Chris Columbus has brought to the screen some of the biggest American family films in the last 20 years: Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone, and Mrs. Doubtfire. He also produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films and produced the third as well. Despite this success, Columbus admits that he “always, to this day, [feels] like [he’s] gonna walk on a movie and get fired.” He reveals to Alec what it was like working with brilliant improvisers like John Candy and Robin Williams—and casting Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Chris Columbus has brought to the screen some of the biggest American family films of the last twenty years, Adventures in Babysitting Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire. He also produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films and produced the third as well. I'm a Wizard and a Thumping good Night Wager. Once you trade up a little, No, you've made a mistake. I mean, I can't be a wizard. I mean, I'm just Harry. I've known Chris for a long time. We were in school together at n y U. I lived, started at Weinstein and then um moved to Reuben. You were in Ruby, I was in Reuben, and I think that's where we met. Yeah. For Columbus, n y U was more than just a place to learn the craft. He loved film school for me was the only It was sort of the only way out, you know. Um. I grew up in a Both of my parents were factory workers in Ohio. UM My future was basically working at either my father's aluminum factory or my mother's automotive factory. Literally didn't own them that I was just be working, and I think they did. You could own them now, could own them the decision I did, although I don't think there's much work there. But at the time that was it, you know, and and the only escape really for me. Uh, we're movies, And what were movies to you? Then? There was no DVD, there was no noble television. How did you? Movies were the either the CBS Late night movie. I would sneak out of bed and watch the late night movie on CBS and just stay in the movie theaters on the weekend. There were only two theaters. Two films would be two separate theaters. There was no multiplexus back then. And I would watch whatever film came into town over and over. And I remember something clicked when I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Something really and I watched it three times and I just was amazed by the movie. And I didn't at the time. There's no understanding, there's no idea. No nobody knew about film schools. Nobody knew that you could actually go to school and learn how to become I didn't even know what a director was. So I put my energy into illustrating and writing comic books. I thought, I still didn't understand the film concept. But I started to draw Spider Man comics, Thor comics, Halt comics. I wanted a job at Marvel in the Marvel that was my goal. I still love movies, but I didn't I didn't understand completely. And yeah, and so the comic books and all of the This is very naive of me, but all the comic book superheroes lived in New York City. So this was this magical place for me as a kid because I'm drawing New York City all the time. And I realized I was spending about eight to twelve hours alone today, and I, um, I wanted to work with people. I wanted to be with people. What did your parents think about that? They thought I could go to art school that like can't state or something, you know that I could go to art school and I could, um draw these comics and that's fine. Then I saw The Godfather. The Godfather was re released in four i think, and re released. And then the next movie I saw was Blazing Saddles. I saw those two movies change my life, both ends of the spectrum. I realized with blazing saddles. The possibilities of what you could do with film were endless, and Time magazine came out with a one page article about film schools. I had never heard of film school and don't know what this could possibly be. And I read about Martin Scorsese, and I read about Francis Ford Coppeland. I read about USC and U, C l A and n y U, and I said to my parents, this is what I want to do. What did they say? They were extraordinarily supported. They were amazingly supported. Every other relative in my family was not supportive. They said, oh, you're gonna you're gonna be saying you're gonna be back here in two years. You can't handle New York City. Uh, And it just it just was more fire. It was just I was like, fuck you, I'm doing it. I got to New York and I remember my father drove me up to Weinstein and he looked at the city and looked at the dorm and he said, let's go home. I'll drive you back home now. And I said, no way, no way. I was in. I was literally in oz. Weinstein does look like the library at a community coach in the Soviet Union right exactly. It's a but I immediately fell in love with the city, and I knew that I had no choice but to succeed. I had to find a way to succeed or I would be back in the middle of Ohio working in an aluminum factory. And that's hideous. So you get there. Had you ever touched any film equipment before? H yeah? Super. My parents did buy me a super great sound camera which enabled me to start to make films. Actually, I made a twenty minute film for my theology class because I went to a very strict Catholic school, so it was a theology class that was dealing with social issues. So we made a film about abortion vasectomes. And I was very inspired at the time by remember SNL n seventies six. Sn L had just come. You know, we would spend our Saturday nights watching Saturday Night Live. So I was doing these basically commercial parodies that I had versions that I had seen on SNL, and I screened it for the class. The class loved it. The priest was horrified. And what happened is the feeling of showing that movie and hearing those all of those kids laughing in this small Ohio Town really really hit me. I mean, it's an addictive feeling, you know what it's like being on stage while showing your film and having people respond to it became very addictive. So that fueled my desire to get there as well. Your parents say about all your politically incorrect film, very dark stuff back then, you know, they You know, my my mother went with it. My father didn't really want to have much to do with it. He figured, okay that you know, my father was most most of the time, my father was under a car repairing it, you know, and in the garage when he wasn't working or having a beer. So I um, as long as he's not on the streets, it's exactly my parents. Not only he's not taking drugs, that's true, and that that actually you know, my mother was very supportive. My mother was probably much more supportive than my father about what I wanted to do, and she had she shared sort of that dark sense of humor that I had as well. So she supported those of those movies and she watched I used to watch SNL with her. She loved it. So you you get to Weinstein you had a super eight sound camera, but you get to Weinstein and what's what are the first recollections you have of that when you get there? To go to n y U? Honestly, n Yu. The night I got there, Spawn drinking age was eight team sponsored a bar tour. Can you imagine them doing that these days? Eight to ten bars in the East Village. They would take a group of freshmen and go to each bar Chumley's, mcsorley's. And that's where I met my best friends, and that's where I met my future producing partner, Michael barn Nathan. We met that first night and and uh yeah, you could be said, I mean, the lawsuits are ridiculous. And we met and we hit it off, and and there was this I mean, you know what it what it's like you go into this community of everyone who shares your deepest love of something like film, and you have someone to talk to about it. I had no one to talk to about it in Ohio, you know, I was this everyone's come there from the aluminum factory. Finally I was able to have arguments and discussions and we would get these into you remember these intense and passion discussions about directors, you know, and and Frank Capra was he really great? Or was he you know, was he much more of a populous to director? And you get into these fantastic discussions that didn't exist for me in Ohio? So I was in you know, it was like Christmas morning every day at n y U. So when you go to film school did you go there when you started to become a wash and all that process? Did you love it? And you ate it up? And you said more and more and more you love the technical No, actually I don't. I mean the technical side of it. I have very little interest in it. I want to know as much as I need to know so I can go onto a set and block a scene with actors. But I'm much more and I was. I've always been this way. I'm much more interested in connecting with the actors on a set because what I've seen as a producer over the years, as I saw it as a writer when I was just starting out. Directors, a lot of directors tend to be afraid of actors, which it drives me insane. I cannot understand. They're suspicious of actor. They're suspicious of actors. They don't want to discuss, you know, it's this whole thing. Well, if an actor has a question, as he challenged, I love that. I love that back and forth, that discussion that you know, I thought it was kind of cool and the Apocalypse Now documentary, when Brando and Coffler were sitting there for six days discussing discussing his character. I love that about actors. So I'm much more drawn to working with the actors than I am working, you know, figuring out what lens I need to use. I know what I want the film to look like. I know how I wanted to feel, But I don't need to know the numbers. I just want to make sure that when I get on that set, those actors and I that we trust each other no matter what kind of film it is. So there must be moments, though, where you're sitting there on the set of a Harry Potter film and Roger Deakins, who is one of the greatest cinematographers of his generation, is there, and do you sit there and say, what do you think Roger? What lends you defer to him about all the cinematography to do. Sometimes that don't go no, No, I think it's this, or I think you must have an opinion. Oh completely, It's not like yeah. Complete. In other words, I don't abdicate all that to something. No. No. I I do my homework. I storyboard everything. Um, I do my own shot list in the morning. I know exactly if I want to use a crane or a dolly or a And I also don't there there's the other side of me where I've seen directors who only want to deal with the actors and don't want to block the scene and leave that all up to the cinematographer. I'm sure you've seen that as well, but I and I'm not interested in that. I want to have the control, certainly of the visual look of the film. But I don't need to get again, I don't need to say I want to fordy here. I don't. That means nothing to me. What means something to me is to look through the camera and know if I've got it right. But it's as I said, it's much more important. The writing is extraordinarily important to me. And the connection with the actors and the crew as well. You know, I I've seen a lot of directors work and there's no connection with people, and I hate that. I just hate those directors who sort of build a wall up around them and maybe maybe it works for them. I'm sure it works for some of them. But for me, it's a matter of connecting with almost every person on that set. So when I leave the set, they all feel that they've had a great day. I know it's a weird thing to say, but it's very important to me that that that the person has the smallest job on the set feels as if he's he or she has contributed something that day. You know. And then when you left n y U, what did you do? I left n y U. I had actually I was lucky enough I had left, but in seventy I had written, um, something interesting happened. That I had a scholarship. I had this great scholarship that got me through ny U the first year. And my mother would call me. You remember, we had those pay phones at the end of our dorm hallways's no cell phone. So every Sunday I would go to the payphone a call home, and my mother would say, Chris, don't forget. To go to the Burstar's office and signed. I had to sign some papers so I would renew my scholarship. And I would say, Mom, no problem. I'd forget. I'd be doing something That went on for six weeks. The seventh week I called. She was screaming at me, said, you lost the scholarship. I said, oh, christ, I the scholarship. She goes this summer, you're gonna have to work at the aluminum factory. So so I went back. I went back to Ohio, and I was working basically swing shifts. I would work stay shifts, afternoon shifts, and night shifts. After your first year, my first year, did your mother make you a little necklace with a little piece of aluminium after that, in the shape of a crucive. Don't sunk up on it? Oh god? I so anyway, so I realized if I was on the night shift, I could read. So that first year I was just read, you know, novels for eight hours. I had to do it again after my sophomore year. So I went back my sophomore year, and I realized, if I could get on the night shift for the entire summer, I could write a screenplay. So what I did is I remember these gigantic, hulking cylinders of aluminum, and I would sneak behind the aluminum cores and sit there with a notepad, and I wrote my first screenplay, a screenplay called Jocks about high school foot ball, my experiences with high school football, and I was a terrible football player, but I I you know, it was very person Sorry. Yeah, I suited up and I brought that back to my writing teacher, a guy named Jesse Cornbluth, who gave it to his agent. And his agent was a guy named Ron Bernstein who still works in New York. And Bernstein took me on as a client my junior year. A producer since passed away. Steve Friedman optioned it for five grands. So your professional career, which was which began as a writer as a screenwriter, was leveraged by corn Bluth, who was your teacher at n Y. Yeah, that five grand prevented me from ever having to go back to the liminary factory. Um. So that was my junior year, and then my senior year I decided to not right because I was getting writing offers, which was great, you know, but I was in college and I wanted to take that time to do my senior film, my senior thesis. So I did a senior film that year, and then when I was out, you know, after college, I just, uh, my agent started to get me writing gigs, and I started writing after as soon as I graduated. Basically, I lived on twenties between six and seven. Um, one school, you were in Chelsea. So when school ended, you decide you're gonna stay in New York. Yeah. I decided to stay in New York because I, again, I was always very wary of going to l A. I I don't know why. Why were you wary of it even then? You know. The weird thing is I have so many friends who think of l A as like that's where all the films are made, that's where that's where the magic happens. But for me, I was I just at that point, after four years in New York, I felt very comfortable in New York and had this vision of being able to make every film in Manhattan, or writing in Manhattan and living in Manhattan. I was kind of out of work and I couldn't figure out what I was going to do next. And a friend of mine, Mitch, said, you know, there hasn't since Jaws, there really hasn't been a great movie that's featured He used the word monster. There has not been a great monster movie made. And I said, that's a good idea that's interesting. And in the loft I lived in and we had these mice scurring around on the floors, and I would sleep with my hand raped over the bed and mice would go by in the middle of the night. I thought, these tiny creatures are frightening. So I spent the next six weeks writing the script called Gremlin's and I wrote it on spec. I wasn't paid for it, and I sent it to my agent, who um liked the script but felt it was a little dark, and still sent it to about fifty producers and studio executives and everyone passed on it. And Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was leaving his office on a Friday and passed his secretary's desk and it was sitting there. That's why so much of this business is luck. He passed the script and saw the title and said that looks interesting, picked it up, read it that weekend, and decided he wanted to option the movie. Now I didn't know this, I gotta call up my loft. Barnathan answers the phone and says it's someone on air. Says he's Steven Spielberg. I get I get the phone. He goes Chris it's Steven Spielberg. I was stunned, and um, yeah, he flew me out to l A. I got to meet Spielberg and that sort of That was teen eight two, and I lived in l A for nine months at that point. So what happens in that nine months He's giving you notes or there's creative people. He would give me notes. Now, Gremlins was sort of often running, and someone else was even rewriting it as I was working on another script for Stephen. For some strange reason, I had sort of carte blanche. I could go into his office whenever I wanted. He whether he liked me, I don't know what it was, but I had an office three doors down from him. I would just go down there whenever he would be sitting there with Richard Gere or or or Warren Beatty. One time he's like, Chris, come on in, would he and I would start to talk to him about ideas. One day, he's looking through these old EC comic books and he says, look at this title, Chris, the goon Children. And I said, the goon Children, that's a cool title. And we came up with this story together about these kids who find a Treasure Map, and it was the Goonies. I would write three pages of Goonies, run to Steven's office, give it to him. He would make some notes. I would run back to my office and make the changes, and we've finished that script in about six weeks. Then I wrote Young Sherlock Holmes with him, kind of in the same way for Amblin, and that's when I and that's when I redirected Goonies. Richard Donner Dick Donner directed Goonies, and who directed Young Sherlock Holmes Barry Levinson. Yeah, so it was so you have Steven Spielberg producing your films and your three doors down from him and Richard Donner, who directed Superman. I'm gonna I want to tell people in the audience who don't remember this timeline. And Levinson was directed many great films they direct. Those are your first two movies that could mat well. Gremlins is the first one as well. Joe Dante. Yeah, so you go from Joe Dante to Donner to Barry Levinson for the first three films that your name was on the script and your name was on as the writer of all three. You know, it was kind of a heady experience. At the same time, I always knew this is what I need to be do, This is what I should be doing, This is what I have to be doing. What did you learn from Spielberg? Spielberg was like graduate school of filmmaking For me. Spielberg was like, UM, I learned shortcuts and I learned basically, it was a Billy Wilder quote that Stephen, you know, nailed into my head every day, which was, don't tell the audience something more than once. I learned how to edit material, I learned how to write better dialogue, and I learned how to be much more visual as a writer from Stephen. So it was a great relationship, you know, um, and still is a great relationship to this day. We have the opportunity to work together a couple of years ago. So I I really loved that time. But at the same time, I needed to get back to Manhattan. Why. I don't know. I just felt like I missed I missed it. I mean it was it's very simple. Did you have a sense, because I find other people have the same thing, it's better for me to stay here for my career. You didn't think of all those lines, No, I I don't think at the time I was able to articulate it. You know, twenty thirty years down the road, now I can look back and and understand why I did it, because I was seeing the beginning of people losing touch with reality. Why do directors not have long careers. They don't have long careers because they become extremely successful. Then they move into these huge mansions and live an isolated life. They watch movies in their screening room. They don't do their own grocery shopping, they don't pump their own gas, they don't get out there on the street. At the end of all that, you've lost connection to real people. What are you making movies about, even if they're fantasy films. Even again, I did not realize that at the time. I realized it years later. I realized the reason I went back to New York was to connect with everyone again, so I could go to the corner superrette and buy a carton of orange hues for forty dollars, you know, so I could see people every day, take my dry cleaning, and take my laundry. And that hasn't changed to this day. I have not changed, you know. I have a great housekeeper now, in San Francisco. But for the most part, again because I'm a director and nobody really knows what the hell I look like. I'm anonymous. Yeah, but you've yeah, You've kept this very low profile. Nobody knows what I do in San Francisco. I mean, I have a couple of friends. But I love it. It's fantastic. They are all conscious choices you made, not I think some of them were subconscious. At the beginning, the only thing that mattered to me about becoming a director was longevity. I wanted to make sure that my career would last for decades, no matter what I was doing, and I felt that part of that has been this ability to sort of hide in plain sight in a weird way. Now I understand it. So you're a writer and you do Gremlin's and you do Goonies and you do Young Sherlock Holmes. Is the notion of you directing a film? Is it starting to percolate? Do you go to Spielberg and say, I want to direct this one? No, it came. It started with Jesse Cornbluth. Jesse Cornbluth put into my head at n y U the only way you're gonna get to become a director is by writing a few successful screenplays after young Sherlock Holmes. Then I realized Gooneys and Gremlins had been successful enough that maybe I could get a directing gig. My agent sent me a copy of the script called Adventures in Babysitting Elizabeth with Elizabeth Shoe and uh Anthony Rapp. I love this. I love the script. I thought this is something I could do. And I had great producers, Linda Oaps and Deborah Hill, who were very supportive of me as a first time director. They agreed to let me direct the movie and that was the first day on the set was a little little horrifying. It was the thing I had dreamed about my California. Now we shot it in Canada. It was my dream to be directing a film. Yet at the same time I realized I had to go hunt to the set and face two fifty people and tell them what to do. You've never done it before. I got over my fear pretty quickly because I had to. It's like jumping off. Do you still have an apprehension about that now? When it's first day of school and I mean shooting. It's not Chris who was drawing his Marvel Comics, Chris that was hiding behind the aluminum spools writing scripts and everything while everybody else has taken a nap at the aluminum factory. It's not Chris alone. There's the writer director who has this kind of monastic process. Then there's the guy that's got to go out and be the captain of the ship on the deck of the ship with two or three people there. So that's a skill you had to develop, correct, I think so, But again because well, definitely so, you know, I was terrifying the first couple of days. But then I realized, Yeah, I realized that a lot of these crew guys, we're like beaten animals because directors, there are so many directors who are such assholes. They're so kind of cruel and angry, and they're working something out on the set of the film. Yeah, and I thought, that's not gonna work. That won't work for me. And I realized after three or four weeks that people were responding just to the fact that I was not grumpy in the morning, that I wasn't piste off all the time, the fact that I was genuinely a pretty happy guy, and I really valued what everybody was doing, and if somebody made a mistake, I wasn't ready to rip their head off. I just I understood it. By the end of that movie, I really I learned a valuable lesson how to earn the respect of the crew and your actors. So you're there, you make the film, and what happens. The film opened to like seven million dollars back then, which was a perceived disaster, so I'm thinking I'm never gonna work again. What happened is the second weekend. It did something that no film some certain films do, few films do, which is a shot up in attendance. So we did better the second weekend. Getting that news that we increased was shocking, and it was great for the movie, and it was great. I was able to go off and make another film then, and uh, what do you go do? I did a film that I wrote. I pitched a film to Jeffrey Katzenberg, and I went off and wrote something else instead, a movie called Heartbreak Hotel about my own obsession with Elvis Wesley. The movie opens on a Friday. I read Roger Ebert's review, calling it one of the worst films. Here, I'm driving a cross country with my wife at that point because we edited in l A for two months and we get by the time we get to the probably in the Texas somewhere, this is Wednesday. The movie is already playing on a double bill in the afternoon. They've already the theater to get it out of there is if if it was a nuclear way. So um, once again, I'm thinking it's over. I'll go back to writing. At the time, my first child, Eleanor, was born, and I got a script from John Hughes. We both had the same agent, UM, and he said, do you want to do the third Christmas Vacation movie. I was like, that's not really I didn't dream of becoming a filmmaker to do that particular movie. But I thought I needed the gig and John Hues is supporting me, so I started to do that movie. I shot Second Unit, and I had such a disastrous relationship with the star Chevy Chase, who you know, it's no he has no shortage of enemies. Uh. It was so disastrous and so humiliating for me, just based on three meetings that I quit. I said that John, I can't do this, I cannot make He's like, you know, Chevy's a complicated guy. He's a rich food. I said, let me tell you something. He treats he when I first walked in, he thought I was an assistant. So I'm like, I can't really work this way I and so I quit, and then I was really I thought it was really in trouble. And John and I got along great. So John sent me the script for Home Alone Again Luck plays into it, and I fell in love with the script. I thought it was a great script. I think he wrote it in two days. I loved him, loved him, I mean his life and how he went and how he kind of left and you know, gave up and moved back to Chicago. I'm not gave up, but he kind of kind of walked away from It was always so to me because I thought, God, I mean, I was hoping I could become the next John Candy in his career and the grown leading crazy uncle Buck of the next barage of films of his. I loved working with him. What was your experience like? It was exactly the same. Um, I walked off of a movie that he had given me, So there was never a reason for him to call me back. But I, for some strange reason, I think he respected that or he understood it, and being chevy, he understood. Yeah, I think so, and he uh, you know, when I read this script, I thought, this is a gift, this script. The script is really really important. And John, the only concern I had was I had a you know, I had a newborn at the time, and John liked to work from about tenant when he was right when he was a producer and writing. You know, he wrote all night long. So we would be doing pre production during the day on Home Alone, and then for story meetings, I'd go to his house in like Forest and we'd work from ten to about five in the morning. So I was getting during the pre production hours of Home Alone, I was getting about two hours sleep, and John half of the time just on He told these great stories. So he would tell stories you probably remember, and smoke and these stories would go on for three hours before we ever got into the movie. The fact that we were making a movie he gave me once he saw the first day of dailies from Home Alone. He gave me an amazing amount of freedom as a filmmaker. And that really felt great that I was. I felt no pressure because I always to this day feel like I'm gonna walk on a movie and get fired. But with John, he made me feel very secure and created sort of a safe atmosphere for me. Immediately, Well, John put him an Uncle Buck, and John said, you should see this kid, but John never said cast him. So McAuley came up to my New York apartment. He and his father the first kid I met, and he was incredibly charming, terrific. But I said to John, just because I felt like I wanted to be responsible, I said I should meet some other kids. So I met about three hundred other kids and then came back around a mccaullary, get back to you job. I'm gonna go kids, and I had to do my job. Was the first one you saw. McCauley was the first one I saw, and he was you know, it was. It was an interesting situation, kind of like the kids in in Harry Potter a little bit. McAuley had only done one or two movies, so he would do a line. He would he would say one line, maybe two lines, and then get distracted. So a lot of that film is cut into pieces just so we could get his performance together. But what happened on screen, it was amazingly charming, and you had Heard is the father? John heard yeah, and Catherine is the mother. And I heard thought he was making Heard who I love. But I loved him and Cut his Way, Remember Cut his Way one of the great performances. But while he was making Home Alone, he thought he was making the biggest piece of ship in the world. And he was. He was a pain in the ass, a little fit. He comes back on Home Alone too, and the first day he's shooting, I yell action. He breaks character and he said, I just would like to say to Chris and the crew, I owe you a big apology. Made a great movie the first time, and I'm here to support you. Wow, we have it in dailies. I still have a tape for that. And I got to work with John Candy for the first time. And John Candy came in for one day of shooting. We had him for one day and he has like six scenes in the movie. So we shot for twenty four hours, twenty four hours straight and Candy kept going. He just would continue to improvise, and it was my first sort of foray into improvisation. John would do a scripted take and then he would start to play myself, Glinsky hard Polka King of the Midwest, and he loved improvising. He was he was brilliant at it. I had a few hits a few years ago. That's why you know. Just Polka, Polca, Polca Oolca, No twin Lakes, Polka, i'mafugie Polka A kiss me Polka, Polka Twish In a minute, Chris Columbus talks about working with another brilliant improviser, Robin Williams. Yeah, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Chris Columbus says he wanted to work with Robin Williams ever since he saw him in Good Morning Vietnam. Five years later, Columbus got his chance. I feel like I've known you for years. Maybe we knew each other in another life. I would love for you to come and work with us. Who would I great? Who would Mrs doubt Fire, a film about a divorced father who dresses as a Scottish nanny to trick his ex wife into hiring him to care for their kids, won a Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Robin Williams won a Globe for Best Actor. But before all that would happen. Before the filming even began, Chris Columbus had to meet Williams for lunch, and I was terrified. I had worked with guys like Passy, who I admired, and Dan Stern, but Robin was a true superstar at the time, and I was I was nervous about how it would go. And we just we hit it off immediately, you know, we wanted to. We really connected. Much of Mrs Doubtfire was shot in San Francisco, and Columbus took the opportunity to move his growing family out west. It's a great place to raise a family, and I felt Manhattan would be a little difficult. Um we were about to have our third kid, and I thought, and two of the kids have been born at Lenox Hill in Manhattan, you know, I can't. And I was having I was walking down the street man Anne with my toddler, and I couldn't hear what she was saying to me. I couldn't you know she's telling And I thought, I gotta I've gotta be in a calmer place. And I also fell in love with the city. San Francisco is a great city, and I had in the relationship with Robin was still is terrific. Had a great relationship with Robin, and with Robin again, it's like it's like a steroid version of John Candy, where you John liked to improvise, but Robin lives to improvise. So it was almost like seeing a Springsteen concert where he has to exhaust himself after four and a half hours of playing before you can go to sleep at night. With Robin, it was the same thing. We would shoot anywhere from twelve to fifteen takes for each scene, and we would start with a very structured script to take and then move off of the script and change everything. And that's why that picture had to be shot with two or three cameras because do the exectit. Fox know that when you're going into make a film and you have someone who's is varied and who's is uh, who says uh, what's the word? You know, as spontaneous as he is, did you call them up after the first week of shooting and say, felons, just tear up the budget. We gotta start all over again. Now we stayed under We stayed not under budget, but we stayed on budget. Maybe we went over one or two days because he is fast. He's lightning fast. And we shot with two or three cameras. We understood the cost benefit analysis of his improvisations. He wasn't somebody who was over the indulgence. No, and you had actors. You had Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan acting across from this guy, not knowing what he was going to say on take number five or six, so we had to have a camera on them because he's I mean, the word genius has used a lot these days, but he he comes up with these seeings so quickly he doesn't remember that he said them in the next take. It's just he's possessed. I sometimes tell people shooting this stuff, I was like shooting a documentary. And by the time we got to the editing room with millions of feet of film. At the time, we weren't shooting digitally yet. We had four or five different versions of the film. We had the PG version, the PG thirteen, the R in the n C seventeen. I showed Marcia who was the produced because the film needed to be PG thirteen, so we knew we couldn't have an R rated version of Mrs Do Fire. I showed Marcia cut of the film, and then Robin wanted to see it with an audience, and that was the sort of the thing that sealed the deal, because the audience really responded. It was like it really was a huge He wasn't then intrusive about cutting the film, and he just as long as the film worked in front of an audience, he was happy. He left. That was it. It's just every day he we developed this sense of trust after a couple of weeks, and I would it was incredibly exhausting shoot, working fourteen hours a day, and I'd get home at night and just poured myself a glass of wine and the phone to ring. It was Robin Howard Daily's how how was I in? Daily? So he was. He was very very obsessive in terms of his own performance, and dot Fire sort of received mixed reviews. So for me, I because because of my love of film history and because my love of certain films, I was, you know, I'd always get there was a level of keeping it very real by reading what some of these people were saying that some I should probably be have a tougher skin and say I don't give a ship what they're saying. So with doubt, Fire there was a sense that we had created a movie that was very successful, a lot of people fell in love with, but it didn't for me personally. I didn't get to that point where I wanted, you know, I always wanted to have that level of critical success and commercial success as well, and I just wasn't there yet. So I managed to stay hungry. I mean, there was a feeling of me that I needed to accomplish a lot more, and I really still feel that way. I still felt that there's a long way to go there back on doubt fire, felt that there was a long way to go. So the collaboration with you did nine months after that with Hugh Grant and Hugh and uh, how did that movie? Did? Okay? But that was the you know, that was the blow job weekend, So that was a that happening while you were shooting and when it was released being no, no, no, no. We were scheduled, we were doing a press const exciting, this is insane. So we're doing and the international press conference on a movie with you. I realized, now I want to make a movie with you just so as a gag, I can get dressed up as a woman, as a cross dresser, and solicit a detective on Hollywood Boulevard just as a gag. What if you got arrested? I wanted the goal is get arrested, just to get arrested, and then when I'm down to the place I want to go, officer, can I explain something to you? This is really just funk with Chris Columbus, and I really wanted to. I wanted the sex scandal on the set of it. It was, and it happened. I never I never saw it coming. He was like the most completely yeah, I guess, buttoned down, really conservative guy, always prepared for work. Did a great job. We were doing the international press conference in l A. The movie was finished. The movie was screening off the charts and audiences were loving it. So I thought, wow, this is gonna be a bigger hit than down Fire. So we screened the movie on a Friday night for the press. I go out to dinner with Hugh, Jeff gold Bloom, and Laura Dern. We have this great dinner. I drive Hugh back to the hotel. He says, oh, John Hughes sent me a script. Would you would you mind looking at it? I don't know if I should do. It was a hundred one Dalmatians. So I walked up to his hotel room, took the script, and I said, Okay, get a good night's sleep. We have a press conference tomorrow. I go to sleep. My phone rings at six fifty nine. It's barn Nathan. He says, turn on the TV. I said what. He goes turn on the TV. I turned on the news channel two five seven mug shots. I'm like, what the fund did he do? So there's a hundred fifty international journalist that I was doing a press conference with Hugh. He was disappeared. He was at his agent's house. He's gone, he didn't come. He got it was me facing all of the amazing. He does this the night before a press conference. Perfect and he's He since said that he did it because he didn't like the movie, which he loved the movie, so that's not why he did what. He went to solicitor prost because he was so depressed about the depressed about the film, he had to have a prostitute. I got, I gotta try that. Hugh Grants well publicized arrest didn't completely kill nine months. It's still made over a hundred and eighty three million dollars Mrs Doubtfire grossed over four hundred and forty million dollars worldwide. The Harry Potter films did even better. Two years ago, Chris Columbus produced The Help, a much smaller film, which earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Clearly Chris is skilled at selecting the right material to work with, or maybe he just surrounds himself with the right people. It was my daughter because she was the one who tried to convince me for about a year and a half to read the Harry Potter books, and finally when I did and I realized I wanted to make the movie. There were twenty five other directors who were in line. They called it at Warner Brothers a bake off. They said, Okay, we're going to meet all of these directors, and whoever we you know, feel will will make the best movie, will hire um. So I was in line because Spielberg had dropped out. Steven Spielberg had dropped it was the one he was going to direct the film. I think he wanted to combine the two books, add some cheerleaders and stuff, and I think that she wasn't you know, Joe Rolling was not up for that. So for whatever reason, Stephen backed backed away from the films, and then it was a group of literally twenty five people. I had the last meeting because I wanted to rewrite the script for the studio UM And what I did is I spent four, no eleven days, staying up to about two or three in the morning rewriting the Harry Potter script. Steve Clubs wrote a brilliant script. I just wanted to rewrite it with some camera cues, add some scenes from the book that weren't in there. And when I went in to meet with Warner Brothers and they said, why do you want to make this movie? And I said, because I've rewritten it for you for free. Now, no one ever does anything for free and Hollywood, so uh. It took it. Still took them a few weeks to say yes, but I did get the gig. They and I realized I still there was oh one obstacle. I had to fly to Scotland to meet with j. K. Rowling. That was my sort of last interview, and if I fucked that up, I wouldn't have gotten the job. So I flew to Scotland, met with Joe, who I was expecting. I hadn't seen many photographs of her at that point. I was expecting Miss Marple. I was expecting some sixty year old, heavy set woman in a flot floral dress. And it was She's she's younger than we are. She's she's very, very funny, one of the funniest people I've ever met, sharp as attack, and we hit it off immediately. We spent three she spent three hours listening to me. I had diarrhea of the mouth because I was telling her the kind of movie I wanted to make. At the end of it, she said, that's exactly the kind of film I want to make, and I knew I got the job. Once I knew I got the job, I was fucking scared out of my wits. Everyone was obsessed about who was going to be cast in the movie, how we how how we were going to design Hogwarts, what was Quidditch going to be like? And I thought the only way to get through this not to be so I'm not standing in a corner unable to face my crew, was to just sort of bury my head and start to work. You just I just just sort of went through every day, moved, I moved my family to London and went through every day making the best movie possible. And the great thing is there were a core of us at the time, four of us, Joe Rolling, David Haym and Steve Clovis and myself, and we'd meet every couple of days, talk about the script, talk about the movie. And it was that core that really ship helped me shape what eventually became all eight movies. And again, and she was around during the screenwriting process or around the shooting as well. Rolling Now she only came out for one day during the shooting just to visit. She wasn't that interested in the shooting, as you can if you're a visitor at a set, it's not that exciting. After about two hours. She came out when were shooting diagon Alley. But during the screenwriting, during the rewriting process, and during some of the design work, you know, I would take her through the Harry Potter Factory, I called it. We would walk through the art department and I would show her what I was thinking of for diagon Alley, or Green Gots or Hogwarts or the Wizarding Robes. And she just was always very collaborative. She'd say, oh, like the wand She was very very specific about everything that Harry's wand couldn't have any specific design to it because it was from an old tree. That wouldn't It was just a little crooked and you And it was that kind of specific comments that really sort of helped me find where I was going. I never was off the rails though, because we did we did share a similar I think, vision for what we wanted the movie to be. And I know she would give us also indications that the films we're gonna get the books there were only three books at the time. Remember, we're gonna get progressively darker, and this had to be sort of the first one was sort of like the storybook version of Harry Potter. It's his origin story. It's still a little darker, and Hogwarts had to feel like the most welcoming place in the world. And then we get little indications that it's going to start to fall apart as we move forward. We set that all into motion, that the movies would get darker and darker and darker. Did you did you have a sense did you say, I think I've got this film version of these books, I've got the recipe. Unfortunately, not not until we were finished. We knew we were We knew things were going well. So even though the kids had not had a lot of experience and acting, they were amazingly charming on screen and they felt like those characters. I think the first day that we really felt that we were on the right track as we shot the the the the opening of the Great Hall and we're on this huge crane and the kids are walking in and are her. Visual effects guy John Richardson attached four hundred and fifty candles to strings that were all burned. They everyone had to light all these candles. There weren't any c g I candles in the shot. And I remember sitting in Daily's and seeing the shot where the camera cranes up through the floating candles and realizing, Oh, I think we're onto something here. Uh. And so that all felt good. We still had no Yeah, it was fun. That's cool, that's cool. Yeah. What was it like to work One of my favorite actors I ever worked with was Gamben. Oh god, he was he would I remember, I pret such a character I produced the movie that that he you know when he Richard Harris was Dumbledore for two films. Now let me tell you something you. Yeah, that was one of the funniest people I've ever met. Harris and he first himself as Harris. Yes, and he and Harris Conk be seen doing this. On the first day of shooting with Richard Harris. He tells me that he's learned the wrong scene that he was seen at the end of the movie's It was one of the final scenes for Dumbledore. We happen to shoot at first and he didn't learn it, and he explained to me that he had learned something else. I don't know if he was telling me the truth. Um. And that's the kind of guy he was. He was constantly he would always try to piss off Maggie Smith by calling her Dame Maggie. Oh, Dame Maggie. It was so fun to watch. But I have to tell you he was such a bad boy. Um. The things that he got away with in his time just never never. You couldn't get away with it today. But anyway, So Harris was in the first two then he passed away. The last thing he said to me. I went to visit him in the hospital room and I knew he was dying. I saw when he was dying, and he had he was sitting there and he lost about twenty pounds, and we never really knew what he was dying. I was, he wouldn't tell us and he didn't think he was dying. So I went to visit him, and as I'm leaving, I said goodbye to him and he says, don't you ever fucking replace me as Dumbledore? And I said, okay, that's the last thing was dead. So and that was the last thing he said to me. Uh, And then Gambon came came in. Who was he was a character? Yeah, he's he's an interesting guy, but he he's conservative compared to Harris. The last film you directed, uh was Percy Jackson. Percy Jackson. Yeah, yeah, so if that was released in you shot that in two thousand nine. So you haven't directed a feature in four years. No, And part of that was because of the of the help Um. There was a writer director named Tate Taylor who wrote a script who was a sort of a director that I had supported over the years. He did a lot of short films, was an actor in l A and I knew him through one of my daughter's school associates. He would always come when he come to San Francisco. He'd sit down and meet with me and show me what he was working. And he came into my office one day and said, this is my first feature that I want to make. My best friend wrote this book, The Help, and I said, I read the script and I said, this is a fantastic movie. I wanted to direct it and take it. Was like, I want to direct, and I want you to support me so I don't get fired. So I brought the script to a lot of studios. At the same time, the book was starting to heat up again. It was one of those books that every woman was reading on the beach. Um and Steven Spielberg and I sort of reunited to do it. Steven and I met Um in London. He said, what do you think of this guy, Tay Taylor. I said, he's incredibly talented. He wrote a brilliant script. Steven said, as long as you promised that you'll be on the set every day. I said, but when I produced a movie, I like to go for the first week, and those financed the DreamWorks. Streamworks financed it. We shot in Mississippi in the summertime a couple of years ago, and you were on the set every day. Was there every day. It was fantastic. I was gonna say, what's that like for you to be the pure producer. Well, as I said, usually I just if I'm the producer, I like to go for a couple of days, make sure it's it's all in good hands. And I don't like to go off and direct or write with in this situation. So I made a promise to Stephen. I was there the entire time. And the interesting thing was because of the level of performances in that film, getting actually just being able to watch these actresses perform every day, Viola Davis and Bryce Stallas Howard and Emma Stone. It just was an amazing sort of front row seat to these these performances. And Tate was just wonderful what the actresses. He was just he's an actor himself. Again, that connection is really helpful. So for me it was it was a bit of a learning experience. Again, it just it opened up another sort of part of filmmaking that I want to get. I was gonna say, do you want to make films like that? Because my last question for you is, here's a guy who the flame for you that you were drawn to from things I've read about you were movies like The Godfather, but you haven't made a movie like The Godfather, and I'm wondering, is that a direction you want to go in? Now you see a movie like The Help, and you see do you want to do more? Not even so much racially theme, but much more kind of intense drama. Here's the thing, I'm not particularly uh. I'm not saying I'm not happy with the movies I've made, but I still have a long way to go. Hopefully I can live long enough to get to where I really would be happy with it. Maybe it won't happen, But what I really really want to do, I would like to make the kind of movies that you and I grew up on, which are the kind of movies look Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather, Serpico. All of those movies were movies that we're not only about something, but but we're great dramatic films with an enormous sense of humor. By the way, all the films I mentioned are very funny at times, yet at the same time they reached a huge audience, And to me, that's what it was about. I didn't want to make a film that was so special and Indian tiny, that it wouldn't reach a wide audience. I always felt that when I was watching movies like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and I was watching Dog Day Afternoon, the performances were so amazing and so authentic and real, and those movies found an audience. Now, unfortunately, most of those types of films are being made for television. So yeah, and aproposal that you've made films now, written, directed and produced huge films, some of the biggest films of the last twenty five years. You've been doing this for twenty five years. How has the business changed in the twenty five years from your standpoint? Well, you know when I get harder to get that movie made you're talking about that Sydney lamente esque drama. Yeah, I've spent the better part of the last year and a half writing films like that, but I can't. It's very, very difficult to get them made in an environment that really is only interested in either sequels or superhero films. If you walked into a studio executive's office in nineteen seventy eight and said you wanted to make Spider Man comic books, oh my god, that's the lowest form of entertainment. Well, now we're in a situation where that's mostly what's being made, so it's difficult to help kind of you know, was made because the book was so successful and we made it for twenty eight million dollars, which for a period piece is relatively inexpensive. So if we can find that way to do more of those films, I'd love to do them. And that's probably one of the reasons I haven't directed. The help is really gotten into my head in a big way and said, you can make these movies and people will go see them. And where I've gotten into trouble in my career, movies like bi centennial Man, movies like Beth Cooper. Again, when I did them for fun and when I thought, oh, this will be fun, I'll just go out and make a movie. Like we're back in film school. It's not the case anymore. There's much more responsibility. Chris Columbus won't stop making movies, but he has taken a slight detour. His first novel, House of Secrets, a middle school fantasy adventure, is out this year. Chris sent an early draft to J. K. Rowling. She said it was too fast paced. Slow down, She told him, Deepen the characters and work on the complexity. Chris Columbus says he and his co author Nid Vezzini took that advice to heart. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear who's the thing.