Weintraub, Sandra, 226, 230, 233, 238–239, 240–43, 246–48, 252, 253, 293–94, 300–302, 314, 325, 357, 376, 392, 405, 445
Welles, Orson, 57, 77, 112, 116, 127, 201, 209, 210, 300, 416
Wells, Frank, 83–85, 98, 100, 181, 183, 190, 191, 207, 216, 221, 222, 292, 304, 358, 393–94, 445
Wenders, Wim, 417, 424, 428
Wertmuller, Lina, 358
Westmoreland, Gen. William, 47
Wexler, Haskell, 101, 171–72, 174, 178, 193, 196, 201, 241, 320, 334, 352–353, 437, 445
Wexler, Jeff, 352–53
What’s New, Pussycat?, 25–26, 33
What’s Up, Doc?, 137–40, 164, 209, 212, 213, 237, 252, 447
Whitman, Charles, 115
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 21, 81
Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, 229
Wild Angels, The, 42, 115, 228
Wild Bunch, The, 15, 36, 79, 119, 123
Wilder, Billy, 24, 38, 207, 276, 414, 416
Wilder, Gene, 32
Wild Strawberries, 228
Williams, Cindy, 237
Williams, Paul, 22, 271
Williams, Robin, 422
Williams, Tennessee, 48
Willis, Bruce, 405
Willis, Gordon, 154–57, 182, 261, 348, 445
Willow, 424
Wind and the Lion, The, 15
Winkler, Irwin, 18, 22, 339, 376, 378, 379, 385, 386, 389–90, 399, 416, 445
Wiz, The, 403
Wolper, David, 201, 202
Women in Love, 16
Wood, Cyndi, 361
Wood, Natalie, 58
Woodfall Films, 52
Woodstock, 85, 150, 228
Woodward, Joanne, 132
Writers Guild of America, 47, 69, 381
Wurlitzer, Rudy, 136, 409
Wycherly, William, 33
Wyler, William, 16, 113, 171
Yablans, Frank, 145, 148, 158–63, 183, 190, 207–8, 210–13, 268–70, 274, 280, 281, 400, 402, 415, 445
Yakuza, The, 246, 291–93, 295, 348, 426
Yee, Yeu-bun, 377, 379
Young, Colin, 290
Young Frankenstein, 175
You’re a Big Boy Now, 36, 142, 150, 256, 447
Z, 122, 205
Zabriskie Point, 234
Zaentz, Saul, 192, 352
Zanuck, Darryl F., 18, 278
Zanuck, Richard, 93–94, 96–98, 204, 244–45, 259, 263–67, 278, 283, 445
Zemeckis, Bob, 331, 384
Zieff, Howard, 423
Zinnemann, Fred, 23, 38
Zsigmond, Vilmos, 104, 331
Zukor, Adolph, 18, 143
Photo Credits
AP/Wide World: 33; Archive Photos: 6, 24; Peter C. Borsari: 10, 13, 17; Camera Press/Retna: 20; Corbis-Bettmann: 24; R. Dominguez/Globe Photos: 35; Everett Collection: 8, 40; © 1976 by Ron Galella: 9; Globe Photos: 4, 21, 22; D. Gorton/Time Inc.: 14; Darlene Hammond: 15; Kobal Collection, page 10, 19; Marvin Lichtner from Lee Gross, Inc.: 28; © Walter McBride/Retna: 34; Floyd McCarty/Motion Picture & Television Photo Archive: 1; Caterine Milinaire: 30; Michael A. Norcia/Globe Photos: 32; Photofest: page 4, 36, 37; Private Collection: 16, 38, 39; Toby Rafelson: 2, 11; Matthew Robbins: 7; G. Seminara Collection/Shooting Star: 3; Steve Schapiro: 23, 29; Steve Schapiro/Gamma Liaison: 26; S.S./Shooting Star: 31; SMP/Globe Photos: 18; Stills/Retna: 5; Wasser/Gamma Liaison: 27.
Gene Hackman looks on as Arthur Perm and Warren Beatty shed blood over Bonnie and Clyde.
Dennis Hopper “was violent and dangerous,” says Brooke Hay ward. “When [I got] divorced, I probably could have gone for half his cut from Easy Rider . . . [but I didn’t] because I didn’t want him coming after me with a shotgun.”
Peter Fonda in his den. “When Easy Rider came out, everyone debated the meaning of Wyatt’s famous line, ‘We blew it,’” says Fonda. “My motivation was ‘Hello, [Dennis], you fascist fuck, you’ve blown our big chance.’”
The Easy Rider gang (from left: Hopper, Fonda, Jack Nicholson) goes to Cannes in 1969. When it became clear that the movie might be a hit, Fonda quipped that the Columbia executives stopped shaking their heads in incomprehension and began nodding their heads in incomprehension.
Michelle Phillips (right, with Nicholson and Hopper) suggested Hopper commit suicide after their week-long marriage ended.
George Lucas, c. 1971. He never forgave Warner Bros, for trimming THX: 1138. He said, “They were cutting off the fingers of my baby.”
Beatty dressed as McCabe (of McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and director Robert Altman dressed as Timothy Leary: Beatty says, “Had I been the producer I would have killed Robert Altman.”
Beatty and Christie (above) at a 1971 American Film Institute benefit in New York City, and (at right) at the L.A. Forum for a McGovern rally on April 15, 1972. “If ever a movie star existed for whom stardom meant nothing, it was Julie,” says Robert Towne. One day she appalled her lover and McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Shampoo co-star Warren Beatty by losing a $1,000 check in the street.
It was “this splendid decade of hope,” says Toby Rafelson, shown here with husband Bob Rafelson soon after they moved to L.A. in the early ’60s. “Then slowly we all began getting into these strange self-destructive, quirky, unpredictable areas of life that ultimately destroyed evenyone.”
Before: “[Wife] Polly accused me of being crazy about [Cybill Shepherd] the day we arrived on location” for The Last Picture Show, says Peter Bogdanovich, shown here with Piatt several years later. “It irritated me enormously.” After: “I never felt about anybody quite the way I felt about Cybill. It was one of those times when life just takes over, and you don’t really have control.”
“I thought Marty [Scorsese] was just the cutest thing I had ever seen,” recalls girlfriend Sandy Weintraub. “He was chubby and he had long hair and no neck, and was shorter than me.”
Bert Schneider and Candice Bergen enjoy a day at the races. Schneider urged her to loosen up, get in closer touch with her feelings, drop some acid.
Upon meeting Huey Newton for the first time, Schneider said, “If he’s not Mao, I’ll eat it.”
Bob Evans, Charlie Bluhdorn, and Frank Yablans, Paramount’s “Manson family,” enjoy a rare moment of levity
Evans and wife Ali MacGraw at the premiere party for The Godfather. Says Evans, “She was looking at me and thinking of Steve McQueen’s cock.”
Bogdanovich directs Shepherd in Daisy Miller. Says his agent, Sue Mengers, “Peter always protected himself against attractive leading men opposite Cybill, with actors he could feel superior to.”
Francophile Billy Friedkin dug his own grave when he inexplicably remade Wages of Fear as Sorcerer.
Too much of a good thing: Francis Coppola clutches three Oscars for The Godfather, Part II.
Beatty takes a bite out of Carrie Fisher on the set of Shampoo. (Below) He talks, while Shampoo co-writer Robert Towne listens. Towne, who did a lot of work for Beatty, used to refer to himself as the “sharecropper.” (Bottom) Towne’s companion, Julie Payne, at the Shampoo premiere with David Geffen.
Schneider and Hearts and Minds director Peter Davis, with their Oscars on April 8, 1975. Bert holds the telegram from the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam that scandalized the audience.
Scorsese on the set of Taxi Driver. flanked, from left to right, by Shepherd, Jodie Foster, and Albert Brooks.
Marcia and George Lucas in the editing room. According to Marcia, George always said, “Emotionally involving the audience is easy. Anybody can do it blindfolded, get a little kitten and have some guy wring its neck.”
Coppola’s “personality had changed,” says the script supervisor of Apocalypse Now. “He was no longer bound by any normal conventions. Francis would tread on anyone he could tread on.”
Marlon Brando disliked Hopper so much he wouldn’t do any of their scenes in Apocalypse Now together. (Below) Coppola with Bunnies Cyndi Wood, Linda Carpenter, and Colleen Camp on December 3, 1976.
Scorsese e
njoys a night out with wife Julia Cameron and mistress Liza Minnelli. (Right) Scorsese with Robbie Robertson. “It was a shame that Marty wasn’t gay,” says former girlfriend Weintraub. “The best relationship he ever had was probably with Robbie.”
Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving. Although several of his friends thought she was using him, she recognized the limitations of the movies Spielberg and his friends were making. She said, “I’m glad I didn’t do Star Wars because it was a nothing part. I would not want to get famous because of that movie.”
The three musketeers: Brian De Palma, Spielberg, and Scorsese.
A boy and his gun: Paul Schrader poses with a familiar prop. (Below) Schroder and Nastassja Kinski on the set of Cat People. According to director John Milius, she said, “Paul, I always fuck my directors. And with you it was difficult:”
Towne and Payne with their newborn, Katharine, in July 1978. (Below) Also in 1978, Towne with Olympic Amazons, some to appear in Personal Best. Says Payne, “He abandoned everything for Personal Best, and went off on this wild journey that never ended.”
Says actor Bruce Dern, “What happened to Hal Ashby both what he did to himself, and they did to him, is as repulsive to me as anything I’ve seen in my forty years in the industry.”
* The “gross” means the “adjusted” gross, which is the studio’s share of the box office receipts, called “rentals,” minus certain costs, such as studio overhead. A percent of the gross is much more lucrative than a percent of the net, which is the gross minus so many expenses besides studio overhead that net participants usually get nothing at all.
† The negative cost is the cost of a picture from its inception through the completion of post-production (editing, sound mixing, etc.). It excludes sums the studio charges for making prints, overhead, distribution, advertising, and so on.
* A point is short for a percentage point of the profits.
* Hopper went on The Tonight Show in 1994 and claimed that he had fired Torn because Torn pulled a knife on him. Torn won a $475,000 judgment against Hopper for defamation. The judge ruled that Hopper was not a credible witness.
* Lens flair, a spiral-like reflection, occurs when the axis of the lens comes too close to the sun and the light bounces around the elements of the lens.
* Geffen says this never happened.
* Flashing means preexposing the raw film stock to low-level light.
* As of 1997, the picture had netted $4.1 million in rentals.
* A master shot is a long shot of an entire scene that is photographed first and then broken down into subsequent medium shots and close-ups.
† Outtakes.
* Actors paid by the day.
* Puzo says this meeting never took place.
* Rolling gross or rolling break-even was a novel idea that rendered gross profits—not to mention net profits—worthless. Essentially, it meant that distribution and other costs would be added on to the negative cost even while a film was in release, so that the break-even point kept rolling, or increasing. As some wag put it, “the break always rolled away from the filmmakers.”
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Down and Dirty Pictures
chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines-Sundance and Miramax- that have powered them. As he did in his acclaimed Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who, with his brother Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse. Biskind’s incisive account is loaded with vibrant anecdotes and outrageous stories, all of it blended into a fast-moving narrative.
“If Down and Dirty Pictures is valuable as business history, it’s an absolute treasure as a comedy of manners. A gifted reporter, Peter Biskind convinces nearly everyone in the industry to talk.”
–Jonathan V. Last, The Wall Street Journal
•
“Dishy, teeming, superbly reported...packed with lively inside anecdotes.... Down and Dirty Pictures is littered with tales of Weinstein’s atrocious misbehavior.”
–Owen Gleiberman. Entertainment Weekly
•
“As for Biskind...one thing seems certain: he’ll never eat lunch in Tribeca again.”
–Jeffrey Ressner, Time
•
“In Down and Dirty Pictures, Biskind takes on the movie industry of the 1990s and again gets the story.”
–Frank Rich, The New York Times
www.simonsays.com
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls Page 77