Film critic John Powers

DATE July 26, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Wes Anderson discusses his new film "The Royal
Tenenbaums"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

One of the best movies of 2001 has just come out on video and DVD, "The Royal
Tenenbaums." It appeared on a lot of critic's 2001 10-best lists. Wes
Anderson directed and co-wrote the film. Anderson also made the films "Bottle
Rocket" and "Rushmore."

We're going to listen back to the interview I recorded last September--last
December, that is, when "The Royal Tenenbaums" was released. It's a comedy
about a dysfunctional family of geniuses. Royal Tenenbaum, played by Gene
Hackman, and his wife, Etheline, played by Anjelica Huston, separated when
their children were young. Royal is part-businessman, part-con man. He's run
a lot of emotional swindles on his family. He's never accepted his adopted
daughter as an authentic member of the family.

The three Tenenbaum kids were child geniuses, but when they grew up, they were
each stunted by family disasters and betrayals. The grown-up children are
played by Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson. In this scene, the
father, Royal, is broke. He owes so much money to the luxury hotel he's been
living in that he's been evicted. Having no place to go, he tries to return
to the Tenenbaum home, where he knows he will not be welcome. So he needs a
scheme. He tells the family he's dying of cancer and wants to reconcile.

(Soundbite of "The Royal Tenenbaums")

Mr. GENE HACKMAN: (As Royal Tenenbaum) I've missed the hell out of you, my
darlings. Well, you know, that, though, don't you?

Ms. ANJELICA HUSTON: I hear you're dying.

Mr. HACKMAN: So they tell me.

Ms. HUSTON: I'm sorry.

Mr. HACKMAN: Well, I've had a good run.

Mr. LUKE WILSON: (As Richie) You don't look so sick, Dad.

Mr. HACKMAN: Thank you.

Mr. WILSON: What have you got?

Mr. HACKMAN: I got a pretty bad case of cancer.

Mr. BEN STILLER: (As Chas) (Yawns) How long are you going to last?

Mr. HACKMAN: Not long.

(Soundbite of pages turning)

Mr. STILLER: A month, a year?

Mr. HACKMAN: About six weeks. Let me get to the point. The three of you
and your mother are all I've got, and I love you more than anything.

Mr. STILLER: Ho-ho. Ho-oh.

Mr. HACKMAN: Chas, let me finish here.

(Soundbite of Chas making a noise with his lips)

Mr. HACKMAN: I've got six weeks to set things right with you, and I aim to
do it. Will you give me a chance?

Mr. STILLER: No.

Mr. HACKMAN: Do you speak for everyone?

Mr. STILLER: I speak for myself.

Mr. HACKMAN: Well, you've made your views known. Let somebody else do some
of the talking now.

Ms. GWYNETH PALTROW: What do you propose to do?

Mr. HACKMAN: I can't say really. Make up for lost time, I suppose. The
first thing I want to do is take you out to see your grandmother at some
point.

Mr. WILSON: I haven't been out there since I was six.

Ms. PALTROW: I've never been out there at all. I was never invited.

Mr. HACKMAN: Well, she wasn't your real grandmother, and I never knew how
much interest you had, sweetie. Anyway, you're invited now.

Ms. PALTROW: Thanks.

GROSS: You know, dysfunctional family is probably the most common subject now
in contemporary fiction and in a lot of movies. What made you think that you
could take on the subject and still have something else to say? It seems like
so much has already been said.

Mr. WES ANDERSON (Director, "The Royal Tenenbaums"): Yeah. Well, you know,
initially, my writing partner, Owen Wilson, and I--he'd always been
encouraging me to write about my parents' divorce. He always thought there
was something there that would be a good basis for something. And so that's
what I thought we were doing. But the more we worked on the script, the less
it had anything to do with my family or my parents' divorce, and the more it
was sort of invented and the more dysfunctional it became. It kind of just
went off on its own.

So I sort of feel like--as we developed it, we invented a lot of new things
and then it kind of started to find its way back to people that we knew, and
little bits of things from real life. But it was sort of, like, when it
became not about my family, that it started to get really severe.

GROSS: Well, there is a line I particularity liked about divorce in the
movie, when Gene Hackman is explaining to the three children that he and his
wife are separating, that the parents are separating. One of the kids says,
`Daddy, is it our fault?' And he says, `Well, it's true we did have to make
many sacrifices to have you children.'

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah, the worse thing. An honest answer is probably a terrible
idea under those situations.

GROSS: Did you pop the question and get an answer like that when your parents
were divorcing?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, that's funny, because that scene--there's a scene, you
know, where they're talking to their father about are they going to split up,
and that's a real scene that my--you know, I have two brothers and the three
of us had this conversation with our father. But none of the fathers' answers
are anything like what my father said. Every answer that the Gene Hackman
character gives is the truth, which has got to be highly destructive for the
children.

GROSS: So your father gave you the right answers.

Mr. ANDERSON: He gave us the right answers, yeah.

GROSS: Each of the children in the Tenenbaum family has a certain look that
they stick with through all or most of the movie. I'd like you to choose a
couple of characters and talk about the look that you gave them and why.

Mr. ANDERSON: Mm-hmm. Well, one thing in the story is that they're all sort
of stuck emotionally in the same place where they were 20 years ago, and
they're also stuck in terms of the clothes that they wear and the way their
rooms look and everything. It's all sort of just cemented in about 1978.

So the tennis player that Luke Wilson plays, Richie, is--you know, he wears a
headband for the whole movie. He always look like he's just about to head out
to the courts, even though he hasn't picked up a racket in six years or
something. And his whole look is sort of modeled on Bjorn Borg in the late
'70s.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. ANDERSON: And then, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow--her character sort of
wears one of these, like, fourth-grader Lacoste dresses that looks like a big
shirt and a mink coat. I don't know why those go together, but somehow they
seem to--and penny loafers.

And, you know, Ben Stiller goes through the whole movie in a red Adidas
warm-up identical to the ones worn by his two sons. And I think the idea for
that--I was just sort of thinking they could always spot each other in a
crowd. It's, like, for safety purposes. He's obsessed with their safety.
So...

GROSS: Because his wife died in a plane crash.

Mr. ANDERSON: Right.

GROSS: Then there's the boy next door who desperately wants to be part of the
Tenenbaum family, and is always showing up at the door when he is a child.
The grownup version of this character is played by Owen Wilson, who's also
your screenwriting partner for the film. Are you familiar with this kind of
character, or is this kind of character based on you? Did you--was there a
family in your life that you really envied because they had such, like, an
interesting house and interesting parents...

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: ...and creative siblings?

Mr. ANDERSON: You know, very much. I mean, as much as sort of devoted as I
am to my own family, I do remember a series of families over the years that I
was always trying to get myself adopted into because of the things that were
going on in their houses. And that's definitely where this Eli Cash character
that Owen plays comes from.

That's actually a good example of what's invented in the movie and what comes
from real life, and hopefully kind of how we rely on both of those things.
Because the character that he plays is initially this sort of concoction of a
kind of Cormac McCarthy, but it--it would be like Cormac McCarthy if he was
living in New York and going out to cocktail parties every night. And he's a
Western novelist, but I think he wouldn't be very comfortable on horseback,
you know. And I think his fringed leather jackets are custom-made, probably
in LA. But the real kind of heart of that character has to do with him
growing up, you know, across the street from this family that he really wanted
to be a part of, and his kind of longing to be one of them.

GROSS: Wes Anderson is my guest. He directed and co-wrote "The Royal
Tenenbaum."

The story of "The Royal Tenenbaums" is set in New York, but it's an idealized
version of the city, and all the landmarks are fake. Instead of the 92nd
Street Y, there's the 375th Street Y. I don't think there even is a 375th
Street anywhere.

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah. I think the 375th Street Y would probably be in
Yonkers.

GROSS: Right. Right. Why did you want to shoot in New York, but have a kind
of fake version of New York that you were operating with?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, you know, one thing that was--one of the--my sort of
initial thoughts about it--often I kind of am thinking about the setting
before much of anything else. And I just had this idea of this sort of
exaggerated version of New York, and I feel like--you know, which is just fun
to make up all the details to the place. But, also, I feel like it sort of
creates a setting where the kind of unusual behavior of the characters can
seem appropriate somehow, because the setting is so exaggerated and is a
little bit unreal.

GROSS: And why did you set your movie in New York?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, because I've always had this sort of semiobsession with
New York, and all the things that I felt like it represented. You know,
having to do--a lot of which came from The New Yorker magazine, which was my
consistent exposure to New York, you know, all through high school. And I
always felt like it seemed like people were up to so many different things
around the city. All these people had their own little projects. And that's
kind of what the movie is partly about, I think. And then I live there now,
so it's--you know, it's kind of a big thing for me.

GROSS: In your movie, "The Royal Tenenbaums," the family lives in, well, this
almost mansion in New York. It's an old building with a turret. I think
you'd call that a turret, the rounded...

Mr. ANDERSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah. With a flag on the top.

GROSS: Yeah. Now I read about you as a kid. You used to draw pictures of
dream mansions that you would have liked to live in. How did you get that
sense of place, that sense of interest in mansions?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, you know, for a little while, I wanted to be an
architect. But along with being interested in buildings, I was also, for a
period of time, I'm embarrassed to say that I was obsessed with being rich. I
was interested in limousines and I was interested in mansions and I was
interested in the fanciest restaurants. And it was like a James Bond kind of
thing that I was really drawn to. I wanted to learn how to play baccarat.
And so I think between the ages of about eight and 12 or something, that was
what I was reading about.

GROSS: My guest is Wes Anderson. He directed and co-wrote the movie "The
Royal Tenenbaums." It just came out on video and DVD. More after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our interview with Wes Anderson. He directed and
co-wrote the film "The Royal Tenenbaums." It just came out on video and DVD.

I want to ask you something about the pacing of the movie. Early on in "The
Royal Tenenbaums," you're just finding out detail after detail about each of
the children in the family. And there are so many, like, sight gags and
verbal jokes, and it's just one laugh after another. And the plot isn't
necessarily advancing, but the character detail is. And at some point, you're
wondering when is this going to slow down and the real story will evolve, and
at about that point, it slows down and the story evolves. And I'm just
wondering if you could talk a little bit about pacing the film...

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah. Well...

GROSS: ...and what you had to figure out with that.

Mr. ANDERSON: Right. I was always a little worried because it does--we do
spend quite a bit of time on--basically what happens is we give this whole
story of the family history. Then we introduce each character today; and
there are eight main characters, and we introduce them very--in the bluntest
way you can. We show an image of them with the name of the character and the
name of the actor and we go on to the next one. Then we go to the present.
You know, we revisit each in the present and a narrator kind of walks us
through where they are now. So we end up doing kind of three tours through
all the characters, and it takes up the entire first reel of the movie. And I
was always worried, can we do this, can we spend this much time laying the
groundwork. But I was also worried that if we didn't, it would just be
completely confusing because there's so many characters, and what they're up
to is not really very familiar territory. But we were very conscious of that,
once that was done we needed to get right into the story. It just--may
require some patience.

GROSS: The song that really stands out, that you used in your previous movie,
"Rushmore," was "A Summer Song" by Chad & Jeremy. Talk about how you chose
the records that you use in the background for "The Royal Tenenbaums."

Mr. ANDERSON: Right. Well, for me, the songs are always a part of the
writing process. When we were doing "Rushmore," I had this idea of British
Invasion, and I just listened to lots of that. And I had some favorites that
I liked. There was a song called "Making Time" by a band called The Creation
that almost became like sort of the theme of the movie, I think. And it sort
of led me into this whole British Invasion thing. And the new movie, I felt
like--there was a song by Nico. They were written by Jackson Brown, but sung
by Nico, and there was also this Ravel string quartet in F major. These two
pieces of music I had from the beginning, and somehow I felt like there was
something kind of half Scott Fitzgerald and half Velvet Underground that was
going to be the sort of sound of the movie. And in a way, it almost
influenced the way the movie looks, I think, because when you're outside in
the movie, it's a little bit like sort of '70s New York. There's a lot of
graffiti and stuff, and it's kind of like "The French Connection" or "The
Warriors" period of New York. But the rooms inside feel like maybe they're
more like the '30s or something. I don't know what. So I feel like that sort
of came out of the mixture of music. And there is something, to me, sort of
New York about a lot of the music, you know, even though there's Beatles and
there's Van Morrison, there's something about the feeling of these songs that
makes me think of New York.

GROSS: You have some great actors in "The Royal Tenenbaums," and Gene
Hackman's at the center of the movie. And he's just so much fun to watch. I
know you worked really hard to convince him to star in the film. What did you
learn about how he works?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, I think he's quite different in his approach to a scene
from anybody else I've worked with. There's something about him where he
wants to be--he's very prepared when he arrives to do a scene, but he somehow
manages to make it completely spontaneous as soon as he launches into it. And
I don't think he really knows what he just did after he finishes a take. He
somehow manages to sort of take all this preparation and then just block it
out and just dive into the scene. So whenever you're starting a scene with
him, there's this real feeling of his attack to it and this energy that he
brings to it. And really, it's very different from other actors that I've
worked with, although a lot of actors which I enjoy also is, you know, people
who want to discuss it and think about it and want to try some different
approaches. He likes to figure it out and then just launch right into it.
And, you know, what I really think he likes to do is to be great on the first
take and just immediately, you know, grab ahold of it.

GROSS: You've worked with Owen Wilson on your three movies. He's co-written
them and he's starred in two of them. How did you meet?

Mr. ANDERSON: Owen and I met--we went to school together in Austin, and we
had a play-writing class together. We didn't actually meet in the
play-writing class. We were in this class together with about five other
people, but we were both sort of non-participants in the room. Owen would
just sit in the corner reading the newspaper and I sat in the other corner. I
think I was trying to write something during the class. But neither of us
really quite joined in, but I think we recognized each other as, you know,
kindred spirits or something. And then we met, you know, shortly after that,
and I think I met him in the halls. He asked me about which creative writing
class he ought to take. And he acted like we already knew each other, so I,
you know, acted like we already knew each other, too.

GROSS: Has it been interesting to know each other for so long and both end up
with pretty successful careers?

Mr. ANDERSON: It's--you know, I think we've been really lucky to have each
other as we kind of figure out all this movie stuff because I think it can be
pretty easy to lose your bearings a little bit. And, you know, I feel like
the Coen Brothers. Those guys seem so secure in their whole approach to
movies, and they seem just to bear it like--and I feel like the two of them
going through all the stuff together have really helped to keep each other
quite focused and sort of on track. And I feel like, you know, I'm glad to
have had Owen and Luke also, just so we could sort of guide each other a
little bit.

GROSS: Your movie has a kind of generosity of spirit, even though it's a
comedy about a dysfunctional family and everybody's totally screwed up.
There's a spirit of forgiveness finally and a sense that the good of family
can really outweigh the bad. Is it as easy for you to feel as generous in
real life both about family and about people maybe within the family who
you've had to forgive?

Mr. ANDERSON: Well, I don't feel like I've had--my experience is it was a
family not really like the one in the movie, so I don't really feel that.
Well, I don't know. I guess everybody has a certain amount of that stuff.
You know, what I feel like is that the movies that we make--I'm drawn to some
kind of optimism or something about the characters, and I want to have an
affection for the characters. And I also feel like we're drawn to characters
that are very flawed and capable of very questionable behavior. But somehow I
always feel like I don't want to have bad guys, and I don't know exactly how
that relates to how I feel in real life, but--I don't know. That's the kind
of movie that I'm drawn to.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. ANDERSON: Yeah, of course. Thank you.

GROSS: Wes Anderson directed and co-wrote the film "The Royal Tenenbaums."
It's just been released on video and DVD. Our interview was recorded in
December, when the movie was released theatrically.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New CD by Wayne Shorter
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Saxophonist Wayne Shorter was a key figure in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and
the Miles Davis Quintet in the 1960s, and in the electric band Weather Report
in the '70s and '80s. He's also one of the most influential composers in
modern jazz. He made few records in the '90s, but last year he put together a
new quartet and took it out on the road, where they recorded a new CD. Jazz
critic Kevin Whitehead says it's a big step in the right direction.

(Soundbite of "Masquelero")

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

Wayne Shorter's "Masquelero." Like most tunes on his new CD, "Footprints
Live!," he wrote it in the 1960s, and like a couple of the others, he wrote it
for Miles Davis. The memory of Miles' '60s quintet hangs heavy over this
music, like a lot of modern jazz. For some musicians, Miles' band was the end
of jazz history. They stretched timing and harmony and the polyrhythmic
interplay so far, it's been hard to figure out how to top it. In the 1980s,
it was a template for Wynton Marsalis' quintet and umpteen other young bands.
And Miles' sidemen have drawn on that model for their own groups.

Shorter was its most important and imitated composer. He knows jazz harmony
the way a chess master knows the board, but he also has a knack for writing
simple tunes that open up possibilities for improvisers. Here's his new band
on his classic "Footprints."

(Soundbite of "Footprints")

WHITEHEAD: Wayne Shorter with his most sympathetic new ally, Panama-born
pianist Banilo Perez. Brian Blade is on drums, and John Patitucci on bass.
"Footprints Live!" is Shorter's best album in 30 years, which would be more
impressive if he hadn't wasted so much of that time on fly-weight stuff, like
the electric band "Weather Report." And for decades now he's played the
squealy little soprano sax more than his beefy tenor. But he favors the big
horn these days, sounding and looking remarkably like his old self. Shorter
thinks like a composer when he improvises; you get ideas more than licks. And
he has a rare ability to edit those ideas on the fly. He makes fewer notes
count for more by placing them right.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Given Shorter's sense of economy, it figures he doesn't hog the
solo space as much as you'd wish. His new band knows his music and is ready
for anything, but in their enthusiasm they can overdo it. "Footprints Live!"
was recorded on the jazz festival circuit last summer. Where musicians play
huge venues full of fans jaded by hearing too much jazz in one day, they can
be tempted toward a little arena rock showboating.

(Soundbite of music)

WHITEHEAD: Public adulation may not encourage musicians to improvise
responsibly, but it does create a demand for the quartet's services, which
gives them a chance to grow. Since the players are all too busy to rehearse,
the only place they get to develop is on the bandstand. This summer they're
back on the trail, getting in plenty of practice.

Now Miles Davis didn't rehearse when Wayne Shorter was in his road band,
either, and they turned out OK. So here's hoping this group stays together
long enough to really hit its stride.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for the Chicago Reader and the Chicago
Sun-Times. He reviewed "Footprints Live!" by saxophonist and composer Wayne
Shorter.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, film producer Robert Evans talks about making "The
Godfather" and "Chinatown." He's the subject of the new documentary "The Kid
Stays in the Picture." This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Robert Evans discusses his career as a movie producer,
which included such films as "The Godfather" and "Chinatown"
TERRY GROSS, host:

"Love Story," "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown," and "The Godfather," parts one
and two, were produced by Robert Evans. As the head of production at
Paramount, he used to be one of Hollywood's greatest power brokers, but he
lost his power and his money when he made "The Cotton Club." Not only were
there serious behind-the-scenes problems with the film, but one of the
potential backers Evans brought on was murdered. Evans was loosely
implicated, but never charged, and he was having cocaine problems. He was
forced out of Paramount. But he returned in 1992.

The new documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture" tells the story of his rise
and fall. It's based on his 1994 memoir. I spoke to him when the book was
published. We talked about a couple of the films he produced, starting with
"The Godfather." Let's hear a scene from near the end of the film. After
killing the heads of the five rival Mafia families, Michael Corleone returns
to the family compound to finish one last piece of business with his
brother-in-law Carlo.

(Soundbite of "The Godfather")

Mr. AL PACINO: (As Michael Corleone) You have to answer for Santino, Carlo.

Mr. GIANNI RUSSO: (As Carlo) Mike, you got it all wrong.

Mr. PACINO: You fingered Sonny for the Barzini people. Ah, that little
farce you played with my sister, you think that could fool a Corleone?

Mr. RUSSO: Mike, I'm innocent. I swear on the kids, Mike. Please, Mike,
don't do this to me.

Mr. PACINO: Sit down there.

Mr. RUSSO: Don't do this to me, please.

Mr. PACINO: Barzini's dead. So is Philip Tattaglia, Moe Greene,
Stratchi(ph), Cuneo. Today I settle all family business, so don't tell me
you're innocent, Carlo. Admit what you did. Give him a drink. Come on,
don't be afraid, Carlo. Come on, you think I'd make my sister a widow? I'm
godfather to your son, Carlo. Go ahead, drink. Drink.

GROSS: Robert Evans told me how he got to produce "The Godfather."

Mr. ROBERT EVANS (Producer): I met Mario Puzo as a favor through a literary
agent friend of mine named George Weizer(ph), And he needed money to pay off
the bookies, actually. And he had this treatment called "Mafia"; it was 60
pages and said the word `Mafia' had never been used before it was found in the
Kefauver Committee. And I was always interested in that kind of a movie, so I
gave him 12,000 just to write a treatment called "Mafia," and that treatment
called "Mafia" turned into being the novel "The Godfather." And we owned the
novel for very, very little money because I put up the money for a treatment,
and even after he owned--and he owned it for next to nothing--they still
didn't want to make the picture at Paramount because too many people said a
Mafia picture had never been successful, anything about `the organization,' as
it was called before the Mafia. And there had never been one successful film
made about the Mafia before that, and they wanted me to sell it. And I
refused to do it, and we found the reason why there had been no successful
Mafia films: because they had been made by Jews and not Italians.

GROSS: Did you think that was the secret?

Mr. EVANS: It must have been, because we had made one two years before with
Kirk Douglas. It was directed by Marty Ritt, written by Bill Sternberg,
starred Luther Adler and Susan Strasberg and Kirk Douglas, all written and
directed and produced by Jewish people. And there's a thin line between a Jew
and a Sicilian, and I thought that made the difference. And that's why we
gave Francis Coppola his assignment to do it, and by record he had only made
three unsuccessful films before that, "Finian's Rainbow," "You're a Big Boy
Now" and "Rain People."

GROSS: I should point...

Mr. EVANS: And when I hired Francis to do it, everyone thought I'd lose my
job over it.

GROSS: I should point out you're Jewish.

Mr. EVANS: Yes, I am.

GROSS: So it's really kind of interesting that you would take a stand that it
had to be an Italian.

Mr. EVANS: Well, yes, because--and I was right in taking that stand. If I
would have done it, I most probably wouldn't have made it the same way.

GROSS: Now several directors...

Mr. EVANS: I wanted to smell the spaghetti, Terry.

GROSS: Several directors turned down "The Godfather," Costa-Gavras, Elia
Kazan, Arthur Penn. Not Italians.

Mr. EVANS: That's right. Larry Peerce.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. EVANS: No Italians. There hadn't been a second-generation Italian
director in Hollywood at the time, as a matter of fact. It was pre-Martin
Scorsese and other Italian directors. And Francis was the only
second-generation Italian working in films at the time, and that's how he got
the nod.

GROSS: That's how he got the gig because he was the only Italian around?

Mr. EVANS: He got the gig that way, and he would only make it one way, if he
could tell the story as a family chronicle on capitalism in America. That's
the way he described it anyway. But we had no choice at the time. And again,
as I said, I wanted to smell that spaghetti, and one thing we did, we smelled
the spaghetti.

GROSS: You say that when "The Godfather" was being made, really most people
did not want Brando to be cast.

Mr. EVANS: Nobody wanted him. Francis wanted him, and I understood why he
wanted him, and the only way we got him into the picture was Francis was
brilliant enough to do a silent screen test of him, and once you saw that
silent screen test, you knew there was only one person to play the part, it
was Marlon. At that point Marlon's career was very deep into the red; he
hadn't made a successful film in years, and he wanted the gig as well. He
didn't do it for the artistic purposes. Though he had claimed he loved the
book, I don't even believe he read it. He wanted the part, and he got the
part, and he made history with it and also made his own second history with
making it.

GROSS: What were your fears about using him?

Mr. EVANS: None. After looking at it, I thought it was a brilliant idea.
The people who put up the money didn't like it that much. There was a very
big producer, an Italian producer who came to see the ...(unintelligible),
said `If you use that Marlon Brando playing the godfather, no one in Italy
will ever even go to the movie.' It ended up being the biggest film ever in
Italy. So that shows how few people knew about anything, including myself.

GROSS: You didn't want to cast Al Pacino.

Mr. EVANS: No, I didn't want Al Pacino and Francis didn't want Jimmy Caan,
so we settled on Al Pacino and Jimmy Caan as a combination, because it was
getting too close to shooting time and Francis rightfully said to me, `You
know, you want someone who looks like you and I want someone who looks like
me,' and we did everything to get together on this part. And he didn't want
Jimmy Caan at all because Jimmy--he had just done "Rain People" with him and
it got rained on pretty good.

GROSS: You know, James Caan's Jewish and you wanted...

Mr. EVANS: Yes.

GROSS: ...to make a whole big thing about Italians in it.

Mr. EVANS: But the reason I wanted James Caan was because Al is like 5'4" or
5'5", and the guy they wanted to play opposite him as the part of Sonny was
6'5", and I didn't want to see Mutt and Jeff. And there was a size
range--Jimmy looked very big next to Al, but he isn't that big in person. I
mean, he's an average size guy, 5'10" or so. But the fella they had wanted to
put next to Al, it would have looked cosmetically ludicrous. So that's the
reason I went with Jimmy.

GROSS: You say that when you saw Coppola's first cut, you told him he had to
make it longer, that he had to put more in, and that's exactly the opposite of
what I'd expect a producer to say. It's usually, `Oh, the film's too long.
You'd better cut it.'

Mr. EVANS: Well, it is the opposite. And not only that, it was around two
hours and six minutes, this cut, and we ended up with a picture close to three
hours. He had shot everything. He had shot that spaghetti, but he took it
out in the edit. He was afraid. And I understand that. The distribution
companies, the theaters want pictures that are two hours or they get turned
over. They don't like a three-hour movie. But this film was not about a
slice of life, it was about an era, and it's not a little picture. The canvas
is there to make it whole. You see, sometimes the longer a film is, the
shorter it plays, and the shorter it is, the longer it plays, because if you
lose the text, if you lose one single dimension, it can play awfully long at
90 minutes and it can play shorter three hours. And we took a real chance
that it'd play long. If it would have played shorter, it would have been "The
Untouchables."

GROSS: You say the ending is really a mess, that there was no ending.

Mr. EVANS: That's correct, there was no ending, and we had a lot of mayhem.

GROSS: What was the ending like? What was the ending like?

Mr. EVANS: It wasn't written. There wasn't an ending. We were going to edit
the ending. And neither Francis nor myself came up with that edit, as I talk

about in the book. A man named Peter Zinner, who was one of the two editors,
choreographed the mixture of the baptism of young Michael and the mass
killings that went on. And it was very operatic, and Francis is a very
operatic director, and he loved what he saw when it was edited together that
way, though it wasn't written that way. And so many films have emulated that
ending. Most probably it's among the classic endings in film history.
Nothing to do with either Francis' or my own talents. It was Peter Zinner's
extraordinary eye and rhythm that made the baptism ending work.

GROSS: You produced "Chinatown"...

Mr. EVANS: Yes.

GROSS: ...a great movie. You cast Jack Nicholson as the leading man in this.
Why did you want him?

Mr. EVANS: First of all, he had never played a straight leading man before.
Secondly, I've always looked at Jack--I discovered him, actually--not
discovered him for film but for big-time film when he was in a Barbra
Streisand picture, "On A Clear Day." Jack has a smile. Before he even opens
his mouth, the rafters shake when he smiles. It's a billion-dollar smile.
And when he starts to speak, he's mesmerizing. I think he stands alone--he
stood alone then; he stands alone now--as the single actor who both the young
and the old relate to. And I wanted to just do a film with him.

And Jack had not played this kind of a straight part before, so in a way, he
wanted the courage to try to play a straight part and not use props of parts
that he'd done before. So that's how he added--in playing the part, his
natural instinct, however, was to do something that was different, and that's
how he and Roman came up with the idea of that blade going into his nose and
cutting his nose wide open. And watching the cast going down to then a
bandage and the bandage lessened in a scar--that's all through the movie--was
a brilliant conceptual move, and it was subliminal. You didn't realize it,
but it was a great character hook for Jack to play that role.

And I must tell you, when people first saw "Chinatown" they looked at each
other and said they thought it was done in Chinese. They didn't understand
it. They got to understand it pretty quick, though. It holds up today as
well as it was when it was made then, and very few pictures hold up after 20,
30 years as well as--not only as well as "Chinatown"--hold up at all 'cause
styles change.

GROSS: I'm always very amused by how movies might have been cast and how they
might have turned out differently, and so I was very amused to hear that when
you were making "Chinatown" you say Jane Fonda was everybody's first choice to
play opposite Jack Nicholson. You know, I don't think that would have worked
at all.

Mr. EVANS: It wouldn't have worked nearly as well. It's all strange.
Everything is what's called, quote, "fashionable" at the time. Jane's career
at that particular moment was hotter than Faye's. Faye's is more correct for
the role, but everyone star plays all the time. I was thrilled to get Faye
because she had the neuroses for this part that made it really work. You
know, the part is only seven or eight scenes. But yet, the text or the way
it's written and the mystery of the way it's written makes it as memorable a
part as she's had in her career. Even though she didn't win the Academy Award
for it, she was nominated for it. "Chinatown" was nominated for 11 Academy
Awards, and no one understood the picture when it was finished. How about
that?

GROSS: Well, you say that Robert Towne, who wrote "Chinatown," is still
really angry with you about how the ending of "Chinatown"...

Mr. EVANS: That's right.

GROSS: ...was changed. So how was it changed compared to what Robert Towne
had originally written?

Mr. EVANS: Well, Robert wanted--and was definite upon it--he wanted the
character that John Huston was playing to be killed at the end, and Roman
wanted the Faye Dunaway character to be killed. And he felt it was more
unique that way that evil did win out in the end and, thus, it didn't make it
a, quote, "Hollywood movie." And Robert thought Roman's thought was demented.
And I was the swing vote in it, and I went along with Roman. And till this
day, Bob Towne thinks it's a mistake. It's one thing--he won the Academy
Award for it, but I suppose that doesn't matter. He still thinks it would
have been better the other way. I mean, till this day, if you had him on your
show, he'd tell you that. But that's...

GROSS: I think he did.

Mr. EVANS: I'm sure he must have. He only became the biggest writer in
town--and not to use a pun, but Towne became the biggest writer in town from
"Chinatown."

GROSS: So that famous line, `It's Chinatown, Jake'--that said at the
end--probably wouldn't have been said at the end if the original ending was
used.

Mr. EVANS: Yes, it would have been.

GROSS: It would have been?

Mr. EVANS: It would have been said anyway, but it wouldn't have made sense.
See, Chinatown was not supposed to be, per se, Chinatown. It wasn't about
Chinatown. It was a state of mind.

GROSS: Right. Well, you know, I think today, it's very difficult to make a
movie where evil does win unless it's evil winning in a kind of monster movie
so there can be a sequel where the monster returns.

Mr. EVANS: You're right. Today is not--making movies today is very much
different than it was making them 20 years ago. Everything is by committee
today. And the numbers are so big, maybe there's reason for it.

You know, there's no such word as an `independent producer.' Everyone's a
dependent producer, including yours truly. The only time you're independent
is when you use your own money. When you use other people's money, they're
the ones who are independent and you're dependent upon their money. And it's
an industry where everybody's overpaid, including myself. And when you're
overpaid, it's not so easy to duplicate your position in life. So you become,
unfortunately, dependent and not independent. And films today are subject to
scrutiny because the budgets are so high and costs of marketing are so high
that they're not left up to the integrity of the artist, and maybe rightfully
so. And distribution is a tremendous voice in what happens to the film, and
from the executive offices the same. And you're just part of a consortium as
to what is being made, how it's being made and how it's to be released. It
is, at the very best, to say that it's frustrating, but I understand it.

GROSS: You were one of the, you know, like, boy-genius producers. You were
very young when you got started. You were very young when you took over
Paramount. Did you have to fake it at the beginning before you had any real
experience?

Mr. EVANS: Well, I've always been a gambler, and the business has always been
made up of gamblers. The Louie B. Mayers, the Harry Cohns, the Jack
Warners--if you study their lives--David Selznick's, Sam Goldwyn--they're all
heavy, heavy gamblers; either the crap tables or at gin or at poker. And I
was always a big gambler in my life, so I took gambles by instinct, not by
reason. It was just automatic for me to do that. And I suppose I hit a few
home runs doing it, and I struck out quite a bit of times, too. But the
homers make up for the strikeouts, as long as you've got some homers in there,
not just singles and doubles.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

Mr. EVANS: Thanks for having me, Terry.

GROSS: Robert Evans is the subject of the new documentary "The Kid Stays in
the Picture." It's based on his 1994 memoir of the same name. Our interview
was recorded when the book was published. The film opened in New York today
and in LA today. It will open in more cities over the next few weeks.

Coming up, John Powers reviews the French film "Read My Lips." This is FRESH
AIR.

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Review: New French film "Read My Lips"
TERRY GROSS, host:

"Read My Lips" is a new French thriller that was a hit in France. Our film
critic John Powers doesn't want it to get lost in the swarm of summer
Hollywood blockbusters.

JOHN POWERS reporting:

A few days ago, I was talking to a television executive who was saying how
brutally competitive things are in the cable TV business. `If your show's not
a hit,' he told me, `it doesn't exist.'

The same is true of foreign movies. Dozens open here every year; a high
percentage of them pretty good. But except for rare hits such as "Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or "Amelie," even the best ones come and go without
leaving the slightest ripple. I fear this could happen to the new French film
"Read My Lips," which would be a pity. For while its entire advertising
budget is far less than Hollywood spends on a single TV spot, this enjoyable
thriller is far more gripping than either "The Bourne Identity" or "Road to
Perdition."

Emmanuelle Devos stars as 35-year-old Carla Blem(ph),the plain-Jane secretary
for a property development company, whose male execs treat her like a cross
between a galley slave and a piece of furniture. Carla is largely deaf. She
wears a hearing aid in both ears. Yet the deep source of her alienation is
the sense that she's destined for a life of being professionally and sexually
downtrodden.

But all that changes when she's ordered to find a new trainee. She hires Paul
Angeli. That's the terrific young star Vincent Cassel, who seems like the
worst possible business prospect. He doesn't even know how to use a Xerox
machine. But he is 25, handsome and just out of jail. And from the moment
they begin working together, Carla and Paul begin a process of mutual
exploitation. While Carla uses Paul's skills as a thief to advance her
professional career--and maybe help her find sexual satisfaction--Paul uses
Carla's gifts as a lip-reader to help him with a crime.

"Read My Lips" was written and directed by Jacques Audiard, one of those
filmmakers who's cursed by being middle-aged rather than a hot, young talent,
and by being a good storyteller rather a flamboyant stylist who can be
marketed as brilliant. His last movie, "A Self-Made Hero," was one of the
best French movies of the past decade; the story of a young man who pretends
to have been a hero in the French Resistance during World War II. Even as it
offered an ironic commentary on how French culture rewrote its history, the
movie--which is available on video, by the way--keeps you on the edge of your
seat. You spend the whole time wondering if the hero's going to get caught
and whether he deserves your sympathy.

We feel that same kind of ambivalent suspense in "Read My Lips," which is even
more complicated because we're never quite sure where it's heading. Is this a
love story, a black comedy, a heist film? Unlike today's hyperkinetic
Hollywood thrillers, which are all about car chases and explosions, the
thrills here remind one of Hitchcock, who knew how to keep menace at a human
scale and how to root everything in the vagaries of human character. Neither
Carla nor Paul is conventionally likeable. He's got a jailbird streak of
selfish thuggery; she's a veritable wellspring of resentment and bottled-up
desire. Yet these two outsiders gradually transform each other. She helps
make him something of a gent, while he helps her act out her antisocial
impulses. They're bound together by great dreams and by sheer guilt.

Audiard underscores the story's psychological dislocations through an
extraordinarily skillful use of sound, which is linked to Carla's hearing aid.
When it's turned off, scenes are played in an eerie silence that heightens our
sense of menace and gives the visual world a peculiar poetry. Without aural
clues, we have to look at things more closely. When Carla clicks her hearing
aid on, we're often assailed by noise that's all the more jarring because it
follows such deep silence. The whole movie tends to feel either too loud or
too quiet, which is precisely how Paul and Carla experience the world.

What makes the story go is Carla's ability to read lips, which is also the
movie's key metaphor. In fact, "Read My Lips" is finally about the freedom
that comes when one escapes the ordinary realm of perception and starts
picking up signs and signals that normally elude our senses. What initially
appears to be Carla's great limitation--her deafness--eventually unleashes her
strength. Able to literally see what people are saying, she's tuned in to
frequencies that the rest of the world is not.

GROSS: John Powers is media columnist for LA Weekly.

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GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

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