Old you is, folks. It's time people paid good money to see this
movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
hot popcorn, and no monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone for tend Podcasting
Isn't boring Off, Lee Marman, Ernest mort Knight, Robert Bryan, Jimmy
Brown, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Trenny Lopez, Richard Jail, Robert
Webber, Lenz Water, Ralph Dirty Dozen in television Metalward from NGA, Hey,
folks, woking by a very special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm
your host, Mike White. On this episode, we have Dwayne Epstein back
and the Booth. He was on our prime cut episode all those years ago,
episode one ten, and he is back with a new book looking at
the Dirty Dozen. It is called Killing Generals. The Making of the Dirty
Dozen, the most iconic World War Two movie of all times, and let
me tell you that it is a terrific book. Dwayne really puts together a
great story about one of the greatest movies. I don't know if it's the
most iconic World War two movie of all times, but it's definitely up there.
It's one of those books where you sit down and you start to read
it and next thing you know, you are fifty pages in, and next
thing you know, after that, you are are done reading that book,
because it is just a page turner to read all about the background to the
movie and how it was actually put together. It was wonderful, highly recommended,
and I hope you enjoy this interview. Did this come out directly from
your research on Lee Marvin or did you come to this through another avenue both.
The way it happened was Lee Marvin point blank was an unexpected but wonderful
surprise, and its success wells critically and financially. Financially, it made it
to number four in the New York canadastseverals was and critically, it won a
couple of publishing awards, was one of the Independent Book Awards Book of the
Year, It was wonder Forward Magazine's Book of the Year, and it was
up for several other awards. But anyway, what happened was in the interim
after it came out and it was successful. My agent, a wonderful man
by the name of Mike camel Bag. You don't meet a lot of really
decent people in men's life, you meet nice people, good people, schmucks,
bad people. But Mike Hammelberg was a true editalemnch. He really was.
And what what can happened was we were working on another project, but
Mike passed away. A matter of fact, I spoke to him literally the
day before he died. He left a message on my answer machine about the
project we would be working on, and I did a proposal, and he
called me the day before he had a stroke and he never came out of
the comma and passed away. And what he said was what you did here
was great. Now the ball is in my park and I got to go
out and push it. And he passed away. So I was devastated.
But in the interim, without having an agent and not having any real connections
in the publishing world, I was a free fall. Now what happened was
the gentleman who published the Marvin's Point Blank was the guy named Tim Shapnell,
who is an open minded publisher, independent publisher in the truest sense of the
words, company Shaffner Press, and eventually he agreed to publish a biography on
Charles Bronson, which was going to be my next project. And in the
interim. I had gathered a whole lot of exclusive information, all kinds of
grids that I interviewed people Bronson went to school with close friends, associates,
co workers, what have you. And Tim liked the idea. So I
was moving forward with that. But then at one point another possibility of a
great project came up. So I asked him, can I take a kind
of sabbatical on the Bronson book, but I work on something else? And
he said okay. And I worked on something else, which I won't go
into because it's still in the work to believe it or not. But once
I had it down, I came back to the Bronson project and talked to
Tim and said, I'm ready to come back to work on the book.
And Tim said, this has done to an email. Tim said, you're
gonna have to call him. You have to talk. So I called him
and what he said to me was, I've been thinking about it when at
the time took off, and I want to move my company into another direction.
So what we can do is this, you keep the advance, I'm
canceling the contract. Yeah, So once again I was back in free fall.
This was about twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, and I wanted up having to
take a day job to pay my bills. You do what you can in
the And then an interesting thing happened. There's a gentleman by the name of
Lee Sobel who is a literary agent who specializes in nonfiction, specifically retro pop
culture, which as if this guy was made for me. And he contacted
me, which is really weird. He contacted me and said, I originally
Marvel. What can I like it a lot? Do you need an agent?
And I thought, agents don't do that. Writers seek out agents don't
necessarily seek out planet generally speaking. And I told him that, and he
said, why are writers so cynical? An agent can do what I'm doing?
And I thought, I can. Agian is doing what you're doing.
There's something not quite on the up and up here. It seemed like a
hustle. So I lift them up. I checked them out from ten ways
to Sunday. And then I got back to him. When I said,
all right, you know what I need an agent? My agent passed away
and he knew my AP two. By the way, my Camilo, that's
how great Hamilburg rudge, And he said, okay, what you got in
mind. So I told him a couple of the ideas that I First off,
I said, how about a bio on Charles Bronson? And he went,
no way, And I said why, and he goes, One reason
is that most of the publishers I deal with aren't interested in celebrity biographies.
You're interested more in books about a specific film. If you want to do
a bio on Bronson, you've got a contact a university press, and they
don't pay very well. But that I knew anyway. So then we started
talking about possible movie ideas, and he said books about movie. The first
one he said was point blank, and I said, I liked that movie.
It's a good movie, but certainly not a favorite compared to some of
the other film Billie Marvin made. And the very next thing I said was
what about a book on the dirty doesn't And he said, yeah, I
don't know. I don't I don't know. And then he said he got
back to me a couple of days later and he said, you know what,
he actually said this to me, I'm a fool. I don't know
what I'm talking about. Apparently, a book on the dirty doesn't like just
work you think you can get a proposal to me, Yeah, I'm gonna
work on it, and so I did. Now, this is the amazing
part, actually part of the whole thing sound amazing so far. But he
says to me, get me a proposal and I'll shop it around. And
I did. Now, while he was shopping it around, my landlord decided
to fumigate our building because we had a problem with termites. Next timing right,
So I was out of the apartment for three to four days, and
we had been contacting each other and usually through video place or my phone.
But while I was out of the apartment, I wasn't able to check my
email. Then I went to the library my girlfriend. I went to the
library so I can plug in and check my email, and I got four
messages from him, the last one going where are that? F are you
in capital letters? So I answered, and what I got was a response
that said and I looked at the previous messages too, and the previous messages
were like, they're offering this much, they're offering that much. And then
by the last one where he went where they yep are you? They had
gone their limit. They wouldn't go any higher. So it was a good
thing. I was at home because he asked me, I need you to
tell me yesterday do we take this deal or not? And I went leave
take the deal, and then he got back to me two seconds later when
he said, we're on and I'm in the library, a library, and
I'm hooting and hollering and everybody's staring at you. It's like a scene right
out of a movie. So that's how the Brook Killing Generals came to be.
When was the first time you saw that? Dirty doesn't know? What
did you think? I'm old enough to. I'm not old enough to.
Actually I was, but I didn't. I was about six or seven when
it came out. The first time I saw it was on television. When
it first aired on TV. I don't know if you remember this or not.
I don't even know how old you are. When they first aired it.
They used to air it in two parts, CBS Thursday Night Movie and
CBS Friday Night. And even when I watch it now, I can remember
vividly when both parts started and ended. And then years later I got to
see it in an repertory theater here in la and back in the eighties and
nineties, used to be a lot of it before I used to go to
those theories once or twice a week, and I think it was up to
New Beverley where they showed it and show in the big screen. As much
as I remembered and loved the movie, it blows your way on the big
screen. You were overwhelmed by it. And that's when I first saw it,
and I'm watching it ever since. And by the way, even if
you don't want to see it, it's kind of inevitable if you're watching TCM
on any given night, because I guess it was and it is. When
it ted Turner's favorite films, it doesn't have gone with the win because they
show it constantly, and I think that's a good thing. I really do
watching every time as Yeah, it's funny. As we're recording this, it's
just a few days after D Day. It's week after Memorial Day, and
they were playing World War Two movies all day on Memorial Day on TCM,
and right there smack in the middles the Dirty, doesn't you bet you.
I knew they would even before I saw the list, and because I'm signed
up to their emailing list. Once I saw they were going to do it
the Memorial Day. At the time, I was like, all right,
where's the dirty Yeah, they gotta have it. And I saw it.
It was on Monday, ten thirty in the morning on the Pacific standard time,
and so it was in the middle of the afternoon back Eave. So
to my mind, other than primetime, it was a perfect time to show
it. Oh yeah. And I was sitting there watching at the entire right
on. It's got some of the best stuff, especially the best bringing together
of the team and exploring that dynamic, and then the whole thing of Lee
Mervin breaking them down, putting them back together. That magical moment where John
Casavetti's refuses to shave, that really just brings the whole team together. It's
magical, boy. I love that, Franco. It's one thing. It
was such an influential movie. At the time it came out. MGM was
hoping it would be successful. They had no idea it would be as successful
as it was. It was the number one box office hit in the country
of the year was released, and it was a pretty seminal year in terms
of great films. There was a sea change in American filmmaking. In the
heat of the night, cool Hen Luke to graduate Bonnie and Clyde all came
out the same year. And what's interesting is the influence of that film exists
to this day, by the way, which I won't go in through anything
moment, but what I find interesting is anything that's ever either either in homage
to The Dirty Dozen or sometimes an out mount rip off, they all seem
to miss one important factor, which is the main thing that made the film
successful. Have been warm movies before, there have been warm movies since.
There certainly was warm movies during the time The Dirty doesn't came out. But
what made The Dirty doesn't stand out? It was not necessarily at the premise,
but it was so character driven, really character driven. Even the smallest
role practically had an important backstory, and we knew who these people were.
And they forgot that over time. That they even made a couple of TV
movie sequels, and they made that mistake. They thought it was more about
the outrageousness of a plot, like in the first TV movie sequel, they
tried to save Hitler's life because it would prolong the war too long. Hitler
was killed. This is stupid, I'm sorry, and other examples like that.
But The Dirty doesn't even the minor characters, the one they called the
Bottom six, even they had moments. And the other thing about the film
that I loved was the effect it had on every single person's career. Everybody
from director Robert Aldridge and producer Ken Hyman, whom my interview by the way,
he's still alive, to meeting man Lee Marvin, all the way down
the cast list. Everybody's career either exploded or was launched by and there is
a difference by The Dirty Dozen, and I can give you example after example.
It was amazing the effect it had on everybody's career. There's the whole
just the Dirty Dozen themselves, along with of course Lee Mervin, but then
all the other people around them, like Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy distellar cast
all the way through. George Kennedy never really had a leading role until after
The Dirty Dozen, and rather ironically, John Cassavettis was the only member of
the cast who got an OSCAR nomination for Best Supporting Actor Kennedy book rather ironic,
but once The Dirty Dozen came out, George Kennedy started playing leads in
character leads, but leads casser Vettis didn't want to do The Dirty Dozen.
But he talked into it by Ken Hyman and really not only resurrected his career
John Cassavettis, it saved his career for a reasoning that I go into in
the book. Cassavettis was basically blacklisted because of a series of events that took
place for another film he had made, and as he put it, he
couldn't get into a Looney Tunes cartoon if you wanted to. Ken Hyman approached
him. Cassavetties reluctantly agreed because Ken Hyman said, look, I know you're
working on a movie of your own, and you run out of money.
Make The Dirty Dozen and you could use that money to finish your film.
And that's how we talked him into it, the movie Cassavetties was working on
with Faces, and he did, and the end result was John Cassavetties became
the father of American independent filmmakers because from there after Faces, his career as
a filmmaker took off, and it started a process he did for the rest
of his life. He would do a movie for the money and use the
money to make the movie he wanted to make, which is what a lot
of filmmakers do now. He was the first. He made Rosemary's Baby after
The Dirty Dozen, and he hated it because you couldn't stand working at roll
with Laski, which is the opposite of working with Robert Aldrin. He loved
working with Audrey. And here's another example. Robert Audrey is the king of
the Maverick filmmakers. And there was this rumor that existed for a long time
that the reason why he didn't get a Best Director nomination for The Dirty Dozen
was because he didn't want to change the end of the film, that ultra
violent explosion of the Chateau. I asked Ken Hyman if that was true,
and he said, absolutely not. It's just not true. He told me
that Altre didn't get a nomination because he didn't like the Hollywood establishment, and
the Hollywood establishment didn't like him. No matter how successful his films were,
he never got a nomination for whatever happened to Baby Jane or Frush Sweet Charlotte,
or Kiss Me Deadly or Fly to the Phoenix The Longest Yard. I
think I had a great career, but he didn't like Hollywood and he was
filmmaking. And he famously said at one point about not getting nominated for The
Dirty doesn't. He said, look, if I made a biblical epic,
I wouldn't get nominated, which is an interesting thing for him to say,
because he didn't want to make a biblical ethic. It was Solomon Gomorra.
Now, after The Dirty Dozen came, it was so successful, he had
already had his own production company, and to show you what a liberal he
was, the company was called Associates and Alternate. He put the people who
worked for him ahead of himself, and the money he got allowed him to
do something he had always wanted to do. He bought his own studio.
He had his own production company, but just allowed him to buy a studio
where he can film on site. Now, ultimately the studio really didn't work
out, but that's another story. For Ken Hyman, who produced The Dirty
Dozen, it was so successful it allowed him to become the head of Warner
Brothers Seven Arts. He became the CEO. And it was because of him
being the head of Warner By the seven Arts, we got films like a
Wild Bunch, We got Paul Newman directing debut Rachel, the launch of Paul
Mazerski's film directing career. The tentacle effect that The Dirty Doesn't had on people's
careers fascinating to me. Launched Jim Brown's career launched on A Sutherland's career.
Made Charles Bronson a superstar because he stayed in Europe after the movie was over
and then went on to make some of the best Bureau of Crime and Western's
ever made by anybody, And by the time he came back to the state,
he was a superstar. Like I said, it had this wonderful ripple
effect for everyone. Now, I know, obviously you've done a lot of
research on Bronson. You obviously had done a lot of research and Lee Mervin,
how else are you approaching this? Tell me your methodology of actually doing
the research for this project. The main thing I did was approach it as
best as I could, because there's information out there that's all over the place,
and so I had to get what I could chronologically. And I was
extremely lucky in that a friend of mine who's also a fiction writer film history.
Her name is Beverly Gray. She did a wonderful bio on Ron Howard
used to work for Roger Corman, and she wrote a book about that.
But she also wrote a book called Seduced by Missus Robinson the effect the graduate
had on a generation, and I used that book as a kind of a
template about how to write the dirty doesn't. And ultimately, because we're friends,
I had told Beverly what I was working on and she said to me,
oh, really, that sounds like a great subject. By the way,
did you know I did an interview with the author of the novel,
E. M. Nathanson. Now Nathanson died in twenty sixteen, okay,
so whatever I could find on him was peace meal. And I said,
did you get this interview published? And she said, no, it never
came to pass. Would you like it? And I went, Beverly,
I think I love you. So she did, and it round up becoming
the best jumping off point you can imagine, because he talked so candidly to
her for seven hours that it gave me the entire genesis of the project.
And he went on and all the way up to projects he was working on
shortly before he passed. So that was the best jumping off point I could
get. It put me in the direction of where to go with anything and
everything else. And the way the novel came about is one of my favorite
stories, believe it or not. It involved, of all people, the
king of sexploitation, Rush Meyer, which just amazed me, and it was
incredible. You know, he was often called the King of the leader.
R russ Meyer was friends with Mick Nathanson. That's what friends and family called
it. Mick. He hated the name Irwin and who could blame him?
A matter of fact, at one point he even tried to legally change his
name. But I don't remember why. It didn't happen to any event when
I think, I'm not positive, but I think they might have known each
other in the service just slightly. You know, Nathanson was living in New
York. He decided to move to LA and when he moved to LA,
he looked up russ Meyer, and Nathanson's son told me that Meyer and his
wife at the time would come over to their house and put gin and cocktail
whatever. And at one point during a conversation, Nathanson was working on a
project involving the Navy and some scandal involving some officers who had done something illegal
whatever. And when he told that to russ Meyer, Meyer said, interesting,
reminds me of the dirty doesn't. And Nathanson said, when he told
me that and the story surrounding it, he goes, the hackles on the
back of my next stood up, which is why I named that chapter that,
and russ Meyer proceeded to tell him about the Dirty Doesn't. The story
goes when russ Meyer was in the service, he was a combat photographer in
a unit under patent of all People, and he was assigned to go to
a military prison and photograph these gentlemen who had decided that they were calling themselves
or the guards had called them the Dirty Dozen, and they were being trained
for a mission overseas behind enemy lines. And rush Meyer took their photos,
shot some film live action action, but yeah, film, and turned it
in to his superiors. And he came back about a month later, curious
to find out where they weren't what happened to because they weren't there anymore,
And the commanding officers said, oh, they went on the mission and they
were all killed. And then rush Meyer decided, that's the case. I
got to find out what happened in my film. So he did a kind
of a trail to find out what happened or that film, and everywhere he
went he was either stonewall or sent somewhere else and told that we don't know
where that is. So he took that story to Nathanson, and Nathan decided,
whatever I'm working on now, Because he was a professional writer, he
worked for some newspapers and magazine and he goes, whatever I'm working on now,
I'm dropping it and I'm going to focus on the Dirty Dozen. He
spent the next two years looking to find what rush Meyer had done. And
he had access to the Pentagon Archives, the National Archives, the Quantico Archives
in Virginia, military assignments to what have you. And he went two years
searching for all this and came up with nothing. There was no record of
anyone. Now, even when it comes to top secret information, it means
that exists. And he had top secret clearance, and he never found anything.
We know about classified and he classified stuff now because they're the former president
and he would have been able to access it, but he never found anything.
So ultimately, but what he did do was in the research he was
doing, he discovered the transcripts of many military trials and he found out how
these trials went, what has been were convicted for, how they attempted to
defend themselves, and he went through the psychiatric record of these men with the
help of another friend of his who was a military psychiatrist, who gave him
the records and the transcripts to go through to make notes, and so consequently,
at some point he decided, you know what, I'm going to write
a work of fiction. I'm going to base it on some factual events I'm
aware of, but otherwise this is a complete work of fiction. And I
discovered where he got some of what he got. It's fascinating. One of
my favorite things about what he wrote was in the book, the character of
Maggot is one of the more interesting characters in the film. In the book,
he's actually three different characters. There's a character who is a Southern bigot
racist, there's a character who is a sexual psychopath, and there is a
character who's a religious fanatic. Three different characters. When they wrote the screenplay
by Nunnie Johnson and Lay, it was revised by Lucas Heller. They decided
to make it one guy. And what amazed me was when you watched the
movie, you'd never know it. Telly Savalas plays that guy so believably that
you can believe the sex perbet, racist religious pig is all one guy.
So strange. It's interesting too. Mathanson told Beverley where the character of Maggot,
because Maggot in the book is just a murderous bigot, And it was
based on a real person. And they actually made a movie about this incident.
There was a town. It was called Phoenix City, either Alabama or
Arkansas, and it was near a military installation fort somewhere and I don't know.
And it was a wild West, scandalous written, lawless town, prostitution,
gambling, murder. In fact, the da who was hired to clean
up the town and was elected shortly before he took off as he was murdered.
And they made a movie out of it, and it was called Phoenix
City Story. And it's a great movie because it just pops. It was
me in the fifty but it goes like this. And the character John Larch,
great character actor, the character he played in the movie, he was
the basis for Maggott. He was a torpedo for one of the gambling bosses
and anybody who didn't fall in line, John Lark's character took care of him.
So that's how it was based on the fact interesting stuff. I think
Valas is just oh another just stellar performance. One of my favorite things about
him in that movie. Jim Brown wrote his autobiography. When they went to
the screening of the film and after tell Us of Villas is bumped off by
Jim Brown, he was sitting next to Jim Brown and tell Us elbowed him
and went, I'm out of the movies over and he got up and walked
out. Isn't that great? Another man had a famous ego? But that
that, to me is amazing. He missed the conclusion of the climat but
you probably did because he wasn't there for that. So anyway, I thought
it was pretty cool that interview with the author almost false to your laugh.
Amazing you get to talk with at least one of the producers. Who else
did you talk with for the book? Oh got lucky. The film was
made over fifty years ago, so there weren't a whole lot of interviews I
could have done. I did get to interview Donald Sutherland were still with us.
Oh wow, you managed to make it past this person. Huh.
I sent her my resume and my bio and she said, I'll have to
let mister Sutherland know, and I don't know when I'll go back to me.
I don't think he'll be interested in this ultimately, I guess. When
she did talk to Sutherland, surprised her. She said, to me,
believe it or not, mister Sutherland will indeed be interested. However, he
cannot talk to you directly. I don't know if he couldn't or she wouldn't
let him. She said, you submit me some questions and I'll send it
to him. I'll send it down to him, which is what I did,
and he allowed me one follow up questions. I wanted to do more,
but no, he's done it not And then when the book came out,
I contacted her and said, would you allow me to send a copy
of the book to Donald Sutherland? And she went, yes, send it
to me and I'll send it to him, and that's exactly what I did.
So that worked out. Now, when you asked me about who else
I was able to talk to, one of the things I wounded up doing
was when I worked on Lee Marvin point Blank, there were still some coworkers
that were still alive at the time that I was able to talk to,
and naturally in Lee Marvin point Blank. I wrote about The Dirty Dozen,
and one of the people I spoke to was Point Walker at the time.
Another wound up being, as you probably are made aware of when you read
the book, a gentleman who told me some of the best anecdotes. The
guy named Bob Phillips now or Robert Phillips in his credit. I got to
call him Bob because he liked me and I liked him. But what wound
up happening was I met him to talk about Lee Marker, and he worked
with Lee on several films. Dirty Doesn't, but he worked with him on
The Dirty Does. In the March, we went to lunch. We wounded
up finishing lunch, going out into the parking lot and talking for another couple
of hours. What happened was I was with him about twenty minutes and he's
telling me some stories, and twenty minutes into it, Bob says to me,
you know there were two bad guys in that movie The Dirty Dushan said,
yeah, Robert Ryan as Colonel Everett Dasher Breed. But who was the
other one? And then he looked at me and he smiled, and he
goes, do I look familiar? And I didn't know who he was,
and I went, oh, you were a corporate margin, weren't you.
And they didn't like that. And then he got a big grin and he
said, yeah, I considered myself the other heavy in the film. And
from there the stories took off and he was a fascinating man. He left
us, I think it was in nineteen ninety nine or two thousand, but
what a resume he had. He was from football, a pro football player.
He was a self defense instructor in the Marine during World War Two.
He was Adonie Stevenson's personal bodyguard. He was an LA police detective whose main
source of information was Johnny Stampanado, which she loved that name, the guy
who was stabbed at that by Lanta Turner's daughter, and all kinds of great
background. And when he got the role in The Dirty Dozen to play Corporate
Morgan, the script he had read. Morgan was a bigger part. He
was on screen, but he's still on screen a lot because he's in the
background, but he doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue, and that really
pissed him off. But he was going to do the movie anyway, and
consequently he ended up making a little bit more money, because as the way
Ken Hyman said it to me was that Bob Phillips served a dual purpose.
He was the character of Corporate Morgan, and he was also Lee Marvin's bodyguard.
Now, that was the term that Ken Hyman leaves. When I talked
to Bob Phillips, he said, bodyguard my ass. I was Lee Marvin's
babysitter. I was the guy who had to make sure he showed up the
work every day and showed up sober. Now, a couple of the stories
he told me went into Lee Marvin point plank. The overwhelming majority of stuff
he told me didn't, but they went into killing generals. And matter of
fact, one of my favorite quotes of his was something he said to Army
Archer while the film is in production that I wound up using at the chapter
title. It was Bob Phillips saying, I guess he was pissed off his
role was cut back. He wrote that Charles Bronson has more lines on his
face than I have in this movie. So I love that when Bronson confronted
him, and when did you really say that? In Bob Phillips, Army
Archer made that up. You know, the stories he told me having to
be leave babysitter. Most of them are hysterical, some of them are tragic
and pointed. And the thing is hecaused his character didn't go on the mission.
At the end of the film, Richard Jacob does boss Head MP,
but because Bob Phillips didn't go on the mission, his time in the movie
was done and he went back to Hollywood. The movie wasn't quite done,
and that meant Lee Marvin didn't have a babysitter, which also meant when they
were shooting the end of the movie, Bronson was quite anxious to get back
to Hollywood so he can marry his fiance, Joely Iray. They weren't married
there and the last day of filming and once Aldred said cut, Bronson was
going to be on a plane back to la What happened was they were waiting
for League. They were waiting for Lee, and they were waiting for Lee,
No Lee Marvin to be found. Ronson was getting beyond pistol ken.
Hyman told me, I had a pretty good idea of where Lee was,
so he goes. I jumped in my limo, drove to this bar called
the Oh. It had a really Olgravia or something like that, and it
was in London because the movie was shot on the outfits and limbo, and
it was very famous because apparently that's where the English Great Train Robbery had been
planned, was in this pub, so it had a reputation. Hyman said,
when I got there, Lee was on the floor happily singing to himself,
which of course meant he was blato, so he goes. I picked
him up, poured him into the limo and started shoveling coffee down a stroke
and then the time it took back to get back to location, and Lee
began sobering up. But when he got when he fell out of the limo,
Ken Hymen said, Charlie took one look at him and went, Lee,
I'm gonna fucking kill you. And Marvin was all smiles and with Charlie,
what's the problem. And then Ronson started to move on Marvin and Ken
Hyman got between them and said, please, Charlie, don't hit him in
the face. We got to do close ups on him yet, so eventually
Ronson simmered down and they got the shot. And what's interesting is the sequence,
and I think if you watch the movie the sequence they were waiting to
shoot was having that half track go over the other drumming car and over the
bridge. Okay, if you watch that scene close, watch Marvin try to
shift. Okay, it's interesting. It takes them several tries, and I
think that's why he actually did drop har But a matter of fact, I
found up the first time he tried it, he was given lessons. He
was like piece of cake, no big deal. He ran it into a
wall. It took somewhere lesson and like I said, that happened because Bob
Phillips wasn't around it. Amore. He became very good friend for John Cassavettis,
and when Phillips arrived in London, he was extremely upset about what was
going to happen to his character. He did do some voice over work in
the film too, when the dozen are grumbling about this side or the other.
But cass he told Cassavettis how pissed off he was that Cassavettis gave him
some very safe advice. He said, look, I know you're upset,
and you have reason to be upset, but do yourself a favor if anybody
asks you how this movie is going tell him it's great. Tell him it's
the best thing you ever did. Why Because they're not going to know for
another year until the movie comes out. If you tell him it's great and
they don't know anything about it, it'll get you more work. And Bob
Phillips said, that was probably the smartest thing anybody ever said to me,
because that's exactly what happened. And Cassavettis was no fool. He knew how
the game was played. And one of the things I loved about, aside
from the fact that he's my favorite thing in the film. Look, I
love Lee Marvin and he was great, but Cassavettis commits grant theft, larceny.
He just steals that movie. He's incredible and I love finding out.
He had told a biographer that he's said, I didn't think I'd get along
with Robert Aldred, but believe it or not, I got along break He's
the best director other than myself, I ever worked with. And he said
the reason why was he called He said he was more than a coach.
He said he called his cast the monsters. Be like during rehearsal, all
right, monsters around the table, and every time we do the read through,
Casservetti said, I had no fear. Anytime he wanted somebody to do
something or come up with an idea for something, Cassavetti said, I'd shoot
my hand up right away. I'll do it. You want somebody, I'll
do it. And he said, and all the other dogs that would be
grumbling under their breath. But many of the things Casservettis did on screen were
complete improvisations. He'd work it out in rehearsal, but it wasn't in the
script necessarily. And Lee Mormon had said to another cast member, he loved
working with John because he goes. John plays his part so well. He
gives me so much to work with. It makes my job easier. I
can go with whatever he's giving me, and it winds up being brilliant.
And if you think of some of the scenes they together, you can see
it when Marvin interviews cassavetties in the cell at the beginning of the movie,
and Cassavetti says that great lascivious laugh, and he's had you a general,
yet out of general, because only a general can grant my reprieve. And
you see Marvin Rolla's eyes and go look stupid. It was the way they
played off each other that was so brilliant, and Cassavetties know it and so
did Marvin, and it worked great, and Marvin was the same way at
certain moments in the movie. Jim Brown was the one who said in his
autobiography that Cassavetties was our spiritual leader. He was a great little mentor,
because whatever mood he was in that day was the way Franco wasn't the way
we all were. Okay, he goes, If Franco was going to be
mischievous, John was mischievous, and so were we all. If Cassavetties was
moody, Franco was moody, and we were moody. We all took our
queue from him. He goes. He was a great natural teacher. And
I think that rubbed off if you remember that scene where Triny Lopez is supposed
to climb the rope and he can't do it, and then which by the
way, he's right out of the book. They changed the at certain aspects
of it that it wasn't the yeminager was another character. But anyway, and
I can't make it major. And then Lee Marvin cuts the end of the
rope right by his feet with the machine gun, and you see him scramble
up the rope and then Marvin says, all right, who's next, and
Cassavetties goes partially improvised line. He goes that you said Mayonaise was the only
one's supposed to climate get to the top of the shot too, by the
way him calling ms Mayonnaise, great touch all Cassavetties, and Marvin holds his
gun on his hip and the way he says this line not written this way.
He has written this way, but you can't put this in the script
of how it's supposed to be played. He rolls his eyes and he goes
west to pause him and gets call before he makes it to the top of
the Chataul just really making fun of Cassavetties. And it's brilliant doing this effeminate
voice because I don't have time for this. There's a brilliant way to do
that scene. And then he tells Clinton Walker, one of the few references
in the film to Walker's character being a Native American, saying, all right,
posy, let's see some of that apatche know how that rope and then
he'll try to Captivady to go all right, Franco, you're next, just
really sticking it to him. A lot of great moment and like I said,
making my point, it's about character, not the mission, although the
mission itself is pretty impressive. He talked about how this would play on TV
over two nights, and I can see that because it's a long movie.
But did they have to pad it out at all to make it fit with
commercials? Did they have any scenes that were shot and never put back in
the movie or just played for TV? First of all, they used to
show a lot less commercials in those days. That's one thing. There was
usually only one or two sponsors for a given program. Now there's like thousands,
especially on cable. But that aside. When I saw it theatrically many
years later, I think it was like teams appointments. To my mind,
I don't remember them. I hadn't cut anything, and it was done in
such a way it isn't long movie, longer than I after to feel like
that. And it was two and a half hours. So if you cut
that completely in half in a two hour time slot, making it a kind
of a four hours, than then the extra thirty minutes are just commercials.
So that's how they did it, and also too in part two they also
had to do a kind of a revamp of a minute or two a book
from the night before, and then you would always go and now part two
of the Dirty Dozen. I do know for a fact that because for several
reasons, there were major changes made in the script that was cut for purposes
of censorship and also cut the purposes of time. Because the movie was running
along very it ran way over schedule and way over budget, which was something
that Jim jam was very fearful of. It's just going to pay out somehow,
and so much so. It's also the reason why Jim Brown quit the
NFL and was supposed to go back to the sixty seven season and go into
the preseason workouts. He was only twenty nine, but he retired from the
NFL, and he held the press conference during the making of the movie saying
why which that's the kind of publicity you can't buy because I'm sure people who
may have seen that press conference on the last half of the news but thinking
how great a movie must this be? If the greatest running back in the
history of NFL is willing to quit to finish the film, so there was
that, and in the script, as in the novel, there were many
changes made it which I point out in the book, taking a hit on
the book criticism about me summarizing the novel to make the point about what's different
from the book from the film. That's why I did it. And there
were several people who said things like, oh, read the beginning, read
like a book report, but then it gets exciting, or I didn't this,
now I got to read the novel, no schmuck. You don't have
to read the novel now. I just summarized did and I summarized it with
the intent of showing what the the film was different. Now having said that,
there were two female characters that were in the book. One of them
was a major character in the book later completely taken out, as well as
the other character who was a barmaid girlfriend of Major Reisman, who's a captain
in the book by the way, Captain Reisman, and they cut her out
completely. That was for censorship reasons. The censors read the script and when
you can't have this, and it was sixty it was going to be released
sixty seven, so the production code was like in Flux there were changes,
but there were still rules they had to apply. And what's funny it was
the very next year, in sixty eight, is when they came out with
the gpg r X, But in sixty seven it didn't exist yet, and
any time the barmaid whose name was Tess, was mentioned, the censors just
went not, no, you had because whenever she's in the screen screenplay,
she's having sex with Reisman, and at one point I think the censor wrote
he can't be her again in a memo. And there was another character who
was a major plot point named Lady Margot. She's in the very beginning of
the book and she's throughout the book, and she's an important character and anything
about her. She is a rich British widow who owns the property that the
dirty doesn't here training them, and Reichman has to make nice with her and
try to make nice with her, and he doesn't succeed because she's very cold
and meant to him, but she's forced to because of the War Department,
and she tries everything she can to get back at Richman. One of the
things she does is in the book she's having an affair with Colonel Breed,
so One of the things they never explained in the movie is how does Breed
know what the compact is when he evages He finds out in the book from
Lady Margot because she's sleeping with him. Yeah, things like that. All
of that was completely taken out of the film. There were sections where it's
in there, but with the revise script they decided to cut it out,
and Aldridge really didn't have a problem with that. In fact, there's a
memo of him writing to Ken Himan about how we're over budget and we're overscheduled.
We got to start doing some cutting. You just have to, and
anything that's not important to the plot, we've got to go. Now.
In the sequence where they're at Breed's parachute school, okay, other than the
scene where Bronson gets beat up into latrine, everything else was cut out.
Also when they first got there, Donald Sulvin imitates to general okay, everything
else was cut out, And there was a whole lot more to that sequence.
There were seen a Breed making fun of Reisman in front of the Dirty
Dozen, Reichman getting back at him, all this other stuff. It was
all cut out, all of which were also in the book too. Now
Aldridge also wanted that scene of Bronson getting beat up cut out too, but
Heyman made the point, obviously, you can't do that because that's when the
dozen't decide first of all, that they can't trust Reisman, but it also
leads into the scene when Breed comes into the compound, they see the two
guys who beat up Waterslaw and go Hey, Reisman was on the up and
up all along at that he wasn't in on this, so that's why it
was left in. But all the other stuff that was all cut out,
and because of that, there are certain moments in the movie that Dale Die.
You know who he is, okay. Dale Die is a military advisor
to motion pictures and TV ever since the early eighties, and he helps filmmakers
make movies war films more believable, which they really hadn't been in the past.
He worked on Saving the Private Ryan, He Will Come Platoon, worked
on a lot of movies making them more believable, and he loves the dirty
doesn't. He's on record as saying how much he goes lean Robert can read
the phone book, I'm gonna watch this movie couldn't matter. But he was
extremely critical of the filmmakers and what they did to make the film, and
it's all in the DVD commentary, and he points out some very good obvious
mistakes, things like during the raid on the chateau, why are they wearing
shiny combat helmets, It doesn't make any sense, and things like that,
and also about some of the equipment they were using being too modern, things
like that, and that's all valid, But I had my own problems with
the film that for a long time went unanswered. One of the biggest things
most fans of the film just scratched their heads over to this day is what
happened to Posy. They never show what happened to him, but they do
show him on the crawl at the end of the film about everybody who would
die, so clearly he's dead. But because they don't show him die,
many fans thought, hey, Posy survived. No, he didn't survive.
There was a thing that was written up. They show everybody else being killed,
but they didn't show Posy being killed because Posy had a specific way of
dying that Clint Walker was very much looking forward to. In that it was
they took two different scenes from the book and put it together. At the
end of the chateau explosion to a posy and what he was gonna do when
he was up in the machine gun nest for Bravos when they looked like they
were being overrun by Germans. He rips off his shirt, he smears himself
with wallpaint, grabs his grease gud and just starts shooting and screaming like Rambo
and until he shot down. They were planning on doing that, Clint Walker
said, I rehearsed it and everything, but then because Robert Aldwards knew that
they were short on time, he decided, we're gonna shoot Jim Brown throwing
those green age into the event, and we're gonna have to not be able
to show what happened to Hint Walker, because after what happens to Jim Brown,
everything else is not the climb actor. And a matter of fact,
that was the main reason why Jim Brown was hired. Alds loved football,
but he didn't know Jim Brown could act on that, so he asked Jim
Brown's agent. I loved the story. Legendary agent named Phil Gersh who represented
Brown in his first film, Everybody Thinks Dirty Doesn't was the film debut.
It wasn't it was a western he made a year two before your conscios.
So when Phil Girsh presented Jim Brown to Robert Aldred as a hospible cast member
because Sidney Portier passed by the way, Aldred said, look, I know
this guy can play football, but what the hell else can he do?
And Phil Gurrsh smiled and said he can run faster than any actor you've got,
and Aldred said, okay, I think we could do something with that.
And when you watch it, he does Another great little side anecdote about
Jim Brown was just before they were to shoot that scene, which is really
well done, and everybody's hanging him on. Come on, Jefferson. Just
before he was going to do that, he had his own in prov as
well. Brown turning to Aldred and he goes, luck, I've had a
lot of fun making this movie. But before I throw the grenade, will
you let me kill a Nazi? And Altrid goes, You've got one of
the best scenes in the movie. Why do you want to kill a Nazi?
And he goes, oh, come on, let me kill a Nazi.
It'll be fun. And when you watch that scene, just before he
does the run with the grenade. A sniper at the top of the chateau
and he shoots down on Brown, and Jim Brown fires at him when he
falls through the glass. Then he throws the grenade, so he got to
kill a nasty Going back to what you were saying earlier, I really appreciate
the way that you summarize the novel and that you gave us that point in
comparison. So I thought that the book was put together so well, and
I hope overall it's been positive response because it's terrific. I haven't gotten a
whole lot of professional book reviews. I've gotten about three or four, and
all of them have been positive. But some of the reviewers on Amazon,
who with all due respect, may not be able to read a book too
well. But some of them, I'd say maybe two or three at the
most. Out of I think twenty physical reviews, not just rating but physical
reviews that I got, most of them have been very positive and outstanding,
mostly five star reviews. To trying to get more reviews, I got one
from the Library Journal and I got one from the Washington Examiner, very positive
reviews. They got it, they understood what I was trying to do.
In the first couple of chapters, I started the book with a biography of
Nathanson, which I think is important to do because you got to know where
the author's coming from, working throughout how he got to write The Dirty Doesn't.
And by the way, like I mentioned before, I didn't do his
son, Michael Nathanson. He was a published author himself, and a lot
of people don't know this, but in the eighties he wrote other stuff mcknathanson,
other novels with varying degrees of success. But I think it's like nineteen
eighty three eighty four, he actually wrote a sequel to The Dirty Doesn't,
and it was called A Dirty Distant War. And as far as writing goes
and story, it's better than The Dirty Does It, truly is. I
read it. It's incredible and the premises this he told an interviewer at the
time. I think it was at the La Times that when he came up
with the idea for it, it was based on the adventure years of a
philosopher doctor who had gone to Vietnam and what his experiences were, and he
goes, I found that fascinating, and what he decided to do was write
a novel about our entrance into Vietnam. And it takes place during World War
Two. It's not before the French got there or anything like that. It's
during World War two. And he said, I was sick and tired of
John Reisman. I didn't want to go anywhere near John Reisman. But he
goes the way this story was playing out, I realized John Reisman is the
perfect league. He's the guy to play this, to be in the story,
the Catalystican story. And so consequently, the many of the Dozen who
didn't die in the novel came back in Dirty Distant War to help Reisman on
his mission. Now Reisman's mission in the novel The Dirty Dozen, he's not
in the Army. He is in the Army, but he's in a special
unit of the OSS. And if you know anything about the OSS, they're
actually the precursor of the CIA. It was started by wild Bill I mean
escapes me. Robert de Niro played it in a movie, and so they're
all about undercover works and the Nathanson said, the reason why he made Reisman
in the OSS is because it made it more believable, Because he said the
US Army would never come up with something like this, it would have to
be something really subversive and covert. And so John Reisman's job in A Dirty
Distant War is to go into Southeast Asia under the guise of another mission,
but his real mission is to find out where are the Chinese, where are
the French, and where the Cambodians in Southeast Asia? But then it was
called Indo China. Where do they stand in terms of who side they're on
during the war, because they're getting mixed. And when he goes there and
he starts finding stuff out, one of the people he encounters is this little
revered man who had done time in a Chinese pow camp and he had done
this, that and the other, and whatever adventure he had been in.
He changes his name and at the time Reisman meets him and bonds with him.
He asked him what his name was, and he tells him, my
name is Vietnam means for everyone's uncle. And so Reisman asked him what does
that mean? And this gentleman goes, people call me ho chi men.
And after I read that, I looked it up and apparently Nathanson did his
homework. That's true. And from there it takes off into all these amazing
adventures that are very believable. And as a friend of Nathanson told me who
I also went into a Guynan Frank McAdams, He goes, when I read
the novel, you do this sometimes when you read something that really gives you
pause, he goes. I closed the book and sat on my couch for
thirty minutes just staring at the back cover. It affected me that much.
And it's funny once he told me that I did the same. It's really
well written, and it ends by letting you know, this is just the
beginning. Really well done. There's a lot more to it tells about everybody
in the calf. Oh, when you ask me who I interviewed, I
also interviewed a gentleman in Colin, Maitland who was one of the dozen in
the lower dozen. Several other people. Dora Riser, who is the only
known female in the cash other than the prostitutes they bring in who only have
one or two lines. But she's the woman that tell us about his taunt
and ultimately kills. I interviewed her great interview talk about ironies. She is
the one who is she's basically a nachi prostitute, right. Or she called
it herself a Nazi horror, and the interesting irony is she's a Holocaust survivor,
right, And she told me some interesting things about having to play that
character and the way it affected her another person I had interviewed. In terms
of the book itself, I think people can still buy it based on however
much I just shot my big mouth off because there's a whole a lot of
stuff in there that I didn't mention, much of it being Bob Phillips stories
about babysitting Lee Marvin. They're great, They're terrific story. They're a lot
of fun. Obviously, we want to leave some mystery and try to get
some more people to pick up your book. But I did want to ask
you, what are you working on now? Immediately after I turned into the
manuscript to Killing Generals, my agent called me up and said, Mazeltop,
that's great, congratulations, what's next? What are you gonna do next?
So he goes, okay, you got a week and then come back back
to me with something. So what I did was we okay. We talked
about several possibilities. One of them I thought was really going to happen.
A book about the making of a Hustler now the pol Neman movie. Now,
naturally that movie came up about eight years before The Dirty Dozen't, so
there's a whole lot less people around now. Piper Laurie, she's still around.
I think she's still on her ninety she's still around. I had a
contact to talk to her. The guy who wrote, directed, and produced
the film, Robert Ross, and his daughter is alive and she was involved
in the filmmaking. I did get to contact her. My agent was friends
with the guy who wrote the sequel, Richard Price, an amazing writer.
Everything he does is just spectacular. He said, I'll put you in touch
with Richard Price, won't you get the proposal together. I did all of
that, and because who were gonna write, I was gonna write about the
sequel as well. He had contact with Scorsese, Tom Cruise. We were
going to do all of that, and he wanted me to highlight the fact
on the cover that Tom Cruise was involved in the film in the sequel,
because Tom Cruise is red hot, and I was like, he's always read
hot. He never went out of the box office. And I put the
whole thing together, kept my fingers crossed and ultimately the publisher who had published
The Dirty does in mine. No, I don't think, so that went
to the wayside. Then I talked about the possibility of doing the book on
one of my all time favorite films, Sweets Model Success BT Lancaster, Tony
Curtiff. God, I love that movie. It's a near perfect film,
and it's a gritty New York movies. There's no gangsters, there's no underworld
figures, there's no crime story involved other than how crooked the lead characters are.
And I put together what I considered to be a really good proposal,
but once again I was told it's too long ago. Nobody really cares.
Never mind the fact that the film may have flop when it came out financially,
got rave reviews, and more importantly, it is a bona fide cult
film. Then it's off the charts. It's incredible anyway, He's the editors
still passed out. It wouldn't even bring it up to the editorial board for
the publisher that the thumbs up the thumbs down. After that, my editor
said to me, my excuse me. My agent said, look, I
know you have favorite films and favorite actors. Why don't you, one of
them being, by the way, Burt Lancaster, as I mentioned a moment
though, also James Cagney. Oh, that was another possibility. I was
thinking about writing a book on White Heat, but I don't know why.
This is weird. He was able to get a contract to a book on
the making of Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt Hitchcock films from
the forties. I wanted to do White Heat, and he said to me,
Hey, that's one of my favorite movies too, But there's nobody around
to fortify your research. And I was very disappointed in that. So I
tried Lancaster, I tried Cagney. You can try Paul Newman. Then he
said, what about Steve McQueen film and An Hour on the Right Track?
Because of the three, Steve McQueen is numero always has and I have a
specific reason why. Nan He asked me what movies haven't been written about specific
books? And the first one he said, it's how about the Great Escape?
But a little bit about five books written about the making of the Great
Escape and the actual escape itself, And he goes, how about a bullet
went, I mean books have been written about bullet there's actually a lot,
and there's actually a book called Bullet McQueen and his Machines. They've actually then
books about the cars in the movie. And he said, ask you what's
your all time favorite Steve McQueen movie, And I said Papian And he said,
sorry, not going to happen. It's not popular enough. And then
he said, let me ask you what was a popular Steve McQueen movie that
nobody's written about. And I told him, and he said, that can
work. I think we can get this to work. Now. I'm not
going to tell you what movie that is, because I don't want to put
the jinks on it. And it's right now currently in the hands of the
publisher who likes it and wants me to polish it a little bit more.
And so maybe in a month or two i'll get a yea year in a
of course, we'd like to think it t a but I think this can
work, and if I can, I'm going to tell you the reason,
if you don't mind, why I'm such a Stephen queene. Always like him
anyway, even when I was a little kid. But I don't want to
go too much into detailed but I had a kind of a rough childhood personally,
and part of that was based on the way I was raised. And
at one point, a matter of fact, the week the movie came into
theaters, it was the summer of seventy three when it came out. Now,
I snuck out and I went to see it. And movie affects people
emotionally more than a psychologically, or maybe even as much spiritually, but emotionally.
There's that scene in the movie when he's in solitary confinement. Hands down,
one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen. It's not only
so believable, it's heart lending. And when he's first in solitary confinement,
he jumps up on the bars and whispers, I'm still here. You bastards.
Got to me like nothing else. At the end of the movie,
when he's on the raft made of coconuts and he looks right in the camera
and says, hey, you bastards, I'm still here. That had an
effect on me like nothing else. I got it. It makes me cheer
up even now because of what I was going through, and it made me
realize things are tough, but if you believe and fight back and don't let
them get to you, you will rise, you will survive, and I'm
not making this up. I went home that night and I watched The Great
Escape. It was on TV that night, and when you see him not
quite making the jump over the bob wire and he puts his hands up and
he looks at the Germans and the Nazis and he smiles. He's not giving
up. This is not the end of the Cooler Kid. And then about
a day or two later, it must have been like Steve McQueen week,
I don't know, it was weird. TV showed the Reavers and there was
that great scene in the movie when he tells Mitch Vogel the little kid about
how they're gonna steal their grandfather's car and go all the way to miss it
to wherever it is they're going, and Mitch Wogel goes, I don't know,
Grandpa ain't gonna like this, and Steve McQueen looks at the kid and
he goes, I put a lot of story into what your grandpa said.
I do. But if you ever want to reach your manhood, you got
to say goodbye to the things you know and hello are the things you don't.
I swear to God he was talking to me he was because he was
probably looking at the cab anyway, and it was like some kind of disciple
or like apostle or something. And then everything I've ever seen him in since
may not affect me the same way, but he's never let me down.
In terms of an actor. Now, I know everybody thinks of them,
those who like him and remember and think of him as the King of cool,
which to a certain extent he was. I won't take that away from
especially in his most famous film, but that's not the Steve McQueen. I
loved the Steve McQueen who reflects what he really was as a person and the
way he grew up. Because I know he came from a really rough childhood
from what i've read, and I've read a lot about him, as well
as other film stars other than maybe Carrie Grant, Charlie Chapter and Marilyn Monroe.
I think Steve McQueen probably had the worst childhood I've ever read about,
and nowhere near I didn't have that kind of childhood, thank god, but
it was pretty bad. And knowing that and seeing what he did with certain
characters, I would always notice he's not playing He's playing the character yet,
but he showed to play that character because it's in his life. He knows
what that was like. He knows what it was like to be beaten,
to be sent away, to be put in the prison camp which he was
as a child, to be hungry on the streets, all that stuff,
and it's in those performances help us for heroes. Maybe The Rain Must Fall,
Soldier in the Rain, Love with the Property Stranger. A lot of
the films that aren't as well known, those are, in my opinions,
his best performances The Sand Pebbles, which he got an a combination for,
but it's not really remembered as much, and that's unfortunate because that's why I'm
a Steve McQueen fan. I love Burt Lancaster because he was just so bigger
than life. And I got to meet him once that was not only meet
him, but talked to him a monel for twenty minutes, and it was
a movie bucket list moment. With James Cagney, it was because he was
the little guy who always was tougher than anybody else in the movie. And
I'm a little guy. And he had said in his contract that every movie
he make made. He could never hit a guy who was the same side.
You always had to hit a guy that was bigger than him. And
I love that. That's so cool. And he was a firecracker. He
was never in repose. He was always like this, And that's one of
the things about most modern actors. I can't stand they put you to sleep.
But I like actors who have energy, who have spark, and a
lot of people probably wouldn't think that about Steve McQueen, but he moved in
a movie. He had a grace and a style about him, and sometimes
he moves so fast you didn't even notice it. Carl Malden said that about
him. He said, there was this danger about Steve mcquin when he was
on screen. You never knew if any given moment he was just going to
explode, and when he didn't, he was still waiting for it. Things
like that. So I'm going off way too much about movies I like.
But I mentioned that thing about Steve McQueen because it looks like there's a very
good chance I'm going to be able to write about Steve mccleen movie and would
I hope it comes to pass. Twayne, Thank you so much for your
time. This is so great talking with you. I'm I'm glad we can
do this. Oh, thank you for being such a receptive audience. You've
been a great hope. You let me babble on and gave me reason to
babbylon I thank you for that