Episode 9: Joel Directs!

As you’ve probably gained from listening to this podcast, working for Joel Silver was an adventure. So, if you like stories about Joel, you’re gonna love this episode.

The Joel Silver Fan Club

In this one, we tell the story of the time our boss, Joel Silver, directed an episode of HBO’s “Tales From The Crypt“. The episode, “Split Personality” stars Joe Pesci and Joey Pantoliano. It’s not half bad! But making it with Joel in the director’s chair – that’s a story!

It’s not surprising that stories about Joel seize the imagination. As we discuss in the podcast, show business has always attracted larger than life people. If you either don’t have an ego to match or the personality to live with such egos, show biz ain’t for you. Everything that makes a Joel Silver (or working for him) entertaining, also makes him hard to work with. And for.

But, even in an industry filled with Tasmanian Devil-like personalities, Joel’s stands out. It can be soul-destroying working for people like Joel. It can be exhilarating too. The strange thing is – for all the bizarre, unbelievable stories we tell here about Joel? Most of us would work with him again.

It ain’t the money. It’s the creative buttons Joel pushes. Underneath the chaos, there’s an artist. I don’t know how else to explain it…

Now, as this podcast has described, working with first-time directors wasn’t new to us. We prided ourselves on working as seamlessly with the first timers our executive producers sometimes asked us to “school” as we did with veterans like Billy Friedkin and John Frankenheimer. But, none of the first time directors we worked with posed quite the challenges that working with our boss Joel Silver did – especially to Gil Adler.

More Great Crypt Stories!

Once we start talking about directors, it’s hard to shut up.

We talk actors, too. Among the many names that’ll pop up: Joe Pesci, Buck Henry, Gary Fleder, Russell Mulcahy, George Burns and Jan de Bont.

We’ll also tell a story about iconic actor Joey Pantoliano and how Joey gave me a literal haircut on the set of an episode of “The Outer Limits” that we did together. I have photos to prove it really happened, too!