CHRIS NEUMER: Where are you from in Chicago?

BOB BALABAN: I was born on Wellington Avenue and my family that remains lives in the Lake Shore Drive area.

BOB BALABAN: I studied at the Second City while I was in high school in the teenage workshop led by the fabulous originator of Second City Viola Scolin. The mother of improvisational theatre.

BOB BALABAN: I guess that you could say that it was. It was my first brush with the professional world. We didn't perform though, we just studied. I did get involved in several other workshops though.

BOB BALABAN: Yes. Then I went to summer stock, got in a TV series during my sophomore year in college and in my junior year got into an off-Broadway play, the original You're a Good Man Charlie Brown and was the first Linus in New York. In my senior year I got into a Broadway show that Mike Nichols directed and, obviously, he offered me my first movie role which was in Catch-22.

BOB BALABAN: Yes that was the same year.

BOB BALABAN: Nope, you got me.

CHRIS NEUMER: You've managed to work with a lot of very talented directors in your career, from day one onward. How did you get to work with such quality directors like Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols and Tim Robbins on such a regular basis?

BOB BALABAN: I'm lucky. I wish I had a better answer. I mean, I wish I knew. I'm not very good at doing certain things, frankly, so that prevents me from getting a lot of big roles in commercial movies. (pause) I'm sort of kidding, but you know.

BOB BALABAN: Thank you. I've got a movie coming out this summer that's very good called Ghost World. It's been getting major reviews. People seem to love it. It's directed by Terry Zwighoff who directed Crumb. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I just finished acting in it you didn't ask me this, but I just finished acting in it so just tell me to shut up if I'm too obnoxious, and I just finished a wonderful movie that I produced with Robert Altman that he also directed. It's a British period movie that is funny and touching and wonderful. I play an American movie producer and was an American movie producer.

BOB BALABAN: I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called The Last Good Time. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.

BOB BALABAN: I think it's going rather nicely. People so far have been very fond of the Robert Altman movie, as I am, and when one things goes well it shines light on your other projects and now I seem to have a number of projects that are moving forward.

BOB BALABAN: To me and to the people who I trust who've seen this picture that this is going to stand up there with his classics. I will be so modest as to say that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Are there any roles that you identify with more so than others? I know you've played the president of NBC at least 10 times?

BOB BALABAN: Yes, I was in the HBO movie and I was on Seinfeld. I really liked that movie a lot and Seinfeld, I enjoyed the movie and being in Absence of Malice a lot, the Sydney Pollack movie starring Paul Newman among others. I really liked that role. And I really had a great time on that Robert Altman movie I just did. It was a real ensemble and you hear a lot about Bob and his work with bunches of people, but until you're actually on a set with him with seventeen fantastic actors sort of participating in the magical atmosphere that Bob creates when he's working with these amazing actors, it was one of my favorite experiences.

BOB BALABAN: I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting. I've worked with a lot of wonderful directors and I what I find really interesting is that it's very very hard to see?I worked with Sidney Lumet on a movie called Prince of the City and after it was over, I asked Sidney if I could punish myself by hanging around him while he worked in order to study him. I watched as he prepared, organized and shot and I could never figure out when he figured out what to do. He'd plan, he'd organize and he did everything and his ideas would emerge from his brain fully hatched, I never really understood that. And now when I meet directors that I admire, I watch them carefully, not just to see how they plan a certain shot or what crane they were using, or what lens they were using, or how they're blocking it, I watch all that stuff, but mostly, I'm trying to figure out the wellspring. Where is this all coming from, from the director? Do you direct a movie subconsciously? You can almost say after you know a director for a while that he is doing most of this work, their personality is getting all over the movie. And in certain cases, that's a brilliant thing to happen. And you don't know how they're doing it, and yet it's part of every decision that they make. I would say that I working with Robert was like that. Everything about him-he almost goes into a trance when he's on the set, but a very active trance, I don't mean he's quiet or anything, he goes into this amazing relaxed state and it spreads. And you watch everyone get inspired by this. He's so in love with being there that you just watch this transfusing movie all the time. And this is impressive, because I've been on the sets of movies where the director makes everyone happy, but it doesn't translate to the screen.

BOB BALABAN: It's because he's always changing. He didn't find a way, he just remains awake and alive. I would love to work with Gore Verbinski again too.

BOB BALABAN: Gore is a really subterranean type of fellow-in a nice way! I don't mean he's secretive or something though. You kind of can't tell where it's coming from though, he doesn't even talk that much. But he says things to you that really motivate and inspire you to do your scenes well. He shoots really nicely and interestingly. And he's one of those directors who doesn't sit around and waste time, but if he's on the set and there's a better way to cover something he figures it out immediately and does it. He doesn't just shoot master shot and close ups, like a lot of people do, and yet it doesn't seem tricky, it just seems interesting. I think that puts him into a "Coen Brothers" like category. I also think he's a sensitive guy which gives him great insight into the personalities of the characters and the actors. I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game. If you can be on both side of that fence at the same time, you're doing something that 90% of directors aren't doing.

BOB BALABAN: They called me a said "are you interested?" I put some stuff on tape, because I was in New York and they were in L.A., My daughter got out the old digital video camera and said a few things and sent it to Gore. He got the tape and asked me if I wanted to come. I said sure. But I did have long hair at the time and he wouldn't let me have long hair in the film. And that's the only sad thing about the movie; so many people had bleached blonde hair in the movie that I couldn't keep my own bleached blonde hair.

BOB BALABAN: Yeah. I had done an episode of The West Wing as a movie mogul guy with bleached blonde hair and when I met Gore he said, "Well you've got to cut your hair and look like a normal person," because, literally, four other people in the movie have bleached blonde hair.

BOB BALABAN: Yes I try to do everything I can not to fail hideously. So I'm learning all the time. I've directed a fair amount of television series, so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying. And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you've got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.

BOB BALABAN: I have a number of projects planned that I would direct, I won't bore you with the development deal, I'm working on a TV movie for Showtime that I would direct-the script is just great, and I will be directing some other TV shows as well. And I will be directing a wonderful off-Broadway play in the fall.

BOB BALABAN: I'm really bad at this. I don't have a great or interesting view about that. I kind of like independent or foreign films more than most big-budget movies, but I kind of understand that if you're a major movie studio you have release movies in 4,000 theatres at once, you had better have a big opening weekend, an identifiable star and if that star is used to being in certain types of roles, you'd better make sure you put them into that kind of role again. I don't find it entertaining, but I do understand the reality of it. God, I'd love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too. But the system is not made for that. I think it's hard for good movies to slip through, but they do come through occasionally.

BOB BALABAN: I was aware that the movie had a problem of image, because, originally the movie was kind of like a Quentin Tarantino, $12 million movie, to have Brad and Julia in it with the demands of the studios, but the audience perception of the movie made it more difficult to market, and to let the audience know what kind of movie they were going to see. Could it have made $200 million? Sure. I think it's the kind of movie people really like, but I don't think that many people knew what it was about before they went to see it. Does that make sense?

BOB BALABAN: And it's interesting because they were both fantastic in their roles and absolutely right for their parts and they weren't like elephants sitting on the movie. Julia didn't come in and demand certain things, she didn't demand to be shot only in evening dresses and refuse to do anything dirty; she's an actress and I think she can do anything. Brad was wonderful, but I do think that their combined presence misleads the audience slightly; people perceived it to be a romantic comedy, and it's not. And I think that had an effect on the audience; you don't mind two Mega stars not getting together in a Coen Brothers movie, but you do mind them not getting together in a gigantic Hollywood romantic comedy. You kind of go, "gee, I'm disappointed, I thought those two were going to spend a lot of time kissing and hugging."

BOB BALABAN: It doesn't mean that the movie is any worse for that but it does mean that the expectations were dashed.

BOB BALABAN: I haven't seen it, I apologize. I've been really busy. I actually wanted to see it onscreen, but somehow was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've worked every day for the last nine months. I will see the film, I'm going to break down and see it on video next week.

BOB BALABAN: But I loved the script and I loved doing it.

BOB BALABAN: I had to go three or four months before the scene was shot and have someone make a plaster cast of my neck and then they made me a whole other neck with the bullet hole in it and then they stick it on you-it's like Jell-O really-and it has the hole and tubes run through the hole and there's a guy lying on the floor smoking and puffing smoke into the tube. We had to be careful not to have too much smoke though. For the smoke trickling out of my mouth, I simply took a drag of a cigarette before each take.

BOB BALABAN: And by the way, this version was much better than a digital version of the scene would have been. I love when things are real.

BOB BALABAN: I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually. They weren't digitized, and there were some things that you just couldn't do, and you would have to reveal it very briefly, like a good magic trick. There were a lot of smoke and mirrors. And sometimes that's more effective than starring at fully computer generated images. CGI are a useful tool, just like Technicolor is a useful tool, widescreen is terrific because you can see that much more on-screen, they're all tools you need to use. However, when you see the tools as the be all, end all, they tend to overwhelm the project. You still need a good script and good actors. There's something about a wonderful actor in a movie-I think we're a few thousand years away from being able to replicate that. Of course what will happen is we'll all get dumbed down. If audiences really get used to seeing actors like that there will be a handful of old-fogey actors who say that, "in the old days, actors used to have personality." And they'll be right, but by then, people will be used to the computer images and won't care.

BOB BALABAN: I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for seventy years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

BOB BALABAN: I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.

BOB BALABAN: I think they're on different planets, but I like them all. I happy to make my home in New York because my life is here, my family and friends are here. To me, it's not crowded and noisy and dirty. To me it's lively and exciting and interesting. I love Chicago because it's beautiful. I have people I love in Chicago and there are lots of interesting things to do in Chicago that weren't there 20 years ago. I think Chicago has moved forward better than almost any other large city in the United States. I love the way it's progressing. I like LA because I like driving around in my car everywhere, but I get scared about how quickly the city would blow away. It's more of a metaphor though.