  |
An Interview with
|
|
MS: I was at your presentation last night. I can’t believe how crowded it was. It was the most people I’ve ever seen there, and certainly during the question-and-answer session afterward there were more hands raised than I can ever recall seeing at such an event. Bill: That’s what they told me. I kept watching Tom [Dean Thomas Bohn] out of the corner of my eye, knowing that he wanted to stop it, knowing and feeling that it was time for it to stop. MS: And they wouldn’t stop. Bill: There was just 10, 12 hands every time, and we couldn’t stop. MS: You should be very pleased. I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here at Ithaca. Bill: I have enjoyed it very much. It’s been pretty intense, to come back. I hadn’t been back here for 30 years. MS: So you’d never even seen this building [Roy H. Park Hall]. Bill: No. Coming back to visit my past has been quite emotional and quite daunting. I’ve done similar things before with students --- because I like doing it --- but at other colleges and high schools. And I think I’m pretty good at it, just being on my feet and talking. MS: Yes, I can tell. Bill: But usually, you just go in and talk to a bunch of kids. This was far more intimidating for me because of all of the emotion it brought up, in terms of when I was here and knowing what that felt like to be right on this same soil, and looking at the faces that reminded me of all of that I felt when I was here. So it had way more meaning for me to do it here than anywhere else. It was good; it was great. MS: Why haven’t you been back before now? Bill: I’ve never attended a reunion. It’s far too emotional of a challenge for me. MS: Do you still have friends from your IC days? Bill: There are some people I’ve stayed in touch with. In fact, one of my friends drove here. He lives near Albany. He knew I was here, and I hadn’t seen him in 14 years, but he drove here to be here last night. MS: Did you know in advance that he was coming? Bill: Yes, but part of the emotion I felt last night was from him being here. So you know, we stay in touch, some of us, and occasionally I’ll get an email from somebody I haven’t heard from because they found me. MS: You’re probably a little easier to find than most.
Bill: Well, yes. That’s what happens a lot, because they see my name on TV and they just call and say, ‘Is that you?’ But, what I meant was that I would probably never come to a reunion just for its own sake, but coming here for this reason is very specific and rewarding. The school found me the same way as anyone else did. In fact, one of the conversations I had with Tom when we first connected was that I thought that the alumni association was weak because I’ve been out there for a decade doing this, and they found me only about four years ago. And they found me only because my son was applying to Ithaca College. MS: Did he come here? Bill: No, he went to New York University and wound up working instead. But a little over four years ago I attended an orientation in Los Angeles because of him, and I picked up the brochure of the school of communications. While I was looking through it I saw my picture in it --- there was a picture of me with Rod Serling! It was a total coincidence, total coincidence. And so the people there then discovered that I went to school there and that now I am a director and an executive producer, and that got back to the school. MS: Well, maybe you should be grateful that they haven’t been hounding you for money all these years! Bill: No. One of the first things I said to Tom was that I’m really kind of surprised [they didn’t find me before], because I get the publications and other stuff. And I see stories about other guys, and I know what my job is, and I know my job is pretty cool. And I was just surprised that nobody contacted me. MS: Well, it’s a good thing your son was looking at the College, then. Bill: It worked out fine. But that was kind of an interesting story, I guess. MS: One of my student interns is a student in this [Park] school, and she’s been attending some of the master classes you’ve been giving. She says that you really stress, as you did last night, the fact that you consider yourself a storyteller first, and a director and writer and producer sort of secondarily. But storyteller is the prime . . . Bill: Well, yes, I consider myself a storyteller, that’s who I am. MS: But not all of the things you direct are from stories that you have written? Bill: No, mostly I haven’t written the things I’ve directed. MS: Can you elaborate on that a little bit, on how you select the stories that you decide to bring to life? Bill: Well, a good story can be told many ways and again and again, and it doesn’t have to originate with the person telling the story. If I had a story to tell you and we were sitting at breakfast over a cup of coffee, there’s a way I’m going to tell that story, just from the setting. And if I had a story to tell you and we were sitting around a campfire in the dark and warming ourselves around the fire, I’m going to take that same story and tell it to you a different way. And to take it even further, if it was just you I was telling the story to, as opposed to you and one or two other people, I would again tell the story differently. I will adapt that story --- I may have told the story a hundred times, and because of the setting and because of the audience, I’m going to tell it in a different way. And that’s my enjoyment in telling the story --- knowing how to make it work for this setting and this audience. And that’s what I get to do. I get a story, and there it is, there’s the script --- and I’m going to get to tell it to everybody. MS: What in the scripts that you’ve chosen has made you choose them, as opposed to other ones? Is there a thread in these stories? Bill: Well, it changes [during one’s career]. In the beginning it’s just, you know, do the work and go. But what I found is that the stories that I’m attracted to are character-driven and dependent on tone as part of telling the story. I’ve done things that are not that, just because I thought it would be fun to direct, say, 90210, or fun to direct something else just because it’s a hit. But the things I’m especially drawn to are a little off-beat. I’m drawn to things that are tonally complicated. MS: Starting with Northern Exposure? Bill: That was one of the first things I cut my teeth on. There was a reason why I was so good at that, which is because I get that kind of thing. I just get it. So I like [the off-beat] more than . . . MS: . . . more standard things? Bill: Sure. Picket Fences and even Chicago Hope --- and certainly Ally McBeal --- were all like that. Chicago Hope sounds and feels more mainstream straight away, but it was really off-beat and quirky --- not to the extent that Picket Fences and Northern Exposure were, and certainly not to the extent that Ally was, but it still was. MS: What’s it like coming into a show for the first time --- say, a show that’s been established for a while --- and just have a week or 15 days to direct and produce and put together that show? Obviously, it will be a bit different on every show, I imagine. Is it scary?
MS: At first it must have been pretty daunting. Bill: Well it’s like their sandbox, and your job is to come into the sandbox and not change any of the toys but arrange the toys in such a way that they'll look at them and say, ‘Hey, you know what? My sandbox looks pretty good. I’m glad you arranged those toys like that.’ That’s kind of what you do. MS: That’s a nice way of putting it. When you studied here, you majored in TV-radio. Did you have any formal directing training? Bill: Not that I recall. There were directing classes and I probably took them, but I didn’t want to be a director. It wasn’t that I came here wanting to be anything. I came here wanting to get an education about television-radio. I came here wanting to figure things out. I always had a desire to be involved in creative things. In high school I was involved in lots of theatrical productions. So I came here with a love of theater thinking, ‘gee it would be great to kind of learn what television and radio and film is all about and see what those kind of jobs are,’ but in terms of wanting to be something, I didn’t know. MS: You didn’t have any specific image of yourself 10 years from then? Bill: No. I just wanted to be involved in something creative, where I could have ideas and apply them. MS: I really liked the way you described that last night, the way you said to the students that they didn’t need to be something, that they just needed to find out who they were. That’s an important message that I don’t think they get often. Bill: I don’t think they get what I meant, though. The questions they asked afterward were, for the most part, challenging and intelligent and interesting. And then afterwards, a lot of kids hung back and had a few more personal and specific questions. So many of them made me think, Were you listening? So many of them asked, ‘I want to be this, so how do I get to do it?’ Didn’t they hear what I just said? The way to do it is go inside and figure it out; then apply that. MS: I’m sure your message got through to a lot of students. Bill: Yes, a lot of them did get it. I was just surprised that there were kids that asked me questions like they hadn’t even been in the room when I was speaking. MS: Well that’s single-mindedness. Bill: I don’t think that at 20 years old you can say I’m going to be this when you don’t even know what this is. MS: Absolutely. And you could be 35 different things in your life, too. You’re one of the unusual people --- you’ve done more than one thing [in your work life], but at the moment it sounds like you are very happy doing what you are doing. Bill: Yes, well, I’ve always worked in the field, but it’s only the last 10 years that I’m doing this [directing, executive producing]. It’s only the last 10 years that I’ve been able to be this. And I’d be lying if I said that this is all I wanted, this is everywhere I am going. MS: Right. Bill: Every choice I made because that was where I wanted to be. I just wanted to do something, not have to be anything, to naturally be myself, and be able to express myself through the work, as opposed to, as I was saying last night, wanting to be a director or wanting to be an accountant. MS: It sounds like you like yourself though, and a lot of students may be at the stage where they don’t know who they are, what there is to like in themselves. I’m sure you weren’t always as confident as you are now. Bill: But I was sure of what I liked and didn’t like, and I’ve always wanted to be busy. I don’t like not having a lot of things going on. When I was here, I took on a lot of extracurricular things, in the TV station and the radio station. It was important to me to be involved in as many things as I could. And that was just part of the exploration for me to try to express as much as I could and find out about as much as I could about myself. MS: That’s also intellectual curiosity. Bill: Yeah. |
||
Bill
D’Elia ’69 spent four days on campus this fall as the Skip Landen
Professional in Residence. He met with students in master classes
and at breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and other sessions. His public
presentation, which he called "How to Succeed in Show Business by
Really, Really Trying," drew what was probably a record crowd to
Park Hall Auditorium, and the Q&A session was lively and nonstop.
The next day he spoke with ICQ editor Maura Stephens. Excerpts from
their conversation:
Bill:
It’s odd. Not so scary anymore, because I have a little reputation
and people know what I have done in the past. But having said that,
it’s just an odd thing to do. You go into a new show and the freight
trains are running; you’re jumping on them at the station when the
train has barely slowed down. And you’ve got to kind of get in and
be prepared and quick and facile enough to be able to bring your
ideas. You can’t come in and ponder anything. You have to be prepared
to work with a bunch of strangers, make them your best friends in
a very short period of time, and bring your vision to the project
while you’re working in their playground. 
