MEET
NOVIENAICERS
RtCHARD DONNER Director & Producer
The Goonies are seven extraordinary kids who come together for one day to share an incredible adven· ture. Bringing this ~ory to life on the silver screen combines the talen~ of literally hundreds of dedicated individuals, from actors to camera operators to special· effects wizards to film editors. Yet two men - Direc· tor Richard Donner and Executive Producer Steven Spielberg-<feserve the major credit for bringing The GJiJnies all together. Separately, Donner and Spiclberg have reached dizzying heigh~ in I Native New Yorker Donner, 52, began his career as an Off· Broadwayactor·tumed· ,. director.. He ~ablished himself right away in live ]V productions in New York. He moved to Los Angeles in 1958. He assembled an impressive list of credits, including pilot episodes of Illmted: Dead or Alive, Kojak, and Bronk, and the highly acclaimed ]V movie Panrait of a Teenage AlrohoIk. In 1976, Donner launched his filITKIirecting career with the occult thriller The Omen. This was followed by Superman - The Mooie, the lVarner Brothers box-office blockbuster that proved a man could fly. Superman also proved beyond a doubt that Dick Donner is an exceptional director. Since then he has reiterated the fact with his films Inside Moues, The final Conflld, The Toy, and ju~ prior to the release of The Goonies, Lad)'hawke, a medieval romantic adventure executive produced by The Goonies Producer Harvey Bernhard. Oddly enough, it was another of Donner's direc· torial m~erpieces that drew the attention, long ago, of Steven Spielberg. "I've been a Donner fan ever since he directed my favorite Twilight Zone episode, , ightmare at 2O,!XX) Feet,''' says Spielberg. "lVe first met in a sushi bar in 1973, and I haven't stopped laughing since. His voice is like the public·address sy~em at Candl~ick Park. His big-kid sense of fun and prank is infectious to be around. I thought the pai ring up of Donner and the Goonies was ideal casting. Dick can so easily combine big-screen values with tender human emotions, which for me was the main reason whySuperman worked as wei as it did."
As easily as Spielberg chose Donner to bring his original ~ory idea to cinematic life, Donner chose to work on The Goonies. However, he quickly realized that you can't always judge a script by its words. "At first, f thought it was going to be a snap," Don· ner recalls, alter reading the Chris Columbus screen· play. "It was a fun adventure picture, and f always wanted to do something like it. Just go out and shoot a bunch of kids in natural locations, I thought, and I'll be done in to weeks. But then, as we got into it, and I ~arted surrounding myself with people like IProduction Designerl Mike Riva, it took on a much larger scope. IVhat I thought was going to be a little shoe-in turned into probably the most difficult pic· lure I've ever done." More difficult than making Superman fly? 'This is more difficult because you have seven kids in a1m~ every scene. Sometimes their attention span is about to seconds. Although I love them dearly - I've become incredibly attached to these kids - it's mind blowing." Added to that, says Donner, were the mon~rous sets, some ju~ in themselves a challenge to shoot, and the huge number of intricate physical eff~, from falling boulders to a giant octopus. There were ways to prepare for the other challenges, but ';th ~ds it's different, the director says. "Either you like kids and get along with them lor you don'tl· And I love kids, f have fun with them." Even so, Donner had to take on many roles as the film's ringm~er. "I became somewhat of a disciplinary figure, a confidante, a father at times, brother, buddy .. .. ft's brought me into a new at· titude, a relationship \~th children that I never had before: that they're amazingly deep and convoluted." The mixtu re of Donner's attitude and skills, plus the seven young actors' natural abilities, blended pertectly. ''I'm in awe," says Donner. "I'm the kind of person who takes a script as an idea, but I don't ~ay married to it. I ask the actors to improvise and expand. And I am awed with these kids and what came out of thcir minds. They came up ';th the most wondertully imaginative, romanti~ exciting, funny things I've ever seen. Their acting method is in their madness." Another unique feature of Donner's work on The Goonies was, again, something he hadn't anticipated but that turned into a remarkably positive experience. "When we got into this thing," he says, "and real· ized how difficult it was going to be, I had to have a second unit." In moviemaking terms that means Donner would direct the main action scenes while a second director and crew coordinate background