WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're focusing 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:05.799 on a filmmaker whose work really defined action 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:10.050 cinema for, well, half a century. Yet his name, 00:00:10.070 --> 00:00:12.289 it often kind of resides in the shadow of some 00:00:12.289 --> 00:00:14.490 of his contemporaries. Right. We are talking 00:00:14.490 --> 00:00:16.870 about Walter Hill. He's the architect of these 00:00:16.870 --> 00:00:19.910 gritty, stylish classics like The Warriors, 48 00:00:19.910 --> 00:00:22.929 H 'ers, and maybe the guy who, more than anyone 00:00:22.929 --> 00:00:25.350 else, really structurally shaped the whole Alien 00:00:25.350 --> 00:00:29.050 franchise. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Hill is just 00:00:29.050 --> 00:00:31.789 a magnificent study in artistic singularity. 00:00:31.829 --> 00:00:34.189 He's one of those rare directors in modern Hollywood 00:00:34.189 --> 00:00:37.119 who stayed, you know. uncompromisingly loyal 00:00:37.119 --> 00:00:39.859 to a specific aesthetic. Even when that aesthetic 00:00:39.859 --> 00:00:42.479 led to, well, some colossal box office failures, 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:44.939 he's kind of the quiet master, you know? His 00:00:44.939 --> 00:00:47.299 films seem simple, but they're relentlessly intense. 00:00:47.579 --> 00:00:49.960 Deceptively simple, yeah. And the key thing we're 00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:51.920 unpacking today, the thesis that seems to govern 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:54.159 his whole career, it comes from Hill himself. 00:00:54.420 --> 00:00:56.719 He stated quite clearly that every film I've 00:00:56.719 --> 00:00:58.920 done has been a Western. And that's the crucial 00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:02.140 lens, isn't it? What's fascinating is his definition 00:01:02.140 --> 00:01:04.569 of a Western. It has almost nothing to do with 00:01:04.569 --> 00:01:06.909 horses or, you know, six shooters. Right. He 00:01:06.909 --> 00:01:10.650 sees the Western as fundamentally a stripped 00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:13.450 down moral universe. He means a world where the 00:01:13.450 --> 00:01:16.469 conflicts, the problems, they exist beyond the 00:01:16.469 --> 00:01:19.329 normal avenues of social control. It's about 00:01:19.329 --> 00:01:21.409 what happens when the rules break down. Okay, 00:01:21.469 --> 00:01:23.250 so that sets our mission statement for this deep 00:01:23.250 --> 00:01:25.409 dive. We're going to look at his biography, his 00:01:25.409 --> 00:01:27.890 films, his interviews, his own notes, really, 00:01:28.010 --> 00:01:32.450 to trace how this moral universe evolved. Whether 00:01:32.450 --> 00:01:35.090 he's directing a buddy cop film set in the 80s 00:01:35.090 --> 00:01:37.890 or... you know, an actual historical Western. 00:01:38.890 --> 00:01:41.150 That structural framework, it stays the same. 00:01:41.329 --> 00:01:44.069 It really does. It's a journey into how this 00:01:44.069 --> 00:01:47.349 unique writing style, this relentless focus on 00:01:47.349 --> 00:01:50.269 genre, allowed one filmmaker to navigate, well, 00:01:50.310 --> 00:01:51.969 the really volatile landscape of Hollywood. He 00:01:51.969 --> 00:01:54.950 generated massive hits and also some truly controversial 00:01:54.950 --> 00:01:57.489 but maybe magnificent failures, too. And that 00:01:57.489 --> 00:01:59.650 longevity that's really relevant for you, the 00:01:59.650 --> 00:02:01.950 listener, he'll prove that sticking to your guns, 00:02:02.129 --> 00:02:05.629 genre purity, a clear artistic voice, even one 00:02:05.629 --> 00:02:07.890 that sometimes tanks commercially, can keep you 00:02:07.890 --> 00:02:10.840 working. And eventually it can earn you the highest 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:13.520 honors. We're talking Emmy wins, the Writers 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:16.379 Guild's Laurel Award. It's quite the career arc. 00:02:16.659 --> 00:02:19.060 OK, so let's unpack this. Let's start right at 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:21.939 the foundation. His early life, Walter Hill, 00:02:22.139 --> 00:02:25.620 born January 10th, 1942, Long Beach, California. 00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:29.740 How does a young kid from California end up with 00:02:29.740 --> 00:02:33.699 this intense focus on like solitary narrative? 00:02:34.379 --> 00:02:36.319 Well, it starts, ironically, with his health. 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:40.020 Hill had severe, really crippling asthma as a 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:42.180 child. Right. It was so bad he actually missed 00:02:42.180 --> 00:02:44.360 several years of school. And this wasn't just 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:47.319 physical. It created this kind of enforced solitude. 00:02:48.339 --> 00:02:50.080 Intellectual imaginative solitude. So he spent 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:52.280 a lot of time alone. He said it himself, didn't 00:02:52.280 --> 00:02:54.139 he? That the asthma made him profoundly comfortable 00:02:54.139 --> 00:02:58.300 being alone. And that led to, his words, a tremendous 00:02:58.300 --> 00:03:00.500 amount of reading at an early age. He wasn't 00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:02.199 getting stimulation from playing with other kids. 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:04.300 He was getting it from stories. Exactly. He read 00:03:04.300 --> 00:03:06.520 constantly, listened obsessively to the radio, 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:09.539 became, and this is his phrase, utterly besotted 00:03:09.539 --> 00:03:12.789 with daytime serials. He realized this solitude 00:03:12.789 --> 00:03:15.629 let him live in this imaginary world. He got 00:03:15.629 --> 00:03:18.430 comfortable with abstract ideas dominated by 00:03:18.430 --> 00:03:21.590 stories, narrative and characters. And that comfort 00:03:21.590 --> 00:03:24.509 with abstraction, that singular focus, that becomes 00:03:24.509 --> 00:03:26.810 the absolute defining feature of his screenwriting 00:03:26.810 --> 00:03:30.599 later on. So lean. So archetype driven. And that 00:03:30.599 --> 00:03:33.159 solitary nature, it shaped his early film taste, 00:03:33.259 --> 00:03:36.159 too, which is pretty revealing. He liked adventure 00:03:36.159 --> 00:03:40.039 films, westerns, musicals, things with clear 00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:43.240 structure, clear morality. Right. But he explicitly 00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:46.360 disliked kid movies. Seems like he rejected sentimentality 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:49.379 in favor of pure drama even then. The very first 00:03:49.379 --> 00:03:50.979 film he remembers seeing, Song of the South, 00:03:51.099 --> 00:03:53.639 the Disney one from 46. Controversial now, but 00:03:53.639 --> 00:03:55.699 that was his first memory. And you also can't 00:03:55.699 --> 00:03:58.810 ignore the blue collar roots. The family background 00:03:58.810 --> 00:04:01.189 that grounded him in a world of physical work 00:04:01.189 --> 00:04:03.650 of stoicism. Oh, OK. And that feeds directly 00:04:03.650 --> 00:04:05.650 into the kinds of heroes he champions later. 00:04:05.789 --> 00:04:07.849 You know, the working class guy who relies on 00:04:07.849 --> 00:04:10.509 skill, not talk. His paternal grandfather was 00:04:10.509 --> 00:04:13.030 a wildcat oil driller. His father supervised 00:04:13.030 --> 00:04:16.220 at Douglas Aircraft. And he admired them. He 00:04:16.220 --> 00:04:18.379 called them smart, physical men who worked with 00:04:18.379 --> 00:04:20.500 their heads and their hands. And he didn't just, 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:23.680 like, admire it from afar. He lived it. During 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:25.879 high school and college, he actually worked on 00:04:25.879 --> 00:04:28.360 the oil fields on Signal Hill as a roustabout. 00:04:28.579 --> 00:04:31.439 Yeah, tough work. He also ran an asbestos pipe 00:04:31.439 --> 00:04:34.120 cutting machine, worked as a spray painter. These 00:04:34.120 --> 00:04:38.139 are intensely physical, manual jobs. That physicality 00:04:38.139 --> 00:04:41.139 gave him a certain grounding, for sure. But... 00:04:41.389 --> 00:04:43.769 His ambition, it was artistic. He actually thought 00:04:43.769 --> 00:04:45.769 about being a comic book illustrator for a bit. 00:04:45.990 --> 00:04:48.089 Studied art down at the Universidad de las Americas 00:04:48.089 --> 00:04:51.230 in Mexico City. Mexico City, why there? He said 00:04:51.230 --> 00:04:54.189 it was as far away as I could get without any 00:04:54.189 --> 00:04:58.579 money. That kind of practical, decisive choice, 00:04:58.839 --> 00:05:02.459 wanting distance, independence, that feels very 00:05:02.459 --> 00:05:05.060 Walter Hill, doesn't it? It does. But the academic 00:05:05.060 --> 00:05:07.600 path, that shifted eventually. He majored in 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:09.819 history at Michigan State. Seems like a bit of 00:05:09.819 --> 00:05:12.620 a detour, but maybe not. This is where his writing 00:05:12.620 --> 00:05:14.779 philosophy starts to form, apparently heavily 00:05:14.779 --> 00:05:17.220 influenced by literary figures, especially Hemingway. 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:20.500 Oh, the Hemingway influence is huge. He wasn't 00:05:20.500 --> 00:05:22.040 just reading him for pleasure. He was studying 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:26.259 the prose. He wanted to, uh... Write clearly 00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:29.439 and simply and make your point in an elegant 00:05:29.439 --> 00:05:32.699 way. Clarity, simplicity, elegance. Exactly. 00:05:32.699 --> 00:05:34.860 That's the intellectual foundation for the whole 00:05:34.860 --> 00:05:37.579 haiku style that would make him famous later. 00:05:37.959 --> 00:05:40.259 It's all about stripping narrative down to its 00:05:40.259 --> 00:05:43.699 absolute bare essentials. So he graduates, can't 00:05:43.699 --> 00:05:46.160 join the army because of the asthma, suddenly 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:48.240 has to figure out, okay, how do I make a living 00:05:48.240 --> 00:05:51.180 telling stories? Heads to Hollywood. What was 00:05:51.180 --> 00:05:53.759 the plan? Well, he took the traditional route. 00:05:54.269 --> 00:05:56.949 The gritty way in. Started doing research for 00:05:56.949 --> 00:05:59.050 historical documentaries. And then crucially, 00:05:59.069 --> 00:06:02.189 he took that classic Hollywood advice. Get a 00:06:02.189 --> 00:06:04.230 job in the mailroom. Right. The mailroom at Universal. 00:06:04.529 --> 00:06:06.490 Yeah. Someone told him it was a good way to meet 00:06:06.490 --> 00:06:08.990 people. He wasn't expecting a handout. He was 00:06:08.990 --> 00:06:10.250 just trying to work his way into the system. 00:06:10.370 --> 00:06:12.629 And from the mailroom, he gets into the Directors 00:06:12.629 --> 00:06:15.610 Guild of America training program, which sounds 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:18.069 pretty demanding. That was his real film school, 00:06:18.230 --> 00:06:20.829 right? An apprenticeship on high pressure TV 00:06:20.829 --> 00:06:23.660 sets in the late 60s. Absolutely. He was an apprentice 00:06:23.660 --> 00:06:27.439 assistant director observing and working on the 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:30.639 bedrock of American genre TV. We're talking Gunsmoke, 00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:34.699 Bonanza, The Wild Wild West. Wow. He was learning 00:06:34.699 --> 00:06:38.019 hands on the economy of storytelling you need 00:06:38.019 --> 00:06:41.199 for TV. Efficiency, clarity. It's a perfect match 00:06:41.199 --> 00:06:44.139 for that Hemingway inspired approach he was developing. 00:06:44.339 --> 00:06:46.360 And he moved to features pretty quickly. Second 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:48.300 assistant director on The Thomas Crown Affair 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:51.879 in 68. Then uncredited second A .D. on Bullet. 00:06:52.189 --> 00:06:54.970 Also 68. That bullet job that gives you a real 00:06:54.970 --> 00:06:58.410 sense of the adrenaline and chaos he was seeing 00:06:58.410 --> 00:07:00.750 firsthand. His job was logistics, setting background 00:07:00.750 --> 00:07:03.189 for the street shots, coordinating with the police, 00:07:03.250 --> 00:07:04.930 making sure nobody got hurt during those high 00:07:04.930 --> 00:07:07.250 -speed chases. He admitted he was scared to death 00:07:07.250 --> 00:07:09.629 during every single shot. So you've got this 00:07:09.629 --> 00:07:12.829 academic guy, the history major, raised on quiet 00:07:12.829 --> 00:07:14.910 reading, suddenly thrown into the middle of a 00:07:14.910 --> 00:07:17.649 massive San Francisco car chase, genuinely terrified. 00:07:17.889 --> 00:07:20.970 You have to wonder how much of that raw adrenaline, 00:07:21.170 --> 00:07:23.579 the chaos, calculation of risk fed into how he 00:07:23.579 --> 00:07:26.480 wrote action later. Oh, definitely. That experience 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:28.579 must have cemented the difference between writing 00:07:28.579 --> 00:07:31.279 about action and filming it. He learned action 00:07:31.279 --> 00:07:34.220 isn't abstract. It's logistics. It's risk. It's 00:07:34.220 --> 00:07:36.420 immediate consequences. But here's the interesting 00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:40.259 part. Even with that invaluable experience, he 00:07:40.259 --> 00:07:41.860 didn't want to be an assistant director long 00:07:41.860 --> 00:07:44.300 term. Really? Yeah. He said he wanted to work 00:07:44.300 --> 00:07:46.860 and be around film. Sure. But. He didn't have 00:07:46.860 --> 00:07:49.740 a shred of desire to keep being an AD. His focus 00:07:49.740 --> 00:07:52.139 was always on writing and directing his own stuff. 00:07:52.399 --> 00:07:54.279 Okay, so that's the key transition. He's doing 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:57.240 this grueling AD work, but he's also spending, 00:07:57.259 --> 00:07:59.459 what, four or five years writing screenplays 00:07:59.459 --> 00:08:01.899 at night? His first attempts, he said, were too 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:06.300 personal and terrible. What was the click? What 00:08:06.300 --> 00:08:09.019 shifted him from writing terrible scripts to 00:08:09.019 --> 00:08:11.600 finding success? Structure. It was all about 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:14.540 structure. He realized success wasn't going to 00:08:14.540 --> 00:08:17.800 come from navel gazing, but from imposing a clear, 00:08:17.879 --> 00:08:20.899 rigid framework. The lightbulb moment came when 00:08:20.899 --> 00:08:23.040 he started writing within genre films, working 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:25.680 in a more structured narrative environment. He 00:08:25.680 --> 00:08:28.259 understood the rules of the Western, the noir, 00:08:28.540 --> 00:08:31.620 the crime thriller. And that structure gave him 00:08:31.620 --> 00:08:33.679 the discipline his writing needed. And once he 00:08:33.679 --> 00:08:37.399 found that genre focus, things moved fast. His 00:08:37.399 --> 00:08:40.779 first proper Western script, Lloyd Williams and 00:08:40.779 --> 00:08:43.149 his brother. it got optioned right away never 00:08:43.149 --> 00:08:46.120 made but still right But the big break, the one 00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:48.480 that really launched him, was The Getaway in 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:50.919 1972. Yeah, he was brought in to co -write it. 00:08:51.019 --> 00:08:53.740 Then Peter Bogdanovich got fired. Sam Peckinpah 00:08:53.740 --> 00:08:56.919 came in. Hill saw his chance. Basically rewrote 00:08:56.919 --> 00:09:00.580 the entire script from scratch in like six weeks 00:09:00.580 --> 00:09:03.419 to fit Peckinpah. Intense pressure. And he called 00:09:03.419 --> 00:09:06.059 that specific draft far and away the best one 00:09:06.059 --> 00:09:08.259 of the films he'd written. It's massive success 00:09:08.259 --> 00:09:10.799 with Steve McQueen and Peckinpah. He said, that 00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:13.360 was really how I got to be a director. It proved 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:15.970 he could deliver. Pure genre under fire. But 00:09:15.970 --> 00:09:18.090 that screenwriting phase also taught him some 00:09:18.090 --> 00:09:21.149 hard lessons about compromise. Like in 73, he 00:09:21.149 --> 00:09:24.110 wrote The Macintosh Man, basically just to settle 00:09:24.110 --> 00:09:26.529 a lawsuit with Warner Bros. He was pretty blunt 00:09:26.529 --> 00:09:28.669 about it. Admitted he wrote a quick script, wasn't 00:09:28.669 --> 00:09:30.590 very good. Said he never even saw the final film. 00:09:30.669 --> 00:09:32.629 Heard it was a real bomb. That must have been 00:09:32.629 --> 00:09:35.309 a harsh intro to the reality of being a writer 00:09:35.309 --> 00:09:37.950 in Hollywood. Your words are just the starting 00:09:37.950 --> 00:09:39.830 point. And we see it again on The Drowning Pool 00:09:39.830 --> 00:09:42.649 for Paul Newman, right? He figured only maybe 00:09:42.649 --> 00:09:45.330 two scenes of his original script survived in 00:09:45.330 --> 00:09:48.190 the final 75 film. Exactly. And that experience, 00:09:48.450 --> 00:09:51.590 seeing his carefully crafted work get diluted 00:09:51.590 --> 00:09:55.210 or just thrown out by the studio machine, probably 00:09:55.210 --> 00:09:57.490 reinforced his instinct to make his writing as 00:09:57.490 --> 00:09:59.789 lean and essential as possible. Right. Like if 00:09:59.789 --> 00:10:01.289 they're going to mess with it anyway. Might as 00:10:01.289 --> 00:10:03.110 well just give him the absolute spine, the core 00:10:03.110 --> 00:10:05.789 structure. Much harder to break that. So connecting 00:10:05.789 --> 00:10:08.169 this back to his love of simplicity, the screenwriting 00:10:08.169 --> 00:10:11.470 struggle, it really forged his style. It wasn't 00:10:11.470 --> 00:10:14.009 just what he wrote, but the revolutionary how. 00:10:14.370 --> 00:10:16.970 Which brings us to the defining thing about his 00:10:16.970 --> 00:10:20.210 aesthetic. The spare universe, that haiku approach. 00:10:20.470 --> 00:10:23.269 Yes. And the specific catalyst for this was reading 00:10:23.269 --> 00:10:25.929 Alexander Jacob's screenplay for John Borman's 00:10:25.929 --> 00:10:28.470 Point Blank. Hill said reading that script was 00:10:28.470 --> 00:10:30.990 an absolute revelation. Just showed him how little 00:10:30.990 --> 00:10:33.669 you actually needed to write to convey huge amounts 00:10:33.669 --> 00:10:36.669 of drama and action. And he just ran with it, 00:10:36.690 --> 00:10:38.730 developed this extremely spare, almost haiku 00:10:38.730 --> 00:10:42.330 style, for stage directions and dialogue. Applied 00:10:42.330 --> 00:10:44.909 it ruthlessly, hard times, the driver, the warriors, 00:10:45.090 --> 00:10:48.250 and famously, that uncredited rewrite of Aliens. 00:10:48.470 --> 00:10:49.990 And just so people understand what that means 00:10:49.990 --> 00:10:52.450 for a script, a typical writer might put, he 00:10:52.450 --> 00:10:54.769 pauses, thinking about his past mistakes and 00:10:54.769 --> 00:10:56.950 the challenge ahead, before slowly, deliberately 00:10:56.950 --> 00:11:00.889 picking up the gun. Hill, using his haiku style, 00:11:01.029 --> 00:11:02.809 would probably write something like, he stops, 00:11:03.029 --> 00:11:06.330 waits, picks up the gun. Maybe three lines max. 00:11:06.629 --> 00:11:09.610 The genius there is it forces the director, the 00:11:09.610 --> 00:11:13.370 actor, everyone to internalize the emotion. There's 00:11:13.370 --> 00:11:15.269 no description of the feeling. The feeling comes 00:11:15.269 --> 00:11:17.350 purely from the action, the character's position 00:11:17.350 --> 00:11:20.669 in the scene. It's pure genre. Movement, consequence, 00:11:20.870 --> 00:11:23.269 not psychology. And speaking of massive influence. 00:11:23.450 --> 00:11:25.840 Yeah. the alien franchise and that's a great 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:28.659 sort of uncredited story of walter hill's writing 00:11:28.659 --> 00:11:30.799 career he co -founded brandywine productions 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:33.360 with david giller and gordon carroll they essentially 00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:35.480 built the engine for one of sci -fi's biggest 00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:39.220 ips brandywine optioned the original alien script 00:11:39.220 --> 00:11:42.700 which was basically kind of a b -movie monster 00:11:42.700 --> 00:11:45.419 flick right pretty much hill and giller rewrote 00:11:45.419 --> 00:11:48.389 it fundamentally now They didn't get writing 00:11:48.389 --> 00:11:50.730 credit because of some WGA arbitration thing, 00:11:50.850 --> 00:11:53.850 but they got producer credits and their structural 00:11:53.850 --> 00:11:56.490 changes were absolutely monumental. What were 00:11:56.490 --> 00:11:59.190 the key changes? They moved it from being just 00:11:59.190 --> 00:12:02.830 monster runs loose on spaceship to a really tense 00:12:02.830 --> 00:12:06.149 character driven survival story. And crucially, 00:12:06.169 --> 00:12:09.360 they made Ripley the main hero. The original 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:11.840 script had several male leads kind of competing. 00:12:12.059 --> 00:12:14.519 Hill and Gidler streamlined the cast, elevated 00:12:14.519 --> 00:12:17.500 Ripley, made her the backbone. They applied that 00:12:17.500 --> 00:12:20.980 sparse haiku style to action horror. And the 00:12:20.980 --> 00:12:22.840 tension, it comes precisely from that economy, 00:12:22.980 --> 00:12:24.720 what you don't see, what you don't know. And 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.360 the impact was huge and lasted. John Hughes, 00:12:27.580 --> 00:12:29.360 right, the famous screenwriter, later said he 00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:31.120 only really understood screenwriting after reading 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.299 Hill's version of the Alien script. That one 00:12:33.299 --> 00:12:35.980 document basically redefined action horror structure. 00:12:36.590 --> 00:12:38.850 And Hill's involvement through Brandywine has 00:12:38.850 --> 00:12:41.009 been consistent ever since. Yeah. Which shows 00:12:41.009 --> 00:12:43.049 his business sense, too. He was story executive 00:12:43.049 --> 00:12:45.870 producer on Aliens in 86, writer -producer on 00:12:45.870 --> 00:12:48.789 Alien 3 in 92. He stayed on as a producer for 00:12:48.789 --> 00:12:51.129 every entry since Prometheus, the upcoming stuff. 00:12:51.289 --> 00:12:54.169 He's this uncredited sci -fi giant who made his 00:12:54.169 --> 00:12:56.769 directing name elsewhere. So after proving himself 00:12:56.769 --> 00:12:59.309 as this powerhouse writer, he finally gets his 00:12:59.309 --> 00:13:01.690 shot behind the camera, met producer Lawrence 00:13:01.690 --> 00:13:05.120 Gordon in 73, struck a deal. write a script, 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:08.059 direct it for scale. That gave us his directorial 00:13:08.059 --> 00:13:11.580 debut, Hard Times, 1975. And Hard Times was the 00:13:11.580 --> 00:13:14.299 perfect first film for him. It embodied his philosophy. 00:13:14.580 --> 00:13:18.139 Made fast, made cheap, 38 days, just $2 .7 million 00:13:18.139 --> 00:13:21.159 on location in New Orleans. Stars James Coburn, 00:13:21.299 --> 00:13:23.820 Charles Bronson. It's about illegal street fighting 00:13:23.820 --> 00:13:25.779 in the Depression. It's a pure Western, isn't 00:13:25.779 --> 00:13:28.240 it? Totally. Two strangers roll into town. One 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:30.779 has a code, one has a talent. They operate outside 00:13:30.779 --> 00:13:33.580 the law. Classic setup. What's amazing is even 00:13:33.580 --> 00:13:36.120 after that successful debut, he stayed fiercely 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:38.279 protective of his vision. He got offered the 00:13:38.279 --> 00:13:40.360 shootest, which would have meant directing John 00:13:40.360 --> 00:13:43.460 Wayne. But he turned it down. Why? Simply because 00:13:43.460 --> 00:13:45.679 he didn't like the script. He wouldn't compromise 00:13:45.679 --> 00:13:48.120 his aesthetic, not even for the Duke. That takes 00:13:48.120 --> 00:13:52.039 guts. And he also dipped his toe into TV around 00:13:52.039 --> 00:13:54.019 then, which had this kind of hidden legacy. He 00:13:54.019 --> 00:13:57.470 created a series called Dog and Cat in 77. But 00:13:57.470 --> 00:13:59.889 he got so mad when they rewrote his pilot script 00:13:59.889 --> 00:14:02.009 that he took his name off it, used a pseudonym. 00:14:02.149 --> 00:14:04.809 But here's the kicker. That original pilot script 00:14:04.809 --> 00:14:06.710 for Dodd and Cat, the one he hated because they 00:14:06.710 --> 00:14:09.230 changed it, it had that spare buddy cop dynamic 00:14:09.230 --> 00:14:12.370 he had basically codified. And years later, it 00:14:12.370 --> 00:14:14.610 influenced Shane Black when he wrote the original 00:14:14.610 --> 00:14:17.529 script for Legal Weapon. No kidding. Yeah. Proves 00:14:17.529 --> 00:14:19.970 the strength of Hill's structural DNA, even when 00:14:19.970 --> 00:14:22.909 he himself disowned the final product. OK, so 00:14:22.909 --> 00:14:25.779 after that fairly strong start. Hill's career 00:14:25.779 --> 00:14:29.220 hits that infamous late 70s roller coaster. Let's 00:14:29.220 --> 00:14:31.600 talk about his second film, The Driver from 78. 00:14:31.919 --> 00:14:34.600 Maybe the purest expression of his Western idea 00:14:34.600 --> 00:14:38.500 in a modern setting. It is utterly, utterly uncompromising. 00:14:38.580 --> 00:14:43.350 Characters with no names. The Driver. The detective. 00:14:43.710 --> 00:14:46.889 They're just their functions, their archetypes. 00:14:46.970 --> 00:14:50.230 It's so lean. It's almost abstract art. He wanted 00:14:50.230 --> 00:14:52.129 Steve McQueen originally, but McQueen passed. 00:14:52.330 --> 00:14:54.470 I think commercially. Yeah. A total disaster 00:14:54.470 --> 00:14:57.049 in the U .S. Hill himself said the film made 00:14:57.049 --> 00:15:00.830 exactly zero dollars domestically. Zero. Zero 00:15:00.830 --> 00:15:03.549 dollars. That's fatal. Should have been. He genuinely 00:15:03.549 --> 00:15:05.230 thought his career might be over. Said if he 00:15:05.230 --> 00:15:06.669 hadn't already been shooting his next movie, 00:15:06.730 --> 00:15:08.409 it might have ended right there. Why do you think 00:15:08.409 --> 00:15:11.169 he went so abstract, so stylized, knowing the 00:15:11.169 --> 00:15:14.070 commercial risk had to be huge? Was it just for 00:15:14.070 --> 00:15:16.250 the satisfaction of boiling the genre down to 00:15:16.250 --> 00:15:18.730 its absolute essence? I think it was a test of 00:15:18.730 --> 00:15:20.649 his whole philosophy. Could the Western idea 00:15:20.649 --> 00:15:23.110 survive with literally nothing left but the conflict 00:15:23.110 --> 00:15:24.929 between two professionals, the lawman and the 00:15:24.929 --> 00:15:28.389 outlaw? American audiences in 78? Nope. too pure 00:15:28.389 --> 00:15:31.669 but the paradox is it was huge overseas and later 00:15:31.669 --> 00:15:34.490 massive cult film right he even noted that when 00:15:34.490 --> 00:15:36.789 they do retrospectives of his work now the driver 00:15:36.789 --> 00:15:38.929 is often the first film they show he trusted 00:15:38.929 --> 00:15:41.009 the aesthetic would win out eventually and he 00:15:41.009 --> 00:15:43.169 only survived the immediate fallout because he'd 00:15:43.169 --> 00:15:45.350 already secured financing for the next one the 00:15:45.350 --> 00:15:48.309 warriors by promising to make it very cheaply 00:15:48.840 --> 00:15:51.919 And the war years, 1979, that's the quintessential 00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:55.460 urban Western rate. Yeah. A gang, the protagonists, 00:15:55.460 --> 00:15:58.139 have to cross hostile territory, the boroughs 00:15:58.139 --> 00:16:00.600 of New York fighting off rival gangs, these other 00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:03.139 outlaw clans, just to get back to their home 00:16:03.139 --> 00:16:06.299 turf. It's the Western journey framework overlaid 00:16:06.299 --> 00:16:08.659 onto contemporary New York. Brilliant. Yeah. 00:16:08.740 --> 00:16:11.299 But the film became this cultural flashpoint. 00:16:11.529 --> 00:16:13.629 steeped in controversy. When it came out, there 00:16:13.629 --> 00:16:16.230 were actual shootings, some killings at screenings, 00:16:16.250 --> 00:16:19.210 often gang -related incidents. Paramount got 00:16:19.210 --> 00:16:21.730 spooked, pulled all the radio and TV ads. That 00:16:21.730 --> 00:16:23.870 must have sent shockwaves through Hollywood. 00:16:24.169 --> 00:16:26.470 It did. Studios got terrified about releasing 00:16:26.470 --> 00:16:29.490 intense urban action films for a while. But Hill, 00:16:29.629 --> 00:16:32.590 very pragmatically, noted the bottom line. Hollywood 00:16:32.590 --> 00:16:35.230 forgives a lot when you have a hit. And The Warriors 00:16:35.230 --> 00:16:37.429 was a hit. Critics who got the style loved it. 00:16:37.470 --> 00:16:39.789 Box office trumped the scandal, ultimately. Okay, 00:16:39.850 --> 00:16:42.470 so after those contemporary urban westerns, he 00:16:42.470 --> 00:16:44.950 finally makes his first true historical western 00:16:44.950 --> 00:16:48.179 with the Long Riders in 1980. Yeah, structurally, 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:49.639 this one's fascinating. It's about the James 00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:52.580 Younger gang. And the casting gimmick is genius. 00:16:52.879 --> 00:16:56.159 He cast real -life acting brothers, the Keeches, 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:58.779 the Carradines, the Quades, the Guests, to play 00:16:58.779 --> 00:17:01.299 the historical outlaw brothers. Oh, right. That 00:17:01.299 --> 00:17:03.679 immediately reinforces the themes of loyalty, 00:17:03.919 --> 00:17:06.839 family, clan structure. It echoes that Western 00:17:06.839 --> 00:17:09.349 code. Hill said his own code for the film was 00:17:09.349 --> 00:17:11.430 simple. Keep the jokes funny and the bullets 00:17:11.430 --> 00:17:14.230 real. He followed that up with another film that 00:17:14.230 --> 00:17:17.470 got critical praise, but was, again, a commercial 00:17:17.470 --> 00:17:20.950 catastrophe. Southern Comfort in 1981. Intense 00:17:20.950 --> 00:17:23.730 thriller. National Guardsmen lost in the Louisiana 00:17:23.730 --> 00:17:26.829 Bayou battling Cajuns. Hill rewrote that script 00:17:26.829 --> 00:17:28.930 with David Giller, turned it into this tight 00:17:28.930 --> 00:17:31.109 existential thriller. A lot of people saw it 00:17:31.109 --> 00:17:33.930 as a Vietnam allegory. Hill denied that specific 00:17:33.930 --> 00:17:36.069 intense. It was just about, you know, men push 00:17:36.069 --> 00:17:38.079 beyond social. control again. But the commercial 00:17:38.079 --> 00:17:40.839 failure was brutal. Hill lamented it didn't make 00:17:40.839 --> 00:17:43.299 a nickel anywhere, foreign, domestic, anything. 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:45.740 It was a universal audience failure. So we're 00:17:45.740 --> 00:17:48.599 seeing a definite pattern here. Artistic purity, 00:17:48.740 --> 00:17:51.900 like the driver and Southern comfort, often equals 00:17:51.900 --> 00:17:55.400 financial failure. By the early 80s, despite 00:17:55.400 --> 00:17:57.920 his talent and this growing cult reputation, 00:17:58.539 --> 00:18:00.839 Hill must have been commercially on thin ice. 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:03.759 Exactly. And this is where timing and necessity 00:18:03.759 --> 00:18:07.230 kind of collide. The writer's strike ended. Hollywood 00:18:07.230 --> 00:18:10.630 needed projects fast. Producer Larry Gordon apparently 00:18:10.630 --> 00:18:13.029 dusted off a script that had been shuttling around 00:18:13.029 --> 00:18:16.109 development for years. That script was 48 H's 00:18:16.109 --> 00:18:18.210 Hill. And the studio jumped on it and put it 00:18:18.210 --> 00:18:20.640 together really quickly. The casting for 48 H's 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:23.220 in 82, that was just lightning in a bottle. Nick 00:18:23.220 --> 00:18:25.180 Nolte was already attached. And Hill's girlfriend 00:18:25.180 --> 00:18:27.519 at the time, a talent agent, suggested this young 00:18:27.519 --> 00:18:29.480 comedian from Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy. 00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:32.680 Yeah. That pairing the greedy veteran character 00:18:32.680 --> 00:18:35.359 actor and the explosive, completely fresh comedic 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.039 talent, it basically defined the modern buddy 00:18:38.039 --> 00:18:40.059 cop movie. Now, the shoot itself was apparently 00:18:40.059 --> 00:18:42.880 pretty rough. Clashes between Hill, the studio, 00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:45.559 Nolte, Murphy, volatile mix. But the result. 00:18:46.519 --> 00:18:50.079 massive industry -changing box office hit. It 00:18:50.079 --> 00:18:52.559 took that mismatched partners trope already a 00:18:52.559 --> 00:18:55.119 staple and supercharged it with Hill's Western 00:18:55.119 --> 00:18:58.839 structure. Two guys, cop and criminal, forced 00:18:58.839 --> 00:19:00.599 to team up in that moral gray zone where the 00:19:00.599 --> 00:19:02.619 system has failed. And that success gave him 00:19:02.619 --> 00:19:04.880 the clout to make his really stylish, really 00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:07.420 specific rock and roll fable Streets of Fire 00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:11.960 in 1984, set in this fictional, hyper -stylized 00:19:11.960 --> 00:19:14.319 city, an attempt to mash up the purest elements 00:19:14.319 --> 00:19:16.460 of the musical and the western. And I like the 00:19:16.460 --> 00:19:18.460 driver. Streets of Fire bombed initially at the 00:19:18.460 --> 00:19:20.599 box office, but almost immediately it gained 00:19:20.599 --> 00:19:22.980 this incredibly passionate cult following. It 00:19:22.980 --> 00:19:25.380 fits the pattern. Hill chases his pure aesthetic 00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:28.099 vision, risks initial rejection, but achieves 00:19:28.099 --> 00:19:30.420 lasting, genre -defining style. Then came the 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:33.259 big anomaly. The one he openly admitted was just 00:19:33.259 --> 00:19:35.920 about the money. Brewster's Millions in 1985, 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:39.259 his first and only straight -up comedy, made, 00:19:39.299 --> 00:19:41.440 in his own words, to improve his bank account 00:19:41.440 --> 00:19:43.619 and success quotient. How do we square that? 00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:46.240 Hill the auteur, the genre purist, the Hemingway 00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:49.980 disciple, taking on a broad comedy remake. Was 00:19:49.980 --> 00:19:52.200 that just a necessary compromise to fund the 00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:54.859 next passion project? Seems like it. He called 00:19:54.859 --> 00:19:57.920 it an aberration in the career line. necessary 00:19:57.920 --> 00:20:00.980 one, maybe. It was profitable. And it let him 00:20:00.980 --> 00:20:03.680 pivot right back to action with Red Heat in 1988. 00:20:04.259 --> 00:20:06.779 That paired Arnold Schwarzenegger playing this 00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:10.069 stoic Soviet cop. perfect hell archetype, all 00:20:10.069 --> 00:20:13.450 physical presence, with Jim Belushi as the wisecracking 00:20:13.450 --> 00:20:16.289 American. Red Heat made money, showed he could 00:20:16.289 --> 00:20:19.349 handle huge stars and budgets, but it was actually 00:20:19.349 --> 00:20:21.430 a bit of a box office disappointment for that 00:20:21.430 --> 00:20:24.089 peak Schwarzenegger era. This period also saw 00:20:24.089 --> 00:20:25.890 him flexing his producer muscles, right? He was 00:20:25.890 --> 00:20:27.710 involved with the tales from the Crypt TV show. 00:20:27.829 --> 00:20:30.130 Yeah, executive producer and directed some episodes, 00:20:30.430 --> 00:20:33.009 kept his hand in different pots. But it's clear 00:20:33.009 --> 00:20:35.470 by the end of the 80s, he was still shaping genre 00:20:35.470 --> 00:20:38.430 cinema, even if his purest Westerns weren't always 00:20:38.430 --> 00:20:40.789 connecting commercially. Oh, and we have to mention 00:20:40.789 --> 00:20:42.789 his biggest commercial hit, the only sequel he 00:20:42.789 --> 00:20:47.589 directed. Right. Another 48 H -ers in 1990. Critics 00:20:47.589 --> 00:20:49.849 mostly saw it as just a retread of the first 00:20:49.849 --> 00:20:53.519 one. Kind of tired, but financially. It was his 00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:56.880 highest grossing film ever. Pulled in $153 .5 00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:59.720 million worldwide. Just goes to show, in Hollywood, 00:20:59.819 --> 00:21:02.619 sometimes revisiting past glories, even if creatively 00:21:02.619 --> 00:21:04.920 maybe less exciting, is the most bankable move. 00:21:05.369 --> 00:21:08.089 OK, moving into the 90s, the roller coaster ride 00:21:08.089 --> 00:21:10.750 continues, maybe gets even bumpier. He directed 00:21:10.750 --> 00:21:14.490 Trespass in 1992, but its release got really 00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:16.670 complicated because the 92 L .A. riots happened 00:21:16.670 --> 00:21:18.190 right before it was supposed to come out. Oh, 00:21:18.210 --> 00:21:20.309 wow. Yeah. The studio had to delay it, change 00:21:20.309 --> 00:21:22.589 the title, shows how real world events can just 00:21:22.589 --> 00:21:25.289 derail everything. And then he went back hard 00:21:25.289 --> 00:21:29.049 to his obsession, historical westerns, with unfortunately 00:21:29.049 --> 00:21:31.509 pretty mixed results again, Geronimo. An American 00:21:31.509 --> 00:21:34.710 Legend in 93 and Wild Bill in 95 both got kind 00:21:34.710 --> 00:21:36.990 of middling reviews, didn't do well commercially, 00:21:37.130 --> 00:21:38.910 seemed like audiences just weren't biting on 00:21:38.910 --> 00:21:40.990 the kind of unvarnished, authentic Westerns he 00:21:40.990 --> 00:21:43.509 wanted to make. And that failure led to some 00:21:43.509 --> 00:21:46.130 pretty candid reflections from him. He admitted 00:21:46.130 --> 00:21:49.130 in 95 that his style, where, as he put it, bullets 00:21:49.130 --> 00:21:51.890 are real, characters operate in a grounded, dramatic 00:21:51.890 --> 00:21:55.039 world, was feeling slightly out of step. With 00:21:55.039 --> 00:21:57.759 the big trend towards oversized kind of cartoon 00:21:57.759 --> 00:22:00.380 action movies. He was basically lamenting the 00:22:00.380 --> 00:22:03.799 shift away from serious realistic action towards 00:22:03.799 --> 00:22:06.859 hyper -stylized, physics -defying spectacle. 00:22:07.400 --> 00:22:10.119 He was a classicist stuck in the emerging blockbuster 00:22:10.119 --> 00:22:12.720 culture of the late 90s. He tried to recapture 00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:14.799 that pure aesthetic with Last Man Standing in 00:22:14.799 --> 00:22:17.400 96 starring Bruce Willis, a very direct return 00:22:17.400 --> 00:22:20.279 to his roots, Prohibition -era Western update 00:22:20.279 --> 00:22:23.420 of Ujimbo, which itself came from Dashiell Hammett's 00:22:23.420 --> 00:22:25.839 Red Harvest, back to that sparse, gritty style. 00:22:25.960 --> 00:22:27.920 But again, audiences just didn't really connect. 00:22:28.220 --> 00:22:30.519 But the real low point, the absolute professional 00:22:30.519 --> 00:22:32.980 catastrophe that nearly ended things for him, 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:36.599 was Supernova in 2000. His conflict with MGM 00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:38.859 over his vision for that sci -fi film got so 00:22:38.859 --> 00:22:41.519 bad that they brought in Francis Ford Coppola 00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:44.259 to recut the entire movie. Coppola, wow. That's 00:22:44.259 --> 00:22:48.940 a major intervention. Huge and incredibly demoralizing 00:22:48.940 --> 00:22:52.220 for Hill. He withdrew completely, took his name 00:22:52.220 --> 00:22:55.299 off it, used the pseudonym Thomas Lee, a variation 00:22:55.299 --> 00:22:57.519 on the industry's Alan Smithy distress signal. 00:22:58.129 --> 00:23:00.490 He said his original cut was much darker. The 00:23:00.490 --> 00:23:02.529 whole experience made him think about quitting. 00:23:02.670 --> 00:23:04.630 After decades of grinding to have your vision 00:23:04.630 --> 00:23:07.269 totally hijacked like that. Yeah, I could see 00:23:07.269 --> 00:23:08.799 how that would make you want to walk away. He 00:23:08.799 --> 00:23:10.740 did recover, directed the prison boxing movie 00:23:10.740 --> 00:23:13.660 Undisputed in 2002. But what's truly fascinating 00:23:13.660 --> 00:23:16.099 is what happened next. He found this incredible, 00:23:16.220 --> 00:23:19.079 immediate acclaim and recognition, not in feature 00:23:19.079 --> 00:23:22.039 films, but in prestige television, proving his 00:23:22.039 --> 00:23:24.400 mastery was still there, maybe just needed a 00:23:24.400 --> 00:23:26.240 different screen at that moment. Okay, this is 00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:28.380 where it gets really interesting. 2004, Hill 00:23:28.380 --> 00:23:30.880 directs the pilot episode for HBO's Western drama, 00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:34.190 Deadwood. Think about the irony. A decade after 00:23:34.190 --> 00:23:36.589 his big -screen westerns flopped, he wins the 00:23:36.589 --> 00:23:38.589 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing for 00:23:38.589 --> 00:23:41.130 a Drama Series and a DGA Award just for that 00:23:41.130 --> 00:23:43.509 one pilot episode. It was stunning validation, 00:23:43.849 --> 00:23:46.529 wasn't it? Almost instant proof of his mastery 00:23:46.529 --> 00:23:49.190 of the genre, his ability to establish that stripped 00:23:49.190 --> 00:23:51.789 -down moral universe with incredible efficiency. 00:23:52.190 --> 00:23:55.990 The quality was undeniable, however. Classic 00:23:55.990 --> 00:23:58.369 Hill conflict here, too. Despite the wins, he 00:23:58.369 --> 00:24:00.470 apparently had a major falling out. with the 00:24:00.470 --> 00:24:02.809 show's creator, David Milch, during the editing 00:24:02.809 --> 00:24:05.410 of that pilot. Never worked on another episode? 00:24:05.789 --> 00:24:08.109 Seems like it was a clash of two very strong, 00:24:08.329 --> 00:24:11.309 uncompromising artistic visions. But the TV awards 00:24:11.309 --> 00:24:14.250 kept coming. In 2006, he directed the Western 00:24:14.250 --> 00:24:17.289 miniseries Broken Trail. Huge audience success. 00:24:17.630 --> 00:24:20.009 Became the highest rated original movie on cable 00:24:20.009 --> 00:24:22.470 at the time. And again, swept the awards. Won 00:24:22.470 --> 00:24:25.190 another DGA award for directing and the Primetime 00:24:25.190 --> 00:24:27.650 Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series. It just 00:24:27.650 --> 00:24:29.990 cemented his legacy as the master of the Western 00:24:29.990 --> 00:24:32.690 form, regardless of screen size. The genre had 00:24:32.690 --> 00:24:34.789 migrated to premium TV and he followed it there 00:24:34.789 --> 00:24:37.369 and triumphed. So by the 2010s, he sort of described 00:24:37.369 --> 00:24:41.049 himself as semi -retired. Noted pretty pragmatically 00:24:41.049 --> 00:24:43.309 that the desirability of hiring directors over 00:24:43.309 --> 00:24:46.140 60 is fairly diminished. Took a bit of a break, 00:24:46.180 --> 00:24:48.299 but then Sylvester Stallone pulled him back to 00:24:48.299 --> 00:24:51.559 direct Bullet to the Head in 2012. He never really 00:24:51.559 --> 00:24:53.799 stopped working, though, did he? That commitment 00:24:53.799 --> 00:24:56.420 to narrative is deep. He published a graphic 00:24:56.420 --> 00:24:59.579 novel, Trigger Man. And then, incredibly, at 00:24:59.579 --> 00:25:02.640 age 77, he wrote and performed a spoken word 00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:06.799 record, The Cowboy Iliad. A legend told in the 00:25:06.799 --> 00:25:10.039 spoken word, telling the story of an 1871 Kansas 00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:12.880 shootout. A spoken word record. That's dedication. 00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:15.539 That's pure, lifelong obsession with the Western 00:25:15.539 --> 00:25:18.279 genre taken to its logical, literary extreme. 00:25:18.579 --> 00:25:21.059 And his most recent feature film work feels like 00:25:21.059 --> 00:25:23.440 a fitting return. Directed The Western Dead for 00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:26.259 a dollar in 2022. got the glory to the filmmaker 00:25:26.259 --> 00:25:28.259 award at the venice film festival for it and 00:25:28.259 --> 00:25:30.039 professionally he was honored with the writers 00:25:30.039 --> 00:25:32.940 guild's 2024 laurel award for screenwriting achievement 00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:35.960 celebrating that whole career built on the haiku 00:25:35.960 --> 00:25:39.299 style his whole career just reveals this unwavering 00:25:39.299 --> 00:25:43.210 commitment to one core vision and now He's apparently 00:25:43.210 --> 00:25:45.410 planning his next project, says he's going back 00:25:45.410 --> 00:25:47.630 to film noir, which is, you know, basically the 00:25:47.630 --> 00:25:50.349 urban western's closest cousin, confirms that 00:25:50.349 --> 00:25:52.910 his moral universe, it just keeps operating within 00:25:52.910 --> 00:25:55.109 those genre lines. So if we boil it all down, 00:25:55.269 --> 00:25:58.690 synthesize his career, what we see is a filmmaker 00:25:58.690 --> 00:26:01.609 who really defined modern action cinema, produced 00:26:01.609 --> 00:26:04.250 one of the biggest sci -fi franchises ever, won 00:26:04.250 --> 00:26:06.650 multiple Emmys, all while operating under this 00:26:06.650 --> 00:26:09.920 one guiding principle. the western his whole 00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:13.859 aesthetic defined by that spare haiku style valuing 00:26:13.859 --> 00:26:16.160 clarity physical action moral conflict above 00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:18.619 everything else and he survived hollywood by 00:26:18.619 --> 00:26:21.240 being completely uncompromisingly clear about 00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:24.059 his interests those big commercial failures like 00:26:24.059 --> 00:26:26.859 the driver making literally zero dollars domestically 00:26:26.859 --> 00:26:28.710 they were ultimately redeemed weren't they By 00:26:28.710 --> 00:26:30.970 cult status, by later critical appreciation, 00:26:31.349 --> 00:26:33.710 by award recognition in unexpected places like 00:26:33.710 --> 00:26:36.109 TV, it proved his vision wasn't wrong, maybe 00:26:36.109 --> 00:26:38.390 just ahead of its time, or needed the right format. 00:26:38.589 --> 00:26:41.109 Let's end with that really pragmatic view he 00:26:41.109 --> 00:26:43.789 has of the industry, that perspective of the 00:26:43.789 --> 00:26:47.109 working pro who knows the score. We come to the 00:26:47.109 --> 00:26:49.609 arena uncalled to seek our fortune and hazard 00:26:49.609 --> 00:26:51.809 disgrace. That's the game. Those are the rules. 00:26:52.150 --> 00:26:55.589 Such a hard -boiled, perfect philosophy for surviving 00:26:55.589 --> 00:26:58.589 in that world. Yeah. And it raises a really interesting 00:26:58.589 --> 00:27:01.190 question for you, the listener, to think about, 00:27:01.250 --> 00:27:03.650 especially looking at Hollywood right now. Hill 00:27:03.650 --> 00:27:06.109 was willing to risk absolute commercial failure. 00:27:06.549 --> 00:27:09.910 The driver, Southern Comfort, chasing his specific 00:27:09.910 --> 00:27:12.859 moral and aesthetic vision. Given the intense 00:27:12.859 --> 00:27:15.220 commercial pressures today, where studios rarely 00:27:15.220 --> 00:27:17.519 tolerate anything but immediate massive success, 00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:20.660 what does the uncompromising longevity of someone 00:27:20.660 --> 00:27:23.000 like Hill tell us? Someone who valued clarity 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:25.619 and genre purity over market trends. What does 00:27:25.619 --> 00:27:27.440 that say about survival in the film industry? 00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:30.000 Right. How many film majors working today would 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:31.880 genuinely risk making a film that could yield, 00:27:31.960 --> 00:27:35.220 like a driver did, exactly zero dollars domestically, 00:27:35.299 --> 00:27:38.250 just for the sake of stylistic purity? The answer 00:27:38.250 --> 00:27:39.650 to that, well, it might be the difference between 00:27:39.650 --> 00:27:42.150 a long, unique career like Hill's and maybe a 00:27:42.150 --> 00:27:43.349 shorter, more conventional one.