BY CAI ROSS
“Directing is so much more than staging
scenes or moving the camera,†explains John Badham in the new edition of his
last book. “It is how to make the impossible possible. It is storytelling,
imagination, people managing, resource skills, physical stamina, so many things
a director is called upon to be good at. Including accepting the blame for
everything: the script, the performances, the camerawork etc., etc., etc. And
yet, in spite of all those limitations, obstacles, and endless politics, we
charge forward trying to make the very best of what we have to work with. Who
else would do such a crazy thing? But how can we not?â€
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s,
John Badham enjoyed something of the Midas Touch. A former actor - and brother
of To Kill a Mockingbird actress Mary Badham - he had graduated at the
same movie academy of hard knocks as contemporary directors like Steven
Spielberg and Richard Donner: namely directing 1970s TV shows, in his case ‘The
Streets of San Francisco’, ‘Kung Fu’ and ‘Night Gallery’.
He struck box office gold with his second
feature, Saturday Night Fever which became a worldwide phenomenon in
1977, capturing the disco era at the zenith of its popularity and transforming
John Travolta into an icon in white polyester. He demonstrated his versatility
straight away with his next movie, a luscious, romantic Dracula starring
Frank Langella, with the Transylvanian Count retooled as a swoon-inducing
Gothic romancer.
Into the 1980s, Badham alternated kid-centric
thrillers like WarGames and Short Circuit with more mature action
pictures like Blue Thunder, Stakeout and Bird on a Wire, all of which resonated with audiences.
A sure-footed, no-nonsense director, Badham’s
work was characterised by his affinity with actors and his ability to coax
naturalistic performances from his cast that won over audiences time after
time. Even in high concept mainstream studio blockbusters, his cast were always
given room to breathe and play off each other, giving his work a charm and
longevity absent from a lot of other hits from the time.
Following hits like The Hard Way and
his underrated remake of La Femme Nikita, Point of No Return,
Badham’s career went full circle in the new millennium as he returned to
television, directing episodes of some of the most successful shows of the past
twenty years like ‘Supernatural’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Arrow’ and ‘Psych’, though the
difference in working methods on TV made for an often jarring gear-change, or
as he puts it, “The parallel universe takes a hard-right fork here and spears
you on a sharply pointed tine.â€
In 2006 he published his first book, ‘I’ll Be
In My Trailer’ (co-written with Craig Modderno), a juicy and highly
entertaining memoir that dealt with the often strained relationship between
director and actor. In his quest to pass on his hard-won skills at ameliorating
tensions, Badham was joined by fellow-travellers including Oliver Stone,
Richard Donner, John Frankenheimer and Michael Mann, and passing insightful
tips from the actors’s corner of the ring, such luminaries as Martin Sheen,
Eriq LaSalle, Mel Gibson, Richard Dreyfuss, and the “always exciting, never
dull scatological actor†James Woods.
The central theme of resolving the potential
conflict between actors and directors carries through to ‘John Badham on
Directing’ (2nd Edition). The first half of the book is a ‘How To…’ guide on
saying the right things, not saying the wrong things, creating the right
atmosphere and tips, learned the hard way, on the best ways to get your actors
to overcome their innate distrust of you.
Once again, Badham is joined by a gang of
learned pals offering their own advice, which is more often than not a sage reduction
like Steven Soderbergh’s simple edict, “Don’t tell actors what to think. Tell
them what to do.†Badham recalls once doing precisely the opposite,
gabbing on at considerable length trying to explain the internal machinations
of Bill Bixby’s character, until Bixby stopped him and said, “I have no idea
what you just said.†It is typical of Badham’s understated style to make
himself the butt of most of the jokes and the source of most (but by no means
all) of the screw-ups that he’s spent fifty years learning from.
He’s still working today at the cutting edge
of mainstream television but as a graduate of the old-school he still has a
fondness for the more analogue-era techniques. He decries the post-digital
tendency to print everything, knowing that the poor editor will be drowning in
mostly useless footage.
He also has little time for new innovations
like video playback, preferring to deal with the actors the old way, standing
off camera. “The video monitor became the watercooler of the set,†he groans. “Anyone
with nothing better to do scammed a pair of headphones and sat in a forest of
director’s chairs crowded around the video monitor, Monday morning
quarterbacking every second.â€
Despite being called ‘…On Directing’ the book
is not a manual for wannabe directors looking to learn how to create dolly-zoom
shots, block scenes or choose camera lenses correctly - though Badham is
generous in his recommendation of other writers’ works that offer further
reading in that area. In Badham’s experience, new directors flush with all the
benefits of modern technology, tend to already know everything about the
mechanical side of making movies. It’s having to deal with other human beings
on the set that often proves to be the Achilles heel.
Instead, anyone hoping to pick up a bullhorn
and recline into the director’s chair for the first time will benefit from the
many anecdotal lessons learned by Badham and his collaborators about vitally
important but untaught skills like how to praise a performance, or how not to
give advice notes, and deceptively simple guidance, like always show up to work
forty-five minutes early.
His tales of the brutally intense world of
directing television shows are particularly compelling. Often, books on
directors tend to concentrate on the almost mythical figure of the grand
Hollywood auteur, but the advice and reminiscences of TV directors like
Michelle MacLaren (‘Breaking Bad’), Allan Arkush (‘Nashville’) and Romeo Tirone
(‘Dexter’) feel especially vital given television’s seemingly unstoppable
cultural dominance.
It’s also an invaluable read for
scriptwriters who get a rare sense of what a director will do with their magnum
opus after it’s had the go-ahead to be turned into a movie. The first thing I
did after reading this was to return to my own script and strike a red pen
through any adverbs in the personal directions!
‘John Badham on Directing’ is a warm, honest,
amusing, direct and informative collection of hard-earned wisdom that anybody
with even a passing interest in film-making would enjoy. For anyone actively
planning on becoming a professional film-maker, it is absolutely essential. The
summaries at the end of each chapter should be cut out and stuck to the walls
of anyone hoping to become the next Christopher Nolan…or John Badham, for that
matter. Heed his advice: he knows whereof he speaks.
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