Behind the scenes
By Caryn James |
June 5, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IN 1967, when the lumbering old Hollywood studios were about to be shaken up by independent, visionary filmmakers, Peter Bart left his job as a New York Times reporter to become Paramount Pictures' No. 2 production executive. "Infamous Players," Bart's breezy, anecdotal account of his eight years at the studio, casts him as the level-headed Sancho Panza to his pal, the production head Robert Evans, who comes across as a risk-taking, eventually cocaine-fueled Don Quixote. Together they led Paramount out of the dark ages of big-budget disasters like "Darling Lili" into the glorious, cutting-edge era of "The Godfather," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown."
Those achievements were so remarkable, in fact, that they have been heavily chronicled already, most colorfully in Evans's memoir, "The Kid Stays in the Picture," most thoroughly in Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." Bart's stories are hardly infamous anymore, his version of familiar events too sketchy and unreliable to add much to the record.
His memoir is technically true to its subtitle. The heavy in Bart's scathing portrait of corporate corruption is Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman of Paramount's parent company, Gulf & Western. According to Bart, Bluhdorn allowed European gangsters to invest in the studio; his instinct for movies was even worse.
Bart had better taste, though he knew when to listen to his business judgment instead. Among the films he championed: the treacly "Love Story," whose success made him "smile and wince" because the film was "as bogus as it was effective."
That kind of lucidity and wit is what you want from a modern-day Sancho, but Bart's scattershot tales rarely deliver such clarity. He recalls telling Woody Allen's "very protective handlers" that their client would not direct his screenplay of "Play It Again, Sam." That job would be handled by - and Bart writes this very earnestly - "Herb Ross, the esteemed director of 'Funny Girl,'" whose work Bart and Evans agreed was "more accessible." I wouldn't brag about that decision.
Bart's crisp, authoritative tone will be recognizable to anyone who read his columns as editor of Variety, a position he held for two decades. In this memoir he is sure of himself even when he is dead wrong: he announces that Clint Eastwood insisted on having his friend Don Siegel direct "Dirty Harry" because Eastwood "wanted the assurance" after the commercial failure of his first movie as a director, "Play Misty for Me." But "Dirty Harry" started filming months before "Misty" was released.
And then there's the kerfuffle over "Don't Look Now." In what sounds like a genuine insider's revelation - at last! - Bart claims he was there when Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland shot their steamy bedroom scene, which led to undying rumors they had really had sex on camera. Bart says he happened to be visiting the set that day and was standing by the director Nicolas Roeg's side; as the actors rolled around, Bart whispered in Roeg's ear that maybe it was time to say "cut."
Bart's earlier account of how far the actors went has been tamed down in the finished book, but that version surfaced recently, provoking Sutherland to release a statement saying that Bart wasn't a witness at all, that only the actors, the director and the cinematographer were in the room. A sex scene would ordinarily have been shot as Sutherland describes it, without gawkers. Crazy things happen - like an executive telling a director when to cut - but plausibility is not on Bart's side here, which makes you doubt even his more innocuous memories.
That's too bad, because he has a few thoughtful things to say about how 1970s filmmakers flamed out, victims of "the instant celebrity, the unimaginable financial rewards" that defined their rebellious era. Bart was part of that Hollywood revolution, but "Infamous Players" is a shaky footnote to his career.
Those achievements were so remarkable, in fact, that they have been heavily chronicled already, most colorfully in Evans's memoir, "The Kid Stays in the Picture," most thoroughly in Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." Bart's stories are hardly infamous anymore, his version of familiar events too sketchy and unreliable to add much to the record.
His memoir is technically true to its subtitle. The heavy in Bart's scathing portrait of corporate corruption is Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman of Paramount's parent company, Gulf & Western. According to Bart, Bluhdorn allowed European gangsters to invest in the studio; his instinct for movies was even worse.
Bart had better taste, though he knew when to listen to his business judgment instead. Among the films he championed: the treacly "Love Story," whose success made him "smile and wince" because the film was "as bogus as it was effective."
That kind of lucidity and wit is what you want from a modern-day Sancho, but Bart's scattershot tales rarely deliver such clarity. He recalls telling Woody Allen's "very protective handlers" that their client would not direct his screenplay of "Play It Again, Sam." That job would be handled by - and Bart writes this very earnestly - "Herb Ross, the esteemed director of 'Funny Girl,'" whose work Bart and Evans agreed was "more accessible." I wouldn't brag about that decision.
Bart's crisp, authoritative tone will be recognizable to anyone who read his columns as editor of Variety, a position he held for two decades. In this memoir he is sure of himself even when he is dead wrong: he announces that Clint Eastwood insisted on having his friend Don Siegel direct "Dirty Harry" because Eastwood "wanted the assurance" after the commercial failure of his first movie as a director, "Play Misty for Me." But "Dirty Harry" started filming months before "Misty" was released.
And then there's the kerfuffle over "Don't Look Now." In what sounds like a genuine insider's revelation - at last! - Bart claims he was there when Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland shot their steamy bedroom scene, which led to undying rumors they had really had sex on camera. Bart says he happened to be visiting the set that day and was standing by the director Nicolas Roeg's side; as the actors rolled around, Bart whispered in Roeg's ear that maybe it was time to say "cut."
Bart's earlier account of how far the actors went has been tamed down in the finished book, but that version surfaced recently, provoking Sutherland to release a statement saying that Bart wasn't a witness at all, that only the actors, the director and the cinematographer were in the room. A sex scene would ordinarily have been shot as Sutherland describes it, without gawkers. Crazy things happen - like an executive telling a director when to cut - but plausibility is not on Bart's side here, which makes you doubt even his more innocuous memories.
That's too bad, because he has a few thoughtful things to say about how 1970s filmmakers flamed out, victims of "the instant celebrity, the unimaginable financial rewards" that defined their rebellious era. Bart was part of that Hollywood revolution, but "Infamous Players" is a shaky footnote to his career.
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