Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (2003) - full transcript

1966. Hollywood, California.

The once great
Hollywood dream factories

that were teeming cities
of technicians and artists, stood empty.

The audiences for the movies these
studios had made had drifted away,

busy building families
or lured away by TV.

The old studio moguls who roamed
these vast empty domains

were confused and uncertain

and, like the movies
they were producing, largely irrelevant.

This is the story of the young artists
and film makers

who stormed the gates
and briefly took control of the studios,

and in the process, inadvertently
created the new Hollywood.



I didn't really like American films

and what was being done
in most American films then.

The studio system

essentially collapsed in the early '60s.

By '63, it was over.

And nobody knew what the hell to do.

The Fox lot - the first Hollywood lot
I ever saw - had been shut down

by the disaster of Cleopatra.

And so, walking on the Fox lot,
it really was a ghost town.

The back lot, which is now Century City,

had the Western streets, the stages
all set up, but it was all deserted.

Television had annihilated
the habit audience for movies

and studios were impoverished.

The big old films weren’t making money,
The Molly Maguires



and Hello Dolly - just these huge flops.

The old people are dying slowly

otherwise the representatives
of the puritanism

and religion and other organisms
which were restricting.

The young people are different
and demand different things.

"Make it new and different", they say.

It really was a strong sense
of a revolution happening.

If you were 18 years old, as I was,

God forbid you should
ally yourself with the old fogeyes.

Even as American films
became more meaningless,

foreign films were beginning
to find an emerging audience

hungry for something different.

There were a lot of art theatres
that showed foreign films.

That's where Natalie and James Dean
and all of us went.

And I was working in American films
but I was looking at foreign films.

Most of the film makers of that period

were brought up on Godard
and Truffaut and Fellini,

and they were tremendously
influenced by the Europeans.

This was the period
of the Nouvelle Vague in France

and everybody was bowled over by what
Jean-Luc had done with Breathless,

and what Truffaut had done
with 400 Blows.

And when I was in Paris,
we became... friends

or conversants, anyway.

In New York,
two young magazine writers,

Robert Benton and David Newman,

who had fallen under the spell
of the French New Wave,

decided to try screenwriting.

We knew nothing about writing movies

cos there weren't any - maybe there were
somewhere, but we didn't know where -

screenwriting courses, there were no
books by McKee, or any of those gurus,

and we just wrote the movie
we wanted to see.

Newman and Benton used
their connections at Esquire magazine,

where they created
the Dubious Achievement Awards,

to get their Bonnie and Clyde script
to Francois Truffaut.

He took it
and broke it down into sections,

and he explained to us the difference
between film time and real time.

And we just filled notebooks
up with notes

and by the end of it, we were just...

The gate had opened
and we were running.

As the new screenwriters
had lessons from the New Wave master,

Arthur Penn had returned from France,

inspired and eager to make a film that
could draw on this new storytelling style.

It would be called Mickey One.

At that point, Beatty called me up out of
the blue and said, "I'm Warren Beatty."

I said, "Why are you calling me?"

And he said, "Well, I learned early on
that the people I want to work with

"are the good directors, that's it."

He said, "So, I'm with you."

I said, "I can't even hardly pay you,
you know?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm in the movie."

I used to be quite a fighter.
I'll never forget my first opponent.

It was also my last opponent.

He was a little guy -
only came up to my chin.

The trouble was, he came up too often.

Watch it, you've heard of ground beef.

I had this opponent covered with blood...

- Yours?
- Kid, when you're working...

Do you come and monkey around
with my mop?

- I can see this kid believes in justice.
- Getting just as drunk as he can.

Waiter, let me mix his next drink.

Blessed are the pure in spirits,
nothing's wickeder than a mixed drink.

He doesn't get drunk but last night
he put pennies in a parking meter

and looked at the Wrigley Building clock
to see how much he weighed.

What a rat! Get him up here.

When I shot Mickey One, both Jean-Luc
and Francois Truffaut showed up

in Chicago while I was shooting.

Truffaut had passed
the Bonnie and Clyde script

onto Jean-Luc Godard
after deciding to film Fahrenheit 451.

Godard flirted with the project briefly,
before deciding to do Alphaville instead.

Meanwhile, Arthur Peon's star,
Warren Beatty,

was frustrated by the limitations of
being just another handsome movie star

bound in by the creative restrictions
of studio-produced films.

Warren Beatty was in Paris,
making a movie

and having, I think,
a romance with Leslie Caron.

One night they went to dinner
at somebody's apartment

and he found himself
sitting next to Truffaut.

Truffaut said,
"There's a movie you should read

"because it's a great part for you.

"It's written
by these two guys in New York."

Warren came back to New York
a week later and called and said,

"I've read half of it, and I want
to option it as soon as it's ready.

"And not only do I want to play the part,
I want to produce the film."

That was after I had decided not
to direct it myself. Arthur was available.

It afforded an opportunity
to work with someone

with whom I had already established
a certain dialogue.

Someone who was aware
of my bad habits, excesses,

and someone whose excesses
and bad habits I was aware of.

- What are your bad habits?
- I won't go into it.

- What are his?
- I won't go into those either.

Beatty worked
for little money up front,

to convince a reluctant Jack Warner
to give the script a green light.

Warren called me
and said he had this script.

I read it and it was very good -
very well-written -

but, at the end of it, they just simply got
shot and that was the end of it.

And I thought, "I just... I don't want
to do a film about two gangsters."

Then I woke up one day and saw
the ending, exactly as it is in the film.

Hey.

Jack Warner thought it was terrible...
He didn't like the picture at all.

We went out to, uh... Jack's house.

We were about to look at the film.

He said, "if I have to go pee,
you know it stinks."

We weren't ten minutes into the film
when he got up and peed.

Came back. Another ten minutes,
he got up and peed.

And it went like that throughout.

And then, finally, the film ended,
and he said, "What the hell is this?"

And it was kind of quiet in the room.

And then Warren said,

"Well, you know, Jack,
what it is, really, is an homage

"to the great gangster films
of the wonderful Warner Bros era."

And Jack... you know, bit that.

And then he looked at Warren and said,
"What the fuck's an homage?"

As Beatty tried to win over
the old studio mogul,

there was a young mogul working
outside the dying studio system,

who was training young film makers
in the art of the low budget B-movie.

By the mid '60s,
producer-director Roger Corman

and American International Pictures
had a thriving business

of making ultra-low-budget B-movies
the studio felt were beneath them.

He had become so successful,

he started hiring up-and-comers
who couldn't get in the studios.

He'd get young talent in,
because they'll work for the amount of...

for the salary, for no salary, practically.

Which is the way it should be. You come
in and do anything to do the film.

He wasn't a brilliant director.

But he was brilliant in recognising talent
in other people.

So he gave people like me, Hopper,
Marty Scorsese - a whole bunch...

Peter Bogdanovich was working on
Wild Angels - second-unit camera.

It was great.

One of Roger Corman's first proteges
was a grad student just out of UCLA -

Francis Ford Coppola.

Francis made his debut
editing Russian science fiction films,

then worked as an assistant director
on a racing film I was doing in Europe,

on the Grand Prix Formula One circuit,
called The Young Racers.

He went on from there
to Ireland, to do Dementia 13,

which was his first film as a director.

Don't touch her!

Corman had become a prime supplier
to a newly evolving audience

that the studios were ignoring.

In the '60s there were about 5000
drive in theatres in the US.

Everywhere, all over.
You know, every town had a drive-in.

The drive-in audience
was a young audience,

and the kids liked these action
and horror films -

the type of pictures
the independents were making.

Sometimes they liked them more
than the major studio films.

Corman was bright
in picking his subjects.

LSD becomes in the paper,
he makes The Trip.

Motorcycle guys get in the paper,
he makes a motorcycle movie.

Bingo Blanket Beach Party - whatever
those movies were - they make those.

So they were serving a function,
fast cars, motorcycles, drugs.

But the one thing great about Corman
was, he wouldn't pay you,

but he'd give you camera and film
and let you go shoot on weekends.

We shot stuff on the Strip,
all the acid trips and so on.

Fantasizing in the desert.
I directed those things.

That was the first time
I'd really had a camera

and been able to go out and shoot stuff.

The drive-ins or the art houses is where
you found young hip moviegoers in '67.

That's where Warner Bros released
that violent bank robber movie

they didn't have much faith in.

Liz Smith of Cosmopolitan calls it
"possibly the best film of the year."

..New Republic,
"the best film of the year."

..both agree,
in The Ladies' Home Journal,

that it is "possibly
the best film of the year."

I know a lot of my friends -
liberals - thought it was...

hated that picture, thought it was violent
and, you know, were furious at me.

Never understood why the kids
would go to it four, five, six times.

They just didn't understand that picture.

Because it was about...
Well, as Jack Warner said,

"You can't tell the good guys
from the bad guys."

Bonnie and Clyde's anti-Establishment
stance made it a huge hit,

perfectly reflecting the disillusionment
of that winter of '67-'68.

With protests against the Vietnam War,

race riots in the ghetto
and anarchy in the streets,

the younger generation was angry
and speaking out.

No one was more surprised
than this disenfranchised audience

that they might have
an ally in Hollywood.

Raised on a steady diet of old films
running on television,

the early '60s spawned
the first generation of movie buffs

that saw film as an art form that
they were determined to be a part of.

I used to see Peter
when he was writing for Esquire,

and barely keeping alive.

In fact, we'd go to screenings
at The Directors Guild

and he was always the first person
at the table to get some food.

It was clearly his only meal of the day.

Bogdanovich came West
with new bride, Polly Platt,

looking for a way to break into movies.

We met Roger - we went to see
Last Year at Marienbad -

I'm pretty sure that was the film
and he was sitting behind us.

We got talking after the screening, and
we went out and had a couple of drinks.

I got friendly with Peter and he worked
with me as a second-unit director

and general production assistant
on The Wild Angels.

They're wild and no angels.

Law-defying - getting their kicks
from violence and torture.

The Wild Angels, starring Peter Fonda
and Nancy Sinatra.

And I met with Roger,
and he said,

"We're making a movie about the Hell's
Angels without making a statement."

I thought, "A movie about the Hell's
Angels on its own is a statement.

"Let's see how he does it."

Their intimacies, a rape of decency.

Their every enjoyment,
a parody of pleasure.

Roger kept missing shots -

you know,
he would fall behind during the day -

and he'd say,
"We'll shoot that in the second unit."

I had never heard of that
but Peter was on to it.

And I did everything possible,

from ordering lunch,
and organizing the laundry

to rewriting 80% of the script,
without credit

and directing three weeks
of the second unit.

The Wild Angels
was a big hit for Corman.

And, as usual,
he rewarded the young Bogdanovich

with a chance to direct his own picture,

if he could figure out how to use
an existing Corman asset.

He said, "Take some footage
from The Terror.

"Shoot some additional footage with
Boris Karloff who owes me two days."

And we looked at
the movie and were devastated

because we could not think of anything.

I kept saying to Peter, "Why are these
Victorian horror films not scary?"

Peter was shaving one morning
and he came in and he said,

"We'll use The Terror
as a movie within the movie,

"and Boris Karloff will play an ageing
horror-movie star who speaks for us."

And he's the one who says,

"These movies aren't frightening
any more, I'm a dinosaur."

And the other plot line is this young
all-American, good-looking boy,

who starts buying guns.

And we see him, you know,
spreading all his gun,

and eating a chocolate bar, very cool.

And picks up his telescopic rifle
and starts aiming.

And it's a very frightening
movie because he starts shooting.

The film was so well-made,
Corman sold it to Paramount Pictures.

Paramount, like many of the old studios,

was in serious trouble when it was
acquired by Gulf and Western,

a conglomerate headed
by a mad Austrian.

Charles Bluhdorn was his name,
an Austrian-born fellow

of mega-maniacal dimensions.

"You think
I make money on pictures? I don't!

"I make money on zinc and sugar!

"Not pictures, it's bullshit.

"But I like it sometimes. But zinc, yes!"

There was no logical business reason.
Let's put it this way.

Bluhdorn did not have a business plan
as to what to do with Paramount,

there was no grand design.

He loved Hollywood, liked pretty women,

and thought that
here was a business in chaos,

maybe there was an opportunity here.

One of Bluhdorn's first decisions

was to hire failed actor
turned producer Bob Evans

to run the West Coast operations.

Hollywood wags assumed Evans
was an attractive pimp for Bluhdorn.

After all, who but a pimp would want
to take over the moribund Paramount?

We were suffering
with an inventory of films

that had already been started.

You had to get through first
that dreadful period

where we made Bluhdorn's dreams, you
know, musicals like Paint Your Wagon.

When I had to sit in the screening room

and listen to Lee Marvin
and Clint Eastwood sing, as dailies,

I thought, "Why did I leave The New York
Times to listen to Lee Marvin singing?"

Evans and Bart signaled
Paramount's new direction

by signing the director of the European
horror film Repulsion, Roman Polanski,

to his first real studio deal
for Rosemary's Baby.

The picture was a big hit for Paramount,

and the elfin, fun-loving Polish Polanski

quickly became a part of
Bob Evans' social scene.

Evans would introduce Polanski
to other young power players

in the New Hollywood, including
Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson.

Women, wine, parties and good blow

were some of the rewards
of success in Hollywood

and Polanski, Nicholson and Evans
shared their drugs and their women.

But what none of them could know

was how often violence would crash
their parties and change their lives,

starting with Paramount's scheduled
release of Targets in the summer of '68.

So, uh... my thanks to all of you.

And now it's on to Chicago,
and let's win there. Thank you.

I had my baby daughter on my hip
and had gone to vote for him.

And... and that night, I remember,
when he was assassinated,

after the initial shock and horror,
I realized it was the end of Targets.

I knew that no one would want
to go see that movie.

After Kennedy's assassination,
the studio yanked Targets from theatres.

But for Corman and those involved

in making the youth-oriented B-movies
so successful at the drive-ins,

it was a boom time,
with one hit after another.

The old studio bosses, however,
continued hiding behind their high walls

with their heads in the sand.

But one studio head,
Stanley Schneider at Columbia Pictures,

had a son young and hip enough to hear
the rumble coming down the road.

Bert is the single
most significant person in post-1950s...

I mean, he is the equivalent,
in terms of producers,

of what Selznick had been before.

He revolutionized film making
from the producer's side.

And mainly, he trusted film makers and
gave them complete creative freedom.

Bert Schneider was the epitome

of a certain kind of
time-and-place producer.

Everyone wanted to be Bert Schneider

and then nobody
wanted to be Bert Schneider.

Well, he was cool. He was so cool
it was like frightening.

He provided the drugs, he provided
the sauna, he provided the pool

he provided the good vibes,

he provided the notion
that nobody should ever feel shitty.

I always thought Bert was kinda mean.

He kinda scared me.

You know, of course,
I met Bob later, and he's...

he's like a beautiful rebel kinda guy, Bob.

Bob Rafelson,
a hip young writer-producer

and Bert Schneider,
an exec at Columbia Pictures,

had hooked up as friends in New York,
and came west with an attitude.

They created Raybert Productions,
a TV and movie production company.

He was the center
of an extraordinary little... community.

- How do you feel now?
- Oh, comme Ci, comme ca.

That's enough. Cut it. Print it.
Good hit. That should be it.

OK, I think we're on another set.

Hey, Bob, that's not right, man.
You know, hitting a girl.

- Hey, did that look good?
- I thought it looked great.

But about hitting a woman, man,
it's about the image and it's not right.

- I hate to interrupt.
- I know, it's for your niece. Her name?

- Mary.
- Fellas, let's move to the right.

- John, was that right, man?
- Yeah.

- John, that's not right.
- Can you move over?

Damn it. Bob, it's a movie for kids.
They're not gonna dig it, man.

The Beatles were very popular then,

and Bob got the idea of doing
a television show based on a rock group.

And so he created The Monkees.

It was an extremely successful show.

Raybert was just
these couple of guys.

Very young for people
in the industry then.

Every other audition had been
some fat guy in a suit going,

"All right, want to read a few lines?"

Bert Schneider's
father ran Columbia Pictures.

There Bert and Bob pitched their idea
for an American Beatles.

The Monkees, in some way,

were simply a cynical decision
to rip off the Beatles,

and be successful in the most
traditional terms on television.

We were never allowed, on
the TV show, to reference the war ever,

to reference society,
anything anti-American,

anything controversial.

Certainly, no references
to even getting stoned.

You know, it was all really sickly sweet-
you know, white bread.

The economic success of that

put Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson
into the catbird seat,

and what they chose to do with that
is what's interesting.

As TV embraced youth programming,
the studios still didn't get it -

but Bert Schneider and
Bob Rafelson sure did.

Flush with money from The Monkees,

they knew there was an audience
for something different.

Peter talked about what was then
called The Loners - Easy Rider.

Jack Nicholson
had talked Bert into this, I believe,

by saying, "Bike movies make money.
You're not gonna lose any money."

So Schneider said, "I'm gonna give you
the money to go and shoot this,

"shoot it in 16mm
and if I like what I see

"then I'll give you the rest of the money
to make the feature movie."

So I got five friends of mine,
that had 16mm cameras,

all of 'em who wanted to be directors -

in the middle of Mardi Gras...

And I was crazy.
There's no question about it.

Get into the Winnie, in search of
the Mardi Gras parade -

which, if you've seen the movie
more than once,

you'll notice we were never in.

The Winnebago
never found the Mardi Gras.

And there are reasons for that.

Everyone was stoned out of their minds.

Every person... everyone was stoned
out of his mind. That's correct, isn't it?

Dennis was just shooting. Getting...
He was gonna "get" New Orleans, man.

Which he did.

We shot for four days,

and I literally walked people through
the streets, it was like the Bataan march.

Finally, Barry Feinstein said,
"I can't take any more,"

and started throwing
the cans of films at me

and said, "That's it, you know."

I said, "if you can't take
any more, give me the film!"

He said, "You want the film?" He starts
throwing. We get into a fist fight.

He pushes me into a room.
Peter's in bed with Karen and Toni Basil,

and a fight proceeds.

Whereupon... it ends,
and... everybody leaves.

After the acid-trip scene at the cemetery,

Hopper and Fonda
returned to Los Angeles.

I get back
and unbeknownst to me,

Peter and Bill Hayward,
my brother-in-law,

came back from New Orleans and
offered to give back the $20,000 that...

Obviously, that I was a crazy person.

And what they had done was,
they started taping me -

my screaming,
and my raving and ranting

and they played this
for Bert Schneider and Jack Nicholson.

And Bert said, "Well... he sounds excited.

"But I hired this man to direct this movie
and he's gonna direct this movie."

Oh, they're not scared of you - they're
scared of what you represent to 'em.

Hey, man. All we represent to them, man,
is somebody who needs a haircut.

Oh, no. What you represent
to them is freedom.

What's wrong with freedom?
That's what it's all about.

That's right - that's what it's all about.

But talking about it and being it,
that's two different things.

It's real hard to be free when you are
bought and sold in the marketplace.

Don't ever tell anybody
that they're not free,

cos they'll get busy killin'
and maimin' to prove that they are.

On the main poster for Easy Rider
there wasn't a motorcycle on it.

The phrase on the top said...

"A man went looking for America
and couldn't find it anywhere.“

When we all, the hippies - when we
arrived at the sales office at Columbia,

we thought,
"What are these guys gonna know?"

We walked in and saw that,
"That's gotta be it. It's amazing.

"That came out of...?
Far out - put it in. It's great."

As Columbia prepared
Easy Rider for release,

United Artists was starting the most
controversial studio picture to date.

There was at UA at that time
this extraordinary group of people,

who had an extraordinary concept about
how to finance and distribute films.

UA had created a world
that the majors were not aware of -

studios didn't understand the concept of
giving creative control to a film maker.

We did it with every film maker.

One that UA wanted
to work with was John Schlesinger,

who had recently scored with Darling,
which won its star, Julie Christie,

an Academy Award.

I told John Schlesinger,
"We want to make a movie with you.

"What do you want to do?"

He said, "There's a book, you'll never
do it." It was Midnight Cowboy.

It never would have been made
under the studio system.

John was at a real turning point
at the Cowboy time.

He was in the closet,
close friends knew that he was gay

but he was desperate to break out.

He wanted to... He's a gay man
and he wanted to have a gay partner,

and live a gay life.

And he had all these archaic ideas

that if the crew knew that he was gay,
that he'd ask them to do something,

and they'd say, "Fuck you, faggot!
You faggot - get outta here!"

I mean, these childhood dreams that...
must have tormented him and all that.

So I just said, "John, it's our movie.

"If we don't like someone,
we'll throw him out."

He got it through his head
that maybe it would be all right,

although he was very frightened,

and then he fell in love with a man
who he's still with now, 39 years later.

And John was like
any one of us if you're in love.

I mean, you're totally on fire with ideas.

And he was inspired -
there's no question about it.

- When did you last go to confession?
- That's between me and my confessor.

And another thing,
you're beginning to smell.

- For a stud that's a handicap.
- Don't talk to me about clean.

I ain't never seen you
change your underwear once.

- That's pretty peculiar.
- I don't do that in public.

- I got no need to expose myself.
- I bet. I bet you ain't never been laid!

And you're gonna tell me
what appeals to women?

I know that that big dumb cowboy crap
of yours don't appeal to nobody,

except every Jackie on 42nd Street.

That's faggot stuff. You want to call it
by its name, that's strictly for fags.

J-John Wayne -
are you gonna tell me he's a fag?

The film would be
nominated for seven Oscars,

win three - including Best Picture -

and be the first studio film
with an X rating.

1969 continued
to rock the movie business.

Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky
directed their first features,

Haskell Wexler did Medium Cool,

and Robert Altman's
antisocial MASH

But the biggest shake-up came

as the quintessential American
drive-in movie premiered at Cannes.

This is the spring of '69 and there's
an anti-festival at the same time,

and we win the anti-festival.

The film blew everybody away so badly,

they actually created a category for it,
so it could be given a prize at Cannes.

It was tremendous. People did not know
how to take us at all.

They just... you know,
we were all bearded, or long-haired

and, you know, it was very far-out.

Nobody thought Easy Rider
would become a seminal film.

It was just another bike movie.

There was a lot of dialogue, a lot of
problems, these hippies had gone out,

and they were stoned
and they made this movie,

and it was never gonna go together,

and they'd spent 700,000,
whatever it was.

And that was kinda the rap on the movie,
that, at least, we heard.

And then it went out, and it was boffo.

I mean, there was genuine shock.

~ Get your motor runnin' ~

~ Head out on the highway ~

~ Lookin' for adventure ~

~ In whatever comes our way ~

~ Yeah, I gotta go make it... ~

Hollywood couldn't figure out why
anybody was going to see that movie.

And that was just - it seems to me that

that was just as
the change was happening.

I mean, it was Vietnam, it was...

Long hair was becoming more popular.

They had lost their audience.
They had not addressed their audience,

or what their audience were into.

We'd gone through the '60s,
and nobody'd ever seen drugs smoked

without going out and committing some
kind of murder, or atrocity of some kind.

When you went to see Easy Rider

and when you saw these guys
really smoking grass by the fire

and, really, the camaraderie
was warm and real and rare,

you went, "What the hell am I looking at?
This has value!

"This has a completely different kind
of value than Pillow Talk.

"This is something extraordinary!
I want more of that!"

But then I kept seeing
movies where people vomited.

I want you to meet my fiancée.

Another new talent brought a new
level of violent realism to the screen.

His name was Sam Peckinpah.

He liked drinking, women
and brawling with studio executives.

His violent lyricism
changed movies forever.

The first time I worked
for Sam, he wrote The Rifleman.

He hadn't directed yet,
but he came on set

and would whisper,
"Why don't you do this?"

So I was the guest star in The Rifleman,
which he always got an income from.

So that was when I first knew him.

And he was one of the few guys that
I knew in the inside that smoked grass.

So he and I
used to smoke in his office.

I knew Sam at the time of Wild Bunch,
hanging around him,

and, erm, wrote a long article about him.

And I just thought
he was brilliant - brilliant.

And I saw the three hours and
45 minutes version of The Wild Bunch,

which was the most
brilliant thing I'd ever fucking seen.

The Wild Bunch was,
in part, an allegory

for America's increasingly violent
involvement in Vietnam.

Fortunately the violence of the new
cinema had been limited to the screen.

For most of those
at the top of the new Hollywood,

life was a nonstop party with an endless
flow of beautiful women and men,

eager to explore
the new sexual freedom,

enhanced and encouraged
with the best drugs money could buy.

Everybody knew everybody else,

and it seemed like
the high would last forever.

Then, on the morning of
August 9th, 1969...

Charlie Manson's followers
broke into Roman Polanski's house

and butchered his pregnant wife,
Sharon Tate, and four others,

while the director was away in Europe.

Rumors flew of orgies and drug abuse.

There was a lot of talk about drugs.

Sharon not only didn't use drugs,

she didn't touch alcohol,
she didn't smoke cigarettes.

The last film she made was not
a very happy experience for her

but her greatest picture she was doing
was her pregnancy.

I never seen a woman
more preoccupied with it.

The house is open now,
the police has released it,

and you can go and see the orgy place.

You will see a lot of blood
all over the place,

cradles, baby clothes - and that's all.

We all knew Sharon,
and we knew, you know, Jay Sebring,

and we knew these people that were
part of our everyday life out here.

And suddenly they were all chopped up
and messed around.

A lot of rage in there, huh?

Well, there was a lot of rage
in the hippie communities,

and on the street in the hippie sides
because the voice was not being heard,

the war was going on,
it was still whacked out...

because we were blowing it.

The trick and the secret is of creating
a film by literally saying you're doing it.

I mean, it's not a matter of asking
someone to let you make a movie.

Francis was the smartest
of all the film makers,

in terms of trying
to bring film makers together,

and do interesting things,
and move into technology

and move the rest of the world
into technology.

The idea is, you gotta really...
really want to do something

and then nothing can stop you.

I thought that he was just
another, you know,

mistake in the security of Hollywood,
you know.

I looked at it as sort of a walled city,
and there were breaches in the defences.

Occasionally you could
get in through them

and see what was on
the other side of the wall.

That didn't mean that
the police wouldn't find you.

The Rain People - Warner Bros
didn't want to make it.

They couldn't care less about this movie.

I went in one day and said,
"We're flying to New York

"to shoot some film for my new movie."

They said, "We gotta approve it."
I said, "Well, I'll pay for it myself."

When I made Easy Rider,
he was coming across the top.

I was crossing the south of the country
and he was crossing the north.

He was doing The Rain People.

Francis Ford Coppola is on the crest of
the new wave of American film makers.

Already he has been named
best director,

and awarded the grand prize
at the San Sebastian Festival in Spain.

He'd gotten on the wall somehow,
and he'd gotten, you know,

the local authorities convinced
that he should be there.

And, of course,
he brought in the Trojan horse.

Would you tell us about
your assistant, George Lucas?

He's not my assistant...

Your...
Associate.

George won an award
to come and observe a film being made,

and he came when we were
making Finian's Rainbow.

And I kept seeing this skinny kid
and he's always looking.

I said, "Who's that?"
He said, "He's observing you."

I think the student films
are the only real hope.

They're slowly realizing
that students know what they’re doing.

Time magazine
had pictures of all of us in,

and we'd just won
The National Student Film Festival.

I won it for Marcello, I'm bored,
George won it for THX,

Marty Scorsese won for one of his films.

His, probably, was a real film.

Mike Medavoy
was a young talent agent

when he went looking for
the next big thing.

I called my secretary and said,
"Find these guys. Let's call them."

So I went up and I called John Milius.

I went out and signed him,
signed Spielberg - signed a few others.

He was a very, very good agent
but a terrible deal-maker.

He... You know, he'd... get you anything.
You know, if the guy said,

"Well, I really can't... I want
to hire the guy but I've only got $35,"

Medavoy'd take the $35.

What was good about that
was it kept you working.

As the oldest of the film school grads,
Francis Coppola set up Zoetrope

as a production banner
for emerging talent.

Two of the new film men,
Francis Coppola and George Lucas,

are discussing director Lucas'
new movie, THX 1138.

George, where did the very first idea
of THX come to you?

It came from reading comic books
when I was ten years old.

Well, Zoetrope was the first attempt
by a kind of outsider... film maker,

who was gonna bring together
and form a commune of film makers.

And it's to Francis's credit
that he tried to put it together.

Everybody had
a six-picture deal with Francis.

So it was six other film makers,
my husband among them,

whose projects were
supposed to go to Warner.

The deal was
we were driving to Warner Bros,

Francis would show themTHX,
Zoetrope's flagship first production,

and then present them with
these silver boxes with our scripts.

They saw THX,
everyone's project was canceled.

Lucas was angry and humiliated
by the reaction to the film

and the cancellation
of other Zoetrope projects.

A crushed Coppola
withdrew to San Francisco,

taking a high-paying script job
on the film Patton.

This whole thing was that
Francis was kind of regarded

as this guy who'd sold them out.

Francis was the Establishment now.

While Coppola explained
to Lucas and the others

why he couldn't save their projects,

Peter Bogdanovich
was trying to get his next directing job.

Bert Schneider was looking for new
films to do, after Easy Rider's success.

He let me direct my first movie,
A Safe Place,

which Jack Nicholson agreed to be in.

And Nicholson was given permission
to direct his first film, Drive, He Said.

And along the way I thought of Peter.

They said, "if you ever have a picture
you want to make, we'd be interested."

So not too long after that
I called and said,

"There's a book I'd like to do,
called The Last Picture Show.

"You can get it in paperback.
Larry McMurtry wrote it."

Bert said, "Well, send it on over."
I said, "Why don't you buy it?"

Arrogant. Thinking,
"if he can't even buy the book

"he won't be interested in making it."

A week later, he called me.
"It took a while to find the book

"but we got it and we'd like to make it."

So we made the movie.
It was filled with lots of drama.

The Last Picture Show
was a frank exploration of sexuality

in a classic American film making style.

It was also an emotionally painful
experience for its makers,

the husband and wife team of
Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt,

We were in preproduction in LA,

and we were already looking at actors
and actresses to play these parts.

And I saw a magazine cover
at this checkstand of Ralph's Market.

And there was this girl
with what I thought looked like

a sexual chip on her shoulder.

Corkscrew curls, you know,
blonde hair, blue eyes.

Just arrogant little thing, you know.

Although she turns out
to be a tall, tall girl.

And I said to Peter, "Doesn't that
look just the way Jacy should look?"

And Peter said, "Yes."
And, you know, he set about finding her.

I knew you couldn't do it.
Now I'll never get to not be a virgin.

What'll we tell everybody?
I just want to cry.

My mother was dead right about you!

I don't know what happened.

Don't go out there!
We haven't had time to do it!

I don't want one soul to know. You better
not tell... Just pretend it was wonderful.

I don't know what happened.

Oh! If you say that
one more time, I'll bite you!

Oh, gee, tell us, Jacy. What was it like?

I just can't describe it.
I just can't describe it in words.

I had a brief affair with Jeff Bridges. Then
he went on National Guard duty, reserve,

and that was when Peter
made that fateful comment to me.

We were shooting the scene in
the theatre - my first scene in the movie.

And he was sitting in the row behind me.

He leaned forward and said, "I don’t
know who I want more, you or Jacy."

And I was so... so struck by that.
Then they said, "We're ready, Cybill."

And I had to make that entrance and say,

"What y'all doing back here in the dark?"

And, I mean, it lit that moment.

It lit that moment. it was real.

Peter meant it but it was also... it was...

You couldn't have told well,
me, certainly, at that time,

anything else that would have...

I was lit up.

Her boyfriend, back in New York,
didn't want her to show her breasts

or do any of the nude scenes
in the movie.

So there were all
these tears and drama

and I remember, you know,

I saw my husband falling in love with her

or falling in, you know,
developing this crush on her

and I remember being grateful
that she even had a boyfriend.

Peter asked me, it was interesting,

"Do you think I should fire her because
she won't do these nude scenes?"

And I said no.

I don't think anything
could have stopped it.

I feel very badly, in many ways,

now that I'm a little wiser.

For Polly, I know
that must have been hell for her.

I even, in a certain way, I understood,

I felt it was an occupational
hazard of the job.

I just thought it might be
a temporary thing.

I've learned since,
over many years,

that was far more like Jacy
than I ever imagined.

In real life.

If I had it to do all over again,

I would do the same.

While Bogdanovich's marriage
was coming apart,

Warren Beatty was winning a reputation
as Hollywood's premier bachelor.

However, his follow-up
to Bonnie And Clyde,

The Only Game In Town,
wasn't scoring nearly as well.

Beatty needed a hit and he believed
strongly in directors.

..John McCabe,
he came with poetry on his lips.

If a frog had wings,
he wouldn't bump his ass so much.

A deck in his pocket.

What do you say
we make this a nickel game, huh?

A man who knew
where he was going.

- Where are you going?
- Nowhere, uh...

I was just wondering
where you was gonna go.

Well, I was gonna go
over there by that fence.

Oh.

The problem was, the director
of his next film, Robert Altman,

believed the only star in an Altman film
was Robert Altman.

And Beatty, after successfully
producing Bonnie And Clyde,

was not prepared to play
a supporting role, even to his director.

Warren kept worrying about coverage.

Because he had produced
Bonnie And Clyde,

and by that time he had a sense

of what you needed to cut away to
and Bob doesn't direct that way.

So, the times when things got testy,

it was really a matter of style.

Warren is very precise
and you have to honor that

but he's not the director or making
the film at that moment in time.

There was a scene
actually going on about eight minutes.

It's a wonderful scene
we shot with two cameras.

So two cameras, eight minutes long
and we did about 40 times.

Imagine just how many
rolls of film that was.

Was that 80 rolls of film?
Because we had to use 80 rolls of film.

That's 80,000 feet of film.

So we went, probably, about,
I don't know, 27 or 28,

when Robert said,
"You know, it's not getting better.

"I told you that take eight
was perfect for me."

"You kept going," and all that.
"I was happy with take eight."

And Warren says,
"I want to do one more."

And then Robert says,
"OK, Warren, I tell you what,

"I'm tired, I'm going to go home.

"You do as many takes as you want.
These boys are going to take it.

"Finish it when you want."
And then he went home.

Neither Beatty or Altman were happy
and McCabe would mark the last time

a star would destabilize
one of Altman's productions.

As Beatty struggles with Altman,
Dennis Hopper planned his next film.

Well, I'm gonna now make the movie
that I wanted to make as my first movie,

which is called The Last Movie.

It starts with the last scene of a movie
being shot and the company leaves.

The people are left with their streets
where one man becomes the director.

He makes the people build
a stick camera

and act out the violence
that the movie company acted out.

After being turned down
by his former partners at BBS,

Dennis Hopper took his new project
to Universal Pictures,

which set up a low-budget division,
headed by Ned Tannen,

to try to cash in on the youth market.

A friend of mine was flying
with Dennis Hopper on an airplane

and he said, "Dennis loves
Me And Bobby McGee

"and he wants to hear
more of your songs

"cos he's making a movie and he wants
to see if you can do the music for it."

And so my publisher flew me
out to LA, out here,

and Dennis took my songs
and showed them to Phil Spector

and at the end of it, he said,

"Will you go down to Peru with me?
I'm making this movie,"

which was The Last Movie.

And he took me down there
to do the music for it.

I was just remembering
the plane trip down to Peru

was one of the scariest things
I've been in.

Here was a plane full of strange people,

including myself,
but they were all so loaded

and walking up and down the aisles
and singing and dancing

and the plane was rocking,
it was some Peruvian airline.

It was, it was really a ship
of fools, you know?

It's amazing that anybody
got out of that alive.

By the time I got down to Peru,

I think he'd already antagonized
the Catholic Church,

the military junta,

the communists, who were building
a road that we had to take

from Cuzco up to Chinchero,
where they were filming.

They cast all these friends of Dennis's,

Mitchum's son and all these
other guys that were huge

and they rode on horses and took
an enormous quantity of drugs.

And being in the Andes,
in the cocaine capital of the world,

it was a very insane scene.

But for me, it was an interesting
introduction to the film... to movies.

Hey! Cut, cut. What the goddamn
hell's the matter with you, Tex?

- Where have you been?
- My name's Kansas, I'm...

I don't care. Who hired him?

- Hey, man, you're in shot.
- OK, get out...

- He's supposed to be in the shot.
- I don't give a damn. Did you hire him?

All right. Get your positions again
and on the double.

Kansas, quit spooking that goddamn
horse, we're trying to get the shot, here.

The movie was in Dennis's mind

so nobody else seemed to know what
was going on or what was happening.

I was convinced that we had a good
movie in the can so we all come back,

Dennis goes to Taos, New Mexico,

and, I think, he bought
DH Lawrence estate,

which is a beautiful compound, and all.

And he decided
he's gonna edit the film there.

Of course, he invited
all his buddies and everybody

and it was endless 24-hour parties,
and all that stuff, you know,

and spending money, and all,

and everybody was giving advice.

You know, "You should do this, that."

And basically, what happened, really,
Dennis screwed it up in editing.

He didn't let anybody,
a professional editor, come in.

And that's what he should have done.

He was
going his own way.

I think Dennis had probably been
fighting so long to do it his way

that when he got a budget
which seemed outlandish at the time,

I think it was a million dollars,

he was not going to be
pushed around by anybody.

I wouldn't re-edit it,
which is what he wanted.

- Did they re-cut it?
- They couldn't re-cut cos I had final cut.

But I had final cut and cut my own throat.

The picture's demise was the first threat

to the new power
studios were giving directors.

Over at Paramount, studio heads
Robert Evans and Peter Bart

were about to find
themselves homeless.

Well, what happened was that,

reduced to simplest terms,
the Mafia bought the lot

with the Vatican bank as a front.

It was arranged by a rather unsavoury
character named Michele Sindona.

I say to you he was a bit unsavoury,

he ended up being murdered
in a jail in Sicily,

which I would suggest is a reasonable
qualification for unsavoury.

But at this moment in time,
he was a banker.

He bought the lot, immediately started
shooting porn movies on the lot.

Evans and Bart moved
Paramount's offices to Beverly Hills.

While this was going on, Mario Puzo
approached his friend, Bob Evans,

desperately in need of cash
for gambling debts.

Evans wrote a cheque
on the spot for ten grand

for an outline Puzo gave him
about the Mafia.

The book was published and this
obscure project that I was nursing,

that no one paid attention to was
the number one bestseller in the world.

Suddenly, everybody in the studio
and in the parent company

had a better idea as to
who should direct and star in it.

We talked to everybody.
Evans and I talked to almost everybody.

Nobody wanted to do it.
It glorified the Mafia.

It made them Robin Hoods,
and all the excuses you can think of.

All of a sudden, everybody got off
the picture. it couldn't be put together.

And suddenly it turned up on my desk
again as an almost abandoned project.

So... went back to plan A.

I got a call from Peter

asking me if I'd be interested
in producing The Godfather.

I couldn't catch my breath for a minute.

And, of course, I said,
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt."

He said, "Well, the one caveat
is Charlie Bluhdorn wants to meet.

"He has to approve the producer
and the director of the Godfather.

"Can you come to New York
to meet him?" And I said, "Absolutely."

I was there in Stanley's office,

the adjoining door flies open,

it's Charlie Bluhdorn,
this hyper, wacko Austrian.

"Ruddy, I'm Charlie Bluhdorn."
"Yeah, hello."

That was the last line, doesn't ask me
how was the flight? Nothing.

"What you wanna do with this movie?"

I looked at him, I looked at my book.

If I start discussing this book,
it's the end of the meeting.

I said, "Charlie,

"I wanna make an ice-blue,
terrifying movie about people you love."

"That's brilliant."

He jumps... He runs
out of the office and slams the door.

I say, "Stanley, what the hell is that?"
He says, "I'll find out."

He says, "Charlie thinks
you're a genius. You got the job."

Hollywood was stunned
when Paramount announced

that their blockbuster
would be directed by Francis... who?

Francis had, as a director,

done You're A Big Boy Now,
Finian's Rainbow, The Rain People.

So it's not the greatest recommendation
for taking him over to direct,

so, truthfully, we hired Francis
as a result of his writing ability.

He had already won the Academy Award,
just won it, for Patton.

Coppola initially
turned Paramount down.

He didn't wanna do
a Hollywood gangster movie.

The original Godfather book
had a lot of sleazy aspects to it

that were cut out for the movie and
I didn't like it much for those reasons

and I was very frightened of getting,
once again, coopted into another project,

low budget, it was
a very inexpensive film.

In those days, they wanted young
directors cos they wanted it cheap.

And I did turn it down,
actually, once or twice.

You know, the Zoetrope studio
wasn't working

and I admired his idealism
but he did have some kids

and, erm, I reminded him rather
frequently that he was broke

and that this would be one way
of getting out of it.

And, er, he kind of agreed.

While The Godfather preoccupied
the higher-ups at Paramount,

Bart and Evans gave the go-ahead
to a bizarre script

helmed by a director considered
extremely eccentric,

even by the standards
of '60s Hollywood.

The prototypical early '70s meeting -

Hal Ashby, who couldn't pitch anything.

Long, scruffy beard,

the ultimate film geek.

For a guy who, when you first met him,

looked like he would never be able
to tie his own shoes,

that you worried about
if he was gonna cross the street,

who would have surprised you if he'd
ever learnt how to use an ATM machine.

But if you looked behind that a bit,

here's a man who manipulated
the studios to do exactly as he wanted.

He says, "I'd like
to introduce you to somebody

"who got a sense of this movie."

Brings in Cat Stevens.

Cat Stevens is not somebody you
would want to be in the same room with.

He looked like a homeless person.

And the two of them, in their inarticulate
'60s way, pitch Harold And Maude.

They had a great sense of the movie.

But Bob and I had spent a few months
trying to persuade Hal to do it.

Not till he met Cat

and they came up with this idea
for, like, a mini opera,

did this thing make sense.

We were this little unit
that was out of sight, out of mind.

And they'd look at dailies.

And Hal had a... His philosophy was,

"Here's the script. You've hired me
as a director, I'm gonna cast it,

"we've agreed on a budget, beat it."

Midway through the cutting period,
we had half the film,

that he sent to Paramount
and they loved 'em.

They thought... They really thought...
So that we had a Christmas release.

- Oh, it's all right.
- It's organic.

The first review was Murph in Variety

and it said, "Harold And Maude
is as funny as a burning orphanage."

And I... And that was a good one.

I mean, Time said, "We're gonna do you
a favour. We're not gonna review it."

So. Erm, so that was the end of it.
It opened and closed in a week.

And it was gone. Bingo.
I mean, it was so weird.

And we'd spent a year on it,
you know, and... nobody got it.

In the weeks before Christmas, 1971,

Paramount Pictures began a nationwide
campaign advertising The Godfather.

They were doing something
no studio had ever done -

opening a film everywhere at once
on an unprecedented 400 screens.

The picture opened
to phenomenal business,

grossing over $80 million
in its initial run.

Nothing in Hollywood history had ever
made this much money this fast.

They saw the amount of money
that came through the door,

it was suddenly Gulf...
everything... News Corp...

Everyone started looking
at studios differently.

They started looking at studios
as real cash cows.

The success of The Godfather
confirmed Coppola as a genuine artist.

He would use
that power to help other directors.

But first, he would bring the exiled
George Lucas back to Hollywood.

And, ultimately, what got Graffiti made

was they said, "if Francis Coppola
produces this film, we'll do it."

George kept saying, "I know people will
love this movie, it will be a big hit."

We said, "George, if you make this
movie, consider yourself very fortunate."

It was just the joy of creating
something. We didn't have to use stars.

We didn't have to do anything
according to the rules.

- We're all done out here.
- All done? What's he mean?

Er, he means we're all done
having loads of fun out here.

Wonderful, have all the fun
you want. This place is for fun.

- Yes, it is. Thank you.
- Well.

- Thank you both.
- Good luck, son.

Wait. Before I say goodbye,
I hope you'll be taking along with you

a little piece of this place.

- I think I have.
- Good. Don't forget us.

No, I won't forget you
and you won't forget me.

- No, kid, bye-bye.
- Goodbye and good luck.

- Bye.
- It was nice to meet you.

Right. What he said goes for me, too.

You might just make it
as a Pharaoh yet, boy.

Everyone in that set believed
and said and stated aloud

that this was a classic film.

That we were making a classic,
a cult movie,

a movie that would be important.

And I said, "What are you talking about?
This is just a little movie.

"It's just a little thing. We're here
in Modesto. We're not making history."

I'll never forget the horror
of the people at Universal,

when they looked at this picture.

"What is this? It's not even
good enough to run on television.

"What is this thing?" Someone said,
"The kids may like it."

"'The kids? But they don't
go to the movies."

The whole orientation was different.

There was a famous incident
where Francis said,

"if you don't like this movie and don't
want to do anything with it, I do.

"I think it's great.
Here's a cheque and I'll buy it."

We made no offer, there were
discussions and at the last moment,

Universal, smartly, decided to preview it

before an audience
and deliberately invite some kids.

And, of course, I knew the jig was up
cos the kids adored this movie.

Universal said, "We thought of selling
this? We don't wanna sell it."

But there was no understanding
about the youth market. That was later.

With the success of American Graffiti,

the door swung open
to Hollywood's next generation

which was coming ashore in Malibu.

And it was just one of my favourite
surfing spots on the whole coast.

And, all of a sudden, I find all
these people I know have houses there.

Donald Sutherland was an old lover
of mine from Canada.

He told me about this house on Nicholas
Beach that was 400 bucks a month.

It was a great house, right on the beach
with two bedrooms upstairs

and in that hideous '60s
A-line split-level style

with an avocado-green shag rug
and it was about that deep.

It was very beautiful and very free
out there. The ocean was incredible.

We were right on these beautiful dunes
on a private road

and Michael and Julia Phillips
rented a house on the beach.

Julia and Michael Phillips
had produced a hit,

The Sting, for Universal.

We met as neighbours
and became very good friends

and became, I guess,
co-conspirators in a sense,

unconscious co-conspirators,

in that we began to mix our friends
and relationships on a social level

but it became an important career thing.

Jenny and I were quite arrogant
about being the queen bees

who decided who was in
and who was out

in this peculiar little rapidly-growing
crowd of misfits.

Jenny was friends with Brian De Palma,
who I promptly got a crush on.

They became an item
and he brought Marty out,

Marty Scorsese,
who brought Harvey Keitel out.

This odd friend of his, Harvey Keitel,

who came with Marty,
you didn't get one without the other.

And then, like, Schrader was there.

Marty, or Brian, had another place
and Michael and Julia Phillips had one

and between the three places,
people would run into each other.

I think Milius... Did he know Brian or...?
Did he know Marty?

Who first brought Bobby De Niro out?
And Al Pacino?

That's easy, he was going out with Jill.

And Margie brought home
her darling little friend Steven Spielberg.

A bunch of actors,
you know, lots of girls.

I'm telling you, life was good.

Steven certainly wasn't a ladies' man
and Marty wasn't

and Paul Schrader wasn't.

I think these were just like...

The truth is, on some level,
they were nerdy guys

who wanted to hang out
and talk movies and make movies.

There was a chemistry going on

between these people having a chance
to meet and talk and hang out.

Well, Julia Phillips,
she pulled everybody together.

She wanted to exploit everybody.

But she actually had
a very positive effect,

cos she was full of enthusiasm.

"What movie do you want to do?
Let's get this done."

We all really rooted for each other
in every way -

went to each other's screenings,

read each other's screenplays,
offered suggestions,

advised on each other's love life.

It was all in the pot and up for grabs
and very much a communal experience.

Nicholas Beach,
with its rabid film buff culture,

would create both competition
and inspiration.

Imagine De Palma, Spielberg,
Schrader, Milius, Scorsese,

all arguing over movies,
favourite directors and possible projects.

They drove each other to think
and believe they could make great films.

Run, Bertha!

The young Scorsese had only directed
the Corman-produced Boxcar Bertha.

He would prove his talent to his buddies
with a film from the streets.

The characters in Mean Streets
are a compilation of many characters

in the neighbourhood
where I used to live...

but he lived there all his life.

Jonathan Taplin was
a rock a roll refugee

who decided to check out movies.

I was kind of arrogant enough...
I didn't know what I didn't know.

So I figured if I could have produced
300 rock and roll concerts in four years

why couldn't I produce a movie?

Sol put some of my money in,
a couple of friends' money in,

we got together half a million dollars

and we made Mean Streets.

Nothing. I won't say nothing to Giovanni.

Hey, I wanted to ask you something.

I've always wondered about her -
God's honest truth -

what happens when she comes?

- What?
- What's that?

What happens when she comes?
I mean...

You dirty, two-faced fucking fag,
don't ever hit me again!

Don't!

- All right, I think I am gonna...
- Go ahead.

- Right now.
- Go on!

I'll tear your fuckin' eyes out!

- I'm gonna kill you, bastard!
- Go on!

Teresa! Teresa.

What do you do? Do you know?

Johnny!

How should I know?
She's your fucking girl.

- Get over here.
- Get off.

Teresa?

Hey, do you know what to do?

Marty had his circle of friends

and they loved the picture.

They just totally loved it,
they saw its originality.

I remember the first executive
we showed it to...

who shall remain nameless,
after a few minutes

he got up and he said,
"Listen, gentlemen,

"thanks for bringing it in
but this is not gonna work."

So he walked out.

And so Marty's, like, dying.

I'm thinking, "I've put my life savings
into something and I'll never get it back."

And then we came here, to Warner Bros.

And the movie starts

and about ten minutes into the movie
this waiter arrives.

"Who's got the tuna on rye?"

And Marty's just, again, dying.

This guy's standing right in the middle,
the waiter's projected on the screen.

And eventually it settles down and...

they're starting to laugh
cos these are New York guys,

they understand that kind of Catholic,
Jewish, weird New York humour.

And I'm beginning to think,
"Well, this is gonna be OK."

And then, about two-thirds
of the way through the movie,

John Calley, who was way up front,
gets up and starts to walk back

and I thought, "Oh, my God,
this is disastrous, he's leaving."

And he comes and he sits down
next to me and he says,

"This is the best movie I've seen all year
but I have to take a leak,

"would you mind stopping it?"

I said, "Sure, what button do I push?"

So we stopped and he went out
and came back.

We finished the movie, he just got up
and said, "We're buying it.

"I don't want you to sell it
to anybody else but us."

And so that was...
All of sudden we were up.

Marty popped two Valiums,
he was fine.

About three weeks later,

we had a meeting with Jay Cocks
and Marty and Bob Evans.

He was saying, "Why didn't you guys
sell this movie to us?"

We had to... We had to rat on Peter Bart.

Mean Streets opened
to ecstatic critical reviews

in an era when reviews
really made a difference.

Well, obviously it was a different time,

but there was a sense that film criticism
was part of the movement

and that film critics were there
at the barricades.

You know... you know,

with the sort of
political message of Godard

in Week End and La Chinoise.

And, you know,
it seems rather preposterous today

to think of a film critic
as part of a political movement.

But clearly that's how a lot of us
thought of ourselves.

But even as the critics brought
audiences back into theatres,

the studios began to understand what
kind of film could really bring money in.

It opened in New York
and it did very well in New York

but then, literally, in the fifth
or sixth week that they'd been working it,

The Exorcist came out

and that just sucked up
all the Warner Bros oxygen

and that was it, that's where
they were gonna take their energies.

With The Exorcist, Warner Bros copied
Paramount's Godfather strategy -

opening the picture all over the country,
on hundreds of screens.

It was Friedkins' second hit after the
hugely successful French Connection

and he joined the growing list
of directors who could do no wrong.

Hollywood now belonged to the auteurs.

Eagerly grabbing up
these new media stars,

Paramount's Charlie Bluhdorn
set up the Directors Company

with Friedkin, Coppola
and Bogdanovich,

ignoring industry concern
about inflated directorial egos.

it was a signal that the producer
could be pushed off to the side

and the directors were the people
responsible for making the picture.

Nobody ever suggested the director
wasn't the director of the movie.

But then, nobody should complain,
when you give him 100% freedom,

about why the pictures cost so much
or why they're not talking to the studio.

I think that was a terrible mistake.

Coppola's first film for the new company
was The Conversation,

a small, artful film that took a long time
to recoup its relatively small budget.

- I didn't mean to tell you on that level.
- No, no.

Bogdanovich folded his Paper Moon
into the new company...

What company you from?

..but then stumbled with
his follow-up, Daisy Miller.

After viewing Daisy Miller
and The Conversation,

Billy Friedkin bailed on his friends
to make the hugely expensive Sorcerer.

The picture flopped
and seriously damaged Friedkin's career.

As the budgets and egos grew,

a self-righteous sense of artistic
entitlement began separating Hollywood

from the rest of the outside world,
which was exploding.

US involvement with the war
was still expanding

and the ghettos were still aflame.

There were exceptions
to this self-involvement.

Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson had
continued BBS's successful run of films

with Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces.

But Bert, having conquered Hollywood,
turned away from make-believe.

Bert felt the need to put his money
where his mouth was.

He believed in certain things.

Hi there. Black power.

Bert's involvements
with other non-filmic things

such as Huey Newton
and the Black Panthers,

such as Abbie Hoffman, who Bert
supported while he was underground...

Huey Newton would be at those parties.

And I don't know a lot of the specifics

but legend has it that he got some guns
to the Panthers.

In 1974, Bert produced the Academy
Award-winning documentary

on the Vietnam War, Hearts And Minds.

Accepting his Oscar,

Schneider read a telegram conveying
greetings of friendship to all Americans

from Vietnam's
revolutionary government.

There was a moment of shocked silence

before a burst of applause
and scattered hisses.

Meanwhile, Sam Peckinpah was
continuing his politically incorrect ways.

After scoring
with the violent Wild Bunch,

he had alienated women
with the sexist Straw Dogs.

Sam was like a dog that you love

but he's always doing something
that kind of embarrasses you.

I don't even think
Sam would be allowed to get into LA,

much less work in LA.

He was a total outlaw
and one of the last of a breed.

He was like one of the Wild Bunch.v

There was clearly
a case of a real survivor.

I mean, Sam had the mentality...
He used to, like...

He couldn't really create
until he was face down in the barroom,

dead broke,
with everyone laughing at him.

Dylan came to see me
and by then we had cast Kristofferson.

He said, "You know, I gotta tell you
that in a past life I was Billy the Kid."

So I said, "Well, that's great,
Bob, that's why you're in."

So two weeks later we flew down
to Durango and we went to see Sam.

It was late at night,
Sam lived kind of outside of town.

We walked up towards the house
and there was this scream

and this maid ran out, just terrified.

And we heard a shot.

And I thought, "Oh, man, this is gonna
blow the whole thing with Bob."

Hey, Pete, who's that out there?

I knocked on Sam's door,

pushed it open and Sam was standing
in front of this mirror,

completely naked,
with a gun in his hand.

This mirror was totally blown to hell

and he was looking at his reflection
and didn't say anything.

He had a bottle in one hand
and a gun in the other.

I said, "Sam, this is Bob Dylan."

In the end, Dylan's soundtrack made
more money than Peckinpah's film.

He was trying
to make something good.

Unfortunately, so much creative energy,
I felt, was expended

in fighting the guys who were
supposed to be on his side, you know?

The studio, the producers or whatever.

As the alcoholic Peckinpah fought MGM
over his director's cut,

a rising star gave one of the boys
from Malibu his first studio gig.

Ellen Burstyn had just become a big star
in Warner Bros' The Exorcist

and was offered a picture
where she could pick the director.

So I called Francis Coppola...

and I asked him, "Do you know
anybody new and exciting?"

He said, "Look at a film
called Mean Streets.v"

Marty came in and I said,
"I loved your movie...

"but it's really all about men

"and this picture is
from a woman's point of view.

"And I can't tell from that movie if you
know anything about women. Do you?"

He said, "No, but I'd like to learn."

So I thought that was as good an answer
as I could ever imagine.

Scorsese surrounded himself
with women for Alice,

partially to help him artistically,
partially to protect himself.

He made his girlfriend Sandy Weintraub
the associate producer,

then hired Toby Rafelson,
who'd recently split from husband Bob

after he'd become too open
about his many sexual infidelities.

Finally, George Lucas's wife Marcia
came on as editor.

- Donald!
- That's OK, boy. That's OK, you run!

Alice...

But in Hollywood the only relationships
that seemed to last were between men.

At Paramount, Bob Evans,

Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson
and Robert Towne

were creating a classic noir tale
of 1930s Los Angeles,

a film made even darker when Polanski,
still scarred by his wife's murder,

insisted on changing Towne's script
to reflect what he saw in reality.

Faye Dunaway's character is murdered

and her daughter returned
to her incestual father

Chinatown's artistic success
justified the studios' faith

in the director as auteur.

By the mid-'70s, audiences
had returned to the theatres.

The Godfather, American Graffiti
and The Exorcist were packing them in.

A new generation of directors
like Coppola, Bogdanovich, Hopper,

Penn, Peckinpah, Scorsese and Altman
had made movies relevant again

with handcrafted films
that spoke to modern audiences.

But now that the studios had
audiences back,

did they really have
to deal with the huge egos

and autocratic control
directors demanded?

Before the question could be asked,

the first cracks were appearing
in this auterist utopia.

Trouble is the studios think
you're infallible.

Suddenly you're fallible,
you make a mistake,

you screw up, they lose some money,

then they get nervous
about the next one.

Peter Bogdanovich stumbled badly with
At Long Last Love and Daisy Miller.

Dennis Hopper's career was lost
in a snowstorm of drugs and paranoia.

Now the BBS had essentially shut down,

Bob Rafelson watched
his directorial ambitions collapse

under the weight of The King
Of Marvin Gardens and Stay Hungry.

And Robert Altman,
after four commercial flops,

adroitly sidestepped
studio indifference to Nashville

by involving critic Pauline Kael
in editing.

Her endorsement made it Altman's last
commercial success for many years.

What happened
to the directors like Peter,

like Altman, like Peckinpah...

They were doing whatever they wanted,

smoking dope, drinking,
and they lost their minds.

I really think that's what happened.

It was the age of excess.

We didn't know enough,
we were too successful,

we probably were somewhat arrogant -
I speak for a lot of us -

and we made some big mistakes.

As the directors started stumbling,

Warren Beatty positioned himself
to take control.

Honey!

- My God, it's Lester! Get up, get up!
- Doll?

- Jackie?
- Oh, God.

- Uh...
- Jackie, you sleeping?

Jackie?

Jackie?

Oh, shut the door, shut the door, honey.

- Come on!
- Oh.

Sorry.

Warren had a lot to say
about the production,

obviously because he was co-writing it
and co-producing

and actually, it was his baby.

Hal was frustrated by it on one level

because like most directors,
he wanted to be in charge.

I don't think he was in charge
on that film.

Warren is a very unique person, too,

and he is so strong, you know, he's...

Whatever he has in mind,
one way or another, he's gonna get it.

So here was this situation
between him and Hal,

who was also equally very strong.

So he said, "OK.
We're gonna do my takes first."

And we did eight or ten takes.

And Hal says, "OK, I'm happy now,
let's do whatever."

And hey, it was Hal's
most successful film.

I mean, so, what do you say?

Shampoo was so successful

it gave Ashby the clout to make
his next picture without stars.

Bound For Glory was a biography
of singer Woody Guthrie

and his attempts to help organize
poor workers into unions.

Ashby, like Guthrie,
was uncompromising.

The picture soon went
far over budget and worse,

failed to connect with an audience.

The public's taste was changing

and it would be fed
by one of the movie nerds from Malibu.

I was so deeply unaware
of what was going on in the studios,

I didn't get that part of Steven until later.

He did know what was going on
at the studios, he was the wunderkind,

I think he dropped a year off his age,
or a couple, I'm sure he did.

Um, cos he started out older than me.

Spielberg had become
a Universal contract director in TV

and had risen out of that ghetto
with the TV movie Duel.

He was 28 when he started the movie

that would change him
and the movie business forever.

I saw him become a huge character.

The demands and pressures
that were thrown at him,

that were staggeringly difficult
and painful and...

And he rose...
He just did it, he did his job.

For a writer it wasn't too tough,

except that I was writing a few days
ahead of the schedule

and I shared a house with Steven
so we talked about nothing but the film.

I didn't have to go on the water
the last two months.

Steven, Roy and Ricky were going out
every day with Robert and the crew

to get maybe 30 seconds of usable film.

Bad weather
and a recalcitrant mechanical shark

drove the picture wildly over budget
and behind schedule.

Two-thirds of the way
through the shoot,

the studio flew out
to see why the picture was in trouble.

They were met by a director
who didn't smoke or drink

and would set aside his own ego
when dealing with studio executives.

The result - the Universal suits
went back to Hollywood

and Spielberg finished his film.

I left the shoot on a Wednesday,
after six months we were wrapping.

We still had a couple of more shots,

including the shot
which exploded the shark.

Roy Scheider goes bam and the shark...
A pretty involved and intricate shot.

So I had flown to Boston

and I met Steven in Boston
and got on the plane with him to LA

and I said, "So how did the shot go?"

He said, "They're doing it now."
I said, "Well, why aren't you there?"

And he kind of gave me this insane grin

and he had bailed,
he'd just said, "I can't do this."

He had put that shot
in the hands of his AD

and he had skipped,

which was his way of going
completely insane.

While Spielberg and editor Verna Fields
assembled the shark movie,

some of the other Malibu film makers

were slipping a dark nightmare
through the studio gates.

I had gone
to UCLA film school.

I'd gone to the AFI the very first year
it began, when it was all free,

and then a number of things
had fallen apart in my life.

I was in debt,
I wasn't making any money,

marriage had fallen apart,

I had left the AFI in protest
over some of their policies.

So I really didn't have
much of a place to go or much of a life.

I took to wandering
and kind of drifting around.

And it was out of that period
of drifting, and drinking,

that, uh... l, um...

started having this pain and finally went
to the hospital and I had an ulcer.

26 years old.

I realized in the emergency area that
I hadn't spoken to anybody in weeks.

I'd just been drifting around in this car,
sleeping in my car.

And so the metaphor
of the taxi driver came to me.

De Niro.

In Bang The Drum Slowly, the critics
called him a brilliant new talent.

After Mean Streets,
they said he was a genius.

For his performance
in The Godfather Part II,

they gave him the Academy Award.

Just get me out of here, all right?

Now Robert De Niro creates
a terrifying portrait of life

on the edge of madness.

Driver, just forget about this, it's nothin'.

A film by Martin Scorsese.

People will do anything
in front of a taxi driver.

- People too cheap to rent a hotel room.
- Driver, hurry up.

People wanna embarrass you.

It's like you're not even there,
you don't even exist.

This city here is like an open sewer,
it's full of filth and scum.

I think I know what you mean, Travis.

The script banged around Hollywood
and everyone said, "This is really good,

"somebody should make it but not us."

And then things started coming together,

Michael and Julia got a Best Oscar
for The Sting,

Marty had a hit
with Alice Doesn't Live Here,

Bobby got an Oscar for Godfather II,

and all of a sudden at $2 million...

Uh... Begelman and Julia Phillips
were friends

and Julia said, "Somebody should
make this, why don't you?"

And he finally said, "Why not? OK."

he had every kind of asthma condition,

he was just afraid of
being chewed up by the system,

he'd obviously been banged around
in some of his film making experiences

and just wanted
to get through with his work

without being too badly mauled.

In order to get
a green light from the studio

Phillips and Scorsese went forward

with what they knew
was an inadequate budget.

We were the Enron of Columbia Pictures
at that time.

We kept the truth hidden,
we made promises,

then we'd go out and shoot something
we said we were gonna drop.

They would freak out.
"You're not authorized to shoot this."

"Sorry, sorry. It's OK, we thought
we could do it on the same day."

You know, just playing a role.

For Taxi Driver,
the boys from Malibu Beach

closed ranks protectively
around Scorsese.

Cybill Shepherd
was practically visiting royalty.

She came because the studio
wanted one more name in the cast.

At the time I had
two offers at Columbia Pictures.

I had Taxi Driver and I had, um...

Nickelodeon and David Begelman
said I couldn't do both.

I talked to Peter and we both agreed.
I said, "I need to do Taxi Driver,"

because we were no longer
reviewed for our work

after At Long Last Love, Peter and I.

We were so obnoxious in the press.

"Look at us, we're in love
and we don't have to be married."

That was a revolutionary premise then.

We were the first couple
to be on the cover of a magazine

that were living in sin.

Her partner's film, Nickelodeon
made money for Columbia

but not enough
to reverse the perception

that Bogdanovich had lost his touch.

In a business where
perception is everything,

Steven Spielberg's shark film was about
to change Hollywood's perception

of what success really meant.

I... Had I seen it?
No, I guess I hadn't seen it yet.

I was in New York
and the studio had told me...

the film was gonna be shown at the
Rivoli Theater on such and such a night.

So I go down to the Rivoli Theater
and there's 1,500 or 2,000 people.

So we start watching this movie.
Now, I'm in the movie.

And I forgot that I was in it.

I was so swept up in the fear
and the storytelling,

I completely forgot
that that was me. I had no idea...

I was appropriately terrified and scared,
it was incredible.

And then... then the audience did
something that I had never heard. Ever.

Maybe it had been done before but...

The movie ends
and the entire building erupts

in a sound that was extraordinary.

Screaming, yelling, applauding,
yelling, screaming. Gevalt!

- That's a 20-footer.
- 25. Three tons of him.

You're gonna need a bigger boat, right?

Gotta get to work.
How do we handle this?

- How do we handle this?
- I need you.

He's circling the boat!

Come on, come on.

Lew Wasserman,
Sid Scheinberg, Henry H,

Hi Martin and Charlie Powell -

Martin was head of distribution, Powell
was head of marketing and publicity -

met in the men's room of the theatre
cos it was the only place they could talk.

And Wasserman said, "Put it out
to as many screens as we can get."

And they went for 1,200 screens which,
at that time, was unheard of.

This was a big decision
to try to take Jaws

and put it out there like they used
to do with exploitation pictures.

Exploitation pictures
were meant to come in,

make a lot of money before anybody
noticed how bad they were and get out.

When I saw Jaws, I thought,
"Uh-oh. These guys understand

"what I and my contemporaries are doing

"and they have the money
and the talent and skill

"to do them bigger and better."

By the winter of '75/'76,

Universal's Jaws had rolled up
$100 million at the box office.

It was the first motion picture
in history to do so.

Everyone knew everything had changed.

Taxi Driver opened later that year
to ecstatic reviews and decent business.

But decent business
wasn't enough any more.

The age of the blockbuster had arrived

and as the grosses climbed,
the pressures mounted.

So did the casualties.

I started using cocaine and
amphetamines way before the success

and in fact had had quite a bit of success
working behind it

and I was thinking yesterday,
things I might say about it

and there was a definite progression
that went from using it as a tool

to using it as a crutch

and then it became you weren't using it
for anything, it was life itself.

In the new Hollywood,

Julia Phillips was just one
of the legion of movie professionals

for whom cocaine was a perk and a tool.

When I was directing Blue Collar
and I was in preproduction,

the producer at that time,
Hal Schneider, came into my office,

put a vial on my desk and said,
"Here, this'll help you work longer."

You know, and it was almost medicinal.

There was a time in Hollywood

where you could see people
snorting coke in public.

And you could see people snorting coke
in public who you knew, who were...

You know, they had authority,
they had responsibility.

Now, I'm... You know, at that time
I was completely over my head.

We went to an AFI tribute for Alfred
Hitchcock, one year during his period.

I went to the men's room
and I swear to God,

under every single stall
there was at least six or eight legs.

The sound of snorting was so loud,
it was like a joke

and there was this one
kind of old washroom attendant

sitting there trying to hand out towels

and it was comical.

Here's old Alfred Hitchcock up there
getting his life achievement award

and all the Hollywood hoi polloi
are in there snorting cocaine.

It was crazy.

As drugs overran
the Hollywood social scene,

the movies themselves
began to be affected.

This was the beginning
of, also, the craziness for everyone.

Fresh off the critical success
of Taxi Driver,

Scorsese could do anything he wanted.

His choice -
an almost impossible blending

of golden-age Hollywood musical

and Cassavetes-like
emotional catharsis.

Well, New York, New York...

reflects the unique state of mind
that Marty was in at that time.

He was having terrible trouble
with his marriage with Julia,

um, he was having an affair
with Liza Minnelli,

he was staying up all night,

he had pushed it
to the edge of the envelope.

The private life is kinda screwed up,

so you begin to live in the fast lane

because you want to kind of get
some benefit out of where you are

but you can't
because your work is always...

They're always in the back of your head
with a gun, you know?

They want, they pay you - deliver.

All this emotional chaos
and everybody doing too much cocaine

didn't help solve the artistic problems.

Marty was very clever, that we started
with the musical numbers.

So two weeks, that's all we shot.

When we finished, he invited for
screening Vincente Minnelli, everybody.

Just a big gala, like it was a wrap party,
you know.

And they showed this - I don't know -
about 15-, 20-minute musical number.

And it was... I was even surprised,
it was fabulous.

You know, moving and all great songs.

And from that point on,
the studio gave Marty anything.

I didn't know that this was
kind of Drugs R Us...

going on on this movie.

You know, I wasn't...

At the time I'd never tried drugs so I
didn't know what it smelt like, looked like

or what people were like
when they were on it.

Ultimately, Scorsese kicked
the drugs and recovered. Some didn't.

In the deserts of Nevada,

Sam Peckinpah
was driving Convoy off the road.

Cocaine and booze was a big problem

and that would certainly explain
a lot of the delays.

I was on the wagon then and Sam wasn't

and I would stay pretty much in
my trailer, I didn't wanna get in trouble.

They actually fired him at one point

and I told them that I would walk
if he weren't kept on the film.

We were standing outside the saloon,
the truck stop where the fight was

and he came up behind me and said,
"You son of a bitch! I was outta here!"

And I said, "You son of a bitch,
you got me into here!" You know?

He was in rough shape.

Time after time,
he would ruin himself financially,

ruin his personal life, ruin his reputation,

so he could do this whole phoenix act.

Er... It didn't work with cocaine.

He did fall flat down, face down
on the floor with cocaine,

only this time he couldn't get up.

A different drug.

William Blake said, "The road of excess
leads to the palace of wisdom".

It also leads to the grave.

Sam Peckinpah made one more picture,

the compromised Osterman Weekend

before dying of heart failure
at the age of 59 in Mexico.

Most said he was the victim
of his own excesses.

People can always say
you're your own victim but...

Sometimes people have great talent
which has to be nourished in some way

and if this industry can't nourish it
they become victims

and then their self-indulgence
sometimes takes over

and nobody pulls 'em up
and pulls 'em out.

I mean, if you write screenplay
after screenplay, deal after deal,

that you see fall apart
and go away and so on,

and you never lose your enthusiasm
for wanting to make film,

you're a victim, that's all.

Malibu resident-
producer-provocateur Julia Phillips

would drive the drug scene
underground

when she publicly flamed out on
Steven Spielberg's follow-up to Jaws,

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Julia and I were pretty terrible

but as far as I was concerned, in
the midst of Julia's chazerai craziness,

she also was a hard worker.

Julia fought the battles on this.
We were divorced at this time

and she ran into problems,
as everybody knows,

late in the postproduction and, er...

Drug problems - and had to be removed

and I got back on and worked
with Steven to finish the film.

Some years later, she wrote
a book. So, I go to the book store.

I'm reading what Julia
is writing about me

and I am getting seriously angry.

Seriously furious.

And I'm gonna kill her! And I'm gonna
do this and I'm gonna do that.

And all of a sudden, I hear this little voice

and the voice inside my head is saying,

"Richard,

"what really happened
was so much worse.

"Leave it alone."

And I left it alone.

I didn't know Julia in the last few years
of her life. I don't know.

She wasn't happy.
She wasn't in good circumstances.

But I never hated her for that.
You know, I was... I was there.

I did that stuff.

Drugs and excess may have derailed
some of the new generation

but it was nothing
compared to the success

of the easily promotable B-movies
that audiences were embracing.

But this was a new kind of B-movie.

Instead of a low-budget programmer
to fit the bottom of a double bill,

these were expensive, effects-driven
pictures like Close Encounters

that could endanger a studio
if they failed.

In England and in computer labs
in California,

George Lucas was quietly laboring
on the ultimate B-movie.

So from American Graffiti,
George got to make a $13 million movie,

which was a huge budget in those days,
it was giant.

He called and he said, "You know,
I don't think it's gonna work at Fox."

And I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "They're not going to give me
the rights to any sequels."

I said, "George, sequels? You're lucky
to get $13 million for this movie!"

He said, "No, I wanna control it,
I want the sequels."

And he held firm and he ended up
owning the rights to Star Wars.

He said, "I'm gonna make more money
by making science fiction toys,

"I'm gonna make more money
than The Godfather

"by making science fiction toys."

He hated directing, George did,
because he got sick all the time,

he had diabetes
and he just wasn't very sturdy

and he got sick.

And he always would talk and he'd say,
"Porno. That's the answer.

"It's a warm room.

"If you don't get the right location
you go get another,

"people don't care what room,
as long as it's a pretty nice room."

So if he hadn't done Star Wars
or American Graffiti,

he would probably own
this huge porno network today.

He'd probably be even richer than he is.

At the first rough cut screening
of Star Wars,

the directorial division of opinion
would foretell the future of movies.

George asked his friends
to see a rough cut of Star Wars.

It was hard to watch because it was...

The special effects,
nothing was there yet.

What we saw was very crude World War II
footage where the effects would be.

And even for experienced people,
it takes a lot to look at a rough cut.

Brian De Palma
was particularly sarcastic.

"What's this crap about the Force?
When did the Force...?" You know.

But George listened
and he took it good-naturedly

and the only one
who was optimistic was Spielberg.

He said, "I think it's great,
it's gonna make $100 million."

We thought, "Steve's just Steve,"
you know. Energetic kid.

Once he started screening it,
it was like American Graffiti,

the audiences just went nuts.

Hollywood, California.
August 1977.

A triumphant moment in screen history.

To the world-famous Chinese Theatre

come the stars of the biggest box-office
success in motion picture history.

The financial success
of Star Wars

would, with The Exorcist,
Jaws and Close Encounters

essentially end the epoch
of the director-driven film

and begin the era
of the big-budget B-movie

where studios
could open a film everywhere

with nationwide ad campaigns
and fast payoffs.

It almost didn't matter
if the film was good or not,

as long as it made a great trail.

Thousands gather
to see the metallic megastars

place their footprints in cement
in the courtyard.

As the two heroes of Star Wars

make their impressions on the ground
reserved for legends,

the world resounds
the fact that Star Wars

has become a full-fledged
social phenomenon.

It has become more than just a movie.

Star Wars was
the ultimate triumph of the B-movie.

It had taken a decade for the studios
to regain their dominance

and find their new audience
with effects-driven sci-fi horror films,

ironic superheroes and sequels.

Endless sequels.

The era of the director -
brief era of the director -

came to a conclusion, really,
by the end of the '70s, if not sooner.

It was sort of petering out.

They started feeding off the mechanism
of what was making money,

so that they wouldn't be in the position
of having film makers walking in

and saying, "You don't know what
makes money, I do, I'll make the movie."

So finally, they were able to say,
"Yes, we do know what makes money

"and you will make it for us."

I mean, the system allowed
these artists to create

and then, when it became... essentially,
conglomerates took over the studios,

everything changed.

I think the thing that killed, for me,
movies, more than anything,

was the event of Entertainment Tonight,

when they started doing
box-office scores

like football scores.

And I remember the first weekend
they did it, or the first Monday -

this film was first
and this film was second -

and I looked at that screen
and I said, "We're over."

In 1979, director Marty Scorsese,

exhausted and convinced
his career was over,

decided to leave Hollywood.

But, urged on by Robert De Niro,

Scorsese summoned up one last
primal scream of defiance.

..clean shots.
How he can survive 'em, nobody knows.

No man can endure this pummeling.

The fight is stopped.

He signals...

Row after row after row from the ring

the crowd is standing
and cheering as he just made it.

Takes La Motta
into a desperate defeat...

Hey, Ray. Hey, Ray.

Hey, Ray.

Never went down, Ray.

You never got me down, Ray.

You hear me? Never got me down.

Yeah. See?

~ I have a mansion, forget the price ~

~ Ain't never been there,
they tell me it's nice ~

~ I live in hotels, tear out the walls ~

~ I have accountants ~

~ Pay for it all ~

~ They say I'm crazy
but I have a good time ~

~I'm lookin' for clues
at he scene of the crime ~

~ Life's been good to me so far ~

~ My Maserati does 185 ~

~ I lost my license, now I don't drive ~

~ I have a limo, ride in the back ~

~ I lock the doors ~

~ In case of attack ~

~ I'm makin' records,
my fans, they can't wait ~

~ They write me letters, tell me I'm great ~

~ So I got me an office,
gold records on the wall ~

~ Just leave a message, maybe I'll call ~

~ Lucky I'm sane
after all I've been through ~

~ He's cool ~

~ I can't complain,
but sometimes I still do ~

~ Life's been good to me so far ~