Stanley Donen: State of Grace

MW: Are you bothered when people pigeonhole you as a great MGM musical director--and slight your later achievements, like Indiscreet, Charade, Bedazzled, Two for the Road or Movie Movie?

SD: Well, each film is so different. You can't look at Bedazzled and say, "It's the same guy that made Indiscreet." People always say to me, "You have such a clearly defined sense of style," and when I hear it, I get crazed, because what I hear--and I know they mean it as a compliment--is that I have such a narrow vision that I can't get out of it.

When you think of the great artists... Take Billy Wilder, as a good example, as a film director. He's made films in the broadest possible spectrum: from melodrama to farce to drama to romance... They stretch across all kinds of barriers. I can't think of anybody who's shown so much scope.

I got pissed off when I did Charade, and everybody said, "It's a copy of Hitchcock." And I said, "Why in the world would you think that? Why does he own that genre?" I got angry. You see, it took me so long, it was such a struggle, to move myself out of musicals--because I had had a success, nobody wanted to allow me to direct a non-musical picture. It was so hard. And the only way I could get it going was to become a producer myself.

MW: Let's talk about the reports of bitter tights over the ending of Lucky Lady. What really happened?

SD: It was very simple. When the picture was written, it had a bittersweet ending to it--with the two male leads killed and Liza Minnelli singing a song on a boat ten years later. It sounded wonderful on paper, and I shot it. But it wasn't wonderful on screen; it was like the picture suddenly went into another key-change. In my opinion, the picture didn't work. We tried all kinds of other endings--which we wrote and shot. I shot one in Rome, a farcical ending, with the three--Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman--in bed. That didn't work. Then I had another ending, that I put together with existing film; that didn't work. So I ended it the way I ended it, which was the best I could do.

MW: You weren't under pressure from the studio?

SD: I was only under pressure from Liza Minnelli, who had never seen the picture, except in parts. She wanted her big song; she wanted that ending. So Fox had this meeting of all the press for Lucky Lady, and Liza came in to me beforehand--Alan Ladd, Jr. was there too--and said: "Listen. If you don't put back the first ending, where I sing that song, I am going to tell the press that the picture's been destroyed... tomorrow." Tomorrow! This is 24 hours. I said, "Liza, you can't be serious." She said, "I'm absolutely serious." I said, "In other words, you're blackmailing me into putting back the original ending?" She said, "That's right." I said, "Well, I don't blackmail. You'll have to do what you want." There was no way I was going to change it. I was intractable on that. It's not up to her to decide, that's not the way it works. A picture's made through one person's point of view. It can't be a group that makes a movie.

She left. Laddie said, "God, maybe you better change it. She's gonna do it." I said, "Well, if she does it, she does it." And she did it. There were a thousand people in the hall. She got up--with Burt Reynolds at her elbow, who had never seen the picture in any form--and she said, "Stanley ruined the movie." In front of thousands of reporters, while I listened to it on closed circuit radio. Two years later, she wrote me a letter, apologizing. A little late. A private apology for a public denunciation just doesn't cover it.

MW: How do you feel about movie-making in the '80s? Today's scripts are generally so bad...

SD: Well, that's because they're not written by writers. They're not written, by and large.

In my opinion, we can't entirely blame the economic people. What gets made is what made money last time. And it's the public that pushes these things in these directions. We can fight the trend, like Woody Allen does; the executives could try to educate the public into better things, like some of them did in the old days--but, in fact, the people in charge of the money like what the public likes. So writing just doesn't come into the equation.

When you've got a committee to make a movie, you're lost. Absolutely lost. A picture can really only be seen through one person's eyes. They may stink, or they may be great, but it's the unique qualities that make art; it's not the collective qualities. It's the differences that make it terrific. And the more narrow you can be in the rules that you impose on each picture, the more inventive it will appear to be.

Why I think it's a thrilling adventure to make movies is that I can somehow satisfy myself, make it worthwhile for the audience, and still get the money to make the picture--and keep going in this terribly complicated economic-social system. And that's the greatest challenge to all of my abilities: my intellect, my talent, my judgment. All of it is called upon. If I can beat those terrible complications, and still come out with a picture...

Look, all I can do is eat and sleep; I need a sandwich and a bed. And that's what I like. I like making movies. That's my life. I am a fellow who makes movies. If you said to me, "What are you?" I'd say, "I am a film director." That's who I am. And that's the great challenge.

MW: It's interesting when you think that Astaire, from the Midwest, became the worldwide epitome of savoir faire, and Kelly from Pittsburgh the worldwide symbol of athletic grace and joy. And you...

SD: But origins are meaningless. I'm this little Jew from South Carolina, you know. That's...

MW: That's Hollywood.

SD: That's life. We are what we are. We are what we enjoy and what we appreciate. And that's what we become.

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Michael Wilmington is the co-author of John Ford and a film critic for The Los Angeles Times.

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