Speaker 1: Hey, that's Zach McNeice. I'm one of the producers of
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, and this week for our summer staff pick,
Speaker 1: I want to share with you one of my favorite
Speaker 1: episodes from all the way back in two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: I love movies, and I really enjoyed listening to stories
Speaker 1: from filmmakers about how they got their start and the
Speaker 1: turning points that shaped their careers. Chris Columbus may not
Speaker 1: be quite as recognizable a household name as some of
Speaker 1: his peers in Hollywood, but I have no doubt that
Speaker 1: you've seen and cherished many of his films. Here's Alec
Speaker 1: with Chris Columbus. Chris Columbus has brought to the screen
Speaker 1: some of the biggest American family films of the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, Adventures in Babysitting Home Alone, Mrs Dowdfire. He
Speaker 1: also produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films
Speaker 1: and produced the third as well. I'm a wizard and
Speaker 1: that's something good at night, wager, once you trade up
Speaker 1: a little, you've made a mistake. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: be a wizard. I mean, I'm just Harry. I've known
Speaker 1: Chris for a long time. We were in school together
Speaker 1: at n y U I lived, started at Weinstein and
Speaker 1: then um moved to Reuben. You were in Ruby as
Speaker 1: in Reuben, and I think that's where we met. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For Columbus, n y U was more than just a
Speaker 1: place to learn the craft. He loved film school for
Speaker 1: me was the only it was sort of the only
Speaker 1: way out, you know. Um, I grew up in Both
Speaker 1: of my parents were factory workers in Ohio. UM my
Speaker 1: future was basically working at either my father's aluminum factory
Speaker 1: or my mother's automotive factory. Literally didn't own them that
Speaker 1: I was just be worried and they did. You could
Speaker 1: own them, I could own them, and they made a
Speaker 1: bad decision. I did. Although I don't think there's much
Speaker 1: work there. But at the time that was it, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the only escape really for me. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: movies and what we're moving to you then there was
Speaker 1: no DVD, There was no Noble television. How did you?
Speaker 1: Movies were the either the CBS late night movie. I
Speaker 1: would sneak out of bed and watch the late night
Speaker 1: movie on CBS and just stay in the movie theaters
Speaker 1: on the weekend. There were only two theaters, two films
Speaker 1: would be two separate theaters. There was no multiplexus back then,
Speaker 1: and I would watch whatever film came into town over
Speaker 1: and over, and I remember something clicked when I saw
Speaker 1: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Something really and I
Speaker 1: watched it three times and I just was amazed by
Speaker 1: the movie. And I didn't at the time. There's no understanding,
Speaker 1: there's no idea. No nobody knew about film schools. Nobody
Speaker 1: knew that you could actually go to school and learn
Speaker 1: how to become I didn't even know what a director was.
Speaker 1: So I put my energy into illustrating and writing comic books.
Speaker 1: I thought still didn't understand the film concept, but I
Speaker 1: started to draw Spider Man comics, Thor comics, Halt comics.
Speaker 1: I wanted to job at Marvel in the Marvel that
Speaker 1: was my goal. I still love movies, but I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't understand how to get completely and and so
Speaker 1: the comic books and all of the kind This is
Speaker 1: very naive of me, but all the comic book superheroes
Speaker 1: lived in New York City. So this was this magical
Speaker 1: place for me as a kid, because I'm drawing New
Speaker 1: York City all the time, and I realized I was
Speaker 1: spending about eight to twelve hours alone a day, and
Speaker 1: I um, I wanted to work with people. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be with people. What did your parents think about that?
Speaker 1: They thought I could go to art school that like
Speaker 1: can't stay or something. You know that I could go
Speaker 1: to art school and I could um draw these comics
Speaker 1: and that's fine. Then I saw The Godfather. The Godfather
Speaker 1: was re released in four I think, and re released.
Speaker 1: And then the next movie I saw was Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 1: I saw those two movies change my life, both ends
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. I realized with Blazing Saddles the possibilities
Speaker 1: of what you could do with film We're endless. And
Speaker 1: Time magazine came out with a one page article about
Speaker 1: film schools. I had never heard of film school and
Speaker 1: don't know what this could possibly be. And I read
Speaker 1: about Martin Scorsese, and I read about Francis Ford Copeland.
Speaker 1: I read about USC and U C l A and
Speaker 1: N y U, and I said to my parents, this
Speaker 1: is what I want to do. What did they say?
Speaker 1: They were extraordinarily supportive. They were amazingly supportive. Every other
Speaker 1: relative in my family was not supportive. They said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna, you're gonna saying you're gonna be back here
Speaker 1: in two years. You can't handle New York City. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it just it just was more fire. It was
Speaker 1: just I was like, fuck you, I'm doing it. I
Speaker 1: got to New York and I remember my father drove
Speaker 1: me up to Weinstein and he looked at the city
Speaker 1: and looked at the dorm and he said, let's go home.
Speaker 1: I'll drive you back home now. And I said, no way,
Speaker 1: no way. I was in. I was literally in oz.
Speaker 1: Weinstein doesn't look like the library at a community coach
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union, right, exactly. It's a very but
Speaker 1: I immediately fell in love with the city, and I
Speaker 1: knew that I had no choice but to succeed. I
Speaker 1: had to find a way to succeed, or I would
Speaker 1: be back in the middle of Ohio working in an
Speaker 1: aluminum factory. And that's hideous. So you get there. Had
Speaker 1: you ever touched any film equipment before? Uh? Yeah, super.
Speaker 1: My parents did buy me a Super eight sound camera,
Speaker 1: which enabled me to start to make films. Actually, I
Speaker 1: made a twenty minute film for my theology class. Because
Speaker 1: I went to a very strict Catholic school, so it
Speaker 1: was a theology class that was dealing with social issues.
Speaker 1: So we made a film about abortion vasectomes. And I
Speaker 1: was very inspired at the time by remember SNL N
Speaker 1: seventies six. Sn L had just come you know, we
Speaker 1: would spend our Saturday nights watching Saturday Night Live. So
Speaker 1: I was doing these basically commercial parodies that I had
Speaker 1: versions that I had seen on SNL, and I screened
Speaker 1: it for the class. The class loved it. The priest
Speaker 1: was horrified. And what happened is the feeling of showing
Speaker 1: that movie and hearing those all of those kids laughing
Speaker 1: in this small Ohio town really really hit me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an addictive feeling, you know, what it's like being
Speaker 1: on stage while showing your film and having people respond
Speaker 1: to it became very addictive. So that fueled my desire
Speaker 1: to get there as well. What did your parents say
Speaker 1: about all your politically incorrect film, very dark stuff back then?
Speaker 1: You know, they they you know, my my mother went
Speaker 1: with it. My father didn't really want to have much
Speaker 1: to do with it. He figured okay that you know,
Speaker 1: my father was most most of the time, my father
Speaker 1: was under a car repairing it, you know, and in
Speaker 1: the garage when he wasn't working or having a beer.
Speaker 1: So I um, as long as he's not on the streets,
Speaker 1: it's exactly my parents. Not onways, he's not taking drugs,
Speaker 1: that's true, and that that actually, you know, my mother
Speaker 1: was very supportive. My mother was probably much more supportive
Speaker 1: than my father about what I wanted to do. And
Speaker 1: she had she shared sort of that dark sense of
Speaker 1: humor that I had as well. So she supported those
Speaker 1: of those movies and she watched I used to watch
Speaker 1: SNL with her. She loved it. So you you get
Speaker 1: to Weinstein, you had a super eight sound camera, but
Speaker 1: you get to Weinstein and what's what are the first
Speaker 1: recollections you have of that when you get there? To
Speaker 1: go to n y U? Honestly n Yu. The night
Speaker 1: I got there, Spawn drinking age was eighteen sponsored a
Speaker 1: bar tour. Can you imagine them doing that these days?
Speaker 1: Eight to ten bars in the East Village. They would
Speaker 1: take a group of freshmen and go to each bar Chumley's, mcsorley's.
Speaker 1: And that's where I met my best friends, and that's
Speaker 1: where I met my future producing partner, Michael barn Nathan.
Speaker 1: We met that first night night and Uh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: could be. I mean, the lawsuits are ridiculous. And we
Speaker 1: met and we hit it off, and and there was
Speaker 1: this I mean, you know what what it's like. You
Speaker 1: go into this community of everyone who shares your deepest
Speaker 1: love of something like film, and you have someone to
Speaker 1: talk to about it. I had no one to talk
Speaker 1: to about it in Ohio, you know, I was this
Speaker 1: everyone's come there from the aluminum factory. Finally I was
Speaker 1: able to have arguments and discussions, and we would get
Speaker 1: these into you remember these intense and passion discussions about directors,
Speaker 1: you know, and and Frank Capra Was he really great?
Speaker 1: Or was he? You know? Was he much more of
Speaker 1: a populous director? And you get into these fantastic discussions
Speaker 1: that didn't exist for me in Ohio. So I was
Speaker 1: in you know, it was like Christmas morning every day
Speaker 1: at NYU. So when you go to film school, did
Speaker 1: you go there when you started to become a wash
Speaker 1: and all that process? Did you love it? And you
Speaker 1: ate it up? And you said more and more and
Speaker 1: more you love the technical No, actually I don't. I
Speaker 1: mean the technical side of it. I have very little
Speaker 1: interest in it. I want to know as much as
Speaker 1: I need to know so I can go onto a
Speaker 1: set and block a scene with actors. But I'm much
Speaker 1: more and I was, I've always been this way. I'm
Speaker 1: much more interested in connecting with the actors on a
Speaker 1: set because what I've seen as a producer over the years,
Speaker 1: as I saw it as a writer when I was
Speaker 1: just starting out directors, A lot of directors tend to
Speaker 1: be afraid of actors, which it drives me insane. I
Speaker 1: cannot understand. They're suspicious of actors. They're suspicious of actors.
Speaker 1: They don't want to discuss, you know, it's this whole thing. Well,
Speaker 1: if an actor has a question, as he challenged, I
Speaker 1: love that. I love that back and forth, that discussion that,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was kind of cool. And
Speaker 1: the Apocalypse Now documentary when Brando and Coffler were sitting
Speaker 1: there for six days discussing, discussing his character. I love
Speaker 1: that about actors. So I'm much more drawn to working
Speaker 1: with the actors than I am working, you know, figuring
Speaker 1: out what lens I need to use. I know what
Speaker 1: I want the film to look like, I know how
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel, But I don't need to know
Speaker 1: the numbers. I just want to make sure that when
Speaker 1: I get on that set, those actors and I that
Speaker 1: we trust each other no matter what kind of film
Speaker 1: it is. So there must be moments, though, where you're
Speaker 1: sitting there on the set of a Harry Potter film
Speaker 1: and Roger Deakins, who is one of the greatest cinematographers
Speaker 1: of his generation, is there, and do you sit there
Speaker 1: and say, what do you think Roger? What lends you?
Speaker 1: You defer to him about all the cinematography to do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that don't go no, no, I think it's this,
Speaker 1: or I think you must have an opinion. Oh completely,
Speaker 1: It's not like yeah completely. In other words, I don't
Speaker 1: abdicate all that to something. No. No, I I do
Speaker 1: my homework. I storyboard everything. Um, I do my own
Speaker 1: shot list in the morning. I know exactly if I
Speaker 1: want to use a crane or a dolly or And
Speaker 1: I also don't there there's the other side of me
Speaker 1: where I've seen directors who only want to deal with
Speaker 1: the actors and don't want to block the scene and
Speaker 1: leave that all up to the cinematographer. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen that as well, But I and I'm not interested
Speaker 1: in that. I want to have the control certainly of
Speaker 1: the visual look of the film. But I don't need
Speaker 1: to get again, I don't need to say I want
Speaker 1: afford to here. I don't. That means nothing to me.
Speaker 1: What means something to me is to look through the
Speaker 1: camera and know if I've got it right. But it's
Speaker 1: as I said, it's much more important. The writing is
Speaker 1: extraordinarily important to me. And the connection with the actors
Speaker 1: and the crew as well. You know. I I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of directors work and there's no connection with people,
Speaker 1: and I hate that. I just hate those directors who
Speaker 1: sort of build a wall up around them. And maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it works for them. I'm sure it works for
Speaker 1: some of them. But for me, it's a matter of
Speaker 1: connecting with almost every person on that set. So when
Speaker 1: I leave the set, they all feel that they've had
Speaker 1: a great day. I know it's a weird thing to say,
Speaker 1: but it's very important to me that that the person
Speaker 1: has the smallest job on the set feels as if
Speaker 1: he's he or she has contributed something that day. You know.
Speaker 1: And then when you left, NYU, what did you do?
Speaker 1: I left n y U. I had Actually I was
Speaker 1: lucky enough I had left. But in seventy eight, I
Speaker 1: had written, um, something interesting happened that I had a scholarship.
Speaker 1: I had this great scholarship that got me through ny
Speaker 1: U the first year, and my mother would call me.
Speaker 1: You remember, we had those pay phones at the end
Speaker 1: of our dorm hallways. It's no cell phones. So every
Speaker 1: Sunday I would go to the payphone a call home,
Speaker 1: and my mother would say, Chris, don't forget to go
Speaker 1: to the Burt Stars office and sign. I had to
Speaker 1: sign some papers. So I would renew my scholarship and
Speaker 1: I would say, Mom, no problem, I'd forget. I'd be
Speaker 1: doing something. That went on for six weeks. The seventh
Speaker 1: week I called. She was screaming at me, said you
Speaker 1: lost the scholarship. I said, oh, christ I lost the scholarship.
Speaker 1: She goes, this summer you're gonna have to work at
Speaker 1: the aluminum factory. So so I went back. I went
Speaker 1: back to Ohio and I was working basically swing shifts.
Speaker 1: I would work day shifts, afternoon shifts, and night shifts.
Speaker 1: After your first year, my first year, did your mother
Speaker 1: make you a little necklace with a little piece of aluminium?
Speaker 1: Moment after that, in the shape of a crucive thing.
Speaker 1: Don't don't sunk up on it any Oh god, I
Speaker 1: so anyway, So I realized if I was on the
Speaker 1: night shift, I could read. So that first year I
Speaker 1: was just read, you know, novels for eight hours. I
Speaker 1: had to do it again after my sophomore year. So
Speaker 1: I went back my sophomore year and I realized if
Speaker 1: I could get on the night shift for the entire summer,
Speaker 1: I could write a screenplay. So what I did is
Speaker 1: I remember these gigantic, hulking cylinders of aluminum, and I
Speaker 1: would sneak behind the aluminum corps and sit there with
Speaker 1: a notepad, and I wrote my first screenplay, a screenplay
Speaker 1: called Jocks about high school football, my experiences with high
Speaker 1: school football. And I was a terrible football player, but
Speaker 1: I I, you know, it was very person Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I suited up. And I brought that back to my
Speaker 1: writing teacher, a guy named Jesse Cornbluth, who gave it
Speaker 1: to his agent. And his agent was a guy named
Speaker 1: Ron Bernstein who still works in New York. And Bernstein
Speaker 1: took me on as a client my junior year. A
Speaker 1: producer since passed away, Steve Friedman optioned it for five
Speaker 1: grand So your professional career, which was which began as
Speaker 1: a writer, as a screenwriter. W was leveraged by Corn Bluth,
Speaker 1: who was your teacher at n YU. Yeah, that five grand,
Speaker 1: preventing me from ever having to go back to the
Speaker 1: aluminium factory. Um. So that was my junior year, and
Speaker 1: then my senior year I decided to not right because
Speaker 1: I was getting writing offers, which was great, you know,
Speaker 1: but I was in college and I wanted to take
Speaker 1: that time to do my senior film, my senior thesis.
Speaker 1: So I did a senior film that year, and then
Speaker 1: when I was out, you know, after college, I just,
Speaker 1: uh my agents started to get me writing gigs and
Speaker 1: I started writing after as soon as I graduated. Basically,
Speaker 1: I lived on twenties New York between six and seven. Um.
Speaker 1: One school you were in Chelsea. So when school ended,
Speaker 1: you decide you're gonna stay in New York. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: decided to stay in New York because I again, I
Speaker 1: was always very wary of going to l A. I
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but why were you wary of it?
Speaker 1: Even then? You know? The weird thing is I have
Speaker 1: so many friends who think of l A as like
Speaker 1: that's where all the films are made. That's where that's
Speaker 1: where the magic happens. But for me, I was I
Speaker 1: just at that point, after four years in New York,
Speaker 1: I felt very comfortable in New York and had this
Speaker 1: vision of being able to make every film in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: or writing in Manhattan and living in Manhattan. I was
Speaker 1: kind of out of work and I couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: what I was going to do next. And a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, Mitch, said, you know, there hasn't since Jaws,
Speaker 1: there really hasn't been a great movie that's featured. He
Speaker 1: used the word monster. There has not been a great
Speaker 1: monster movie made. And I said, that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. And in the loft I lived in, we
Speaker 1: had these mice scurring around on the floors and I
Speaker 1: would sleep with my hand raped over the bed and
Speaker 1: mice would go by in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: I thought, these tiny creatures are frightening. So I spent
Speaker 1: the next six weeks writing the script called Gremlin's and
Speaker 1: I wrote it on spec. I wasn't paid for it,
Speaker 1: and I sent it to my agent, who um liked
Speaker 1: the script but felt it was a little dark, and
Speaker 1: still sent it to about fifty producers and studio executives
Speaker 1: and everyone passed on it, and Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was
Speaker 1: leaving his office on a Friday and passed his secretary's
Speaker 1: desk and it was sitting there. That's why so much
Speaker 1: of this business is luck. He passed the script and
Speaker 1: saw the title and said that looks interesting, picked it up,
Speaker 1: read it that weekend, and decided he wanted to option
Speaker 1: the movie. Now I didn't know this. I gotta call
Speaker 1: up my loft bar. Nathan answers the phone and says,
Speaker 1: as someone on area says, it's Steven Spielberg, I get
Speaker 1: I get the phone. He goes, Chris, it's Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1: I was stunned, and um, yeah, he flew me out
Speaker 1: to l A. I got to meet Spielberg and that
Speaker 1: sort of that. And I lived in l A for
Speaker 1: nine months at that point. So what happens in that
Speaker 1: nine months He's giving you notes, or there's creative people
Speaker 1: he would give me notes. Now, Gremlins was sort of
Speaker 1: off and running, and someone else was even rewriting it
Speaker 1: as I was working on another script for Stephen. For
Speaker 1: some strange reason, I had sort of carte blanche. I
Speaker 1: could go into his office whenever I wanted. He whether
Speaker 1: he liked me, I don't know what it was. But
Speaker 1: I had an office three doors down from him. I
Speaker 1: would just go down there whenever he would be sitting
Speaker 1: there with Richard Gere or or uh or Warren Beatty.
Speaker 1: One time he's like, Chris, come on in, would he
Speaker 1: and I would start to talk to him about ideas.
Speaker 1: One day he's looking through these old EC comic books
Speaker 1: and he says, look at this title, Chris, the goon Children.
Speaker 1: And I said, the goon Children, that's a cool title.
Speaker 1: And we came up with this story together about these
Speaker 1: kids who find a treasure map, and it was The Goonies.
Speaker 1: I would write three pages of Goonies, run to Steven's office,
Speaker 1: give it to him. He would make some notes. I
Speaker 1: would run back to my office and make the changes.
Speaker 1: And we finished that script in about six weeks. Then
Speaker 1: I wrote Young Sherlock Holmes with him, kind of in
Speaker 1: the same way for Amblin, And that's when I and
Speaker 1: that's when I redirected Goonies. Richard Donner Dick Donner directed Goonies,
Speaker 1: and who directed Young Sherlock Holmes Barry Levinson. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was. So you have Steven Spielberg producing your films
Speaker 1: and your three doors down from him and Richard Donner,
Speaker 1: who directed Superman. I'm gonna I want to tell people
Speaker 1: in the audience who don't remember this Timeline and Levinson
Speaker 1: was directed many great films they direct. Those are your
Speaker 1: first two movies. That could mean well, Gremlins is the
Speaker 1: first one as well. Joe Dante. Yeah, so you go
Speaker 1: from Joe Dante to Donner to bar E Levenson for
Speaker 1: the first three films that your name was on the script. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your name was on as the writer of all three.
Speaker 1: You know, it was kind of a heavy experience. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I always knew, this is what I
Speaker 1: need to be do, This is what I should be doing,
Speaker 1: This is what I have to be doing. What did
Speaker 1: you learn from Spielberg? Spielberg was like graduate school of
Speaker 1: filmmaking for me. Spielberg was like, um, I learned shortcuts
Speaker 1: and I learned basically, it was a Billy Wilder quote
Speaker 1: that Stephen you know, nailed into my head every day,
Speaker 1: which was don't tell the audience something more than once.
Speaker 1: I learned how to edit material, I learned how to
Speaker 1: write better. Dialogue, and I learned how to be much
Speaker 1: more visual as a writer from Stephen. So it was
Speaker 1: a great relationship, you know, um and still is a
Speaker 1: great relationship to this day. We have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: work together a couple of years ago. So I I
Speaker 1: really loved that time. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: needed to get back to Manhattan. Why. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just felt like I missed I missed it. I
Speaker 1: mean it was It's a very simple did you of
Speaker 1: a sense? Because I find other people have the same thing,
Speaker 1: It's better for me to stay here for my career.
Speaker 1: You didn't think of all those lines. Now, I I
Speaker 1: don't think at the time, I was able to articulate it.
Speaker 1: You know, twenty years down the road, now I can
Speaker 1: look back and and understand why I did it, Because
Speaker 1: I was seeing the beginning of people losing touch with reality.
Speaker 1: Why do directors not have long careers. They don't have
Speaker 1: long careers because they become extremely successful. Then they move
Speaker 1: into these huge mansions and live an isolated life. They
Speaker 1: watch movies in their screening room. They don't do their
Speaker 1: own grocery shopping, they don't pump their own gas, they
Speaker 1: don't get out there on the street. At the end
Speaker 1: of all that, you've lost connection to real people. What
Speaker 1: are you making movies about, even if they're fantasy films.
Speaker 1: Even again, I did not realize it at the time.
Speaker 1: I realized it years later. I realized the reason I
Speaker 1: went back to New York was to connect with everyone again,
Speaker 1: so I could go to the corner superrette and buy
Speaker 1: a carton of orange hues for forty dollars, you know,
Speaker 1: so I could see people every day, take my dry
Speaker 1: cleaning and take my laundry. And that hasn't changed to
Speaker 1: this day. I have not changed, you know. I have
Speaker 1: a great housekeeper now in San Francisco. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, again because I'm a director and nobody really
Speaker 1: knows what the hell I look like, I'm anonymous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've yeah, you've kept this very low profile. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows what I do in San Francisco. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have a couple of friends. But I love it. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: They're all conscious choices you made, not I think some
Speaker 1: of them were subconscious. At the beginning, the only thing
Speaker 1: that mattered to me about becoming a director was longevity.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that my career would last
Speaker 1: for decades no matter what I was doing, And I
Speaker 1: felt that part of that has been this ability to
Speaker 1: sort of hide in plain sight in a weird way.
Speaker 1: Now I understand it, Director Chris Columbus. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear about the faithful cast of McCauley culkin in
Speaker 1: Home Alone. So you're a writer and you do Gremlins,
Speaker 1: and you do Goonies and you do Young Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: Is the notion of you directing a film? Is it
Speaker 1: starting to percolate? Do you go to Spielberg and say,
Speaker 1: I want to direct this one? Now? It came. It
Speaker 1: started with Jesse corn Blooth. Jesse Cornbluoth put into my
Speaker 1: head at n y U the only way you're gonna
Speaker 1: get to become a director is by writing a few
Speaker 1: successful screenplays after Young Sherlock Holmes. Then I realized Gooneys
Speaker 1: and Gremlins had been successful enough that maybe I could
Speaker 1: get a directing gig. My agents sent me a copy
Speaker 1: of the script called Adventures in Babysitting Elizabeth with Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Shoe and Anthony Rapp. I love this, I love the script.
Speaker 1: I thought this is something I could do, and I
Speaker 1: had great producers Linda Oaps and Deborah Hill, who were
Speaker 1: very supportive of me as the first time director. They
Speaker 1: agreed to let me direct the movie, and that was
Speaker 1: the first day on the set was a little little horrifying.
Speaker 1: So it was the thing I had dreamed about my California.
Speaker 1: Now we shot it in Canada. It was my dream
Speaker 1: to be directing a film. Yet at the same time
Speaker 1: I realized I had to go hunt to the set
Speaker 1: and face two D fifty people and tell them what
Speaker 1: to do, and you've never done it before. I got
Speaker 1: over my fear pretty quickly because I had to. It's
Speaker 1: like jumping off. Do you still have an apprehension about
Speaker 1: that now? When it's first day of school, and I
Speaker 1: mean shooting. It's not Chris who was drawing his Marvel comics,
Speaker 1: Chris that was hiding behind the aluminum spools writing scripts
Speaker 1: and everything one everybody else has taken a nap at
Speaker 1: the aluminum factory. It's not Chris alone. There's the writer
Speaker 1: director who has this kind of monastic process. Then there's
Speaker 1: the guy that's got to go out and be the
Speaker 1: captain of the ship. On the deck of the ship
Speaker 1: with two or three hundred people there so that's a
Speaker 1: skill you had to develop, correct, I think so. But
Speaker 1: I again, because well, definitely, so. You know, I was
Speaker 1: terrifying the first couple of days. But then I realized, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realized that a lot of these crew guys, we're
Speaker 1: like beating animals because directors. There are so many directors
Speaker 1: who are such assholes. They're so kind of cruel and angry,
Speaker 1: and they're working something out on the set of the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's not gonna work. That won't work
Speaker 1: for me. And I realized after three or four weeks
Speaker 1: that people were responding just to the fact that I
Speaker 1: was not grumpy in the morning, that I wasn't piste
Speaker 1: off all the time, the fact that I was genuinely
Speaker 1: a pretty happy guy, and I really valued what everybody
Speaker 1: was doing. If somebody made a mistake, I wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to rip their head off. I just I understood it.
Speaker 1: By the end of that movie, I really I learned
Speaker 1: a valuable lesson how to earn the respect of the
Speaker 1: crew and your actors. So you're there, you make the film,
Speaker 1: and what happens. The film opened to like seven million
Speaker 1: dollars back then, which was a perceived disaster. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking I'm never gonna work again. What happened is the
Speaker 1: second weekend, it did something that no film some certain
Speaker 1: films do, few films do, which is a shot up
Speaker 1: in attendance. So we did better the second weekend. Getting
Speaker 1: that news that we increase was shocking, and it was
Speaker 1: great for the movie, and it was great. I was
Speaker 1: able to go off and make another film then, and uh,
Speaker 1: what do you go do? I did a film that
Speaker 1: I wrote, I pitched a film to Jeffrey Katzenberg, and
Speaker 1: I went off and wrote something else instead, a movie
Speaker 1: called Heartbreak Hotel about my own obsession with Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1: The movie opens on a Friday. I read Roger Ebert's
Speaker 1: review calling it one of the worst films here. I'm
Speaker 1: driving across country with my wife at that point, because
Speaker 1: we edited in l A for two months, and we
Speaker 1: get By the time we get to the probably in
Speaker 1: the Texas somewhere, this is Wednesday, the movie is already
Speaker 1: playing on a double bill in the afternoon. They've already
Speaker 1: the theater owners to get it out of there, as
Speaker 1: if if it was a nuclear way. So um, once again,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's over. I'll go back to writing At
Speaker 1: the time my first child, Eleanor, was born, and I
Speaker 1: got a script from John Hughes. We both have the
Speaker 1: same agent. Um. He said, do you want to do
Speaker 1: the third Christmas Vacation movie. I was like, that's not
Speaker 1: really I didn't dream of becoming a filmmaker to do
Speaker 1: that particular movie. But I thought I needed the gig
Speaker 1: and John Muses supporting me, so I started to do
Speaker 1: that movie. I shot Second Unit, and I had such
Speaker 1: a disastrous relationship with the star Chevy Chase, who you know,
Speaker 1: it's no, he has no shortage of enemies. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was so disastrous and so humiliating for me, just based
Speaker 1: on three meetings that I quit. I said that John,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. I cannot make He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Chevy's a complicated guys, he's a rich food. I said,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. He treat he when I
Speaker 1: first walked in. He thought I was an assistant. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't really work this way I and
Speaker 1: so I I quit and then I was really I
Speaker 1: thought I was really in trouble. And John and I
Speaker 1: got along great. So John sent me the script for
Speaker 1: Home Alone Again. Luck plays into it and I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the script. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: great script. I think he wrote it in two days.
Speaker 1: I loved him, loved him, I mean his life and
Speaker 1: how he went and how he kind of left and
Speaker 1: you know, gave up and moved back to Chicago. I'm
Speaker 1: not gave up, but he kind of kind of walked
Speaker 1: away from It. Was always so sad to me because
Speaker 1: I thought, God, I mean, I was hoping I could
Speaker 1: become the next John Candy in his career and the
Speaker 1: grown leading, crazy uncle Buck of the next garage of
Speaker 1: films of his. I loved working with him, loved him.
Speaker 1: What was your experience like? It was exactly the same. Um,
Speaker 1: I walked off of a movie that he had given me.
Speaker 1: So there was never a reason for him to call
Speaker 1: me back. But it for some strange reason, I think
Speaker 1: he respected that or he understood it, and being chevy,
Speaker 1: he understood. Yeah, I think so, and he uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when I read this script, I thought, this is a gift,
Speaker 1: this script. The script is really really important. And John,
Speaker 1: the only concern I had was I had a you know,
Speaker 1: I had a newborn at the time, and John liked
Speaker 1: to work from about tenant when he was right when
Speaker 1: he was a producer in writing. You know, he wrote
Speaker 1: all night long. So we would be doing pre production
Speaker 1: during the day on Home Alone, and then for story meetings,
Speaker 1: I'd go to his house in Like Forest and we'd
Speaker 1: work from ten to about five in the morning. So
Speaker 1: I was getting during the pre production hours of Home Alone,
Speaker 1: I was getting about two hours sleep, and John half
Speaker 1: of the time just on. He told these great stories.
Speaker 1: So he would tell stories you probably remember, and smoke
Speaker 1: and these stories would go on for three hours before
Speaker 1: we ever got into the movie. The fact that we
Speaker 1: were making a movie he gave me once he saw
Speaker 1: the first day of dailies from Home Alone. He gave
Speaker 1: me an amazing amount of freedom a filmmaker, and that
Speaker 1: really felt great. I was I felt no pressure because
Speaker 1: I always to this day feel like I'm gonna walk
Speaker 1: on a movie and get fired. But with John, he
Speaker 1: made me feel very secure and created sort of a
Speaker 1: safe atmosphere for me. Immediately, who cast McCauley, Well, John
Speaker 1: put him an Uncle Buck, and John said you should
Speaker 1: see this kid, But John never said cast him. So
Speaker 1: McCauley came up to my New York apartment. He and
Speaker 1: his father the first kid I met, and he was
Speaker 1: incredibly charming, terrific. But I said to John, just because
Speaker 1: I felt like I wanted to be responsible, I said
Speaker 1: I should meet some other kids. So I met about
Speaker 1: three hundred other kids and then came back around a mccaullary.
Speaker 1: Let me get back to you. I'm gonna be three kids,
Speaker 1: and I had to do my job. But McCauley was
Speaker 1: the first one you saw. McCauley was the first one
Speaker 1: I saw, and he was you know, it was. It
Speaker 1: was an interesting situation, kind of like the kids in
Speaker 1: in Harry Potter a little bit. McAuley had only done
Speaker 1: one or two movies, so he would do a line.
Speaker 1: He would he would say one line, maybe two lines,
Speaker 1: and then get distracted. So a lot of that film
Speaker 1: is cut into pieces just so we could get his
Speaker 1: performance together. But what happened on screen, it was amazingly charming.
Speaker 1: And you had Heard is the father. John heard, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Catherine is the mother, and I heard thought he
Speaker 1: was making heard who I love? But I loved him
Speaker 1: in Cutter his Way, remember cut his Way one of
Speaker 1: the great performances. But while he was making Home Alone,
Speaker 1: he thought he was making the biggest piece of ship
Speaker 1: in the world, and he was he was a pain
Speaker 1: in the ass, a little fit. He comes back on
Speaker 1: home alone too, and the first day he's shooting, I
Speaker 1: yell action. He breaks character and he said, I just
Speaker 1: would like to say to Chris and the crew, I
Speaker 1: owe you a big apology. Made a great movie the
Speaker 1: first time, and I'm here to support you. Wow, we
Speaker 1: have it in dailies. I still have a tape of that.
Speaker 1: And I got to work with John Candy for the
Speaker 1: first time. And John Candy came in for one day
Speaker 1: of shooting. We had it for one day and he
Speaker 1: has like six scenes in the movie. So we shot
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours, four hours straight and Candy kept going.
Speaker 1: He just would could continue to improvise. And it was
Speaker 1: my first sort of foray into improvisation. That's director Chris Columbus.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Columbus talks about working with another
Speaker 1: brilliant improviser, Robin Williams. Yeah, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing. Chris Columbus says he wanted
Speaker 1: to work with Robin Williams ever since he saw him
Speaker 1: in Good Morning Vietnam. Five years later, Columbus got his chance.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've known you for years. Maybe we
Speaker 1: knew each other in another life. I would love for
Speaker 1: you to come and work with us. Who would I great?
Speaker 1: Mrs doubt Fire, a film about a divorced father who
Speaker 1: dresses as a Scottish nanny to trick his ex wife
Speaker 1: into hiring him to care for their kids, won a
Speaker 1: Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Robin Williams won a Globe
Speaker 1: for Best Actor. But before all that would happen, Before
Speaker 1: the filming even began, Chris Columbus had to meet Williams
Speaker 1: for lunch, and I was terrified. I had worked with
Speaker 1: guys like Passy who I admired, and Dan Stern, but
Speaker 1: Robin was a true superstar at the time, and I
Speaker 1: was I was nervous about how it would go. And
Speaker 1: we just we hit it off immediately, you know, we
Speaker 1: wanted to. We really connected. Much of Mrs doubt Fire
Speaker 1: was shot in San Francisco, and Columbus took the opportunity
Speaker 1: to move his growing family out west. It's a great
Speaker 1: place to raise a family, and I felt Manhattan would
Speaker 1: be a little difficult. Um we were about to our
Speaker 1: third kid, and I thought, and two of the kids
Speaker 1: have been born at Lenox Hill in Manhattan. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't. And I was having I was walking down
Speaker 1: the street man Anne with my toddler, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: hear what she was saying to me. I couldn't you
Speaker 1: know she's telling And I thought, I gotta I've gotta
Speaker 1: be in a calmer place. And I also fell in
Speaker 1: love with the city. San Francisco is a great city.
Speaker 1: And I had in the relationship with Robin was still
Speaker 1: is terrific. Had a great relationship with Robin. And with
Speaker 1: Robin again, it's like it's like a steroid version of
Speaker 1: John Candy, where you John liked to improvise, but Robin
Speaker 1: lives to improvise. So it was almost like seeing a
Speaker 1: Springsteen concert where he has to exhaust himself after four
Speaker 1: and a half hours of playing before you can go
Speaker 1: to sleep at night. With Robin, it was the same thing.
Speaker 1: We would shoot anywhere from twelve to fifteen takes for
Speaker 1: each scene, and we would start with a very structured
Speaker 1: script to take and then move off of the script
Speaker 1: and change every And that's why that picture had to
Speaker 1: be shot with two or three cameras because do the
Speaker 1: exectit Fox. Know that when you're going in to make
Speaker 1: a film and you have someone who's is varied and
Speaker 1: who's is uh, who says uh, what's the word? You know,
Speaker 1: as spontaneous as he is, did you call them up
Speaker 1: after the first week of shooting and say, fellas, just
Speaker 1: tear off the budget. We gotta start all over again.
Speaker 1: Now we stayed under We stayed not under budget, but
Speaker 1: we stayed on budget. Maybe we went over one or
Speaker 1: two days because he is fast, He's lightning fast, and
Speaker 1: we shot with two or three cameras. We understood the
Speaker 1: cost benefit analysis of his improvisations. He wasn't somebody who
Speaker 1: was over the indulgence. No, And you had actors. You
Speaker 1: had Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan acting across from this guy,
Speaker 1: not knowing what he was going to say on take
Speaker 1: number five or six. So we had to have a
Speaker 1: camera on them because he's I mean, the word genius
Speaker 1: has used a lot these days. But he he comes
Speaker 1: up with these things so quickly he doesn't remember that
Speaker 1: he said them in the next take. It's just he's possessed.
Speaker 1: I sometimes tell people shooting Mrs Doutfire, I was like
Speaker 1: shooting a documentary, and by the time we got to
Speaker 1: the editing room with millions of feet of film. At
Speaker 1: the time, we weren't shooting digitally yet. We had four
Speaker 1: or five different versions of the film. We had the
Speaker 1: PG version, the PG thirteen, the R in the n
Speaker 1: C seventeen. I showed Marcia, who was the producer, because
Speaker 1: the film needed to be PG thirteen, so we knew
Speaker 1: we couldn't have an R rated version of Mrs Doutfire.
Speaker 1: I showed Marcia cut of the film and then Robin
Speaker 1: wanted to see it with an audience, and that was
Speaker 1: the sort of the thing that sealed the deal, because
Speaker 1: the audience really responded. It was like it really was
Speaker 1: a huge It wasn't that intrusive about cutting the film,
Speaker 1: and he just as long as they from worked in
Speaker 1: front of an audience, he was happy left alone. That
Speaker 1: was it. It's just every day he we developed this
Speaker 1: sense of trust after a couple of weeks, and I
Speaker 1: would it was incredibly exhausting shoot, working fourteen hours a day,
Speaker 1: and I'd get home at night and just poured myself
Speaker 1: a glass of wine and the phone to ring. It
Speaker 1: was Robin Howard Daily's how how was I in daily
Speaker 1: so he was he was very very obsessive in terms
Speaker 1: of his own performance, and doubt Fire sort of received
Speaker 1: mixed reviews. So for me, I because because of my
Speaker 1: love of film history and because my love of certain films,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I'd always get there was a
Speaker 1: level of keeping it very real by reading what some
Speaker 1: of these people were saying. Now some I should probably
Speaker 1: be have a tougher skin and say, I don't give
Speaker 1: a ship what they're saying. So with doubt Fire, there
Speaker 1: was a sense that we had created a movie that
Speaker 1: was very successful, a lot of people fell in love with,
Speaker 1: but it didn't for me personally. I didn't get to
Speaker 1: that point where I wanted. You know, I always wanted
Speaker 1: to have that level of critical success and commercial success
Speaker 1: as well, and I just wasn't there yet. So I
Speaker 1: managed to stay hungry. I mean, there was a feeling
Speaker 1: of me that I needed to accomplish a lot more
Speaker 1: and I really still feel that way. I still felt
Speaker 1: that there's a long way to go there. Back on
Speaker 1: dobt Fire, felt that there was a long way to go.
Speaker 1: So the collaboration with you did nine months after that,
Speaker 1: with Hugh Grant and Hugh and uh, how did that
Speaker 1: movie do? That movie did okay, but that was the
Speaker 1: you know, that was the blow job weekend, So that
Speaker 1: was a that happening while you were shooting and when
Speaker 1: it was released being no, no, no no. We were scheduled,
Speaker 1: we were doing a press const exciting. This is insane.
Speaker 1: So we're doing an the international press conference on a
Speaker 1: movie with you. I realized, now I want to make
Speaker 1: a movie with you, just so as a gag, I
Speaker 1: can get dressed up as a woman, as a cross
Speaker 1: dresser and solicit a detective on Hollywood Boulevard, just as
Speaker 1: a gag. What if you got arrested? I wanted the
Speaker 1: goal is he get arrested just to get arrested. And
Speaker 1: then when I'm down to the police, said, I going
Speaker 1: to go officer, can I explace some of you? This
Speaker 1: is really just funk with Chris Columbus, and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to. I wanted the sex scandal on the set
Speaker 1: of it was and it happened. I never I never
Speaker 1: saw it coming. He was like the most completely yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, button down, really conservative guy, always prepared for work,
Speaker 1: did a great job. We were doing the international press
Speaker 1: conference in l A. The movie was finished. The movie
Speaker 1: was screen off the charts and audiences were loving it.
Speaker 1: So I thought, wow, this is gonna be a bigger
Speaker 1: hit than down Fire. So we screened the movie on
Speaker 1: a Friday night for the press. I go out to
Speaker 1: dinner with Hugh, Jeff gold Bloom, and Laura Dern. We
Speaker 1: have this great dinner. I drive Hugh back to the hotel.
Speaker 1: He says, oh, John Hughes sent me a script. Would
Speaker 1: you would you mind looking at it? I don't know
Speaker 1: if I should do. It was a hundred one Dalmatians.
Speaker 1: So I walked up to his hotel room, took the script,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, get a good night's sleep. We
Speaker 1: have a press conference tomorrow. I go to sleep. My
Speaker 1: phone rings. It's six fifty nine. It's bar Nathan. He says,
Speaker 1: turn on the TV. I said, what, he goes turn
Speaker 1: on the TV. I turned on the news channel two
Speaker 1: five seven mug shots. I'm like, what the fund did
Speaker 1: he do? So there's a hundred fifty international journalist that
Speaker 1: I was doing a press conference with. Hugh. Hugh was disappeared.
Speaker 1: He was at his agent's house. He's gone, he didn't come.
Speaker 1: He got it was me facing all of course, amazing.
Speaker 1: He does this the night before a press conference. Perfect,
Speaker 1: and he's he since said that he did it because
Speaker 1: he didn't like the movie, which he loved the movie,
Speaker 1: so that's not why he did what. He went to
Speaker 1: solicitor Proster because he was so depressed about the so
Speaker 1: depressed about the film, he had to have a prostitute.
Speaker 1: I got, I gotta try that. Hugh Grants well publicized
Speaker 1: arrest didn't completely kill nine months. It's still made over
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty three million dollars. Mrs Doubtfire grossed
Speaker 1: over four hundred and forty million dollars worldwide. The Harry
Speaker 1: Potter films did even better. Two years ago, Chris Columbus
Speaker 1: produced The Help, a much smaller film, which earned a
Speaker 1: Best Picture Oscar nomination. Clearly, Chris is skilled at selecting
Speaker 1: the right material to work with, or maybe he just
Speaker 1: surrounds himself with the right people. It was my daughter,
Speaker 1: because she was the one who tried to convince me
Speaker 1: for about a year and a half to read the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter books. And finally when I did and I
Speaker 1: realized wanted to make the movie. There were twenty five
Speaker 1: other directors who were in line. They called it at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers a bake off. They said, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to meet all of these directors, and whoever we you
Speaker 1: know feel will make the best movie will hire UM.
Speaker 1: So I was in line because Spielberg had dropped out.
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg had dropped it was the one he was
Speaker 1: going to direct the film. I think he wanted to
Speaker 1: combine the two books, add some cheerleaders and stuff, and
Speaker 1: I think that she wasn't you know, Joe Rolling was
Speaker 1: not up for that. So for whatever reason, Stephen backed
Speaker 1: backed away from the films, and then it was a
Speaker 1: group of literally twenty five people. I had the last
Speaker 1: meeting because I wanted to rewrite the script for the
Speaker 1: studio UM. And what I did is I spent four,
Speaker 1: no eleven days, staying up to about two or three
Speaker 1: in the morning rewriting the Harry Potter script. Steve Clubs
Speaker 1: wrote a brilliant script. I just wanted to rewrite it
Speaker 1: with some camera cues, some add some scenes from the
Speaker 1: book that weren't in there. And when I went in
Speaker 1: to meet with Warner Brothers and they said, why do
Speaker 1: you want to make this movie? And I said, because
Speaker 1: I've rewritten it. For you for free. Now, no one
Speaker 1: ever does anything for free in Hollywood, so uh, it
Speaker 1: took it. Still took them a few weeks to say yes,
Speaker 1: but I did get the gig. They and I realized
Speaker 1: I still there was still one obstacle. I had to
Speaker 1: fly to Scotland to meet with j K. Rowling. That
Speaker 1: was my sort of last interview, and if I fucked
Speaker 1: that up, I wouldn't have gotten the job. So I
Speaker 1: flew to Scotland, met with Joe, who I was expecting.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen many photographs of her at that point.
Speaker 1: I was expecting Miss Marple. I was expecting some sixty
Speaker 1: year old, heavy set woman in a flow floral dress.
Speaker 1: And it was She's she's younger than we are. She's
Speaker 1: she's very, very funny, one of the funniest people I've
Speaker 1: ever met, sharp as attack, and we hit it off immediately.
Speaker 1: We spent three she spent three hours listening to me.
Speaker 1: I had diarrhea of the mouth because I was telling
Speaker 1: her the kind of movie I wanted to make. At
Speaker 1: the end of it, she said, that's exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of film I want to make, and I knew I
Speaker 1: got the job. Once I knew I got the job.
Speaker 1: I was fucking scared out of my wits. Everyone was
Speaker 1: obsessed about who was going to be cast in the movie,
Speaker 1: how we how how we were going to design Hogwarts,
Speaker 1: what was Quidditch going to be like? And I thought
Speaker 1: the only way to get through this not to be
Speaker 1: so I'm not standing in a corner unable to face
Speaker 1: my crew, was to just sort of bury my head
Speaker 1: and start to work. You just I just just sort
Speaker 1: of went through every day, moved I moved my family
Speaker 1: to London, and went through every day making the best
Speaker 1: movie possible. And the great thing is there were a
Speaker 1: core of us at the time, four of us, Joe Rolling,
Speaker 1: David Haym and Steve Clovis and myself, and we'd meet
Speaker 1: every couple of days, talk about the script, talk about
Speaker 1: the movie. And it was that core that really helped
Speaker 1: me shape what eventually became all eight movies. And again,
Speaker 1: and she was around during the screenwriting process or around
Speaker 1: the shooting as well. Roll Now she only came out
Speaker 1: for one day during the shooting, just to visit. She
Speaker 1: wasn't that interested in the shooting. As you can if
Speaker 1: her a visitor ont a set, it's not that exciting
Speaker 1: after about two hours. She came out. When we were
Speaker 1: shooting diagon Alley. But during the screenwriting, during the rewriting process,
Speaker 1: and during some of the design work, you know, I
Speaker 1: would take her through the Harry Potter Factory, I called it.
Speaker 1: We would walk through the art department and I would
Speaker 1: show her what I was thinking of for diagon Alley
Speaker 1: or Green Gots or Hogwarts of the Wizarding Robes, and
Speaker 1: she just was always very collaborative. She'd say, oh, like
Speaker 1: the wand she was very very specific about everything that
Speaker 1: Harry's wand couldn't have any specific design to it because
Speaker 1: it was from an old tree. That wouldn't It was
Speaker 1: just a little crooked and you And it was that
Speaker 1: kind of specific comments that really sort of helped me
Speaker 1: find where I was going. I never was off the
Speaker 1: rails though, because we did we did share a similar
Speaker 1: i think, vision for what we wanted the movie to be.
Speaker 1: And I she would give us also indications that the
Speaker 1: films we're gonna get the books. There were only three
Speaker 1: books at the time. Remember, we're gonna get progressively darker,
Speaker 1: and this had to be sort of the first one
Speaker 1: was sort of like the storybook version of Harry Potter
Speaker 1: or it's his origin story. It's still a little dark,
Speaker 1: and Hogwarts had to feel like the most welcoming place
Speaker 1: in the world. And then we get little indications that
Speaker 1: it's going to start to fall apart as we move forward.
Speaker 1: We set that all into motion, that the movies would
Speaker 1: get darker and darker and darker. Did you did you
Speaker 1: have a sense did you say, I think I've got
Speaker 1: this film version of these books, I've got the recipe. Unfortunately, not,
Speaker 1: not until we were finished. We knew we were We
Speaker 1: knew things were going well. So even though the kids
Speaker 1: had not had a lot of experience and acting, they
Speaker 1: were amazingly charming on screen and they felt like those characters.
Speaker 1: I think the first day that we really felt that
Speaker 1: we were on the right track. As we shot the
Speaker 1: the the the opening of the Great Hall and we're
Speaker 1: on this huge crane and the kids are walking in
Speaker 1: and are her. Visual effects guy John Richardson attached four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty candles to strings that were all burned.
Speaker 1: They everyone had to light all these candles. There weren't
Speaker 1: any CGI candles in the shot. And I remember sitting
Speaker 1: in Daily's and seeing the shot where the camera cranes
Speaker 1: up through the floating candles and realizing, Oh, I think
Speaker 1: we're onto something. Uh, and so that all felt good.
Speaker 1: We still had no Yeah, it was fun. That's cool.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Yeah. What was it like to work One
Speaker 1: of my favorite actors I ever worked with was Gamben.
Speaker 1: Oh god, he was he. I remember I prea such
Speaker 1: a character. I produced the movie that that he you
Speaker 1: know when he Richard Harris was Dumbledore for two films. Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. Yeah, that was one of
Speaker 1: the funniest people I've ever met. Harris and he first
Speaker 1: himself as Harris. Yes, and he Harris do this and
Speaker 1: Harris count be seen doing this. On the first day
Speaker 1: of shooting with Richard Harris, he tells me that he's
Speaker 1: learned the wrong scene that he It was seen at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie's It was one of the
Speaker 1: final scenes for Dumbledore. We having to shoot at first,
Speaker 1: and he didn't learn it, and he explained to me
Speaker 1: that he had learned something else. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was telling me the truth. Um. And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of guy he was. He was constantly he would
Speaker 1: always try to piss off Maggie Smith by calling her
Speaker 1: Dame Maggie, Oh, Dame Maggie. It was so fun to watch.
Speaker 1: But I have to tell you he was such a
Speaker 1: bad boy. Um. The things that he got away with
Speaker 1: in his time just never never. You couldn't get away
Speaker 1: with it today. But anyway, So Harris was in the
Speaker 1: first two. Then he passed away. The last thing he
Speaker 1: said to me. I went to visit him in the
Speaker 1: hospital room, and I knew he was dying. I saw
Speaker 1: when he was dying, and he had he was sitting
Speaker 1: there and he lost about twenty pounds. And we never
Speaker 1: really knew what he was dying. I was, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell us and he didn't think he was dying. So
Speaker 1: I went to visit him, and as I'm leaving, I
Speaker 1: said goodbye to him, and he says, don't you ever
Speaker 1: fucking replace me as Dumbledore? And I said, okay, that's
Speaker 1: the last thing he said. So and that was the
Speaker 1: last thing he said to me. Uh. And then Gambin
Speaker 1: came in and came in. Who was he was a character? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's an interesting guy, but he he's conservative compared
Speaker 1: to Harris. The last film you directed, uh was Percy Jackson.
Speaker 1: Percy Jackson. Yeah, feature. Yeah, so if that was released
Speaker 1: in ten, you shot that in two thousand nine. So
Speaker 1: you haven't directed a feature in four years. No, And
Speaker 1: part of that was because of the of The Help. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a writer director named Take Taylor who wrote
Speaker 1: a script who was a sort of a director that
Speaker 1: I had supported over the years. He did a lot
Speaker 1: of short films, was an actor in l A and
Speaker 1: I knew him through one of my daughter's school associates.
Speaker 1: He would always come when he come to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: he'd sit down and meet with me and show me
Speaker 1: what he was working on. He came into my office
Speaker 1: one day and said, this is my first feature that
Speaker 1: I want to make. My best friend wrote this book,
Speaker 1: The Help, and I said, I read the script and
Speaker 1: I said, this is a fantastic movie. I wanted to
Speaker 1: direct it. And Tate was like, I want to direct,
Speaker 1: and I want you to support me so I don't
Speaker 1: get fired. So I brought the script to a lot
Speaker 1: of studios. At the same time, the book was starting
Speaker 1: to heat up again. It was one of those books
Speaker 1: that every woman was reading on the beach. Um and
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg and I sort of reunited to do it.
Speaker 1: Steven and I met um in London. He said, what
Speaker 1: do you think of this guy, Tay Taylor? I said,
Speaker 1: incredibly talented, he wrote a brilliant script. Steven said, as
Speaker 1: long as you promised that you'll be on the set
Speaker 1: every day. I said, but when I produced a movie,
Speaker 1: I like to go for the first week, and then
Speaker 1: those guys financed the DreamWorks. Streamworks financed it. We shot
Speaker 1: in Mississippi in the summertime a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and I knew were on the set every day. I
Speaker 1: was there every day. It was fantastic. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: what's that like for you to be the pure producer. Well,
Speaker 1: as I said, usually I just if I'm the producer,
Speaker 1: I like to go for a couple of days, make
Speaker 1: sure it's it's all in good hands, and I don't
Speaker 1: like to go off and direct or write with it
Speaker 1: in this situation, and so I made a promise to Stephen.
Speaker 1: I was there the entire time. And the interesting thing was,
Speaker 1: because of the level of performances in that film, getting
Speaker 1: actually just being able to watch these actresses perform every day,
Speaker 1: Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone. It
Speaker 1: just was an amazing sort of front row seat to
Speaker 1: these these performances, and Tait was just wonderful with the actresses.
Speaker 1: He was just he's an actor himself. Again, that connection
Speaker 1: is really helpful. So for me it was it was
Speaker 1: a bit of a learning experience again, it just it
Speaker 1: opened up another sort of part of filmmaking that I
Speaker 1: want to get. I was gonna say, do you want
Speaker 1: to make films like that? Because my last question for
Speaker 1: you is, here's a guy who the flame for you
Speaker 1: that you were drawn to from things I've read about
Speaker 1: you were movies like The Godfather, But you haven't made
Speaker 1: a movie like The Godfather, And I'm wondering is that
Speaker 1: a direction you want to go in? Now you see
Speaker 1: a movie like The Help, and you see do you
Speaker 1: want to do more? Not even so much racially, but
Speaker 1: much more kind of intense drama. Here's the thing I'm
Speaker 1: not particularly uh. I'm not saying I'm not happy with
Speaker 1: the movies I made, but I still have a long
Speaker 1: way to go. Hopefully I can live long enough to
Speaker 1: get to where I really will be happy with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it won't happen, but what I really really want
Speaker 1: to do, I would like to make the kind of
Speaker 1: movies that you and I grew up on, which are
Speaker 1: the kind of movies. Look Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather, Serpico.
Speaker 1: All of those movies were movies that we're not only
Speaker 1: about something, but but we're great dramatic films with an
Speaker 1: enormous sense of humor. By the way, all the films
Speaker 1: I mentioned are very funny at times, yet at the
Speaker 1: same time they reached a huge audience. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what it was about. I didn't want to make
Speaker 1: a film that was so special in Indian tiny that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't reach a wide audience. I always felt that
Speaker 1: when I was watching movies like Butch Cassidy and The
Speaker 1: Sundance Kid, and I was watching Dog Day Afternoon, the
Speaker 1: performances were so amazing and so authentic and real, and
Speaker 1: those movies found an audience. Now, unfortunately, most of those
Speaker 1: types of films are being made for television. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and aproposal that you've made films now, written, directed and
Speaker 1: produced huge films, some of the biggest films of the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years. You've been doing this for twenty
Speaker 1: five years. How has the business changed in the twenty
Speaker 1: five years from your standpoint? Well, you know, when I
Speaker 1: get harder to get that movie made. You're talking about
Speaker 1: that Sydney Lamette esque drama. Yeah, I've spent the better
Speaker 1: part of the last year and a half writing films
Speaker 1: like that, but I can't. It's very, very difficult to
Speaker 1: get them made in an environment that really is only
Speaker 1: interested in either sequels or superhero films. If you walked
Speaker 1: into a studio executive's office in nineteen seventies eight and
Speaker 1: said you wanted to make Spider Man, yeah, comic books,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's the lowest form of entertainment. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're in a situation where that's mostly what's being made,
Speaker 1: So it's difficult to help kind of you know, was
Speaker 1: made because the book was so successful and we made
Speaker 1: it for twenty eight million dollars, which for a period
Speaker 1: piece is relatively inexpensive. So if we can find that
Speaker 1: way to do more of those films, I'd love to
Speaker 1: do them. And that's probably one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: haven't directed. The help is really gotten into my head
Speaker 1: in a big way and said you can make these
Speaker 1: movies and people will go see them. And where I've
Speaker 1: gotten into trouble in my career, movies like bi centennial
Speaker 1: man movies like Beth Cooper Again, when I did them
Speaker 1: for fun, and when I thought, oh, this will be fun,
Speaker 1: I'll just go out and make a movie like we're
Speaker 1: back in film school. It's not the case anymore. There's
Speaker 1: much more responsibility. Chris Columbus won't stop making movies, but
Speaker 1: he has taken a slight detour. This first novel, House
Speaker 1: of Secrets, a middle school fantasy adventure, is out this year.
Speaker 1: Chris sent an early draft to J. K. Rowling. She
Speaker 1: said it was too fast paced, slowed down. She told
Speaker 1: him deepen the characters and work on the complexity. Chris
Speaker 1: Columbus says he and his co author Ned Vizzini took
Speaker 1: that advice to heart. I hope you enjoyed this conversation
Speaker 1: with director Chris Columbus. Here's the Thing is produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Riso, myself, Zach mcneie, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Zach McNee HELEC. Baldwin will be back next week.
Speaker 1: Here's the Things brought to you by iHeart Radio.