Hud: A Conversation with Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.

The distinguished screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., first met as young writers at M-G-M and were married in 1946. Irving Ravetch, born in Newark, New Jersey, was an aspiring playwright, who'd attended U.C.L.A. before coming to M-G-M. Harriet Frank, Jr., was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and eventually attended U.C.L.A. while her mother was working as a Hollywood story editor. After their marriage, the Ravetches worked independently for over ten years before beginning their first collaboration on Martin Ritt's The Long Hot Summer (1958) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. This experience initiated a remarkable series of collaborations with Martin Ritt that extended over eight films and included Hud (1963), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal, for which the Ravetches were nominated for an Academy Award; Hombre (1967), also with Paul Newman; Norma Rae, featuring Sally Field, for which the Ravetches received their second Oscar nomination; and Stanley and Iris (1990), starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda. They also wrote various scripts for other directors, including an adaptation of William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), directed by Delbert Mann and starring Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire, and an adaptation of William Faulkner's The Reivers (1969), directed by Mark Rydell and featuring Steve McQueen.

BAER: After graduating from U.C.L.A. at different times, you both ended up at M-G-M. How did you actually meet?

RAVETCH: Harriet was in the Junior Writer's Program, and I was writing shorts for the studio, things like "Crime Doesn't Pay." Then one day I saw this beautiful, radiant, young woman walking down the hallway toward her office. So I went to the guy in the office next to hers, and I said, "I'll give you fifty dollars if you'll trade offices." So we made the deal—he was one of the studio lawyers, not one of the writers—and I immediately went to "work" on L. B. Mayer's time!

BAER: And it worked.

FRANK: It definitely did! Any man who comes into your office every morning and reads you The New York Times is the man you have to marry.

RAVETCH: It not only worked, it's worked for over fifty-five years!

BAER: You were married in 1946, but you worked independently in Hollywood for over ten years until you finally collaborated on a script in 1957 when producer Jerry Wald approved your proposal to adapt William Faulkner's novel The Hamlet. Is that correct?

FRANK: That's right. Jerry Wald was very serious about doing "serious" films, especially literary adaptations. So we began writing the script using both The Hamlet and Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" as starting points, but, in the end, we created mostly new material, so it wasn't really a true adaptation.

BAER: Why did you suggest to Jerry Wald that Martin Ritt be chosen to direct the film, which was eventually titled The Long Hot Summer and starred Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward?

RAVETCH: I'd met Marty in the New York office of Audrey Wood, who was a well-known agent back then. I'd gone to New York for the production of one of my plays, which, unfortunately, had turned out disastrously. Marty had been a member of the Group Theater, and he was one of the founding members of the Actor's Studio. Recently, he'd directed his first film, Edge of the City, with John Cassavetes and Sidney Poitier. So when I got back to L.A., Jerry asked me to suggest a director for Long Hot Summer. He definitely wanted somebody young and creative and promising, and he finally said, "You pick the director, Irving." So I remembered Marty, and that's how it happened.

BAER: After the success of The Long Hot Summer (1958), you wrote your second film for Martin Ritt, an adaptation of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1959). Then you wrote screenplays for Vincente Minnelli (Home from the Hill, 1960) and Delbert Mann (The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, 1960). How did you come upon the source material for your next film, Larry McMurtry's first novel, Horseman, Pass By?

RAVETCH: I found the book in a bookstore, took it home, and read it. Then I asked Harriet to read it.

FRANK: It's a beautifully written book. McMurtry was very young at the time, and it was clear that he was a very gifted writer.

RAVETCH: And since we'd enjoyed working with Marty and Paul so much, we wanted to do it again, and we thought the book could be adapted in such a way as to create a leading role for Paul. So we acquired the rights to the book.

BAER: Before we get to the specifics about writing Hud, I'd like to ask you about your approach to literary adaptation and literary collaboration. First, let's talk about adaptation. In the past, you've referred to your scripts based on other literary sources as being more like "hybrids" than adaptations.

RAVETCH: Yes, very much so. The Long Hot Summer, for example, was probably 95 percent ours and only 5 percent Faulkner. The Hamlet's a marvelous book—brilliant and hysterical—and Faulkner's "Barn Burning" is one of the great American short stories, but in actually writing the film, we basically took one of the characters from the novel, altered him drastically, and then created a new story around him. On the other hand, The Reivers, which we did many years later, is almost entirely from the book. It's 100 percent Faulkner because we found it readily adaptable to film. So our approach to adaptations, whether it be Faulkner or someone else, really runs the gamut because it's always crucial to focus on what's best for the film.

BAER: Faulkner, who was a screenwriter himself, seemed to understand that approach since he called The Long Hot Summer a "charmin' little movie."

RAVETCH: Well, I'm glad to hear that. Faulkner is absolutely our favorite novelist of all American novelists, and we always worried that he might have hated what we did in The Long Hot Summer.

FRANK: Faulkner's definitely America's glorious writer, but you're right. He knew all about screen adaptation. He'd worked with Howard Hawks, and he worked on the screen adaptation of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, so he knew from personal experience that film and fiction are two very different mediums.

BAER: So how do you collaborate? How do you actually go about creating a script together?

FRANK: First we talk out an outline, and since we want to stay married, we talk it out very amiably. At that point, we're not laying out an absolute chapter-and-verse for every single moment in the screenplay; we're instead creating large blocks of organization, so we can visualize the line of the story, and get ready to go. We usually start with a one-page outline listing about thirty-five to forty-five major scenes.

BAER: Irving once said that "The script is not so much written as it's talked onto the page."

FRANK: That's right. That's how we do it. Once we're ready to begin, we start "talking" the screenplay to each other. Outloud. It's a line-for-line conversation. In truth, we get so involved that we can't even tell who starts a line or who finishes it. It's a very animated, running conversation where we act out the lines—Irving's a very good actor and I'm not!—along with a running commentary like, "That's good," or "That's lousy," or "Why not try this?"

RAVETCH: And there's no ego involved. None. Over the years, we've heard about a number of other collaborators who do a lot of screaming at each other, but we never raise our voices.

FRANK: We want to stay married!

RAVETCH: Yes, but as conscientious writers, we can't let our egos get in the way, otherwise it will start to interfere with the work and ruin it.

FRANK: And from many years of experience, I can tell you that Irving is never a man of ego. He's never aggressively critical, although, if he hates something, he's very honest and plainspoken. So we have none of that push-me-pull-me business. We work things out amicably, and we don't waste time arguing.

RAVETCH: Who was that married couple at Metro who collaborated on so many scripts? They did The Thin Man and It's a Wonderful Life.

FRANK: Hackett and Goodrich.

RAVETCH: Yes, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Apparently they also had a seamless and unegotistical collaboration.

BAER: So who types the script?

RAVETCH: I do. I sit at the typewriter, and Hank paces around. We always work in the mornings, nine to one, five days a week. Usually, we'd get about three pages done each day, and those pages are finished pages. We'd polish them as we go, over and over again, doing our revising as we proceed. So when we're finished, we're really finished. We very seldom do any revising.

BAER: How long does a script usually take?

FRANK: About ten weeks.

BAER: Now the McMurtry project, which was eventually titled Hud, was the first film in a three-picture deal for the newly formed Salem Pictures, which was established by Martin Ritt and Paul Newman in agreement with Paramount and Columbia. Were you partners in Salem Pictures?

RAVETCH: No, we weren't.

BAER: But Irving was listed as a producer on the film?

RAVETCH: Well, you know that Hollywood is always pretty loose with the term "producer." All I did was find the source material.

BAER: But I think you're being too modest. The whole idea for the picture came from the both of you. Weren't you involved in the casting?

RAVETCH: Yes, Marty always kept us with him, from the beginning to the end.

FRANK: Yes, he truly embraced us as collaborators. It was a very unusual relationship. Just glorious!

BAER: Let's talk about that relationship.

RAVETCH: We made eight films with Marty Ritt, and on every single one of those pictures, we were with Marty from the preproduction and casting to the final advertising campaign. We were also on the set every single day, and he invited us to the rushes every single morning. It was a true collaboration, and we always had a marvelous time. Marty Ritt was an extraordinary man in many ways, and unlike most directors he never insisted on a vanity credit.

FRANK: That's right, Marty's films never opened with the credit, "Film by Martin Ritt." Never. He was a class act, and he was never concerned with ego.

RAVETCH: And he was always willing to try something new, something "difficult."

BAER: Well, Hud was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a "pure bastard"—and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.

RAVETCH: Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed—which, of course, fully blossomed in the 'eighties and the 'nineties. So we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that's important. But he doesn't care. He's still unrepentant.

FRANK: In our society, there's always been a fascination with the "charming" villain, and we wanted to say that if something's corrupt, it's still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem—even if it's Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn't work out like we planned.

BAER: It actually backfired.

RAVETCH: Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here's a man—Hud—who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell his neighbors poisoned cattle, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father's property. And all the time, he's completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, "Which character did you most admire?" and many of them answered, "Hud." We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.

BAER: Paul Newman actually took much of the blame on himself, feeling that he'd portrayed Hud as far too vital and appealing and charming. But Martin Ritt disagreed, saying that the film clearly revealed Hud for exactly what he was, and denying that any of the film's creators could have possibly anticipated the rising cynicism of the baby-boom generation. How do you feel about that?

RAVETCH: I think they were both right, and both innocent. We could have never anticipated the reaction of those audiences, especially the young people, and if we had known beforehand, we would have definitely done things differently.

BAER: That was a time when young people were looking for rebels to emulate.

FRANK: That's right.

RAVETCH: That's true, but Hud's more than just a bit rebellious. He's truly villainous. But, of course, that's the way things have gone in our society. In many movies today, there's a stream of endless violence and murder and high-tech fireballs, and the young audiences are eagerly clapping, and laughing, and banging their feet. They love it. So what have we created? What kind of society is that? Back in the early sixties, we knew something was in the air, but we never could have anticipated what's come to pass.

BAER: In McMurtry's novel, Hud's a minor and infrequently seen character, so one of the key changes in the script is the expansion of Hud's role. Was that alteration made to accommodate Paul Newman?

RAVETCH: Yes, we were specifically trying to create material that would interest both Paul and Marty. So we enlarged the character of Hud and wrote the part with Paul in mind.

BAER: Many critics have drawn comparisons between Hud and Shane since, in both films, a young boy is attracted to a charismatic man. Shane, of course, despite his past, is an admirable western hero, but Hud is not, and young Lon must decide whether he will be lured into the immoral but seemingly exciting lifestyle of Hud, or whether he'll eventually side with his grandfather, Homer Bannon, a man of high integrity and old-fashioned values. Was it a complete coincidence that the role of Lon was played by Brandon de Wilde, who'd also played the part of Joey Starrett, the young boy in Shane?

RAVETCH: I never thought about that before.

FRANK: I don't think it ever crossed our minds.

RAVETCH: I can certainly see that there's lots of parallels in the two stories, but the casting of Brandon in Hud was just a coincidence. He was the only young actor we could find who we felt was right for the part.

FRANK: Brandon was a very gifted young actor and an elegant young man, but he died soon afterwards. He was killed in a car accident on a slick, rainy road. It was dreadful.

BAER: As you were tightening up McMurtry's novel, you made a number of other significant changes. For example, Hud is now the son of Homer Bannon, not just his son-in-law; Homer is still a widower, eliminating the role of Lon's grandmother; and the role of Jesse, the former rodeo rider, is greatly diminished. An even more important change is the metamorphosis of Halmea, the black housekeeper, into Alma, the laconic, worldly-wise, and very sensual white housekeeper played so perfectly by Patricia Neal. Why did you make that change?

FRANK: We would have loved to keep her black for the movie. She has moral strength, she's benevolent, she's tough-minded, and she's secure in herself. So we would have loved to say to the world, "Look, here's a hell of a woman, and she's black," but in those days you simply couldn't do it, and not because the talent wasn't there—there were at least a half-dozen powerhouse black actresses who could have played that role. But the times weren't ready for it yet, and it was, of course, further complicated by the attempted rape.

RAVETCH: We also wanted to enrich the character by making her more of an antagonist for Hud—a protagonist, really—than she was in the novel. And we wanted to do that by creating a kind of romantic possibility between them, a dark romantic possibility. And neither American film nor American society was quite ready for that back then.

FRANK: But fortunately for us, we had this extraordinary actress, Patricia Neal, waiting in the wings. Until then, everyone thought of Patricia as specializing in those mean-spirited, raffish, high-society ladies she'd played in most of her pictures—with fox furs and bourbon—like her role in Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn. But I told Irving and Marty, "Believe me, she'll be absolute hell-on-wheels in this movie." And they said, "But she's too elegant," and I said, "Trust me." And they did, and Patricia came in, kicked off her shoes, rolled up her sleeves, took off her make-up, and instantly transformed into Alma—generous, intense, womanly, earthy, and intelligent.

BAER: She was perfect.

FRANK: Yes, she was, but when she first read the script, she said, "Well, it's not a very big part." Then later, when she won the Academy Award, she sent us a wire saying, "It's big enough!"

BAER: Alma's an excellent counterpart to Hud, who, as his father clearly states, is an "unprincipled man." But in the novel, Hud's even worse, and I'd like to ask you about two important changes that you made in the script. The first is the fact that in the novel, Hud actually rapes Halmea, whereas in the script his assault on Alma is thwarted by Lon's intervention.

RAVETCH: Well, the change highlights Lon's significance in the film, and it also helps to keep Hud human. We didn't want to create a character who was totally and simplistically evil, so Lon's intervention prevents the drunken Hud from going too far.

FRANK: Also, in the film, Alma's definitely attracted to Hud. There's a real chemistry between them—there's clearly something in the air—and the two of them are playing a very sophisticated, sexual "card game." But when Hud gets drunk, he ruins everything, and his attempted rape both insults and violates Alma, and she decides to leave. But up to that point, things might have worked out if Hud hadn't been so crude and vile. At the bus station, Alma clearly admits it, saying, "You want to know something funny? It would have happened eventually without the roughhouse," and Hud's final comment to the departing Alma is: "I'll remember you, honey. You're the one that got away." So thwarting the rape in the film allowed for much more subtlety in their relationship.

BAER: Similarly, at the end of the novel, Hud actually shoots his wounded father-in-law, claiming it to be a mercy killing, and he ends up indicted for "murder without malice"—although he expects to get a suspended sentence. In the script, however, Hud doesn't kill his father, who dies of his injuries and a broken will.

RAVETCH: That's another attempt to humanize Hud, so he wouldn't be one-dimensionally evil. In that scene at the end, with his father dying in his lap, there's a subtle sense of unspoken grief. Hud's a villain, but he's a villain with seeds of something worth preserving.

FRANK: What? Leave the room! We'll have none of that, Mr. Ravetch!

RAVETCH: But he's human; he's not all dark.

FRANK: We can discuss that tomorrow morning in divorce court!

RAVETCH: But in that crucial scene with Lon and his dying father, Hud tries in some way—a very laconic way—to give the young boy some kind of consolation. There's something decent going on.

FRANK: But not nearly enough. There's something in the American psyche that's sadly attracted to the dangerous, the flamboyant, and the immoral. And that's exactly what we were trying to show in that film.

RAVETCH: Well, now you can see how we collaborate!

FRANK: Yes-no, yes-no, back-and-forth.

BAER: Let's try another important topic. One of the most famous scenes in the film is the killing of Homer's herd of cattle to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease. The scene is expertly directed by Martin Ritt and powerfully shot by James Wong Howe. A number of critics have suggested that the scene, in some way, recalls the terrible human genocides of the twentieth century. Was that on your minds when you were writing the scene?

RAVETCH: Yes, we certainly had that in mind when we were writing that scene.

FRANK: Yes, the undertone was clearly intended.

RAVETCH: Definitely.

BAER: Let's talk about the end of the script. Just like in the novel, young Lon leaves the ranch to get away from Hud, and he hitches a ride with a trucker who recalls Lon's grandfather, Homer, and refers to him as the "old gentleman." But this scene was eventually cut from the movie. Do you know why?

RAVETCH: It was too much of a dying fall. Marty always had a gutsy, muscular attack on life in general—and, in his films, he would always opt for the punchiest moments he could get. And it definitely seemed more dramatic to end the film with Hud shutting the door and making his "The hell with you" gesture.

BAER: Was the script ending ever shot?

RAVETCH: No, Marty was satisfied with closing on Paul, and so were we.

BAER: Let's talk some more about that final scene. The film ends with Hud completely alone on the deserted ranch. He goes into the empty house, gets a beer, and comes back to the screen door. Then he looks out, as if wondering if he should go after Lon, but then he shrugs, makes a dismissive hand gesture—as if to say, "the hell with it"—and shuts the door. It's a very powerful ending—reminiscent of the Greek tragedies and so many of Faulkner's novels—illustrating the fall of a once-great household. Did you think about that larger theme as you were writing the script?

RAVETCH: Not specifically, although it's clear that the film is about the fall of Homer Bannon and everything he'd built and stood for. But in writing the very end of the film, we relied more on a gut instinct that that's exactly how Hud would have reacted under those circumstances. He'd be consistent. He'd be Hud. It's an odd movie in a way because Lon is the central character in that he's the one who has to make the crucial choice, but Hud's also the main character since he's always at the center of everything. So Marty decided—we all did, in fact—to end the film with Hud.

BAER: In the script, you added a very effective and funny greased-pig contest which reveals both Hud's aggressiveness and his popularity. Originally, you'd written the scene as a baseball game. Do you remember where the pigs came from?

RAVETCH: Isn't that in the novel?

BAER: No, it's a baseball game in the book, and you originally wrote it that way in the script.

RAVETCH: I don't remember where that scene came from.

FRANK: Me neither, not the faintest idea. But it's a good piece of small-town America.

BAER: And very effective. I wonder if you ever discussed the script with Larry McMurtry?

RAVETCH: No, we never even met Larry McMurtry until he visited the set one day in Texas while we were shooting the movie.

BAER: Did you ever talk about the film after it was finished?

RAVETCH: Not really, but he definitely liked the film. Although he traveled around with it quite a bit, and he eventually got sick of seeing it all the time—something like forty times. But he sent us his second book called Leaving Cheyenne, which wasn't very successful, and we eventually visited him down at Rice University to talk about it. Unfortunately, we had to tell him that we weren't interested in adapting the book, and he was quite disappointed.

FRANK: But we've always been deeply indebted to Larry for Horseman, Pass By. We were very fortunate that Irving stumbled on to it in that bookstore.

BAER: As mentioned earlier, you had a very special relationship with Martin Ritt, who stayed very close to your scripts and dialogue. But he did suggest a number of changes over the course of your eight collaborations, and I wonder if you can remember any about Hud?

FRANK: In general, Marty would ask us to cut a scene, a subtext, or a line. For example, in Hud, we originally wrote a scene between Lonny and his girlfriend who lived on the adjoining ranch. But Marty felt it was unnecessary, and we agreed, so we cut it out. Marty never altered our scripts, but he would suggest small cuts, and they were always carefully thought-out suggestions. It was never arbitrary, and it was never a command. It was never a "You have to do this" kind of thing. It was rather, "Let's sit down and discuss this scene," or "How can we tighten it up?" or "Let's think about taking that one out." As a director, Marty was, remarkably, without ego, which was extremely attractive, and he was one of the great defenders of writers in Hollywood—if not the greatest. He was always your friend and advocate—tough-minded, but always fair—and he truly considered his films a collaboration. He couldn't have been more devoted to his writers. It was a marvellous relationship.

RAVETCH: I don't know of any other director in Hollywood who was more respectful of his writers than Marty was. What other Hollywood director kept his writers with him from the very beginning to the very end? And on the set every single day of shooting? I don't know of any.

BAER: What did you do on the set?

RAVETCH: Very little!

FRANK: Have fun! Marty always rehearsed the film very carefully, like a theater director, for several weeks before shooting began. So by the time we were actually on the set, everything was fully prepared, and there were very few changes. So we had a great time, sitting around and shooting the breeze.

RAVETCH: Sometimes we might cut a line or two, but not much more. Mostly, I think Marty wanted us there for support. It gave him a certain comfort to know that we were always with him on the set.

FRANK: And his sets were always great fun, just like a big family. On Hud, Paul was always professional, but also great fun, and Pat was extremely maternal—which everyone loved—even James Wong Howe, who was usually rather austere, but he loosened up on Hud and had a really good time. It was perfectly pleasant and congenial.

BAER: You shot the whole picture down in Texas?

FRANK: Yes, we did, and we were very lucky to have such a brilliant cinematographer as James Wong Howe to shoot the film. He wasn't afraid to capture the bleak Texas landscape, and he did it with a stark, yet beautiful quality that no one else would have even dared to attempt.

BAER: What was Martin Ritt like on the set?

FRANK: Patient and punctual. Marty loved actors, and even though he was so volatile in his own life, he was remarkably patient with his performers. He truly loved them, and it always amazed me. I remember when he first said that he wanted to be a director, and I said, "You'll never be able to do it. You're too demanding. You'll force the horse to drink the water whether he wants to or not," but I was wrong. Marty was always the soul of patience with his actors.

BAER: And punctual?

FRANK: Yes, he was punctual to the point of insanity about food and actors and everything else. I'm also a bit fastidious that way, so on Hud, the two of us started showing up at the rushes a little bit earlier each morning just to see who was more punctual! At first, we'd both show up at 5:00, then Marty would start arriving at 4:45, so then I'd start coming at 4:30, and so on. Finally, I said, "For God sakes, Marty, just stay in bed! Enough of this! Let's just watch the rushes at six o'clock." So we did, but he was always there and ready-to-go right on time, and he expected everyone else to do the same.

RAVETCH: Yes, and he was always quite the perfectionist. I remember when we were shooting the scene where the cattle are being guided through the chutes to be injected, and the wranglers were having some trouble moving the cattle into the right position. So Marty got right down in the dirt behind one of the cows, and started pushing it forward, when, suddenly, it "let go" all over him. He was filthy, completely covered with manure, and one of the wranglers came over and said, "Don't worry about it, Marty, it's only grass and water," and we all laughed about it. But it shows you the kind of guy he was.

BAER: After the filming was complete, were you in the editing room?

RAVETCH: Always. And I can still remember watching Marty trimming a little bit more each day, day after day, and finally, I knew he was going too far, and I actually screamed. So Marty stopped, turned to me, and asked, "Does it hurt, Irving?" and I said, "Yes, it hurts!" And he said, "Okay, that's it," and he wrapped the movie there.

FRANK: Is that a man or is that a man?

RAVETCH: He was just terrific.

BAER: Now, once the film was cut, did you attend any of the early previews which apparently made the studio quite nervous, and even convinced several of the Paramount executives that the ending should be changed?

RAVETCH: We were present at a number of the early previews, but I wasn't aware that they were talking about changing the ending. Of course, I can easily imagine how some of those executives might have said, "Well, why not have a happy ending?" On the other hand, I clearly remember that, earlier, after the shooting was done, Paramount was actually thinking about dumping the whole picture because they felt it wasn't commercial enough.

FRANK: But Marty Rackin saved it.

RAVETCH: Yes, he did. Marty, who was the overall "godfather" of the project, immediately got on the plane to New York, arrived at five in the morning, and went to the executive offices of Paramount—way up in one of the skyscrapers. Then he sat there for four hours until the big boss arrived for work. Then he collared the guy, and screamed and shouted and pleaded and cried and wept, and finally convinced the man to go ahead with the project. It was very touch-and-go, believe me. They came very close to abandoning Hud, but Marty saved it.

BAER: I read somewhere that Marty Rackin wanted to change the ending.

RAVETCH: Not that I ever knew.

BAER: Of course, the studio had messed with the ending of your previous film, The Long Hot Summer.

RAVETCH: They sure did! You know, we've never watched the end of that film. Never. We can't bear to look at it. We had a terrific ending in the script—where Varner goes out on the balcony and screams down at the departing lovers—but the studio said, "Nah, that's not good enough. It won't work." So they changed it, but Marty Rackin had nothing to do with it, and he stood by Hud all the way.

BAER: Hud was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Adaptation. Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, and James Wong Howe all won Oscars, but, unfortunately, John Osborne was given the writing award for Tom Jones.

FRANK: Yes, sigh!

RAVETCH: I could give you an opinion about that.

FRANK: Maybe you shouldn't. What do you think?

BAER: I always thought Tom Jones was overrated, but I will say in Osborne's defense that it's a very hard novel to adapt—with all its peculiarities.

FRANK: That's true. And now we don't need any of Irving's opinions!

BAER: Did you go to the ceremony?

FRANK: I didn't. I went to Paris with my mother, but Irving went. So I'm over in France, out of touch with everything, and I get a telegram from Irving: "Oscar loves Pat. Oscar loves Melvyn. Oscar loves James Wong Howe. And I love you."

RAVETCH: Can you imagine her not going to the Academy Awards?

FRANK: Well, I knew damn well we weren't going to win.

RAVETCH: Oh, how could you know that?

FRANK: Well, I did, and I was right. Irving's more brave than I am, so he went alone. But I'm smart. I went to Paris instead!

BAER: Well, it's better to get a telegram that says "I love you" anyway.

FRANK: Absolutely! Much better!

BAER: But you should have won the Oscar too.

FRANK: You're welcome to come to dinner anytime you want!

BAER: As for the critics, the film received extraordinary reviews, and the picture did very well at the box office. But critics did raise a number of questions, and I'd like to ask you about a few. One, which I don't fully understand, is the complaint that the animosity between Homer and Hud was not clearly delineated. Yet you purposefully added the telling backstory about Hud's drunken car accident fifteen years earlier which resulted in the death of his older brother, Norman. And you also had Homer make the shocking revelation, in the film's most powerful scene, that he was sick of Hud "a long time before that"—because Hud was so selfish and didn't "give a damn" about anybody but himself. So why do you think some people weren't satisfied with that?

RAVETCH: I'm not sure. Most of the critics felt they "understood" Hud, but a few didn't care for Homer because he was so rigid.

FRANK: Yes, so unyielding. And so judgmental. There's a very reasonable point of view about Hud that growing up in the home of a man like Homer Bannon might seriously damage a young man like Hud, and I accept that. It was a very dysfunctional family.

BAER: But Homer's firmness is also admirable. He actually stands for something.

FRANK: Yes, but he's too uncompromising. I grew up with a mother who gave me encouragement and lots of freedom, and it was very nourishing. But growing up in a household where the standards were as impeccable as those of Homer Bannon would have been very difficult. All your failures would naturally engender resentment and anger—even contempt.

RAVETCH: That's right, without the understanding, uncritical love of a parent, a child can become emotionally crippled. Also, in Hud, there's clearly the sense of parental favoritism—that Homer favored Norman over Hud. So those are interpretations of the film that we're comfortable with.

BAER: But doesn't that run the risk of making excuses for Hud? Surely, Homer has his flaws, but that's because you made him a real human being, but there's quite a bit about him that's admirable.

FRANK: Yes, his standards were certainly admirable.

RAVETCH: I agree. Homer's standards, which don't exist very much anymore, were definitely admirable, even if he was too inflexible in dealing with his son. In a way, Homer was a lot like Marty Ritt, who was such a principled man that even if you threatened to kill him, he'd never budge from his ethical beliefs.

FRANK: And Paul Newman's a very principled man himself—and very generous.

BAER: Let's return to some of the critical commentaries on the film. Although Hud is clearly set in contemporary Texas, it's often cited as one of the films that began the "demystification" of the American Western. It came out a year after The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which John Ford began to re-examine the Western hero, and it predated the so-called "revisionist" Westerns of the later sixties, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) and The Wild Bunch (1969). I wonder how you feel about that?

RAVETCH: To be perfectly honest, I never thought of Hud as a Western. Never. I always thought of it as a domestic drama. Whenever I see Hud listed with Westerns, I wince. Not because I don't admire Westerns—I wrote a number of them in my earlier days—but because I don't feel the film is appropriate to that category.

BAER: The film's become a classic of the American cinema, and it remains a devastating indictment of individual greed and selfishness. At the time of Hud's release, Penelope Gilliatt in The London Observer called Hud: "American writing at its abrasive best."

FRANK: We love that quote!

RAVETCH: Yes, we do!

BAER: Well, you earned it. Similarly, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that the film's characters "behave and talk so truly that it is hard to shake them out of your mind." He also claimed that Hud was "as wide and profound a contemplation of the human condition as one of the New England plays of Eugene O'Neill." That's high praise indeed, and fully justified. I'd like to finish up today by asking you about your own personal favorite moments in the film. When you watch Hud these days, after all these years, what do you most appreciate?

RAVETCH: Well, we have to admit, Bill, that we don't watch the film anymore. In fact, once our films are finished, we never watch them again.

BAER: Never?

RAVETCH: No. For us, it's over and done.

BAER: But you don't know what you're missing.

RAVETCH: Well, that's very kind of you to say that, but it's an experience that we lived through once, nurtured, and saw come alive. So it's very hard afterwards to go back and look at the movie again.

FRANK: But thinking back to when we did see it last—and trying to answer your question—I'd say that the last scene is one of my personal favorites. I feel that it has a powerful punch that resonates—as Lon leaves and Hud slams the door. Also, I have to admit, I loved every single scene that Patricia was in. She was always perfect, and always affecting. She never missed a moment.

RAVETCH: I have to agree that I'm partial to all those scenes with Pat—like when she's leaving at the bus station. It's very touching. Her whole performance is very moving. But Paul was impeccable as well. I still remember standing on the set and watching him perform, and, in my mind, I was always acting out the scene right along with him, and, almost invariably, he would play it exactly the way we'd envisioned it when we wrote the script. Paul completely understood that role, and he completely embodied the character of Hud. He was just terrific.

FRANK: Well, you're a very good actor yourself—you always were.

RAVETCH: Yes, I would have been a terrific Hud, if only I'd had the talent! Like Edna May Oliver said in Pride and Prejudice, "I would have made a marvelous musician, if I only had the talent."

BAER: Well, both of your talents are perfectly obvious in your masterful writing of the American film classic Hud. Thanks for your time.

FRANK: Thank you, Bill, it was fun!

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