Taking a Classic Turn

After a distinguished 40-year career in feature films, it never occurred to Peter Yates that TV directing might be a fruitful professional option. But then he had lunch with John Frankenheimer, an old friend and veteran filmmaker, who directed a prestige TV project (“George Wallace”), then watched his feature career revive with “Ronin” and “Reindeer Games.”

“John turned me on to the idea,” said Yates, 70, relaxing over afternoon coffee in his sumptuously appointed Kensington apartment. “He said I should do some TV, that it could be fun as long as you take the same care as you do with feature films--get good actors, do something that’s going to be special. It was good advice.”

Around this time he also met another old pal, English playwright and screenwriter John Mortimer (“Tea With Mussolini”), with whom Yates collaborated on his 1969 film “John and Mary.” “John told me he had just written a script of ‘Don Quixote’ and asked me to read it,” Yates recalled. “I did, and I really liked it. When my agent established no director was attached, I went to see [producer] Robert Halmi and said I’d like to make ‘Quixote.’ I’d never done television since I first started in this business.” (That was in the early 1960s, when Yates directed episodes of “Secret Agent” and “The Saint” for British TV.)

So it was that Yates came to direct “Don Quixote,” based on the classic 17th century work of Miguel de Cervantes, with John Lithgow in the title role as the middle-aged landowner of Spain’s La Mancha region who fancies himself a knight in shining armor and sets out to right injustices in the world. He tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants, and mistakes flocks of sheep for armies. Bob Hoskins plays Quixote’s trusty peasant sidekick Sancho Panza in his own cockney accent. The film premieres on TNT next Sunday.

In accepting the job, Yates found himself part of a movement. Apart from Frankenheimer, several hugely experienced feature film directors are finding that prestigious, high-end TV films, especially those made for cable companies and screened without commercial interruptions, can be as satisfying as feature work. William Friedkin has made “Twelve Angry Men” and “Noriega” for cable television. Martha Coolidge (“Introducing Dorothy Dandridge”) and Paul Mazursky (“Winchell”) moved in the same direction. Stephen Frears is set to direct a live remake of “Fail-Safe” for CBS.

“These people are showing that it’s possible to make demanding, challenging films for TV,” Yates said. “And I feel the wonderful thing about TV is you don’t have to cut down stories. You can develop them. Some authors work better when they’re adapted for TV rather than film. John le Carre is an example. His books are dense and complex, and they deserve to have their characters properly projected.

“If you get a script as good as [“Don Quixote”] and actors as good as these, what’s the difference between films and TV, except a snobbish one? You shoot exactly the same way. Actually, the only difference is that more people get to see your film on TV.”

Well, there’s also the budget. “Don Quixote” cost around $15 million, which is low in feature terms. “But I never wanted for anything,” Yates insisted. “If I wanted a crane shot, I had a crane shot. The only thing was, we had to plan more, especially against the weather.

“We didn’t shoot it in La Mancha itself, which is all major highways and overhead electrical cables these days. We were in southern Spain, and I think it was important to shoot there. All the dressing and the props could be accurate, and we could use a lot of Spanish people as actors and extras.”

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With 20-20 hindsight, if one had to pick a feature film director with the flexibility and open-mindedness to consider television work, the affable Yates would be high on the list. In his long career he has steadfastly refused to tie himself down to a particular genre.

He directed Steve McQueen in one of his definitive roles in “Bullitt” (1968), a superior action film set in San Francisco, featuring an all-time classic car chase. But he also directed “The Dresser” (1983), set in wartime England, with Albert Finney as a tyrannical, aging stage actor-manager and Tom Courtenay as his mincing, nagging dresser. He also made “Breaking Away” (1979), a delightful comedy set in America’s heartland. “The Dresser” and “Breaking Away” both received Oscar nominations for best film, and Yates for best director.

Between these career highlights he made films as varied as “Murphy’s War” (1971), “The Deep” (1977), “Eleni” (1985) and “The House on Carroll Street” (1988). As Yates tells it, hopping from genre to genre was deliberate. “After ‘Bullitt,’ I was determined not to do another action film,” he recalled. “That may have been a mistake, but my theory was, perhaps selfishly, it’s much more interesting to be involved with different kinds of genres. If you’re just one kind of director, people will get tired of you. But if you make different films all the time, hopefully you’ll be judged on talent.”

Three years ago, Yates found this was less and less true for him in Hollywood: “The work was starting to close down,” he admitted. “Firstly, you’re supposed to be under 30, if possible. Secondly, I prefer to develop my own projects, as I did with ‘Breaking Away’ and ‘The Dresser.’ There were a lot of teenage films around, which I wasn’t right for and didn’t feel connected to, and special-effects films of a kind I didn’t know enough about. You have to be brought up in a computer-literate generation.”

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All this was enough to bring English-born Yates back to London, after living in New York for 18 years, then in Los Angeles for another six. “I found L.A. a wonderful place to work,” he said. “But unless you’ve just made a successful film, it can be terribly unsocial. When I moved there, I felt it might be easier to set up films there and get things going. But it’s just as easy to do it in London. I’d never have been offered ‘Don Quixote’ if I’d still been in Los Angeles.”

He thinks the pendulum has swung back and is heartened by the success of “American Beauty,” “The Sixth Sense” and “The Cider House Rules”--all films of a type he would enjoy directing. “I think there’s a recognition in Hollywood that there’s an audience for intelligent films,” he said. “And I think this partly has to do with TV companies like HBO and Turner who provide such films and find they’re popular.”

Ironically, Yates’ new film represents neither his first brush with his leading man, nor with the source text. “I saw John Lithgow for the lead role in ‘The House on Carroll Street,’ ” he recalled. “He’s a very good actor, but I went with William Hurt. John didn’t hold it against me, I’m glad to say.

“My first venture with ‘Quixote’ was in the 1970s, for a studio. Waldo Salt wrote an excellent script, and I fell in love with the story, the book, everything. But the casting was strange: Richard Burton was to be Quixote and Peter O’Toole, Panza. You’d think the reverse, if anything. Anyway, I eventually left and it fell apart. But I always longed to make it.”

Yates seems energized by his experience on “Don Quixote.” He is mulling over his next move and considering feature projects based on works by Pete Hamill and Peter Benchley. “But you know,” he said, sounding a mite surprised at himself, “I’d like to do another TV film too.”