Director Randal Kleiser Talks About His Work, Recent Stay in Greece [Interview by Alexander Leontaritis for GREEK REPORTER Hollywood]

Greek Reporter met with Randal Kleiser during his short stay in Greece.
We attended the captivating seminar he gave at the Michael Cacoyannis
Foundation. One of the major points of his lecture was the Nina Foch
project, an instructional video he created together with George Lucas.
He has directed Grease, the most successful movie musical ever made,
and also other hits like Blue Lagoon, Summer Lovers, and Honey I
Blew Up the Kids. The last one inspired him to direct Honey I Shrunk
the Audience on 70mm 3D, which has drawn record crowds at Disney Theme
Parks. Apart from being a judge at the Student Awards for the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a chairman of the Academic
Subcommittee for the Directors Guild of America, he has also taught a
graduate production workshop at USC and Master Directing Classes for
European students at film festivals in Deauville and Sarlat, and
Malaga. He also co-invented a digital Cinerama-like process called
Vistarama HD. His knowledge and innovative skills in new technologies
has lead him to work with the Graphics Lab at USCs Institute for
Creative Technologies. Despite his successful course in the Hollywood
film industry, Kleiser decided to work more in the area of independent
filmmaking during the last years. This July, he will direct the
International Digital Cinema Workshop that will take place at
California State University in San Bernardino
(http://digitalcinema.csusb.edu/). He enthusiastically talked to us
about the experience he had in Greece, backstage memorable events from
the period he was shooting Grease, the Nina Foch courses, and also
his relationship with new technology methods.

Tell us about the experience you had from your recent stay in Athens.

I was greeted by one of the most efficient and pleasant staff members
Ive met, Alexandra Georgopoulou from the Michael Cacoyannis
Foundation. She took me to the Foundation headquarters and I was
extremely impressed by the facilities. I stayed at the Divani Palace
Acropolis and had a wonderful dinner with the owners. They put me in an
amazing suite that had an outdoor deck that looked up on the Acropolis.
When photographic artist Dimitris Yeros came to do a shoot, I asked to
be photographed on that beautiful deck.

The Master class was the
longest I had ever done and I prepared for weeks. Being onstage for
five hours was exhilarating. Everyone at the Cacoyannis Institute was
supportive and friendly. It was a great experience.

How was the response from the people who attended the seminar you gave at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation?

I
heard nothing but good reactions. When I give presentations I can
sense if the audience is with me, and these students and professionals
didnt fall asleep once during my five hour seminar.

You had also visited Greece a few year back for doing some filming. What
lead you to the decision to do some of the shooting there? Have you
visited Greece since then?

The movie I shot on the Greek
islands was Summer Lovers in 1981. During the publicity tour for The
Blue Lagoon, one of the journalists told me about Santorini and the
thousands of young people who flock there each summer. I decided to go
there and check it out. I was overwhelmed by the unusual beauty and the
social interaction. That led to me writing the screenplay and then
returning to film the movie. I did return to Santorini in the 90s to
scatter the ashes of my friend, Harry Stein, who the movie Its My
Party was based on.

Although
you started directing mainstream Hollywood movies, like the famous
musical Grease, you decided to go your own way, and to be engaged in
more personal projects. How difficult is it for a director in Hollywood
to take another route and work as an independent filmmaker?

Its much more difficult to go independent, but more satisfying.
Unfortunately, the Hollywood Studios are only making sequels, remakes,
and comic books. They have abandoned midsize performance films with
original stories. Those projects are now either made independently or
are on American TV. Working for the studios is good money, but you end
up being a pawn moving around a cold chessboard.

Grease
is considered to be one of the most successful musicals of all time,
that influenced and still influences a lot of people. Tell us if you
have any memorable events from the days shooting the movie.

When the soundtrack was being decided, I felt the music should all be from
the 1950′s or at least have that sound. Producer Robert Stigwood hired
Barry Gibb to write the title song. When I got the demo of the song, I
didnt like the lyrics. They were dark and tough and definitely had
nothing to do with the picture we were making.

Stigwood was shooting GREASE and SGT PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND at the same
time. Our picture was considered the small unimportant teen musical,
and SGT. PEPPER was the project everyone was convinced was going to be
the critically acclaimed major hit. Barry Gibb was starring in it and I
went to the set to discuss the lyrics. He was about to do a big
production number and I asked to talk to him. We went behind some flats
to talk privately.

[I said,] You see, Barry, you havent seen any of our footage, but were making a very light sunny musical. You
have written, Life is a time of illusion, wrapped up in trouble and
laced in confusion. What are we doing here? These lyrics dont really
work for our movie; theres no trouble, no confusion. Its not like a
film noir. There arent any serious scenes. Its like a happy-go-lucky
thing, so, do you think you could change the lyrics?

He replied, Why dont you shoot a serious scene so the lyrics will work.

When I realized he wasnt kidding I staggered off the set in shock. The
lyrics stayed, the song was a hit, and no one ever noticed they were
completely wrong. My introduction to the music world was very confusing.

Tell us a little bit about the Nina Foch course that is addressed both to filmmakers and actors.

Nina Foch was the best teacher I ever had and I knew her teachings had to be
recorded for future generations. Even as she continued acting in film
and television, her passion for teaching lasted for over forty years.
Her course was immensely popular because she developed her own unique
style drawing from her experiences studying with Lee Strasberg, Stella
Adler and Uta Hagen, as well as, the directors, Vincente Minnelli,
Stanley Kubrick, Cecil B. DeMille and Otto Preminger. She taught a
generation of filmmakers including John McTiernan, Amy Heckerling, Ed
Zwick, Ron Underwood, and many others. Nina went from being my teacher,
to my mentor, to my good friend. She often said her greatest
accomplishment was her teaching. As she put it, her action was To
share the fascination. As I began directing, the tremendous value of
her teachings became evident. I realized how important it was to
preserve them, and I began documenting her classes at regular
intervals. My former classmate, George Lucas, put up the financing to
shoot a whole semester of her teaching and the 2 set DVD the Nina Foch
Course for Filmmakers and Actors is the result.

You
have successfully managed to attach special effects captivating the
audiences attention in films like Honey I Blew Up the Kid. Tell us
about your relationship with the new technology and how it has applied
to your work.

I was hired by Disney Studios to direct
Flight of the Navigator. My brother Jeff had been on the cutting edge
of computer graphics since they were first done in the late seventies.
He kept me updated on what the state of the art technology was. I read
a book called Special Effects and it had a chapter on the future of
Effects. It showed a chrome dog that was created by wrapping the
background visual information onto a wire frame computer rendering of a
toy dog. It appeared to be three-dimensional and mirrored. I had the
idea that this could be done with a moving spaceshipusing a computer
to wrap the background onto a wireframe of the spaceship, which would
create an apparently solid mirrored shape. The experiment worked, and
James Cameron used the technology later in Terminator II. Jeff helped
me with the effects on several other films, including Honey, I Blew Up
the Kid.

You also invented Vistarama HD and developed Silver Metal Lover for Dimension Pictures. Give us some info about that.

Vistarama
HD is a digital filming, warping and projection process that is
suitable to the creation and display of content with an expansive field
of view. The process recreates for the audience the original field of
view of the camera, producing an immersive experience. Similar
techniques include Cinerama and IMAX. Both Cinerama and IMAX require
large and heavy cameras and film. Vistarama HD uses a single standard
digital video camera equipped with a wide angle lens, such as a
fisheye. The image is warped to project onto a large curved screen. The
unwarped image is displayed via three video projectors onto a 10ft
tall, 150 degree screen. In the areas where the three projections
overlap, the pixels are blended together to produce a seamless image.

Silver Metal Lover is a novel I would love to adapt for the screen. It is currently owned by the Weinstein company.

What are the projects you are working on?

Its bad luck to talk about movies that have not been greenlit, but I have a
comedy, a teen thriller, a sci-fi and a period classic all ready to
shoot. Know anyone who wants to invest?

Original photo from seminar taken by Haris Akriviadis