INTERVIEW WITH ACTOR MICHAEL MARGOTTA

Today I have the happy pleasure of welcoming a very special guest, actor Michael Margotta, to CINEMATIC REVELATIONS for an interview. Michael has acted in various motion pictures and television series over the years, in films such as DRIVE, HE SAID (1971) [My review of the film can be found here] WILD IN THE STREETS (1968), THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT (1970), and I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN (1977), to name a few examples. Michael will today be discussing his role in DRIVE, HE SAID, acting, The Actors Studio, Film Festivals, and, as an acting coach.

Welcome to CINEMATIC REVELATIONS Michael!

Athan: When did you first realize that you wanted to be an actor?

Michael: I was 18 years old. Wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do with my life. I had already had a physical for the Draft so it was just a matter of time before my number would come up and I would be in Vietnam. I was sitting in a library reading magazines and in the back of one I saw an advertisement for a theater academy in California that was also an accredited college. Thought maybe that might be a way to stay out of a war that I knew was wrong early on. Started doing research on other places but there really wasn’t a lot of choices in 1965. I had never done anything related to acting before so I didn’t have much to base a choice on. I had a hunch that film was the medium that would interest me so I focused in that direction.

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Athan: Where did you study acting?

Michael: I made the decision to go to the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theater Arts. One reason was that it offered a department for studying acting related to film and television.

Another was that it was situated near Hollywood. I grew up in New York and for an 18 year old in 1965, California seemed like the most exciting place to be.

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Athan: Your performance in DRIVE, HE SAID was a powerful, compelling viewing experience. How did you become involved in this project?

Michael: My involvement in Drive was on the surface like any other project. Agents setting up meetings and auditioning to get the role. I had been under contract to Columbia Pictures before this and had a reputation of fighting for what I believed in and Jack [Nicholson] knew all those stories. I had fought for creative freedom in a Studio system and that was rare and risky in those days. The Producers of Drive had all been working in Columbia so they knew the stories about me as well.

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Athan: Much of the film was shot at the University of Oregon, which gave the movie a freshness and realism that a studio could not offer in this instance. What were both the logistical advantages, and challenges, of filming on a real location?

Michael: The location issues were many. First, there were only two Universities in the U.S. that would allow filming by this time. It was 1970 and there had been problems in the past with film studios shooting on campuses. With the anti-war movement and antiestablishment atmosphere that circulated around Universities the consensus then was that a film shoot might create problems depending on content. So the only two choices left were University of Oregon or Colorado. There was so much going on around the University of Oregon at that time in terms of political polarization that could be interesting plus being situated in a very beautiful area of the country and fairly close proximity to California that it became the choice with a contract that stipulated no sex, no drugs, nothing detrimental to the name of the University.

The city of Eugene, where the University is situated, is surrounded by mountains and there were many communes established where groups were living in whatever ways they chose. And also communities where you would have right wing good ol’boys.

I don’t know if you remember the scene in Easy Rider when Jacks character is murdered but that location is known as the Paris Line and it was famous in Louisiana because many young people disappeared going through there. And the other famous place where young people disappeared is Grants Pass, Oregon, near the border with California.

So there were these extreme energies in the location.

One week before the shooting began I went with Jack to a location in the mountains in Oregon where a train was to arrive with a shipment of nerve gas to be stored in some kind of underground structure. Oregon is a Federally funded State so this Federally mandated shipment meant business and there was a protest taking place and we went to get a sense of the kind of atmosphere we would be eventually dealing with.

To give you a broader perspective, the week we arrived in Eugene there were two events that had just taken place. One was that a building was burned down that was run by the R.O.T.C. Reserve Officer Training Corps was a training program of the United States armed forces present on college campuses to recruit and educate commissioned officers. This brought in the F.B.I. The other event was someone driving around in a green pickup truck at night shooting anyone with long hair. This was all just for starters. The challenges had just begun.

All these events were part of the background of the filming but there was an internal event taking place that would affect shooting for days. This was the first film Jack directed and the Director’s Guild of America demanded he join the union because it was a union project.

He was refusing to pay for membership on the grounds that he may never direct again so the Directors Guild threatened to shut down the project by having other unions pull the crews off the production. The Producers brought in an alternative non-union crew in case the plug was pulled. So there were two crews, one sitting around watching while the other one worked. This stalled the shooting for awhile but eventually an agreement was reached and the non-union crew returned to L.A.

But this had an effect that was not obvious at first. The crew was becoming polarized like the environment. Which would blow up in the end when some rules were broken.

A major turning point was reached when a nationwide event started taking place on or near college campuses. It was the first time Earth Week, an event that represented ecological and environmental issues would be set up across the country. And the University gave permission for a street on campus to be used for the displays.

There was a radical movement that built a wall each night at each end of the street. They used cinder blocks and quick dry cement. In the morning the authorities would knock it down. But at the end of the week the radical movement took over the administration building next to the street and would not leave.

Just before all this chaos I met with Jack and Jeremy Larner (the writer of the novel that the film was based on) to discuss the ending of the film. The ending of the film is very different from what was originally in the script and the script ending very different from the novel ending (which I preferred). In the script, Gabriel(the character I played)does break into the Biology Lab but is captured and given a shot with a needle and put into a cage and taken away. In the novel there is a parade in the town and Gabriel who has been pursued by the authorities suddenly appears on the top of a huge float, fires up a cigar and in a relaxed mood in front of the world, sets the float on fire and self immolates.

What we discussed was a variation on the script which would most likely create a big problem because it involved not only doing the scene nude in the Lab but include streaking nude across the campus... a direct violation of the contract between the Producers, Studio and University. And instead of the needle and straitjacket and cage... I would let the animals go free and when the authorities finally catch up with me, walk out and get in the ambulance on my own free will. But we had to convince the Producer on location.

His answer to this idea about nudity in the Lab was that it was okay but not in the Lab originally designated, which was situated on University property. He offered to rent an abandoned school building in another area. The streak nude across the University campus idea was out. So it was left like this.

But as I mentioned before, there was a major turning point that would cause events to spiral out of control. The Administration building was now completely occupied by students.

I should mention here that I had made a decision that I would stay in character through the entire filming even when I was not working. I wore the same costume even when I was not working. I had a lot of free time when all the basketball sequences were being shot and I used it to stay in character and live in that place. I even convinced Bill [William] Tepper at one point to sleep in the boiler room space that the characters shared. I was continually doing my ‘research’ about what was going on in the area when I wasn’t shooting.

I happened to be on the campus and spotted the camera equipment truck in a parking area and I strolled over to sit and talk with some of the camera crew. Within a few minutes the Producer (Steve Blauner) came running up shouting, “Break out a camera... c’mon with me Gabriel... something is happening.”

So with one camera operator, I followed Steve up a hill and arrived on one side of the Administration building where a few people were gathered. A Military transport vehicle was parked in front of this side door and there two rows of Police in full riot gear... shields, riot helmets, rifles, batons, etc; creating a path from the door of the building to the back of the transport and at the same time students were being dragged/carried from the building and put into the truck.

Things were happening fast. The students’ hands and legs were tied with plastic bands that were adopted from the Military in Vietnam. It was as if Steve, the cameraman and myself were all on the same wave length. With no time to waste I positioned myself right in front of one of the men in riot gear and started a monologue. I forgot completely about Steve and the camera operator. I could see the nervousness in the eyes of the man behind the plastic face mask that I was monologuing with. More students dragged out behind him but now something else was happening.

Crowds started gathering quickly behind me and on both sides of me and at the same time the transport was overloaded with tied up students so they started lining them up on the ground at the back of the vehicle in a rush to get them out and get out themselves because now there were a couple of hundred people shouting at them and more arriving. They underestimated this operation.

And then all hell broke loose in seconds. It remains in my memory as a series of snapshots. On my left I was aware of an older man with a briefcase, a kind of professor type. Suddenly, over our heads, a huge piece of cement, like the base of some kind of street sign that had been ripped out of the ground came crashing down on the head of the man in the mask that I was talking with. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. Immediately the professor guy next to me reached down to try and help him. Instantly, someone behind me put a hand on my left shoulder and I could see it was holding a handkerchief. I reached for it and at the same time an officer who was standing behind the one I had been talking with, who was now lying on the ground semi-conscious, raised a pepper fogger and blasted me with gas.

This all happened in seconds.

Everything went black. My eyes were sealed, my skin was sealed! I instinctively knew I shouldn’t try to breathe and I had to protect my head. I was backing up, bent over, trying to protect my head with my arms and holding the last breath I had taken before getting hit with gas. It was Dante’s Inferno. Blackness. Bumping into people. Screaming and yelling all around me. And one minute became an eternity.

I stopped and still, with my eyes sealed, I started sipping little bits of air until I could breathe again and wiped my eyes with the handkerchief that mysteriously appeared on my shoulder.

The Producer was gone. The cameraman was gone. The transport was gone.

But there were hundreds of students chasing after a column of men in riot gear as they tried to retreat. Sometimes the last man in the column would be hit by some kind of projectile and the next man would have to carry him along.

And this was a strange moment for me. I’m not in a movie now. This is another dimension of ‘acting’ of ‘being’.

 

I started going with the flow. I was curious. Following this column now off the campus trying to make its way through a street in Eugene followed by an angry mob, every once in awhile having to stop alongside a building to put their backs against a wall for protection before attempting another block. The automobile traffic jammed up because of the crowd and mayhem.

And then I heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Someone ran by me screaming, “the national guard is coming!”

And I knew this did not bode well and it was time to call it quits.

Oddly enough all this movement seemed to be flowing in the direction of the center of Eugene where the Hotel was situated that the Production was based in. I went to the Hotel and sat at a window and watched as the riot worked its way to an underground parking garage and in swooped the Calvary (National Guard) and it was a bad day for everyone. I sat in that chair and cried. It was not only a release of a hell of a lot of adrenaline but something intensely soulful.

As an actor, prejudice is death. I was caught up in the rage. The rage of a nation at war with itself. This was 1970. The previous decade is difficult to explain. Like being in a dark room and someone turned on the light for the first time. And now they want to turn it off again and all this struggle is to keep that light on and keep exploring what was impossible to see before.

Needless to say, this event became the turning point for the production. The press was all over this event. It was the first time gas was used in the 40 year history of the University at that point in time. And this was covered up in the press. The subject of gas was a big issue as I mentioned in the beginning when the State had to accept the storage of nerve gas in one of its mountains.

The problem was... we had footage of gas being used and they knew it. And that footage was already on its way to California. It wasn’t long before the Governor of Oregon had a team of his aides at the Hotel trying to get that footage. Jack and the Producer had their hands full. It was clear that the material could create legal problems. And for that reason, when you see the film, after the first basketball game where my character with his misfit team of radicals stopped the game by turning off the lights, you see me outside the stadium supposedly getting arrested and I put my hand over the camera lens. Those few seconds are just before I was gassed. And I didn’t remember until I saw the film the first time that I did that in reality. It was as if I was saying...no, this is real..go away.

It was the beginning of the end. The Producer was now fired up and changed his mind about the ending idea for the film. He said if I wanted to streak nude to the Lab on University property it was fine. But... it would have to be a secret. It would not appear on any schedule. Only a few people on the Production would know. The idea was, I would get a phone call early in the morning on a weekend and be ready to go.

I got the phone call at 5am on a Sunday morning. There was a station wagon waiting outside the Hotel. There were six of us. Nicholson, Steve Blauner the Producer, Harry Gittes the Set Designer, Fred Roos the casting director, Bill Butler the director of Photography, and myself.

We drove over to the campus. Parked next to the entrance of the Lab building. Bill, Steve and Harry got out and started setting up a tripod and getting the camera ready. Jack was behind the wheel. Fred in the back seat and I was in the passenger seat. The idea was that when the camera was ready, Jack would drive to an area around 500 meters away and we would wait for a signal and Fred and I would get out and he would be an extra watching me streak nude to the building and enter while Jack drove back to the camera area.

As we sat there I was scanning the grounds of the University and I saw a pickup truck pull up to a building not far from where I was going to get out of the car and start running. A man got out of the truck, stood there watching us and then entered a building. I had a strange feeling in that moment. Bill signaled he was ready with the camera. We drove to our starting point and as soon as we stopped we saw a Eugene Police car pull up to the camera.

Jack got out and went to see what was happening while Fred and I waited…

The Police car drove away and Jack came back and said they were just curious why someone was shooting at 6am on a Sunday morning.

I stripped off my clothes and wrapped myself in a blanket. They waved and I got out and started running. Fred got out and was walking in the background and Jack was driving back towards the camera.

I ran towards camera which was placed on a tripod next to some stairs that led up to a glass door entrance of the Laboratory and the set up was that I would enter the building and shot finished. I was hoping we would get it in one take.

I ran up the stairs, past the camera, reached for the door and it was locked! Immediately a man appeared on the other side of the locked glass door and in one hand he had a walkie-talkie and in the other he was holding up a badge and shouted at me, “don’t move, you are under arrest!”

Without hesitation I ran back down the stairs and jumped in the car which had just returned and immediately started getting dressed. Jack was helping everyone collect the gear and throw it in the station wagon and by the time everyone was back in the car, there were men coming out of different buildings and surrounding the car before we could move. One guy actually had his hip up against the headlight on the driver’s side and Steve Blauner was behind the wheel now. We had the windows up and doors locked. The guy leaning on the headlight had his hand inside his jacket the whole time as if he was holding onto a weapon. It was a standoff. Blauner was racing the engine to try and threaten the guy off but he wouldn’t budge. There was a construction site nearby and the other guys were picking up boards and whatever they could find and jamming it under the car.

Blauner gunned the engine and tried to move an inch and the guy in front whipped his hand out of his jacket and pointed a kind of pen at the windshield which was a relief at that moment but it made Steve crazy. He jumped out of the car and started screaming at the guy that if he didn’t move he was going to drive over him. Got back in, revved up full speed and let it go and the guy up front jumped/fell backward and was just missed as we bounced full speed over boards and bricks and raced back to the Hotel but not to stay.

It was obvious we were set up. But by who?

Everything was moving fast. Blauner got his girlfriend and the footage we had just shot and got in his Porsche and headed for the California border. There was definitely going to be some fallout from this especially after what happened with the footage of the gassing and the Governor becoming involved. So the message was we were going to have breakfast at a Pancake House restaurant. A long breakfast. Because a team of lawyers were on the way from L.A.

It was a pretty quiet breakfast. When the lawyers arrived they just sat there watching us eat. Like everyone was trying to be serious but the subtext was more like, a bunch of kids sent to the Principles Office.

The plan was that we would go back to the Hotel but I should avoid my room. Wait in the Dining Room for a car to pick me up and drive me to the Oregon coastline and stay there one night and we would improvise shooting something there. Jack and the Lawyers would be busy with Police Authorities for awhile.

I had already cleaned out my room before we went out for breakfast so when we returned to the Hotel I went right to the Dining Room. The Police were arriving at the Hotel at the same time. Jack had a room full of Lawyers and Police.

When I entered the Dining Room, I saw the Assistant Director and a couple of crew members sitting at a table at one end of the room. I saw Jacks girlfriend, Mimi, sitting at another table with a guy who was a Nicholson fan that appeared whenever and wherever Jack worked. More than just a fan, he was obsessed with Jack and would pop up on location all the time. I sat down with them and immediately Mimi explained to me that she would be a go-between what was happening upstairs with Jack and what I should do.

And in walked two Police Officers. They came to our table and one of them asked if we knew the actor Michael Margotta. Instinctively I knew I should answer fast and first so the other two would know what do. I shook my head and said no. Mimi and the guy knew to say no as well. The two officers looked around the room, spotted the Assistant Director and crew at another table and made their way over. Mimi left quickly to go to Jacks room.

I watched as the Police asked the same question at the other table. I saw the Assistant Director point in the direction of me and Jacks fan guy. And I knew in that moment that the Assistant Director was the person that tipped off the authorities about the shot we did earlier. There are very strict union rules in the U.S. about shooting. The Assistant Director is like a Sergeant in the Military. He has to be informed of everything. And in a Studio system he has to control everything. He was not informed about what we were doing but somehow he figured it out. And in order to save himself from any blame in the fiasco, he alerted the Police.

The two officers walked out. Mimi returned and told me there was a van waiting for me outside and she was going to travel with me and later Jack would join us.

The three of us walked out together and as soon as we entered the Hotel Lobby the two Police Officers appeared from a side door and stopped Jacks fan guy. One of the officers took off his hat and pulled out of it a little card and started reading the poor guy his rights.

They were called Miranda Rights and had only recently become a law that the Police had to abide by. ‘You have the right to remain silent..etc; etc.’ This officer didn’t have it memorized yet so he was reading it.

I did not pause but kept going. It was obvious what happened. When the finger was pointed at our table they thought the other guy was Michael Margotta.

Mimi kept pace with me. As we entered the parking area where the van was waiting a Police car pulled up alongside of me with one officer in it and I stopped. Through his rolled down window he asked me if I was Michael Margotta and I said no. He asked me what my name was and a name popped out of my mouth of one of my high school friends. “Andy Dunne’” was my answer. I saw him pick up a little notebook and start searching for the name. We continued on, jumped in the van and were driven to the coast.

So these were a few of the challenges in shooting in a real location.

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Athan: What did you most enjoy about the experience of filming DRIVE, HE SAID?

Michael: One of things I enjoyed in the project is the research that I was doing day to day. It is my favorite part of acting. I dropped into a part of the world that was all new to me. I was spending time with people from the area and going into worlds that were interesting. Communes where groups were living alternative life styles. I was from New York and had only been in LA for 5 years and these two zones were best characterized by an iconic cover on THE NEW YORKER magazine which represented a map of the United States in which we see LA on the west coast and NYC on the east coast and nothing but a desert in between. There were some far out individuals living in Oregon. Ken Kesey who wrote, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest had graduated from the University of Oregon more than a decade before this but had a kind of commune life style that he supported as an example. So, I enjoyed being in these different worlds. And I developed a kind of group of locals that helped me explore the more radical undercurrents. And I enjoyed my fellow actors. Bill Tepper and I became life-long friends until he died recently. And Henry Jaglom and I worked together again many years after on a film in NYC called, CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE. And we are still in touch with each other. I greatly enjoyed the freedom I had working on the film. And the discoveries I made because of that freedom. Working with Nicholson and Bill Butler (Director of Photography) opened up possibilities to explore technically in ways I had not been able to do on productions before this one.

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Athan: What research did you undertake after you decided to take on the role of the irreverent, troubled Gabriel in DRIVE, HE SAID?

Michael: The research was pretty much about what I experienced living in the environment we worked in. Some of that I mentioned before. The political and social issues that were primarily the conflicts the character faced, were all too familiar. I had done a film (STRAWBERRY STATEMENT) before this that dealt with similar themes based on a real event at Columbia University. But a much more Hollywood version of events in my opinion. I drew from different sources for the character. A teenage friend who had dropped out of high school, a real rebel who opened up my mind by handing me a copy of ‘Coney Island of the Mind’ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. An African American street guy I studied for a couple years named Andy, who would never reveal his last name to me. The last line of the film is, “Your Mother called...your Mother called” as I was taken away. And for me this was the first time that there was some sense of this guy was just a kid who was angry and willing to go against Goliath even if it meant ending up in the asylum. There was an incredible sequence that we shot that never made it into the film. It took place in the Draft Board location. It was to take place after the scene where I attack the psychiatrist and I get dragged out by some guards. I went back at night and broke into the building and destroyed the whole interior. We spent a long time on that. Some of it symbolic, like destroying a Coca Cola machine and dozens of bottles of Coca Cola in slow motion and the rest just pure, poetic rage in real time taking the whole building apart. The character was doing so many drugs that he was ultimately alone in another dimension. The freeing of the animals in the end, his ultimate expression. I saw many people lost in drugs so it wasn’t difficult to draw from those impressions.

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Athan: Bruce Dern did a wonderful job as the coach in DRIVE, HE SAID, a character who was totally no-nonsense, the complete antithesis to Gabriel. What was it like to work with the talented Mr Dern? 

Michael: Working with Bruce Dern was minimal. We only had one scene together. But we would sometimes watch each other work. He was very supportive and it was always a pleasure to see him standing off to the side and giving me the ok sign after I did a scene. He had a phenomenal stamina. Sometimes we would cross paths early in the morning as I was leaving to shoot and he was just coming back from a 50 mile run. On the weekends he would run 100 miles with his girlfriend driving alongside handing him Coca Cola. I was happy for Bruce that he had this opportunity because the film helped his career tremendously. I had heard a story that when he was much younger he was up for the leading role in Elia Kazan’s, Splendor In The Grass and the only other actor being considered was Warren Beatty who did get the role in the end. When he spoke to Lee Strasberg about his disappointment, Lee told him, Bruce you are going to have to wait another 20 years. Pretty devastating to hear for a guy driving a taxi to survive. The last time I saw him was years after the film. I was doing something in the Actors Studio in NYC and he stopped in because he was doing something on Broadway and it was great to see him. He was surprised to see me working on a play by Chekhov.

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Athan: How was the experience of being directed in DRIVE, HE SAID by the renowned Jack Nicholson? 

Michael: Working with Jack directing was very liberating. At the same time he is a strong personality. As a result of the freedom it was possible to push the limits in some scenes in ways that I had not experienced in my previous work. Improvising scenes as an example. Or following an impulse that would not have been acceptable in a more traditional shooting situation. Some of those moments surprised me because in any other situation a director would have said, “Cut.” There is a scene that takes place before the Draft Board sequence when I’m sitting with a couple of the guys and Henry Jaglom is asking me why I am so morose and I was upset to the point where I got up and walked out of the scene but kept talking and then walked back in and sat down again still talking. I was surprised to see it in the final cut. Because Jack was so laid back (sometimes literally lying on the floor) when we were shooting, the atmosphere was relaxed for the most part.

Most films made in that era generally shot around one hundred and fifty thousand feet of film, max. I think we came back with three hundred and fifty thousand. A lot of that was basketball footage for sure but also things like the destruction of the Draft Board that never made it into the final cut.

There are as many different kinds of directors as there are actors and I have had the good fortune of working with directors who had been actors and they tend to have a trust in who they choose to work with so it becomes more of a collaboration. There is a vocabulary we can tap into and a lot of that is non-verbal. Jack liked it when I would do the hambone thing of slapping my leg rhythmically (which I stole from my teenage rebel friend) and I was using sparingly in key scenes and I would see him off camera doing it to encourage me to do it again and again and at a certain point I realized that he was pushing me to do it more knowing that only a percentage of it would end up in the final product and it would become a character trait.

One day he said something to me that I will always be grateful for. Learn film editing. It will save you eight years. And I did right after we finished shooting.

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Athan: Have you kept in contact with any cast members and crew from DRIVE, HE SAID? 

Michael: I did stay in touch with Jack, Bruce, Henry, Bill Tepper, Karen Black, Bob Rafelson. I did another film with Karen, ‘Can She Bake A Cherry Pie,’ directed by Henry Jaglom. And Bill was developing a script that he wanted me to do with him in Prague right up until he passed away last year. Henry wrote to me yesterday. Pierre Cottrell was also a dear friend. His Company did the subtitles for foreign distribution and he was also an important producer. So, Bill, Karen and Pierre have passed away. I have been living in Italy for almost twenty years and working non-stop and have a tendency to disappear into my work.

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Athan: Are you still recognized today for your role in DRIVE, HE SAID?

Michael: ‘Drive’ was certainly a unique film but from the beginning it was a film that came too late into the world. The University, anti-war themes had been done. After ‘Easy Rider’ there was a period when anyone that had a script that dealt with youth issues found Hollywood very receptive. Most Producers were looking for the formula of B.B.S. Productions. I did some of the earlier films that dealt with similar issues. ‘Strawberry Statement,’ ‘Wild In The Streets.’ The wave was finished by the time Drive was released. But in most respects it was in my opinion the best of the genre. In the 70’s there were young people that would stop me, mostly University types that would want to say something about how the film effected them. And here in Italy more people of that generation saw ‘Strawberry’ than ‘Drive.’ About ten years ago Sony released a collection of all the B.B.S films and that was the last time I heard anything.

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Athan: What for you was the scene(s) in DRIVE, HE SAID you are most proud? 

Michael: Over the years I have become a firm believer in less is more. That the gold is in the details. Take the s and the m off the word small and you get all. So I have a tendency to look at scenes under the microscope and when I look at my own work I focus more on moments. I’m not proud of any of the scenes as much as I am moments. When I saw the film the first time I was not excited about it. Of the genre it was the most original. It was pushing the limits in many areas. The Catholic Review Board which existed for years, walked out when they saw it and never came back. Initially it received an X-Rating and it took some legal work to get an R=Rating. Jack went after the hypocrisy in the Rating system. The philosophy being that it was okay to shoot or stab a woman in the breast but not show male frontal nudity.

I think there were too many cooks in the kitchen during the editing of the film. And there was an enormous amount of film to edit, more than twice an average film. So there are moments here and there in my own performance that I can see something. Most of them are silent moments.

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Athan: In 2009 you directed your first feature film, MISS JULIE. What is it that attracted you to directing this film?

Michael: The writings of August Strindberg always fascinated me. His perspective on theater was visionary, far ahead of the times. In the preface for Miss Julie he was pleading with Producers, Theater Managers, to make changes in productions that would add more realism. He is considered one of the three Grandfathers of Modern Realism, along with Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen. When Tennessee Williams received an award for ‘Streetcar Named Desire,’ he thanked Strindberg because in many ways, Miss Julie was the inspiration for Blanche DuBois. What I found challenging in Miss Julie is how Strindberg packed so much into the small space. It’s a one act play that takes place in one night in one room and has so many levels running through it in a unique language. I had been working on several projects as Artistic Director of The Actors Center Roma, a non-profit organization made up of two hundred actors, writers and directors. And it was several years later that I realized that three of the productions I was working on were in one way or another connected with suicide. I made a short version film of Chekhov’s ‘The Sea Gull.’ And shot an original story, ‘Everything Counts, Nothing Matters,’ about a film director that commits suicide while the entire cast is waiting for him in a hotel on an island. I was very curious about the subject of suicide and in all these projects I was working to remove all the moral issues connected with it and exploring how powerful that switch is that overrides our associations connected with pain and pleasure. Miss Julie was also an exercise with the actors in approaching material without assumptions. The initial intention was to explore the themes and see if we could find the play. The Actors Center was designed with this kind of approach in mind. I’m a member of the Actors Studio in the U.S. and it is similar in that it is made up of professional actors who come together to cause each other to grow in the art. So it wasn’t the kind of traditional approach. Meaning, we decide on a script and go into production. Instead, we decide on a script and work on it and see if we can find the soul of it, test it, get feedback on it and then take it to production. Miss Julie grew up in this way. I had worked this way as an actor in the past on many projects and it was a pleasure to share this with the actors in Miss Julie.

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Athan: What did you most enjoy about directing MISS JULIE? 

Michael: It was very satisfying to see the actors make the commitment to work on developing their characters and explore the text without any concern for performing for such a long period. I watched them grow in so many ways. They knew this was an opportunity they might never have again so they were devoted to it. In the Actors Center in Rome we had sessions twice a week for eight years in which the actors could bring in work and present it for feedback. And Directors sessions once a week for the same purpose. The actors in Miss Julie used these sessions for almost a year in order to test their development, sometimes with my input about what to focus on. Rai television came in and shot one of the sessions for a special they were doing on the Actors Center and this increased the interest in the project. The whole project developed in the Center. It was literally shot in the basement of the Center. It was challenging to design it to run like a play with three cameras inside the action at all times but I enjoyed that process very much. And the camera operators enjoyed it as much as I did.

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Athan: When did you first become involved in The Actor’s Studio?

Michael: I became involved in the Actor’s Studio in the late seventies in L.A. first and then right after in N.Y. I was asked to work on a play in development with Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s sister and it was around the same time that I became friends with Jack Garfein, the Director who along with Paul Newman put together the Actors Studio West. Jack was creating two new theaters in NYC and very excited about the move because after years in LA he felt it was an intellectual desert and he convinced me that it could be good for me to go back to my roots which began in the theater. My career started in the theater in LA in a production of Eugene O’Neil’s, ‘Ah,Wilderness.’

It was an enormous success and from there I went under contract to Columbia Pictures and working in films and television. Jack convinced me to come back to theater and especially theater in NYC. Ellen Burstyn invited me into the East Coast Actors Studio as a Professional Observer. After a few years of trying to live on two coasts I became a member of the Studio.

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Athan: You coach students on acting in seminars across the world. In which countries do you hold seminars? What gives you the most satisfaction about teaching the art of acting to students?

Michael: Until 2000 I taught in NYC. Then I started a routine which lasted a few years. Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Costa Rica and U.S.A. Then something happened that changed everything. I was doing a seminar on the Spanish island, Formentera when 9/11 happened and I could not go home. There were people working with me from five countries, one of them Italy. The Italians were asking me to come back to Rome which I did and life changed. There were so many people coming in that it was overwhelming and we started the Actors Center Roma. I continued to try and keep the commitments with other countries but it became very difficult. If I was in Portugal adapting Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Waves,’ and directing it for theater for six months, I would have to leave the Center in Rome and going back and forth meant leaving the actors alone and losing momentum. I closed the Center after eight years. I do seminars and coaching all over Italy now. I work with individuals and productions and started a company in Milan called MIAT, Milan Institute for Arts and Technology.

There was a moment when I was asking myself, why do so many young people want to become actors. There are so many courses, classes, schools, seminars for acting all over the world. I was teaching in the jungle of Costa Rica, on a Blue Boat off of Turkey, in East Berlin on Pushkin Strasse, in the incredible Duomo of AMALFI, on islands like Sardinia, Sicily, Mallorca, Formentera, Maddelana, in the Algarve section of Portugal, in Tel Aviv, in an ancient cemetery in Turin and every region of Italy. Why do so many young people want to join an endangered species?

I thought about all the obvious reasons, superficial reasons, but I came to the conclusion that there is something much deeper going on. Something ancient. That an actor is someone who can change, transform. Which means they have some kind of control over their existence. And when have we needed control over our existence more than now?

With the Actors Center in Rome I had a laboratory that I could experiment in, explore in, with two hundred and nineteen members made of actors, directors, writers. With different countries and environments I worked with diverse energies culturally, socially, artistically and that made it possible to adapt the work I was doing and experience the influences that were effecting different countries as we became more global. Some of the actors that came to work with me twenty years ago are now considered the best actors in Italy.

In all that time I was teaching acting, directing, writing, life issues, script analysis and developed exercises to address the issues that actors deal with so they can get into their power as actors and know how to get results.

And to take responsibility for the purpose and meaning of acting.

And when I see, and everyone else sees an actor discover the ability to be swept beyond themselves, I feel a great satisfaction. It’s really fulfilling when I see someone take on the discipline. I have watched lives change.

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Athan: What is the most thrilling aspect of being involved in film festivals, and selecting the movies which are to be screened? 

Michael: If it’s the Cannes Festival it’s very different from Ischia Festival or some newly formed festival. I was in Cannes with Nicholson for Drive, He Said and there you have a tough audience. For the past few years I have been doing seminars in the Ischia Film Festival with not only a special friend but a wonderful director and writer named Paul Haggis. We started doing seminars together three years ago on the subject of acting and also on writing short films.

In Festivals where I am involved in the selection process it is not thrilling at all. It is a lot of work and patience. Conferences and deliberations. For three years I was the Artistic Director of a small film festival in Sardinia. It was hard work to get it to another level and to introduce new ways of seeing. Last year I helped launch a new festival outside of Rome and it was consuming. Not only selecting but judging the work.

Sometimes I am asked to select works in festivals and sometimes just be a judge. I enjoy meeting interesting people who are trying to say something important. And when I interview people for an audience it can be educational and fun. Actors like Antonio Banderas or Directors like Billie August. These people have wonderful stories to tell about their lives and work.

Three years ago I received an Artistic Achievement Award at the Ischia Festival. And it was nice to be on the other end of a festival. Ten years ago the Mayor of Rome threw a big event for the Actors Center at the Roma Film Festival. It was a great pleasure to see the Center acknowledged for its artistic efforts. It can also be scary to be a judge of an anti-mafia film festival in Calabria. I have fond memories from all of them.

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Thank you so much today for your time Michael, and for the fascinating insight you have provided into the art of acting, film, film festivals, directing, and DRIVE, HE SAID. It has been wonderful to have you on CINEMATIC REVELATIONS. You are welcome to return whenever you wish.

Athan's note: I wish to express my great appreciation to Michael for agreeing to answer my questions for the interview, as he is currently in a difficult position in lockdown in Italy with his family during the coronavirus pandemic. Thank you again to Michael for an incisive, and thoroughly compelling discussion from which we have learned so much. Also, with a sincere hope that the crisis will end soon, and that life can eventually return to a sense of calm and normality, but with added understanding for humanity at large.

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Michael Margotta links

+Michael Margotta's official website

+Michael Margotta IMDb Actor Page

+DRIVE, HE SAID IMDb page

+Short Documentary on seminar with Michael Margotta on Vimeo

+Short Virtual Reality Project To Study Problems Of Acting In New Medium, Milan And Venice, Italy:

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