WEBVTT - James Toback 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:09.720 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:16.800 thing my guest today, James Tobak is no ordinary filmmaker. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:22.400 He's no ordinary anything. Tobak has strong opinions and doesn't 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.800 forget things easily. Robert Downey Junior described Tobak as a 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:33.080 revenge specialist for a rapid fire education in Tobak's personal 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.400 demons and obsessions. Just review the titles of some of 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:41.160 his films, The Gambler, The pick Up Artist, Love and Money, 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:46.520 Black and White. James Tobak makes movies on his own terms. 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:49.920 No one hovers over him to ensure he pleases a 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.920 mass audience or conforms to the needs of a studio. Recently, 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:59.120 my friend Jimmy and I made the documentary Seduced and Abandoned, 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.800 which premier at can and will air on HBO starting October. 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:11.840 This is the world and film business. These people are 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.960 here doing what selling films they have, are trying to 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.679 find a film to grab. The documentary began as a 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.480 chronicle of our attempt to raise money for a film, 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.479 but soon became a study of the tension between art 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.880 and commerce. It's about how difficult it's become to secure 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.880 financing for independent films. Just for argument's sake, the kind 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:35.080 of movie we're thinking of couldn't go much lower than that. 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.120 But what would be the number that that cast would 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:48.960 be a feasible bet? A quarter five million? I'm too 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.559 old for that, you know. We spoke to Martin Scorsese, 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:56.440 Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Roman Polanski, among others. 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.240 But no matter how challenging the climate gets for independ 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.960 in filmmakers, I have no doubt that James Tobec will 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.480 find a way to fund his next project. It's clear 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.440 he was put on this earth to make movies. Film 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:16.520 as a child was probably the primary treat of my life. 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:22.679 Maybe watching tennis at Forest Hills, which is where the 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:26.480 Open was played then, and or going to New York 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:29.160 Giant baseball game so I could watch Whitey Lockman and 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.240 Willie Mays. They'd probably be at an equal footing. But 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.360 I loved going to the movies, and it was also 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.799 a way of entering a world that I found dazzling 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.600 and beautiful and intriguing and appealing. And of course there 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.320 was no TV, there were no computers, there was no 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.840 other screen. There was that big screen in a theater. 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:54.200 So it had a specialness that it's completely lost today. Um, 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:57.560 I didn't know that I was going to get it 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:02.840 directly involved as a filmmaker. For years later, I remained fascinated. 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.840 I watched movies when you didn't study film in school. No, 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:09.040 I never took a film course in my life to 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.680 this day. When I got out of Harvard, I figured 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.760 I'll be d Harvard English Comparative Literature. And I did 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.600 teach comparative literature. And I wrote a book which was 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:24.400 called Jim, A Record of my rather wildlife in Jim 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.239 Brown's house in the Hollywood Hills. And it wasn't until 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:33.840 seventy two, when I started an autobiographical novel called The Gambler, 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.120 that I realized halfway through it that I was conceiving 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:42.160 it as a film. And um. Eventually it fell into 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:46.000 the hands of Mike Metavoi, who was the movie agent 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.360 who ran I C M S Movie division at the time, 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.080 Marvin Josephs, and I think it was called and Linnez, 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.200 my literary agent, gave it to him. He called me up. 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.880 He said this movie is gonna get made. I said great. 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.440 He said, um, I know who's perfect for it? And 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.840 I said who's that and he said Redford And I said, well, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.720 the guy's jew from New York and he said, Redford 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.720 is a great actor. He can play anything. By then, 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.000 by that time, I had already shared the script with 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.240 de Niro, who was a friend of Lucy Saroyan's, and 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.640 Lucy was my best friend, and um, de Niro had 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.160 gone up to my class with me, learned the script, 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.800 knew every move and where was in his career He 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:31.120 was at the no he was just doing mean streets. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.000 It was DeNiro very beginning. Yeah, but he was the 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:39.159 guy everyone at the actor's studio was talking about. Everyone 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:41.480 was saying that was much like everyone was saying at 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.200 the actor's studio, de Niro is going to be the guy. 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:46.640 He's the guy. They always saying it. So DeNiro came 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:48.440 up to class with me. He got his hair cut 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:50.960 by Carol at Sassoon where I get He wore the 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.120 car down blazer and he had the part down. Now 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:56.840 Metavoy comes into play, says he's going to get it 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.719 done and says in addition to Redford, he says, now, 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:02.520 who do you want to have direct this movie? And 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.280 I said, well, I'll direct it. He said, what have 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:06.160 you directed? I said nothing. He said, well, I mean, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.240 you know, like shorts or something. I said nothing. So 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.040 we can't direct the movie out of nowhere. We gotta 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.479 get a director to do this movie. So he gave 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.120 me a list of directors. He said, these are the 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.560 ten best directors in the world. They turned out to 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.320 be his ten director clients and um. He asked me 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:22.640 to research them and see which one I like best. 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.760 And Carol Rice, who had done Is a Door, which 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.760 I loved and Saturday night and Sunday morning I felt 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.360 would be ideal, and he called Carol sent him the script. 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:34.680 Carol called me up and said, I don't know this 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:38.640 world gambling New York. Uh, I do know. The character 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.600 intrigues me. Will you come to London and work with 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:45.280 me for a year or so and maybe I'll be 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:47.599 able to do it? So I thought, why not? It 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.000 sounds like an interesting experience. If I don't like it, 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.080 I can always come back. So Paramount gave me a check. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.000 I cashed it, got on a plane, and spent the 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.720 next year seven hours a day in Carol Rice's study, 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:04.480 developing what I could only describe as the perfect mentor 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.240 protege relationship. He taught me. He was my film school. 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.440 Have you got an idea? How much you all forty 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:18.520 four and change forty four dimes? That's six Eldoradosto dollars. 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.000 Acts at ain't just numbers. So when you look back 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:26.440 on that period in the seventies, wasn't exciting for you? 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.040 You must have been. I mean to this day you 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.200 enjoy this place putting the filmmakers who are great admirers 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.720 of yours and your work. What was it like for 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:37.599 you back then when those people were at their height, 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.760 when Copola was making films and all of these people 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.800 were It was just a different world back then, the 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.200 completely different world. It was as if you were nothing 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.360 was corporate. You were just on your own. You were 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.920 given money and you made a movie and you made 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:55.160 the movie you wanted to make and the way you wanted. Now, 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:57.360 I've always done that, but I've had to take much 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.720 much less money than other people are getting to do it. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.400 I can't work any other way. That's the way I 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.000 learned how to work. And by the way I learned 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.440 that from Carol Rice to The number one rule with 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:14.000 Carol was decide what you want and then make your 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.960 wishes clear to everybody you're working with. That way of 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:23.000 making movies as a fulfillment of an intention is something 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.600 that has always stayed with me. Invent it, create it, 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:33.000 write it, direct it, edited or totally self. Yeah. So therefore, 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.160 when you're at this point in the seventies where Carol Rice, 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:38.400 who was a very well regarded director back then, he 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.600 makes The Gambler con was a huge movie star back then. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.480 But um, were their turns you might have made? Were 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.880 their choices you might have made. I'm assuming you could 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:51.240 have hitched your wagon to the system, absolutely, and you 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:53.520 could have gotten into moving with it. Without naming names 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:55.600 because I don't want to be penny about it, but 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.920 movies you might have done, offers you might have gotten, 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:01.840 forks and road you might have taken that you didn't take. 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.280 Were those opportunities there for you? There were many? Um 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:12.160 what happened that there was never I wasn't constitutionally opposed 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.040 to the idea of well, I know I could never 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.840 have done that. I could do in other areas in 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.040 my life, not in that I am a pri any 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.600 area except movies. You cannot get me to do it 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.040 with movies. I just can't do it. I'll take the 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:29.200 money and run. I won't take the money and be 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:34.400 a performing Whoreor but what I could do was read 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.120 someone else's script and say, is this something I could 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.920 make my own and do a decent job with? And 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:43.720 the answer on the various offers that I got, which 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.920 I hardly ever get anymore, and I used to get 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.600 many of, was always the same. No, I don't believe 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.160 in it. I'm not excited by it. If I have 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.480 invented a film and written it and created it, I 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:57.440 know no one else can do it the way I can, 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:59.720 or I don't want it done except the way I 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.120 want it done. I would never say that about somebody 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.960 else's script. There has to be someone else at In fact, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:08.600 I'm shocked that the guy who wrote that doesn't want 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:11.040 to do it himself. I can't imagine that he wants 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.520 to turn it over to somebody else. And if you 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.480 don't have that kind of faith, I don't know how 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:17.679 you do movies. I wouldn't be able to do it. 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.640 You need a heavy dose of megalomania and a heavy 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.760 dose of humility. It's a combination of the two. Where 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.600 does your humility come from from how do you access 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:32.520 your humility? The humility is that you say to your collaborators, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.560 you can either enable me to achieve what I know 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.840 I can do with this movie, or you can prevent 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.640 me from achieving it. I am at your mercy. If 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:45.760 you can give me what I know, you can give 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:49.679 me humility or manipulation. No, it's humility because I know 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.120 that if they're not all there for me, and if 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.920 I've made a wrong selection, I'm gonna I'm doomed. But 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:58.760 the point is that let's go back to the seventies 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.960 and talk about just uh, name two directors who you 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:04.960 admired what they were doing when you were coming up, 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.200 You were looking at their films. Now you're in the business, 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.280 now you're making films. Who do you turned on by 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.640 his filmmaker is number one by a mile, And then 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.199 behind him were a few. And the first two I 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:23.199 would say were Visconti and go dar Um. I would 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.679 say new Vell vague people. Yeah, I would not. There 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:31.760 were no American directors at that time. I liked a 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:36.439 lot um the very people we've used in our masterpiece, 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:41.040 seduced and abandoned Copelus Scorsese, Polanski, and Bert Lucci a 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.079 little bit later became the four directors that I was 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.640 most enamored of. My earlier icon when I was at 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.959 Harvard watching his early movies was Trufaux and then, as 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.199 I said, go dar Visconti, in particular The Leopard, which 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:58.080 I regarded as an absolute masterpiece. None of the Americans 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:00.360 were on the scene at the time. Even Cooper No, 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:04.520 I I like you were indifferent. Coper no not indifferent. 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.080 I liked him, I just didn't put him on the 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.680 same level. The only movie of Kubricks that I absolutely 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.360 thought was was I liked Paths of Glory a lot. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.200 I thought Lolita was a great, great movie. I still do. 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.560 Was television ever on the menu for you? Ever? Never? 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.959 And even as film has become less of an opportunity, 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:22.839 shall we say, you might say that the film is 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.240 less special and film has diminished you all the word 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.320 you might one might use how to describe the rather 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.200 sickly condition of the movie business from one standpoint. From 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:36.280 from our standpoint. Uh, many people, of course have and 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.640 some very big names have migrated. Big director's names, I 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.920 mean colleagues of yours that you admire and some of 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.199 them you worked with, Levinson and so forth, have migrated 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:49.800 to television and you haven't. Well, then, um uh, television 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:56.600 was still television. It's now something different. Cable is responsible, Yes, 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.520 cable is responsible. It still is in transition. I like 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:02.760 Breaking Bad a lot. I think it's terrific, But you've 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.280 got commercials all the way through it. To me, that's 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.280 the reason right there. You cannot work in a medium 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:13.240 that interrupts the your movie seven times to sell toilet paper. 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.319 I'm sorry, you just can't do that. So when television 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:23.800 was commercial interrupted television it was not viable. Now that 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:28.200 there are big screens at home with excellent quality, and 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.400 you have serious, ambitious work, much more of it being 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.320 done on cable than in film, I would be open 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:36.600 to it. I am open to an HBO in particular 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:40.040 because of a great relationship there. I like these guys 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.480 and it's a viable place to work. In the seventies, 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:47.720 though Tobac wouldn't even consider working in television. He made 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.480 three films, The Gambler, Fingers and Loving Money, which came 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.319 out in It was about then the Tobec observed a 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.280 change in the business, the era of the studio head, 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:05.520 an individual deciding what gets done is beginning to crack. 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.319 It's going to take quite a while, as you know. 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:11.360 Ron Meyer, in one of the more revealing aspects of 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:16.040 Seduced an Abandon about the movie business, says something really 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:20.760 startlingly relatory. He's talking about the seventies and the eighties. 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.079 He says, I could walk into Universal or any studio 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:26.440 for that matter, if he had the elements this movie, 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:29.199 and they do it that day on the spot. Now, 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.000 he said, I, as head of NBC Universal, would never 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.160 do anything unless I had the team with me. That 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.880 transition was beginning in the eighties. Uh, there were not 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.520 that many people. I think it was the it's the 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:49.319 corporatization of movies, the corporate ownership of movies, the conglomerate 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:54.000 ownership where there's less trust, where it's who are you exactly? 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.960 Then you're And I noticed that as I was trying 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.680 to get my next movie exposed financed, because a fairly 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:05.280 expensive film, well it's eighteen million, and that would be 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:10.559 like sixty five today. Big movie shot in Paris and Vermont, Wisconsin, 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:15.040 New York. I had Nastasia Kinsky, Rudolph Naree of Harvey 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:20.320 Kitel B B Anderson, Pierre Claimante and your stational cast. Yes, 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:22.880 Rhode It produced it, directed it, and acted in it. 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.480 The problem was I could not get it financed. Jeff Berg, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.760 my agent, was over ten. Everyone turned it down. And 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.920 what happened well, including David Bagelman, who was running MGM 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:35.880 U A. He'd already turned it down. But I found 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.960 myself with two million dollars cash, which I won in Vegas. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:43.560 By the way, less the I R S be listening, 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:47.080 my net figure with Vegas is about minus fifty million, 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.720 so please don't tell me I made money that way, 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:52.760 as anyone in Vegas will vouch. But in any event, 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.800 I had that two million. This is nineteen eighty one, 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.520 and I thought, Christ, I'm not gonna hang around here 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:05.000 anymore pounding on doors chasing money. I'll just bribe Bagelman 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.120 and get the movie done. So I walked into his 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:11.680 office and with two suitcases and to make with your 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:16.000 Vegas winnings. Yeah, and let's say, without filling in the details, 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:18.680 it got a green light and how much money do 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.120 they give you to make the movie? Five hundred thousand? 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.840 So I was at minus a million five. In other words, 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:25.920 I paid a million five to have it done. He 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:27.840 gave you a budget? How much? Oh, he gave me 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.520 a budget of eighteen million, of which I received five 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.720 hundred thousand. So my net for the movie was minus 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.160 a million and a half. Yeah, but I didn't care. 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:37.760 I wanted to make the movie. So you go and 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.800 make Exposed and now you have Now you're making a 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:42.840 movie and you have a good amount of money. What's 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.800 the experience? I learned that I could handle very easily 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:50.760 a big, ambitious, eighty day shoot, just as easily and 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.440 skillfully as I could handle a twenty day shoot. That 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.320 I had the knowledge and the cinematic skills to take 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.520 a big canvas through a kind of epic size movie 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.640 with plots and subplots and diverse characters, and do it 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:10.640 with great quality. It was a really ambitious, interesting and 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.280 what happened to the film when it came out uh 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:16.760 Sitan sound The b f I British On Institutes publication 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.560 Tom Millne referred to me as the American Buna Well, 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.400 and I got some sensational reviews. Dave Kerr, who writes 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:25.520 for the Times, that picked the best movie of the year, 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.760 and there were some people who didn't like it. It 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.800 was sort of a mixed response, some great, some pretty good, 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.400 some negative. Quentin Tarantino today still refers to it as 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:36.560 his favorite movie of mine. He knows the whole script 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.680 by heart. He literally knows all of Harvey Keitel's language 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:41.800 word for word, and it came out on how many 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.920 screens I think eight hundred, which at the time was 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.720 a lot. Yeah, eight hundred. What was your writing career 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.880 like during this time of year you're making these three films, 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:54.040 But at the same time, the guy that wrote The 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:58.680 Gambler and also wrote Bugsy you wrote Bugsy win Next, No, 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.400 not next, Sorry I didn't I Bugsy Next. The next 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:06.520 thing I wrote was The Pickup Artist, right, Warren't I 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.240 sold it to Warrant for him to act in again. 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:11.119 He was supposed to act in Loving Money, and we're 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.000 supposed to act in The Pickup Artists. Then de Niro 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:15.239 was supposed to act in The Pickup Artist, and we 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.160 were all behind DeNiro doing it. Warren't had already set 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:20.760 it up with Diller at Fox, and we had a 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:25.280 reading at de Niro's apartment, and it became very clear 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.480 to Warren and me that not only was DeNiro too old. 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:32.320 The idea of a guy of that age was ridiculous. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.240 It should be a guy twenty years younger. And he 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:37.520 asked me to make the call to de Niro to 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.760 say this, and as I was about to make a goal. 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:42.880 No one knows this is true except me, but it's 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:47.760 literally the case, he called me and said, listen, I've 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:49.399 been thinking a lot. If you want me to do 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:51.480 the movie, I'm gonna do the movie. But you know, 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.239 I've been thinking more and more about this. This is 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:56.960 not a guy forty years old, thirty years old. You 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:58.960 really need a guy like twenty one years old in 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.000 this part. I said, you know what, Warren and I 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.080 have been talking about the same thing, and in one 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:07.120 smooth conversation we decided to go literally with the guy 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.040 young enough to be the son of the age range 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:12.600 we've been thinking about. So now now we had a 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.480 whole new casting agenda, and I met every well known 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.160 actor in that nineteen to twenty four year old range. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.800 Never felt really excited about anyone. And then Brian Hamill 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.159 and David McLeod on the same day said you know, 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:30.840 you should look into this guy, Robert Downey. What has 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:32.919 he done? And I looked in five minutes in a 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:36.000 little movie called Tough Turf, and a little bit more 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:41.040 in one of those uh Rodney Dangerfield movies. And he 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.720 was also a about to be fired sub regular on 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:47.840 Saturday Night Live. In other words, he was a reject 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.119 loser at that point and a drug addict, and a 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.720 very clear drug addict. The minute you met him and 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.520 he came in, and I said to myself, this is 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.480 the guy. And I knew all the pitfalls right away. 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:01.600 I could see he was a drug addict. I could 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:04.000 see he was a liar. I could see he was 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:06.920 in this horrible relationship with Sarah Jessica Parker, who was 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:09.439 a big star. She had done Annie on Broadway, and 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.080 he felt totally intimidated by her inferior. But there was 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:19.240 something about him. I felt he had a kind of jerky, mercurial, 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:25.719 unthreatening charm for who, well, like nobody, but like that 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:30.040 character must no no, Well a little I felt yes. 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.960 But I thought, what he can do is allow I 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:37.080 can allow this character to cruise relentlessly and get away 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:39.919 with it because he is who he is, and it 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.720 was the personality he had, and I thought, this guy 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.560 can make the movie work. I felt that he did 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.600 the best he could given that he was an ongoing 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.280 drug addict at the time, and he was lying about it, 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:54.359 and and to my assistant, who was fooling me, because 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:57.399 my assistant I really trusted, and she kept assuring me 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:00.679 that everything was okay and he was only doing an weekends, 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.520 and in reality she was getting drugs for him. She 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:05.520 was later murdered by the way it was, and he 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.120 was She became his assistant afterward. It was a very 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.680 crazy story. Then we did Two Girls and a Guy 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:15.119 years later, and that's when we reached our perfection of collaboration, 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:17.960 where I feel it's the best work he could ever do, 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:20.320 not only that he has ever done. I don't think 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.239 he can do anything beyond that. Everything he can do 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.119 is on display in that movie. They are not protestations, 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.240 they are outright denials. It's it's beyond desires, beyond choice, 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.639 it's fallacking capacity. It's an inoperative shaft. I'm telling you, 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:37.000 if you were to put a gun to my head 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.680 and say fuck her, she's gorgeous, she needs you, it's easy. 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.040 No one will know. I'd say, pull, pull the trigger, 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.040 empty the chamber into my head, because that's when you 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:49.080 did Bugsy? What year was that? Okay, so over twenty 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:51.680 years ago, and you're coming out of the eighties where 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.160 you Bagelman and so forth and whatever other films you made, 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:57.040 and you go and you're a pure writer. Now you're 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.720 writing for baby big movie beat. He was still making 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.960 big movies back then. Uh and uh. Levinson was at 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.879 the top of his game and directing still then. Was 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:10.399 that sort of the end of your career as the 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.120 writer for hire? Did you just stop right then and say, 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:15.919 I just won't do this anymore. I can't do it anymore, 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.080 because you could have had a career there as well, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.159 where you could have been just tearing it up as 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.679 a writer for hire. Did you decide I thought I 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:26.080 was going to direct Bugs. I wouldn't have written it otherwise. 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.200 I was hired by Warren where you would never give 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:32.480 your films, as you said, as you would never orfer 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:34.880 your children, so to speak, and give them to other 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:36.560 people to direct. Why did you do it in the 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.439 case if I didn't? He asked me. He owned the 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:41.440 rights to a book about Bugsy See, and he wanted 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:42.959 to deployent to play Bugs. He said, do you want 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:45.400 to write a Bugsy Siegle movie for me. I said, yeah, 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.240 he knew that. I knew that I wanted to direct 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.160 the movie. He didn't promise me. He's very well as 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.960 Warren as I. You and I both know, yes, is 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:56.560 very very careful with his language. He will not make 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.280 a promise he doesn't keep. So I was not naive 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:02.800 he was not promising it. But I felt, when the 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.239 time comes, my script will be so good, he'll be 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:07.760 so excited, there won't be a problem. I'll be hired. 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:12.359 I turned into script. He said, it's great script. I 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.480 love it. I'm gonna do it. I said, well, um, 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.240 should I come out today to l A? And he said, 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:22.040 what do you think of Barry Levinson? And I said, 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.639 as what? He said a director? I said, he's okay. 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:27.920