OTHER TECH

I've heard that you started out as a set dresser, but became an actor to have more control over how a film turns out. My heroes growing up, going back to the silent days, were actors like Buster Keaton and Clint Eastwood who empowered themselves as filmmakers. When I was a boy, my father would take me and my brothers to films, and he would call our attention to the artifice of moviemaking. He loved the art direction, the lighting, the editing. He made me aware that what I was watching was an illusion - like he'd talk about Sean Connery's tailor after seeing Dr. No.

Did you always want to be a director? Always. I started out making Super 8 and 16mm films, went to California at 18, and ended up working for Roger Corman on an Angie Dickinson movie called Big Bad Mama. I tried to get into film school, but was turned down at both USC and UCLA because I didn't have great test scores. I did finally have some satisfaction, though. When Leonard Maltin invited me to his USC class, he showed my film, The Greatest Game Ever Played, and someone asked me if I went to film school. Nowadays, instead of giving my money to a school, I would just get some DVDs and listen to the commentaries - and go out and make movies, of course. You've got to be a self-starter.

Did working for your buddy James Cameron on The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic help you to direct The Greatest Game? I picked up a lot from Jim. Just before I started directing my first film, Frailty, I asked him if he had any advice, and he told me that the director's main job is making it happen. He came into the editing room on both Frailty and Greatest Game, and gave me some insightful notes.

You starred in Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan. Was he also an influence? Oh - big time. In 1987, I got a call from Jim. "Bill, seen Evil Dead 2? Nope? Well, I'll pick you up in 15 minutes." We drove to a 99-cent movie house where we were the only two guys in the theater, and he said to me, "Watch this." At the end, he turned to me and said, "It's rare to see a movie in this day and age that actually starts a new genre." It was a kind of a horror cartoon. More people have borrowed from Sam - the Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino. Let's pay homage where homage is due.

Greatest Game is more influenced by Raimi than Frailty was. I'm kind of old school in terms of not wanting to call attention to the camera, because I don't want to take the audience out of the picture. But with Greatest Game, I threw that rulebook right out the window. We did everything - we tossed cameras through the air. We actually have a shot in the film we called the Sam Raimi shot - The Evil Dead shot.

The Greatest Game is a period movie about a working-class boy winning the U.S. Open. Are you a big golf fan? I'm not a huge practitioner of the sport, but I grew up around it - right next to Ben Hogan's home club in Fort Worth, Texas. As a kid, I worked at the club to earn spending money. When I read this story about an 8-year-old who moves next to a golf course and has this sports hero, it reminded me of myself as a kid.

The movie will probably find a whole other audience now that it's on DVD. The best films are the ones you personally discover. And because of cable and DVD, this is their chance to get down into the ground water - into the popular consciousness.