00:13At first, I was a casting director, so I did, we put a few ads in backstage newspaper, I think
00:21it was,
00:22and we found Harvey Keitel in 1965, he came to an audition, quote-unquote, at NYU, which was actually just
00:32myself and a friend,
00:34and a couple of other people for some of my short films, but primarily you, at that time, just grab
00:42your friends and your parents and put them in,
00:46because they're going to have to do it for you, you know, your parents, and if they're around, and if
00:52they're available to do it,
00:53and it isn't so complicated, they've got to do it. So from that, basically a home movie,
00:58Mean Streets is like a home movie in a sense, not literally, but, well, at some cases, yes, but at
01:05some points it is,
01:06but primarily a lot of the people in the frame, and even to think Senator Robert De Niro, who grew
01:12up in that area,
01:13so he knew many of the people making the film about, and shot in the hallways of where we grew
01:18up, and people around us,
01:20it was kind of a community effort, so to speak. Since then, I was able to work on a couple
01:28of films,
01:28two or three films, a very, very key casting process, with Cis Corman, who did Raging Bull, King of Comedy,
01:35and Last Temptation of Christ, originally. But, in the late 80s, began to work with the same casting director, Ellen
01:42Lewis.
01:45And, Ellen kind of, well, of course, we discussed the project, she reads what I'm going after,
01:50and she usually knows exactly what I want. For Goodfellas, for example, we were taken up to Rao's restaurant,
01:56and in one night, we cast about five roles, just from the people in the restaurant.
02:00So, we've been doing that ever since, for that kind of picture, for that kind of film.
02:05But, she gives me a range of choices, and I respond to them, make decisions.
02:11We can, the reason we work together is I can tell that the people she brings to me, I connect
02:18with, for the most part.
02:19So, we kind of have the same taste, in a way.
02:23Um, and, uh, I always say that, you know, casting is 85 to 90% of the picture for me.
02:29So, you know, all of you just starting out, I want to repeat, you know, again, insist on what you
02:34want.
02:35And, you don't settle for close enough or second best, and, um, don't imagine there's a shortcut.
02:41But, it's meeting the people, spending time with them, talking with them, then putting them together with the other actors.
02:49That's a key thing.
02:50And, see how the other actors respond.
02:53Um, it's somewhat different, I think, than, uh, who I could imagine, a studio system where, in the case of,
03:00uh, certain key films, uh, filmmakers had to work with certain actors because of contractual issues.
03:08And, um, very often they didn't get along, uh, with each other.
03:12Uh, but that was the contract, and they had to do it.
03:14Here, that may not be the case.
03:15I don't say you have to become friends, uh, but you have to be, here's the key thing with casting.
03:21And this is why casting directors are so important.
03:23He or she has to know that, um, with the actors, primarily, you want to work with the actors.
03:31You all agree you're making the same film.
03:33That's the key.
03:35Now, how you get to make the same film, that's part of the process of how you work with the
03:38actor.
03:38That's a give and take, somehow.
03:40But if you're all making the same film, you know that, and your casting director knows that, and she knows
03:45to pull actors for you to choose from that are of the same mind, then you have a possibility of
03:51making the picture.
03:51And you get this unexpected dimension.
04:01I found that I responded to actors pretty much through the films I saw.
04:08Now, for many years, through the 40s and early 50s, uh, the films I saw, uh, the acting was of
04:15a certain style, right?
04:16Of a certain time, coming out of, uh, Hollywood tradition or from England, for example.
04:23Wonderful, like Alec Guinness and Olivier and James Mason and so many others.
04:27Um, and Hollywood, of course, you had the greats.
04:30You know, it's Stewart and Cary Grant and, uh, Henry Fonda and so many others, and Maureen O'Hara and
04:35John Wayne and all of this sort of thing.
04:37But they're from another world, you know?
04:39And, of course, in England, another world.
04:41Then I saw Kazan's films.
04:44And I saw On the Waterfront and East to Be.
04:48And those were both in the same year, I think, or a year apart.
04:52And those were a revelation in terms of behavior.
04:55And so it's really been, um, inspired by what I saw there on the screen and what I experienced watching
05:01those films over and over again.
05:03That's my gauge, I guess.
05:05That's where I go.
05:06And to a certain extent, I do like, like where Cassavetes worked or where I worked on Italian America, my
05:11parents' documentary, where they're telling stories, they're acting, in a sense.
05:15But are they acting?
05:17And I, I, uh, certain subject matter and certain stories that I make lend themselves to that kind of directing
05:22of actors or guidance of actors.
05:25Um, but primarily, the actor has to already be there, in a way.
05:30As I said, you can't tell a person how to lean against a car in 1955 on Elizabeth Street.
05:35Or, you know, I don't know, other worlds.
05:39Of course, I had to be told, in the case of Silence, um, what a, um, interrogation is like in
05:45the magistrate's office outside Nagasaki in 1632.
05:50So, again, I see a certain thing, work around that, uh, work with the actors that way, but primarily, um,
05:59primarily it's, uh, it's, uh, a combination, if I can, finding the person on screen as they're doing it, as
06:09they're in the process.
06:10Almost something that's, that may not be, it certainly doesn't feel like it's scripted, in many cases.
06:15That's what I'm hoping for, you know?
06:17Something natural.
06:19Um, but not, I don't know what naturalism is, I don't know what realism is, I'm just, uh, it, this
06:25is where I was talking about the business of the mixture of non-fiction and fiction.
06:30Where it all becomes a film.
06:33I don't know what you want to call it, but that's what it is.
06:41I do think, um, for me, coming out of a situation where I often used, uh, worked with, uh, people
06:48who were around, mixed with actors, they have to come from that spot.
06:51They have to come from that, that part of the world.
06:53They have to come from that culture, I should say, particularly in certain, um, um, uh, films depicting certain periods
07:00of certain worlds, like a Mean Streets or a Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, et cetera, uh, King of Comedy.
07:05Uh, that was contemporaneous to me, you know, and I felt that mixing, um, non-actors with the actors, partially,
07:14I must say, again, going back to the beginnings of making films, we had no choice but to use non
07:19-actors.
07:19So it became something that was, um, natural to me, uh, um, uh, and so we, uh, uh, uh, kind
07:27of relied on that.
07:29It also meant that by placing a non-actor in with the actors, as long as the actors, as I
07:35say, are making the same film as you, as long as they understand the environment that they're, they're, uh, they're
07:40working within, um, they could maybe lose, if there is any artificiality, lose that by being around the non-actor.
07:55So then Kingsley, doing, uh, Georges Méliès, he, uh, finds the posture, and that's Georges.
08:09I, I, there's, there's, I, I know it's there, you see.
08:14I know it's there.
08:15Um, his look, his manner, and his use of the language and the text.
08:20He's one who sticks with the text.
08:22And that particular film, uh, and even in Shutter Island with Ben, you're able to work with that text.
08:28I mean, he's there.
08:29Um, his behavior as the, uh, the doctor in Shutter Island is there.
08:34It was there, the way he moves, and the look in his eye.
08:37And so, um, that's another way of feeling, uh, how should I say, that the person inhabits the role.
08:44You see, um, I had a confidence.
08:47In fact, I never even thought of him as, uh, Ben Kingsley had when we were doing Hugo.
08:51It was always George.
08:53I, I remember, um, the great-granddaughter, I think, was sitting on the set one day, uh, in Paris.
08:59And she came to say hello, and we got to meet.
09:02And, uh, and, uh, Ben, it came out of, it was in, it was in, um, Sorbonne.
09:09And Ben came out of the door, came out of the, uh, main auditorium into the lobby.
09:13And she suddenly teared up, because it was her great-grandfather whom she never met.
09:20Um, and this was spontaneous.
09:22It's not, oh, this is so-and-so, and he's portraying.
09:25This is, just happened to be at the moment.
09:29So there was some, uh, sense of authority, really the character.
09:32You know, it's something I admire greatly.
09:34I, I can't do it, nor can I think I can really, um, excel in directing or creating that with
09:41certain actors
09:42or certain kinds of pictures.
09:43I don't think I can.
09:44But when I experienced it on the set with people like, uh, like Ben and, and, uh, Daniel Day
09:50and, uh, oh, a number of others, uh, it's something of, uh, a sense of awe, um, a sense of,
09:58uh,
10:00a sense of, uh, uh, beauty and power that, uh, something you respect and admire.
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