself as a Producer working with Writers, working with Writers, working out stories and seeing their creativity--[INT: Well, you and Bob Ellison and David [David Lloyd], I mean, not to mention the guys you brought along--] Bruce Helford, very talented. [INT: Bruce has done alright with Drew Carey, hasn’t he?] Yeah. Right. Very talented guy, Bruce. [INT: You know, you talked about Disney. I did a pilot with a comic named John Caponera, and right after the first reading, the Disney suit took me aside and said, “Fire that second banana.” I said, “Who? What?” “The guy with the glasses.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Well, did you hear his reading?” I said, “He read around a table. This is an Actor.” I said, “Let me make a prediction,” I said, “I like John Caponera, but he won't survive as long as the second guy.” That’s Drew Carey.] The guy with the glasses? [INT: The guy with the glasses. And of course Bruce Helford and Drew Carey went on to make magnificent careers. But this guy was going to fire him on the first reading.] Shows you what they know. [INT: It was insane.] He should have heard Marlon Brando at a reading. [INT: Oh I’m sure it was all a mumble.] He doesn’t press. [INT: But that’s the point. They don’t know. You can get a great reading around the table; the guy can’t act his way out of a paper bag.] But they don’t know a whole lot.