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00:00:00.
00:00:06Get in!
00:00:08Making a film is like going to war.
00:00:13So you have to work with people you can rely on.
00:00:18Studios tend to set a release date.
00:00:21They wanted to open this movie at the beginning of the summer,
00:00:24so we had to really scramble to get this film finished.
00:00:27There's an awful lot of films of that period.
00:00:33And half the battle was not to do it like it's been done before.
00:00:39We never took the whole thing serious.
00:00:43It was a medieval romp of classic scale Robin Hood.
00:00:47How did your uneducated kind ever take Jerusalem?
00:00:50I can honestly say that Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
00:00:53is the shortest leading period on a film that I've ever had.
00:00:58This is a story that people need to tell.
00:01:01You know, there was a Robin Hood made in the 1920s,
00:01:04and there was a Robin Hood made in the 50s.
00:01:07It's a group of underdogs going up against an evil force,
00:01:10and by bonding together and taking it down,
00:01:12they make the world a better place.
00:01:14That doesn't go out of style.
00:01:15My parents made short films that weren't in the movie theaters
00:01:31My parents made short films that went in the movie theaters.
00:01:35I think they couldn't afford babysitters, so they would take me along with them.
00:01:38And they had me ride an alligator, a live one.
00:01:41It was seven foot long in one of their films on people that kept strange pets.
00:01:45And honestly, when you take a camera out or you put it up somewhere in a corner, people gather.
00:01:51And then they took me with them to Water Street where the distributors were and showed the movies to them.
00:01:56And this little kid never grew up from then on.
00:01:59I just wanted to cast spells with a camera.
00:02:02I left school at 15, tried to get into the photography world.
00:02:06I did some photographing of the Rolling Stones and people like that, which was entrepreneurial of me.
00:02:12But I sort of felt like a failure and washed up at 19, went to Canada and discovered I was young.
00:02:18There were people coming out of college and they hadn't done anything.
00:02:21And I got a job at a film company that was making short films for the educational
00:02:26and started to realize around me was a whole culture of young filmmakers.
00:02:29And we all swapped notes and we started making our own movies.
00:02:32At 22, I had my own company.
00:02:35And I had also put together like a hippie house full of filmmakers.
00:02:40And it was people upstairs.
00:02:43We would all share each other's food.
00:02:45And there would be people, editors in one room and a TV, radio announcer in another.
00:02:51And my wife moved in with me.
00:02:53And we literally started editing in the basement.
00:02:55And we found that we could sell little short films to the television systems in Canada.
00:03:00And it was a miracle.
00:03:01Well, I grew up in the land of Robin Hood.
00:03:04I grew up in England and went to university there and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
00:03:12And met people who were in film editing, actually, in London.
00:03:17And it was instantly intrigued.
00:03:19It was an instant love affair.
00:03:21As soon as I laid my hands on film, I realized that it was something special.
00:03:26And I think that I discovered a latent talent, perhaps, in terms of my ability to organize disparate images and words from chaos into some organization, which led me to film editing.
00:03:41So I started out as an editor.
00:03:43And fairly soon thereafter, I took a plunge and went to Chicago because I knew people who were making movies there.
00:03:51And from there, I went to Toronto, Canada, where I worked as an editor for, like, you know, for pay.
00:04:00And while doing that, Pendentium and I started our own production company.
00:04:07And we started making movies with, you know, borrowed film, borrowed equipment, cutting room in the basement, you know, out filming on the weekends whenever we could and started making our own films.
00:04:18When he came from Chicago to Canada, we found a closet that we could give him for a place to put his feet up and sleep in until we actually found a better space for him.
00:04:31And we got along great.
00:04:33I used to love cameras and shooting stuff.
00:04:36And he was a really, really fine editor.
00:04:38He was sort of scrambling to make ends meet.
00:04:41You know, we'd never had any money.
00:04:43We were, like, using short ends of film.
00:04:46We were borrowing cameras.
00:04:48We were relying on charity from all kinds of people.
00:04:51And then we had to sell them.
00:04:52If we didn't sell them, we had to go work for other people.
00:04:54We weren't going to do that if we could help it.
00:04:56So we were sort of a logical team in that we kind of co-wrote, co-produced, co-directed everything we did.
00:05:03He shot them.
00:05:04I edited them.
00:05:05And eventually we ended up where we realized that you have to enter awards contests
00:05:15because people don't know how to judge you.
00:05:17But if you've won an award, they always look at you like, oh, you must be a bit more special, even if you aren't.
00:05:22And so we ended up winning, like, 80 awards for our films, Oscar nominations,
00:05:27and getting noticed by a lot of people that gave us an opportunity to make more films.
00:05:33Norman Jewison, who was the patron saint of filmmakers in Canada,
00:05:38he reached out to me and said,
00:05:41Penn, I would love to mentor you into Hollywood.
00:05:44And the Canadian government paid for me and was stunned.
00:05:48And John and I had a company by then with staff,
00:05:50and John encouraged me to take the risk of looking and seeing what that felt like.
00:05:55And I was able to talk Norman into letting us have John join me.
00:06:01We made a film about him and Sylvester Stallone working together on the movie Fist,
00:06:06and that changed our lives.
00:06:08Well, we'd been out in L.A. for a few years and were developing projects.
00:06:13We made, I think, three or four smaller films.
00:06:17And we were having some success as writers, Penn and I.
00:06:24And we had this notion of doing a new version of Robin Hood.
00:06:29My wife and I had the privilege of having a child together.
00:06:32And I started to look at the world differently.
00:06:34And I'm looking at my little son growing up and how hard it is to raise a kid,
00:06:38how much effort goes into that person and the love and the energy that one invests.
00:06:43And I'm watching, at that point, Stallone movies and Schwarzenegger movies
00:06:47where mowing human beings down like tenpins was considered as something to celebrate.
00:06:52And that dissonance upset me.
00:06:55And I had this intuition, and I've learned about creativity,
00:07:00is that you surrender to intuitions rather than try and figure out what people want,
00:07:04because you're more likely to pursue something to the very end
00:07:08if it's something that comes out of passion in you.
00:07:10And I had this sudden thought, I want to make a movie like Robin Hood.
00:07:14And I'd always loved the Errol Flynn one.
00:07:17And this idea came to me about making a movie about a very selfish baron son
00:07:22who's spoiled and rich.
00:07:24And then he comes back after the Crusades, and his father is dead,
00:07:29and he's angry at himself, but he's going to use the peasants he has
00:07:33to fight the sheriff instead of actually taking responsibility.
00:07:38And the movie ends up where he ends up learning that he has actually
00:07:43a better and more moral thing to do, which is to fight the sheriff
00:07:47for the future of his peasants' children.
00:07:51I was living in a world where people were constantly portraying Arabs
00:07:56as negative forces, terrorists, ugly.
00:08:00And I had read a lot of history.
00:08:02And I knew that they were some of the most intelligent human beings.
00:08:05They were in the courts of all the European kings
00:08:07because of their skills with mathematics and medicine.
00:08:11And I thought, what if you put a Christian and a Muslim side by side
00:08:15in an adventure where they both learn from each other?
00:08:18And went around pitching to studios, and we figured, you know,
00:08:21hey, it's a great idea.
00:08:23We thought it was a great idea.
00:08:24And they could not be less interested.
00:08:26It was bizarre.
00:08:27It was like, men in tights in the forest?
00:08:30No, no, no, no.
00:08:31Set it in the future.
00:08:32Make it a sci-fi movie.
00:08:33We were kind of passionate about it.
00:08:35We really believed in our vision.
00:08:37So we kind of decided rather than just give up on it,
00:08:40we would write it on spec.
00:08:42So Penn came up with a very wonderfully fleshed out outline
00:08:47for the whole movie, a treatment with including some dialogue
00:08:50and all the scenes.
00:08:51And then I took that and ran with it
00:08:53and turned it into a screenplay.
00:08:54And I'd write something and think, oh, this is kind of obvious.
00:08:57You know, Maid Marian, you think she's this older lady
00:09:00who's rather large.
00:09:01And then it turns out, no, that's actually her assistant.
00:09:04And she's the guy that's just come out in a suit
00:09:06and is jumping on them to try and fight with them.
00:09:08And I'm thinking, that's a bit corny.
00:09:10And he's, no, no, it's great.
00:09:11It's great.
00:09:12Keep going.
00:09:13As soon as people started reading it,
00:09:15they went, wow, this is something.
00:09:17This has really captured something.
00:09:18And we were deliberately kind of dark at the beginning
00:09:21and we had a combination of romance and drama
00:09:24and adventure and humor.
00:09:26And it hit a vein at the right time.
00:09:29And it happened to be when there was a writer's strike going on.
00:09:33And after the strike, the studios were really hungry
00:09:36for finished scripts.
00:09:38So we hit the marketplace at a time when there were buyers.
00:09:42They really wanted something new.
00:09:44And we ended up with a little bit of a bidding war for the script,
00:09:48which was unlikely, it seemed, at the time.
00:09:52And then, you know, as it would have it,
00:09:56something about Robin Hood was in the zeitgeist
00:09:58because we found out that 20th Century Fox had a Robin Hood in the works
00:10:02with John McTiernan directing.
00:10:04And we found out that there was a scripting developed in England
00:10:08that Tristar were getting involved in.
00:10:10So, yeah, we suddenly found ourselves in this competition for Robin Hood.
00:10:16We heard that Warner Brothers wanted to buy it,
00:10:18but they would probably take it away from us and give it to Joel Silver.
00:10:21And you go, they're offering more money, but our hearts are in this project.
00:10:25This is our project.
00:10:26So we didn't want to give it up.
00:10:27We heard that maybe Fox was trying to buy it
00:10:29because they wanted to kill it so they could put their own Robin Hood out.
00:10:33And we go, well, they're offering us more money, but we'd rather not.
00:10:36And we heard that Morgan Creek was interested,
00:10:40and so we decided to take the chance.
00:10:42And then John Watson moved into their offices,
00:10:45and we, every day, were pushing to try and get the script made
00:10:48because from that point on,
00:10:50there were suddenly three other Robin Hoods in Hollywood
00:10:53trying to get made all at the same time.
00:10:55It literally was a horse race.
00:10:57And one of the convictions we had was we thought it deserved to get made.
00:11:01One of the reasons that we wanted to be the producers on our own movies,
00:11:06it was so that we could control the film and make the best possible version of it.
00:11:12Well, John and I had two different roles.
00:11:15Mine was to try and hold the film together while he was in England trying to get it mounted.
00:11:20And we were in a horse race.
00:11:21Literally, he was putting crew on a movie that had yet to be greenlit.
00:11:25One day, I got contacted about working on a film, a new production of Robin Hood.
00:11:32It wasn't called Prince of Thieves then.
00:11:34They didn't have a title.
00:11:35It was just a Robin Hood story.
00:11:37And I was reluctant.
00:11:39I thought, well, it's been done a thousand times.
00:11:41What are we going to do another one?
00:11:42Ah, but this is going to be different.
00:11:44No! No! No!
00:11:46So I went up to Warren Woods Studios and I met them.
00:11:51I said, so my first question was, who's the director?
00:11:55They said, we haven't got one.
00:11:57And I like to tell my students, I'm now teaching at USC, that if you can produce a successful short film,
00:12:02you can produce a feature film.
00:12:04It's essentially the same process.
00:12:05I mean, as much as we like to cloak ourselves with expertise, it's essentially common sense.
00:12:12You know, it's having good storytelling skills, it's having good people skills.
00:12:16The struggle was trying to find a cast and trying to find the director.
00:12:21And in the midst of, you know, our charge towards production, we found out that this Fox movie was actually going to go ahead
00:12:31and that this other movie at TriStar was going to go ahead.
00:12:34A friend of ours called J.J. Harris, who was an agent who had been Kevin Costner's agent, slipped it to Kevin Costner,
00:12:41even though she no longer represented him because she thought the script was that good.
00:12:47We learned that Kevin Costner, that he was actually contemplating all three films.
00:12:52He knew he was going to play Robin Hood.
00:12:54It's just now it was a question of which one.
00:12:56And we found out that he'd read all three scripts.
00:13:00He liked our script the best, but we didn't have a director.
00:13:03And apparently he'd even gone to Fox and seen posters of himself as Robin Hood and they'd showed him,
00:13:08trying to talk him into it.
00:13:09But he ended up coming on us.
00:13:11And he said the reason it was, was the script.
00:13:13Well, I hope I don't bring a whole end of the legend.
00:13:16That's what I'm like hoping.
00:13:18I felt good about the chance.
00:13:20I never dreamed about doing it.
00:13:21So I can't say that this is one of the things I always wanted to do.
00:13:24But when I saw it, I saw it was a great chance to make this movie.
00:13:27There was a great spin on it.
00:13:29There's a lot of humor.
00:13:31And I think that when you mix it all up, it comes out to a great Friday or Saturday night at the movies.
00:13:36He fits in a place like Tom Hanks does.
00:13:40That you're just comfortable with him and you like him and he's heroic and he does the right things.
00:13:46And so when you put him in a role like a Robin Hood, your heart goes out to him.
00:13:50And so I was thrilled that we had him.
00:13:53I went and pursued a friend of mine, Kevin Reynolds, because I thought Kevin might make a wonderful director.
00:13:59Plus he had worked with Kevin Costner and I thought maybe this could be the catalytic marriage that could get the movie made.
00:14:05And Kevin had made two movies.
00:14:08One was Fandango with Kevin Costner, but he'd also made a movie called The Beast, which is kind of Robin Hood-ish, about a little group of Afghanis taking on a Russian tank and pursuing it.
00:14:18So there were kind of ragtag rebels going up against that.
00:14:21And he'd also written Red Dawn, which was a group of rebels, young people against the Russians who had invaded America.
00:14:28So he seemed like a perfect director because he had great action skills and his material also had heart.
00:14:35Kevin Reynolds, he was interested, but at the time he was busy, he had a deal at Universal.
00:14:39But the timing worked out that his deal at Universal was falling out at about the right time.
00:14:45That we really had to make a decision to go ahead or we were going to get beat out by one of these other films.
00:14:52And so, you know, Friday afternoon Kevin Reynolds calls me and said I'm available.
00:14:58Saturday morning we meet with Morgan Creek.
00:15:00Saturday afternoon we're on a plane to England where I'd already been a few times, finding crew, finding locations, putting things together.
00:15:08For the what if we actually go ahead.
00:15:11We got going and the Fox film went away and the Traystar film went ahead.
00:15:16But they ended up only being on television, so we kind of won that particular race.
00:15:21Kevin Reynolds, the director, really stepped up in that department.
00:15:26You know, really stepped up and made it a spectacle.
00:15:30I'd written a TV show called Diary of Teenage Health Freak for Channel 4.
00:15:37And we'd done the first series, gone very well, I was in it as well.
00:15:42The second series was coming up.
00:15:44My agent phones up and says there's a film called Robin Hood Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner.
00:15:49Would you like to go for the audition because they want to see you?
00:15:52And I said no, because even though I'd like to do that, obviously, the dates will clash.
00:15:57I can't do both.
00:15:58And I'm going to do the show that I wrote, Teenage Health Freak.
00:16:01She said, well, go anyway.
00:16:03I said, no, I don't want to go.
00:16:04What's the point of going?
00:16:05Because I'm doing Teenage Health Freak, my show.
00:16:10I want to do that.
00:16:11She said, go anyway.
00:16:12Fine, I'll go anyway.
00:16:13So I went anyway.
00:16:14Went to the audition, but made the point of doing a very bad audition.
00:16:18The way you do a bad audition is get drunk.
00:16:21So I got very drunk, stormed him through the door angrily, and the director, Kevin Reynolds,
00:16:29God bless him, said, Dan, I'm offering you the part.
00:16:33The spirit within the Robin Hood camp was always one of fun and finding ways to entertain ourselves.
00:16:40And it was kind of wild.
00:16:42And we've got to remember, everyone's back in medieval days with swords, which was always great fun.
00:16:51John was selecting some of the greatest film technicians in English history.
00:16:55And he was even starting to build sets before we actually had Kevin Reynolds over there to be able to work with him.
00:17:02That process of jumping in and taking risks again, it was also because Morgan Creek and Jim Robinson was willing to spend money.
00:17:11And that mini mogul, that guy who was the decision maker without having to go through layers,
00:17:16meant that he could jump quicker and do more things and make deals more quickly.
00:17:21And so that's the reason the movie got made.
00:17:23Action!
00:17:25What was good about it was, in spite of my cynicism at the start, it was very rewarding.
00:17:31In a way, because the director somehow managed to get everybody together without sort of being a bully or being impatient.
00:17:43Or, you know, he had his own agenda.
00:17:47And he'd somehow, you know, the people are very deceptive.
00:17:51He worked it out without going through it scene by scene with any of us.
00:18:00Any backstage, so-called backstage staff.
00:18:04So, you know, you must give him credit for that.
00:18:07And the whole thing was, you know, you thought, this is actually, it may be a hokum, but it's good stuff.
00:18:16It's good. It works. And it's...
00:18:20Every time you think, oh, here's a bit of action, suddenly there's a humour, like the whole running gag about the guy with the twisted nose piece.
00:18:30I've never seen the breasts of a noble woman.
00:18:35And it's really, it's sort of, yeah, I like it. It's fun. It's inventive. You know, that's what, that's what it is.
00:18:44It's not just telling the story. It's all the little bits on the side, which give it a kind of richness.
00:18:51And so it's, even if we're not, you know, the thing is, as an assistant director, you give your energy to make it happen.
00:19:03And so you feel you get some energy back.
00:19:09Kevin Costner joined the film right after finishing Dances With Wolves.
00:19:14So, the movie hadn't come out when he first came over.
00:19:17He had been the director on Dances With Wolves.
00:19:20So, he knew, you know, we knew that he was a real filmmaker.
00:19:24He wasn't just an actor for hire, he was a real filmmaker.
00:19:26So, he had a lot of ideas and we listened.
00:19:30Where is she?
00:19:32Within the first week, he's there in the river, in freezing cold water, you know, fighting the battle in the waterfalls with little John.
00:19:43And, I mean, he was tireless. He just kept on going at it and going at it.
00:19:47This was a very physically challenging movie.
00:19:53He also rides a horse really well, which is handy.
00:19:56We got so lucky there because who knew that Morgan Freeman was an expert horseman.
00:20:02How were we to guess that, right?
00:20:03I mean, all the, we didn't need to double any of the riding sequences.
00:20:07And Michael Wincott, who played Guy of Gisborne, who also had some riding scenes, that was all real.
00:20:13He was, you know, he rears the horse up, they jump over walls.
00:20:16I mean, that's, that's the real deal. That's the real actors doing it.
00:20:19And because they were all, turned out to be, fortunately, really good horsemen.
00:20:26I was working on the screenplay, making changes for the two Kevins, making sure that both of them were getting things that they needed.
00:20:33As the, as the movie grew, you knew new things that you wanted to accomplish or things that needed to be attended to.
00:20:38And then when I finished that and the script was finished, I went back to Hollywood to hold together some of the deal points and some of the things that were going on.
00:20:48We were fortunate enough to have backdrop filming simultaneously.
00:20:53And Penn had to run the show back in LA, but he came over to England a lot.
00:20:59The first scenes of the movie that were shot in England were shot in the New Forest.
00:21:04I used to live in the New Forest. That was where I came from.
00:21:07We ended up filming a hundred days over there and shooting six day weeks.
00:21:14It was, it was pretty exhausting.
00:21:17And it was a English fall going into winter and it was wet and cold and muddy.
00:21:22And it was quite a, it was quite a ordeal physically, I think it was a little ordeal.
00:21:28And, you know, if you're producing a movie of any scale, you tend not to get a whole lot of sleep.
00:21:33You know, you shoot 12 hours a day and then you're prepping for the next day and putting out fires and in some cases literally in this film.
00:21:40It was a challenge, but you know, it was, it was worth it. It was, it was our big break. It was our big movie.
00:21:46We were late getting started later than we wanted to.
00:21:55You kind of need leaves on the trees in, in Sherwood Forest when you make your movie.
00:21:59By the time we actually filmed in Sherwood Forest, we were sticking leaves onto trees.
00:22:03Doug Wilson was our DP and he had worked with Kevin Reynolds before.
00:22:10It didn't exist the Sherwood Forest to this date as far as I know, because I think Kevin Reynolds was trying to find it.
00:22:17So all the forests around the world, he keeps saying to Kevin, well, why do we go all this way to do this?
00:22:22Because a tree is a tree basically, you know, in the end of the day.
00:22:26Yeah, we used an ARRI 535. It was the first time they used a 535 camera from ARRI.
00:22:32It replaced the BL, which was a bit noisy in those days.
00:22:36We have much to celebrate.
00:22:39Yes, you've got to plan your days to make a dual of available light, but it's not always available.
00:22:44We've actually almost started in the morning and run out of light about four in the afternoon
00:22:50and managed to still keep the 8 o'clock a.m. look at 8 p.m. look. It was partially dark.
00:22:56You know, we put blue skies back in, kickers where we didn't have them, shot in full sun to dull to almost dust time.
00:23:03And repeat the look. It was done seamlessly. You wouldn't believe it.
00:23:07I would almost be saying, come on, boys, just wrap this up and go home, you know.
00:23:11But you're able to pull stuff up. You are. You are.
00:23:15And what we had to do wasn't achieving a great deal with the distance that we had to run to find these locations.
00:23:21So we wound up really, showed the bulk of it, about 10 miles from Piedwood Studios, Burnham Beaches.
00:23:30It was in, as I remember, late summer or autumn months, and it was fairly dry and had long sunny spells.
00:23:40And in the long period of, you know, waiting between takes, et cetera, I became...
00:23:45The lighting, the natural lighting through the lees of the trees at Burnham Beaches, I found very involving.
00:23:55Well, we shot at Shepperton Studios and built all of the interior sets at Shepperton Studios.
00:24:01John Graysmark was our production designer. Wow, what a find he was.
00:24:07He very much believed in putting it in the camera, you know, not relying on visual effects.
00:24:13And he had fabulous techniques.
00:24:16John Graysmark was quite specific with Kevin Reynolds, the director, on the look of the film.
00:24:23It was, of course, medieval.
00:24:27There was an awful lot of iron furniture brought over by Dante Ferretti and Francesca Loscavolo for Zeffirelli's Hamlet.
00:24:41And we managed to use an awful lot of that before it went back to Rome on a container.
00:24:49Some of the corridors in Nottingham Castle are just a very small backdrop with the perspective of a long corridor.
00:24:56And, you know, it completely sells.
00:24:58And he was kind of an old-fashioned guy who knew how to do things.
00:25:01And, you know, we learned so much from him.
00:25:04And his design and enthusiasm was just infectious.
00:25:08One of the locations we had was the wall where the boy climbs up the tree.
00:25:20And, of course, with Hadrian's wall, we couldn't put anything on the ground.
00:25:24I have no fear. Come down, boy.
00:25:26But it was a great location.
00:25:28John Watson was a great producer.
00:25:31He knew the story.
00:25:34And he knew I knew locations, good locations, which was based on castles.
00:25:42And so he asked me if I'd do it.
00:25:45And you start off on a film and then all of a sudden the film goes.
00:25:50And that's the marvellous part about it.
00:25:53I mean, England is great for castles.
00:25:56Wardell Castle.
00:25:57We did the sequence there where Robin came back.
00:26:00His father was killed.
00:26:02You go along to, say, you're a film company making a movie.
00:26:07What's it about?
00:26:09There's Robin Hood.
00:26:10And, first of all, the thing is money talks as far as castles are concerned
00:26:17because they've, they're all sort of money.
00:26:20And so, depending on the amount of work you have to do, depends on the amount of money you're prepared to pay.
00:26:27Nottingham itself, we filmed in Carcassonne in southern France.
00:26:33I've got an extensive library of books.
00:26:36And I was looking through the library and I came across a book on France, opening it up, and there was Carcassonne.
00:26:45And it was a superb location.
00:26:47I mean, France has some wonderful locations.
00:26:49Well, it was a great film.
00:26:52A lot of location.
00:26:53A lot of wood location.
00:26:55A lot of action.
00:26:57I think it went over quite a bit.
00:27:00Very great.
00:27:01A bit concerned about that because it took a lot longer to shoot.
00:27:06And we had quite a few units, too.
00:27:08Kevin Reynolds, he wanted to do things extreme.
00:27:12You know, his idea of a close-up was right up there on the 12mm or something like that.
00:27:18We'd set an avenue through the trees.
00:27:21There was, I think, two horses pulling a cart.
00:27:24They wanted a tracking shot of this lot going through the woods.
00:27:31And so I had a little Citroen camera car and a handheld camera with a 12mm lens.
00:27:40Another Kevin Reynolds expert.
00:27:43And so I'm running through the...
00:27:45I said to the horse master, I said, this is the shot we wanted to do.
00:27:50I said, if I'm going to be on there, on the thing, on the floor with this lens,
00:27:57I said, will the horses trample me?
00:28:02He said, no.
00:28:03He said, if you go through that avenue, 20 miles an hour,
00:28:08and maintain a constant speed, don't change it.
00:28:11He said, I'll ride up to you.
00:28:13He said, I'll get as close as I can.
00:28:14He said, the horses will never touch you.
00:28:16Never in a million years.
00:28:18And so that's what we did.
00:28:20And so I said to the camera car drivers,
00:28:23make sure you stick to that speed and don't touch the brakes.
00:28:25Just keep going.
00:28:27And that's what we did.
00:28:28And it was a great shot.
00:28:30Right underneath the horses.
00:28:32And it's in the movie.
00:28:34It was a scene where the village was going to be raided and destroyed.
00:28:39I think it was only on a rehearsal of the action,
00:28:44when on the rehearsal somebody thought it was the take
00:28:48and they actually set light to the largely straw and timber set.
00:28:55And I think it may have been a slightly breezy day as well.
00:28:59And we had this great unrehearsed conflagration
00:29:03where they hurriedly had to do the shot.
00:29:06Well, I was pop maker on there and I made all the bridging.
00:29:11When you see the film, you see all the bridging bit.
00:29:13I made that.
00:29:15It's quite funny because we made two lots of bridging.
00:29:19One to actually be the action.
00:29:22Another one is dressing in the background to make it look big.
00:29:26So we've done that and the second one, the one in the background,
00:29:32it was just slopped together.
00:29:34Bits of wood just tied and everything just for the back end.
00:29:39And then I couldn't believe it that it went up north.
00:29:45It shot up north and I wasn't there.
00:29:48I was doing another job down here.
00:29:50And when it came back and when we saw the film,
00:29:54they brought the bridging back.
00:29:58And the one I showed in the background,
00:30:02it was all broken in pieces and everything.
00:30:04I said, what happened there?
00:30:05He said, well, the stunt guys do it.
00:30:07I said, that is only dressing.
00:30:09I mean, they could have been killed.
00:30:11I mean, he saw about 30 foot up and they're walking on some,
00:30:15and I felt very embarrassed by it.
00:30:17And I did ask the stuntman, I said, why did you go over it?
00:30:22He said, oh, it was dressing there.
00:30:24Well, we just decided to go over it.
00:30:26I was a stuntman on Robin Hood.
00:30:29Went down to do some sword play
00:30:31and have some fight scenes in the woods.
00:30:34And I remember the horses running around,
00:30:38sword play, lots of sword play going on.
00:30:42Loads of arrows.
00:30:45I remember ducking out the way of loads of arrows coming.
00:30:48You get shot with arrows, you can either have a flip up
00:30:52that's on a spring and they cut it into the jacket,
00:30:55so the jacket covers it.
00:30:57And if you put your arms up and take them away,
00:31:02you flip it and it comes out
00:31:04and it looks like it's gone in at speed.
00:31:06You gotta go, Robin! You gotta go now!
00:31:10Stunt-wise, I was told to run into a burning, tented area
00:31:15and kick a stuntman in the balls.
00:31:20Boom. That's what I was told to do.
00:31:23Don't worry about it, he's all padded up.
00:31:25As long as you kick him here and not right there,
00:31:29where it's gonna hurt.
00:31:31I said, don't worry about it.
00:31:33I'm a professional, I know exactly where to kick him.
00:31:36Not in the balls, in the inner thigh.
00:31:41They said action, the adrenaline started,
00:31:44I ran straight in and kicked him right in the bollocks.
00:31:47We had a wonderful time moving around from location to location.
00:31:52In those days it was all on film.
00:31:55So the important thing was that people could see the rushes
00:31:59on location and check whether the make-up was right,
00:32:02whether the costume was right.
00:32:04And so they had the cutting rooms in caravans.
00:32:08I had a caravan which was set up as a full cutting room
00:32:12with a Steenbeck, a flat table editing machine on it,
00:32:16and the moviola and the benches and everything else.
00:32:19And Jonathan Lucas, my assistant,
00:32:21had another caravan with all his benches in there
00:32:24and we kept the film there
00:32:26so we could reference any shots later on.
00:32:29What I remember most was that there was a second unit,
00:32:32as always on a big movie.
00:32:34The crew used to come in to check what they needed to shoot
00:32:38and they always, because it was autumn,
00:32:40came in with muddy boots.
00:32:42And because we were working on film,
00:32:45we had to try to keep the film clean.
00:32:47And so there was a little bit of a war set up
00:32:50between them with their muddy boots
00:32:52and me trying to preserve the film.
00:32:54And it ended up with me having to sweep out the cutting room
00:32:57every time they'd been in.
00:32:58And it became a bit of a joke.
00:33:00We all enjoyed taking the piss out of each other.
00:33:03England had been making the Bond movies,
00:33:06they'd been making the Star Wars movies.
00:33:09So there was a really, really high level of talent available to us.
00:33:15The clothes make the man.
00:33:16In costumes, in production design.
00:33:19The best in the world were right there in England.
00:33:22I went months before for an interview with Kevin Reynolds, the director.
00:33:27And we had a long chat.
00:33:29And he said,
00:33:31what I really want, John, is that this film looks very authentic.
00:33:37And I said, no you don't.
00:33:39No you don't, that's nonsense.
00:33:41You don't say that to a director when you're on an interview.
00:33:44You know, I said, this is a, it's a romantic drama.
00:33:48It's not a piece of museum work.
00:33:50It would look not good.
00:33:52It's very easy making costumes look new.
00:33:55It's harder work to make things look old.
00:33:57I met Kevin Costner for the first time,
00:34:00which was about four days before shooting started.
00:34:03I didn't have anything that was in a suitable fit condition
00:34:06to do a fitting properly.
00:34:09I mean, I did, but it was all in pieces and pinned
00:34:12and all that sort of stuff.
00:34:14We were still sitting all together.
00:34:16And I've got this weird sense of humour,
00:34:18which is not American at all,
00:34:20that I make jokes of things.
00:34:23So in the fitting room at Angels,
00:34:25I set up on the chair in the corner,
00:34:27as you walked into the star fitting room,
00:34:30a long pair of green tights and a pointed hat.
00:34:34And walked in with Kevin and said,
00:34:36right, is this what you had in mind?
00:34:39Another funny story about it is with Alan Rickman,
00:34:43who played the Sheriff of Nottingham,
00:34:44back at Shepperton Studios getting his stuff together,
00:34:47what we were going to do.
00:34:49And he was standing in front of the big mirror there
00:34:52and we were looking,
00:34:53and I was standing behind his shoulder
00:34:55and putting stuff on him and saying what he want.
00:34:57And he said,
00:34:58John, are you trying to make me look like Elvis Presley?
00:35:02Sorry to keep you hanging about.
00:35:05Alan Rickman was great.
00:35:07The first day he came in and he said,
00:35:09I want to look like a pop singer.
00:35:11And he said,
00:35:15this film doesn't, you know,
00:35:18it's a fun film.
00:35:19He said,
00:35:20so I want to look like a pop singer and have white hair.
00:35:23So I said, well, you can't have white hair,
00:35:25so I said, I think you should have black hair.
00:35:36So I had a wig made for him,
00:35:39but I had blue highlights in it.
00:35:42So because if you have totally black hair,
00:35:46it just looks dead on camera.
00:35:48So it gave it like a sheen.
00:35:51So it almost looked like a raven.
00:35:53It sort of suited the character, really.
00:35:56Shut up.
00:35:57One of the things I did
00:35:59when I was looking at writing Robin Hood
00:36:01was I looked at the history of the world at that time.
00:36:05And one of the greatest pieces of storytelling was Bow Wolf.
00:36:09And I actually went and took a lady to lunch
00:36:11who was a professor of English language
00:36:13and asked her to tell me why Bow Wolf had been
00:36:16such an extraordinary piece of doc.
00:36:18Because it's outlived everything else from that time.
00:36:22And she talked about the witches
00:36:24and she talked about the kind of magical legacy in that story.
00:36:29And it influenced me in thinking that I should add
00:36:32a kind of a unique feel to our Robin Hood.
00:36:36Adding a witch into it was making it actually more accurate to the times.
00:36:41I was able to cheat a moment a little with the witch character,
00:36:49Mortiana, played by Geraldine McEwan.
00:36:53A few years before, at the BBC, I'd done a series of Casanova
00:37:00with Frank Finlay playing Casanova.
00:37:02And I'd made this strange black and silver robe.
00:37:11I can't remember who for in that, but that doesn't matter.
00:37:14It made absolutely a patchwork of just bits of fabric from the floor,
00:37:20black and silver putting together.
00:37:22And it was in store at Angels.
00:37:27That's the way costume, we didn't make it.
00:37:29It's not the sort of thing that they would have made straight up,
00:37:32but it was in their store, so I found it.
00:37:34And the reason I was able to find it, I knew where it was,
00:37:39because I had also used the same costume in Doctor Who,
00:37:43one of Tom Baker's episodes.
00:37:45It's quite interesting, you know, having used something that you've used before,
00:37:51particularly if you've used it on Doctor Who.
00:37:53And I do occasionally get asked to go to Doctor Who conventions.
00:37:57And the people in those conventions, they absolutely,
00:38:01they delve into everything.
00:38:03And I had several questions saying,
00:38:06did you use the same costume for Talons of Wayne Chang
00:38:10as you used for Mortiana in Robin Hood?
00:38:13And I have to admit, yes, I did.
00:38:22We, from the early days, really wanted to get Alan Rickman.
00:38:26We'd seen him play Die Hard.
00:38:28We knew he was a fantastic villain.
00:38:30And we thought he'd be perfect for Robin Hood
00:38:34to play the Sheriff of Nottingham.
00:38:36The trouble was, I was exactly the reason
00:38:38that Alan did not want to play another villain.
00:38:42I'm not a villain, he kept saying.
00:38:43I'm an actor.
00:38:44I should be a romantic lead.
00:38:45I don't want to be...
00:38:46So it took some persuasion.
00:38:48And we actually didn't persuade Alan to be in the movie
00:38:52until about a week into filming.
00:38:54I'm not playing a villain.
00:38:55I'm just playing somebody who has a certain checklist
00:38:59of things that he wants in life and he goes after them.
00:39:03Oh, that's it.
00:39:05Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans.
00:39:08No more merciful beheadings.
00:39:11And call off Christmas.
00:39:13I think that the movie proved to be very much a blend of the Sheriff
00:39:18having an ironic, dark sense of humor.
00:39:21And I think that it was great that Alan Rickman added some of the lines himself
00:39:25because, you know, when you work with an actor, you ask them,
00:39:28what can I do to help you bring your best performance?
00:39:31That's the question you ask if you're smart.
00:39:33Who are you looking at?
00:39:36We kind of, when we first previewed the movie,
00:39:38weren't absolutely sure how people would react to Alan's character.
00:39:42Warner Brothers, honestly, had some reservations about it.
00:39:45I remember the last day of shooting at Shepparton Studios,
00:39:53somebody in the production said,
00:39:55could I put together a little funny reel?
00:39:58And what I remember from all the material
00:40:01was that the sword fight scenes often ended in some jokes,
00:40:06certainly with the Sheriff of Nottingham
00:40:09not being able to handle the sword fights.
00:40:14Alan was amazingly funny.
00:40:17Every time the director shouted, cut.
00:40:19We put it together that afternoon
00:40:22and rushed it up to the end of shooting party,
00:40:25which is in the BAFTA building in Piccadilly.
00:40:28And when I arrived, I remember bumping into Alan Rickman
00:40:32coming down the stairs and you said,
00:40:35whatever you do, try and save my performance.
00:40:38I went into the party and sort of joined in
00:40:43and during the course of conversation asked,
00:40:46where's Costner?
00:40:47And somebody said, well, he's in the theatre,
00:40:49viewing that thing you sent up, that funny reel,
00:40:52for the fifth time.
00:40:55And it suddenly dawned on me that Costner and his,
00:41:01or his team, were just getting a hint of the fact
00:41:05that he could be a lesser star than Rickman,
00:41:08who really did steal a lot of the show with his performance.
00:41:12This could steal.
00:41:14So it was a forewarning that I should have paid attention to.
00:41:19Costner was one of the most valuable properties in Hollywood at the time.
00:41:23He was the number one star.
00:41:25And the thought that he could be shown up
00:41:29as not the great hero that he was,
00:41:32was a terrifying danger.
00:41:35We had a film that the studios were extremely excited by
00:41:39because the Dances with Wolves' success
00:41:42put Kevin Costner on a pedestal
00:41:44in terms of potential promotion.
00:41:46And then we went to preview.
00:41:48And the preview,
00:41:50I think it scored higher than any other Warner film
00:41:55that they'd ever previewed before.
00:41:57It was incredibly successful
00:41:59and the audience, which was mostly young kids
00:42:01because they wanted a young audience for it,
00:42:03they loved it.
00:42:05And I thought we were home and dry then.
00:42:08But obviously after every preview
00:42:12there are changes to be made.
00:42:14And we were making changes
00:42:18and at some point,
00:42:20I forget when,
00:42:23this problem crept in.
00:42:25Robin Hood catapults into Nottingham
00:42:28to rescue at the end.
00:42:30And the catapult was activated by Christian Slater.
00:42:35After the 16th take,
00:42:38I think Christian Slater was getting a little bit pissed off
00:42:41and he pulled the lever.
00:42:45And Christian Slater went,
00:42:47Fuck me, he cleared it!
00:42:49We all thought it was hilarious.
00:42:51And I put that take in the film.
00:42:54And when it came up at the previews,
00:42:58people loved it.
00:43:00The young audiences just screamed with laughter.
00:43:04But,
00:43:06in the notes that came from the studio afterwards,
00:43:08it said,
00:43:09Take out Christian Slater saying, Fuck me.
00:43:12And Kevin didn't want to do it.
00:43:15He thought it was a wonderful moment.
00:43:17And I remember,
00:43:21my children were staying with me in Hollywood at the time.
00:43:25And on the,
00:43:27Kevin was deliberating as to whether he should take it out or not.
00:43:31And the family came round,
00:43:34and we put the scene on the steam beck and ran it for them.
00:43:39And my boys,
00:43:40they were young boys,
00:43:42screamed with laughter.
00:43:44They thought it was the funniest thing ever.
00:43:46And Kevin said, Right, that's it.
00:43:47Leave it in.
00:43:48And of course,
00:43:50it did exceptionally well.
00:43:52The second time we previewed,
00:43:54they loved it,
00:43:55but the studio got nastier.
00:43:57And they said,
00:43:58and I think at that point,
00:44:00there was a feeling that we were out of control in the cutting room.
00:44:04We weren't taking,
00:44:05we weren't showing due respect to the studio notes.
00:44:08And that was our undoing as such.
00:44:15And then Kevin decided that,
00:44:17and I still don't understand why,
00:44:19for his own reasons,
00:44:20he would leave the film.
00:44:21And we said in the cutting rooms,
00:44:24if Kevin goes,
00:44:26we go.
00:44:27Suddenly it was like multiple editors,
00:44:30all editing at the same time with myself and Stuart Baird,
00:44:33who,
00:44:34who was a master film editor that Warner Brothers used a lot.
00:44:38We were going from cutting room to cutting room,
00:44:40fixing the film as we went and,
00:44:42and recutting and recutting and previewing.
00:44:45And it was a,
00:44:47it was a wild,
00:44:48wild scramble.
00:44:49And I was put in charge,
00:44:51which I love,
00:44:52mix.
00:44:53And for me,
00:44:54the mix is the most exciting time in a movie.
00:44:56All of the frustration,
00:44:57all of the horror,
00:44:58all of the what ifs are gone.
00:45:00You've got to cut.
00:45:01And now you're just breathing oxygen with sounds into your Frankenstein,
00:45:06and it becomes a human.
00:45:07And then we ended up with Michael Kamen,
00:45:12which I think is a score for all time.
00:45:14Michael was born in New York City in 1948.
00:45:24He was,
00:45:25I think definitely a prodigy with a real love for the oboe.
00:45:28And,
00:45:29uh,
00:45:30he formed very early on a group called the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble.
00:45:34They blended a kind of a classical attitude with a rock and roll energy.
00:45:39And again,
00:45:40I think really set the tone of his career.
00:45:43And,
00:45:44you know,
00:45:45especially in his action films,
00:45:46was kind of bringing a real panache that modernized a classical sound,
00:45:51and gave him a very distinctive voice as a film composer.
00:45:55Some of his first scores were for John Waters' Polyester.
00:46:00He'd score Robert Duvall's directorial debut, Angelo My Love, which was a gypsy comedy.
00:46:06But his real breakthrough was 1983's The Dead Zone for David Cronenberg,
00:46:11and really created a beautiful, haunting soundtrack that essentially gave humanity to a man who was a modern-day Cassandra.
00:46:20In 1985,
00:46:22he'd score Terry Gilliam's Brazil,
00:46:24which began a very rewarding collaboration with the director,
00:46:28especially in terms of playing historical action with the adventures of Baron Munchausen.
00:46:34But really,
00:46:35the movie that puts him into the action blockbuster category was 1986's Highlander.
00:46:42Highlander was a film that became an instant cult picture,
00:46:45but it didn't particularly do well at the box office.
00:46:48So it was in 1987 where Michael truly solidified his Hollywood-composing stardom with Lethal Weapon.
00:46:58And I think it was really the first time you heard an action score that was also rock and roll blues,
00:47:04and it really had an attitude, a fun hangdog attitude of this unlikely, crazy, shoot-em-up partnership.
00:47:12But the movie that makes Michael Kamen a superstar,
00:47:16and debatably the greatest action film ever made, is 1988's Die Hard,
00:47:22where, again, no one had ever quite used classical music,
00:47:26in this case Beethoven's Ninth,
00:47:28throughout the entire score,
00:47:30while also, again, balancing
00:47:32essentially a really strong orchestral,
00:47:34in-your-face rock and roll attitude,
00:47:36but, again, with a very ironic throwback.
00:47:40And you could say by the time that Robin Hood comes his way,
00:47:44there's a sense of kind of almost satire
00:47:46in just how wonderfully bombastic Michael Kamen's scores can be.
00:47:50Robin Hood!
00:47:52So, if you're doing a Robin Hood score,
00:47:56and it kind of has a Lethal Weapon attitude,
00:47:58in pairing Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner,
00:48:02who do you want to get for a Lethal Weapon take
00:48:04on history's greatest action figure than Michael Kamen?
00:48:08B, F, A, B, ring!
00:48:10I need a G to D pickup as if you're in bar 110.
00:48:14The music is the last ingredient
00:48:16that can help to extract the emotions from the characters.
00:48:20That's why it's called underscore.
00:48:22It's more like underlining an emotion.
00:48:24Here we go.
00:48:26Michael was a force of nature.
00:48:29That joie de vivre came out in all of the music that he wrote.
00:48:36So I got a call from Sam Schwartz, the agent,
00:48:40saying, meet Michael Kamen at midnight
00:48:44at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.
00:48:47And I said, that sounds interesting.
00:48:49Let's see what this is all about.
00:48:51So I sat in the lobby and I waited,
00:48:54and this person walked into the lobby
00:48:58with a full beard and dark wavy hair
00:49:02and wearing a cape all in black
00:49:06with a blue turquoise belt buckle about the size of my fist.
00:49:10And he did a double take when he saw me
00:49:14and he just kind of cocked his head and said,
00:49:16Chris?
00:49:18And that was the beginning of our relationship.
00:49:20Now, I ended up delivering the yard fight cue,
00:49:24the end of Lethal Weapon, the next morning.
00:49:26And we ended up working together for many, many years.
00:49:32Let's go listen to it.
00:49:35I was working on Batman the Animated Series,
00:49:38and I was also doing some other orchestrating
00:49:40for other composers,
00:49:41and this is when one of these calls came.
00:49:43I was sent to the studio where Michael was working,
00:49:46and Michael would be playing his music to picture
00:49:50and basically recording it.
00:49:52I'd walk away with the old-fashioned cassette,
00:49:55a cassette recording of Michael playing to picture.
00:49:58I would go home.
00:49:59I would listen on my headphones,
00:50:00and I would write out what he was playing,
00:50:02kind of like if you've ever seen the film Amadeus
00:50:04where Mozart is in the bed
00:50:06and Salieri is writing things down.
00:50:08So instead of just Michael singing things,
00:50:10I would have him playing.
00:50:12So then I would bring the sketch back to Michael,
00:50:14and he would mark it up and say,
00:50:15OK, I want this to be flutes.
00:50:17I want this to be bassoons.
00:50:18I want, you know, add some rhythm here.
00:50:21And then that sketch would either go to one of,
00:50:25you know, there were many orchestrators on Robin Hood,
00:50:28or as we progressed into it,
00:50:32I was actually one of the orchestrators as well
00:50:34because he said,
00:50:35well, why don't you try it?
00:50:36And I just, I was,
00:50:37so I got some of my first big screen orchestration
00:50:41right on Robin Hood.
00:50:51It's often confusing describing what an orchestrator does,
00:50:56and if I had an analogy,
00:50:58it would be comic books
00:50:59where you have the composer
00:51:01who creates the pencils on a particular page,
00:51:04but then you have to have an inker
00:51:06and a colorist
00:51:07who fill in the various musical shades,
00:51:10who fill in the strong lines,
00:51:12what instruments you're going to use,
00:51:14what's the size of the orchestra,
00:51:16how are all the themes going to come together?
00:51:19And in the case of Robin Hood,
00:51:21you just have a gigantic production.
00:51:23You've got numerous orchestrators
00:51:25all striving to create one goal
00:51:28with one musical voice.
00:51:31The post-production schedule for Robin Hood
00:51:34was just chaotic.
00:51:37I mean, there were some amazing orchestrators.
00:51:39Don Davis, who's known for The Matrix,
00:51:41he was one of the main orchestrators.
00:51:44Bill Ross, William Ross,
00:51:46has done a lot of arranging.
00:51:48Most notably, he's done a lot of work
00:51:50with David Foster and like Josh Groban
00:51:52and Celine Dion doing these string arrangements.
00:51:54So there were some heavy, heavy hitter orchestrators
00:51:56on this project.
00:51:58Yeah, no doubt.
00:51:59There's a lot of pressure.
00:52:00I mean, I do remember,
00:52:02I didn't go to the scoring sessions
00:52:04because I was working on another project,
00:52:06but I do remember hearing the producer saying,
00:52:10at 12 midnight tonight, we will have a score.
00:52:13So he was basically pulling the plug
00:52:16and saying, you know,
00:52:18I know you want to keep going.
00:52:20I know you want to keep making changes,
00:52:21but midnight tonight, that's it.
00:52:24I think my favorite story really is about
00:52:28the main title.
00:52:30I was at the studio kind of waiting for this
00:52:34because it was supposed to be recorded the next day.
00:52:36So it was, I mean, I live in Studio City,
00:52:38and this is Encino.
00:52:39So it's about a 15 minute drive.
00:52:41I was told be there at, I don't know,
00:52:43it's like noon or something.
00:52:44And he's like, he's still working on it.
00:52:45And it was very much like out of some sort of movie
00:52:47where he'd finish and I'd say,
00:52:48Michael, okay, give me the next page.
00:52:50And then I'd be in the other room
00:52:51and then I'd bring it back to him and he'd look at it
00:52:53and he'd put a few more things in.
00:52:54So we actually co-orchestrated that piece.
00:52:57Every single melody is his,
00:53:00but just the way, which instruments were playing,
00:53:03what was a collaboration.
00:53:05And it was really exciting.
00:53:11And essentially it's a, it's a two-part theme.
00:53:13You know, it starts off with this kind of romping,
00:53:16energetic rhythm.
00:53:20It's music that conveys horses galloping.
00:53:23And the use of brass and French horns that Cayman uses,
00:53:29it's almost heraldic.
00:53:31You know, it's trumpeting.
00:53:32Here comes Robin Hood.
00:53:35But yet there's also a throwback quality to it
00:53:38that you can also envision old England.
00:53:43One of the really fun upgrades of this Robin Hood
00:53:47is that Maid Marian,
00:53:48who's a fetching but very calmly figure
00:53:51in all the iterations that this has been done in the past.
00:53:54Here's a Maid Marian you can actually fight back.
00:53:59And has a personality to rival Robin Hood's.
00:54:02Robin, do something for me.
00:54:04What?
00:54:05Take a bath.
00:54:06Take a bath.
00:54:08So Robin Hood and Maid Marian have never been equals
00:54:10like this before.
00:54:11And like the main theme, Cayman essentially creates two parts
00:54:15to the love melody.
00:54:17And it's really the first part of that melody
00:54:20that will become the hit song,
00:54:22Everything I Do, I Do It For You.
00:54:28You really get to hear the sweep of that melody
00:54:31when they depart on the fog drenched shores.
00:54:35There are a lot of composers who did a great job
00:54:51kind of writing music you could detach.
00:54:53Okay, here is the theme, and then the theme goes away,
00:54:56then here's another piece of music, and the theme again.
00:54:59But the great thing about Michael Cayman's work
00:55:01is that everything kind of had a flow together.
00:55:03You know, themes would kind of shift in and out.
00:55:07And again, the music just kind of had a way of feeling
00:55:10like it was inventing itself as it went along.
00:55:13And while Cayman takes the spirit of Korngold through the score,
00:55:22where you really get to hear a complete throwback
00:55:25to exactly the kind of music that Korngold would have done,
00:55:28is of course the scene you're waiting for in any Robin Hood movie,
00:55:31which is the climactic duel between Robin and the Sheriff of Noddingham.
00:55:35And it's Cayman just leaping and dashing and pairing,
00:55:41just the energy of the two iconic forces of good and evil,
00:55:46battling away at each other.
00:55:48And Robin Hood was a tremendous box office hit
00:55:52for everyone involved.
00:55:53Again, Michael Cayman was essentially the king
00:55:55of action scoring after this.
00:55:57But the one Oscar nomination it got was for the song
00:56:00Everything I Do, I Do It For You.
00:56:03Very rarely gets any more involved than that.
00:56:16It was a very, very Hollywood experience, the whole thing.
00:56:21Robin Hood, the biggest, you know, biggest stars, big orchestra,
00:56:25larger-than-life composer with a big team,
00:56:28and just an incredible experience.
00:56:33Michael passed away far too young at the age of 55.
00:56:39But he left behind such a lasting legacy of these amazingly stylistic scores
00:56:44in all different kinds of subject matter,
00:56:46but I think no more impactfully than in the action genre.
00:56:50And when you look at it as the people automatically remember
00:56:54Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and Robin Hood, again, I think that's kind of a trinity
00:56:58of these terrific energetic scores that just gave such vitality and a sense of fun and danger to the subject matter.
00:57:07And obviously you don't have any more of an iconic action hero than Robin Hood.
00:57:12And what Michael did in bringing a sense of modern energy and orchestration to a character,
00:57:19really brought a new sense of dynamism as to how do you score historical action.
00:57:26Above all, with the sense of fun and passion and love of the character.
00:57:32It's big. It's full of heroics and power and real compassion.
00:57:36I've carried an idea of who Robin Hood is in my mind since I was six,
00:57:41so that's a pretty strong vision to have musically.
00:57:45It's rare that I find someone in life who is my musical peer,
00:57:52not to be egotistical, but just to say we communicated on such a deep, intimate level,
00:57:59that that's what I miss the most about Michael and working with people like him,
00:58:06is that connection where we could finish each other's sentences as a matter of routine,
00:58:13not the exception to the rule.
00:58:15Yeah, the film just absolutely took off and it's interesting.
00:58:27It had a good opening weekend.
00:58:29What happened was it never dropped off at all.
00:58:32That's what I think amazed the distribution folks at Warner Brothers
00:58:36is that the movie kept on taking over.
00:58:38Traditionally, you know, the first weekend constitutes about a third of the total box office
00:58:44and it was way, way different than that in this case.
00:58:48You know, the second weekend was almost as big as the first and et cetera, et cetera,
00:58:51and it ran and ran and ran.
00:58:53Richard!
00:58:56Well, I have to give the credit to Penn for coming up with the idea of Sean Connery.
00:59:00We knew from the beginning that we had an opportunity to land a movie star for one day
00:59:05to play the very last scene in the movie.
00:59:08I will not allow this wedding to proceed.
00:59:10My lord.
00:59:11Unless...
00:59:12I'm allowed to give the bride away.
00:59:15You look radiant, cousin.
00:59:17No.
00:59:18I knew Sean and Kevin Costner worked together on The Untouchables
00:59:23and I thought if Sean walked on at the very end of the movie
00:59:27and became the person that blessed the marriage, the audience would go nuts.
00:59:32He had one day available.
00:59:33He was on his way to see the Pope for some reason.
00:59:37He was coming back from Rome and was going to land in London before having to come back to L.A.
00:59:44and the deal was if you can choose this one day, you can have him for one day and one day only.
00:59:50Friar, proceed.
00:59:53Yeah, we kept it a surprise.
00:59:55We decided not to mention him in the publicity of the film, not to include him in the trailer,
00:59:59not to let it be known, so I think it was a glorious surprise for the audience
01:00:03when the last scene of the movie and there's Sean Connery.
01:00:07I think it sent people out of the theater with a real high.
01:00:10One of the things that, as I mentioned earlier, growing up in the world of films and loving films,
01:00:31I felt that the film should have more than just an ordinary adventure form.
01:00:35I wanted my film to feel like it was deeper and have more things to say
01:00:39and then you hide it, you hide the medicine.
01:00:41But if a film is carrying a message as well that says something good about humanity,
01:00:45I think it's easier to fight for getting it made.
01:00:48I think if you have passion to change the world, if you have an altruistic point of view.
01:00:53And the idea of putting a Muslim and a Christian side by side was powerful to me.
01:00:57I'm an atheist, but I still believe in spirituality and I still believe in morals.
01:01:02And here I wanted to make a film which stated that those morals and those belief systems
01:01:06shared by two people who would normally be considered enemies was something special.
01:01:13And I also really, really wanted a birth scene.
01:01:15Manny, your baby has not turned.
01:01:21It cannot be born without help.
01:01:24And it sounds kind of weird to want a birth scene in a male action adventure,
01:01:29but it felt to me that we were making a film that was also for women.
01:01:34I feel that movies, when they touch human nature, when they get into biology,
01:01:39have more feeling and reach more people because they have a kind of a truth to them,
01:01:45as well as the fun and the adventure element, but there was something else going on.
01:01:50Robin Hood's fighting for that child's future, and I'm so proud that it's in there.
01:01:56Oh, it's always nice to be on board something that's worthy of critical acclaim.
01:02:01It really is.
01:02:02Robin Hood was a pleasure from day one to the end.
01:02:06I know, it really was.
01:02:08And having a director who has a sense of humour, like Reynolds, we laughed at the same jokes.
01:02:14He loved the English as well, their kind of sense of humour.
01:02:19And, you know, basic modesty to apply, not in any way Hollywood hotshot DPs, you know,
01:02:27who may tell them what to do all the time.
01:02:29I was receptive to his suggestions and applying his thoughts, you know, visually.
01:02:35So it's a great correlation between DP and director, I think so.
01:02:41And I thoroughly enjoyed Robin Hood with Reynolds, I always did.
01:02:45For me, working on Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves was actually a watershed moment
01:02:51because it introduced me to Kevin Reynolds and to Kevin Cosner.
01:02:56And I did several more movies with them, including the infamous Waterworld,
01:03:04which was huge fun. I loved it.
01:03:07Everybody said, you know, it was way too expensive, but I don't know.
01:03:11We spent a lot of money, it was an expensive film.
01:03:13And actually, it's gone on and on, being popular in DVDs,
01:03:17and I think has made its money.
01:03:19The sheriff calls us outlaws, but I say we are free.
01:03:24And one free man defending his home is more powerful than ten hired soldiers.
01:03:30People love to be entertained and not be told what to think.
01:03:35And this movie was never, ever supposed to be a message movie.
01:03:41But there is a message in it, and it's a message that raises your heart.
01:03:44You see courage, you see love, you see commitment.
01:03:47You see people doing bad things, and you know that they mustn't get away with it.
01:03:51And we must make sure that these people are punished for their bad choices.
01:03:55Because as human beings, we live in a society which needs stability.
01:04:00And so whether it's Robin Hood or whether it's law and order,
01:04:03we're always going to go for the people who stand up to the dangers on our behalf.
01:04:08So I think Robin Hood and recruiting all these merry men to this goal
01:04:13is something that an audience sits in there and they become part of that group.
01:04:17This here is the best that we simple men can expect.
01:04:20Here we're safe.
01:04:24Here we are kings.
01:04:27And it reminds them that human beings are good creatures,
01:04:30that we are moral and we are decent.
01:04:32And I think that movie speaks to that.
01:04:34And you can sometimes think, well that's a bit sort of old fashioned,
01:04:37but I don't think being good is old fashioned.
01:04:39My relationship with Pendentium is quite extraordinary.
01:04:44We're still partners, we're still working together,
01:04:46we've still got projects together.
01:04:48I think we just turned out to be a pretty unique combination that's worked out.
01:04:54And we were compatible.
01:04:56We had fun.
01:04:57We enjoyed working together and we shared a passion for the process
01:05:01and always, always enjoyed it, even through the tough times.
01:05:04One looks at your life and you go, wow, I've worked with this gentleman now so many years
01:05:09and it's been a moral journey.
01:05:12We've always trusted each other.
01:05:13We might have had disagreements,
01:05:15we might have got a little pesky with each other once in a while,
01:05:17but God did I absolutely believe he was on my team.
01:05:21I never felt I was going to be undermined or let down.
01:05:24And so that comes out of going through all of these experiences and all of these life journeys.
01:05:31You know, the actual process of making it was pretty challenging.
01:05:36I would go so far as to say it was hellish at times.
01:05:39It was like the long hours, the constant stress, the long, long shooting period,
01:05:45the scramble in the editing room, the drama of trying to get the film made against the competition.
01:05:51It put it all together.
01:05:53It was a lot of stress, a lot of off-camera drama, exhausting, you know,
01:06:00not a lot of sleep for almost a year.
01:06:03And yet, you know, it was the breakthrough.
01:06:06It's what made all the difference to my career because after that,
01:06:10and Backdraft came out the same year that Robin Hood came out,
01:06:14suddenly we were on the map, suddenly we were filmmakers that people wanted to work with.
01:06:18390 take 4.
01:06:20And the ability to get movies made, you know, became a lot more accessible to us
01:06:26after the making of Robin Hood.
01:06:28But then we had to follow up, right?
01:06:29Then we had to move on, and what's the next big challenge?
01:06:32And so, I don't know, it was certainly a pivotal moment in my career
01:06:37that I look back on fondly, perhaps more fondly than the reality of the challenges,
01:06:44the difficulty at the time.
01:06:46But, you know, I have to say it was worth it.
01:06:48It's worth it.
01:06:49It's worth it.
01:06:50There only a lot more time ago, next time.
01:06:51It was worth it.
01:06:52Thank you so much.
01:06:54It was worth it spending the fall
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