Interview with William Hurt (link)
Paddy Chayefsky owned his own work. No writer owns his own work. They disenfranchised all artists. They started it in the Twenties and Thirties by buying the writers’ work. The first thing they did to de-ball all of us was buy the writer’s work. They can change any word they want to, they can still slap his name up there and they can still say it’s his idea, that he agreed what they did to those words, but he probably didn’t, or she didn’t. So that was the beginning of the disenfranchising of the collaborative effort of theatre. Then they took the director and instead of allowing him to be the facilitator and communicator of ideas, appreciator of talents, they turned him in the hirer or firer and administrator, which is exactly the opposite to his function, and they take the actor and instead of allowing him to transcend through character they turn him into a narcissist personality who has to sell himself out of the box. End of story. Goodbye. Goodbye, theatre. Goodbye, usefulness. Goodbye to work. Goodbye.
So why did you make it?
Because I spent two weeks having dinner three times a week with Arthur Penn figuring out a way for me to get out of film after making one movie. I had no obligations to do PR. I had a guarantee that I was personally in control of the character. I had director approval until 48 hours before we started filming. I had no obligation to market at all. And I had those protections in my contract for many many many years. You couldn’t make me market a film that I didn’t like, that I didn’t approve of. You couldn’t make me sell something where I thought I’d been lied to or cheated or where the promise of something had been deliberately deceitfully lied about. You couldn’t make me smile on something I didn’t want to smile on.
It was on that basis you agreed to do it?
Yes, and I was with Arthur. And on the basis of at least three weeks of full rehearsal. Which Paddy was of course all in favour of because he was an artist.
And the best part:
These are your tools, so go ahead. Use the sucker. Do something with it. Don’t just let it shoot. The word “shoot” - bad word. The word “cut” - bad word. The word “show” - bad word. The only word is work. Work is the word. Work makes you freer, man. Because it gets you outside of your petty self-conscious insecure self.
That was the phrase used by the Nazis.
I know that. It’s over Auschwitz. That’s why I use it. I study that a lot. Since I was 14, I’ve been studying the Holocaust
Posted 1 year ago
