PLUME: Now, was Dreyfuss ever able to fully overcome his reverence?
BALABAN: I don’t think so. I think he always got sort of, “Oh my God, I’m with Francois Truffaut.” I think he did. But you have to remember, he couldn’t speak to him much. You know what I mean? So Francois just thought Richard was the best. He was so American, Richard. His energy, his humor, his style – Francois really said great things about Richard all the time. But they really didn’t sit down and talk, because it was too difficult.
PLUME: What would the standard conversation over lunch be like?
BALABAN: Well, we always talked about the same things. We would talk about who was in the room, what we thought about them. You know, like, after a certain point you’re in high school together.
PLUME: I loved your valiant attempts, with Truffaut, to develop an enemy on the set to focus on.
BALABAN: Well, yes, that happened.
PLUME: Is it something you ever tried on another film after that?
BALABAN: No, I didn’t even try to do it really, it just happened. But it doesn’t happen when you’re on a movie for four weeks – it’s a kind of a seven month experience. I mean, nobody’s irritating to you, very rarely are we that irritated by somebody except the occasional person you encounter in your life somewhere, like a nasty bus driver or something. But you know, mostly who would pay attention? You can’t get annoyed if you don’t know somebody pretty well. So it is sort of unique to movies. No, really, I can’t say that I’ve had that much, ever, on a movie set.
PLUME: What was the most difficult aspect of the shooting? Was it the duration of the shoot?
BALABAN: It’s the length of time, and the heat, and the frustration and everything. But for me, there wasn’t much difficulty. It was being away from home that was hard. The hours were a little challenging. But, when you’re on location, you have nothing else to do anyway. I loved standing next to Francois. Then Richard and I were friends, so if Francois wasn’t there, Richard was there. Then Steven was inviting you to his house to watch movies – it’s summer camp. It’s not hard.
PLUME: I loved the description of you forcing everyone to sit down because you were desperate for a nice, home-cooked meal. That and the description of video games at the time, all being referred to as Pong…
BALABAN: Yeah, I guess so… I was completely out of that loop, and I continue to be. I just knew they had these big things that were imported that people were playing.
PLUME: It’s a nice little time capsule, as well.
BALABAN: Inadvertent, but that’s the way it is.
PLUME: Have you ever thought about doing a follow up?
BALABAN: No.
PLUME: Or just a memoir in general?
BALABAN: Nope. Well, A, I’m busy, and B, I’m not that interesting – although I’m sure some of my experiences are worth sharing, but mostly I don’t want to be thought of as somebody who shows up on a set and writes about people.
PLUME: Well, it’s an excellent book. That would be my bottom line.
BALABAN: You’re very kind. You know, you can’t write this about most movies, because most of the time you haven’t had the kind of experience that you would find interesting to yourself to write about. Most of the time on movies you’re writing letters, and reading, and not paying too much attention to what’s going on – except your work. This was a movie that happened to have this amazing bunch of people in it, and also was a very, very interesting movie to watch being made, because of Steven. It doesn’t happen that much, that these circumstances come together.
PLUME: Was it a daily diary that you kept, or was it recollections?
BALABAN: It was a series of letters home to my wife. After which, she suggested that I maybe write a magazine article, and then eventually it became a book.
PLUME: Your letters were quite detailed…
BALABAN: Also, it did have an earlier life as something I wrote at college. When I was older – I didn’t graduate college when I was supposed to, because I left to be in the movie of Catch-22. So when I went back to graduate, when I was 30 or 31, or whatever it was, I had to take two courses in order to graduate, one of which was a sociology course. It was a course in which all you did was write a 100 page paper, and you didn’t have to go to class. But, like all you did was write a 100 page paper? It was a tutorial. So I chose social stratification on a film set, and had just finished being in Close Encounters, and actually wrote my paper on that movie – without mentioning names or anything, because I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. I got an A+ on the paper; my teacher thought I had really penetrated whatever, and they enjoyed reading it, I guess. It’s not that the Close Encounters book was directly that, but it had caused me to focus on the movie in a way that normally I don’t look back on my experiences. They’re over, I don’t really think about them too much. You try to dredge up two anecdotes for the electronic press kit, and that’s about it. But I had really spent time thinking about it, so when it arose that a publisher actually called me and said could I publish my “diary,” it was much easier to revisit it, because I had written my paper, and of course I obviously took out all the social stratification issues, and also went back to the letters that I had written my wife as a guide for how to put this thing together, basically.
PLUME: I have to ask you about another film that was one of my childhood favorites – 2010. That, for me, is the iconic role when I think of you.
BALABAN: Oh, I had a good time. I enjoyed my part.
Continued below…
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