Interview with Director
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER
(John Frankenheimer is the director of Path to War. He spoke with HBO from Los Angeles.)
HBO: You've directed many films that express your views on important social and philosophical topics. Is this another such film?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER:
Well...this is a very special film in the fact that I was very much a part of this whole thing in the '60s. I was very close to Bobby Kennedy... I did a lot of film and television for Bobby Kennedy's campaign, as a volunteer. I was greatly concerned about the Vietnam war. And this film, I think, opens up whole new channels that we never knew existed, I mean all new points of view about what really happened in Vietnam. I mean how...Johnson was really so ambivalent about the war. I never knew that.
HBO: Mm-hmm--
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And I think that the average viewer never knew that. I think that the role of Johnson's advisors in this, for the first time is really fully understood. And, from a dramatic standpoint, it was a chance for me as a director to do a modern-day King Lear. Which is what this is.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: It was an extraordinary project, and it- it's not like a lot of other movies I've done. But it does certainly...the movie does reflect my views, yes. I mean I came out of this very sympathetic to Lyndon Johnson. And I think the movie reflects that.
HBO: Three of your films, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and Seconds, have informally been called your "paranoia trilogy." Would you agree with that statement? And do you see any thematic similarities between those films and Path to War?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, I think paranoia only exists if the circumstances are totally untrue, if they're made up. I mean someone who's afraid of something irrationally. In this particular case I don't think any of those films are really paranoiac.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: In the fact that, certainly, after Manchurian, it was vividly demonstrated that there are lots and lots of plots to assassinate presidents and high-ranking figures for political gain. And with the discovery of, for instance somebody like Hansen who's a mole in the FBI, these characters in The Manchurian Candidate are not impossible.
HBO: No, they're not.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And there's a certain grotesque reality about Manchurian Candidate. And as far as Seven Days in May is concerned we know that there was a very definite group in the military, that would have, at one point liked to have taken over the government and not perhaps by the extent of force that we showed in Seven Days in May. But, the extreme right has been very, very effective in undermining quite a few things that could've changed the destiny of this country. I mean not the least being Bill Clinton's presidency, if you listen to him.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And if you listen to his wife, and there's a certain amount of truth to that. I mean Clinton was certainly an enabler. Clinton certainly helped 'em destroy him. But there's certainly a group that really wanted him out of the way. Any way they could get him out of the way, and of course what happened is he just completely dishonored himself.
HBO: Yes.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: But I think in the Lyndon Johnson presidency...the far right was very influential in our staying in the war. And we dramatized that, and that of other Republicans. As far as Seconds is concerned, Seconds is a movie... about...the fact that you are what you are and if you try and change that it can never work, I mean you can't live without your past. And if you try it just ends in disaster and I don't think that's paranoiac.
HBO: It's one of my favorite films, I must tell you.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Oh, thank you.
HBO: Now your years of work on shows like "See it Now" and "You Are There," did that prepare you for Path to War?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well I think everything I have ever have done prepared me for Path to War, certainly... working with Edward R. Murrow and working on something as you say like "You Are There," really... Well certainly "You Are There" just equipped me right from the beginning to really deal with real characters, real historical characters being portrayed fictionally by actors. And then a film like The Birdman of Alcatraz for instance.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And other HBO films I did like the Attica prison riot, Against the Wall. And a film with Raul Julia about Chico Mendez, The Burning Season, and for that matter Andersonville and George Wallace, the same thing could be said.
HBO: You've been quoted as saying, "The very process of crafting a show is a comment by the director." Can you expand a little bit on that?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Sure, I mean, how you...what you put on the screen. A two-shot rather than a close-up, a sympathetic portrayal of a character, rather than an unsympathetic one. A flattering camera angle, rather than an unflattering one. Editing certain lines out that could change a character from one way to another, or keeping the lines. The director's point of view is the one that, for all practical purposes is on the screen. Just the design of a set, how you want the set to look. How you want a scene photographed. All kinds of things.
HBO: What similarities do you see between the climate of the Cold War era as depicted in The Manchurian Candidate, the Vietnam era, as evoked in Path to War, and our current situation today?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, the Cold War was very much in effect when Vietnam was going on otherwise we would've never been there.
HBO: Mm-hmm. That mentality, led us right into Vietnam--
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Oh, sure.
HBO: Right.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And Johnson constantly being concerned about what Russia and China were gonna do. I think during the Cold War, McCarthy era...there was a tremendous climate of fear in this country. And the government itself was a lot stronger. And people didn't question things nearly as much as they do today. I don't know if McCarthy could've gotten away with all that stuff in today's climate. I don't think he could.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: I think there would've been some brave journalists from the middle and from the left that would attack this, that you couldn't do it, I mean it-it just was almost like tantamount to being fired if you attacked McCarthy. And they were afraid of him, I mean I remember at CBS they were very, very afraid of him. And Murrow's decision to do that program (criticizing McCarthy) on "See it Now," I mean that was in a sense the beginning of the end of the relationship between Murrow and (CBS).
HBO: But also significantly contributed to the downfall of McCarthy.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Absolutely. That one program on "See it Now." (McCarthy accepted an invitation to respond on "See it Now" and his bombastic rhetoric, calling Murrow "the leader and cleverest of the jackal pack," coupled with the later failure of his televised investigation into the Army, left his career in a shambles.)
HBO: And you were you involved with those programs--
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: I was involved with some of them.
HBO: I wonder from your point of view as a filmmaker, do you see that kind of climate returning again to a certain degree?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Oh, yeah, I mean right now, they've got a tremendous control over the press and over the media today. I mean they're not letting 'em in-they're not letting- "they" being the Bush administration--
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: --they're not letting 'em into Afghanistan. They're absolutely supplying what they want to be known. And, I mean, George Bush has this enormous popularity, where attacking George Bush is tantamount to being unpatriotic.
HBO: Mm-hmm. Shadow governments and the Office of Strategic Information, these are all very Cold War-era, uh, Eisenhower-era, concepts.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Yeah, but don't forget they've learned a lot. They really know how to do it now.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: I mean the way they're deploying the infantry for instance is brilliant.
HBO: How do you mean?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well for instance, I mean they have this light, heavily armed, heavily trained infantry that use much more guerilla-like tactics than sending in platoons and companies like they did in Vietnam. I mean the military strategy in Afghanistan is really quite wonderful.
HBO: And very different from any other war we've fought.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, they've learned since Vietnam.
HBO: What makes Path to War different from other Vietnam films?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, I think that number one is you never go to Vietnam, except when Johnson visits Vietnam. This is a war movie shown through the eyes of the people that really fought the war in the back rooms of Washington.
HBO: So we're getting an unprecedented point of view?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Absolutely. I mean this is really what happened.
HBO: Tell us a little bit about your work with consultant, Michael Beschloss, and the research that went into this project.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, Beschloss was a big help to us, but the real scholar on this film was the guy who gets executive producer credit, Howard Dratch.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Who with the writer spent ten years researching this material. We have a bibliography on this script that's four and a half pages long.
HBO: Wow.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And everything has been vetted...and re-vetted. So I think we very rightfully stand behind everything we say in this movie as actually being historically correct.
HBO: You're not embellishing.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: No, nor have we distorted or changed.
HBO: Because it's a rather sympathetic portrait of LBJ, which, I imagine, will be a surprise to a lot of people.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well it might be, but it's the truth. Look, I tried to show the destruction of the man from the height of his popularity to being alone and disgraced. All in the course of four years. And what happened to this country while it was all happening. They're two parallel stories. But basically this is a story-this is a modern-day King Lear. This is the destruction of a bigger-than-life giant.
HBO: You've worked with many great actors over the course of your career, and you had a fantastic cast for Path to War. What led to your choose, for instance, Michael Gambon, an English actor, to play Johnson, who was a Texan?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Well, when I came to this project, Colin Callender (president, HBO Films) told me that Michael Gambon was interested in playing him. And I love Michael Gambon, I mean I just think he's one of the best actors in the English-speaking world.
HBO: Indeed.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And, to me, it was a perfect choice. Not only is he brilliant, but he even looks something like him.
HBO: Absolutely.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: And that's a hell of a hard part to cast.
HBO: You have a distinct signature style as a filmmaker - from desaturating the image to meticulously choreographed camera movement to evocative production design. What were you looking to do in this regard with Path to War?
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Emotionally involve the audience in the picture, without...calling attention to the camera or anything like that. I wanted to make it as real as I possibly could. And there's a lotta depth-of-focus stuff in there, because there's just so much going on in the background.
HBO: Mm-hmm. So, in a sense you weren't looking for the kind of action effects we've seen in other films of yours like Ronin for instance, with these terrific action sequences. It seemed in this film the camera is more of a fly on the wall.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: Yeah, you're not gonna have Lyndon Johnson pursuing Ho Chi Minh in limousines across the Potomac Bridge.
HBO: [LAUGHS] Unfortunately, we're out of time. John Frankenheimer, thank you.
JOHN FRANKENHEIMER:My pleasure.
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DIRECTOR:
John Frankenheimer
WRITER:
Daniel Giat
CONSULTANT:
Michael Beschloss
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