On A Clockwork Orange:
"It was one of those movies that, once having seen it, for me, I can always remember almost every part of the movie, cut for cut. Particularly the first half, which I thought was so vivid. And that was the great thing about Stanley Kubrick. Somehow he was able to create images which, once seen, are never forgotten. They somehow sear themselves into the brain. And they're just uniquely his vision. And so whenever I watch something like Clockwork Orange, it's almost as though I don't need to watch it over and over, because I know every shot, every gesture, every bit of the music and so on. But the filmmakers that influence you, when I really became interested in cinema, it started with the silent filmmakers. I remember I first saw Buster Keaton, and I thought, “Wow, this guy really, really knows the potential of classic montage filmmaking.” You’ve got composition, how one shot flows to the next, and understanding in those chase films and those action movies he made, understanding that it can only exist in cinema. It could never exist in theater or anywhere else. So they were the people who defined it. And then for me, you know, the greatest pioneer — not only because of the films he made, but because of the way he was able to articulate his process so succinctly — was Hitchcock. But there's so many of them."
On quitting Witches of Eastwick, twice:
"It was a chaotic production. I'm not even sure what happened. I’d had a really fantastic experience working on the Twilight Zone movie with Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall and Kathy Kennedy and a whole crew that had come off E.T. And it felt like very much at home. I thought, “Oh, this is Hollywood.” You know, all these stories about Hollywood being chaotic [weren’t true]. And I didn't pay enough attention — when I read this wonderful screenplay Witches of Eastwick — to the crew and how the film was to be made. I thought, “Oh, it's just going to be like working with Amblin and that whole cohort.” And it wasn't. I didn't cast enough of the crew properly. There was some of the producers were very chaotic in their thinking. And, if it wasn't for Jack Nicholson — it kind of got crazy. There was no purpose to [things]. The first mistake I made was, I sat down at a production meeting and they said, like we always do in these production meetings, “OK, where can we cut the budget?” And I said, “Oh, I don't need a trailer,” because I'm never in the trailer. I'm either with the actors or I'm on the set. Back in Australia, we'd done the Mad Max movies. I never had a trailer, because we're out there, just into something. Now that would make sense. I had always been one of the producers on the film. But that was code to them that, “Oh, this guy's negotiable on everything.”
That was really interesting. And I was always seen as being very polite. And they mistake politeness for weakness. That's what Jack told me. He said, “Be careful. They mistake your politeness for weakness.” And he said, “You've got to make them think you're a little bit crazy.” [LAUGHTER] Seriously. It was really interesting. When I asked for 150 extras, I was really careful about having to fill a hall. But 75 turned up. And I said, “Well, I can't shoot.” So if I needed 150 extras, I'd ask for 300. And 300 would have to be let go because they'd say to me, “Why did you ask for 300?” I said, “Because last time you gave me 75.” So the game started playing. Same with camera crews. I always ordered an extra camera crew, but wouldn't use them because I was very one-shot-camera — you know, one camera shooting — at that time. And it went on and on and on. And then there was one of the producers who threw a tantrum on the set for a reason I still don't know. And I just didn't turn up to the set the next day. And the moment that happened, suddenly I had everyone from the studio [saying], “What's wrong? What's wrong? Oh, we'll solve the problem.” I said, “Well if he's on the set, I just can't be on the set.” So suddenly I was unwittingly being conditioned to bad behavior. I was rewarded for bad behavior. And basically punished for good behavior.
And suddenly I saw how the pathology happened. And it was Jack Nicholson who negotiated me through that, and I'm eternally grateful. But more than the process of that, just to see his process: that thing we talked about, the paradox between rigor and abandon, and the creative courage of that. Seeing his skill was a great privilege on that film."
Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
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