1. My
father was an engineer, and I went to college toStanford as anEngineeringmajor,
feeling I would follow in his footsteps. It wasn't until my senioryear that I
realised that Engineering was not for me, and I was interested inFilms. But I
could start over and take another major and spent extra year in college or I
could just graduate. I thought, I just want to get out of here, I want to
graduate. Theonlyjob I could get, because Hollywood was verytough place to get
a job in those days, was as a messenger atFox. Started as a messenger, worked
my way up as a storyanalyst, and they reallywanted me to go toEurope. And I had
some time onGIBill, so I went toOxford onGIBill, traveled aroundEurope, came
back, got a job as a literary agent, and wrote and sold my own script. And I
offered to work for a producer [gratis] for nothing as an associateproducer to
learn and to get the credit, so that when the picture was over, I would be able
to say, I was a writerproducer. I rasied twelvethousandUSD partly from my sale
of the script and partly from the gusy I went to school with, and
madeMonsterFromOcean'sFloor plus a little money and firmament [?], and I
neverlooked back. Omitted.
2. I
actually have lost count how many films I have produced. I know a little more
about how many I have directed. I think I directed a little bit less than
sixty, maybe fiftyseven, fiftyeight films, something like that. As to how many
films I've produced, I don't even know myself, because sometimes I've done
coproductions overseas, whether I should
count those or not. But assuming I count those, as coproducer, producing for
somebodyelse, I think it's around fourhundredsandfifty or a little more. We're
shooting at the moment, so it will go up onemore within a couple of weeks.
Omitted.
3. These
days, I'm known mostly as a producer, but when I was a primarily a director,
which was the latefifties and through thesixties and up until around
ninetyseventy or so, I was considered okay. Particularly inEurope.
FrenchNewWavecritics, some of them became directors, picked up on [discussed]
my work before the critics in theUnitedStates. FromParis toLondon, the english
critics, wrote good things about it. And, eventually, a couple of american
critics said that, Okay, this guy is okay. Omitted.
4. If
I were talking to a young filmmaker who had started and was interested in how
his career was going to progress, I would guide his career, I would say the
numberonerule is to do your best on every project. When I started, I knew we
were doing essentially lowbudgetBpictures. Now, if you're brilliant, you may
jump on your first try or your second try. But, normally, you do a film, a
number of films, and work up, assuming you're on that path. I would say, Turn
down the absolute losers, Don't get involved with anything that you know is
going to be bad. But, if it has any chance, do the film, and do it the best you
can. The guys that I knew who would take lowbudgetfilms and say, Well, it's
just a cheap film, I'm just going to knock it off. I'll get money. Those guys
are out of the business today. The ones who took lowbudgetfim that seemed to
have limited potential, but who said, I will make thebestfilm on this subject I
possibly can, those are the ones who have built their careers.
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