Speaker Just simply, when did you first meet David?

Speaker I met David in person, I think I may have may have talked to him over the phone, but met him in person shortly after he called me and said, I want you I want to meet you and I want you to come become the president of this company that we’re starting. And that probably would have been in 1980, I would think. And how did you have that come about? That came about? I think I’m not really sure. I think there were two people that were instrumental in David deciding to meet me in connection with this job.

Speaker And one was Moyston.

Speaker Mo, I think what what David discovered is that he and I had the same enemies and the same friends and that sort of made it easy. And Mo was definitely one of our mutual friends. I knew Mo because Mo was the head of Warner Brothers Records and I was a lawyer in the music business, usually trying to you know, I was the guy with the sample suitcase out in the hallway waiting to sell him something.

Speaker I also think Carol Childs may have had a hand in this because, Carol, prior to working for David, she she was already an employee of a company that I think literally had two employees. I think there was Carol and this David secretary. But Carol, before that had worked for Richard Perry and Richard Perry was a client. And so I got to know Carol a little bit.

Speaker Through that connection, and I think that she I think she had this grand notion of me and I think she may have sold that to David, I think she may kind of built me up a little bit. He’s he’s the killer. He’s young. And he’s going to you know, he’s the guy you need or something like that. So I think by the time I met David, he had at least I think Carol may have been an inspiration and then Mo may have sort of, you know, given it his blessings just because no one has talked about her.

Speaker Can you just say, you know who Carol Charles was, that she was the first and our person that was hired?

Speaker Is that true? Yeah, I Carol Childs was certainly an idiosyncratic creature.

Speaker There weren’t that many girls in the music business. It was really a guy’s world. But she she could watch football and drink beer and curse.

Speaker And so I don’t know how she she I don’t remember how she met David, but she wound up with a job at Geffen Records. Is the kind of girl that if she saw something and in Variety that David Geffen was starting a record company, you know, she hi, I’m going to come work for you that she had that kind of moxie.

Speaker And so they met and she had that kind of relationship with me. So she was she’s a very interesting character. And she became, I think, the first employee of Geffen Records other than Linda. Yeah, well, Linda was his had been his secretary at Elektra Siloam. Linda Lodin.

Speaker God, yeah. Linda, there a big figure in David’s life. I know things ended badly, but it was it was obviously I mean, he’s had these incredibly strong assistant women by his side. Yeah. His entire career. Yeah.

Speaker You know, Linda was a very capable person.

Speaker So when you first met David in person, what was your first impressions of him?

Speaker Hmm, I wasn’t interested in who David was. I was only interested in getting him to agree to simply become a client of mine. So I was so devoted to trying to convince him that the way to do this was simply for him to become a client. I don’t think I really gave much thought to who David was because I knew he was incredibly talented and he’s glamorous and he’s dynamic. So meeting him was just in person was I already knew what he looked like. So it was just there was nothing surprising about meeting him. He he lived up to his reputation. So my my agenda was, how am I going to pull this off? And finally didn’t pull it off.

Speaker So I came to work for to continue working in a at a at a lot for entertainment. Not learn from your music. Yeah. And what did you know about David. I mean, what was sort of what do people think they gave the maverick?

Speaker I would say that again, I’m this is all reconstructed because I’m not sure that I gave it any thought. But I think David certainly had a maverick reputation. I don’t think anybody at the time thought that David Geffen was here for the long haul. I think everybody knew that David had.

Speaker A nose for glamour and talent and an ability to win it over and that he was very persuasive, he was certainly not the typical suit. Only the music business could have someone like David in it. And therefore, I think David was no one really thought about David as a permanent institution. It was sort of like, yeah, he did it once. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Yeah. He had some success as a manager and it made a lot of money. And Steve Ross loved him and then Electricidad him was a hit and then he went away. And I think just a very difficult creature to define and I don’t think anyone really attempted to yet. I don’t think people knew that they had to at that point.

Speaker That’s an excellent point. And I think one of the things we’ve asked people is, you know, when David did disappear, you mean to have the whole health scare, whole cancer scare. And then he came back to establish records in 1980, you know, where people sort of saying, oh, you know, we never thought we’d see or hear from David Geffen. Yeah.

Speaker They may have been thinking of it, the thought didn’t cross my mind one way or the other, but I think that he was not somebody that people thought they had to reckon with. Then he was simply a guy who was, as I said, a very idiosyncratic person, a creature of the music business who knows whether he’ll be here a year from now.

Speaker And what about asylum records? What was the kind of reputation of what he had built asylum records, was that well known?

Speaker Yeah, I think it was. I think if you liked California music, you know, if you liked white California music, you could only admire the stable of artists that he put together an asylum because it was pretty much as good as it could get. You can’t have Joni Mitchell, the Eagles and Jackson Browne and call it an accident. It’s just ridiculous how how gifted he was at kind of like feeling out what was happening in that culture at the time. So not to mention Crosby, Stills and Nash. Can you imagine we’re talking about something that we neglected them. It tells you how incredible those artists were, although they were. No, but David managed them.

Speaker Absolutely.

Speaker So earlier we were talking and you could just give me a little bit of what you said about your own background, about how you grew up around the village.

Speaker My background. OK, I grew up in Greenwich Village. It’s like the really early 60s now when I’m a teenager. The Beatles have already come to well, I want to hold your hand is already a hit.

Speaker And and and the more precocious village brats are already starting to grow their hair long.

Speaker Should I stop, look and spend two seconds on it?

Speaker What do you want to start. Say what you. OK, so Greenwich Village, little red schoolhouse, that whole scene. And it’s at that time when I mean, folk music was never that big.

Speaker Maybe it sort of was the signature of Washington Square Park. But in the scheme of things, even at the height of folk music, very few people played the guitar or or sang folk songs. And then you’re at now that period when whoever played the guitar is starting to think about an electric guitar because.

Speaker They heard, I want to hold your hand and they saw what the Rolling Stones looked like and the Beatles looked like in Greenwich Village. I mean, this may have happened years later in where least in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Speaker But in Greenwich Village, the kids who were playing folk music now started becoming, you know, intrigued by that whole scene.

Speaker And so I wound up becoming a drummer, a little bit of a songwriter and working those clubs after school in the village, like in the in the I’d say spring, maybe winter, spring of 64 into the summer of 64.

Speaker And you open the letters.

Speaker Well, we were man, we sort of got if you could say we got you can’t say we got discovered because that lead that that promise is something. I would just say that we wound up being managed and produced by the guys that managed and produced the spoonful because the Spoonful were working next door to us. They were working at this club called The Night Owl, and we were down the block at this place called the Music Hall. I mean, these were dumps and they used to come to see us when they because there’s nothing else to do when you’re off. And so they decided to take us under their wing and we wound up under their management and production.

Speaker And I would say that that’s pretty much how I got into the business part of the music business, because before then it was just about trying to get into whatever jazz club you could get into and see whoever you could. And, you know, listen to Miles Davis and Bill Evans. So but that’s when I realized I got paid. I got 70 bucks a week for working at the opening for the Spoonful at the night out. So that was that was music business. Now now you’re in the business. And then I would write songs for people and Charlie Koppelman, who was my music publisher, and that it really tells you more about how fantastic New York City was then, because all of the people who who wrote that fantastic wave into the success of the music business in the 70s, they most of them came out of that little culture in New York.

Speaker You might have met David Geffen down there for you while in the same club with him one night, possibly because he was he was the person I know. Phil Spector. I met Phil Spector there back in 1964.

Speaker You know, David met Phil Spector. His very first trip out to California did not did not know no other network when he first moved to California to stay with me. All right. And he mentioned the. A girl whose sister got engaged to Phil Spector.

Speaker OK, so he would give all that. So he was out here and he used to sit in at Goldstar at Sessions, and he met Cher then, too.

Speaker That’s how I met you, which I mean, shares that share is a very interesting character in David’s life, a very unique character in his life. Only if you’re interested. Of course, of you said. When David told me he wanted to sign share and it was entirely his idea, I, I. I was incredulous, I mean, she seemed so. Passé to me at the time, not that that’s the word I would have used, but it was like. All right, you know, just let them do it because he loves her and they had a relationship and it’s but it was like, are you kidding? I mean, her success at a time when no one was really interested in her is such a testimony to David, both to his loyalty and his determination that one of my kids, they’re going to be there.

Speaker These are the greats. These are the and also to his will to make it happen. It’s just it was amazing to me.

Speaker And can you just say so that it’s clear how much of an incredible financial success those share hits and albums?

Speaker Well, I mean, they they were they weren’t certainly our biggest, most successful money earners because, you know, we had some acts that just were kind of literally went through the roof, but they were really profitable records. What amazed me wasn’t the degree of profit as much as that he had the balls to sign her at the time and the vision that she could still make it happen for young people, it was just. I didn’t see it, but I like her. I enjoyed her, I enjoyed talking to her.

Speaker She’s you know, I’m sure you’ve met her by now, but we’re going to interview her soon. You’re supposed to interview her in Las Vegas last week. Yeah.

Speaker She’s also a hard person. She’s a completely unique person as well. It’s going to be a very, very, very excited for that.

Speaker Chocolate rain has something to do with that, but am I wrong?

Speaker I think he wound up being the another person. And again, only John Carlot, if if John Kalodner endorsed it, it’s only testimony to how off the beaten path it was because there was no one further from the beaten path than John Kalodner.

Speaker He was as again, I mean.

Speaker But just I mean, that’s such a beautiful thing to think about, like David and right. Yes.

Speaker I mean, the fact that he’s he met John Potter, John Connor came into his purview and he decided this is the guy to David.

Speaker David certainly was never bothered by convention. It never occurred, I was much more conventional than they, but it never would occur to David to see somebody walk in with hair down to his waist, hair plugs, a white linen suit, looking like some zazie top reject and not think twice about it because this kid knows how to sign acts. And it’s really such a, you know, credit to David that he was so oblivious to those kinds of superficial judgments. Didn’t matter. Didn’t mean it should him. I learned a lot from David in terms of his absolute tolerance of all anybody’s idiosyncrasies and craziness, there was only about are they dedicated? Is their heart in it? Are they going to kill to win? And do they just love it enough to do that? And John is a perfect example of that, even in times of doubt. Yes, Tom. Well, Tom wasn’t nearly as eccentric, as crazy as Tom was and as demanding. And I mean, in some ways infantile. He he was nothing compared to John Kalodner in terms of eccentricity. I mean, John Kalodner would just say things that would make your. Eyes turn around in your head and without even a suggestion that he thought this was shocking to you. Oh, I couldn’t possibly remember them, but no, he was completely unedited person.

Speaker Absolutely unedited person seems like that’s what David loves, that he loves and unedited person he likes, people he likes.

Speaker I mean, I wouldn’t limit David’s appreciation for people. I wouldn’t pigeonhole it that narrowly. But certainly he does definitely have a taste for that in people.

Speaker And it’s great.

Speaker That’s really how far we’re going to be interviewing Jon next month.

Speaker I mean, there were many times when I being much more of a suit than David, even though in the world of suits, I was probably thought of as being a complete heretic. But compared to David, I was a suit. I remember coming up to him and going, David, I got to tell you something. I mean, we’ve got this problem with Jon or he wants this or that. And David’s attitude was, if we can give it to him, do it. My attitude at first was it doesn’t seem right, it seems very it doesn’t it seems very irregular to do this. And David’s attitude was, let’s figure out a way to do it because make them happy. Let’s what’s the difference? Unless it became something that actually was, you know, dysfunctional. But it was a David’s perspective was much healthier than mine in that regard. He was making it happen. These are wonderful guys. He said, who cares if they’re crazy?

Speaker And he was dangerous.

Speaker David was generous, absolutely, there was there was never how little can we pay him? It was always, if he’s worth it, pay him.

Speaker That seems unusual to me.

Speaker Yeah, David didn’t he did David definitely didn’t have a bean counter mentality.

Speaker No, not even the slightest was that bad. All right. Let me disconnect that. All right.

Speaker So what you were saying, just to finish that thought, I think that David David was never interested in correcting or straightening somebody out. His attitude was, let’s create an environment in which this nut can be the nut that he is. Let him let’s I want this to be a place where he can be exactly who he is, because who he is is who you’re hiring. And in that sense, David really was a patron of artists going back to what we were talking about, you were talking about earlier. And maybe in that sense, he did see an art people as artists because that’s the attitude you bring to an artist. But he brought it to employees as well.

Speaker I mean, to me, that seems highly unusual.

Speaker David never had much stock in convention. It never worked for him and he wasn’t, you know, head of the football team.

Speaker It was you know, what the convention was never working for. It may have appeared glamorous to him, but it never worked for him. And at some point, he was too smart to think it was that glamorous.

Speaker Is it true that he bought a car or a house for John Carliner?

Speaker I don’t know. He may have. I don’t know those details. You don’t know. But I left when we see him, right.

Speaker So now.

Speaker Here you are, this music attorney, and here you get connected with David and here he’s talking to you about starting this new venture essentially. Right. OK, were you thinking this is an awfully big job for me? Am I up to this challenge or. Yes, I’m very excited about this? Or what is this job even going to be? Did you have any expectations? Were you.

Speaker I think the.

Speaker I wasn’t really that concerned about what the job would be because. There really was like it was a big company with a defined job. I think I probably pretty much assumed that the job would be whatever I could do because of David’s nature and the fact that it was, you know, so embryonic. My concern was more it had more to do with cutting ties, with being an attorney, being a lawyer, having, you know. Letting go, letting go of the very wide, the reason I went to college and law school in the first place, which was I’m not ready to let go. I need to I mean, I’m not ready to sort of be a high school dropout. I’m not ready to be a college dropout. And now the question was, are you ready to be a dropout?

Speaker I.

Speaker I’m stupid about a lot of things, but one thing I’m not stupid about is people, and that comes with being the as we were talking before, being the youngest. You know, you it if somebody I could tell if somebody was valuable, I could see if somebody was a great person to. Go to one, go someplace with. And in the beginning, it was going to jazz clubs with my brothers and they were gods and I and I went, so it was easy for me to go, you know, somebody to go someplace with. And I think that I probably knew that about David before I met him, I knew that about Lisa before I met her. So I think that that’s one, you know, kind of sixth sense that I have a sixth sense. Do you think that I have and I think that it wasn’t difficult for me to say this is the guy to go someplace with.

Speaker And did you feel sort of like it was a.

Speaker I doubt that I thought about it that way. Change your life. Yeah, but look.

Speaker Is a safe falls on your head, and it’s bad luck or you you are, do you find something and it’s good luck. I don’t really think of the things that happen in life as luck or bad luck, because then you have no responsibility for them.

Speaker It was again, it felt like a from hindsight, of course, it was the smartest thing I could possibly have done, but at the time it was a gamble. It was a gamble, but David has the kind of glamour that appeals to me. Not every person appeals to me, but David appealed to me and also, yes, I had gone to law school and yes, I was one of these determined Herrman straight-A students. But the truth of the matter was, I always knew that I wasn’t as good at that as guys whose lives were meant to be practicing, you know, corporate law. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come out here. Coming out here, in a sense, was. Sort of like testimony to my equivocation about do I want to spend the rest of my life being a lawyer, otherwise I state I would have worked in the firm I worked at when I was in school and Madison Avenue. So coming I kind of felt that sooner or later the gyroscope would probably wind up tilting back that way. So it was a little bit easier for me to make that decision maybe than some other guy who was practicing law.

Speaker So what did David see in you and what you need from you guys?

Speaker I had a reputation for an honest staff. OK, what did David why did David want to hire me? I can only speculate. I’ve heard either from David or Carol or some other person that I had a reputation and I mean this sincerely. I have no idea how I had this reputation of being tough. David had a guy working for him already named Chuck, who was going to run Geffen Music, the publishing company, and Chuck had come from A&M and I did a lot of work at A&M because A&M was a client of ours. And Chuck had come up with this nickname for me called Attila the Hun, which I always thought was the stupidest thing. But for some reason, I then found out that people actually thought of me that way. I guess that means, I don’t know, stop at nothing tough, you know, until I don’t know. But I think that because of Carol and Chuck, he may have had this notion that this is like he’s like a pit bull. He’s tough. And he needed that because. Because he didn’t need anybody so smart, he there’s nobody smarter than David. It wasn’t like he was trying to find somebody who was going to teach him something or help him understand maybe maybe be a good maybe be tough enough to say you’re wrong. But that’s not about being smart. That’s about being tough. And I think he just wanted somebody who he knew was going to keep the fight away from him unless he wanted to get in it. Keep the, you know, just be tough enough so that things wouldn’t get to him. And you think that was a direct result of well, yeah, we were talking about I think I think that it’s not a coincidence that I came on board for a funny expression at the time of the problem with personal best, because I think that David had. Regretted getting involved with it. Because there was no it was there was just no way to win, Bobtown was his friend. Barry Diller was his friend. The movie was costing so much more money, I think, at the time than he expected, and he didn’t really want to have to go to war over it himself. And so I think that he may have felt at the time, this is a this is not a good use of my time. Let me find somebody for whom this would be a better use their time, you know, someone who has an appetite. I think maybe David had already lost his appetite for that stuff and maybe he thought that I was, you know, still young enough and kind of green enough to still have an appetite for the kind of, OK, OK, you want to get into this, let’s get into it.

Speaker So explain just as briefly as you can, you know, kind of how the the David Geffen Co. deal. Work with Warner, how does that work?

Speaker Well, it began with the record joint venture, you know, essentially a joint venture is just a fancy name for partnership. So, David, what David’s entity is a 50/50 partner with Warner Communications. You have a joint venture, as you reminded me, David had gotten involved through Gil Siegel, who was both. Robert Town and David’s business manager at the time in putting up money to complete the filming of personal best. The production had begun at Paramount. But then obviously Barry had gotten into some kind of major fallout with Robert Town. And I think there might have been a strike at the time to so influence that influences had conspired to bring this movie to a grinding halt, and nobody at Paramount seemed to be willing to pony up to get it started again. And it may have just. Never seen the light of day, in any event, before I met David, he became persuaded to sort of come in as the white knight and save the day and bail this thing out. With, I’m sure, the best of intentions of Robert Towne, he’s brilliant, it’s a movie about homosexuality. It’s interesting. It was a great screenplay. It’s provocative. I don’t think David at the time was interested in making, you know, major movies. I think what caught his attention about this was that it was unusual and it was controversial and it was provocative and it did have a small budget and it was Robert Towne. But then, of course, he all of those elements, you know, revealed themselves to be mixed up with all of the. The movie business ego is power plays money, Mike Ovitz, who at the time was Towne’s adviser and suddenly found himself in a situation which was he knew it wasn’t good for him to be in this hole and trying to dig his way out. And I think he then went to Steve or maybe Steve came to him. I don’t know Steve Ross. Probably David went to Steve and said, get me out of this, because David has the courage to say, get me out of this. Meaning I’m this is no good.

Speaker And I think I remember David saying to me that Steve knew that this was a terrible distraction for David and that the real investment was in the record business because there was a record business then. And Steve knew that it was smart to bail David out of this and to keep his focus on the record business. But since David had obviously displayed some nose for the movie business and Steve knew that there was there wasn’t a better horse to back than David, he managed to convince David to.

Speaker I’m not saying you had to twist David’s arm because I don’t remember, because this is literally happening just on the the day before that I got involved with the company. But the upshot of it was here’s a new joint venture for David to be responsible for spending money to make movies that Warners would distribute.

Speaker And where are certain restrictions on budgets?

Speaker Yeah, my my memory’s not that good, I think at the time, as ridiculous as it sounds now, we could make any movie we wanted up to a budget of like ten million dollars because that’s what a medium sized budget was then. Can you believe that. Ten million dollars compared to now.

Speaker Yeah. Which is.

Speaker That number would be 60 now, probably maybe 75. In any event, boom, there’s this New Deal. And the first thing I was asked to do was sort of get the paperwork done on this deal and make sure that the paperwork reflected the deal the way David understood the deal. That’s the first thing I really did. So in my in my effort to persuade David to simply become a client, despite his overtures about coming and running, becoming the president, whatever that meant of a tiny record company, I said I don’t want to just be involved with the record business. And David said, What else do you want to do? I said, I would like to be involved with films. He said, so we’ll start a film company. And I said, I think we should do Broadway musicals. So we’ll start a Broadway musical company. And I was like, I think he might mean this. I was I was willing to consider the possibility that he meant it and to he could do it, which of course, in hindsight was nothing for him. But at the time it was a ridiculous assumption. But in fact, that will happen now.

Speaker David had besides personal best, he had had a stint at.

Speaker Warner Brothers studios, yeah, I think he was the head of production at Warner, president of production, I think the office of the president and vice chairman something.

Speaker Yeah, but head of production. Yeah. What happened there? I know that again before my time. I think that. David was not used. This is pure conjecture. I think that David was not used to.

Speaker David was used to being autonomous. You know, you can work at it at a at a talent agency and you can have a boss like Freddy Fields or whoever it is, it doesn’t matter. They don’t get what you do. You handle that. You’re if you’re managing Laura Nyro, nobody’s telling you what to do. You’re handling her. And then David started his own management company and then David started his own record company. And David was used to being autonomous. And that’s why he was successful. And I think maybe an element of his disenchantment with the film business in terms of that experience was there is no autonomy. When you’re the head of production at Warner Brothers Pictures, there’s so many it’s all you’re you’re just a glorified secretary running things past whoever is the head of the studio fronting about, you know, that kind of person.

Speaker That’s OK. You can say something about, you know, when you’re working at a studio like that, there’s a tremendous hierarchy.

Speaker I would put it slightly differently when you’re working at a movie studio. Your titles are actually great for that. OK.

Speaker So now we’re in rush hour.

Speaker OK, so, Roger, when you’re working in a movie studio, movie studio, job descriptions are so misleading, you know, head of production, head of production, can’t make a movie. So I think that that’s not a good environment for David. David’s where titles describe much bigger responsibilities than you actually have, because David is going to go I’m going to be the head of production. And that’s not the way it works at all. I mean. The head of a studio often can’t greenlight a movie. That’s a bad environment for David, I think he got frustrated. Frank Wells is a what if I was a corporate suit? Frank Wells was he was spaatz and the three peat three-piece vest. I mean, Frank was even in the world a wonderful guy, I’m sure. But even in the world of corporate jobs in the movie business was certainly the most conservative.

Speaker So that was a bad. Yeah, that was a bad match.

Speaker David and Frank Wells. And Frank Wills had the upper hand there because David didn’t have enough of a success record track record in the movie business to win that battle. I’m sure David learned as much from his pain as from his joy.

Speaker At that point, you said to me over the phone, you think you basically learned, essentially learned the only business I think he knew at that point that the movie business, though certainly glamorous and it is and certainly with great highs and you can do great work. The recipe was a different recipe than the record business was much more collaborative in the good sense and bad sense and much less control. It’s essentially a director’s medium. I mean, it’s it’s a cliche. Everyone says it. But of course, it’s like any cliche. It’s true. You hope you get the right director and then from that moment on, it’s his movie and if it’s not, you’re in big trouble, you’re really in big trouble.

Speaker And that’s one of the reasons he waited so long. What this is I know this is after you had you and David were not working together anymore, but I think that’s one of the reasons he waited so long to pick somebody to do Dreamgirls.

Speaker Very possibly. Very possibly.

Speaker OK, so.

Speaker So collaboration, so here here you are now doing your first movie, Risky Business, right, for the first time.

Speaker Yes, that’s the first. Well, you could say that Personal Best was the first movie because it got folded into the joint venture. So technically became the first movie of the joint venture.

Speaker But the first movie that that that we greenlit, if you want to use that expression, was risky business.

Speaker And how did that come to you?

Speaker Um hmm.

Speaker My best friend in law school now runs Utøya, one of the top guys, Peter Benedek and Peter Benedict, had a client named Paul Brickman, and that screenplay was put in turnaround by Warner Brothers pictures. And Peter called me up and said, you should read the screenplay. And so I did, and then it seemed to me to have something that the other whatever it was by then, I had read, didn’t lact, which was it really felt as if it created a world. It had a kind of voice that that gave tone to this world that the entire movie unfolded in. And so I thought it was it had something. And so I gave it to David to read and he read it very quickly. And he called me up and he asked the most intelligent question, why has Warner Brothers put this in turn around? Right, I couldn’t have cared less why they put it in turnaround. I’m not even sure at the time I even knew what turnaround meant. All I knew was I was hoping we would go ahead and make this movie because it seemed like a good, inexpensive movie to make. But David, of course, said, all right, Terry Semel, Bob Dalys, guys in the movie business have passed on this. They put it in turnaround. We’ve got to find out why, which is very, very revealing of David, which is I want to find out as much information as I can. His ego doesn’t get in the way. Ah, I love this movie, I know what a great movie is. Let’s make it it was. Let’s find out everything we can find out about this. Right. And so I called the OR Terry, I can’t even remember. I said, why did you guys put this in turn around? And they said, because it’s got an 18 year old prostitute in it. Well, maybe 17 years old, I can’t remember, so I went back to David, I said they put it in turnaround because it’s got a 17 year old prostitute in it. He says, where does it say her age? I said on page 42, he said, take that lineout. And will cast a girl who doesn’t look 17.

Speaker So we decided to make risky business that it’s not so yet, the morning did not look like she was.

Speaker Well, she be so.

Speaker David had a good reaction to the script.

Speaker Good enough to say, let’s find out why they put it in turnaround, if he didn’t have a good reaction to the script, he wouldn’t have said, let’s find out.

Speaker And so what about the casting, was there something about the original casting, David didn’t like it?

Speaker Well, we because it was Paul’s first movie, we had the normal controls, which is, you know, approval of our main casting. And so but David wasn’t that interested in. I mean, David never went to a casting session. I might have just because it seemed like fun. But Paul more than once came up with kids for Tom Cruise’s role, which.

Speaker Didn’t make any sense. They. This kid had to be cute.

Speaker Whatever else it hit, the kid had to be cute. He had to have some heat about him. And so the first two kids that Paul came up with. It was like then Paul became convinced by the second one that what we were trying to do was get out of our commitment to make the movie. So that was the first battle. You guys are just doing this because you don’t want to make the movie, which tells you what the movie business is all about. And I can’t remember how that argument was resolved, but somehow we persuaded Paul to persevere. And then he came in with a screen test of Tom Cruise. And in two seconds it was done.

Speaker Mean that you guys looked at the tape.

Speaker Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s something that David is going to get right away if a kid is cute and hot, David’s going to get it. And so the minute we looked at Tom Cruise, even with that kind of dorky haircut, because this was not Tom Cruise that, you know, today, this was a Tom Cruise who looked like a suburban. You know, sophomore, senior in high school, and there was no effort to make him cute. You’d be interested in seeing the screen test, you know you know how bad kids look in. And timid Beatle haircuts, it’s one of the worst looks you either go with the long hair or you don’t have this was one of those timid little Beatle haircuts that’s he couldn’t have looked more suburban. And but David said, let’s go with him. That’s good. And I was in favor of it because I thought this is a vast improvement over the first two kids that he had brought to Tom Cruise. Nobody, certainly nobody to us. But interestingly enough, at the first screening. Girls in the front row screamed, and that’s when we knew that Tom Cruise may be nothing to us, but he was something to them.

Speaker But we were surprised to know he had done I think he had done maybe taps or maybe a cop killer. I think he had a small role in one of those Coppola movies, you know?

Speaker Yes, I didn’t know that.

Speaker Yeah. Sighs Yeah, it may be he may have done The Outsiders first, but he had a he had a relatively minor role in that.

Speaker He was relatively undiscovered.

Speaker Yes, as far as far as we know, I have never officially said the name Tom Cruise, I had never heard it and I didn’t see his face and go, oh, I remember this kid. And I don’t think David did either. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Speaker So. So the movie.

Speaker Got shot. Now, my question, I guess, about David’s involvement is this is the first real movie that you guys greenlit under Adelia under your deal. So David Stafford said he said he wasn’t interested in that. He let people do what they were going to do. I mean, what was his sort of role?

Speaker David was very. Encouraging of Paul to go make the movie. Paul’s a smart guy, and you could read the screenplay and see that this was no this was no effort to make some, you know, a rite of passage. There was talent here and the budget was low, fairly young, but fairly responsible producers. And the movie stayed on budget. I mean, John Avnet and Steve Tisch did a good job keeping the movie on budget, and Paul was mindful of that, too. And the dailies look pretty good. And so David let people do their thing until the issue arose, which I’m sure you know about, about the ending of the movie, because Paul decided to rewrite the ending of the movie after we started shooting it.

Speaker I can explain when you read the script. First time, what was the ending?

Speaker I can’t remember exactly what the ending was, but it was more or less what the ending is on the movie, which is it had an upbeat, positive ending involving Tom Cruise getting into Princeton and fulfilling that desire, if not by a highly unpredictable route. You know, it was filled with the irony of the movie. But at the end of the day, you know.

Speaker Life applauds you, and that was the end of the movie, Paul, for reasons which you could speculate about until hell froze over, you know, I have my opinion became insecure with that ending. I think he felt that cheapened the movie. It was it was what you write to get the movie made. It’s what our studio now will make the movie, because if the ending’s too grim, they won’t. And I think he became insecure with it and thought that the movie will be taken more seriously and completely understandable. He’s a first time director with a lot of talent, and he.

Speaker He’s he wants to be. Taken seriously, the problem is that it. It was a depressing ending. So you have a desperate, huge fight, huge argument, um, Paul walked off, wouldn’t you? You got to back up, OK?

Speaker It’s normal procedure to have a test screening at a test screening test.

Speaker Now this is before test screening time because the movie hasn’t been assembled yet. The pages come in, I go over them with David, I can’t remember. It’s way too long ago to remember, but David is. Sends me on an unequivocal mission. This is not a good ending for this movie. My memory’s not good enough to know whether or not we had this battle, as I’m thinking before we actually showed the movie for the first time or whether we showed it and then went back and reshot it. It’s possible that we actually screened the movie with that ending and it did not score well. And it was a pity because the movie was beautifully rendered.

Speaker I think what happened, although I could be wrong. But just to refresh your memory, I think what happened is you guys read it, right? Even with Paul, not a test screening for it. Just for you. That’s right. And it had that new ending.

Speaker Right? I get that. I think you’re right. I think David, with great reluctance, allowed Paul to shoot his ending. That’s right. I think that’s true. And then it just wasn’t working. And so. We told Paul that he has to go back to the original ending and shoot it both ways and that we would screen it both ways and really go with whichever one was better. And I think David even said to Paul, if it’s a draw, we’ll go with your ending. And even if you’re even if the original ending is marginally better, we’ll go with your ending. David was pretty tolerant of it and very supportive of Paul. I’m not sure Paul felt that way, but. Then after that, we said, you have he said it can’t be done. You can’t now bring there’s no way to. There’s no way to reshoot the original ending, and David assigned me that job of doing that, of convincing Paul or helping him do it. And Paul said, I’m not going to do it. You want to do it. You write it. You rehearse them. I actually was put in the ridiculous position of rehearsing Tom and Rebecca on the changes of the script to accomplish the new ending. And it was so uncomfortable. But it was an exercise that we had to go through because Paul, that was, you know, that was his move. I’m going to walk off. You do it. And when he saw that, then he couldn’t the notion that someone was actually going to rehearse them and direct them without him, he had enough maturity and and sense to come back and say, all right, all right, I’ll make this work. And we worked together and he made it work. And then we went down to San Diego and screened the two versions back to back. And there was just no comparison.

Speaker Now, wasn’t there some I mean.

Speaker After the first screening, I think it was maybe like a first test screening, but it had to be Paul preferred ending and afterwards.

Speaker I mean, was David just.

Speaker Did he have a confrontation with Paul?

Speaker I mean, I think I had little to compare it to, so it wasn’t like I could say he handled it in in a in a in a character. And I think he just handled it very. Honestly, I think he was always utterly straightforward with Paul. I don’t think he was any guile involved, any strategy. I think he simply told Paul exactly what he felt and and was good to his word.