Are Action Sequences Enough?

DATE May 26, 2000 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Linda Greenlaw, author "The Hungry Ocean," discusses
her fishing experiences
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.

It's rare for a woman to work on a fishing boat and virtually unheard of for a
woman to captain one. Despite that, Linda Greenlaw has a reputation as one of
the best on the East Coast. For a decade, Greenlaw captained swordfishing
boats off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland from May to October and in the
Caribbean and the mid-Atlantic in the winter months.

A few years ago she took some time off from fishing to write a book. "The
Hungry Ocean," which has just come out in paperback, tells the story of a
monthlong fishing trip aboard the Hannah Boden, a hundred-foot, steel-hulled
boat that Greenlaw skippered for seven years. The Hannah Boden was the sister
ship to the Andrea Gail, which was lost in a hurricane in 1991. Sebastian
Junger's book about the Andrea Gail, "The Perfect Storm," has just been
adapted to the screen and features a character based on Greenlaw. It's due
out June 30th.

I spoke with Linda Greenlaw last year. Since the captain and crew's paycheck
depend on the haul, I asked her how much fish she had to catch just to break
even.

Ms. LINDA GREENLAW (Author, "The Hungry Ocean"): An average Grand Banks
swordfishing trip is 30 days dock to dock, and it's about $40,000 that the
owner of the boat would have invested just to get the boat away from the dock.
And to pay the expenses, you'd have to catch, you know--generally speaking, at
$4 a pound, obviously you'd have 10,000 pounds to cover the expenses.

BOGAEV: Have you ever not caught enough to break even?

Ms. GREENLAW: Absolutely, I have. And I think that the best example of that
was a trip I made halibut fishing to the Grand Banks one winter. We hadn't
been doing that well swordfishing and thought we'd just nail them halibut
fishing. We thought we'd kind of bail ourselves out. My boss had done very
well halibut fishing in the past, so I was very anxious to go, anxious try to
it, had never done it before.

It was probably the worst fishing I can remember in my life. We couldn't
catch anything. We fished all the way around the tail of the bank, up around
this thing called the Flemish Cap, went everywhere that we could, covered
every inch of bottom that we could legally cover and just couldn't come up
with any fish at any point. I mean, we'd get a little sign here and there,
`Well, maybe we'll be able to bail ourselves out. This is it. We're on
them,' and then nothing. Empty hooks, empty hooks, empty hooks. And that
trip lingered into 40-odd days. It was a long, disastrous trip. And when we
reached shore, a couple of my guys actually kissed the ground when they jumped
ashore and never went fishing again.

BOGAEV: How do you hold a crew together under circumstances like that?

Ms. GREENLAW: Well, it's tough during the extreme circumstances like that.
I stay very optimistic. Usually, the crew will follow the captain's lead. If
I, you know, think there's fish around the next corner, then, you know, can
usually convince the crew that there's a chance. Unfortunately, in that trip,
you know, we just sort of ran out of corners.

BOGAEV: You write about something called the fishing mentality. Why don't
you tell us what that is?

Ms. GREENLAW: OK. When things are going very well, fishermen start getting
very suspicious about their good fortune and wonder when the tide is going to
turn: `Oh, absolutely, there's no way this good fortune can go on forever.
So it's just a matter of when. When is our luck going to turn to being very
bad?' And on the other hand, when things are going very bad, you sort of
almost feel like you're due some good luck. And, you know, `Well, gee, if we
stay out here long enough, things have got to turn around. Our luck just
can't stay bad forever.'

BOGAEV: Where would you put yourself on the fishing mentality scale? Are you
on the high end in superstition?

Ms. GREENLAW: In superstition, I'll tell you what, I'm kind of weird when it
comes to the fishing superstitions. I obviously don't believe that women are
bad luck on boats. That's the one that I absolutely won't believe at all
because I've proven that one to be wrong. People are sometimes surprised that
I'm still fishing and actually return from every trip. You know, I should
definitely have been lost at sea long ago if I'd been bad luck. The other
superstitions, though, I'm not like a real believer in them, but they're sort
of like the horoscope. You know, if I get up in the morning and I read my
horoscope and I like it, I think, `Cool, today's going to be a great day.'
And if I read my horoscope and I don't like it, I think, `Eh, that's a bunch
of bull. Who believes that stuff anyway?'

BOGAEV: Besides women being bad luck on boats, what are some of the cardinal
superstitions in fishing lore?

Ms. GREENLAW: Number-one superstition in a fisherman's life is the word
`pig.' You're not allowed to say the word `pig' on a boat, aboard a boat
anytime, anywhere. The couple of different reasons that I've heard for
that--and, I mean, I grew up with this superstition, so I definitely would
never say it on a boat. A couple of different reasons for a pig being bad
luck on a boat that I've heard: that--they seem a little ridiculous, but one
is that pigs can't swim, and they roll over onto their backs and drown. And
the other one is that, `Oh, yeah, pigs do swim, but they do the dog paddle and
they cut their own throats with their hooves and bleed to death.' So that's
the foremost of fishing superstitions. There are others. I mean, you never
turn a hatch cover upside-down. Bananas are forbidden on a boat. The color
blue is an unlucky hull color. There are many, but those are the main ones.

BOGAEV: What's with the bananas?

Ms. GREENLAW: I don't know. I never heard any reason for that, but I
definitely don't allow bananas on any boat that I'm aboard.

BOGAEV: Also no whistling, right?

Ms. GREENLAW: Yeah. No whistling. Whistling is said to whistle up the
wind.

BOGAEV: Mm-hmm. That's a bad thing.

Ms. GREENLAW: That would be a bad thing, yeah.

BOGAEV: How well do you sleep when you're at sea?

Ms. GREENLAW: Well, I like to think that I sleep well aboard a boat, but it's
sort of sleeping with your ears open. You definitely get very accustomed to
the sound of a boat and the sound that the engine makes and the sound of the
generator running. I know that when I'm sleeping aboard the Hannah Boden, I
can hear when a pump kicks in. You know, it changes the sound of the
generator. I can hear the guys opening the engine room door. For instance,
if they're taking a watch, they're supposed to be checking the engine room
every 30 minutes, and I hear the door opening and closing. I know who's
checking the engine room and who is not. I have an ear open for the radio. I
like to listen to what's going on, you know, on the VHF or the single-sideband
radio. As far as traffic in the area, other boats and maybe other fishermen
chit-chatting, I like to keep an ear on that, too.

BOGAEV: Sounds like you don't sleep at all.

Ms. GREENLAW: Well, I know it sounds that way, but maybe it's more or less
just resting because fishing's very physical. And when you do get a chance to
lie down, giving your body a rest is just as important as giving your mind a
rest.

BOGAEV: I imagine, since there's always a man on watch, that it must be your
nightmare as captain that he fall asleep. Has that happened to you?

Ms. GREENLAW: That is a cardinal sin. Yes, it has. Yes, it has. Bad
experience. I was actually in my bunk and had a man on watch. I heard
somebody on the VHF radio calling the boat three miles from them and then a
little later two miles and then a little later one mile, a little later, a
half a mile. And I thought, `You know, this voice on the radio is starting to
sound kind of panicky.' So I thought maybe I'd get up and listen to the rest
of the conversation, just see, you know, someone's going to be in trouble.
Two boats are getting way too close to each other at sea.

When I heard the voice on the radio saying a quarter of a mile, I jumped out
of my bunk and looked out the wheelhouse windows, and all I could see was
white lights. The voice on the radio was calling my boat. My man, who was on
watch, was sound asleep, never heard a thing. It looked to me like we were
about to have a collision. I turned the helm hard to starboard, and we just
missed this other thing. All I could see was lights we were so close to it.
And then, of course, I was sort of woken up by this. Just missed, very near
miss collision. Got away from it far enough to see on radar that there were
actually two targets. It was a tugboat pulling a barge behind it. So we were
either going to go between the two, which would have been disastrous, or smash
into one or the other, which also would have been disastrous.

This man slept through the whole thing. And I was so upset, you know, all I
could imagine was, you know, `Here we are, we're on our way in. It was a good
trip. And we could have all died if I hadn't jumped up.' You know, there was
a very good chance we all would have been in the water. I actually slapped
the guy across the face, and, of course, he woke up, `Oh, what's going on?'
kind of thing. And, well, that was the last trip he made with us.

BOGAEV: He was fired on the spot?

Ms. GREENLAW: Yeah, he was. And he didn't even have to ask why.

BOGAEV: We're featuring a 1999 interview with boat Captain Linda Greenlaw.
Her book, "The Hungry Ocean," has just been released in paperback. We'll
continue our conversation after this break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Let's get back to our 1999 interview with commercial fishing Captain
Linda Greenlaw. She's featured as one of the characters in the upcoming film
adaptation of Sebastian Junger's book "The Perfect Storm."

You tell a story about arriving on ship first on the day you're going to head
out on a trip, and you notice a body in the water. Why don't you tell us what
that was all about?

Ms. GREENLAW: OK. I actually climbed aboard the boat. We were doing some
work aboard the boat at the dock. I was the first one there in the morning.
Went down and did my engine room chores and decided it was going to be a while
before the crew showed up, so maybe I'd go up the street for a cup of coffee.
While I was climbing off of the boat, I noticed a body in the water below me
between the boat and the dock. All that was breaking the surface of the water
was the crown of this man's head. I figured he was dead, and this was in the
middle of the winter, very cold. There's no way this guy should have been
alive.

I reached over the rail. All I could reach was the top of his head. I pulled
his hair and pulled his head out of the water, and I almost died myself
because he started talking to me. He was alive. I managed to get him aboard
the boat, and he was very intoxicated. About the time that I got him on the
boat, I thought he was dead again. He just sort of laid on the deck like a
dead fish. And two of my crew members showed up, referred to this guy that I
had on the deck as Uncle Patty. So to make a long story short, my first mate
had hired this man to go as cook the following trip, unbeknownst to me. So my
first introduction to my cook was pulling him out of the icy ocean.

BOGAEV: His name was Uncle Patty, right? What happened to him?

Ms. GREENLAW: Yes. Well, Uncle Patty went fishing with us and,
unfortunately, he really must have been a lot deeper into the alcohol than any
of us knew. We reached the fishing grounds and were just getting ready to set
the first hooks, and I sent the cook down below to wake the guys up. You
know, `Hey, we're here finally,' after five or six days of steaming. `Go get
everybody up and, you know, get ready. We're going to set the gear out for
the first set.' We were halibut fishing.

The cook came back into the wheelhouse and said, `I think Uncle Patty's dead.'
And I said, `You know, I've heard some pretty good excuses for not wanting to
get up in the morning, but, really, you know, go get him up.' And, you know,
he disappeared and came back and said, `No, really, Linda, you need to come
down and check. I really think he's dead.' And I said, `Oh, my God. All
right.' Well, we went down and, sure enough, Patty had died in his bunk.

BOGAEV: I assume that's the end of that fishing trip. Is that right? What
did you do?

Ms. GREENLAW: That was the end of that fishing trip. I really didn't know
what to do at that point. Obviously, I'd never encountered this kind of
problem: `Hey, I've got a corpse on the boat.' The first thing I did was I
called the Canadian Coast Guard--we were fishing off the coast of
Newfoundland--and told them, you know, I had a man that passed away and could
they come get him. And they said, `No, absolutely not. We don't come get
dead bodies.' So I tried the US Coast Guard and got the same response. You
know, `We don't come get dead bodies. You'll have to bring him in yourself.'
So I did. We turned around--without putting one hook in the water, turned
around and steamed all the way back to Portland.

In the meantime, we had to decide what to do with the body, and that was
either--choices are few. It's either burial at sea, which means throw him
overboard, or put him in the bait freezer. His nephew was on the boat--that's
why we called him Uncle Patty--and we decided that we would have to go in, we
would have to have the body with us, so we would put him in the bait freezer,
which we did.

It was a long trip home. You know, we encountered a very severe ocean storm
on the way home. It kind of slowed our progress. It was like seven days
with, you know, Uncle Patty in the freezer. Long trip home.

BOGAEV: My guest is Linda Greenlaw. Her new book about her experiences as a
fisherman off the Newfoundland coast, fishing for swordfish, is called "The
Hungry Ocean."

In the fall of 1991, a storm devastated your sister ship called the Andrea
Gail. Sebastian Junger told the story of the shipwreck in "The Perfect Storm,"
his novel, and you were also at sea in the storm, you mention in the book.
What was your experience during the gale?

Ms. GREENLAW: People are generally a little disappointed after they read
"The Perfect Storm" and then ask me about my personal experience during that
storm. I was 600 miles east of where the Andrea Gail is suspected to have
gone down. Of course, we'll never know exactly where because nothing was
ever really found. They pretty much disappeared without a trace.

Probably two really bad parts of the storm for me were, one, listening to the
guys west of me who were struggling with the weather. These are men that I'd
fished around and talked to on the radio every day for years. They weren't
saying, `Oh, you know, we're scared,' but you could tell from their voices and
the types of things that they were saying that they were having a very hard
time. And a couple of them said that it was the worst weather they'd ever
seen, and I know what kind of weather these guys are used to. Knowing that
weather moves from west to east, I knew that weather was coming--that that bad
storm was coming towards me. So what they had I was going to get. So,
obviously, I was scared.

My crew was very busy preparing the boat for the weather. There's a whole
list of things that you do to make a boat as seaworthy as you can make it.
Fortunately, by the time the storm reached my position, it had diminished
somewhat. We had 70 knots of wind for a couple of days. It was miserable.
It was, by no means, life-threatening for us aboard the Hannah Boden.
Fortunately, we were just in a better place, you know, at the time.

The other really bad thing, other than listening to they guys west of me, of
that whole episode for me was returning to Gloucester. The day that I
returned to Gloucester was the day that the Coast Guard canceled the search
for the Andrea Gail. So, at that point, there really was no reason to hope
or, you know, wonder if they were going to show up. So that was a very, very
sad time for me. Usually homecomings are a very joyous occasion. You know,
you're glad to be coming in.

But during this homecoming, you know, many of the family members and friends
of the guys who were lost aboard the Andrea Gail were coming around the dock
and asking questions. They understood that I was, you know, the person to
have the last conversation with Billy Tyne, the captain of the Andrea Gail,
and they wanted to know exactly what he said, and they wanted to know if I
knew anything that the Coast Guard had not relayed to them. And I really
didn't have any answers for them. It was very sad.

BOGAEV: In that last conversation that you had with the captain of that boat,
did you get the sense that he knew how bad their situation was?

Ms. GREENLAW: No. The last conversation I had with Billy Tyne was a very
typical conversation. Billy Tyne had been steaming towards Gloucester for
three days. He was on his way home with a trip of swordfish. And it's very
common for the guy to the west to call the other fishermen and let them know
what the weather's doing. It's your best predictor of what the weather's
going to do, the guy west of you. So he pretty much called me up that evening
and warned me that his weather had gotten--you know, he had like 50 knots of
wind. It had gone from about flat calm to 50 very quickly. And he was
warning me, you know, that maybe I would want to consider not fishing that
night because the weather was moving towards me.

And I had already received some faxes, weather maps and had decided to not
fish, and I appreciated him calling me and giving me that advice and
information. That was pretty much the end of the conversation. It was a very
typical conversation between fishermen. Conversations always include weather
information, the sharing of weather information, so it was not out of the
ordinary in any way.

BOGAEV: My guest is commercial fisherman Linda Greenlaw. She has a new book
about her experiences at sea, fishing for swordfish on other trips. It's
called "The Hungry Ocean."

What kind of trouble did you run into because of your gender on the boat,
either as a crew member or as a captain, which I imagine brought different
challenges to the job?

Ms. GREENLAW: Well, to be honest with you, I've been fishing for 18 years,
and I've never really thought about being female that much until recently,
because obviously I am asked that type of question a lot. So I've had to
think about it, and I can honestly say that I can't think of any time that I
thought that being female was an obstacle to any success that I've achieved.
And, by the same token, I really can't really use being female as an excuse
for any failures that I've accumulated because I've surely accumulated a few
of those also. But gender just hasn't been a factor. The obstacles that
challenge fishermen are bad weather, crew problems and mechanical breakdowns,
and they're certainly ignorant of gender. They haven't been any tougher for
me than they have been for the men in the same business.

BOGAEV: Do you find that you have to go through any kind of hazing procedure
with every new crew member; that you have to be tough on them at the beginning
so they know they're not just messing around with some woman?

Ms. GREENLAW: No, I've never felt that way. I think that's due to a couple
of different things, one is which I hire my own crew. So any guy who doesn't
like the idea of working for a woman definitely is not going to ask me for a
job. The other is just the title of captain brings with it, you know,
obviously the ultimate authority aboard the boat and some respect. I mean,
even the lowliest captains, the dirtbaggy captains that I know, when the crew
climbs aboard in the morning, they say, `Hello, Captain.'

BOGAEV: Are there any basic, everyday tasks that you find a little difficult
or uncomfortable because you're a woman? I'm thinking about going to the head
or any kind of issues that involve modesty.

Ms. GREENLAW: Yeah, if you want to get into that, that's fine. This is the
one thing that I did mention in my book. I've always been very careful to go
on boats where I have privacy. Even working on deck, I only went as crew
member aboard a boat where I would have my own stateroom. You know, I did not
share a room with any guys. As captain, I've always had my own stateroom and
my own head, my own shower. It's very important because, you know, being the
only female on the boat, I have to have some privacy.

I will say the one thing--you know, if you're going to push me on this about,
you know, there's got to be something about being more difficult for a
female, it probably is using the head. You know, in rough weather, it's kind
of difficult. You have to brace yourself and try and stay on the head, and
sometimes it can be very difficult in bad weather.

BOGAEV: Is there a moratorium on swordfishing now? I think environmentalists
are concerned that the swordfish are overfished. What's your take on that?

Ms. GREENLAW: No. There's no moratorium. There's a moratorium on permits.
So somebody wants to get in the swordfishing business, it's impossible to get
a permit to go, but the boats who already have permits are allowed to go.
There are all kinds of management plans and regulations in place to ensure
that the swordfish stock remain healthy. US fishermen--not just
swordfishermen, all US fishermen are among the most-regulated fishermen in the
world. I would like to add that regulations are a good thing. Fishermen of
today are conservationists. I like to know there's going to be a future in
fishing. I'm happy to abide by all laws. Sometimes the laws seem a little
extreme.

And I guess the one gripe that I have is when sort of radical
conservationists, who maybe don't know that much about the fish stocks, when
they come up with a reason to boycott swordfish, such as the "Give Swordfish a
Break"(ph) campaign, without knowing all the facts--you know, I find it hard
to believe that chefs from restaurants in New York City would know enough
about swordfishing to make a really good decision about boycotting it.

BOGAEV: Linda Greenlaw, thanks so much for talking with me today.

Ms. GREENLAW: Thank you.

BOGAEV: Linda Greenlaw is currently a lobster fisherman living on an island
off the coast of Maine. She's working on her second book.

I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan gives us some ideas for
summer reading. Director Jon Woo talks about making action films in Hollywood
and Hong Kong. And film critic John Powers gives us his take on Woo's new
film, "Mission Impossible 2."

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Commentary: Recommended books for summer reading
(Soundbite from "Mission: Impossible")

BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.

Summer is the time for travel, and book critic Maureen Corrigan has a few
recommendations for some armchair travels through time.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN (Georgetown University):

Usually, I'm the one desperately shouting out summer reading suggestions to my
students on the last day of class as they're making a break for the door, many
of them in a rush to get to the campus bookstore to sell all the books they
allegedly just read for my course.

But that situation was somewhat reversed recently when I got a letter from an
old student, making one of the most persuasive reading recommendations I've
ever received. Knowing of my native daughter's love for New York City, this
former student sent me a brand-new copy of Jack Finney's 1970 cult classic
"Time and Again." Other people have recommended this novel to me over the
years, but they've never done so in an eloquent three-page letter. My old
student said the novel shaped his view that the only thing cooler than New
York City was the New York City of the past. He said he thought I would be as
amazed by this novel as he was each time he read it. He was right. "Time and
Again" became my first read of this summer, the perfect summer novel, in fact,
because it's old and therefore in paperback, and because it's deftly crafted,
suspenseful, emotionally absorbing and totally escapist.

Actually, the first thing that surprised me about the novel was the list
opposite the title page of other stories written by Finney. I didn't know he
wrote that classic tale of terror "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I've only
seen the movie versions, so I don't know how his original story compares, but
its horrifying premise that people you love can change overnight into
strangers extends beyond sci-fi fantasy into the chilled reality of
relationships changed by the fast-acting agents of betrayal, sickness and old
age.

Finney wrote that story--originally entitled "The Body Snatchers"--in 1955,
and he was irritated until his death in 1995 by critics who read it as a Cold
War allegory dramatizing America's fear of Communist infiltration. I think in
"Time and Again," Finney responded to those critics because the novel contains
an explicit anti-military, anti-big government message. The plot revolves
around the time travel adventures of an advertising artist named Si Morley,
who participates in a government project that transports him back to New York
City in the winter of 1882.

"Time and Again" may be classified dismissively as `genre fiction,' but I
don't think I've read any other novel or history--including "The Alienist" and
E.L. Doctorow's "Waterworks"--that's made New York of the 19th century come
so vividly alive in my mind.

Here's a passage where Morley describes a nighttime elevated train ride
through Lower Manhattan. `There were lights, thousands of them, but of no
brightness. They were gaslights, most of them, white at this distance and
almost steady. But there was candlelight, too, and I supposed kerosene. No
colors, no neon, nothing to read. Just a vast blackness pricked with lights.'
That vision of a darkened and alien New York City gives me the chills, just
like the idea of pod people does. "Time and Again," like all good fantasy
fiction, makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Like my old
student said, `Read it, and you'll be amazed.'

My other two summer novel recommendations aren't time-travel tales, but
they're set, at least partly, in the past and so give a reader that vacation
sensation of having left home for far-off places. The appropriately titled
"Last Days of Summer" by Steve Kluger is a 1998 novel now out in paperback.
It's set in Brooklyn of the 1940s, and ingeniously tells its story of a
lonely, nine-year-old juvenile delinquent named Joey Margolis, mostly through
letters, telegrams, newspaper clippings and report cards. Like "Time and
Again," it's chockful of period detail. But here, the obsessive references to
antiquities like Nathan's Hot Dogs, the New York Giants and the old Paramount
Theatre are used to mostly comic effect. "Last Days of Summer" is as sweet
and ephemeral as a genuine egg cream.

Enough about New York. My pick for this summer's must-read novel is "No Great
Mischief" by Alistair MacCleod. And it's set in desolate Cape Breton, Canada,
where descendents of Scottish highlanders still speak Gaelic and the past is
as omnipresent as the sea. This is the 64-year-old MacCleod's first novel.
He's been celebrated in Canada for his short story collections. I wish that
adjectives like `luminous,' `spare' and `haunting' weren't such cliches
because they're the perfect words for "No Great Mischief."

The present-day story line takes place mostly during the few hours when a
middle-aged orthodontist named Alexander MacDonald visits his alcoholic older
brother who's living in a Toronto flophouse. Their brandy-fueled conversation
arcs back to their childhood and beyond, to General Wolfe's(ph) Scottish
troops dying on the Plains of Abraham(ph) and to their ancestor, Calum
MacDonald, who left Scotland in 1779 with his wife and 12 children and landed
in Cape Breton. There are unsentimental, poetic descriptions here of uranium
miners hands and disemboweled whales and the deaths of Alexander's parents,
who fell through the ice one evening crossing a not-quite-frozen sea channel.
Commenting on the lesser grief, Alexander says, `Sometimes it is hard to
choose or not to choose those things which bother us at the most inappropriate
of times.'

The only thing that bothered me about "No Great Mischief" is that it's too
slim to last the whole summer long.

BOGAEV: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed "Time and Again" by Jack Finney, "Last Days of Summer" by Steve
Kluger and "No Great Mischief" by Alistair MacCleod.

Coming up, director John Woo. His new film is "Mission: Impossible 2." This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Director John Woo discusses his movie style and some of
his influences
(Soundbite from "Mission: Impossible 2")

Unidentified Woman: You're a spy. But if you want me, you got to catch me.

(Soundbite of motorcycle; cars screeching; crashing)

Unidentified Man: Oh!

BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

"Mission: Impossible 2" has just hit the theaters. The film stars Tom Cruise
and Thandie Newton, and it's directed by John Woo, who's best-known for his
fast-paced, intricately choreographed action films.

Before John Woo went Hollywood, he made 26 movies in Hong Kong, including
comedies, martial arts films and gangster films. Some of Woo's Hong Kong
films, such as "The Killer" and "Hard-Boiled," developed a cult following in
the US. Quentin Tarantino was one of Woo's early champions. Woo made his
first American film--"Hard Target"--in 1992 with Jean-Claude Van Damme. He
followed that up with "Broken Arrow" and "Face/Off," which both starred John
Travolta. A little later in the show, we'll have a review of his new film,
"Mission: Impossible 2."

First, let's hear Terry's 1997 interview with John Woo, recorded after the
release of "Face/Off."

TERRY GROSS, host:

There's a scene toward the end of "Face/Off" in which all the characters--each
have their gun out, and each person has their gun pointed at somebody else.
So everybody's got a gun pointed and everybody's got a gun pointed at them.
You had a very similar scene toward the end of "The Killer," in which the two
men who have been pursuing each other through the film have their guns drawn
on each other in a stalemate. And Quentin Tarantino borrowed that at the end
of "Reservoir Dogs."

Mr. JOHN WOO (Director, "Mission: Impossible 2"): Yeah.

GROSS: How did this become an almost signature shot for you?

Mr. WOO: Well, I just want to show, you know, all men are equal, you know,
no matter the good guy or the bad guy. And they all only have one chance to
live or die, you know. While making "The Killer," I tried to create a moment
that said--to show that all mankind--they all pretty much the same, you know,
no matter they're good and bad. And, also, the idea was--came from the Mad
magazine, Spy vs. Spy.

GROSS: No, really?

Mr. WOO: Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the Mad magazine and the cartoon,
you know. You know, in Spy vs. Spy, the black and white bird against each
other, but even though they are enemies--but, actually, they are friend. So
I tried to create a equal moment to show that. So that became my trademark.
Listen, in my theory, I always believe there's no really a good guy or bad guy
in this world. I think all of mankind, they all have a very special quality,
you know.

GROSS: So you read Mad magazine when you were in Hong Kong?

Mr. WOO: Oh, yeah. I read Mad magazine for years, yeah. I'm a big fan.
Yeah.

GROSS: Now a lot of people describe your action scenes as looking beautifully
choreographed. And you've said that you've been very influenced by Hollywood
musicals in how you do the action scenes.

Mr. WOO: Oh, yes.

GROSS: What Hollywood musicals do you really love that have influenced your
action scenes?

Mr. WOO: Well, mostly the old classic musical, like "Singin' in the Rain." I
saw lots and lots of Fred Astaire's musicals, "Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers," "West Side Story," "All That Jazz," you know, and "The Wizard of
Oz." I have seen a lot of musicals. And beside the musical, I also a big fan
of the cartoon, you know. So that's why my kind of action sometimes is pretty
much like a cartoon.

GROSS: Well, it is like a cartoon in a sense that no matter how much a person
is knocked down and beaten up, he springs back up again to fight some more if
he's the leading man. If he's a secondary character, he's probably going to
get killed.

Mr. WOO: Yeah.

GROSS: But, you know, some people would say that that's a bad thing because
it leads people to think that violence doesn't really hurt and that violence
doesn't really kill people; that violence can be fun.

Mr. WOO: Well, I think some people may be a little too serious about my
movies, you know. And, actually, the action in my movie, I always feel it's
pretty much like ballet dancing or the cartoon. To be honest, I have never
intends to selling violence. And, actually, I'm not a violent guy, you know.
I have never learned any kung fu. I've never fight any people. I've never
fired a real gun in my life, you know. I just make it fun, you know.

You know, maybe the way I show it usually a little too strong. Before I
start--if I think of something--you know, something from the news, something
from the newspaper--like, if I read something, like, a little child having
been murdered or some innocent people are being killed, you know, by a madman
or by gangster or some people who lost their life in a war, then it usually
make me very angry, very angry and painful. And then I put that emotional
into the scene, and then I will let my hero hit the bad guy harder and harder,
you know. So scenes that are so much emotional, so that's why the impact so
strong.

GROSS: In talking about how dance films, how musicals have influenced your
action sequences...

Mr. WOO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...I would imagine that was even more true in some of the Hong Kong
films, in which the fighting was martial arts fighting and you were doing a
lot of, you know, hand-to-hand and foot-to-hand kind of combat.

Mr. WOO: Yeah.

GROSS: That's very choreographed.

Mr. WOO: Yeah. Yeah. I--some of the kung fu films are very choreographed
and, also, pretty much like dancing, as well. Of course, most of the Hong
Kong director or stunt coordinator--they have been trained by the Peking
Opera. So they are very good at those kind of, like, dancing action, you
know.

GROSS: Were you trained by the Peking Opera?

Mr. WOO: No, never, never. I did...

GROSS: Do you dance? Do you dance at all?

Mr. WOO: Yeah, I dance a little. When I was in high school, I was a
ballroom dance instructor, you know. I taught the folk dance, waltz, tango,
you know. So I am--I feel myself as a dancer, you know.

GROSS: That's great.

Mr. WOO: So that's why when I said, you know, why I am choreographing the
action, it seems like I'm dancing, you know. I'm dancing with the actors.

GROSS: Now what were some of the things that you did with the camera and with
the speed to make the fight scenes more dramatic, things like slowing up or
speeding up or slowing down the scene?

Mr. WOO: Well, each shot, I like to set five or six--or three or four
camera. And each camera have a different kind of speed, you know. Like, one
is the normal speed, the other maybe 120 frame, the other maybe 60 frame, you
know. And then I put them together to see how it looks, how it feels. And
then I edit it with the soundtrack. It means that I cut with the music. I
just sort of use the soundtrack to cut with the scene.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. WOO: So when a mood or when the music rhythm go, that will usually give
me the feeling to use the normal speed or to using the slow motion or, you
know, slow-motion shot. And after we put the whole scene together to go over
the music, see how it feel.

GROSS: Is there either an action scene or a fight scene that you can break
down for us almost shot by shot and tell us how you made it?

Mr. WOO: Well, it's real hard, you know. Of course, the first beginning we
did some storyboard, you know. But I just said that I use it for reference.
I like to create anything on a set. When I go to the set, I would like to see
what I had. So I usually choreograph everything by myself, sometimes with my
stunt coordinator.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. WOO: And I put myself as a character, as a hero. So I usually see how I
feel first. OK. For example, if I'm in a lobby and ambushed by 20 guys, OK,
and I only got two guns in my hand, so how could I deal with all of those 20
guys? So I had to figure it out for myself first, and then I will choreograph
with my stunt coordinator and demonstrate with my stunt man. And then I will
rolling on the ground and get up and shooting some guy on the left side and
then spin around and jumping in the air and taking care of some other guy on
the right side. I like to keep the beauty of the body movement--keeping it
low-grade. If I'm spinning in the air, then I would like to put some other
two guys up on the ceiling and then I shoot them in the air, you know. If I
feel I could do that, it will make me feel my actors also can do that.

GROSS: Have you ever had an actor or a stunt man hurt while shooting a scene?

Mr. WOO: No, never. I always concerned about safety. Safety's first. And
I also know how to use the camera technique to make it look great and avoid
the dangerous. You know, only a--sometimes they get slightly hurt, but--you
know, a little cut, but it doesn't mean anything. And I have never liked my
actors or stunt man risking their life to do all those dangerous things. I
mean, it isn't worth it, you know. I always believe a movie is about editing,
camera and lighting and the drama. It's not about risking your life to do
some crazy thing, you know.

But in "Face/Off," there's a scene--the speedboat chase, you know, at the
ending.

GROSS: Yeah?

Mr. WOO: One of our stunt double, you know, he doubled for Nick Cage. The
story was he fell off the boat and dragging alongside the boat and then he
flip up on to the ski, you know, that famous scene. And he almost got killed,
and that's all. Because the first time when he fell, his head went down
first. So his head hit the side of the boat and he lost conscious about a
few seconds, you know. And he almost lost his life.

GROSS: Well, how did that make you feel?

Mr. WOO: I feel very upset. I feel--and I did try to stop him and want him
to do it again. But the guy was so brave, you know. Because that was his
idea, you know. He wanted to make it. He wanted to do a great job, so he did
try it again.

GROSS: John Woo, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. WOO: Oh, thank you so much.

BOGAEV: John Woo, speaking with Terry Gross in 1997.

Coming up, a review of his new film, "Mission: Impossible 2." This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New film "Mission: Impossible 2" the summer's first
blockbuster in spite of a dull story line
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

"Mission: Impossible 2," the first of the summer blockbuster movies, opened
this week. It stars Tom Cruise. Our film critic John Powers says that
director John Woo comes through with some satisfying action scenes, but is
that enough?

JOHN POWERS (Vogue):

Back when I was an innocent, young film critic, I used to treat summer
blockbusters like ordinary movies that could be judged on the basis of their
plot, characterization and acting. But this was to miss the whole point of
these blockbusters, which is to provide enough spectacle that the audience
feels it simply has to see it. That's clearly the reasoning behind "Mission:
Impossible 2."

Tom Cruise stars as secret agent Ethan Hunt, who's assigned to recover a
biological weapon stolen by Sean Ambrose, a renegade spy played by Dougray
Scott. To get the stuff back, Hunt needs the assistance of Ambrose's
ex-girlfriend and master thief, Nyah Nordoff-Hall, played by Thandie Newton,
who had the title role in "Beloved."

Hunt wins her help, but the two fall for each other, and suddenly the plot
begins to look like Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious," where Cary Grant pushes
Ingrid Bergman into the arms of Nazi Claude Rains. Here, Hunt sends the woman
he loves into the villain's lair in Sydney, Australia.

Of course, merely to mention "Notorious" is to be misleading, for Hitchcockian
suspense has a rich sense of character. In contrast, there's no psychology at
all in "MI 2" despite having a screenplay by Robert Towne, once famous for
scripting movies like "Chinatown." Towne's now a little more than a well-paid
lawn jockey for stars like Cruise. And though his screenplay is less inept
than the one for the original "Mission: Impossible," it's still
excruciatingly short on wit and drama.

Stringing together action sequences, the script never gets any better than the
formula beginning when a helicopter arrives to give the vacationing Hunt a
message from his boss, played by Anthony Hopkins.

(Soundbite from "Mission: Impossible 2")

Unidentified Man: Good morning, Mr. Hunt.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the recovery of a
stolen item designated Chimera. You may select any two team members, but it
is essential that the third team member by Nyah Nordoff-Hall. She is a
civilian, and a highly capable professional thief. You have 48 hours to
recruit Ms. Nordoff-Hall and meet me in Seville to receive your assignment.

As always, should you or any member of your IM force be captured, the
secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. And, Mr. Hunt, the
next time you go on holiday, please be good enough to let us know where you're
going.

Computerized Voice: This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

Mr. TOM CRUISE ("Ethan Hunt"): I'll let you know where I'm going. I won't
be on holiday.

(Soundbite of music)

POWERS: "Mission: Impossible 2" was directed by John Woo, a master of
operatic mayhem, whose original Hong Kong movies radically transformed
Hollywood action pictures. Actors clearly love doing Woo's trademark shtick,
like sliding across the floor on their back, guns blazing in both hands. But
by now, I suspect that Woo shoots such scenes in the same spirit that The
Rolling Stones perform "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" in concert.

Which isn't to say that "MI 2" is badly directed. On the contrary, the movie
is bursting with visual arias; an amazing rock climbing sequence, a
vertiginous bit when Hunt dives off a helicopter into the belly of a high-rise
and a preposterously entertaining final showdown when Hunt and Ambrose meet on
a motorcycle. These scenes are enough to ensure that "MI 2" will become an
international hit. Woo delivers the spectacle and touches on his familiar
themes: alter egos, friendship and betrayal, the homoerotic bond linking
villains and heroes.

But the movie lacks the compelling story of pictures like "Face/Off" or "The
Matrix," and it's impossible to care what happens. Even by the debased
standards of blockbusters, Ethan Hunt's an absolute bore. Who is this guy?
We know that James Bond has only two or three personality traits. He likes
his martinis shaken, not stirred. He has sex with women, then kills them.
But next to Hunt, Bond looks as complex as Hamlet.

Although physically brave, Cruise brings nothing to the part except a bad
haircut and his beaming, Teflon-coated Tom Cruiseness. He lacks the
expressiveness of Woo's favorite star, the great Hong Kong actor Chow Yung
Fat, who knows how to give tough guys a rich sense of human vulnerability.

There's nothing remotely vulnerable about Cruise, who, as the movie's
producer, insists on hogging all the glory. Thandie Newton's Nyah has nothing
to do but simper, wear skimpy tank tops and gaze at Cruise adoringly. As
Hunt's sidekick Luther, Ving Rhames spends the film clicking away at a
computer. And as for the evil Ambrose, Dougray Scott fills the screen with
self-hating hamminess in an attempt to balance Cruise's self-methologizing
grandiosity. None of these actors has a chance, nor finally does Woo. He
does everything in his power to turn "MI 2" into something more than a machine
for making money. But as it turns out, that mission really is impossible.

BOGAEV: John Powers is film critic for Vogue.

(Station credits given)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.