Directors Tell the Story

Chapter 16

Being a Director

Bethany tells this story about the first Hollywood director with whom she worked: “His name was Jackie Cooper. He had been a child star in the 1930s and 1940s, and by the time I met him, in 1978, he was a grizzled cowboy, wearing boots, rodeo-type silver belt buckle through the loops of his jeans, smoking a Cuban stogie. He was loud and brash and totally sure of himself. He was the director of the first show I worked on, called The White Shadow, which was about a white basketball coach teaching at an inner-city high school. Jackie was a fantastic director, especially for the young men who were the actors on the show; he gave them a lot of tough love, using cuss words and confrontation to get what he needed from them. ...