Director John Badham specializes in audience-pleasing popcorn movies, ranging from Saturday Night Fever and WarGames to Point of No Return and Drop Zone. Will Nick of Time, his new thriller starring Johnny Depp, hit it big like the former duo, or sink without a trace like the latter flicks?
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Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on the rebirth of Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 Brooklyn disco epic that made John Travolta and the Bee Gees stars. In the '90s, the film has become an icon to Generation X: a midnight movie favorite and corner-stone of the whole weird disco revival. The Times didn't bother to mention the film's director, John Badham, even once. That's Badham in a nutshell: the anonymous director who's made 15 movies in 19 years--WarGames, Short Circuit, Blue Thunder, Stakeout, Bird on a Wire, The Hard Way, Point of No Return and Drop Zone, among others--whose name apparently doesn't seem worth noting, even when a legendary film he directed is being discussed.
What's further typical of Badham, I found after meeting him, is that such anonymity doesn't apparently bother him. That's odd as hell for a director--traditionally, they're the most egotistical bunch in Hollywood, as their screen credits pointedly remind us: "A Joe Blow Film." But Badham's even more pointed credit reads: "A John Badham Movie." "Films," Badham feels, are those black-and-white foreign things that no one understands. "Movies" are entertainment, like a ride at Disneyland. And it's more than enough, insists the 54-year-old Badham, to be the guy who keeps the machinery oiled and moving.
JOSHUA MOONEY: You've gone from the studio mailroom to the A-List director's chair, worked steadily for 20 years, had several hits and directed big stars in every genre there is. Would you agree you've had the quintessential Hollywood career?
JOHN BADHAM: Well. I don't know what that would be. I got to do a lot of staff I never thought I would when I first came here.
Q: You were born in England, raised in Alabama by an Air Force general, then went to Yale Drama School. Why did you end up here?
A: I had gotten this idea--wouldn't it be fun to look into the movies? Like Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane saying, "'I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!"
Q: Kane didn't know what he was getting into.
A: I was just as misguided.
Q: In 1962, you were getting a master's degree in directing at Yale when your nine-year-old sister Mary starred in To Kill a Mockingbird. How did you feel about that?
A: It was thrilling and frustrating at the same time. Frustrating because I was your basic starving grad student and she was where I wanted to be. But I never thought I could act like her. so it was pretty friendly.
Q: Did she open any doors for you?
A: After Mockingbird, she came out to L.A. to do a "Twilight Zone" episode, so I said, "Can I come along?" I went, and later met [her Mockingbird co-star] Gregory Peck--and anyone else who would meet me.
Q: And around 1964, you ended up in the Universal mailroom with a lot of other overqualified people.
A: Everybody had bachelor's degrees. Four of us had master's degrees. [Director] Walter Hill was in there and [studio head] Mike Medavoy. The way they operated the mailroom was you had to find your own way out.
Q: You eventually made it into casting, and then had an associate producing credit on Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" pilot in 1969. The director was an unknown first-timer named Steven Spielberg. You were 29--he was 19. What was it like working under this punk kid?
A: It was a big deal for me to have that credit. And he was directing Joan Crawford for his very first job. She was a little intimidating.
Q: So they say. How did she and young Spielberg get along?
A: He was supposed to take her to dinner and he called me and said. "You have to come along." Suddenly my job became holding Joan Crawford's hand--making sure she got whatever she needed. But she was great. You could not have had more of a willing actor on a show.
Q: That must have been a fascinating dinner: you, Joan and the teen Spielberg.
A: It was in a Trader Vic's kind of place in Hollywood--I can't remember, but it's gone now. It must have been very popular in the '40s and '50s. If you went there regularly and drank mai tais, you had your own cup with "Joan Crawford" or whatever written on it. There were walls of cups. She was just very entertaining-- dishing on Bette Davis--a lot of fun. Yet when she went to work, she was all business. We had to make sure there was a bed in her dressing room.
Q: Excuse me?
A: Well, she literally lived on the lot. She was totally focused on what she was doing.
Q: Did you feel any jealousy toward Spielberg, who was 10 years younger and doing what you wanted to do: directing?
A: No. I remember clearly the day Amblin' [Spielberg's first 35 mm film] was shown on the lot. All us young guys piled into the projection room. About two shots into the movie some-one said, "Oh man, I hate this guy already," because it was so good. At the end, they introduced him. I think they said "Stevie Spielberg"--he was 19, in a turtleneck that was too big, but it didn't matter. You just had to stand back and say, 'This is a major talent."
Q: You and Spielberg have crossed paths a few times. After directing TV for several years, you finally got a shot at a feature with 1976's The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, on which Spielberg had been the original director.
A: He and I discussed Bingo when I got on to it--his original ideas, and so forth.
Q: In 1983, the summer of two big hits for you--WarGames and Blue Thunder--some in the press were declaring you "the next Spielberg." What do you think they meant?
A: Those are things where you go, "Well, that's nice." But I never took it seriously. If I had, I would have fallen flat on my can.
Q: Pup music mogul-turned-movie producer Robert Stigwood saw Bingo, and offered you your second film, Saturday Night Fever. Good thing he didn't ask you to do Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the disaster he was brewing up at the same time.
A: He did ask me to do Sgt. Pepper's first. I read the script and the only thing I could say was that I didn't get it--I didn't have a clue.
Q: Who did? It was a terrible movie.
A: A couple weeks after I had politely said no, I got a panic calf: "You've got to come help us with this movie Saturday Night Fever." I bounced off the walls when I read the script, it was so good.
Q: Why was the first director, John Avildsen, fired?
A: I guess the whole battle was that he didn't like Norman Wexler's new draft of the script and Stigwood said, "I do." Stigwood was very tough--so I'm told the same day Avildsen was nominated for an Oscar for Rocky, Stigwood said, ''You're gone."
Q: Good thing you liked the script.
A: I was over the moon for it. It was great. I'd never been to Brooklyn before, but I'd been thinking about musicals, since I was the original director for The Wiz.
Q: Right--the funked-up The Wizard of Oz remake: a Broadway hit, but it became another movie bomb you luckily avoided.
A: My producing partner, Rob Cohen, and I had gotten Universal to buy it and we were going to do it. But the studio insisted on Diana Ross for Dorothy. I thought she was too old. It made no sense to me. So we parted company.
Q: Did you feel vindicated when you saw what bombs The Wiz and Sgt. Pepper's were? Have you ever speculated on how disastrous those two movies, back-to-back, would have been for your fledgling career?
A: I never look back. When you turn something down, you push it out of your brain. When I saw them, I said, "I guess I did the right thing." I don't see that there was any great insight.
Q: Fever has been reborn as this Generation X cult hit--part of the whole disco revival. Have you seen it with a 1995 audience?
A: No. I should, just to see how they respond.
Q: There was an essay about its rebirth in the Los Angeles Times two years ago, yet your name wasn't mentioned once in the whole story. Isn't that upsetting?
A: Hmm ... it was interesting that when the movie first came out, it was perceived as having directed itself. All the buzz was about John Travolta and the Bee Gees. Well, you know, that's the way it happens. I just keep going.
Q: You turned down the chance to do the Fever sequel, Staying Alive-- another smart move, to judge from the resulting movie directed by Sly Stallone, with Travolta and his shaved chest and that whole Dante's Inferno/Satan's Alley dance sequence. Ludicrous, no?
A: When I read the script, I thought all the positiveness and fun of the first one was gone, I expressed that to Stigwood and he said, "We love it." I said, "Well, good luck to you."
Q: A sequel you did do was Another Stakeout, a follow-up to your 1987 film Stakeout. Why did it make only $20 million--less than a third of the original, and surely a disappointment? I thought it was as funny as the first one.
A: I think the Manhattan Project was as well kept a secret as Another Stakeout. The studio accelerated the release date by a month, so it was a problem familiarizing people with a movie where the original had been six years earlier: "Stake-what?" I thought it was a good opportunity thrown away because I knew the picture played like dynamite in the theaters.
Q: I just read in Variety that Paramount has moved up the release date of your new film Nick of Time. Aren't you worried about a similar problem there?
A: If it were bad for the film to do that. I'd have to go, "Hey guys, you want to make some money. Will a piece of shit help?" That's a pretty powerful argument.
Q: I've heard that Nick of Time is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much: innocent man drawn into intrigue because his kid's been kidnapped, etc.
A: No, that's not at all accurate. That would be like saying WarGames is a remake of Dr. Strangelove. A child is kidnapped in both--that's about the end of it.
Q: Johnny Depp plays the child's dad. Definitely a first for him after playing all those oddball characters like Edward Scissorhands, Gilbert Grape and Ed Wood. With Nick is he maybe going for a big action flick to enhance his image?
A: I have quite the opposite feeling. While we were shooting, a parade of pretty famous directors came down to my set to woo him with big-budget commercial pictures. The studios, I think, perceive him as being about to make a career breakthrough. But I don't think he cares whether a picture's going to be commercial or not--I think he's just marching to his own drummer.
Q: You've said Depp is "too nice to be a movie star." What did you mean by that?
A: It takes a certain amount of toughness and arrogance to survive all the stuff as a star. But it is possible to be a nice person and a star--you just have to have the strength of your convictions. Johnny Depp is able to speak his mind intelligently about what he wants--in a quiet, non-arrogant way. He's considerate.
Q: Let's talk about some less considerate actors. I've heard there was tension between you and Kevin Costner on the set of American Flyers, because you didn't care for his acting style.
A: Well, Kevin always has lots of thoughts about the script, his character and other characters. Sometimes when you're on a schedule--and what movie is not?--it can really get in the way. I have rehearsals to work out such concerns beforehand, but Kevin takes a lot longer than my rehearsal period. So sometimes we struggled between his concerns and our need to keep going. Once he could focus on the bicycle he had to ride---that was such a challenge--he stopped worrying about the script.
Q: Here's another thing you and Spielberg have in common: you're the only directors who've ever worked with Richard Dreyfuss on three features. He was perhaps never the easiest-going guy to begin with, but when you first teamed up for 1981's Whose Life Is It Anyway? he was a cocaine addict, as we later learned.
A: The first film was very stressful and quite traumatic, mainly because he was ill.
Q: Ill or "ill"?
A: The reason given at the time, which the doctors backed up, was a dreadful flu. He'd only have enough strength to work two- or three-hour days. His mood swings were frequent; his emotional state was not stable. Even so, his acting was fabulous. He's smarter than you and me and about six other people put together--even in a weakened state.
Q: Six years later you and he did Stakeout. How had he changed?
A: I figured I was getting the same kind of person, even though I knew he was sober. It took me a while to realize that this was a happier person, who loved working and being part of the process. Later, on Another Stakeout, I pointed out a scene we were doing with odd parallels to a scene in Whose Life Is It Anyway? He said, "You know, I don't remember being in that movie at all I know I was, because I've seen it. But I don't remember making it." Thank goodness he's been through that and isn't likely to go back.
Q: Let's talk about one star you didn't work with: Tom Cruise. I've heard you had a pay-or-play deal to direct The Firm, but when Cruise got involved and wanted Sydney Pollack to direct, you were asked to abandon ship. True?
A: [Dryly] That's what I've heard.
Q: So, let's chat about what exactly your role as a director involves. For example, one doesn't ever look at a movie and say, "That's a Badham flick." I don't think anyone would know instantly that the man who directed Dracula also did Bird on a Wire or Point of No Return.
A: The kinds of films where the directors' handprints are all over them are often extremely self-conscious.
Q: Your former partner Rob Cohen once said that you'd rather be in-visible than get between the movie and the audience. Isn't "invisible" dangerously close to "anonymous"?
A: It depends on your goal. Is your goal to paint a painting to express a visual idea, or to let everyone know what a fantastic painter you are? If you're van Gogh sitting in some loony bin you do it because you have to. Oh my God--I'm not comparing myself to van Gogh. After all, I have two ears--
Q: Ba-dum-bum!
A: --and nothing like that talent. At Yale I was trained to think the play is the most important thing. If that means anonymous, well, OK--all righty. I'm also the kind of person who thinks Hollywood credits have gotten ridiculous. Movie posters look like legal contracts.
Q: So, is that why your credit, since Stakeout, reads "A John Badham Movie," instead of the typically self-important "A Film By John Badham"?
A: I still think of "films" as things that Ingmar Bergman makes that you think about for months. Movies are entertaining popcorn experiences.
Q: You've never made a "film"?
A: Well, Saturday Night Fever and Whose Life Is It Anyway? both had texture and depth, I think.
Q: Is the credit "A John Badham Movie" making a statement, then?
A: It's just truth in advertising.
Q: Along those lines, you've said the auteur theory--that the director is the sole "author"--is bull.
A: If you write your own screenplay, then maybe you're the author of the film.
Otherwise, directors have so many people giving them good ideas. You're a fool to ignore the ideas, and a fool not to share credit.
Q: That attitude sets you apart from many directors.
A: Absolutely. God forbid they would allow the thought to enter their heads that anyone did it but themselves. People who think they did it all are seriously deluded.
Q: Let's talk about critics, who can be hard on "popcorn entertainment." I understand you take bad reviews personally.
A: It's hard to read criticism of your work in such immutable form as words on paper. You don't have the opportunity to question the critic. Now, critics who have to produce a certain number of words have to say things---but I sometimes wonder, "Did he mean that literally?"
Q: Have you ever said, "My God-- that's a personal attack"?
A: I haven't looked at their pieces with regards to movies of mine for a while, I just stay away from them.
Q: Lucky for you, I have one here: Terrence Rafterty in The New Yorker reviewing Stakeout in 1987. I wonder if you'd comment.
A: OK.
Q: "... there are no signs of the funkiness of his earliest films-- Bingo Long... and Saturday Night Fever. They were the work of a man who had some belief in what he was doing, who got excited about it. Stakeout is the most entertaining of his recent string of cold, craftsmanlike films, but he was a better director when he knew less about moviemaking..."
A: Hmmm. Well--I don't know how I feel about that. I think Stakeout isn't a good example because it works so well. But it definitely didn't have, in its conception, the depth of feeling of [Bingo Long or Saturday Night Fever]. He's right--it's a better made film. But yes, material that touches the emotions is more valuable than all the slick filmmaking in the world.
Q: But surely you disagree when he says you no longer believe in what you're doing?
A: Well, it's nice that he can be inside my head. I should ask him what I should do next.
Q: What will you do next? You've done several action films in a row now: The Hard Way, Point of No Return, Another Stakeout, Drop Zone, none have done well with critics or audiences. What's the appeal to you?
A: They're fun and seductive to make. Next thing you know, I look and say. "I've done way too many. Why didn't I just shut up and say no?" Well, there was nothing else more interesting at the lime.
Q: You sound frustrated--as though you're stuck in a rut. How will you get out of it?
A: There's a tendency for material to come your way that echoes what you've recently done. My job has to be to resist all that and keep pressing toward things that are different and challenging. Which I really need to do. I went to see Under Siege 2: Dark Territory the other night and all I could think of while watching it was how exhausting it must have been to make. For just a few fleeting seconds of thrill If I'm going to work that hard again. I'd want it to be for something more lasting.
Q: If, at the end of your career, you saw your entry in a film encyclopedia, what would you hope it would say?
A: Gee, I don't know... "He entertained audiences." That's a lot to hope for.
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Joshua Mooney interviewed Rachel Tatalay for the April Movieline.