It was far from an auspicious debut. The first official press and industry screening of acclaimed British director Michael Apted's latest documentary, Inspirations, at the Toronto International Film Festival was plagued with projection problems. The framing was off, there was sound and then there was none. Some audience members joked that perhaps the hapless projectionist had been ingesting illicit substances when he should have been paying attention to the screen. And although Apted himself was not on hand to witness the unfortunate event, he heard all about it by the time our interview rolls around the following morning.

"You never really get a second chance," he sighs, clearly irked by the situation, "especially if it's a visual film."

Although I saw many films before this, I recall the power that The Greatest Show on Earth held over me as a child. The sense of showmanship and the scope drawn into that one-dimensional screen captured my imagination. I recall that, at the time, it suggested the power of which the cinema was capable.

This (above), was one of those stunts where everything went wrong! It was a picture called "Honky Talk Freeway" directed by John Schlesinger. And the stunt team read like a "Who's Who" of Hollywood Stunt people!

The first time, I flew out of the car, it slid over the hill with me. I rolled down the hill while the car was right next to me. As the tire was sliding within inches of my face, I wondered if it could flip while sliding so fast and I would end up underneath it.

You recently worked on the score to "The Matrix Reloaded", and used similar material from "The Matrix". Tell me a bit about the elements you used to create this score.

Well, the Wachowski Brothers None of us were interested in abandoning what had been established in the first picture; we wanted to expand on it, just like the Wachowskis expanded on their palette. So I was definitely looking to see how I could take those motifs and post-modern concepts and pursue something bigger and more ambitious.

Coming from two successful rock groups (Faith No More and Imperial Teen), how did you make the jump into film music?

I grew up in Los Angeles, and was always into film music as a kid. I moved to San Francisco to attend the film program at San Francisco State to learn film production. San Francisco in the 1980s was a thriving art community - so it made sense to work in a lot of different fields - so I joined a band. The band took me on the road - away from the camera, and the area where I could make films. It ended up being a fulltime job for many years. So I just stopped doing film for a long time while I was touring, since Faith No More turned into a round-the-clock, throughout-the-year, fulltime job. Now, after about 15-years, it makes sense. Since I want to stay home and not do as much touring, I can get back into film.

Why did you chose Ed Wood as a character? Tim...

quote-leftThe first film by him that I saw was "Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1958). It had images I never forgot. Later he was elected ‘worst director of all time’. How can someone be elected as the worst? There are so many bad filmmakers. I started reading about his life and about the bizarre characters that surrounded him, like Bela Lugosi. Wood was always positive, even in the worst circumstances. When you read his letters, you realize he thought he was making great films, he thought he was making ‘Citizen Kane’. In a letter from his final days, Wood wrote that he led a great life and made great pictures and in fact, he was abandoned and dying of alcoholism. That’s what fascinates me about that character. He was very weird. I think it would be easy to copy an image by Alfred Hitchcock, not with his mastery, but it is possible to imitate it. But copying an image by Ed Wood is so hard. His images were very weird. You don’t know how he did them. Wood was something more special than just bad [laughs].

You told me at the time "Rumble in the Bronx" opened that you didn't think that you were going to be able to find an American audience.

quote-leftYeah.

So, what happened?

quote-leftBecause, fifteen years ago [with 1980's "The Big Brawl"], I tried to get into the American market, doing the same thing, the same humor--I picked an American director, of course [Robert Clouse]--same fighting. They seemed to not accept it. So why suddenly can "Rumble" be released in America? I still doubted it, and I really scared box office not doing so good. Suddenly, big huge hit and I don't know. I still don't have the confidence how long this audience will continue to like this kind of movie, but seems I do have a big following. But how many people in America? There's almost two billion people, right?

How did your journey to the bottom of the Atlantic to film the Titanic's wreckage change your conception of the story you were making?

quote-leftIt was sort of like going to Mecca first, and getting religion. We went there with very specific objectives, and I took two things away from the experience. One, get it right. Do it "exactly right". We've got the "real ship" on film--everything else has to live up to that level of reality from this point on. That imbued everybody in the art department with the same kind of crusade of correctness. And that applied also to what boats were launched at what time, what officer was where. The whole physical staging of it was also influenced. But there was another level of reaction coming away from the real wreck, which was that it wasn't just a story, it wasn't just a drama. It was an event that happened to real people who really died. Working around the wreck for so much time, you get such a strong sense of the profound sadness and injustice of it, and the message of it. You think, "There probably aren't going to be many filmmakers who go to Titanic. There may never be another one--maybe a documentarian." So it sort of becomes a great mantle of responsibility to convey the emotional message of it--to do that part of it right, too.

Bernardo Bertolucci, you have made many remarkable films. Your last film, "The Last Emperor" had a great public triumph in Hollywood. Were you happy about all those Oscars?

quote-left You know for a European director the Oscar is a kind of very remote ceremony. It is something that it doesn't belong to us. Of course, the moment you get nine of it, the things change; so I felt suddenly sucked into a world, a universe, which is not my universe, which is a kind of legendary Hollywood universe. What it was interesting and reassuring is that the Hollywood community in general is very, very, let's say, chauvinistic. I don't think there is a record of a foreign movie- because The Last Emperor is an independent, European movie- that has this kind of success. So it was curious why; and people executive of the major companies came to congratulate me, and they told me in general more or less the same thing. The Last Emperor gave them the feeling of cinema as... They said this movie will make us think of the reason why we decided to be in movie business.

The "Fifth Element" is fantastic. Where did you get the idea for this?

I started to write it at sixteen years old. I was living outside of Paris, sixty kilometers from Paris. No TV. No V.C.R. Very much in the country, and not so many friends. It was pretty boring for an adolescent. So I started to invent this world where I can be a wild cab driver [Willis's character, Korben Dallas]. It was just a way to escape at first.