TO THE READER:
    As a kid I wanted to be a writer, but at fifteen was shocked to learn there were people like Saroyan and Hemingway doing the same thing- no matter what happened to me and my work, they persisted and went ahead without me.
    Twenty-five years later I found myself teaching at the University of Southern California- no, not writing, but just about everything else having to do with making film.  You can imagine my surprise when Random House wanted a book from me on the total film-maker.  I said I'd write it- they said, "Don't." Upon asking, "How do I write a book without writing?" they answered, "You tape every class and your book will be everything you said, with your by-line."
    Hence the following pages represent a half million feet of audio tape compiled, examined, listened to, transcribed and finally edited into respective categories.
    I think I love films and those who love them better than just about anything else in the world- and I hope when you read this book you will become a part of the already overwhelming number of film-loving people.
                                        J.L.
 

PROLOGUE:
    The total film-maker is a man who gives of himself through emulsion, which in turns acts as a mirror.  What he gives he gets back.
    Because I believe in what can be done with film in our big round put-on, I wanted to write about it so that others, the new ones who are driven to work with it, who want to say their thing, can maybe learn something of what I've learned.  So, leaving the over-thirties to wallow in their own messes, I am aiming this toward the young, the fired-up long-and short-hairs who want to lick emulsion.
    Film, baby, powerful tool for love or laughter, fantastic weapon to create violence or ward it off, is in your hands. The only possible chance you've got in our round thing is not to bitch about injustice or break windows, but to make a concerted effort to have a loud voice.  The loudest voice known to man is on thousand-foot reels.  Campus chants about war are not going to help from firing into nine children somewhere, sometime.  Now; next year; five years from now.  Try emulsion instead of rocks for race relations and ecology.  That, and love and laughter, has to be what it's all about.  Then you'll survive.  Maybe we'll all survive.  Maybe.
    Emulsion has the strangest capacity to react.  It's almost like infectious hepatitis, only germ known to medical science that can't be sterilized off a needle.  It picks up information germs.  More than that, I really believe emulsion picks up the attitude of a film-maker's work.  It actually "feels" the intangibles.
    When you make a film under stress of one kind or another, emotional or mechanical, or without all the necessary information, it might still turn out to be a good film.  But no one can put a finger on why it isn't an excellent film.  The intangibles! If it flops completely, you can blame pressures, as if anyone wants to listen.
    But the more information you have to apply to the film, the easier it is to work, create, and design.  That applies to making crullers, too.  But there's a difference.  The emulsion smells and feels happy.  It will make things that are somewhat minor turn magnificent.  It's part of the mystery of film-making, and no one yet has explained it.  It's wrapped in adventure, excitement and, sometimes, true satisfaction.
    I have a confession.  Crazy.  I have perched in a cutting room and licked emulsion.  Maybe I thought more of me would get on to that film.  I don't know.  I do know that plumbers don't lick their pipes.  With emulsion, it's easy to get turned on.
    The film-maker's commitment to society comes only from his hope that society will see the picture.  If he doesn't care what society thinks, then he's off on an ego trip, and isn't my definition of a film-maker.  It doesn't matter what the subject is.  It does matter how it is made.  If the right optics aren't used, and if the actors don't function properly, and if the film-maker doesn't have a complete understanding of his function, it will bomb- whatever the subject.
    You will have to know all the technical crap as well as how to smell out the intangibles, then go make the birth of a simian under a Jewish gypsy lying in a truck in Fresno during a snowstorm prior to the wheat fields burning while a priest begs a rabbi to hug his foot.
    Where do you start? There's no Monopoly board.  No start. Do not pass go. I think you start out by just being there, and being curious and having the drive to make films.
    More important: make film, shoot film, run film.
    Do something.
    Make film.  Shoot anything.
    It does not have to be sound.
    It does not have to be titled.
    It does not have to be color.
    There is no have to.  Just do.
    And show it to somebody. If it is an audience of one, do and show, and then try it again.
    That is how.
    It sounds simple.
    It's not. Then again, it is.
    In what is to follow, I do not want to sound like I am anything other than what I am.  I have no "isms." This is my own statement on film-making, my own point of view.
 
 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 ONE

PRODUCTION

1

No  matter how you slice it, the most critical aspect of making films is dealing with people.  Whether you think he's a hero or an occasional creep, you must have a rooting interest fro the next guy and his reason for being on that sound stage.  He's the key to your technical instrument. He can help you to be very good, or he can sabotage you.

There are many technical-minded people, some brilliant, in the industry who can't get a job.  The ones who function best seem to be very human.  They might not be as well qualified as the super-technician but they bring a tremendous insight to the material and its projection.

So I maintain we're dealing in a humanities area just as critical, in its was, as open heart surgery.  I don't care how much technical information you have stored away, you blow the picture when you blow the human end.  Everything is going for you - beautiful setup, marvellous cast, wonderful sets, crew, et cetera.  And then someone says, "Good luck.  It's your first day. It's nine o'clock. Make your first shot."

"Wha-wha-wha-wha!"

Here he comes now! Here is Ray Milland and there is Ann Sothern, I saw you on television and you were pretty shitty.  Now, here's your first shot ... "

Forget it.  It's over. Burn the set.  Forget it.

"Mr Milland, you look a little old for this part, but we'll see what we can do."

Out! It's over.

Actors will kill for you if you treat them like human beings.  You have to let them know you want them and need them; pay them what they want, but don't overpay them; treat them kindly.  Give an actress a clean dress and see she gets fresh coffee in the mornings, and other little spoon-feedings.  She will kill for you.

I once worked for a director who had a personality like Eva Braun's.  I was doing a scene, a fall, and told him to forget the stunt man.  "I'll fall downstage.  You're in a close angle and you're low.  It'll be a rough cut for you.  I'll do the fall."

"Okay, great!"

I wasn't doing it for him, really.  I wanted it to work.  Although in the end I suppose I was doing it for him because he'd have to cut the film.  So I did it.

"Perfect," he said. "Cut! Print!"

He proceeds to the next setup while I'm cocked down with one leg hanging.  The son-of-a-bitch didn't say "Thank you" or even nod his head.  Just "Perfect."

He lost me with that one scene, and never got me back.  I did my funny faces, and took the money; wished him good luck, and lied about that. I guess I hurt myself, because the comedian on the screen wasn't very funny when the film was released.  

Frank Tashlin, on the other hand, was great at handling Jerry Lewis the comic.  He has a feeling for people.  Very possibly I learned more about the humanities of making films from Frank than I did from everyone else combined.  He was a caring director.

I realize that I am basically a miserable bastard on the sound stage.  It comes from trying to be a perfectionist.  If the toilet seat is left up, I faint.

It's like Queeg and "Who ate the strawberries?"

"Who left the toilet seat up?"

To work for this kind of maniac, you have got to be some kind of dingaling.  Yet I get the good dingalings film after film, and the rewards are great.  I consciously root for them, and that is what it is all about.

The relations with crew are not much different from the relations with actors.  A strong feeling, for good or bad, runs through a crew.  They are as adult as I am, and as childish.  They like to be "made-over" a bit.  You are going to walk by a grip or electrician?  What the hell is wrong in recognizing him? I've always done it, not so much for their comfort, but selfishly for mine.  I'm more comfortable not having to turn my head away. If I don't know his name, I'll say something: "What right do you have to be working here, you dirty, lousy old..."

It is a wild goddamn but very understandable thing.  You take a guy who is yawning away, and then suddenly make him special by saying, "How's it going? The first day's tough, right?"

And he answers, "Yeh, but what the hell?"

All of a sudden he's a tiger.  "Hey, can I give you a hand here?"

If a grip walks past me and says "Hi," but doesn't add "Jerry," I act offended, and it's not all acting. "Hey, how come I know your name, but you don't know mine. I'm the movie star." It works.  I want that personal relationship.

For years I've had a thing in my operation that I call fear extraction.  The first thing I try to do with a new member of the staff is extract the fear that insecurity, God, and Saint Peter handed down.  I try to do it simply-tell him that I care, that I don't want to hurt him, that I want him to excel, to be happy.  Then I'll be happy making what I love best, film.  It works, too.

One night on The Ladies Man I had to wrap up a sequence or it would have cost an additional hundred thousand.  The crew knocked off at eight o'clock, went to dinner, and then came back to work until three in the morning to finish it.  Two days passed before the unit manager told me that the 116 technicians had all punched out at eight o'clock, and had dinner on their own time.  They contributed the time between nine pm and three the next morning.  Had they stayed on the overtime clock, it would have cost something like $50,000.

That's a pretty good example of rapport, and the humanities.  It doesn't happen often in this town called Hollywood, but in this new day of making films, it will probably happen more. Everyone will be better for it.  There are other examples, of course.  Rossellini fell in love with casts and crews, and told them so.  He took trite scripts and developed fine films out of love, and the labor of love.  That love magic enters into it big.

The funniest part of  creative people, particularly people who love film, is that they get up in the morning and can't wait to run into somebody to hug.  A hug does not have to be embracing a male, so that the cops pick you up.  A hug is in the voice; a hug is in the spirit; a hug is in the attitude.  Kibitz or tease someone to put him down for a second! It only takes another second to let him know it wasn't meant to be unkind.  If there isn't rapport and communication, those love magics of film, then the technical information isn't worth a damn.

Hugs, kisses and happy talk don't mean I favor playtime on any set.  If there's someone I don't like, I have to let them know why; then see how well I can function with him on a human level.  Otherwise, one of us will sabotage.

There will be shmucks midst all the hugging.  They take advantage.  There us always one who doesn't understand honesty  when it is laid on the line.  He'll try to undermine.  Get rid of him! Save some sabotage.  But care must be taken not to let that experience start you off wrong with the replacement.  The past screwing has to be forgotten; the humanities pulled in again.

Part of what's wrong with the film industry in America is a couple of goddamn greedy unions and some crew types protected by the unions.  But what film-makers, new and old, always have to remember is that there are usually 116 men around who are willing  to kill for them. They will gladly assassinate as long as there is rapport. 

Humanities go beyond cast and crew rapport.  Those who are loving film-makers don't hope another producer's picture will go down the drain.  Sam Goldwyn doesn't do that.  Louis B. Mayer, who was the murderer of the world in business, didn't do it.  Mr. Mayer once told me, "If you don't want that picture I make to be a  smash, you're stupid.  Your coming attractions might be playing with it."

The people who don't root for another guy's film are the ones who are fearful their own product will bomb.  If there can be thirty other film-makers in front of their own demise, it won't be such a bad fall.  If they had confidence in their own work,  the first thing they'd do is pray for the next guy's work, because he keeps the theatres open.

I could be shooting on a  sound stage on Vine Street when a film like Funny Girl opens in New York.  Should I worry? Absolutely.  That theatre may fold if Funny Girl goes on its ass.  Then where will I go with mine? That's healthy thinking.  Additionally, I just happen to be a rooter.  

But Hollywood is a pretty strange place sometimes.  For instance, I took out a full page ad in a trade paper to congratulate a certain studio for making a certain film, simply because I could take my children to see it.  I said, "Bravo for making a good film."  But I didn't hear from the producer, didn't hear from the studio.  Dead silence for boosting their picture.  I had rooted in vain.  Now I take the trouble to call attention to what I do.  It is no longer a nice thing, but I'm spelling it out in the future.

In contrast to that studio's behaviour, I remember going into Abe Schneider's office at Columbia.  He runs that studio and is a man of dignity and taste.  Very excited, he said.  "Look at what Funny Girl did!"  He should have been excited at the box office figures.  It was a Columbia film.  But then he added, "The business is churning.  How the West Was Won, Metro, Warner-Seven Arts, Bonnie And Clyde.  Did you ever see figures like that?"

The film-maker who really has the ball park, with the bat and the ball and the ground rules, loses none of his strength or integrity by dealing in humanities on the set as well as throughout the industry.  He doesn't have to.  If he knows his job, hw doesn't need to slam a fist down and yell, "Goddammit, this is the way..." It never gets to that, because he is honest with himself, with those around him, and he cares for the product.  He'll lick the face of a man who can make an important production contribution.

I suppose what I have been talking about is simple, decent human behaviour.  But it is the most complex thing around.  Some of it can be cut through with a hug and a smile.  It is that tangible, intangible basis of it all-the all-meaning relationships with actors, crews, executives and the public.

2 

THE TOTAL FILM-MAKER

I have some hates in film-the schnuck who works with it and deep down doesn't like anything about it; also, the guy who doesn't care how he works.  The other-type person I hate is the untotal film-maker who loftily claims he is dealing with the "human magic" of reels, dictating what the emulsion sees and does, and yet has nothing to say.  I think he's taking up space.  You can automate that kind of film-maker. They come out of a box on a side of a Sperry-Rand thing that says, "I'll make whatever you want."

On the other hand, we don't necessarily have to lay on a  tag of importance only when laboring with that we have been told are the issues.  I buy the premise that we are, as an international whole, responsible film-makers.  We tackle an Advise and Consent or a Z.  We must also tackle the comedy of Dagwood and Blondie with the same care and a sense of importance, believing that it will make a contribution.

Education is a curse in this respect.  The curse on the creative level is that often we have been made to understand that only certain subjects are status subjects; certain themes, valid.  Anything else is viewed over the bridge of an intellectual nose and put down.  Good Christ, on that basis, how can we remain committed and responsible film-makers if we are making, by choice, subjects that do not fall into those categories?
I'm living proof of the effect of this intellectual snobbery.  I cannot sit at certain tables at the Director's Guild because I make what people consider is a "hokey" product. John Frankenheiner waves and hopes no one else sees his hand, simply because I film pratfalls and spritz water and throw pies.  But I believe, in my own way, that I say something on film.  I'm getting to those who probably don't have the mentality to understand what the hell A Man For All Seasons is all about, plus many who did understand it.

I am not ashamed or embarrassed at how seemingly trite or saccharine something in my films will sound.  I really do make films for my great-great-grandchildren and not for the critics!  I'm never going to meet my great-great-grandchildren in these seventy-some years that may be allotted to me, but when they see my films they'll also see what I wanted to say.  And they won't be purposely bad or uncaring films.  As a matter of pride, I also hope I took nifty for them.

I believe that the quickest way to find out your capacity fro being a total film-maker is to determine whether or not you have something to say on film. If the answer is negative, I suggest saving grief and dropping out.  Total film-making requires the definite point of view.  Of course, an awful lot is meant to be said in many films, mine included, that doesn't get across.  That's no crime.  The crime is starting out by having nothing to say.

As long as he is honest unto himself, I am not going to put anyone down if he just wants to grind footage, function only on a technical level, and make money.  There is nothing particularly wrong with that, but it falls beneath the category of total film-making, and should be recognized as such.

The film-maker constantly skates between himself and the audience.  Which comes first? Both, hopefully, but it is such a fine line, such an intangible line, that the only way he can proceed is to first please himself.  The discipline of the audience is always out there to keep somewhat of a balance.  And he cannot presume that the audience will see his film more than once.  They will judge it on that first time basis.

There is no way to put on the table the heartaches, palpitations, dreams and hopes that can't be bought with a check.  Yet they aren't things you call upon as a starting director or as one with a hundred film credits.  "I, too, shall be that way."  You are that way or you aren't.  It's the difference between a film-loving, total film-maker or just a film-maker.  Even if you flop, you're better off with your heart in film than if your just a good mechanic.

In terms of totality, I think a film I am in, and have not directed, is less of a film even though the public may judge it otherwise.   Dedication can't be bought with a director's salary.  No one can write a check for concern; no one can say to a director, "Here is a hundred thousand, pray for it, love it, take care of it, sit at the moviola all night long and edit us a masterpiece."  The price is really based on X number of week's work.  If lucky, there may be dedication and concern-maybe only technical function.

When you make a film yourself, write it, produce it, direct it, perhaps star in it;a piece of your life, good film or bad.  So, from a purely personal viewpoint, the film I directed and starred in is a hundred times better than the other man's film starring me, simply because of the care it was given.  Going in, the chances of success are better because of that dedication.

Also, as a total film-maker, I'm convinced that there is a greater chance of inconsistency when the four separate minds of writer, producer, director, and actor collaborate.  I know about spreading one's self too thin-I've lived with it year after year-but care is the antitoxin to a thin-spread project.

I want to see four different men make the Mona Lisa; four men sculpt something elegant, four men make a baby.  That's my answer to anyone who hits me with the idea that committees, three or four central minds, make the best films.  They often make good films, rarely the best.

A one-man effort at least has the potential of being a Mona Lisa.  Monsieur Verdoux was not accepted as a fine film, nor was Limelight, but both had the potential of being Chaplin's Mona Lisa.  They failed.  even so, they were better by far than the majority of committee films.

A man who is going to write, produce, direct and act in a film argues more with himself, fights a greater battle than any battle with all the other bright committee minds choosing to give him static.  The battle within himself is part and parcel of what makes him a total film-maker.  He struggles within one mind.  One hat fights the other.  Often the actor cannot stand what the director says.  The producer thinks the director is a moron.  And the writer is disturbed  by all three of them.  The total film-maker  cannot lie to any of his separate parts and be successful.  There is a tremendous inner government within him, and his judgement is severely examined by that inner government.

The committee way, it's always, "Well, who'll tell him?" The committee way, you walk away from the director.  Or when you wrap the set at six o'clock, saying, "I'll argue with you tomorrow, Mr. Star."  The one-man total way, you must eat and sleep with it.  You don't win arguments because you want to win them.

Some film-makers can never be multifaceted simply because they cannot be that objective.  It isn't something you buy in a store: "Give me three pounds of objectivity, please." You have it or you don't.

For example, the director-writer hat does not always help the multifaceted film-maker.  It depends on the kid of director he is.  A lovely thing happens to a director-writer.  As writer, he can easily become the director's enemy.  Alternatively, the director can become the enemy because he has placed the writer in traps. However, if you are objective enough while wearing two hats, you will not blame yourself but blame the writer as if he doesn't exist within you.

If you're functioning as director at a given moment, it takes tremendous will power, objectivity and know how to leave the writer in his office when you are writer-director, to leave the producer in his office when you are producer-director.  Yet it can be done.  It's even rougher as director-actor  when you sit back in dailies and turn to the cutter and say, "Dump him.  He isn't funny.  I did something wrong with him."   Total film-makers are usually objective enough to know what they want, what they did right; to admit what is wrong.  Objectively will indicate when the film is running away on its own.

In my case, if I believe the character up there on the screen is funny I'll laugh at him.  There are no egos or vanities if he isn't.  They are kept in the desk drawer.  Egos and vanities do come out when you dress up like a movie star and watch yourself on the screen.  Sitting in the projection room. looking at the bread and butter, you become a slasher.  No one on that screen has value if he is getting in the way.  Objectivity has no relatives.

The total film-maker bears the sometimes expensive curse of never being really satisfied.  He can approach but never gain it.  He is driven to this by being rather totally identified with his product.  So, he must strive for self-satisfaction.

I've spent an extra half million dollars on a film because of this curse.  Truthfully, the film wasn't improved that much but I had seen mistakes which I thought should be corrected.  The comedian I'd cast and directed wasn't funny, were not of importance.  He'd failed. I reshot his part simply because I wasn't satisfied. 

Of course, many times a director's design and intention becomes something other than what it was meant to be.

He will lose control of the film if he loses objectivity.  It will tend to travel its own course in that literal sense.  Occasionally, this is salvation.  Mostly, it is disaster.  Yet all directors, good or bad, will sometimes accept  exactly what the film gives them.

In my own  experience, I've gotten some things I really didn't intend and found myself accepting them.  I could not decide how much was me, and how much was the magic and emulsion mystery.  This happens.

Another aspect of the film-maker's objectivity is the practical application to "different."  Suddenly, miraculously, he thinks he has done something, applies objectivity and gets around to the realization that some pretty good minds have passed along the same route.  His "different" or switch on past work, remains valid but he sees it in its true light.

It's hell being objective.  I've had more retakes on Jerry Lewis than anyone else in the production. I use video tape, shot simultaneously, for instant viewing of any scene.  The video camera monitors every take.  But I never view the tape except when I'm in doubt.  One advantage I've had is playing night clubs, theatres, and concerts.  I do ninety minutes performing in Las Vegas making audiences laugh.  Timing tells me what top do and how.  If it is working, I don't need the audience to tell me.  It is right because it feels right.  The same applies to the sound stage.  I view the video for mistakes.  At that moment, all the objective hyphenated hats are functioning.

Yes it is often torture when you have complete personal control.  You answer to yourself once you get it.  The pain is justified when you answer to a bunch of stupid front-office morons.  Eventually, you may beg not to have autonomy so that the morons can pass judgment.  You can lie back and bleed, whimpering safely, "Look what they did to me."

Autonomy in film, as well as any other endeavor, is always a tough rap because it basically deals with your own integrity.  There is no easy way to shake that schmuck you sleep with at night.  No matter how you toss and turn, he's always there. 

I have to sleep with that bastard all the time.  Very painful, sometimes terrifying.

A good film-maker must have the guts to quit,  If somebody challenges what he says, or denies him the right to believe what he has said, he must fight back, spit it out, and if necessary, walk out.  Total film-making cannot be approached on the basis of compromise.

Autonomy, if you are lucky enough to be the producer, writer, and director, cuts away a lot of the fat but spreads the hours.  One beleaguered morning you wake up to ask, "How does the director, who is a total film-maker, put in twenty-one hours in s working day?"

Well, on a nine-to-six basis on the stage, you eat up three in camera setups, which leaves six.  One for lunch leaves you five.  Of those five, you talk to actors for two while rehearsing and waiting for the lighting.  Another hour, perhaps, is spent talking to the crew.  Before you know it, you have two hours of actual shooting time to pick up three minutes of screen time.

What's happened to the other twelve hours? Somehow they sandwich in. In that nine hour day at the studio or on location, you're involved in wardrobe, building or striking of sets, casting, script, dailies, publicity, money and a supporting player's hay fever.  Even if you were only hired as a director and not a hyphenate- a producer-director or writer-director-you'd still be dealing in most of these areas.

Unfortunately the film-maker cannot design a specific sequence and deal just with actors, the script and camera movement.  The design often involves the unexpected.  The set scheduled for the afternoon's work suddenly vanishes.  The unit production manager, the nuts and bolts foreman of the entire operation, coughs, "Jeez, they just told me it's not ready."

So the homework of last night is so much scrap paper now.  You have to do another scene, possibly one you haven't really prepared.  (Actually, you do nightly homework on what has been prepared for months but bone up specifically for the next day's work.) The total film-maker, knowing all parts of his operation, develops an elasticity that helps in emergencies.  

Even without the producer or writer roles tossed in, the dimensions f the director's work alone are sometimes frightening.  There is no such thing as being "just a  director" in today's industry.  When D.W.  Griffith walked on the set years ago, everything was laid out for him.  Today, even the key departments of a decade ago are ghosts.  It is now the director's bag and he must be somewhat multifaceted even though he does not produce or write.

Whatever I am as a producer-writer in this total category.  I am a hard-ass director.  Otto Preminger was a hard-ass director before anyone knew Preminger wasn't a skin disease.  A hard-ass director arrives at his iron  nates by knowing his craft.  Few can get to him.  That is where sound stage strength lies.

I've found when you know your racket, you can't sleep a full eight hours.  you want to work, can't wait to get your hands on the goddamn film.  The strength is already there and comes from information. Oddly, yet understandably, the stronger you are in all the know-hows to make a total film, the more tender you seem when it comes to the cast and crew humanities on the set.  Security versus insecurity.

Beyond that strength it turns back to the individual director and what he is; what he has to say, hard-ass or not.  Karl Menninger once remarked, "The psychiatrist is not good because of what he has learned and what he knows by way of texts. He is good because of what he is. It applies to directing films.

I think total film-making has always been misunderstood by the Hollywood onlookers.  They presume it is a little less than purest egomania.  I don't buy that.  I simply don't want anyone tampering with what I believe.

I want to make a piece of crap.  If it is a piece of crap, let it be mine.  Don't add and join.  My crap and your crap do not meld.  Let mine be good crap by itself.

And the only way to retain full-control over your piece of crap is to hold the reins yourself by being a total filmmaker.

3

COMEDY

15
LAUGHS ARE OUR THING

I had seven hundred and thirty five young people who wanted to join a comedy workshop.  The audition was very  simple. I asked them why they wanted to do comedy.  

First, a few negative responses:

"Well, I want to do comedy because I want to give to the world...."

"I want to give to the world.  There are lot of people who can't walk who should laugh a lot."

The ones who made it said:

"I want to do comedy because something in here is chewing away at me."

"I want to do comedy because I know why."

Maybe, for some of us, after we cut away the drivel, comedy is our bag because it is in our gut.  We have no choice.  It's laugh or cry.  Laughs are our thing.  People can't hate when they are laughing.

A good comedian, I think, comes from a shallow beginning if not a minority group.  Shallow emotionally or financially, often both.  No one from a silver spoon family has ever been a top banana.  A few have tried but haven't made it.

Comedy, humor, call it what you may. is often the difference between sanity and insanity, survival and disaster, even death.  it's man's emotional safety valve. If it wasn't for humor, man could not survive emotionally.  Peoples who have the ability to laugh at themselves are the peoples who eventually make it.  Blacks and Jews have the greatest sense of humor simply because their safety valves have been open so long.

Humor works in strange ways, always close to the pulses of life.  Sometimes there is a smile or a laugh of disbelief when misfortune is reported.  Then hysteria breaks.  Often a weird laugh can be heard at a funeral.  It is either to protect a sob  or because of an inability to sob.  In funeral processions, jokes about the dead person are defences against the tragedy.  Many times, comedy plays directly against tragedy.

I've always felt that comedy is reality.  What isn't real isn't identifiable; man only laughs when he identifies.  If the comedic form is not reality in its purest sense, it often becomes a caricature of reality.  Comedy is never fantasy, although fantasy can be comedic.  Pure fantasy is seldom genuinely funny because it stands as an entity in itself.

Identification, and identification alone, is what makes comedy work.  If the punch line of an American joke is delivered in Swedish to an American audience, you won't hear a  thistle drop/  Comedy does not need to be verbal, of course.  Anyone can identify with the fat man who drops his ice-cream cone taking the first lick.  But if it is verbal, it must be understood for identification.

I'm deeply committed to comedy because it is in my gut.  I also feel there is nothing more dramatic than comedy. So there is no purpose in my doing a no-comic film.  There are too few comedian in a troubled world, and why make it one less for the questionable compensation of joining the effete ranks at the Screen Director's Guild? I am dedicated to comedy film-making because of my gut needs and because I know it best.

When I speak of my own comedy, as a performer, I often refer to the nonsense I make.  I do it with pride and affection and not in a self-derogatory way.  I am nine years old when performing comedy.  At that age, hurt is possible but degradation is seldom possible.

Some actors, unable to understand comedy, look upon it as less than dignified.  I've worked with them and cast them in films.  They are lost causes and cannot be taught crying and happy, in ten minutes or ten years.  They don't know what they aremissing.