Original subtitles

I was the president of Columbia Pictures...

...and left Columbia.

I read in a newspaper...

...about a young man who escaped a Turkish prison ...

...and the story of his tale seemed to intrigue me.

I had been involved at Columbia with lots of very unique films...

...from Last Picture Show to Taxi Driver, The Last Detail.

And these kinds of films and subjects were intriguing to me.

So I hunted down Billy Hayes in England .

There was no book. There was no nothing .

It was just the articles, and got in touch with him ...

...brought him to the United States, brought him to Los Angeles...

...and began talking to him...

...and ultimately acquired the film rights for the material .

Then what happened was we started to figure out...

...how we could develop this material into a movie.

And we auditioned a number of writers at that time...

...screenwriters, young screenwriters...

...and went through many and then met this young gentleman ...

...who was intriguing , was intrigued by the material ...

...and he gave us a screenplay to read .

It was kind of a war picture about a platoon of soldiers.

It wasn't something that we were gonna make.

Somebody did Iater, you can figure that out.

And we said , "Let's go with him ."

He's a young screenwriter.

The studio didn't wanna spend a lot of money.

They were qu ite frightened of the picture.

And so we said , "Okay, Iet's go with him."

And that was OIiver Stone.

And OIiver began writing the screenplay...

...and working on the research of it.

And what happened was...

...around that time, we were developing the project...

...it was either subsequent to that event or right near that...

...David Puttnam became the president of my company...

...Casablanca Record and Films and I was an old friend of David ...

...and David an old friend of mine while I was at Colu mbia.

I made movies with him in London as an independent producer.

He was quite a good independent producer even then .

And he became the president of my company.

I signed a deal to do two years in California...

...working for a company that Peter co-owned with Neil Bogart...

...Casablanca.

And built into the deal was that I would produce with Alan Marshall ...

...Midnight Express, which is a book I , by that time, read .

So it was a kind of package.

It was a package for me that I took on a role...

...in the U .S. for a couple of years...

...that included production of Midnight Express.

I , pretty well almost at the same time, met Oliver.

And from memory, I Iiked his take on it.

I found him a very energetic guy.

The most attractive of all for me was that part of the package was that...

...AIan Parker and AIan Marshall be involved .

So it was a great piece of good fortune...

...because, also, because Peter, at that point, wanted this entire package...

...we were able to negotiate up qu ite usefully.

So in a way, Peter got me then he also got Parker.

He knew that I've worked with Parker in Bugsy.

So one way or another...

...it was a sweet deal for everyone involved ...

...and from my point of my view, it was extraordinary...

...because I got paid on it more...

...than I got for the previous 1 0 films all put together.

So financially, it was a real breakthrough .

The concept of the film ...

...was always anxiety-provoking for Columbia Pictures.

The subject matter and the period of time...

...that we were making the film ...

...and there was a complete group of folks at Columbia...

...including the chairman of Columbia...

...who was trying to persuade me not to make the film .

Really not to make the film. This wouldn't be a good move for me.

I had just finished a film which was very, very successful ...

...for Columbia that I produced called The Deep.

And I was forced to be cross-collateralized .

That means the profit from The Deep would be used ...

...to protect any Ioss for Midnight Express.

That's what they did in those days.

They try to bundle two pictures together to protect the studio.

And I didn't have to make Midnight Express...

...and I would protect all my profits from The Deep.

But I sucked up the air and said , "Okay, I'm gonna roll the dice."

And so the idea of the film...

...making the film , and the design of the film was a Iot of people involved .

A Iot of folks from David and AIan and AIan and OIiver...

...and myself, of course, and the studio.

So ultimately, it was a true collaborative effort.

I arrived in , I think it was Iate April , 1 977.

And the film was far from green-Iit.

It was a project with a script that the studio liked ...

...and I was in place to try and move it along .

The big issue was casting .

The studio were very, very keen on Richard Gere in particular.

He just had a very successful movie, I think called Bloodbrothers.

It had been very good and he got terrific reviews.

And a whole series of meetings occurred between them...

...AIan Parker and Richard that I had set up.

These meetings, I think three or four of them, went from bad to worse...

...because Richard's sense of insecurity about the part...

...or the way in which he wanted to address the part...

...began to undermine AIan's confidence in the screenplay.

And so in a sense, in persuading an actor to come on board ...

...I had a director who was rapidly Iosing his confidence.

I n the end , one night it was a tearful conversation with Alan .

I said , "Look, I have nothing else to say to him .

That I cannot answer any more questions, that I've had it."

Now by this time, we had also cast and screen tested ...

...a number of people that included Sam Bottoms...

...who was very good ...

...Dennis Quaid and Brad Davis.

And we had three terrific sets of tests.

And actually a very, very tough decision ...

...Ieaving Richard to one side...

...particularly between Brad and Dennis.

Dennis had been utterly outstanding .

We tested three scenes.

Dennis was outstanding in one of the scenes...

...the courtroom scene, absolutely extraordinary...

...and was good in the others.

Whereas Brad was that bit better in all of them.

And also Brad had a vulnerability that Dennis, in a sense, didn't have.

I was always very keen that two-thirds way through the movie...

...you begin to think he was not gonna survive this.

This kid was just not gonna make it.

And I felt that was qu ite important.

And Brad had that implicitly.

Brad eventually got the role and it was--

I had lunch with-- And in fact, that was--

There was a very funny story.

Because AIan said to me, "Look, you b--"

Because we thought Richard Gere was gonna take the role.

And he said :

"Could you go and have Iunch with Brad over at U niversal .

And just say how sorry we are...

...that he's not gonna get the role...

...because we really wanted him to do it...

...but the studio has that control ."

And so I had lunch and it was awful .

And I said , "I'm sorry, you know...

...we thought your screen test was fantastic.

You would be absolutely perfect for the role and--

But we can't control the studio."

And he was really understanding ...

...and I took him down the hill and dropped him off...

...and I saw him nip across...

...one of the main roads, where I thought:

"Well , that's gonna be the end of it."

And then , I think it was Iiterally four weeks Iater...

...he was in London then ...

...fitted for what rags we could stick on him.

But AIan really read him , Iooked at him...

...and David Iooked at him , David has a really terrific eye.

He's a very smart fellow.

And Marshall jumped in , everybody jumped in ...

...and felt he was the right person .

You know, once you're on the river and the rapids are ahead ...

...and you can't get to shore...

...you're best to try to give the crew its due and try to make it through .

And I think that at that point, they realized that--

The studio realized that they really weren't in charge.

That the momentum had been achieved ...

...by the picture and this director...

...and so that they've said :

"Okay, we rolled the dice this far, we'II support him ."

Well , it was a very small film .

You gotta understand . Midnight Express...

...if you think of it in today's terms, the budget of Midnight Express...

...isn't the catering bill for most films today.

I mean , you're talking about a film that was about a million-seven ...

...a million-eight hu ndred thousand dollars.

You know, even then it wasn't a very expensive film .

There wasn't a Iot of attention paid for it...

...because it was an economic engine...

...either in terms of reward or expense.

And the people involved , none of them were stars, you know.

The only folks that were known was me and David .

I mean , in the heart of the matter.

I had momentu m because I used to be the president of the company.

So I had some Ieverage in the thing ...

...and I had a big hit picture that had just come out.

So the idea of being-- Yeah , we went back and forth .

David was there a Iot...

...and I went back and forth to Malta a number of times.

But AIan had to carry the day.

And we were very careful because we knew those dailies...

...being showed at the stud io was gonna cause a problem .

I had those problems before with Taxi Driver and Last Detail...

...and Tommy where the film was controversial in the making ...

...and the dailies would frighten the management.

So managing the expectations of the studio wasn't hard ...

...because they had no expectations.

What we were trying to do was not get shut down ...

...because they got frightened of the film .

And the scariest moment in the making of the film ...

...was suddenly AIan called one day and said , "We're done."

I said , "You got four more days of shooting . What about the ending?

What about when he swims across the Bosporus straits...

...and goes through the minefield?"

"No, no, no. We're gonna end it when he comes out of the prison ."

We finished the film, our film ...

...what we thought was our film ...

...and , I think it was about eight pages...

...earlier than the actual film script that OIiver had written .

I said , "What?" I said , "They're gonna kill me at the studio.

That's the action part of the actionladventure picture.

You're gonna take that out."

He said , "No, Peter, trust me. It won't work.

I Iooked at the way the film was shot."

I said , "Trust you , I know, but it's scary.

It's scary because that's what they think."

"Oh , that should be a great piece...

...for the trailer and to sell the picture."

I then went back and got into a complicated negotiation ...

...with the studio, who were very unhappy about this, saying :

"Frankly, we would Iike to finish the film on page--" I'm making this up.

"Page 1 08. And we think the Iast 1 4 pages are unnecessary.

And we read your contract. The contract says you gotta do all that."

I brokered a compromise, which was, "Look, Iet us do this."

We were pretty on the edge of the budget anyway.

"Let us do this.

If we failed , if we're wrong ...

...it's a separate shoot anyway...

...we'll come back, shoot those sequences...

...and if necessary, you can dock our salaries...

...for some of the costs, et cetera.

But let's only do it when we know that our instincts are wrong ."

You gotta defend the filmmaker, gotta support him ...

...and I did support him, and certainly David supported him ...

...and Alan supported him .

So the idea is, we went with that.

And when we told the studio...

...we weren't shooting the ending of the picture, they went ballistic.

And David Begelman , who was then the chairman of the company...

...called me Iike four times and said , "That's absolutely unacceptable.

You got the money and the budget. The money, you overspent it.

You're on budget. Just shoot it and we'll have it."

I said , "Why don't you call AIan .

See if you can persuade him to shoot and have it.

He's just not gonna do that because he's afraid ...

...that you're gonna put it in no matter what he thinks."

And he said , " I am gonna put it in no matter what he thinks."

I said , "Well , there you go."

So that's how the film ended too.

With Billy Hayes coming out of prison ...

...clicking his heels and being free.

AIan made a very cogent comment.

He said , "The real heart of the story as it evolved in the filmmaking ...

...was his trials and tribulations in the prison ...

...the system , how he behaved there, what happened to him .

It was a cautionary tale and to change the texture of the film ...

...at the Iast 1 0 minutes and make it an actionladventure film...

...has the accent on the wrong syllable, you know."

H is argument held merit, you know what I mean?

It really had merit in every sense.

So it wasn't just an egocentric exercise on the part of AIan Parker.

He really, as a filmmaker, crafting this film from the screenplay...

...with all the notes and the conversations...

...had to make a fundamental creative judgment.

And he made the right one.

Before showing it to the studio, we showed it to one or two friends...

...which included a woman who's married to a guy...

...who had a lot of--

I'll keep the names out of it.

He had a Iot of faith in .

An experienced stud io executive.

And she absolutely freaked out...

...two-thirds of the way through the film and ran out of there.

Ran out.

Particularly to do with the cat, that's what finally did it for her.

And that was pretty alarming .

I think we hadn't anticipated that sort of reaction .

So we were a bit tense.

We did eventually then-- It was obviously created for the studio--

It's better Alan tells this story than I do.

But we screened it and everything was going fine...

...until we got towards the end of the film .

And suddenly, the projectionist got the reels in the wrong order.

And we're suddenly looking at the penultimate reel he said--

And I went-- I mean , I was intensely nervous anyway.

I went utterly ballistic. I went racing back to the projection box.

"What the fuck's going on?"

And the guy said , "Well , what's the matter?"

And for some extraordinary reason , I've never done it before or since...

...the reels were lettered , not nu mbered .

-I said , "You got the wrong reel up." -He said , "No, I haven't."

And I said , "You have." He said , "No, no. A, B, C, D, E ...

Oh , fuck. H , I . Oh , fuck this."

He had . He d idn't know his F and his H and his I and his J , you know.

So I whacked him .

And the next thing I knew...

...I'm on the ground in the projection box.

I got the head of the studio walking in pulling us apart.

AIan's there.

But it's better, in a sense, much better if AIIan tells this story.

And mayhem.

And in an odd way, it wasn't intentional ...

...it was a good thing to happen because it demonstrated ...

...the seriousness of what had happened .

We had a similar experience on Bugsy with Barry Diller. But, another story.

And the tension , it was-- Anyway, it was all right.

And then in end , the screening , I think, went very well .

I mean , people were blown away by the movie.

I mean , even if you didn't Iike it, you're blown away by the movie.

Some people Ioved it, some did n't Iike it, but blown away.

To understand Cannes, you've to understand the back-story.

Because without the context...

...Cannes is just the place where the film was first exhibited .

The context was that Colu mbia, Norman Levy was a champion ...

...who was a distributor, Iiked the film when he first saw it.

David Begelman was going through his own trials and tribulations...

...didn't really ad mire the film.

I mean , he didn't dislike the qualitative aspects of it...

...but he didn't feel comfortable with what the film , you know, portrayed .

And the idea of going to Cannes...

...wasn't to lau nch the film , you know, or to praise the film...

...it was to really put the film aside, say:

"Look, if it's not gonna work, you know, it'Il vaporize."

And Cannes is a scary place...

...to Iaunch the first public screening of a movie.

It's really throwing all the marbles on the table at one shot.

And what happened was-- It was very unusual at Cannes.

First of all , what usually occurs...

...is that there's press screenings that start in the morning ...

...at 1 0:00, 1 2:00, 2 :00, 4:00.

Then there's the big screening in the Palais at night.

And there was a kind of feeling amongst the Columbia brass...

...that they'd just Iike this thing to get through and go on to the next project.

And when we went to the screening-- I went to that screening ...

...a big , big screening in the old Palais at 1 0:00...

...and usually a Iot of the press comes at the 1 0:00 screening .

There were very few press there.

Maybe 20 percent, 1 5 percent, very, very few.

Looked Iike a catastrophe because press weren't showing up.

"Oh , my God ." I know for my own self, my own story's a Iittle different.

I went off and got completely whacked , drunk.

I went up to Colombe d'Or, drank, took my wife and some friends.

Because I could n't bear the thing cratering , not only creatively...

...I believed in the film, the filmmakers and the project...

...but also financially.

It would've been a debacle for me.

And so I got completely sloshed .

And I wandered back into Cannes around ...

...oh , around 4:30 and bumped into Rona Barrett...

...who was then a very, very, very important commentator...

...about popular Hollywood projects, people, personalities.

She was People Magazine personified for television networks.

And I had known her for a number of years...

...and she came up to me in the street...

...and said , "I wanna see Midnight Express.

Can I get four tickets?"

I said , "You can get six, you can get eight, you can get 1 0.

You can get as many as you want. Lay down ."

"Really? Can I get eight?"

"No problem, I'II go get eight for you ," figuring the place is gonna be empty.

So I strolled over to the Palais.

At that time, they had Iike a will call box office...

...you can pick up extra seats and such .

I walked up to the booth and I said , "I'd like six tickets or eight tickets...

-...for Midnight Express tonight." -Says, "No, no, no."

I said , "Well , I'm the producer...

...executive producer, owner, head of the studio. Can I get the tickets?"

He said , "You could be King of France, there are no tickets."

I said , "Why?" He said , "Because they're all gone."

AII gone? The first thing I thought...

-...how could they be all gone? -"They're all gone."

I said , "Nobody was there this morning at the press."

He said , "Yeah , but by 2:00, there were 1 0,000 people...

...and 50 million , you know, picketers in front of the theatre...

...picketing and screaming and yelling and carrying on .

There wasn't a ticket to be had . The press people were jammed in ."

That freaked me because I didn't know what's gonna happen that night.

So we go that night. There was a lot of buzz...

...a Iot of noise, kind of Iike uncomfortableness.

And the French audience can be very fickle.

They can boo, they can get u p, they can stomp, they can walk out.

You know, they're not immu ne to the niceties...

...of, you know, being polite in the theatre.

And we all sat together and the film played .

There was a few bumps and grinds and people were anxious in the film .

We've never seen it really, at all , in a public screening .

It hadn't been previewed . That's a pretty scary thing .

And the film played , the film finished and we knew something was wrong ...

...because they didn't applaud , nothing happened .

And Alan and myself and David , we all looked at each other.

"This is not good ."

And then the credits ended and they all--

Two thousand people stood up and gave a standing ovation .

So we went from the depths of cataclysmic failure...

...to the heights of euphoria in one minute.

I n one minute.

And then the film took off.

And then everybody-- Success has many fathers and failure is an orphan ...

...in our business, everybody had something to do with the film .

The one champion in the studio that was really remarkable...

...was a man named Norman Levy, the head of distribution ...

...who worked for me when I was running Columbia.

He's passed away, but he was truly a believer.

He didn't need the social proof of the film playing .

He knew in his heart that this film was gonna work.

The showing at the evening was wonderful .

I mean , it was very well received and we came out...

...we were favourites to win the Palme d'Or, I think.

But the next morning , you have the press conference.

And we were very naive in those days.

I mean , we weren't that young actually.

But we were probably young in film terms.

We certainly were young in film terms.

But we got a great deal of criticism .

Mostly because I think they thought that we had never shown ...

...any Turkish person in any good light...

...that there was no good Turks in the movie.

And we said , "Well , within the circumstances of being a prison ...

...we didn't expect to find too many nice Turks."

But that was a great deal of the criticism.

Of course, that criticism ...

...I don't think ever came this side of the Atlantic...

...because I don't think it was criticized ...

...for any of its political connotations in the U .S.A.

Whereas in Europe, it was...

I mean , in Holland , somebody set fire to a cinema...

...that the film was running in .

I n Germany, it failed miserably at the box office...

...because during the Iate '60s and early '70s...

...there was a huge influx of Turkish workers...

...into the German community.

And so it had major criticism in many areas...

...and mostly, I think, because of this whole political situation ...

...that they wanted us to show an even balance.

And we didn't show that even balance.

Everybody was nasty in the movie.

Even the inmates were nasty as well as the judge.

Not so much the judge, but certainly the prosecutor...

...was a nasty piece of work.

There's a marvellous man , called David Matinal ...

...who, at the time, was overseas sales director of Columbia.

He bore the brunt of this because he was going around ...

...having to deal with Iocal distributors and he was amazing .

We had a couple of court cases.

One I remember definitely in Holland about the opening of the film.

To an extent, David and others protected us from a Iot of that.

And it wasn't until we started going out promoting the film ...

...that we, in a way, came up against it.

The film had one of those u nique moments in the ether of film business...

...that flies in the face of gravity.

Films would open , the first week would always the best...

...and the second , the third and the fourth .

And at that time in the world in the '70s...

...films played for 1 5-, 1 6 weeks, 1 4 weeks, 1 3 weeks.

They started out in 40 theatres, 20 theatres...

...1 0 theatres, two theatres you know, and expanded .

They don't open in 6000 screens, you know, internationally...

...including Phuket, Thailand at the same time.

They opened in , you know, the West Side of New York...

...the East Side of New York, Hollywood Boulevard ...

...west Los Angeles, maybe Chicago, maybe, you know, M ichigan Avenue.

I mean , three sites, that's where this film started .

And they figured that would be the end it.

And the film opened kind of soft.

It disappointed Norman Levy, he was the big d istribution fan of the picture.

He said , "We were disappointed , we thought it was okay."

And the reviews were quite good .

Very good .

But the audience reaction was fantastic.

Fantastic.

Suddenly the second week, it actually went up.

And the third week went up.

Then it expanded , went up the fourth week.

So that everybody was talking about.

How can the film be improving?

I think early on they realized they had ...

...a good movie...

...which with good promotion , could make money.

I think the level of success amazed them .

I mean , it did return remarkable...

...percentage of its investment. Look at it pound for pound .

One of the most successful films probably ever made.

Because it was so relatively inexpensive...

...a bit Iike The Full Monty.

You know, there are films that-- Look at what they cost, look what they gross...

...and then you think, "My God , if every movie could do that...

...everyone would be in this business.

Guber's gotta take a Iot credit for the fact that he really d id push ...

...for a marketing budget that was weighty.

He is very, very good ...

...at the promotional aspects of filmmaking .

I Iearned a Iot from him in that area.

But the genius behind the ads and everything else I think was AIan .

AIan understood the power of the film ...

...and sort of how to promote the power of the film .

About a year Iater, in England ...

...it played as a double bill with another film , Taxi Driver...

...which I started at Columbia.

And I said to somebody in the paper, which got quoted :

"They should stand outside the theatre and arrest everybody...

...that comes out of the theatre." To watch those two films in a row...

...you gotta be really hard-core.