In the Life: Interview with Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. [unedited footage]

all right we so is it okay I call you Andy yes please that's people call me um tell me about the Genesis of get Bru how did you come up with this idea to do this documentary well um I had first of all I'd been making quite a few documentaries about the making of movies I had done an hourlong piece on a stars born with Barbara Strand and I did an hourong documentary that PBS ran on the making of Annie and even though my ba main business is doing trailers I always enjoyed doing these documentaries U um and had fun doing them and then I saw um the misari documentary on Z which I thought was just terrific and I thought you know I should do something like that and then I gave it some more thought and somebody said to me uh why don't you do something like that on Bruce fanch and I thought well wow that would be terrific so I approached Bruce and he said yes I said look I'll I'll do the directing and the camera and all that part and you supply the Stars which he did um and uh we were off and running or originally I did not intend to finance it myself uh but I ended up doing so because the more we shot the more fun it was um I just said oh I don't want anybody else telling me what to do let's just keep doing it and and that was it took us two years actually all told interesting now behind the scenes of a movie sounds a little different from what you were doing with get Bruce because you're dealing with a lot of different personalities and a lot of stars on behind the scenes um award shows what is that a different kind of a challenge are there any other differences there was a tremendous difference between shooting behind the scenes with what Bruce does and shooting behind the scenes in movies the big difference is this movies are repetitious and it gives you a chance to shoot uh the same piece of action from a variety of angles what he does is all spontaneity uh movie sets are boring people people finally settle in they get relaxed uh you can take your time you're there for a whole day um what Bruce does is write shows that are uh in a state of panic from the very beginning when I first went backstage at the Oscars um and saw what went on there uh I couldn't believe it and I could understand why they didn't want me backstage at the Oscars um it is um absolute pandemonium uh um if you put a light on anybody they freak out everybody involved is tremendously nervous when people make movies they're not nervous uh when people appear live on television they're all nervous and it's a very very nerve-wracking procedure and uh I wish that I could have gotten more in get Bruce of what really goes on the way they're pulling at Bruce from every direction you know Shirley mlan needs you this one needs you that one needs you you you know and it's for the cameraman he didn't you didn't you wouldn't know where to put the camera whereas in a movie you you look at the scene being shot once and you know now I'll put it behind the camera this time and the next time I'm going to shoot with the director in the shot and then I'll shoot this and that so I'd originally intended to do something more similar to what I did with Annie um the behind the scenes show I did on Annie and on a stars born but I couldn't do that I what Bruce does is too fleeting and movies are much more repetitious now um let me finish this next question we change the tap why did you think the story on Bruce's work and his life would be interesting to American audiences and why did you want to direct it well I knew uh that for a fact that people had no idea whatsoever that somebody actually wrote what seemed to be spontaneous remarks that there was an actual writing process in what whoopy Goldberg says at the Oscars or Billy Crystal says or what Robin Williams says or what B Midler says people actually when I first started showing little pieces of it to people they were amazed that somebody actually wrote that stuff they thought that it was all came off the top of their head and I do think it was very generous of all the stars to allow us to reveal that fact because I think uh uh they would prefer for people to think that it uh it actually comes from them spontaneously and why did you want to direct this particular documentary oh I just wanted to do I wanted to do a behindth scenes document I hadn't done one in a while because Entertainment Tonight put me out of the backstage business in the old days the studios hired me to do behind thes scenes documentaries to promote films on television the minute Entertainment Tonight came along and would do it for nothing come on the S show a little piece and get it on TV for nothing they didn't need me anymore interesting okay why don't we change tape I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Bruce do you think that um American audiences will be surprised to find out that the words that their favorite people are um saying was written by a gay man um no um can you repeat am going to um I actually agree with uh Bruce that um I don't think people think in those terms at all um unless somebody is a political leader or a romantic leading man or woman I don't think that kind of thought the idea of whether they gay or straight comes into play at all uh years ago in New [Music] York trying to remember this guy's name Ray Ray I better not say his name even you're mentioning about well years ago in New York I remember um I dated a guy who was Nixon's chief speech writer and he was gay of course and um I used to look at Nixon's speeches and um uh and see if there was anything about them that would suggest that they were written by a homosexual and of course they they weren't there is a uh I've heard this said in Hollywood I think this is an interesting uh um Insight a well-known director who's a friend of mine who's gay I heard a studio studio executives one say well he can't direct this heterosexual love film because he's gay and I thought wow that's pretty stupid reasoning because the best female characters ever written in the theater probably were written by Tennesse Williams who gay uh the most powerful heterosexual relationships have been written by uh by homosexuals uh and I think uh likewise probably a number of straight writers have been able to write about uh gay people uh um the person who directed Philadelphia is straight uh Tom Hanks is straight um I just think that's all very superficial uh uh thinking and I think there's less of it today than there there was before I think that that that Hollywood just like Society itself has changed and attitudes towards homosexuality have changed um um so I I would just if if a if a young man uh came to me and said if let's say um um Leonardo DiCaprio were to ask me if he if he were gay which he's not if he would ask me well should I let it be known that I'm gay I would advise him not to do so I say if you're a uh somebody with a teen following if you're a Ricky Martin I think you'd be stupid to to broadcast uh your homosexuality to the world um I think those agents and and managers who handle people who might be in the closet uh if if their career is such that they're going to have to appeal to young girls or to families or to children it's best left unsaid um people don't go around talking about their sexual life when they're straight uh so much um I think discretion is is is advisable if you're a character person or if you're behind the scenes I don't think it matters one iota now for yourself um you've been you've not been in the closet since you've been here in Hollywood was that always the case working in the industry or was that a gradual process for you um earlier in the when I was in the business back in the 60s I was much more guarded I was never I never lied or anything but I was just more careful to use um neutral gendered words uh to uh if I went to a I would have a date or something and uh you know avoided the discussion then during the 60s the whole sort of um kind of hippie movement the Bohemian lifestyle that came to the four in the 60s gave a lot of people cover you know you could be gay and it just looked like you were U you know enjoying the the 60s lifestyle um I actually uh reached a point where I hadn't i' I became so ad Droid at avoiding the issue that I found that I had a lot of friends who I wanted to tell but I was now embarrassed to say it to them because they would say to me why didn't you tell me this years as before that's all that thought start with a you had a lot of friend okay um I reached a point where I had a lot of friends that um were pretty close friends that I had sort of fooled over the years uh uh not intentionally but it just worked out that way and I wanted to tell them and it it became difficult to tell them because I was fearful then of them saying why didn't you tell me this before how can we be friends and you withhold that kind of information the way I actually forced myself out was I was working with a very big female movie star who saw me as a very eligible bachelor for her girlfriend's who were getting divorced or had not married yet and I found myself at the functions sitting next to all these single women I was out at the beach one day and uh her boyfriend the fellow she was living with at the time called me and said U Andy uh I heard you out at the beach uh we're just having a little dinner at home at our beach house would you like to join us on Saturday night and and I said um sure uh but I'm with someone and he said oh that's fine bring them along and I was with my lover at the time and I brought him along and the reaction was rather interesting uh uh as we began the meal it began to Dawn on the star uh that this was my boyfriend and she had a little bit of difficulty dealing with it and at one point actually had to get up and leave the table and stayed away for about a half an hour and then she came back and she was all right with it and I thought to myself thank God if uh if I can push this thing past Barbera strand I can tell everybody that's a great story um in your film I think Paul Riser kind of makes a a funny comment about Bruce being a good gay role model do you see Bruce as being a role model to the gay community don't let this film fool you Bruce is a very very complicated fellow and I don't have such a narrow picture of Bruce that I would see him as a model of anything he's a very complicated guy he's extremely decent an ex what he's done for the AIDS cause in this country is immeasurable um he's too much of a muppet to be a role model though I think I don't know I don't know I don't I don't I don't have any role models myself so it's hard for me to uh to sayc oh okay repeat um yeah I think he did did you're probably not going to use that anyway oh question I asked Bruce tell me about the response you've been getting for your film film festivals and you've been screening it to friends what has been the response to get the response to this film uh at film festivals has been extraordinary um we were at Sundance we had several screenings the film played extremely well we went to the Santa Barbara Film Festival which is um an older crowd and it played like dynamite there we had 414 people in the uh excuse me in the theater and it played like dynamite um I have an older sister who lives in Leisure World which is a retirement community I loaned her a tape and she started showing it to people in their 70s and 80s and she said Andy they're falling out of the furniture They're laughing so hard and now I'm getting phone calls from people I don't even know asking to borrow the tape um you expect this response well I hoped we'd have such a good response but um it's been for the most part better than uh than I expected what what does happen though with audiences that the film tends to skew towards slightly older audience very young people uh I don't think are as interested in this film as as an older audience slightly older audience is and and I doubt that it'll play well way out in the Hinterlands I think you have to be sort of interested in making the film I threw out a lot of very funny stuff because I wanted to concentrate on it being an educational piece something that enlightened people as to how this process worked so as I cut I cut for information rather than for jokes and I think one of the reasons that it does play so well and that that it does get such big laughs is that people are perceiving it as a a piece of information and when you're thinking along those lines and then a joke comes at you it's funnier then if we sat there and said now here's some of Bruce's best jokes and just started throwing jokes at you you know but I cut out a lot of great jokes Bruce wrote the joke for um for um um Richards the governor of U of uh Anne Richards the governor of Texas at the Democratic Convention when she said poor George he doesn't know any better he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth um and I I was never able to use and finally cut out one of Bruce's funniest lines was when after P Paul Rubin had his U problems uh which was a scandal uh he made a sudden surprise appearance on the MTV Awards and he walked out and he and he said and this is the line Bruce wrote for him he said heard any good jokes lately and uh that was a a joke I wanted to leave in but we couldn't I I I couldn't get it set up properly um this is something I want to ask you that brings to mind um did you take advantage of any of the newer Technologies like smaller cameras or you know in order to get the access that you did it was a lot ofage I made one big serious technical mistake in approaching this film I started shooting it on super 16 I would never ever do that again I shot some of it you know on Digi beta ultimately when it went when it came time to blow this thing up to 35 the digi beta blew up better than the super 16 because of the process we used we went with a process that's geared to blowing video to 35 not 16 to 35 had I gone and blown the 16 up separately to 35 the finishing cost would have been prohibitive in addition in film you're working with 10-minute loads and every 10 minutes just when something's going you have to change and that's a timec consuming process as you know whereas with video you have a 20 at least 20 usually a 40min load um the unions have different rules about film I could have gotten more backstage if I had been strictly on video like at the Elizabeth Taylor thing because I was on film I was prohibited uh from backstage access because a whole different set of Union things kicked in whereas if I'd have been video I would have been perceived as news and I would have had a greater access if I when and if I ever do one of these again I would only shoot it on video even if I intended it for theatrical release uh um I I think that uh super 16 is totally uh untenable and 35 forget it you can't make a documentary in 35 mm I just have two more questions I think we need to maybe dab your okay um the title get Bruce tell us how you came to that title uh the minute I thought of uh doing a documentary on Bruce I thought of the title get Bruce and I got it from the movie get shorty now I the title really um refers to the fact that every single person in Hollywood who has to get up and speak on an award show or at a charit charitable event the first thought that comes into their head is get Bruce uh his phone rings off the hook constantly everybody wants him to write for them those little onliners those little things that they have to say impromptu um on award shows and on uh charitable events and it's my last question what do you ultimately hope that audiences um including your older sister and her friends at the place where she lives and as well as people in Middle America Come Away with after they see your film well the film as you know ends on kind of a touching note and and um uh I hope that people see naturally I want people to be entertained and amused and I want them to understand the craftsmanship of writing but there's such a humanness quality to Bruce and and so much Humanity in him that I I wanted people to see that I wanted people to uh to see that what a lovely human being there is inside of this Preposterous looking character and hopefully it'll expand people's understanding of The Human Condition great thanks so much