BIO – Dwight Adair is a Producer/Director who currently runs his own studio, Granite House in Austin, Texas. Dwight started in the entertainment business as a 'dialog coach' to John Travolta in "Urban Cowboy" He's also been a coach to stars such as Henry Fonda, Cloris Leachman, John Lithgow and Sally Field, and went north to do the same on "The River Runs Through It" with Brad Pitt. He’s also spent 6 years on the “Dallas” TV series as both coach and Director before moving over to direct “Dynasty.”

The interviewer in this article is FlixUSA's Paul Heckmann.

2 Minute Drill
with Dwight Adair

What is your all time favorite movie? 

I have many favorites, in many genres. But did you ever see "Freaks"? "Hud" is a great picture, too. And "Blood Simple". And "Nanook of the North". Who can choose? Why bother?

If you had only one book, and you were on a deserted island, what would that book be? 

I would choose the Bible. It has all the stories, all the flaws, all the propensities, all the hubris, all the promise of humanity.

One place you haven’t been that you still want to go to. 

Australia

Your five most interesting people at dinner, real or fictional, past or present – who would they be? 

Kierkegard, Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi.

Apple pie – plain, or alamode? 

Plain apple pie.

Casual or business wear? 

In my life they are mostly the same.

Procrastination or ‘just do it!’? 

Definitely "Just Do It"

Dwight Adair

PH:      Dwight, can you tell us how you started in the entertainment business?

DA:      I got into the industry after going through the graduate film program at the University of Texas.  I was teaching at UT and then by some strange circumstances, I ended up being the dialect coach, some call it the dialog coach, on Urban Cowboy.  And I was the one that imparted the accent to that entire company including John Travolta.

            That was a great initial project for me both personally and professionally.  I learned a lot about what it takes to make a feature film, especially in how to deal with large personalities. Professionally, it launched me on a series of projects where I was perceived as sort of the resident expert on what Texans sound like and how they conduct themselves in public so after Urban Cowboy I did another feature called Hard Country with Kim Basinger, Michael Parks and Jan Michael Vincent. It was also Darryl Hannah’s first film. And then there were a series of NBC specials, which happened about that time, all of them, which had a Southwestern flair.  I was hired as a dialog coach on those too. On these projects I was privileged to work with Henry Fonda, Cloris Leachman, John Lithgow, Tim Hutton, Sally Field, William Hurt, Ned Beaty and others.

            There were a lot of great names. I saw some really incredible acting and worked with some fantastic directors, some of them had won Emmy nominations and awards, like Delbert Mann. I also went up north to coach on The River Runs Through It, which Robert Redford directed. Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer and Tom Skerritt were the stars.

            So, that was my way of kind of growing, moving sideways into the directing field.  So, when you mentioned my credits earlier, those are credit for dialog coaching, directing and producing, usually at separate times.  I got into the industry being a dialog coach, which put me on the set and let me work very closely with actors and good directors.  I leveraged that on the Dallas television series into becomes a DGA Director. And I paid my dues. I was on the set 4 years before I got a chance to direct.

            And the first season they gave me one show, the next season they gave me two shows and so on.  And then one of the producers left Dallas and went over to Dynasty with the Aaron Spelling organization for the last season of Dynasty.

            I was able to, in a single season, direct 6 episodes of Dynasty - it gave me the opportunity for the first time to direct regularly and not be directing out of a feeling of being rusty because it’d been a year since I’d directed a show.

            And along the way, I began writing my own screenplays, wanting to get my own projects off and it was that impetus that really brought me to Texas.  I wanted to do my own projects, do them in Texas and so I came back to Austin and formed Granite House. About a year after we incorporated we did our first movie of the week and I produced that for NBC and that was called She Fought Alone with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Brian Austin Green from 90210. So, I have been lucky enough to work with a) really great talent, both in front of the camera and behind it; b) to direct prime-time dramatic television and c) to produce a movie of the week while working here at home.

PH:     You said earlier that you began your career as a dialog coach in Urban Cowboy.  How did you go from University of Texas to being a dialog coach? 

DA:     Paul, as you well know, our industry is strongly dependent upon who you know.  And so as for who I knew, I was a good friend with a person who knew James Bridges who was about to do Urban Cowboy.

PH:     You mean the fellow that wrote The China Syndrome?

DA:     Yes, that’s him. He also directed China Syndrome and was then selected to do Urban Cowboy by Robert Evans. And, they needed someone who knew Texas, but also knew enough about filmmaking so as to not get in the way. John was at a kind of delicate period in his career and he didn’t want just anybody around him. It had to be someone who had a combination of personality that he could respond to and also someone who understood filmmaking enough that Jim Bridges could respond to and trust.

            And so, the answer to your question is, I knew somebody that knew somebody.

PH:      Don’t you love it when those things actually work out?

DA:     And in that particular instance, that was the case.  Of course, it doesn’t happen often enough.  You don’t get the red carpet treatment; and certainly just knowing somebody is not enough.  You have to deliver the goods. And I was able to do a good job on Urban Cowboy which led to the other things and eventually getting on Dallas, which led to being a director.

PH:     Let’s go back a bit Dwight, what did you study when you were down at the University of Texas?

DA:      By the time I got to University of Texas, I already had my undergraduate and my masters completed and so what I did at the University of Texas was to go through their PHD program in communications with a specialization in film, so I’m an ABD.  That is “all but dissertation.”  I completed everything for my doctoral degree in communications except having written that damn book.

PH:      Do you intend to do that?

DA:      Eventually, yeah, I would like to go ahead and get my degree.  I really enjoy teaching.  I can see that later in my life that would be something I would want to do something I enjoy.  It’s just that I spent a lot of my time in formal education and it’d be nice if that were consummated in some way.  But so far, being an ABD has meant very little.  It’s more the amount of experience I have.

PH:     Tell me a bit about your early years. Where did you grow up?

DA:      I’m a person who doesn’t have a single hometown because I moved every two or three years.  My father was a Methodist minister.  He was of the sort that was the old Humphrey liberal.  When I was growing up, integration was a big topic of debate and it was just before the civil rights movement in the 60’s and of course I was child of the 50’s. So my father was an early champion of a lot of liberal causes including the integration of a lot of small towns in Texas.  So after about 2-3 years that he’d say as much down at the barbershop as he would behind the pulpit, things would get a little too hot under the collar for people and we would have to be moved out in lieu of somebody who hopefully wouldn’t meddle as much in local politics.  So, I’d say the answer is that I grew up in a bunch of small towns, none of them more than 2,000 people, places like Hughes Springs, Lonestar, and China, Texas

            In 4^th grade I was in Lufkin.  It was a little bigger, and at first, as I got into high school, and my horizons began broadening through some associations I had with national organizations relating to the church, I thought that it was a real determent the way I was raised.  Then I came to realize that, in fact, it was not true at all as I was firmly seated in the value structure, organization and political structure of small town America. What that’s all about and while I didn’t embrace all of those values, I was exposed to it and exposed to it in numerous settings so I began to see similarities.  And as I saw the similarities and opinions and types, the personality types that would erupt in those situations and I think it made me, at least in my early adulthood, more astute as to how to be a leader - and how to direct a group of people as I understood the dynamics more than if I was just swimming in it without any self-awareness.

PH:     Dwight, would you explain the differences between a director and producer?

DA:     Sure. The difference between a producer and a director in the broad sense is that the producer sets up the game that the director plays.  Now, let me be a little less obtuse about that.  The producer does all the business behind the event of making a picture and the director steps in and orchestrates the creative people to make the picture so that a producer is the businessperson and the director is more the creative person.  They both organize personalities and thresholds of work but the producer tends to do little things that happen in offices and the director tends to do those things that mostly have to do with what happens on the set.

            The best directors however, know what it’s like to be a producer so that they know how important it is to get the work done in the time allotted for instance.  And likewise, the best producers are those that have taken a shot at directing because they understand the complexities of set work and so they just don’t go out there and stamp out cookies.  That’s especially true in feature film work where you not only have the complexities of, the technical complexities to deal with but you have the personality complexities to deal with both the crew and the talent in front of the camera.

            When somebody asks me, well, what is directing like?  I have two standard replies.  One is that directing is answering a thousand questions a day with great certainty.   Not with absolute power, but with great certainty in that you have thought through every aspect of the production so that you have an opinion.  It’s an opinion that could change with enlightenment, but you definitely have an opinion.  If you don’t know, then who does?  The other thing that a director does is that he or she is the person who gets all the work going at 7:30 in the morning, when 70 people are standing around saying, “what are we doing here?”  It’s your first job to know exactly what it is you do.

            And in the ancient days, we human beings huddled around a fire and those of us that were best at telling stories did so, and the rest of us listened, very carefully.  It was the way we’d look at ourselves, and the way we’d look at our families and the way we looked at the world.  And I think the same thing is true today.  I think the fire is the fire that happens on the screen at the movie theatre and the directors of the world are our premier storytellers and they tell us stories about who we are and who we aren’t and who are families and who our culture are to us.  And I think that’s the difference between a director and a producer.  A producer isn’t really a storyteller.  The producer is the guy that makes the fire and assembles the people around it and the director is the one who tells the story.

            In independent financing it’s usually only the producer that’s involved in the financing end of it and then the director is hired after that’s accomplished.  But of course, that varies depending on the project.  For instance, I’ve written a screenplay based on the life of the country singing legend Bob Wills. I’ve also done all the research over the years to get it to this point, and continue to function as a producer well before I get the opportunity to direct it.

PH:     How about the assistants?

DA:      The first assistant director is the straw boss, if you will, of the set.  He is the one that keeps that show moving for the director.  Once again how much the assistant director does varies with a particular director involved.  For instance, some directors just love to involve themselves with performance of the actors, the lighting, the composition of the shot or just about anything else.

            The assistant director would ideally be the person that administrates those desires to the director of photography, and who gets the proper number of extras walking in the background, and those are the kinds of things that happen in the immediate sense on the set.  Before you get to the set the first assistant director is the one that works the closest with the director in achieving his or her vision and I mean that administratively.  The director can’t always communicate with every person in the crew as to what the vision for a particular shot or scene is and the assistant director is the one that becomes the extension of the director.  And he also becomes the extension of the director in terms of the creative process, he’s also an extension of the producer in that assistant directors are the ones who are very aware of how much time is elapsing between takes and between scenes and how much more work there is to be done.  So that person serves as a prompter to the director saying, “Okay, you and I talked about that we were going to have these two scenes done by lunch”.

            How we were going to spend all afternoon on this other scene, which is very dramatic and is going to take us a while because it has numerous setups.  He or she is the one who goes to the director and says hey, you know, you’re a little behind schedule. Or, you’re doing fine.  Take as much time as you want to.  The assistant director is the one who decides whether to go 10 minutes beyond the lunch break and pay overtime or not.  The assistant director takes care of those sort of immediate administrative things that the director would rather not involve him or herself in so they can stay directly involved in the creative portions of the process.

            In a nutshell, the First assistant director is the one that stands right beside the camera with the director and calls for the camera and the sound to be ready and in some cases, the assistant director actually says “Action” for the director.  But my particular style is that I like to say “Action” because how I say Action and the inflection of my voice often, I think at least, help the performances.

            Second Assistant Director as you might suppose takes care of those things, which are not quite as large, but still need a qualified body to do.  Like bringing the talent out of the trailer and to the set. The Second also is the one that sends all out the extras. For instance, I send him behind the barn with all the background, and I want it done in 5-second intervals.

            And so generally it’s that sort of thing.  The director wants to involve him or herself in the creative process totally as they are the one and the only one who knows the through-line and the storyline behind that particular scene that you are shooting out of sequence. The assistant director administrates so that he can do that; and the second assistant director handles those things, which are of secondary importance. 

PH:     Dwight, would you describe the reasons for shooting out of sequence? 

DA:      Absolutely. Feature films are shot according to efficiency, not according to story line.  Therefore, shooting schedules are determined by how many days in a row certain actors have been contracted to work.  How many days in a row you have certain locations and when they are available and not available.  When wardrobe is clean and not clean.

            It’s so very important for the actors to also have some skill in filmmaking that includes knowing just where they are emotionally in every different scene. 9 times out of 10 scenes are shot completely out of order, and if one has an arc in your character that you’re building, it can totally mess up the shoot and have to be reshot later.

            With an actor, part of what their skill and talent is knowing where they are in the development of the arc of their character so that if they are involved in ten scenes in a movie and the third scene down they are beginning to be upset and the fourth scene down, they are psychologically coming apart and the fifth scene down they are in complete upheaval, if you shoot the fifth scene first, then they’ve got to know how far that upheaval it is and work backwards. I find that to be a really awe-inspiring skill and talent by actors.  And the director needs to really have totally thought every character development and plot development through too because it is incumbent upon them to know when to pull an actor back and when to encourage more.  As I said before, it’s only the director on the set that understands the whole through-line and his or her attention to detail is where their talent lies.  And often it is assumed that if you just squeeze all the blood out of every turnip that is available on a picture and string all that together, to mix my metaphors, how do you string blood together? 

PH:      That’s not very easy my friend.

DA:      One of the things you have to learn as a director is when to slight if you will, certain scenes and certain characters within the scene because as you will notice whenever you tell any story, you don’t enumerate every fact and every event with equal importance. 

            Also, some things are more important than others.  Sometimes you talk about why the road is bending rather than take the time to walk down the road and finally take a look and go somewhere else.  Sometimes you just say go down the road and make a left because what’s more important is what happens when you get there.  Same thing is true in storytelling and directing films.  You’ve got to know when to squeeze the blood out of the turnip and when to leave the blood in the turnip.

            And not to pick on my favorite friends, the actors, but I’ve found that a lot of actors who become directors fall guilty in this regard.  They don’t remember that it’s their job to orchestra how the story is being told and so they also go in and just, you know, try to get every bit of emotion they possibly can out of every moment and what you end up with is a very singularly paced figure motion picture instead of being one that has an arc in it.

            And with that said, everyone else has his or her job to do, and they’re equally important.  But if the director doesn’t understand fully what it’s all about, then the picture will suffer.

PH:     What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working in a Texas as a director/producer?  

DA:      One of the advantages as a director/producer is that you can somewhat create your own rules.  You are not entirely bound by those hard and fast rules that dictate how pictures are made in the 30 miles radius of Los Angeles. You also don’t have to use a certain level of union personnel unless you want to, as this is a “right to work” state. 

            The disadvantage is, as a director/producer, is that you are working in a market where your business is not understood by the common person and by the common businessperson. All along the way you have to explain the business, as you do the business. We find that it becomes a big part of what it means to be a producer here in Texas – educating as you go. In Los Angeles you can just do the business because everyone down to the busboy has a script or headshot in his or her pocket.

            There are a few more drawbacks from such things as a CPA that understands the business to the wardrobe people. When they go to the cleaners in LA it’s no problem, everybody understands the business.  Here in Austin even though it’s growing, you generally have to explain to the dry cleaning people, “No I will pick these ALL up in the morning. I HAVE to pick them up in the morning.  I’m spending $250,000 tomorrow and I have to have them. Your normal turn-around doesn’t work for us.”

            And it goes as far as this. When we did our movie of the week here, they had a person come with a production coordinator - they were going to set up the office for NBC. They called around to get furniture and they found out that the local furniture companies had a 3-month turn-around.  They said, well we’re going to be in and out of here in 2 months and the office furniture rental people didn’t know what to do.  They didn’t have a contract for 2 months and they never leased for something for as short as 2 months.  So a whole new contract had to be generated by their people to take.

            Once again, same thing, the NBC people would phone the telephone company and say that they were setting up production offices, we need to be in full tilt a week from now.  The director is coming in less than 10 days; the producer is going to be here in 3 days, we have to have 10 phone lines up and we have to have them day after tomorrow.

            Now, Western Bell says, ‘well, now let me see, I can put you on this and we can maybe have a guy out there in 2 weeks’.  You say no, no, I’m not being a primadonna.  I’m just telling you I’m a niche market for you - you’ve got to have these in here tomorrow.  Getting that across is so hard.  It’s one of the challenges producers have in a state like ours.

 PH:    Tell me about shooting in a small town. 

DA:     Well, we shot our movie of the week in Lockhart and I have documented the amount of money that was dropped in that local economy.  We made a point of filling up all the trucks and vehicles at the local service stations.  We made a point of getting as much food bought there in the local grocery stores and wholesalers as we could.  You know, typically 40% of a film’s budget is spent in the local economy where it is shot.  So, that’s a significant figure for a small town and so of late the educational process has not been as great as it has been before because they have begun to hear through the grapevine that there is money to be made.

PH:      How big is Lockhart? 

DA:      I would say Lockhart probably has maybe 5000 people. 

PH:     And you pumped how about much money into that area? 

DA:     Well, it was a 3.5 million dollar movie of the week and when you take 40%, you’re talking about roughly 2 million dollars.

PH:      2 million dollars - in a town of 5000?

DA:      Yeah - it can be a lot. 

PH:     Did you scout the locations yourself or did you did you have a location manager?

DA:      Eric Williams was our location manager and he did a great job.

PH:      How did he find Lockhart?

DA:      It was a combination of his own personal experience of what was available in small towns surrounding Austin and also the help by the Texas Film Commission making him aware of things that were available.  Our movie of the week was brought to us by NBC in that they had the script.  It was not our script that we developed here and so it made for a relationship with NBC where they were very hands on.  Which suited us just fine because it was our first movie of the week.

            So what we did was make sure that they hired the very best local professionals they could.  The Line Producer was Bill Scott who has done a lot of movies of the week and features.  He had just finished Rodriguez’ The Faculty, and before that he did The Newton Boys. He’s done a lot of pictures in this area so he was great to crew up our project.

            NBC had a very limited amount of time to set up the offices and start shooting; they were using cast members from 90210 who were on hiatus and time was tight. The most efficient thing to do was to find a company like ours to run it straight through.

PH:     Dwight, if someone was interested in directing or producing, how would you recommend they start?

DA:      If they are young, either go to film school or create their own film school. Film school is a good place to start  because you get your hands on equipment, you get your mind and eyes looking at what’s been produced before so that you don’t try to recreate the wheel and there is a formal process laid out for you to get under your belt the technical aspects of making film.  If you can’t go to film school, as I said the best thing to do is create your own film school by start making films.  There is no excuse today for anyone not to make films because of the prevalence of the VCR and consumer video cameras.  And so, if you want to make films, go make a film.  Find out how tough it is to edit.  Find out how tough it is to get all the angles so it really looks professional.  So it’s lit well, so the sound is good.  Then beyond that, go and intern at a company like ours where you’ll get thrown into the business of making films and you’ll get throw into the technical aspects and the creative aspects and once you finish interning at one place, go to another place and go to a third place and probably by the time you’ve interned at 2 or 3 places, you will have learned marketable skills that you can become a free lance person. One of the things that we try to do here at Granite House is that when people intern with us, they leave with marketable skills.  Interning is a hard thing to do because there are so many people who want to be in our business you have to usually intern for free. That means that you have to go and consider the internship a part time job without pay and so you have to go someplace else and make your rent and your money for eating. 

PH:     Sounds good for a student.

DA:     Or someone just even out of film school.  Just because you’ve done things doesn’t mean you have anything on your resume.  So the way to get things on your resume, such and such television, such and such production company, such and such corporate video for such and such production company.  You know, you get 4 or 5 on your resume then people say, oh this guy’s been around the block. He understands how not to get in the way.  He knows what happens on the set and what doesn’t.  And then you have a much better chance of actually landing a job that will eventually put you in a position of where you want to be.

            So, if you don’t go to film school, you need to make your own film school.

            It’s a tough thing to be a film school because it requires a large capital investment on behalf of the school.  Just to have and maintain equipment and just to have and maintain studios.  And then, beyond that, it’s a tough thing for students and schools because film itself is expensive and even making videos is very expensive so there is no easy place to go to film school and no one film school. And you can have great equipment and great facilities, but if you don’t have active filmmakers teaching, then there is no creative thrust and so it’s very tough.  How do you attract resident artists and filmmakers to a University and then how do you, once you attract them, have enough money to have up to date equipment that is maintained and state of the art studios?  That’s a lot of money.  But, it’s like any other profession where you learn through a guild process.  It’s on you to find it.  Nobody is going to tell you how to do it.  We certainly are living in a era where Frances Coppola and Steven Spielberg and others went through film school, showed how valuable it can be and other people that completely shunned that approach and got there by hook and crook.  There’s no one-way of getting there.  But it is incumbent upon you and nobody else to get there.       

            And then educate yourself just like you would in any other field.  You know, if you are going to be in international finance, you don’t just try to think up all the ways you can do that in your own head.  You go out and read a book.  You find out what other people have done.  Same thing is true in filmmaking.

PH:     Dwight, can you tell me a bit about the startup of a film assuming you have the financing in place?

DA:     We keep an active list of crew and resumes. Then we find crew that had worked on similar sized projects.  Why? Because, if you simply go by experience, they could have been working only on 20-30 million dollar pictures and if you are doing a 5 million dollar picture, it can be tough on that person.  So you have to find a person that has got the experience level, but in the same budget level is what you are looking for.  And then the other part, once again is whom you know.  If you don’t know a person that fills that position, whom do you know that does know?

            The other obvious first thing to do is call the Texas Film Commission and tell Tom Copeland (the Texas Film Commissioner) what you are up to.  He  and his staff can be of tremendous assistance, have a vast knowledge of locations, location burn-outs, union issues, equipment issues, and what other  productions are in the state.

            Finally, let me say this.  The last thing in the world you want to do is rush into production.

            I’ve seen so many enthusiastic young filmmakers do poor pre-production in their rush to start shooting and it always bites them—hard—later. The best  way to ensure a great shoot is to prepare for a great shoot thoroughly. Period

PH:     We're nearing the end of our time Dwight, so I need to ask you, what is the one question you've never been asked in an interview?

DA:     What are the theological underpinnings of my life and work?

PH:      And Dwight, that sounds like a whole new interview. And with that said, it's time for a wrap. Thank you for your time Dwight!

Granite House Inc., Austin's award-winning multimedia production company, specializes in high-tech video, film, CD and Internet content. It also does concept-to-camera-to-completion, in a competitively priced way, whether it be content, commercial, network TV or cable production.

Dwight Adair, President
Granite House Inc.
1411 West Sixth St.
Austin, Texas 78703
voice 512-481-1300
fax 512-481-1308
www.granitehouse.com