By BILL REICK
Here’s the second half of my hour-long conversation with Joe Dante. He couldn’t have been kinder in answering my scatter-brained questions.
It was a real privilege to connect with this horror legend, and I wanted to honor his time by speaking with him about aspects of his career that most fans aren’t familiar with. Everybody asks Joe Dante about Gremlins, so you won’t see too much about it in this interview. The same is true of The Howling. Instead, I wanted to learn about what in his life prepared him to be the filmmaker who directed those movies and all the others. I did some serious research, and hopefully, I asked a few questions you might have if you were in my shoes.
You were a monster kid. Did you ever get the chance to meet Forry Ackerman?
Filmmaker Joe Dante.
Oh yeah, yeah. But not until I came out to California. Forry was the editor of Famous Monsters, and he had a good relationship with the audience. He was told, “Your audience is 11 years old, write to them,” which is what he did, even though he had much higher aspirations for the magazine when it was first proposed.
But then he’d go, “Okay, I’ll play to the kids,” and he became this sort of father-figure character. Then, when he came out here, he had this big collection of stuff. He would let people come in, and he would have Saturdays where he would bring people over, and they would look at all his props and his stills and stuff. And they would steal stuff from him, blindly, because he was so trusting. I mean, half the stuff would go out under people’s coats.
He kept trying to sell the stuff to the L.A. government, and they kept saying, “Well, we’ll build a museum for you.” And they never did. So, now, all that material is scattered to the winds. But he was very influential. He had a lot of filmmakers who were on his list of people to come and hold court in his living room.
Dick Miller and Forrest J Ackerman in Joe Dante’s “THE HOWLING.”
And you wrote to him, and he published it [in Famous Monsters of Filmland]?
Yeah, they published one of my letters. That was my first [published piece].
They called it “Dante’s Inferno.”
Yeah, I was very, very excited when he sent me that magazine.
I was thinking I’d have a clever title for this interview, and decades ago, Forrest Ackerman beat me to it! Besides Famous Monsters, you were also reading Scrooge McDuck comics…
Yeah, Uncle Scrooge.
Were they just a little bit more sophisticated than other comics at the time?
There was one Disney artist named Carl Barks, who is known as the “good duck artist.” He took the Donald Duck character, who is very one-note in the cartoons, and in the comic books, he turned him into an actual everyman character. And because Barks was interested in the past, and into legends and stuff like that, he would always put [Donald] in situations where he would be going into the center of the earth to find something or whatever with his two nephews. And Uncle Scrooge would be along to finance it.
There was something special about the material that Barks did. Steven Spielberg is a huge fan. He has some giant Carl Barks paintings in his office.
Barks, like Ray Harryhausen, was a lucky enough guy to stay alive long enough to realize he had been venerated. A lot of these guys pass away… Lugosi and Willis O’Brien, people like that, die before they realize how famous they are, but Barks and Harryhausen managed to spend their later years raking in the accolades from people who said, “You made my childhood, and I love you, and I love the stuff you’ve done.” That must be very rewarding for somebody who spent their time thinking that the work they’re doing wasn’t really getting much attention.
Do you feel like you get your flowers these days?
Oh, I’ve gotten overly, overly flowered.
Good. Who are Rover Cat and Duffy Dog?
They were characters that I made up for cartoon comic books that I used to draw when I was a kid. I had my own cast of characters that I would put in these stories.
Were these also “every men” like Donald Duck?
They were less sophisticated, I think, but they were definitely influenced by what I was reading in the comics and what I was seeing in the movies. I still have some. I think I gave some of those things to the Academy. I’ve still got some of them around somewhere.
I wanted to be a cartoonist until I went to art school, and they told me I couldn’t be a cartoonist because it wasn’t an art, and I should take their film class instead. So, I took the “40 students, 2 cameras, 16 millimeter” class. And I didn’t do very well, but I did live in Philadelphia, where there were lots of grindhouses.
I spent lots of time going to the movies with all the money I was supposed to spend on art supplies. I was spending it on movie tickets, which were very cheap. You know, let’s face it, grindhouses are pretty cheap, and the audiences are a little rowdy and often dangerous. But still, there were a lot of pictures you would never be able to see otherwise.
We lost David Lynch recently. He spent a lot of time in Philly, and you could kind of see that in a lot of his movies. Do you think Philadelphia influenced your filmmaking career outside of what you learned in school?
Well, it was a pretty unique place. It was not like New Jersey. It was not like New York. It had some of those elements, but it was Philadelphia. Plus, it had this long history – 1776 and all that. All that stuff was still there, the Liberty Bell and Betsy Ross’s house, where you go in and you realize that the average person was 5’2” when they built those things. We took our Wheaties after that, and now nobody can fit through the doors.
I enjoyed Philadelphia. I’ve been through some pretty hairy about-to-have-riots situations in Philadelphia. I was there off-and-on from ‘64 to ‘73, and then, when I came out here [to L.A.], I basically was out here.
And then you were cutting trailers…
I did end up making movie trailers for Roger [Corman]. But, before that, my friend John Davis and I did a picture called The Movie Orgy, which was a seven-hour compilation film which we used to take around to college campuses, and the Schlitz people found out about it and offered to give us money. There was only one print because it was all spliced together. It’s now, amazingly, actually in distribution from American Genre Film Archive because they said, “Well, can we make a DVD of it or a Blu-ray or something? A DCP [digital cinema package] of it?” And so we did. It’s not the seven-hour version; It’s only a five-hour version, so it’s not quite as much fun as the seven-hour version. The whole idea of the seven-hour version was that you could go out, have dinner, come back, and you hadn’t missed anything.
Anyway, it was an experience to see with an audience, and spend that much time, and so we said, “Well, we could do that with other weird stuff.” We got together some other serials and pieces of movies, and TV shows, and cut them all together. A lot of them were TV shows that people had seen when they were kids and hadn’t even remembered they knew what they were. The way they were cut together was very funny, and it was hilarious and very popular. If you go on IMDb, there are a whole lot of testimonials of people who saw this thing when it was new, and then it just disappeared. It was kind of like a lost film until I found a bunch of reels and these guys said, “Well, let’s just let’s see if we can put it out.” So, it’s out, for whatever that’s worth.
When you directed TV, were there lessons that you took from working with Roger Corman that served you better in TV than they did in movies?
They served me better at whatever I was doing. Basically, you learn to solve problems, and you learn to be decisive. Just make a decision, and if it’s the wrong decision, you can deal with it later. But you can’t dither. You can’t say, “Well, maybe we could do it this way, or maybe we could do it that way.” That’s what the Democrats do; That’s why they never get elected. The Republicans come out and say, “This is what we’re doing. And it’s shitty but we’re going to do it.” People say, “Yeah, we like that.” You have to act like you know what you’re doing, and that gives you time to actually think while you’re creating whatever it is that you’re creating.
B-movie visionary Roger Corman.
TV goes just about at the same pace as a Corman movie, but in the old days, TVs were small, and you couldn’t do sight gags that well because everybody knew that the TV screen was small. That’s why I never made any movies in Cinemascope. I knew that all my movies were going to be seen on TV, and they were going to be pan and scanned, which I hate. So, I didn’t start making movies in Cinemascope until the TVs got wider, and you can see things in the correct ratio. I was a big campaigner for putting movies out in their original ratio, which the DGA was promulgating for quite a long time. Now, I’m happy to say that most movies that we see today are actually shown pretty much the way they were supposed to be seen.
Which is better for background gags.
Absolutely.
Ro-Man from 1953’s “ROBOT MONSTER” pops up in “LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.”
Part of this conversation I’ve been kind of dreading is bringing up what I know is a project that was very contentious for you. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a ton of DVDs, and one of our favorite movies – mine and my brother David’s – was Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Watching it now, as an adult, it was just so cool to see all the cameos and stuff most kids would miss. Like, “Holy crap there’s Roger Corman! There’s Peter Graves!” You got Robbie the Robot in there and Ro-Man and Fiend Without a Face. I know it’ll never be worth the year-and-a-half of your life that the studio kind of stomped on, but that movie was so meaningful to me as a kid. And it holds up in unexpected ways. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how that movie was so appreciated in my home. And again, I understand that it was kind of an awful experience to make it…
But it was all worth it. If people take that away from it, then it was worth going through, dealing with people who don’t like cartoons telling you how to make cartoons.
It was a very unpleasant experience, but it had its rewards, and there were a lot of things about it that I enjoyed. I just didn’t enjoy the fact that there were people who were so fucking stupid telling me how to make a movie that they would never walk across the street to see.
This is kind of a recurring theme in some of the work your name’s attached to.
Talk to any filmmaker, and they’ll tell you it’s a recurring theme in their life. If you watch the new TV series called The Studio, the whole premise of the show is that there’s this studio executive who says that he loves film but is under pressure to make money and completely sells out everything that he believes to make that happen. It’s a painfully funny, accurate TV show. I’ve only seen the first two episodes. People say, “Was that what it’s really like?” Yes, that’s what it’s like. It’s not exaggerated. That’s what it’s like. It’s good to know that people are holding the studios’ feet to the fire. Let me just say, there are many things in it that people who do this for a living will recognize.
Before we move too far away from it, I do want to say that when I was a kid, everybody loved Space Jam, but it’s so clear that Looney Tunes: Back in Action holds up a lot better. There’s such obvious affection for the characters.
That’s because Space Jam was a deal, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a movie. There’s a difference.
Was there ever a project that you were like, “Ah, damn! I wish I could have done that”?
Yeah, sure. I had Termite Terrace, which was about Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., but that didn’t get made. Space Jam got made instead.
Then, a movie about Roger [Corman] making The Trip called The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes. I tried to get made for over ten years, and that just didn’t happen. And now Roger’s not happening, so that’s another one that got away.
There’s a guy writing a book about me now; He’s constantly reminding me about these projects, and I keep having to go to my producer friend Mike Finnell, saying, “Do you remember? Remind me what this was.”
What is it about Charlie Haas (screenwriter of Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Matinee) as a writer that you love, that made you want to work with him? Is it your friendship with him?
We are friends, and he’s a very good writer. I’ve read his books, and I first met him through Jonathan Kaplan. He was writing on Over the Edge, which was one of Jonathan’s better pictures. It introduced Matt Dillon. Charlie and I always hit it off, and he’s written so much stuff for me that never got made. My drawer is filled with all these drafts of Charlie Haas things that didn’t happen. He’s one of the best writers I know, and when you want to write something, you want to go to the best writers you know. John Sayles is another one. They’re people who will deliver. They know you, and you know them. They come up with ideas that you wouldn’t think of, and they embellish the ideas that you have. It’s a match made in heaven because if you don’t have a script, you don’t have a movie.
Do you think that’s what’s missing the mark with a lot of movies these days?
No. Movies these days are just too long; That’s what’s missing the mark in these movies. They’re all too fucking long. Who is going to sit through almost four hours of The Brutalist? And what do you get for your four hours? An intermission.
Two trips to the bathroom, that’s what I get.
That’s why they have an intermission. Even the movies I like, too. The Substance, I liked, but it was too long. Whatever happened to the art of editing? You can’t just keep making the same point over and over. You’ve got to stop at some point, and there’s something to be said for brevity. Half the movies that I love the most are 75 minutes or less. Back in the ‘30s, they were making movies that moved! They were rat-tat-tat! They happened, and now, everything is so languorous, and the shots linger so long.
There are long movies I love. I love Lawrence of Arabia. I love Once Upon a Time in the West. I love The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I love movies that are long, but there needs to be a reason. They can’t just be long because, “Well, it’s a movie, and if it doesn’t run for two-and-a-half hours, the exhibitors will complain!” Well, I’ve got news for you. The exhibitors complain when they run two-and-a-half hours because they have to try to fit in an extra show, and they can’t because it’s too long.
Because you’re somebody who cut trailers professionally, I want to ask you about modern trailers. Do they have to reveal the whole story?
No, we didn’t do that. They used to do things called “teasers” where you would just tease the audience with what it’s going to be. You don’t show them the monster. Give them a hint, but don’t show the whole thing. Now, the trailer’s over, and you’ve seen the whole movie. You know how it ends.
One thing I learned when I started cutting trailers for my own movies was that you shouldn’t do a trailer for your own movie because you’re so protective of some of the things in the movie that you don’t want to give them away. You don’t want to put them in the trailer. And somebody else just says, “Well, this is a great shot, we should put it in the trailer.” No, no! It’s important! That gives away the…
It doesn’t matter. Trailers are supposed to give you an impression of the movie. They’re not supposed to give you the movie. Today, the trailers are just a bunch of people running away from a fireball. How many times can you do that? There are a lot of trailers where you come out and you really feel, Well, I sort of wanted to see this movie until I saw this trailer, and now, I don’t want to see it anymore. Less is more.
What’s the toughest darling you’ve had to kill in editing, in cutting a movie down to size? Was there ever any one particular scene where you felt it could have greatly changed the impact of a movie that you cut?
No, I don’t think I’ve ever ruined a movie by changing the impact by cutting stuff, but there have been things, grace notes and things, that you have put in a movie that you think would be nice – but then, you watch the movie. The first time you watch a rough cut is horrible. You just sweat bullets because there are so many things that don’t work. Usually, they’re in the first 20 minutes of the movie, and so you have to be pretty brutal about that. The nice thing about DVDs when they came out was that you were able to say, “Well, at least I can put this in the extras on the DVD, and people will see it.” Before that, whatever you cut just disappeared. All these movies, like Freaks and Mark of the Vampire, have been completely recut by the studio, and then the stuff has been thrown away. We’ll never see what it was. Now, you can save that stuff and put it on as an extra, and that’s supposedly a selling point, which is great.
The movie that I’ve cut the most stuff out of that I thought should stay in was The Second Civil War, but that was because HBO had a specific running time that they had to hit. So, there was a whole subplot about Muslims and genital mutilation, which, I guess, they probably didn’t enjoy that idea either.
