John Slattery

“Shampoo, written by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty and directed by Hal Ashby. Robert Towne was on the staff of Mad Men in the last season or two seasons and I got to hang out with him and I don’t know where I got the nerve to ask him out to lunch, but I did. I asked him how long it took to shoot and he said 75 days, which is, in modern filmmaking, that’s a lot of days. And I felt, “Was it Hollywood ten-hour days?” And he said, “No, it was… We’d do 50 takes.” At some point, they laid over the Nixon election over the story because Warren wanted… He knew he had a moment and he knew he could make what he wanted. Just knowing all that. Also Jack Warden would sing “Born Free,” which they couldn’t afford and Warren kept telling him, “Stop singing that song. We can’t afford it.” And he said, “I can’t help it, I’m nervous,” and he would just sing… Every time you see Jack Warden, he was singing ♪ Born free ♪ while he was showing up and… And anyway, a lot of funny stories and I love this movie.”

“Here’s a movie, No Country for Old Men, which I think… I worked with Mike Nichols once and he said that every stick of furniture, every piece of clothing, everything you put into the movie should add to the telling of the story, and I feel like this movie does that. The beginning, there’s an opening sequence where he’s hunting, Josh Brolin’s character’s hunting, and he takes off his boot and he puts it on the rock and then he aims at the… elk or whatever, and then he picks up the shell and puts it in his pocket, so you sort of get the idea that he’s either ex-military… Just every single thing about this film, I think, is just masterfully executed. These guys are at the height of their… their filmmaking abilities when they made this.”

“This movie here is maybe my favorite screwball comedy, of which I’m a great fan. Leo McCarey, The Awful Truth. Leo McCarey didn’t like the original script and rewrote it a bunch and had a piano on set that he would sit at when he wasn’t sure what to do and he would play, just to get creative, and he would think of what the scene ought to be. It was the first time that Cary Grant had improvised and Cary Grant offered to give his money back after the first week of production because he didn’t understand the way McCarey was working, and McCarey was like, “Just trust me. This is going to work out.” It was a very rocky early going and… and then they kind of fell into it. And it’s some of the most inspired acting, comedic acting that I’ve ever seen. There’s a pratfall that Cary Grant makes when he goes to see Irene Dunne singing an aria and tips the table over, and it’s one take and it’s incredible. Both of them are great in it.”

“Here’s a movie, by the great Stephen Frears, called The Hit. It starts out small. It’s shot in Spain. The production gets bigger and bigger. It’s sort of a chase. And it’s about a hitman who loses nerve and starts to examine his conscience. And it’s full of amazing performances. There’s a scene in it where Tim Roth goes into a bar and gets a couple of beers to take with him and gets made fun of by a bunch of locals. And he’s just sort of smiling, and he’s taking out his brass knuckles and his garrote wire and his knives and stuff, and he’s just going… And then he gets his beers, he puts them in his pockets, his four beers, and then he proceeds to beat the holy hell out of those four guys and then pull the whole bar to the ground before he runs and gets in the car. This is a great film. Really, really well done.”

“There’s a movie that I… go back to a lot. I directed a couple movies. One was called God’s Pocket and it was inspired by this, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Peter Yates is a guy who, to me, is remarkable in his breadth of field. He did The Dresser. He did Bullitt. He did Breaking Away. He did this. And Mitchum is unbelievable. I come from Boston, so a lot of old Boston is here. He goes to the Garden and watches Bobby Orr play hockey when he was a kid. There’s an entrance that he makes through the… He steps up to the window of a diner, and that’s the first time you see the reflection in the window of Mitchum. That menace, when you’re in the hands of heavyweights who don’t have to prove it. It was so well cast that there’s so many people that are just conversationally saying stuff that is really pretty chilling. It’s a great film.”