Here, he dishes some of the war stories.
I have to start withShakespeare in Love.
When you directed another movie, Universal letHarvey Weinsteinhave the property, and he summarily cut you out.
(L-R) Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou in ‘Blood Diamond’Warner Bros./courtesy Everett Collection
Later, he cries in apology to you.
And then what happens?
And what I do say in the book is that I was faced with an interesting moral choice.
I made the wrong choice.
DEADLINE:You wanted to shove him off the stage and into the orchestra pit.
Would it have been worth it?
ZWICK: So maybe I made the right choice.
We pay such importance to those moments, in the moment, but these fade so quickly.
And Ive been able to really recall a lot of the pleasures along with the indignities.
The amazing thing is I was treated to the monstrosity that is Harvey, early on.
Obviously hes gotten his due in trials and in prison as well, where he ought to be.
So yes, thats one of the insignificant ones among his bill of particulars, I think.
How satisfying was that?
And thats what was available and thats what I found, and thats why I wrote the book.
Look at any list of a directors career over time, and its full of these peaks and valleys.
Paul Mazursky and Sydney Pollack and John Frankenheimer and these amazing guys who were generous.
And so I was a little bit prepared for what awaited me.
Thats how you treat a bully.
You punch him in the nose right away or else you pay the price.
Ive lost track of all of those kind of things.
Its just not my lane.
DEADLINE:Enough of your Shakespearean torture.
You have injected so many sharp observations in this book.
I want to reflect on one, after you madeBlood Diamondwith Leo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou.
And he told you it cost $100 million to make $40 million in profit.
I didnt understand the math, but I got a 32 on my Trigonometry Regents.
ZWICK: Well, let me help.
Maybe I could have explained it better.
What Alan said to me, in depth was every slot has a potential value of X.
Therefore, the potential of that slot is to make several hundred million dollars with a big blockbuster.
If they then only make 40, it doesnt move the needle of the stock price.
DEADLINE:Explain how that math relates to today.
Theyre not being made in the same numbers.
Theyre being made occasionally, but they seem to exist as tithes.
Those movies are not being made either.
There are wonderful movies being made about interesting complex themes.
But theres another reason for that.
Youve made a bunch of movies that told compelling stories but also spotlighted injustice.
What impact do these movies actually have on changing abhorrent things in the world?
ZWICK: You never can know.
We do what we can with what we have.
I can point to certain examples.
It certainly has not brought down the De Beers Corporation.
So Im afraid that that resource curse that Im describing still exists.
And they are often corrupt.
Glory, and several other of your films put forth admirable heroic characters, without superpowers.
How do you feel about this?
They just tend to be more complex.
ZWICK: Thats a really good question because as a young director, your temptation is to overdetermine things.
Control is something that somehow seems very important in that authority role.
And then you encounter something that is so magnificent, so beyond your ability or understanding.
And so that was an amazing moment in my life.
How did you help get that to happen?
Do you motivate him?
Do you leave him alone?
Do you shoot it over and over again?
And where are you after an onscreen scene like that?
He is never somebody you say, oh God, how am I going to get this performance?
But that particular moment was so full of feeling.
We were just miles away from the caves where they had kept slaves in chains in Savannah Harbor.
There were ghosts everywhere, and all of us were feeling it.
So it didnt take a genius to know that this was going to be a special moment on film.
Did I do the things that a director does?
But hes incapable of a fake experience.
All of those things come together.
And what does he do?
He gives over completely to the moment.
And what happens, happens.
And then you look at the dailies, and what are you left feeling at that moment?
ZWICK: There are certain moments like that, and Ive had a few of them.
DEADLINE:What other times have you felt that?
First you learn that behind your back, he tried to get Bo Goldman to rewrite your script.
You find out when Goldman calls to tell you, and he gracefully turns it down.
What the hell happened there, and what did you learn?
ZWICK: I make a run at write fairly about Matthew at that moment.
He had gone through a very difficult time with a car accident not long before.
Im sure that they were saying to Matthew, what are you doing with this guy?
I was not much older than him, and what had I done?
Id done a movie about kids in Chicago and sex inAbout Last Night.
Id done a talky television show about whiny 30 year olds.
You should be working with Sydney Pollack or whoever is hot at the moment.
He didnt do anything that was malfeasant.
And thats often the way of movie stars.
They let other people do their dirty work for them.
DEADLINE:His agent, Mike Ovitz, was a fearsome figure back then.
And when he tells you, Matthew saw the film, and he wants to do his own cut.
What are you feeling inside when you say no, and what it might cost you in your career?
ZWICK: When youre that deep into a movie?
The stakes feel so personal.
I had shown that movie to people by then, and Id seen how it played.
Maybe thats a strategic calculation.
It was just a days business for him, protecting a client.
For me, it was my entire life.
So it was no choice.
DEADLINE:If youre going to fail, let it be on your terms?
It may be shit, but its my shit.
Meaning, this ugly cycle the film put us through was not over.
The ending we saw was more hopeful.
Why did you guys decide to go that way?
And I was able to sit there and sit in the screenings and give Steve my ideas.
DEADLINE:I think it was the right creative choice Soderbergh made.
Who really is Ed Zwick and can one be a nice guy and a great filmmaker?
ZWICK: Id like to think that the majority of the time, I am in fact nice.
At a certain point, you just do what needs to be done.
He shrugged and said, huh, and walked away.
And your partner says to you, no negativity.
ZWICK: That they dont care about your anxieties.
They dont want to know about those things.
They want an authority figure to represent them and to be leading that charge.
ZWICK: Ive actually thought about this question, and I got nothing.
Im not even sure it has to do with superpower or religion or upbringing.
I actually think it has to do with joy.
ZWICK: Theyre all actually very different to some degree.
The one quality that I could point to, how profane can I be here, Mike?
Theres a quality of saying, you know what?
Im not going to want to just, and Im going to just own this moment, and myself.
Not every great actor is that way, but the ones that youre describing have that.
Its about having a stomach brain.
But what they have is an intuition and a feeling that cant be taught and cant be learned.
That drives them, and then that prepares them.
Theres just these things that are available.
What is that charisma?
Theres some force field.
Then you want to be warmed by that.
How do you describe that?
DEADLINE:Thats true, and the camera doesnt love everybody.
There are many men who are handsome and women who are gorgeous, but they are flat onscreen.
Others are not perfect, but they just pop.
How do you explain that?
ZWICK: Thats the eternal question youre asking.
You cant choose to make it visible.
It either is visible or it isnt.
But when we see it, we just lean in because were just so taken by it.
Look at his eyes, look at what he just did, you have to use that.
It turns them both into kids on Christmas morning.
And thats why I love film so much.
It wasnt something that an actor prepared.
He goes, what is that?
DEADLINE:Im a movie guy, but I gotta ask something about your TV exploits.
That medium, its always easier to hit the zeitgeist.
How does that show play back for you?
I remember my parents looking at us thinking, yeah, well, so what?
Youre going through this.
Only, we made a television show about it.
DEADLINE:The creators ofFriendsapologized for not having meaningful recurring Black characters.
It wasnt the priority it is today.
How do you feel about that when you look back?
And did that make it all white?
That was the truth.
But I do want to say literally while I was making 30 something, I was also making Glory.
So it wasnt a racial decision.
I think it was just holding up a mirror to a culture as it existed at the time.
What did you take away from that?
How does that movie play back for you?
Thats where I was having made Blood Diamond.
I did want to talk about a different kind of heroism.
These were not obvious heroes.
And the other is more measured, wanting to think about saving people and saving their culture.
Same was true of The Siege.
We made the movie before the 9/11 attack, and yet it became a different movie after that happened.
Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in Defiance
Paramount Vantage/Courtesy Everett Collection
DEADLINE:Two more for you.
You mention some pictures that you always wanted to make.
Is there a holy grail project that you must make before hang it up?
Meaning you struck out, popped out, grounded out, or fly out seven out of 10 times.
And thats what you deal with, these things that you love.
You lose sometimes and you just have to keep driving on.
Yeah, there are a couple things that Im working on.
DEADLINE:Last one: you met Marshall Herskovitz when you guys were rubbing nickels together to eat.
Why have you endured so long that we could call you an old married couple?
Its getting close to 50 years and its meant everything.
We have been best friends as much as we have been collaborators from a very early moment.
There are things that he has meant to me as a friend that I cant even describe.
Its not been having a partner or a collaborator.
Its been like having a brother.
I think weve got em by a year or two.
So lets just see who lasts.
