GALE ANN HURD: Yeah, it was a huge thing, I didn’t realize at the time because I worked with Roger Corman, and as a woman there was no impediment being a woman, according to Roger Corman. Anywhere else, it was a huge liability. It was only when I went to a major studio for the production of Aliens that I realized, and I’m sure you read the quote, after almost a year working on it, someone came up to me and said to my face "How can a little girl like you produce a big movie like this?"

CHRIS NEUMER: I didn’t read that exact quote, I read the paraphrased version.

GALE ANN HURD: That’s it, and it had never occurred to me that someone would question my credibility because of my gender, and because I was 5’4.

CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like you have a perfect example to sort of do a double take and be like, "It’s here, done." If they had said that ahead of time, if some executive had sat down with you and said I don’t think you can produce this because you’re a little girl, I’d be like, yeah, that seems wrong, but to be able to see the finished project and then ask you how you were able —

GALE ANN HURD: Yeah, well I’d done Terminator, and then another independent movie, and the budget for Alien was 18M. So I went from 6.4M to 18M.

CHRIS NEUMER: I know you were credited with co-producing Smokey ---?

GALE ANN HURD: Smokey Bites the Dust.

CHRIS NEUMER: To be honest with you, I didn’t have time to check on whether that was the final of the Smokey and the Bandit series or if it was something completely different.

GALE ANN HURD: It was something completely different. It was Roger Corman’s youth homage.

CHRIS NEUMER: But it seemed liked big steps to go from co-producing a film like that, to doing something like Terminator.

GALE ANN HURD: But the thing was that at that point I already had the skills. I had been the assistant production manager on Battle beyond the Stars, which was the biggest film at that time that Roger had ever done; it was a 2 million dollar film, which was how I met Jim Cameron. Even though Roger took producing credit he was not on the set, he was not the person who was potentially —

CHRIS NEUMER: You were filling his shoes?

GALE ANN HURD: Pulling it off, so I was quite involved in producing that film, and then I went on to Terminator. So it was tripling, I went from a 2 million, to a 6 million, to an 18 million, and then tripled again.

CHRIS NEUMER: That is pretty — you don’t think of those big snowball like chumps, It’s not, I don’t want to say it’s not enormous, it’s probably better than not working at all, but I think it’s a note to your talent, the effort you’ve put forth.

GALE ANN HURD: And I think keeping that, is not losing sight of how to make a little movie. I went from doing this to Waterdance.

CHRIS NEUMER: I didn’t think you’d have anything to do with water again, but there you go and do the Waterdance.

GALE ANN HURD: It has nothing to do with water. (Laughs)

CHRIS NEUMER: I know, I’m teasing.

GALE ANN HURD: But yes, that was 2.7M.

CHRIS NEUMER: I did notice that there wasn’t a whole lot involving water after that.

GALE ANN HURD: Virus, Virus was in water, lots of water.

CHRIS NEUMER: Ten years removed, or seven years removed. Do you feel safe going back there? I just remember reading some of the horror stories involving how you were shooting in a nuclear containment —

GALE ANN HURD: A nuclear containment.

CHRIS NEUMER: And you had to black out the top. Was it Ed Harris that passed out trying to swim?

GALE ANN HURD: No, no one actually passed out, but it was Leo Burmester, who almost passed out, yeah. I mean the truth was, no one was going to die because there were safety divers everywhere, they couldn’t see them.

CHRIS NEUMER: Still, it’s got to be a pretty interesting situation. Still, most people say, that if you’re used to working on land, and you want to go underwater, it’s going to make working eight times as difficult even if you plan for it, because most people think, oh, it’ll be twice as difficult.

GALE ANN HURD: Well, at least we did shoot it in a contained tank instead of out in the ocean.

CHRIS NEUMER: Do people do that?

GALE ANN HURD: They do, which is really silly.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah?

GALE ANN HURD: Ok, look at Waterworld.

CHRIS NEUMER: The story of about how the slave colony set they never actually used sunk, and then they raised it up, and then it sunk again. You read it, and you just think, this can’t actually be true, it can’t possibly be true, but oh, it’s true. But you’d figure something like the Fox studio down in Mexico, where they shot Titanic and Master and Commander, you’d figure sooner or later someone would get that kind of an idea.

GALE ANN HURD: But Jim knew back to the time we even made the Abyss, he said we need to find a facility to do this because we need to control the auto clarity, we don’t need to worry about tides, we don’t have to worry about surface chop. I mean, look at Lake Ontario today versus yesterday.

CHRIS NEUMER: I think you actually see some waves out there today, not that you see anyone in a dry suit.

GALE ANN HURD: There’s a huge difference. I can tell you the Canada Geese that were there yesterday weren’t around then either.

CHRIS NEUMER: There was something, I think it was like a bufflehead or a croot, it was in the water, and the waves are coming, and it just bobs right under, and then you look around, and it comes back up. And you’re just going — Ok. I know you’re warm blooded, but it seems like you’re pushing it. But you’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of directors. I was looking at this, and you’ve worked with big directors, small directors, directors of Indie films. You’ve worked with Michael Bay, Jim Cameron, Brian De Palma, your permanent husband, Roger Corman, I mean, it’s all over the map. First-timers, veterans, people who are deemed to be insane by outsiders and people who are deemed to be true professionals. Is there any type of director you as a producer like to work with better than others?

GALE ANN HURD: The only thing that matters to me is that I work with someone who has a vision, and can communicate it.

CHRIS NEUMER: To yourself, or?

GALE ANN HURD: At least to me and the first assistant director. There has to be at least those two people, because we can disseminate out to everybody else. Preferably someone who can communicate it to all the department heads, but failing that, at least to us. That’s key, I don’t mind the difficult directors, but a director lacking a vision is the most problematic, because you can’t fix that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Do you have a hand bringing the directors on?

GALE ANN HURD: Most of the time but not all of the time. There are times when the studios basically say, hey, this is who we want, isn’t that a great idea?

CHRIS NEUMER: You nod your head and look just like that, I’m sure. Is there any particular vision?

GALE ANN HURD: Well, generally, if I think it’s a really bad idea, I’ll tell them, but sometimes, I get stuck anyways.

CHRIS NEUMER: Is there any project you’ve worked on where you’ve worked on it and you’ve looked at it and thought, oh, the vision of this director - let’s say about Cameron for now - who beat you with a bat about how much vision they have, but was there any project that you worked on that you look back on now and say, yeah, that came out right, that came out sort of like we were discussing in pre-production?

GALE ANN HURD: A lot of them: The Waterdance did; Dick, a comedy that Andrew Fleming did; Hulk was exactly what Ang said it was going to be.

CHRIS NEUMER: It seems it has to be, I don’t want to say rewarding, but seems like less to worry about for you, because that’s —

GALE ANN HURD: No, it’s not. It depends, it depends on how grand someone’s vision is, and how modest the budget, whether there’s more or less work for me.

CHRIS NEUMER: So the grander the vision, the less the budget, the more work for you? I have to ask, is there a specific film or two you can mention where you sort of worked under the table deals or things like that to try to get the most for your budget?

GALE ANN HURD: I don’t do any under the table deals. You mean, do I make better deals on some movies than others?

CHRIS NEUMER: Exactly.

GALE ANN HURD: Yes. When you produce quite a few films you keep going back to the same people over and over again, and I don’t want to name names because I don’t want people to know that they’ll do it for little money, but right now there’s a situation on the Punisher where I called in a favor, a very big favor.

CHRIS NEUMER: There are a lot of people that do sort of, I’m sure it’s on a much smaller scale, but trade gifts, independent film makers from whatever hometown they’re shooting it, but you had specifically mentioned how much harder your job got when you had to sort of work on reigning in the vision of the director with the budgetary constraints. Now you know, I’m sure, like with the Titanic, it just seemed like the budget kept getting bigger to match the vision, which I think is the exact opposite of the way it works most of the time, and I’m saying that, out of any examples of films that you’ve worked on, that you can or would care to cite, of something where you had to do some skulking to either get either the vision down a little bit?

GALE ANN HURD: Well, we did on Aliens. We knew it was absolutely critical on both Jim’s and my first studio film that we keep it on budget. Everything was a compromise, you know, I had a meeting with Jim about what we couldn’t afford, and how we would creatively get around it. By using a mirror in the scene where they come out of the suspended animation, we used a mirror because we could only build six of those things that they sleep in, so we used a mirror so it looked like there were 12. I made Jim pay for the laser at the very beginning when they find the Norcisus. That was an idea he came up with about three days before, and I said if you want it, you have to pay for it, and he did.

CHRIS NEUMER: No Kraft services for a week and a half because I want a laser.

GALE ANN HURD: No, he personally wrote the check.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, he did?

GALE ANN HURD: Yeah. That wasn’t going to happen again. But every day is like that, and today is going to be like that, except here, I’m more in the position to be the godmother.

CHRIS NEUMER: The difference in points of time, like Armageddon for example, I mentioned to an acquaintance of mine that I was trying to get an interview with you and he said, oh yeah, she did Armageddon, didn’t she? And this was like a week and a half ago, and I looked at it, and there was something like four different producers on this. How do you sort of break down your role from the other producers?

GALE ANN HURD: I developed the story, I developed the screenplay, got the green light, and at least up until that point I’d always worked with Jerry.

CHRIS NEUMER: So that was kind of at his request that Jerry come on. Jerry’s name being monstrous now, his shadow has cast far.

GALE ANN HURD: He has a contract that required that he get first position credit. And it was a Disney movie, one of his dealers.

CHRIS NEUMER: Ok, but so were you both doing day-to-day on the set, hands on?

GALE ANN HURD: We both, you know, Jerry really loves music, which is critical to the film. You know, they had the hit single.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh yes, Aerosmith. I don’t hate the song; it just got played out very quickly.

GALE ANN HURD: But I set up the entire film; the crew; we worked together on many things, Ben Affleck, finding Ben Affleck. At that point Good Will Hunting hadn’t come out yet, and he was still —

CHRIS NEUMER: There was an article that came out, I remember reading that you guys got the name Armageddon from Warner Brothers, did you have to trade a couple of —

GALE ANN HURD: No, what happened is, we went in, and it was untitled. Jonathan, Michael Bay and I went in to Joe Lock, who was running Disney at the time, and said, do you like this pitch? He brought it in the room, and said you have to call it Armageddon. So it was actually Joe’s idea.

CHRIS NEUMER: Ok.

GALE ANN HURD: To call it Armageddon, and then Disney would’ve had to do the negotiating with Jerry.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, nice for you. Now is there, and I realize that with any job where you have people you have to work with and you just try to get along as best as possible, is there any sort of producer code of ethics on things like that? I’m sure you’re used to doing, like with Armageddon, you brought it along, you’ve got the material, you’ve got the script as it is, you’re working on finding people -- and then you’re paired up with Jerry Bruckheimer. Is there ever, I mean, how do you deal with that? Is it just like, we try to work well together, or is it something where…?

GALE ANN HURD: Once again, each time it’s different. So I don’t think there is any routine situation. Once shooting started, I was on the set, and then as shooting developed, Michael Bay ended up -- he gets a producing credit too, and there’s a reason it’s a producing credit.

CHRIS NEUMER: Which is?

GALE ANN HURD: Because he’s the one who likes to get to also be really involved in the kinds of decisions producers don’t usually make.

GALE ANN HURD: Well, once again, I’m normally — there are a lot of directors now that come with producers, it’s very common. When I was starting out that wasn’t the case. So, things have changed, I don’t know what Michael is going to do with his next movie, but up until now, they’ve all been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

CHRIS NEUMER: Right.

GALE ANN HURD: There’s going to be a closer bond between people who’ve done three or four movies together, than someone who’s coming in, who’s developed the project, or —

CHRIS NEUMER: Signed on midway through.

GALE ANN HURD: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like it goes back again to that trust that you talk about, that maybe it’s inherent in a relationship with someone you know, when you’ve worked together three or four times, and you go back. It all comes down to the relationships.

GALE ANN HURD: You can’t quantify anything, really.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’m sorry, what was that?

GALE ANN HURD: You can’t quantify anything.

CHRIS NEUMER: No, it’s interesting that when you get to the heart of it all it gets right down to the stuff that you can’t put your finger on, you can’t necessarily describe nicely in words. It makes my job incredibly hard.

GALE ANN HURD: Pictures.

CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you this, then. Are there any projects that you do, that you look at — do you watch the things you’ve done? Do you ever go back and say, you know, I have a hankering for Dead Man on Campus or anything like that?

GALE ANN HURD: You know, if the movie is on TV, I will generally try to start watching it, and then I can’t, because by the time it’s on TV, I’ve seen it so many times.

CHRIS NEUMER: Are there any projects though, regardless of whether you’re watching them or rediscovering them, you look back and you think to yourself, I’m pretty satisfied with the way it turned out, or I’m pretty satisfied with one little scene in there, maybe something?

GALE ANN HURD: Oh yeah, there’s something I like in everything I’ve done. But, there’s also stuff that I’ll look at and all I’ll see is the compromise. When I was saying that filmmaking is the art of compromise, when you sit there and all you see is the compromises that were too great that you shouldn’t have made.

Chris Neumer