SPACE.com: You've had a long-term association with Clint, haven't you?

HB: Since 1971 or 1972 when he was at Universal. I did Joe Kid with him and then after that followed with High Planes Drifter. And then Clint moved away to Warner Brothers. He did call me back to do a [Warner] film later, the one he did with his son [Kyle, Honkytonk Man].

I've been at Universal a long time and they’ve given me the best pictures and everything. So I never reunited with him until Unforgiven. And I've done everything since then, except the Bridges of Madison County. I have a nice relationship with Clint and he trusts me. So it's been very enjoyable working for him especially now when I'm so old. I'm 85.

SPACE.com: Well, you're probably the only person who worked on the set who could call Clint Eastwood a youngster?

HB: Yes, that's right. He said to me a few days before he turned 70, "they call me Bummy" and he asked me, "How would you like to be 70 again?" And I said, "Clint, I would even settle for 80."

HB: Yeah, he does. Well, we shot Space Cowboys in 62 days. Boy, he had us hopping. There were quite a few sets that we had to work Saturdays and Sundays to keep ahead of him.

SPACE.com: You've also worked with Hitchcock?

HB: I did four with Hitchcock (The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, Topaz, Family Plot.)

I think [I had with him] the same kind of wonderful relationship that I have with Clint. They trust me, and they leave me alone. I just go ahead, and luckily I've been able to please them.

SPACE.com: So you've worked with Clint Eastwood and you've worked with Hitchcock. How do they compare as far as directing styles?

HB: Well, Hitch worked with a writer. When he started a picture, he knew every scene so well. I remember one day he was sitting there and I asked him what he was thinking about and he said, "I'm thinking about my next film. This is all terribly boring." It just drove him crazy how much time it took to put this story on the film, with the lighting of the set and this and that. I can't remember but I don't think they figured Hitch [would shoot] over 2 pages a day.

Whereas Clint is much faster. Unfortunately, there was tension on Hitch's sets. I think everybody was kind of afraid of him. But on Clint's sets everybody's happy and it's just a lot of fun. When you don't have to shoot long hours it makes the picture more enjoyable. I mean, he knows what he wants to do. You cut right through it in a hurry.

SPACE.com: Space Cowboys seems to me to be a much bigger production technically then the ones in the past?

HB: Well, yes it was. But quite a bit of the movie was the earlier part before they go into space. We used studio sets and NASA locations. We went [to NASA locations] and we marched right through all of that. Everything was well organized.

Things slowed down when we got into the space things like the shuttle, blue screening and dealing with ILM. But he still did that film, I think, in 62 days. [Another director] had figured 100 days to shoot that film and a lot more money. So I think he got a very good picture.

SPACE.com: What was your role in the film?

HB: As production designer, I read the script and now I have location managers [that] goes out and kind of pre-shoot things that the script calls for. Then I go with them and select the ones I think I want to show Clint.

The way we work nowadays, I go out and photograph these locations. I would show him these photos and recommend certain ones. Then I prepared the sets and got ready for them.

I think the biggest challenge was all the space things because we had to build the interior of the space shuttle and we had to build the flight deck (which is the deck below where the bathroom is and where their lockers and everything are). And that was one hell of a job. And all of this goes on a gimbal [a large device that can shake and tilt an entire set to simulate an earthquake or shuttle launch].

The day we shot the film, we had [an astronaut named Bob Cabana] who had commanded four flights into space. He sat in that space shuttle and it's all the lights and all the gauges. It's just unbelievable. He thought it was fantastic. He thought he was riding in the real thing. And this is because I had such a good crew.

Then there was the satellite. That was an enormous thing for us to draw. And went on a new stage and it was a big, big set. The draftsman, set designer on it, he must have worked at least two months on that drawing, maybe two and a half months. It's a very complicated thing, and to build too.

SPACE.com: Could you say that Clint keeps you young?

HB: Well, he certainly helped.