The Coney Island Kid Who Made Rocky, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull | Irwin Winkler

28:53I know, but I - You were kind of being an agent again. Yeah, but I wasn't, I was now independent. And by the way, I have never worked for anybody since. Since William Morris. Yeah. Okay. Never worked for anybody since 1964. How do you guys go from agents to producer? Well, that's another story. All right, let's continue with it.

29:16One of the people I represented at William Morris that nobody cared about came with me as a manager. And he was an English film and television producer. His name was Nat Cohen, another Jew. Yeah. So and we hit it off and he called me up and he said, you know, I just made a movie that I financed in Lincoln, a little independent movie. It was called, it's called Billy Liar. There's a girl in that movie that I signed. And in order for her to get the part, she had to give me six loan outs. So I could loan her out, which means if we get her a job or she gets a job, she's under contract to him, so she gets paid from him, and he can sell her for twice as much money.

30:11As a matter of fact, historically, David Selznick did that with Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock. You sign them to a contract and then you basically have the right to sell them. So he said, find a, he said, see this movie, Billy Lyre. I said, where do I find it? He says, it's going to play in a New York someplace. I don't know. So he found that it was playing on a small theater out in Long Island, somewhere we drove out. And as, about a third of the way through, we're still waiting for this girl. And down the street, this beautiful blonde girl, her name is Julie Christie. who ultimately won an Academy Award for Best Actress, goes bopping down the street and she represented London in the heyday of the 60s.

30:58And I lifted up and I said, Bob, this is going to make us, this girl. So what happened is I handled her loan outs, but I didn't know anything about the motion picture business. So there were guys at William Morris that I had known from when I worked there. And I called one guy, his name was Marv Menoff, who passed away a couple of years ago, and I said, Marv, is there any movies that are looking for an act? He said, well, David Lean is doing this movie, Dr. Zhivago. That's a big, big movie. They're looking for a girl to star in the... I said, okay. I said, but how do I get a hold of David Lean, the director, Carlo Ponte?

31:40He said, oh, the lawyer's named Lee Steiner. So I said, okay, I call up Mr. Steiner. And I say, you know, I represent Julie Christie's loan outs, and I wonder if there's any way for her to meet David Lean and test for the lead. He said, send me a letter. I sent him a letter, and a couple of weeks later he calls. He said, David Lean wants a tester, and we'll fly her over from London to wherever they're testing. Maybe it was, I don't remember. and she gets the part. Wow. And it's the lead role in Dr. Zhivago. Meanwhile... And it's a big film. A big film. One Academy Award for Best Movie. But even then, even before it won, it was going to be a big thing.

32:24Oh, yeah. Okay. David Lee had done Lawrence of Arabia. Okay. I mean, he was the great, great English director. He then said, okay, and I'm also financing a movie that she's starring in. It's called Darling, that I want to sell in America. So could you come over to London, and I'll show you it's about half finished. I'll see you. And you can see it, and you can sell it. I said, great, but we don't have any money. So we get on a gambling junket. From New York to London, they fly you over, a group of men, old men. They put you up at the Victoria Sporting Club, and all the food you ate and for your hotel room is all paid for.

33:13Because they want you to gamble. They want you to gamble. But you're not a gamble. And they don't have any money. But what we did, we knew enough, we took$500 in cash and what happened, we'd go to the cage at the Victoria's Oracle, buy$300 worth of chips and put it in our pocket, hang out a little bit at the table, come back and say to the, give me another$200 worth of chips. It looked like he had lost the$300. Now we had$500 worth of chips. And we'd come back and smile and say, hey, we just won$500. And we kept doing this, so they thought we were gambling. And you got a free trip to London. And a hotel room and free meal.

33:58Oh, that's a classic Big Shot story. Victoria's Spurgeon. So we saw the movie, and we thought it was really, really good. And we came back, and I met with the head of MGM. His name was Robert O 'Brien. He came from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and how he ended up running MGM, I don't know, but he was a lovely man. Part of the detail of Julie Christie's deal, she finished darling, and the next day she had to go to Spain for Dr. Zhivago, and her contract was for 106 weeks. Yeah, 104 weeks. Two years. Two years to do that one movie. So she had no time to do any post-production work, music, dubbing, all the stuff that's required.

34:47So I made a deal that she can leave Dr. Zhivago for three weeks in March so that she can go to London and do her post-production work on Darling, which, by the way, she won an Academy Award on Darling for Best Actress. next year. So the time for her to go to London is coming up, and I send a telegram, in those days a telegram, to the lawyers at MGM, and I say, I just want to remind you that Julie Christie is leaving for three weeks. No response. So on a Friday afternoon, I get a call from the head of business affairs, big lawyer at MGM. He said, could you come right up to Mr. O 'Brien's office?

35:34we got a real crisis. And I kind of knew what the crisis was. They didn't want her to leave. So I get there, and Mr. O 'Brien is on the phone with the production manager in Madrid. I think it was in Madrid. It could have been Barcelona. I don't remember. And he's saying, okay, okay, Julie Christie is leaving tomorrow? And the guy says, yeah. And he says, what are we shooting tomorrow? He said, we have 5 ,000 extras in costume and Julie Christie, but she's not going to be here. So he said, what did David Lean say? He says, I'm not going to tell him. I'm afraid to tell him. So he hanged up and he said to me, this is terrible.

36:17So I said, you know, let me call Nat Cohen, my guy in London. And this is what the luck is. The secretary comes in and says, all the lines between New York and London are down. Those were days when it was coaxial cable. It wasn't digital. And very often you get, you know, you can't get through. And now Mr. O 'Brien is sweating and this is the end. David Lena is going to walk off the picture. I'll get sued. You know, everybody is playing out the worst possible scenario. I said, you know what? Call that guy back in Madrid and have him call Mr. Cohen in London and have Mr. Cohen call us here. and they're looking at me like, what is this kid?

37:03And sure enough, in five minutes, Mr. Cohen is on the phone. I said, Nat, instead of Julie Christie flying to London to do the post-production, how about doing it in Madrid at night and MGM will pay for it? And he says, great, yeah. And then Julie Christie can work in Dr. Zhivago during the day and at night. And they will look at me like... You're a genius. Yeah. And O 'Brien says to me, you know, I got a bunch of old producers out in Hollywood. They don't know what they're doing. Nobody could do what you just did, calling Madrid to call. He said, you think on your feet. I need somebody like you out in Hollywood.

37:40He said, you know, find a script and I'll make you a producer. Wow. So you weren't such a bad, I mean, you were helping your client as an agent, but ultimately you were doing the work of the producer. Did you want to be a producer? I hadn't even thought of him. Well, let me finish the story, however. You want to know how I got to Hollywood. So a couple of days later, I got a call from his head of the story department in New York. And he calls me and he says, look, we have a script here that we think would be really great for Julie Christie. And we can't get Mr. O 'Brien to read everything. It just sits on his desk and he's got other things.

38:19But he wants to be in business with you. So if you like the script, you give it to him. And who read it if it comes from you? He won't read it if it comes from us because we give him all that other stuff. So I read the script. It's okay. Not great. Not bad. But I call Mr. O 'Brien. I said, we have a script here and we think Julie Christie might be interested. And now she's starring in their big movie in Dr. Zhilago. So it's a natural for them to want to be in business with her. So he says, send it over. Sure enough, a couple of days later, he calls me up. He said, you know, I read that script.

38:51He said, I don't think I want to do it with Julie Christie. I said, oh, that's too bad. He said, but, he said, I have another idea. I said, what is that? He said, instead of Julie Christie, I'd like to do it with Elvis Presley. So I said, the script I sent you starring Julie Christie, you want to do it with Elvis Presley? He said, yeah, what do you think about that? I said, that's the best idea I ever heard. And he said, how quick can you get out to Hollywood? And that's how I got to Hollywood. Amazing. Did you agree that Elvis would be good for that or you thought it was ridiculous? I couldn't care less.

39:26All I knew is I went downstairs, called Margo, and I said, you better start thinking about renting the apartment. We're on our way to Hollywood. And you got to Hollywood. What year did you get to Hollywood? What year did you get here? 66. 60 years ago. There's opportunity knocked twice for you. Once when you're running the subway. Once saying it's a great idea. Right. I mean, did you, where did you get that sort of open mind? I mean, most people wouldn't at the drop of the hat. It's actually chutzpah in some ways. I mean, this is real, like, very positive, constructive chutzpah. You know, you got to have a little chutzpah to be going through 60 years of making movies with, you know, from Elvis Presley to Viola Davis.

40:08Stallone, I mean, yeah. Can you talk to us a little bit about Stallone and that chapter? Because It's a fascinating chapter how that happened. Well, what happened was also a matter of some crazy luck. We were producing and making quite a few movies probably. And from 1966, when we ran our first movie, to 1976, we probably did 12, 14 movies. And some very good ones. In 1970, we had three films at the Cannes Film Festival. one was the closing out attraction the other two won one best jury award best director so we were making some good movies and some not so good movies but we were working and we were making two movies a year and you're making money at this point making money on fees yeah but you're starting to live a better life yeah we're okay yeah we rented a house in the flats Margot had a convertible you know we let's get it yeah Yeah.

41:08And we're making fees, but not back-end, nothing like that. And we had a script.

41:19We didn't want to spend our own money developing a script, in other words, paying a writer$100 ,000 to write a script that you don't know how it's going to come out and whether you're going to lose all your money. So we made a deal with a writer and said, look, we'll give you an idea for a movie. You write the script. We'll work with you on the screenplay, They give you our input creatively. And if we sell it, you'll get$200 ,000 or$300 ,000. If we don't sell it in six months, you own it. You have all the rights, all the work that we did, and it's yours. And you can do anything you want with it without us.

41:54So I did it with this guy, W.D. Richter. And he wrote a really terrific script that we end up selling for a lot of money over a weekend. And we put it up for auction. and one of the people that we sent it to was a man by the name of Arthur Krim who ran United Artists, which doesn't exist in Indiana right now. And he was a very close friend to Lyndon Johnson when Lyndon Johnson was president of the United States. So what happened was we sold over the weekend to Columbia Pictures, now Sony, with Columbia Pictures, and the head of United Artists in L.A. called me and said, you know, Mr. Krim is really very angry at you.

42:40I said, why? He said, well, you sold it without giving him a chance to bid. I said, well, we gave it to you and all that. He said, yeah, but he was on the ranch, Lyndon Johnson's ranch, and he couldn't use the phone there and start calling you. So he said, but Mr. Krim would like to meet you. I said, wait a minute, he's mad at me, but he wants me to meet you. He said, yeah. He said, next time in New York, he'll take you to lunch. Next time we're in New York, we made lunch. And I said to him, I thought you were angry at me. Why do you want to take me to lunch? He said, look, you always have good material.

43:15And rather than being angry at you, I'd rather be in business with you. So he said, we'd like to have an exclusive contract. Together you would make pictures. I said, no, I don't want to. The minute you're exclusive, you don't have any more power. You control me. And you like being independent. Exactly. Right, you said that. So after a lot of pressure, we came up with a formula that if we don't make a movie for them in the first nine months of our contract, and they're paying us a good fee, we have the opportunity, which nobody does anymore, of put a picture. A put picture is a picture where, in our case, you give them a script, you give them a budget.

43:58if the script is a million and a half dollars, which today would be probably$10 million, if it was a million and a half dollars or less, they have to finance the movie. They don't have to release it, but they have to finance it. But it can't be an X-rated movie. It has to... That was the deal. So we had that power. If we don't make a movie, we find a small script and make them do it. And what happened... So then we hadn't made a movie, and then one day a guy that was working for us, his name was Jim Kirkwood, came in and said, do me a favor, would you meet this guy Sylvester Stallone? I said, I don't think I want to meet anybody by the name of Sylvester Stallone.

44:42He said, oh, do me a favor, meet with him. I said, what has he done? He said, really, Lord's a Flapper, some little movie, but just meet him for casting. I said, but we're not casting anything. So, okay, I'll meet him. And he comes in, it's one of those meetings where you, you know, how long this is going to take. And he comes in and we're very nice and we talk, we talk. As he's leaving, and we see we're just not casting right now. As he's leaving, he said, by the way, I'm a writer. And I wrote a script and if I send it to you, would you read it? He didn't look like a writer, he didn't sound like a writer, but what does a writer look like?

45:21I don't know. What did he look like at the time? He looked like he didn't have the kind of muscles he has today. He was big and heavy, and he still talked the way he did. And he sent us a script, and we read it, and we didn't want to make the movie, but we thought the writing was really, really good. So we called him up and said, look, thank you for sending it over. We think you're a really good writer, and the script is very, very well done, but it's not something that we're interested in producing. He said, I don't know the level of desperation, but he said, look, I have an idea for another movie.

46:01If you like my writing, would you listen to that idea?

46:08Cichua, and he came in and he pitched the idea of Rocky. And he'd already written Rocky at that point? No. Okay, just an idea. Just an idea. And he said, look, and if you like the script when it's finished, you don't have to pay me not that we were going to but he said you don't have to pay me but if you like it and you want to make the movie I have to star in it that's the only demand I have so we said you know what we're not costing anything yeah why not so then he sent us some of the pages and we kind of liked it and then he finished it and we really said okay that's great we gave it to United Artists They looked and said, why would we want to do a picture where a guy by the name of Sylvester Stallone?

46:53It's about two ugly people having an affair. Who cares? For fights, nobody's watching fights anymore on television. And Philadelphia, who would want his movie? Who cares about Philadelphia? They just didn't want to do it. So we said, okay, well, it's a put picture. It's a million five. You got to do it. They had no choice. They had to do it. Yeah, except they did something that is not surprising. They budgeted themselves. So they said it's over$1.5 million. Yeah, it's$2 million. Well, it's over the put. Yeah, so you don't have a put. So I said, you know what? We'll make it for$1 million and we'll guarantee, Charterf and I will guarantee anything over$1 million.

47:35So now it's back to a put picture because it's within that. You're not committed for more than$1 million. You're really$1.5 million. Yeah, you're giving them a$500 ,000 break. Yeah, getting a bargain anyhow. So after a lot of back and forth, they were stuck. And they said, okay. But then they went to Stallone. They realized they had a good script. They went to Stallone. And I don't know how he tells the story now, but they offered him, I think,$250 ,000 to sell them the script so they can make the movie with Ryan O 'Neill or Burt Reynolds, one of the big stars at that time. But not Sylvester Stallone.

48:10But not Sylvester Stallone. And he said, no. So he said, I don't know if he admits to this now, but he said, Charterford Winkler promised me that if I wrote the script, they would star me in the movie, and I think they'll do it. What did you see that no one else did at first? I saw somebody trying to screw us. We had a deal that they had to make a picture at a million and a half, and by doing a budget of$2 million, they were screwing us. I didn't know that it was a kind of cockamamie little movie. cost a million dollars. I didn't have any idea it would be what it was. Well, that's so interesting.

48:45So it wasn't, you were, this movie needs to be made. I was just angry. You were just angry. It was a spite movie. Yeah, it was a spite movie. Rocky was a spite movie. So Rocky then gets made. It comes out. Do you know right away this is going to be huge? Yeah, well, I know how huge, but what happened is we had screenings after it was finished, and Bill Conti wrote this great story and called it Fly Now and on. And we screened it for friends and all that. And everyone said, really? It's great. But at the end, it all went down. I mean, basically, the poster is, the camera is on the back, and you see the back of Stallone and Talia Shia walking away, very sad.

49:25That was the ending that we shot. So we all said, you know, something wrong here, because the people are cheering during the fight, and then afterwards, they're just, it's very Vietnam-syncing. 70s. Everything in America at the time was downbeat and everybody was depressed. And we finally three months later, four months later we reshot the ending where she comes in the ring and they hug and all that stuff. That's a reshoot after three months. And they wouldn't pay for it. We paid for it ourselves. There's a story behind that and how you managed to do it without spending too much. Oh yeah. Well what happened is because it was our own money.

50:08So instead of hiring a whole bunch of extras to fill up the screen from where she comes from the doorway to the ring itself, we hired, I think, 25 extras. We said, bring your hats and coats. And we said, okay, you take off your coat. You stand in the front. You go in the back, put on your hat. You know, we just, we moved it around with the wardrobe and all that. So 25 people became like 100 people. Yeah, it became 125. That's an amazing thing. So the movie comes out. But does this change your life? By the way, you know how we got the crowds in the stands? We couldn't afford to hire, you know, 200 extras because the picture was a million dollars and our money.

50:47So we went to an assisted living home, and we took the old folks, and we bused them to the set, and every hour we would auction off a television set so that we'd keep them there. And at 4 o 'clock, when they had to get their meds, we would drive them back to the… Oh, man. Yeah. That's incredible. So movie comes out. It's a big hit. Does that change things for you and Chartoff? Well, you know, I say I read a book. It's for me right away. When the picture was finished, I was taking, Margo and I were taking our three boys to Hawaii for a vacation. And they upgraded us to first class. That's what it did for me.

51:27Okay. No, it obviously made, you know, it gave us great United Arabes makeup. lot of money and it was the thought of the whole franchise. And then let's talk about sort of the next kind of phase of that which you know gets into Goodfellas and some of those other iconic films. Well how did you meet Marty Scorsese? Let's talk about Scorsese and your relationship to Marty. Well what happened was this was before Rocky and for some reason I was in New York and somebody asked me to go see Mean Streets I think was at the New York film festival someplace. And I went to see it and I thought it was really terrific and that same person said, would you like to meet Scorsese?

52:10And I said, sure, absolutely. So we had drinks and I was very impressed that there's a scene in Mean Streets where before Bob De Niro gets shot, if you remember he gets shot and killed in Mean Streets, there's a scene in the office right before he gets in a car where there's a poster and there was a gun pointing at his head and Scorsese had put in. That poster was from a movie I had done before called Point Blank which was a big favorite to Marty. So I said, you know, thank you, you used that poster and all that. So we kind of, you know, we liked each other and then I had the guy, the same, a friend, no a guy who was very friendly with the guy that wrote Nickelodeon, the one that Arthur Krim couldn't bid on, wrote another script called New York, New York.

53:08That was also a script, but we made a deal right away with that. By then, we made a deal with United Artists because we were under contract to them. And I was going to do it with, I was talking to Gene Kelly and Liza Minnelli about starring in it. But Gene Kelly was a great dancer and directed Singing in the Rain and some other movies. But it was kind of old fashioned. So I got a call from Marty Scorsese's manager and saying Marty had read in the trades that I was doing a big band musical called New York, New York. And he loves that era and we love to read the script. So we sent of them and marty said i love it and i want to do it so that's how marty got involved in it and your relationship to marty was effectively what did he see in you like he needed you to what to sort of ensure over the years that he was able to make the movies you wanted financially or that he was able to navigate hollywood what was the what was your role in all this well some of it was material that i had developed myself okay and then some of the other of it was while we're doing in And I was running the set, which was chaos, because that was...

54:22Were they always chaos? Sets were always chaos? No. But mid-70s, frankly, there was a lot of snuff coming around. Yeah, drugs. It was the 70s and a lot of drugs around. And I managed it, you know, and I kept the studio away from the production. And what was your secret to managing all that? How did you do so well? I don't know. I would get up in the morning and early and get on the set and make sure we got our shots in. And was your reputation, were you strict? Were you organized? What was it that... I was always very, very anxious to keep the creative side running. Got it. And I think that was where Marty and Bob found me attractive to them.

55:10Because I was always on the side of the creator. and found a way to deal with the studio and keep them from destroying the creation. But the creatives liked you, but in their eyes, you were kind of the business side of these? No, I think it was protecting the creative side of it. Well, Erwin, that brings a great question up. I mean, do you consider yourself an artist or a businessman? And how would you describe the difference? I don't know. You know, an artist, a businessman, I guess part of everything. I mean, I directed seven movies, I wrote movies, and so I do both. Which is uncommon. Yeah, very few producers have ever become directors.

55:56And I spent 15 years directing movies. And somebody asked me, was there anything you wish you had done? I said, yeah, I wish I had started directing 15 years earlier. and I wish I had continued another five years when I stopped. But anyhow, so we hit it off. And then while we were shooting, and there was trouble on the set because of the drug, and Marty came to me and said, I have a book that I want to make into a movie called The Last Temptation of Christ. Would you be interested in producing it for me? So I read it and I said yes. And then Bob came to me and he had this book called Raging Bull and he said to me, I want to make this book very badly.

56:47I want to make this movie very badly. Would you produce it? And I said yes. So they, I guess, recognized, I can't answer for them, but they recognized something that they wanted to be in business with me. I didn't know anything about either one. But original, back to sort of you protecting the creatives. Raging Bull, one of the stories that Dave and I read about in our research was that you had to, like, this idea of a black and white film in that era. And at least the data or the stories we heard was that you had to really push for that black and white film to be made. Can you talk a bit about that story?

57:27It's not particularly true. Oh, it's not true. What happened was because there was a lot of turmoil at United Artists at the time. There was a movie called Heaven's Gate, which was very over budget and a lot of people were unhappy. And we were heroes because of Rocky. We made this incredibly successful film. For very little money. For very little money. They made a great deal of money. They saw the future of the franchise in it.

57:57And what happened was, when they, when, and that's just to go off to the side for a minute, they didn't want to make Raging Bull in a worse way. In fact, we had a meeting at Marty's apartment with Bob De Niro, myself, and two of the United Art executives, where they came to tell us that they weren't going to make the movie. One of them said to De Niro, why do you want to play this cockroach? I thought De Niro was going to throw him out of the window. But what I knew that they didn't know is that they wanted to do Rocky II desperately. Because they had a big financial trouble because they lost so much money on the Heaven's Gate movie.

58:37So I said to them basically, yeah, I'll do Rocky II, but you've got to do Raging Ball. Quit pro quo. Yeah, and that was the quit pro quo. They reluctantly agreed to do Raging Ball. and Rocky was great because we ended up with Rocky 3, 4, 5, 6, all those, Creed, everything came along afterwards. Amazing. A raging bull though. You know, that idea, how did it go? Oh, you asked creatively? Yeah, creatively. Why was black and white? Yeah. They didn't, we just did it. We didn't discuss it with them. But I mean, that wasn't, it's so strange. They had a success with Woody Allen with black and white at the time.

59:15So we just did it. They were, United States had a very interesting concept, which doesn't exist today, was Mr. Klim, his attitude was, if I'm going to give you$2 million,$10 million,$20 million to make a movie, I got to trust you. If I don't trust you, I'm not going to give you the money. So if I give you the money, I trust you and you do it. That's why they made all the James Bond movies in that area. All that stuff all came out of that attitude. That trust relationship. Can you talk a bit about the business model of that era of Hollywood? I mean, who was funding? Where was the money coming from for all this?

59:52Well, United Artists was funded by banks. It was banks. Yeah, they would get loans from banks. As a matter of fact, they would actually, when you said, okay, we're going to make the mechanic, the big cheese would cost a million five, they'd go to a bank, take out a bank loan for the million five. But how is the margin sufficient even for all these people to make money? I mean, it doesn't seem like it was a great money-making business. It wasn't. Is it still? Especially in that period. Now. Yeah. Is it different now? Yeah, well, now, by the way. Now you have sort of James Cameron doing these crazy...

1:00:27But they do well. They do well. I can't help it. I mean, the job of the producer is to bring together the financing, the screenplay, the actors. You did all of that with one of the greatest directors ever, one of the greatest actors ever. You did it over an extended period of time. Tell us about the art of business. What is it that made you such a great producer that all these incredible talents wanted to work with you again and again and again? Well, number one, I hope you don't refer to me as one of the great producers because I'm just dropped the grade. Producer. Yeah. I don't know. I can't answer that.

1:01:08As far as I know, I just do what I have to do. Before I came here, we were dealing with my next movie, which starts shooting April 6th, with how much AI we're going to use, how much visual effects we're going to use, how much we're not going to use, how does the AI look. Have we ever seen where an oil rig is hit by a hurricane? And are we going to shoot the plates of an oil rig? Are we going to build an oil rig in miniature and have that put in a tank and do all that? or are we going to just do it with AI? And the AI people are giving all kinds of tests. So I do that too. How do you feel about the whole AI?

1:01:49I think it's going to be incredible in many ways. Amazing to hear that. As far as films are concerned, it's going to make a lot of things cheaper, more innovative, because they could do so much stuff that you can't even think of. Is that how you felt about CGI as well? Well, CGI is there. But basically, when we shot Creed III, it was during the pandemic. We were down in Atlanta, Georgia. And they said, okay, we'll have two people here in the stands, but we want three empty seats here and then another two because we don't want everybody too close together because of COVID. it. So we had to fill in with the visual effects the other people in the seats.

1:02:39So that wasn't AI and that's been done since movies started. Now to do that with AI, but then you got the unions which are saying wait a minute when they're right, what are we going to do about you're going to remake people because you can remake the actors too. So we're all in very, very vague, as far as seeing a hurricane that we can do. You seem to focus on the immediate problem in front of you all the time. I mean, imagine when you're making these films, and I mean, I know you don't want us to say you're a great producer, but you do have three of the greatest 100 movies of all time, you know, ever in that list.

1:03:21Which one? I believe it's Rocky, Raging Bull, and... The Right Stuff? Goodfellas? The Right Stuff. The Right Stuff. I mean, the list goes on and on. But when you're in that moment, you're dealing with a lot of chaos. A lot of different problems are coming at you. How do you prioritize? You know, it's day by day. There's no plan how to get it better. The best way to do Goodfellas is have a great director like Marty do it and then cast it with all these great people. You know, when we were preparing Goodfellas, Marty wanted Ray Liotta to play Henry Hill. I said to Marty, and I really was very reluctant, and I said, let's keep looking.

1:04:02I think we can get somebody more interesting. I didn't think he was that interesting. And I kept putting him off, putting him off, and he lets me do it, you know, and he... And then my wife and I were having dinner with friends out in Venice,

1:04:24and Henry Hill's personification, Ray Liotta, came over to me at the restaurant. And he said, could I talk to you a few minutes outside? It sounded like about to be a fight. It was whacked. So we went outside and he said, look, I know you don't think I'm the perfect guy to play Henry Hill. And then we had a 10 to 15 minute conversation. and I saw Marty was absolutely right. He got the right guy. And I called Marty. I said, you're right. Let's go. So that's how some of those things happened. I mean, it just happened to be at the same restaurant in Venice. Yes, again. You just happened to be on the subway.

1:04:59You just happened to figure out this London to Spain phone call. You just, I mean, you know, I wrote this down here, but in many ways, you know, you're like, you're the invisible architect behind visible culture. That's right. You kind of work behind the scenes. But the other thing I find so fascinating is like, Like, this industry that you are in is so incredibly volatile and for many is quite short-lived. But yet you've been, Erwin, you've been kind of in this stable thing in this very unstable industry. Yeah. How? Don't ask me. I have no idea. You know what? If I knew, I probably wouldn't do it.

1:05:40Yeah. So again, I think it's a matter of luck and then utilizing the luck to produce something or create something. But you don't know what's going to happen. Do you love it? Do you love Hollywood? I still love it. You still love it? It's a movie business? It's been great for me. Either way, you're 95. You look great. Two of my three sons are with me in the business. And my grandson is right down in Louisiana right now on location, really helping produce the new film that we're doing. Amazing. Yeah. Your grandson. When I hear a lot about old Hollywood, new Hollywood, how would you describe the difference?

1:06:15You know, I guess because I'm old, I'm old Hollywood and I've been doing it for 60 years, that's as old as you can be. I don't think there's been anybody, anybody that I can know offhand that's been making movies for that amount of time. I really don't think so. So I've been very lucky to have survived in a crazy world of movie making that went and changed dramatically over the years. And it's changing right now. But having said that, The Irishman we made for Netflix. And they were great partners. Ali Clark, which is a film we're preparing now with by Ola Davis, we're doing for Amazon. And they're great partners.

1:06:59You're not tied to an old model. It's wonderful. So anyhow, I think you've got to go and really be part of the atmosphere that exists in the industry itself. Last Christmas, we went to a Christmas party at Jeff Bezos' house, which was formerly Jack Warner's house, formerly David Geffen's house. This is 1968. This is the last story I'm going to tell you, okay? Because I'm getting tired. But it's 1968, and I get an invitation to come to have cocktails at Jack Warner's house. Jack Warner. That was a big deal for you. It was a big deal for anybody. Jack Warner. And I say to Margot, boy, why would they pick me?

1:07:44But I'm gone, you know. I get all dressed up in an arm. I drive up. They take your car, and the estate is so big, you take a golf cart up to the house itself. I go in the house, and it's a big, big reception room, and it's all in a Spanish motif, and they bring around wine and hors d 'oeuvres, and there's a lot of dressed up men around, and I recognize some of them as important guys, but by myself, nobody knows me, I don't know anybody. And Jack Warner comes out. He says, gentlemen, the Israelis have been attacked. It's the Six-Day War by Jordan, Egypt, et cetera, et cetera. So we're here to raise money for Israel.

1:08:34Now I'm saying, oh, my God. And he says, I'm going to go around the room, and I'm going to have every one of you give me a pledge. And tomorrow we're going to make sure you give us a check. And he says, okay. Abe Lasfogel. Abe Lasfogel was the founder of William Morris and running William Morris. hey what are you going to give 250 000. lou lou wasterman ronnie who ran mc lou 250 i'm going to give two he says zanuck zanuck how much are you going to give me sir i'm going to get 500 000. he says you see this guy he's not even jewish zanuck is not even jewish and he's giving 500 you guys are all going to raise your you're going to match that and he goes around and says another the guy, what are you going to give?

1:09:23And the guy says, I'm going to give it anonymously. He said, no, you're not. You're going to tell us how much you're going to give, and then we're going to collect it tomorrow. And he's really tough. And he goes, and now it's me. He says, you, what are you going to give? I take a buck off. I said,$1 ,500. He said, see this kid, he don't have a pot to piss in, and he's giving$1 ,500. You lost your W. That's a great story. That's my job. I love it. I love that. All right. Last question before we let you go here. By the way, I never figured out. Margo claims he said to his secretary, find the schnurr somewhere.

1:10:01He probably said, find an up-and-comer that I can use as an example. He must have done something. But it was great because you could have tried to be a real big shot instead of$100 ,000, which you didn't have. But$1 ,500 was probably real for you. Oh, yeah. It was very real. And that's what he wanted. He wanted it to feel real. So someone else, Wasserman saying 250 doesn't feel so generous. His 250 is actually... But this kid that didn't have a pot to piss in it. Yeah, it's brilliant. One of the things we want to talk about as we sort of close up here is there are 8 billion people on the planet.

1:10:32There are 15 million Jews. We're a tiny percentage of the world. One of the stories that Mike Milken told us is that if you look at all the founders of all the Hollywood studios, they all grew up within like 40, 50 kilometers of Warsaw. I don't know about that, but they all come from Eastern Europe. That's right. Well, actually, he had mapped it out. I mean, if you know, Milken, like brilliant guy. He like actually mapped it out. He's like, this is where they all come from, this circle here. It's a remarkable thing. What's the connection for you between Jews and entrepreneurship? How did this all kind of, why do you think this has happened?

1:11:07Well, by the way, I contributed to the Academy Museum, who has a permanent exhibition about the Jews that built Hollywood. It's the Sam Goldwyn and the Louis Mayors and the Warners. I think what happened is, and it's hard to really be theoretical about it, but why does seven men, all from Eastern Europe, all poor, poorly educated as well, come and create the greatest art industry in the modern world. I know that once they did it, they saw America in a very different way than America really was. They idolized America because they came over with nothing, and then all of a sudden they were wealthy and had a lot of contributions to make, and it's luck and fate.

1:12:08I don't know why. Why were they so much better than a group of Protestants? By the way, I don't know, how many Jews have won Nobel Prizes? A ton. Disproportionate amount. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, on the sports side, we haven't done as well, but, you know, as athletes. There was Hank Greenberg when I got here. Sandy Koufax. You could name a few of them. Yeah, Sandy Koufax. Although, you know, I think we own the sports teams now. Yeah, that's true. Which is good. But we're fascinated by this because we, You know, it's a great question. I don't know how to answer it because it's almost mystical that, you know, Sam Golden was selling gloves.

1:12:45Yeah, Louis Mayer was a junkie. By a junkie, he would steal or find pieces of metal. And his father, he had a peddler. He was a scrap business. Yeah, but not a scrap. He was a peddler. Yeah, peddler. Yeah. And how do they create all this? It's amazing. Do you create your own luck? I don't know. I don't. Do you? How you guys are doing okay? I don't know. We're just watching. We're just trying to follow people like you. Or do you have to be smart enough to know when you're getting lucky? Yeah, I think that's important. I think you have to recognize that you've found something very special. and if I have one quality, I always found that other people's opinion, especially in the creative aspect, are worth considering.

1:13:40I know that when we had trouble with Goodfellas, because we had screenings where people were running out of the theater like it was on fire, especially in that opening scene when Joe Pesci takes that big knife and he's stabbing the guy in the back of the trunk of the car. People were running out of theater. You have to believe in what you do. We believed in what Marty did. And we sat, and they had a lot of suggestions. Some were actually good, and some weren't, but we tried them. They would say, try to take out that scene and see how it looks, and we tried it. It didn't work. It didn't work, and we said it didn't work, and they were okay.

1:14:23I remember I directed a movie with Sandra Bullock called The Net. And I had a very down ending. And I don't know if it was very down, but it was questionable. What happens next? Because in 1995, nobody knew what was going to happen next as far as the Internet is concerned. The head of the studio at the time was Governor Mark Kent, a lovely guy. And he said, I think you should have a more upbeat ending. I said, I don't think it's right. He said, but I'll tell you what. He said, shoot another ending. We'll pay for it, of course. And you choose. If you don't like it, go back to your ending. So I thought that was fine.

1:15:08But there were a lot of directors who would say, no, that's the ending I want no matter what. And you ended up going with? I didn't like the one. And he said, OK, you didn't like it. Then we had actually very similar when we had Creed. The studio wanted him, the Michael B. Jordan character, to win at the end. And Ryan Coogler and ourselves said, no, no, don't forget Rocky lost the fight, but he won his self-respect and he won the girl. So they said, okay, let's have, we shot two endings and let's preview both of them. and we went to Las Vegas, we went to a multiplex and we had one with him winning, one with him winning.

1:15:52We started the one where he wins 15 minutes before the other one and basically the same audience so that we can watch both endings. And both of them, both endings were through the roof. It was no different. And Ryan said in that case we used the one that I like and Erwin likes and all that. And the studio said, okay. In other words, it made sense because they saw the previous, but we were willing always to at least listen to the other. And I think that's one of the reasons I think I've survived in so many years over the changes in studios and owners. A lot of it I've been with MGM, and boy, I saw it going from Elvis Presley to, as I said, Viola Davis.

1:16:46Did Saul and Anna, your parents, get to see your success? My mother and father came out when I was a producer here, yeah. I don't think they really knew what the hell I was doing, you know. But my parents were very hands-off. My father never sat me down and said, you know, you should do this or that. Didn't have this kind of experience. I'm sure he'd be very proud of you. Thank you for this, Erwin. That was fun, yeah. That was amazing. Yeah, I mean you've produced some of the best movies, at least the ones we love the most between Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, I mean it's just incredible. I mean you've come a long way from Jackie Mason that's for sure.

1:17:22In the Catskills. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. I'll help you up here.