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32 dga quarterly from that, they've just got to do it, like any other scene: You've got to make it as real as you can, and it's got to lead us somewhere in the story. Q: Speaking of violence, your most recent movie, Parker (2013), is as close to a straight action picture as you've ever made. A: I love action movies, though I never really thought about making one before this. The thing about Parker is he's a great literary character by a great writer, Don- ald Westlake. I've done plenty of action and fight scenes in my other pictures: the karate fight in An Officer and a Gentleman, the fight with Jeff Bridges and the assassins in Against All Odds, the sequence in which John Good- man is beaten to death in Everybody's All-American. I always want my fight sequences to be real, to be brutal. Vio- lence isn't fun—it hurts, and I want you to feel it. Q: We've been talking about your de- sire for realism, but you've also made films in less realistic modes, like The Devil's Advocate and Dolores Clai- borne (1995). How do you approach those? A: Although the acting is realistic, Dolores Claiborne is certainly more stylized. In fact, my production de- signer, Bruno Rubeo, and I looked at a lot of Magritte's surrealist paintings, and even incorporated some of his im- agery in the film, like when Jennifer Jason Leigh looks in the bathroom mir- ror and what she sees is the back of her head. I was trying to create a unique look in that film, where the narrative alternates between the present and the past. I had different looks for each, and they had to reflect the psychological nature of Dolores. In the present tense, we shot on Kodak, which naturally has a strong, contrasty, bluish feel to it—it's a little cold compared to Fuji. There was a film I loved that Sven Nykvist had shot for Ingmar Bergman, The Pas- sion of Anna, in which almost all the color had been stripped out, and I told my cinematographer, Gabriel Beri- stain, that I wanted that look in Dolo- res Claiborne. So we used Kodak for all the contemporary sequences, then desaturated it like crazy, and flashed it. But for the flashback scenes, when Dolores is 25 and hopeful, we used Fuji, which has a pastel look—it creates a kind of natural feeling of bliss. I did that all throughout the film. Q: What about that fantastic sequence at the end of Devil's Advocate in which the frieze seems to come to life? How was that done? A: Bruno had had this idea about an animated bas- relief, and I hired a very smart guy named Richard Greenberg as a visual consultant to help me figure out how to do it. He took me to the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, where every year they re-create old master paintings with real people on stage, and he also showed me a book by a photographer who took pictures of ballet dancers un- derwater—he had some film footage, too. So Richard and I would get dancers and shoot them underwater, then freeze their three-dimensional form in this bas-relief, and then we'd animate them digitally when they're supposed to be coming to life. It's a great effect, I think. Q: It is. And you did a good job shoot- ing dancers on dry land, too, in White Nights (1985). A: I love dance. In White Nights, I PHOTOS: (TOP) WARNER BROS.; (BOTTOM) DGA ARCHIVES BUILDING CHARACTER: (above) Hackford on the mean streets of New York with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advo- cate; (below) in his office as DGA president; (opposite) Hackford directing Jamie Foxx in the title role in Ray.