Stories

Family

So I make my deal and get the shooting script for SPACE JAM. It’s actually not titled SPACE JAM yet. I don’t remember what they were calling it. No matter. The script was simple and inoffensive. Not as witty or clever as the commercials we had done, but somewhat serviceable. It needed stuff.  It needed The Riz, maybe …

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DIANE KEATON

DIANE KEATON When I first started doing commercials, Diane Keaton was doing them as well. I cast her in a commercial for ENDUST (I’ll do anything for science) that was supposed to be a sendup of soap operas since it ran on soap operas.  I tracked down the commercial after many years out of curiosity. …

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REVENGE OF THE NERDS

Everybody’s on the internet.  Facebook, Twitter, Google, Myspace, Ebay, Netflix, Vimeo, Hulu, etc. etc. etc. timewastersall. Everybody’s trying to figure out how to make money on what is basically a free medium. But the internet is full of creeps, Zuckerberg, Sean Parker. Zuckerberg is fighting the Federal Government because he is illegally allowing underage kids on FACEBOOK. Instead …

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LOUISE LASSER

I really don’t remember exactly when I worked with Woody’s ex. I just remember it was extremely difficult. Louise Lasser was playing a transmission for AAMCO, a transmission repair company. Her sense of performance was intense as she actually wrote pauses and stammers into her scripts, much like Bob Newhart did when we worked together on Stamps.com. The problem …

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Sight and Sound

I discovered the magazine while I was trying to survive engineering school at Pitt (University of Pittsburgh). I would go the the library between classes to read stuff I hadn’t seen before, mostly periodicals. The only magazine I had access to growing up was LIFE and that gave me a feel for great reportage photography, …

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No. 1s

number ones MUHAMMAD ALI Heavyweight Boxing Champion My NUMBER ONE NUMBER ONE is Muhammad Ali. Not only do I think he’s the greatest athlete, I feel he is the most important single person of the twentieth century.  What he did in resisting Vietnam and his personal loss brought on by the United States Government is …

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DOORS

I started collecting authentic material to reconstruct a Santa Fe property. A guy from the village of Mora would bring a pickup truck of materials, doors, windows, floors, vigas, latillas, beams, no Home Depot stuff. I bought it all. Mora had put through an ordinance to tear down adobe houses that couldn’t be rebuilt properly and were dangerous, …

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TAKES

TAKES I ran into an old editor I knew and we chatted a bit and he remarked to the friends I was with that he was always astonished at the very few takes I would do, usually two or three at most. When I was asked about that later, I thought and said, that if the …

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VOGUE

Madonna had asked me to do a documentary of her BLOND AMBITION TOUR and I was interested, but not really interested, in following her around the world for a year. Vince Paterson had mentioned to her that I could do a great job, but I suggested David Fincher, who she was seeing at the time, and …

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The Hurdler

THE HURDLER I was filming a Kodak spot for the Los Angeles Olympics and we had some authentic Olympic hopefuls. The amateur conditions had relaxed quite a bit and the athletes were allowed to accept remuneration for their work under ‘training expenses’ or something like that. Edwin Moses’ training must have been expensive because he showed …

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