:16:03
And he hung the phone up.
:16:05
My first move was to hire Peter Bart
as my right-hand man.
:16:08
He's not Hollywood. He doesn't read
synopses, he reads the entire text.
:16:13
He can read six books over a weekend.
I'm hard-pressed to finish one in six.
:16:17
But even more important, it was his
article that got me into this mess.
:16:22
The two of us caucused
in Palm Springs for a full week.
:16:25
Strategizing how an actor and a journalist
could turn a white elephant into a contender.
:16:30
Patience was not a quality Bluhdorn or
Davis had, and the clock was ticking.
:16:36
With the little experience we had,
we knew one thing: The property is the star.
:16:41
Let's go back to basics, Peter.
You can have stars up the ass...
:16:46
...but if it's not on the page,
it's not on the screen.
:16:48
It's no mistake Paramount's
been in ninth place for five years.
:16:52
It's time to pick up new dice.
Now let's try and do it.
:17:03
Between Peter and myself, we went
through dozens of scripts, maybe hundreds.
:17:08
Nothing clicked. It all felt tired.
There was nothing fresh about it.
:17:13
And we were looking
for the unexpected.
:17:15
Something that sounded new and
what we were gonna be about.
:17:21
Then one day, Bill Castle,
the veteran producer...
:17:24
...walked into my office with a manuscript
he had optioned, tucked under his arm.
:17:29
It was Rosemary's Baby. And I loved it.
:17:33
There was one problem:
Castle insisted on directing it.
:17:36
I only had one director in mind for it.
I saw brilliance in his little films.
:17:41
It was the little Polack himself,
Roman Polanski.
:17:45
Not a little Polack. The biggest Polack
and one of the biggest men I've ever met.
:17:50
The films I saw were Knife in the Water,
Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, all offbeat thrillers.
:17:56
Roman was a big cinema star over
in Europe, as well as director...