Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  Tell me about your efforts to sell Bone.

  I had to find a distributor, so I took the picture all over Hollywood and New York. That wasn’t easy because I only had a work print of the film. It was ten reels of picture and ten reels of matching track, which meant there were twenty reels that had to be transported from one place to the other. I was the only one who could do it and, frankly, I was the only one I would trust with the reels. If I’d lost that print it would have been the end of me, so I personally escorted it around. It was difficult lugging all of this stuff around from office building to office building, screening room to screening room. I was often mistaken for some kind of delivery boy and doormen would try to send me around to the service entrance. But I managed to get the film to all the screenings and showed it to Columbia Pictures. That screening was supervised by Bosley Crowther, who was a notable critic for the New York Times that I greatly admired. Crowther liked my movie, but Columbia weren’t interested in buying it. I then showed Bone to David Brown at Warner Bros. He said, “Oh, I’m afraid I have a meeting scheduled for today, so I won’t be able to stay for the duration of the picture.” I immediately knew that was his excuse to get up and leave the screening if he didn’t like what he saw. Then there was a moment in the film where Bone is pulling books off shelves and he picks one up that happens to be The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron. That moment intrigued Brown because as it turned out, he had purchased the rights to Styron’s book when he was over at 20th Century Fox. It was merely a coincidence, but it kept him in his seat. So, Brown watched the whole of the film, but he was concerned about certain elements of Bone that he felt were controversial and difficult. So, Brown passed on the movie, too. I then hauled the twenty reels back over to New York and screened the picture for Joseph E. Levine, who had produced The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge for Mike Nichols. In fact, Levine asked to see Bone again and, after the second screening, he compared my work with that of Nichols, which, of course, was a great compliment. He then said, “Kid, let me be honest with you: if you had walked in here a year or so ago I would have tied you to that chair! Unfortunately, I’m having problems with financing at the moment, so I don’t have the money to buy your picture or pay for prints and advertising.” And that was it. Our hopes were dashed again. All of this was a little frustrating as Levine had told us to wait and give him another look at the movie — despite his knowing that he was in no position to buy it. Incidentally, I would always insist on staying in the screening room and supervising the exhibition of the film.

  Is that practice unusual?

  Most of the executives had never heard of a filmmaker being present at the screening of their movie. They don’t ever want you to be there and the simple reason for that is because they can take phone calls, or talk during the screening, or even switch reels without you knowing. They can’t do that when the director is sitting in the same room as them. But I wouldn’t show the picture if they wouldn’t allow me to be present. I would announce that I was going to leave with my movie and they would always acquiesce and I’d be invited to stay for the screening. Generally, the reactions to Bone were quite good, but people were scared of the racism aspect of it and the sex scene between a Black man and a White woman. A lot of the dialogue, which was highly inflammatory, also concerned them.

  What can you tell me about your dealings with the infamous producer and distributor Jack H. Harris and how he became interested in acquiring Bone?

  Well, firstly, let me say that Jack Harris is an extremely nice man, and I’ve kept up a very friendly relationship with him over the years. [8] Jack is a lovely guy, but he knows absolutely nothing about movies! [Chuckles] Jack made some money with The Blob and he still continues to make money with The Blob. He did put out a number of other exploitation movies, but he was certainly not a class-A distributor. However, of all the people I showed Bone to, Jack was the only one who stood up when the lights came on and said, “I want your picture. How much money do you need?” He stepped right up and bought it. Of course, he bought it for all the wrong reasons because he thought he could sell Bone as a blaxploitation movie like Shaft or Superfly. He was completely wrong about that as Bone was not that kind of picture. It was a comedy, but he tried to sell it as a drama. When I tried to explain this to him, he said, “Well, I’m not going to stand in the aisle and tell the audience when to laugh.” I said, “Jack, that’s not the point. When you advertise a picture as a drama and people come in and discover it’s actually a comedy they are not going to be happy. If they order vanilla ice cream and you give them chocolate ice cream, they won’t swallow it. People have to buy a ticket to see a movie they want to see. You can’t deceive them and show them something that they didn’t expect.” Jack did not understand that. He kept trying to sell Bone first as a blaxploitation movie, then later he changed the title to Housewife and tried to put it out as a sex film. I asked Jack where he got that title from and he replied, “Well, there is a housewife in the film.” I mean, he was just going in the wrong direction.

  I’ve seen the lurid print ads that Harris sanctioned that exclaim: “White meat, black bone — what a dish!”

  Yeah, it was very embarrassing, but the ad campaign in England was even worse! I went over there and met with the British distributors and explained what Jack had done. They politely listened and were incredibly sympathetic. They seemed to be so intelligent, but of course, a sophisticated British accent can fool you into mistakenly believing that you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing. Unfortunately, that was not the case because these people were equally stupid. They put the picture out over there as Dial Rat for Terror! [Sighs] It couldn’t have been a worse or more inappropriate title for a picture that was supposed to be a comedy. They just didn’t get it either. I felt there was an audience out there for Bone. I mean, Jack held a preview at a rather disreputable theater called the World Theater. It was located on Hollywood Boulevard and was a third-run theater that is long gone now. I told Jack that the audience at the theater would not be the audience for Bone as there was only one Black man in the film. Of course, he wouldn’t listen and said, “Let’s just arrange the preview and see what happens.” So, we did and, to my surprise, the picture played wonderfully. It was a predominantly Black audience and they all laughed in the right places and understood the subtleties and nuances of the film. That was probably the first time that I really felt confident about the movie. I knew it was good but I now realized that it could really work for an audience. Jack then arranged a second screening over at a theater in Westwood, which was a more upscale and fashionable theater. Bone went over well again — this time with a White audience — so I really knew we had something cooking. But when Jack started with the wrong title and the wrong ad campaign, we were hobbling the picture before it really had a chance to fly.

  What was the response from critics?

  Some of the critics, like Judith Crist in New York, liked the picture very much. We got a lot of good reviews but, naturally, Jack wasn’t going to go out and spend money taking ads out to reproduce positive critical quotes. That was not the way he distributed the picture. Good notices really mean nothing if you don’t make use of them, but of course it costs money to exploit good reviews. You have to be able to take ads out and spend a good deal of revenue to try and promote all the audiences to come into the theater. A picture like Bone required that quality of distribution, but that’s not what happened. We did finally find a home for the movie on home video many years later. Since it has been released on DVD, Bone has enjoyed fabulous reviews. It’s earned four-star ratings, been picture of the week in various magazines and publications, and received a great deal of attention. So, the movie has finally found an audience after all this time and that’s wonderful. I always knew that someday people would discover Bone. If the picture had been received the way I hoped it would back at the time of its original release, I believe it would have changed my entire career.

  Changed it how exactly?


  If Bone had been appreciated artistically within the circles I hoped it would, I think I may have gotten a chance to make a more esoteric type of film. Instead, I was immediately invited to do a blaxploitation picture because Yaphet Kotto was so good people thought, Oh, this guy can really direct Black actors — as if there was a difference between directing White and Black actors. So, I got to make Black Caesar and Hell up in Harlem and made a lot of money. I enjoyed some success, but those were not the kinds of movies I would have gotten had Bone been better received. I always felt that I would get a chance to do the kind of quality pictures that Mike Nichols did like Carnal Knowledge. You know, it’s odd when you look back at the direction your career has gone in, but as long as you get a chance to continue making movies life goes on. Again, I don’t think I could ever have been a studio director anyway. I wouldn’t have been comfortable or happy in such a restrictive system where you experience all kinds of supervision and collaboration. They say that making movies is a collaborative process, but I’m not a good collaborator. I like to do everything. I like to be in charge of every aspect. Again, I just want people to do everything that I tell them to do.

  Bone still has important things to say about race relations in the United States, but how do you feel about the film today?

  I feel that Bone is just as uncomfortable and difficult for audiences to deal with now as it was when it was first made. The picture played at an arthouse in Chicago about five years ago and the management of the theater said that the Black people who attended the screening enjoyed the movie, but a lot of the White people were offended by it. Remember, this was more than thirty-five years after the film was first released! People in America think that the racial situation has changed because we now have a Black president, but there is still a lot of racial unrest out there. Every once in a while, something fiercely divisive, like the O. J. Simpson trial, suddenly arrives and stirs up all those old tensions and hatreds again. It is the same thing with anti-Semitism. People will often say, “Oh, that’s old, that’s all over with!” But it’s still very much out there, simmering under the surface. Sometimes a lot of the shadowy side of life in our country is brushed away or ignored. We think the sun is shining in America and that kind of unpleasantness is gone, but it may not be so. The darkness is still there and you can’t be too surprised when racism and anti-Semitism becomes visible again because it never goes away. It’s always there and for as long as human beings continue to exist it probably always will be.

  Black Caesar (1972)

  How did Black Caesar become your second directorial offering?

  It started when I was approached by the manager of Sammy Davis, Jr. to write a picture for him. Sammy was tired of playing second fiddle to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and wanted to be the hero or leading part in his own movie. They were offering to pay me $10,000 to write a treatment, and so I started to think of some ideas. I realized that Sammy was a little guy, like Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney were little guys, but both Robinson and Cagney still had a formidable screen presence. I particularly remembered and liked Robinson in Little Caesar. I thought we could do our own movie about a Black gangster in Harlem and call it Black Caesar. I then wrote a treatment and delivered it to them, but they never paid me the $10,000. Sammy’s manager came back and said, “Sammy is in trouble with the IRS and his taxes. He hasn’t got any money and he can’t pay you.” So, what was I going to do, sue Sammy Davis Jr. for $10,000? No, I just took the treatment back and decided to keep it. Then I got a call from Samuel Arkoff [1] at American International Pictures, who was starting to make some blaxploitation movies like Coffy and Foxy Brown, stuff like that. Sam basically said, “Listen, we’re looking for some action pictures that can star Black actors. I saw that movie you made with Yaphet Kotto and thought you did a very good job directing him. Do you have anything?” I said, “Well, you’ve come to the right place because it just so happens that I’ve got a treatment downstairs in the car that might interest you.” So, I ran down, got the treatment out of my trunk, brought it back up to Sam, and we made a deal within fifteen minutes. We then made the picture for something like half a million dollars.

  It’s interesting that you selected a gangster vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr. considering the rumours that he and other members of The Rat Pack reputedly had Mafia connections.

  Sammy and all those guys claimed to have Mafia connections, but that was because they all played in nightclubs. In those days, all of the nightclubs in Las Vegas were owned by the Mafia. That’s how people like Sammy and Frank Sinatra formed those relationships, but they were never really “in with the mob” in any serious or meaningful way. The mobsters enjoyed their music and seeing them perform and just liked to hang out with them. That’s really as far as it went.

  How did you find Fred Williamson for the lead role of Tommy Gibbs?

  Fred had just made a successful picture called — believe it or not — The Legend of Nigger Charley, which had stirred up some controversy. [2] I mean, who ever heard of a title like The Legend of Nigger Charley? Anyway, he had this movie out and it was a hit, which meant that Fred was now considered a viable Black star. Somebody I knew was friendly with Fred’s manager and they arranged for us to meet. We had a cup of coffee together and we hit it off immediately. Fred was acceptable to AIP and so he was cast in the movie and became the Black Caesar.

  Did you change or remodel the character at all after casting Williamson?

  No, not really, except that Fred was a very attractive, good-looking guy as opposed to Sammy who was a little bit more of a character — certainly not a sex symbol. Fred was a very handsome leading man and we played off of that. He had a fabulous wardrobe and really looked great and imposing in the part.

  Whereas other contemporary efforts such as Shaft updated the forties model of the private eye melodrama, Black Caesar follows the conventional mechanics of the traditional Hollywood gangster film, particularly Scarface and Little Caesar.

  I was definitely attracted to stories like Scarface, Little Caesar, and The Public Enemy because those were the kinds of films I enjoyed as a kid — the Cagney, Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart films. I loved Warner Bros. movies very much, and this was my chance to do my own Warner Bros. gangster movie in what was, at that time, modern dress. Black Caesar followed the same established pattern of the old gangster films where you saw the rise of the gangster and then his eventual collapse and destruction. In every other contemporary blaxploitation picture that was being made in the early 1970s, the Black hero was always utterly infallible. He dispensed violence and defeated everybody and usually ran off with a lot of White women. There was no downfall for any of those characters, and I didn’t find that particularly interesting. So, this was a completely different story because it didn’t fit the cliché of the typical blaxploitation movie with its Black superhero. Tommy was a vulnerable character with a lot of flaws and insecurities. He was betrayed by the people he loved and eventually ended up back in the slums where he began. He was not impervious and all-powerful. I thought we made a legitimate film in Black Caesar rather than a cliché-ridden blaxploitation movie that people were used to seeing back then.

  You have previously stated that certain people had no desire to follow you into the slum areas where you shot the film for fear of being accosted. Did you encounter any problems during the shoot?

  Well, we were making a non-union movie. We couldn’t afford to pay for Teamsters and for the expensive New York unions that were around in those days. Shooting in New York was prohibitively expensive and we couldn’t afford any of that. So, when they found out that we were there, the Teamsters and the union people came around to harass us and stop us from shooting. We then drove up to Harlem, and when we eventually reached 125th Street, the Teamsters and the union people immediately turned around and went back. They were not going to follow us into Harlem. Frankly, they were scared to go up there. We weren’t scared to go up there because we were going to make our movie. We felt perfectly
safe, but then the local gangsters in Harlem came around and wanted to shake us down for money. There had been a movie shot up there previously with Anthony Quinn called Across 110th Street that was a big studio picture. [3] They had arrived in Harlem with all the trailers, the portable toilets, and dressing rooms, but discovered that they had to pay off the gangsters in order to be allowed to shoot. So, when we got there, they also came around to see us, but we had hardly any equipment and only a small crew. The tough guys immediately said, “You can’t shoot here. This is our neighbourhood and you have to pay us.” I didn’t have any money to give them, and so I said, “Hey, you gentlemen look great. Can you act? We’re looking for guys to play Fred Williamson’s henchmen in the movie and you guys would be fantastic.” The next thing I know, I’d hired all of them to be in the movie. These gangsters loved the experience of shooting a film and the prospect of seeing themselves up on the big screen. We even put these guys on the poster. In fact, when we opened the picture at the Cinerama Theatre on Broadway, all these gangsters were standing around in front of the theater signing autographs! So we never had any trouble in Harlem. Anything we wanted, we got. On one occasion I happened to mention that we needed something that looked like heroin for a particular scene. The next thing I know, they had arrived back on the set with a real bag of heroin. I quickly said, “Get that out of here now!” That was the last thing I needed.