We shot the picture in 20 days, making downtown L.A. look like New York City. We had a couple of sets--the subway where the guy gets pulled down and plays chopsticks on the stairs with his chin. Richard Kiley's character is not a true true believer; he's just another grifter being paid by the Commies. I really don't care about ideologies. That's all a yawn; but the people who believe, who work for, who kill for the ideologies, now those are characters that I can relate to. I played down the politics because that's boring, and I had no interest in the political structure of the Communist Party in the U.S. or anywhere else. This is about espionage, a risk occupation just like lifting wallets--a grifter is a grifter after all whatever the grift. Even the American agents are left vague; they're just government men. There was a guy in England, Fuchs I think, who got slammed around the time I was writing the script for being a double-agent, so I threw a reference in there: "You know about Fuchs (or whatever his name was). You know what he did and what's going to happen to him." Widmark's answer is "Who cares about that?" I wanted the contrast between the political view, the Red Menace, all of that stuff, and the reality for a grifter: which is "who cares?" I'm down here two steps up from the gutter. Political motives are from the moon.

That's the real issue for Ryan, but there is no sense of conflict for Bob Stack. As a theme, there is only betrayal, with all the Freudian bits, the love between men. After all, why does Ryan not kill Stack when he's wounded? There's something between them, not father/son, not man to man, but something. And it is that betrayal, the emotional betrayal, that galls him. There's a line in The Godfather to the effect that "It's not personal, it's business. I tried to kill your father because of business." Ryan makes it personal, and then gets betrayed, so it is not business. And that is the cause of his downfall, not living by those harsh principles--kill your wounded--that is his undoing, and that, I guess, if kind of noir.

Q: So the ostensible hero, Stack's character Spanier, is the real betrayer.
Fuller: When Spanier makes the girl lie, and he does it violently. He slaps her and says, "Now tell the truth." He has no choice; he's a double agent. He is playing a false parental role, that the Ryan character genuinely embraces. The thing that I wanted to emphasize is not that your hands are tied or anything like that. The real irony, the reason that I liked the Ryan character, was that sense of code. I wanted the audience, if not to like him, at least to respect him. Was he really hurting anyone? He stole some money, but the people he killed were his own men. He's not setting fire to an old folks' home or robbing an orphanage. He's knocking over illegal gambling joints. Who cares about that? The real heavy is the government agency. My attitude towards the Stack character--towards any character in any picture I do--depends on the question, "Is he doing an unnecessary job?" He is. So I can portray him as the lowest sort of double-crosser.

Personally, the thrill I got out of making House of Bamboo was shooting in Japan, having a major studio budget and enough money and working counter to stereotypes. In terms of style, I wanted the wide screen and the color. I loathe this cliché vision of the underworld. Dark alleys and wet streets. I've done it. Everybody's done it. It becomes fake, and I don't like it.

Q: You've dealt with other cultural views in a number of your pictures, [such as] The Crimson Kimono.
Fuller: Crimson Kimono is really just a reversal of the old GI concept: "Let's change our luck." That means let's go out and get some local talent, someone of a race or creed other than our own. The Japanese cop in Crimson Kimono is in a reverse position. He is involved with a white girl and wondering to himself, does she want me for me or has she been dumped by some white guy and is just trying to change her luck. That's the idea that got me started on Crimson Kimono. That and the triangle aspect, the two partners, the girl who has to chose between them. As you know, the white partner is not a racist; he has been steeped in Japanese culture and loves his partner. But when a white girl picks a Japanese guy instead of him, that anger comes out of him. I hate those pat, anti-racist movies of the Fifties with those long-suffering Joes who let a pal have the girl without a fight. This was about two things: I am pissed because you took my girl and although I may know about all the things that are good and noble about the Japanese and their culture, why did she pick you over me? Did I lose her straight up? In fact, it is the Japanese character who, like many actual Asians, has a hard time overcoming his own racism. He's the one with the bigoted ideas, not his partner. He's the one who suspects people of being racists while acting like one himself.

Q: Underworld USA was made after the classic era of film noir had ended. So were Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss.
Fuller: You think Underworld USA is noir. To me, it's just a revenge romance, like The Count of Monte Cristo. I even had a character reading the book. Except that Tolly Devlin [Cliff Robertson] figures out a better way: he'll let the cops take out the people on his list. I also liked working against the cliché--gangster idiom or noir or whatever you want to call it--of hoodlums being in dingy, poorly lit offices, the milieu that we talked about earlier. These guys sit around the pool on sunny afternoons and cold-bloodedly plan who they're going to bribe, who they're going to rub out, all in a middle-class, up-scale day's work. The mob boss gives a little lecture on how it works: "We go to church, we pay taxes, donate to local charity, be part of the PTA," and that's why he believes they'll win. Tolly is the dark figure. These mob guys are businessmen, part of society, maybe members of the Rotary club. Tolly is the outcast, the loose cannon. The mob killer is all business. It's a job and he's good at it. Like I said before, business, not personal. To separate himself from the dirty part of the business, the hit man has these dark glasses that he puts on. That switches on the killer. Afterwards he takes them off and he's a regular guy, good to his mother, pets his dog. Tolly is the one who is eaten up inside, who can't sleep at night for thinking about what he has to do. I guess that would be what you guys call a noir character. This is the theme that I can sink my teeth into in a picture. The guy is not trying to be a hero, he is doing something for personal reasons. Not business, not moral, not political, he just has to do it. I don't think Shock Corridor or The Naked Kiss can really be considered film noir. True they're in black-and-white but that's about it.

Q: So you were most interested in realism?
Fuller: Oh, yeah. I researched every milieu. If I were to do a movie tomorrow about a fashion designer, say, I would have to spend some time to find out what language they spoke. Because I would never be satisfied with my dialogue, I want something that gives you the color of that character right away. In The Naked Kiss, I had more time than with Pick-up to work on that. But you also have to create interest. The Constance Towers character wants to rise above her station, quotes from books. That's all to make an impression. A real hooker would not be interested in any of that. It wouldn't mean anything unless it made money for her. A whore-house story is always great. Just great! The way they hang around and discuss the men and pull together in their outlook. Hollywood could never deal with that. And television has a different kind of whore: they all have Black pimps. No Black pastors, teachers, bus drivers--they're all pimps. I don't understand it. And this is coming into people's homes...

In The Naked Kiss I had to rewrite a scene, and I resented it. The Shurlock office, the new version of the Breen and Hays Offices, the "censor," didn't like the speech Constance Towers made at the end. This was the first time I used profanity, and my argument was that this real profanity suggests the depth of her anger. She is not trying to be dirty if she says, "I moved to this town to get away from shit." Then she realizes that the Chamber of Commerce, the American Legion, the D.A.R., that's the real shit. Of course, the censors suggested that I should use another word and not mention the D.A.R. etc. So I said the hell with it, I need to get a [Motion Picture Code] Seal or this movie doesn't get released.

Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity. The people who look down on you are just prejudiced, like the townspeople who deride Constance Towers when they think she's a killer and find out about her past and then cannot face her when they discover she actually did something heroic. That's what I wanted to show and that's what I thought was shocking. The irony was a woman who has struggled, finds what she thinks is happiness, the whole nine yards, then finds out it's all a lie. After it's all smashed to bits, she can still pick up the pieces because she still has her own integrity. But nobody got it. It went over like a lead balloon, probably because it was too shocking and distasteful.

Q: Did you have a style in mind in any of these films, were you aware of film noir?
Fuller: When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's Oxbow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir. To get back to what you said about milieu, I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross, whether it's Brutus doing it to Caesar or Bob Stack doing it to Robert Ryan [in House of Bamboo] that defines what kind of drama it is.