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Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing,

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Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to

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Speaker 1: hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change

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Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. If you're going

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Speaker 1: to see The Lion King on Broadway, don't be late.

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Speaker 1: The first number, The Circle of Life is as miraculous

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Speaker 1: an opening as you'll ever see. Life sized animal puppets

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Speaker 1: parade through the aisles to African music. It's breathtaking. Julie Taymore,

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Speaker 1: the woman who brought this animated Disney musical to the stage,

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Speaker 1: which went on to become the most successful Broadway musical

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Speaker 1: of all time, is my guest today. Since The Lion King,

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Speaker 1: Julie's work has run the gamut. She's directed Shakespeare operas, films,

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Speaker 1: and a solo show. Her recent staging of A Midsummer

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Speaker 1: Night's Dream christened a new theater space in Brooklyn this summer.

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Speaker 1: She released a movie of the production, and we prepared

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Speaker 1: it over three days and shot it. But I knew

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Speaker 1: the play well and I could make a shot list.

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Speaker 1: I knew it very well, so I could I could

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Speaker 1: really think about what would be the scenes that I

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Speaker 1: would want to do. And that's it. The last week

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Speaker 1: of performances. Whose idea was it to do the play itself?

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Speaker 1: What was the genesis of the play. Well, the theater

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Speaker 1: for new audience was getting a new new theater, and

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Harwitz, the producer, asked me if I would inaugurate

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Speaker 1: the new house, and you know, he knew I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do Macbeth, but he said go ahead. I said,

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Speaker 1: are you out of your mind? You can't open a

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Speaker 1: new theater with McBeth. So I had read, sure you

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Speaker 1: can her house down? I don't think so. But we

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Speaker 1: did readings of four or places Harness on our back.

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Speaker 1: You've done it. I know that. Um So I decided,

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Speaker 1: even though I hadn't really been all that interested in dream,

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Speaker 1: I decided it was the right one to bless a

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Speaker 1: new house because it's the new Amsterdam. It was it

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Speaker 1: blessed that house years ago. It's it's it's was created

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Speaker 1: by Shakespeare for a wedding. We hear, and that's what

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Speaker 1: a new theater is. It's a wedding between a new

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Speaker 1: audience and the artists. And I felt that it would

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Speaker 1: bring in the audience that would cross from young kids

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Speaker 1: right up through old age and deceased. And we we would,

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Speaker 1: we would, um, we'd be properly doing what I think

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Speaker 1: a new play has to do it in a new house.

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Speaker 1: I mean, not a new play, but a production should

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Speaker 1: do in a new house. So it was Jeffrey was thrilled,

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Speaker 1: everybody was happy, and it worked out. How do you

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Speaker 1: cast well, t Tanya Oh, Tina benk Oh, my god,

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Speaker 1: well you should see you didn't know her, right, she

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Speaker 1: should be a national treasure in America. She's an American

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Speaker 1: New York City and come out on stage. I was like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, she's gorgeous. She's so talented and amazing.

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Speaker 1: There was the most amazing representation of ever saying, well,

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Speaker 1: that's great. She she auditioned. I didn't know who she was.

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Speaker 1: I heard that she had done a one woman show,

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Speaker 1: Jackie on Jackie Onassis and Peter Sellers had used her.

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Speaker 1: But if she were in England, if we were in

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Speaker 1: London was set from tempest. If we were in England

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Speaker 1: now is once we were, um, she'd be known. But

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Speaker 1: the person who I've cast first was Katherine Hunter, who

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Speaker 1: played Puck and and She was pivotal for me because

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Speaker 1: if I didn't find my Puck, I didn't know if

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Speaker 1: I wanted to do the play. So I asked her

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Speaker 1: over a year in advance, and I had seen her.

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Speaker 1: She's she's sort of she's English and American, she can

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Speaker 1: work in both places. And I had seen her in

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Speaker 1: London at the National ten years ago in Carol Churchill's

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Speaker 1: The Striker, and I had seen her here a couple

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Speaker 1: of times, and I went, oh, my god, this woman.

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Speaker 1: She is the background that I have Lecoq studying in Paris.

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Speaker 1: But she's one of the greats. She's played King lear

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Speaker 1: in She's one of the only women Richard the Third.

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Speaker 1: She's just brilliant and uh. She came over and we

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Speaker 1: did workshops with children because if I I felt if

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Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out how to do the fairy world,

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Speaker 1: the supernatural fairy world, I wouldn't find I had to

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Speaker 1: find my way into that because I didn't want to

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Speaker 1: do puppets. I didn't want to do what people expected

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Speaker 1: me to do because for years, oh, you've got to

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Speaker 1: do Midsummer Night's Dream, right, you know why, Oh, because

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Speaker 1: you can do that? And then oh, good reason not

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Speaker 1: to do it exactly, so there aren't there's a few

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Speaker 1: deer masks, but I wanted to figure out if I

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Speaker 1: could create this rude elemental world as opposed to fairies.

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Speaker 1: I called them the rude elementals. You know. The mechanicals

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Speaker 1: are the rude mechanicals. And we did workshops, three or

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Speaker 1: four of them with the New York City schools, children

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Speaker 1: from all over start out with eight and we whittled

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Speaker 1: it down to seventeen or eighteen after a couple of months,

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Speaker 1: and Catherine came over was the pied piper, and together

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Speaker 1: we had these wild workshops where we try out these

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Speaker 1: young kids playing the forest, the maniacal part of the forest,

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Speaker 1: the malignant, the terrorizing. The What why I felt they

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Speaker 1: were important is because the play, which is about marriage,

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Speaker 1: is about codifying love right. It's about putting strictures. What's

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Speaker 1: a marriage, but putting fetters on something that is natural,

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Speaker 1: human being civilized. We need to organize. But children under

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Speaker 1: a certain age or pre that they're raw, they're rude there.

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Speaker 1: They don't understand those limitations. And I wanted to play

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Speaker 1: that aspect because the night of Midsummer Night's Dream as

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Speaker 1: a night where everything goes topsy turvy and haywire. So

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Speaker 1: the kids could be many, many things, including finally the

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Speaker 1: children of the court. When you said you had to

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Speaker 1: have my puck. Are you from this school, I should say,

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Speaker 1: or maybe you It varies where you know what you

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Speaker 1: want and you go and find that, or someone shows

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Speaker 1: it to you, or both both. You asked me about

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Speaker 1: how I cast I knew I needed someone who understood

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Speaker 1: that Shakespeare. There's two parts to Shakespeare. Of course, there's

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Speaker 1: the language. Usually people separate, they go, oh, we shouldn't

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Speaker 1: do spectacle Shakespeare. We want to hear the language in

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Speaker 1: the Iamic Bentameter, and it's Shakespeare wrote visual effects play

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Speaker 1: and by the time Midsummer Night's Dream happened, it was

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Speaker 1: inside and there were footlights, and there were fairies. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure that they did their little fairies coming in on

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Speaker 1: ropes and stuff like that in his day. But I

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Speaker 1: knew that that with Pack you needed a transformer. You

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Speaker 1: needed someone who could not only deliver the incredible language,

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Speaker 1: but who was neither male nor female, neither eight or

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Speaker 1: nine or fifty or eighty. She's everything, She's he she

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Speaker 1: and Catherine has that. She's she's your age and yet

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Speaker 1: you think she's five years old. Some of the time

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Speaker 1: she's four ft eight, So she mixed with these kids.

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Speaker 1: You're remarkable looking actress. She's totally you know, her body

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Speaker 1: is all different. She can do anything with her body. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and she's got that all Julie, Let's do it like that.

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Speaker 1: She always talks in this voice. Now you um, I

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Speaker 1: want you to describe in whatever word you want to use,

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Speaker 1: the period from when you're like ten or eleven years

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Speaker 1: old and you go into Boston and your parents have

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Speaker 1: you going by yourself and too well, you live very

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Speaker 1: unique period there that leads to a lot of very

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Speaker 1: eclectic things in France and Japan. And what was that about,

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Speaker 1: you know, in those days, the early days, in the

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Speaker 1: late I guess sixties and seventies. First of all, I'm

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Speaker 1: a lot younger than my brother and sister, and my

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Speaker 1: parents had a lot to contend with with them going

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Speaker 1: through the sixties, and they let me alone. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if you ever saw across the universe? Did you

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Speaker 1: ever see the Beatles physical? Okay, that's the closest thing

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Speaker 1: to my family and that older brother and sit my

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Speaker 1: sister was very politically active. My brother was a musician

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Speaker 1: and a captain. Anyway, my parents had their hands full.

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Speaker 1: They were great parents, but they basically let me be free.

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Speaker 1: So I literally took the the the t in Boston

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Speaker 1: and I would go to Boston Children's Theater at age

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Speaker 1: probably starting eight or nine, after school ten eleven and

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Speaker 1: and started acting. But I was in more of the

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Speaker 1: Cinderella's and Tom Sawyers and I think Cinderella was the

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Speaker 1: first thing I ever played. And I always wanted to

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Speaker 1: be the evil step sisters, but I was never cast.

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Speaker 1: I said, I wanted to be a character actress, but

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Speaker 1: I had this, you know, nice pretty little face, and

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Speaker 1: so I never really liked doing that. That's why I

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Speaker 1: didn't go into acting, because where I want to play

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Speaker 1: is not what I look like. Probably maybe now, maybe

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Speaker 1: now when you get older. But uh, then when I

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Speaker 1: was about thirteen or fourteen, and this is um what

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Speaker 1: is this? You know, this is a time where Gratowski

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Speaker 1: and the Living Theater and many people were creating theater

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Speaker 1: from scratch, from ideas, and I joined a company I

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Speaker 1: was the youngest by far, Theater Workshop of Boston, and

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Speaker 1: Julie Portman was the director. But they were creating work

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Speaker 1: based on political ideas, and the first one they did

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Speaker 1: was called Riot, which was really about the racial issues

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Speaker 1: in America. The one that I got involved in was

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Speaker 1: was called Tribe, and it was about Native Americans and

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Speaker 1: all the people in the company. This was a younger company,

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Speaker 1: probably sixteen seventeen through twenty, and I was the youngest.

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Speaker 1: We would bring in the material and we were working

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Speaker 1: very physically with our bodies in a church basement, the

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Speaker 1: Arlington Street Church. What was exciting was we were responsible

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Speaker 1: for creating the content of the material. But even at

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Speaker 1: that age of fifteen sixteen, I felt that though I

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Speaker 1: was good physically, I wanted more disciplined. So I graduated

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Speaker 1: high school early and went to Paris at sixteen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: these parents, they went okay, fine, And I lived with

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Speaker 1: this twenty one year old Deborah Tate, who was a

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Speaker 1: photographer and who was wild. We're living in Paris, and

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Speaker 1: and I mean, and I went to moms school. I

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Speaker 1: went to it called him mean Jacques Lecoq, Yes, let

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Speaker 1: Jacques Lecoq. And that's where Simon McBurney, a lot of

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Speaker 1: directors and actors whom I really admire. Now, a lot

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Speaker 1: of us went there and had this training, which was

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Speaker 1: physical training, how to use your body to express, not

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Speaker 1: to do mine, not to end up being a mime.

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Speaker 1: But this is where I started really understanding the power

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Speaker 1: of mask, the mask and even poppetry. She would this

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Speaker 1: this crazy lady named Madame Citroen, who looked like a lemon.

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Speaker 1: She was like a lemon. She was very brutal, but

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Speaker 1: she would take We would take objects, brooms and candles

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Speaker 1: and all kinds of objects and make them come alive,

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Speaker 1: understanding what what hardness, what metal? What what kind of character?

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Speaker 1: You know? How when we say someone is, you know

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Speaker 1: they're they're They're as brittle as a break or something

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Speaker 1: you know, eat to express it. So we would take

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Speaker 1: shapes and materials and make stories and characters out of them.

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Speaker 1: So it's a different approach to puppetry, but very interesting.

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Speaker 1: And the mask work was there to understand to get

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Speaker 1: yourself out of yourself, Like when you can wear a mask,

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Speaker 1: you can transport yourself to being a completely different human

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Speaker 1: being because you lose your identity. And I understood how

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Speaker 1: the body then becomes a complete sculpture. So I learned

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Speaker 1: a lot that year at Lecoq. I didn't stay for

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Speaker 1: the full two years. The second year was clowning, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not The red nose didn't appeal to me. I

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Speaker 1: didn't want to go there, but but I did get

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Speaker 1: a lot out of that. Where from there, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: went to college. I went to Oberlin. I went to Oberlin,

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Speaker 1: and I I at Oberlin there was a man from

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Speaker 1: named Herbert Blow. Did you ever hear of Herbert Blow?

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Speaker 1: Us to run Lincoln Center. Then he went to cal Arts,

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Speaker 1: started cal Arts, and he brought Bill Irwin Um Sharon

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Speaker 1: at and about four or five actors came from cal

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Speaker 1: Arts and he started a program at Oberlin, an interdisciplinary

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Speaker 1: theater thing. At this point, for you, it's mostly about acting.

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Speaker 1: You're an actor. No. I went to Oberlin to study

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Speaker 1: anthropology and religion. Yes, No, I just couldn't stay away

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Speaker 1: from theater. I didn't really want to study theater. I

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Speaker 1: didn't mind doing it because that's the origins of the

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Speaker 1: I loved I loved Antipope, I loved um traveling. I

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Speaker 1: went I'd have to go back for a second. Before

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Speaker 1: I went to Oberlin, I went to Sri Lanka one

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Speaker 1: summer to Ceylon was Cylon back then and on the

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Speaker 1: experiment in international living so you sort of see I constantly,

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Speaker 1: whether it was Boston or out to Asia. My parents

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Speaker 1: let me go and I loved. I loved experiencing other culture.

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Speaker 1: There's a big part of you even touch treated parents.

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Speaker 1: I'm very close to them. I never had I never

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Speaker 1: went through all the crap that people do with their parents,

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Speaker 1: because they treated me with enormous respect. And I was

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Speaker 1: called they did, and I called them by their first

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Speaker 1: name since I was little. I didn't call them mommy, daddy.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what that was about, but they I

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Speaker 1: never had to lie to them, and when I did lie,

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Speaker 1: I lied once and told them afterwards, I said, you

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Speaker 1: made me lie because you didn't trust me, And that

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Speaker 1: never happened again. I was about fifteen, you know. It

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Speaker 1: was about going away with my boyfriend and they didn't

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Speaker 1: want me, so I lied and went anyway, miserable the

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Speaker 1: whole time. That's right, Ka. Well, I lived to the

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Speaker 1: family and UH and saw this extraordinary culture. I was

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Speaker 1: in India, went through India a bit of India and

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Speaker 1: then Ceylon, lived with the Ceylonese family and started to

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Speaker 1: get my interest in that part of the world back then,

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Speaker 1: and I did come to New York in between. Actually

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Speaker 1: I did do at New York. I came and I

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Speaker 1: went to Herbert broke Off School of Acting. I acted

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Speaker 1: in the Lower east Side. I worked with Bob Californ

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Speaker 1: at the in Brooklyn, at the Chelsea Theater Center. But

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Speaker 1: I didn't I had my resume and I went out.

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Speaker 1: But that's what I'm saying. I didn't really want to do.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't be playing the roles I wanted. So I

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Speaker 1: was more interested in theater that you created from scratch.

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Speaker 1: You wouldn't be playing the roles you wanted. No, I

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Speaker 1: didn't want to don't No, not a seventeen right, No,

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Speaker 1: I really didn't. And soap opera's and you could. You're

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Speaker 1: naming all the things I ended up doing. By the way,

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Speaker 1: you're you're kind of pissing on my whole early crept.

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Speaker 1: But but you stayed with wanting to be an actor,

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Speaker 1: right reluctantly. You look what you're doing. Well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's changed so much in my lifetime.

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Speaker 1: It's very different. You know. When I started, there was

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Speaker 1: um it was easier to make it. It wasn't easy,

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Speaker 1: but it was easier. You could slalom between the one

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Speaker 1: for them, one for me, one for the one for me,

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Speaker 1: go to a play, come back and do make some

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Speaker 1: money backing forth. And now it's not like that anymore. No,

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Speaker 1: not in any in any of those areas, it's not

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Speaker 1: like that. And when do you start directing? Well, I

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Speaker 1: started in college a little bit, but then I went

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Speaker 1: to Indonesia. At the end of Oberlin, I got a

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Speaker 1: traveling fellowship in visual theater, experimental puppet theater to Eastern Europe, Indonesia,

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Speaker 1: and Japan and pronounce it for me, Oh, where's my glasses?

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Speaker 1: Tatulaw Well, that didn't happen right away. I was going

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Speaker 1: to spend a year in Japan with have you ever

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Speaker 1: heard of the buon Rocku? Okay, So there's a folk

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Speaker 1: buon Rocku called the awaji and this is where it

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Speaker 1: is a very ancient technique where three people manipulate the puppet.

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Speaker 1: And I was on my way to Japan, but I

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Speaker 1: went to Indonesia first. I was going to spend three

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Speaker 1: months in Indonesia and I ended up four years at

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Speaker 1: because Indonesia Java. I was in Java first, and then

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Speaker 1: Bali and then Sumatra toward I had never experienced theater

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Speaker 1: in its original form. Now, going back to Oberlin, those

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Speaker 1: were the days where you made up your own major,

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Speaker 1: and my major was folklore mythology, and I studied shamanism.

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Speaker 1: In the early forms of theater. I was in a

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Speaker 1: country now where I was watching traditional theater function in

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Speaker 1: all of its original ways, because there was no television.

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Speaker 1: There was very little film. I mean I was forty

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Speaker 1: years ago. I was in Java and Bali, and there

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Speaker 1: was so little of that. Villages were distinct from a

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Speaker 1: village ten miles away. They had their own culture, distinct.

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Speaker 1: And I saw nine hour plays that would be from

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Speaker 1: the Mahabad, the Ramayana, the epics, you know, they're like

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Speaker 1: our epics, are Shakespeare there or our Greeks. And watch

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Speaker 1: these plays that would go on in the audience, moving

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Speaker 1: back and forth behind the shadow puppet screen or behind

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Speaker 1: and in front, and see that during the nine hours

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Speaker 1: of a play, teenagers were flirting with others. Where people

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Speaker 1: would talk or children would fall asleep, where you you

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Speaker 1: wake up for the clowns, you know, the fools, like

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Speaker 1: in Lear, where politics of the day were discussed because

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Speaker 1: the comedians would speak in the local language, where philosophies

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Speaker 1: were all done in ancient Sanskrit kaoi, but nobody understood

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Speaker 1: it except for the you know, the Hindu priests or whoever.

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Speaker 1: I watched theater function in its original humanizing way, and

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Speaker 1: that blew my mind as an artist, As an artist

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Speaker 1: who was trying not to be an artist, meaning I

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Speaker 1: could never commit to saying I was going to do theater.

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Speaker 1: I suddenly found myself in a place where I understood

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Speaker 1: the origins and watched it function in this most astounding way,

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Speaker 1: and I decided to stay. And I got encouraged to

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Speaker 1: stay by a major political theater figure who was always

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Speaker 1: imprisoned in an out rendra a w s Rendra Javanese Muslim,

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Speaker 1: who thought I'd be his fourth wife. And I said, now,

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Speaker 1: I don't sign on. But I did sign on to

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Speaker 1: do choreography for him. And um the problem with radio

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Speaker 1: as you can't see facials. A Taylor of Java, Julie

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Speaker 1: Tamore now makes her home in New York City. Listen

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Speaker 1: to our archives to hear what Debbie Reynolds says of

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Speaker 1: working with the real Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Joan

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Speaker 1: Collins and Shirley mcclaim. Well, we had a lot of

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Speaker 1: fun working together. That Joan never lets you watch her makeup,

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Speaker 1: and she hides in her trailer and all her makeup.

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Speaker 1: But we all kind of quite an operation. Well it

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Speaker 1: is an operation for all of us as a certain

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Speaker 1: point when you look in the mirror and everything is

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Speaker 1: moved someplace else, take a listen, and here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to

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Speaker 1: here's the thing. The New York Times called my guest

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Speaker 1: Julie Tamore the cosmic p. T. Barnum of contemporary stagecraft.

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Speaker 1: Her work draws heavily on her eclectic life experiences. In

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Speaker 1: her early twenties, Julie was the director of a theater

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Speaker 1: group in Indonesia. She could have stayed and lived a

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Speaker 1: very different life, but she had a sense it just

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Speaker 1: wouldn't work. I felt, after living that many years in Indonesia,

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Speaker 1: I would never ever be accepted as an Indonesian. But

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Speaker 1: if a Javanese guy came to New York, they could disappear.

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Speaker 1: I was always that white woman with the bula booloo,

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Speaker 1: which is I don't have it now, but hair on

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Speaker 1: the arms, feathers, you know. And also I had to

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Speaker 1: deal with the fact that there's two words that describe

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Speaker 1: human beings in Javanny in Indonesian halusen kassar. Hallus is

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Speaker 1: refined and kassar is crude. Well, being the head of

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Speaker 1: a theater company at a two, you can't be hallus.

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Speaker 1: I had to deal with the fact that just being

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Speaker 1: in that position was really tricky because you're the boss.

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Speaker 1: And I had a fifty year old master mask performer

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Speaker 1: from Bali who was one of the company. But I'm

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Speaker 1: the director of the company. And at that time I

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Speaker 1: had a great partner of photographer, Javanese photographer, who was

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Speaker 1: sort of the daddy. We were the mommy and daddy

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Speaker 1: of the company, and we all lived together in this

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Speaker 1: Mother Death Temple hotel and we started to create this

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Speaker 1: original piece of theater and I acted in it as well.

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Speaker 1: I acted as the outsider, the one who's trespassed. We'll

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Speaker 1: come back to you And did you enjoy that? Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: I hadn't stopped acting then. I hadn't. I didn't stop

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Speaker 1: acting professionally or literally until I came back to the States,

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Speaker 1: where you have to be put in boxes and you

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Speaker 1: can't be a director and a designer and an actor.

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Speaker 1: You have to be one thing or another, and I

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Speaker 1: had stories to tell, so I decided the best thing

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Speaker 1: was to be the kind of I call myself a

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Speaker 1: creator more. And then I got boxed into being a

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Speaker 1: designer in New York because I designed at the Public

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Speaker 1: Theater for Elizabeth Swados. I designed the Hagada, you know,

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Speaker 1: the passover, which was done every three years. I was

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Speaker 1: the set, cost him, mask and puppet designer. And I

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Speaker 1: had never studied that. I just did it and choreographer

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Speaker 1: and sort of created that with her because that was

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Speaker 1: the She liked that. That was the kind of background

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Speaker 1: that I had really had, which was to create from

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Speaker 1: a ritual. I've just been in a country for four

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Speaker 1: years where theater comes from ritual and religion. So doing

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Speaker 1: the Hagada, the Jewish passover ceremony was really something I understood.

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Speaker 1: I'm jumping around here, So when do you come back

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Speaker 1: to the US. Well, four years of Indonesia, Well, I

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Speaker 1: have to tell the story. I we created this play

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Speaker 1: in Bali. We had a tsunami in the meantime, and

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Speaker 1: everybody was living. They had moved that one hotel got

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Speaker 1: taken away by the tsunami, and we're all living crowded

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Speaker 1: in these rooms and we're ready to go on tour.

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Speaker 1: And this mixture of Hindus, Muslims, um Jews, Christians and atheists,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're all there, and we all get on

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Speaker 1: this night bus. Uh. We take the ferry from Bali

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Speaker 1: to Java and get on a night bus to go

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Speaker 1: to Surabaya. And we crashed on our way to our

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Speaker 1: first performance after a year of rehearsal and total truck

390
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Speaker 1: and bus. The truck driver died and I got glass

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Speaker 1: all over and people's backs. So you can imagine being

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Speaker 1: the mommy of this troop. It was horrendous. It was horrendous,

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Speaker 1: and I had two operations and but talk about my parents.

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Speaker 1: I finally I came home and then I said to them, no,

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Speaker 1: I have to go back again, and they let me,

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Speaker 1: and I went back and my troop got together, and

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Speaker 1: then we toured for three more months, and at the

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Speaker 1: end of that I just felt I I wanted to

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Speaker 1: go back to the States. I felt I needed to,

400
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Speaker 1: but I also wanted to bring what I had learned there.

401
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Speaker 1: And I came to New York and went to La

402
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Speaker 1: Mama to Ellen Stewart, and we couldn't bring all of

403
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Speaker 1: my troop. I found Indonesians here and Bill Irwin, who

404
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Speaker 1: I'd worked with, he came and played the opposite the

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Speaker 1: character with me, and that was the last thing I said, Well,

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Speaker 1: I I really have to go back to making my

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Speaker 1: own shows. So I worked off off Broadway, and then

408
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Speaker 1: I started work off Broadway and started to create original

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Speaker 1: shows or direct things that existed. It was Broadway, something

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Speaker 1: you wanted to do, something you thought not from it,

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Speaker 1: not for no change. Well, somebody like Tom Schumacher at

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Speaker 1: Disney called me up one day and and I did,

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Speaker 1: and I told you could do what you want. They

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Speaker 1: wanted you to do what you do. That's what they did.

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Speaker 1: They did. They said, do you know the Lion King?

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Speaker 1: And I said, and I said no, I mean I

417
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Speaker 1: hadn't seen the animated film. And that was a nice

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Speaker 1: big laugh at the other end of the telephone because

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Speaker 1: that was weird. And he said, well, I had just

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Speaker 1: done opera in Japan, Odipus Rex in Japan, and I

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Speaker 1: did want dot Agen at You know, I had had

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Speaker 1: shows and I had won awards. It wasn't like I

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Speaker 1: was in some obscure little off off Broadway theater I had.

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Speaker 1: I was doing opera around the world and other kinds

425
00:23:56,520 --> 00:24:00,639
Speaker 1: of theater and Lion King. I look did the movie

426
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: and I went, Wow, how much fun to try and

427
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 1: figure out how to do a stampede on stage that's

428
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: like this. Also, I thought it was thrilling to try

429
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:14,480
Speaker 1: and bring that animal world to the stage. What have

430
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: they seen of yours? Well? One Thienne had won many awards,

431
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: you know, the Uruguay and short story that Elliott Goldenfall

432
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:23,520
Speaker 1: and I had done three times or by that time

433
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: two times, and Toward It which isn't, which is a

434
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: Jaguar tale of transformation. So I'd worked with My work

435
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 1: is in the Disney World, fairy tales, myths, animal legends,

436
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:40,159
Speaker 1: the green birds, it is. It's just my aesthetic is

437
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:42,800
Speaker 1: totally different. And and when I got together with them,

438
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 1: I said, you know my aesthetic, I'm a I'm a sculptor,

439
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 1: plastic artist. I don't wear for using. So when you

440
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: first lay out even the most primary takes on what

441
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: Lion came gonna be on, probably did they kind of

442
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: lean into each othern go they've got to get rid

443
00:24:58,119 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: of her, or they got it? Did they get they did?

444
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: Schumacher got it, Schneider got it. Other people got scared,

445
00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: but not the main people, including Michael Eisner. I made

446
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: one of the first things I made um was the

447
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: thing that we call the gazelle wheel if if you know,

448
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,719
Speaker 1: after eighteen years, maybe some people have seen it, but

449
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: it's it. I used bicycle wheels and the idea was

450
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 1: to create gazelles that would that would leap across. And

451
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:27,880
Speaker 1: I made a model of that, and I had done

452
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: the drawings of the how you would always show the

453
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: humans in the masks, in the bodies, whether it was

454
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: scar or a zebra or the elephants, you'd see the

455
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 1: people in the legs. And so the concept of not

456
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: hiding the human beings, of having the strings and rods exposed.

457
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,800
Speaker 1: I brought my models and my drawings and they got it.

458
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: And there were some people and I can leave them mentionless,

459
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:53,120
Speaker 1: but who didn't get it, and who were very high

460
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: up in Disney but Disney Film, who didn't really know theater.

461
00:25:56,760 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 1: So we did some workshops and everything were and then

462
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: Eisner said the thing that I really love that he said, well,

463
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: let's do your original concept. Let's go back to the

464
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,120
Speaker 1: one that you first presented, where all the doubt happened,

465
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:13,520
Speaker 1: and he didn't doubt, but he wanted to know for sure.

466
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: He said, because the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.

467
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,400
Speaker 1: And I thought, for the head of a company, that

468
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: was a really terrific motto and for them came true

469
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:31,400
Speaker 1: for them, me for that point at that point, yes,

470
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 1: so the But at what point did you sit there

471
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: and say you knew you were onto something in the

472
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,239
Speaker 1: early rehearsals or oh no, right from the you know.

473
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. The big thing that was so exciting

474
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: was the movie had five Elton and Tim songs with Hunts,

475
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: Zimmer and Lebo am doing all the South African stuff

476
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: in mark Manchina. And there was an album that was

477
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: put out at the same time as the movie called

478
00:26:57,119 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 1: Rhythm of the Pride Lands and it was all of

479
00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: the South for in those languages called son Zulu and

480
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:07,919
Speaker 1: you know. And you heard Lebo and the chorus do

481
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 1: all of these songs. And I heard that, and I

482
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:14,200
Speaker 1: said to the to the producers, what if we take

483
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 1: those and make fill out the score with that and

484
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 1: keep it in its original language. And they did it,

485
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 1: and then Lebo came on as a major composer, and

486
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: I wrote some of the lyrics to one of the songs,

487
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 1: but we took those songs and we made them work

488
00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: into the story structure. And people love the visual but

489
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:33,199
Speaker 1: it's the It's the first thing online, King is that

490
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,199
Speaker 1: not's going You know when you hear the chant and

491
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 1: they come down and and it's hard to say why,

492
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: but but that kind of music, that coral, spiritual, chorl

493
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 1: South African singing, gets you as much as any imagery.

494
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,000
Speaker 1: And we knew that right away in the first workshop,

495
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 1: minus visuals. You knew that the story worked and the

496
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: music worked. And even though I think imagery is a

497
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: huge part of it, the book has to work, the

498
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: music has to work, has to be there and work.

499
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: And it did you win the Tony Award for Best

500
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: Director of a Musical, And would you say that After that,

501
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: there was just an onslaught of people wanting you to

502
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: replicate that same kind of a little bit. One of

503
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,400
Speaker 1: the first things I think was Steven Spielberg. I think

504
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: I got an offer to do some kind of children's

505
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: maybe even the Cat in the Hat, I'm not sure,

506
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, sure, if the cat's black. You know,

507
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever it is, but I wanted to

508
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: do Titus. I wanted to do Titus Andronicus, which I

509
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 1: had directed off Broadway before Lion King. And I think

510
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: this is the perverse side of my nature, which is

511
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: I don't like to be put into a box, and

512
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,959
Speaker 1: I like to do something that I've never done before.

513
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 1: I've done Shakespeare, but I wanted to do a feature

514
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: film of Titus, and I wanted to work with the

515
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: best writer in the English language and the best actors

516
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: in the English Tony, Your Tony are Tony. And so

517
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: for me going from Lion King, which is brilliant actors,

518
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, the it's a musical. It's

519
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: broad for families. Uh I was. I really felt that

520
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: at that this point, which is that issue of violence

521
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: in American culture and violence in general, this was what

522
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: was really on my mind, as it was on everybody's minds.

523
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:25,960
Speaker 1: There was the Columbine, there was the Menendez brothers. I

524
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: remember very much feeling that that this we're coming to

525
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 1: the end of what is it, the twentieth century and

526
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: lo and behold, but nothing has changed, has just gotten worse.

527
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: But there was an idealism at the time that if

528
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: you take this incredible play of Shakespeare's which is the

529
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 1: best dissertation on violence ever written, ever written. It's astounding.

530
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 1: And try and tell that story. You know that that

531
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 1: really had meaning for me. And then Hopkins saw Lion King.

532
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 1: I mean, this is interesting. He saw Lion King. I I.

533
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: I had done workshops with Gino on doing it, but

534
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: he never committed, you know, al so he would never commit.

535
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: And finally I had the money, whether it was Pacino

536
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: or somebody else, didn't have to be Puccino. And I

537
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: called up Tony hopt where we found Tony Hopkins, and

538
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 1: he said, well, let's have a meeting. And three hours

539
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: after the meeting, I get it. He says, okay. I

540
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: got a message when I come back to New York

541
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: and said, well, we don't have to make a decision

542
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: right away. He said, no, no, let's do it. He

543
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: liked that he saw a director in line. He liked

544
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: that there was a person with a concept and that

545
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: I had an idea about I had done the play.

546
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 1: So he signed on. And then I got Jessica Lang

547
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: and Alan Cummings and Harry Lennox and Matthew Reason, Jonathan

548
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 1: re Smyers and all these fabulous actors to do it.

549
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: It was it was the right thing for me to do.

550
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: Maybe not commercially, but so what you know, have you

551
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: struggled with that about movie abdicating commerciality? Have you ever thought, oh,

552
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: I'll go do that to make a living. Well, I

553
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: make a them. No, I'm well aware of them. But

554
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: in terms of do you just sit there and say

555
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: you can make more of a living? Do you get

556
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 1: not about making a living for me? It's about being

557
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: able to do the films I want and period. Yeah,

558
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: that's what governs everything or theater or opera, Yes, completely,

559
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: because I make a good enough living with Lion King,

560
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: so I don't have to do it to make a living.

561
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:22,959
Speaker 1: I have tremendous freedom. Is the greatest boon that an

562
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: artist can have is to make that choice of the

563
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: kind of work. So I can do an opera here,

564
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 1: I can do a one woman show at the public

565
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: theater like with Anne Hathaway this This Spring, which I

566
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 1: love doing. Uh, the movies I want to make, run

567
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: the Gamut and something like Frieda was very successful, didn't

568
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: cost very much and made a lot of money compared

569
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: to what it costs. But then I've done three Shakespeare

570
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: films and If you don't have money to promote shape

571
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: any movie. If you don't spend money in advertising and promotion,

572
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: no movie will do well. That's a wonderful place to

573
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: be to have. Uh. I mean, obviously, you direct a

574
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: Broadway show, and there are like my friend Walter Bobby

575
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,959
Speaker 1: who did Chicago, and like Mantella with Wicked, and on

576
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: and on many other people throughout history who the royalties

577
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,880
Speaker 1: give them some great reward. And it seems that you've

578
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: done amazing things with that freedom that you've had. You

579
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: really have done what you wanted to do. Or a

580
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: lot of other people have this condition where they're told, well,

581
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: now you can do whatever you want to do, and

582
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: they don't know what they wanted to know. Yeah, it's

583
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: just that I have projects that I'm still twenty years

584
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: trying to do. There that's when we started this conversation.

585
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: I have a movie that's still after all this time.

586
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: If I don't get quote the A list actor two

587
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: of them at the top, I can't get the money.

588
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: Because some of the movies I want to make, they

589
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 1: their magical realism. They combine realism with fantasy. There's visual effects.

590
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: It's not a ten million dollar film. It's more like

591
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 1: five and that that that what do you call it?

592
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: But those million dollar films don't exist very much anymore.

593
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: It's the five million dollar film and the two exactly

594
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: and the two million. Rarely do women get offered that

595
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: you know? And even the men, if you just again

596
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: not naming names, there's a couple you see that they

597
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: hire men that even have no experience that because everybody

598
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: thinks they can make those big comic book movies by

599
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 1: wrote or there's you know, they'd rather not have someone

600
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: who's too much of an autour director doing it. I'm

601
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: assuming you've done projects it didn't always go the way

602
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: you wanted them to go. And when they didn't go

603
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: the way you wanted them to go, did you sense

604
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: it right up in the beginning If that's interesting, Yes,

605
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: that's interesting. No, if you know it right at the beginning,

606
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 1: you'd get out, wouldn't you? Maybe maybe not? Like for actors,

607
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 1: the condition is like booking a ticket on a train.

608
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to work now. I've told myself,

609
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: my wife, my family, in my life October fift we

610
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 1: set sail, and all of a sudden we going we

611
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: do it, and I go, oh, this is not. There's

612
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 1: an iceberg here in the harbor. I think we're going

613
00:33:57,600 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 1: to hit that iceberg. We should turn around. They're like, no,

614
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 1: we're not turning. You can't turn around. It's not up

615
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 1: to you to turn around. I don't think. I think

616
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: a lot of these you can't. You're right, you can't

617
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 1: turn around. So but I think, you know, in these

618
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,400
Speaker 1: projects that take so long to develop, there are points

619
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: where you where you should where you could if you knew.

620
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,439
Speaker 1: And I won't do anything if I don't really love

621
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, you know, I mean I Lion King

622
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: taught me that you don't condescend to your audience, that

623
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: you don't patronize your audience, that you can still be

624
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: the artist or do the things you want to do

625
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 1: and reach a wide audience. It's proven it's possible take

626
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:33,799
Speaker 1: people to a place they didn't know they wanted to go.

627
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: That's a tricky where where you have. Most producers say,

628
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: give the audience what they want. My my raison detre

629
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: is not that if you give them what they want,

630
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: you're going to be bored doing it because you've already

631
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: seen it, They've done it, they know it. I'm going

632
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: to be investing minimum of two years in any film.

633
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: As a director, you've got to feel excited every day

634
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: going to work, right you have to do you know,

635
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: do you go to the theater and watch TV and

636
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:02,879
Speaker 1: go to the movies? What entertainment for you? Privately? All

637
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: of them? All of them? I mean, it's oh god,

638
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: I I watched Breaking Bad like mentally at this one

639
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: my favorite. I've watched them What's the Downtown Abbey until it?

640
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 1: Until it sort of didn't interest me as much anymore.

641
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 1: But I that those forms. I've got two projects for

642
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: television that are in development, you know, will take a

643
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:24,839
Speaker 1: long time. But I have too that I'm working on

644
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: with a writer, and I'm gonna do Grendel hopefully is

645
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: an opera film. One dot An we're talking about is

646
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: the film These are the non commercial you know, the

647
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: word art film. That's such a bad word, isn't it.

648
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: Shouldn't all films be art films? Shouldn't they all be

649
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: artfully done? This is the big This is the conundrum

650
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 1: that I have because they make art into a bad word.

651
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 1: Means you don't make money on it. That's what art means.

652
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: Whereas any film I do, whether it's a big, huge

653
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: one like Across the Universe was a big film or not?

654
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 1: You hope you're doing it artfully. Who produced Across the Universe? Well,

655
00:35:57,920 --> 00:35:59,800
Speaker 1: that was Joe Roth and Revolution and we did you

656
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: calaborate with any of the surviving Beatles and that at all?

657
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:03,920
Speaker 1: Or now they weren't a part of it. I wish

658
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: they had been. I did meet. I sat next to

659
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:10,240
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney watching the movie in London. I was so thrilling.

660
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 1: I he's right when Jude sings oh My Love and hit,

661
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: I could hear McCartney singing under under his breath and

662
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 1: I died because I was twelve or something when that happened.

663
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: And um I met with Yoko up in her apartment

664
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,399
Speaker 1: with the white piano and Olivia Harrison. I didn't meet

665
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: with Ringo, but I wanted their approval when we finished it.

666
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: Even though they don't own the rights to their own music.

667
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: It's strange, but I am trying to do that on stage.

668
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,919
Speaker 1: Who owns the rights to their music? Sony a TV.

669
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: So when we get those worked out, I would love

670
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: to do it on the stage because we rehearsed it

671
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: like we were doing a real musical. When we did

672
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: the movie and if in Korea. You know, I put

673
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 1: the choreography back in that. I really didn't do much

674
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: choreography in the movie because I wanted it more real.

675
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that I really want to do.

676
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: And uh, and then these TV things and then this

677
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:07,479
Speaker 1: beautiful movie called Writers on the Storm, although we'll probably

678
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: have to change the title, which is an updating of

679
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:13,640
Speaker 1: the Flying Dutchman and it takes that that myth. That's

680
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 1: something I'd love to do, take the myth of the

681
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: Dutchman and bring it into the present. And it takes

682
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: place in newportant New Bedford. I love story, kind of

683
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 1: action love story. And this is the one where I

684
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: was mentioning, Okay, but I have great actors, the greatest

685
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: actors for these two leads, and for me, it's more

686
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: exciting that they aren't household. Well one is sort of

687
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: but you know that's thrilling because then you can believe it.

688
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: You know, it's fantastic. But but it's this this number

689
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: that I'm dealing with, the number can we get it

690
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: down to fifteen? And going yeah, But then it doesn't

691
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: have sailing scenes that are of the eighteen hundreds mixed

692
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: with the present, and you know, somehow, in spite of

693
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:54,560
Speaker 1: these limitations, because what you try to do is such

694
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: a rich meal, you prevail. You find a way. I

695
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:02,239
Speaker 1: guess you find a way. You'll find a way, don't you. Yeah,

696
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:10,320
Speaker 1: I hope so, I have no doubt. We'll see Julie

697
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: Taymor's The Flying Dutchman in our sites. In the future.

698
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: You can see her film version of A Midsummer Night's

699
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: Dream in select theaters in the US and the UK.

700
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to hear? Is the

701
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:23,919
Speaker 1: thing