The Man in the Celluloid Armchair: James Bridges
James Bridges left his small hometown in Arkansas.
And as I promised, our very special guest today is James Bridges, a man of many talents and the director of a remarkable film, The Paper Chase, a film I reviewed last week on the celluloid armchair.
Last week I told everyone about The Paper Chase, but maybe we ought to outline the story briefly.
It's about first -year law students at Harvard, one in particular, Hart, played by Timothy Bottoms.
Can you carry the story on from there? Yeah, it's about a young kid named Hart who comes from the Midwest, who comes from Minnesota actually and goes to Harvard first year right out of the University of Minnesota, comes up against the Eastern establishment, all of the very competitive young men who are at Harvard, and it's his trials and tribulations, his confrontation with a very famous and difficult law professor played by John Hausman, and it's really just what happens to him the first year at Harvard with this professor.
Well, did you write the script too? Yes, I did.
Well now, this is based on a novel by John J.
Did you use him as a consultant? How was he used in this? Yeah, John, the book is called The Paper Chase, and it was written while John was a first -year 1L at Harvard Law School, and John is actually the great -great -great -great -great -grandson of John J., who was our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and I fell in love with the book when the studio sent it to me because I saw this extraordinary paper metaphor in it about how paper dominates our lives and how young men, well, in colleges and in the professional schools like law school, how they chase after the grade that's on a piece of paper and consequently the paper chase becomes our chase for money and our chase for status, everything in society, isn't it? And John was our technical advisor, sure.
Well did he, for instance, you have some very technical dialogue in there in the classroom, did he help you with this? Yes he did.
You know, the law is so poetic, and I'm not really a aficionado of law myself, but the cases that are used in the film were in the book, but as we began to work on it, on the picture John came up and as our technical advisor kept going over and over and over all of the cases to make sure everything was accurate.
Did you do a rough draft before you talked to Osborne about the script? You talked to him first and then you did.
The first thing I did was once I agreed to make the film I insisted that I be able to go back to Harvard, spend a week on the campus, in the classrooms, and talk to Osborne to get a sense of what the whole thing was about.
And then I wrote a first draft and then went back and spent more time with John and then he came up and helped us actually during the actual shooting of the picture.
You know this film is so well cast.
Can you tell us how you did cast after you were given the go ahead on this? Did you start really with a consideration of Timothy Bottoms? You did.
Before we even, before I started, actually before I started the writing of the piece, I said to the studio that I would not make the film, I would not direct the film unless I could have Timothy Bottoms to play the lead.
And once that was taken care of, once I wrote the script and showed it to Timothy, he fell in love with the material because there's so few young actors who have that kind of intelligence that you can photograph.
I know some of his background.
He was in many, many student plays in Santa Barbara.
And you have called him really a remarkable talent.
He really earned that, hasn't he? Because he has worked, he has learned his trade.
This is I think very apparent in the film.
I understand at UCLA, did you go to the drama school there or not? Where did you? No, I didn't.
I went to college in a small town in Arkansas called Conway to the Arkansas State Teachers College for only two years.
But my first play that I wrote was produced by a man named Dennis Steagin who was John Hausman's assistant at that time.
And John Hausman had a theater group, a professional theater group on the UCLA campus.
And then you joined that group.
What did you become a stage manager then? I became an assistant stage manager first for $25 a week and appeared as all the walk -on, carrying spears in all the productions for John.
Well then this is where you first met John Hausman.
I imagine you learned a great deal from him.
Is this one of the reasons you chose him as Kingsley, this very demanding professor at Harvard? Yeah.
When I make a film, I have to find something personal in my experience in order to really get it up there on the screen.
It's not enough to just be making believe all the time.
And I began to identify very much with Timothy Bottoms.
And Timothy and I were talking about the person that he admired most in the theater in America.
And it turned out to be John Hausman who was a friend of mine.
And Hausman had been my Kingsfield.
So when we went to Juilliard, it was very obvious who was going to be the professor.
You know, his performance is extraordinary.
Did the studio, because most people undoubtedly do not know his name, unfortunately, because he hasn't had the big buildup in Hollywood and all of that and is not one of the acting commodities, did the studio resist your casting of Hausman? At the beginning.
I sent him the script and I said, how do you like it? And he said, I want to play Kingsfield.
And he said, but they won't have me.
And so I tested him, convinced the studio to let me test him.
And the minute that they saw it, Gordon Stuhlberg, who was the president of Fox and who was a lawyer, went to, I think, Cornell.
I was not in the screening room, but I was told that when he saw the test, he said, that's the man.
And so this was your Kingsfield.
And you'll probably get an Academy Award for this.
Who was your director of photography on this? The photography, I think, is remarkable.
You've referred to the director of photography as another Greg Toland.
There is this chiaroscuro lighting in there that you tried to achieve.
What is, who is this fine director? His name is Gordon Willis.
And I suppose most people would know his work from The Godfather.
He shot The Godfather, Clute, Up the Sandbox, Loving, End of the Road.
He's just done a new film for Alan Bacula called Parallax View.
And Gordon is more than just a cameraman.
He really is a director of photography, and we worked very closely together, the whole film.
There is no hard light in the film at all.
It's all reflected light, which is very...
Well, you have the feeling, especially when the students meet in these study sessions, that it's almost a Rembrandt, you have.
Well, the hope was in those study sessions, the look was that we wanted to do...
Young men in portraits, you know, portraits of old judges.
And the hope was that we would have the kind of our gang comedy grown up in these portraits of old judges.
So it was a kind of, it was an in -joke a little bit.
It's also sort of sepia -toned, isn't it? I feel that they're very warm colors.
Yeah, always very warm colors.
The idea was that, you know, the New York Times Magazine section of the Sunday Times, the look was we wanted to achieve that kind of Eastern warm autumn look at all times.
I understand you have several projects in the wings, a new play, and you're working with Christopher Isherwood right now, preparing a screenplay based on Isherwood's novel, A Meeting by the River.
Is this something that you're going to complete shortly? Yeah.
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bacardi wrote a theatrical adaptation, a play of the novel, A Meeting by the River, which I directed in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum a year ago with Sam Waterston and Larry Luckinbill.
And I just yesterday morning finished working with Chris and Don on the first step outline of the picture, which will be a film that will shoot in India and London with hopefully Albert Finney and Alan Bates.
Who are the producers now on this? That's, well, I'm going to produce it with Gordon Willis.
And so you'll be able to do it just exactly the way you want to do it, right? For instance, now that we're talking about producers, who are the young producers now that made the paper chase possible? I understand that at least one of them is even younger than Timothy Bottoms.
Their names are Robert Thompson and Roderick Paul.
And Rod is, he was 20 while we were making the film, and he's just turned 21.
Tell me, what is the particular magic of a producer anyway? What is his function? Well, I've been very fortunate in the two films that I've directed in having very good producers.
They put you with the material.
They produce the stars you want, and then they fight any kind of studio fights you might have.
And they stay off the set and out of the cutting room unless you ask them to come in.
In other words, this is not like the old Hollywood factory system where a director has an option on first cut and then it's taken apart by the producers later on.
Well, we worked so well together, Bob and Rod and I, that none of that happened.
I have in my contract two preview cuts.
And so by the time that we had the second preview, the film was solidified.
Who was the editor on this? His name is Walter Thompson, and I've worked with Walter now in both films, A Baby Maker and The Paper Chase, and I'd never do a film without him.
I think he's the greatest cutter in Hollywood.
He cut for John Ford, for John Houston, for Fred Zenneman, and he really knows the insides and outs of making movies.
In other words, you do rely on him to use his creative ability.
In other words, you don't just simply dictate.
Well, hopefully as I get better and better, there's only one way of cutting the picture, and I cut a lot in the camera now.
But I've learned a lot from Walter, and we think so much alike now that he knows the minute I point to a take or tell him what I want to do that he knows how to put it together.
I want to thank you so much, James Bridges, for joining us today.
You really should get out, all of you in the audience, to see The Paper Chase.
It's an extraordinary film, and the screenplay and direction are by James Bridges.
I'll be back after these messages.
We just got it within three seconds.
Excellent, every facet of production.
All we can do is urge people to take their feet off their TV stools and turn off the idiot box and get on down to see The Paper Chase.
Today what I want to do is ask you about your career.
You went to school in Arkansas, am I correct? That's right, to Arkansas State Teachers College, which is now called, I think, Arkansas State College.
And then you had ambitions to what? To really go to Hollywood? I wanted to be a movie star.
And I went out and I did about 50 television shows as an actor and five feature films.
And then I was drafted, and then I discovered when I came back from the service that I wasn't going to be a movie star, and then decided to become a writer.
That's the next best thing, isn't it? Well, I think it...
Or maybe even a little bit better.
I think it gets better the better I am.
You have a longer career there, don't you think? Who knows? Well, right now you're a theater director, a screen director, a screenwriter, playwright.
Can you also operate a camera? Well, I can operate a 16 millimeter camera and a little Super 8, but the Big 35, I don't even pretend to be able to do that.
Do you make home movies and edit them yourself and so on? I did until my camera was stolen.
I was shooting a lot of film, 16 millimeter, and then I took the camera to London and shot a very short 16 millimeter film over in London.
The cameraman, an English cameraman, stole my camera.
Well, the insurance company had nothing to say about that.
I wasn't insured, actually, so I was very upset about that.
I was wondering whether it was one of those London closets.
How did you get to be a writer for the Hitchcock series on television? I understand you wrote many of these, and did you win an Emmy? I was nominated for an Emmy.
You were nominated for an Emmy? And I won the Mystery Writers of America, the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Hitchcock Show.
Actually, John Housman, who's in the paper chase, had a lot to do with that.
I wrote a play which was called The Days of the Dancing that starred Jan Sterling and Dennis Hopper, which was done in California in 1961.
And John Housman came to the play, actually, an assistant of his produced and directed the play, and John came to it and brought people who produced the Alfred Hitchcock television show, Norman Lloyd, who used to be a part of the Mercury Theatre with Orson Wells and John Housman.
And they liked my writing very much and asked me to come and be, well, not a staff writer, but I did six every season of the Hitchcock shows.
These were hour -long shows? The hour -long shows.
Were you able immediately to write this type of script, or did it take some time to catch on? Well, Norman is a very good theatre man, and so we understood each other, the language.
And the first one I wrote was a big success.
I wrote it for Robert Redford and Zora Lampert.
And after that, I'd take each one of the stories and work on them in a specific manner, one for plot, one for characterization, one for suspense, one for just a straight storyline.
And so that was very exciting to work that way all the time.
And this, of course, prepared you for screenwriting, didn't it? Yeah.
What was your first feature film as a writer? The first one that was produced was called The Appaloosa that starred Marlon Brando.
What, did you get to meet Brando on this? Oh, yeah.
I spent an awful lot of time with Marlon before we started shooting and during the first three weeks of shooting.
It was a very interesting thing.
The first 40 pages of the script dealt with the killing of an Indian, the way Matt got his horse.
And at that time, Marlon was obviously into his Indian trip.
And I went up to his house and he said, I will not shoot an Indian on screen.
And he said, and I don't think you can rewrite the top of the show until you know more about the Indians.
And he literally gave me 30, 40 books about the American Indian and said, take these home and read them and then we can talk about the script, which I did.
And you changed the recording? We changed the, I mean, the whole opening and the ending based on not killing Indians.
What was the first feature that you directed? It was a film called The Baby Maker.
And this was also your script, wasn't it? Right.
It was an original screenplay.
And that was very well received.
Did you get many directing offers after The Baby Maker? Did you take any of them? No, I got a lot of things like Summer 42, I was offered to direct before anybody else, and I turned it down.
Why did you turn that down? I didn't believe the ending, but it certainly turned out to be a very successful film.
I still don't believe the end of Summer 42.
And really a lot of things, Save the Tiger, Kansas City Bomber.
You really should have directed Save the Tiger, shouldn't you? Well, I haven't seen the picture, but I sure did like the script.
Steve Shagan's script was beautiful.
You directed a number of plays in Scotland, am I correct? Yes.
How did this happen? Well, I like to keep my hands in both theater and film.
And I have over the past few years been working with the University of Southern California's theater department under John Blankenship, and I direct for the SC theater department when they go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival.
With all of your creative outpouring, do you in addition have a large family, 12 children and a dog? I have a dog, but I'm unmarried.
That's why you're so successful.
What can we really do to save our theater, if you feel that it should be saved, as well as our motion pictures, from largely what I think a lot of people consider an outpouring of banality.
Blood and Gut films, Hate Whitey films, the Disney escape pieces, all of these things.
Who is really to blame for some of this material? I don't know where you put the blame, but I think that if we want the theater to survive, that we must nourish our playwrights.
And there are many, many playwrights in this country and in the world that are really getting the short end of the stick.
They're languishing, aren't they? They certainly are.
What's happened is that I think, and being a director I think I can speak from that point of view, is that it's turned into a director's theater and to a producer's theater, and it's not a playwright's theater anymore.
The best theaters have always been a playwright's theater.
Shaw certainly had no director.
He sat and thumped the stage himself.
Shakespeare directed his own plays with a stage manager.
And we have great, great playwrights.
And as a matter of fact, I just saw last night here in Chicago, production of Freedom of the City, the new Brian Friel play.
Did you like that? I think it's sensational.
It's one of the best things I've seen in the theater in years at the Goodman.
And I'm getting goose -flesh thinking about it.
And the theater in the middle of the country can make the theater.
I don't think New York is going to help the theater survive because it's all too commercially and directorial.
It's way, way too commercial, isn't it? It's very true what you said, I think, about the playwright.
I think all the playwright really needs, he needs paper and he needs his actors, but he certainly doesn't need the rest of it, does he? He needs to set up a platform anywhere.
He needs a floor and one light and he can make a play.
I've always had the feeling that also this is a rather inequitable situation in Hollywood where the director is always given the first credits.
We have, for instance, Kubrick's Clockwork Orange.
Actually, it took a person to write this, didn't it? Anthony Burgess.
I, as a director of film, feel that the director is the writer and I know that Kubrick works very closely with Burgess.
But unlike the theater, the director does make many, many more contributions.
And it's really sort of a team warfare, isn't it? You really have to get a good team together.
Well, John Huston was very responsible in an interview that he had in directors on film directing.
I always read every director because you begin to know that you're not alone out there being insecure and not knowing what you're doing often.
And he said, and it's been sort of the axum that I've used all the way through my life, is that you hire the very best people and you create an atmosphere where those people can function the best and trust them and go with them.
It would seem to me, though, the ideal director would also be his own writer.
And in this way, I think we will have some extraordinary films coming out if our producers give the writer -director his head.
I think it's the only...the director is the writer of the film.
I know I'll be killed in California by that, but I feel it very strongly.
You know, not too long ago, you worked with the famous director Jean Renoir.
Does he really control his material, too? Oh, very much.
Always has, hasn't he? Very, very, very much.
And I worked on a piece that he wrote many years ago, a play called Corolla that he wrote, I think, for Jean Moreau.
Oh, a remarkable actor she is.
Then it was done on NET with Leslie Caron playing the Moreau role, and I thought Leslie was absolutely wonderful, but it's extraordinary to know Jean Renoir and to go into his house and see his father's paintings all over the walls and the sculpture.
He lives now out west, doesn't he? Yes, he does, in Beverly Hills.
Well, Jim Bridges, it's been an honor.
Thank you for being on our program today.
It's a pleasure talking with you.
Let us just say here, your film, The Paper Chase, is out right now, and I urge that everyone see it.