How did you talk your friends (Jim, Willem, Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper, Matt Dillon) into going fishing with you? Did they suggest locations?

Wasn’t really a lot of convincing. Dennis was the only one who I thought wouldn’t want to do it. He wanted to go to Thailand, and when we got the money to make that possible, it happened like that. Willem wanted to do the ice fishing in Maine. I thought he was nuts.

What was the biggest disaster you encountered while filming Fishing?

There were constant disasters, but no one shining disaster. In Montauk, both cameramen vomiting over the railing while we were catching the first shark was a bit worrisome. In Costa Rica, [cameraman] Stephen Torton almost backed into the propeller when we were leaving in those prop planes on the jungle runway. It was so hot and so confused. Getting all those people into the planes in some formation that would let us shoot the flights was mayhem. After we stuck pins into an effigy of Klaus Kinski—it all seemed to subside.

Talking with John