One of the most self-consciously impressive shots in Pick Me Up is the bird’s eye-view tracking shot over Walker, Wheeler and Stacia [Fairuza Balk] as they rest in their respective motel rooms.
Well, I wanted to execute some shots that were ambitious, but still very simple. So I came up with the idea for that shot and we built the set accordingly. We used an electronic crane that was operated by remote control and gave the camera a nice fluid movement. Since the set had the three motel rooms positioned directly next to each other, we simply raised the camera up from the first room, moved it slowly across the second room, and dropped it into the third room. That way, we could see the various activities of the three characters without having to cut between them. It worked out fine and we only did two takes and both of them were good.
Moriarty gets another opportunity to play the piano, as he did in Q — The Winged Serpent, performing his song “Snakes in the Snow.”
Yeah, I told him he could. We put a piano outside the café as if there was a garage sale or something going on, and his character could just sit down for a few moments and play something. Moriarty was then able to perform his song and he was happy about that. It also made me happy that Michael was happy. We actually shot that on the very first day and got it over with. I must confess that I don’t exactly know what “Snakes in the Snow” means. You’d have to ask Michael.
How was it reuniting with Moriarty again after an eighteen-year break?
Gosh! Was it really that long?
Yes, it was, stretching all the way back to A Return to Salem’s Lot in 1987.
I can’t believe it was that long. It felt as if we’d been working together only a year or two before. That’s quite incredible. You know, in the time that had elapsed between those two films, Michael had been through a lot of physical problems. First of all, he had left the U.S. and moved to Canada. He swore he would never come back to America again and developed some imagined fixation that the Justice Department was out to get him. Michael was convinced that Janet Reno, the attorney general, had it in for him because he had gone to Washington with Dick Wolf, the creator and producer of Law & Order, to talk to the Justice Department about violence on television. Moriarty had gotten into an argument with Reno and just went nuts. Afterwards, he came back and eventually quit Law & Order, even though he had been the star and backbone of the show for four years and was making a fortune. Michael had been nominated for the Emmy Award for television every year, but he just walked away from it all. Personally, I feel that Michael always wanted to do everything he could to destroy himself, or at the very least make life difficult for himself. When things are going well for him, he has to do something to screw it all up. Unfortunately, that is what he has done throughout his whole career. He’s a truly wonderful actor, but every time things are going great he creates this situation of absolute chaos. After leaving Law & Order, he then went to Canada and started drinking like a lunatic and getting into fist-fights in bars. On one occasion, he got beaten to a pulp by a bunch of guys in a bar who basically crippled him. Michael was in a wheelchair and on crutches, and he never fully recovered from the beating he took.
Was this before you made Pick Me Up?
Yes. In fact, the word quickly got to me that Moriarty couldn’t do the film because he was now basically an invalid. I said, “Don’t make any decisions until I see him first. Let me meet with him and figure out what we can or can’t do.” When I arrived in Canada and met with Michael, I immediately saw that he was walking with a cane and had a significant limp. I thought I could double him and found an actor that looked a lot like Michael from the side and the rear. I used the double for certain shots where his character was required to run around or fight. Moriarty still plays the part in ninety-five percent of Pick Me Up, it’s just a few instances where the action is very physical. So, we did get him in the film, even though there was some resistance from the producers, who believed he was physically incapacitated. The fact was they had to let me do what I wanted, and I wanted Moriarty for that part. He was my first and only choice. So, I hired him and, of course, he was fabulous. I actually think that Michael gave one of his greatest performances in Pick Me Up. At various times he is incredibly charming and then incredibly menacing, and sometimes he’s both at once! You can’t take your eyes off him. In fact, I was more than satisfied with all the actors we had on that film including Fairuza Balk and Warren Cole.
Let’s talk about Fairuza Balk, who plays the object of the serial killers attentions. How did she come to be cast?
Frankly, I was surprised we got Fairuza. I didn’t think we’d be able to get somebody as good as her for the part of the girl, although Fairuza had appeared in a few horror movies before Pick Me Up. [6] I was very happy to have her in the film, and she had a wonderful sense of humour. I kept Fairuza happy, and was fooling around with her all the time. She was a pleasure to work with and we never had a moment’s conflict. I also enjoyed working with Warren Cole. I’d seen Warren in a television miniseries and thought he would play well against Moriarty, which he did. It was important that these two male characters be equally threatening. I must say that for the money we had to spend, and the fact you had to make these films quickly, it all worked out. I mean, you literally arrived there and went into pre-production, but sometimes these things are not cast until two or three days before you start shooting. There is not a lot of lead time and you can get down to a point where you have to select somebody and get them to Canada to shoot the damn film. I already had Moriarty and Fairuza, but Warren was the last minute choice. Fortunately, he turned out to be good.
How did you stage the climactic truck crash?
Even though I am averse to storyboarding, I had a storyboard artist come in to help work out what that sequence was going to be. Another reason I storyboarded the truck crash was because we had a wonderful stunt director on Pick Me Up and I was going to delegate a great deal of that sequence to him. [7] As I keep saying, it was always pouring with rain and freezing cold and, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t want to stand out in that weather and choreograph the stunt. That process takes hours and hours. You are not only preparing the area where the stunt is going to take place, you are readying the catapults, putting in the safety equipment, and supervising all the other small details which have to be done. I might have supervised that sequence if the weather was fine, but it was awful. I also had the actors to deal with and we were shooting a dramatic scene elsewhere at the same time as the stunt director was preparing the truck crash. He called me when everything was ready, and I went up there to observe the stunt. I would then say if it was okay or if we needed to do it again. So, the stunt director deserves the credit for shooting that crash, but I did come up with the way it should play and I did supervise the drawing of the storyboards.
You clearly seem happy with how Pick Me Up turned out.
I thought it was very good, actually. Pick Me Up was better than I expected it to be. It was entertaining and the performances were better than those found in some of the other films. In fact, I thought Moriarty’s performance was by far the best of any found in the entire series. That’s only my opinion, but then he’s just a better actor than everybody else so I suppose it was to be expected. We had a lot of fun together but, sadly, towards the end of shoot, Michael got a little irritable. Part of the reason for this was we had to film some other stuff ahead of him and he didn’t like waiting around for his scenes to be shot. We had built a version of Moriarty’s truck on a soundstage that was on a winch. This enabled us to turn the entire vehicle over onto its side with Fairuza strapped down inside of it. That took a lot of preparation and we had to keep Moriarty waiting for a very long time and he got annoyed. So, towards the end, things did get a little tense between us, and by the last day we weren’t even on speaking terms. Afterwards, we did patch it up over the telephone and it was all okay.
When did you last see Moriarty?
Uh, I’m trying to remember. [Pause] Actually, I think
that was the last time I saw him in person. Michael is a man who thinks about things deeply, perhaps too deeply. He is an incredibly intelligent and creative person but, unfortunately, he has these paranoid conspiracy theories and some other crazy ideas and opinions about life. But when it comes down to acting and playing a part, he has the ability to bring characters to life and invest them with an energy and believability that most actors can only ever dream of approaching.
Stella Adler, the legendary acting teacher, once hailed Moriarty as “one of the great actors in the Western world.”
And she’s absolutely right. He is one of the very best. Michael is a highly honored performer, who has won almost every major award in acting, including the Tony Award. [8] He’s won the Emmy Award three times: firstly for The Glass Menagerie in which he starred alongside Katherine Hepburn, and, secondly for Holocaust, a role which also won him a Golden Globe. Holocaust was a very successful six-hour miniseries in which he played a despicably cruel Nazi officer. Michael was so deeply affected by that character, he vowed never to play a villain again, at least not until Pick Me Up came along. He won his third Emmy a few years ago for James Dean, in which he played Dean’s father. The only major acting award that has eluded him is the Oscar, so he really is an exceptional talent.
Along with Takashi Miike, Don Coscarelli, and John McNaughton you were the only director who failed to return for the second season of Masters of Horror. Why was that? Surely it wasn’t solely due to the weather conditions?
To tell you the truth, my last experience on Masters of Horror was not the most pleasant shoot. It wasn’t only because the weather was horrendous and the money negligible, I simply had no desire to go back there again. I mean, you got paid very little for the amount of time and energy you put into the work. I felt that I had done my duty towards Masters of Horror. We all said that we would do one film and I did one film, just as I said I would. I didn’t then feel obliged to go back and direct another film in the second season. Again, I don’t think Masters of Horror was that good considering all the incredible talent involved. Frankly, I didn’t think it was going to last, and the second season was worst than the first!
As of this conversation, Pick Me Up is your last credit as a director. John Carpenter told me he felt reinvigorated by working on Masters of Horror, saying it re-ignited his love for making movies and led him to direct The Ward, his first theatrical feature in almost a decade. The experience obviously did not arouse that same feeling in you, but do you harbour any ambitions of one day returning to warm a director’s chair?
Oh sure, I would love to direct again. I don’t think I have the energy to do the insane eighteen to twenty-hour working days I used to do! [Chuckles] I’m not that crazy madman anymore — driving everyone forward — although those days were a lot of fun. The only problem these days, and it’s rather a big one, is being able to get distribution on the pictures. Nowadays, lower-budgeted movies have a very difficult time getting any kind of distribution or advertising budget from the distributors. They want to sell you directly to DVD, or directly to Netflix, or directly to cable. There is no backend, no profits, and the exhibition of the picture is minimal. Nobody really sees your film, so what’s the point of working so hard to make something if nobody is going to see it? I wish I could say that things were different now, but, ever increasingly, there are a couple of big movies that do all the business and every other movie does no business. A significant number of pictures never get played theatrically at all and you see them on DVD and say, “Look at the stars in this movie?” You’ll find there are big name people associated with it, but the film was never in theaters. I was fortunate in my day that most of my pictures got theatrical distribution, or at least received very favourable video distribution. Today, you can work extremely hard on a movie and find yourself left totally frustrated. That situation greatly lessens my enthusiasm to return to directing.
What if somebody approached you with an offer you couldn’t refuse?
Well, I’ve found that you can never say never in this business. I try not to make any definitive statements, just in case I later change my mind! [Chuckles] But as far as the directing goes, I will say that if somebody ever came to me and said, “Yeah, we’ll make your picture. I would love to have you direct the film and here’s when we can start,” I wouldn’t immediately turn them down. I would listen to what they have to say and seriously weigh the situation up. But to go out there now at my age and beat the bushes, trying to get these things put together like I used to do, I just can’t do that anymore. It requires too much effort for too little reward. I don’t want to struggle and work hard on a picture only for it not to ever be seen by anybody after I make it. No, that’s just too traumatic and tragic for me.
Despite these hardships, you’ve already noted that both John Landis and Joe Dante are still out there in the trenches, making movies.
Yeah, and John Landis is a particularly good example. As I said, a few years after doing Masters of Horror, John went to England to make Burke & Hare and put together a very good cast with two excellent British actors in the leads. [9] The picture was made, but then John couldn’t secure distribution in the United States. One day, I was watching cable on Showtime and, suddenly, there was Burke & Hare. I ran into John a couple of days later and said, “Hey, John, I really enjoyed your movie.” He asked, “Where did you see it?” I said, “It was on Showtime.” He was like, “Oh, my god! I did not know that!” So, there you go. You struggle and sweat to make a whole movie and you don’t even know what has happened to it. You have no idea where it is eventually going to show up, or indeed if it will ever be seen. This news was a total surprise to John because nobody ever told him about it. Those who were in control of Burke & Hare didn’t feel they had an obligation to inform John that his movie was going to be on Showtime. That’s the kind of treatment that you don’t like to receive. It’s incredibly depressing and disheartening. I mean, you would really love it if the people you are working with would be honest enough with you to tell you what the hell is going on.
There is obviously a collision of values here.
I would say it’s more of a collapse than a collision. Sometimes there are no values in this business — at least none that you can recognize — and it becomes an adversarial situation. That’s another problem with the business of making motion pictures: when you are on the set directing a film, it’s about dealing with the producers and the associate producers and the studio executives and the other people on the picture, like the production managers. Sometimes, the production managers are not working in your interests, but are really working for the producers and the backers of the studio. A production manager is basically an informer, that’s all. You sometimes hear them say, “Hey, he shot two hours over yesterday! He’s wasting too much time on this scene!” There are too many people coming back, giving you complaints and arguments and discussions. Naturally, as a director, many people can come between you and a single decision or request you may make. That’s just the way it is, but if I’m making a movie like Pick Me Up and I want to write a new scene where Michael Moriarty plays the piano, I don’t have to ask for anybody’s permission. I have the freedom to do what I want. I just say, “Put a piano in here, we’re going to do a scene,” and we just do it. If you are doing a regular picture, like most directors have to, you must obtain permission from the studio, the production executives, and other people. Almost immediately, somebody will say, “Hey, if you do that you are going to throw the picture over-budget and over-time!” With me, on my movies, I do what I damn well please. That’s the way I want to make my pictures. If I can’t make them my way, I don’t ever want to make movies at all. I must be in absolute control of a film. I must have the freedom to improvise and make up new material and have some fun with it. If that is taken away from me, I simply can’t work. I don’t want to get up at five o’clock every morning to shoot these damn things, only to find that I’m dancing to somebody else’s tune. I will never direct
another movie again if I can’t have complete autonomy.
On Writing
There seems to be a consensus amongst some critics that you are a better writer than you are a director. Do you agree with this view?
Yeah, I suppose, but then I don’t really know if that’s true. I mean, the movies I’ve made would not have been made the way they were if I had not directed them. There was so much of films like God Told Me To, Q, and The Stuff that was made up on the set, as opposed to being tightly scripted; material that was actually created with the actors as we were shooting. I would often send my pictures off in different and interesting directions that were not down on the page, but certainly felt a part of the continuing story. I often deviated from the scripts when I was shooting, but I did more than most directors did with the scripts that I wrote. I went off like a jazz musician, using the basic material as a theme and doing various riffs on the theme, occasionally returning to the theme. Did my ability to riff on my own stories make me a better writer? Or did my ability to implement these new ideas and communicate them successfully to the cast and crew make me a better director? So, I suppose the question of whether I’m a better writer or a better director is still open for discussion.
When you are writing a script, do you ever think about your audience?
Larry Cohen Page 63