Ed Pressman Dialogue with Julie Solomon, 1991

Bruce Jenkins: We've decided to end this season. This is our first year of such dialogues with a visit not by another director or actor/director, but by a producer and not just any producer. Management hailed in a recent issue of American Film as ​ a producer of the decade and I believe the single most interesting producer in the US, someone who has a sense of what is possible and a sense of how to make visions of filmmakers actually happen on celluloid. It's Edward R. Pressman who is very, very kindly agreed to come and talk about the work he's done for the past 20 years. I had an opportunity to see him in action a year ago at Berlin where he was doing a premiere of a new film.

Bruce Jenkins: He has continued to work at an extraordinary pace making two, three, sometimes four films in a year. He is as we know right now beginning work with a native son, someone whose career we followed here at the Walker, Mark Frost who will in about a week's time be making his feature film directing debut under the production of Ed Pressman, a new film called Storyville. We're very, very pleased to highlight not only another aspect of what makes interesting, ​ ​ engaging, lively cinema possible, but a particular figure who's been a catalyst for filmmakers like , , Charles Burnett, , and hopefully Mark Frost.

Bruce Jenkins: With Ed tonight is a critical... I know many people who have read but have never seen or have not widely known about her other work. We have Julie Solomon from Wall Street Journal whose career dates back to writing fiction of ​ first novel who has been writing for the journal since the late 1970s, who has a degree in law, has a broad range of interests. Her work at the journal though I think is of singular importance. The general began covering film in 1983 and she was allowed to begin working on the film beat and has in that time a master or rather astonishing array of film reviews of feature coverage on a whole range of issues, of aesthetic and cultural importance in film.

Bruce Jenkins: She has been working for the past two years on a book documenting the production of a major film of the past year. Major film that regrettably didn't make very much money in the past year, Bonfire of the Vanities and will in about six ​ months time have her first major nonfiction book, this case study of Bonfire of the Vanities published. We're very ​ pleased that she's taken time out from her reviewing duties at Wall Street Journal and finishing up work on this ​ actually major, major book study to be with us and to spend some time really over the last two months looking at work that has been done under the auspices of Ed Pressman, making their final dialogue visit or making our final dialogue visit possible tonight.

Bruce Jenkins: It is a great deal of pleasure to welcome here to the Walker, Ed Pressman and Julie Solomon.

Julie Solomon: Hello. Is this okay? Good. Well, before we came out here, I decided I should do a little research about Ed Pressman outside of what I knew about his film career, so I called his mother up. I said to her that we were going to be here in Minneapolis and I wanted her to know when she first thought that Ed was going to go into the movie business and

Apr 20, 1991 1 she said she never thought he was going to go into the movie business when he was a kid, but she had a couple of good stories that she thought I should tell you about them. She thought it gave them insight into his future as a somewhat eclectic film producer, and she said that when he was a kid, he went to the Ethical Culture School in New York City, and he used to go off to school every day and everything didn't match all the time.

Julie Solomon: Like when she would be from one pair of shoes and the other shoe would be from the other pair of shoes, and she was quite concerned about this. She went to talk to one of Ed's teachers and the teacher said, "Don't worry about it. Just means he's very interested in everything. He'll be like Benjamin Franklin." Mrs. Pressman thought, "Well, okay, we'll see about that." Then she sent Eddie off to camp. Eddie, she called and she said he came home from camp that summer and her little quiet boy comes home and he's mister all around camper. She says, "I always wondered how they knew that because he's such a quiet person. How did they know that he was so great?"

Julie Solomon: She said I should tell you that her all around camper may not look like what your stereotype of a film, but you're expecting some guy with a ponytail and all of that and then in comes Ed, but he is the mister all around camper. I think as you look at some of the films and listened to his career, you'll see that he has really been all over the map. Guess I wanted to start a little bit about how you ended up getting into the film business. Ed's family is in the toy business, was in the toy business, and one could say that might be fun enough, and yet you chose to go into film. You certainly don't fit the stereotype and what was it that first attracted you to movie making?

Ed Pressman: Well, I think it was a similar process to what I guess brought me to major in Philosophy in college. It was a process of elimination. Philosophy seemed to be the most encompassing subject and film brought together very diverse aspects of my interest. I was brought up to go into the toy business and film is a business, and I think that strain was very much a part of me, but I didn't want to go into the toy business.

Julie Solomon: Why was that?

Ed Pressman: I used to try it out in the summer times. I don't know, I just never was excited by it. I can't give a reason, but just, it didn't fulfill me and I also didn't want to just pursue, I shouldn't say just, but I didn't want to pursue an academic career in philosophy, but film seemed somehow to subsumed the whole and encompassed all those aspects of our culture. I couldn't think of anything else I ever wanted to do and that film itself seemed totally remote and impossible to pursue I guess. When I was at Fieldston High School, I had a teacher that taught modern European history through German films, Dr. Caligari and Mädchen in Uniform and Der letzte Mann, and I guess that impressed me on ​ ​ ​ ​ the power of film.

Ed Pressman: I had an uncle when I was growing up in New York. I guess that's first thing. When I was maybe eight years old, he owned two movie theaters up in Washington Heights. I used to sell popcorn and see four movies a day and loved the movies, but again, it seemed totally remote. When I was at Stanford, I had a roommate whose father was a director

Apr 20, 1991 2 and we talked about making films endlessly but again, it seemed impossible. When I went to graduate school in England at LSE, while I was going to school, I got a non-paying job, an attache with an executive at Columbia Pictures and I met a filmmaker who was American studying at Cambridge named Paul Williams, and he had done a short film at Harvard the year before.

Ed Pressman: The two of us started talking about film and he thought I was a great movie mogul because I had a job on Orr Street. I thought he was a, yeah, D.W. Griffith. We were totally absorbed with each other's dreams and we spent the whole night talking about... We formed a partnership that day and we were together for seven years, and Paul really was the way I got into film because Paul had great confidence. He was the outside man, I was the inside man. It was through Paul I guess ultimately that the possibilities seemed real.

Julie Solomon: Well, that's great, and so then you went from that to becoming a producer, and I think one of the things that has always somewhat mystified me, even though I've been writing about film for a long time, you always hear about producer and I think they're all different kinds of producers who really run the gamut from having a very minimal effect on what the actual film is. They just pick a project and then leave to producers who are very much hands on all the way through what we think of as a David Selznick type. I guess what I want to ask you is, what does a producer do generally, and I guess more specifically, what is it that you do and how does that differ from somebody who's working within the studio system?

Ed Pressman: That's a lot of questions.

Julie Solomon: You can break them up.

Ed Pressman: Well, I think I've operated in a different world than Selznick operated. I think that there are producers today still who see themselves as the generative force in the creation of a film, but the kind of function that producers like Selznick like could provide in the context of a studio system where the greatest directors were under contract. From Hitchcock to Ford doesn't exist anymore and in those days, the producer was in opposition in a basic way to the director, but the conflict was the method of the studio system, the producer was in charge.

Ed Pressman: I approach my job as a producer and as a collaborator and partner going back to the partnership with Paul Williams when we started, and when Paul and I started working together, I was the producer, he was the director, but we didn't set a fine line of demarcation of business and creative matters, but it was a true partnership and we overlap, and that kind of collusion and partnership with the filmmakers what I look to recreate each time. It doesn't always work that way, but that's the ideal relationship.

Ed Pressman:

Apr 20, 1991 3 That's for me the most fulfilling, and it's a function of really establishing the context for that person, the filmmaker to achieve his or her vision that I see is the fundamental function of a producer, which involves the financial context and the creative context, which varies from film to film and filmmaker to filmmaker. When Oliver Stone was doing The Hand, he was a young filmmaker and we're growing together, and I had to do a lot more in certain areas than I did when we did Wall Street or Talk Radio because by that time, he had his crew. We weren't just starting together and with the Tavianis, they take it an opposite. With David Byrne, David was just learning the whole syntax of film.

Ed Pressman: He didn't understand what a strip wasn't a schedule or what a first AD was really. It was really starting from the very basic fundamentals and casting the crew and learning the whole process of filmmaking together, which was a very involving situation. With the Tavianis, the Tavianis had their team for many years. They've done their films with like a family, so our function was very different there. It was trying to make sure as possible that the language issue was dealt with that the casting would ring true for an American audience, so the functions vary. The involvement varies from film to film and with the same director from director to director.

Julie Solomon: I'm curious, you mentioned Oliver Stone and The Hand, which I guess when Platoon came out, everybody always ​ ​ ​ referred to Platoon is Oliver Stone's first directing. I've heard a lot of people had that mistaken impression, and yet ​ you knew him way back when with The Hand, which wasn't a movie that I think all that many people saw. Did you ​ ​ see at that point in that movie, the director that was going to emerge later on and whether you like them or don't like them, a very successful director?

Ed Pressman: Well, I think that I get attracted to directors by their very hard to define aspects, but intelligence and charisma and all those things that make a director inspire those around them, which in a communal work is what the director has to do is what attracts me as well. I'm being seduced by the filmmaker in a sense.

Julie Solomon: You saw that charisma at that time in Stone?

Ed Pressman: Yeah. I met Oliver actually when we were doing Conan the Barbarian. He wrote the script for Conan. He had shown ​ ​ ​ ​ me Platoon as a writing sample and I thought it was just terrific, and he wrote a script for Conan, which was actually ​ ​ ​ quite remarkable. It was not the final film that Millie is shot. It was like a Dante's Inferno. It was still in an attempt to ​ ​ write Platoon and it was probably $60 million budget and impossible, but it was great scrip[t]. Working on The Hand, ​ ​ ​ he was in his most crazy period I'd say, but he was an amazingly creative, very exciting character, always innovated me, energized me intellectually.

Ed Pressman: After The Hand, I couldn't get arrested, so he and I didn't talk to each other for about two years because he thought it ​ ​ was my fault, but after time, those wounds healed and we became close again. He asked if I wanted to produce Platoon. I was eager to do it but then Dino came in and other things happened, and I didn't get to do it, but I was ​ eager to work with Oliver. I felt he would be a director.

Apr 20, 1991 4 Julie Solomon: The first film clip we're going to look at is from Badlands, which was one of your earlier films and Terrence Malick ​ ​ who directed the film as an example of somebody who I think is a quite talented film director who pretty much got eaten up by the system and has dropped out. I don't know if you're in touch with him at all, but you'll see even in this brief clip of a story of a very nice young couple who casually went across the country killing people, that your taste is a little bit on the dark side. I mean, I think if you look through the body of your work, there is a, yeah, darkness and cynicism to them that certainly doesn't come across that much in your persona. Is that just coincidence in terms of the directors or am I misreading?

Ed Pressman: I don't think it's a coincidence because of the directors, but it's on account of the directors because I think the filmmakers who are the truest artists are affected by the currents of their time, and at least the filmmakers I'm attracted to are somehow engaged, and I guess that's really the answer.

Julie Solomon: Now how did Badlands come about? How did you... ​ ​

Ed Pressman: Terry was at Harvard with Paul Williams, and Terry had been trying to get Badlands made for a couple of years when ​ we met. I saw a film he did at the AFI, a short film and got to know Terry over time and basically somehow convinced, it's hard to say how, to try to get it made. It was made for $300,000-

Julie Solomon: Oh my God.

Ed Pressman: ... and Terry had raised about a hundred. I mean at that time, you shouldn't say, oh, but our mission was to raise $200,000. We had Arthur Penn, who was a friend of Terry's, who's put his name on as an executive producer to help. We had Warren Oates as our big name and basically, we got the film done on... I guess I borrowed the money. My mother helped. She was my banker.

Julie Solomon: Your mother was your banker.

Ed Pressman: The credit card and everyone worked for nothing. It was a total commitment of everybody's to Terry, and Terry had that kind of magnetism that I was talking about that a filmmaker is somehow personifying themselves the work they do in a different way than Oliver or Brian. Terry was more like a, I don't know, David Burn [Byrne]. He was very quiet, but he somehow inspires those around him to somehow believe that they're working with someone that's going to give a... The film will have significance, not just be a job. That's the only way that such a film could get made.

Julie Solomon:

Apr 20, 1991 5 Okay. Let's take a look at some of the... Peter, could you run the clip from Badlands. That's and Martin ​ ​ Sheen looking extremely young.

Ed Pressman: Yeah. There's Charlie Sheen is now the same age as Martin Sheen was in this.

Julie Solomon: Oh really?

Ed Pressman: Yeah.

Julie Solomon: Not your basic likable characters. It's been said that these are tough movies. I mean really up and down the board, I mean these are all movies about the darker side of life and especially now, they're not the kind of movies that Hollywood Studios necessarily want to make or even distribute half the time because they don't necessarily make huge amounts of money. You've obviously been doing it for a long time. Is it possible to make money on these movies on a consistent basis? I mean, what is the audience for it and is it both net in the United States and internationally, and I guess now with video because these are tough films and it's tough to find I think audiences especially now who will sit through them.

Ed Pressman: Well, I mean for $300,000, this film was totally justified as an economic endeavor and I think that it's simply a economy of scale. If you make Wall Street for $16 million, it needs to reach a wide audience to justify itself, but I think ​ what's great about a film like this or True Stories or To Sleep with Anger, is that those films can be rationalized ​ ​ ​ artistically but also economically. I think the audience for such films is there in many parts of the world, and the problem is being able to reach the audience that wants to see it and the studios system controls distribution to a large extent, but there are continually changes and ways to reach the audience.

Ed Pressman: I mean, this Badlands was distributed by Warner Bros. It gets distributed all over and it's been profitable for them as ​ well. I mean, I think that the independent film is stronger now than it's ever been in America, and the independent movement is stronger now than it's ever been in history.

Julie Solomon: Why is that? Is that because the studios themselves... I guess the question I've always had is that it's always seemed to make sense to me that that economies of scale should take place that yes, if the movie costs $300,000 or $1 million to make it, it costs less to give the money back, and I never understood why the studios themselves haven't done that and why is it they prefer to let independent producers make the low budget pictures and then just pick them up? Why is it not profitable for them to do it?

Ed Pressman: Well, because they have a big overhead. I think they...

Apr 20, 1991 6 Julie Solomon: What is that overhead? They're always talking about the big overhead. What is it?

Ed Pressman: They've got an organization with hundreds of millions of dollars of interest and real estate and personnel and all the things that make a studio operate, and they've got to supply basically a factory system. The films they look to make are obviously the ones that will bring the greatest return and those that are most predictable because that's the same way. It's always been history of Hollywood. The idea of doing sequels is really not new. Studios just used to make the same film over again in different guises and same story as a Western or yeah, it's thriller, and they would re-process the same stories over and over again. It was like a factory.

Ed Pressman: I mean the differences when we made Badlands, they were seven really institutional sources of financing and ​ ​ distribution that existed. There were no significant independent distributors. There was a company called Loper, but that was about it. Nowadays, there are video companies and cable companies and international conglomerates and many independent distributors that are in the business of making films and distributing them. There are many, many more ways of getting such films made. When we made Badlands, we couldn't go to those places. We had to do it ​ ​ ourselves. When we made Sisters and , it really had come out of our own pocket book or do it as you would ​ ​ a Broadway show by selling shares.

Ed Pressman: Nowadays, there are many real institutional ways of, I say institutional ongoing ways of finding ways to get films made, and the studios want right now to expand their distribution capabilities. They can't afford to do everything themselves and they look to bring in outside films more than they ever have before. I'd say over half the studio films released now are produced by independent companies, and some of the best films every year are independent generated films. Film like our film Reversal of Fortune or even the, I guess, Dances with Wolves was really generated ​ ​ by independent financing outside of America and only was picked up by Orion at the end. It's a studio release like Reversal was, but they're financed independently, and that's been true constantly. ​

Julie Solomon: On the actual film making process, how involved do you get with the day to day process of making a film? I guess I read in one of the articles about you that it said that you reserve the right to have six arguments with a director per film, and I wanted to know when do you feel it's important to have those arguments? At what phase of the process? During the writing of the script or the filming or the editing?

Ed Pressman: A kind of poetic license there. I think the point is not to make issues on every little thing because if you have something important to disagree about, I think it's best to reserve your criticism for those real important things. Otherwise, it loses the impact and I think the hardest thing for a producer to do, you're getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, you got to do something and it's often best not to do anything, and that's a hard thing to come to grips with because if things are going well, if things are set up and you've done your job right when the film is actually being made, there's very little to do. You become then a crisis manager if something goes wrong.

Apr 20, 1991 7 Ed Pressman: I tend to visit a set for an hour and leave. If there's a problem, I get involved, but there's nothing I can stand less than sitting around watching time go by and the process is arduous. There's other things I can be doing more productively than just sitting and watching. During the editorial process, I find it best... Everybody's looking at the dailies and in the case of a new director, I might be there a lot, but with someone who's made films before who I trust, I prefer not to look at dailies. I'd rather look at the film when it's first assembled and give a more objective point of view because I can be much more beneficial. Everyone's seen the dailies.

Ed Pressman: There's a lot of smart people working on the film and I think it's useful to have some detachment. I prefer to not look at every day's rushes, but to have that.

Julie Solomon: Is there a point at which, say for example, in the film Walker, which was a movie based on a true story of an ​ ​ American became the president of Nicaragua in the 19th century was very interesting story. Ed Harris played the part and the movie was not a success I think, in my opinion, too much critically, either critically or financially and I think on that movie, you took a risk with a director who was a cult, director Alex Cox. Was there a point during the making of that movie where you said to yourself, ‘oh my God, this isn't working, what do we do?’

Ed Pressman: Not in the sense you're meaning. I think that Alex is a piece of work and it was very, very the idea of the kind of partnership that I described working with a director as I did with Paul or most every other director was not the case with Alex. Once we started shooting, he became William Walker, but I always had tremendous respect for his work. I never lost confidence in that. I never lost confidence even when I saw the movie. I liked the movie and I guess I liked it the second time I saw it, which is always a problem and I liked it when I got into the music of Joe Strummer and I got into the rhythm of it, and then somehow I've come to perceive the film in a way that works for me.

Ed Pressman: I defend it to the last, but very few other people share that I realized, but I never had doubt about the work. I really didn't. I had doubt about the sanity of going down to Nicaragua with Alex doing this movie to come out alive, but that was for other much less rational reasons.

Julie Solomon: One of the filmmakers that you worked with a number of years ago was Brian De Palma, Sisters and Phantom of the ​ ​ Paradise. We're going to see a clip from Phantom of the Paradise next, which is I saw it for the first... I haven't seen ​ ​ that movie for a while and I forgot how intense it is. We actually saved you a little bit of the intensity of it, but I wanted to know, I think... Actually when I spoke to your mother, she said, "Yeah, Eddie had a bunch of guys working in the back of the toy company. These directors were coming in and out." She says, "You know that guy that made those horror films," and I think that was Brian. I wondered how did you first hook up with him because I think Phantom ​ was... Was that after Sisters? ​ ​

Ed Pressman:

Apr 20, 1991 8 After Sisters. ​ ​

Julie Solomon: After Sisters, so you'd already worked with him and how did you first come in contact with him? ​ ​

Ed Pressman: We were based in New York and our office in New York was a hangout for filmmakers. Besides Paul and Brian, there was a Scorsese and a guy named Mark Stone and Jeff Young and a bunch of other people, and Brian was always the ringleader. We were friends during the making of Greetings and Hi, Mom!, and we basically hung out together. ​ ​ ​ After Hi, Mom!, he made a deal with Ray Stark to do a couple of pictures and he developed with Stark, Sisters and ​ ​ ​ Phantom of the Paradise. Paul Williams and I were doing Dealing up in Toronto and Brian came to visit us and said, ​ ​ "He and Stark can had this falling out. Could we save him from the relationship and pay Ray Stark back the money to get the rights free and do it together," which I did.

Ed Pressman: We'd known each other for four or five years and at the time actually, I had met George Lucas through Brian and we were shooting Dealing in San Francisco as well as Toronto and Brian and I met with George on a script called ​ Cruisin, which he wanted to do, which turned into American Graffiti. Then Scorsese had a scrip[t] called Gaga by Jay ​ ​ ​ ​ Cox, which ultimately in a very circuitous way I believe became Mean Streets. Any case, we had a choice of doing ​ ​ these three movies and we chose Sisters because it was Brian who I knew best and so I didn't make American ​ ​ Graffiti, but I never had any regrets. ​

Julie Solomon: Great. Well, we're going to roll a little bit of Phantom of the Paradise, which was Brian De Palma's version of ​ ​ Phantom of the Opera set in the record industry, and the scene that you're going to see is pretty much near the end of the movie when all the deals with the devil are about to...

Ed Pressman: It's a mixture of Phantom of the Opera and , . ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Julie Solomon: It goes on from there.

Ed Pressman: This is the end. You've got to understand what led up to it.

Julie Solomon: Tell me does it bother you at all that you give all these guys their start, to Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma and his early work and Terry Malick, and then they make the films with you that get people's attentions, and then when they go off to make their big vapor films, they move on. Would you like to go on with them as they go onto bigger films or is that just something that's not of interest to you?

Ed Pressman:

Apr 20, 1991 9 No, I've worked with Oliver in the beginning and then we worked again on Wall Street and Talk Radio, and I hope to ​ ​ ​ work with him again. I hope to work with Brian again. I think when we started, I think the ability I had to deliver at the level that the filmmakers required was limited, so that when Brian was doing his early films, I was really, really able to help, not just at that level, but I think at this point, my peers have grown up with me, not just in the creative community, but at the studios and other places. I have much better access now to getting films launched at a studio level or at an independent level, so that I'm better able to provide the help that such a filmmaker would want.

Ed Pressman: I mean I would hope to work with directors who are established as well as first timers and continue to do that.

Julie Solomon: Have you ever been offered any kind of deal to work within a studio to have a deal like Guber and Peters did before they went off to Columbia at Warner Bros where they had an exclusive producing deal? Have you ever been offered that kind of thing or do you prefer to stay outside of the...

Ed Pressman: We had it once right after Phantom. Fox thought Phantom was going to be a much bigger hit than it was and they ​ ​ ​ gave us a contract, which was for two years. Right after that, the management changed and was the least productive period of my life, and the relationship that that offered has always seemed to me that I should keep my options open.

Julie Solomon: Because they have to approve what you're doing or...

Ed Pressman: The problem, there are all kinds of deals made, but in that arrangement, we got a salary so we were paid whether a film was made or not and there was money to buy scripts and stuff, but they didn't want to make anything we brought them, and then if we took it elsewhere, it was tarnished or it was inhibited by Fox's ability to take it over if anyone else wanted to. It was just a very unproductive relationship, but there are different kinds of relationships that one could have with studios. We've had discussions recently and if we could find a way to work with the studio and do the films we want to make that, that's ideal. Every film I want to make, I go to the studios first and if they want to finance it and distribute it, that's the easiest way to do it.

Ed Pressman: I'm not against that at all. I'm not independent because I'm against the studios. I worked through the studio system. It's only if the studios don't want to do a film, that I have to find other creative ways of financing, and then I have to come back to the studios anyway for distribution. If an arrangement could be achieved to distribute films with the studio and still have the ability to make the films that we want to make, there's nothing wrong with that.

Julie Solomon: I'm just curious the film business is covered now everywhere in all the magazines and newspapers, and it seems like everybody knows about Spago or the IV or wherever it is, and Michael Ovitz, the head of CAA and how the agents are running the business. I was wondering if you're in your position, you have a very good track record, what is your

Apr 20, 1991 10 line to people like Michael Lovitz at the big agencies in terms of lining up the directors in the stars and the people you need... I mean like, will he return your phone call the same day or what is the...

Ed Pressman: I think over time, there's at least a credibility than if I say we're going to make a film, we'll make it so that the agents are responsive. I'm not signed to any one agency, but again, over time, I've developed a certain confidence factor with the agents, and what the agents really do is provide access. They don't really tell a star what they should do. I don't think the idea that they have the power to tell Dustin Hoffman what picture he's going to do or that Michael Woods can tell Tom Cruise what to do is as powerful as people imagined, but I think what the agent provides is access. They can deny you access and I think that that's again over time and credibility, I've gained much more access than I had in the past.

Julie Solomon: Do you see it waxing and waning according to the... I mean, if the business is cynical as one might be led to believe so that after Walker, your access might be a little bit less and now after Reversal of Fortune being a success or at ​ ​ ​ least, yeah, a success that people now be quicker to get back to you? Is it quite as brutal as that?

Ed Pressman: I think maybe with some people, but not with many. I think I have friends... Who knows, next week, it could change. I feel okay today.

Julie Solomon: Well, that's good. That's good. You've worked with a number of foreign directors as well as American directors and in fact, one of the film clips that we're going to look at is from Das Boot which is really so good. I just looked at it again. ​ It's such a tight, great film and I was wondering in a picture like that, with Wolfgang Peterson in that case, I mean, how did you come about to get to know him and what's the difference in terms of getting a film like that produced and distributed and the money raised as opposed to an American?

Ed Pressman: Well, that's a long story. When we were involved with Das Boot, it was at a time I was in Munich doing a film with Bo ​ ​ Widerberg and the opportunity presented itself to do that film and the Fassbinder film Despair in partnership with the ​ various studios and a German tax shelter group called Geria. If we could provide the other third of the financing from the States, and the intention was that Das Boot would be what was called an international film, meaning an American ​ film. We developed a screenplay, which is the screenplay that was eventually shot and we built a submarine, and we hired John Sturgis to direct and Richard Dreyfuss to play the captain, and Tony Richmond was the camera man.

Ed Pressman: We were well into pre-production when Buchheim, the author of the book, appeared and claimed that our script was anti-German. In fact, it was pacifist against war, but against German and in particular, Buchheim had been an assistant to Himmler during the war. When this erupted, Dreyfus started announcing to the German press that this was anti-Semitic. Sturgis then drive his walk off the film and the film came to a stop. We had done what we promised, but no one told us that the author had script approval legally, so the picture stopped. The money we put up was returned. We were given two and a half percent of the profits, executive producer credit and that was the end of it.

Apr 20, 1991 11 Ed Pressman: Three years later, the film was revived. By the various studios with the same boats sitting there and unfortunately, I had nothing to do with it.

Julie Solomon: Was the script the same script, and then because it sounds...

Ed Pressman: Yeah, it was the same script. There was a scene that book I'm objected to, which was hypothecated in the book, but dramatized in the script where the enemy sailors are in the water and the German look at them as they're drowning and according to German rules of war, if the enemy is there because of security, you shoot them. In the book, it hypothesized what he would do. In the script, we said they're shot and then the captain was going to be very tormented. It's not like they were cruel, but that was not dramatized in the book. You dramatize it in the script, so you've got to take that out and that's what created the issue because that was the only real issue.

Ed Pressman: Anyway, I think the film obviously turned out much better than it would have had it been made as an international production than as a German film, so I can't take responsibility for that.

Julie Solomon: Well, I think you can because the script was...

Ed Pressman: For a part of it, yeah.

Julie Solomon: Yeah, the script was the script that was built because it's quite a pacifist movie.

Ed Pressman: Right, right.

Julie Solomon: The segment that we're going to see now is there's a spray thing from above and the submarine starts to sink. Oh. Unless everybody think that you're always involved in serious films, there is Conan. Trying to think of you and Arnold ​ ​ Schwarzenegger in a room together, it's daunting, but I was wondering, did you have anything to do with the casting of Arnold and what was your relationship with him?

Ed Pressman: I discovered Arnold. No, Jerome Gary was making a film called Pumping Iron, which was being edited and I was ​ ​ living in New York and he asked if I would look at it for advice. I saw Arnold's image and his personality. There was an immediate impact and I was with someone, I asked there must be a movie for this fellow and he said, "Oh, don't you know about Conan the Barbarian?" I said, "No." He went to this fellow's bookstore. He had a comic bookstore ​ ​

Apr 20, 1991 12 called Super Snipe in New York, which was actually backed by George Lucas and he introduced me to this whole world of Robert Howard and Frank Frazetta paintings.

Ed Pressman: It was like something I knew nothing about, and it was a cinematic conception to me right away and on the cover was this presented painting which was Arnold, and so Arnold was the reason that Conan became of interest. We made an ​ agreement with Arnold that he would do three films with us as Conan. We became very good friends. We spent a great deal of time together for a couple of years trying to get Conan made and a lot of people thought it was like the ​ old sword and sandal movies with Steve Reeves and the genre of sword and sorcery. It was in fact something new. I think it's an interesting genre and is original in its own way. Some of the other films that may be more serious in some way, but I think it's an interesting film.

Ed Pressman: I think that it took us seven years to get the film made and Arnold stuck with us for the last four of them, and we went through many different ways of getting it made. Oliver wrote the script, but the script was impractical. We even thought this was both before The Hand. We thought maybe Oliver could direct it, but he couldn't direct the action ​ ​ stuff. We got Joe Alves who had done this second unit direction on Jaws and the special effects, and we actually ​ thought for a few months that we'd have two people directing it. The first time director Oliver and Joe Alves, it's like the Taviani brothers, and that was not a good idea. Well, in the very beginning, I went to John Milius and Milius said he'd do it, then he went off to do Big Wednesday, so we lost him for a long time. ​ ​

Ed Pressman: In the meantime, we went with Alan Parker, Ridley Scott. There were many people interested and then things would happen and it would change their mind. Then John came back and we did it with John. John and Oliver had a combative relationship and then the script changed and that became the movie. Actually the first half of that movie I think is terrific.

Julie Solomon: I always love that. In fact, I thought we should just see it, just a little bit of Arnold. Just imagine Ed and Arnold. Could you just show us? I don't know if any of you saw The Doors movie. I think that's in The Doors as well. ​ ​ ​ ​

Ed Pressman: I think you're trying to tell me something here Julie. This film has much more eloquence than that scene.

Julie Solomon: I have to say this is the one clip I hadn't seen. I just told them to pick something with Arnold and then... I’ll have to talk to the projector when this is over over... Wow. Sorry.

Ed Pressman: It's a textural analysis.

Julie Solomon:

Apr 20, 1991 13 Well, that's quite a scene there. I don't know how to go from this to my next question, so I'm just going to break. 1990 was a tough year for Hollywood, but maybe not as bad as the last five minutes that's been for me. Big budget pictures were the failure in 1990, Avalon, Bonfire of the Vanities, Havana all cost a fortune and did not do well at the ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ box office. After that, you have all the studio executives in Hollywood coming out saying, "Oh, we're not going to make expensive movies anymore. We're all going back to doing what you do, making reasonably budgeted movies," but at the same time, in the next week in the trade, Bruce Willis is getting $10 million, Demi Moore is getting $8 million, and you say to yourself, well, how can this be?

Julie Solomon: How can they make modestly budgeted pictures when they're paying the stars such exorbitant amounts of money. I guess what I wanted to ask you is in the wake of this breast-beating and saying we're going to be monks now and make modest movies, does this affect you? Is this a good thing for you because do people now look to you as somebody who's going to supply them with a reasonably priced product?

Ed Pressman: Well, I think they're always contradicting tendencies going on in Hollywood. I think there's a real effort on account of just market factors and the fact that companies like Fox and Time Warner are very highly leveraged. They have tremendous interest payments and they can't spend as freely as they did, and the companies that have usually the strongest runs had been companies that have been on top of the form and not spending the most money doing paramount in the '70s or Disney in the mid '80s and maybe Fox right now, but at the same time, probably the most expensive film ever made is about to come out at $105 million for Terminator 2. ​ ​

Ed Pressman: The money that Matsushita and Sony had brought to Universal and Columbia give those studios certainly, certainly Columbia over the last year an inclination to spend as freely or more freely than ever. Film Hook, the Spielberg film ​ ​ with Robin Williams is going to cost a fortune, and so there's this contradicting trend. I think that generally, I think that this seems to go in cycles and I remember again in the... Was it the mid 70s after Sound of Music, and the answer ​ ​ was big musicals and then they made Star and Finian's Rainbow and a bunch of very expensive flops. Then Easy ​ ​ ​ Rider came out and the tendency was then let's make low budget films, and then they lost a fortune taking that turn. ​

Ed Pressman: After Jaws, the same thing happened and then came Porky's and they went the other way. There's this yin and yang ​ ​ ​ going on and I think that as a current, today's theme is at least for the official record is generally more towards look at Home Alone, look at Pretty Woman, look at Ghost, look at these films as models of smart thinking. In that context, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ our way making films is definitely appealing and the idea that we can lower the average is I think an advantage, but we're doing a film called Hoffa with Danny DeVito and probably Jack Nicholson, and that's going to be very ​ expensive.

Julie Solomon: What’s very expensive?

Ed Pressman: I don't know yet, but above average.

Apr 20, 1991 14 Julie Solomon: What's average now, 18 million for a picture in Hollywood?

Ed Pressman: I think 25.

Julie Solomon: Twenty-five.

Ed Pressman: I mean we've done mostly films. I don't think we've ever done a film that expensive. I think we haven't done a film that expensive.

Julie Solomon: Twenty five million.

Ed Pressman: Right. I mean, Conan was 18. It depends who you ask. If you ask Dino, Dino was one price, Universal another price, ​ but somewhere in that area, 18 to $20 million. To Sleep with Anger was A million two. Reversal of Fortune was about ​ ​ 15. David Mamet film we just finished is around 7, so they're all certainly well below the average, but there's some situations where the studios will reach to pay the stars. I think that the Japanese financing is a big factor for those studios to be able to survive in that climate because I think that no matter what, I think the studios that are more financially strapped are not going to do that.

Ed Pressman: I think Carolco is a company that's doing Terminator 2 and that's a big, big test because if they did Total Recall, ​ ​ ​ which cost about $70 million and it was their most profitable film. They have projections based on Terminator 2, ​ ​ which they expect to do very well, and would be interesting to see because the balloon has burst before and these cycles usually come to an end with a lot of very expensive disasters, like Heaven's Gate or whatever. I don't know. ​ Did Bonfires really change Warner's thinking? I don't know. ​ ​

Julie Solomon: They say it has, but then who knows because...

Ed Pressman: I mean they're doing Batman 2 and I'm sure they're going to... ​ ​

Julie Solomon: They just hired Bruce Willis to do a big action picture and I'm sure that he didn't do it for nothing.

Ed Pressman: Yeah.

Apr 20, 1991 15 Julie Solomon: Next film clip.

Ed Pressman: I bet if...

Julie Solomon: Oh, sorry.

Ed Pressman: No, I was just saying it's a brand name psychology and that makes sense. It's just being what brand is really going to work.

Julie Solomon: You created Arnold, so I think you have to take some responsibility for this in some way. The next film clip we're going to see is from True Stories, which was a David Burns [Byrne’s] directorial debut. It was a musical about life in ​ ​ Virgil, Texas and the scene we're going to see is actually somewhat appropriate to this discussion about the absurdity of the way Hollywood thinks. $105 million for a film is almost uncomprehensible to imagine, but in the scene we're going to see, the leading town industrialist played by Spalding Gray, a man who hasn't spoken to his wife for like 20 years or ever, and they're sitting around the family table and he's explaining to David Byrne, who's the visitor in town about industry.

Ed Pressman: Well, the woman at the table, Spalding Gray’s wife is played by, my wife, Annie McEnroe. I should say that because...

Julie Solomon: She's very good. She has her own musical number in this.

Ed Pressman: Yes.

Julie Solomon: We're going to see a family. It's not your family, is it Ed, who doesn't talk to... The last movie we're going to see a clip from is going to be Reversal of Fortune which has done quite well by you. I think recently won an ​ Academy award, deservedly so I think for his portrayal of Claus von Bülow. I think this picture in a lot of ways really represents Ed Pressman. This is what you do. I mean you have a very American story in a lot of ways, Reversal of ​ Fortune, the Claus von Bülow case based on a book written by an American lawyer and self-promoter, Alan ​ Dershowitz, an English actor and a somewhat German and somewhat other things Director Barbet Schroeder. What is he exactly? He's German...

Ed Pressman:

Apr 20, 1991 16 No, he's Swiss, grew up in Colombia and he has no particular nationality.

Julie Solomon: A man of no particular nationality. I was wondering how did this come together? How did...

Ed Pressman: Barbet actually has an accent in every language.

Julie Solomon: Has an accent.

Ed Pressman: No, he does.

Julie Solomon: How did you put Reversal together? ​ ​

Ed Pressman: How long do we have?

Julie Solomon: Not too long.

Ed Pressman: Let's see. Basically started with, I've always had a student drivers because I tend to bump into things when I drive myself. In LA, you're always in road so I do my work in car and the film some student who was driving me was Elon Dershowitz, Alan's son. I didn't know who Alan was. One day he handed me a manuscript after he was working for me like four months and said, "What do you think of this?" I read it and I was taken with it right away as an exploration of class system society in America, the legal process and a lot of things that intrigued me. I met with Nick Kazan who took a point of view on how the script might be written, which sold me on the idea that it could be a movie. It was really Nick's conception.

Ed Pressman: The idea of by the way of the voiceover of Sunny was Brian's idea.

Julie Solomon: Brian De Palma.

Ed Pressman: Yeah, which I suggested to Nick after Brian said the only way you can tell this story is from Sunny's point of view. Nick liked that idea. The original director was someone else, not Barbet.

Julie Solomon:

Apr 20, 1991 17 Who was it?

Ed Pressman: Hugh Hudson and we spent two years trying to satisfy Hugh's demands in the script. He was never satisfied and after two years, I'd never been in this situation before, but I actually had to make a decision to find someone else because we weren't even close to getting the script to satisfy what Hugh wanted it to be, and we couldn't figure out what that was, and it was just not getting anywhere. At that time, Barbet who I'd known for years, we work together to try to get Barfly going early on before Mickey Rourke with Jimmy Woods. We were friends, we met. Barbet had an idea for a movie and said he wished he'd get Nick Kazan to write the script. I said, "Well, I just happened to have a script by Nick Kazan. Would you be interested in reading it?"

Ed Pressman: He read it and loved it and the idea of Barbet doing it seemed logically interesting to me because Barbet when he was married in Niarchos and Onassis where at his wedding, he knew that world. He also knew that the other world Barfly reflected. He understood evil, Idi Amin, and he's a very bright fellow. Barbet loves the script. Barbet didn't want to change it at all, so that made it solved. It's one big problem, and Barbet actually, because English is not his native language, had a great respect for the world and for Nick. In fact, during the whole shooting, Nick had a beeper on him so when he was in LA or wherever he was, Barbet could reach him. If there were changes to be done or whatever, Nick was very, very intimately involved.

Ed Pressman: From the point we had a script that we liked and the director, the problem of getting this film made was just beginning and the studios all turned down the screenplay to finance, so we had to find another way to do it. We made a deal with . We made a deal with Jeremy. The casting was much more circuitous than that. For a certain point, we had part of the cast in place, but no one still wanted to make the movie. We were committed basically to make it because we had done pay or play with the actors. We got Shochiku, a Japanese company. It was like a 4- or 5-year process, but that was how it came to be.

Ed Pressman: The film itself was always a stepchild at Warners because they didn't have a lot of money in it, and they kept putting up tests for the film, let's see how it plays in Telluride and let's see how it plays in Toronto, and let's see what happens when it opens. The reviews were good and the film did well, but they had opened it at a time when they didn't think it was going to play long and they had all the Christmas films coming in, and they also had Goodfellas ​ playing and they were definitely behind that. This film really had to come out of the theaters when the Christmas films came in, but fortunately, it got the nominations and then received the Oscar, and so now it's back in 400 theaters and it's doing pretty well.

Ed Pressman: It's been a long process because it was an independent film and not something that Warners had a stake in from the beginning, but in the end, it's played out on its own merit so it's come out fine.

Julie Solomon:

Apr 20, 1991 18 I'm just curious how much money had it made before Christmas and how much of a difference did the Oscar actually made in terms of the box office receipts?

Ed Pressman: Let's say it'll do another 50%.

Julie Solomon: Another 50% because of that. The scene that you're about to see is just graded lunch between Alan Dershowitz played by Ron Silver and Claus von Bulow. It's a scene in which Alan Dershowitz is just trying to decide whether he wants to take the case or not, and I think you'll see just from this clip exactly, if you haven't seen the movie, why Jeremy Irons won the Academy award for this picture. I think I like to let any of you ask some questions if you'd like to.

Ed Pressman: Sure.

Julie Solomon: Any questions? No hands? Yes sir.

Audience: Well, I'd like to know Mr. Pressman, what's the film that you're most proud of.

Julie Solomon: The question is, what is the film that Mr. Pressman is most proud of.

Ed Pressman: I think of the 34 films, probably a dozen of them. It's hard to pick one. I think...

Julie Solomon: Pick two.

Ed Pressman: Actually, I keep reminding what I'm working on and what I've been doing, and I circle the ones that I think I like to think of, so I got... I'll read the ones out of it. Sisters and Phantom, Badlands, Das Boot, Heart Beat, Conan, Plenty. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ She didn't like Plenty. True Stories, Good Morning Babylon, Wall Street, Walker, Blue Steel, Talk Radio, Reversal of ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Fortune, and To Sleep with Anger. ​ ​ ​

Julie Solomon: Yes sir.

Audience: Mr. Pressman, you mentioned some of these films are anywhere from five to seven years from the beginning to completion. What rate would you say that you start with it actually [inaudible 01:31:29]?

Apr 20, 1991 19 Ed Pressman: I think of the films that we start working on, we make about lower two thirds of what we start. I think the studios probably do one out of 200, but we can't operate on that basis. We've got to make pretty much what we start.

Julie Solomon: Yes sir.

Audience: Mr. Pressman I read a couple of years ago that you bought the rights to a story about the life of Dean Reed. He was a close personal friend of mine for 20 years and Dean was assaulted three times and there are a number of people here when I imagined that you had bought the rights that an honest film would be made about someone who might be very controversial. Could you tell us where that project might be right now?

Ed Pressman: Well, at the moment, our rights have lapsed that we were involved for a while trying to get a handle on the best approach because it could be approached so many different ways and there are a lot of different theories. The person that we got the rights from was a friend of Reid's also.

Audience: Will Roberts?

Ed Pressman: Who?

Audience: Will Roberts?

Ed Pressman: No.

Audience: Oh, I see.

Ed Pressman: Teacher at Antioch, but at the same time, the BBC said they were going to do a film, which never turned out, but we were concerned because we hadn't even gotten a script started and they were doing their films, so we'd let the rights laps. It's interesting subject and the change in the climate politically with Russia made us think also that maybe the times and the pertinence of it would be less relevant somehow but then again, it may be interesting again in a whole different light with a little... Things have been changing rapidly there that the kind, do you know the Dean Reid? Dean Reid was a American who became a superstar. He was big as Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley all rolled into one in Russia and in East Germany and the Soviet block.

Apr 20, 1991 20 Ed Pressman: He was the biggest recording star, actor made movies and he died under mysterious circumstances. Some people thought the CIA had done it, some people took the KGB had done it, some people thought he committed suicide. What do you think?

Audience: He wasn't the type of person to commit suicide.

Ed Pressman: Right.

Audience: I don't think we'll ever know.

Ed Pressman: Right. Anyways, it's an interesting subject.

Audience: Thank you.

Julie Solomon: Yes.

Audience: I want to know what happened with To Sleep With Anger. It seemed like a very exceptional film and I wonder how ​ ​ much referral the producers have over the distribution of the films over it.

Ed Pressman: Right. That's really the toughest problem. Like I said, there is a lot more ways of getting films made now than there used to be, but the distribution of the film once it's made is the real problem. I think a mistake was made, an honest mistake, but a mistake in the distribution of To Sleep With Anger, the Goldwyn Company that distributed to film voted ​ ​ after it was completed and because of Danny Glover being the star, the notion was that this film might be able to be sold as a Danny Glover movie, like Lethal Weapon 3 or something. ​ ​

Ed Pressman: We only had about $750,000 for our agreement to spend on marketing and moving, and about half of that was spent on a test engagement in Atlanta and a couple of other cities in a very wide release with television advertising, and the experiment failed and we used up half our money. When it opened, subsequently as a very limited art film release, we didn't have much money to keep the film alive. Even so without any money, the film did over $1 million just hanging on week to week in a few cities where at least got established; San Francisco, New York or in LA, Boston, I don't know. Hard to hear, but generally across the country, it came and went and there was no money to advertise it left.

Apr 20, 1991 21 Ed Pressman: There's nothing to do about it and the structure of the financing had been preordained. It was funded by a Sony Company that became an orphan to the Columbia Sony company, Columbia. Sony had financed the film before they bought Columbia Pictures and then they bought Columbia Pictures, but the division of Sony that financed the film was absorbed and the management left. There was no one there to get an answer from and there was no way to get the deal adjusted. We tried very hard and we got what was agreed to in front and that was all it could get.

Julie Solomon: Yes. You. You, you, you.

Audience: Oh, I was just curious what became of Paul Williams who directed the first three films.

Ed Pressman: Well, Paul after the third film of Dealing dropped out, became interested in politics and other things other than film ​ and went to Arica training. Remember that?

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Ed Pressman: I guess gave away all his possessions and went to a hole, got divorced, and then recently we stayed friends. Recently, he's decided to try to come back to direct again, which is a hard thing to do, but he's got a script that Dennis Hopper wants to do and he's trying to do it up in Montreal. I'm trying to help if I can. He's living out in LA.

Julie Solomon: Yes.

Audience: What is the reference or meaning of the title To Sleep with Anger? ​ ​

Ed Pressman: Charles is much more eloquent than I am in explaining that. It's about frustration, quiet, quiet, quiet kind of anger. It's poetry. I'm not sure.

Audience: Is it a specific line in poetry?

Ed Pressman: Oh, I don't think so.

Julie Solomon:

Apr 20, 1991 22 Somebody had a question. Yes.

Audience: I really enjoyed the film Trues Stories and I'm just curious now that you mentioned you get a little bit more involved ​ with David Byrne because he's a filmmaker. I'm wondering number one, if the film was financially successful and also if you've had a chance to talk David Byrne again about visiting another film because everybody here is very interested in doing some.

Ed Pressman: Yeah. True Stories was made for $3 million and half of it was provided by Warner Records, so the movie company ​ actually only put up a million and a half. At that level, it was considered successful. It did very well on video. As far as working with David again, we're talking about a couple of projects. He does want to direct again and he's got two projects that we're talking about and maybe others also. I know a little one were furthest along on involves the Latin rhythms that some of his latest albums have explored from Brazilian music.

Julie Solomon: Yes.

Audience: You seem to support directors in everything and I'm curious about your own vision. How do you view works through your eyes and how important is that to you because up until now it's really been the director's vision that has attracted you and I’m curious about your own. Especially with your background.

Julie Solomon: Well, I guess I'd take a vicarious creative pleasure. What I'm good at is identifying through the eyes of my partner and taking that trip. I didn't know a lot about Nicaraguan politics before getting involved with Walker, but through that ​ ​ process, I became much more learned. I think that's what galvanizes me is the other person and that's not to say I don't become involved or just say if you're fixed, I can identify and feel we're talking the same language, and I think that's why the filmmaker would come to me as well because it's a process of being able to speak the same language. That's really what it comes down to, and it's things that are sometimes easy to verbalize and sometimes not. I mean in the case of Reversal, the real partner was Nick. Plenty was David Hare. ​ ​ ​ ​

Julie Solomon: It's not always the director, but I find I don't have the talent or the confidence or the inclination to write myself or direct myself. I think what I do though I think is very critical and very fulfilling and totally fulfilling in a creative way for myself in a way that's going into the toy business wasn't like I find a creative fulfillment in the role of producer, which generally is demeaned as a title for all kinds of reasons and as a function.

Julie Solomon: Well, I think you do very much present your own vision and you just get other people to put in on the screen for you, but I found this very interesting. I thank you and I thank you for letting me comment. Thank you.

Ed Pressman:

Apr 20, 1991 23 Oh, thank you.

Apr 20, 1991 24