Rebels on the Backlot (52 page)

50 “swim with sharks …”: Russell, author interview.

50 “arguably dangerous”: Shaye, author interview.

51 “that was really arduous”: Russell, in Christine Spines, “Who Let the Underdogs Out?,”
Premiere
, October 2002.

52 “making your own point”: Russell, in
Premiere
, October 2002.

52 “I expected a twisted drama”: Shaye, author interview.

52 “We didn’t see what the hook was”: Ira Deutchman, author interview.

52 Harvey Weinstein got up and left: Larkin, author interview.

52 “Over my dead body”: Deutchman, author interview.

52 Russell felt like New Line had held him up: Deutchman, George Larkin, author interviews.

53 “when exciting things happen in Hollywood”: Peter McAlevey, “All’s Well That Ends Gruesomely,”
New York Times Magazine
, December 6, 1992.

54 “I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t seen
Dogs”
: Lynn Hirschberg, “Tarantino Bravo,”
Vanity Fair
, July 1994.

54 “made me want to make movies again”: Ibid.

54 $25,000 for
Pandemonium Reigned:
Confidential source, author interview.

54 embellishing them in longhand: Lawrence Bender, Stacey Sher, author interviews.

55 “up to the gold watch”: Sher, author interview.

55 “what he wrote are almost indefinable”: Peter Biskind,
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 167.

55 “went to make
Killing Zoe”:
Ibid., 167.

55 “Roger Avary’s writing in
Pulp Fiction”:
Quentin Tarantino, author interview.

56 “There’s not a catty bone in Quentin’s body”: Sher, author interview.

57 “to take a ‘story by’ credit?”: Biskind,
Down and Dirty Pictures
, 170.

57 “you don’t want people to be confused as to who the star is”: Ibid.

58 needed the financial security: Ibid.

58 the agreement had a confidentiality clause: Confidential source, author interview.

58 “Get me out of it. I can’t do it”: Confidential source, author interview.

59 $5,000 debt: Scott Spiegel, author interview.

59 “What’s so bad about being Paul Schrader?”: Spiegel, author interview.

59 “taking that idealism, and just shattering it”: Biskind,
Down and Dirty Pictures
, 171.

59 a list of everything he wanted on his next movie deal: Mike Simpson, author interview.

61 “I wasn’t a young guy anymore”: Mike Medavoy, author interview.

61 “And we had the screenplay free and clear”: Simpson, author interview.

61 “I’ve always regretted passing on it”: Mike De Luca, author interview.

62 “We’ve got to make this”: Richard Gladstein, Harvey Weinstein, author interviews.

62 “It’s a breakthrough”: Weinstein, author interview.

62 “Here was a chance for us to see if we could make movies”: Weinstein, author interview.

62 “She made a great proposal”: Simpson, author interview.

63 a signed release from TriStar: Weinstein, author interview.

64 Simpson had counted to four: Simpson, Weinstein, author interviews.

65 leaving the very different cultures of the two companies intact: Jeffrey Katzenberg, author interview.

65 “Neither of us thought it would be possible”: Chris McGurk, author interview.

66
autonomy
appeared on every page of the contract: Weinstein, author interview.

66 “The bench strength at Disney” was amazing: Weinstein, author interview.

67 “and shoot a couple of them”: Weinstein, author interview.

67 “Jeffrey laughed, and to his credit, said, ‘Go ahead’”: Weinstein, author interview.

68 more popular in Great Britain: Gladstein, author interview.

68 Travolta had lived there: Jaymes, author interview.

68 He was almost right, of course: Simpson, author interview.

68 “I didn’t see how he’d play a hood”: Weinstein, author interview.

69 He was soon cast as the boxer: Bender, author interview.

69 “gave the worst audition in the world”: Weinstein, author interview. 69 “you’re gonna have to blow his balls off”: Weinstein, author interview.

69 too late to call Moloney … without insulting him: Bender, author interview.

+70 “We had a child together, it’s called
Pulp Fiction”:
Sher, author interview.

70 “Gentiles didn’t get it right.” Connie Zastoupil, author interview.

70 “His excitement was contagious”: Gladstein, author interview.

70 “as if he hasn’t shaved or bathed in days …”: Lynn Hirschberg, “Tarantino Bravo,”
Vanity Fair
, July 1994.

71 “I masturbated in that bathrobe”:
Ibid.

71 “not the back of your fucking head …”:
Ibid.

71 “You’re destroying my concentration”: Jami Bernard,
Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies
(New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 208.

71 two-picture development deal: Bender, author interview.

71 Hamann counseled Thurman and Travolta: Craig Hamann, author interview.

71 “‘… they go berserk before they calm down’”: Eric Stoltz, in
Premiere
, March 2003.

72 “I wasn’t exactly reassured”: Bernard,
Quentin Tarantino
, 2.

73 “Nobody has to keep their promises”: Confidential source, author interview.

73 “I didn’t betray Cathryn. I like Cathryn.” Tarantino through Bumble Ward, author interview.

74 “a poet of violence”: David Wild,
Interview with Quentin Tarantino, Rolling Stone
, November 3, 1994.

74 “…cocktail of rampage and meditation”: Richard Corliss, “A Blast to the Heart,”
Time
, October 10, 1994.

74 They talked, they bonded: Cynthia Swartz, author interview.

74 “Cap’n Crunch … is the crème de la crème”: Margy Rochlin, Quentin Tarantino Interview.”
Playboy
, November 1994.

75 it was too late to do anything about it: Bender, author interview.

75 “This is what it’s like to be a rock star”: Bender, author interview.

75 “It was like New Cinema had arrived”: Weinstein, author interview.

76 “The storytelling is solid and the time flies”: Janet Maslin,
New York Times
, May 20, 1994.

76 Maslin’s review under their doors just before they went to vote: Gladstein, author interview.

77 Anderson was enamored of the hot young director: Mark Borman, author interview.

78 take the movie into a wide release: Weinstein, author interview.

78 “it was scary beyond belief …”: Mark Gill, author interview.

79 “Warner Bros and the other studios would have been scared of it”: Ken Auletta, “Beauty and the Beast: Harvey Weinstein Has Made Some Great Movies and a Lot of Enemies,”
New Yorker
, December 16, 2002.

80 “‘Let’s take something from the art house and possibly make it explode’”: Gill, author interview.

81 “I felt an explosion of how creative that movie was”: Paul Thomas Anderson, author interview.

81 with the volume turned down: Bernard,
Quentin Tarantino
, 239.

82 prompted Avary’s wife, Gretchen, to curse him out: Ibid., 238.

82 a night of triumph: Ibid., 244.

83 nine children from two marriages: Paul Thomas Anderson, author interview.

83 “My dad was an amazing, creative, lovable guy”: Anderson, author interview.

84 Edwina Gough: Anderson, author interview.

84 “we all fought all the time”: Anderson, author interview.

85 “It wasn’t that dark and dirty”: Anderson, author interview.

85 “there’s a lot of my dad in these movies”: George Thomas,
“Boogie Nights
Director Paul Thomas Anderson Is Back with Another Impossible-to-Ignore Movie,”
Akron Beacon Journal
, January 7, 2000.

85 “We get along all right”: Anderson, author interview.

85 “I loved to write as a kid”: Anderson, author interview.

85 “My name is Paul Anderson …”: Lynn Hirschberg, “His Way,”
New York Times
, December 19, 1999.

85 started eating five eggs a day: Patrick Goldstein, “The New New Wave,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 12, 1999.

86 adding music to the background: Anderson, author interview.

86 complications from diabetes: Anderson, author interview.

86 “I responded terribly to that”: Anderson, author interview.

86 “there were a lot of drugs”: Anderson, author interview.

86 deciding they had nothing to teach him: Hirschberg, “His Way.”

87 “He was very savvy, utterly self-confident”: John Lyons, author interview.

87 “There was something different about him …”: Michelle Satter, author interview.

87 “He has an incredible ear”: Lyons, author interview.

87 $800,000 budget: Robert Jones, author interview.

88 “I’m not a stand-in-the-background producer”: Jones, author interview.

88 “would find the film in postproduction”: Lyons, author interview.

88 “He wasn’t a final-cut director”: Jones, author interview.

89 “he couldn’t see the woods for the trees”: Jones, author interview.

89 “I’m not touching a frame”: Jones, author interview.

89 did not kill off the Philip Baker Hall character: Lyons, author interview.

89 it was then the keys were taken away: Jones, author interview.

89 “I’m different now”: Anderson, author interview.

90 “You’ll find out what I’m going through”: Jones, author interview.

90 “flipping Channel 98 and 99 at 2:00
A.M….
”: Lyons, author interview.

90 Satter made sure they showed Paul’s version: Satter, author interview.

90 “Go back to Europe”: Jones, author interview.

90 “It took me a long time to get over the experience”: Jones, author interview.

90 telling him to get lost: Jones, author interview.

91 “that will never, ever happen to me again”: David Konow, “PTA Meeting,”
Creative Screenwriting
7, no. 1 (January 2000).

91 Anderson recut the film: Satter, author interview.

91 “You’ve got to see this film”: Satter, author interview.

91 Russell was strictly a marijuana man: David O. Russell, author interview.

91 “They wanted him to roll over”: Lyons, author interview.

92 “I thought we
had
made the deal”: Bob Shaye, author interview.

92 Rob Morrow … wanted the main role: George Larkin, author interview.

92
Flirting
negotiation with Miramax: Russell, George Larkin, Janet Grillo, author interviews.

93 “Another insider to the negotiations …”: Confidential source, author interview.

93 “I didn’t know there was bad blood”: Shaye, author interview.

93 “She was quite contrite”: Shaye, author interview. 93 he never went to see
Flirting with Disaster
: Ira Deutchman, author interview.

93 he wanted to work on a bigger canvas …short shrift on its video release: Russell, author interview.

95 “He was the nicest person I’d ever run across”: David Jensen, author interview.

95 “He had a warmth that Steven doesn’t always show”: Jensen, author interview.

95 “he decided he wasn’t going to re-create that”: Steven Soderbergh, author interview.

95 “she was on retainer at Exxon for her psychic abilities”: Jensen, author interview.

95 left to their own devices for meals: Scott Collins, “The Funk of Steven Soderbergh,”
Los Angeles Times
, February 16, 1997.

95 “as soon as they committed … that’s when he left”: Jensen, author interview.

96 “She’s just insane”: Confidential source, author interview.

96 “it doesn’t look like they love each other”: Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret,
Interview with Steven Soderbergh, Positif
, 1993; reprinted in
Steven Soderbergh Interviews
, edited by Anthony Kaufman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 59.

96 “I didn’t know how to be stable”: Soderbergh, author interview.

96 “Whatever the thing was, it was just gone”: Jess Cagle, “Soderbergh’s Choice,”
Time
, January 8, 2001.

97 McCallum inspired his students: Jensen, Soderbergh, author interviews.

97 “the most purely talented filmmaker I’d ever seen”: Soderbergh, author interview.

97 a kid “who you want to be around”: Jensen, author interview.

97 “I was like, ‘Well, that’s different’”: Paul Ledford, author interview.

97 “… we would just collect there every day”: Soderbergh, author interview.

97 seeing
Jaws
“twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven times …”: Ledford, author interview.

97 “the first time I started thinking about how movies get made”: Soderbergh, author interview.

98 “in the front row ten minutes before the movie started”: Jensen, author interview.

98 “a very specific way that you’re supposed to use the knife”: Soderbergh, author interview.

98 editing jobs with another LSU alum, Brad Johnson: Soderbergh, author interview.

98 “he was faster than everyone else, and had better ideas”: John Hardy, author interview.

99 to create flashes of light on camera: Hardy, author interview.

99 “I just wanted it dealt with”:
Soderbergh Interviews
, 9.

92 wearing the same outfits: Soderbergh, author interview.

92 “It was me asking myself a series of questions”: Soderbergh, author interview.

100 “She just had incredible presence …”: Soderbergh, author interview.

100 Dollard family history: Pat Dollard, author interview.

101 “Acidos!” and someone would come running: Dollard, author interview.

101 Pat Dollard had logged five hundred calls: Dollard, author interview.

102 earlier fallout with Redford: Gavin Smith, “Hired Gun.”
Film Comment
, January 2001.

102 “what I needed to do was change what I was doing”:
Soderbergh Interviews
, 91.

103 He was probably right: Ibid., 76.

103 “I was sleepwalking in my life and my work and it shows”: Ibid., 152.