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Francis Ford Coppola
Filmmaker, Producer and Screenwriter
I showed him the three pages I wrote that night, which was of course, the most garish kind of action scene I could come up with. And he said, "Okay." And I went off. He gave me a check for $20,000. He sent me with a young woman who had worked on the production who was going to be the co-signer -- and I went to Ireland. When I was in Ireland, I met another producer and I said I was making a film for Roger, and this guy offered to buy the English rights for another $20,000. So I had now $40,000. Roger, of course, expected to get his $20,000 back, still make the movie for the 20 with the English rights, and get the film for free. But I sort of just duped him. I took both checks and I put it in the bank. And I had this young woman sign the check, and I just kind of made the amount to the whole amount, so she basically was out of the check signing. Then I made the movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.
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Francis Ford Coppola
Filmmaker, Producer and Screenwriter
The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job.
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Sheryl Crow
Award-Winning Singer and Songwriter
My mother says I have a lot of chutzpah. I did. You know, I was really naive about my career. I just figured if I kept working hard, and if I just seized moments, that things would happen, and that is really the way it worked. I was doing a recording session for a jingle, I believe, and I overheard some singers talking about an audition that was closed, supposed to be on recommendation, and I found out where it was and I went, and that's how I got it.
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Sheryl Crow
Award-Winning Singer and Songwriter
Sheryl Crow: The Tuesday Night Music Club actually was sort of the result of my kicking around for about a year, hearing that I was going to be dropped from the record label, and not having a record, and I fell in with a bunch of people that were just jamming on Tuesday nights. So that actually is how I came into contact with all these people, which was fun, because we were all kind of a close-knit group of misfits who felt we were intelligent and talented and we were being overlooked, and that was what our camaraderie was based on. Ultimately, the album came out, and it did really, really well, which is kind of funny, because it broke the mold of being one of those people that was being overlooked. So it was not without its trial and tribulation, but it was a really good experience.
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
Jack Warner utterly refused to lend me for Melanie. He wouldn't hear of it. I even went to call on him and begged him. He said no, he wouldn't do it. He would not lend me to Selznick to play the part of Melanie. I was desperate, and I did something, age 22, that really was not correct, but I did it. I called Mrs. Warner, who had been an actress, a lovely, lovely woman -- Ann Alvarado was her name before she met Jack -- and I told her that I would very much like to see her, and would she be kind enough to have tea with me at the Brown Derby, and she said, "Yes." Well, we met. It was raining. I remember that. The Brown Derby, I think, no longer exists. It's a terrible thing that they tore that down. I explained to her how much the part meant to me, and I said, "Would you help me?" She said, "I understand you, and I will help you," and it was through her that Jack eventually agreed, and he says so in his biography. It was Ann who did it. Isn't this wonderful? And finally arrangements were made, an agreement between Selznick and Warner. Selznick had a one-picture commitment with Jimmy Stewart. So he loaned -- he gave up that. He gave that over to Jack Warner who needed him for a film and took me in exchange.
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
The whole business of casting, putting it together, taking almost three years, the whole town was bored with the film [Gone With the Wind]. They were so bored with the film, they wished it bad luck, and they all thought it was going to be a big, big flop, a complete disaster, and they were rather pleased at the thought. Well, we just went ahead, quietly working ahead on the lot, six months, retakes after that, and just knew -- I knew we were making a film that was going to have quite a different history from any other film that had ever been made, and it would endure. And by heaven, it has, has it not?
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
It wasn't fun for anyone, and it certainly wasn't for William Wyler, a very distinguished man, as the director of the film. One day, we came on the set. It was a long and difficult scene, and he said, "I don't know what this scene is all about. I want you to show me. Just get up there. Start there with your scripts, and just show me what this scene is all about." Well, it was frightful. There we were stumbling along, and we exchange, say, ten lines, and he would say, "Stop. I want you to go back to the beginning. Keep this little exchanges you made, say, with the third exchange of lines. Leave everything else out. Do something different. I don't care what you do, as long as it's different, but keep just that." So we would do that, and then he would say, "Stop. Keep the first exchange. Then I want you to keep the sixth exchange. Drop everything else. Start again." We did that for four hours, and I think Montie Clift realized that perhaps he should kind of work things out with William Wyler and Miss De Havilland.
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Olivia de Havilland
Legendary Leading Lady
The motion picture business is not easy. It was not easy then. It was hard, really hard, exhausting too, in every way physically. It was a six-day week, and Saturday night, it was the custom to ask at the end of the week -- the actors having gotten up at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning to report to makeup. Women had to report at 6:30 on the set, ready, dressed, up on your lines, and ready to shoot. You would work until 6:00, 6:30 at night, but six days a week. The custom was on Saturday night to excuse the company at 6:00 for dinner and come back and shoot until midnight. I can't tell you how hard that was on us, and how the actors disliked doing it and the camera crew, grips, everyone disliked that very much. You know what I did to get around that? Well, I suggested to the cameraman that we put dark circles under my eyes, that he photograph me very badly, and I would show up in the rushes, and then he would say, "What's the matter with her appearance?" "Well, she was very tired, Jack, after the week." Finally, they abandoned that practice, at least they did with me.
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