Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/994862
40 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: (TOP) DAVID BLOOMER/SHOWTIME; (BOTTOM) FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY IMAGES to capture people's imaginations. This was a little movie, and there was no money for any special effects. So for example, the famous shot when E.T. boards the spaceship at the end, and the door closes? Q: The one that looks like an aperture closing, with five moving parts? A: That shot was achieved by members of the crew standing on various parts of scaffolding behind the wall set of the spaceship, holding something like a broomstick, each with one section of the door attached to the end. Then they'd have to count down, simultaneously, so it looks like it's automatic. This is the level of budget that [movie] had. As is often the case, when you have financial limitations, that's when the real spark of creativity gets lit. You're forced to think differently. Q: Your career is extensive enough to have witnessed the major shift in how we perceive television, and its emergence as a prestigious medium. How did you experience it from your perspective? A: When I started, I loved all the great films of the '70s, the independent filmmakers. That's what I wanted to be. And my first job after being an assistant director was a feature film, the only feature I've ever done, which was [the 1985 Stephen King adaptation] Silver Bullet. That came about because I'd made a short that won a bunch of film festivals. There's a lot about it I feel proud of, but at the time, I was pretty much mortified at the critical reception it received. But I didn't want to do another feature like that, and television, in the mid-'80s, was kind of a fallback. "Okay, let's get a job." So it's funny to me—I was hired on Miami Vice in 1986 because they fancied themselves only working with feature directors. But what I know about directing now, compared to what I knew then, is shocking. I really cut my teeth on Beverly Hills 90210. I directed 20 episodes in the first three years, but I battled that kind of dismissal of myself as a director while I was doing episodic. I started to feel a turn when I did Northern Exposure, which I think could stack up against any show then or now. What really changed, and it's not a new thought, was The Sopranos. It introduced a new animal, the serialized show with no obligation to have a beginning, middle and end on any particular story, that could really just deal with nuances of character. That was the beginning of it. Then somewhere in the early 2000s, you felt for the first time, a crossover of talent going from features to TV. Q: Did that first Sopranos episode you directed, "46 Long," the second episode of the first season, have that aura of something less constricted? A: Absolutely. I looked at David Chase's first episode, and thought, " Wow, I love the adventurousness of it." So I was a kid in the candy store with that episode of The Sopranos. I'd never felt freer to just find fascinating camera angles and extreme lenses. I loved not having to have tons of coverage, not having to go to close-ups. I remember playing with the opening sequence when Tony is trying to deal with the theft of this car, and his mother calling with the mushrooms burning, and the women are dancing behind Tony. It was fun to think of that wide-angle close-up, so we see these naked women dancing behind his head as he's talking on the phone with his mother. It really appealed to me. I have a literature background as an undergraduate, so making something dense with levels and layers was so much fun. Q: David Chase had a rule that the camera couldn't move in the therapy scenes between Tony and Dr. Melfi. How did you work around that? "I advise people shadowing me: 'Do your own shot lists. You might have a better solution, or it might show you a solution.' But you don't really learn until you practice yourself having to make choices."