Frankenheimer: A reluctant director

His current film, Reindeer Games, which opens Friday, stars Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron and Gary Sinise in a surprise-filled thriller that's reminiscent of the crackling political dramas of the '60s, a genre that Mr. Frankenheimer polished to perfection with the classic The Manchurian Candidate.

Other Frankenheimer films include Birdman of Alcatraz, Seven Days in May, The Train, Black Sunday and Grand Prix.

His films are distinguished by expert scene composition and fluid camera movements. Yet film directing was far from his mind when he pursued a career in entertainment.

"There has never been anything as exciting as live television in its early days," Mr. Frankenheimer says in a recent Dallas visit. "There never has been and there never will be anything to match it. It wasn't playing live to an audience on Broadway. It was playing live to the entire nation."

His live television dramas include an elaborate version of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls with Jason Robards, an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw with Ingrid Bergman and the original Days of Wine and Roses with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. Many film buffs consider his small-screen version far superior to the famous big-screener with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.

"When live shows turned to tape, so much of that energy was gone forever. In live television, I was filled with this wonderful feeling that anything was possible. Originally, I even wanted to do Birdman of Alcatraz as a live TV drama. Can you imagine having to direct all those birds on a stage in a live performance? Looking back now, I see that I must have been arrogant. But back then, I only thought that nothing was impossible. So I went into feature filmmaking reluctantly."

Even now, entering his fifth decade as a feature filmmaker, he harbors reservations about the big screen. For cable television, he has won Emmys directing Against the Wall, about the Attica prison riots; The Burning Season, about slain rain forest activist Chico Mendes; Andersonville, about the infamous Civil War prison; and George Wallace, about the flamboyant Alabama governor. None of those topics is likely to be first on any movie studio's green-light list, and Mr. Frankenheimer recently raised Hollywood eyebrows when he said that cable films are superior to feature films.

"On a film-for-film basis, there's no doubt that cable is superior. Everything about cable is conducive to quality filmmaking. For one thing, they don't screen the film for those truly awful focus groups. Studio executives always insist that a movie be screened in advance for focus groups, and the people in those focus groups are not the type of people you'd even want to see the movie. Yet, the studio will make changes on the basis of what those groups say. If it weren't so sad, it would be a very funny situation."

Still, he's happy with Reindeer Games, in which Mr. Affleck plays an ex-con reluctantly lured into planning a Las Vegas casino heist.

"I was drawn to the script immediately because of the dialogue. It has the same type of wry humor that The Manchurian Candidate has. And the screenplay goes from Point A to Point B all the way to Point Z, which not many screenplays do. And Affleck is the perfect Everyman. He doesn't look like a hardened criminal, and he doesn't have an air of superiority. You're never sure if he'll get out of a tight situation."

Ironically, Mr. Frankenheimer first came to Hollywood as the protege of a man who loved feature films, David O. Selznick, the legendary creator of such grandiose productions as Gone With the Wind, Duel in the Sun and Spellbound.

"Selznick was so smart in so many ways. He's not known as a maker of action films, but he taught me everything about directing a chase scene. He said to let the audience know where everyone is, to give them a sense of geography, and then you can do anything."

In the mid-1960s, Mr. Frankenheimer became fast friends with Sen. Robert Kennedy, who was a great fan of The Manchurian Candidate, which included a scene of political assassination. Mr. Frankenheimer directed all the senator's campaign films. In 1968, RFK came to Los Angeles for the final time, and stayed in Malibu with Mr. Frankenheimer and the director's wife, Evans Evans , the former actress best-known as Velma, Gene Wilder's nervous fiancee in Bonnie and Clyde.

Mr. Frankenheimer drove Kennedy to the Ambassador Hotel on the night of his assassination.

"Bobby and I had walked together through the kitchen and through the entrance into the ballroom. Suddenly, he turned to me and said he was really tired and could I go get the car, so we could leave the hotel as soon as his speech was over. I was standing at the entrance to the ballroom, and I could see my own face in the huge monitor, which was a weird sensation. I got the car and when I drove around to the entrance, police started banging on my hood.

"They kept telling me to move it, to move it. I didn't know what had happened. And then a woman ran out of the hotel, screaming, 'Kennedy's been shot! Kennedy's been shot!' And then I saw the cops pulling Sirhan Sirhan along the entranceway. I turned on the radio and heard my name being mentioned among those who were shot. I was supposed to be on the podium with Bobby, and early reports were confused, so they must have assumed that I had been shot, too."

Although he now talks freely about that night, the thought of it still pains him.

"It affected the next 10 years of my life. I had a nervous breakdown, and I moved to France for six years. I also developed a drinking problem, which I eventually recovered from. I still worked when I was in France. I just wasn't located in the United States."

He revisited the Ambassador Hotel while making the cable biography of George Wallace and filmed scenes in the ballroom where Kennedy was shot.

"The way I had remembered it, and the way I saw it when I dreamed about that night, the distance from the entrance to the ballroom to the outside driveway was enormous. But when I directed George Wallace, I realized that the distance was actually quite short. In my dreams, it had become magnified and surreal."

He would love to make a miniseries, possibly with Gary Sinise, based on Robert Kennedy's life. But his mind is clearly set in the present.