Interview conducted by Josh Horowitz
March 12, 2004
Per square inch, Danny DeVito has got to be the most powerful man in Hollywood. An actor, producer, and director to be reckoned with, he’s managed to remain relevant in all arenas for two decades.
Behind the camera, DeVito has displayed a wickedly dark sense of humor with comedies like THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN and THE WAR OF THE ROSES. But there was a time when he tried his hand at a good, old-fashioned epic biopic.
The film was HOFFA and it sported a sharp script by David Mamet, a robust performance by DeVito’s longtime friend Jack Nicholson, and more than its share of controversy considering the positive take it had on its divisive subject. To this day, DeVito obviously still has great affection for the film despite its mixed reception at the time.
It’s no surprise that HOFFA now turns up as an impressive extras packed dvd. DeVito was an early proponent of audio commentaries and outtakes and all those other goodies film geeks take for granted today. Indeed, most of the extras from the new HOFFA DVD came from an early special edition laser disc version of the film.
I had the good fortune of playing phone tag with DeVito recently to chat about his eleven-year-old epic film, now finally given the proper DVD treatment. He gave me a ring recently one afternoon.
Danny DeVito: Hey, Josh?
Josh Horowitz: Yeah?
DD: Hey, it’s Danny!
JH: How you doing? Sorry we missed each other before.
DD: Yeah. I’m glad we’re getting to talk.
JH: You know it’s funny as I sit here, I was just watching HOFFA on the Fox Movie Channel.
DD: No kidding? Fantastic!
JH: Did a lot of the stuff from the DVD come from the laserdisc version?
DD: Yes. I made the laserdisc version and we put it all on the DVD. It was done while we were still in the thick of things. It’s really a good idea to do that if you can when everything is hot and you’ve just come off the experience and you have a lot to say. It’s just more comfortable. When HOFFA was made and MATILDA was made that was still the early days of doing the behind the scenes stuff. It was a little bit more like pulling teeth to get everybody on board studio-wise. But then as it’s going on they really understand how they get the value of how fans want to hear what it entailed.
JH: We all know how reticent Nicholson can be in talking to cameras so it makes all the behind the scenes stuff you have of you guys just being you all the more interesting.
DD: Yeah, it’s really valuable to see. I really wanted to get that kind of thing. If you were to go back ten years later it would be difficult to get everybody to jump in. For me, while I’m going along, you can pretty much get me to talk about anything.
JH: Let’s talk a little bit about the background of the film. You had a great David Mamet screenplay.
DD: Great screenplay. I had done WAR OF THE ROSES at Fox and I was looking at all the things they had on their boards, all the different movies they had in development. The one that I really honed in on early on was that Mamet was writing HOFFA and I just thought it would be so much fun to get to work with him. Then I read it and I just dug it so much. He’s just a master with dialogue.
JH: You filled the film with a lot Mamet regulars. It’s great to see the great J.T. Walsh in this.
DD: Yeah, J.T. and I worked together before in TIN MEN. We were always friends after that. I was fortunate to have that good relationship with J.T.. What a great guy. I miss him so much. I think about him all the time. I’m in the middle of something and I think, J.T. could play that. But this is life.
JH: For a film released in 1992, you had a liberal use of the F-word in the film, another signature of Mamet.
DD: I don’t how many are in HOFFA but I know how many are in SCARFACE because of the band, BLINK 182. I think that’s what they named their band after, how many F-words were in SCARFACE. I think what we should do is count them up [in HOFFA] and start a rock band. (LAUGHS)
JH: (LAUGHS) Are you going to be on drums? What are you going to be doing?
DD: I don’t know man. I’ll book the band and I’ll be the roadie. I’ll stand backstage.
JH: You have experience in music videos. I remember that JEWEL OF THE NILE video you were in, [When the Going Gets Tough].
DD: That’s right. What a pisser that was. We had so much fun doing that. It all really boils down to the people that you’re with whether you’re a journalist or an actor or a director. Doing that video with Michael [Douglas] and Kathleen [Turner], we did that in London. It was such a bizarre thing with Billy Ocean. It was so much fun. I had just never done anything like that before. I t was so much damn fun. We just laughed our heads off.
JH: I caught it on VH1 Classic or something recently and it so took me back to that time period.
DD: It’s a really great video and I get to play the sax. I came out and made believe I’m playing the saxophone.
JH: Back to HOFFA for a second, we talked about that Mamet screenplay. Sometimes in his films, his dialogue carries the day. But with this, you obviously placed as much emphasis on the visuals. It has a very epic feeling.
DD: I wanted that epic feeling. Some of the times I wanted the characters to be overbearing. Some times I wanted that feel of power over the characters from the setting. We were going for extremes in that way. I wanted it to be very visual in terms of [my character] Bobby Ciaro’s thoughts and people’s memories. You never remember everything exactly as it was. You remember it and embellish it or put it out of your mind or whatever. So I was trying to go for a little of that where they were remembering the good old days even though they were sometimes the good old rough days. So [cinematographer] Stephen Burum and I sat for a long time, many hours, just designing shots and planning transitions and stuff that would keep it flowing and bring you into the minds of Bobby Ciaro and Jimmy Hoffa.
JH: I can’t remember a film that had so much going on in terms of transitions. You really went all out. These are not the easiest cuts from one scene to another but you obviously felt it was important.
DD: Yeah, I felt really connected to those. I have a really dear friend, Harold Michelson, who is a production designer and we sit and talk and think of our “goes-intas” which is what we call them. This goes into that and that goes into that. I like doing that. I try to do that as much as I can. I did it on MATILDA as much as I could and WAR OF THE ROSES. It gives me a great satisfaction to visualize the movie and try to execute with the entire team.
JH: The score of HOFFA is used to this day everywhere in film trailers and commercials. It’s a great score.
DD: it’s used everywhere. I’ve done seven movies and David Newman has scored every one. He’s brilliant. His dad was Alfred Newman who actually wrote the fanfare for 20th Century Fox. So if you watch WAR OF THE ROSES, in the very beginning, the last note of the fanfare goes right into WAR OF THE ROSES.
JH: From father to son…
DD: Yeah, we had an opportunity to do something there that was an homage to his dad and also gave David a chance to have some fun in the credit sequence.
JH: Everyone has heard the old adage about biopics, how you can spend two hours watching a film about anyone and you’re going to feel some sympathy for them. Jimmy Hoffa was obviously a very complex character and not a black and white figure. How did you approach the subject? You got some criticism in your favorable portrayal of him.
DD: I loved and still do David’s script. I felt that one of my tasks was to serve that script which I thought was really well done. My feelings deepened as I went along because I met many, many people, not only Jimmy’s son but his daughter Barbara who was a federal court judge in Florida. I met family members, loved ones, friends that he was dear to. Anybody who knew him, I tried to reach out to meet. My father always used to say, “there are three sides to every story.” I was getting the story from the history books and from the television, so I wound up understanding a little bit of what he was going through, coming from where he came from. My father also came from a background of not a lot of education, out there in the streets working, trying to make ends meet in the depression. So I did become very sympathetic of what Jimmy was going through. I did get a lot of flack from friends and family and some critics about the way I treated characters in the movie. I was just going by what David wrote and how I wanted to translate it. I feel good about it. I watch it every once in a while and I go back and see what we did. Jack’s performance I think is off the charts.
JH: HOFFA opened on the same day in 1992 as CHAPLIN and just a month after MALCOLM X. It was the heyday of the sprawling biopic. Were you annoyed by all the competition?
DD: You go out and you make your movie and you do the best work you can whether or not you’re making a movie that’s similar to something that’s coming out. I don’t think you can think about it. You can pine away about it. When MATILDA opened, three or four days later, some other kids movie was released by the same company. Those kinds of thing make you say, “if I was the one calling the shots, would I have done that?” [HOFFA] did get mixed reviews. There was some controversy. I did a lot of news shows and there was a lot about whether it was true to life.
JH: You had your moment to feel like Oliver Stone.
DD: Yeah. You feel really good. It’s like you birth this baby and you’ve got people who hold it up to the light and say, “it’s so gorgeous.” And you have other people say, “what is this?!?” And you go, well this is our work and this what filmmakers do.
JH: Perhaps there’s never been a more apropos cameo in a film than Tim Burton’s in HOFFA.
DD: (LAUGHS) Timmy came by that day and Jack and I were having a good time hanging out. We were going to do this really serious scene and I said, “do you want to be in the movie?” He said, “yeah yeah, what?” I said, “I wanna stick you in a coffin!” And he said, “oh goodie.” He was so excited about it!
JH: Do you think you’ll ever make something on the scale of HOFFA again?
DD: It depends if the right subject matter comes along that’s larger than life. It’s not out of the question that I take some sea-faring movie and go out and…
JH: MASTER AND COMMANDER 2 by Danny DeVito?
DD: That’s right. MASTER AND COMMANDER 2.
JH: I’ve always wanted to ask you about this. Have you stopped to consider some of the motifs that have recur in your directing efforts? HOFFA stands apart from this. But most of your others involve plots to commit murder and usually an old woman is involved. What’s going on here?
DD: I don’t know. The thing about it is, I’ve had such a great relationship with my mom. It’s got nothing to do with that at all. I just think it’s funny. Kind of like dark and funny and twisted. I love to see things like momma beating the hell out of Owen [in THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN]. (LAUGHS) It tickles my fancy. Like Trunchbull [in MATILDA], Pam Ferris is such a gorgeous English woman and I made her look like Robert Morley on a bad day.
JH: And how can anyone not be amused by a plot about trying to kill a children’s character?
DD: Yeah, like in DEATH TO SMOOCHY. Oh my God! That was so much fun. I had such a ball making that movie.
JH: I feel like that’s a film that going to get more popular with time.
DD: Already people write to me about it. Usually at rock shows or at venues where people are hip, they come up to me and it’s like their favorite film. It’s just one of those things. When MATILDA was out, there was dissent from the studio about it. Now we’re going to release a special dvd of it. I spoke to the people the other day about it at Sony and they say there’s two major family films that are at the top of their catalogue, MATILDA and ANNIE. You just don’t know. You just gotta do your work and not look back. You’ve got to just do what’s in your heart.
JH: I enjoyed your presentation with Sharon Stone of the lifetime achievement award to your buddy Michael Douglas at the Golden Globes. Be honest, were you as concerned as I was that Sharon looked like she might jump from the stage onto a table at any given moment?
DD: (LAUGHS) She’s got a great body. Man, she’s in shape. She looked hot. From my angle on the side view, she’s got a nice body.
JH: Well you stayed on target. You did what you had to do.
DD: I did what I had to do. I had to roast Mikey. He didn’t know any of that was coming. I said the gynecologist thing and the whole place was like, “what is he saying now?!?” (LAUGHS)
JH: Did he give you hell for it afterwards?
DD: No, he loved it!
JH: You did TWINS and JUNIOR with the governor of California.
DD: That’s right.
JH: Do you regret that you never got to complete the trifecta of comedies with him?
DD: (IN A SCHWARZENEGGER ACCENT) I think when he’s done with his business, we can do it. Why can’t we do it?!? TWINS 2!
JH: You could be the lieutenant governor or something?
DD: No thanks. We’ll keep politics out of it. When’s he’s done with this folly…(LAUGHS)
JH: This little respite from Hollywood.
DD: That’s right. He can come back and we can do TWINS 2.
JH: Is I MARRIED A WITCH still in development for you as a director?
DD: Michael Leeson is writing it. It’s one of those things with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner where we’re developing it. He’s still the potential star of it.
JH: Finally, I know you’re doing the sequel to GET SHORTY, BE COOL.
DD: I just walked off the set and called you. Today’s our first day of shooting with F. Gary Gray directing it. We were at Cantor’s and I just had a nice lunch of a pastrami sandwich on rye and it was very good. The life of a producer! You go on the set, say hello to everybody, look at the costumes, shake a few hands, have a pastrami sandwich and there you go!
HOFFA is now available on DVD.
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