From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

My guest, Oscar and I need Jeff Bridges, is a lucky charm for writer-directors.

Let's just go over the list of some of them.

The Cohen brothers, Robert Benton, Michael Chimino in his first film, Steve Clovis,

and a great film, The Fabulous Baker Boys, and now his new film with writer-director first-timer

Scott Cooper, Crazy Heart.

First of all, Jeff, thanks for being here.

Hey, thanks for having me, Elvis. This brings up an interesting question for me. I mean,

you really do work a lot with writer-directors, and I want if there's something you find in

that that you really like, that you like that collaboration. Well, it's always interesting

what a director's background, where he's coming from, you know. In the case of Crazy Heart, Scott Cooper, our director, by the way, a first-timer

like Steve Clovis and Fabulous Baker Boys and Bob Benton, too, as well. I've had great success

with first-time directors, and as we were talking before the show, our mutual friend, Mike Trager,

who did a... For the amateurs, that's right.

For the amateurs.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's interesting where directors are coming from.

Now, with Scott Cooper, our director for Crazy Art, he not only was a writer, but also an actor.

And that was very handy.

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