Berto's Garret

a collection of historical audio interviews with top class actors and movie directors

 

Interview with John Landis

In January 1995 two important things happened. The first one is my first book was finally published, and the publisher gave me my 10 copies - wrapped in blue plastic. The second one is John Landis - who was the subject of the book - came to Rome for a big Fellini retrospective they were holding in EUR.

I had been in touch with John while researching for the book and I had only met him twice before - one in 1989 at the Venice Film Festival (he was a member of the jury), and once again in Rome (he was there to do press interviews to promote Oscar). He was extremely cooperative in my research and it only felt right that I allowed him to know what I had written about him: so I spent the whole week before he flew in translating the whole book into something close enough to english so he could understand what it was all about.

The translation was terrible, but John was very friendly anyways. This interview was recorded in some hall in the Excelsior hotel in Via Veneto and it covers at lenght a lot of things that had been left out in the book, trying to set a few things straight: we discuss the TV-series Dream On and find out about a number of projects that had ended up not happening, including the sequel to An American Werewolf in London. If you want to forget the mediocre An American Werewolf in Paris, do listen to what the original story was supposed to be at around 14' 30" into this very long podcast: John did not just tell the story, but he almost acted it out, with some amazing sound effects.

Around minute 26 some photographer walked in and after discussing the book a little he tried hopelessly to get John to pose for funny photos, and then we kept going for a while: we mentioned Schlock, his debut, that he had bought off the market (27'55"), we discuss Tim Burton's Ed Wood (29') and the original Wood that John had once met, the cuts made to the original The Blues Brothers (30') and that at the time were thought to be lost (about half of that material was actually recovered later, and re-cut into the movie for a laserdisc edition, and are now available on the DVD). We end up discussing censorship (32") and the necessity of shooting multiple versions of the risquee parts so a film can be shown in television with no cuts. This brings to a treat about the way Innocent Blood was cut in the US to get an R rating, and lenghtened again in Europe reintroducing by mistake parts of the film that were not supposed to be seen because John had edited them out the film (35'40") so that Robert Loggia speaks for hours in the final scene.

The final line (around 38') a brief line is dedicated to the project of a sequel to "The Blues Brothers". I could not expect I would have worked on it 2 years later, in Toronto, as a voluntary assistant to the director.

Click here to download podcast  

Posted by: rojking a 14:40 | link | commenti |

Coming Soon...

...a lo-ong, exclusive, and exhaustive special feature on (and with) John Landis...stay tuned! 

Posted by: rojking a 21:47 | link | commenti |

A temporary feed for Berto's Garret

Due to a (hopefully) temporary maintenance of our hosting service, our feed moved to the following URL:

http://www.articolo21.info/antonio/ilsolaiodiberto/bertosgarret3.xml

As Itunes is still pointing to the old one, you won't find Berto's Garret on that directory until our hosting is back to work. Sorry for the (hopefully) temporary inconvenience.

Posted by: rojking a 11:22 | link | commenti (1) |

Interview with Tim Burton

Before computers took over my life, I used to note on my paper diaries every event that happened - and particularly the date, place and time of every film I saw. For some reason, though, the day I first saw Edward Scissorhands seems to having been lost to history. I do know when the following interview was recorded: it was april 12th, 1991. In order to meet Tim Burton I had declined the invitation to an advanced screening of a rare italian SF film, directed by a first time director who was closely knit with the Italian Socialist Party - they had seized and vastly misused the political power, and they were on the verge of crumbling under scandals, an event that had been forecasted somehow by the political comedy Il portaborse by Daniele Luchetti and Nanni Moretti, which I had seen with some delight just two days before (I did note this date).

I write all this because a couple of days ago I saw Moretti's brand new Il caimano - another political comedy that I hope will have a similar outcome on our present regime.

Back to the interview, I remember the Fox publicity person had promised me just a handful of minutes - meeting Tim Burton already was something every film journalist wanted to do. Then I guess someone who was supposed to come after me arrived too late, or just didn't show up, and that was my luck. Although my english was far from perfect, it was good enough for me not to need an interpreter. This allowed a real and fascinating conversation on the film: Burton was nice, warm and at ease, and I think his answers expressed way more depth than you can find in most average junket interviews. I love this film, and I think this interview tells more about it than Burton's own audio commentary track on the DVD. Please note that once again I had to split this quite long interview in two parts.

Click here to download podcast  (part one)  (part two)

Posted by: rojking a 15:41 | link | commenti |

Interview with Ivan Passer

I had never seen a film by Czech director Ivan Passer's before the day I happened to be invited to a press screening of "Creator", which I knew nothing about. Although the film was somewhat flawed, I fell deeply in love with it - and as I usually do I imposed it to many friends in the following months and years, and I am proud to say that most of them also felt the same way about it. This is why I jumped to the occasion of meeting with him when he came to Venice to promote "Haunted Summer", a film based on that famous weekend when the "Frankenstein" story was created by Mary Shelley.

Besides trying to learn as much as I could about "Creator", the discussion was also very much about Cannon, who had produced "Haunted Summer" and by then seemed to be on a rise as a mini-major in spite of the fact that most of their movies were doing bad business. That very same day I remember interviewing Eric Stoltz who was the lead of the same film - it might be him that's heard laughing a couple of times while Passer and I speak. That interview was much shorter, and although my english was not any better, Stoltz's was way superior to Passer's.

Click here to download podcast  

Posted by: rojking a 09:57 | link | commenti |

Interview with John Badham

Whatever happened to John Badham? After years of directing TV movies, he stepped on to theatrical and even scored big with a string of notable and often very successful titles. His skills allowed him to often switch genres: so he directed the gritty-realistic musical 'Saturday Night Fever', a good actioner as 'Blue Thunder', the SF-comedy 'WarGames', the stage-like drama of 'Whose Life is it Anyway?' and the action-drama 'American Flyer'.

Eventually, it felt as if his career had been stuck in comedy - I remember enjoying both 'Stakeout' and 'The Hard Way', although they were not much more than pleasant films, and his last effort outside the genre that I remember was 'Nick of Time'. And then what? After a few other films that were barely released in Italy (and probably did not have a great echo in the U.S. either), back to television, and an undeserved lack of attention. To this day I still wonder what made him stop making movies for theaters - there must be some story, here. And of course I feel it's about time Badham was rediscovered.

This interview was recorded on the terrace of Venice's Excelsior in 1986, when he was promoting 'Short Circuit', which I was not crazy about - but the opportunity to speak to him was too good to let it pass. I had a very clunky and big tape recorder, and I remember him using it to discuss the risks of technology. Listening to this first part of the interview again, I recognized the voice of a fellow film journalist that I've lost touch with, Giuseppe Salza - Giuseppe, where the hell are you nowadays?

Due to the interview length, the file has been split in two parts.

Click here to download podcast  (part one)  (part two)

Posted by: rojking a 14:02 | link | commenti (4) |

Interview with Julien Temple

I write this from a train bringing me back to Rome from this year's edition of the Torino Film Festival. It is only fitting that this week's vintage interview was recorded in Torino as well - back in a time when the Fest was still called "Cinema Giovani" (Young People's Cinema) and had more sections for shorts and amateur films than features. As far as major motion pictures go, Julien Temple seems to have disappeared as a movie director since. Back then, he was still considered one of the most promising new directors to come from rock videos. He was a nice guy and his "Earth Girls Are Easy" - although trying too hard to be a ready-to-go camp classic - was quite entertaining. But my Temple favorite is still his one-take bravura segment in the operatic anthology "Aria".

While listening to this interview after so much time (do remember we were in 1988) I was awfully ashamed at the poor quality of my spoken english. But I also had the surprise of hearing a lost friend's voice. I was joined, during the interview, by Renato Della Valle, who was younger than me and whose life came to an untimely end in 2001. Renato, wherever you are now, it was unexpected hearing from you again. Sorry about what happened to you, man.

Due to the interview length, the file has been split in two parts.

Click here to download podcast  (part one)  (part two) 

Posted by: rojking a 11:33 | link | commenti |

Interview with James Brooks

Ugh, I have no memory whatsoever of this interview anymore, and I won't be able to listen to it before Antonio - my producer and the very one who came up with the idea of doing this podcast - puts it online.

I do remember I was in Venice in September 1988, and also that James Brooks was there not as an award-winning film director, nor as the producer of The Simpsons (that was still some times away in the future) but only as the producer of Penny Marshall's Big. I even think the interview was actually never published in print and I do hope that my questions were at least interesting enough. You'll probably be the best judge of that before I can even find the time to download the file and listen to it again after all these years.

Due to the interview length, the file has been split in two parts.

Click here to download podcast  (part one)  (part two) 

Posted by: rojking a 16:17 | link | commenti |

Interview with Peter Weir

Unlike the previous issues of this series, the interview to Peter Weir was done with a few other journalists. The year was 1989 and Weir had come to the Venice Film Festival to present his wonderful Dead Poets Society (retitled L'attimo fuggente in Italy). I am a huge fan of some of his movies and I was looking forward to meeting him, but the press agent only allowed me to participate in a group interview. I hate doing interviews with other people, because:

1) Most movie journalists ask the silliest questions and I often feel ashamed for the category.

2) Most movie journalists don't speak any english at all and they need an interpreter.

Thus, half of whatever time you have for the interview is lost listening to usually inaccurate translation of stuff you have just listened to. On this specific occasion, however, I think it all turned out all right - mainly, I was able to slip in most of the questions I was planning to ask, without being overrun by the others. I am not sure, but I think one of the other interviewers was Piera Detassis.

Years later, in 2000, I met Weir again in Taormina - I only had very few minutes to interview him about the director's cut of Picnic at Hanging Rock... but I was pleasantly surprised when he recognized me after so much time. I delude myself that the interview you are soon going to listen had been something special - however, he was most likely just being polite. :-)

I haven't listened to this tape in a long time but I do remember Weir talking about his next project, written with Gerard Depardieu in mind - that would have been Green Card, of course.

Due to the interview length, the file has been split in two parts.

Click here to download podcast  (part one)   (part two)

Posted by: rojking a 16:16 | link | commenti |