The concept of making one for the studio and one for yourself is a familiar one for Hollywood directors. And that is how Barry Levinson's career is often summarised. He's that Baltimore guy who directed Diner, Avalon and Tin Men - wry, personal films set in his Maryland hometown. Sure, he makes some big-budget pictures, but essentially he remains the same intimate film-maker he always was.
But just look at his credits: The Natural, Bugsy, Disclosure, Sleepers, Good Morning Vietnam. He's worked with Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro. He's directed Dustin Hoffman four times, most notably in Rain Man, for which they both won Oscars. And now he gives us the diverting crime comedy, Bandits, starring Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton.
Who exactly is this rounded, academic-looking figure? And what is the industry doing with him?
"I think my experience with Diner sums up everything," he explains, referring to his delightful 1982 dΘbut, which related the adventures of a group of young men in 1950s Baltimore. "The studios thought they were getting a high-school comedy and when they saw it, they hated it. It opened in a few cities, got terrible reviews. I was therefore a failure as a director. Then a few reviewers like the New Yorker's Pauline Kael saw it and loved it. It became a major hit in New York. Suddenly I'm a genius.
"That's been my career ever since. The same film is a masterpiece in some people's eyes and a disaster in others'. All my films have been misunderstood one way or the other."
Sounds like we're about to hear about Toys, his ill-starred 1992 comedy starring the dread Robin Williams.
"Now, with Toys, the critics just hated it. Hated it! They were vicious," Levinson says. "Okay, so they didn't like it, but what were they so angry about? If you make a good, old-fashioned big-budget movie, apparently that's okay. If you make an independent movie, then that's OK too. Eventually, I figured out that if you make a film which steps outside those boxes, or if it's in the seams between, then you're in trouble. If you do that, then you have no real constituency. Even Rain Man, which was a giant hit, was not a typical Hollywood movie at all. My films are always in those seams."
Well, maybe. But some of his films sit deeper in the seams than others. Both Diner and 1987's Tin Men demonstrated a singular feel for dialogue. The films focused on the aesthetics of the trivial, featuring lengthy conversations about pop music, junk food or television.
"And that has evolved," Levinson says. "You can see it in Tarantino's movie where they're talking about hamburgers. You see it in Seinfeld, where they worry away at nothing. It never occurred to me that it was an original idea then, but I guess it was. The MGM guys said to me: 'You have a lot to learn about editing. Look at the scene where the guy is ordering the sandwich. Cut out all that meandering talk. Just give him the sandwich and get on with the story.' But of course the talk is the story."
Somehow or other, Levinson won over the boys at the studio. After Diner he made the over-cooked baseball fable, The Natural, with Redford, followed by Good Morning Vietnam (Robin Williams again). But things really took off with 1988's Rain Man. Though he had already tasted success, a best director Oscar does tend to nudge one into a different league.
"I'm not sure how much it changes things," he says. "It's nice to win an award. You're polite about it. You say thank-you. But you still have to do what you want to do.
"After that, I went straight back and did Avalon, another Baltimore movie. And then Bugsy, which was something else again. You have to do your own thing."
Was he doing his own thing with Michael Crichton's contemporary bodice-ripper, Disclosure? Or with the David Mamet-scripted Clinton satire, Wag the Dog? Or with Bandits? Do these films really feel like his own in the same way as the Baltimore films - films that he also writes?
"Yes, they are. Absolutely," he says. "I mean, Wag the Dog was an idea I felt very strongly about. We made it for $15 million. We shot it in 29 days. It was a small individual project. But for some reason that was not considered an independent movie.
"It was considered as a big studio project because of the cast [Hoffman, De Niro ]and because of my involvement. Again, it fell into the seams."
Levinson is careful not to use the unashamedly populist Disclosure as an example of this individuality. But to be fair, he has continued to encourage original work. The 59-year-old started out writing television comedy for the likes of Carol Burnett and he still keeps a toe in those waters. His production company produced the excellent Baltimore-based cop series, Homicide, a show for which he has directed. And last year he directed Everlasting Piece, a low-budget comedy about wig salesmen in Belfast.
Despite being set an ocean away, of the films he hasn't written it is perhaps closest in spirit to his Baltimore pictures.
"Belfast really did remind me of Baltimore," he explains. "All those rows of houses. It's also a working-class town. And there is the same quirky sense of humour to the place. It was important to me not to swan in and do a Hollywood thing. So I used a completely Irish crew, all of whom were great. It looked good and I was very proud of it."
Levinson was so impressed with lead actor Brian F. O'Byrne that he has cast him in his new film as one of the first hostages of the Sleepover Bandits. Thornton and Willis play the two anti-heroes who rob their way across the US, only for everything to come crashing around their ears when both fall for flame-haired Bonnie Tyler fan, Cate Blanchett.
"It's all a little past reality," Levinson says. "I've tried to take the spirit of the screwball comedy, or even the spirit of a Hope and Crosby road picture. Not exactly the way those films looked, but the spirit of them. Strangely, when those movies came out audiences almost thought reality did look like that. But now we know better. We know it is somewhere in between fantasy and reality."
Perhaps one looks too hard for the characteristic Levinson signature, but one can't help thinking that the film's strengths lie in the reality. There are some wonderfully light pieces of interaction between the three main protagonists. Blanchett, in particular, gives a storming performance, at times broad, at times subtle.
"She is one of the great actresses of our time," Levinson says. "But a lot of great actresses just can't do comedy. She really can."
Levinson sees the heart of the film as the triangle between the three stars, the personal drama. The crime sequences exist, as he says, somewhere between reality and fantasy. But not necessarily in a good way. Is this Bonnie and Clyde? Is it Butch and Sundance?
"Probably neither," he says. "Okay, there is a woman that comes between them like Butch and Sundance, but they didn't really deal with that relationship."
But how are we to feel morally about the fact that the heroes are bank robbers? "I think in the world of make-believe you are not bound by those concerns. If it was a real movie, then you could deal with those things."
Freudian slip? Did he genuinely mean to imply that this is not a "real movie". Certainly, fans have their own ideas about what a "real" Levinson movie looks like. And unlike the Coppolas of the world, Levinson is still capable of delivering an individual work when he chooses. Bandits will do nicely enough for now, but we look forward to the next one he does for himself.
Bandits is on general release