"It's no use asking me to talk about art." "I'm a journeyman director, a traffic cop in front of the camera." "If I had my way, every morning of my life..." "I'd be behind that camera at 9:00... waiting for the boys to roll 'em." "Because that's the only thing I really like to do." "I'm a picture man." "Steamboat 'Round the Bend should have been a great picture." "But at that time they had a change of studio... and a new manager came in who wanted to show off... so he recut the picture and took all the comedy out." "I believe in comedy, but I do not believe in farce." "I know I have, at times, lost a great many laughs... by eliminating farce or hokum... but I believe these very eliminations have been responsible... for the success of the pictures from which they were eliminated." "Ford once said that he had a thousand battles with the studios... and lost every one of them." "Stanley Kauffmann made the point... that you have to measure an artist by the level of interference... that they were able to transcend... and the pressures they had to work under... whether it's Michelangelo having to deal with the Catholic Church or" "Uh, Mozart had to deal with the emperor." "Dickens had to deal with the idiotic conventions of publishing in his time." "Someone has coined the phrase- a marvelous phrase- the genius of the system." "And I think there is genius in the system." "There was genius in the system in what we now refer to as Hollywood's Golden Age." "But what makes Ford so incredible... is that he was this amazing, one-of-a-kind genius... within the genius of the system." "No one managed to transcend it better than he did." "By 1935, Fox had been very weakened... and they were merged into 20th Century... which is the company that Darryl F. Zanuck ran." "It became 20th Century Fox." "Zanuck was a great executive who really had a strong story sense." "He had been a screenwriter." "He was known to be a terrific cutter." "Even John Ford praised Zanuck's editing... which is remarkable for Ford to say anything good about a studio executive." "Philip Dunne, the famous screenwriter... once said, uh, "I knew that Ford liked me... because he would never say anything good to me."" "And this is the strangely contradictory, almost adversarial nature... that John Ford had with his friends." "Darryl's a genius, and I don't use the word lightly." "Of course, in this industry every idiot nephew of some executive producer is a genius." "But he actually was." "He was head and shoulders above all the other producers." "Darryl comes in, and he's inherited what forces there are." "But from a starring standpoint, versus MGM" ""More stars than there are in the heavens"" "Fox has Shirley Temple." "Will Rogers-big." "But he dies." "And he's got Warner Baxter, who was sort of a big star... but not- You know." "And John Ford." "John Ford started directing in 1917." "He had been in Hollywood since 1914." "His brother, Francis, was an important director and star in silent films... and Jack Ford was his prop boy and assistant director and stunt man." "And then he started directing westerns." "Universal was a very active studio." "They were not making prestige films." "They were making bread-and-butter films for small-town audiences." "Ford started directing Harry Carey, the great western star... and made a series of feature films with him." "Exclusively westerns until 1920." "They weren't shoot-em-ups." "They were character stories." "Zanuck had worked his way up from the bottom." "He was a writer." "He had been hired by Warner Bros. To write for Rin Tin Tin." "Before that he worked for a while at Mack Sennett... and he had written some stories and had a book published." "But he was a young, dynamic guy." "Then he rose to become associate executive in charge of production... at Warner Bros under Jack L. Warner." "We pay entirely too much attention to good scripts... and not enough attention to good subjects." "I would rather have a bad script on a great subject... than a great script on an ordinary subject." "I know the audiences today want popular crap... but I cannot believe that we are so lacking that we cannot dish it up to them... with some traces of originality." "By the time John Ford came to Fox Film Corporation... he was a well-known director." "Not an A-list director... but he was known to make films on budget... with production values that didn't reflect the minimal budgets that he was given." "He was a proven success with actors." "Ford began feeling he wasn't getting paid properly at Universal." "Harry Carey was making a lot of money, and Ford was only making 150 a week." "Then he got up to 300 a week in 1920." "He, I think, also felt that he wanted to show his range beyond the western." "He had other things that he wanted to explore." "Plus, Fox was looking for good directors." "Fox had their needs too." "And Ford was finished with Universal." "And when he was hired by Winfield Sheehan at Fox, uh, they doubled the salary." "From 1921 on, he was exclusive with Fox for quite a long time." "It's a dizzying list of films that he made- a film about a Russian dancer in London... and a film about an old guy who runs a hotel in Nevada..." "Kentucky Pride, a wonderful movie about a horse... narrated by the horse with intertitles- a wonderful movie." "And he made The Face on the Barroom Floor." "He later said, "My God, did I do that?"" "And he claimed-and I think it's sort of half true- they would throw the script on the front porch on Monday morning like a newspaper... and he would open it up and wouldn't have time to read it completely... before he'd have to go to the studio and shoot it." "He told this hilarious story-An older man was supposed to kiss some woman." "He wasn't doing it with enough passion, and Ford said" "Kiss her, for heaven's sakes." "You're supposed to be her lover." "Clasp her in your arms." "Kiss her on the mouth." "And he said, "Mr. Ford, she's playing my daughter."" "He'd been making movie after movie after movie after movie... meaning he didn't have high status as a director." "After all, this was a very competitive field... and he had seen what happened to his brother Francis... from whom he learned much of his craft, acted in some of his films... and then was given the director's reins after a while." "He knew how volatile the profession could be... and his scrappy Irish nature was such that he was just a workhorse... to the point that, in very short time- in less than four years- he was given the opportunity to make one of the biggest films of the 1920s" " The Iron Horse- and even then make a film... that was initially planned at being somewhat modest into a major epic." "() The Iron Horse is a very important film for Ford." "It's sort of like Jaws was for Steven Spielberg." "It's the young director who makes his breakthrough film... that makes a lot of money and is very impressive, a real feat of direction." "Iron Horse is a big epic- a very elaborate production... that the 30-year-old director made." "It got bigger and bigger on location." "And Fox executives had the smarts and the courage... to go along with it and keep letting him shoot." "We had to spend more and more money... and eventually this simple little story came out as a so-called epic... the biggest picture Fox had ever made." "Of course, if they'd have known what was going to happen... they never would have let us make it." "What he does in this film that wasn't often done... particularly in pioneer dramas-and there weren't very many like that in those days- is that he showed how "e pluribus unum"" ""out of many, one"- came to be." "He had the Irish, he had the Italians, he had the Westerners... and they all came together for that one central effort... of building the railroad... of spanning the borders of the continent... and those thrilling things- manifest destiny" "that we associate with the American West." "But Ford gave it that sense of national unity... family structure as part of the epic conquest." "As a European kid... he gave me a sense of what America should be or America is." "Definitely, to me, John Ford's movies show the eternal soul... and spirit of America." "I don't know, and I wouldn't say if America is still... what John Ford tried to show in his movies... but probably this is what he gave me most." "And I think it's funny, because somehow this man brought me here... because he gave me the love of this country." "In 1925, William Fox started selling stock in the company... to the public for the first time to finance an expansion." "He wanted to buy additional property to shoot films on." "He was an early pioneer studio to get into sound... with the Movietone process... which was sound actually recorded on film... unlike the Warner Bros. ' Vitaphone, which was on a record." "He brought over from Germany F. W. Murnau... who was the most important director in the German expressionist movement." "Murnau's arrival was preceded by a whole year of publicity." "So everybody on the Fox lot knew that he was coming." "Everybody was told he was the world's most important director." "Everybody was told he was an art director." "To advertise films as art in the United States was not at all typical." "But suddenly to realize that someone called a genius... was gonna be arriving from Europe... somebody who was known to be very cultured... and was expected to make a cinematic masterpiece" "He made Sunrise at Fox in 1926." "And John Ford saw the rushes and he declared publicly... that it was the greatest film ever made." "And, um, he went to Germany to meet Murnau." "That meant that for somebody like John Ford... who had aspirations... who also was very interested in painting... and who was gifted when it came to lighting" "John Ford, in my opinion, took a leap upwards in ambition... from the experience of watching Murnau work... of being able to talk to him... and of seeing what he could do with Sunrise." "And he filmed Four Sons on the same sets." "He used a lot of the visual devices with the fog and the moving camera... that Murnau is known for." "Ford made several films that were influenced by Murnau" "Mother Machree, an Irish film which is very expressionistic... and his 1933 masterpiece Pilgrimage..." "That is very much like Sunrise in its visual style... and gets into some very disturbing and dark psychological states." "In this film, we see a mother who is such a dark character... that she would seem to be the opposite of a Ford mother... if indeed we were operating with this construct... that the mother is always, um, the good figure... the stable figure, the center of the community." "What's come over you lately, Son, getting so restless?" "I'm tired." "Same thing day after day." "Nothing but work." "Well, what about me?" "Didn't I work all alone after your father died till you was big enough to help me?" "And now you want to go away." "You know, I don't want this to get out." "I posed as an illiterate." "But nothing's gonna take you away from me, nor nobody." "Auditory imagery- the chance to project symphonic qualities... for the creation and holding of a mood... so that pictures will no longer be limited to pure and simple narrative for material." "Oh, I like talking pictures." "Henrietta Crosman in Pilgrimage is one of the all-time great performances." "She was a stage actress who made very few films... but he found this wonderful strength... and bitterness in her." "She's kind of like a female Ethan Edwards in The Searchers." "Sends her son off to die in World War I rather than give him up to his girlfriend." "It's a really dark, tragic insight... into womanhood and into motherhood, actually." "Can you forgive me, Mary?" "It's amazing" " Everyone knows that actors change their names when they come to Hollywood." "John Wayne's name isn't John Wayne." "Woody Allen's name isn't Woody Allen." "Or Rock Hudson, or Tony Curtis, or Kirk Douglas- they're all phony." "And writers use pseudonyms." "But in the entire history of famous directors in Hollywood... do you know how many have a completely made-up name?" "John Ford." "John Ford's birth name was John Martin Feeney... and he never changed it." "I went to Ford's funeral, and I first discovered this when I looked at his coffin." "The family had engraved "John M. Feeney" on there." "And I thought, "That's a surprise." "I didn't realize that."" "But he never changed it legally." "I like the comment of author and screenwriter Stephen Longstreet... who said, "John Ford is an unholy combination..." ""of the Boston Strangler..." ""Groucho Marx..." "Zorro and Mark Twain."" "He started foundering a bit in the early '30s." "He was actually fired by Fox in 1931... because he misbehaved on the shooting of Arrowsmith... which he made for Goldwyn on loan out." "He walked off the picture at one point, in a dispute, and went on a bender." "Ford's brother Francis was this tremendously successful silent movie director... but his career started falling apart... when he had the chutzpah to open his own studio." "That's a difficult thing to pull off." "He was contentious with the studio bosses... and by 1928 he was no longer directing." "That was a cautionary tale for John Ford" ""I don't wanna end up like Francis." "I wanna keep working."" "Constant battle to do something fresh." "First they want you to repeat your last picture." "You talk 'em down." "Then they want you to continue whatever vein you succeeded in with the last picture." "You're a comedy director or a spectacle director... or a melodrama director." "You show 'em you've been each of these in turn, and effectively too... so they grant you range." "Another time they want you to knock out something... another studio's gone and cleaned up with, like a market." "Got to fight it very time." "Never any point where you can really say you have full freedom... for your own ideas to go ahead with." "Fox was having a lot of turmoil." "It was the depths of the Depression... and William Fox had a serious auto accident." "Fox was in disarray." "They started losing a lot of money in the early '30s." "My philosophy of life." "All my life I believed in action, even if wrong... as action can sometimes be better than no action at all." "Zanuck left Warner Bros. In '33... and he met with Joseph M. Schenck." "After hours and hours and hours of talking..." "Schenck said, "You know, we should form a company."" "So they did, and it was called 20th Century Pictures." "They were off and running, and they're doing very well." "All right, now cut to across town." "Here we have Fox" " Movietone City." "They're not doing so well." "So one day they have a meeting." "It ended up where, "Hey.!" ""What about 20th Century Fox?" "Darryl will be in charge of production. "" "So, of course, now it's John Ford saying I wonder how this is going to work out." "Because John Ford, of course, generally had his way." "Darryl F. Zanuck... born and reared in Wahoo, Nebraska, was, um..." "American-born, American-bred... and at his studio he loved the theme of Americana." "With the United States coming out of the Great Depression... studios, primarily Fox... went back into episodes of American history... to shore up a recovering America... in a sense of itself, where it had been and what the promise could be." "And this episode of Dr. Mudd and John Wilkes Booth is a fascinating one." "And it deserved the dark, grim treatment that John Ford could give it." "What happens in The Prisoner of Shark Island... is that people who are suspected... of having assisted John Wilkes Booth, the assassin... are rounded up, they are put in jail... they are denied lawyers." "These people are even shown with bags over their heads... so that you can't see their identity." "It couldn't be more contemporary." "It's all about the loss of civil liberties in the United States... in the name of American patriotism." "It gave Ford an interesting backdrop." "It was a very good story, and it was historically accurate." "Everything's going pretty well." "Apparently Warner Baxter was trying... a phony Southern dialect... and Zanuck had said" "What about this accent that Baxter's using?" "Well, what about it?" "I think it's giving a bad effect." "Have you spoken to him about it?" " Yes." " Can't you do anything with him about it?" "If you're not satisfied with the way I'm directing this, you can get somebody else." "Are you threatening me?" "Are you threatening me you'll walk off this set?" "Don't ever threaten me." "I throw fellows off this set." "They don't quit on me." "We had a little meeting, a discussion." "There's been no trouble since." "Ford did not like producers." "But Zanuck was probably the only producer... that Ford had a grudgingly cordial relationship with." "Zanuck thought he was terrific... signing him to an exclusive contract, I believe, in 1937." "The thing that I think people should know about studios as they were then is... they were complete little nations." "You could live inside a studio and be taken care of by the studio." "So my father had a bungalow with a picket fence and some lawn... and a mailbox where they put the mail in in the morning." "He had a bed." "There was a barbershop here." "There was a steam room here." "The commissary was virtually open 24 hours a day." "You came through the gates of Fox, you were entering Darryl Zanuck's kingdom." "Wait a minute." "Cut it." "I'm going to give you something to scream about." "I'm going to put you together with Shirley Temple." "What does Chin-Chin mean?" " Wait a minute." "You got it wrong." " I made a mistake." "Do it over again." "My face fell atop the floor." "Ready?" "My idea about doing this picture is to forget it is a Shirley Temple picture." "All the hokum must be thrown out." "The characters must be made real, human, believable... and it must be told from the child's viewpoint, through her eyes." " Hello, Shirley." " How do you do?" "So you're the guardian of the quintuplets." "That's right, Shirley." "Um-Wait a minute." "Cut." "How do you do, Miss Temple?" "I'm the man you're going to direct in Wee Willie Winkie." "Based upon what's come down, John Ford thought" "But they started off" "And, of course, Shirley relates in her autobiography of several years ago... that it was not a great opener..." "And Ford was, you know, not being Mr. Charm." "She wins him over." "On Wee Willie Winkie..." "Ford was standing on their location... for the military fort in India." "There were dark storm clouds gathering... and he turned to the cameraman, Arthur Miller, and said..." "We've got everybody here." "Let's bury Victor." "So they shot this whole wonderful funeral scene- silent scene with music- uh, off the cuff." "This is hailed as an example of Ford's intuitive genius where he just threw off a great scene." "But in reality, it turned out that, back at the studio before this..." "Ford and Zanuck had been talking about this and Zanuck said" "Victor McLaglen is so good in this, and we kill him off halfway through." "I'd like to keep him." "Can you give him an impressive military funeral?" "So it was really Zanuck's idea, but Ford passed it off as this spur-of-the-moment idea of his... and people thought, "Oh, what a genius he is."" "But this is typical of" "Directors, in a way too, have taken credit for other people's inspirations." "That's me when I was a little baby." "Oh, I think you were just beautiful." "It turned out to be a wonderful picture." "If there was any justice in Hollywood... he would have won an Oscar for directing Wee Willie Winkie and not The Informer." "It's a much better film." "I think someone like Zanuck was, in his own way... a kind of director of the director... that he was there to, you know... keep Ford from his worst impulses, perhaps... and try to emphasize his strengths." "There's this belief now that movies have to move relentlessly forward... and that you have to jettison and excise ruthlessly... anything that doesn't advance the plot." "I think Ford's nature was to excise the plot." "He cared about story but not plot... which is what most Hollywood movies are predicated on." "The Hollywood instinct" "The average person would make a movie called They Are Expendable." "You know." "Or The Expendables.!" "Five guys on a mission." "Let's see what happens." "Whereas Ford made They Were Expendable." "So these characters have already passed into myth... when you sit down and the movie opens." "()Jack, happy you're pleased with the Lincoln assignment." "I am anxious to have you see the test that Fonda made." "He looks exactly like Lincoln, and he really was immense." "The greatest example is Young Mr. Lincoln... where what you're experiencing is something amazing." "It works on so many levels." "You know who Lincoln was." "You know who he is, in the actual time frame of this film that you're watching." "And you know what he will become." "It's past, present and future simultaneously." "The general feeling about Ford was that John Ford was a conformist... that John Ford was embracing... the dominant political ideology of the day... which was retrograde and conservative." "The French point of view was completely different." "They didn't look at American films as being realistic." "They looked at American films as being abstract." "And all of the sudden, it was like a big light bulb going off." "Aha!" "It's not reality." "It's about mythology." "Young Mr. Lincoln is a film... which at times, even though the story is telling us that Lincoln is the great mediator... the person bringing people together... he's photographed as if he's Nosferatu the Vampire." "He's photographed with very harsh shadows... with an elongated body and stovepipe hat... to make him look unnatural and inhuman." "Henry Fonda was once quoted as saying..." ""I never want to play Abraham Lincoln."" "What the fuck is all this shit about you not wanting to play this part?" "You think you'd be playing the goddamn Great Emancipator, huh?" "He's a goddamned fucking jack-legged lawyer in Springfield, for Christ's sake." "Well, if it's all the same to you, I'll just call you Jack Cass." "Quiet.!" "Quiet.!" "Quiet.!" "Your Honor!" "Your Honor!" "Fonda had been in a dazzling Technicolor version of Jesse James... as Tyrone Power's brother." "And yet, if you compare those two films... you see a tremendous talent in Young Mr. Lincoln... that is evident but is not completely there in Jesse James." "So one- one could argue... that John Ford really discovered Henry Fonda." "Henry Fonda, uh, through John Ford films... is typically... the tall American citizen." "He is the simple, good man... trying to achieve something... trying to reach out... for what is the most difficult to reach- truth and justice." "Henry Fonda is that kind of icon... that has totally disappeared." "Robert Towne writes about Fonda as a great film actor." "He says that actors often embody contradictions." "The best stars embody contradictions." "And Fonda had a certain stiffness and rigidity... but he also had a certain grace." "There is also a very dark and difficult side to Fonda." "Cahiers du cinéma wrote this famous piece on Lincoln that said he's like a vampire." "He's a scary, frightening figure." "I think they go too far, but there is a very dark side... that comes from Lincoln's loneliness and isolation." "And I think Ford, being a leader and a great man" "As Philip Dunne said, "Leaders don't have friends." "They can't afford to."" "I have been more than pleased with the rushes." "You're making grand progress, and everything that I have seen looks honest and real." "The front office likes the rushes, so there must be something wrong." "We'll have to keep shooting till we find out what it is." "I saw John Ford working, having no idea what movies were." "And my father" "I think he was very ill at ease that my sister and I were there." "I remember seeing Drums Along the Mohawk... and I got extraordinarily scared when my father was being chased by Indians." "I didn't know it was a movie." "For all I knew, it was like our home movies and my father was really being chased by Indians." "It got so upsetting to me, I started rolling empty reels down the cement floors." "They made a lot of clacking noise, I ran out of there... and was taught how to catch peanuts in my mouth by somebody outside." "I can't remember what role this guy had in the studio system." "Drums Along the Mohawk." "Technicolor." "Now, this was Ford's first Technicolor feature." "He'd not worked in color at all." "And we're now talking 1938... and Technicolor is not being used on every other movie then." "It would be maybe each studio doing one or two- major studios." "Some studios hadn't even done any in color, and wouldn't until the '40s." "So this was big." "You know, special cameras, you know, special lights." "He went to none other than Dixie National Forest... in Southwestern Utah, above Cedar City... to replicate Upper New York State and the Mohawk Valley... and it came off splendidly." "Look at those blue skies above those green trees." "There isn't a hint of fog, a hint of haze or anything else... that proved really problematic for early, low-speed Technicolor film." "Color is much easier than black and white." "It's a cinch to work in if you've got any eye at all." "For a good, dramatic story, though, I much prefer to work in black and white." "You'll probably say I'm old-fashioned... but black and white is real photography." "But it's not an epic of nation building." "This script has made the original error of endeavoring to become an epic." "The picture becomes great because the characters are great." "We must see it over the shoulders of our two leading characters- an intimate, personal story which we must not lose sight of for one second." "That's what makes this film so wonderful." "Do you feel that at times the tempo is apt to be a little slow?" "I have had a feeling that at times we seem to be a little draggy... as far as mood is concerned." "Your letters and wires about tempo frighten me." "Both the script and the story call for a placid, pastoral, simple movement... which suddenly breaks into quick, heavy, dramatic overtones." "All this requires care." "They don't call them moving pictures because they stand still." "They move.!" "You have all these different kinds of people" "Native Americans, Irish and others- coming together as this new flag is brought into the fort... and it's pure Ford, it's pure Zanuck... and it's unequaled Americana." "Sarris wrote that the heroes of Hawks do what they do... for the sake of professionalism." "It's about getting the job done, doing the job well." "And the heroes of Walsh do what they do for the sake of adventure." "And the heroes of Ford do what they do for the sake of tradition." "I think tradition is a greater subject." "If you're thinking of a general run of social pictures... or even just plain, honest ones, it's almost hopeless." "The whole financial setup is against it." "What you'll get is an isolated courageous effort here and there." "John Ford is like a fireplace- it's something very warm." "So warm, it appeals to your feelings." "But a lot of artists like that... become extraordinary, powerful... because they are not what they would like to be." "Uh, so everything is like a creation." "I'm going to remake what God didn't make me." "But if you're thinking about a nice, cozy, warm fire... and conveys that meaning of family... this is a fire that's restrained." "I suspect that John Ford respected fire, and a warm fire, in its place... but you get too close and you find out more about the fire than you want-you get burned." "Uh, he was a tyrant." "He was a sadist." "The John Ford family is like a bunch of abused children and an abusive father." "Yet they were devoted to him." "That's kind of the way, unfortunately... people are sometimes toward people who are mean to them." "They crave approval or attention." "And, uh, that's true of Hollywood a lot." "People put up with all kinds of horrible things for the chance to make a film." "How did this crude, ugly man, in many respects... achieve this body of work of surpassing beauty and poetry... and depth and complexity?" "Andrew Sarris wrote his book about Ford- it was called The John Ford Movie Mystery." "I think that's the essential element of Ford, is-is mystery." "He would put up whatever obstacles he could... and they were very creative and often very humorous... insofar as the mythology that he created about his own life... that prevented people from getting too close." "He had a self-image of being, uh, uh, not an attractive guy... and people have said maybe wearing the dark glasses... and having the pipe and chewing on the handkerchief and having the hat... was a way of hiding." "I think there's a deeper emotional and social hiding that went on... a kind of devious Irish self-protection." "I myself am a pretty ugly fellow." "The public wouldn't pay to see me on film." "It's funny." "He actually acted in some pictures when he was young... for his brother Frank." "These films, unfortunately, don't survive." "The very first film he directed, he starred in." "It's called The Tornado." "It's a two-reel film." "It's kind of hard to believe that he was" "I found a fan letter in his files by a woman from Texas in 1917 who said..." ""I think you're so handsome and so wonderful." "Can I meet you?"" "It's the only letter like that in Ford's files." "It must've really tickled him." "The essential quality of Ford as a human being... seems to have been not so much that he was mean and cruel... although that's an aspect people talk about all the time... but that he was kind of a nutcase- he was just eccentric." "He was bizarre.!" "And that's certainly what comes across when you see him in interviews from the 1960s." "He was just an oddball." "Young Robert Wagner, when he was here in the, I guess, late '40s... one of his first small parts was in What Price Glory." "Ford was talking to the cameraman and saying..." ""I got a big problem 'cause I took 'em out..." ""left to right on location..." ""so I gotta bring 'em in right to left." "But if I do that, I'm gonna see the telephone pole."" "He's talking, and R.J. Thought" "As a good, young suck-up, he said, "I've got an idea, Mr. Ford."" "And Ford whacked him right in the face, knocked him down." "Orson Welles said to me a great line, he said" ""Jack had chips on his shoulders like epaulets."" "And also it's sort of like, I dare you to knock the block off my shoulder." "He would come bag home and crawl into bed or in his sleeping bag... and read and drink himself into oblivion... and wind up in the hospital, usually." "And then he'd sober up and go back and make another film." "I would see the Duke from time to time." "One day he came over to my yacht." "He asked permission to board." ""Permission to board, Mr. Wayne."" ""You call me the Duke, just like everybody else. "" "And he'd get a bit-not in his cups, but just a bit of a buzz going..." "And then he'd talk about Ford... who would get so pissed-ass drunk... that he would end up in the main salon- and couldn't move." "And so, you know, he" "Well, basically he would defecate on himself... and he would be in there for a few days." "It became really basically impossible for any of us to go down there." ""Uncle Duke, Uncle Hank, would you come on down here?"" "And we wouldn't want to go into the main salon because it basically stank." "The truth about my life is nobody's damn business but my own." "You know, when you are a kid, this is when you live the most important experiences... that are going to determine what you are going to do, who you're gonna be." "And it's strange-When you do things in your life, uh, today... everything is a part of those memories... everything is a part of those experiences that you have shared." "When I purchased The Grapes of Wrath... this company was controlled by the Chase National Bank." "I was attempting a controversial subject... that did not hold capital in too high a light." "When Steinbeck came out here for the first story conference... he was highly suspicious and finally told me... he would never have sold the book to me if he had realized this company was controlled... by big banking interests." "I told him I was willing to take any legitimate or justified gamble." "Zanuck was a very, very brave filmmaker... uh, for a studio head." "He did a little western with William Wellman directing called The Ox-Bow Incident... about a lynching party, which was scandalous at the time." "He did a picture called Pinky where Jeanne Crain passed for white." "Gentlemen's Agreement, where Gregory Peck passed for being Jewish... and exposing anti-Semitism." "No Way Out, which was Sidney Poitier's first part." "They knew in advance... that the picture was not going to be shown below the Mason-Dixon Line... and Zanuck said, "What the hell." "Let's go make it."" "And it was the first time in the history of film when a black family ever sat down to lunch- a contemporary black family ever sat down to lunch, to a meal." "The Grapes of Wrath was not an easy project just waiting for anybody to take it." "This was a major effort fraught with multiple obstacles... and as smart as Darryl F. Zanuck was, he saw it from the beginning." "He was concerned that the bank... to which 20th Century Fox was tied- a very capitalist enterprise- would react very negatively to the anti-capitalist... some would say socialist message of Steinbeck's famous, best-selling novel." "It was too big to ignore." "But the wife of the owner of the bank had read it... and passed along her favorable idea of it to him and he said..." ""Sure!" "I think it'd be a great picture!"" " They come with the Cats." " The what?" "The Cats." "The Caterpillar tractors." "() Grapes of Wrath- a very different kind of Ford western... in the fact that he shot it in a very grainy way... almost like a documentary." "But he used Gregg Toland, this fabulous cameraman... who was very into deep focus and stuff like that... and he was able to deliver Ford this image... that made you feel you were watching an actual documentary... about the Dust Bowl in those years." "There was 10, 15 families throwed right out of their homes." "A hundred folks, and no place to live but on the road." "The Rantzes, the Peterses, the Perrys, the Joadses- one right after the other, they got throwed out." "One of the great moments in that film is the last part of the film... when Ma Joad is talking to Tom and says..." ""How will I know where you are, Tommy?" "How will I know how you are doing?"" "And my father, and in Academy close-up" "Academy didn't have that;" "it was the full thing- says..." ""Wherever there's a cop beatin' on a fella, Ma, I'll be there." "Wherever there's a fella needing' a job, I'll be there."" "And I've always wanted to-And I've regretted that I didn't ask my father or Ford... whose idea it was that my dad played it in that way." "By that I mean, uh, he did it without blinking." "He did the whole shot, a long close-up... without a blink, with no facial expression and no verbal additive." "Nothing indicative in his voice of how dramatic this speech was." "There was no greater eye... in terms of composition and just the visual beauty of his films." "I think" " I think he knew more than any other great director... that films" "In those days no one had any expectation that these movies would be seen... beyond their initial theatrical release." "And I think he knew that the emphasis must be on the pictorial... and the emphasis must be on memorable episodes... and sequences and scenes and people... because that's what the viewer would take away and remember." "We need a scene in town." "Their money practically gone, gas low, the terrible realization" "We come in on them driving into town and asking somebody... where they should go about finding work." "Maybe showing a fellow the handbill." "The man just looks at them and laughs." "Someone else comes along, and they ask him." "We see the fellow look at the car and the license plate." "Oh, Oklahoma." "Their hopefulness and terrible disillusionment." "Darryl knew I hated to go into the projection room... so I had this tacit agreement that he would cut the picture." "I never have been satisfied with the last scene when Joad leaves." "I have a feeling I'd like to hear from the old man and lady." "I wanted to end on a down note... and the way Zanuck changed it, it came out on an up beat." "The mother had a little soliloquy, which was all right." "Rich fellas come up and they die... and their kids ain't no good, and they die out... but we keep a-comin'." "We're the people that live." "They can't wipe us out." "They can't lick us." "We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people." "One of his greatest assets was to supply the proper music." "He held music down to a minimum." "In Grapes, Darryl used a single, lightly played accordion... not a big orchestra... and it was very American and very right for the picture." "And with sound effects he was absolutely uncanny." "He'd put things in that I'd never dream of." "There was a scene with an itinerant preacher and a swamp under a bridge... and Darryl put in the sound of crickets... and you knew you were in a swamp." "He was a great cutter, a great film editor." "Come on in." "Tom Joad." "That's why Zanuck, I think, uh" " I'm sure there were all kinds of subjects and projects... and ideas and scripts and short stories and novels... that Ford tried to push on Zanuck... and Zanuck would push back with The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley... in the typical studio system and studio chief manner... because these were important books, you know." "Ma." "Most people think that the mother is the center of the family... in John Ford's films." "The family is the center of the community." "The community is the most important thing in the worldview... that the film is portraying." "And sometimes that takes up a lot of space in a movie." "Sometimes that only takes up a little space in the movie." "But still, as an idea, it's a fundamental motive." "The mother holds it together." "It's-It's actually difficult to, uh- oftentimes to explain to women... why Ford films are so meaningful." "I don't know, uh, if he has as many female fans... as he might or should." "Uh, we know his treatment of women in his films is often prehistoric." "Ohh!" "So as long as the mother was there with her apron strings, you know... in the kitchen serving this family's brood of boys, um, she was doing her job." "In some way, women represent a solid home, and they keep it together." "And, uh, How Green Was My Valley... and the fantastic strong mother figure in- in, uh, The Grapes of Wrath, of course." "It goes hand in hand with his treatment of women." "I think he was probably frightened of them and a little bit disturbed by them... and didn't understand them." "So what you do understand about women, if you, uh, feel that way, is your mother." "You know you had a mother, and-and, uh- and it's that kind of mother love that permeates his portrayals of women." "A woman critic, Janey Place, who wrote two books on Ford, startled me in the '70s... when she said, "You know, I think Ford is essentially a feminine filmmaker. "" "And I said, "What?" 'Cause that's- that's not the usual thing." "And she said, "Think about what are his Home, family, community, tradition."" "She said, "These were long considered the traditional feminine values." "These are not the masculine values."" "And obviously the world has changed." "Women have different roles." "But I think she was on to something." "And I think Ford really identified with a lot of the women characters in his films." "And yet he had this bluff, macho, tough-guy persona... which has fooled a lot of people into thinking that he was a male chauvinist jerk." "His daughter, Barbara, said he wore the dark glasses to hide his sensitive eyes... because they would have killed him." "You cannot ever hope to put an entire novel on screen." "It becomes a matter of selection and elimination." "The smart thing to do was to focus mainly on the human story as seen through Huw's eyes." "We should do much of the picture with him as an off-stage commentator... with many of the scenes running silent with nothing but his voice-over." "It was as nearly a perfect script as could be possible." "This is the finest script I've ever had... and I'm going to make this picture." "If I can't make it now, I'll make it later." "And if necessary, I'll take it to another studio." "Ford's concept of family is warm and loving." "We get that from the visual compositions... of people around the table enjoying good food together." "Their cooperation in pooling all of their money in the apron at the end of the workday." "Wonderful images of family solidity." "And yet the Ford family in motion pictures is a very fragile family." "It's delicate." "As sure as those bonds seem, they are, in reality... depending on the events that surround them... those bonds are eggshell thin." "And in How Green Was My Valley, they're cracking at the very beginning." "Here you had the Welsh singers singing Welsh songs quite a bit." "We may have a trifle too much singing." "If we have, it will be very simple to prune it down." "Try not to spoil it, will you, sonny?" "I never meant to say that we should eliminate the singing." "I said that I felt the final picture might show us that we have too much singing." "But it was so funny, because, uh, Ford goes..." ""What do you mean we're not gonna use the music?" I can just hear him." "I think it's a perfect picture, because more than any other film..." "I think it shows..." "Ford's homage to the silent film art." "You almost don't need..." "Irving Pichel's, uh, voice-over narration of Huw at age 50." "You can turn the sound down, watch the succession of images... and as Ford loved to say..." ""Photograph the eyes." "Watch the eyes. "" "And you look at Huw in these scenes, you know exactly what's going on... without any voice-over narration." "See that?" "See how that kid sort of felt for the stool with his ass?" "He knows how to act, this kid." "The mine disaster, which is one of the more dramatic scenes in the film... and the studio again argued about how many extras Ford could use." "So he shot it without extras." "He just had a couple principal players... running up and down this huge set with no people in the background." "And the studio, evidently, just said, "Okay, go ahead and use as many people as you want."" "()Jack, I think we should absolutely go to town on the mine cave-in episode." "I believe in this type of picture." "Audiences will expect to see a thrilling and exciting climax... that is fraught with suspense and danger... and then winds up with a beautiful scene between father and son." " Dada." " Huw." "Dada." "Mr. Griffin!" "There's a good old man you are." "It's one of the most moving scenes in all of Ford... when, you know, Roddy McDowall is clutching his father... and Donald Crisp, you know, when he's dying... and says "What a good old man you are"- uh, it's heartbreaking." "One of the great things about, uh, hindsight in movie history... is the fact that, uh, you don't know... that a film is going to win the top five Academy Awards... earn the studio's first Best Picture... the director's second back-to-back... uh, Best Director Academy Award... when you start filming on day one." "But it would seem that John Ford brought everything that he had learned... at Universal, but primarily at Fox... and through all the experience that he had gone through... and it was all poured in to this one film." "It took me 26 years to know how to do that job in eight weeks." "Congratulate the actors." "I'm only a slave driver, a kind of Legree." "The only thing I always had was an eye for composition." "I don't know where I got it." "And that's all I did have." "An intuitive artist knows how to balance these very delicate natures... of humor and happiness... grimness and sorrow and reconciliation for the world as it is." "What he had done in How Green Was My Valley... was an accurate description of how the world was coming apart... just as the family of the Morgans was falling apart." "One reason I think there's this unusual depth of feeling in How Green Was My Valley... is that Ford knew that he was going off to war when he made it." "And he probably thought this could be my last film." "I might not come back." "And it looks like a last film." "It's a valedictory summarizing your entire view of life." "It ends in the afterlife, in a sense, with bringing back the dead members of the family." "Ford's love of America that were so beautifully expressed in his motion pictures... was not a papier-mâché love, uh, nor was it a faint devotion." "He loved America." "And he couldn't wait to get into the fight." "Ford was a member of the naval reserve from 1934 onward." "And he- he was tight in with naval intelligence." "And he knew that the war was coming ahead of a lot of people." "He was very sophisticated politically." "And he was preparing for war." "In 1940, he formed a group of filmmakers in Hollywood... who were going to be, he hoped, part of the navy to photograph combat." "And he started training them at Fox." "And Fox let him use the soundstage." "And they used prop weapons from the Prop Department and drilled, and they trained." "Uh, Gregg Toland taught the cameramen how to shoot film." "You know, the greatest cameraman in Hollywood." "So he wound up getting the unit accepted into the O.S.S." " Office of Strategic Services- which was our spy agency which was formed in 1941... under General "Wild Bill" Donovan, who became Ford's patron... his new Darryl F. Zanuck for World War II." "Zanuck and Ford and all the other studio bosses... were a product of the system." "They loved being Americans." "They saw the threat that came from abroad." "And they all wanted to join in to do their part." "Whether it was in active military service... like Tyrone Power and Clark Gable and some of the others... or if they could wage the war with a movie camera and a motion picture theater." "I wouldn't miss this show for all the cigars in Havana." "I just think it's the thing to do." "But a lot of his work still is very little known, what he was doing." "There were reconnaissance films, combat films, training films, all different kinds of things." "And they were important to the war effort." "Some of them were shown publicly." "One was The Battle of Midway, which came out in 1942." "Ford was at the actual battle filming it with a 16-millimeter color camera." "And it's a really great film." "A 20-minute film." "And Fox released it." "Ford wanted a national release... and got President Roosevelt to agree to show it." "Roosevelt said, "I want every mother in America to see this film... 'cause it shows what the war is all about. "" "It's a very emotional film, very poetic." "And it's not as much a report on the battle as a meditation on the battle." "But Fox put it out in hundreds of prints." "And it apparently had an overwhelming effect on the audience." "It was the first time they had seen American troops in combat in such a vivid way." "And the color makes it very hyper-real." "And it's a very overwhelmingly powerful film." "I shot film and continued to change the film magazines... and to stuff them in my pockets." "The image jumps a lot because the shells were exploding right next to me." "Since then, they do that on purpose, shaking the camera when filming war scenes." "For me it was authentic because the shells were exploding at my feet." "But they were" " I think they were a good team as a team would be in those days... between a head of the studio and a director, you know." "And I think that they both had their strong suits... and they both maybe weren't equipped to do everything." "" "I get to North Africa and the first person I run into is Darryl." "Can't I ever get away from you?" "I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut, if I ever go to heaven... you'll be waiting at the door for me under "Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck."" "Darryl and I were in an advanced outfit." "It was a pretty good place for the Germans to strike." "So we went down the hill by a beautiful little church..." " and we're gonna take pictures of it." "I asked Darryl if he had any cigars left." "I gave you one this morning, and I only have one left." " Cut it in half." " Okay." "But first, why don't you go up in the steeple of that church and take pictures?" "I'm not Catholic, but you are." "And what greater place for a Catholic to get killed than in a Catholic church?" "()Just then a bomb came and blew us over a cliff and into some rocks." "Did it hurt the cigar?" "Later in the day I saw him, and he was covered with blood." "He'd been helping the wounded, and he was smoking a full cigar." "And I said, "You lied to me."" "Antiaircraft guns are blazing away all around us." "Our Spitfires rise to the attack." "Planes are now coming at us from all directions." "I let go with my tommy gun and used up a full clip." "At last I was shooting at a German." "Doing very little damage I'm sure, but I was still shooting." "I really am a coward." "I know I am and that's why I did foolish things." "Oh, we'd go ahead and do a thing, but after it was over... your knees would start shaking." "Writing letters to the next of kin is not a pleasant duty." "Uh, many social critics have said America suffered a loss of innocence." "Zanuck came back from the war ready to make more adult pictures." "He would distinguish 20th Century Fox, in fact... for the rest of the decade in making these kinds of motion pictures." "So it's very interesting that a John Ford western... would be the first significant film to deal with... what had often been considered a juvenile genre but make it very adult." "It really changed Ford a lot in the war." "It was a very important experience." "It deepened his art." "I think made him more aware of historical issues than he'd even been before." "His postwar westerns, for example... deal a lot with war and military issues in a very complex and very profound way." "And his general view of life darkened over time." "And that's part of, um, his legacy of having been at war for four years." "Making western pictures has been a crusade with me since the war." "I'm sure there are millions of people still proud of their country, flag and traditions." "Give me some horses and real estate." "There are a number of reasons that John Ford loved the landscape so much." "Uh, one factor that is not inconsiderable is... it's as far away from the studio as possible." "Even in the 21st century..." "Monument Valley is one of the most remote locations in the United States." "So first and foremost, Ford loved that." "Secondly, since the days of Stagecoach... he had a significant relationship... uh, marvelous relationship with the Navajo Indians." "They treated him as one of their own." "He came to their aid on so many occasions during droughts and times of famine... and, in fact, bringing, uh, My Darling Clementine to Monument Valley... provided significant employment." "I think you could say that the real star of my westerns... has always been the land." "My favorite location is Monument Valley." "It has rivers, mountains, plains, desert." "Everything the land can offer." "I feel at peace there." "I've been all over the world, but I consider this the most complete, beautiful... peaceful place on Earth." "You know, some people say that the westerns of today are more real... that everything that was made in Hollywood is just a glorious legend... of what the West, uh, the old West, was." "It's part true and part wrong." "Because, first of all, John Ford is an American." "And, um, even if he filmed, uh... the old American West as a story, as a movie, with a fictional thing and et cetera... he cannot prevent himself from being totally inspired... and-and touched by the reality of the land." "I think the only purpose of Monument Valley is its beauty." "I think it's just the most pictorial landscape he ever saw and ever found... and could never better it." "'Cause he loved to go down there." "And they're shooting it in black and white." "And Zanuck was trying to, you know, hold off a little bit." "Because here's John Ford coming back, and he'd been at the war a number" "And actually if you look at all of Ford's films in the next few years after World War II... almost all of them are about war of one kind or another." "And Clementine is about an epic gunfight, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral... a battle between factions in Tombstone, Arizona" "Wyatt Earp versus the Clantons." "I like to get out on location." "I like to leave this place with the smog and fog and traffic and freeways." "I like to get out and live in the open." "You get up early, you work late... you eat dinner with an appetite, you sleep well." "When I come back from making a western on location, I feel a better man for it." "And in terms of Ford's, uh, westerns..." "I was greatly influenced, uh, by some of the things that, uh, he did with my dad." "Uh, My Darling Clementine for an example." "() His westerns are not like other westerns." "They're not, in fact, like westerns." "My Darling Clementine opens with a-with a murder." "Not a killing or a shooting like in most westerns, it opens with a murder." "And it's the story of revenge and justice." "I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee... and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral." "So in My Darling Clementine, we did it exactly the way it had been." "But what's strange about Clementine is Ford said..." ""Well, I did it exactly the way Wyatt Earp told us it happened."" "He didn't." "It's very "mythified" and romanticized." "On the other hand, one of the things that happened with Wyatt Earp... he came to Hollywood, and he wanted to get people to make his story." "And nobody wanted to do the real story 'cause it was sort of unsavory... and it was not particularly heroic." "So he started lying and embellishing until people took interest." "And Stuart Lake wrote this book called Frontier Marshal... which was the basis of My Darling Clementine, which is all Wyatt Earp's B.S." "In this gorgeous, open-air area that almost looks religious-like... with these sandstone buttes, say, as the cathedral... and totems in the church... paints a very dark picture of loss... of regret and of intense conflict." "I would venture to make an argument... that John Ford the filmmaker, perhaps the man... is revealed in the Doc Holliday character played by Victor Mature." "He's alcoholic." "He has mood swings." "He's in the bar and suddenly runs out without any kind of provocation." "He is mean to those to whom he loved- you have the Cathy Downs character- and yet he's uncharacteristically tender... to this barroom girl played by Linda Darnell." "And you wonder, how do I figure a man like this out?" "And then the final flourish in the battle of the O.K. Corral, when he gets shot... what is it that falls out of his hand?" "The handkerchief." "I mean, is this the handkerchief that John Ford chews on during production in his mouth... and had as kind of a signature talisman or ornament during his career?" "I think there are too many parallels to ignore." "The church sequence is one of the greatest things that Ford ever did." "I mean, just that alone, when they're dedicating a church in the wilderness... and it turns into a dance, a joyous dance... where Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp is accepted into the community." "This rough and tough lawman cowboy is accepted." "And Ford loved dances and-and rituals... and religious overtones and patriotic overtones." "It all comes together in that beautiful scene." "It's the most memorable moment that, uh, Ford was able to get out of my dad." "My dad's on this porch, uh, on the- on the sideboards... while people are coming to the church... and he's just, uh, gone to the barbershop and he's got his hair slicked back... and he's got this thing he's doing with his feet." "I know if you'll ever show this clip, but it's beautiful." "He's balancing, kind of knocking himself back and forth in the seat doing this stuff... and, uh, the people come by and go- smell." "Well, that's just- My dad just, "That's me."" "That was a pretty good moment." "I thought that was very interesting." "And I wondered whose idea was that." "Uh, and getting my father to dance... was a very difficult thing in real life, let alone on film." "And so there is my father dancing on the platform... of the church they're erecting with this huge American flag flying over it." "Oh, that's very fun." "A lot of shots of the flag with the sun coming through it and interesting things." "But my dad doing this extraordinarily funny dance, you know, with his legs." "I mean, he looked so awkward." "My dad was awkward about it, and I think Ford knew that and used that." "Henry Fonda was like the first wife... that you- that you discard for something more exciting." "I don't think Fonda was as malleable... and as willing to go where John Ford wanted to take his films and his characters." "Henry Fonda, uh, hired, uh, Ford... to, uh, direct Mr. Roberts." "And Ford, the first week or 10 days, started screaming at people... and, uh- and the crew was coming to Hank and saying..." ""I don't want to be yelled at." "I don't want to be called a moron." "I don't want to be-"" "And Hank, uh, who told me this story..." "I mean, he-he brought him into his motor home and he said, "Jack-"" "um, he said, "You can't do this." "You can't behave this way anymore."" "And Ford said, "I don't think you're the person to tell me how I'm gonna behave or not behave."" "And Hank said, "Jack, if you keep doing this, I'm gonna have to fire you."" "And Ford hit him." "And that was that." "Hank said, "There were almost tears in my eyes." ""This is the man" ""This is the man for whom I did Grapes of Wrath, made me a star." "The man for whom I did My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, so many movies. "" "He said, "I just worshipped this man."" "Then my father very remarkably wrote me- the fourth letter he ever wrote me in my life- talking about shooting with me for one day... and how he had, in his 41 years of making motion pictures... he had never seen a director so beloved by the crew... and that I was a very good director." "And for the first time he put down on paper, "And I love you very much, Son."" "Which was remarkable." "Really remarkable." "()Jack, I didn't tell you the full truth last night... when I gave you my reactions to the film." "I did not sleep last night thinking about it." "You have in the film a great number of outstanding... individual episodes and sequences." "You have a certain western magnificence... and a number of character touches that rival your best work." "But to me, the picture as a whole is a disappointment." "Many of my recommendations in the editorial handling of the film are radical." "You trusted me implicitly on Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley." "You did not see either picture until they were playing in the theaters." "And innumerable times you went out of your way to tell me... how much you appreciated the editorial work." "I am not going to lose any of things that appeal to you... because past performances have proven that the things that appeal to you... also appeal to me." "Ford said to Jean Mitry in 1955- uh, Mitry was a French critic who wrote book on him- he said, "Do you think Clementine is one of your favorite films?"" "And Ford said, "Well, my children liked it a lot, but I, you know-"" "I took that as very telling, because I think Ford was very disappointed... that Zanuck reedited the picture... had Lloyd Bacon reshoot certain scenes, including the ending... and tampered with the film and cut out some of the atmospheric and comedic things." "And-And, uh, Ford really was upset by that." "I liked the ending of My Darling Clementine exactly as it is." "Unfortunately, 2,000 people who saw the picture at a preview did not agree." "The last scene was perfect up to where Fonda reaches out to shake hands with Cathy Downs." "It was such an obvious build up for a kiss... that the audience felt first amused and then cheated." "They laughed at us at the finish." "I do feel it will be honest, legitimate and reasonable... if Henry kisses her on the cheek." "It is a good-bye kiss and nothing more." "He does like her." "The audience knows he likes her." "Now is no time for us to get smart." "And Zanuck, the story editor and marvelous film editor, uh, took over... and made a Darryl F. Zanuck cut." "And this caused an impasse in both of these brilliant, talented people." "Now I say momentous." "Because in reality, the fact that Zanuck did this... and wanted a graveside speech given by Henry Fonda to his slain brother... which surprisingly Ford didn't do." "Didn't echo Young Mr. Lincoln or Judge Priest." "Zanuck put that in, and he trimmed some other scenes... which were, uh, I think, justifiably a little too long." "They needed the trimming." "So the Zanuck cut, I believe, was actually a good Ford cut." "And it showed that Zanuck honored and appreciated his best director." "My Darling Clementine was, um- was a shock when I saw this movie for the first time... because it was so complex." "All the characters were so unusual." "Uh, the guys, for the first time, were not really- everybody was not exactly the good guy and the bad guy." "There were shadows everywhere, shadows and light... which is very interesting, you know." "Quite often what it means in Ford when there's this isolated individual... who rides away at the end, it's-it's, uh- uh- it's a rejection- uh, maybe a melancholy one" "uh, a rejection of the future and Ford's hunger and longing... for an idealized past, um, or a better American past." "And, uh, again, that's why his films are so lasting." "Because that's a universal feeling... the world changing and becoming something that you no longer recognize." "It was time to move on." "So I think Ford was chafing under the, uh, uh- maybe benevolent dictatorship of Zanuck, but it was a dictatorship." "Ford said he had a Napoleon complex." "And he wasn't about to take orders from a studio head after, you know" "Taking orders from "Will Bill" Donovan and Franklin D. Roosevelt was a different thing." "Directors, because of the nature of their profession... some might say the cussedness of their natures too... are among the greatest individualists in the world." "What's going to happen to Wyatt Earp?" "What's going to happen to Gil in Drums Along the Mohawk?" "Where are these people going to be?" "It isn't final, and it isn't set." "Both their losses and their disappointments seem limitless." "But then there's hope in a John Ford film." "You know, it's always difficult to say who gave what to whom." "And obviously, each of these individuals, in their respective capacities" "You know, Zanuck was never a director." "He didn't want to be a director." "And, uh, obviously John Ford was a director." "The gems stood out in bas-relief." "He obviously knew... what Ford was able to give to a picture." "Zanuck knew the business." "None of the others knew anything." "It's true of a lot of great directors." "You don't really even have to know the films." "You have to look at the titles of the films... and you get a sense of the world that this man is interested in." "They're, um... folk songs." "They're ballads." "They're poems." "You just look at the titles:" "Sun Shines Bright and When Willie Comes Marching Home... and My Darling Clementine and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon... and Wee Willie Winkie." "They're visual ballads." "Someone's called me the greatest poet of the western saga." "I'm not a poet, and I don't know what a western saga is." "I have finally come to the conclusion... that Jack Ford was the greatest for many reasons." "He made more outstanding hits than any other director on all subjects." "He painted a picture... in movement, in action, in still shots." "He was an artist." "I would say that is horseshit." "I think that, uh- and this is probably also what John Ford... consciously or not, depicted in his movies, is that in America- and it's still true today... even if the land, uh, uh... has grown up, the population has grown up and it's built up" "uh, this is- that in America, with self-determination, everything can happen." "And this is a feeling, really, which is not a myth." "America is an old dream... and a dream for old people, because it's over." "I've heard that many times." "And the sentence is very tough." "But it's not true." "Uh, the American dream is alive." "It's a little bit of everywhere." "It's still here." "And not only because we would like to think of the past... and what it used to be when it used to grow up... you know, with a lot of almost naive, in a naive way... because America grew up in a naive way also." "Like a natural movement." "Like a creature, you know." "The sun rises." "What's gonna happen?" "What are we gonna do today?" "And whatever Ford's genius was, he allowed that accident." "And I wonder how many accidents happened that he didn't say, "Cut.!"" "'Cause it wasn't quite what he had in mind... but he saw that something was going to happen within this accident." "Accidents, by the way, are not mistakes." "Mistake's, "Cut!" "Reset." "From the top."" "An accident just allows actors to go someplace they haven't gone before." "It's what Peter Fonda was talking about... how often in great films there are happy accidents." "And that there's a distinction to be made between accidents and mistakes." "That's the point." "Nothing matters with him." "'Cause he's able to surpass and transcend everything... with his level of genius, artistry, invention, imagination... the richness of this panorama of America... that his films give you." "And the richness of these faces and memorable people... of Victor McLaglen and Thomas Mitchell... and Charley Grapewin... and Jane Darwell and John Wayne and Hank Worden... and Ward Bond and Francis Ford and Jack Pennick." "You know, this guy Jack Pennick- the face of this crony of his who's in every single film, uh, it seems" "Joe Sawyer, John Qualen- You know faces." "And it's what Jimmy Stewart said, "Pieces of time."" "There is the obligatory "The End."" "But there isn't an end to a John Ford film." "The story continues." "There is a sequel somewhere, not from John Ford... but from the person who's sitting in that theater seat or in front of that television... who has lived with Tom Joad or Gil... or walks off with Wyatt at the end of the film." "We find ourselves getting up from our chair and walking with them." "And the wonder is, where are we going?" "Who are we going to be?" "What will happen to us?" "It's almost as if you want to pinpoint some kind of Rosebud that would explain everything... and no one has found that with John Ford." "Um..." "I mean, I think" " I think again it's maybe everything we're doing now... all this jibber-jabbering about John Ford and talking about his films... and all the books that have been written... and essays and articles in Cahiers du cinéma, you know, nonsense... and it's all- it's all nonsense in the end because... uh, uh, it doesn't ever explain anything." "Irish and genius don't mix well." "I met John Ford briefly one time around 1970, 1971." "That year my father, who's a painter, um... named R. B. Kitaj, was teaching at UCLA... conceived of an epic Hollywood project." "And, of course, there was no one we were more excited to go see than John Ford." "He was in bed." "Uh, I don't know if he was sick at that time." "I think he liked to be in bed." "He liked to just hold court and not get up and just lounge around in his jammies." "And, um, there were all these women fluttering about." "It was like entering a John Ford movie." "Of course, what I got from Ford in one sentence was... everything you've ever read about his nature." "He said to me I think pretty much as soon as we were introduced and I came in." "I don't know if he was expecting a kid." "I was, you know, 11 or 12 or whatever I was." "And he said to me, "Oh, you should have come yesterday." "The Duke was here."" "Can you imagine saying to a 12-year-old boy in the 1960s..." ""If only you'd come a day earlier you could have sat around with John Wayne"?" "He needed to let you know John Wayne is a friend of mine." "My father was sitting by his bedside sketching him with a little sketchbook." "And I was sitting in some comfortable chair, you know, viewing the two of them... and my father was chatting with him." "He was watching the pope on television." "And he was sitting in bed going, "Oh, the pope's looking good today." "Oh, the pope's looking very well. "" "And he had rosary- He was fingering some rosary beads." "My father asked him about The Grapes of Wrath and he said..." ""Is that the one about the Oakies?"" "You know, so" "So Ford, of course, his famous act was to pretend to know nothing... but really you knew he knew everything... uh, and to pretend not to care when probably he did care, really." "This kind of cantankerous, grumpy guy... uh, who wouldn't, uh- wouldn't, uh, engage." "I want to be a tugboat captain." "I asked him to sign something for me." "I don't even remember asking him." "I think he may have offered to sign something for me." "'Cause I didn't bring this." "He gave it to me." "Um, and here's what he wrote on it." ""To Lem." "Keep watching westerns."" "10,000 cattle" "Gone astray" "Left my range and wandered away" "And the sons of guns" "I'm here to say" "Have left me dead broke" "Dead broke today" "My name is John Ford." "I direct westerns." "Don't stop." "Keep cranking."