Randal Kleiser: More From The Author Of Drawing Directors: Volume 1 | FilmInk

Last week, we chatted with veteran American director Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Grandview USA, Big Top Pee-Wee, Summer Lovers, White Fang, It’s My Party, Flight Of The Navigator) about his new book Drawing Directors: Volume 1, which not only features the filmmaker’s sketches of his fellow directors (collected over decades), but also his observations – often deeply personal and entertainingly candid – on his often-famous subjects. It’s a fascinating tome, and you can click here to read much, much more about it.

As well as his lengthy career resume of vital pop cultural cinematic works, Randal Kleiser is a true mainstay of the American film industry. His connection to film began in earnest during his days at The University Of Southern California (USC), where he was part of a very impressive graduating class, appearing as an actor in Star Wars godhead George Lucas’ first student film Freiheit in 1966, and eventually having his own 1973 student film Peege (a devastating work on family and ageing) selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, a true honour for any filmmaker.

Kleiser is still very much actively involved at USC, running classes, and keeping in touch with his cinematic roots. “They called our class The Dirty Dozen, and the birth of The USC Mafia,” Kleiser laughs. “We were all told there was no way we’d all make it into the film industry. We all helped each other a lot with our student films. And then, for some reason, we all kind of took off at once. So many of us got jobs in the film industry, and it’s quite rare for it to happen that way. That group certainly did. I’m still in touch with many of my USC classmates. I saw John Milius last week. There’s been a book just written about our classmate Basil Poledouris, the composer [The Music Of Basil Poledouris by Sergio Hardasmal], who did five movies for John, and five for me, and I took it over to John’s house. We read from it, and spoke, and reminisced about our wonderful friend, Basil. I see Michael Phelps a lot…he directed North Shore for me, which I produced. I see Douglas Day Stewart a lot…he wrote The Blue Lagoon and The Boy In The Plastic Bubble for me, as well as An Officer And A Gentleman. He’s a director too, and he’ll be in the second volume of Drawing Directors.”

Is John Milius as enthusiastic about guns as the stories would suggest? “John loves skeet shooting, and he certainly has lots of guns,” Kleiser replies. “Unfortunately, John had a stroke a couple of years back now, and he doesn’t go out much anymore. He still goes out and shoots, but he’s not wandering around with guns, no.” Is it true that Milius used to carry a gun with him everywhere, even to the bathroom? “Oh, that’s a legend that he would love to hear,” Kleiser laughs. “He would love to know that’s out there…he would definitely love that!”

Though he started on film, Randal Kleiser has been a vocal supporter of cinema technology, hosting the annual “Digital Day” event, a forum where Directors Guild Of America (DGA) members are presented with the latest cutting-edge filmmaking technology. How did Kleiser get into that side of things? “My brother, Jeff Kleiser is a Visual Effects Supervisor, and he started out in college with one of the first computer graphic courses,” Kleiser replies. “It didn’t even exist back then…he found some guy in the industry to take him through it. He worked on the very first CGI movie, Tron, and he’s been an absolute pioneer in the field of CGI since. He’s worked on a lot of my films too. He introduced me to the [VR headset/programme] Occulus Rift, and I got totally obsessed with it. I devised a whole twelve-part course about CGI and shooting in Virtual Reality for the Occulus. That’s a project that not many people have seen, because not that many people have the viewers. It might someday be revived as a primitive window into the beginnings of 360-degree filmmaking and storytelling. That’s how I got involved in that side of things, largely through my brother and his position in the industry.”

Where does Kleiser stand on the death of celluloid and the rise of digital? “The ship has sailed on film,” the director replies. “Everything is shot digitally now, except the films of Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg…it’s a dying breed. It’s unfortunate, but the good thing about digital is that it doesn’t decay, it doesn’t get dirt all over it, and it can’t get covered in scratches. It will continue to look as good as it ever did forever…if we can find the right story devices. I like the fact that you can just keep shooting. With film, you have to stop every ten minutes and reload. Film is very precious, and it’s very expensive. With digital, you don’t feel that pressure, and you can just keep rolling. You don’t have that weight of trying to get everything perfect. With actors, you can just keep working and working on a scene without stopping and having people come in to make adjustments….hair and makeup and wardrobe…that really slows down the process. Digital just has so many advantages.”

Randal Kleiser has always been cutting edge. Something of a style icon in the film industry, his house was used in the filming of the horror sequel Scream 3, and his very own apartment in the 1980s is now one of the most famous of that era, thanks to a controversial and distinctly of-its-era cult classic. “The apartment that Mickey Rourke has in 9½ Weeks was my apartment,” Kleiser reveals. “One day, I was driving along, and Mickey happened to be driving along beside me. He looked down and saw me, and waved. Then I got a call the next day from Mickey saying that he wanted me to direct 9½ Weeks 2 because I was driving a Porsche. He thought that if I had that apartment and if I drove a Porsche, then I was the right director for the sequel. I didn’t end up doing it, but Mickey really wanted me to.”

As well as his more famous career entries, Kleiser also boasts a slew of essential telemovies – including The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway and The Gathering – on his resume. Though great works, Kleiser’s efforts in this most humble of mediums remain very difficult to see and reassess. Is there any way that high-profile directors’ early telemovies can be re-accessed as anything other than just inferior bootlegs? “I think they’re just in the vaults of the TV networks,” Kleiser replies. “I’ve thought about it myself. I have one movie called All Together Now, which I did for TV in 1975. It was shown once, and was then never shown again. John Rubenstein plays a young man whose parents die, and then he raises his brothers and sisters, one of whom was played by Helen Hunt. It was her first role, and she was just twelve-years-old. That movie is locked away in a vault somewhere, and I’d love to pull it out and have a look at it because it turned out pretty well. It’s a good question, and it’s been in the back of my mind about how to do what you’ve just said…I’d love to resurrect some of these old TV movies but I haven’t been able to focus on it. These things sometimes show up as DVDs on Amazon and eBay, but the quality is not usually very good. We shot on 35mm, so there are good negatives somewhere, but most of the stuff out there is VHS quality.”

Though aged 77, Randal Kleiser is thankfully not taking it easy. “I have a documentary that will be coming out soon called Baby Boomer Yearbook,” the director says. “It’s shot kind of like Michael Apted’s 7Up. I’ve interviewed my high school class every ten years. That’s the next thing to come out, and I’m doing prep work on a feature film now, so things are quite busy.”

Randal Kleiser’s Drawing Directors: Volume 1 is available now from Amazon. For more information, head to Randal Kleiser’s official website. Click here for more on Randal Kleiser and Drawing Directors: Volume 1.