FROM THE VAULT: Richard Donner Interviews (Part 2) (Patreon)

Director Richard Donner had quite a few memorable films – including Superman, Goonies, Scrooged, The Omen, and the Lethal Weapon series, to name just a few.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Donner numerous times over the years – Sometimes on the record, and sometimes just a conversation.With his passing at the age of 91 and a massive career behind him that lasted for decades and produced numerous hits and cultural touchstones, I decided to pull our interviews from the archives in hopes that some may find our conversations of interest. Here are those interviews, the first of which was conducted in 2001, with the second and third in 2003...

You can ready my first interview with Richard Donner HERE

I hope you enjoy this blast from the past (and please consider supporting me being able to present more of these archive pieces, and all-new material, by becoming a Patron)…

For a Halloween feature, I got to chat with Donner about The Omen.

Conducted ~2003

PLUME: The script for The Omen had been circulating for awhile in Hollywood, hadn’t it?

RICHARD DONNER: Years. It had been turned down by every studio in town, including Fox – where it ended up, eventually.

PLUME: What was the main stumbling block? Was it the subject matter, or just that it wasn’t a terribly good script at the time?

DONNER: The subject matter was good. I think what they had done was that they had tried to write it as a horror film. In other words, when I read it, it had devil gods and cloven hooves and covens… Very heavy-handed…

PLUME: So it was like a Hammer horror picture…

DONNER: Yeah… and yet it had this wonderful character-driven piece, of these people. So when I read it, and I brought it to Laddie (Alan Ladd) and he said, “What would you do?” And I said, “We’d eliminate the obvious.” Because I wanted to turn it into a mystery suspense thriller, because I knew – first of all – that we’d never get it made otherwise, and if we did, we’d never get an actor of any importance. So we turned it into what our concept was – there was no reality to it, this was just the worst day in somebody’s life. To the point where it drove him insane, and he could even attempt to kill a child.

PLUME: Up to that point, the closest directing gig you had had that was similar in tone and tenor would have been your work on The Twilight Zone…

DONNER: I did a bunch of them… Yeah, definitely.

PLUME: Certainly Gilligan’s Island wasn’t in the same vein as The Omen…

DONNER: (laughing) Maybe Naked City was. Nah, there was nothing that was anywhere close to that.

PLUME: So how do you approach material like that, as a director, when you really haven’t tackled that kind of subject matter previously, especially on the big screen?

DONNER: Well, that was my first picture of any performance. Every one of them is very special and unique, and you approach it with great fear and trepidation… which I still do! It was scary as hell to get involved with it. It was an important film for me, it was an important film for the studio. I was lucky to get people like Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. But you approach every one of them with its own unique feeling, and this was going to be a very special mystery suspense thriller.

PLUME: How fine a line do you have to walk as a director on a project like that, so it doesn’t fall into schlock?

DONNER: It’s a concept. You have the concept in your head, and you know you don’t want to make it a horror film, and you know you want to make it a mystery and a thriller and you want the suspense in, so you really just approach the subject matter like what your emotional feelings are going to be for the end result. At least for me.

PLUME: Were there any goal posts within the film where you thought, “If I can pull this off, I know that this picture will work….” ?

DONNER: Yeah. The only thing I felt I had to pull off to make it work was the little child – the son of the Devil. But how can you even say that? You can’t believe for a second that his mother was taken by a jackal. So, I mean, everything was just this ridiculous circumstance, but if you believed any of it as a reality, then it had crossed over the line and became a horror film.

PLUME: Was there any point during the filming process when you thought it wasn’t going to work?

DONNER: From day one! Day one till the first screening.

PLUME: If I remember correctly, the first screening of the rough cut didn’t go very well, did it?

DONNER: No, but that was personal. That was just for me and the editor. That drove me nuts. I was so insecure, I wanted to tear everything out of the movie and start all over again, but I couldn’t.

PLUME: What were the problems with that first cut?

DONNER: Nothing, actually. It was too long, so it was just tightening it up – but I was just totally insecure. I looked at the movie and I thought, “That doesn’t work, this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, get rid of the dogs, get rid of the nanny…” Thank god I had a very wonderful editor, named Stuart Baird – it was his first big picture, too – and he said, “Hey, calm down. Let’s look at this again in a couple of days.” And we kept doing it, and gradually we started to see the forest for the trees. But the first real screening we had was in a Warner Bros. theater in SoHo, and we invited our friends and everybody we knew in London at the time. It was with an audience, I was scared stiff – we all were – and they saw the movie… and they were horrified and scared and it just felt right on the spot that, “Wow, we did right.”

PLUME: The closest comparable film to The Omen would probably be The Exorcist…

DONNER: If we had come out before The Exorcist, we would have done much better, but there were so many people that were afraid to go to our picture because of The Exorcist.

PLUME: Why do you think?

DONNER: Because of that horror of something to do with the occult. Everybody was afraid of the occult after that. And we ruined the breeding of rottweilers for years. Nobody wanted one.

PLUME: What would you say is the centerpiece scene in the film for you, that you worked toward pulling together the various elements you sought to achieve?

DONNER: The decapitation of the photographer, David Warner. But I don’t know… Maybe the jumping of the nanny, because that was the first piece that said anything could really be wrong. I don’t know! I haven’t seen that picture in so long now, it’s hard for me. I’m trying to go back over the picture and it’s hard…

PLUME: The two scenes you just mentioned represent two different methods of building horror – the decapitation being a technical one, and the nanny scene being more stylistic…

DONNER: Interestingly enough, that decapitation scene was improvised, because it was originally supposed to be a sheet of glass that falls from the top of a building that’s under construction, and he drops the knives and is bending over and is decapitated. We tried it so many times – we didn’t have any money to do it – and the sheets of glass used to end up leafing, like a leaf coming down, so that didn’t work. At the last minute we had to shoot that scene, and we came up with putting the sheet on the top of a glass truck, and see if that works. So it came out of nowhere. We just had an articulated dummy and six cameras, a bottle of red wine to knock off the table so at 120 frames you were confused whether it was red wine or blood.

PLUME: How much of filmmaking is happy accidents like that?

DONNER: So much it’s extraordinary. But not any more, because so much of it is computer-generated and you don’t have to do it live.

PLUME: How do you think the proliferation of CG affects the tone of a film? I don’t know how this affects you as a filmmaker, but as a viewer, there’s something cold and uninvolving about CG-heavy films like Star Wars and the recent Matrix flick, whereas it’s easier to invest in an effect that’s done practically where you can sense a texture and unpredictability…

DONNER: Well, when you see Timeline, you’re going to say the same thing, because that’s just what we did. We made everything as physically live on the set as we possibly could and only used computer graphics when we needed it to supplement or add something. But there is nothing like touching something that’s real and making it work. I always felt that way, and will continue to.

PLUME: Do you think it’s even more important, when it’s in the context of a horror film that requires an quick buy-in to what’s being presented?

DONNER: I think it’s more frightening than when you computer generate all these horrible images – things that are not touchable, not real… that are beyond reality. And unless it’s done really carefully, than it takes the fear out of it.

PLUME: In the films you’re doing now, do you have to fight to have practical effects?

DONNER: No… only because I’m the master of my own ship. But I think that a lot of other directors that don’t carry the weight are forced into it.

PLUME: Is it seen as an expediency?

DONNER: It’s much faster and cheaper – just generate it and don’t get involved.

PLUME: During the actual filming of The Omen, did you feel it was going to be a success?

DONNER: No.. no… no. Anybody that knows that up front is a genius.

PLUME: For The Omen, did more of that come from you having doubts in the material, or more from you having doubts in your abilities, considering this was your first major film?

DONNER: It could have been my hundredth time, I still would have felt the same – terribly insecure. I guess I’ll always feel insecure. I mean, how do you know the direction you’re going is not so subjective and so personal that an objective audience is not going to appreciate it? You don’t know. You don’t know… Anybody who says they know – they’re far better than I will ever be.

PLUME: Has there ever been a film that you have been confident on?

DONNER: Umm……….. Nope. Now that I think about it, nope.

PLUME: And is there a difference between having confidence in how a film will do at the box office and having confidence in yourself as a director?

DONNER: Yes. You’re right. You’re 100% right. The answer to that is “yes.” We made a movie called Radio Flyer, we made Ladyhawke, and I felt very confident that the film was very personal and a good film, and special in my life. But I never had any idea if it would do any business. In those particular cases, they didn’t. But they became cult.

PLUME: Is that almost like the consolation prize of the film business?

DONNER: Yes, very much so! It’s a pain in the a**! You walk such a thin line, it’s frightening.

PLUME: In terms of how the film turned out, how important was the casting process for The Omen?

DONNER: Extremely so. If we didn’t get somebody of Gregory Peck’s caliber, as an actor… He validated it. One we had Greg, than Lee wanted to work with him – it was terribly important that we got them together. People like David Warner and Patrick Troughton, who played the priest that got impaled… Then the kid was the next big thing, and boy that was a b****. At one point we were going to go with a little girl – you wouldn’t have known the difference at that age. But we found this kid and we died his hair and curled it, and he’s very East-End cockney, so he hardly spoke.

PLUME: It’s become a habit of yours over the years, of dying your actor’s hair…

DONNER: (laughing) Who’d I do that to?

PLUME: You also did that to Chris Reeve for Superman…

DONNER: You’re right! And Gene Hackman. I remember that.

PLUME: So there’s your “director’s trademark”…

DONNER: Thanks, but no thanks!

PLUME: As far as the Gregory Peck role, you had also approached Charlton Heston and William Holden, right?

DONNER: Yup. Heston and Holden. And for some miraculous reason, Peck read it, his agent liked it – and Greg had just had some terrible emotional thing in his life, and his agent said, “Do it, it’ll be good for ya.” As it was, he made more money on that movie than he ever made on any other movie.

PLUME: He had some participation in The Omen, right?

DONNER: Yeah. They gave him big points.

PLUME: As a director, when you do such a big genre pic as your first major feature, was there a fear that it would have pigeonholed you?

DONNER: Well, there’s always that possibility, but when I was doing television I did the same thing. I did comedies… I did everything from Gilligan’s Island to Naked City to Route 66… You name it. I did every TV show, so I got out of that niche by not allowing myself to be put in that niche.

PLUME: Was it harder to avoid being placed in a niche as a film director than it was as a TV director, because it’s that much more high profile? I mean, once you have a success in a certain genre, the industry tends to want to push you back into that genre…

DONNER: Yeah, but that’s your choice. After I did The Omen, I got scripts like that, and I just didn’t want to do another one. So, I mean, it’s your choice. You can either be put in that position of staying in a category or saying you want to break out. I won’t do it.

PLUME: At that point, did they try and push you into doing a sequel?

DONNER: I was going to do the sequel. As a matter of fact, I wrote part of the sequel. The whole sequence under the ice – that was mine. That’s been a fear of mine my whole life. I was going to do it, and then I got the call to do Superman, so I had to turn down the second one, obviously.

PLUME: I assume you still consider it a much better career move…

DONNER: Oh yeah. Totally. But the idea that I could have an icon like Superman and do that movie, I was riding high.

PLUME: Does it surprise you that The Omen continues to have the same kind of power over the years?

DONNER: Does it surprise me now? It would have then, obviously, but now… no. I think it was a very well done film that… I didn’t realize it would stand up as well as it has over the years, but it has stood up pretty strong, and continues to. So that surprises me. Everything about this business surprises me!

PLUME: And it’s a genre that you really haven’t revisited since then, except for in TV…

DONNER: You know, I would if I found something. I’ve always been looking for something. A couple of years ago I read a script that was really good – and it’s been made without me – called A Godsend. It’s coming out soon, and I don’t know what they did with it, but I hope they did good. But that could be every bit as frightening because it was very personal and it was driven by characters. So if they did that one right, they’ve got a big hit.

PLUME: It’s interesting how many of these iconic horror films have their basis in religion…

DONNER: Well, that’s what we live today. Religion seems to put the fear of “God” in everybody. Fear is what has motivated a lot of it over the centuries, so it makes a great subject matter for a film, or a book, or anything. It’s like treading on thin ice.

And the final time I interviewed Richard Donner was for the release of his adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Timeline, in 2003…

Conducted ~2003

KEN PLUME: What are the difficulties in the adaptation process – a process you’ve had to do previously in a much looser form with a much broader range of material, with Superman? With Timeline, this is the first time since then that you’ve gone into full adaptation mode…

RICHARD DONNER: It was not easy. Crichton writes a book that is really conditioned for motion pictures. He’s brilliant when it comes to that. His visuals are extraordinary, and his writing – although what we had to face, I don’t know how many hundreds of pages… to distill it down into under 2 hours… and there were a lot of things we had to change to make it work. His whole theory of time travel was extraordinarily interesting, and therefore the usage of it, in a commercial vein – which is what the book was predicated on – was fascinating, but when you try to say that in 50 words or less, you’re in a lot of trouble. So we took the liberty of changing it from somebody who’s gone out to invent time travel, and we made it inadvertent – much like in The Omen they were victims of circumstance rather than the reality of it, that demonic beings couldn’t be. So in this we changed it to that they were in the process of trying to develop a dimensional fax machine – much like a few years back you never thought that you could go to your telephone and a piece of paper would come through it. What we designed was that they were trying to build a machine that could fax a 3-D object, and in so doing, they inadvertently opened a wormhole, and they found that you could traverse it. And that wormhole – for some indescribable, unsolvable reason – went to 1357 France. So they sponsored the dig because they wanted to find out a reason from the academics why the wormhole only goes there. I felt, in doing this, it was much easier to explain it in short paragraphs than to explain it as time machines. You had to make departures. We had to join some characters together as one. We made the boy in the piece the professor’s son rather than a student, because we felt the ties that bind in relationships of family are stronger. But it’s very difficult – you take a book that’s a bestseller and mess with it, and you’re messing with an audience that’s coming to see what they’ve already seen. Hopefully – so far from our previews – we’ve been accepted, but we’ll see.

PLUME: When you’re adapting it, are there certain points where you go, “No, we’ve gone too far in changing the book…” ?

DONNER: Yes. Yes. A lot of times you go, “Well hold on, guys, hold on. Let’s settle in here and go back. These are good ideas, but it’s too much of a departure.”

PLUME: Anything that sticks out in your mind that was mooted but rejected?

DONNER: No, no… It’s so many years ago. It’s like three years ago, or something.

PLUME: What has been the difficulty in the development and shooting process of this film? Because when I spoke to you in 2001, you were about to shoot…

DONNER: The problems we ran into with this film are extraordinary. First it was a b**** developing the screenplay, which we finally did. Then we picked the location – we couldn’t shoot in France because everything around the Dordogne Valley and around that area was all built up – so you couldn’t get a Medieval look without spending a fortune to take everything out with computers. We looked for locations all over Europe, and we found the best one at that time in Wales. So we decided it was going to be Wales, and we art directed it for Wales, we started to design sets, we booked studios nearby… and in what could only happen to us, Hoof & Mouth disease hit England, and we were asked to leave because they wouldn’t allow anybody to travel with vehicles or trucks in and out of areas. We were literally shut down – a few million dollars gone down the drain. And then we looked all over Europe and we found – I don’t know if this is the exact history, but these are the things – and we were going to shoot in the national forests that were outside Berlin, which were quite beautiful and relatively untouched. Then 9/11 happened, and we didn’t want to be in Berlin with a high profile American film. Then we came back and had the threat of the strike, which closed us down for 6 months, and then when we got the go again we tried to do it in America, but it was much too expensive and wouldn’t hold up on the budget. Then we scouted in Canada, starting on the west coast and working ourselves east. The only place we could get away from mountains – because it’s such a mountainous country – was by the time we got to Montreal, and we stayed away from the Laurentians and found farmyards. So it was an incredible process to get this film made. We went through unbelievable problems.

PLUME: Was there any point where it could have been permanently derailed?

DONNER: At every point. We had spent so much money, and you just wanted to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe it’s just better to recoup our losses and close up.” We lost all that money in Germany, we lost all that money in England, we had to close down because of the strike, we had to pay people off – maybe it was just better to wrap it because we’re never going to see that money on the screen. But we persevered… Let’s put it that way.

PLUME: What was it about the project that drove you to persevere?

DONNER: We were committed… We were committed. We’re were gonna do it. We loved it, we had a couple years of our lives in it, and we knew we had a good project. You couldn’t turn away from it.

PLUME: Had casting always been locked in during those permutations?

DONNER: No no no no… The final casting was done after we got back., and

PLUME: How difficult was it to cast the film?

DONNER: A little difficult, in that it was such an ensemble that you really wanted one to compliment the other. Paul Walker was just kind of… They made him for the role. Because he was a really good looking kid, nice kid, not all that interested in what he’s doing- but when his father gets in trouble, his life means everything. And Billy Connolly, of course – after I had seen him in Mrs. Brown, I just thought, “Wow. I don’t know if we can get him…” But we met, talked, and we had him. And then everybody else fell in. Gerry Butler is going to be very important – he’s wonderful. Frances O’Connor, David Thewlis, Anna Friel – everybody just worked. And they worked together well – and that’s what it had to be. It had to be an ensemble, and they were all pulling together. Every picture takes a lot of casting, but when you have an ensemble piece like this with this many people, it’s pretty bitchy getting it. It’s tough.

PLUME: You have two distinctly different time periods in the film – how did you set out to differentiate the two periods, either visually or stylistically?

DONNER: That’s a good questions. I had Caleb Deschanel – who is, as you know, one of the great cameramen. We decided that the contemporary period should have no distinction. It should just be. It’s today, it’d day, it’s night – it’s inside, it’s outside… there’s no real strong delineation, except that it’s almost documented. But then when you went back in time, we wanted to make it beautiful, but we wanted to make it very gritty. There’s very few cameramen who could have found that little trade, but he did it, and he did it just wonderfully. It’s just – you look at it and it’s a visually fascinating place to be, but it just feels almost a little dirty. Just… gritty. Gritty’s the word, I guess.

PLUME: Is there a similar period piece that you could compare it to? Does it feel more like Excalibur or Monty Python & The Holy Grail, or does it feel like The Adventures of Robin Hood?

DONNER: No, none of them, because they had a touch of fantasy to them. Don’t forget – we were going back into the 100 Year War. These academics have always looked at this as a very beautiful period where gentlemen were gentlemen and the wars were relatively righteous and the people were good and jovial and happy – and what they find in return is that it’s a terrible, terrible time. It’s shortly after the plague, it’s the 100 Year War, it’s brutality in its worst form – so their disillusionment had to be complemented by what they saw and how they see it. So as I say – we put the gritty edge.

PLUME: Providing a disillusionment for the audience as well as the characters…

DONNER: Yes, very much so.

PLUME: How authentic did you try to go in recreating the time period?

DONNER: Very… very. I mean, we did massive, massive research. I surrounded myself with the best people I could, and one of the best swordmasters, one of the best weaponry guys. The costumer was just great, and was from England and had just done the medieval period. In everything we tried very hard – within the realm of reason – to have our own sense of reality and make it work.

PLUME: Besides Maverick and Lady Hawke, this is the only other period piece you’ve ever done, right?

DONNER: Right.

PLUME: When doing a period piece, is there a challenge in trying to find a visual base to hang your design work on, in order to have an audience relate to it?

DONNER: There’s a book about the medieval period, and it’s called Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman, and it was 90% of our research – except for weaponry and things like that. That came to our weaponmasters, who designed catapults that actually worked, and fired these fireballs, like 300 yards. It was extraordinary what they did.

PLUME: Would you say that once the actual production got going and you were on the ground filming, things went smoothly from that point? Or were there any other issues?

DONNER: Well, the issues were that it was an hour outside Montreal and we shot in both winter and summer, and it was freezing and raining. The entire battle sequence was night, and that took us a couple of months, and it was a b***. It was really totally uncomfortable. And then as spring and summer came to us – we had obviously planned all this – it got so mosquito-y and buggy and muggy… it was a b***. But what shoot isn’t? Maybe doing it in Paris, but I don’t get that lucky.

PLUME: Is my understanding correct that there were some reshoots done for the film?

DONNER: Not really reshoots – there were add-ons.

PLUME: What was the impetus for doing the add-ons? Were there certain plot holes or threads you wanted to address?

DONNER: The thing is – I always try to save a hunk of money so I don’t ever have to go to the studio if I want to do pick-ups or changes. We saved a hunk of money, and then when we cut the picture together, I looked and I said, “You know what? I think maybe I knew this too well, and maybe the audience needs more explanation here – because if they don’t understand this particular thing, they’re not going to understand that.” So we would sit down and write these and take out time, and then go, “Wait a minute. I don’t need it.” Because we did find something else. Finally we got to a point where I said, “We got enough for a 5 day shot, so let’s go shoot.” And I didn’t have to ask anybody because I had already had the money in the budget.

PLUME: What are your feelings on the negative buzz that has built up around this project, with people saying, “There were reshoots – there must be problems…” ?

DONNER: I never reshot anything

PLUME: Do you think it’s become harder for a filmmaker, in this age of the internet, to do the kind of postproduction and testing that your average film requires without being bombarded by this sort of critical assessment?

DONNER: I hear about that, but I can’t worry about it. You’ve gotta go by the way you make films, and you have your process. Maybe you have to make some modifications, but we’ve had screenings – we’ve had good screenings. I haven’t heard anything bad – as a matter of fact, all I’ve heard has been good.

PLUME: Has your filmmaking process changed over the years?

DONNER: It’s very much the same. The only thing that has really changed is the advent of the computer. As I said, if you can do it real – so it’s tangible and can be touched and it’s visceral – do it. If you can’t – if it’s impossible – then go to the computer. But my feeling is try and do it the old way, Try and do it real. Let the actors live in a habitat that has a sense of reality to them. I still try and do that.

PLUME: As a director, it seemed like you were averaging a film almost every year during the 80’s and early 90’s…

DONNER: Right…

PLUME: What slowed down that momentum? Was it a conscious decision you made to do less projects?

DONNER: No… I’m in less of a rush to do them. But this thing took me forever. There was so much time wrapped up in this that it was extraordinary. Plus, I has taken a year to build my house. I wanted to be there – which I never should have been, because it cost me a fortune. I’ve learned my lesson. But I wanted to be there, and I did it. Right now, this is coming out, and I’m going to have a Christmas and New Year’s vacation, and then when I come back I’m going to start on another picture.

PLUME: Which picture would that be?

DONNER: Well, I’m not sure. It’s one of two, but I think it’s going to be an original Brian Helgeland script, which I love desperately.

PLUME: What is the current status of Goonies 2?

DONNER: Waiting for Warners to say yes. They’re being ridiculous.

PLUME: Still something you want to do?

DONNER: If I don’t direct it, I’ll produce it. I do want to make it, though. I definitely want to make it.

PLUME: What are all these rumors that have been circulating over the past few years regarding you and a Captain Marvel project?

DONNER: For me? First I heard of it. I did Superman – I don’t want to do any more of those.

PLUME: People have also been clamoring for you to make a “director’s cut” of Superman II, or wondering why Warners hasn’t offered you a new Superman film…

DONNER: People would have to ask Warners…

PLUME: Is it even a franchise that you would want to revisit?

DONNER: It all depends on the material. If they make it with the same respect it should be made, I’d be interested. If they make it with little respect but strictly “How do we catch up to everybody else that’s making these?” – I don’t want to be involved.

PLUME: Is it even possible, at this point, for you to do a director’s cut of Superman II?

DONNER: I don’t think so, anymore. I don’t think the material even exists.

PLUME: If the material that you shot still exists, would it be possible?

DONNER: Oh sure. Yeah, if it was around I could put that material back together. I would love to. We had terrible times finding that stuff. I don’t know what the Salkinds did with it. That’s negative, man, and it’s got to be treated right or it doesn’t exist. And I don’t know where they have all the outtake negative.

PLUME: Well, it wouldn’t be the first time they did something they shouldn’t…

DONNER: Oh, you are so right…

PLUME: Speaking of things I’d love to see, are there any plans to do a special edition DVD of Scrooged?

DONNER: God, I don’t know… I never even thought of that. What a great idea!

PLUME: When I spoke to you last, you mentioned there was all kinds of behind-the-scenes and deleted footage that exists for that…

DONNER: Yeah… Damn! I’m going to do something about that. There’s a lot of footage that didn’t make the movie.

PLUME: The only other special edition I’d still like to see is Maverick, which Warner released only as a bare-bones edition…

DONNER: See, they’re not too smart. It’s too bad. There’s another one – I’ve got a lot of footage on that one. A lot of footage.

PLUME: So can I cross my fingers and hope for the best?

DONNER: You know what? I’m gonna ask.

PLUME: Are there any projects at this time that you can point to and say, “I desperately want to get this off the ground…” ?

DONNER: The one I’m going to do with Brian Helgeland.

PLUME: Is this one that’s been in play for awhile?

DONNER: A long time. The story was, and then Brian wrote it. I had the story, and I waited and I waited. Brian is the only guy who really found a handle on it, he wrote it on his own, and he did just a wondrous job.

PLUME: Do you think that you’ll ever lose your desire to direct?

DONNER: If I do, we won’t be having these conversations.

PLUME: You’ll always have producing…

DONNER: Ehhh… If I ever lose my love for directing, then I don’t know what I’m going to do. Go fishin’?

PLUME: Is there a difference in the emotional investment between producing and directing?

DONNER: It is for me, because one is totally hands-on. The other is extraordinarily great support. And I gotta be hands-on.

PLUME: Do you find that easier now than it was in the past, or do the same hurdles still exist?

DONNER: It’s a lot easier. They don’t bother you making the films. Just make up your mind which material you want to devote that year and the beginning of the next to.

PLUME: So you’ll be helming the next X-Men film, right? I hear you have an in with one of the producers…

DONNER: Yeah, tell me about it!

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