I wrote about you
couple years ago for the time so I pointed out that you've made every
conceivable kind of movie there is you made you've made a western United boxing
movie you've made some romantic comedies you made a fire fighting movie of me to
space epic probably last summer and you made to Dan Brown thrillers and and I
and what I said at the end of my my piece was that that having exhausted all
the major Jean Wright you were now in to sub jobs last movie rush was a car
racing film had made one of those for a long time and now you're new movie NRC
is a whaling picture will have to Wheeling picture for fifty you well I
don't wanna make a movie that's just like something else that somebody saw a
month ago and and are always looking for for movies as more more today than ever
that demand to be seen on the big screen on the big screen again transport
audiences in
in in in interesting ways and this particular story that was a very
ambitious one but I feel like audiences you know they deserve our ambition when
I saw this movie a couple weeks ago I realized that one reason people don't
make willing pictures as much as much as perhaps they should really hard I think
this is probably the most complicated movie that i've i've made and I was very
grateful for you know all my past experiences that I I could you know that
I could I could I could apply unfortunately you know every movie is
kind of its own animal it takes on its own set of of of of factors and and and
challenges and so in some way you know you always feel like you're starting
over and put it to good news I we say it's the median that cannot be mastered
and that's that's the good news so are you a boat guy no no no I i I know when
I was a kid I was kind of phobic about the ocean and I alt alt why you know I
was a kid actor was an engraver show and things like that and I would but I would
also do in the offseason ankle height as I would sometimes appear on other TV
shows and one of them was route 66 team member route 66 two guys and a Corvette
saw him driving from town to town and solving people's problems and 11 at one
of the problems they were trying to solve involved
a some sort of boat that was catching sharks and I don't know doing some
medical research or something and and so I was forced to play the scientists Sun
was out on the boat I don't know how but somehow I i guess i posed to have fallen
overboard so we were shooting out the Pacific Ocean and I i could swim I never
a different swimming in the ocean and came time for me to have to sort of jump
in there so my dad was there
supervising the whole thing but I jumped in under water opened my eyes oh my god
that scared the hell out of me I just couldn't see anything else I could see
it was dark and scary and I popped up and started screaming and dad fortune I
had a dead in the show because I get one line of dialogue with me screaming my
dad and the stunt people jumped in and pulled me out is scripted and of course
the director so that was good we need to do it again so I did it again second
time's a little easier and I was kinda proud of myself but within minutes after
I was on Dec dried off as a lot of scurrying around and there were a lot of
excitement and they said okay this is gonna be great we can use it for all
cameras and they actually caught a real shark right there where I'd been in the
water and big guy do and so honestly I i really didn't like the idea of being the
ocean you said earlier that you know all movies are hard and they present their
own challenges but I'm I'm imagining that that filming on board a ship and
most of the state is just got it raised the level of difficulty
immense fact was entirely antithetical to what you try to do when you're you
know when your staging scenes and and making a movie you know even if it's
supposed to look spontaneous and naturalistic even if you're using
natural light environment you know you're actually trying to control things
as best you can
stages and you know achieved these particular very particular objectives
and you know it's really hard to do in the ocean and if you if you think if you
go at it with that in mind you're you're you're gonna be stymied is going to be
very expensive and you're in and you're also not going to achieve your goals
the interesting thing about the movie is is that you don't shy away from unlike
say the Gregory Peck movie the Chinese to movie you don't romanticize me
wailing as a cave said this before you come away from this movie knowing the
wailing as a kind of grimy business well it's you know I mean it it it it was
brutal and I while I wanted the movie to begin on a kind of romantic no more from
the boys point of view I Q is often the adventure of his life and I kind of shot
it that way and played it that way with a little a little flair and and a sense
of fun and and and the first whale hunt you know that that changes and it's
really through his eyes we begin to see that you know the truth the truth of
this brutality of it and you know I felt it was important to to reflect that I'd
certainly on a political level i mean I'm not interested in trying to
romanticize whaling then or now but I also wanted to look at it in a
clear-eyed wait say this you know this is this is how this is how it worked
then this is what this is what they did and then when the whale attacks you know
it's not the shark in Jaws it's actually I like to say it's kinda like King Kong
you know it's it's a force of nature body giant
mammoth creature so what then switch to you i mean to act and to directing you
made this choice i mean you could probably still be an actor today right
be playing the grand dad on some stay calm when did you start getting
interested in directing and why did you decide to make the switch
well you know i I did watch my dad directing plays a lot and I and i never
directed film or TV but it's also a writer for The Flintstones and other TV
shows as well as acting and some of the most of the directors on The Andy
Griffith Show had been actors so I began to see that there was some sort of path
I loved everything about being around the set I was fascinated by the camera
stuff I was interested in the writing was a very collaborative and a collegial
relaxed environment and yet there is this kind of professionalism and focus
is well on that show led by led by Andy and the New York Times paying that show
every year
little revenge for and I don't think I've ever really had the performers
personality and and and and literally was eight years old and people would say
what you want to do when you grow up I would say I want to be an actor writer
producer director cameraman and baseball player and I thought it could be a
seasonal thing and and and by the time I was in my teens I just assuming a real
recalling and I fell in love with movies in the sixties kind of the Graduate made
me understand that movies could be this kind I've experienced it can just reach
you in a way that nothing ever had before and it was a great hero with with
rallies Romeo and Juliet and you know Norman Jewison this in the heat of the
night and Bonnie and Clyde Arthur Penn unbelievable American movies really
wasn't that great you know a transformation in cinema at that time I
got the feeling from talking to you you made russia now and I'm getting it again
that partly it's the challenge of these just precisely because rush was hard to
make their yard in the logistics how hard the filming you know you figure in
new way to fill McCrory's which can be the most boring thing on earth and then
the same thing here it's a you get off on doing well it's tough
yeah that that's not the compelling reason but I also I also like the fact
that I'm experienced enough and and and just just fearless enough to to not let
those things those challenges stand the way of a story that i think is
interesting and so you know I i'm got got a lot of experience behind me and a
lot of energy to tackle these things and so while that while that all that
combination exists in this body you know I want to take advantage of it