Phil Joanou

[on Gary Oldman] I had a great relationship with him [on State of Grace (1990)] - later he was in Final Analysis (1992) but I cut him out. He was so good he tipped the whole movie. People just wanted to see a movie about him. They're like "Why can't we see a movie about that guy in an insane asylum that Richard Gere treated?"[2015] Show less «

[on Final Analysis (1992)] Working with Orion...it was a one-of-a-kind experience. And I didn't realize that until my next movie, which was Final Analysis (1992) for Warner Brothers. The politics of making a movie in the Hollywood studio system, versus the New York-based Orion, were very, very different. And "Final Analysis"(1992) was a star-driven movie with Richard Gere as a producer coming off of Pretty Woman (1990), so I was also managing that in a way I didn't have to on State of Grace (1990). I wanted "Final Analysis"(1992) to be more like a Brian De Palma movie, a kinky thriller like Sisters (1972) or something, but Gere wanted the guy he was playing to be an ethical psychiatrist. I said, "But Richard, you're sleeping with the sister of your patient and the other patient has a crush on you. You're totally fucking with her head. By the nature of the story, he's never going to be ethical - he's a schmuck. Why don't we go all the way?" He wasn't having it. He said, "Well, he just makes a bad decision." And I said, "Well, kind of a really bad decision that gets you kicked out of your industry. It gets you kicked out of psychiatry for doing what you did. They revoke your license." Up until "Final Analysis"(1992) I had lived a privileged existence. My first film, Three O'Clock High (1987), was produced through Amblin and I had Steven Spielberg protecting me. Then I did U2: Rattle and Hum (1988), and the band was financing it - later they sold it to Paramount, but I was supported and got to make the movie I wanted to make. Same thing on "State of Grace"(1990). Then I go on to "Final Analysis"(1992), and I was supported but it was much more political in terms of appeasing all the big power players. I had big producers and big stars, and there was a lot of fiddling with the script and a lot of fiddling with casting. I wasn't allowed to just make decisions - every decision I made was scrutinized, and I wasn't used to that. It really threw me off. A lot of my time and energy was put into being careful instead of filmmaking, and that disturbed me.[2015] Show less «

[on scoring State of Grace (1990)] I went to Orion and said, "Hey, listen, we lost U2. What about Ennio Morricone?" They said, "Fantastic. Go see if you can get him." So my editor Claire Simpson and I go to London with the film, and we're carrying it in this big film can. We both look really young and small. We arrive at Ennio's screening room in Rome, and Ennio is waiting for us in the lobby. He always talks through an interpreter, so we carry the film cans in and the interpreter says, "Mr. Morricone says you two may take the film upstairs to the projection room while he waits for the director." I said, "I am the director, and this is the editor," and I could just see the guy roll his eyes like, "What have I gotten myself into? Nobody told me it was this punk kid." He hated the temp music, which was chosen when I thought U2 was doing the score, but eventually he came around and we had a great working relationship. It was really fun. He'd sit at his piano and we'd run through themes. It was really exciting for me, because this is the guy who did Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966), you know?[2015] Show less «

[on pre-planning the visual style of a film] For me to have a visual point of view, it has to be worked out ahead of time because you shoot totally out of order. If you're shooting page 100 on day three, who's to say what's going to come before that in the movie if you're making it up as you go? On every movie I've ever made, I list every single shot before I get to the set. I have this document, often 75 or 80 pages long, of every shot in cutting order. It takes me a few weeks, and I don't do it on and off. I do it day after day after day after day until I'm done. That way, I basically go to sleep and wake up with the movie in my head, because I'm trying to be very cognizant of what I like to call the symphony. Like symphonies, films all have rhythm: they have low points, and they have builds, and they have crescendos, and they come back down. Every shot you do contributes to that rhythm, whether it's going to be a long take or a bunch of quick cuts, whether it's going to be slow motion, whether it's going to be tight or wide. Those all affect the visual and emotional impact of the movie on the viewer. So now I have this document, which I rearrange again once the schedule is done. I cut and paste all the shots, not based on story, but schedule, because what you can get done in a day has more to do with the amount of shots you're doing than with page count. Each shot takes time. So I look at the schedule and the shot list, and we redo the schedule based on shots. If there are a bunch of crane shots, we schedule those all at the same time so we don't have to build the crane, take it down, build the crane, take it down. That allows you more time for acting and creativity, because you're not sitting there watching guys put up scaffolding all day. I want to give the actors the most amount of time to do their thing, because if what's in front of the camera isn't working, everyone behind the camera and every dollar we're spending is worthless. To me, the whole reason to go to the set every day is to get the actors to do their thing, and to give them the room to do that, and to really let them explore the characters. We got to rehearse for a week on State of Grace (1990), and I took the actors to the locations - I didn't rehearse in some empty room. I took them to the church, I took them to the bar, I took them out to the river. We went around in a van, and we actually staged and rehearsed on location, because that way they go home and think about the scene where we're really going to do it, as opposed to walking through in the morning going, "Oh, this is the church. OK. Where would I be in here?" Orion paid for a week of rehearsal for the entire cast, which is one of many things they did that was incredible.[2015] Show less «

[on Heaven's Prisoners (1996)] Alec [Alec Baldwin] and I weren't done with the movie when Savoy went under and sold their catalog to New Line. They told us, "It's over. Wherever you're at now in the movie, finish to deliver." Essentially, mix it in a couple of weeks, print it, done. If they had warned us that the company was going down, we could have pulled all-nighters for a couple of weeks and made the movie better, but they didn't have the heart to let us know. I found out from the trades. Alec and I met with New Line and said we could finish the movie right with $100,000 and a month more of work. They didn't care, they just bought the catalog for home video. The funny thing is, at one point we actually had a better cut of it, and then we were scrutinized, scrutinized, scrutinized, and did testing and all that. I began to try to fight off the scrutiny, and the cut got away from me a little bit when I was trying to fix the criticism. Really, the criticism was silly criticism that I should have ignored, but again, you get so into the battle...and it broke my heart because that movie had so much promise. I had to go to DGA arbitration against Savoy during the editing process because they tried to fire my editor. I had William Steinkamp, a huge, Oscar-nominated [editor]. (...) They fired him and gave me a guy whose only experience was doing cut-downs of movies for TV. I said, "You can't do that. I get to have my ten-week cut under the DGA rules. After that you can dump us all if you want." They said, "We don't give a shit about the DGA agreement." I went to my lawyers, we went to the DGA and they said that's a breach of the agreement. It lasted all about an hour. I got to do my cut, they liked it, and for a brief moment I had hope. Then they just reverted back to the old behavior. (...) I fucked it up, because I was not mature enough either as a person or a filmmaker to understand that I just needed to block all the irrelevant noise out, and just be like "Uh-huh, great, whatever you say" and just do my thing. I should have ignored it, but I got caught up in it. I got caught up in the phone calls, and the e-mails, and the faxes, and every day battling over equipment and the amount of film they'd give me and the locations. They would just take days away for no reason. At one point I needed some extra time to shoot the shot where Alec sees the rings that reveal the mystery of the movie of who's the murderer in the story. The producer said, "No, you don't need that." So I cut the movie together, and of course of the higher-ups said, "Where the hell's the shot?" And I said, "Well, wasn't allowed to do it." Around the time of the first preview I was doing a Tom Petty video, so I got a counter and the rings and used the video guy's hands for Alec Baldwin's fingers because they matched. I shot it on the set of a Tom Petty video and that's how I got that shot in the movie. That's how absurd it was. The clue that tells the story, they wouldn't let me shoot. No interest in the story we're trying to tell. I got so angry, so overwhelmed, and so combative that it affected the symphonic rhythm of the movie. If you watch the movie, it's out of rhythm. The movie runs nicely, then slows too much, takes too long to get to this, and over-talks about this...it's fits and starts, that movie. I needed to smooth it out and I didn't get to, but I could have done a lot, lot better when I shot it. I was fighting so much that I lost track of my shot list, if you will. (...) It really took the wind out of my sails, career-wise. I considered quitting directing, until I realized it was the only thing I knew how to do and the only thing I could make a living at.[2015] Show less «

[on The Veil (2016)] We made the movie for 4 million dollars in twenty-five days. The way Jason Blum's business model works is that everyone works for scale - me, the actors, everyone - and some of the above the line people get a little bit of backend if it makes some money. You don't get a cent beyond that 4 million, but there's no interference. None. The deal with Universal is that they'll decide what kind of release you get when it's all done, and unfortunately it costs a minimum of $25 million to market a movie theatrically. So as soon as you decide something's going theatrical as opposed to just VOD it goes from being a $4 million risk to, rounding up, a $30 million risk. Since you only get half that money, the movie has to gross a minimum of $60 million to break even. So they start thinking, "At 4 million we're guaranteed a profit, why would we risk it?" I don't know what's going to happen with ours, but I don't really care. I'm over whether you get 3,000 screens or Netflix, I'm just happy I got to make the movie I wanted to make. (...) Every promise Blumhouse has made to me they've upheld, and I've had a great experience and have been really surprised by how well it has come out. You have to understand, Three O'Clock High (1987) was 5 million in 1986, so this is the cheapest movie I've done. Actually, I did Entropy (1999) for 3 million, so that one was really tight, but that was just crazy. That's on my site now if you want to see it.[2015] Show less «

I did Entropy (1999) for three million, (...) that was just crazy. That's on my site now if you want to see it. (...) It's on Netflix too, but...okay, how bad is this? This guy Elie Samaha financed it., and he sold the video rights before I could sell the theatrical. No one wants theatrical without DVD and VOD. I said, "Elie! How can I sell it to a studio?" "Phil, I don't know what to tell you, I had to make sure I got my money back." So who bought it? Disney! Touchstone. They never released it on DVD. It's on VHS, good luck finding it. It was shot widescreen, 2.35:1, and when Netflix runs it, they run it full 16:9 - you see dolly track, booms, lights, the works. I should have hard cropped it, because it wasn't anamorphic, it was Super-35mm. On my website, it's not that big and it's on Vimeo, but you can see the whole movie if you want.[2015] Show less «

[on doing it yourself] He [Alec Baldwin] directed a version of The Devil and Daniel Webster (2003). I don't know what studio it was for, but it was basically a financier bail-out thing. They didn't give him the money to finish it. Of course, now the technology's in a place where he probably could finish it. I can finish a movie in my house. I'm making this movie right now for Universal and Blumhouse, The Veil (2016) with Jessica Alba and Thomas Jane, and I've literally done re-shoots on my Canon 5D [Mark II] and put them in the movie. No one can tell - I put an anamorphic lens on my 5D for quick inserts and stuff. Not whole scenes, but shots. I've done over 200 effects shots myself in After Effects. I taught myself via YouTube. Back in the day, I'd have needed ILM or whoever, but today I can finish pretty complex digital effects shots on my Mac.[2015] Show less «

Well, State of Grace (1990)...I'm sure you know the history of it, but when the movie came out in 1990, it was a total flop. I think it was only out two weekends total; it came out in about a hundred theaters, grossed less than four million dollars, and just came and went. I spent two years on it and it just vanished like it had never happened. It was almost like if a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? That's how I felt about "State of Grace"(1992). It didn't make a sound, and I was really devastated. I was really hoping that people would notice it, and they didn't. The VHS tapes disappeared quickly too, because they only bought one or two per store, and if they got worn out...it was a decade of complete anonymity. Finally, the DVD release in the early 2000s helped, and it slowly started playing on HBO and Showtime and those channels when Orion went out of business and sold their library to MGM. MGM has this price tiering system when they sell stuff to cable and movies like State of Grace, which grossed nothing and no one ever heard of, cost next to nothing to run. Naturally, especially late at night, they run the cheap ones again and again, so "State of Grace"(1990) started getting a lot of play - and as those actors all grew in stature, it was a good title to show that cost the cable channels nothing. It was the most bizarre thing. It really educated me about filmmaking for the long run, because cut to 15 to 20 years later, of all the movies I've made it's the one that people want to talk about. For years I just thought, "Well, I guess no one's ever going to know that film got made," and lo and behold distribution changed, and viewing habits changed, and here we are 25 years later, and it's finally got a Blu-Ray.(...) can't tell you how many times people have said, "Gosh, "State of Grace", that must have been great for your career," and I say, "No, it was a flop. No one saw it. It was a disaster." They're like, "What?" Because perception changes, too. No one cares about box office two years later.[2015] Show less «

[After Heaven's Prisoners (1996)], I felt that, personally, I had more energy than my films. While the pace of State of Grace (1990) was appropriate for that story, I felt that Final Analysis (1992) and Heaven's Prisoners (1996) were both too slowly paced. It seemed like I was becoming bogged down in too heavy and ponderous a style. I really wanted to do something that had energy and cinematic, visual humor. I wanted to do something fresh, modern and with an exciting, energetic style. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Woody Allen and François Truffaut, filmmakers who took experiences from their own lives and interpreted them and then tried to make a statement about our existence and relationships. Show less «

[on Entropy (1999)] The film dramatizes various events that I have experienced, and nothing that happens in the movie is exactly how it happened to me. It's all been reworked and manipulated for the sake of entertainment. [What happens to Jake in the film] is slightly more interesting than the long drawn out process that my life actually took. Show less «

[on Three O'Clock High (1987)] It's different, clearly a lot of people have felt that, and that was something I absolutely tried to do with the film. I felt that the genre had been so worked over by the time I got this project given to me by Universal, that I needed to do something a little bit different or I was just going to be - and the film was just going to be - another in a long series of youth comedies.[1987] Show less «

I like to move the camera a lot. And I like to do kind of strange angles. Three O'Clock High (1987) is a nightmare, and this kind of movie warrants it. If you're making Ordinary People (1980), it ruins it. But this movie's about a nightmare, and when you make a nightmare you gotta go for it. You gotta make it weird and wild and energetic and jumping around and visuals that are wide and long and short and quick and moving and rapid and energetic. This movie has a pace that should be a sprint. This isn't a marathon like maybe Gandhi (1982). This is a machine-gun fire of energy, hopefully, and that's how I'm trying to shoot it.[1987] Show less «

[on Three O'Clock High (1987)] I made it for $6 million with a studio, which has its own set of problems - believe me - in dealing with that world. There's a certain amount of luxury to being out there on your own, even if it's not with the most money in the world. At least you're making every decision. With the studio, they tend to make decisions for you or with you, quite often.[1987] Show less «