I did it about Raintree County - we did it via phone. I put it up here just out of interest.
How Kaufman Got Involved“I was under contract to MGM, they had this thing, this book called Raintree County and it had won a prize which Metro offered for fiction. I was a rare thing I don’t think they’d offered it to anyone before or after... Metro had this novel which ran over 1000 pages… once they got it they didn’t know what to do with it. They gave it to a couple of people who didn’t know what to do with it.”
How come you succeed it?
“I’m a pain in the ass… I don’t know.”
“I was very taken with it [the novel]… It was very complicated in terms of literary form. It was complex and turned on itself in a number of ways which at that time which was unusual… Followed almost the construct of James Joyce.”
“It’s a very good book.”
On Ross Lockridge
"He was an English instructor at the Uni of Indiana, where those two people did v important sexuality in the US, Kinsey and woman he worked with. Kinsey seemed to be very fond of Ross Lockridge. Lockridge was a little strange. He’d spent 19 years writing this book. This is book that won the prize. Kinsey told him that now that he had some money he strongly suggested he try psychoanalysis. Lockridge who was unhappy person along with other difficulties approached his wife about what Kinsey said. She said ‘absolutely not too much of a disgrace for the family’. At that time there was something ungainly about psychoanalysis… Everyone a little goofy. He never did enter analysis. Not long after that killed himself."
What Kaufman thought of the film
“The main problem with picture was I kept too much. I went on various tangents which should have been left out. I did this not because I lacked craft of screenwriter but I included too much of the novel. I went on too many tangents. The screenplay was over 200 pages.”
On director Edward Dmytryk.
“This apparently, and I’m not sure of this, was something discussed heads various studios… Dmytryk one of Hollywood ten. Did six months in gaol, when got out of gaol he rather peculiarly turned on people he went to gaol with and named names. He became an informer. Because of that it was said he was rewarded to direct this picture, biggest picture at that time MGM had ever made.”
“Eddie was an enormously bright guy who wanted to be a mathematician and
you know how many mathematicians are successful in this world so he
became a cutter then a director… By the time he became an informer, some
people would say he ratted on the people who were his friends… I
didn’t feel that way. I was then and am now rather far to the left. I
was rather contemptuous of people who had informed. That’s how he got
that job. He was rewarded for coming back into the fold…"
"Professionally he was fair, which is very good. He shot the script as it was. Most
of these crazy bastards won’t to that. Unfortunately it would have been
better if he hadn’t.”
On Dore Schary
"The idea of making another Gone with the Wind might have been somewhere but only briefly and haphazardly in Dore Schary’s mind.. He thought Gone with the Wind was the best movie ever made… He never saw foreign pictures which I think where the best anywhere at the time.”, like Grand Illusion. "
“Dore was a wonderful guy. Thoughtful, understanding of writers having been a writer himself, he had a great sense of humour which was rare – unique – amongst heads of studios. He was able to relax at all times.. He was younger than others heads… He had one problem – he was inordinately ambitious. I believe he was a bit preoccupied with his own fame. I think he wanted to increase it. There was a period where he thought he might be a diplomat, the US ambassador to Israel. That was when Adlai Stevenson running for President; he and Dore were great friends. Stevenson promised Dore the ambassadorship if he won. He took this very seriously, even to the point of learning Hebrew. In the Middle East he made a speech to the [didn't get name] in Hebrew. I said to him, ‘This is a pipedream, Eisenhower is going to kick the hell out of Stevenson. I’m not normally a political guru or anything but in this case I was right. Eisenhower was re-elected. Dore remained at MGM for a while, then he was kicked out.”
Dore was not not very involved with Raintree… He was very good with writers… He left them entirely alone. I think because of his experience and his breadth it would have been a better picture if he imposed more than he did.”
On David Lewis
“The producer of his picture didn’t know his ass… He was a guy who’d formerly been a producer and had met Dore’s sister on Elizabeth II coming back from Europe and they became friends. She’d been divorced and was on her own as an agent. She took him under her wing in a rather astonishing way.. I think she foisted him on Dore. He was a very nice rather inept man.”
The production
“I was the force behind the goddam picture and I think I screwed it up. If it was a bad picture the fault wasn’t Eddies, it wasn’t David Lewis and it sure wasn’t Dore. It was mine.”
“It was a big picture. It had a long shooting schedule. It was a costume picture with a large cast.”
“At that time it was the most expensive picture MGM had ever made. It cost $11 million. Today you can’t blow you nose for that.”
“The casting informal because of my relationship with Dore. We got along well, I liked him, he liked me. When you write a picture almost invariably characters come to mind. It’s different from a novel, all characters come from novelist’s heroic vision of himself… Film is active characters. Like Monty Clift, which he was. I suggested Clift and Elizabeth Taylor… I talked Eva Marie who’s a good friend of mine into it when she didn’t want to do it. She was going to be playing second fiddle to Elizabeth Taylor.”
“When I suggested these people… Usually writers not in the position I was in MGM, because Dore thought of me very highly… I had the kind of power most writers never would have had in an American studio. Dore thought I was great. It was because I’d been in the Marine Corp and been in combat. It had nothing to do with my ability to write. If they needed a combat picture I would write it.”
“Monty Clift accident was most unfortunate… The press all knew he goddam
near had his head chopped off, and he was heavily criticised when he
should have been applauded for his courage going through with the damn
thing. He was a very nice young man, a very decent person.”
“The
cast was exceptional. Everyone in it was so decent… Nigel Patrick was
great, a wonderful guy - as they say in the New Yorker - as a human
being.”
“Elizabeth Taylor - she was great. People constantly
underestimated her because she was beautiful… Quickest study I ever
knew. She’d come on set two minutes before hand, ask a director what are
we doing today, and memorise scenes in two minutes… She was wonderful.”
Clift’s accident. “We shot around him as much as we could, then maybe shut down for a few days…"
On Lee Marvin
“Lee and I go back to the Marine corp… his death scene and all the exuberant alive scenes… He swings around the post in the middle of the room. We had a stunt man to do that, he couldn’t do it, so Lee did it… He was a very bright man… The scene of the race he could run maybe ten times faster than Monty Clift and he did it in such a way you could swear both running at full stop.. He was a very good athlete. He got shot up in the Marine Corp.”
“I had contract MGM as a writer-director-producer. Of jobs I hated producer, I hired a friend of mine, he could hardly read a script. I found out getting on stage every morning and telling a group of people how to behave… I hated directing.”
What would you do differently?
“I would have concentrated much more on the relationship between Monty and Elizabeth. I brought in I think too many extraneous relationships”
Thoughts on the American South.
“It’s been mythologised, not history it’s a sacred text. They’re still refighting that war. What you had and still have with this business of the Confederate flag it’s an insult to black people… They were still fighting that war when we made Raintree County. It was one of few pictures dealing with Civil War which had a hero fighting with Federalists, the north… When word got out we were doing this picture they raised hell. Thought it was placing an unseeming burden on the South. They didn’t want to be involved in situation where they had a film which thought freeing slaves was a good idea… There was something which I didn’t manage to keep in the script… I had Clift going off to fight for the Federalist forces. I had Clift shooting his mouth off in anti-slavery way. People in South didn’t like idea. Dore then had the idea the reason Clift goes into the army was because his wife, Elizabeth, who was a nut had disappeared into the south where she came from, so he has to go looking for her, which was ridiculous. There was nothing I could do. It was a question of finance. They didn’t want to lose the Southern markets. And in movies, greed wins.”
"He did a rather smart thing, a
truly Hollywood sense of interaction. He read the script – I don’t know
where he got it, he didn’t get it from me, it was around the studio… He
went to Dore Shcary and said he’d like to play that part, Dore gave it
to him. He actually got it himself.”
“I do remember he and I being on location together and spending some time together… I knew he was an Australian and that he had a good sense of humour. He was outgoing, and had a lot of energy, which is always good in an actor.”
“I had heard stories, the fact he’d had some difficulty in Australia something to do with his wife… He was very much still apparently taken by her or so I remember.”
“His character was the antithesis of Clift’s character – aggressive, outgoing he made bad jokes, he was terribly politically ambitious. This made a terribly good character when put against Clift’s character who was sensitive, decent, almost plodding. He was almost a complete characterisation with his job, he was a school teacher… Can’t remember what Rod’s job was but he went into politics… [His character] He was hardly a villain. He wasn’t vicious or brutal or any of that. He was an antagonist but not a stereotypical American villain.”
Was Rod nervous?
“Not in the least or at least he didn’t show it… He had a great gift of brass. He knew what he wanted and he got it. Became a hell of a movie actor… It was the only picture I had anything to do he was in…”
“I liked him very much. On location we had dinner with him.”
“The only time [Dore] talked about him [Rod] was to tell me how he got the part… He walked in and got it. Dore was susceptible to that sort of thing - I guess you call it filmic romance. The stand-in goes on for the star who breaks her leg, that sort of thing.”
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