Never Never Never

Published by on

My topic heading refers to a mistake that a lot of film producers make.. don’t start without all the money!!!  Tony told me that we had to begin production on our next spaghetti western.  I don’t recall the actual working title.. ( I will go thru my records at some point).  He said that we had the director (Baldi) and everything was set.  We didn’t have all the money.  We did have an Italian co producer — he and his attorney had flown into New York to do a deal with us.  At the time I lived on 53rd street and Broadway across the street from the Americana Hotel. (since changed)  As we were finalizing a deal structure, the producer noticed that you could see into the Americana hotel rooms.  He picked up a pair of binoculars and looked across to watch a young woman prepare to shower, eat an apple, and have fun with herself… his attorney joined in… Time passed and they realized that they were going to miss their flight back to Rome.  The producer got mad and told the lawyer that he would not pay for the extra day as he also wasted time being a voyeur..

Back to the film–Tony said that if we began shooting we could take some of the footage and have our foreign sales team (Bob Meyers and Alfred Herskovitz) sell the pic and get us advances that would help finish the film.  The estimates were that advance sales would bring in about $750,000.  Reality time–at the very last minute when all would be shut down we got an offer……reality, the 750,000 became $125,000 and I had to scramble to make up the difference.  The scrambling will be detailed at some later time..let me say that two of our principle investors ended up murdered. In both cases, it had nothing to do with the film or anything or anybody related to it.. and the murderer’s were caught.

Categories: Get Mean

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

error: Content is protected !!