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Chapter 2

Mistake #2: Know-It-Alls Rule

On the set of my first movie, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings¹ (what a title!), I was working with Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams, and the amazing James Earl Jones. For 1976, it was a medium-budget film about Negro league baseball that took place in the 1930s, so it was also a period picture, which meant period set design, costumes, automobiles, trucks, and buses.

One morning, in the 100° heat of the Georgia sun in July with the humidity bubbling at 90%, Billy Dee Williams, who was playing the pitcher, steamed up to me with an idea about what he could say to the batter, James Earl Jones, at the plate. Nothing much was scripted, but Billy Dee said he thought these two were very competitive in a friendly way. What if they were to “play the dozens,” or hurl funny insults at one another? Jokes on the level of “Yo mama is so fat… ” was what he had in mind. They could make fun of each other’s age or athletic ability or family traits.

My very first instinct on hearing this was to think that we didn’t have time to stand around and make up a bunch of silly insults. We barely had time to shoot the scene as written. The first-time, paranoid feature director in me was thinking, “This is how it starts — they try to take the picture away from you a little bit at a time. Don’t do it. Stand up to them.”

Donald Petrie: I’ve often seen where the first-time director on set wants everyone to know that they know what they’re doing and they’re in charge. So when someone tries to give them a little friendly advice, they reply, “I know what I’m doing, no, no!” They become these little Hitlers, and if they do well, great, and if they don’t, nobody’s gonna help them. You don’t have any friends there on the set.

So there I was, director on the spot, all alone. Rob Cohen, the producer, was not yet on the set. I had a negative attitude because I was scared of people wanting to “ruin” it. “I don’t think we can do that,” I said. “We don’t have the writers here. What would we say, anyway?”

I found out.

Next thing I knew, the entire baseball team, all black, surrounded me, one skinny little white boy. They started throwing out suggested “dozens” right and left:

“It ain’t nice to be throwing hard at old men.”

“You couldn’t hit the floor if you fell out the bed.”

“Don’t be makin’ excuses for yo arthuritis, now.”

“Yo mama so fat, when she haul ass, she gotta make two trips.”

Within two minutes, we had enough insults to repel the Normandy Invasion. Before DP Bill Butler had finished setting up the lighting, we had a scene that was not only much funnier but also told us more about the characters than we had ever known.

Great idea — and I almost turned it down. What was I thinking? When Rob Cohen showed up on the set and heard the scene, he laughed so hard he had to change his Depends… twice.

Ron Howard: Because I was an actor, I was playing every role in my mind and trying to make puppets out of everybody. And because I was young, I was terrified that people would second-guess me. I was so prepared, and pretty dictatorial about how things had to go. It took me a while to figure out that people weren’t going to try to undermine me, that it’s in everybody’s interest for the director to succeed.²

Little did I know, there’s a name for this: First-Time Director Syndrome. More common than pimples on a teenager, and even less attractive. The first-time director is terrified that they won’t be listened to. First-Time Director Syndrome is characterized by fixed ideas, by stubbornness, by obsessive attention to petty details and overlooking important ones.

Paris Barclay: The number one problem that young directors have is a misconception of what the job really is. I think something in our culture is this idea of the tyrannical director. They’ve gotten this idea that the director is a kind of god because the director has “the vision,” and therefore it is all about the director. It’s so not all about the director.

But a lot of young directors, they’ll come on a show, and they’ll kill themselves by thinking, “I am the director; therefore, where I put the camera is the only place the camera can be, and this is the way the actor needs to do this, and this is my vision, and you need to walk there. On In Treatment, we had a director who said during the take, “Stop!” Not “Cut,” but “Stop, everybody, right where you’re at.” He was calling out from video village, not where the action was happening. Gabriel Byrne as the shrink was seated, and his patient was standing. The director says, “Two more lines before this is when you should’ve sat down. Okay, let’s go again.” And from that day on, he lost the actors. They paid no attention to him.

I asked Jodie Foster what she knows now that she didn’t when she started directing. And remember, she had been acting professionally since she was only five or six years old and had many opportunities to watch different directors at work.

Jodie Foster: My first movie was… Little Man Tate. I was young, twenty-five, and I think that I had this very black-and-white idea about how everything must be. I had a very young idea about life. I don’t think I had enough appreciation of complexity. That just comes with age. But that extended to my relationship with the actors, too. I think it was very hard for me to let go of a preconceived idea of what I thought the performances should be. That was fine with Adam Hann-Byrd because he was a little boy, but it was harder on the other actors. I wanted it told a certain way, and I couldn’t allow them to breathe in their characters’ bodies. But by the time I got to the second movie, Home for the Holidays, I thought, “I’m not doing that again.”

I’ve done many movies with first-time directors. I have a whole list of pet peeves about the things that they do. I did Alan Parker’s first movie, Bugsy Malone. I did Adrian Lyne’s first movie, Foxes. Sometimes they trench in on things that are unimportant because there’s something solid to get their teeth into. I worked for a director, and in the script, the character had a chipped tooth. There really wasn’t any reason why she had a chipped tooth. She just had a chipped tooth. So he insisted on me having false teeth.

The fixed idea is the death of the creative person. It’s one thing to have a strong concept and a strong belief in what you want to do. At the same time, just because something is being created doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or even right. It would really be nice if our first idea were always the best one. The truth is a lot harder. Any creative person has to be ready to modify, change, alter, chuck, deep-six, or destroy an idea if it’s not working.

Nobody cares if it’s your first idea or your jillionth idea. What they care about is very simple: Does it work? Does it speak to them? Authors rewrite books endlessly. Rembrandt painted over earlier versions of the same portrait. Picasso redrew Guernica many times, and Spielberg reshot parts of Jaws so many times that the studio took away all his cameras.

Paris Barclay: I guess I have two things to say to new directors. I know you don’t have to really be humble, but you must present an appearance of humility; otherwise, you’re not going to get anyone to work with you. They’re going to be talking about you behind your back, and you’re not going to get the best work from them. It means you have to be open and accepting to collaboration with other human beings. You have to accurately know what you’re good at, and what you need help on, and that’s humility. I know I have a certain expertise in music, but at the same time, I know I need work when it comes to a fight scene. I need help. I’m not really great at choreography. I’m not the guy who’s going to do the fresh fight scene. So I know I need the stunt coordinator who’s creative. I need to give him some free rein. I need to have him come and show me stuff. If you’re the director and you’re afraid to let people know that there are areas you’re weak in, whatever you come out with is not going to be as good as it could be, and certainly not as pleasant. The takeaway is you need other people. You do. You need actors, you need other collaborators. You need to inspire them. You need to treat them like family.

SUMMARY

1. Good ideas can come from anywhere. Listen to everyone, even if it’s the craft service person or a Teamster.

2. First-time directors are scared of being second-guessed, so they act dictatorial to cover their fear, succumbing to First-Time Director Syndrome.

3. Be open to suggestions. In the end, you are the decider. If you never let yourself hear the suggestion, you could be leaving gold in the streets.

4. Not all suggestions are good ones. However, sometimes hearing something that wouldn’t work can shine a light on the scene and lead you to discover what will work.

5. Fixed ideas are the death of creativity.

6. Have a vision for your work, but don’t become a slave to it.

7. If you can’t be truly humble, at least pretend to be. Otherwise, nobody will want to work with you. Ask for help when you need it. You’ll get help… and respect.

¹ https://www.amazon.com/Bingo-Traveling-All-Stars-Motor-Kings/dp/B00005RIIY

² 8 Terrence Rafferty, ”Ron Howard,” DGA Quarterly, Fall 2009, 38.