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.
The first time acclaimed director Stephen Daldry was expected to shout “Action!” he thought it was a joke. Alec met with Stephen Daldry in 2011, weeks before his intimate, post-9/11 drama, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, opened. Daldry’s work is precise and intimate, but in conversation with Alec he was passionate about a wide variety of topics, including communal living, the virtues of mass transit, and the Olympics.
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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. 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. I make what to change the world. I think that's any reason to do anything, and getting a group of people in to start a conversation with the community and with the society you live in is going to be the greatest thing you can do Today. I talked with two movie directors who have each had enormous success with very different types of films. Stephen Daldry got his start in theater. He's British, and his transition to filmmaking appeared effortless. His first three films, Billy Elliott, The Hours, and The Reader featured complicated characters and serious topics class struggle, the search for Life's Purpose and war crimes. Each film also earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director. My first guest, 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 Something Good at 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 plus 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 Reuben, as in Reuben and I think that's where we met. 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 they did. You could own them them. 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, 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, and I watched it three times and I just was amazed by the movie. And I didn't 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. Um 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 how to 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. Then I saw The Godfather. The Godfather was 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, 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 they say. They were extraordinarily supported. They were amazingly supportive. Every other relative in my family was not supportive. 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 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. So you get there. Had you ever touched any film equipment before? H yeah? Super. My parents did buy me a Super eight sound camera, which enabled me to start to 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 of the sectomes. And I was very inspired at the time by remember SNL just nine 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 sn L, and I screened it for for the class. The class loved it. The priest was horrified, Um, what did your parents say about all your politically incorrect films? 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 not taking drugs, that's true. 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. I used to watch SNL with her. She loved it. So you you get to Weinstein, you have 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, drinking age was eighteen 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, ms o Orley's. And that's where I met my best friends. And that's where I met my future producing partner, Michael Barnathan. We met that first night bart Nights and and uh, yeah, you could be. I mean, the lawsuits are ridiculous, and we met. 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. 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 sight, 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 sign. I had to sign some papers so I would renew my scholarship and I would say, Mom, no problem. That went on for six weeks. The seventh week I called. She was screaming at me, said, you lost the scholarship. 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 day shifts, afternoon shifts, and night shifts. After your first year, my first year, 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 aluminium cores and sit there with a notepad, and I wrote my first screenplay, a screenplay called Jocks about high school football, my experiences with high school football. And I was a terrible football player, but I I you know, it was very very 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, some guy a producers since passed away. Steve Friedman optioned it for five grand. That five grand prevented me from ever having to go back to the liminary factory. And then when I was out, you know, after college, I just, uh, my agents started to get me writing gigs. 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, we had these mice scurring around on the floors and I would sleep with my hand draped 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 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 bar. Nathan answers the phone and says, as someone on air says, that's Steven Spielberg. Remember I get I get the phone. He goes, Chris, it's Steven Spielberg. I was stunned. 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 off and 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. He would be sitting there with Richard Gere or or uh 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 to other 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. Then I wrote Young Sherlock Holmes with him, kind of in the same way. What did you learn from Spielberg? Spielberg was like graduate school of filmmaking. For me. Spielberg was like, UM, I learned shortcuts. 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 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. But 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 long 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. 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? 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 orangees for forty dollars. 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. 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? Now? It came. It started with Jesse corn Blooth. 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 Gramlin 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 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 the first time director. The first day on the set was a little little horrifying. It was my dream to be directing a film, Yet at the same time I realized I had to go hunt of the set and face two fifty people and tell them what to do, and 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 one. 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 nastic 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 I 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 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. So you're there, you make the film, and what happens. The film opened to like seven million dollars back then, which was 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, A few films do, which is a shot up in attendance. So we did better the second weekend. I was able to go off and make another film. Then what do you go do? 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 Presley. The movie opens on a Friday. I read Roger Ebert's review calling it one of the worst films here. 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, 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 muses 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, he has no shortage of enemies. 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 I was really in trouble. And John and I got along great. So John sent me the script for Home Alone again luck 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, get up and moved back to Chicago. Not gave up, but he kind of kind of walked away from It. Was always so sad 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, loved him. What was your experience like it was exactly the same. Um, I walked off of a movie that he had given me 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 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 in 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 mornings. I was getting during the pre production hours of Home Alone, I was getting about two hours sleep, and John 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. Who cast McCauley, Well, John put him an uncle Buck and John said you should see this kid. But John never said cast him. So McCauley 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 mccaully. Let me get back. I'm gonna be three kids, and I had to do my job. But McCauley was the first one you saw, 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, 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 in Cutter 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 it for one day and he has like six scenes in the movie. So we shot for twenty four hours, twenty four hours straight and he kept going. He just would continue to improvise, and it was my first sort of foray into improvisation. John would do a script to take and then he would start to play Blinky 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, Old Folca, No in Twin Lakes, Polka, do'mahugie, Polka, kiss Me Polca, polka twist. In a minute, Chris Columbus talks about working with another brilliant improviser, Robin Williams. We've come to this planet looking for intelligent life. Would happened to be in America. Don't ask for the dream cap. I want you on the lost wile. Well, it's just suddenly a rough meeting and it's not going very well for me. I'll tell you that this is Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive where you can hear more interviews with artists, dollars and performers. Turns out Chris Columbus isn't the only one with a mother who was a die hard SNL fan. My mom really loved Saturday Night Live. She loved it. She I remember her talking about Chevy Chase and she would say like, oh, Chevy Chase, he's so funny. You just look at his face. And you want to listen to my interview with comedian Fred Armison And here's the thing, Dot Org, 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, would be an honor to us, to us start for business relationship. Mrs Doubtfire, 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 doubt Fire 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. I was walking down the street man and with my addler, 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 in to 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, fellas, 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 lightening 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 things 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 Mr 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 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 producer, 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 of my love of certain films, there was a level of keeping it very real by reading what some of these people were saying. Now, some I should probably be have a tougher skin and say, I don't give us 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. 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. Mrs. Doubt Fire 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 who greeky you, Harry Potter. I'm Marti Granger. So when these books one of these juggernauts come, who first comes to you and says you're going to direct those as a film? 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. So I was in line because Spielberg had dropped out. Steven Spielberg had dropped He was the one that was going to direct. 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 I had the last meeting because I wanted to rewrite the script for the studio um 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 on Hollywood, so it took it. Still took them a few weeks to say yes, but I did get the gig. There was still one obstacle. I had to fly to Scotland to meet with j K. Rowling. 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 floral dress. And it was She's she's younger than we are. 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 scared out of my wits. Everyone was obsessed about who was going to be cast in the movie, how we were going to design Hogwarts, what was Quidditch going to be like? And I thought, the only way to get through this 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 and again. And she was around during the screenwriting process or around the shooting as well. 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 we 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 of the Wizarding Robes, and she just was always very collaborative. She'd say, oh, like the wand 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 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. Everyone had to light all these candles, 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. Uh, And so that all felt good. We still had no Yeah, it was fun. That's cool. The last film you directed was Percy Jackson. Percy Jackson, Yeah, the feature. Yeah. So if that was released in ten, 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. There was a writer director named Take Taylor, sort of a director that I had supported over the years. He did a lot of short films, was an actor in l A. 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. I read the script and I said, this is a fantastic movie. I wanted to direct it, and Tait was like, I want to direct, and I want you to support me so I don't get fired. So Steven Spielberg and I sort of reunited to do it. Steven and I met in London. Steven said, as long as you promised that you'll be on the set every day. I said, but when I produce a movie, I like to go for the first week and dream Works. Streamworks financed it. We shot in Mississippi in the summertime a couple of years ago, and you were on the set every day that I 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'd like to go off and direct or write. 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, Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone. It just was an amazing front row seat to these these performances. And Tate was just wonderful with 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. It opened up another sort of part of filmmaking that I want to get. I was going to 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 yeahs that you've made films now it 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 set 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 seventies 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. 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. Coming my conversation with theater and film director Stephen Daldry, He's had three Oscar nominations for Best Director, but still fantasizes about other careers town country planning, traffic lights, Really interested in traffic lights, subway sist you're an engineer mass transit systems. This is Alec Baldwin. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Stephen Daldry grew up in the theater. He began directing plays at age sixteen. He went on to run several theaters before spending most of the nine nineties at the Royal Court in London. Since two thousand one, he spent more time making movies. His most recent film, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starred Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. But Stephen Doldry still chooses projects based on the same criteria he you When he was working with fringe theater groups. I didn't know what you who you make stuff for? I always make stuff for myself and my you know, you make stuff for your friends, yourself and see whether it makes any sense to you. Your first film was Billy Elliott. Correct, Yeah, but that was that was a really weeny one to you know, That's what I mean. So obviously you see where like that was. That was a small film and then you we we made that literally we made it for next to nothing. And is there a difference for you and making films and producing shows and directing shows in the theater. The difference between the two a big difference. One is in the theater, everybody's in the same room, so everybody can see what the beast is. Everyone can see what it's made. And you start at the beginning, and you finish the people you start with, the people you finish with, and the movie is that the people you you prep with, the people you shoot with, and the people you shoot without the people you finish with. And the people think it's more like a relay race making a movie. To me, it's more like cooking, you know, Like there's a guy that makes the let us out in California, there's a guy that grew the tomatoes and Georgia, and none of them ever meeting each other or know each other, they ship at all. And you cut it up into a salad and mix it all together. And that's why it's it's more lonely because it's so compartmentalized that way. Yeah, And I mean I remember the first day that I ever shot anything on film, and you know, suddenly around the camera people are saying these extraordinary things to me, like you know, rolling, you know, all these things. When was that billion it? And people are going, they're saying all these strange words, you know, and then everyone's looking at me and I'm going, what are they doing? And you go, oh, I'm meant to say action? People really say that do thing? I thought it was some sort of like joke. And since then, I've never really liked saying action, which is why I prefer just to keep rehearsing and roll the camera while we're rehearsing, and then eventually he's into. Some people don't want to say the word action. I find a bizarre on myself, and when it freaks the actors out, actually do it now, turn on Now. It's not very intimate, it's not and it's a it's a it's like an assault on the outer I directed a film once and I couldn't stand that. I really didn't care for it. But I wonder. I've always wondered if I had the nation to absorb more about lighting and cutting and editing, and has that been a big thing for you. There's that journey of learning more about how films are put together. And I love editing. You do. It's my favorite bit of a pressure. It is. A film is written three times. You write it to start it you, then you rewrite it as you make it, and then you do the final and proper right as you put it all together. And it's like a jigsaw puzzle if you like jigsaw puzzles, if you love making movies. But it's actually putting the pieces together, finding out the rhythms. And I would imagine that the experience of editing makes anyone a better filmmaker in terms of teaching you what you need to have in the Can people say to me, you know, what should idea to learn how to make a film? Just getting by a final clup prom and just start shooting stuff and then just start editing, and you'll learn everything you need to know about making a movie from editing it. Did you feel that you had learned everything that you needed to learn about directing actors from your years in the theater in England? In terms of directing actress for film, was there a difference? It was the same. I think it's the same. Well, let it rip. Most of my life, you know, all my life has been spent in the theater, you know, and all you need to work out with an actor is how to talk to them. And actors come with their own method like you you know, you've come with your own methodology of where you've picked up and usually act as a lot of actors, particularly American actors, if I may dare to say this, come from some notion, some they've picked up some ideas of what acting might be or what what a methodology might be. It's easier in Europe. It's easier in England because usually people have got to shared methodology and other words, there's a language that people sort of understand that you can actually have a conversation about what what literally you're meant to be doing at any one particular time. A lot of American actors got lost in this idea of the method or some sort of notion of character. They keep going on about when my character this, or and even what are you talking about? Where did you get this idea of character from. It's easier in Europe because people tend to be more strictly come from a a training whereby the common training a common training, because there's a lot of training going on here, but that training is a different kind of training. It's a different sort of training. So the difficulty is just finding a language to talk to actors so you can be honest. I think that. You know. One time I was watching a concert and I was watching some famous musician like Tom Petty. He was performing at a benefit and I turned to a friend of mine and I had this chill run up my spine, and I said, do you see what these people are doing. They're all doing the same thing at the same time, and they're all of one at the same time. You know, it's it doesn't happen in the theater and enacting a lot of times it does in England. No, No, it's really hard. It's the only people. Sometimes people are doing their own thing. What is the job of the doctor? The job of the doctors. You've got one job is to make sure everybody's in the same show. And you can have fantastic films, fantastic fantastic theater. There in one show, he's in another show, she's doing something else. They're all being brilliant in their own way, but they're on the same space. Getting everybody in the same spaces the hardest thing. But what's your methodology? Where were you? If I was to ask you what you do you define your acting in a particular way? Well, it depends. I mean, I try to think of it in terms of rhythm, there's a key you play in you have you have to pace it up. It has to be fast, you have to make the audience catch up to you don't put a lot of unearned policies. And there really paces a big part of it. But did you train? Yeah? I went to n y U. And as I get older, everything is technical. I mean I literally mark my minds in the scripts that I do now, like a musical score, stop, hard, constant, here, move, dip rise, all these things. Emphasis Before that, though, it was all about authenticity. I would say that method acting was about like if you said to me, which I want you to do this, I'd say, well, I've got to go meet a bunch of surgeons. Let's go find that how hard surgeons really behave in the operating room, because I don't want to do anything as an authentic And then of course there's that famous Walter math on line where they said to Walter Math, how do you want to go observe some surgery and he said, no, I'm a movie actor. No one expects me to know anything about surgery. So we're just gonna fake it and indicate it. And you're absolutly right, about the technical. I mean in England we do tend to be more technical. But I'm connecting, you know even remember you know I work with male Streep on a movie, and you know a Mail has this extraordinary emotional ability. But she does pause before the verb. And I know why you're doing it because you think I can't cut away. I can absolutely show you I can cut away from you even if you pause before the verb. And she knew she was pausing before the verb. Well, she she definitely is a maestro. She is she's her Nicholson that they know every trick there is to force the cut in the film or to deny the cut in the film. But I think that it is thrilling when you do a piece and you have a director who can help you. I've had to do what the modern actress had to do, which is to come prepared to be self directing in case you didn't have anything from me, agonizing because I'd rather come and have you say to me, but of course it's this, and I would don't you realize it's this? And you have got all fond of information, but I would go crazy. But I find it really crazy when it is come in self prepared because they've done some journey that they get and you go, well, well this is and again you get they're showing your photographs of a trip they went on without you. Yeah, and then they again in this comment you're my character and you're don't look, it's not your character. Okay, it's ours, and we're going to make it up. Now. Interesting, I've never heard that. Every further it's ours, it's ours, it's not your character. I'm going to remember that it's ours. Well, my character wouldn't do that. Well, let's change the character then, because we're going to do that. You know what is let's talk about a character they wouldn't do that. That's right, let's change you. What do you miss about running up by side the court which everybody just adores the work there and loves the court. You miss it? I miss it, and I suspect I'm going to run another favor. I mean, it's too much fun. It's about community. It's about having a community of people that you know you're staying with for a period of time, the number of years you commit yourself to and trying to do something you know, I don't know why you make work. I mean I make work to change the world. I think that's any reason to do anything. And getting a group of people in to start a conversation with the community and with a society you live in is going to be the greatest thing you can do. Can you do both right now or now? You certainly can't make movies in mouth here, don't. Movies are too obsessive. It's it's like it's it's two years of your life, just whatever you do, it's two years. Two years is fast compared to the years it took to turn Billy Elliott into a musical. What does it feel like when you're darks hmm, so it feels good. We made this little film. Nobody was really nobody was interested by the way. You know, a kid who wants to be a dancer, you know, please. But we took it to Can and the first showing in Can, for some unknown reason, Elton John was there and the party afterwards out and said, you know, this is going to be better on stage. I mean, it's a great movie, but I want to write the music for this on stage. And we went it's out on John and I met him before you know, it's like, oh my god, you know what, No if but now, and then he kept on going for what did you say no? Because we just finished the film and you just weren't ready to think about this, not even ready for it. But he kept he was persistent and carried on, and he would literally start writing stuff and write songs, and he'd ring me up in my kitchen and I put him on speaker phone and he said, look, how about this one? And I'd be cooking in my kitchen and then e speaker phone, and he really didn't fall into a kind of a Lewis Carroll hole there. I think the stage show is better than the movie. It's found its natural home. Isn't it amazing? How that is a big part of this business. How you do fall into a hole one day you weren't sitting there. I would imagine at the court saying I've got to get out of here and make films. You know, it doesn't happen to you every day, though, that life changes in the second right, one such turning point for you, I think from what I could gather from reading, was that you were a clown's apprentice. Correct us. I was interested in circus when I was finishing university, so I I suppose I sought out this guy called Elder Milette. He was in a great Italian clown and then I went to work with him in Italy. I worked in a year indoor fe It was a hard circus. I mean it wasn't What does that mean? I love that. What does it mean a hard circus? A hard circus is it's three shows daily, hard schedule, hard schedule. I was in charge of the giraffes as well. I had to look after the giraffes and then we would travel by train and then I would take the giraffes off the train and put them into their little drive, the giraffes. So it really is like you see in these period movies where it's like dumb, like Greatest Show on Earth everything, where it's there's everyone's multitasking everyone. You're the clown and you're claiming the giraffe pen driving the draft through these Pompeii, you know, me the drafts and Pompeii. And people talk about, you know, the animals being mistreated, which I you know, people have different opinions about, but the people being so mistreated, the people who were they mistreated by management, management themselves. The hierarchy a lot of drinking, love, very very tough living. It was a hard life. We were basically going to be training in Italy for a year and then we were going to go off to Moscow State Circus. When Nicole, you know, okay, we're going off to Moscow, and now I just went, you know what, I've done this for a year. I'm off. You're filmmaking experiences. It sounded a moment ago when we were talking like they've been relatively emotionally secure experiences for you as a filmmaker, and you've been very content and happy making films. Filmmaking hasn't been another hard circus for you people. I do understand a lot of filmmakers have a very hard time making films, and I've been blessed. I mean, I've got friends of mine who have had experience of sitting in the trailer and spending your whole time trying to defend what you're doing and fighting and cutting and and I haven't had that experience. But a lot of that is because of Scott. Ridden for me has always been a huge filmmaker support, fighting for me in the right way. Do you find something out about yourself every film you make? Is there a part of you that you lay bare, that you weren't aware of. When you make a m everything's therapy, don't you find it is every piece of work you make. You you have to explore yourself, the Reader? What was the therapy for which I love that film? By the way, I was just I was completely spend with him. I worship her, Okay, I worship her. I can't go I'm unabashed about him. I am completely immune to all the charms of all movie actresses except her. I saw her in a war show and I gradually swallowed my time. She's fantastic, um, the Reader. I spent a lot of time in Germany as a kid. I spent you know, learned German and spent a lot of time there. And the idea of a country crippled for many generations by something that happened, and how it was still coming to terms with what it went through and where I went through it and collective guilt. So for me it was an expiration of my school days in Germany. And what about The Hours? Well, The Hours is a complicated film about the one thing that that all the films that I may tend to having common is they're all about loss in one way or another and what the nature of loss is. Everybody has it at some point in their lives, and that was a studying three women who are going through a profound sense of loss. Loss is really my subject. Your two women when the oscar coming out of your how did you feel about that? It's been enormously gratified enormously. I mean, it's always fantastic when your actors do well, isn't it. Did you find that Kate and Nicole Kidman in the hours who won the oscar for that film, did you find that they came to the party with that British sense of working in the shared experience with you? Were they more in line with that? They are? They were and up for rehearsal. I love rehearsing, and Nicole rehearse forever. Kate rehearsed forever on this film. We rehearse forever. You know, it's part of the process. And do you rehearse well. I've done films where we did some rehearsal, and remember one time they had a very formalized rehearsal process, but it was constantly interrupted by the department heads coming in and summoning the director to go and look at something and he run out, so we know we had his attention, you know, fleetingly. But I've I've done films where we had I would crave that, I'd love that. You don't have to answer this question because they's going to embarrass you. But open I'll just tee up this boat. You're a very charismatic man. You're very charming, and you're very seductive. You have a kind of a very seductive veneer to you, And I'm wondering, do you think that that helps you with what you do? Because when the guy walks in the room or the woman, because I worked with a woman directors, but this mostly men, let's face it. And when that guy walks in the room and he looks like a high school shop teacher with a bunch of pen sticking out of his pocket, you know what, maybe if it doesn't have any kind of cheat to him at all. You're a very seductive guy and you're a very very kind of appealing guy. Do you find that that works for you? Do you use that to your advantage when you're directing? Don't smirk at me, do you? I didn't I consciously, you don't consciously try to seduce the people you work with. It's always going to be a love affair with your actors. If you're not in love with him, it's not going to pan out. You literally have to fall in love and they with you, and they with you, and then you can do. Your actors fall in love with you. I try to make them. You do, don't you. I bet you they do, because it's so intimate. It's such a pride in such a and it requires such honesty. But one day, I'd love to talk to you about a play. Should we do one? I'd love to do a play. I don't know if you're gonna have time. You're not gonna be any time to a play with me? Good God. Now we're gonna do one of the public I'm sure they'll love it. Let's see the hours the reader extremely close with Tom Hanks and sound a book, and you're gonna stop all that to go to a play with me? I don't think so. I think I can hear your publicist really screaming. Now she's calling your agent right now. Stephen Daldry has yet to call, but I'll give him time. He's currently directing the film adaptation of the children's novel Trash, starring Martin Sheen and Rooney Mara, to be released next year. I'm Alec Baldwin and Here's the Thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth and honest conversations with artists, policy makers, and performers like Kathleen Turner. So I did cata lot to move honestly. Michael Douglas was calling me up, and Jack Nickoson was calling me up. Warm Baby was calling up and saying, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. You know they'll just kill you. Yeah, And I said, you know, you don't understand. I'm better on stage, and I think I am. Go to Here's the Thing dot org to hear more. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily Botine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey k Sharon Machee and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry Josephson and the Radio Foundation. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the Name.