What was your role on this project?

An executive producer's job is mainly to be in charge of the money and to hire the right people to do the job, the right people being the writer and the director and the production company. And then once the film is being made, an executive producer's job is to worry. I'm actually not doing my job very well. I'm not very worried. This is going way too smoothly. I'm very relaxed. I'm having a great time.

What was your favorite part of this project?

I think my favorite part of this project has been [working] with Jamie Redford, the screenwriter, because I love writers, and I love mysteries. Jamie has been very open to suggestion. We've worked very hard for weeks on this script, and it's done. It's absolutely ready to be given into the hands of the people who can turn it into a film.

Tell us why you like him.

Jamie's very smart and very literate. He's very literate in movies. I think he's seen every movie ever made. We talk about dialogue or scenes -- we've done this in a group with Michael Nozik, the other executive producer, and Chris Eyre, the director. Jamie and I actually met for one long day in Los Angeles, and then worked for weeks on the phone. Chris would be in South Dakota, Michael and Jamie in California, and I was in Boston. And we'd spend hours on the phone going through the script, line by line, getting it (a) to make sense as a murder mystery, and (b) to sound real.

How is writing a mystery different from other kinds of screenwriting?

Writing a mystery, I think, creates a special challenge for a writer. ... Not only do you have to write a good script with real characters and good dialogue, but you have to create a puzzle with a logical structure, with clues, with suspects, and then you have to solve it in a satisfying way at the end. It can't just be emotionally sensible. It also has to be logically sensible at the end.

Can you talk about what a unique production this was?

Skinwalkers wouldn't have happened except for the participation of three very different worlds of program-making. There is the feature film world of Robert Redford, who owns the rights to Skinwalkers. Then there is the independent feature world of Chris Eyre, the director, who has made two small feature films. And then there's the world of television -- American and British, PBS and Carlton Television. These three very different sensibilities came together on this project, which is set in yet another culture, which is the Native American culture.

It's been very challenging at times, because these three or four cultures coming together in this film are as if from different planets in terms of understanding what the expectations are of the other -- the financial expectations, the dramatic expectations. Everybody's been very patient with each other and very open-minded. It's been a lot of fun, because none of us knew what the other was bringing to the table, but here we are.

What was the most challenging aspect of this project?

I think we're making a champagne movie on a beer budget here. We all have high expectations for this film. ... When you're doing this on a public television budget, you have to be modest, thinking practically about how to do it. So I think we have all tried very hard artistically to maintain high standards and absolute fidelity to the intention of Tony Hillerman's work within fairly limited means.

What was it like working with the other members of the crew?

[You have to] look at the credentials of the people involved. Everyone knows Robert Redford and his work. Chris Eyre is a Native American filmmaker who has made two really interesting, small, independent features. The producer of this film, the line producer, Craig McNeil, was the line producer on several of the most famous public television projects ever done, Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren and Brideshead Revisited. ... The credits associated with those three people, combined with the production financing of a company like Carlton Television, who produced Inspector Morse for Mystery!, and with a network like PBS, and you can see this is an international undertaking.

Tell us about coming together that first day of shooting.

The executive producer's main job is to get the money together and keep the money together, keep everybody happy right up until the first day of shooting. The first day of shooting, after you've hired the production company, after you've hired a director and the director has cast it, you show up on the set, and it is the best moment, because you're turning this over to 75 qualified professional people who are going to make it happen. And there's nothing else for you to do except get out of the way.

So why did you visit?

Wouldn't you? The executive producer's job is not quite finished once the production starts filming, because you still have to worry and hover as much as possible throughout the production, [and] be available if there are changes in the script. For instance, Jamie's not here if there are developments that affect the budget, and scenes have to be changed or perhaps dropped. You can do that from a distance, but I think it's much more effective for someone from the production end to be here. Besides, would you rather be in Arizona in March, or would you rather be in Boston?

For you there's development, there's production, then there's post-production. Where does it all end?

That's a big question. ... I think the executive producer's role is by far the largest in the development stage, because that means choosing the project, pitching it to the people who have the money to make it, and overseeing the hiring of the creative people who will make it. Then the actual production time is the most expensive, but the shortest, the most intense. Post-production, similarly, is fairly defined. Development can go on for years. You can grow old with a project in development. So a producer's job is most intense at the beginning -- making sure it gets up and running, and then making sure it is broadcast or released in the proper way.

Where does the audience enter into the process?

The choice of any project to make into a television program I think is very subjective. You can do focus groups and research, and you should. But at the end of the day, it's a very subjective decision. You have to read a book, as I do, and get a sense: Will this make it to a successful visual television experience? The Tony Hillerman mysteries absolutely have this because he writes very smart murders. He's very good at giving you the proper evidence and clues, and he knows just how and when to give them, so you are kept in suspense. But that's not all he's doing. He's also doing very complicated psychological mysteries, which happen to be set in the Indian community. ... When we were looking for an American mystery to do, the Hillerman mysteries were a perfect fit, because Tony Hillerman's mysteries have a wonderful sense of place. Murder and mayhem happen everywhere, and crimes are solved by detectives and policemen everywhere. But to have a murder set in a largely unfamiliar -- and exotic, to many of us -- culture, the Indian culture, in the beautiful deserts and mountains of the Southwest, was a producer's gift.

Why did you go looking for an American mystery?

I may be wrong, but I doubt that network television or cable television would ever choose to pursue an Indian detective series. I think it's exactly what PBS should do, because it takes us to an entirely different place, to a different culture where we haven't been before. It tells us a traditional story, the solving of a murder, but in a new culture. What's been interesting to me is to see how you take a fairly conversational genre, the mystery genre, and what happens to it when you place it in a whole new culture, when you place it in the Indian culture. And that's what Tony Hillerman did so well, because he gave us a familiar problem -- murder and policemen solving murders -- but that was only one thing that he was doing. The other thing that he was doing was giving you an entry into another world, and giving you a very realistic, unstereotypical view of people who live on Navajo reservations and people who work there.

Why did you choose Skinwalkers?

I think the added bonus of Skinwalkers as a first choice of American mystery is not only is it a famous American mystery -- the Tony Hillerman [books] are very famous -- not only does it have Robert Redford associated with it, but besides the mystery that's being solved in it, there's a whole other story, which is the struggle between the two main characters and their relationships to being Indian. I think that's something that most people in this country don't have a clue about. So not only are they doing a job, solving a mystery, but they're struggling with themselves and with each other about what it means to be an Indian.

Was Tony Hillerman involved in the development of this script at all?

No. Tony Hillerman remains the mystery man. ... I think Tony Hillerman did what a lot of writers have to do after they've written a book and turned it over to people who want to transpose it to another medium -- in this case to television: He let it go. He met with Jamie. They discussed it, and Jamie took it in a very different direction. I think people who know the book, Skinwalkers, will be very surprised by the film, because it's very different.

Joe Leaphorn changed a lot?

Well, that's the other thing. People who love the Hillerman mysteries have a Joe Leaphorn in the imaginations and a Jim Chee in their imaginations, as all of us do for any fictional character that we read. Then we go to the movie or watch the television show and see the character as played by an actor, and it's always a shock. Then you adjust and say: "Now, well, wait a minute. Yeah, I can see that. I never thought of Joe Leaphorn looking that way, or I never thought of Jim Chee looking that way. But I believe this." And then you go with it. ... So we expect the Tony Hillerman police to come after us, the Tony Hillerman police being the diehard fans who have read every word of this book at least 10 times, who know every location, and will recognize when we have departed from the locations and the characters and the plot in the book, and will be eager to let us know how they feel. But it happens every time you make a television program or a film out of a piece of fiction.

How did you approach the changes?

I have the advantage or the disadvantage of not being particularly well marinated in the Tony Hillerman mysteries. I have read the Skinwalkers book and a couple of the other books, so I don't particularly have a hard and fast picture of these characters in my mind. So when I worked on the script with Jamie, it's working on the characters as they exist in the script -- do they make sense as they interact with each other, just in the script, and are they working as real people on the screen? -- rather than being concerned with how exactly they match the characters as written.

When you looked over Chris [Eyre's] shoulder at the [video] monitor, what were you looking for?

What he is looking at, and what we're all looking at, is, first of all, how the shot is framed and how all the visual information is coming across, but also if the emotional information is being conveyed appropriately and if the actors are sticking to the script. As anybody who knows these books can immediately tell, the Hillerman mysteries are set in northern Arizona on the Navajo reservation, and we're not shooting in the Navajo reservation. We're shooting in southern Arizona. The reason for that is the realities of production. It's very difficult to shoot up there. It's very difficult to get a crew. So with the exception of a different kind of cactus which grows down here and not up there, we are still in Arizona. And we are still definitely in Native American country.

What did this project mean to the Native cast and crew who worked it?

I think it would be presumptuous for me to guess what this project might mean to the Native Americans working on it, but the sense that I've had is that they are very eager for the opportunity to do their best work. This is a story that happens to be set in their culture, a culture that they're proud of, but they're wanting to show their best work as actors, as set designers, as directors, which has nothing to do with the fact that they're Indian. They just want the opportunity to be good at what they do. Skinwalkers is set in a Navajo community, and I think most people who will watch this will say, "Oh, this is an Indian story; this is a Native American story." But what they won't realize is the number of tribes that are represented just on this movie. There are Cherokee. There are Apache Indians. There are people from tribes I never even heard the names of. And it makes for a very rich group of people.

What was the biggest challenge for you?

The hardest part of this project is the expectations attached to it, because raising the money has been pretty tough. PBS is not famous for having a lot of money, and this is an ambitious undertaking. And because it's the first American Mystery!, when you do the first of anything, you get the feeling that all eyes are on you. And when you set out to do a project with Robert Redford, you can bet a couple of extra eyes are going to be on you as well. I think there is an expectation that this needs to live up to the standards of the Mystery! series that we've all known and loved for 20 years, and that it breaks new ground successfully. That's fairly nerve-wracking. That can wake you up in the middle of the night.

Is this the first of many American Mystery!s?

We have one shot at this. And I think there are great hopes that this can go on to be a couple of specials every year. We would always love to do that. But every time you make a drama for PBS, you reinvent the wheel in terms of getting the money together and getting a production on its feet. [But] as new as a lot of this is to all of us, the credentials that people are bringing to the table are impressive, whether it's Robert Redford or Michael Nozik, who produced Quiz Show, or Craig McNeil from Granada Television ... or Carlton Television in England.... So in a way, it's a lot of old friends breaking new ground. I think my dream come true for this project would be that Skinwalkers works a charm, that everybody decides we should finish doing the Tony Hillerman mysteries. We do those, and we branch out and do more of all the marvelous regional American mystery writers that can do what the Hillermans do, which is transport us to a completely new time and place.