Steven Spielberg helped Alfred Molina on his first movie by telling him not to watch the dailies

The Tony, Emmy, and Grammy-nominated actor Alfred Molina stopped by the recording studio of Still Here Hollywood to chat with Steve Kmetko about his varied and lengthy career.

The future star of Spider-Man, Boogie Nights and Love Is Strange was unknown outside of British theater circles when Steven Spielberg cast him in Raiders of the Lost Ark as Satipo, the cowardly, backstabbing guide who joins Indiana Jones on his quest to, uh, “liberate” a golden idol and put it in a museum. Molina talks at length on the new podcast episode about his first big gig, especially concerning what a greenhorn he was.

“I didn’t understand the techniques, or cutting or editing. So we would shoot a scene, and then I would go to dailies the next day to watch that scene, or takes of the scene,” he confessed. “I would see things that I did, that I didn’t, that I thought, ‘Oh no, that’s terrible,’ and then I would come in the next day to work trying to fix what I saw before.”

Dailies, if you don’t know, is the filmmaking term for what’s essentially raw footage of individual takes, with no sound design, no music, and none of the juxtapositions that come from editing. Filmmaking is a big exercise in collage, but if you are coming from the world of theater, it can make for a bit of a mental adjustment when watching your own performance.

Molina gave an example of how his inexperience caused some problems.

“The focus puller would put tape on the floor, to give the actor a guide as to where to stand to stay in focus,” he explained. “I had no idea what that was for. Nobody explained it to me. So, I I thought it was something to do with what they were doing. [I thought] it doesn’t have nothing to do with me. [Cinematographer] Dougie Slocombe, who was a legend, came around from behind the camera, like a real gentleman. He came around and said, ‘We love what you’re doing, but it would be absolutely wonderful if we could get it in focus.'”

Eventually, the big boss stepped in.

“After a few days, it was Steven Spielberg who suggested I don’t go to dailies. Because I think he understood. He could see I wasn’t understanding that dailies are essentially a technical reference. They’re all about, did we get the lighting right? Is the makeup okay? Do the costumes work? The contrast between the actors and the background. It’s all of that stuff. That’s all really what the dailies are about. But, of course, when I saw the film, the finished film, I was I was delighted, you know.”

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The novitiate Molina quickly caught on, as the remainder of his career can attest. But about his first big role, he was sure to warn his friends not to trust the marketing too much.

“The irony is, of course, that my character gets his within seven minutes or something. But because that little portion of the movie had nothing to do with the rest of the film, they mined that seven minutes for all the trailers,” he said. “So, it was me and Harrison [Ford] all over the trailers. [Friends were] calling me, ‘Fred, you got this great big part in this movie!'”

Molina, without wanting to spoil the warning, gave some advice, telling them, “If you go to the bathroom, you’re gonna miss me. Make sure you get your popcorn early.”

To hear more of Molina’s gab sesh with Kmetko — and how his very first day on his very first movie involved the shot with all the spiders — check out the link below.