Hey folks, Harry here with Quint's interview with Richard LaGravenese regarding A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE, and no, Quint doesn't ask him if he really wrote GOOD WILL HUNTING, so just relax, some day the truth will come out that Ben Affleck wrote it all by himself, and that Damon checked spelling. Wait - strike that, reverse that... play... Anyway, below you'll find an absolutely killer interview - got the time, give it a read... worth every second of your time...
Ahoy, squirts! 'Tis I, saltiest seaman of them all, Quint, here with an interview for you folks to enjoy. I got a chance to bullshit with Richard LaGravenese, co-director of A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE as well as a successful screenwriter-
LaGravenese and Ted Demme started up this documentary that had a brief theatrical run and then hit IFC in an extended cut because of their shared love of '70s films. This is a topic close to my heart, if in doubt just look at my namesake- Quint isn't taken from MALLRATS.
If you haven't seen the film and consider yourself a fan of movies, then you should be ashamed of yourself. Go out and rent it or even better buy it. It comes out on DVD next Tuesday (September 30th).
In the below interview you'll see us happy, sad, reflective and everywhere in between. You see, I knew Ted Demme a little bit and was hit pretty hard when he passed. That is brought up as well as much more happy moments. I think you'll get a kick out of this interview. Without any further ado, let's get on with it shall we?
QUINT: HOW DID YOU AND TED START THIS PROJECT?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Ted and I had been best friends since we did THE REF together back in '93. Since then we would spend a lot of time hanging out and talking about movies, talking about the kind of movies we wanted to make and the kind of filmmakers we wanted to be. Teddy loved taking steam baths and sort of detoxing and going and having cocktails. That was one of his favorite rituals.
I remember once we were doing that at the Four Seasons, I was visiting him in LA, and we were talking about '70s films and '70s filmmakers and how there was going to be this writer's strike where Hollywood was going to be frozen and all the films were either being rushed into production or stalled indefinitely.
So, Teddy says, "Why don't we do a documentary? We'll have so much fun. We'll get to work together and hang out and meet all these great people and actually document people in one film that hasn't been done before."
And then the strike didn't happen and we decided to do it anyway because it was an opportunity to work together, an opportunity to do something that we really thought would be a contribution and really an opportunity to meet all these great filmmakers, all these idols of ours.
We started in the Fall of 2001. He brought it to IFC because he had a relationship there. He had a television show called ESCAPE FROM HOLLYWOOD. We started filming in December of 2001 and we had about nine interviews and then he passed away a month later.
Then I continued- Put together a 60 minute clip of what the show would be like, then we just worked for another year and a half and that's where we are.
QUINT: I INTERVIEWED TED FOR "BLOW" AND WE HIT IT OFF. WE STARTED CHATTING-
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: He was a huge fan of the site. You guys were very supportive. It meant a lot to him.
QUINT: HE DID THE WORK. HE MADE MOVIES THAT WERE COOL-
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: He was a great guy, one of the funniest guys ever.
QUINT: HE WAS A BLAST! WE'D SPEND HOURS IN AOL INSTANT MESSENGER JUST BULLSHITTING.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Dennis Leary and I are actually doing a documentary on Teddy for IFC for next year. It'll be kind of a mock documentary about his death with a lot of friends telling funny stories about Teddy. There are millions of them.
QUINT: FUNNILY ENOUGH, TEDDY WAS ONE OF MY BIGGEST SOURCES. I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW MANY BIG SCRIPTS AND NEWS HE SLIPPED ME.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: (laughs)
QUINT: HE'D BE ALL, "HEY, MAN. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS HUGE PIECE OF SHIT THEY SENT ME! THEY WANT ME TO DO THIS (BLEEP) MOVIE, LOOK HOW MUCH IT SUCKS!"
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: (laughs) That sounds like him.
QUINT: HE TOLD ME ABOUT THIS THING BEING IN THE WORKS WHEN I INTERVIEWED HIM AND I'M GLAD IT CAME TO BE, ALTHOUGH IT IS VERY BITTERSWEET TO WATCH.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Oh, God, yes. I think the primary feeling was that he was alive and in partnership- I remember his memorial- I said, "He's not dead, he's not gone. He's here-" because I felt him so strong and doing the documentary it honestly felt like he was here. It was only recently, now that it's over, that it has started to fade a little bit.
QUINT: I REMEMBER WHEN I GOT THE CALL THAT TEDDY WAS DEAD- IT WAS ONE OF MY FRIENDS WHO KNEW I KNEW HIM- I THOUGHT HE WAS BULLSHITTING ME-
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: It's true. It was such a shock to me. Not only because I loved the guy, but my first reaction was, "Wait a minute! This is Teddy's movie! Teddy's the star of this movie. He doesn't die now! He's isn't a supporting character-" It didn't make sense to me at all.
I had to call my friend back 10 minutes later and go, "You mean- Ted- Ted who?" It made no sense to me whatsoever. And it really pissed me off. I was really pissed off at him.
QUINT: DID YOU EVER THINK OF DROPPING THE MOVIE AFTER THAT?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Never. Never. I never even considered it. I couldn't. I never even considered it.
QUINT: ALL RIGHT! LET'S LIGHTEN THIS THING UP A BIT, SHALL WE?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: (laughs) He's laughing at both of us right now. You know what he's saying right now? "Fags!" (laughs) That's what he's totally saying right now.
QUINT: SO, TELL ME THE TRUTH- YOU REALLY WANTED TO DO THIS DOCUMENTARY SO YOU COULD GET ALL YOUR ONE-SHEETS SIGNED, RIGHT?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Even more selfishly than that, I wanted to meet these guys and get a sense of how they did what they did. I wasn't at all interested in the personal life stuff. I wasn't at all interested in- Everything's been written before about it. I just think we know way too much about creative people nowadays anyway and it's all the same shit.
Oh, they did drugs and they were this and they were that. So what do you say? What's the point? That creative people are self-destructive, that they do drugs and that they're over-emotional and they're ego-maniacs. That's the oldest story in the book. I don't care. How did they make this movie? How did this get made in that system?
So, I really just wanted to focus on the work and figure out this period for myself, which for me I grew up in. I was a couple years older than Teddy and I saw these movies first run in the theaters in a different time- before there were VCRs, before there were tapes, before there were wide releases. It was a different experience in filmmaking. In a way, going through it, I recaptured my own love of going to movies and the movies themselves.
QUINT: WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THE DOC WAS YOU SPENT TIME ON SPECIFIC FILMS, NOT SPECIFIC FILMMAKERS. TO ME, THAT'S WHAT I DUG. I'M A HUGE FAN OF '70S FILMS.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: It didn't hit me until editing, but this idea that there were these 3 elements- this sort of confluence of events that happened, that created this special sort of window that opened in Hollywood for a very brief time. One was all these revolutions that were going on within the youth. These political, social, generational, cultural and there was the music, primarily, that was amazing.
At the same time, the studios were dying. Literally, all the studio heads were dying. These pioneers were dying and the people stepping in didn't know how to reach an audience anymore because the audience had changed. I love what Sydney Pollack said, "You used to measure your pleasure at a movie by the distance it had from your own life. The more of a fantasy, the more escapism, like the people from the Depression. But now, this generation in the late '60s said, 'No, we don't want that. We want films we can recognize, that reflect what's going on, that aren't hypocritical.'" Julie Christie said at one point that it was the least hypocritical time in cinema.
The third thing that happened was the filmmakers that got the chance to take advantage of these things were those who were just coming up and were being influenced by this massive import of foreign filmmakers who telling completely different kinds of stories in completely different kind of ways, breaking every rule in the book, making it more personal.
Those three things sort of combined and you got this wealth of material.
QUINT: WHO WAS YOUR BIGGEST SURPRISE THAT AGREED TO TALK WITH YOU ABOUT THEIR FILMS?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Um- (Francis Ford) Coppola. I always wanted to get Coppola and wasn't sure we would, so I was really happy about that. It is really due to Alexander Payne. He was a really big help in getting that to happen. I loved his interview. I just love hearing him talk and his insights. There are a couple more things on the DVD that I added that I just couldn't find a space for in the movie where he basically says, "The greatest honor is for you, now, in this generation to steal from us. Use us. Use what we do and take it because that's what we're here for. Then someone will steal from you and that's how it keeps going on. But it'll never be the same because always through you you'll create something original." He's just really cool.
Sidney Lumet was incredible- Julie Christie was amazing. She came so prepared and had so many incredible insights into the period. I wish- It's just a little frustrating because there's just so much more to do. Somebody should really do- I wanted to do a whole section on the foreign films of the '70s, which I couldn't do which was so amazing. There was an incredibly strong movement at the time here in the states.
I couldn't do a lot of other filmmakers and smaller films that I wanted to get in there that aren't as well known that I remember really clearly, like DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE or- Teddy and I were always talking about THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1, 2, 3-
QUINT: I FUCKING LOVE THAT MOVIE! I HAVE A ONE-SHEET FOR IT UP IN MY BEDROOM AS A MATTER OF FACT.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: (laughs) Yeah? I couldn't find a way to get it in there. It was really pissing me off.
QUINT: SHIT, WALTER MATTHAU AND ROBERT SHAW BEING COOL TOGETHER? YOU CAN'T BEAT THAT!
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: If you look at RESERVOIR DOGS, it's a total rip-off-
QUINT: WITH THE MR. BLUE/MR. PINK STUFF-
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Yeah- I remember my friend and I in Brooklyn taking the train going to see that movie. It was so awesome.
QUINT: TAKING THE TRAIN. THAT'S THE WAY TO SEE IT.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Exactly! (laughs) For me this is a primer, pretty much, because I didn't realize, and I'm glad that I did, but along the way I realized- Most of us know the '70s, like this would be any big revelation, but then I took it to Denver and Dallas and DC. In Columbia film school- These Columbian film students- The one comment I got after I showed a really early version of it, one girl raised her hand and said, "Um, it's really nice to see (Jack) Nicholson's earlier work. I only know him old." Another person hadn't heard of Julie Christie. Another one didn't know who Michael Cimino was.
In Denver, these film students said, "We're looking for something rare, we're looking for something more authentic as we're trying to find our own voices in film and I don't know any of these films that are in this documentary, but I'm going to go out and watch all of them because they're exactly what I'm looking for."
Another kid came up to me and said, "You know, I don't know anything before 1983. I don't know any of these films and IÃm so psyched to go discover them now." And I realized then that that's why we did the documentary.
QUINT: YOU TOUCH A BIT ON THE BLAXPLOITATION FILMS OF THE '70S IN THE FILM..
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: I tried to get Sidney Poitier, Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles, but they all said no. I know it seems like there's a token idea in there, but we had tried to get more black filmmakers. A lot of this was determined by who said yes. I mean, a lot of the documentary really was determined by that.
QUINT: SPEAKING OF PEOPLE YOU COULDN'T GET, I'M SHOCKED THAT SPIELBERG DIDN'T GIVE YOU SOME TIME. I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HEAR HIM TALK ABOUT "DUEL"-
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: We tried! We tried a couple of times. I think it was the schedule mostly. I would have loved to have gotten him in there. I wanted him for SUGARLAND EXPRESS, but again, I wasn't able to.
QUINT: YOU'D THINK HE'D JUMP AT THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT SOME OF HIS LESSER KNOWN FILM, LIKE "SUGARLAND" AND "DUEL." -
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: I know, I know. And Warren was the other one I really wanted- And Jane Fonda. Those are the people I tried to get, but didn't do it.
QUINT: WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE FILMS YOU GOT TO FOCUS ON IN THE FILM?
RICHARD LEGRAVENESE: KLUTE. (Alan) Pakula is one of my favorites and KLUTE- Her (Fonda's) performance in KLUTE will stand as strong it ever way. It's a great movie. I think she's really incredible in it. PARALLAX VIEW was another film I was really in to.
We couldn't get any of the Kubrick films because we couldn't get any of the rights to them. Um, there was a movie called DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE, which was a great little movie that came out in the early '70s and was one of my favorites.
Of course, the big ones that are so much a part of your blood stream that you don't even need to have to say them, like THE GODFATHER, FRENCH CONNECTION, THE EXORCIST, CHINATOWN- But it was great to hear Robert Towne talk about CHINATOWN and the evolution of the idea. For me as a screenwriter, that was really cool- how he put the different pieces together. You look at that and you go, "This is so beautifully constructed. How did it happen?" It happens just like everything happens. Pieces of ideas and interests come together, but his overall was to reinvent the genre.
That's what a lot of people were doing that were doing really well. They were reinventing the genre- The gangster film, the horror film, the noir film- Martin Scorsese's ALICE DOESNÃT LIVE HERE ANYMORE. God, there are so many.
Coming up with the clips going, "Oh, it's just me being selfish. I gotta have that scene when Madeline Kahn sings "Sweet Mystery of Life" in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN." I remember being in the theater as a kid and watching it and laughing my ass off.
DOG DAY (AFTERNOON) became a big, big movie for me again. It was then and I rediscovered it as a big movie for me. The real robbery happened in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I was there at the real robbery. We were there all day and all night. It was, like, the biggest thing in our neighborhood. Years later they came out with the movie.
I remember I was with my friend Jack. We were in his bedroom, doing something we shouldn't have been doing, I'm sure, and we heard police sirens. We ran down Avenue P. It was at a Chase-Manhattan bank and it was really great. We'd go have dinner at his mom's place, then we ran back down to the crowd which was big and wild.
I remember having to open the daily news the next day because they had taken them to the airport that night and thatÃs where they caught them. That movie when I was watching it - I couldn't get enough. Pacino is just a genius in that movie. Just watch him. Every time I watch those clips, his performance is just perfect. ItÃs a perfect performance.
QUINT: WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE NON-'70s FILMS THAT CAME OUT EITHER AFTER OR BEFORE?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: I love great scripts and great performances with great scripts. Most of the ones I love are kinda script heavy like ALL ABOUT EVE or NOTORIOUS - SOME LIKE IT HOT, of course. The Billy Wilder stuff. THE APARTMENT, SUNSET BLVD., DOUBLE INDEMNITY. NOTORIOUS is my favorite Hitchcock.
I loved WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and LION IN WINTER and THE GRADUATE. That whole period of '66, '67 that whole period. I love that period.
After I'm a big fan of TOOTSIE. Into the '80s now I remember WITNESS. I like that movie. I love a lot of movies that have been out. The Woody Allen stuff, I mean MANHATTAN. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANERS is my favorite. God, there are so many.
I'm a script heavy guy. I'm not so big on action. Ahem (laughs) I love great action movies and when they work, I'm in awe of them. Like the first time I saw DIE HARD or LETHAL WEAPON, I was like "Wow. How do you do this?" I don't know how, so when I go see them, I'm like a fan again.
I love LORD OF THE RINGS. They're my favorite I sit there and I'm like a little kid again. I'm actually IN the movie. Everything about that movie how they did it I'm just totally in it because I have no fucking idea how they did those movies.
QUINT: I JUST SPENT 2 MONTHS IN NEW ZEALAND
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: You're kidding!!!
QUINT: ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS YOU'RE GOING TO SHIT YOUR PANTS OVER "RETURN OF THE KING."
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: I can not wait. I am dying. I haven't been excited about this kind of stuff for so long. I took my daughter to see it for the first time at a premiere. I hadn't read the books and she didn't know them and she had a full day of school and it's a three hour long movie. I said, "If you fall asleep or something or it's too complicated, don't worry about " We were glued to that screen for three hours. It was amazing.
That's the difference between a filmmaker that's making a movie that you know is a passion of his and that he knows really well as opposed to a movie where you look at it and it feels like the filmmaker went, "OK. This would be a good script for my next movie." You can just tell by the way the movie is made. One is more contrived and sort of deliberate as the next career move and this one is just "Gotta tell the story!"
QUINT: WHAT'S NEXT FOR YOU?
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: I have a movie that I've written that we're in negotiations for me to direct. We're keeping that on a low profile You know, a thousand things can fuck up between then and now, but it looks pretty good for me to direct next Winter.
I've got a lot of ideas. I'd like to write an original piece. I haven't written an original piece in a very long time, so I'd like to do that. Maybe more into directing. I'd want to do something small.
Right now I'm fulfilling commitments that had to be put back on the back burner because of the documentary. I'm actually working on a script that I've been committed to since before September 11th. Because of everything, the documentary, Teddy's death and a lot of other personal things that were going on, a lot of other work had to take a side seat. I'm still sort of catching up.
QUINT: TIME FOR MY TRADITIONAL QUESTION. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DIRTY JOKE? TEDDY ENDED UP GIVING ME A DIRTY LIMMERICK INSTEAD, SO WHATEVER YOU GOT. LETÃS HEAR IT.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Favorite dirty joke! Oh wow Oh, man
QUINT: PRIESTS, POLLACKS MOOSE, I DON'T KNOW
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE: Oh, I just heard this one. I have to take it from the Dennis Leary Roast. So, a priest, a rapist and a pedophile walk into a bar and that was just the first guy!
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What'd I tell you? We laughed, we choked up, we geeked out over classic '70s films. What more could you ask for? Quality reading, I tell ya'!
I/m gonna take a few moments rest, then start transcribing my interview with the man, the myth, the legend R. LEE ERMEY. It should be up for your enjoyment by Wednesday or Thursday. Trust me, it's a chat you don't want to miss. Til that day, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
email: Don't play the fool, jive turkey! Email Quint here!!!
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