Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 259. Irwin Winkler

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

Oscar-winning producer Irwin Winkler ("Rocky," "Goodfellas," "Raging Bull," "The Right Stuff") looks back on a half-century of movie-making and shares behind-the-scenes stories about working with Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Jessica Lange and Kevin Kline (to name a few). Also, Al Pacino walks off the set, Sly Stallone sticks to his guns, Jerry Orbach befriends a mobster and Irwin tackles the Hollywood blacklist. PLUS: "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" Remembering Burgess Meredith! Peter Bogdanovich rides again! Elvis replaces Julie Christie! And Irwin reveals the movies he never got to make! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi, this is John Davidson. I'm on Gilbert Gottfried's show with Frank. Oh, yes, Frank. Frank is the reason Gilbert is clever. John Davidson. He said fuck

on Gilbert Gottfried's show That's my new favorite song now. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. Our guest this week is an accomplished film director, an Oscar and Golden Globe winning producer responsible for some of the most celebrated and important movies of the last six decades. To read his full list of credits would take up the entire podcast, but we'll try to get through as many as possible. Point blank. They shoot horses, don't they? The Mechanic, Rocky, Rocky 2, New York, New York, The Right Stuff, True Confessions, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Freed, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

He also directed the well-received films like The Net, Life as a House, The Lovely, Night in the City, Home of the Brave. Night in the City, Home of the Brave, wrote and directed a movie Frank and I have discussed on this show, Guilty by Suspicion, about the infamous Hollywood blacklist. And in 2017, he was presented with the David O. Selznick Life Achievement Award for Producers Guild of America. The artist and performers he's worked with is a virtual who's who of 20th century cinema, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Barbara Streisand, Al Pacino, Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Kline, Samuel L. Jackson, George C. Scott, Sylvester Stallone, and even Elvis Presley. His latest project is The Irishman,

with his longtime friends De Niro and Pacino, and directed by his frequent collaborator, Martin Scorsese. His brand new memoir is entitled Irwin Winkler, a life in movies, stories from 50 years in Hollywood. Frank and I are thrilled to welcome to the podcast, a living legend of the silver screen and a man who once said that he had no reason to believe that Francis Ford Coppola would direct a mafia picture. The pride of Coney Island, Erwin Winkler. Now, here's something that happened to me this morning. I went to the bank depositing some residual check for $1.19. And the girl behind the counter who I, you know, I dealt with before, she says hello and how are you? And then she's out of nowhere.

She says to me, what does a producer do? She says to me, what does a producer do? And I figured I've been in the business a number of years and known a number of producers, and I couldn't answer the question. So I ask you, Erwin Winkler. That's a good question. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book, because it could be anybody from some guy who or some woman who shows up and puts up a couple of million dollars for the making of the movie,

or it could be somebody who really starts with a script or an idea and develops a script and puts together all the elements to make a movie, casts it, finds the financing, and then ultimately gets a studio and markets the film. Or he could be, I don't know, Madonna's hairdresser's brother who somehow got in and put his name on the film. When I started out basically in the late 60s and through the 70s and 80s and 90s,

it was usually just one producer or in our case with Chardoff Winkler, it was Bob Chardoff and I as a team. But there were never the list of eight or 10 or 12 producers and who knows how many executive producers. But I think what's happened is the misunderstanding of what a producer's role is linked to the handing out of producer credits like it was candy in a giveaway store. I always wondered, and now I'm starting to see it in the Academy Awards ceremony,

how it comes at the Tony Awards where they give a Best Play award, and there's people on the stage that I'm sure their only reference was to write a check and then probably get two opening night tickets and probably never read the play. And it's not quite that bad in the film business, but it seems to be getting there because I produced a film called Silence that Marty Scorsese made. It's a very, very fine film with Adam Driver. Just Liam Neeson. It's a really, really marvelous, marvelous film. And a guy came along and he said, you know, I'll give you,

we were financing it independently. And a guy came along and said, you know, I'll give you $500,000, which is just a pittance on the budget, but I got to be an executive producer. So we needed you $500,000, which is just a pittance on the budget, but I've got to be an executive producer. So we needed the $500,000 and gave them credit as an executive producer. So what happened is in the old days, the studios financed the movies 100%, and in doing so, they maintained the, I guess you might call it, the dignity of the producer credit.

But nowadays, most of the films that I've been involved with, and a lot of people are involved with, are independently financed. And that's the reason the people financed the movie, so they could see their name up there on the screen. So, executive and associate producer, I've heard like you could take a homeless man off the street. And they have. I could name a few, but could take a homeless man off the street. And they have. I can name a few, but I don't want to get sued.

But you are definitely not that kind of producer. You are not a checkmaker. Thank you. But what happened is, in order to answer the question about 1985 or 86, I decided that I would start keeping notes to show what a producer actually does. So what I would do at the end of the day, I would say, well, I had a conversation with so-and-so, or I had lunch with Michael Keaton. I saw Michael Douglas, and we talked about a script.

And I kept this diary for 20, 30 years. And then about two or three years ago, I asked my assistant to type it up and put it in some form, and I gave it to a friend of mine, and his name is Jason Epstein, a very famous book editor. And Jason said, you know, it's really fascinating. I stayed up all night reading, but after a while you get tired of reading about so-and-so is late for lunch and so-and-so didn't come for lunch or so-and-so came for lunch but he had nothing to

say or so-and-so you know and so he said why don't you put it in a narrative form and let's find out how you started in the business they're not just what you did day to day so that's how the book turned out you retained some of that too in the guilty by suspicion day. So that's how the book turned out. You retained some of that too in the Guilty by Suspicion chapter. That's the chapter where you went into the diary of making that film. I wanted to show

how the whole project started so I kept some of those diary notes and even in a couple of pages I think it gets a little boring. Maybe you didn't feel that way. I didn't think so. I mean, it was just, as I said to you outside, it's an endurance test.

I mean, you have Hackman. You have Michael Douglas. You have Michael Keaton. You're going to give it to Richard Dreyfuss. You're going around and around and around. And then the money falls out. And then the money comes back. But ultimately, Bob De Niro says he'll do the movie.

And the movie gets made. And you're off and having a great year of making a movie with a great actor and a story you want to tell. But there is a happy ending when you actually make the movie. It's not a happy ending when you make the movie and it doesn't turn out so good, but I kept that down to a minimum in the book. I tried to keep how many bad movies there are. You're brave to mention them.

minimum in the book. I try to keep how many bad movies there are. You're brave to mention them. You mentioned, since you don't want to mention

a bad film. You can. Yeah. Revolution. Yes. With Al Pacino. Right. Well, what happened

was we had a really, I was fascinated that, first of all, there had been very, very few films about the American Revolution. Not many. There was Drums Along the Mohawk and a couple others, but not many. So I thought, you know, I had this kind of

idea that fit in with the Vietnam War, that basically what would happen to a man who is forced to follow his son who had been drafted or who enlisted in the army? And what happens to the family? What happens to the soldier? What happens to the father? And maybe it had something to do with my own relationship with my boys. And I had Robert Dillon wrote a really, really good script.

And then I made some really terrible mistakes. I really, really screwed up badly. I mean, why do I hire a British director to do a movie about the American Revolution? You must have. When the British lose, obviously. So that was my first mistake. Then I agreed to shoot it in England. Now, look at it again.

How stupid can you be? I had an American Revolution shoot. I agreed to shoot it in England. Now, look at it again. How stupid can you be? An American Revolution shoot. And so, by the way, I shouldn't have been surprised when I got a lot of hostility when I started to shoot the movie. And it was financed by a British company. So, basically, it was very good. But what happened is Hugh Hudson, who had a great visual sense, he had done Tarzan and he had done... Chariots of Fire.

Chariots of Fire, which was an Academy Award winning movie. But also that was a very British film. It didn't have an American sensibility. And he was a very nice guy, but I think he instinctively knew he was in the wrong place also because he spent his time really setting up these incredible shots of cannon going off and soldiers marching in these stupid ways that they did in those days and the American guerrillas and the cruelty of it all.

And I think he just couldn't find that key that you need. And Al, whose life is acting and he's a you know great actor uh and the vision of al trying to get you you hudson's attention so they can talk about what his character needed and had to do uh and you was busy kind of getting the cannons or we're ready to shoot so then, oh, the weather was terrible. We were in the worst part of England, the northern part of England. It rained all the time, so the schedule was wrong. I mean, we couldn't live by the schedule, so the money got short.

It was. And so what happened is you couldn't get a good meal in this little town in England. So Margo and I, we went- For a New Yorker, that's unacceptable. Oh, especially. Right. What we did is when the driver took the film into London to get the dailies printed, we used to have him stop off at one of the markets and bring back food

so we didn't have to eat only frozen peas. And so the crew was a little jealous of us eating kind of, you know, frankly, much better than they were. So it was not a happy experience. And Al Pacino got pneumonia. He got pneumonia and I got sick, but I got sick in the head. Well, I was going to say, Erwin, to your credit, you opened the chapter on revolution by putting in the Stinker's Bad Movie Awards, winner of 1985.

Well, you win all kinds of awards sometimes at the Stinker Awards. And, you know, it's funny, and that explains something about movies, is that your description of a father following his son into battle and how it affects, I think, wow, that sounds like a great movie. I'm glad I didn't ask you for the money. You ever done an interview before where the first thing they brought up is revolution? Yeah, why are we talking about raging bull or good we'll get to him for sure i just want to talk about you being from coney island gilbert's also i know i re-talked neck of the woods and you worked on the boardwalk i mean yeah that was my first job i was in high school and in the summers most of the either you hung around on the beach or you got a job. And I was always kind of motivated to work. So I got a job on the boardwalk on a bumper car ride where people have these electric cars.

Sure, you're in any hall. They bump into each other. And my job was to separate them, which really taught me something that I use later in life as a producer. Because everybody in Hollywood is always fighting and bumping into each other. You need somebody to kind of separate them and keep them apart and keep them calm.

So I got a good lesson. And you just escaped to the movies every chance you got. Yeah, we went to a lot of movies and there were two big theaters in Coney Island. One showed like the MGM movies

and that's when I saw Gone with the Wind. Do you remember the names of those theaters? I'm wondering if they were still there when Gilbert was... I don't know. I don't remember. But there were two.

They were both on Surf Avenue down there, like 19th Street or 18th Street. Did that ring any bells, Gil? No. And they were those big, you know, thousand-seat theaters that you... Show places. Now they're a 10-multiple.

I know. And then on Friday nights, Friday nights we was friday nights with the mgm and then saturday nights we used to see like the warner brothers movies and that was you know more of the guys together um on friday night it was the romance movies and that's when you took a date and and just talking about movie theaters is something frank and i discuss a lot here. And I always get depressed because I think now talking movie theaters is like saying Vaudeville. Soon. Well, you know, my model, my wife's mother and father were Vaudeville performers.

Actually, her mother performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto while she was doing a backbend on her toes. Wow. That was part of her act. And her father did a sand dance. You know what a sand dance is? Sure. You put sand on the stage and shuffle it.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Well, I've talked to, I mean, some of the, on Creed and Creed II, both directors were 29 years old when we started, Ryan Coogler and Creed. These directors, when I said, they said, where's Margaret? They were like her. And when they found out that her mother and father were performers,

and I would say they were in vaudeville, they had no idea what vaudeville was. Unbelievable. The term didn't even mean anything to them that's incredible wow are you surprised by i am surprised they didn't know because they're in show they're in show business they didn't think they would have just picked it up somewhere they didn't know the word vaudeville yeah fascinating yeah and the places where they were watching movies were former vaudeville houses them were, sure. That's where the word Nickelodeon, you should pardon the expression, comes from.

You gave us a segue there, but we won't take it. I gave you the chance. Now to show that you actually have made a good movie. Okay. I think they're all in the intro. Yeah.

Let's talk about Raging Bull. Okay. Terrific film. Thank you. And I think you said that you had so much, you had a lot of freedom with Raging Bull because they were all concentrating on Heaven's Gate. Yeah.

Heaven's Gate was a big, a very expensive, over-budget film that the studio was really very, very upset about and very involved with. So they kind of let us alone. And we had done Rocky for them,

which was such a big financial and critical success. Best picture. Best picture award. So they kind of had a lot of confidence in Bob Chardiff and I and what we were doing. So they kind of let us alone, and we made the picture really the way we wanted.

Was there a small threat involved? Well, what happened was they had no intention of making Raging Bull. They didn't want to make it. They thought that Jake Lamar, the character, was a – as they said in a meeting with Bob De Niro and Marty Scorsese and I, they said to Bob De Niro, why do you want to play this man? He's a cockroach. So that's how they looked on it. They really didn't have any faith in it.

And we said, okay, well, maybe so, but we're not going to make Rocky II unless you make Raging Bull. So that was the kind of deal we made. And I think you said the original script was a very stock, cliche fight script. I don't think I said cliche, but I think it didn't have passion. It was structurally very, very finely done, but I don't think it had the passion. And what happened was Marty and Bob went off and they went down to the Caribbean to a little island. And they checked into a hotel and they spent three weeks just living the script, going over the scenes, doing the dialogue for the scenes. And they came back with this film you see with all the passion that you see in the film. Have two executives ever been so wrong about a movie?

Has history ever proven two executives? It's not the first bad thing. I know, but when you consider how revered and highly regarded Raging Bull is, I mean, you know. But by the way, the same thing about Rocky. That's film of the decade. Yeah, same thing about Rocky. Studio didn't want to make it. We had to drag him to the starting post.

As long as you're talking about Rocky, I just want to ask a couple of questions about that. I mean, the luck involved, you know, and obviously luck plays a role in the success of all of these situations. But the timing, that he was, he had originally, when he came in, you took the meeting,

it was a meet and greet with an actor you'd never heard of. And we're not casting anything either. We're not casting. Why are we meeting with this guy? He gives you the other script. He gives you Paradise Alley to read, which was under a different title. And then as an afterthought, oh, I've also got this boxing idea. And the luck

of that you and Bob Chardoff, your partner, were thinking about doing a boxing picture. Yes, just coincidentally. Just coincidentally. And the second magical coincidence was you had that special deal with UA. Right, where we could put a picture to them and force them to make a film. So he walked in the right room

at the right time. And it certainly was the right time for us. But you know what? We made the movie. We made it cheaply. We shot it in 28 days. The average movie is about 50 days shooting. So almost half the time

the ordinary movie shoots. And we put it together, and we hired Bill Conti to write the music. We found him in a piano bar in Venice, Italy. And he was the cheapest guy around, so we said, okay, you get the job. And he wrote this score, and the editor put it on the training sequence and then put it on the ending. And we said, oh, my God, this is something more than we thought. We thought we were just making this little movie that was kind of nice. The studio had said to us, wait a minute, why would you want to make a movie about a broken down fighter

who is in love with an ugly girl who sells birds? Who loses the big fight. And he loses the big fight. You want to shoot it in Philadelphia? Who goes to Philadelphia? It's the Friday night fights. Nobody's watching the fights on television.

Why would they pay to go see it in a movie? And you want to star who? Sylvester Stallone? What do you think? We're crazy? Right. So that was their attitude, you know? Did they offer him $250,000 to let it go?

Yeah, they went around us and they offered him $250,000 to sell them the script so they didn't have to make it. Or if they had to, they would have made it with like Burt Reynolds or somebody. But certainly not Sylvester Stallone. And Sly said, no, no, Bob and Irwin promised me that I would star in it, and I'm not going to give it up. Good for him. He believed in himself, which is

what the movie is about, really. Tell Gilbert that Paddy Chayefsky story, too, before you jump off Rocky. Well, what happened was there were five really, really good movies nominated. In those days, there were only five films nominated for an Academy or whatnot. Not like today when you can be up to ten. So the five nominated films were really, really...

All the President's Men, a great, great movie. Taxi Driver, another great movie. Network, I mean, you can't get much better than Network, right? And Bound for Glory, which is okay. Yeah, that is okay. That is good. Yeah, good movie. And Rocky.

We didn't think we had a chance to win, but we were the favorite because we had won the Golden Globe. Anyhow, at the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, they voted, and we were at the ceremony when they announced it, and I was standing next to Paddy Chesky who was this great writer of Network and when they announced that Rocky and Network were tied as the best winner,

I turned to Paddy Chesky, I put out my hand, I said, congratulations. He said, I hope you die. I knew you'd like that one, Gil. So the competition is always there.

Unbelievable. And you paid for the new ending yourself. You would bump out of your pockets. Yeah, well, the studio wouldn't pay for the ending because they felt the film was good enough, but we knew that when the fight is over, everybody was up, but then when they walk out of the arena

and it's dirty and dusty and he lost the fight it had no passion uh so sly rewrote this the ending so that uh uh adrian comes into the ring and he says oh adrian i love you and they embrace and the music swells and we cut we hold on that uh so he so we went to the student and said, we want to reshoot the ending. He said, no, no, no. If you want to do it, it's your money. You do it.

So we said, okay. We would put up our own money, but we didn't want to put up a lot of money. So what we did, we hired 25 extras because we had to fill up the, as she's walking from the back of the arena to the ring, we had to go through a lot of people. So we said to the 25 extras,

okay, everybody bring a hat and a coat. So the first 20, you stand on this side. You take off your hat. You put on a hat. You take off your coat. And then we cut, and we went to the next section, and we moved them up. We said, now you stand in the back.

You stand in the front. It's the same people in every cut, but we just changed the ones who stood in the front. And given the budget, who were the people in the big arena scenes? How did you fill the seats? Well, the big arena scene, we had a more massive problem that we managed to. What happened is we couldn't afford, because the big, you know, you do a fight, you got to have a lot of people there. So we had to fill it up. And so what we did is we went to an assistant living home and we bussed these elderly folks in. And what happened

is to keep their attention, every hour we would auction off a lottery of a television set, a little part of a television. And we'd give them snacks all day long. Now I'm going to look closer at Rocky. But at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, they needed their meds, so we had to put them back on the bus and send them home. That's great. It's funny. Good tricks.

You talked about finding the composer, and that score is a part of the culture. Sure is. Bill Conti also wrote the score for The Right Stuff. Yeah, good one. And he won Academy Award for Best Score and that's a great stuff. But what happened was we were looking for a composer before we hired Bill. And my wife and I were in a restaurant in paris and we had been introduced to vangelis who is the man who won an academy award for uh the u hudson yeah chariots of fire it's a fire

with that great great score so we're in this restaurant and he realized that he was basically you know auditioning for a job so uh we started talking, and I said, well, what do you think this movie needs? What kind of score? He said, let me show you. And he had all these wine glasses and water glasses on it. He actually played us the proposed score on the glasses. He would rub the top of the glass, and the one with the red wine had a little different sound.

The one with the white wine had a little different sound. The one with the water that was half full had a different sound from the one that had water with the whole. So I said, I heard that score. We didn't hire him.

That's one of the acts in Broadway Danny Rose. The woman points for glasses. Boy, the tricks of movie making, Erwin. I'm going to look closer at Rocky now and see if I can see those seniors in the crowd scenes. What were the auction of?

TVs. This is a portable TV so they can take it back to their room. You know, they cost like a hundred bucks. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And you said De Niro, well, De Niro is like famous for like just going crazy to get the character right. And that he trained for Rocky. Raging Bull, you mean. Not Rocky, Rocky.

He trained for Raging Bull. Oh, yeah. He trained. He lost a lot of weight. And actually, he was really, really good. He lost a lot of weight. And actually, he was really, really good. Jake even arranged for him to do one or two professional fights, a couple of rounds.

And he was able to, you know, there was no decision or anything, but he was able to get in the ring with professional fighters, which is not easy. Even when we did Rocky IV, Sly got hit by one of the, I think it was when we were Rocky IV, Sly got hit by one of the, I think it was when we were rehearsing, and ended up in the emergency room, because he almost broke his ribs.

What you see in any fight movie is misses, but they're close misses. It's so easy to move your head in the wrong way and get hit in the jaw, and if it's from a professional fighter, it's like a pitcher in a professional. If you watch the Yankee pitcher, you don't want to stand in the way of a 95-mile-an-hour fastball. Especially if he's wild.

Especially if he's wild. Right, right. So that happens. And in making a fight movie, it's almost like making a musical because you have to choreograph all the fight scenes, all the moves, where they're going to be, where the camera's going to be. Because if they're fighting, you can't show the camera, obviously. So it's a very complicated process. And timing and luck again playing a role. And as Gilbert pointed out, because the UA executives were so obsessed with what was going on with Heaven's Gate, they let you alone a little bit while making Raging Bull.

And you guys had a little. But look, you know, when we were shooting Goodfellas, you know the famous scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci says, you think I'm funny? Sure. Yes. Yes. That was, Joe came up with the idea. It wasn't in the script. And he had heard about it.

And he talked to Marty about it. Marty, who's always open to ideas, said, okay, let's rehearse that. Let's get it down. And so they rehearsed it. And then we set it up and we were shooting right here on a nightclub on Broadway. I think it was like 47th or 48th Street on the second floor. And that day, the head of the studio, Terry Semel, the head of Warner Brothers, showed up.

And he looked around and he said, what are you guys shooting? He said, I don't remember that in the script. I said, no, no, we came up with it yesterday and rehearsed it and it's really going to be great. He said, we're paying for, and you're doing it. So he said, well, then, okay, it's too late to stop you now, but you're supposed to do a scene in Florida

where the guy goes into, where they go down to Florida and throw a guy into a lion's cage, because he owes them money, if you remember the scene. Sure. Tampa was, he said, you can't go to Florida because you spent all the money on this. So we scratched our head and we shot that Tampa Bay scene, not Tampa Bay, it's football, the Tampa Zoo in Queens. We took a lot of greenery and it was night.

Throw up a sign. And we put up a sign that said, Tampa Zoo. Okay. You're funny. What do you mean I'm funny? It's funny, you know. It's a good story. It's funny.

You're a funny guy. What do you mean? You mean the way I talk? What? It's just, you know, you're just funny. It's, you know, the way you tell the story and everything. Funny how? I mean, what's funny about it?

Tommy, no, you got it all wrong. Oh, Anthony. He's a big boy. He knows what he said. What'd you say? Funny how? What? Just, you know, you're funny. You mean, let me understand this,

because maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up, maybe. But I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to fucking amuse you? What do you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny? I'm not just... Do you know how you tell the story?

No, no, I don't know. You said it. How do I know? You said I'm not just... Do you know how you tell the story? No, no, I don't know. You said it. How do I know? You said I'm funny. How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me. Tell me what's funny. Get the fuck out of here. Tell me. You motherfucker. I almost had him.

I almost had him. I almost had him. You stuttering prick, yeah? Frankie, was he shaking? I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor.

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perfect. But there the studio would have stopped us if they had come in earlier in the day, you know, because they didn't, you know, and properly so, they're always concerned about what things are going to cost. But generally, they're pretty good once they get on board. But there it would

have killed what is arguably the most memorable scene in the whole film. It is one of the great, great scenes. They didn't want Ray Liotta. No, I didn't want Ray Liotta. I forgot about them. I said to Marty Scorsese,

you know, I trust you and all that, but I think maybe why don't we keep looking for somebody better? He said, no, this is the guy. And I kept kind of

trying to talk to him, meet with this guy, mate with this guy. And he was very, he would meet with him. And he said, no, this is the guy. And I kept kind of trying to talk to him, meet with this guy, mate with this guy. And he was very, he would meet with him. And he said, no, no, I won't. Hey. So my wife and I were having dinner

in a restaurant in Pacific Palisades in California. And sure enough, Ray Liotta was sitting at another table having dinner. Just a coincidence. And he came, walked over to my table.

And he says, can I see you outside? Well, it sounded like I was going to to my table, and he says, can I see you outside? Well, it sounded like I was going to be having a fight with the guy, you know, can I see you outside? I'm doing a gangster movie, sure. And he went out, and we sat for a few minutes, and he really just sold me on how he would do the film and why he was the right guy for it. How about that?

So I came back, I called up Marty right away, I said, you know what, you're absolutely right, he's the guy for it. How about that? So I came back. I called up Marty right away. I said, you know what? You're absolutely right. He's the guy for it. But you know what happened? Look, I think the perfect casting is Sam Shepard playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, right? I didn't want him either. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I should be taking credit until I'm taking blame.

Well, the studio was trying to push Tom Cruise and Madonna on you for Henry and Karen. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They insisted that Tom Cruise was perfect for Henry and Madonna. But we shut that down. But on the right stuff, I kept saying to Phil Kauffman, you know, we can get like Bob Redford or somebody. Really, this is a great role. He said, no, no, that's the guy.

And he was smart. He just waited. He said, okay, no, that's the guy. And he was smart. He just waited. He said, okay, send me anybody you want. I'll talk to him. And he kept waiting and waiting, and there was like a week from shooting, and I said, Phil, we got a cast here? He says, Sam Shepard. I said, okay.

And he was great. Yeah, he's great in that picture. You know what gets me about Goodfellas is that, you know, it ends with how it did in real life with him going into the witness protection program. And yet he lived to, you know, fairly good age. Yeah, he was in his 70s. Henry Hill. Yeah. And he was surprised that he never got whacked.

Yeah. He was as surprised as anybody. Well, you know, he was kicked out of the program, you know. And what got me is he was like a regular on the Howard Stern show. Yep, yep. I would never have started a car if it wasn't for him. They don't usually kick people out of the witness protection program, but he got kicked out. Yeah, because he was selling drugs and he couldn't

help himself. But he came up to see me a couple of times before he passed away, and he was always very, very lovely. Not the same, he had changed dramatically over the course of the 30 years since he was a kid. I want to point out your wife's fine work in that picture as

Maury's wife. Maury's very anxious wife. She's great in that. She's also great maury's wife maury's very very anxious wife she's great in that she's also great in king of comedy which i didn't have anything to do talking about outside she was the receptionist who was giving him the runaround in king of comedy very memorable um this is the thing about goodfellas that i want to bring up is how disastrous the preview was the first screening yeah we we put the film, and we were quite happy with it. And we took it to Encino for a preview. And in the first scene, when Joe Pesci's got this knife that's about 10 feet long,

and he's stabbing the guy in the trunk, and they're shooting him. I think his name was Vincent, the actor. Oh, Frank Vincent. Frank Vincent. Yeah. Who passed away just recently. was Vincent, the actor. Oh, Frank Vincent. Frank Vincent. Yeah. Who passed away just recently. He did, last year. Yeah, the year before.

Well, at that scene, 32, I counted them, 32 people got up from their seats and walked out of their theater. You counted them. Absolutely. Because I thought it would never stop. So I had to keep trying. Oh, my God. stop so i get my thank you oh my god and by the time the film was ended two and two hours and 20 minutes later the place the the only people hanging around were my wife and i and marty scorsese even the studio executive wanted to leave you thought what do we got on our hands yeah

so uh but we uh what happened was and then we had a post-mortem the next day and they try to cut the film to ribbons and take this out, take that out. And Marty was great. He said, let me look at it. Let me see. Let me see. And we were very cooperative but didn't do anything. He kept the film exactly as we wanted, and the film is now a classic.

I have three words for you, and I don't want to disparage the Academy because you have an Oscar. But the three words, the three painful words are dances with wolves. How about ordinary people? How about ordinary people? That's awesome. That's the two painful words. How about the Deborah Winger cancer movie that- Oh, Terms of Endearment.

Which beat the right stuff. Yeah. So as long as, yeah, just for our listeners, to bring our listeners up to speed, ordinary people defeat Raging Bull for best Picture and somehow dances with wolves. Beat Goodfellas and that stuff was bitten by... Good heavens. And I really like how you call it the Deborah Winger cancer picture. It's a pretty good movie.

I kind of enjoy it. I won't deal with it. Oh, my gosh. Is that Lufthansa case still an open investigation? As far as I know, yeah. Isn't that crazy? Well, you know, they're going to find somebody's DNA, but who's no real one. Why?

Because everybody involved in that is dead. Either killed by themselves or killed by the mob or just died. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we talk about Guilty by Suspicion? Yes, we can. Your first picture as a director. And an important movie. Thank you, thank you. A movie that needed to be made. What happened was

I didn't know much about the Hollywood blacklist at all. As a kid, I had seen the McCarthy, all the army hearings, but that was later on and I really didn't know what was going on with the House Un-American Activities Committee, which, by the way, if you're interested in the politics of it,

what happened was it was really, really brought to life by the Truman administration, by a democratic administration. What happened was when China became communist, the Republicans attacked the Democrats as being easy on communism and letting China, one of the great allies during the Second World War, become communistic.

So the Truman administration, in response to that, to show how tough they were on communism, started the House Un-American Activities Committee and the hearings. And obviously Hollywood was a great place to go to for communists. Because there were some communists there,

but also the names. You can get Robert Stack or somebody to come up and testify or Ronald Reagan to testify. So you got names to really enforce the publicity of it. So what happened is when we were shooting around midnight, we hired a director to play an Ike Labona. And this director was a Hollywood blacklisted director that had moved to Paris and lived there for 20 years.

And he started telling me stories about the Blacklist. Ultimately, I wrote the script about the Hollywood Blacklist and decided it became very personal to me. I did a lot of research. I felt it was a really interesting story. And I didn't want to hand it over to a director to do it. I wanted to do it myself. So I went through the whole process of trying to get it financed and cast. That's the marathon we were talking about in the book.

And I left those sequences of how I went from a producer to a director in daily diary form in the book. You can actually see all the crazy moves that go on. All the lunches you took with all the agents. Yeah, all the agents and all the actors and all the studio people to try to get it made. Ultimately, we got it made and made with Bob De Niro and Annette Bening

and it turned out to be one of the few films about the Hollywood blacklist. There's a couple of others. There was one that Woody Allen... Oh, the Martin Ritz movie, the front. Yeah, the front where he played the man who wrote the scripts for the Hollywood blacklist.

But I wanted somebody, I wanted the movie to be about an innocent because the whole theory of how the House Un-American activities work was kind of very ingenious and almost criminal and ingenious. What happened is you would be called in to a room. There would be an FBI agent.

There would be probably an income tax agent also there to scare the hell out of you. And they would say to you, we have, somebody told us that you were at a meeting at somebody's house three years ago. And there were a lot of talk about communism there. And we want you to give us the names of all the people that you can remember that were at that house.

And you'd say, well, if I name those people, they could lose their jobs because they get blacklisted as being communists. And they say, well, if you won't give us their names, it means you're not patriotic, so you must be a communist. So you'll get blacklisted. So you can't, there's,

somebody said there are no villains and there are no heroes, there are just victims. All victims, yeah. And that's really what it comes down to. Well, we had Lee Grant here, and she wound up in Red Channels, said there are no villains and there are no heroes there are just victims. That's really what it comes down to. We had Lee Grant here and she wound up in Red Channels because she spoke lovingly and defensively of an actor who had passed away. She had a friendship with.

That's all you needed. It was a terrible part of what was going on in America at the time. People committed suicide. People couldn't work. And I included a lot of that, those incidents in the... Yeah, well, you used Larry Park's actual testimony at one point.

And the Patricia Weddick character is based on Dorothy Commoncore, who to our listeners is Susan Cain in Citizen Kane. A Tragic Life. Frank and I were discussing the actor that Robert De Niro. Well, that was Craig Smith, if I have the name right, that said De Niro sent you the actor. No, what happened was an actor came in. Bob called me and said, see this actor.

He's kind of an interesting guy. So the actor came in and i said how come uh where do you know bob de niro from and he said well um elia kazan um work with my father and uh elia kazan called bob there for me and arranged for because Bob had done the last tycoon with Bob. That's right. With Kazan, and they were friendly. So I said, okay, I'll find something for you, sure. And he had good credits and all that. And I said, well, where's your father now?

Because I said to him, maybe I'll give his father a pardon. I'll find something for his father. He said, oh, my father died. I said, oh, that's too bad. He said, yeah, he father died. I said, oh, that's too bad. He said, yeah, he committed suicide. I said, well, why did he commit suicide? He said he was blacklisted and couldn't work, so he killed himself. I said, well, who gave his name?

He said, Elias Kazan. There you go. Wow. Yeah. How torn were you during that controversial moment when Kazan was getting the honorary Oscar and half the audience stood up and the other half the audience protested?

I like Kazan's work enormously. Yeah, me too. He's one of the great, great American directors or worldwide directors, I think. On the waterfront, you don't do better. Facing the crowd. Sure. I mean, just look through that list of great, great films.

So I think you have to honor a man, not for his politics, but for his work. Look, today in the area of Me Too movement, I don't think you should be barred from looking at Michelangelo's work because he seduced a lot of young boys.

Of course. Right. Everything in context. I think around the time Ilya Kazan won the award, they asked Paul Newman how he felt about him winning. And I always remember he said, it's very easy now to say what you would have done back then. You know, it's interesting you say that

because as I was making the film, I said to myself, you know, it's easy to be a hero when you're not under oath. And what is it? You're not chained to a radiator in some room someplace. It's easy for me to go back now and say, oh, I would never do that. But you don't really know what you would or wouldn't do

in those circumstances. Well, to go back to what you said a moment ago, he was vilified as a villain, but he was a victim, too. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, you could be a big, big hero 20 years later in the safety

of where we are today, and, well, I don't know that we're that safe. It could happen again. Yeah. But they were all victims to some extent. And it also, with the House of Un-American Activities, they had one of the crimes was, I think it was called,

premature anti-fascist. Yeah, well, I guess. That it was like you were against Hitler before you should have been. Well, that was the nature of a lot of those meetings that those people had attended. Yeah, absolutely. By the time, at that point, Hitler was fighting Russia, but then Hitler made a deal with Russia, and then they broke the deal. You don't know which side to be on. Victor Navsky's book, by the way, Naming Names.

Naming Names is a great book. Great book if our listeners want to read more about it at this tragic period. We had Josh Mustel here, too. Zero's Mustel's son. Yeah, I mean, there's the— Zero was blacklisted. Sure, sure. Oh, and then another people you know there's the the zero was blacklisted sure yeah sure oh and then another horrible time on the front during the depression uh and that's where uh they shoot horses don't they from one from one depressing period to another depressing period

that is a wonderful movie thank you yeah it it it, it's a picture of where America was during the throes of the Depression and what people would do just to survive. And the dance marathons where people would come in and the question was who would survive this grueling being on your feet for 22 hours a day for how long you could last. And the ones that last won. And usually they deducted the cost of towels like they did in a boxing arena. And it was terrible. And the script, which really was great, based on a Harris-McCoy short novel.

Jane Fonda, Spree in the movie. Was that sort of a turning point for her? I think so. She was playing sex kittens, and she was playing light comedy. Well, yeah, when we met, she was living in Paris with her husband at the time, Roger Vadim. Yeah. And doing... Barbarella.

Barbarella. And she was doing light comedy before that. And then she did Barefoot in the Park before that. And we kind of, you know, she jumped in and really lived the part, moved on the Warner Brothers lot where we shot and really lived that part and then became really a very active anti-Vietnam advocate. And to this day, she's quite a great woman. That cast is perfect.

Every part. Bruce Dern. Bruce Dern. Bonnie Bedelia. Bonnie Bedelia. And Gig Young. Of course, Gig Young. Gig Young won Academy Awards.

Won the Oscar. Yeah. You know, it's funny. The culture always portrayed dance marathons almost like it was something whimsical, like stuffing a phone booth or swallowing goldfish. But you realize the sadism. You realize the terrible things that were done to exploit these people.

It was like watching gladiators. In a way. Precursor of reality shows. Yeah, like just you were watching people being tortured. And the only way out of it. And humiliated. And that's where

the title comes from. The only, you know, at one point, Jane Fonda's character finally says to Michael Saracen, who is her partner in dancing, and says, do me a favor here.

Shoot me. Kill me. She doesn't have the nerve to even shoot herself. But it's a film that got, I think, nine Academy Awards and nominations.

Young Sidney Pollack. Sidney Pollack won his first really big movie and a wonderful director, a wonderful man. Everybody's great. Gig Young, though. Gig Young won Academy Award. Terrific. Another guy who's... What a tragic life that he had.

Tragic life. He murdered his wife and then committed suicide. Yes. But he's a villain a little bit in the picture, but he's also a victim. He's a pathetic character. He can't get out of this prison. I read, go ahead, Gil. Oh, no, I was just

we were talking yesterday that even if you won, you didn't win. In many cases. There was nothing to win. By the time you won, you were dead, really, for all intents and purposes. If you weren't physically dead, you were emotionally dead. It had drained every ounce of emotion out of you. And there was really no money.

No, very little money. There were a lot of promises, but almost no money. Because what could you do? After you finally survived, the guy would leave town usually, the gig young character, and go on to the next town and put another show on. These were desperate people that were starving and would often do it for the lunch. Exactly. For the meal or just to get out of the elements, get out of the snow.

I mean, it's terrible. There is a good in-joke there, though. There is the Winkler Travel Agency. It's one of the sponsors. Get out of town quick. You snuck that in there. You know what? I didn't know that that was still in there.

It's in there. I looked for it. I'm anal retentive. So I looked for it. I read that somebody, that the film was shown in Russia. I hope this isn't bullshit because it's fun. The film was shown in Russia

as a propaganda to highlight the evils of American capitalism. You know what? I had never heard that before, but they probably never paid us for the film. Probably was a bootleg print.

Can we just talk about the old days a little bit, too, because I just want to get to Elvis. I want to get how you got from the boardwalk to the William Morris mailroom. By the way, George Shapiro was here on the podcast. Oh, really? He was in the mailroom with me and William Morris. I know. He and Bernie Bolstein and Jerry Weintraub. I guess we missed out on.

So you guys were all in there with big dreams. Yes. And no resources. Big dreams and no money. And you find yourself producing a movie with Julie Christie or being involved. I was very involved with her doing Dr. Zhivago. Right. And that brought me to the attention of the chief executive at MGM at the time, a man by the name of Robert O'Brien.

And we had a very, very complicated negotiation. A lot of things happened. And one day he said to me, you know, I think I need some young producers out in Hollywood. We got all these old guys out there and they're not up to times. And he said, get a script and if I like it, I'll make you a producer. I said, well, yeah, we don't have any scripts. And sure enough, a couple of days later, his head of production, a very, very nice guy called and said, you know, Erwin, we have a script here that we think would be a perfect script for Julie Christie. He said,

however, we can't get Mr. O'Brien to read the scripts. He's got a pile on his desk and he never reads anything. We can't get anything done because he won't okay anything until he reads the script, but he's not going to read it. But he wants to be in business with you.

So why don't I send you the script? You give it to my boss and maybe he'll read it because he won't read it for me. So I read the script. It was okay, not great. But I called Mr. O'Brien. I said't read it for me. So I read the script. It was okay, not great. But I called Mr. O'Brien. I said, Mr. O'Brien, I have this script. We think it'd be really good for Julie Christie. We'd like to do it with Julie Christie. We think she might be interested. Would you read the script? He said, sure, send it over. A couple of days later,

he calls me. He said, listen, I don't think I want to do it with Julie Christie. I said, oh, that's too bad. He said, but, you know, I've got another idea. I said, what is that? He said, how about doing it with Elvis Presley instead of Julie Christie? Sounds like an executive. I said, let me ask you a question. I said, the script I gave you with Julie Christie involved, you want to do now with Elvis Presley?

He says, yeah, what do you think about that idea? I said, that's the best idea I ever heard. And he said, how quickly can you get out to Hollywood? And you weren't impressed by the Colonel? No, the Colonel. When I came, I said,

you've got to rewrite the script. He said, we'll get somebody. Don't come to me with your New York ways, which was Jewish way. Oh, yes. Yes.

And, and then they, they, and it was still an old MGM studios out in Culver City and they had a whole way of doing things

and they said, now your director is Norman Turok. I said, don't I get, your director is Norman Turok and I was, didn't I get, your director is Norman Turok. And I didn't know really anything about it. I'd never been on a Hollywood soundstage.

I was a kid and I didn't know what was going on. But I did say, I said, I'd like to meet the director. So they said, okay, be at the steps of the Thorberg building, which was the executive building at AM Jam Lot, tomorrow at noon, and we'll have the director there, and you'll meet him and greet him and get to know him. Okay, next day at 12 noon, I'm standing on the steps with an executive from MGM, and a car drives up, and it's kind of like a Chevy or a Buick, I don't know, but kind of like a car that's like seven or eight years old, but there's a driver, not a real chauffeur, but a driver,

and the guy gets out of the car, and he runs around, and he opens the door on the passenger side to help this elderly gentleman out of the car, and then he helps the man up the steps where I'm standing. So I'm then introduced that this is your director, this is Norman Turok and now I have no idea what to say to the guy

it's like you set up a meeting and then I don't I'm lost for words so I say first thing that comes to mind I said it's nice that you you know you got a chauffeur

and all that and he says well I really prefer to drive myself but I can't drive I said well why not he said well I'm blind in one eye. And I'm going blind in the other eye. I said, wait a minute.

I got a script here that was for Julie Christie. I'm doing it with Elvis Presley. I have a director that's half blind. I'm shooting in Culver City instead of France where it was set. Making it look like France in Culver City. I said, I got to do better than this my next time. That movie was double trouble.

That's right. In case our listeners are wondering. I also love the story in the book. You said that his handlers would throw Elvis on the floor of the car. Throw blankets on him. There were two things about Elvis. There were three things. Number one, when it came to acting, he was like uncomfortable, but he did it.

He knew his lines. He was always on time. He was really a gentleman, and he was personally a gentleman. And I liked him an awful lot. And when we did the music, he was really great. He had everybody come, and pizza was flowing and beer, and it was really a party, and he was very serious about his music, and that was great. But when it came to acting, it was a whole different story.

But there was one day that was put into the script where he cuts, he does a karate chop on a board. Everybody showed up that day. Because it's a karate. His friends, his girlfriends, the executive from the studio, the colonel came, and it was right before lunch, and he gives it a whack, and the board breaks, and everybody claps. If you blew on it, it would have broken.

It was so prepared. So everybody was happy with that, and they all had a celebratory lunch about that. celebratory lunch about that. And then the sad part was every day when he left the MGM lot, the two guys who were really nice, two of his close friends, Shorty and Red, who were terrific, and they were the ones

that were really close to him, and they would drive out a lot, and they would say, okay, Elvis, now get down. And he would get down on the floor of the car, and they would cover him with a blanket so that the crowd outside the gates of mgm wouldn't rush the car but the sad thing was there was nobody there anymore that's wild oh there was

nobody there the crowd had gone home either he didn't know or he didn't want to know yeah or they didn't want him to know but there was nobody there but he was under the carpet wild yeah wild a long way from jul Christie shooting in Europe. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Spring is here and you can now get

almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no but a banana that's a yes a nice tan sorry nope but a box fan happily yes a day of sunshine no a box of fine wines yes uber eats can definitely get you that get almost almost anything delivered with uber eats order now alcohol and select markets product availability may vary by regency app for details. Io Debre and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again.

All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Okay, it's my job here to bring up all the bad pictures. So far, you're doing a great job. Thank you. The gang that couldn't shoot. I don't think that's a bad picture.

I don't either. It's uneven. Well, look, what happened in the gang that couldn't shoot, we had a terrific book by Jimmy Breslin about the mob and crazy Joe Gallo and what was going on in Brooklyn in the early 70s or late 60s. We hired Waldo Salt, who wrote and won an Academy Award for Midnight Caballero and was blacklisted.

And we're looking for a director because we had this really good book and a really good script. So, an agent called me and said,

what about Francis Coppola? I said, Francis Coppola? He said, yeah. I said, well, let me look at it.

The previous film he did was Finian's Rainbow with Fred Astaire, a musical. So I called the agent. I said, why in the world would you suggest Francis Coppola to do a gangster movie? That's the worst idea I ever heard. That's what we were referring to in the intro. So I didn't hire him. So we did hire Al Pacino for the lead role

when we got another director and then I got a call one day from Al Pacino's agent who said, you know, Al Pacino is leaving your movie. He's not going to do it. I said,

where's he going? I said, where is he in rehearsal? He said, he's going to do The God said where's he going i said what do you have where he's in rehearsal he said he's going to do the godfather with francis you end that chapter by saying i haven't seen the gang that should since then since then but i saw the godfather a lot what would you do you looked at Finian's Rainbow why would you hire

Francis Cumberbatch and you're a big boy now that's all he had done that's all he had done that's all he had done to a gangster movie you can't be blamed for not

for making that call did Jerry Orbach was hanging out with Crazy Joe Gallo no what happened was Jerry Orbach who was a wonderful man by the way

a really terrific actor and a lovely lovely guy did you meet him at the Friars Jerry Orbach sweet guy yeah I met him a couple of times he was a yeah he played he played crazy Joe Gallo in the movie or crazy Joe Raka so in order to do the character he wanted to do some research and called actually

called up Joe Gallo and they became really really really great friends. Joe Gallo and Jerry Obeck became friends. Their wives became friends. And on crazy Joe Gallo's birthday, they all went to the Copa, Jerry Obeck and his wife and Joe Gallo and his wife, to hear Don Rickles at the Copa Cabana. And what happened was Jerry Obeck and his wife left after the show went over

and Joe Gallo and his wife went with some friends to celebrate his birthday down to I think it was Umberto's. Umberto's Clam House. And in walked a guy who was called the Irishman who then puts a bullet

in his head. So Joe Gallo gets killed the night after that called the Irishman, who then puts a bullet in his head. So Joe Gallo gets killed the night after that by the Irishman, which brings us to my latest movie called The Irishman. Nice segue, Erwin. Wow. Done like a producer. Two things there before we jump to The Irishman, but it's a good thing that Jerry excused himself for the night

and decided not to go down to the clean bar. He could have been there, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Let's talk about the Irishman. That sounds like a ridiculous cast. The Irishman? Yeah.

I mean, just by how great. I mean, it's Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, of course, Bob De Niro, Ray Romano. It's a great end. Harvey Keitel. Oh, Harvey's in it too, right? Yeah. How'd you get Pesci off the golf course? You know what?

It was the personal relationship he had with Bob mostly. Of course, Bob and him were very, very close since the days of Raging Bull. And it was kind of a – we all looked at a pawn as kind of how we reunited because I had done like seven or eight pictures with Scorsese as a director. I directed him as an actor because he was in Guilty by Suspicion.

He was an actor. He was an actor and Around Midnight was a jazz movie I made and all the movies we had made together, Wolf of Wall Street, New York, New York, and all those movies. And he said, let's do this together. And then, so I had this long relationship with him. Then I had this long relationship with Al Pacino going back to us doing Author, Author together.

Sure. Which is a very funny, marvelous film. I like that picture. I'm sorry I didn't put it in the intro. And Revolution, which is not.

And then, and then was Bob, who I'd done Gang that Could to Shoot Straight, New York, New York. True Confessions.

Raging Bull, Two Confessions, Goodfellas, Guilty by Suspicion, and Night in the City. Night in the City. So we had done a lot together. So it was like

the coming together of all, you know, all of us. And so it was very comfortable. And the film came out really, really great. I think it's going to be one of the most important

films of the year. And it's probably one of the most important films of the year and it's probably one of the most interesting and important gangster movies ever made, but it's more than a gangster movie. It's really about relationships and I'm particularly happy with it. Really, really happy.

What made Joe Pesci drop out of acting? I think Joe just reached the point in his life where he didn't want to work so much. I mean, he ended up doing it. Maybe other people never came to him with the same kind of script, but he loves to play golf, and he just didn't want to. He's kind of shy and humble, isn't he? Very, very shy.

I remember his Oscar speech was all of three words. Very shy. And interestingly enough, the funniest guy is Al Pacino. Interesting. Who is really incredibly smart, really, really funny. Interesting guy, yeah. But I think, by the way, what drew everybody together was Bob De Niro. Bob had this passion for this project.

He and Jane Rosenthal, they really wanted to make it, and Bob was really on top of everybody to get it done. He really was. And everybody came in to Bob. Terrific. I want to ask you about a couple of other projects that you're still working on. You're still determined to make that Gershwin picture.

Yeah, I think we're going to do it this time. That's wonderful. John Carney, who is a Welsh filmmaker who did a couple of interesting movies. He did Once, which became a 2021 winning play on Broadway. He did another called Sing Street, which is coming to Off-Broadway next year. Wrote a wonderful treatment that the Gershwin family approved of

that we're going to go into script on very soon. That's a project that I've been involved with for 30 some odd years. Yeah. I mean, I know you had Daniel Day-Lewis and Tom Hanks. That's right. At one point. Yeah. And we couldn't get it done.

So we're on that. We're probably going to do it. I came across a documentary about a young man in West Virginia who got into a ski accident and had brain damage. And his parents couldn't do anything. I mean, they tried everything to get him to speak, to function. And in desperation, they hired a music therapist. And for some strange reason, they also hired a documentary crew to follow him around. I don't know why they did it.

I saw this documentary about how you actually see the moment when the music therapist gets this boy who can't eat, can't do anything, to blow into a little pipe or a little horn. You see the process. And at the end of four years, the young man graduates from high school. And it's a wonderful story about how this music can. And I think there's something in how our brain operates and reacts to certain sounds. And music is one of them.

You should see this documentary that Gilbert's featured in. Oh, Life Animated. About a boy that... It was about an autistic boy who couldn't communicate with his parents or anybody, and he was falling deeper and deeper into autism, but he was in love with Disney animated features. But he was in love with Disney animated features.

And one day his father put on a puppet on his hand of my character, the parody Yago from Aladdin. And he started to imitate me. And his son had a conversation with the puppet. Really? Yeah. But a normal conversation, not an artistic conversation. Really? Yeah. Like, that was a real... But a normal conversation, not just a conversation. Yeah, yeah. He had an actual conversation.

He saw this as an old friend. Wow. Yeah, it drew him out. What's it called? Life Animated. Yeah, give it a look. Yeah, I'm going to look at it. Yeah.

Anyway, so those are a couple of things we're working on. We're also working on Creed 3. We're going to do that one. Creed 3? Yeah at it, yeah. Anyway, so those are a couple of things we're working on. We're also working on Creed III. Creed III? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and jumping back to the blacklist, one funny story you told was about, I think it was Harry Warner. Oh, yeah. No, what happened is I live in a house in Beverly Hills

that was once owned by a film producer who was the son-in-law of Harry Warner. And during the blacklisting period, he called his son-in-law and said, I understand you're involved with communists. And he said, no, no, Harry, I belong to the Young Anti-Communist League. And he said, I don't care what kind of communist you are, get out. Now my other favorite topic, Nazis. Oh, you're going to ask about Music Box.

Yes. Yeah. Tell us about that, how that came about. Well, actually, it's a lot of coincidence there, which I documented in the book. Of course, it's almost unbelievable. What happened is I read in the paper some years ago about this auto worker who came from Germany and was being accused by the Justice Department of falsifying his application for citizenship.

And they had found that he was a concentration camp guard called Ivan the Terrible, by the way. So I had done a film that I was very proud of with Deborah Winger, by the way, called Betrayed, about the infiltration of the right-wing militant group. And Joe had written a very good script. So I said to Joe, why don't we do a film about this kind of man

who is a grandfather, who has brought up his children in America, seems like a perfect citizen, but yet we don't know that much about our parents. Background is he was a killer. He murdered thousands and thousands of Jews. So Joe said, yeah, that's a good idea. And he wrote the script and we made the film with Jessica Lange playing the daughter who is a lawyer by the way and defends her father and then finds out he actually did all these horrible things. So two years or three years after the film is finished, Joe Esthouse writes me a letter,

which I reprinted in the book in its full, because it's almost really his father, and Joe lives in Cleveland, by the way, his father is accused of being a Nazi during the Second World War and involved in Hungary in the murder of many, many Jews and other people during the Second World War. Incredible. So it's the same story, but years later, and he had no idea, and he wrote me this letter telling me that this has happened, the Justice Department. He never wanted to speak to his father again.

They had the proof that his father was this terrible person. And it was his loving father that he, and as it turned out, his father passed away before they deported him. But that's an incredible story. It's life imitating art. Yes. Yeah. Good film, by the way. Very good film.

So is Betray Yes. Yeah. Good film, by the way. Very good film. So is Betrayed. Yeah. Wasn't it supposed to be that you wanted Sidney Pollack to direct it? No, I wanted Sidney Pollack to direct the right stuff. Yeah. Oh, no, but I thought there was something that you wanted Pollack with the music box, but you wanted a happy ending. Oh, that's a different Pollock.

That was the studio head. Oh, okay. It wasn't Sidney Pollock. Oh, Tom Pollock. It was Tom Pollock. Tom Pollock, who was the head of Universal, who said, yeah, I'll do the movie, but you have to have him be innocent. I said, what's the point of making the movie? So a happy ending about a Nazi killer.

Yeah. Yes. We'll say to our listeners that Music Box is definitely one to watch. Yes, it is. Thank you. And as is Betrayed, both directed by the same director, Costa Garber. By the way, Costa Garber's told me an interesting story. I said to Costa once, why don't you do a kind of a romance or something?

You really, you know, because he had a nice sense of humor and all that and a great smile. And I said, you always do these political films. All of them, very heavy. He did Z and some really, you know, because he had a nice sense of humor and all that and a great smile. And I said, you always do these political films? All of them, very heavy. He did Z and some really, really good and missing. Yeah. And really, really, I said, why don't you ever do a, why do you do all these political, he said, I don't do political films. I said, what do you mean you don't do political films? He said, I'll tell you what a political film is.

He said, I grew up in a small town in Greece after the Second World War. We were poverty stricken. But every Saturday, a man would troop up to the center of town with a can of film. And he put up a big white sheet in the center of town. And he'd show us. He was from MGM. And he showed us Singing in the Rain. Or he showed us an Esther Williams movie in full color.

Wow. We looked at that and we said, that's America? That's America? He said, that's a political film. Wow. Oh. When you think about it, think about the end of the Second World War, poverty in your Greece town.

This is what you're seeing of America. You want to be there. You want to love. And America is still the outpost of great, great freedom. I got into a cab just two days ago, and I don't know why the guy's talking, what do you do and all that. I never tell him what I do. But the guy said, he said to me, I said, where do you come from?

Because he had a little accent. He said, I come from Guyana. I said, well, how long have you been here? He said, 32 years. I said, how long have you been driving the cab? Oh, he said, I've been doing it for 32 years. I said, well, you have everything good? He said, yeah, I have two of my two daughters.

I've got twins. They're going to college. And he said, America is the greatest place in the world. He said, I support my blind brother in Guyana. I send my two girls to college. He said, America is the greatest. And I drive this cab and I make a living. I send my daughters to college and I support my blind brother.

It was a wonderful story about America. That's nice. Not an immigrant, by the way. I try to engage with cab drivers because you always get an interesting story. I got a question for you about the right stuff. Why didn't John Glenn like the way Wolf portrayed him in the novel? And did you have to, Ed Harris had some pressure on him playing that part. Not only that, what happened was he was such an important senator.

As a matter of fact, he was talking about running for president. He didn't like the point. I don't know why. I thought we portrayed him as a great American. He still didn't like it. He didn't like the point. I don't know why. I thought we portrayed him as a great American. He still didn't like it. As a matter of fact, he went to the we had gotten the approval of the Defense Department to use Edwards

Air Force Base and to use an aircraft carrier and they were very cooperative because they loved Tom Wolfe's book. He went to them and put a lot of pressure on them to withdraw permission and they did and Bob Chardoff got on a plane and went to Washington, spoke to just a bureaucrat, and got him to agree in spite of the pressure from the head.

And he was the head of some important committee, Glenn. And the guy just thought that was the right thing to do and took all the pressure. And he did. He said, I want to do this. One of the other things producers do yes yeah putting out fires and another favorite topic that i that i used all my strength to hold off is sharon stone's pussy oh you're talking about how you didn't want to make basic instinct yeah yeah well she she wasn't involved in it when I was shortly involved in it. What happened was

Joe Estahouse, who wrote it, asked me to get involved and I did and then they brought in a director that I didn't like and didn't like me because I was now directing myself and I think he was very nervous about me and then he came to my house with Joe Estahouse and he told me

what he was going to do with the nudity and full frontal nudity. And he was going to show sex scenes that they've never been shown before. And at one point I said to him, you know what, I'm going to go upstairs to my bathroom. I'm going to take a shower because I really feel dirty. And when I come down and I'm all clean,

I'd like you to be gone. And he left and then I withdrew from the film. So you weren't around for... No, he withdrew from the picture. Yeah, I withdrew before Sharon Stone came around. But she did a really good job. Yeah. Became a star.

Marty Scorsese, he thought in Casino, she was absolutely great. She was. She was a fine actress. She was. Fine actress. She was. Fine actress. Yeah. I just want to ask about somebody who comes up in the book and somebody who Gilbert interacted with a little bit, and that's your friend Alan King.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Because I want to go back just a second just to give this context, too. In the mailroom days when you were at William Morris, one of your jobs was going, was being a professional clapper. That's right. I worked on the Buddy Hackett and the Walter Winters show. The Buddy Hackett show.

He used to go sit in the audience. Yeah, I used to sit in the audience and I would get five bucks for clapping. Half hour's worth of clapping, you know, it was five bucks. And was it you or your partner Bob that was handling Jackie Mason?

Bob Chardoff was, yes. Yeah. But you got to know Alan. I got to know Alan. I cast him in Author, Author. That was the first time. And then he worked a night in the city for me. But we became very, very good friends.

And it's interesting. Alan came to stay with us when he was very sick, and he had cancer and he was going to die, but he had a part in a movie, and he came out to L.A., and he was a wonderful, wonderful man. He was a renaissance man. He was a comedian, an actor. Funny, funny man. He was a great tennis player, a great golfer.

He could do everything. So anyhow, so he was staying at the guest house. We have a small guest house next to my house. And he and Jeanette were staying at the guest house. And they walked from the guest house over to my house. We had a little dinner party in his honor. And he could hardly make it because the cancer was so terrible. And Jeanette had to help him walk in.

And as he approached the dining room and all the friends were sitting there, Alan threw his shoulders back and his chest out and walked in like there was nothing in the world wrong with him. It was just wonderful to see this man and so brave and so wonderful, engaging. I never forgot that picture of Alan walking in like an actor. It's a nice story. So I guess he was like a lot of those actors who are near death, but if you yell action, that's right, they give you action. They tough it out.

He turned out to be a good actor. He's in that Lumet picture with Ali McGrath. He's funny in it. He was very good. Tell me what you want. And he's in that Lumet picture with Ali McGrath. He's funny in it. Oh, yeah, he was very good. Tell me what you want. And he's in a favorite of mine, Bye Bye Braver. Another Lumet movie. Oh, yeah, yeah.

One time, there was some big show at Lincoln Center with a bunch of comics, and Alan King was the emcee. And I went on stage. I performed, and, you know, I'm walking off to applause and I'm wearing like a, you know, a sweatshirt and jeans and sneakers. And Alan King comes back to the mic, looking at me walk off stage and he goes, you know, when I go on stage, I wear a suit and tie neatly pressed. My hair is coiffed. And then he comes out looking like he rolled around in shit.

Really? Yeah. I love it. We're going to let you out of here, Erwin, but tell us one story. Two things. You've got more. Well. This is the most note-taking he's done.

Yeah. Peter Bogdanovich. Right. Yeah. Peter Bogdanovich. We had a really, really terrific script called Starlight Parade. Peter Bogdanovich rewrote it called Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon.

So I walked on the set and there was Peter Bogdanovich directing on a horse. And I said, what the heck are you doing on a horse? And I said, you know, I think the actors might feel a little uncomfortable. He said, well, John Ford directed all his movies on a horse. And I said, you're not John Ford, and that horse is not John Ford's horse. That's the perfect answer. I want to say about the book, too,

one of the best parts of the book for me was you went to the trouble of putting in the back of the book all the movies you never made. Yeah, yeah. An impressive list. I mean, this Warren Beatty, Lillian Hellman project where you have this very funny story. The Tempest written by Ray Bradbury. There's an F. Scott Fitzgerald movie.

We should have Jay Cox on the show, by the way. Oh, he's great. Yeah. Is he in New York? Huh? Is he in New York? Oh, yeah, he lives here. Oh, we got to get Jay Cox.

The Bob Fosse. In fact, I'm having lunch with him Thursday. Please, we'd love to have him. The Busby Berkeley movie that you talked to get Jay Cox. In fact, I'm having lunch with him Thursday. Please, we'd love to have him. The Busby Berkeley movie that you talked to Fosse about. Yeah. I mean, it's a movie lover's dream just to read these. Just to read the books on the movies I did. These dream projects.

Didn't Busby Berkeley kill someone in his car? Yes, he did. He was drunk and he got into an automobile and drove over on the Pacific Coast Highway and killed somebody. And when he was on trial, they made him direct his movies at night. He was on trial for murder during the day. Incredible. And working at night making movies at the Warner Brothers lot. Jeez.

Yeah. This is a favorite actor of ours, and we're going to squeeze in if you have one story about the great Burgess Meredith. Yes. Or just a memory. More a memory because he was a really, really lovely man and a great actor. And what happened was we had auditioned a lot of actors to play that role, and we didn't have any money.

And everybody turned us down. And Burgess came in. He read the script. And he said, you know, I'll do it. You don't have to pay me. Just buy me a couple of good bottles of wine. Because he loved. He was a wine connoisseur.

So basically, and he got nominated for an Academy Award. And we did two more movies. And we would have kept him on forever. But he was getting ill. Yeah. But he was a wonderful man. I can only say nice things about him. And happily, he was just warm, talented, supportive. He gave Sly a lot of help.

He gave John Alvison a lot of help. All of us. All of us a lot of help. I don't think that man ever gave a bad performance in anything and completely committed. He cared about everything he did. He cared about everything. He. Cared about everything. He was a consummate actor.

Gilbert loves Of Mice and Men with Chaney Jr., which we talked about all the time. Great movie. Also with G.I. Joe. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, so many. So many. He directed a good movie called The Man on the Eiffel Tower.

Oh, did he? Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And he was married to Paulette Goddard, so we'll give him props for that. I'll give him props for that right away. I also want to recommend to our listeners Life as a House, which we didn't get to. Thank you.

But another labor of love for you, another personal picture. And it's very sweet and very well done, and everybody's good in it. Thank you. Kevin Kline's another guy who can do no wrong on that screen. He was wonderful and very supportive. Then after that, we did The Love of You Together, a reporter story, which I really love. There's so many that we didn't get to.

I would have loved to talk about True Confessions. Well, we'll come back sometime. We'd love to have you back anytime, but we're going to plug the book. Well, thank you. Gil, give the bigger book plug. We'll let this man get to dinner. Stories from 50 years in Hollywood.

A life in movies. Erwin. Erwin Winkler. Thank you. It comes out May 7th. May 7th. And the Irishman. When can we see the Irishman?

Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you guys very, very much. You are an entertaining fellow. Thank you. Thanks for the years and years of entertainment.

Thank you. And this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre, our engineer Frank Verderosa, and a guy who's made a lot of bad movies for our great producer. Thank you. And some great ones.

Yeah. But the great ones way outnumber any values. The great and legendary Erwin Winkler. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Erwin Winkler. Thank you. Thank you. I love you.