August 23, 2022 • 52 mins
Our staff picks continue at Here’s The Thing, where every other week throughout the summer, members of our team select their favorite interviews from the archives. This week, we revisit Alec’s 2013 interview with acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Columbus. As a director, Columbus has brought to life some of the biggest American family films in history: Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone, and Mrs. Doubtfire. He also wrote the screenplays of Gremlins and The Goonies, and produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films. Despite this success, Columbus admits that he “always, to this day, [feels] like [he’s] gonna walk on a movie and get fired.” He reveals to Alec what it was like working with brilliant improvisers like John Candy and Robin Williams, how he got his start writing while working nights in an aluminum factory and why it’s important to him to keep a low-profile.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, that's Zach McNeice. I'm one of the producers of
Here's the Thing, and this week for our summer staff pick,
I want to share with you one of my favorite
episodes from all the way back in two thousand thirteen.
I love movies, and I really enjoyed listening to stories
from filmmakers about how they got their start and the
turning points that shaped their careers. Chris Columbus may not
(00:22):
be quite as recognizable a household name as some of
his peers in Hollywood, but I have no doubt that
you've seen and cherished many of his films. Here's Alec
with Chris Columbus. Chris Columbus has brought to the screen
some of the biggest American family films of the last
twenty years, Adventures in Babysitting Home Alone, Mrs Dowdfire. He
(00:44):
also produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films
and produced the third as well. I'm a wizard and
that's something good at night, wager, once you trade up
a little, you've made a mistake. I mean, I can't
be a wizard. I mean, I'm just Harry. I've known
(01:07):
Chris for a long time. We were in school together
at n y U I lived, started at Weinstein and
then um moved to Reuben. You were in Ruby as
in Reuben, and I think that's where we met. Yeah.
For Columbus, n y U was more than just a
place to learn the craft. He loved film school for
me was the only it was sort of the only
(01:28):
way out, you know. Um, I grew up in Both
of my parents were factory workers in Ohio. UM my
future was basically working at either my father's aluminum factory
or my mother's automotive factory. Literally didn't own them that
I was just be worried and they did. You could
own them, I could own them, and they made a
bad decision. I did. Although I don't think there's much
(01:51):
work there. But at the time that was it, you know,
and and the only escape really for me. Uh, we're
movies and what we're moving to you then there was
no DVD, There was no Noble television. How did you?
Movies were the either the CBS late night movie. I
would sneak out of bed and watch the late night
movie on CBS and just stay in the movie theaters
(02:15):
on the weekend. There were only two theaters, two films
would be two separate theaters. There was no multiplexus back then,
and I would watch whatever film came into town over
and over, and I remember something clicked when I saw
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Something really and I
watched it three times and I just was amazed by
(02:35):
the movie. And I didn't at the time. There's no understanding,
there's no idea. No nobody knew about film schools. Nobody
knew that you could actually go to school and learn
how to become I didn't even know what a director was.
So I put my energy into illustrating and writing comic books.
I thought still didn't understand the film concept, but I
started to draw Spider Man comics, Thor comics, Halt comics.
(02:59):
I wanted to job at Marvel in the Marvel that
was my goal. I still love movies, but I didn't
I didn't understand how to get completely and and so
the comic books and all of the kind This is
very naive of me, but all the comic book superheroes
lived in New York City. So this was this magical
place for me as a kid, because I'm drawing New
(03:21):
York City all the time, and I realized I was
spending about eight to twelve hours alone a day, and
I um, I wanted to work with people. I wanted
to be with people. What did your parents think about that?
They thought I could go to art school that like
can't stay or something. You know that I could go
to art school and I could um draw these comics
and that's fine. Then I saw The Godfather. The Godfather
(03:43):
was re released in four I think, and re released.
And then the next movie I saw was Blazing Saddles.
I saw those two movies change my life, both ends
of the spectrum. I realized with Blazing Saddles the possibilities
of what you could do with film We're endless. And
Time magazine came out with a one page article about
(04:04):
film schools. I had never heard of film school and
don't know what this could possibly be. And I read
about Martin Scorsese, and I read about Francis Ford Copeland.
I read about USC and U C l A and
N y U, and I said to my parents, this
is what I want to do. What did they say?
They were extraordinarily supportive. They were amazingly supportive. Every other
relative in my family was not supportive. They said, oh,
(04:25):
you're gonna, you're gonna saying you're gonna be back here
in two years. You can't handle New York City. Uh,
And it just it just was more fire. It was
just I was like, fuck you, I'm doing it. I
got to New York and I remember my father drove
me up to Weinstein and he looked at the city
and looked at the dorm and he said, let's go home.
I'll drive you back home now. And I said, no way,
(04:46):
no way. I was in. I was literally in oz.
Weinstein doesn't look like the library at a community coach
in the Soviet Union, right, exactly. It's a very but
I immediately fell in love with the city, and I
knew that I had no choice but to succeed. I
had to find a way to succeed, or I would
be back in the middle of Ohio working in an
(05:07):
aluminum factory. And that's hideous. So you get there. Had
you ever touched any film equipment before? Uh? Yeah, super.
My parents did buy me a Super eight sound camera,
which enabled me to start to make films. Actually, I
made a twenty minute film for my theology class. Because
I went to a very strict Catholic school, so it
(05:29):
was a theology class that was dealing with social issues.
So we made a film about abortion vasectomes. And I
was very inspired at the time by remember SNL N
seventies six. Sn L had just come you know, we
would spend our Saturday nights watching Saturday Night Live. So
I was doing these basically commercial parodies that I had
(05:51):
versions that I had seen on SNL, and I screened
it for the class. The class loved it. The priest
was horrified. And what happened is the feeling of showing
that movie and hearing those all of those kids laughing
in this small Ohio town really really hit me. I mean,
it's an addictive feeling, you know, what it's like being
on stage while showing your film and having people respond
(06:12):
to it became very addictive. So that fueled my desire
to get there as well. What did your parents say
about all your politically incorrect film, very dark stuff back then?
You know, they they you know, my my mother went
with it. My father didn't really want to have much
to do with it. He figured okay that you know,
my father was most most of the time, my father
was under a car repairing it, you know, and in
(06:34):
the garage when he wasn't working or having a beer.
So I um, as long as he's not on the streets,
it's exactly my parents. Not onways, he's not taking drugs,
that's true, and that that actually, you know, my mother
was very supportive. My mother was probably much more supportive
than my father about what I wanted to do. And
she had she shared sort of that dark sense of
(06:55):
humor that I had as well. So she supported those
of those movies and she watched I used to watch
SNL with her. She loved it. So you you get
to Weinstein, you had a super eight sound camera, but
you get to Weinstein and what's what are the first
recollections you have of that when you get there? To
go to n y U? Honestly n Yu. The night
I got there, Spawn drinking age was eighteen sponsored a
(07:18):
bar tour. Can you imagine them doing that these days?
Eight to ten bars in the East Village. They would
take a group of freshmen and go to each bar Chumley's, mcsorley's.
And that's where I met my best friends, and that's
where I met my future producing partner, Michael barn Nathan.
We met that first night night and Uh, yeah, you
(07:39):
could be. I mean, the lawsuits are ridiculous. And we
met and we hit it off, and and there was
this I mean, you know what what it's like. You
go into this community of everyone who shares your deepest
love of something like film, and you have someone to
talk to about it. I had no one to talk
to about it in Ohio, you know, I was this
everyone's come there from the aluminum factory. Finally I was
(08:03):
able to have arguments and discussions, and we would get
these into you remember these intense and passion discussions about directors,
you know, and and Frank Capra Was he really great?
Or was he? You know? Was he much more of
a populous director? And you get into these fantastic discussions
that didn't exist for me in Ohio. So I was
in you know, it was like Christmas morning every day
(08:25):
at NYU. So when you go to film school, did
you go there when you started to become a wash
and all that process? Did you love it? And you
ate it up? And you said more and more and
more you love the technical No, actually I don't. I
mean the technical side of it. I have very little
interest in it. I want to know as much as
I need to know so I can go onto a
set and block a scene with actors. But I'm much
(08:47):
more and I was, I've always been this way. I'm
much more interested in connecting with the actors on a
set because what I've seen as a producer over the years,
as I saw it as a writer when I was
just starting out directors, A lot of directors tend to
be afraid of actors, which it drives me insane. I
cannot understand. They're suspicious of actors. They're suspicious of actors.
(09:10):
They don't want to discuss, you know, it's this whole thing. Well,
if an actor has a question, as he challenged, I
love that. I love that back and forth, that discussion that,
you know, I thought it was kind of cool. And
the Apocalypse Now documentary when Brando and Coffler were sitting
there for six days discussing, discussing his character. I love
(09:30):
that about actors. So I'm much more drawn to working
with the actors than I am working, you know, figuring
out what lens I need to use. I know what
I want the film to look like, I know how
I wanted to feel, But I don't need to know
the numbers. I just want to make sure that when
I get on that set, those actors and I that
we trust each other no matter what kind of film
it is. So there must be moments, though, where you're
(09:51):
sitting there on the set of a Harry Potter film
and Roger Deakins, who is one of the greatest cinematographers
of his generation, is there, and do you sit there
and say, what do you think Roger? What lends you?
You defer to him about all the cinematography to do.
Sometimes that don't go no, no, I think it's this,
or I think you must have an opinion. Oh completely,
It's not like yeah completely. In other words, I don't
(10:12):
abdicate all that to something. No. No, I I do
my homework. I storyboard everything. Um, I do my own
shot list in the morning. I know exactly if I
want to use a crane or a dolly or And
I also don't there there's the other side of me
where I've seen directors who only want to deal with
the actors and don't want to block the scene and
leave that all up to the cinematographer. I'm sure you've
seen that as well, But I and I'm not interested
(10:33):
in that. I want to have the control certainly of
the visual look of the film. But I don't need
to get again, I don't need to say I want
afford to here. I don't. That means nothing to me.
What means something to me is to look through the
camera and know if I've got it right. But it's
as I said, it's much more important. The writing is
extraordinarily important to me. And the connection with the actors
(10:56):
and the crew as well. You know. I I've seen
a lot of directors work and there's no connection with people,
and I hate that. I just hate those directors who
sort of build a wall up around them. And maybe
maybe it works for them. I'm sure it works for
some of them. But for me, it's a matter of
connecting with almost every person on that set. So when
I leave the set, they all feel that they've had
a great day. I know it's a weird thing to say,
(11:17):
but it's very important to me that that the person
has the smallest job on the set feels as if
he's he or she has contributed something that day. You know.
And then when you left, NYU, what did you do?
I left n y U. I had Actually I was
lucky enough I had left. But in seventy eight, I
(11:39):
had written, um, something interesting happened that I had a scholarship.
I had this great scholarship that got me through ny
U the first year, and my mother would call me.
You remember, we had those pay phones at the end
of our dorm hallways. It's no cell phones. So every
Sunday I would go to the payphone a call home,
and my mother would say, Chris, don't forget to go
(12:01):
to the Burt Stars office and sign. I had to
sign some papers. So I would renew my scholarship and
I would say, Mom, no problem, I'd forget. I'd be
doing something. That went on for six weeks. The seventh
week I called. She was screaming at me, said you
lost the scholarship. I said, oh, christ I lost the scholarship.
She goes, this summer you're gonna have to work at
(12:21):
the aluminum factory. So so I went back. I went
back to Ohio and I was working basically swing shifts.
I would work day shifts, afternoon shifts, and night shifts.
After your first year, my first year, did your mother
make you a little necklace with a little piece of aluminium?
Moment after that, in the shape of a crucive thing.
(12:41):
Don't don't sunk up on it any Oh god, I
so anyway, So I realized if I was on the
night shift, I could read. So that first year I
was just read, you know, novels for eight hours. I
had to do it again after my sophomore year. So
I went back my sophomore year and I realized if
I could get on the night shift for the entire summer,
I could write a screenplay. So what I did is
(13:05):
I remember these gigantic, hulking cylinders of aluminum, and I
would sneak behind the aluminum corps and sit there with
a notepad, and I wrote my first screenplay, a screenplay
called Jocks about high school football, my experiences with high
school football. And I was a terrible football player, but
I I, you know, it was very person Sorry, yeah,
I suited up. And I brought that back to my
(13:26):
writing teacher, a guy named Jesse Cornbluth, who gave it
to his agent. And his agent was a guy named
Ron Bernstein who still works in New York. And Bernstein
took me on as a client my junior year. A
producer since passed away, Steve Friedman optioned it for five
grand So your professional career, which was which began as
a writer, as a screenwriter. W was leveraged by Corn Bluth,
(13:47):
who was your teacher at n YU. Yeah, that five grand,
preventing me from ever having to go back to the
aluminium factory. Um. So that was my junior year, and
then my senior year I decided to not right because
I was getting writing offers, which was great, you know,
but I was in college and I wanted to take
that time to do my senior film, my senior thesis.
(14:08):
So I did a senior film that year, and then
when I was out, you know, after college, I just,
uh my agents started to get me writing gigs and
I started writing after as soon as I graduated. Basically,
I lived on twenties New York between six and seven. Um.
One school you were in Chelsea. So when school ended,
(14:29):
you decide you're gonna stay in New York. Yeah. I
decided to stay in New York because I again, I
was always very wary of going to l A. I
I don't know why, but why were you wary of it?
Even then? You know? The weird thing is I have
so many friends who think of l A as like
that's where all the films are made. That's where that's
where the magic happens. But for me, I was I
just at that point, after four years in New York,
(14:50):
I felt very comfortable in New York and had this
vision of being able to make every film in Manhattan,
or writing in Manhattan and living in Manhattan. I was
kind of out of work and I couldn't figure out
what I was going to do next. And a friend
of mine, Mitch, said, you know, there hasn't since Jaws,
there really hasn't been a great movie that's featured. He
used the word monster. There has not been a great
(15:10):
monster movie made. And I said, that's a good idea.
That's interesting. And in the loft I lived in, we
had these mice scurring around on the floors and I
would sleep with my hand raped over the bed and
mice would go by in the middle of the night.
I thought, these tiny creatures are frightening. So I spent
the next six weeks writing the script called Gremlin's and
I wrote it on spec. I wasn't paid for it,
(15:30):
and I sent it to my agent, who um liked
the script but felt it was a little dark, and
still sent it to about fifty producers and studio executives
and everyone passed on it, and Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was
leaving his office on a Friday and passed his secretary's
desk and it was sitting there. That's why so much
of this business is luck. He passed the script and
(15:52):
saw the title and said that looks interesting, picked it up,
read it that weekend, and decided he wanted to option
the movie. Now I didn't know this. I gotta call
up my loft bar. Nathan answers the phone and says,
as someone on area says, it's Steven Spielberg, I get
I get the phone. He goes, Chris, it's Steven Spielberg.
I was stunned, and um, yeah, he flew me out
(16:12):
to l A. I got to meet Spielberg and that
sort of that. And I lived in l A for
nine months at that point. So what happens in that
nine months He's giving you notes, or there's creative people
he would give me notes. Now, Gremlins was sort of
off and running, and someone else was even rewriting it
as I was working on another script for Stephen. For
some strange reason, I had sort of carte blanche. I
(16:35):
could go into his office whenever I wanted. He whether
he liked me, I don't know what it was. But
I had an office three doors down from him. I
would just go down there whenever he would be sitting
there with Richard Gere or or uh or Warren Beatty.
One time he's like, Chris, come on in, would he
and I would start to talk to him about ideas.
One day he's looking through these old EC comic books
(16:56):
and he says, look at this title, Chris, the goon Children.
And I said, the goon Children, that's a cool title.
And we came up with this story together about these
kids who find a treasure map, and it was The Goonies.
I would write three pages of Goonies, run to Steven's office,
give it to him. He would make some notes. I
would run back to my office and make the changes.
And we finished that script in about six weeks. Then
(17:19):
I wrote Young Sherlock Holmes with him, kind of in
the same way for Amblin, And that's when I and
that's when I redirected Goonies. Richard Donner Dick Donner directed Goonies,
and who directed Young Sherlock Holmes Barry Levinson. Yeah, so
it was. So you have Steven Spielberg producing your films
(17:40):
and your three doors down from him and Richard Donner,
who directed Superman. I'm gonna I want to tell people
in the audience who don't remember this Timeline and Levinson
was directed many great films they direct. Those are your
first two movies. That could mean well, Gremlins is the
first one as well. Joe Dante. Yeah, so you go
from Joe Dante to Donner to bar E Levenson for
(18:01):
the first three films that your name was on the script. Yeah,
and your name was on as the writer of all three.
You know, it was kind of a heavy experience. At
the same time, I always knew, this is what I
need to be do, This is what I should be doing,
This is what I have to be doing. What did
you learn from Spielberg? Spielberg was like graduate school of
filmmaking for me. Spielberg was like, um, I learned shortcuts
(18:24):
and I learned basically, it was a Billy Wilder quote
that Stephen you know, nailed into my head every day,
which was don't tell the audience something more than once.
I learned how to edit material, I learned how to
write better. Dialogue, and I learned how to be much
more visual as a writer from Stephen. So it was
a great relationship, you know, um and still is a
(18:46):
great relationship to this day. We have the opportunity to
work together a couple of years ago. So I I
really loved that time. But at the same time, I
needed to get back to Manhattan. Why. I don't know.
I just felt like I missed I missed it. I
mean it was It's a very simple did you of
a sense? Because I find other people have the same thing,
It's better for me to stay here for my career.
You didn't think of all those lines. Now, I I
(19:08):
don't think at the time, I was able to articulate it.
You know, twenty years down the road, now I can
look back and and understand why I did it, Because
I was seeing the beginning of people losing touch with reality.
Why do directors not have long careers. They don't have
long careers because they become extremely successful. Then they move
(19:28):
into these huge mansions and live an isolated life. They
watch movies in their screening room. They don't do their
own grocery shopping, they don't pump their own gas, they
don't get out there on the street. At the end
of all that, you've lost connection to real people. What
are you making movies about, even if they're fantasy films.
Even again, I did not realize it at the time.
I realized it years later. I realized the reason I
(19:49):
went back to New York was to connect with everyone again,
so I could go to the corner superrette and buy
a carton of orange hues for forty dollars, you know,
so I could see people every day, take my dry
cleaning and take my laundry. And that hasn't changed to
this day. I have not changed, you know. I have
a great housekeeper now in San Francisco. But for the
most part, again because I'm a director and nobody really
(20:12):
knows what the hell I look like, I'm anonymous. Yeah,
but you've yeah, you've kept this very low profile. Nobody
knows what I do in San Francisco. I mean, I
have a couple of friends. But I love it. It's fantastic.
They're all conscious choices you made, not I think some
of them were subconscious. At the beginning, the only thing
(20:34):
that mattered to me about becoming a director was longevity.
I wanted to make sure that my career would last
for decades no matter what I was doing, And I
felt that part of that has been this ability to
sort of hide in plain sight in a weird way.
Now I understand it, Director Chris Columbus. After the break,
(20:58):
we'll hear about the faithful cast of McCauley culkin in
Home Alone. So you're a writer and you do Gremlins,
and you do Goonies and you do Young Sherlock Holmes.
(21:20):
Is the notion of you directing a film? Is it
starting to percolate? Do you go to Spielberg and say,
I want to direct this one? Now? It came. It
started with Jesse corn Blooth. Jesse Cornbluoth put into my
head at n y U the only way you're gonna
get to become a director is by writing a few
successful screenplays after Young Sherlock Holmes. Then I realized Gooneys
(21:44):
and Gremlins had been successful enough that maybe I could
get a directing gig. My agents sent me a copy
of the script called Adventures in Babysitting Elizabeth with Elizabeth
Shoe and Anthony Rapp. I love this, I love the script.
I thought this is something I could do, and I
had great producers Linda Oaps and Deborah Hill, who were
very supportive of me as the first time director. They
(22:06):
agreed to let me direct the movie, and that was
the first day on the set was a little little horrifying.
So it was the thing I had dreamed about my California.
Now we shot it in Canada. It was my dream
to be directing a film. Yet at the same time
I realized I had to go hunt to the set
and face two D fifty people and tell them what
to do, and you've never done it before. I got
(22:28):
over my fear pretty quickly because I had to. It's
like jumping off. Do you still have an apprehension about
that now? When it's first day of school, and I
mean shooting. It's not Chris who was drawing his Marvel comics,
Chris that was hiding behind the aluminum spools writing scripts
and everything one everybody else has taken a nap at
the aluminum factory. It's not Chris alone. There's the writer
(22:51):
director who has this kind of monastic process. Then there's
the guy that's got to go out and be the
captain of the ship. On the deck of the ship
with two or three hundred people there so that's a
skill you had to develop, correct, I think so. But
I again, because well, definitely, so. You know, I was
terrifying the first couple of days. But then I realized, Yeah,
I realized that a lot of these crew guys, we're
(23:14):
like beating animals because directors. There are so many directors
who are such assholes. They're so kind of cruel and angry,
and they're working something out on the set of the film. Yeah,
and I thought, that's not gonna work. That won't work
for me. And I realized after three or four weeks
that people were responding just to the fact that I
was not grumpy in the morning, that I wasn't piste
(23:34):
off all the time, the fact that I was genuinely
a pretty happy guy, and I really valued what everybody
was doing. If somebody made a mistake, I wasn't ready
to rip their head off. I just I understood it.
By the end of that movie, I really I learned
a valuable lesson how to earn the respect of the
crew and your actors. So you're there, you make the film,
and what happens. The film opened to like seven million
(23:58):
dollars back then, which was a perceived disaster. So I'm
thinking I'm never gonna work again. What happened is the
second weekend, it did something that no film some certain
films do, few films do, which is a shot up
in attendance. So we did better the second weekend. Getting
that news that we increase was shocking, and it was
(24:20):
great for the movie, and it was great. I was
able to go off and make another film then, and uh,
what do you go do? I did a film that
I wrote, I pitched a film to Jeffrey Katzenberg, and
I went off and wrote something else instead, a movie
called Heartbreak Hotel about my own obsession with Elvis Presley.
The movie opens on a Friday. I read Roger Ebert's
(24:41):
review calling it one of the worst films here. I'm
driving across country with my wife at that point, because
we edited in l A for two months, and we
get By the time we get to the probably in
the Texas somewhere, this is Wednesday, the movie is already
playing on a double bill in the afternoon. They've already
the theater owners to get it out of there, as
if if it was a nuclear way. So um, once again,
(25:04):
I'm thinking it's over. I'll go back to writing At
the time my first child, Eleanor, was born, and I
got a script from John Hughes. We both have the
same agent. Um. He said, do you want to do
the third Christmas Vacation movie. I was like, that's not
really I didn't dream of becoming a filmmaker to do
that particular movie. But I thought I needed the gig
(25:27):
and John Muses supporting me, so I started to do
that movie. I shot Second Unit, and I had such
a disastrous relationship with the star Chevy Chase, who you know,
it's no, he has no shortage of enemies. Uh. It
was so disastrous and so humiliating for me, just based
(25:50):
on three meetings that I quit. I said that John,
I can't do this. I cannot make He's like, you know,
Chevy's a complicated guys, he's a rich food. I said,
let me tell you something. He treat he when I
first walked in. He thought I was an assistant. So
I'm like, I can't really work this way I and
so I I quit and then I was really I
(26:12):
thought I was really in trouble. And John and I
got along great. So John sent me the script for
Home Alone Again. Luck plays into it and I fell
in love with the script. I thought it was a
great script. I think he wrote it in two days.
I loved him, loved him, I mean his life and
how he went and how he kind of left and
you know, gave up and moved back to Chicago. I'm
(26:33):
not gave up, but he kind of kind of walked
away from It. Was always so sad to me because
I thought, God, I mean, I was hoping I could
become the next John Candy in his career and the
grown leading, crazy uncle Buck of the next garage of
films of his. I loved working with him, loved him.
What was your experience like? It was exactly the same. Um,
(26:54):
I walked off of a movie that he had given me.
So there was never a reason for him to call
me back. But it for some strange reason, I think
he respected that or he understood it, and being chevy,
he understood. Yeah, I think so, and he uh, you know,
when I read this script, I thought, this is a gift,
this script. The script is really really important. And John,
(27:15):
the only concern I had was I had a you know,
I had a newborn at the time, and John liked
to work from about tenant when he was right when
he was a producer in writing. You know, he wrote
all night long. So we would be doing pre production
during the day on Home Alone, and then for story meetings,
I'd go to his house in Like Forest and we'd
work from ten to about five in the morning. So
(27:37):
I was getting during the pre production hours of Home Alone,
I was getting about two hours sleep, and John half
of the time just on. He told these great stories.
So he would tell stories you probably remember, and smoke
and these stories would go on for three hours before
we ever got into the movie. The fact that we
were making a movie he gave me once he saw
the first day of dailies from Home Alone. He gave
(27:58):
me an amazing amount of freedom a filmmaker, and that
really felt great. I was I felt no pressure because
I always to this day feel like I'm gonna walk
on a movie and get fired. But with John, he
made me feel very secure and created sort of a
safe atmosphere for me. Immediately, who cast McCauley, Well, John
put him an Uncle Buck, and John said you should
see this kid, But John never said cast him. So
(28:21):
McCauley came up to my New York apartment. He and
his father the first kid I met, and he was
incredibly charming, terrific. But I said to John, just because
I felt like I wanted to be responsible, I said
I should meet some other kids. So I met about
three hundred other kids and then came back around a mccaullary.
Let me get back to you. I'm gonna be three kids,
and I had to do my job. But McCauley was
(28:44):
the first one you saw. McCauley was the first one
I saw, and he was you know, it was. It
was an interesting situation, kind of like the kids in
in Harry Potter a little bit. McAuley had only done
one or two movies, so he would do a line.
He would he would say one line, maybe two lines,
and then get distracted. So a lot of that film
is cut into pieces just so we could get his
(29:06):
performance together. But what happened on screen, it was amazingly charming.
And you had Heard is the father. John heard, yeah,
and Catherine is the mother, and I heard thought he
was making heard who I love? But I loved him
in Cutter his Way, remember cut his Way one of
the great performances. But while he was making Home Alone,
he thought he was making the biggest piece of ship
(29:27):
in the world, and he was he was a pain
in the ass, a little fit. He comes back on
home alone too, and the first day he's shooting, I
yell action. He breaks character and he said, I just
would like to say to Chris and the crew, I
owe you a big apology. Made a great movie the
first time, and I'm here to support you. Wow, we
(29:48):
have it in dailies. I still have a tape of that.
And I got to work with John Candy for the
first time. And John Candy came in for one day
of shooting. We had it for one day and he
has like six scenes in the movie. So we shot
for twenty four hours, four hours straight and Candy kept going.
He just would could continue to improvise. And it was
my first sort of foray into improvisation. That's director Chris Columbus.
(30:15):
When we come back, Columbus talks about working with another
brilliant improviser, Robin Williams. Yeah, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(30:39):
listening to here's the thing. Chris Columbus says he wanted
to work with Robin Williams ever since he saw him
in Good Morning Vietnam. Five years later, Columbus got his chance.
I feel like I've known you for years. Maybe we
knew each other in another life. I would love for
(31:01):
you to come and work with us. Who would I great?
Mrs doubt Fire, a film about a divorced father who
dresses as a Scottish nanny to trick his ex wife
into hiring him to care for their kids, won a
Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Robin Williams won a Globe
(31:21):
for Best Actor. But before all that would happen, Before
the filming even began, Chris Columbus had to meet Williams
for lunch, and I was terrified. I had worked with
guys like Passy who I admired, and Dan Stern, but
Robin was a true superstar at the time, and I
was I was nervous about how it would go. And
we just we hit it off immediately, you know, we
(31:42):
wanted to. We really connected. Much of Mrs doubt Fire
was shot in San Francisco, and Columbus took the opportunity
to move his growing family out west. It's a great
place to raise a family, and I felt Manhattan would
be a little difficult. Um we were about to our
third kid, and I thought, and two of the kids
have been born at Lenox Hill in Manhattan. You know,
(32:05):
I can't. And I was having I was walking down
the street man Anne with my toddler, and I couldn't
hear what she was saying to me. I couldn't you
know she's telling And I thought, I gotta I've gotta
be in a calmer place. And I also fell in
love with the city. San Francisco is a great city.
And I had in the relationship with Robin was still
is terrific. Had a great relationship with Robin. And with
Robin again, it's like it's like a steroid version of
(32:29):
John Candy, where you John liked to improvise, but Robin
lives to improvise. So it was almost like seeing a
Springsteen concert where he has to exhaust himself after four
and a half hours of playing before you can go
to sleep at night. With Robin, it was the same thing.
We would shoot anywhere from twelve to fifteen takes for
each scene, and we would start with a very structured
(32:54):
script to take and then move off of the script
and change every And that's why that picture had to
be shot with two or three cameras because do the
exectit Fox. Know that when you're going in to make
a film and you have someone who's is varied and
who's is uh, who says uh, what's the word? You know,
as spontaneous as he is, did you call them up
(33:16):
after the first week of shooting and say, fellas, just
tear off the budget. We gotta start all over again.
Now we stayed under We stayed not under budget, but
we stayed on budget. Maybe we went over one or
two days because he is fast, He's lightning fast, and
we shot with two or three cameras. We understood the
cost benefit analysis of his improvisations. He wasn't somebody who
was over the indulgence. No, And you had actors. You
(33:38):
had Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan acting across from this guy,
not knowing what he was going to say on take
number five or six. So we had to have a
camera on them because he's I mean, the word genius
has used a lot these days. But he he comes
up with these things so quickly he doesn't remember that
he said them in the next take. It's just he's possessed.
(33:58):
I sometimes tell people shooting Mrs Doutfire, I was like
shooting a documentary, and by the time we got to
the editing room with millions of feet of film. At
the time, we weren't shooting digitally yet. We had four
or five different versions of the film. We had the
PG version, the PG thirteen, the R in the n
C seventeen. I showed Marcia, who was the producer, because
the film needed to be PG thirteen, so we knew
(34:20):
we couldn't have an R rated version of Mrs Doutfire.
I showed Marcia cut of the film and then Robin
wanted to see it with an audience, and that was
the sort of the thing that sealed the deal, because
the audience really responded. It was like it really was
a huge It wasn't that intrusive about cutting the film,
and he just as long as they from worked in
front of an audience, he was happy left alone. That
was it. It's just every day he we developed this
(34:42):
sense of trust after a couple of weeks, and I
would it was incredibly exhausting shoot, working fourteen hours a day,
and I'd get home at night and just poured myself
a glass of wine and the phone to ring. It
was Robin Howard Daily's how how was I in daily
so he was he was very very obsessive in terms
of his own performance, and doubt Fire sort of received
(35:03):
mixed reviews. So for me, I because because of my
love of film history and because my love of certain films,
I was, you know, I'd always get there was a
level of keeping it very real by reading what some
of these people were saying. Now some I should probably
be have a tougher skin and say, I don't give
a ship what they're saying. So with doubt Fire, there
(35:23):
was a sense that we had created a movie that
was very successful, a lot of people fell in love with,
but it didn't for me personally. I didn't get to
that point where I wanted. You know, I always wanted
to have that level of critical success and commercial success
as well, and I just wasn't there yet. So I
managed to stay hungry. I mean, there was a feeling
(35:43):
of me that I needed to accomplish a lot more
and I really still feel that way. I still felt
that there's a long way to go there. Back on
dobt Fire, felt that there was a long way to go.
So the collaboration with you did nine months after that,
with Hugh Grant and Hugh and uh, how did that
movie do? That movie did okay, but that was the
(36:05):
you know, that was the blow job weekend, So that
was a that happening while you were shooting and when
it was released being no, no, no no. We were scheduled,
we were doing a press const exciting. This is insane.
So we're doing an the international press conference on a
movie with you. I realized, now I want to make
a movie with you, just so as a gag, I
can get dressed up as a woman, as a cross
(36:25):
dresser and solicit a detective on Hollywood Boulevard, just as
a gag. What if you got arrested? I wanted the
goal is he get arrested just to get arrested. And
then when I'm down to the police, said, I going
to go officer, can I explace some of you? This
is really just funk with Chris Columbus, and I really
wanted to. I wanted the sex scandal on the set
of it was and it happened. I never I never
saw it coming. He was like the most completely yeah,
(36:48):
I guess, button down, really conservative guy, always prepared for work,
did a great job. We were doing the international press
conference in l A. The movie was finished. The movie
was screen off the charts and audiences were loving it.
So I thought, wow, this is gonna be a bigger
hit than down Fire. So we screened the movie on
(37:08):
a Friday night for the press. I go out to
dinner with Hugh, Jeff gold Bloom, and Laura Dern. We
have this great dinner. I drive Hugh back to the hotel.
He says, oh, John Hughes sent me a script. Would
you would you mind looking at it? I don't know
if I should do. It was a hundred one Dalmatians.
So I walked up to his hotel room, took the script,
and I said, okay, get a good night's sleep. We
(37:29):
have a press conference tomorrow. I go to sleep. My
phone rings. It's six fifty nine. It's bar Nathan. He says,
turn on the TV. I said, what, he goes turn
on the TV. I turned on the news channel two
five seven mug shots. I'm like, what the fund did
he do? So there's a hundred fifty international journalist that
(37:53):
I was doing a press conference with. Hugh. Hugh was disappeared.
He was at his agent's house. He's gone, he didn't come.
He got it was me facing all of course, amazing.
He does this the night before a press conference. Perfect,
and he's he since said that he did it because
he didn't like the movie, which he loved the movie,
so that's not why he did what. He went to
(38:14):
solicitor Proster because he was so depressed about the so
depressed about the film, he had to have a prostitute.
I got, I gotta try that. Hugh Grants well publicized
arrest didn't completely kill nine months. It's still made over
a hundred and eighty three million dollars. Mrs Doubtfire grossed
over four hundred and forty million dollars worldwide. The Harry
(38:35):
Potter films did even better. Two years ago, Chris Columbus
produced The Help, a much smaller film, which earned a
Best Picture Oscar nomination. Clearly, Chris is skilled at selecting
the right material to work with, or maybe he just
surrounds himself with the right people. It was my daughter,
because she was the one who tried to convince me
for about a year and a half to read the
(38:56):
Harry Potter books. And finally when I did and I
realized wanted to make the movie. There were twenty five
other directors who were in line. They called it at
Warner Brothers a bake off. They said, Okay, we're going
to meet all of these directors, and whoever we you
know feel will make the best movie will hire UM.
(39:17):
So I was in line because Spielberg had dropped out.
Steven Spielberg had dropped it was the one he was
going to direct the film. I think he wanted to
combine the two books, add some cheerleaders and stuff, and
I think that she wasn't you know, Joe Rolling was
not up for that. So for whatever reason, Stephen backed
backed away from the films, and then it was a
group of literally twenty five people. I had the last
(39:40):
meeting because I wanted to rewrite the script for the
studio UM. And what I did is I spent four,
no eleven days, staying up to about two or three
in the morning rewriting the Harry Potter script. Steve Clubs
wrote a brilliant script. I just wanted to rewrite it
with some camera cues, some add some scenes from the
book that weren't in there. And when I went in
(40:00):
to meet with Warner Brothers and they said, why do
you want to make this movie? And I said, because
I've rewritten it. For you for free. Now, no one
ever does anything for free in Hollywood, so uh, it
took it. Still took them a few weeks to say yes,
but I did get the gig. They and I realized
I still there was still one obstacle. I had to
fly to Scotland to meet with j K. Rowling. That
(40:20):
was my sort of last interview, and if I fucked
that up, I wouldn't have gotten the job. So I
flew to Scotland, met with Joe, who I was expecting.
I hadn't seen many photographs of her at that point.
I was expecting Miss Marple. I was expecting some sixty
year old, heavy set woman in a flow floral dress.
And it was She's she's younger than we are. She's
she's very, very funny, one of the funniest people I've
(40:44):
ever met, sharp as attack, and we hit it off immediately.
We spent three she spent three hours listening to me.
I had diarrhea of the mouth because I was telling
her the kind of movie I wanted to make. At
the end of it, she said, that's exactly the kind
of film I want to make, and I knew I
got the job. Once I knew I got the job.
I was fucking scared out of my wits. Everyone was
(41:05):
obsessed about who was going to be cast in the movie,
how we how how we were going to design Hogwarts,
what was Quidditch going to be like? And I thought
the only way to get through this not to be
so I'm not standing in a corner unable to face
my crew, was to just sort of bury my head
and start to work. You just I just just sort
of went through every day, moved I moved my family
(41:25):
to London, and went through every day making the best
movie possible. And the great thing is there were a
core of us at the time, four of us, Joe Rolling,
David Haym and Steve Clovis and myself, and we'd meet
every couple of days, talk about the script, talk about
the movie. And it was that core that really helped
me shape what eventually became all eight movies. And again,
(41:48):
and she was around during the screenwriting process or around
the shooting as well. Roll Now she only came out
for one day during the shooting, just to visit. She
wasn't that interested in the shooting. As you can if
her a visitor ont a set, it's not that exciting
after about two hours. She came out. When we were
shooting diagon Alley. But during the screenwriting, during the rewriting process,
(42:08):
and during some of the design work, you know, I
would take her through the Harry Potter Factory, I called it.
We would walk through the art department and I would
show her what I was thinking of for diagon Alley
or Green Gots or Hogwarts of the Wizarding Robes, and
she just was always very collaborative. She'd say, oh, like
the wand she was very very specific about everything that
(42:28):
Harry's wand couldn't have any specific design to it because
it was from an old tree. That wouldn't It was
just a little crooked and you And it was that
kind of specific comments that really sort of helped me
find where I was going. I never was off the
rails though, because we did we did share a similar
i think, vision for what we wanted the movie to be.
And I she would give us also indications that the
(42:50):
films we're gonna get the books. There were only three
books at the time. Remember, we're gonna get progressively darker,
and this had to be sort of the first one
was sort of like the storybook version of Harry Potter
or it's his origin story. It's still a little dark,
and Hogwarts had to feel like the most welcoming place
in the world. And then we get little indications that
it's going to start to fall apart as we move forward.
We set that all into motion, that the movies would
(43:13):
get darker and darker and darker. Did you did you
have a sense did you say, I think I've got
this film version of these books, I've got the recipe. Unfortunately, not,
not until we were finished. We knew we were We
knew things were going well. So even though the kids
had not had a lot of experience and acting, they
(43:33):
were amazingly charming on screen and they felt like those characters.
I think the first day that we really felt that
we were on the right track. As we shot the
the the the opening of the Great Hall and we're
on this huge crane and the kids are walking in
and are her. Visual effects guy John Richardson attached four
(43:56):
hundred and fifty candles to strings that were all burned.
They everyone had to light all these candles. There weren't
any CGI candles in the shot. And I remember sitting
in Daily's and seeing the shot where the camera cranes
up through the floating candles and realizing, Oh, I think
we're onto something. Uh, and so that all felt good.
We still had no Yeah, it was fun. That's cool.
(44:17):
That's cool. Yeah. What was it like to work One
of my favorite actors I ever worked with was Gamben.
Oh god, he was he. I remember I prea such
a character. I produced the movie that that he you
know when he Richard Harris was Dumbledore for two films. Now,
let me tell you something. Yeah, that was one of
the funniest people I've ever met. Harris and he first
(44:40):
himself as Harris. Yes, and he Harris do this and
Harris count be seen doing this. On the first day
of shooting with Richard Harris, he tells me that he's
learned the wrong scene that he It was seen at
the end of the movie's It was one of the
final scenes for Dumbledore. We having to shoot at first,
and he didn't learn it, and he explained to me
(45:03):
that he had learned something else. I don't know if
he was telling me the truth. Um. And that's the
kind of guy he was. He was constantly he would
always try to piss off Maggie Smith by calling her
Dame Maggie, Oh, Dame Maggie. It was so fun to watch.
But I have to tell you he was such a
bad boy. Um. The things that he got away with
(45:23):
in his time just never never. You couldn't get away
with it today. But anyway, So Harris was in the
first two. Then he passed away. The last thing he
said to me. I went to visit him in the
hospital room, and I knew he was dying. I saw
when he was dying, and he had he was sitting
there and he lost about twenty pounds. And we never
really knew what he was dying. I was, he wouldn't
(45:46):
tell us and he didn't think he was dying. So
I went to visit him, and as I'm leaving, I
said goodbye to him, and he says, don't you ever
fucking replace me as Dumbledore? And I said, okay, that's
the last thing he said. So and that was the
last thing he said to me. Uh. And then Gambin
came in and came in. Who was he was a character? Yeah,
(46:09):
he's he's an interesting guy, but he he's conservative compared
to Harris. The last film you directed, uh was Percy Jackson.
Percy Jackson. Yeah, feature. Yeah, so if that was released
in ten, you shot that in two thousand nine. So
you haven't directed a feature in four years. No, And
(46:33):
part of that was because of the of The Help. Um.
There was a writer director named Take Taylor who wrote
a script who was a sort of a director that
I had supported over the years. He did a lot
of short films, was an actor in l A and
I knew him through one of my daughter's school associates.
He would always come when he come to San Francisco,
he'd sit down and meet with me and show me
what he was working on. He came into my office
(46:54):
one day and said, this is my first feature that
I want to make. My best friend wrote this book,
The Help, and I said, I read the script and
I said, this is a fantastic movie. I wanted to
direct it. And Tate was like, I want to direct,
and I want you to support me so I don't
get fired. So I brought the script to a lot
of studios. At the same time, the book was starting
to heat up again. It was one of those books
(47:14):
that every woman was reading on the beach. Um and
Steven Spielberg and I sort of reunited to do it.
Steven and I met um in London. He said, what
do you think of this guy, Tay Taylor? I said,
incredibly talented, he wrote a brilliant script. Steven said, as
long as you promised that you'll be on the set
every day. I said, but when I produced a movie,
I like to go for the first week, and then
(47:35):
those guys financed the DreamWorks. Streamworks financed it. We shot
in Mississippi in the summertime a couple of years ago,
and I knew were on the set every day. I
was there every day. It was fantastic. I was gonna say,
what's that like for you to be the pure producer. Well,
as I said, usually I just if I'm the producer,
I like to go for a couple of days, make
sure it's it's all in good hands, and I don't
(47:56):
like to go off and direct or write with it
in this situation, and so I made a promise to Stephen.
I was there the entire time. And the interesting thing was,
because of the level of performances in that film, getting
actually just being able to watch these actresses perform every day,
Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone. It
(48:19):
just was an amazing sort of front row seat to
these these performances, and Tait was just wonderful with the actresses.
He was just he's an actor himself. Again, that connection
is really helpful. So for me it was it was
a bit of a learning experience again, it just it
opened up another sort of part of filmmaking that I
want to get. I was gonna say, do you want
(48:39):
to make films like that? Because my last question for
you is, here's a guy who the flame for you
that you were drawn to from things I've read about
you were movies like The Godfather, But you haven't made
a movie like The Godfather, And I'm wondering is that
a direction you want to go in? Now you see
a movie like The Help, and you see do you
want to do more? Not even so much racially, but
(49:00):
much more kind of intense drama. Here's the thing I'm
not particularly uh. I'm not saying I'm not happy with
the movies I made, but I still have a long
way to go. Hopefully I can live long enough to
get to where I really will be happy with it.
Maybe it won't happen, but what I really really want
to do, I would like to make the kind of
movies that you and I grew up on, which are
(49:21):
the kind of movies. Look Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather, Serpico.
All of those movies were movies that we're not only
about something, but but we're great dramatic films with an
enormous sense of humor. By the way, all the films
I mentioned are very funny at times, yet at the
same time they reached a huge audience. And to me,
that's what it was about. I didn't want to make
(49:42):
a film that was so special in Indian tiny that
it wouldn't reach a wide audience. I always felt that
when I was watching movies like Butch Cassidy and The
Sundance Kid, and I was watching Dog Day Afternoon, the
performances were so amazing and so authentic and real, and
those movies found an audience. Now, unfortunately, most of those
(50:04):
types of films are being made for television. So yeah,
and aproposal that you've made films now, written, directed and
produced huge films, some of the biggest films of the
last twenty five years. You've been doing this for twenty
five years. How has the business changed in the twenty
five years from your standpoint? Well, you know, when I
(50:26):
get harder to get that movie made. You're talking about
that Sydney Lamette esque drama. Yeah, I've spent the better
part of the last year and a half writing films
like that, but I can't. It's very, very difficult to
get them made in an environment that really is only
interested in either sequels or superhero films. If you walked
(50:46):
into a studio executive's office in nineteen seventies eight and
said you wanted to make Spider Man, yeah, comic books,
Oh my god, that's the lowest form of entertainment. Well,
now we're in a situation where that's mostly what's being made,
So it's difficult to help kind of you know, was
made because the book was so successful and we made
(51:08):
it for twenty eight million dollars, which for a period
piece is relatively inexpensive. So if we can find that
way to do more of those films, I'd love to
do them. And that's probably one of the reasons I
haven't directed. The help is really gotten into my head
in a big way and said you can make these
movies and people will go see them. And where I've
gotten into trouble in my career, movies like bi centennial
(51:30):
man movies like Beth Cooper Again, when I did them
for fun, and when I thought, oh, this will be fun,
I'll just go out and make a movie like we're
back in film school. It's not the case anymore. There's
much more responsibility. Chris Columbus won't stop making movies, but
he has taken a slight detour. This first novel, House
(51:51):
of Secrets, a middle school fantasy adventure, is out this year.
Chris sent an early draft to J. K. Rowling. She
said it was too fast paced, slowed down. She told
him deepen the characters and work on the complexity. Chris
Columbus says he and his co author Ned Vizzini took
that advice to heart. I hope you enjoyed this conversation
(52:16):
with director Chris Columbus. Here's the Thing is produced by
Kathleen Riso, myself, Zach mcneie, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer
is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich.
I'm Zach McNee HELEC. Baldwin will be back next week.
Here's the Things brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Hey, that's Zach McNeice. I'm one of the producers of
Here's the Thing, and this week for our summer staff pick,
I want to share with you one of my favorite
episodes from all the way back in two thousand thirteen.
I love movies, and I really enjoyed listening to stories
from filmmakers about how they got their start and the
turning points that shaped their careers. Chris Columbus may not
(00:22):
be quite as recognizable a household name as some of
his peers in Hollywood, but I have no doubt that
you've seen and cherished many of his films. Here's Alec
with Chris Columbus. Chris Columbus has brought to the screen
some of the biggest American family films of the last
twenty years, Adventures in Babysitting Home Alone, Mrs Dowdfire. He
(00:44):
also produced and directed the first two Harry Potter films
and produced the third as well. I'm a wizard and
that's something good at night, wager, once you trade up
a little, you've made a mistake. I mean, I can't
be a wizard. I mean, I'm just Harry. I've known
(01:07):
Chris for a long time. We were in school together
at n y U I lived, started at Weinstein and
then um moved to Reuben. You were in Ruby as
in Reuben, and I think that's where we met. Yeah.
For Columbus, n y U was more than just a
place to learn the craft. He loved film school for
me was the only it was sort of the only
(01:28):
way out, you know. Um, I grew up in Both
of my parents were factory workers in Ohio. UM my
future was basically working at either my father's aluminum factory
or my mother's automotive factory. Literally didn't own them that
I was just be worried and they did. You could
own them, I could own them, and they made a
bad decision. I did. Although I don't think there's much
(01:51):
work there. But at the time that was it, you know,
and and the only escape really for me. Uh, we're
movies and what we're moving to you then there was
no DVD, There was no Noble television. How did you?
Movies were the either the CBS late night movie. I
would sneak out of bed and watch the late night
movie on CBS and just stay in the movie theaters
(02:15):
on the weekend. There were only two theaters, two films
would be two separate theaters. There was no multiplexus back then,
and I would watch whatever film came into town over
and over, and I remember something clicked when I saw
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Something really and I
watched it three times and I just was amazed by
(02:35):
the movie. And I didn't at the time. There's no understanding,
there's no idea. No nobody knew about film schools. Nobody
knew that you could actually go to school and learn
how to become I didn't even know what a director was.
So I put my energy into illustrating and writing comic books.
I thought still didn't understand the film concept, but I
started to draw Spider Man comics, Thor comics, Halt comics.
(02:59):
I wanted to job at Marvel in the Marvel that
was my goal. I still love movies, but I didn't
I didn't understand how to get completely and and so
the comic books and all of the kind This is
very naive of me, but all the comic book superheroes
lived in New York City. So this was this magical
place for me as a kid, because I'm drawing New
(03:21):
York City all the time, and I realized I was
spending about eight to twelve hours alone a day, and
I um, I wanted to work with people. I wanted
to be with people. What did your parents think about that?
They thought I could go to art school that like
can't stay or something. You know that I could go
to art school and I could um draw these comics
and that's fine. Then I saw The Godfather. The Godfather
(03:43):
was re released in four I think, and re released.
And then the next movie I saw was Blazing Saddles.
I saw those two movies change my life, both ends
of the spectrum. I realized with Blazing Saddles the possibilities
of what you could do with film We're endless. And
Time magazine came out with a one page article about
(04:04):
film schools. I had never heard of film school and
don't know what this could possibly be. And I read
about Martin Scorsese, and I read about Francis Ford Copeland.
I read about USC and U C l A and
N y U, and I said to my parents, this
is what I want to do. What did they say?
They were extraordinarily supportive. They were amazingly supportive. Every other
relative in my family was not supportive. They said, oh,
(04:25):
you're gonna, you're gonna saying you're gonna be back here
in two years. You can't handle New York City. Uh,
And it just it just was more fire. It was
just I was like, fuck you, I'm doing it. I
got to New York and I remember my father drove
me up to Weinstein and he looked at the city
and looked at the dorm and he said, let's go home.
I'll drive you back home now. And I said, no way,
(04:46):
no way. I was in. I was literally in oz.
Weinstein doesn't look like the library at a community coach
in the Soviet Union, right, exactly. It's a very but
I immediately fell in love with the city, and I
knew that I had no choice but to succeed. I
had to find a way to succeed, or I would
be back in the middle of Ohio working in an
(05:07):
aluminum factory. And that's hideous. So you get there. Had
you ever touched any film equipment before? Uh? Yeah, super.
My parents did buy me a Super eight sound camera,
which enabled me to start to make films. Actually, I
made a twenty minute film for my theology class. Because
I went to a very strict Catholic school, so it
(05:29):
was a theology class that was dealing with social issues.
So we made a film about abortion vasectomes. And I
was very inspired at the time by remember SNL N
seventies six. Sn L had just come you know, we
would spend our Saturday nights watching Saturday Night Live. So
I was doing these basically commercial parodies that I had
(05:51):
versions that I had seen on SNL, and I screened
it for the class. The class loved it. The priest
was horrified. And what happened is the feeling of showing
that movie and hearing those all of those kids laughing
in this small Ohio town really really hit me. I mean,
it's an addictive feeling, you know, what it's like being
on stage while showing your film and having people respond
(06:12):
to it became very addictive. So that fueled my desire
to get there as well. What did your parents say
about all your politically incorrect film, very dark stuff back then?
You know, they they you know, my my mother went
with it. My father didn't really want to have much
to do with it. He figured okay that you know,
my father was most most of the time, my father
was under a car repairing it, you know, and in
(06:34):
the garage when he wasn't working or having a beer.
So I um, as long as he's not on the streets,
it's exactly my parents. Not onways, he's not taking drugs,
that's true, and that that actually, you know, my mother
was very supportive. My mother was probably much more supportive
than my father about what I wanted to do. And
she had she shared sort of that dark sense of
(06:55):
humor that I had as well. So she supported those
of those movies and she watched I used to watch
SNL with her. She loved it. So you you get
to Weinstein, you had a super eight sound camera, but
you get to Weinstein and what's what are the first
recollections you have of that when you get there? To
go to n y U? Honestly n Yu. The night
I got there, Spawn drinking age was eighteen sponsored a
(07:18):
bar tour. Can you imagine them doing that these days?
Eight to ten bars in the East Village. They would
take a group of freshmen and go to each bar Chumley's, mcsorley's.
And that's where I met my best friends, and that's
where I met my future producing partner, Michael barn Nathan.
We met that first night night and Uh, yeah, you
(07:39):
could be. I mean, the lawsuits are ridiculous. And we
met and we hit it off, and and there was
this I mean, you know what what it's like. You
go into this community of everyone who shares your deepest
love of something like film, and you have someone to
talk to about it. I had no one to talk
to about it in Ohio, you know, I was this
everyone's come there from the aluminum factory. Finally I was
(08:03):
able to have arguments and discussions, and we would get
these into you remember these intense and passion discussions about directors,
you know, and and Frank Capra Was he really great?
Or was he? You know? Was he much more of
a populous director? And you get into these fantastic discussions
that didn't exist for me in Ohio. So I was
in you know, it was like Christmas morning every day
(08:25):
at NYU. So when you go to film school, did
you go there when you started to become a wash
and all that process? Did you love it? And you
ate it up? And you said more and more and
more you love the technical No, actually I don't. I
mean the technical side of it. I have very little
interest in it. I want to know as much as
I need to know so I can go onto a
set and block a scene with actors. But I'm much
(08:47):
more and I was, I've always been this way. I'm
much more interested in connecting with the actors on a
set because what I've seen as a producer over the years,
as I saw it as a writer when I was
just starting out directors, A lot of directors tend to
be afraid of actors, which it drives me insane. I
cannot understand. They're suspicious of actors. They're suspicious of actors.
(09:10):
They don't want to discuss, you know, it's this whole thing. Well,
if an actor has a question, as he challenged, I
love that. I love that back and forth, that discussion that,
you know, I thought it was kind of cool. And
the Apocalypse Now documentary when Brando and Coffler were sitting
there for six days discussing, discussing his character. I love
(09:30):
that about actors. So I'm much more drawn to working
with the actors than I am working, you know, figuring
out what lens I need to use. I know what
I want the film to look like, I know how
I wanted to feel, But I don't need to know
the numbers. I just want to make sure that when
I get on that set, those actors and I that
we trust each other no matter what kind of film
it is. So there must be moments, though, where you're
(09:51):
sitting there on the set of a Harry Potter film
and Roger Deakins, who is one of the greatest cinematographers
of his generation, is there, and do you sit there
and say, what do you think Roger? What lends you?
You defer to him about all the cinematography to do.
Sometimes that don't go no, no, I think it's this,
or I think you must have an opinion. Oh completely,
It's not like yeah completely. In other words, I don't
(10:12):
abdicate all that to something. No. No, I I do
my homework. I storyboard everything. Um, I do my own
shot list in the morning. I know exactly if I
want to use a crane or a dolly or And
I also don't there there's the other side of me
where I've seen directors who only want to deal with
the actors and don't want to block the scene and
leave that all up to the cinematographer. I'm sure you've
seen that as well, But I and I'm not interested
(10:33):
in that. I want to have the control certainly of
the visual look of the film. But I don't need
to get again, I don't need to say I want
afford to here. I don't. That means nothing to me.
What means something to me is to look through the
camera and know if I've got it right. But it's
as I said, it's much more important. The writing is
extraordinarily important to me. And the connection with the actors
(10:56):
and the crew as well. You know. I I've seen
a lot of directors work and there's no connection with people,
and I hate that. I just hate those directors who
sort of build a wall up around them. And maybe
maybe it works for them. I'm sure it works for
some of them. But for me, it's a matter of
connecting with almost every person on that set. So when
I leave the set, they all feel that they've had
a great day. I know it's a weird thing to say,
(11:17):
but it's very important to me that that the person
has the smallest job on the set feels as if
he's he or she has contributed something that day. You know.
And then when you left, NYU, what did you do?
I left n y U. I had Actually I was
lucky enough I had left. But in seventy eight, I
(11:39):
had written, um, something interesting happened that I had a scholarship.
I had this great scholarship that got me through ny
U the first year, and my mother would call me.
You remember, we had those pay phones at the end
of our dorm hallways. It's no cell phones. So every
Sunday I would go to the payphone a call home,
and my mother would say, Chris, don't forget to go
(12:01):
to the Burt Stars office and sign. I had to
sign some papers. So I would renew my scholarship and
I would say, Mom, no problem, I'd forget. I'd be
doing something. That went on for six weeks. The seventh
week I called. She was screaming at me, said you
lost the scholarship. I said, oh, christ I lost the scholarship.
She goes, this summer you're gonna have to work at
(12:21):
the aluminum factory. So so I went back. I went
back to Ohio and I was working basically swing shifts.
I would work day shifts, afternoon shifts, and night shifts.
After your first year, my first year, did your mother
make you a little necklace with a little piece of aluminium?
Moment after that, in the shape of a crucive thing.
(12:41):
Don't don't sunk up on it any Oh god, I
so anyway, So I realized if I was on the
night shift, I could read. So that first year I
was just read, you know, novels for eight hours. I
had to do it again after my sophomore year. So
I went back my sophomore year and I realized if
I could get on the night shift for the entire summer,
I could write a screenplay. So what I did is
(13:05):
I remember these gigantic, hulking cylinders of aluminum, and I
would sneak behind the aluminum corps and sit there with
a notepad, and I wrote my first screenplay, a screenplay
called Jocks about high school football, my experiences with high
school football. And I was a terrible football player, but
I I, you know, it was very person Sorry, yeah,
I suited up. And I brought that back to my
(13:26):
writing teacher, a guy named Jesse Cornbluth, who gave it
to his agent. And his agent was a guy named
Ron Bernstein who still works in New York. And Bernstein
took me on as a client my junior year. A
producer since passed away, Steve Friedman optioned it for five
grand So your professional career, which was which began as
a writer, as a screenwriter. W was leveraged by Corn Bluth,
(13:47):
who was your teacher at n YU. Yeah, that five grand,
preventing me from ever having to go back to the
aluminium factory. Um. So that was my junior year, and
then my senior year I decided to not right because
I was getting writing offers, which was great, you know,
but I was in college and I wanted to take
that time to do my senior film, my senior thesis.
(14:08):
So I did a senior film that year, and then
when I was out, you know, after college, I just,
uh my agents started to get me writing gigs and
I started writing after as soon as I graduated. Basically,
I lived on twenties New York between six and seven. Um.
One school you were in Chelsea. So when school ended,
(14:29):
you decide you're gonna stay in New York. Yeah. I
decided to stay in New York because I again, I
was always very wary of going to l A. I
I don't know why, but why were you wary of it?
Even then? You know? The weird thing is I have
so many friends who think of l A as like
that's where all the films are made. That's where that's
where the magic happens. But for me, I was I
just at that point, after four years in New York,
(14:50):
I felt very comfortable in New York and had this
vision of being able to make every film in Manhattan,
or writing in Manhattan and living in Manhattan. I was
kind of out of work and I couldn't figure out
what I was going to do next. And a friend
of mine, Mitch, said, you know, there hasn't since Jaws,
there really hasn't been a great movie that's featured. He
used the word monster. There has not been a great
(15:10):
monster movie made. And I said, that's a good idea.
That's interesting. And in the loft I lived in, we
had these mice scurring around on the floors and I
would sleep with my hand raped over the bed and
mice would go by in the middle of the night.
I thought, these tiny creatures are frightening. So I spent
the next six weeks writing the script called Gremlin's and
I wrote it on spec. I wasn't paid for it,
(15:30):
and I sent it to my agent, who um liked
the script but felt it was a little dark, and
still sent it to about fifty producers and studio executives
and everyone passed on it, and Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was
leaving his office on a Friday and passed his secretary's
desk and it was sitting there. That's why so much
of this business is luck. He passed the script and
(15:52):
saw the title and said that looks interesting, picked it up,
read it that weekend, and decided he wanted to option
the movie. Now I didn't know this. I gotta call
up my loft bar. Nathan answers the phone and says,
as someone on area says, it's Steven Spielberg, I get
I get the phone. He goes, Chris, it's Steven Spielberg.
I was stunned, and um, yeah, he flew me out
(16:12):
to l A. I got to meet Spielberg and that
sort of that. And I lived in l A for
nine months at that point. So what happens in that
nine months He's giving you notes, or there's creative people
he would give me notes. Now, Gremlins was sort of
off and running, and someone else was even rewriting it
as I was working on another script for Stephen. For
some strange reason, I had sort of carte blanche. I
(16:35):
could go into his office whenever I wanted. He whether
he liked me, I don't know what it was. But
I had an office three doors down from him. I
would just go down there whenever he would be sitting
there with Richard Gere or or uh or Warren Beatty.
One time he's like, Chris, come on in, would he
and I would start to talk to him about ideas.
One day he's looking through these old EC comic books
(16:56):
and he says, look at this title, Chris, the goon Children.
And I said, the goon Children, that's a cool title.
And we came up with this story together about these
kids who find a treasure map, and it was The Goonies.
I would write three pages of Goonies, run to Steven's office,
give it to him. He would make some notes. I
would run back to my office and make the changes.
And we finished that script in about six weeks. Then
(17:19):
I wrote Young Sherlock Holmes with him, kind of in
the same way for Amblin, And that's when I and
that's when I redirected Goonies. Richard Donner Dick Donner directed Goonies,
and who directed Young Sherlock Holmes Barry Levinson. Yeah, so
it was. So you have Steven Spielberg producing your films
(17:40):
and your three doors down from him and Richard Donner,
who directed Superman. I'm gonna I want to tell people
in the audience who don't remember this Timeline and Levinson
was directed many great films they direct. Those are your
first two movies. That could mean well, Gremlins is the
first one as well. Joe Dante. Yeah, so you go
from Joe Dante to Donner to bar E Levenson for
(18:01):
the first three films that your name was on the script. Yeah,
and your name was on as the writer of all three.
You know, it was kind of a heavy experience. At
the same time, I always knew, this is what I
need to be do, This is what I should be doing,
This is what I have to be doing. What did
you learn from Spielberg? Spielberg was like graduate school of
filmmaking for me. Spielberg was like, um, I learned shortcuts
(18:24):
and I learned basically, it was a Billy Wilder quote
that Stephen you know, nailed into my head every day,
which was don't tell the audience something more than once.
I learned how to edit material, I learned how to
write better. Dialogue, and I learned how to be much
more visual as a writer from Stephen. So it was
a great relationship, you know, um and still is a
(18:46):
great relationship to this day. We have the opportunity to
work together a couple of years ago. So I I
really loved that time. But at the same time, I
needed to get back to Manhattan. Why. I don't know.
I just felt like I missed I missed it. I
mean it was It's a very simple did you of
a sense? Because I find other people have the same thing,
It's better for me to stay here for my career.
You didn't think of all those lines. Now, I I
(19:08):
don't think at the time, I was able to articulate it.
You know, twenty years down the road, now I can
look back and and understand why I did it, Because
I was seeing the beginning of people losing touch with reality.
Why do directors not have long careers. They don't have
long careers because they become extremely successful. Then they move
(19:28):
into these huge mansions and live an isolated life. They
watch movies in their screening room. They don't do their
own grocery shopping, they don't pump their own gas, they
don't get out there on the street. At the end
of all that, you've lost connection to real people. What
are you making movies about, even if they're fantasy films.
Even again, I did not realize it at the time.
I realized it years later. I realized the reason I
(19:49):
went back to New York was to connect with everyone again,
so I could go to the corner superrette and buy
a carton of orange hues for forty dollars, you know,
so I could see people every day, take my dry
cleaning and take my laundry. And that hasn't changed to
this day. I have not changed, you know. I have
a great housekeeper now in San Francisco. But for the
most part, again because I'm a director and nobody really
(20:12):
knows what the hell I look like, I'm anonymous. Yeah,
but you've yeah, you've kept this very low profile. Nobody
knows what I do in San Francisco. I mean, I
have a couple of friends. But I love it. It's fantastic.
They're all conscious choices you made, not I think some
of them were subconscious. At the beginning, the only thing
(20:34):
that mattered to me about becoming a director was longevity.
I wanted to make sure that my career would last
for decades no matter what I was doing, And I
felt that part of that has been this ability to
sort of hide in plain sight in a weird way.
Now I understand it, Director Chris Columbus. After the break,
(20:58):
we'll hear about the faithful cast of McCauley culkin in
Home Alone. So you're a writer and you do Gremlins,
and you do Goonies and you do Young Sherlock Holmes.
(21:20):
Is the notion of you directing a film? Is it
starting to percolate? Do you go to Spielberg and say,
I want to direct this one? Now? It came. It
started with Jesse corn Blooth. Jesse Cornbluoth put into my
head at n y U the only way you're gonna
get to become a director is by writing a few
successful screenplays after Young Sherlock Holmes. Then I realized Gooneys
(21:44):
and Gremlins had been successful enough that maybe I could
get a directing gig. My agents sent me a copy
of the script called Adventures in Babysitting Elizabeth with Elizabeth
Shoe and Anthony Rapp. I love this, I love the script.
I thought this is something I could do, and I
had great producers Linda Oaps and Deborah Hill, who were
very supportive of me as the first time director. They
(22:06):
agreed to let me direct the movie, and that was
the first day on the set was a little little horrifying.
So it was the thing I had dreamed about my California.
Now we shot it in Canada. It was my dream
to be directing a film. Yet at the same time
I realized I had to go hunt to the set
and face two D fifty people and tell them what
to do, and you've never done it before. I got
(22:28):
over my fear pretty quickly because I had to. It's
like jumping off. Do you still have an apprehension about
that now? When it's first day of school, and I
mean shooting. It's not Chris who was drawing his Marvel comics,
Chris that was hiding behind the aluminum spools writing scripts
and everything one everybody else has taken a nap at
the aluminum factory. It's not Chris alone. There's the writer
(22:51):
director who has this kind of monastic process. Then there's
the guy that's got to go out and be the
captain of the ship. On the deck of the ship
with two or three hundred people there so that's a
skill you had to develop, correct, I think so. But
I again, because well, definitely, so. You know, I was
terrifying the first couple of days. But then I realized, Yeah,
I realized that a lot of these crew guys, we're
(23:14):
like beating animals because directors. There are so many directors
who are such assholes. They're so kind of cruel and angry,
and they're working something out on the set of the film. Yeah,
and I thought, that's not gonna work. That won't work
for me. And I realized after three or four weeks
that people were responding just to the fact that I
was not grumpy in the morning, that I wasn't piste
(23:34):
off all the time, the fact that I was genuinely
a pretty happy guy, and I really valued what everybody
was doing. If somebody made a mistake, I wasn't ready
to rip their head off. I just I understood it.
By the end of that movie, I really I learned
a valuable lesson how to earn the respect of the
crew and your actors. So you're there, you make the film,
and what happens. The film opened to like seven million
(23:58):
dollars back then, which was a perceived disaster. So I'm
thinking I'm never gonna work again. What happened is the
second weekend, it did something that no film some certain
films do, few films do, which is a shot up
in attendance. So we did better the second weekend. Getting
that news that we increase was shocking, and it was
(24:20):
great for the movie, and it was great. I was
able to go off and make another film then, and uh,
what do you go do? I did a film that
I wrote, I pitched a film to Jeffrey Katzenberg, and
I went off and wrote something else instead, a movie
called Heartbreak Hotel about my own obsession with Elvis Presley.
The movie opens on a Friday. I read Roger Ebert's
(24:41):
review calling it one of the worst films here. I'm
driving across country with my wife at that point, because
we edited in l A for two months, and we
get By the time we get to the probably in
the Texas somewhere, this is Wednesday, the movie is already
playing on a double bill in the afternoon. They've already
the theater owners to get it out of there, as
if if it was a nuclear way. So um, once again,
(25:04):
I'm thinking it's over. I'll go back to writing At
the time my first child, Eleanor, was born, and I
got a script from John Hughes. We both have the
same agent. Um. He said, do you want to do
the third Christmas Vacation movie. I was like, that's not
really I didn't dream of becoming a filmmaker to do
that particular movie. But I thought I needed the gig
(25:27):
and John Muses supporting me, so I started to do
that movie. I shot Second Unit, and I had such
a disastrous relationship with the star Chevy Chase, who you know,
it's no, he has no shortage of enemies. Uh. It
was so disastrous and so humiliating for me, just based
(25:50):
on three meetings that I quit. I said that John,
I can't do this. I cannot make He's like, you know,
Chevy's a complicated guys, he's a rich food. I said,
let me tell you something. He treat he when I
first walked in. He thought I was an assistant. So
I'm like, I can't really work this way I and
so I I quit and then I was really I
(26:12):
thought I was really in trouble. And John and I
got along great. So John sent me the script for
Home Alone Again. Luck plays into it and I fell
in love with the script. I thought it was a
great script. I think he wrote it in two days.
I loved him, loved him, I mean his life and
how he went and how he kind of left and
you know, gave up and moved back to Chicago. I'm
(26:33):
not gave up, but he kind of kind of walked
away from It. Was always so sad to me because
I thought, God, I mean, I was hoping I could
become the next John Candy in his career and the
grown leading, crazy uncle Buck of the next garage of
films of his. I loved working with him, loved him.
What was your experience like? It was exactly the same. Um,
(26:54):
I walked off of a movie that he had given me.
So there was never a reason for him to call
me back. But it for some strange reason, I think
he respected that or he understood it, and being chevy,
he understood. Yeah, I think so, and he uh, you know,
when I read this script, I thought, this is a gift,
this script. The script is really really important. And John,
(27:15):
the only concern I had was I had a you know,
I had a newborn at the time, and John liked
to work from about tenant when he was right when
he was a producer in writing. You know, he wrote
all night long. So we would be doing pre production
during the day on Home Alone, and then for story meetings,
I'd go to his house in Like Forest and we'd
work from ten to about five in the morning. So
(27:37):
I was getting during the pre production hours of Home Alone,
I was getting about two hours sleep, and John half
of the time just on. He told these great stories.
So he would tell stories you probably remember, and smoke
and these stories would go on for three hours before
we ever got into the movie. The fact that we
were making a movie he gave me once he saw
the first day of dailies from Home Alone. He gave
(27:58):
me an amazing amount of freedom a filmmaker, and that
really felt great. I was I felt no pressure because
I always to this day feel like I'm gonna walk
on a movie and get fired. But with John, he
made me feel very secure and created sort of a
safe atmosphere for me. Immediately, who cast McCauley, Well, John
put him an Uncle Buck, and John said you should
see this kid, But John never said cast him. So
(28:21):
McCauley came up to my New York apartment. He and
his father the first kid I met, and he was
incredibly charming, terrific. But I said to John, just because
I felt like I wanted to be responsible, I said
I should meet some other kids. So I met about
three hundred other kids and then came back around a mccaullary.
Let me get back to you. I'm gonna be three kids,
and I had to do my job. But McCauley was
(28:44):
the first one you saw. McCauley was the first one
I saw, and he was you know, it was. It
was an interesting situation, kind of like the kids in
in Harry Potter a little bit. McAuley had only done
one or two movies, so he would do a line.
He would he would say one line, maybe two lines,
and then get distracted. So a lot of that film
is cut into pieces just so we could get his
(29:06):
performance together. But what happened on screen, it was amazingly charming.
And you had Heard is the father. John heard, yeah,
and Catherine is the mother, and I heard thought he
was making heard who I love? But I loved him
in Cutter his Way, remember cut his Way one of
the great performances. But while he was making Home Alone,
he thought he was making the biggest piece of ship
(29:27):
in the world, and he was he was a pain
in the ass, a little fit. He comes back on
home alone too, and the first day he's shooting, I
yell action. He breaks character and he said, I just
would like to say to Chris and the crew, I
owe you a big apology. Made a great movie the
first time, and I'm here to support you. Wow, we
(29:48):
have it in dailies. I still have a tape of that.
And I got to work with John Candy for the
first time. And John Candy came in for one day
of shooting. We had it for one day and he
has like six scenes in the movie. So we shot
for twenty four hours, four hours straight and Candy kept going.
He just would could continue to improvise. And it was
my first sort of foray into improvisation. That's director Chris Columbus.
(30:15):
When we come back, Columbus talks about working with another
brilliant improviser, Robin Williams. Yeah, I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(30:39):
listening to here's the thing. Chris Columbus says he wanted
to work with Robin Williams ever since he saw him
in Good Morning Vietnam. Five years later, Columbus got his chance.
I feel like I've known you for years. Maybe we
knew each other in another life. I would love for
(31:01):
you to come and work with us. Who would I great?
Mrs doubt Fire, a film about a divorced father who
dresses as a Scottish nanny to trick his ex wife
into hiring him to care for their kids, won a
Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Robin Williams won a Globe
(31:21):
for Best Actor. But before all that would happen, Before
the filming even began, Chris Columbus had to meet Williams
for lunch, and I was terrified. I had worked with
guys like Passy who I admired, and Dan Stern, but
Robin was a true superstar at the time, and I
was I was nervous about how it would go. And
we just we hit it off immediately, you know, we
(31:42):
wanted to. We really connected. Much of Mrs doubt Fire
was shot in San Francisco, and Columbus took the opportunity
to move his growing family out west. It's a great
place to raise a family, and I felt Manhattan would
be a little difficult. Um we were about to our
third kid, and I thought, and two of the kids
have been born at Lenox Hill in Manhattan. You know,
(32:05):
I can't. And I was having I was walking down
the street man Anne with my toddler, and I couldn't
hear what she was saying to me. I couldn't you
know she's telling And I thought, I gotta I've gotta
be in a calmer place. And I also fell in
love with the city. San Francisco is a great city.
And I had in the relationship with Robin was still
is terrific. Had a great relationship with Robin. And with
Robin again, it's like it's like a steroid version of
(32:29):
John Candy, where you John liked to improvise, but Robin
lives to improvise. So it was almost like seeing a
Springsteen concert where he has to exhaust himself after four
and a half hours of playing before you can go
to sleep at night. With Robin, it was the same thing.
We would shoot anywhere from twelve to fifteen takes for
each scene, and we would start with a very structured
(32:54):
script to take and then move off of the script
and change every And that's why that picture had to
be shot with two or three cameras because do the
exectit Fox. Know that when you're going in to make
a film and you have someone who's is varied and
who's is uh, who says uh, what's the word? You know,
as spontaneous as he is, did you call them up
(33:16):
after the first week of shooting and say, fellas, just
tear off the budget. We gotta start all over again.
Now we stayed under We stayed not under budget, but
we stayed on budget. Maybe we went over one or
two days because he is fast, He's lightning fast, and
we shot with two or three cameras. We understood the
cost benefit analysis of his improvisations. He wasn't somebody who
was over the indulgence. No, And you had actors. You
(33:38):
had Sally Field and Pierce Brosnan acting across from this guy,
not knowing what he was going to say on take
number five or six. So we had to have a
camera on them because he's I mean, the word genius
has used a lot these days. But he he comes
up with these things so quickly he doesn't remember that
he said them in the next take. It's just he's possessed.
(33:58):
I sometimes tell people shooting Mrs Doutfire, I was like
shooting a documentary, and by the time we got to
the editing room with millions of feet of film. At
the time, we weren't shooting digitally yet. We had four
or five different versions of the film. We had the
PG version, the PG thirteen, the R in the n
C seventeen. I showed Marcia, who was the producer, because
the film needed to be PG thirteen, so we knew
(34:20):
we couldn't have an R rated version of Mrs Doutfire.
I showed Marcia cut of the film and then Robin
wanted to see it with an audience, and that was
the sort of the thing that sealed the deal, because
the audience really responded. It was like it really was
a huge It wasn't that intrusive about cutting the film,
and he just as long as they from worked in
front of an audience, he was happy left alone. That
was it. It's just every day he we developed this
(34:42):
sense of trust after a couple of weeks, and I
would it was incredibly exhausting shoot, working fourteen hours a day,
and I'd get home at night and just poured myself
a glass of wine and the phone to ring. It
was Robin Howard Daily's how how was I in daily
so he was he was very very obsessive in terms
of his own performance, and doubt Fire sort of received
(35:03):
mixed reviews. So for me, I because because of my
love of film history and because my love of certain films,
I was, you know, I'd always get there was a
level of keeping it very real by reading what some
of these people were saying. Now some I should probably
be have a tougher skin and say, I don't give
a ship what they're saying. So with doubt Fire, there
(35:23):
was a sense that we had created a movie that
was very successful, a lot of people fell in love with,
but it didn't for me personally. I didn't get to
that point where I wanted. You know, I always wanted
to have that level of critical success and commercial success
as well, and I just wasn't there yet. So I
managed to stay hungry. I mean, there was a feeling
(35:43):
of me that I needed to accomplish a lot more
and I really still feel that way. I still felt
that there's a long way to go there. Back on
dobt Fire, felt that there was a long way to go.
So the collaboration with you did nine months after that,
with Hugh Grant and Hugh and uh, how did that
movie do? That movie did okay, but that was the
(36:05):
you know, that was the blow job weekend, So that
was a that happening while you were shooting and when
it was released being no, no, no no. We were scheduled,
we were doing a press const exciting. This is insane.
So we're doing an the international press conference on a
movie with you. I realized, now I want to make
a movie with you, just so as a gag, I
can get dressed up as a woman, as a cross
(36:25):
dresser and solicit a detective on Hollywood Boulevard, just as
a gag. What if you got arrested? I wanted the
goal is he get arrested just to get arrested. And
then when I'm down to the police, said, I going
to go officer, can I explace some of you? This
is really just funk with Chris Columbus, and I really
wanted to. I wanted the sex scandal on the set
of it was and it happened. I never I never
saw it coming. He was like the most completely yeah,
(36:48):
I guess, button down, really conservative guy, always prepared for work,
did a great job. We were doing the international press
conference in l A. The movie was finished. The movie
was screen off the charts and audiences were loving it.
So I thought, wow, this is gonna be a bigger
hit than down Fire. So we screened the movie on
(37:08):
a Friday night for the press. I go out to
dinner with Hugh, Jeff gold Bloom, and Laura Dern. We
have this great dinner. I drive Hugh back to the hotel.
He says, oh, John Hughes sent me a script. Would
you would you mind looking at it? I don't know
if I should do. It was a hundred one Dalmatians.
So I walked up to his hotel room, took the script,
and I said, okay, get a good night's sleep. We
(37:29):
have a press conference tomorrow. I go to sleep. My
phone rings. It's six fifty nine. It's bar Nathan. He says,
turn on the TV. I said, what, he goes turn
on the TV. I turned on the news channel two
five seven mug shots. I'm like, what the fund did
he do? So there's a hundred fifty international journalist that
(37:53):
I was doing a press conference with. Hugh. Hugh was disappeared.
He was at his agent's house. He's gone, he didn't come.
He got it was me facing all of course, amazing.
He does this the night before a press conference. Perfect,
and he's he since said that he did it because
he didn't like the movie, which he loved the movie,
so that's not why he did what. He went to
(38:14):
solicitor Proster because he was so depressed about the so
depressed about the film, he had to have a prostitute.
I got, I gotta try that. Hugh Grants well publicized
arrest didn't completely kill nine months. It's still made over
a hundred and eighty three million dollars. Mrs Doubtfire grossed
over four hundred and forty million dollars worldwide. The Harry
(38:35):
Potter films did even better. Two years ago, Chris Columbus
produced The Help, a much smaller film, which earned a
Best Picture Oscar nomination. Clearly, Chris is skilled at selecting
the right material to work with, or maybe he just
surrounds himself with the right people. It was my daughter,
because she was the one who tried to convince me
for about a year and a half to read the
(38:56):
Harry Potter books. And finally when I did and I
realized wanted to make the movie. There were twenty five
other directors who were in line. They called it at
Warner Brothers a bake off. They said, Okay, we're going
to meet all of these directors, and whoever we you
know feel will make the best movie will hire UM.
(39:17):
So I was in line because Spielberg had dropped out.
Steven Spielberg had dropped it was the one he was
going to direct the film. I think he wanted to
combine the two books, add some cheerleaders and stuff, and
I think that she wasn't you know, Joe Rolling was
not up for that. So for whatever reason, Stephen backed
backed away from the films, and then it was a
group of literally twenty five people. I had the last
(39:40):
meeting because I wanted to rewrite the script for the
studio UM. And what I did is I spent four,
no eleven days, staying up to about two or three
in the morning rewriting the Harry Potter script. Steve Clubs
wrote a brilliant script. I just wanted to rewrite it
with some camera cues, some add some scenes from the
book that weren't in there. And when I went in
(40:00):
to meet with Warner Brothers and they said, why do
you want to make this movie? And I said, because
I've rewritten it. For you for free. Now, no one
ever does anything for free in Hollywood, so uh, it
took it. Still took them a few weeks to say yes,
but I did get the gig. They and I realized
I still there was still one obstacle. I had to
fly to Scotland to meet with j K. Rowling. That
(40:20):
was my sort of last interview, and if I fucked
that up, I wouldn't have gotten the job. So I
flew to Scotland, met with Joe, who I was expecting.
I hadn't seen many photographs of her at that point.
I was expecting Miss Marple. I was expecting some sixty
year old, heavy set woman in a flow floral dress.
And it was She's she's younger than we are. She's
she's very, very funny, one of the funniest people I've
(40:44):
ever met, sharp as attack, and we hit it off immediately.
We spent three she spent three hours listening to me.
I had diarrhea of the mouth because I was telling
her the kind of movie I wanted to make. At
the end of it, she said, that's exactly the kind
of film I want to make, and I knew I
got the job. Once I knew I got the job.
I was fucking scared out of my wits. Everyone was
(41:05):
obsessed about who was going to be cast in the movie,
how we how how we were going to design Hogwarts,
what was Quidditch going to be like? And I thought
the only way to get through this not to be
so I'm not standing in a corner unable to face
my crew, was to just sort of bury my head
and start to work. You just I just just sort
of went through every day, moved I moved my family
(41:25):
to London, and went through every day making the best
movie possible. And the great thing is there were a
core of us at the time, four of us, Joe Rolling,
David Haym and Steve Clovis and myself, and we'd meet
every couple of days, talk about the script, talk about
the movie. And it was that core that really helped
me shape what eventually became all eight movies. And again,
(41:48):
and she was around during the screenwriting process or around
the shooting as well. Roll Now she only came out
for one day during the shooting, just to visit. She
wasn't that interested in the shooting. As you can if
her a visitor ont a set, it's not that exciting
after about two hours. She came out. When we were
shooting diagon Alley. But during the screenwriting, during the rewriting process,
(42:08):
and during some of the design work, you know, I
would take her through the Harry Potter Factory, I called it.
We would walk through the art department and I would
show her what I was thinking of for diagon Alley
or Green Gots or Hogwarts of the Wizarding Robes, and
she just was always very collaborative. She'd say, oh, like
the wand she was very very specific about everything that
(42:28):
Harry's wand couldn't have any specific design to it because
it was from an old tree. That wouldn't It was
just a little crooked and you And it was that
kind of specific comments that really sort of helped me
find where I was going. I never was off the
rails though, because we did we did share a similar
i think, vision for what we wanted the movie to be.
And I she would give us also indications that the
(42:50):
films we're gonna get the books. There were only three
books at the time. Remember, we're gonna get progressively darker,
and this had to be sort of the first one
was sort of like the storybook version of Harry Potter
or it's his origin story. It's still a little dark,
and Hogwarts had to feel like the most welcoming place
in the world. And then we get little indications that
it's going to start to fall apart as we move forward.
We set that all into motion, that the movies would
(43:13):
get darker and darker and darker. Did you did you
have a sense did you say, I think I've got
this film version of these books, I've got the recipe. Unfortunately, not,
not until we were finished. We knew we were We
knew things were going well. So even though the kids
had not had a lot of experience and acting, they
(43:33):
were amazingly charming on screen and they felt like those characters.
I think the first day that we really felt that
we were on the right track. As we shot the
the the the opening of the Great Hall and we're
on this huge crane and the kids are walking in
and are her. Visual effects guy John Richardson attached four
(43:56):
hundred and fifty candles to strings that were all burned.
They everyone had to light all these candles. There weren't
any CGI candles in the shot. And I remember sitting
in Daily's and seeing the shot where the camera cranes
up through the floating candles and realizing, Oh, I think
we're onto something. Uh, and so that all felt good.
We still had no Yeah, it was fun. That's cool.
(44:17):
That's cool. Yeah. What was it like to work One
of my favorite actors I ever worked with was Gamben.
Oh god, he was he. I remember I prea such
a character. I produced the movie that that he you
know when he Richard Harris was Dumbledore for two films. Now,
let me tell you something. Yeah, that was one of
the funniest people I've ever met. Harris and he first
(44:40):
himself as Harris. Yes, and he Harris do this and
Harris count be seen doing this. On the first day
of shooting with Richard Harris, he tells me that he's
learned the wrong scene that he It was seen at
the end of the movie's It was one of the
final scenes for Dumbledore. We having to shoot at first,
and he didn't learn it, and he explained to me
(45:03):
that he had learned something else. I don't know if
he was telling me the truth. Um. And that's the
kind of guy he was. He was constantly he would
always try to piss off Maggie Smith by calling her
Dame Maggie, Oh, Dame Maggie. It was so fun to watch.
But I have to tell you he was such a
bad boy. Um. The things that he got away with
(45:23):
in his time just never never. You couldn't get away
with it today. But anyway, So Harris was in the
first two. Then he passed away. The last thing he
said to me. I went to visit him in the
hospital room, and I knew he was dying. I saw
when he was dying, and he had he was sitting
there and he lost about twenty pounds. And we never
really knew what he was dying. I was, he wouldn't
(45:46):
tell us and he didn't think he was dying. So
I went to visit him, and as I'm leaving, I
said goodbye to him, and he says, don't you ever
fucking replace me as Dumbledore? And I said, okay, that's
the last thing he said. So and that was the
last thing he said to me. Uh. And then Gambin
came in and came in. Who was he was a character? Yeah,
(46:09):
he's he's an interesting guy, but he he's conservative compared
to Harris. The last film you directed, uh was Percy Jackson.
Percy Jackson. Yeah, feature. Yeah, so if that was released
in ten, you shot that in two thousand nine. So
you haven't directed a feature in four years. No, And
(46:33):
part of that was because of the of The Help. Um.
There was a writer director named Take Taylor who wrote
a script who was a sort of a director that
I had supported over the years. He did a lot
of short films, was an actor in l A and
I knew him through one of my daughter's school associates.
He would always come when he come to San Francisco,
he'd sit down and meet with me and show me
what he was working on. He came into my office
(46:54):
one day and said, this is my first feature that
I want to make. My best friend wrote this book,
The Help, and I said, I read the script and
I said, this is a fantastic movie. I wanted to
direct it. And Tate was like, I want to direct,
and I want you to support me so I don't
get fired. So I brought the script to a lot
of studios. At the same time, the book was starting
to heat up again. It was one of those books
(47:14):
that every woman was reading on the beach. Um and
Steven Spielberg and I sort of reunited to do it.
Steven and I met um in London. He said, what
do you think of this guy, Tay Taylor? I said,
incredibly talented, he wrote a brilliant script. Steven said, as
long as you promised that you'll be on the set
every day. I said, but when I produced a movie,
I like to go for the first week, and then
(47:35):
those guys financed the DreamWorks. Streamworks financed it. We shot
in Mississippi in the summertime a couple of years ago,
and I knew were on the set every day. I
was there every day. It was fantastic. I was gonna say,
what's that like for you to be the pure producer. Well,
as I said, usually I just if I'm the producer,
I like to go for a couple of days, make
sure it's it's all in good hands, and I don't
(47:56):
like to go off and direct or write with it
in this situation, and so I made a promise to Stephen.
I was there the entire time. And the interesting thing was,
because of the level of performances in that film, getting
actually just being able to watch these actresses perform every day,
Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone. It
(48:19):
just was an amazing sort of front row seat to
these these performances, and Tait was just wonderful with the actresses.
He was just he's an actor himself. Again, that connection
is really helpful. So for me it was it was
a bit of a learning experience again, it just it
opened up another sort of part of filmmaking that I
want to get. I was gonna say, do you want
(48:39):
to make films like that? Because my last question for
you is, here's a guy who the flame for you
that you were drawn to from things I've read about
you were movies like The Godfather, But you haven't made
a movie like The Godfather, And I'm wondering is that
a direction you want to go in? Now you see
a movie like The Help, and you see do you
want to do more? Not even so much racially, but
(49:00):
much more kind of intense drama. Here's the thing I'm
not particularly uh. I'm not saying I'm not happy with
the movies I made, but I still have a long
way to go. Hopefully I can live long enough to
get to where I really will be happy with it.
Maybe it won't happen, but what I really really want
to do, I would like to make the kind of
movies that you and I grew up on, which are
(49:21):
the kind of movies. Look Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather, Serpico.
All of those movies were movies that we're not only
about something, but but we're great dramatic films with an
enormous sense of humor. By the way, all the films
I mentioned are very funny at times, yet at the
same time they reached a huge audience. And to me,
that's what it was about. I didn't want to make
(49:42):
a film that was so special in Indian tiny that
it wouldn't reach a wide audience. I always felt that
when I was watching movies like Butch Cassidy and The
Sundance Kid, and I was watching Dog Day Afternoon, the
performances were so amazing and so authentic and real, and
those movies found an audience. Now, unfortunately, most of those
(50:04):
types of films are being made for television. So yeah,
and aproposal that you've made films now, written, directed and
produced huge films, some of the biggest films of the
last twenty five years. You've been doing this for twenty
five years. How has the business changed in the twenty
five years from your standpoint? Well, you know, when I
(50:26):
get harder to get that movie made. You're talking about
that Sydney Lamette esque drama. Yeah, I've spent the better
part of the last year and a half writing films
like that, but I can't. It's very, very difficult to
get them made in an environment that really is only
interested in either sequels or superhero films. If you walked
(50:46):
into a studio executive's office in nineteen seventies eight and
said you wanted to make Spider Man, yeah, comic books,
Oh my god, that's the lowest form of entertainment. Well,
now we're in a situation where that's mostly what's being made,
So it's difficult to help kind of you know, was
made because the book was so successful and we made
(51:08):
it for twenty eight million dollars, which for a period
piece is relatively inexpensive. So if we can find that
way to do more of those films, I'd love to
do them. And that's probably one of the reasons I
haven't directed. The help is really gotten into my head
in a big way and said you can make these
movies and people will go see them. And where I've
gotten into trouble in my career, movies like bi centennial
(51:30):
man movies like Beth Cooper Again, when I did them
for fun, and when I thought, oh, this will be fun,
I'll just go out and make a movie like we're
back in film school. It's not the case anymore. There's
much more responsibility. Chris Columbus won't stop making movies, but
he has taken a slight detour. This first novel, House
(51:51):
of Secrets, a middle school fantasy adventure, is out this year.
Chris sent an early draft to J. K. Rowling. She
said it was too fast paced, slowed down. She told
him deepen the characters and work on the complexity. Chris
Columbus says he and his co author Ned Vizzini took
that advice to heart. I hope you enjoyed this conversation
(52:16):
with director Chris Columbus. Here's the Thing is produced by
Kathleen Riso, myself, Zach mcneie, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer
is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich.
I'm Zach McNee HELEC. Baldwin will be back next week.
Here's the Things brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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