New York-based multi-talented actor Jordan Lage
Jordan Lage
In today’s captivating interview, join me as I delve into an engaging conversation with the immensely talented Jordan Lage, a well know film, television, and theater actor hailing from New York. Discover the captivating journey of this extraordinary artist as he shares his insights, experiences, and profound passion for the world of acting. From his performances on the silver screen to his enthralling portrayals on television and stage, Jordan Lage is an extreme talent. Tune in now to gain a unique perspective on the art of acting from the perspective of a true master of his craft. Don’t miss this exclusive interview with Jordan Lage, where artistry meets inspiration.
Jordan Lage Interview Transcript
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:25:13
Jordan
So I chose New York and lo and behold, one of the first films you come across, film shoots in film and television shoots. Now, more so television shoots in New York now, but film shoots all the time on the streets of Manhattan. The first one I came across just happened to be it just happened to feature one of my heroes growing up as a kid.
00:00:25:15 – 00:00:30:18
Jordan
It was Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese shooting a scene from the King of Comedy.
00:01:55:04 – 00:02:10:25
Jordan
Welcome today. I have actor Jordan Lage with me today and I’m very excited he is. He’s got a lot of very interesting roles under his belt and he’s going to give us some information about New York City and some movies and other stuff that are filmed there. Welcome, Jordan.
00:02:10:28 – 00:02:13:13
John
Thanks, John. It’s a pleasure. Looking forward to it.
00:02:13:15 – 00:02:20:25
Jordan
All right. We’ll just jump right in. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started or called to acting?
00:02:20:28 – 00:02:43:19
John
Yeah, sure. So career I was born in Northern California. I was born in Palo Alto. And as a result of a divorce, when I was very young, I wound up moving with my mom to the East Coast. But I would also split time with my old man. Once I got to about the age of 18, he relocated from Palo Alto to Berkeley, California.
00:02:43:19 – 00:03:21:02
John
So I spent my summers in the Bay Area and school year in southeastern Pennsylvania. Consequently, I was raised by my mom, her sister and their mother, my grandmother. And they began at a very early age, taking me to film theater. I think the first the first film I can recall seeing in a movie theater, which in Westchester, Pennsylvania, just happened to be one of those grand and glorious old Warner Brothers art deco palaces called the Warner.
00:03:21:05 – 00:03:48:13
John
The first film I remember seeing was Disney’s Jungle Book. And, you know, like any six year old, I was quite enraptured with it. And then and then my my aunt used to be a member of a doily cart company. And that’s a group of people there devoted to doing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. So my aunt was a singer and she was also a voice a voice teacher at Westchester State College in Westchester.
00:03:48:16 – 00:04:07:10
John
My mom had been a musical theater performer in college. The Allegheny College is where she met my father. And so their love of the performing arts was instilled in me by, you know, taking me along with them to see these things. And of course, I caught the bug very early on.
00:04:07:13 – 00:04:09:26
Jordan
You could have gone any other way with that background.
00:04:10:00 – 00:04:40:24
John
Right, Right. And a few years after that, when I was about eight years old, my mom remarried. We moved to the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware. Now, I’m not sure if you’re a product of your youth spent in suburbia or if you’re a product of the suburbs. But my mind was pretty dull. I got to say, the development I grew up in, it was a development that was going up all around the country, I guess, from the mid sixties on.
00:04:40:26 – 00:05:03:27
John
And it just kind of just got to kind of lay this on. You set the framework for what happened to me a bit later. So this development, you know, it wasn’t cookie cutter houses. They were all different architectural styles and everything. Very nice. But in a development of a maybe 150 homes, of which there were only two entrances to this suburban development.
00:05:03:29 – 00:05:27:28
John
So there were no businesses in here, just family homes. There were no sidewalks. There were no playground. So the kids I’m not quite sure who ever dreamt up this idea for this particular development, but there was nowhere for the kids to play and to find like a ball field to play or a large kind of grassy field, the closest of which was my elementary school.
00:05:27:28 – 00:05:58:14
John
You had to walk about half a mile and kind of make your own, you know, make your own play area, which is kind of a grassy field. So it was soccer and football and all. My point is, is that growing up in suburbia, in this particular suburban development left a lot to be desired for the children. It was great if you were, I guess, just the, you know, the owner of the house, like my stepfather was.
00:05:58:16 – 00:06:26:26
John
But there was really nothing. There was no incredibly, there was no consideration given to the kids. And, you know, keeping them entertained and keeping them sort of inspired and and active. So this is my theory about why I got so attracted to the film and and and theater. It was just kind of a place where I could go to to re-energize my batteries.
00:06:26:28 – 00:06:38:15
John
You know, and to make my life a little bit more exciting rather than just kind of living in a sort of an island of suburbia.
00:06:38:18 – 00:06:41:09
Jordan
Kind of a sterile environment, almost very.
00:06:41:10 – 00:06:55:29
John
And the bug that I caught that was it was a couple it was a baby, actually. Probably the same year I saw Jungle Book, my aunt took me to see the film. All of Carol Reed’s Oliver.
00:06:56:01 – 00:06:56:26
Jordan
Mm hmm.
00:06:56:28 – 00:07:21:23
John
In 1960, probably 69, when she took me to see that. And it looked like those kids, Mark Lester and Jack Wild with the Artful Dodger were having so much fun that I thought, God, I would love to do that. That looks like great fun. You know, even even at that young age, I was probably about six years old appreciating that they had filmed it on, you know, in soundstages and Backlots and stuff in London or outside of London.
00:07:21:25 – 00:07:47:06
John
But it made me think, Oh, wow, I would love to do that for a living. And then, you know, get a little bit older and you start discovering sports. Like for me it was baseball and football and soccer and everything. And then I didn’t really kind of catch the the acting bug or the film bug again until about four years later when my older brothers took me one Saturday night to go see The Poseidon Adventure.
00:07:47:09 – 00:08:21:21
John
And this was I have to say, you know, I have to say, John, this was so groundbreaking for me because it was at that impressionable age, which I kind of put in the seminal years. I’m like eight years old to maybe 16, 17, 18 years old when the things that you’re exposed to really have a that effect on you that is going to take you, I think, on through your adult years.
00:08:21:23 – 00:08:50:01
John
I know I can’t you can’t underestimate what that was like to a ten year old. First of all, it was so engrossing watching these you know, these these few people that survived the overturning of the SS beside and try to find their way to safety. It just had the adrenaline pumping in me. It was it was an unbelievable I can’t you can’t underestimate what an effect it had on me.
00:08:50:03 – 00:09:18:20
John
And I was so thrilled by that. I went back and I saw it nine more times. Wow. Over successive Saturday matinees and for whatever that was, the next two or three months. I mean, it played forever at this one theater in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware. Like like movies used to do probably about the same age. Yeah, but back in the days before the VCR and all before that, movies would play for months on end in local theaters.
00:09:18:25 – 00:09:19:23
John
Now.
00:09:19:25 – 00:09:24:22
Jordan
I remember that sets a time when all the rest of the disaster films came out and The Towering Inferno.
00:09:24:22 – 00:09:25:16
John
And all that. Yeah.
00:09:25:19 – 00:09:27:24
Jordan
Airport or Airplane?
00:09:27:26 – 00:09:40:27
John
Airport? Yeah. No, The Towering Inferno just upped the ante. I mean, that was even better than the Poseidon Adventure. And I went back and saw that multiple times, you know, as a 12 year old or whatever. 11 year old. Yeah. So that’s how it all started. Yeah.
00:09:41:00 – 00:09:47:17
Jordan
I’ll say it. I remember midway with the sense around they would return in North Korea with you. Oh, yeah. We got.
00:09:47:17 – 00:10:12:02
John
Them on. Another exciting one for a kid. You know, not a great idea by any stretch, but fun entertainment. Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. A nice way to to spend a buck and, you know, kill a couple of hours in a movie theater. And so that really instilled. Believe it or not, that it was that one movie that it began to instill this love of moviegoing for me and my mother.
00:10:12:04 – 00:10:46:16
John
I was. I was the baby of the family. I have four brothers. My mother indulged me by taking me to, like a new release every weekend. And when she didn’t want to accompany me, she would drop me off at the movies and I just happened to that. Just kind of happened to coincide since this 1973, I guess, with kind of the golden age, the second golden age, I guess, of of American cinema, if you consider the forties, thirties, forties, the first golden age.
00:10:46:19 – 00:11:10:29
John
Right. And so, you know, I grew up a product of 1970s American cinema and I remember going to see, oh gosh, you know, I begged my mom to take me to see The Godfather Part two. When it opened in late 1974, I was 11 years old and I was like, You got to take me to see this. And she did.
00:11:11:01 – 00:11:40:16
John
And so we saw very, very many, many fond memories of her taking me to R-rated movies back and back before I was able to officially as supposed to be going to these things. But it was great fun and it was thrilling. And then I want to add on to that. When I would go see my father in the summertime, that’s where I discovered the the joy of getting a film education by going to the revival houses in the Bay Area.
00:11:40:16 – 00:12:23:07
John
There were many in San Francisco, there were quite a few in Berkeley itself. There were some in Oakland, California, too. And I would spend my summer afternoons in darkened movie theaters getting a film education. And these were, you know, these are curated by what Berkeley’s like. And Berkeley’s a very busy university town, is very intellectual, very liberal. So the people that curated these programs for these revival houses really knew what they were doing, you know, And that was my first exposure, for example, to Fellini, my first exposure to Alain Resnais, Hiroshima, Mon Amour last year.
00:12:23:07 – 00:12:48:20
John
Marion Bad believe it or not, my first the first couple of Fellini films I saw were eight and a half and Roma on a double feature I had. Fast forward to late 1977. I had missed Taxi Driver when it had come out the year before, and maybe it was just a little bit, a little bit much for my mother to take me to a movie like that.
00:12:48:20 – 00:13:12:24
John
But a year later I was 14 and I decided to go see it at the revival house and it was on a double bill with a newly I’d never even heard of before called Mean Streets. And so I went for Taxi Driver was really impressed by it, but I came away being blown away by Main Street. And that’s probably a good segue way into me going.
00:13:12:26 – 00:13:47:13
John
I have to see more of New York because because of where I grew up in those northern Delaware suburbs, cities like San Francisco, which I spent a lot of time just as a kid wandering about and sort of drinking that that energetic hustle and bustle vibe in to sort of stimulate myself. Then graduated on to New York City that I had grown up learning about by going to the movie.
00:13:47:15 – 00:14:17:14
John
And so to make this long story even shorter, I get to high school. Even I started in junior high. I began performing in the in the school plays, and then I began doing community theater. A lot of community theater in Wilmington, Delaware. And I decided I wanted to be an actor. And so I chose to go to New York University for my undergrad degree in drama acting there and and New York sort of became my oyster.
00:14:17:16 – 00:14:21:10
John
And that was was 43 years ago.
00:14:21:13 – 00:14:23:19
Jordan
Can you find it there? You can’t find it anywhere.
00:14:23:21 – 00:14:40:17
John
That’s true. You know, I thought about applying to USC, maybe going to film school out there, but I really wanted to learn the craft of acting. And I thought, what better place to do that than to go to where theater is is done. Really? Theater is really just done in New York. It’s certainly not really done in L.A..
00:14:40:20 – 00:15:06:28
John
All right. So I chose New York and lo and behold, one of the first films you come across, film shoots in film and television shoots. Now more so television shoots in New York now, but film shoots all the time on the streets of Manhattan. The first one I came across just happened to be it just happened to feature one of my heroes growing up as a kid.
00:15:07:01 – 00:15:30:19
John
It was Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. He shooting a scene from the King of Comedy. Okay, in Times Square. And I could not believe my luck because here were, you know, this is in the summer of 1980. I was actually going to school in Manhattan at an acting school called the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and wandering around the city, just taking it all in.
00:15:30:19 – 00:15:33:24
John
And here were two of my idols, right?
00:15:33:26 – 00:15:35:01
Jordan
You know.
00:15:35:03 – 00:15:48:19
John
You know who I’d been growing up, spending my summers in revival houses, seeing the movies like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and all that kind of thing. And they were here. There they were. They were filming a movie. And I just was. I was thrilled beyond belief.
00:15:48:21 – 00:15:49:11
Jordan
That’s awesome.
00:15:49:18 – 00:15:53:03
John
Yeah. Yeah. So was that it for me? Yeah.
00:15:53:05 – 00:15:54:11
Jordan
Yeah. No, I’m glad I was.
00:15:54:11 – 00:15:57:28
John
I know. That’s how. That’s so that’s how we get to talking about New York.
00:15:58:00 – 00:15:59:24
Jordan
Okay.
00:15:59:27 – 00:16:04:04
John
Yeah. I’ve always thought of New York City really as sort of Hollywood East.
00:16:04:06 – 00:16:31:28
Jordan
You know, it would you said it in your email that, you know, New York City is a character. I’m like, Oh, that’s it. You know, Absolutely. Because I knew what you meant. And I didn’t I hadn’t processed and thought of it. I thought, that’s a great idea, but I want a storyteller with a little light question I was looking at you on IMDB, and I see you’ve been on Law and Order Special Victims Unit and the the other two, the regular Law and Order and the.
00:16:32:00 – 00:16:33:19
John
The other one, criminal intent was.
00:16:33:20 – 00:16:34:25
Jordan
Criminal intent.
00:16:34:27 – 00:16:37:21
John
And the other was Special Victims Unit. Yeah.
00:16:37:23 – 00:16:50:13
Jordan
But if you could tell me a little bit about that in a minute, but I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had the role where you’re being interviewed by the two policemen about a homicide and you continue to do your work, remove your boxes?
00:16:50:15 – 00:17:18:14
John
I’m sure I have. Yeah. But that’s you know, that’s just typical of the law and order formula, the police procedural that has its antecedents in tried and true. In fact, I was in order to prepare for this this interview, we were talking about film noir, and I decided to go back and rewatch probably one of the first classic procedurals films that was ever made.
00:17:18:20 – 00:17:21:08
John
It’s Jules Dassin, The Naked City.
00:17:21:10 – 00:17:22:15
Jordan
Naked City is.
00:17:22:17 – 00:17:38:00
John
Which was all filmed in New York. And if your listeners have not seen it and have a have an affinity for movies that are set and filmed on location in New York, that is the granddaddy of them.
00:17:38:00 – 00:17:40:21
Jordan
All, the jury is.
00:17:40:23 – 00:18:00:11
John
There up. You know, this came out in 1948. And up until that point there, you know, many, many films set in New York in the thirties and forties, even in the silent era. You know, many films use New York as a location, but not not a lot of them were filmed entirely in New York. Unless you go back to the very beginning of the industry.
00:18:00:14 – 00:18:01:15
Jordan
In the halcyon days.
00:18:01:22 – 00:18:40:21
John
Back to the Edison days. Exactly. Yeah. And the early silence. But so the Naked City was one of the first to be shot entirely in New York. And it was just kind of wonderful seeing how Jules Dassin made use of the locations and, you know, having been living, having lived in New York now for more than four decades, it’s always fascinating to me to see a time capsule like that captured of neighborhoods that I’m familiar with now or have been familiar with since 1980 and how different they are.
00:18:40:23 – 00:19:08:26
John
In fact, earlier today, I went for a run and I lived in the on the east side of Manhattan, Lower East side of Manhattan. So I’m just a half a mile from where a lot of the climax of the Naked City was filmed in Lower East Side. You know, down on Orchard Street, where most most immigrants who first came to New York around the turn of the century SETTLE okay.
00:19:09:02 – 00:19:35:09
John
So the end of that movie is in this film down there in the climax is actually filmed on the Williamsburg Bridge. It doesn’t look anything like it did in 1948. There are there are some remnants, but it’s actually kind of like, you know, I go on these walks around the city and I see where some of my street I live within a half a mile to a mile of where almost all of my favorite films were were shot.
00:19:35:10 – 00:20:04:07
John
Movies like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets and the Three Godfathers Crossing, The Land Sea. The list goes on and on and on. But I you know, I walk by this shooting locations that were used by Scorsese and Coppola, you know, and Joan MICKLIN Silver, for example, all film and I remember them from the film. And I kind of get a little, you know, I get very nostalgic about it.
00:20:04:09 – 00:20:33:12
John
Unfortunately, some of the neighborhoods, just because of time and the way a city evolves, loses lose it, that special appeal that it that it once had that made it so photogenic especially like the naked city. But anyway, it’s great fun film great for the great for the acting Barry Fitzgerald, who was a great character actor back in the late thirties and forties, he’s the lead in in this.
00:20:33:12 – 00:20:53:04
John
He plays the detective that’s tasked with solving a murder that happens at the beginning of the film and it’s it’s a great example of a police procedural of which the Law and Order series went on to exploit, if you will. You know.
00:20:53:06 – 00:21:15:18
Jordan
You use when you were talking back about, you know, early seventies, late sixties or early seventies, that’s really the the neo noir is really taking over the and all the film noir that we’ve seen back in the past. We’re getting well it didn’t you know Chinatown in 74 is going to hit it was a great time and of course I learned it backwards.
00:21:15:18 – 00:21:32:13
Jordan
I you know watch all the 74 stuff on and then I’m like, there’s a there’s an original law back here, you know, So backwards. But yeah, I can see that’s the one. She has a tattoo, right? And he’s trying to track down the tattoo on the murdered girl’s foot. Is that the.
00:21:32:15 – 00:21:34:00
John
So you talk about the naked. The naked.
00:21:34:02 – 00:21:35:07
Jordan
They can see the. Yes.
00:21:35:10 – 00:21:58:20
John
No, that the the the young woman is is which is he strangled to death at the beginning. And and just like in law and order, there are all these red herrings that are kind of thrown at you in the back to begin with. And then you think, oh, it’s this guy. What’s that guy? Yeah. And then it turns up being, you know, it turns out the being kind of the most unlikely of suspect.
00:21:58:22 – 00:22:00:01
John
But when to go back.
00:22:00:03 – 00:22:23:24
Jordan
Yeah, go back once that again soon. There’s another early procedural that’s set in Boston called I think it’s Myst it’s a mystery story and Ricardo Montalban is the thing and he’s he’s going through the same you know, the procedure. Right. You know Eddie Muller from Del Norte, he was crediting that one as being the first through the father of all procedurals.
00:22:23:27 – 00:22:26:26
Jordan
I think you’re you’re you’re more accurate with the Naked City.
00:22:26:26 – 00:22:30:20
John
Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. Mystery story. So I’m not sure when that came out.
00:22:30:20 – 00:22:32:22
Jordan
It came out 50 positively.
00:22:32:23 – 00:22:57:28
John
Okay. Yes. And they said it was 48. And then there are others, too. You know, as I’ve been sort of exploring that genre, which I, I believe me, Eddie Muller seems to be the reigning sort of expert on film noir. I certainly am not. I mean, it’s a genre that, you know, I’m familiar with, but I don’t make it my my life’s work to study them.
00:22:58:01 – 00:23:35:01
John
But I the reason I’ve been catching up on quite a few of them is that there’s a couple that I saw this past week that predate the naked city by almost a decade. One is Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which started which starred Edward G. Robinson. Richie Roberts. Yeah. Yeah. And it was actually based on a true story, I guess the FBI was looking into, oh, uh, Nazi sympathizers in America, of which there was a, I guess, a considerable contingent of that early thirties.
00:23:35:03 – 00:23:37:08
Jordan
And going either way at that time.
00:23:37:11 – 00:23:48:04
John
Yeah. You know, and the country don’t or one of America’s greatest heroes at that time, you know this is a decade removed from this transatlantic flight was was Charles Lindbergh.
00:23:48:07 – 00:23:49:04
Jordan
Charles Lindbergh.
00:23:49:04 – 00:23:54:28
John
And he was a he was a Nazi sympathizer who apparently had sort of fascistic leanings. You know.
00:23:54:29 – 00:23:56:03
Jordan
Henry Ford to.
00:23:56:06 – 00:24:20:01
John
Ford. Yeah, exactly. So there’s that one. And then the House of 92nd Street, which is a Lee was a 1940 and 1941 film, I believe Anatole Litvak was the director. And again, it’s about another it’s another sort of procedural, FBI procedural where they’re trying to uncover a Nazi spy ring.
00:24:20:03 – 00:24:26:04
Jordan
Right. That was Lloyd, not Lloyd Bridges, but Floyd Nolan.
00:24:26:07 – 00:24:27:23
John
Lloyd Nolan is in that. Yeah, yeah.
00:24:28:01 – 00:24:41:20
Jordan
In the larger I’m about three quarters of the way through that or I was just oh this week All right And the there’s the the worst one they made is the big Jim McLain. John Wayne. This is a communist honor.
00:24:41:27 – 00:25:14:01
John
Oh, I’d forgotten what that was about. You know, I went on a whole John Wayne JAG during the pandemic and my wife gave me for Christmas one Christmas a few years back, this enormous Scott Eyman biography of Wayne. And it’s like reading a phone book is very, very detailed. And I thought, okay, well, I’m going to I’m going to look at the entire canon of Wayne Films, which was kind of a fool’s mission because he made something like 185 movies.
00:25:14:03 – 00:25:15:23
Jordan
But 80 of them are the same movie.
00:25:15:23 – 00:25:42:20
John
Yeah, basically. Right. So and half of them are also the Republic B Westerns that he made in the 1930s. But I saw a fair share of John Wayne movies, and it was quite opening, eye opening. It gave me a real appreciation for the dedication to his work ethic and to his business ethic. Although he came close to bankruptcy many times, I think, throughout his career.
00:25:42:23 – 00:25:45:01
John
But it’s fascinating.
00:25:45:03 – 00:26:01:11
Jordan
I want to I started the same kind of process and I try to go back and started watching these old John Wayne. So and there was one where they were calling the better rallies, rallies like they didn’t even know how to pronounce the word in the movie. And all the rallies are coming. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:01:13 – 00:26:32:10
John
Well, the thing about seeing a lot of movies like that sort of back to back to back in a short span of time, you know, because Wayne Wayne worked John Ford so many times. I have to say I admired a lot of things about John John Ford’s pictures, but I can’t get I having seen so many of them, I can’t get fully on the John Ford bandwagon because so many of the tropes that he uses, particularly in the Westerns he used over and over again, and I just found them really tiresome.
00:26:32:10 – 00:26:40:22
John
You know, there was the obligatory sort of male brawl in a bar that was intended to be sort of comic relief. It’s there they are in almost every film.
00:26:41:00 – 00:26:43:22
Jordan
A Woman in Love, but he just couldn’t live with her.
00:26:43:22 – 00:26:51:21
John
And I was. Exactly. And the and he also has to wind up, like taking her over his knee and spanking her. Yes. And it’s just like, come on, man.
00:26:51:24 – 00:26:59:07
Jordan
My work, my world famous short summary of McLintock was to women, go west and find abusive husbands.
00:26:59:10 – 00:27:27:11
John
Exactly. That’s it. And God bless Maureen. Maureen O’Hara. She endured it, I suppose. But it’s it’s I find I find going going to the movies. I find watching movies just the never ending front of of fascination and inspiration. I just love it. I’ve never kind of tired of it. You just a change. But I never tired of it.
00:27:27:12 – 00:27:28:10
John
Yeah.
00:27:28:13 – 00:27:50:12
Jordan
You know, you were talking about how you grew up in kind of suburbia I grew up in, as we can tell from the boys way in the country, we had to pipe sunshine in, but you could buy both. My parents work back in a time when both most mothers didn’t. Okay, so I was always getting dropped off at like double features Robinson Crusoe on Mars and stuff like that, and spending all holidays.
00:27:50:19 – 00:27:57:14
Jordan
And it’s like an open the whole world, like there’s more out there to go find just to stay here. And you know.
00:27:57:16 – 00:28:00:03
John
So did you grow up did you grow up in the panhandle?
00:28:00:06 – 00:28:19:12
Jordan
No, I was over in Mississippi. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. That’s where I’m from originally. And so, yeah, well, the country. So there was always something to get into. But, you know, even when I was oh, gosh, even when I was an adult in the Army, go to movie by myself, you know, early afternoon, you know, Saturday night, it didn’t matter.
00:28:19:14 – 00:28:24:01
Jordan
I didn’t need anybody else to to go in there and just go to that place, you know.
00:28:24:03 – 00:28:26:29
John
Now, you mentioned that you had just gotten back from France.
00:28:27:01 – 00:28:27:22
Jordan
Yes.
00:28:27:25 – 00:28:31:16
John
Tell me tell me where you went. I did mention to in an email, I’m a big Francophile.
00:28:31:22 – 00:28:59:11
Jordan
Well, you know, you did say that. And I didn’t respond. But it’s because my French is so atrocious. I didn’t I didn’t want to say anything. But we went to Paris and we stayed there for six or seven days. And we had a really oh, I’ve had our schedule packed. We went to the Eiffel Tower, the art, the Triumph, the Louvre, the Orsay, a Notre Dame, but still, you know, got construction going on around it.
00:28:59:13 – 00:29:20:07
Jordan
And the opera house in Paris, which wasn’t really surprising. She drove me there. I didn’t think I’d like it, and it was really enjoyable to go into it. And so we did that. And of course I’m a photo book. And so after taking pictures of bridges and flying buttresses and everything I could get, and then we drove out, came in.
00:29:20:10 – 00:29:34:08
Jordan
I wanted to see William the Conqueror, his castle. Okay, we did that castle. We went to Normandy. And then the third day out there, we went the most famous view. Right. Which is in and then back to Paris and flew out. So that was our trip.
00:29:34:11 – 00:29:35:22
John
That’s a fantastic trip.
00:29:35:25 – 00:29:40:15
Jordan
We were running the whole time, but it was worth it. Oh, really?
00:29:40:17 – 00:29:41:22
John
Had you been there before?
00:29:41:25 – 00:29:42:27
Jordan
No, that’s my from.
00:29:42:29 – 00:29:43:17
John
Okay.
00:29:43:20 – 00:30:00:01
Jordan
I’d been in Germany. I had passed through France one time. But, you know, you hear all these horror stories and everybody was nice, friendly. You know, I try a couple of words in French and they’d go right in English for me. And, you know, we had a great time. Well-treated.
00:30:00:03 – 00:30:08:19
John
That’s been my experience, too. I mean, we can we can sort of segway into France and French cinema if you want to. I don’t know if you’re very up on your French films or not.
00:30:08:26 – 00:30:14:14
Jordan
No, I’m not just going to hang my build my gallows high, which is the one with the.
00:30:14:20 – 00:30:15:25
John
Elevator to the gallows.
00:30:15:26 – 00:30:17:27
Jordan
Elevator to the gallows. Yes, I was.
00:30:17:29 – 00:30:25:15
John
Louis Malle, I believe. Yeah. I mean, that’s that is a that has its roots in film noir as well.
00:30:25:17 – 00:30:27:01
Jordan
Right?
00:30:27:03 – 00:30:30:04
John
You on rope? Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:30:09 – 00:30:31:03
Jordan
She’s amazing.
00:30:31:09 – 00:30:32:11
John
Yeah, she’s great.
00:30:32:13 – 00:30:53:14
Jordan
And I first ran into her when I was watching the train with Burt Lancaster, Bristol up in the Nazi hand. And that’s what I did. I also everywhere I went, I recorded a little video and talked about some movies, you know, that’s how. Yeah, here we were at the Orsay Museum, and these are the artworks of Nazis tried to steal and train the Monuments Men.
00:30:53:14 – 00:30:56:04
Jordan
And then I’m slowly putting those out on.
00:30:56:07 – 00:31:14:28
John
The Orsay was used before they turn it into a train station. I’m sorry. They turned it from a train station into a museum. It was used as a location in a Bertolucci film called The Conformist. Oh, correct. With Jean-Louis Trintignant. If you’re interested in seeing what it looked like before we do museum hours.
00:31:14:28 – 00:31:29:18
Jordan
But yeah, the train station, I think, you know, back and. Sorry, go back on one more thing. Yeah. I was just phased at the Toulouse-Lautrec. I didn’t think that would be the what drew my attention out of that whole museum.
00:31:29:20 – 00:31:30:08
John
Okay.
00:31:30:10 – 00:31:39:25
Jordan
Yeah, of course. There’s that great movie with the. Oh, let’s say for Ferrari, those are forever on it. So. Yeah, definitely want to go back?
00:31:39:27 – 00:31:56:05
John
Oh, for sure. You know, France was the first place I visited outside of the United States, and I was I was in college. I had a girlfriend who was doing a European tour bus and truck tour of West Side Story. Nice. And on my Easter break, she just happened to be in the south of France. I said, So where are you?
00:31:56:11 – 00:32:12:08
John
Oh, I’m in the south of France, area of Provence. We’re going to be down here for a few weeks. I said, Well, I don’t know it. I don’t know anything about it, but I’d love to come see you, of course. And so I’ll book a flight to the south of France. And I did. And of course, I instantly fell in love with it.
00:32:12:08 – 00:32:36:17
John
It’s like, yeah, John It’s one of the garden spots of the world. It is so beautiful. And so that began a lifelong affair for me with France and French culture and the language and everything like that. But I was in Paris last summer for a few weeks and I’m a I’m a big Truffaut fan in particular. His his first feature film, which was the 400 Blows.
00:32:36:19 – 00:32:59:12
John
And it’s a coming of age tale of a young young boy, probably 13 years old, going to a public. You say it’s a French word for France, a French word for school, and he can’t seem to keep from getting into trouble. Okay. And in the end, he was expelled from the school and his parents enrolled in a reformatory.
00:32:59:14 – 00:33:27:11
John
And he well, he gets his first taste of adulthood through the course of the film. But it’s a beautiful movie. It’s very, very emotional, very moving. And it’s it’s kind of one of my touchstones. And it was all shot in Paris until the the story moves outside of Paris, getting over towards the coast where the olive is, where the reformatory is.
00:33:27:14 – 00:33:52:13
John
So but most of it is shot on the streets of Paris, maybe some of us hand-held, but probably they were still using dollies. The photographer on the film was a very famous French cinematographer called His Name is Only the Kind, just an excellent French new wave, Steep. And of course, Truffaut himself was sort of at the vanguard of the French New Wave as well.
00:33:52:13 – 00:34:24:15
John
But so when I’m there in Paris on my own last summer and I decided I was there for a couple of weeks, I decided, well, I’m going to try and visit as many locations as in the film of the 400 blows and possibly visit and just see how it’s changed and put together this little montage that I have yet to post on Instagram of stills from the movie and stills from what it looks like what was last year of 2022.
00:34:24:15 – 00:34:29:16
John
So 63 years later. Wow, it was a lot of fun.
00:34:29:19 – 00:34:34:09
Jordan
Sounds like I’m I’m waiting for your book to come out and maybe locations in New York and Paris.
00:34:34:11 – 00:34:45:10
John
I don’t know if you’re like me, sounds like you’re like me. You go on. You go on a vacation to to a place and you start going, Oh, yeah, we filmed one of my favorite. I’m going to make the pilgrimage to book a trip.
00:34:45:13 – 00:34:47:13
Jordan
Yes, yes.
00:34:47:16 – 00:35:07:17
John
You know, I mean, here in New York, I can do it every day. I just step out of my apartment. But I was in Sicily about 12 years ago, and of course, I had to go see where The Godfather films were filming in Sicily. And I wound up doing that. I wound up meeting a guy who ran a little naked.
00:35:07:17 – 00:35:34:16
John
There’s a little town called Savo CA. It’s on the eastern coast of Sicily, and it’s. You remember the Godfather first Godfather film? It’s the village where Al Pacino and his bodyguards wind up sitting down and having a drink. And they talk to the the cafe owner about, Oh, we saw this pretty young woman in the countryside, and my friend here has fallen in love with her.
00:35:34:19 – 00:35:39:24
John
Do you know who who she might be? And the guy realizes he’s talking about they’re talking about his daughter.
00:35:39:26 – 00:35:40:20
Jordan
Right.
00:35:40:22 – 00:36:03:08
John
And so he goes back and he starts yelling, here, I’m yelling. And the bodyguards get nervous with Pacino there. And then the owner comes out with his two sons kind of flanking him. And Pacino says, Well, hey, what would you think if I married your daughter, actually? Right? So I go to this town job and I’m wandering around.
00:36:03:08 – 00:36:36:18
John
The bar is still there. If you walk into the bar, it’s like a shrine to The Godfather. Okay. There are pictures, stills from the shoot all over the place. The church where Pacino marries the young Sicilian girl is just up the hill. You can go visit that. And I go into this little, very quiet little town. Right? But I go into this little souvenir shop right next to the to the bar, and there’s a woman in there and all around are, you know, the old padrino T-shirts, you know, coffee mugs with Brando’s face on it.
00:36:36:20 – 00:36:53:26
John
You know, you can buy a set of movie stills from the guy, all the stuff you can imagine. So I sit. The woman said, Excuse me, ma’am, would you, in whatever Italian I could muster. So do would you mind if I take a picture of you here in your shop? And she’s like that? I said, I just want to take a picture.
00:36:53:28 – 00:37:17:07
John
Just. Oh, spent this. Better wait a moment. Let me get my husband. I said, No, no, no, no. You don’t forget your only your husband. I just want to take a picture of you in your shop. Just. No, no, no, wait. He’s right next door. So she goes out of the shop, goes literally next door to their house, comes back with her husband, and the husband says to me in English, she says, Oh, I understand you are asking about the film The Godfather.
00:37:17:07 – 00:37:52:07
John
And I said, Yeah, yeah, I was in The Godfather. They’re like, Really? Yes. I was one of the sons of the of the cafe owner. And sure enough, it’s him, you know, 45 years later. And so the guy speaks fluent English. He loves telling stories to tourists who come. And he sat me down for an hour in his little store and told me stories about making the film and shooting that scene and meeting Pacino and auditioning for Coppola and it was great.
00:37:52:10 – 00:37:53:19
Jordan
That’s awesome.
00:37:53:21 – 00:38:21:03
John
But here’s the kicker, John. So he asks you, So what do you do? I said, Well, I’m from New York. And he goes, Oh yeah, what do you do? And I said, Well, I’m an actor. And he goes, Oh my God, what have you seen? What have you done that I might have seen? And I said, Well, I just I just recently finished filming this movie called Saul that was directed by Philip Noyce and starred Angelina Jolie as Angelina Jolie.
00:38:21:06 – 00:38:42:02
John
I’m so excited. So I’m just take your picture. Wait here, wait here. I go get my daughter. So he runs next door and brings back his 16 year old daughter and says, We want our picture taken with you. And I said, Well, I’ll be happy to oblige. So it was very funny. He was excited about me as I was excited about him and his story.
00:38:42:04 – 00:38:47:10
Jordan
In the movie. That little village is like a climb, right? Is it is it above the beach or is it.
00:38:47:10 – 00:39:07:29
John
It is. It is. It’s funny because it’s supposed to be a double for Corleone. So the actual name of the village, though, Estaba Corleone is sort of on the western part of Sicily. This is way over in the eastern coast of Sicily. In the film, you would never guess that you could literally drive about 7 minutes and be at a beach.
00:39:08:02 – 00:39:09:26
John
You know, it.
00:39:09:28 – 00:39:10:17
Jordan
Looks like a map.
00:39:10:18 – 00:39:29:19
John
But the road from the beach to get up to where the Avoca is is this windy, curving corkscrew road to get up to the kind of the the top of the I don’t know, the bluff I guess where with the villages but it doesn’t all it does seem like it’s a dusty interior or Sicilian town in the movie.
00:39:29:19 – 00:39:31:04
John
Yeah yeah yeah.
00:39:31:06 – 00:39:42:11
Jordan
Okay well you know while you’re on the subject of The Godfather, Oh, could you touch on your idea of how the now New York is a character in The Godfather series to.
00:39:42:11 – 00:40:05:11
John
Try to look at it this way? I’m not so sure. Maybe I. Maybe I misspoke when I wrote that to you. It’s not so much a character as it is. It’s one of those great films that are take place in New York City that would could only be filmed in New York City. In other words, had they shot it anywhere else, it wouldn’t have worked.
00:40:05:17 – 00:40:26:14
John
It would have been completely diminished by having not filmed it in New York. And the hilarious thing about The Godfather, maybe some of your listeners know about this because there’s so many Godfather fans out there now and they know all the stories. And there was that series called The Offer that was on Paramount Plus last year, which is actually quite a bit of fun about the making of The Godfather.
00:40:26:20 – 00:40:27:13
Jordan
And watched them.
00:40:27:18 – 00:40:55:20
John
Oh, it’s fun. You should check it out. What’s his name from Whiplash. Oh, and he was in Top Gun Maverick last year with Tom Cruise. His name is escaping me, but anyway, the funny thing about The Godfather is that when Coppola was hired by Paramount to direct it, they they said, well, we don’t want to. We don’t want to.
00:40:55:22 – 00:41:23:22
John
The cost of filming in New York is too expensive and the unions are a pain in the ass. And so what about shooting it in Kansas City? Hogan and Coppola and Mario Puzo, who wrote the novel? It’s based on it’s like, you can’t do that. I mean, it is the story is intricately, intricately the right word because that set in New York City, you can’t not set that movie in New York.
00:41:23:24 – 00:41:45:08
John
And the suits at Paramount, I’m not I don’t think this included Robert Evans, who was running the studio at the time, but maybe the maybe the Gulf and Western brass, Charlie Bluhdorn back here in New York, they said we don’t want it to be a period movie that costs too much, too. So let’s let’s make it a contemporary film, which we’d been like.
00:41:45:10 – 00:42:32:15
John
That would have been a recipe for disaster is. The irony of it is that they did decide to pay Coppola, pay Mario Puzo, whatever, $80,000 for the rights to film the book. And then they say, Well, we’re not going to. This is a hot property. The novel is a huge bestseller. At the time, in 1970, I guess 69, 70, but we’re not going to allow it to suffer the death that the last major mob film did, which was a movie, I believe it’s called The Group with Kirk Douglas, and it’s about the New York Mafia.
00:42:32:18 – 00:42:34:01
Jordan
Okay. I’m not familiar with that one.
00:42:34:01 – 00:43:10:00
John
And it came out like in 69, I think maybe maybe it was released in 70. But it was a huge flop because it was just full of clichés and it didn’t it didn’t land with audiences at all. And they really were saying that they wanted to go to great lengths to avoid The Godfather having same fate. And yet here they were starting to compromise that vision by telling Coppola, Go look at Kansas City, four locations, and let’s talk about maybe making it a contemporary tale rather than sit in the 1940.
00:43:10:03 – 00:43:29:06
John
And Coppola knew that was a disaster from the get go. Fortunately He actually did go to Kansas City to scout locations, knowing full well that he was never going to do it if they insisted that it be filmed there. He comes back and he makes his case to to the paramount people, the Gulf and Western people saying, no, it has to be done in New York.
00:43:29:07 – 00:43:49:27
John
It has to be a period film. Try and find a little bit more money in the budget in order to do this. But they wanted to compromise it every which way they possibly could. They didn’t want Brando because he was kind of box office poison at the time. Nobody wanted Pacino on. The only person that kind of believed in Pacino was Coppola.
00:43:49:29 – 00:44:11:05
John
So he had to fight you. Coppola had to fight for all of these things, and then he had to fight for the budget to finish the film by going to Sicily with a very pared down camera unit in order to shoot all the Sicilian stuff. So it was a huge struggle for him to get that movie made. But thank God he prevailed.
00:44:11:08 – 00:44:17:05
Jordan
Yeah, I didn’t know that story. That’s amazing. You know the accountants, you know?
00:44:17:07 – 00:44:54:15
John
Yeah, Yeah, that’s a great example. Going back to your question, it’s a great example of a movie that you really you could never have done it anywhere but New York. You the stuff that needed to be, the stuff that needed to be shot in New York, had to be shot in New York. And Coppola and his his art design production designer guy, terrifically talented guy named Travelers who also worked on The Godfather Part two, made great use of what was still available in in New York and in Manhattan and Staten Island.
00:44:54:17 – 00:44:58:02
John
They could still pass for 45 New York.
00:44:58:04 – 00:45:01:01
Jordan
Okay. Without having to build out at nine stuff. Build the set.
00:45:01:02 – 00:45:02:00
John
Hell yeah.
00:45:02:00 – 00:45:03:15
Jordan
It was straight.
00:45:03:17 – 00:45:29:08
John
Right? They a lot of the interiors were filmed at a studio up in Harlem on 127th Street in a place called Film Wave Studios, which was a film studio that went back to the 1930. But they filmed interiors up there and a lot of exteriors were filmed all over Manhattan. The Corleone family compound was filmed out in Staten Island.
00:45:29:10 – 00:45:39:15
John
Yeah, yeah. But it’s kind of fascinating how they how were they able to shoot stuff and make it look again like 1940s, New York.
00:45:39:17 – 00:45:56:18
Jordan
They did a great job. I got to see that when they reran that theater years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It was better than, you know, the first time I saw it was on television. I thought it was a great one of the greatest films ever made. And then I got to see it in a theater and was yeah, this is so much better than I thought it was.
00:45:56:18 – 00:46:14:28
John
Right now. It’s amazing. And I’m one of the one of the few people I mean, not the few people, but I’m a person who feels like part two is even better. I mean, the the Little Italy stuff, the stuff in De Niro’s part of that story was filmed just a few blocks away from me down here on Sixth Street in the East Village.
00:46:14:28 – 00:46:26:17
John
And they what they did is they took over an entire city block on sixth Street down here in, the East Village, for about a month.
00:46:26:19 – 00:46:28:10
Jordan
So they could do the parade and everything.
00:46:28:10 – 00:46:52:27
John
But yeah, the mopping up to make it look like 1917 Little Italy. And it’s just I mean, what they were able to show on film in terms of the authenticity of that that time period, it’s just staggering, you know, In fact it was so it worked so well that it inspired Sergio Leone to want to do the same thing.
00:46:53:00 – 00:47:09:00
John
And he looked for a story to tell in which he could do the same thing that Coppola had done. In other words, recreating a specific time period in New York history. And what he came up with was once upon a time in America.
00:47:09:02 – 00:47:11:11
Jordan
Okay, there’s another De Niro film, right?
00:47:11:13 – 00:47:22:28
John
Exactly. Yeah. It’s about the Jewish mafia. You know what? I’m close to being my battery running out. But let me just plug in the record. If you give me 10 seconds here. Sorry about that.
00:47:23:01 – 00:47:54:29
Jordan
The ad, we’re like 47 minutes. I don’t know if there’s a time limit on this or so. If it cuts out just one, we’ll go back. And if we’re not finished.
00:47:55:02 – 00:48:17:07
John
All right. Very good. You just going to say good And getting back to your question about, you know, what what films kind of act as a as another character in the story and two movies that came to mind that I think kind of fit that bill. And it both happened to be Scorsese’s film. One of them is Taxi Driver, of course.
00:48:17:10 – 00:48:43:28
John
I mean, it really does act like a almost you could argue that it acts like an antagonist to the to the Travis Bickle character because it certainly becomes a almost a representation of things that he feels like he needs to fight against. It helps constantly in the film about, I’m going to clean this, I’ve got to clean this city up.
00:48:44:01 – 00:49:03:07
John
You know, it’s it’s gotten to the point where I just can’t take it anymore. So the city acts like it’s another kind of abstract character to him. And the other one also is Scorsese. And it’s 1985 after hours with Griffin Dunne.
00:49:03:09 – 00:49:09:19
Jordan
Oh, here is Knock Yourself five for Drew Rosanna Arquette. Rosanna Arquette.
00:49:09:19 – 00:49:34:14
John
Okay, Yeah. Where he he plays a guy who works for I think he’s like an actuarial or something or an accountant who works in a building up here near Madison Square Park here in Manhattan. And he one night he goes into a diner in which Rosanna Arquette, who leaves him, is it leaves him her address and he decides, you know, you want to get some.
00:49:34:16 – 00:50:16:23
John
So he makes the almost Homeric journey down to Soho, which at the time is not the Soho of European tourists and high end boutiques. Soho back in the certainly the seventies and on through about the mid eighties when the movie was shot, was kind of grungy and grimy and dirty and absolutely desolate at night. So the story winds up there and it becomes about the Griffin Dunne characters journey into hell and then his attempt to journey Get the Hell out of hell.
00:50:16:25 – 00:50:18:01
Jordan
That’s the scope of the movie.
00:50:18:02 – 00:50:36:26
John
Yeah, exactly. Back to the safety aspect of the safety of, you know, uptown Manhattan. But it’s a great it’s a very dark, dark, dark comedy. And it’s it’s really hilarious. But the city in that movie also acts as kind of a character that’s pushing up against him and trying to undo him at every turn.
00:50:36:28 – 00:50:48:07
Jordan
Well, you know, I was talking to my wife and we’re getting ready to go on a trip about and now I’m not going to be able to pull up the name. It’s the Jack Lemmon where he goes to the New York City to for a job interview.
00:50:48:09 – 00:50:49:19
John
Is it the out-of-towners?
00:50:49:22 – 00:50:58:05
Jordan
The out-of-towners, Yes. With another one where the identities are. Yeah. It’s attacking him everywhere. You know, as a sewer blows up on him, he gets robbed. Police.
00:50:58:07 – 00:51:07:09
John
I think there’s one scene where he’s he gets mugged by Sylvester Stallone in Central Park, but he gets chased all over Central Park in the.
00:51:07:12 – 00:51:27:27
Jordan
Yeah, I want to go back, look back a little bit and ask you just a couple of opinion questions. You had mentioned how great The Godfather two was and I agree. I thought in a lot of ways when it was originally cut, the it was as good or better than the first one. I guess the academy Award for that out, too.
00:51:27:29 – 00:51:31:20
Jordan
But did you ever see the one where they cut it sequentially?
00:51:31:22 – 00:51:55:08
John
I did television the first time it was on. I actually I was such a geeked on about film. Oh, when it first was shown on TV. I think in the fall of 1977, I was there as a kid with my little tape cassette tape recorder, and I would record movies that were my favorite movies. And so I recorded it.
00:51:55:10 – 00:52:12:19
John
I think that that was broadcast. There were four nights where they were Coppola recut both The Godfather and the Godfather. Part two so that it would unfold sequentially chronologically. And he added outtakes.
00:52:12:21 – 00:52:24:25
Jordan
Yeah, I did that. To me, it didn’t work as well as the two movies either, the flashbacks. But but that leads to the other thing. The third movie that’s nearly universally hated.
00:52:24:27 – 00:52:25:26
John
So part three.
00:52:26:02 – 00:52:45:23
Jordan
Part three of The Godfather. Yeah, I didn’t like it when I first saw it, but I watched it a couple more times and then I’m like, Oh my God, you know, this is what Michael got. Because he never committed to his job as the Godfather. He was always working, Get out of the job. It really never fully committed.
00:52:45:25 – 00:52:57:08
Jordan
And if you look at it that way, it’s kind of a great ending to the trilogy. He was punished for for not being the Godfather, being all in, I guess.
00:52:57:10 – 00:53:17:13
John
Yeah, Well, it’s interesting. Interesting about part two, where at the end of one he is ensconced as the heir apparent to his father. So he’s the godfather. At the end of part one, he’s gone to the dark side.
00:53:17:16 – 00:53:18:20
Jordan
Right.
00:53:18:23 – 00:53:43:11
John
At the beginning of part two. He’s saying to his wife, Diane Keaton, and part two and part one, he says to her, I’m going to get out. I’ve had enough and I’m going to be the family business and I’m just going to devote my life to you. And of course, he doesn’t. There’s an attempt on his life at the beginning of part two that kind of that draws him probably in.
00:53:43:13 – 00:54:04:22
John
He does say at one point soon after the assassination attempt to the Duvall character who plays his consiglieri, his lawyer and says, I’m going to turn the reins over to you. You’re going to become the new Don. You’re going to become the new godfather. I’ve had it with it. And plus, I might be assassinated. So be ready to step into my shoes if that should happen.
00:54:04:24 – 00:54:32:03
John
But it doesn’t. And it goes. He keeps saying, I’m going. I’m going to go out and he keeps making decisions that draw him further and further into the downward spiral. So by the end of part two, he’s basically killed everyone close to him. In effect, he’s killed his wife because of the divorce over the abortion that she has.
00:54:32:05 – 00:55:01:25
John
He’s left alone. He’s killed his brother. He’s killed his other enemies. Brother in law. Yeah. And it’s a it’s a it’s a very it’s a very poignant, moving tableau. We have at the end of part two, where he’s sitting there at Tahoe in the outdoors on his own as a state by himself contemplating, one assumes, or one can assume what he’s done, maybe regretfully.
00:55:01:27 – 00:55:44:01
John
But it’s it’s so powerful. It’s just such an incredible ending to that that part of the The Godfather saga. The thing with part three, which I don’t hate as much as a lot of people do, but I do think it’s deeply flawed. I read the screenplay before it was released. I had gotten my hands on the screenplay and I thought it was a terrific screenplay because it was it was all that sort of the the machinations of the relationship with the Vatican.
00:55:44:03 – 00:56:16:05
John
And I found that to be really fascinating, that aspect of the story really fascinating. And then, of course, it does have to go back to the to the formula, the first two godfathers, where he gets double crossed by some of his enemies and he’s got to take them out. And that’s basically he does. But the twist here is that maybe I shouldn’t be a spoiler here, but the twist is it comes back to bite him in the ass right at the end of part three, which I think is actually a great way to do it.
00:56:16:05 – 00:56:24:14
John
It’s just it’s probably what what killed it the most was that it was horribly miscast. You know, if you knew, you know what I’m referring to?
00:56:24:15 – 00:56:25:08
Jordan
God, no, exactly.
00:56:25:13 – 00:56:59:19
John
Because you’ve seen the film. And so had it been had it been cast, had the movie proceeded with the original actor, I think it would have had a it would have had a better a better outcome in terms of being a better movie. Yeah. The interesting thing about that film, John, is that the first couple of movies that I did were happened to be a couple of more than a couple like three or four David Mamet film The Playwright.
00:56:59:21 – 00:57:15:12
John
He and William H. Macy happened to be my acting teachers. I was studying at New York University. Yeah. So it just so it was just the sheer luck of timing that they happened to be there teaching, acting the four years that I was at NYU.
00:57:15:15 – 00:57:16:04
Jordan
Wow.
00:57:16:06 – 00:57:42:02
John
And out of the class they taught and went on, I and my classmates went on to form a theater company here in New York called the Atlantic Theater Company. And we’re still around. It’s almost 40 years later. But consequently, I was I was been able to work with Mamet a lot and did several of his films. And I’ve done more than two dozen of his plays over the years.
00:57:42:04 – 00:58:23:03
John
And something that I’ll be I’m very proud of and that I will forever be grateful for, you know, being able to do such such a such terrific work plays such incredibly vivid and complex characters. It’s just been my my I feel my career’s greatest accomplishment is being able to be involved with some of the works of David. So the first few films that I did, I actually happened to be working with the actor Joe Mantegna, who is an old Mamet friend from Chicago days.
00:58:23:05 – 00:58:58:28
John
And so Joe gets cast in Godfather Part three, and I get a call from him one day and he says, Oh, why don’t you come down to the set? We’re filming here in Lower Manhattan. You can come hang out and watch watch this film for a bit. I was like, Hell yeah, yeah. So they did the same. Coppola did the same thing that he did on part two, which was he blocked off a block of Elizabeth Street down here in in the East Village in order to film for about two weeks.
00:58:59:01 – 00:59:19:08
John
Part of the movie. It’s the scene in the Part three where Joe’s character of Antinous character gets assassinated by Andy Garcia. Okay. And so invited me down and I went and spent the day watching them film. And it was just thrilling beyond belief. You know, it’s.
00:59:19:08 – 00:59:20:12
Jordan
Amazing.
00:59:20:14 – 00:59:47:17
John
Watching. I mean, Coppola just was a God to me. And of course, Gordon Willis was there is his DP, and that was just I mean, I remember I remember watching the film and there were these two guys that had been hired as bodyguards. I think for Montaigne, his character, and I overheard them talking and they were just kind of like they were kind of they were in wonderment, in amazement like I was.
00:59:47:17 – 01:00:12:03
John
And they were saying to one other, God, can you believe it? You’re making the sequel to The Godfather. I said, Yeah, Lucky you guys know that. It was very, very cool. Yeah. And I was a big, big deal. I mean, when you block off an entire street in New York City for weeks in order to film a movie, it’s a big deal.
01:00:12:06 – 01:00:23:08
Jordan
Yeah, no doubt now. And Coppola is he does I mean, is he like in command or is he just like, letting the director photography do their stuff and everybody.
01:00:23:11 – 01:00:53:27
John
Like it to me. Now, I know he and Gordon Willis class clashed on the first Godfather stories, stories that I’ve heard, but they seem to be very much, very much a team when I observe them that day of filming and of course they, you know, clearly they whatever whatever disagreements they had on the first Godfather, they they quickly mended fences because two years later they shot Godfather Part two together.
01:00:53:28 – 01:00:54:16
John
So.
01:00:54:18 – 01:01:18:03
Jordan
Yeah, I Do I’ve never been on a film set, you know, I didn’t go I didn’t go to film school. So I have to kind of I’m trying to learn what directors do, what directors of photography do, what the assistant directors do, you know, everybody’s job. I’m trying to always get it right in my mind. And when I have somebody that’s been there, just that I wasn’t trying to, like, dredge up a story about them fighting, but I was nervous.
01:01:18:10 – 01:01:52:01
John
Yeah. No, for me, the best. And I’ve worked with quite a few big name directors. I mean, you from Mamet to Oliver Stone, Sydney Pollack, Ridley Scott, Phillip Noyce. I mean, you know, some pretty big names and the best ones. Sydney Pollack Yeah, the best ones. They know how to talk to actors. They’re not just, they’re, they’re not just behind the camera film nerds.
01:01:52:04 – 01:02:16:24
John
They, they know how to draw out performances from their actors. And for me, that really is the province of the director. I mean, of course the director has to have the vision. He’s got to know, you know, what lenses he wants to shoot and how to piece it all together. But I think the best ones also actually know how to direct the actors in such a way that they they get amazing performances out of.
01:02:16:24 – 01:02:47:17
John
I’ve recently been catching up on some Betty Davis films that I never seen. So I last week I watched I never seen Jezebel or The Little Foxes, which are sort of she made them at the at the the apogee of her career. They both happened to be done. Directed by William Wyler. And Wyler won three directing with three directing Oscars.
01:02:47:20 – 01:03:10:15
John
He was really known for getting fantastic performances out of his cast, and it really shows in these two films with Betty Davis. Betty Davis is just on top of her game, especially in Jezebel. I mean, she comes on in the first and her first scene in Jezebel or like a like she’s kind of burst out of a can and she is just amazing.
01:03:10:17 – 01:03:33:24
John
And she if you look at her career, she kind of went on she kind of went on to Campier and Campier performances in films, you know, starting in the fifties and on through the sixties. But when she was on top of it back in the thirties and forties, boy, I mean, so much attention, so much to be learned from watching these great old actors and actresses.
01:03:33:26 – 01:04:10:26
John
And I encourage any young actor or actress that is listening to your podcast or watching on on YouTube to go and discover the classic, because you can learn so much not just about acting, which if you’re if that’s your if that’s your meaty, but about film in general. And I think it’s really important. It’s really important, I think, for actors to know not just about acting, but I think about filmmaking all aspects of filmmaking in all aspects of playwriting as well, all aspects of theater.
01:04:10:29 – 01:04:32:08
John
But they, they also I think it’s imperative that they take advantage of seeing what they’re going to say antecedents, but what their ancestor is. Do we all we all, everyone, every performer has an ancestor, you know, I mean, we’re all part of a continuum.
01:04:32:11 – 01:04:35:16
Jordan
Yeah, I’m a retired archeologist, so I understand exactly what you’re talking.
01:04:35:16 – 01:05:14:26
John
Okay, well, yeah, because we are just continuing that long line of succession of performers giving our gift, such as it is to audiences as as our forebears have done for millennia, and to be ignorant of what what has been captured over the past 110, 115 years of cinema is really doing yourself a disservice if you don’t know who Betty Davis is.
01:05:14:29 – 01:05:15:29
John
Find out.
01:05:16:01 – 01:05:18:20
Jordan
Yes, you know, okay.
01:05:18:23 – 01:05:58:08
John
And that goes for every I mean, from the biggest stars that Hollywood put out to international stars, to smaller films, to the character actors and actresses that were just there, It’s like if you go see a film like the two I just mentioned, Little Foxes and and and Jezebel, the character people, character actors and actresses and those in those cast, it’s like gold, you know, because, you know, back in the studio days, people were hired to a studio contract three, four, five, seven, eight years, maybe a decade even.
01:05:58:11 – 01:06:13:08
John
And they went to work like almost every day. I was looking at who was it today? I was looking at his credits on IMDB. Oh, yeah, this terrific character actor named Sig Ruman. Oh, who do you know this guy?
01:06:13:10 – 01:06:18:20
Jordan
He’s. Oh, he was Schultz. What? Oh, talks over Dog 17.
01:06:18:23 – 01:06:43:17
John
Was he shot? I can’t remember. But he he was in that great Jack Benny comedy to be or not to be Carole Lombard, who plays people in the movie, takes place in Warsaw before the war, maybe during and maybe during the war. And so he plays a German officer. And to be or not to be is a farce comedy.
01:06:43:20 – 01:07:13:00
John
And he plays this Commandant Erhard. And the classic line is the romance in that film is, Oh, so they call me Concentration Camp Air Hog. Do they? And it’s kind of an ongoing joke. It’s very, very funny. And Truman was a German immigrant, came to Hollywood, I think, at some point before the war, and he just just blossomed and had an incredible career for the next 25 years after that.
01:07:13:03 – 01:07:17:26
John
And in 1937 alone, John, he made 14 films.
01:07:17:29 – 01:07:29:19
Jordan
That’s incredible. You know, it’s like every once in a while I’ll run into somebody like James Hong. He’s not from that older time, but oh, yeah, he’s got over 325.
01:07:29:19 – 01:07:30:15
John
Credits since.
01:07:30:17 – 01:07:31:20
Jordan
The A guy.
01:07:31:23 – 01:07:41:08
John
Yeah. Some of this just they work, you know, small roles in films. Nonetheless, he was intimidated. These people were intimidated. You know God bless James Hong is incredible He’s my favorite movie.
01:07:41:11 – 01:07:42:11
Jordan
Yeah. Which one?
01:07:42:13 – 01:07:43:08
John
Chinatown.
01:07:43:11 – 01:07:44:09
Jordan
Chinatown.
01:07:44:11 – 01:07:45:17
John
My favorite movie. Yeah.
01:07:45:19 – 01:07:49:29
Jordan
I like David Lappin at Big Trouble in Little China.
01:07:50:02 – 01:07:54:29
John
Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you have a do you have a favorite film or a favorite handful of them?
01:07:55:02 – 01:08:05:26
Jordan
Guillermo Yeah, just depending on how cynical I’m feeling. It’s like 13 or a bridge too far. Oh, well, familiar films, but yeah, well, I’m cynical.
01:08:05:29 – 01:08:07:06
John
It’s not like 17.
01:08:07:08 – 01:08:09:02
Jordan
Stalag 17.
01:08:09:04 – 01:08:28:02
John
But yeah, I enjoy store 17 too. I’m a big William Holden fan, but a bridge too far. John is my favorite war film. Yes, I saw it. I don’t know if you saw it when it was first released. I did. I when I was 14 years old and I was blown away by it.
01:08:28:04 – 01:08:31:24
Jordan
Just amazing. Oh, yeah. All the equipment and.
01:08:31:26 – 01:08:59:08
John
And it’s the real deal. You know, I saw somebody posted on Twitter last week or two weeks ago. The the, the the paratrooper drop in which, you know, they filmed that in 1976. This is before CGI. A big deal. I mean, it was one of the most expensive movies ever made, I think is back in 1976. And like $100 million.
01:08:59:11 – 01:09:01:11
Jordan
They gathered up all those antique planes.
01:09:01:11 – 01:09:02:14
John
For the oh yeah, for.
01:09:02:14 – 01:09:04:17
Jordan
The tow glider scenes and everything.
01:09:04:22 – 01:09:25:20
John
You watch this, you watch the sequence in that one sequence alone in bridge too far where it’s the it’s the Allied Paratrooper drop over Holland for Operation Market Garden in World War Two, which was turned out to be a fiasco for the Allies. What a great made a great film.
01:09:25:23 – 01:09:26:10
Jordan
To do it.
01:09:26:16 – 01:09:48:17
John
But that sequence which goes on for maybe 5 minutes or so, I’m watching this thing and I’ve seen the movie so many times, you know, watching this thing and thinking, imagine, imagine the planning and the work, the pre-production work that went into what they need to do in order to film this sequence.
01:09:48:19 – 01:09:49:26
Jordan
They could look.
01:09:49:28 – 01:10:21:00
John
A hiring of all those. Well, it wasn’t extras. Apparently. They they used the Army recruits from Holland or something like that to do the parachute drops. But the planning on what shots they were going to need, where they were going to position the cameras on the ground, where they were going to position cameras in the plane. There’s there’s a few shots of guys jumping out who clearly were holding handheld cameras so they could get the in the air stuff.
01:10:21:00 – 01:10:22:27
John
You know, it’s just staggering.
01:10:23:04 – 01:10:30:24
Jordan
You get an idea of how how rough it is and, you know, and then when they hit the ground, well, the impact.
01:10:30:26 – 01:10:31:14
John
Was.
01:10:31:16 – 01:10:49:26
Jordan
Killing my wife. When we were driving to Normandy, we went to Omaha Beach and everything I was telling her about, we tried to make it to send Mare Ugly, but it was just just couldn’t be done. We didn’t have enough time where they still got the the guy had a dummy of a paratrooper hanging from the steeple up there.
01:10:49:26 – 01:10:52:03
John
Still looks a lot like red button. So yeah.
01:10:52:06 – 01:11:10:02
Jordan
I was telling her it was right on red buttons. And then one day of reference she says, Well, are you going to go to San Merrick, Greece? And I said, Yeah, I think so. She said, So you’re going to do your red buttons? And I’m like, Huh? And she’s like, You’re going to do red blood, huh? Yeah. You know, she had no idea what I was doing.
01:11:10:02 – 01:11:10:17
Jordan
Oh.
01:11:10:19 – 01:11:33:20
John
That’s very funny. Yeah. Yeah, Well, that’s. Well, I’m glad you both could get that reference for the longest day, but, you know, I actually did the whole Normandy thing about ten years ago myself. And I did. I did have a it sounds like I had a few more days than you did, so I was able to get from summary galleys all way over to, oh, what was it?
01:11:33:23 – 01:11:39:15
John
I guess it was Sword Beach. Sword Beach where the Canadians landed, obviously over to this way over to the east.
01:11:39:15 – 01:11:41:08
Jordan
It’s sort of Juno.
01:11:41:11 – 01:12:04:04
John
It’s yeah, it’s just it was it was just west of the Pegasus Bridge. I didn’t get as far west, far east as that. But I got to, you know, I got to the American cemetery at Omaha Beach. I went to call, I went to Utah Beach, we went to some Gilley’s. I was there for about five days. And it was probably an incredible experience.
01:12:04:04 – 01:12:24:23
John
Of course, want to walk, you know, But it’s probably Yeah, yeah. Probably the closest thing one could get to stepping into a time machine and going because there’s so much that is still present there about the D-Day invasion.
01:12:24:26 – 01:12:29:12
Jordan
Yeah, we, we had went to the Bay Owens Bay. Oh, Tapestry. Yeah. Oh.
01:12:29:14 – 01:12:30:22
John
There you. Bye bye.
01:12:30:25 – 01:12:42:06
Jordan
Bye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there for like €2 more. You got a war museum. But it was a war museum. So we toured there. They got the whole the American stuff laid.
01:12:42:08 – 01:12:42:27
John
Okay.
01:12:42:29 – 01:12:47:18
Jordan
But it was interesting to see the whole British side of it, which I don’t know that much about.
01:12:47:23 – 01:12:53:05
John
Right. Well, the thing that did you get a chance to walk down on the beach at Omaha, You know.
01:12:53:05 – 01:13:10:00
Jordan
We got we drove down a dirt road where there was a parking lot and I’m like, oh, I’m going to get the rental car struck and turned around. Then we went when we went up and we’re on the Nazi bunkers. Yeah, you could see that, though, that led right to a parking lot to the beach, but we didn’t get to do it.
01:13:10:03 – 01:13:34:07
John
Well, I, I spent a couple of days down there. I, I went to the museum at the at the American cemetery. And then you can, you can wander around the grounds themselves, which is absolutely hallowed ground. It’s incredibly moving to see all the crosses and stars of David and everything. And then later that day, I went down the beach and just to hang out on the beach, I actually went swimming.
01:13:34:09 – 01:13:38:11
John
Oh, no, no. This was this would have been like late July.
01:13:38:13 – 01:13:42:10
Jordan
Yeah, because it was very cold when we were.
01:13:42:12 – 01:14:05:12
John
The water was warm. And the incredible thing to me about it was that you’re, you’re, you’re, I was on probably save for some of the the Pacific islands during World War two probably the bloodiest battle ever fought on a beach. Right. And it was a day that was gorgeous. The sun was out, families were picnicking on the beach.
01:14:05:14 – 01:14:23:17
John
Little kids are running around with kites. There are these there were these group groups of people that were doing like these these sort of like all the catamaran races, these kind of three wheeled vehicles with sails on them. I don’t know. I don’t know what you call them. Call them.
01:14:23:20 – 01:14:24:15
Jordan
Sailors myself.
01:14:24:16 – 01:14:38:28
John
Okay. Yeah. Okay. But they were racing back and forth on the on the sand, you know, by the by where the surf coming in. It was getting built. My God. Imagine if these decades later that this is happening right here.
01:14:39:00 – 01:14:44:18
Jordan
Yeah. So this one next year will be the 80th? I think.
01:14:44:20 – 01:14:45:22
John
That’s right. Yeah.
01:14:45:23 – 01:14:50:28
Jordan
And that’s going to probably be the last one with a lot of veterans left. Yeah, that’s a big
01:14:50:28 – 01:14:58:01
Jordan
Sundance. You can find out more about Jordan on IMDB.com. Check out his movie, Silence and Darkness (2019).
01:14:58:01 – 01:15:03:23
Jordan
he also has a website. Jordan Lage com and he’s on Twitter @JordanLage.
01:15:03:23 – 01:15:06:08
Jordan
There’ll be some boxes and circles around here.
01:15:06:10 – 01:15:13:25
Jordan
One box will have a recommendation for you, and the next box will have a playlist. The circles for subscribing. So you can get notification.
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