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Curtis Hanson

Curtis Hanson Books

Film director

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“I did it [photojournalism] as something that was really rewarding to do, given the opportunity to express myself about something I cared about, and also to learn a lot by watching filmmakers I admired. In a sense, it was my film school. After doing it for a few years, I decided that the time had come to get it together and do some work of my own. So I stopped doing that and wrote some screenplays on speculation, because even though I wanted to direct, to direct you need a lot of money.”

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“Roger [Corman] didn't actually hire me, though. I was hired by AIP [American International Pictures], the studio that made the picture, which was Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson. It was a great learning experience for me, because not only did I work on the script, but they hired me back to go on location when they were making the movie, to write new scenes and so forth.”

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“Initially, it connected with me when I was a kid, seeing a lot of movies while growing up in Los Angeles. And Sam's [Fuller] pictures are an expression of such a distinct voice that he was one of those filmmakers who made me aware that there was, in fact, a real presence behind the camera that was telling the story, as opposed to actors just presenting it.”

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“Of course, Sam [Fuller] was like, "No problem," because he treated it like a newspaper deadline. We worked long hours, often very late into the night, in his garage, which had been converted into an office. It was freezing cold outside and there was no heat in the garage, so he had a little space heater over by his side and I had a blanket that he graciously gave me to drape around my shoulders like a Navajo Indian. And he gave me cigars, too, of course.”

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“It was just a wonderful experience, one for the memory book for sure. The sad thing about it was that the picture came under this absurd cloud of controversy. Here was a movie based on the central theme that racism is something that is taught, and it's illustrated by this story of a dog and the efforts of humans to re-train it after it had been trained to go after black people. And it created this ridiculous controversy and wound up being the last Hollywood movie that Sam [Fuller] made.”

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“On the surface, Wonder Boys seemed like such a departure from L.A. Confidential - it's funny, it's contemporary, and so on - and yet at a certain point, I had a feeling that reminded me how I felt when I was shooting L.A. Confidential. I analyzed it for a while, and thought about how emotionally involved I was with the characters. Then I realized that in both movies, there are three main male characters and one female, and all of them are struggling to figure out what they're doing with their lives, independent of each other.”

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“In terms of talking with my collaborators as they came onboard - Jeannine Oppewall, our production designer, Dante Spinotti, our cinematographer, and so forth - I said to them, "Let's pretend that this is a place like Honolulu. Let's ignore the fact that all these other movies have been made here for decades and try to come at it with a fresh eye, as if it were an exotic city that people aren't that familiar with. And let's present our own view of it, create a world that's unique to this movie [L.A Confidential].”

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“Consequently, pictures are aimed at certain audiences, whether it be a teen comedy or an action movie or whatever. It's unfortunate, because while it may lead to big opening grosses, a lot of pictures that are a little different and don't fit so neatly into either a niche market or a high-concept marketing approach can get lost in the shuffle. That's one unfortunate thing.”

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