> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Director opens people’s eyes to the world - URL: https://www.smdp.com/director-opens-peoples-eyes-to-the-world/ - Published: 2005-01-17T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T06:00:51.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import *Charles.* *By DIDIER DIELS Special to the Daily Press* OCEAN AVE. — Universal Pictures recently stripped the walls, boxed his belongings and unceremoniously ejected Taylor Hackford from his Santa Monica offices at 3000 Olympic Blvd. “What happens when you finish a project is they kick you out,” said Hackford, sporting a black leather jacket and his trademark white beard while sitting at a poolside cabana at the Viceroy hotel. Finishing the thought, he immediately broke out laughing. The 60-year-old producer, director and co-writer of “Ray,” the biography of Ray Charles Robinson’s life and music, is in demand. His dream project, once passed on by Hollywood as too dated and too black to find an audience, took $30 million to make and has already grossed more than $72 million domestically, pre-DVD release and not counting soundtrack sales. The film will be released on DVD Feb. 1. The film garnered a Golden Globe nomination for best picture, and although it didn’t take home that award last night, Jamie Foxx won best actor for his role as Ray The film also has generated no shortage of Oscar buzz. For the director of such films as “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “The Devil’s Advocate” and “La Bamba,” the success, Hackford hopes, will make more personal projects possible. Hackford recently sat down with the Daily Press to discuss his latest film, his life and times, and the man who was Ray Charles. It took 15 years to get “Ray” onto the screen. Can you describe the process? “It was really interesting in the sense of going in and trying to research and trying to spend time with Ray Charles because Ray Charles was himself not very forthcoming. He’d written an autobiography, and it’s a very truthful autobiography, but he doesn’t really get very much into emotional context. In other words, he tells the facts. You know, ‘I was born. I grew up here. I went blind. I played the piano. I did bu-bu-bu.’ But if you’re trying to find out, you know, feelings and emotions about what he went through, he wasn’t very forthcoming. He was a very self-contained guy. He said, ‘Listen, I worked hard. I succeeded. A lot of people had it harder than I did.’ You know, that’s very admirable, but it’s not at all helpful when you’re trying to make a feature film about someone’s life. That’s all about trying to discover the person, the inside of the person, and Ray had a diamond-hard exterior and didn’t let people in very easily. It took years for me to get to know him.” In the film, it seemed that almost the only person he ever let in was his wife. Is that your feeling? “And his mother. The thing that Ray Charles told me, to my face he said, ‘I talked to my mother everyday of my life. She was the most important person in my life and responsible for everything I am and where I got to.’ Now, his mother had been dead over 50 years when he told me this. So the fact that he still talked to his mother everyday of his life was very interesting and very telling. In his head, obviously she was there. Throughout the film I had these flashbacks, not only flash-backs, but these flashes to his mother commenting on the things he was doing with his life because she was a major presence in his life all the way through.” How do you remember Ray Charles? “When I first met him I thought his whole blindness was a hoax. If he were at the hotel here, he’d have someone walk him around the pool and tell him where everything was. Then when you saw him, he’d walk you, telling you where to sit and pointing everything out. He never used a cane or a wand. He’d just memorize everything, and I think his motivation was to disarm you, to level the playing field. Black people have to be better, and a blind black person has to be even better. He never told me this, but that’s why I think he wanted the film to be made. His music is going to preserve his legacy. There’s no question of that. I think he wanted the film to be done for people that are ‘handicapped,’ to let them know what they could achieve. “Ray could also be very hard to work with. When we were recording background music for the film, I would tell him the emotion and the feeling I wanted to convey through each scene, but at first he played like he was performing for a crowd. When I tried to tell him to tone it down, he said, ‘Ray Charles don’t play bad for anyone. If you can’t describe what you need, I might as well get the f--k out of here.’ By the way, he was right. It was my fault. I was using visual terms to describe what the music should sound like, and it totally wasn’t working. When I figured out what he needed, we fell into rhythm and really had a ball.” Where did your own interest in music originate? “It started with my brother going to Korea and leaving me his records, which was Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Dexter Gordon. I was 5\. Five, 6, 7, I was listening to heavy jazz and really loving it. And realize I’m a child of the ’60s. That was when I hit maturity and music was — it isn’t today — but music at that time was an avenue of liberation. The music of the ’60s really signaled a cultural change in America. The messages being stated, whether folk music or rock ’n’ roll or Marvin Gaye doing R&B singing ‘What’s Going On,’ were very pointed and very specific anti-establishment messages that felt part of a movement. It feels silly talking about it now because you look back and all you see is a bunch of long hairs smoking pot, but that’s not what it was about. It was a protest against an unjust war in Vietnam. There was a lot of people not just taking chances — and when you say ‘protesting’ they were not just chicken shits — they were people standing up for what they believe.” What would we find in your CD case? “I listen to everything. I always listen to jazz. You would see a lot of bee-bop jazz. You would still see rock ’n’ roll. You would see Kanye West and Timberlake and innumerable rap people. The ones I’m interested in are the artists. I listen to Jay Z, but I’m interested in the producers that make real art. When it’s beautifully produced, it’s cool like anything else.” How did you move from music into film? “When I went to USC, I didn’t major in film. I was in international relations and in politics. Campus was a very conservative place when I became student-body president. I knew people in school that would serve on the Nixon administration. The difference is I’m working class, and I always was working class. My mother was a waitress, and she raised me alone... My sense when I ran for political office was to not follow in those old politics. When I was president, we created the first cooperative book exchange, where students could exchange books and not get ripped off by book stores. I did the first student evaluation of the faculty. Want to talk about something controversial? That was controversial. I also tried to get USC to join the National Student Association, which was known as a pinko, commy organization at the time. That wasn’t the part I was interested in, but I was trying to get some exchange between students at USC and at other universities. Believe me, there was a lot of shit happening in the ’60s when I was there... I won the highest honor, the order of the Palm, that year for what I’d done in student government, which was all populist, no-bullshit national politics. It was all about trying to empower students. I got the first thing passed where they actually contributed to a student activities fee. Student government was always powerless, but that year the budget went from $1,000, $2,000 to $75,000, which meant we could bring speakers and concerts to campus. “At the same time, I started hanging with some film students, and that gave me an opportunity to look at film. I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up in a movie theater. ‘I went there because I was crippled and sickly and all I could was live everyday in a movie theater.’ No, f--k no. I was out everyday enjoying life and engaging in life. I didn’t worship at the church of cinema. Ultimately, I started hanging with film students and started seeing the political power of film. My interest was in documentaries and being able to communicate politically. I graduated from USC and went into the Peace Corp. and to Bolivia.” How does the South America presented by your film “Proof of Life,” in which leftist guerillas abduct and ransom a foreigner, relate to what the Peace Corp. hoped to achieve in that region? “The fact is the Peace Corp. has a raison d’être that we’re going to go out and show the world and help the world. It’s nice and very well meaning. It’s also ludicrous to think a liberal-arts graduate is going to go into some third-world country and teach farmers who have been harvesting their land for 3,000 years how to farm better. The reality of the Peace Corp. is it provides Americans the opportunity to live in another culture, not in Europe on the Riviera, but in a third-world culture on a level very close to the lowest poverty levels in the world. That’s something Americans don’t get an opportunity to do. You can’t go through that and remain unmoved. “The value of the Peace Corp. is it can give Americans a wake-up call, give them a chance to really see how the majority of the world lives. How can you ever come back to this country, which is incredibly privileged — we’re privileged to live here — but also you’re never quite as innocent, as naïve again. That infuses their concern and motivation now. You see incredible poverty in the Peace Corp. You’re not going to solve it. People pick arms and revolt, and you can understand that. There was an oligarchy there. There was a power elite of very rich people, and people were rebelling. ‘Proof of Life’ is not really about that though. FARK, the organization depicted, preach communism. They preach Maoist doctrine, but they’re f--king dope dealers. That’s what they’re doing. They’re taking advantage of poor people in a same way they’re criticizing others. Compared to the ’60s, which was a much more naïve time, you see generations later that it is no longer naïve or idealistic. It’s very much pragmatic. And for me, because I want to believe in the ideas I used to, it’s more perverted. Where did you go after the Peace Corp.? “I sat through two weeks of law school at USC, but I’d really changed my thinking in the Peace Corp. I came back in 1969\. The world was turned on its ear, and I decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I lost my tuition. I lost all the money I put in, and I walked out of there and over to the mailroom of KCET, asked for a job and got one. About a year later, someone asked if I could shoot film. I lied and said ‘yes.’” Shortly after leaving KCET you won the Academy Award for best dramatic short in 1978\. How did your time at a public access help you get there? “While I was at KCET, I was watching movies all the time. I didn’t tell anybody, but I would watch 12 to 14 feature films a week. I was learning how films were made. My documentary on Charles Bukowski had also won a PBS award for best feature and a San Francisco Critics award for best documentary, so I had some recognition for that and wasn’t unknown. “With ‘Teenage Father,’ I made it to look just like a documentary on teenage pregnancy. I actually made it look so much like a documentary that people were pissed off at the end of the movie when it said it wasn’t real. People were really pissed off, but the Academy liked it and gave me the award. That really opened a lot of doors. It said I could direct.” When you made ‘La Bamba,’ you criticized Hollywood for only portraying Latinos as “drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members.” How do you reconcile that with ‘Blood In, Blood Out,’ which deals with violent Latino gang members in the California correctional system? “You have to respect a culture, but you can’t baby it. With ‘Blood In, Blood Out,’ I wanted to show the flip side of ‘La Bamba.’ Immigrants in America have always had two avenues out of poverty. One is entertainment, and the other is crime. It was the same story for the waves of Jewish, Italian and Irish immigrants that came to this country much earlier, and I wanted to update that story to the Chicano experience. Jimmy Baca, the Chicano poet who left prison to win a National Book Award, is a good friend of mine. He said, ‘I was one of those guys running around illiterate in the jail.’ He learned to read and write in prison. Jimmy very much wanted this story to be told, and to people saying I’m stereotyping, I stand up for my choices.” You once saved Baca from a gun wielded by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford. Can you explain? “Jimmy’s a passionate guy. We were at Ford’s house in New Orleans with a whole bunch of writers, people Jimmy worshipped. Writers do drink, and all I know is I walked into the room and saw Ford pull a gun from a kitchen drawer. Yeah, I stepped in front of Jimmy. I walked in and said, ‘Richard put that f-- king thing away.’ Did I save anyone’s life? I doubt it. They’re a couple of posturing f--king writers. Writers will drink, and they will posture. Think he was going to actually shoot him? F--k no.” With Ray finished, where will you go from here? “I’ve had a career. I realize I have hopefully a few more films to make but not a ton. Right now, I have three projects I want to work on that I feel passionate about. One is a script I’m developing for my wife that’s not ready yet. Another is a music-related film, and the third is a historical drama, not a costume piece but a real historical drama, way older than the time period when ‘Ray’ takes place.” Can you talk about your relationship with your wife, actress Helen Mirren? “I had two previous marriages, and I’m not proud they broke up. I have two sons from those marriages and have great relationships with both of them. Filmmaking can be a hard job. You’re on the road shooting a lot. It weighs on and sometimes destroys relationships. If you wait a long time, you know when the right person comes along. When you find that person, you have to hold onto them.” Born: Dec. 31, 1945, Santa Barbara. Background: USC student body president and Laurel and Palm award winner, Peace Corp. volunteer, award-winning KCET reporter and documentary director/producer, Academy Award winner for best dramatic short film. Family: Hackford’s mother, Mary, worked as a waitress and raised him and his brother by herself. He has two sons from two earlier marriages and is now married to actress Helen Mirren. Aspiration: To complete a few more films before retirement and live happily with his wife. Salary: More than the pay cut he took to make ‘Ray.’ *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 17, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011705.pdf?ref=smdp.com)