Q 6

PLAYBOY: You worked for director Sam Peckinpah on four films, including directing the second unit on Convoy. Recently you said you based Affliction's Pop Whitehouse on him. What was it about Peckinpah that you found so fascinating?

James Coburn: The alcoholic side. Only once in a while did you see Sam drunk, but he drank all the time. In the morning he would have a tall glass of grenadine, with just a bit of vodka in it. As the day went on, the red would get lighter and lighter and lighter. Pretty soon it would be pure vodka or pure gin, or pure whatever he was drinking. By five o'clock that night, it was all over. He'd say, "Yet's chust sit out here and watch the fuckin' sun go down. C'mon, Jim."

Sam was a genius three hours a day, maybe four. He could create an atmosphere, a background, a reality, and you could work in it. You'd be shooting the scene and he'd say, "Say that line again." You'd say the line again. The cameras were rolling all the time, no cut, nothing. "Say the goddamn line again!" You'd say the line again and then you'd be waiting for him to yell, "Say it again!" I don't think in terms of lines; I think in terms of energy going out. But he wanted to hear every word. If it was too perfect, he would say it was wrong. He didn't want it perfect. He wanted it askew. Edgy. Kind of off-balance, like life is. When I finally understood what he was after, it was easy, because I didn't have to do anything [laughs]. Eventually we got these shorthand signals going. He'd make a motion and I'd know what he meant.

Sam's great talent was paying attention. He was really into the fucking scene. He'd have three cameras going--long, wide, medium--all at the same time. He'd sit there, wearing his glasses and his bandanna, watching. He wasn't thinking about whether he would get screwed that night, or even about the drink in his hand. He just watched what was happening, and he recorded it in his head. I loved working with Sam because of his intensity, though his erratic behavior sometimes got in the way.

I'm not sure exactly what he liked about me. We were friends, and I represented a certain individuality that he liked to have in his movies. I did two extraordinary characters for him: Pat Garrett, and Sergeant Steiner in Cross of Iron. I think those films are my best work.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: In The President's Analyst, the conceit is that the phone company wants to rule the world. Is there a corporate entity today that justifies the same suspicions and wariness?

James Coburn: We were right, back then. There was only one phone company [laughs]. I think today it's the corporate brotherhood of filmmakers. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex, but he forgot the entertainment complex. For instance, we don't get news anymore. It's all the same, whether in the paper or on TV. That's not news. It's just "bad things happening around town, around the world." It's about fear-making. Jesus, anybody visiting here from any other country who watches the evening news two nights in a row won't go out of the house.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Is it hopeless?

James Coburn: It's not hopeless, just foolish. It's entertainment news: infotainment. It's bullshit. CNN, PBS and the BBC World Service are the only ones with any kind of objectivity.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: In The President's Analyst you changed FBI to FBR. Did J. Edgar lean on you?

James Coburn: Before shooting, we sent the script to the CIA and the FBI--and the phone company. We invited them to the set to watch us work. A representative from the phone company actually came. We said, "What do you think about that?" and he said, "Well, nothing we can do about it, is there?" We said, "Nope." We never heard from the FBI or the CIA. A couple days before we wrapped principal photography, we got a call on the set. Two guys from FBI Director Hoover's office wanted to meet. They said, "The director doesn't want this film made."

We said, "That's too fucking bad. It's already made. We sent you something three months ago, and it's a little too late to respond. Are you going to pay for this film if we abandon it?"

"No. But you can't use the initials FBI."

"All right. We'll call it the FBR." The CIA never spoke up, but we changed CIA to CRA because we figured the FBI was also talking for them. They went for that, but they weren't happy with it.

We had the premiere in Washington, D.C. and we invited the whole Senate. The director, Ted Flicker, didn't show up, and neither did Bob Evans or Peter Bart, from Paramount. It was just me and the line producer. There we were, standing in line, shaking hands with all these senators, while they said, "Are you kidding?"

Q 10

PLAYBOY: Hollywood has always had an uneasy alliance with violence. Do impressionable kids really have trouble distinguishing between real and movie violence and their consequences? And what does the public refuse to understand about movie violence?

James Coburn: The intelligent ones don't have any problem with it, but the simpleminded ones have a big problem with it--and they're the ones who are dangerous. The simpleminded ones are those you see in prison. Peckinpah always said he was a peaceful man, that he hated violence. He hated it in his life; he was the worst fighter in the world. His films simply demonstrated how violent man is; they're all about people who sacrificed their lives for or are sacrificed by violence. He used that Kurosawa thing of the slow-motion death. I remember when he screened The Wild Bunch for me. He said, "I don't know what it is, but come on and see it." We went out to dinner afterward and I said, "Sam, that slow-motion stuff reminds me a lot of Kurosawa." He said, "Oh, thank you." [Laughs] And he meant it.

Many modern directors who employ violence don't seem to get it somehow. They've got all these big fucking cannons that people carry around, and they blow things up and nobody gets hurt. It's all fake. James Bond can be shot at by 27 guys and not one gets him; but he goes boom! and knocks off three guys. You don't believe that. In Sam's movies, I think you believed the violence happened.

Today's violence is not connected to anything. Anyway, it's not violence, it's just action. Lee Marvin said this many years ago: "This isn't violence, this is an action film. What are you trying to do? You're running me out of business here." But action becomes violence when it becomes ridiculous.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: Tell us about your first fight and your last.

James Coburn: I've never really had a physical fight. I've never had to fight my way out of anything. The closest I got to it was when Bruce Lee and I used to train--or he trained me. We were friends. I wasn't very good, but he'd bring things out in me; he showed me what I could do. He taught me scientific street fighting. I can still do that. When someone has a knife or a gun or can punch, the idea is to do more damage to the attacker, in a short time, than he can do to you. It depends on the situation; you learn to size it up and see if you can take care of it or not. Blake Edwards told me a funny story. He'd been working with a karate guy around town for a while; he fancied himself a bit of a karate guy. He was driving home in his new Jaguar and he cut a guy off. The guy honked his horn and Blake yelled, "Fuck you. What are you honking about?" The guy pulled around in front of him, forced him over and got out of the car. Blake thought, Well, I guess I'm going to practice. He starts to open the door and forgets that he has his seat belt on, and the guy reaches in and--pow!--whacks him.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: How did you persuade Bruce Lee to make martial arts movies instead of taking the David Carradine role in Kung Fu?

James Coburn: He had a reputation of being a renegade. Before Bruce Lee, there was no full-contact sport. You couldn't really hit anybody. He said it was nothing if you couldn't strike--not kill, but strike. He was in Hong Kong visiting his mother when he was invited to go on a television show. He would do this occasionally, watch people break bricks and ice and wood. Then the hosts would say, "Mr. Lee, would you like to give us a demonstration?" He'd say [quietly], "I don't do demonstrations," then get up and walk out. Once, I went with him to a show. There was a big audience. After the demonstrations someone said, "Well, Mr. Lee, what do you think about this?" He said, "I think this man here knows how to break bricks with his head, and that one there knows how to break ice with his hands. But what does that prove? The fellow over there knows how to do a dance, and this fellow here knows how to do tai chi." Then they asked him to demonstrate. He said, "What is it you're after here? You want a demonstration of what?" They said, "What do you do?" He said, "I practice scientific street fighting." They said, "Can you give us an example of that?" He said, "No," and the audience booed him. He said, "OK." He instructed them to tape three square pieces of pine together.

Then he held the wood out to his side, dropped it, and side-kicked it so hard that the pieces flew up into the flies and broke three lights. Sparks came tumbling down. Can you imagine? He said he had no idea what would happen. From that moment on, Bruce Lee was King Karate. Everything he said was written down. The movie producer Run Run Shaw wanted him to do something. So did Raymond Chow. He was also offered Kung Fu. But Bruce wasn't a great actor, and David Carradine, then, wasn't a real martial artist. I said, "Man, you do that television show and you'll last two weeks, maybe a year, because you'll burn out that great image you have, that great technique. If you do films, you'll do a whole story and you can use that karate." He thought about it for a while, then decided to go to Hong Kong and do movies. He became an international star and made more money than Steve McQueen, which he had always said was his goal.