The Cotton Club

'The Cotton Club' was supposed to be Robert Evans’ big comeback... Instead, it became the movie that finally took him down - and nearly dragged Francis Ford Coppola with him. Chris and Lizzie break down how Evans' desperation to make the film led to shady financing, a baffling creative curveball from Richard Gere, and a production so chaotic that an actual mobster came on board as a line producer. Even though 'The Cotton Club' began as a story highlighting the racial inequalities of the actual nightclub, it became a film that marginalized its own black talent. Find out why it took Coppola 30 years to correct this mistake, finally allowing Gregory and Maurice Hines to steal the show. Make sure you listen to our Out of Frame episode on The Cotton Club Murder first as a primer for this episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a homerun-esque swing. Well, an attempt at a homerun that nearly bankrupts you, but is it worth it? Because it's still pretty amazing at the end of the day. I think so. As always, I am Chris Winerar, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how are you doing and what have you brought for us today?

• 2:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm doing great, Chris, and I'm very, very excited to talk about today's film, which is The Cotton Club. Before we dive into this at all, I want you all to make sure you have gone back and listened to the episode we dropped on Friday, which was an out of frame episode that covers in detail a murder, which is directly affiliated with this film. It also covers the investment that was tied to that murder. So we're not going to talk about it a ton in this episode because it was already discussed in that one. So please go back and listen to that one first before we dive in here. Chris, had you ever seen Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club before? Or Francis Coppola, actually, as he was originally credited on this. And what was your reaction upon watching it for the podcast?

• 3:13Chris Winterbauer?

  I had seen The Cotton Club, not for probably 20 years or so. I saw this in high school, I want to say, or middle school.

• 3:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, so then you saw the original.

• 3:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, I believe I did. So this movie, my dad's a fan of this movie. My dad's a really big fan of tap dancing, oddly enough. And so I actually saw Gregory Hines live at the Paramount in Seattle the year before he died.

• 3:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Whoa.

• 3:38Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it was in 2002. I was looking online to try to figure out when.

• 3:41Lizzie Bassett?

  He died in 2003.

• 3:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So I think that was the last time he came to Seattle. We saw Gregory Hines, we saw Savion Glover a couple of times, Stomp, obviously, and stuff like that, like a lot of rhythmic, you know, dance and stuff like that. And so my dad, and as I mentioned, my dad loved All That Jazz. And so The Cotton Club, to me, in my mind, was always The Godfather meets All That Jazz. And I saw this movie. I didn't like. Get as much as either of those movies, growing up.

• 4:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Chris Winterbauer?

  The Godfather or All That Jazz. Because while there are storylines in this movie that I love, there are other storylines that feel like they don't completely work for me. And we can get into the specifics of which ones. Rewatching it was really interesting because we just talked about Sinners. I think you can see some interesting parallels in the worlds, the music, explorations of race, for example, the mob, the time period. In something like Sinners, it also reminded me so much of, or Babylon reminds me so much of this movie, the Damien Chazelle film, that also was a weird, you know, sort of not nail in the coffin of his career, but a big career setback, just like this movie was. And this movie also, it reminds me that there are kind of like two Francis Ford Coppolas, especially from, let's say, 68 to late 80s, right?

• 4:51Chris Winterbauer?

  You have the mobster, gritty realism oriented Francis Ford Coppola. You have things like The Conversation, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now. But then you've got, you know, One From The Heart, you know, for example.

• 5:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 5:03Chris Winterbauer?

  And you've got this, you know? Peggy Sue Got Married later on. And what's interesting about this movie is the tone really skirts with magical realism and fantasy towards the end, right? With the wonderful sequence at the train station, intercutting with the Cotton Club finale. But it also tonally has a bit of a fairy tale quality too. Even the way that someone like Onie Madden is presented, right? Bob Hoskins' character, who's a real person.

• 5:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Bob Hoskins in this. Yes, we're gonna talk about him.

• 5:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and like he and Frenchie, played by, oh my gosh, that actor is wonderful.

• 5:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Fred Gwynn.

• 5:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Fred Gwynn.

• 5:36Lizzie Bassett?

  We're gonna talk about him too.

• 5:38Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, they have one of the most loving relationships in the entire movie.

• 5:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I love those two. I love the size difference. I think that's such a fun.

• 5:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Them in the urinal discussing is so funny because of that. And so this movie is one of those great attempts at a, let's just call it an attempt at a grand slam. And it ends up being a triple, in my mind. It's reaching for so much, it does not entirely pull all of it off. But the dance sequences are so good. Gregory Hines and his brother, Maurice Hines, right?

• 6:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Are so good. The recreations, like the Cab Calloway set pieces are. So good. Lynette McKee is so wonderful. Like, her voice is so good. Richard Gere is great. I heard he does a lot of the music in this movie, and maybe that's true, maybe it's not true.

• 6:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true.

• 6:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I found that impressive. I will say, the storyline doesn't work for me. So like, the Frenchie Oni Madden storyline totally works for me. The Sandman and his brother, the Heinz Brothers storyline totally works for me. The storyline that doesn't work is Richard Gere and Diane Lane.

• 6:39Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 6:40Chris Winterbauer?

  It's the Dixie Dwyer, Vera Cicero story.

• 6:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't care about them at all.

• 6:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't care about them. I don't buy the romance. I also think the only person who I do think is a little miscast is James Romar. I don't 100% buy him as the sort of loose canon character that, you know, we will later see played by a, you know, I think of Bobby Canavale in Boardwalk Empire, or I think of Ben Foster in any number of movies. And so, again, that ties into the Dixie Dwyer, Vera Cicero storyline. That component of the movie is the least compelling to me, and that's arguably the central focus of the movie. And so, as I watch this, I find myself more interested in everything going on around those characters than I am in those characters themselves. Even though I love the like, I'm assuming it's a, you know, it's a George Raft Scarface sort of riff that they're doing with Dixie Dwyer and whatnot.

• 7:29Chris Winterbauer?

  And so, I love all of that time period, and I've been reading this book called The Genius of the System, about the rise and fall of the studio system in Hollywood that ties in nicely with this movie. But I think that the big flaw of the movie, Lizzie, is its focus on that particular storyline of Dixie, Vera, and the Dutchman. Because that's the least compelling part.

• 7:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I 100% agree. We are gonna very much discuss that today. We will find out, I think, exactly why that storyline is what it is, and why it doesn't make a lick of sense at the middle of this movie. I don't agree with you on James Romar. I actually think he's great in this. I think he's very fun to watch. I think he doesn't work super well opposite Richard Gere or Diane Lane, but I don't really think that that's his fault, and we'll get into that a little bit as well. So I had never seen The Cotton Club. I had only ever heard that, you know, this movie was a disaster. It ruined Francis Ford Coppola's career, which, as we'll find out today, that's not really the career it tanked, though it did very much tank someone's career. So I watched it for the podcast, and I gotta say... I loved it. And I want to be very clear, the version that Chris and I and that any of

• 8:33Lizzie Bassett?

  you who want to watch this and want to watch it, streaming the only version, as far as I can tell, that you will be able to find is The Cotton Club Encore, which we're going to get into at the end of this episode. It is a recutting of the film by Francis Ford Coppola, done almost 35 years after the movie came out. We will discuss why, we will discuss what is different about the two versions, because there's some pretty massive differences. And I'll just come right out at the top and say the biggest one, Chris, is that in the theatrical cut, you don't get anywhere near as much time with Maurice and Gregory Hines. You don't get anywhere near as much time with Lonnie McKee. We will talk about what specifically was cut. Laurence Fishburne

• 9:13Lizzie Bassett?

  as Bumpy Rhodes was almost entirely excised from that version, and he's got a fun turn in Cotton Club Encore. All of which is to say, Chris, today, we're going to discover how a film, which initially intended to showcase the absurdity of The Cotton Club's racial segregation and highlight its black performers, became instead a further subjugation of their talents. I really think Richard Gere is terrible in this movie. And I like Richard Gere. I shouldn't say terrible. Next to everyone else in this movie, he just feels like a black hole of energy. I think I understand why. I don't blame him for it. I think he's a great actor. I tend to prefer Richard Gere when he's playing less of a romantic lead and more of a slime ball.

• 9:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Think Chicago, think Primal Fear. He's wonderful in those roles. And honestly, Chicago now in retrospect feels like maybe a little bit of a redo of The Cotton Club for him, and one in which he actually got to finally have fun. And he is wonderful in that as Billy Flynn.

• 10:13Chris Winterbauer?

  He kind of has to play the straight man to everybody in this movie.

• 10:16Lizzie Bassett?

  He does. He doesn't have a fun part.

• 10:18Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I mean, Nicolas Cage delivering one of his great dipshit brother performances.

• 10:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he's very fun.

• 10:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Right up there with Donald Kaufman in adaptation. He's so, I believe he's also based on a real person, Mad Dog Mick. And he does a great job. You really think, oh, my God, this guy is a doe-eyed idiot who does not- Not understand what he's getting into. It's interesting that he ends up eclipsing Gere in the 90s in a big way as an action star. It's a little unexpected based on this movie, but I agree with you, Lizzie. And I think like even opposite, you know, Gere's going up against Hoskins. And even James Romar has much more personality than Gere's Dixie Dwyer.

• 10:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, there's a very particular reason for that. And I think it has to do with how much Richard Gere's style clashed with Francis Ford Coppola's style.

• 11:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 11:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So let's get the basic info out of the way because we have a lot to get through here. The Cotton Club was, of course, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, initially credited as Francis Coppola because he was starting to doubt himself, Chris. And he thought the Ford was a little pretentious, but don't worry, he put it back in. Produced by Robert Evans, distributed by Orion Pictures. You will see a lion's gate at the top of the version that's streaming. That has to do with them releasing the encore. Screenplay by William Kennedy and Francis Ford Coppola. Story by Mario Puzo.

• 11:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh oh.

• 11:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Saw that name.

• 11:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Based on James Haskins, The Cotton Club. It stars Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee, Bob Hoskins, Nick Cage, Fred Gwynne, James Romar. And did you catch the Breaking Bad reunion in non-speaking roles?

• 11:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Giancarlo Esposito and Mark Margulies, who plays Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad. Yeah, he's he has a brief scene in here as well. And there's also a Malcolm X reunion, too. Lonette McKee plays Malcolm's mother in Malcolm X. And Giancarlo Esposito plays one of his assassins at the end of that film as well.

• 12:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Shout out to David for spotting Hector Salamanca. He could stay on screen for about 30 seconds.

• 12:18Chris Winterbauer?

  It's brief. Same with Giancarlo. He's like just in the background as one of Bumpy's guys.

• 12:23Lizzie Bassett?

  He's so young. Yeah, it's fun to see. As always, the IMDb log line is, "Meet the jazz musicians, dancers, owners, and guests like gangster Dutch Schultz of The Cotton Club in 1928 to 1930s Harlem." Yeah, that sums up the fact that there's not like really a plot.

• 12:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Not really.

• 12:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that's not true. There is a plot that I would like to follow. It's not really the one that the movie follows. So our main sources for today are, of course, Robert Evans's fabulous and ridiculous memoir, The Kid's Days in the Picture, as well as a wonderful 23-page in-depth investigation of the movie from New York Magazine in 1984, prior to its release. And of course, many, many articles, reviews, and retrospectives. Now, Chris, I would like to set the scene for this episode with a deeply relevant and informative clip from another classic film.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Get out of here, Dewey.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  What are y'all doing in here?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  It's called cocaine, and you don't want no part of this shit.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Cocaine?

• 13:19Speaker 03

  What's it do?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  It turns all your bad feelings into good feelings. It's a nightmare.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  I'm thinking maybe I'd like to try me some of that cocaine.

• 13:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Can't wait to cover Dewey Cox.

• 13:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Neither can I.

• 13:34Chris Winterbauer?

  One of the most underrated movies of the last 25 years.

• 13:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, indeed. And you know, The Cotton Club is truly what happens when some very talented and powerful men say, as Dewey Cox once did, "I think I'd like to try me some of that cocaine." According to The Kid's Days in the Picture, Bob Evans said, quote, "Intrigue, anger, blackmail, deceit, pussy galore, macho grandstanding, backstabbing, and threats to life and career plagued the five-year making and near unmaking of The Cotton Club." Chris, we today get to revisit one of the most dysfunctional relationships Hollywood has ever seen, between two insanely talented men who just could not get out of each other's way. It is finally time to talk about the movie that almost ended Francis Ford Coppola's career and absolutely destroyed Bob Evans's, because after The Cotton Club, the kid was never in the picture again.

• 14:22Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, so as we've said, today we are discussing two divas we've talked about at length on the podcast before, Robert or Bob Evans and Francis Ford Coppola. We have a lot to get through today. I'm not going to rehash the early careers of either of them. If you want to hear more about Coppola, go listen to our episode on Apocalypse Now or Dracula. If you want to learn more about old Bobby Evans, listen to our episode on Chinatown. And if you want a refresher on how much these two absolutely hated each other, go back and listen to our episode on The Godfather. But here's a little recap of what their relationship on that movie was like. Now Coppola obviously co-wrote and directed. Evans produced for Paramount, where he was the head of production. And Evans was, at minimum, semi-responsible for bringing on Coppola, who was then somewhat of an unknown. But he ended up pushing back against almost

• 15:07Lizzie Bassett?

  all of Coppola's creative decisions, including the casting of Al Pacino, who he thought was a, quote, "little runt." One of their hottest disputes was over Coppola's original cut. Coppola always claimed Evans was on the side of people telling him- To cut way too much, Evans says the opposite, that he pushed Coppola to add a crucial 30 minutes to the film. And he also basically takes credit for the entire ending of The Godfather. In his memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Evans said, Francis and I have a perfect record. We disagreed on everything. Now, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle, but it must be said, Bob Evans, not a reliable narrator. Very fun one, but not reliable. And frankly, Francis Ford Coppola.

• 15:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Same thing.

• 15:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Same thing. Same thing. So take everything in this episode with a grain of salt because it's coming from these two queens. So let's get back to The Godfather. Now, Chris, despite all of his work on The Godfather, and he truly almost killed himself making it. What do you think bothered Bob Evans the most about the end result?

• 16:03Chris Winterbauer?

  About the film itself?

• 16:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Has to do with how he's credited.

• 16:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I mean, since he's a studio executive, is he not credited on the movie?

• 16:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's correct. He is not credited on the movie.

• 16:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, which is so interesting because, you know, Bob Evans was basically plucked from obscurity by Norma Shearer, who was Irving Thalberg's widow. And Irving Thalberg famously, that's what started the whole process of, you know, these studios executives didn't take credits on the movies. He was the central producer at MGM, and so he was overseeing every movie and he didn't take credits on the movies. And so it's just funny how Bob Evans is part of that legacy, you know? It's just interesting.

• 16:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, he's on the other side of that legacy.

• 16:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, exactly.

• 16:40Lizzie Bassett?

  He was very upset.

• 16:41Chris Winterbauer?

  That's true to this day, right?

• 16:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 16:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Like the people at the studio do not take credits.

• 16:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a thankless job. They genuinely do not get their names on these projects despite working on them around the clock.

• 16:50Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what the money's for, to quote Don Draper.

• 16:54Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. So Evans left Paramount and went independent because he wanted his name in the credits. And he got it on Chinatown in 1974 and Marathon Man in 1976. And to be clear, while he was at Paramount, Bob Evans had an absolutely insane run in terms of the movies that he produced. But this time at the top while he was independent was brief because he followed these up with Black Sunday and Players, both of which were big time floppers.

• 17:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Haven't seen either of them.

• 17:20Lizzie Bassett?

  You don't need to. In 1980, he was on the hunt for his next big hit, and he thought surely he was on the rise again because he had already had another movie in post-production with Paramount and Disney. Now he just needed a strong follow-up. And he found it the same way he found The Godfather, Chris, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly named George Weiser, who moonlit as Evans' literary scout. George sent Evans a nonfiction book by author James Haskins called The Cotton Club, about Harlem's legendary club of the same name. And the book included, quote, "unromantic details regarding the mobsters who ran it, the African-American talent that made it famous and exciting, and the troubles that brought it to a close." Here is a very, very brief history on the real Cotton Club. The Cotton Club was an iconic nightclub in Harlem. And in case you can't tell by its name, the whole premise was indeed a heightened, high-end recreation of the Jim Crow South

• 18:05Lizzie Bassett?

  in which the performers were black, but the audience was entirely white. It was an exoticized version of segregation, essentially. The original iteration of the club was called The Club Deluxe, and it was actually opened in 1920 by Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, was designed as an intimate supper club. None of the additional trappings were present, but by 1922, it had effectively been taken over by notorious gangster Owen, or Oni, Madden. It was Madden who gave the club the racist facelift and by design turned it into the most popular cabaret in Harlem. From 1922 to 1935, The Cotton Club was at its peak with artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and many, many more becoming stars on its stage.

• 18:49Lizzie Bassett?

  But following the Harlem riots in 1935, the club moved locations, and it then never managed to reclaim its earlier success. To Evans, this was a no-brainer, kind of an upstairs-downstairs-style drama set against the backdrop of segregation, the mob, the roaring twenties. So he immediately set about trying to get the rights to the book. But in May of 1980, Bob Evans got an unpleasant surprise. He was arrested on charges of cocaine possession.

• 19:15Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 19:17Lizzie Bassett?

  His brother Charlie and his brother-in-law, Mike, had been caught paying $19,000 for five ounces of cocaine. Unfortunately, the gentleman they were buying it from were federal agents.

• 19:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I'd just like to imagine Paul Rudd at the beginning of Our Idiot Brother, when he gets tricked into selling the weed to the cop and that's what happens to Bob Evans' brother at the beginning of this story.

• 19:38Lizzie Bassett?

  100%. Reportedly, all three of them had agreed on a phone call to split the cost of the coke and unfortunately for Bob.

• 19:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's just hop on a quick three-way call to discuss these numbers, guys.

• 19:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Bob Evans is not careful.

• 19:54Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 19:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Unfortunately for Bob, even though he had been 3,000 miles away during the sale, his frickin' brother had name dropped him when allegedly trying to avoid jail time.

• 20:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Lizzie Bassett?

  His idiot brother.

• 20:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep, our idiot brother.

• 20:08Lizzie Bassett?

  In his memoir, Evans said, quote, "Pharmaceutical cocaine was mythical, manufactured by only one company in America, Merck. It was obtainable to the outside world by only heist. So mythical was its allure that it became the DEA's most effective bait to entrap schmuck buyers."

• 20:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Like my brother.

• 20:25Lizzie Bassett?

  That's my best Bob Evans, by the way.

• 20:28Lizzie Bassett?

  My brother, exactly. As for the question of whether it was going to affect his career, Bob Evans said, quote, "Paramount, the company I had saved from the graveyard, gave a statement to the press concerning my new infamy. Evans is not an employee of Paramount and has not been an employee of Paramount for four years. He is an independent contractor producing pictures for us. Suddenly, the media coined a new middle name for me, Bob Cocaine Evans. Nothing travels faster than raunchy gossip." And on July 31st, Bob Cocaine Evans did indeed plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge on possession. He avoided jail time, but as a condition of his probation, he was required by the judge to use his, quote, "unique talents where others have failed in this horrible thing of drug abuse by children." And Chris, the result, I don't know if you've ever seen

• 21:12Lizzie Bassett?

  this, was an absolutely batshit bonkers anti-drug special called Get High on Yourself.

• 21:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, man.

• 21:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And I would like to watch a little bit.

• 21:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, man. Yeah, this is, well, this is probably right before the Nancy Reagan sort of anti-drug campaign stuff that would come into play in the mid 80s. The timing's great.

• 21:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It's 1981.

• 21:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Get high on yourself.

• 21:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Here we go.

• 22:06Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, that's enough. It's insane. I love it.

• 22:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Cabernet, popo.

• 22:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Be in yourself, be in yourself. Meanwhile, Bob Evans is just snorting line after line of cocaine in the background.

• 22:16Chris Winterbauer?

  That is Bob Evans being himself.

• 22:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true. After seven months of negotiations, The New York Times reported that Cocaine Bob had finally purchased the rights to The Cotton Club for $350,000.

• 22:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 22:29Lizzie Bassett?

  And that same article also said that Evans had already secured private financing for the film. In reality, Paramount was still waiting in the wings to take on the project, but they were waiting because they wanted to see how that little Disney movie that they'd made with Evans was gonna do at the box office.

• 22:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Wait, which one was it? Was it The Black Cauldron?

• 22:46Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it's so much worse. It's a Disney and Paramount movie produced by-

• 22:51Chris Winterbauer?

  By Robert Evans. Disney and Paramount.

• 22:54Lizzie Bassett?

  We've covered it.

• 22:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, Popeye!

• 22:56Lizzie Bassett?

  It's Popeye!

• 22:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is a cocaine-riddled production!

• 23:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it is!

• 23:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I totally forgot. Robert Altman, yeah, the Popeye production.

• 23:04Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 23:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Listen to our episode, Cocaine Mannequins: Ship to Malta. Very exciting.

• 23:08Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 23:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 23:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I wonder if he had some of those cocaine mannequins on set to be in yourself.

• 23:13Chris Winterbauer?

  He's got some mannequin and like cocaine's shooting out of the side. Yeah.

• 23:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, so unfortunately, what they were waiting on the success of was Popeye. And the very same day that that New York Times article reported on The Cotton Club, Popeye opened in theaters. And of course, it's even more tied to Popeye because Robert Altman was on board to direct The Cotton Club as well.

• 23:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that's so interesting. Robert Altman's actually a really interesting

• 23:42Lizzie Bassett?

  A better fit, potentially.

• 23:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 23:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Nashville.

• 23:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly. So like, he's done music and he does really great ensemble work. And pioneered multi-track audio recording in a lot of ways for capturing dialogue between a bunch of different actors when it's not necessarily focused on one person. That's so interesting because like, on the one hand, Coppola feels like an obvious fit with the mob stuff, but on the other hand, man, Altman would have been good.

• 24:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so.

• 24:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that's really interesting.

• 24:11Lizzie Bassett?

  So Evans was also reported to be just about to sign a, quote, tremendously important novelist, screenwriter to write the script. Unfortunately for Evans' wallet, that person was Mario Puzo.

• 24:22Chris Winterbauer?

  He's like trying to peel him away from the crap table to get him to come write this script.

• 24:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Evans said, quote, "If it was going to be The Godfather with music, who better to write it than my pal Puzo? No cheap buy, Mario. Now a million dollar ticket." That is true.

• 24:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 24:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Million dollars. Evans' original vision for The Cotton Club does sound pretty good. He pitched it as, quote, "Like ragtime, my Cotton Club will be a blend of fact and fiction. The white story will be fictional, the rest will be a hunk of history out of America." He also explicitly said he wanted to cast unknown black performers to play The Cotton Club's most famous stars. But unfortunately for Evans, Popeye was not the blockbuster that Paramount and Disney had been banking on. And since this was now the third in a run of big time floppers for Evans, Paramount looked at The Cotton Club and said, "Pass."

• 25:11Lizzie Bassett?

  We recently moved into a new house and realized that our bedding desperately needed a refresh. So I took my own advice. And before spending all our money on a luxury bedding brand, I went to Quince. And let me tell you, we now have the crispest, coolest, most beautiful organic percale sheets and duvet covers that we've ever had. I've bought quite a bit of bedding from Quince and it's all super high quality and has lasted for years without paying the brand markup. Now, obviously, you shouldn't stop at bedding. You should also refresh your closet with elevated everyday essentials that you will wear over and over again. Think cozy Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at 50 bucks, cashmere scarves, responsibly sourced down jackets, and 14 karat gold Jewelry. I genuinely love Quince and I shop here for everything. I walked out the door the other day and realized every single thing I was wearing was Quince,

• 25:55Lizzie Bassett?

  down to my socks. Did I mention their socks are great, too? Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was what went wrong. It's the best way to support the show.

• 26:20Speaker 04

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• 26:25Speaker 05

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• 26:34Speaker 04

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• 26:38Speaker 05

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• 26:41Speaker 04

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• 26:44Speaker 06

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• 27:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Just a few months later, a Boston Globe article announced that Bob Evans would be officially breaking ties with Paramount and going fully independent with The Cotton Club. And this is because he had left Paramount, but he basically had a deal in place with them where he was still working with them on movies. That deal, he is now dissolving.

• 27:41Chris Winterbauer?

  So for example, like Amy Pascal leaves Sony after the Sony hack, but she sets up her production company under Sony. So she's still on the lot. She's just not technically an employee.

• 27:51Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly right. But now he's going out on his own. And he also referenced an $18 million budget provided by a mystery Swiss investment group that I'm pretty sure did not exist.

• 28:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, of course.

• 28:01Lizzie Bassett?

  So you've never heard of them. They're the best. Evans was adamant at this point that he wanted to retain ownership of the film's negative. Chris, can you briefly explain? We talked about this actually very recently on our episode about centers, but what does that mean?

• 28:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, he would own, he would hold the copyright. He would own the film outright. So he would not be doing what would be called a negative pickup, for example, which would involve effectively the studio providing some sort of promissory note saying, upon completion of this film within a certain set of parameters, duration, when it's completed, et cetera, we will pick up the negative. We will purchase this film for a pre-agreed price. That's a very common way of financing because you can use that promissory note to go and debt finance your movie by getting a loan from a bank, for example. Because the studio's money is seen as good, it allows the studio to defer that cost until the film is completed. But what Evans is saying is, I have an investor that's going to allow me to own the negative. And then we will find a distributor once the movie is complete.

• 28:59Chris Winterbauer?

  And that investor will theoretically recoup their money through this just straight distribution and not through a sale.

• 29:05Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly right. However, he didn't really have an investor. And in fact, the system that you are describing.

• 29:11Chris Winterbauer?

  My investors live in Canada. You've never met them. It's fine.

• 29:15Lizzie Bassett?

  The setup you are describing was in fact quite unappealing to most traditional investors. So the project kept festering and Robert Altman bailed. And Bob Evans thought, well, you know what? Why don't I just direct this myself? He needed a comeback pretty badly. It makes sense why he would try to take a big swing on this, even if it would cost him financially. His friend, Richard Silbert, Dick Silbert, production designer, said, it's not about the money for Bob. Bob doesn't have to be rich. He has to be Bob Evans. If he can't be Bob Evans, he's dead.

• 29:44Chris Winterbauer?

  He never directed anything, did he?

• 29:46Lizzie Bassett?

  He had never directed anything.

• 29:47Chris Winterbauer?

  And yeah, okay, that's what I thought.

• 29:49Lizzie Bassett?

  And there was something else scaring off investors. Evans very explicitly wanted to make a movie featuring predominantly black actors. The recent underperformance of The Wiz seems to have given investors an excuse to say that a film with a lot of black faces in it wouldn't make money. But Evans was undeterred. He would later tell New York Magazine, quote, "gangsters, music, and pussy. How could I lose?" But you can't make a movie on chutzpah alone, Chris. You also need cash. And so begins Bob Evans' journey into Mordor to find funding. First up, Adnan Kashoggi. He was a Saudi arms dealer, one of the richest men in the world, and dubbed the Great Gatsby of the Middle East. Evans met Kashoggi through Melissa Profit, an actress and former Miss California, on a flight from LA to New York. She had somehow become friends with Kashoggi, who had naturally offered to finance a film for her.

• 30:34Lizzie Bassett?

  When she came across Bob Evans and he told her about The Cotton Club, she's like, bing bang boom, match made in heaven. So she went off, met with Kashoggi in Vegas, pitched him The Cotton Club, and the next morning, she was woken up by his assistant, who was like, hey, go get on this private plane, go get Bob Evans, bring him back here in time for dinner. And she did it. She got to Bob Evans' house. He was not happy. One has to imagine he was swanning around in his signature silk pajamas. But he did get on the plane and he took the meeting. Though, as one does when buying a car, he walked out before accepting the deal. And as he's flying on the same private plane, this time to New York, because he wanted to squeeze an extra flight out of Kashoggi, Evans was served champagne by a beautiful woman, presumably originally dressed as a stewardess. But all of a sudden, he noticed she was wearing a negligee yawning and saying, "It's time to go to bed."

• 31:19Lizzie Bassett?

  To which Bob Evans says, "Good night."

• 31:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And then she asked if he was coming with her, and he smartly said, "Nope." The next day, Melissa Profit revealed to him that she had heard the whole exchange because it had been recorded and played for her.

• 31:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, wow. They're trying to honeypot him and blackmail him.

• 31:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 31:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, I believe there is a weird, like, Adnan Khashoggi sold his yacht to, like, the Sultan of Brunei, who sold it to Donald Trump, who then sold it to somebody else like 40 years ago. So there's a funny connection to our own president.

• 31:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 31:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Lizzie Bassett?

  But despite all of this, Bob Evans did come back and close the deal.

• 32:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, of course.

• 32:01Lizzie Bassett?

  He got $2 million on April 30th of 1981, provided he did not disclose who his investor was to anyone, and also that Melissa Profit would get an associate producer credit on the film. This meant that Evans could officially bring on $1 million man Mario Puzo to write the script. So Khashoggi threw a massive party in Vegas for Puzo and Evans, and I bet Puzo loved that. And the next day, he offered to add another $10 million to the pot, which would have given Evans enough to make the film basically completely outside the studio system, or at least so he thought. But Khashoggi was like, and I'm gonna put my brother Assam on the case to evaluate the deal and make sure that it's staying on track. And Assam, a little bit more practical, a little less pie in the sky. And to him, the numbers were not adding up,

• 32:45Lizzie Bassett?

  and he was very concerned about making such a bet on a first-time director when interest rates were at a record 22.5%.

• 32:51Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 32:52Lizzie Bassett?

  He also got a peek at the script that Mario Puzo had been working on, and he did not like what he saw. In fact, to call it a script might have been generous. So Assam tried to renegotiate the deal. Evans tried to put his house up as collateral, but they couldn't make it work, most likely because Evans refused to give up control of the negative at this point. Now, Assam said that Khashoggi's canceled the deal. Evans says he canceled the deal because he didn't like being, quote, "arobed down." Yikes, Bob. But Melissa Profit would remain on board for the rest of production, so at least he got a loyal AP out of it. Now, Evans also managed to woo some Texas oilmen, and this seemed like this was the deal that was gonna make it. I'm an oil man, one of them, who seemed like a vibrant, young, Daniel Plainview-type-a-guy,

• 33:37Lizzie Bassett?

  agreed to finance the film, and then died of a heart attack the next day.

• 33:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Nice.

• 33:42Lizzie Bassett?

  As one does. More committed to financing the film after this, but then the bottom fell out of the oil. Market and the deal was off. Meanwhile, Bob Evans went to Cannes to try to drum up international support for the film, which as a reminder, doesn't really have a script. But he did have Mario Puzo, his name at least.

• 33:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say, I actually think it's a pretty good package because you have an Academy Award winning, right, screenwriter?

• 34:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Correct.

• 34:04Chris Winterbauer?

  And Mario Puzo, and you have a book, you have a IP technically, which Hollywood did care about at that point in time. And I do agree, it's a great, people like high-low stories, they like class stories.

• 34:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Chris Winterbauer?

  It's incredibly visual, you can pitch-

• 34:18Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a great idea.

• 34:18Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great idea, you have murder, you have sex, you have music. I can see the appeal outside of Bob Evans directing. That is where it gets really sticky. You don't have a star and you also have a first time director and that starts to get messy.

• 34:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, but Chris, he did have a star.

• 34:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, who?

• 34:35Lizzie Bassett?

  He had Sylvester Stallone.

• 34:38Chris Winterbauer?

  And, okay, as Dixie Dwyer?

• 34:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh, Dixie Dwyer didn't really exist because again, we don't really have a script at this point.

• 34:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 34:47Lizzie Bassett?

  But Sylvester Stallone would have played a gangster.

• 34:49Chris Winterbauer?

  He could have been good as Mad Dog, as the Nick Cage character.

• 34:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he could have been great in this world, in this movie.

• 34:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Bob Evans certainly thought so.

• 34:56Chris Winterbauer?

  And the creative force behind an Oscar winner in Rocky as well.

• 35:00Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Now, he thought he had Stallone locked up, but while they were at Cannes, he found out that Stallone wanted four million, not two million, and Evans said, "We can't do that." So, he's now shown up at Cannes without a script, without a star, because Stallone is out. But he does have a poster, let's take a look at it.

• 35:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, he's doing the full Salkine Superman treatment at this point. He says, "We got nothing, but we are going to send a plane through the sky, drag in a banner saying Superman's coming next year."

• 35:29Lizzie Bassett?

  The Cotton Club, and can you read the slogan on the poster, Chris?

• 35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  "Its violence startled the nation, its music startled the world."

• 35:37Lizzie Bassett?

  All right.

• 35:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay. It's a cool poster, very art deco. It does evoke the final film in a lot of ways. You can see the vision, but it feels dated relative to what's happening in Hollywood in the 1980s, in my opinion. You're like coming into, you know, Star Wars, E.T., Indiana Jones. I'm not sure where this fits in exactly in the landscape.

• 36:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It is also interesting to me that the two white characters are at the foreground of this poster and the black musicians are not even with discernible faces at the back.

• 36:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, but that's a Bob Evans trying to sell, like he's selling it canned, for example.

• 36:13Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 36:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I could believe that he would try to sell it this way, even if his intention was to forefront the black performers eventually.

• 36:20Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree, and I think that that was his intention.

• 36:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I could totally see Bob Evans doing a bait and switch.

• 36:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Bob Evans is a bait and switch, basically.

• 36:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Lizzie Bassett?

  So it's great, as we said, but to quote his longtime friend and eventual Cotton Club production designer Dick Silbert, quote, "Terrific, Bob, but you can't sell tickets to a poster." Except he kind of did, because he got $8 million in international backers at the festival, because he's Bob Evans.

• 36:46Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what I'm saying. Yeah, just do the pre-sale foreign markets and all of a sudden you got some money. You got some cash in hand.

• 36:52Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Now, despite this win, deal after deal kept falling through and it was becoming well-known around town that Bob Evans was hard up for cash. Now, the exact date of what happened next is a little unclear, but at some point amidst all of this chaos, Melissa Profit again brought Evans an unusual investor. Melissa, what are you doing in your free time? And this is where we meet Ed and Fred Dumani. They were the sons of a Lebanese immigrant who had gone from running a fruit cart to managing hotels and motels in Las Vegas, and the brothers had taken over the family business and absolutely skyrocketed it. But after their father's death, they had put up both the Tropicana Hotel and the El Morocco Casino at the end of the 70s for sale, and had gone into the oil business with a Denver insurance magnate named Victor Sayat.

• 37:34Lizzie Bassett?

  The Dumanis were well-known around Vegas, and they had been heavily linked to several major mob figures over the years. Before they sold the Tropicana, it was under investigation for a massive skimming operation by the Kansas City mob, though the Dumanis were never Directly charged in this. So Evans presented the Cotton Club to the Dumani's and Sayah as a sure thing that could be made for 18 to 20 million dollars. Now, the brothers were new to the film industry, but they still wanted to read the script. And according to Ed Dumani, quote, "My impression was it had a lot of potential, not that I knew what I was reading." So in January of 1983, the Dumani's and Sayah officially agreed to partner with Evans and finance the film together for 30 million dollars in exchange for 50% ownership of the film. This just shows

• 38:15Lizzie Bassett?

  me how desperate Evans has gotten that now he has given up 50%. And that's not all he gave up, Chris.

• 38:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But it also shows me how green and desperate like the Dumani's are to find maybe a new area to enter into, because I think that's a bad deal, given that they're negotiating against nobody.

• 38:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it's not all Evans put up. He also supplied collateral by mortgaging his Beverly Hills mansion, liquidating his savings, and selling all of his Gulf and Western stock, Paramount's parent company. All of this while the Dumani's were under a corruption review by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. So you're getting in bed with some interesting guys here, Bob.

• 38:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I just love how, you know, behind the scenes, we have Casino and Siriana and all of these other movies happening as Bob Evans is globetrotting, trying to finance this.

• 38:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It's insane. And by the way, when he actually managed to get some financing, he did say that some studios were kind of starting to become interesting at that point, because it's like, okay, you've got some money. But he keeps batting them away. He's like, I don't want it. I don't want it. I'm doing this independent with my shady Las Vegas hotel managers. Now, while Evans was running around getting that money, he also had already been spending major production dollars that they didn't even have yet. He had tried to get Richard Pryor on board. That didn't pan out. Evans had gone to great lengths to try and get him to the point where he actually had tried to reconcile Richard Pryor with his estranged wife, setting up a dinner for all of them to try and get them back together. It didn't pan out, but Richard Pryor was extremely grateful to Bob Evans. And initially, he was like, you know what? It's okay that this didn't

• 39:43Lizzie Bassett?

  work. You really went the extra mile for me. I will still do the Cotton Club. But then shortly thereafter, a familiar situation popped up. He asked, instead of 2 million dollars, for 4 million dollars. Evans said again, I can't afford that. And he had to let Richard Pryor go. It turns out, Richard Pryor had been advised by his lawyer not to do the film because anything with Bob Evans was going to be a disaster. And when he asked how to get out of it, the lawyer said, simply ask for more money.

• 40:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Good lawyer.

• 40:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So at this point, after blowing through stars like Al Pacino, the runt he hated in The Godfather, who he did try to get on board for this, who basically was like, I'm not doing this. It's just another, you know, another Godfather.

• 40:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Sylvester Stallone, of course. Allegedly Harrison Ford was considered at one point. Evans had now spent months wooing the latest hot ticket in town, the star of An Officer and a Gentleman, Richard Gere. And Chris, he had literally moved Richard Gere into his pool house at his mansion and was giving him constant presents and parties. At one point Evans gave him a custom vest and when Richard Gere said, oh no, please don't give me anything else, Evans threw it at him.

• 40:49Chris Winterbauer?

  So he's basically doing the Dutchman on him and he's captured and kidnapped Richard Gere and said, you gotta do it, kid. I'm your Dutch uncle now.

• 40:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Basically.

• 40:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Great.

• 40:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And by the beginning of 1983, Richard Gere had been hired. Gregory Hines, on the other hand, had not required any wooing. He was at this point, one of the most celebrated tap dancers of all time, but he was not a household name. And he'd found the script on his agent's desk. He grabbed it, slipped it under his shirt and told the agent's secretary that he was going to be in the bathroom for a while. He said, quote, "I sat there for 45 minutes. I'm lucky I didn't get piles." He then begged for a meeting with Evans, which he eventually got, but Evans told him, look, you look perfect. You are perfect for this part. I can't cast you because I need a bigger name.

• 41:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 41:32Lizzie Bassett?

  But Gregory Hines did not take no for an answer. He called and pestered Evans every day for weeks, until eventually Evans gave in and gave him the part.

• 41:40Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, it's interesting. Do you know who Gregory Hines replaced in, in History of the World Part One? Richard Pryor.

• 41:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 41:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Because I believe, if I have my history correct, that's when Richard Pryor accidentally set himself on fire.

• 41:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh yeah, that was terrible.

• 41:55Chris Winterbauer?

  The freebasing accident. And so he had to, I don't, I think he couldn't do the job because of his burns. And so Gregory Hines replaced him on that movie. That's my understanding.

• 42:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 42:03Chris Winterbauer?

  I love Gregory Hines.

• 42:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It's interesting because their energies are so different.

• 42:06Chris Winterbauer?

  They are, but Gregory- Heinz is really funny. Like, have you seen Running Scared with him and Billy Crystal?

• 42:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 42:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's a fun buddy cop movie, or I haven't seen it in a long time, but they have a good comedic energy together. I like Gregory Hines a lot.

• 42:18Lizzie Bassett?

  He's amazing. I think he's amazing in this movie, and so is Maurice.

• 42:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Maurice is great. They're obviously amazing tap dancers. They can also both sing, and they have great, I mean, they're incredible performers. I didn't realize how good they are. They're such good actors.

• 42:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Really good. Evans also found Lonette McKee singing at a club in New York, asked her when her show ended. She said, Sunday, and he was like, great, you're in rehearsals starting on Monday. And she's like, for what? Meanwhile, Mario Puzo was doing what he did best and turned in draft after draft of a completely bonkers script. The actors attached at this point, particularly Richard Gere, were very unhappy with what they were seeing. It seems like the biggest complaint was that it did not balance the gangster storyline with the tap dance narrative at all. And I have to wonder if Puzo was spending more time in the tap dance world because it was more interesting. And Richard Gere probably wasn't thrilled about that. And speaking of Richard Gere, he was slated to start filming a movie for Paramount at the end of the year. So Evans was really pressing everyone to get started ASAP. He promised constantly it was all gonna

• 43:15Lizzie Bassett?

  work because they were going to, quote, "plan this like the invasion of Normandy." But Dick Silbert, who had just come on as production designer, knew better. "I said to myself, be ready for the worst," said Dick. And he was right, because they still did not have a usable script. So in February of 1983, Evans did the unthinkable, and he called up his arch nemesis, Chris. Who is it?

• 43:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Franny Coppola.

• 43:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Franny Copes. He needed a script, Doctor Stat, and wondered if Fran had any advice. So a little bit of background on where Francis Ford Coppola was at this point. Uh, poor. He was poor. His money had gone bye bye, thanks to Apocalypse Now, and a series of very expensive purchases, including his Napa home and the old Hollywood General Studios lot. And he had also suffered a financial blow from a movie you mentioned earlier, Chris, One From the Heart.

• 44:00Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 44:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Which cost $27 million to make and pulled in $1.2 million at the box office. I don't even know how that's possible.

• 44:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that might include a re-release or two. I had always heard that it was under a million initially, like its initial run. Maybe that's wrong. It's a huge flop. A huge flop.

• 44:19Lizzie Bassett?

  The biggest time flopper.

• 44:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I think The Outsiders did okay, and then, but then Rumblefish flopped. I can't remember what the order is.

• 44:26Lizzie Bassett?

  So I don't think those had quite come out just yet. He had finished shooting both.

• 44:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Those are 83.

• 44:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 44:32Chris Winterbauer?

  And he shot them basically back to back, right?

• 44:35Lizzie Bassett?

  He did.

• 44:35Chris Winterbauer?

  In the Midwest.

• 44:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he had finished shooting both The Outsiders and Rumblefish at this point. I don't think they had come out, and he was over $20 million in debt at this point.

• 44:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I think he's just like, get me movies so I can pay off my debts.

• 44:48Lizzie Bassett?

  That's literally what he's doing.

• 44:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Lizzie Bassett?

  So Coppola and Evans hadn't spoken since The Godfather, and now, according to Coppola, the call went something like this. "The script by Puzo was a disaster. Richard Gere refused to play a gangster and was insisting on playing a cornet player, which made no sense in the context of the film since there had never been a white musician at The Cotton Club, so where the fuck was he gonna play the cornet? Gregory Hines was great and everything else was a mess." I'm editorializing, but that is the gist of the situation. According to Coppola, Evans, quote, "sounded very morose. His voice was worried. He said to me, 'Francis, you have to help me with my child.'" And Coppola literally thought he was talking about his actual child at first.

• 45:26Chris Winterbauer?

  No, Bob doesn't care about that child.

• 45:30Lizzie Bassett?

  This child.

• 45:31Chris Winterbauer?

  This is the one he cares about.

• 45:33Lizzie Bassett?

  And this, of course, is the crux of the issue, I think, with the whole movie. And it does come from Richard Gere. He was insisting that he had to be a cornet player, a musician. He would not play a gangster. He absolutely refused. It makes no sense in the context of The Cotton Club, and it makes it so difficult to work him into this world and make it make sense as to like where he fits in.

• 45:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Could I make the argument that I agree with you in execution? In theory, it actually should be a lubricant. I feel like it should be helpful. He is the only white character who bridges the two worlds, right? He becomes an entry point into both the music and the mob.

• 46:13Lizzie Bassett?

  But why is he at The Cotton Club?

• 46:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I think they kind of tried. I'm not saying it's successful. They tried to explain it as- He came up in Harlem.

• 46:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 46:21Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the one white guy, obviously, that ever played there. I know it confuses things ultimately, but I could see a world where the argument is we have a high-low situation and he is the only person who has given permission to transcend. Actually, Lonette McKee becomes his parallel in a sense. She ascends as he descends, so to speak, right? Because she can pass as white. And so, I don't know. And I think with a better screenwriter, maybe that actually could work. But I do agree with you that ultimately it falls apart.

• 46:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, maybe it could work. It is more difficult than it needs to be, I think.

• 46:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And then he's like kind of George Raft, but he's like also not George Raft. You know what I'm saying? It's like the.

• 47:00Lizzie Bassett?

  He's Richard Gere, which is what he wanted to do, so.

• 47:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Although the screen test scene is so funny. It's so funny.

• 47:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It is funny.

• 47:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Lizzie Bassett?

  It's good. Here is Bob Evans's version of the call. So we just heard Francis Ford Coppola's. Here's Bob Evans. On a hunch, I called Coppola in Napa Valley. Who's the best script doctor I can get? Need a quick rewrite. Me. Thanks, but I called for advice, not your pen. Can't afford it. How's nothing sound? Get the script to me by tomorrow. We'll speak over the weekend. Five days later. Needs major surgery. Don't panic, I've got the key. Can you fly up to Frisco tomorrow? Have Gere, Hines, and Love will come up too. Give us a few hours alone first. See if we agree, then we'll present it to them. We'll start at 10. Have them here by 3. Cook dinner at the house. Stay the night. Bob.

• 47:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Francis Ford Coppola has never said, "Don't panic, I've got the key." In his life, there's no way. But it is fine. Now Coppola did indeed offer to help out for a few weeks and write a free treatment. But according to him, it was Evans who begged him to write a draft and he agreed, thanks to the $250,000 fee that Evans offered him, which Evans coughed up out of his own pockets. Now Coppola, as we've discussed, had a major problem to solve. Honor the black tap dancer storyline with Gregory Hines while somehow resolving Richard Gere's baffling request to play a musician and not a gangster. And Coppola did ask Evans to send Gere and Hines to San Francisco to help figure things out while Coppola rewrote the script. Realistically, it kind of seems like Evans had promised actors some crazy things and

• 48:25Lizzie Bassett?

  just sort of figured that they could write the script around them because it was already such a. A mess. And according to Evans, Coppola had a brilliant pitch for how to fix it all. But six weeks later, when he turned in the script on April 5th of 1983, it was nothing like what they had discussed. In fact, it more closely resembled, quote, "a history lesson that read like a PBS documentary." Evans hated it. Richard Gere hated it. In fact, Evans put on a party at his house for the international distributors. Richard Gere showed up arm around Bob, saying, "I can't wait to make the movie." But in private, once they were alone, he told Evans he still hated the script, and he wasn't gonna do the movie at all. Apparently, the more everyone hated this, the more Francis loved it. On April 11th, the day of the Oscars, Evans flew to Las Vegas to meet with the Dumani's and present them with the latest script.

• 49:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And he topped the script, Chris, with an author's note to the producers, which was signed "F." It read, "Well, after 22 days, here is the blueprint. Now let's get down to writing a script. As we've said before, background makes foreground. Now let's get to the foreground. You always use the word 'magic,' we're gonna touch it again." Chris, who do you think wrote that note?

• 49:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Bob Evans. Yeah, of course. Francis Ford Coppola doesn't give a shit about the financiers. He's not gonna write them a note. Francis Ford Coppola's note would say, "It's perfect. I don't care what you think."

• 49:43Lizzie Bassett?

  So funny.

• 49:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, no, Bob Evans wrote that. And I love how he says, "Well, I didn't technically lie. I just wrote 'F.'"

• 49:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 49:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It's me, F. Mr. F. So the Dumani's are like, "What the fuck is this?" They look at the script and they're like, "No." And they suspended future further investment. All while pre-pro was ongoing in New York, Chris, and it was costing over $140,000 a week.

• 50:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 50:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Richard Silbert, a wonderful production designer, who has worked on many films we've covered on this show, had started building a $1 million recreation of The Cotton Club at Astoria Studios. Academy Award-winning costume designer, Melena Cananero, was moving forward with costumes. Music producer Jerry Wexler was selecting music. And it's somewhere around this point, as Evans is bleeding money and the Dumani tap had seemingly dried up, that Evans was introduced to a woman named Laney Jacobs.

• 50:45Speaker 06

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• 51:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Laney was a cocaine dealer who was interested in getting into the film industry. And she would lead Evans to a vaudeville promoter named Roy Radin, who would in turn lead Evans to the government of Puerto Rico in a $35 million investment. But it all fell apart sooner than it had come together. And if you haven't, again, go back and listen to our Out of Frame episode that aired on Friday, because that will catch you up on everything you need to know about Laney, Roy, and their ultimate, very bloody demise. So Evans knew what he needed was a great script, or at least one that worked. And he also knew Coppola was not going to listen to him. So according to New York Magazine, he enlisted the help of an actress he had met a few months earlier named Marilyn Matthews. To be clear, Marilyn Matthews is black. Evans sent her in to talk to Coppola. She read the script, and he asked what she thought.

• 52:04Lizzie Bassett?

  And she said, "Well, I think you're a good writer, and I really like it, but it seems like there's a lot of history here. Can you have a little more story and a little more about the people you can really get into?" Great note. But Coppola said, "Nope. This is how it's gonna be." And Evans then pops in and is whispering in her ear, "Come see me after. Talk to you later." So she left, and she went to Evans' townhouse. And at this point, he revealed to her that the Cotton Club was not gonna happen unless Coppola changed the script, and he was flat-out refusing. And Marilyn was pissed. Because to her, this was an unusual opportunity for a large number of black actors. It was a chance to tell the stories of the black performers of the Cotton Club. And in her mind, Francis Ford Coppola is stopping this

• 52:49Lizzie Bassett?

  because he's just being a baby about the script.

• 52:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Especially frustrating because he's a hired gun.

• 52:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 52:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Look, if this was Francis Ford Coppola's thing, right, that he'd conceived from the beginning and he's

• 53:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 53:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure. You don't want to do Megalopolis until you're ready? Of course. I completely understand that. But dude, you can't hold this project hostage. You know, you were brought in at the last minute, but I'm sure Coppola's, I don't know, maybe you'll tell me I'm wrong. I'm thinking Coppola's thinking the same thing as Evans, which is, this is my way back in.

• 53:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Right? Like, I've taken a couple blows. This thing just landed in my lap, you know? The reason I'm sure he said to Evans, oh, sure, I'll do a pass, you know, for free or a treatment for free, or even for 250 grand.

• 53:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Not because they're such good friends. They hate each other.

• 53:30Chris Winterbauer?

  He thinks this could be really good. This could be great.

• 53:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. So you're completely correct. The next morning, Marilyn Matthews banged on Coppola's door and said, you can't do this. You can't let us down. The black community will tear you apart. And Coppola's like, I understand, but I have to show people's struggles. To which Marilyn said, nobody wants to pay money to see that. You gotta have action. You gotta have love. You gotta have sex. Marilyn, you're correct. So finally Coppola gave in and is like, all right, let's go get some coffee. They started working on the script together and Marilyn was basically like, look, Richard Gere wants to play this stupid ass trumpet. And since you don't have a story anyway, let him play the stupid ass trumpet. I am paraphrasing here. She's far more eloquent. But she was just like, figure it out. He's the star. He's what's going to get this movie made. Give him the cornet.

• 54:17Lizzie Bassett?

  A few days later, Matthews, Evans, Hines and Gere all joined Coppola at his home in Napa to keep refining and working on the script. And they all said this was a really positive experience, except maybe for Coppola, who Marilyn Matthews kept yelling at when he would start deviating off course again and again. But even he, I think, enjoyed this. And of course, he was at a low point creatively and commercially, thanks to the failure of One From the Heart. So this probably felt pretty good to have this kind of collaboration. Now, at this point, Bob Evans had lost all desire to direct The Cotton Club. And he figured with Francis at rock bottom, he might finally agree to helm the movie for him. And of course, Chris, if you have Francis Ford Coppola on board, you can officially market this as what?

• 54:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Prestige, Oscar?

• 55:00Lizzie Bassett?

  The Godfather reunion.

• 55:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Right, that's exactly right. You have Puzo, Coppola, Evans, all back in action.

• 55:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. Since 1983.

• 55:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Eighty-three, so nine years since part two, just in time for the 10-year anniversary.

• 55:15Lizzie Bassett?

  So Francis says, "No," and then "No," again, and "No," again, but finally, after 10 days in Napa, with a new script in hand, he's like, "I'll consider it." And everyone's like, "Yeah!" The crowd goes wild. So Evans took the screenplay back to the Dumani's, who were still like, "Boo, hoo." But Evans turned around in front of them, called Francis, and said, quote, "They loved it. A plus. To show them, look, this is how you have to treat the talent." They're like, "Fine." They read it again, they liked it better this time, and they agreed to resume funding, but they were very worried about the idea of hiring Coppola. And Evans said, quote, "Don't worry, I can control Francis. Can you, Bobby?"

• 55:55Lizzie Bassett?

  But when he sat down to meet with Francis, Coppola demanded $2.5 million, a piece of the gross, and final cut. Now, according to Bob, Francis reassured him, "Don't worry, you know how close we are, we'll work together." According to Coppola, he was very clear that that's not what he meant at all. He said, quote, "As a writer, I would do it anyway my director told me to, but if I became the director, I would need to have total control and final cut. I was very clear on this point because Evans is a known backseat driver, a man who tends to fool with other people's work from his office or apartment." Coppola is so bitchy, they both are. But, to be fair, he also knew the financing on this thing was extremely shady, and he wanted to get paid, and he wanted to make sure he was securing his paycheck.

• 56:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Finally, Bob Evans agreed to the terms, which is pretty shocking, but you know what? He was happy. He had Coppola, he had Richard Gere. He said, quote, "I felt like I was 10 feet tall." But on June 10th, 1983, Roy Radin's body was discovered in a canyon just outside of Los Angeles. He had been shot to death, and a stick of dynamite had been shoved into his mouth and exploded. Detectives came and interviewed Bob Evans for four hours, and then apparently decided, "Ah, he probably has no involvement in the crime." And they all left with signed copies of the Chinatown script.

• 57:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Don't worry, they'll come back.

• 57:20Chris Winterbauer?

  People are people, you know, we're all susceptible to being starstruck, I suppose.

• 57:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I think they very much thought that Bob Evans was involved and continued to keep an eye on him.

• 57:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's get some Chinatown scripts out of this first.

• 57:33Lizzie Bassett?

  But Chris, the cops were not who scared Evans. He was instead terrified that the person who had come after Roy Raden would come after him next.

• 57:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course.

• 57:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Or his ex-wife, Ally McGraw, or their son. And honestly, he had pretty good reason to be afraid. Again, go back and listen to the out of frame episode to find out more, but keep this in mind that this is what's going on for Bob Evans at this point. He's literally afraid somebody's gonna come blow him up. So Coppola had six weeks to get the movie ready to shoot, and he mostly kept the production heads that Evans already had in place, including production designer Dick Silbert, who I think does a wonderful job on this movie. Apparently, at an early kickoff meeting, Coppola was like, you know, it's a 12-week shooting schedule. Everybody's gonna be home by Thanksgiving. And then he turned to Silbert and was like, yeah, I know why you're smiling, because you're the only person who knows Thanksgiving means Christmas. And right away, Silbert was, I think, a little taken aback by Coppola,

• 58:24Lizzie Bassett?

  who was apparently prone to major mood swings on this project and seemed very easily distracted. Now, notice I said that he kept most production heads, not all. He got rid of music supervisor Jerry Wexler right away, who managed to get a pretty high severance fee out of the deal. And he also wanted to replace cinematographer John Alonso with Steve Burham, who he'd worked with on Rumblefish. And this really freaked Bob Evans out, because he was not a fan of what he had seen on Rumblefish. So they ended up putting the cinematographer role to a vote amongst production executives. And the winner was none of those guys. It was a British, South African-born DP named Stephen Goldblatt, who would go on to make many, many movies, but at this point, he'd only worked on about four, including The Hunger.

• 59:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Like Wexler, the original DP got a very expensive buyout, and Goldblatt came on for $100,000. So the bills are definitely piling up. And Chris, like a raptor in Jurassic Park, Francis Ford Coppola started testing the boundaries of his cage. He first went after 18-year-old Diane Lane for a role written for a woman in her 20s, and then proceeded to yell. At her in front of Richard Gere for acting like an 18 year old. Poor Diane Lane. I actually don't think she's bad in this at all, but she is so young.

• 59:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. I don't think Diane Lane is bad at all in this role, but I do think she feels too young for this part. And I I've kept thinking you needed someone a little more world weary. I was thinking of Gretchen Mall's character in Boardwalk Empire, Bobby Barrett from from Mad Men, Jimmy Barrett's wife and manager. And, you know, similarly, I don't think Richard Gere is bad in this movie. I agree with you. His character is weirdly positioned relative to the others. I actually think he and Diane Lane, while I don't feel they have great romantic chemistry.

• 1:00:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Zero.

• 1:00:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I do like some of their scenes, though. So, for example, at Vera's Club, when he plays the trumpet as she's singing, that duet that they do, I actually really like that scene. And as shocking as it is, and I actually kind of like it for this reason, I actually think the scene where they're dancing and they slap each other is a really interesting scene.

• 1:00:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a really interesting scene. It's weird, and my thing with that is it doesn't quite work in the context of this movie.

• 1:00:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 1:00:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Own, it's actually the story I would have been more interested to see between the two of them because it is so strange.

• 1:00:34Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point. There are scenes with them that I do really like, but their story as a whole feels like it never comes together.

• 1:00:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. And then, Chris, Coppola went after Fred Gwynn, who you already mentioned, who was best known at the time for playing Herman Munster on The Munsters. Coppola had seen him in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, thought he was great. I think he loved the combo of him and Bob Hoskins. Again, we did too. I think he's excellent in this. But Bob Evans is like, you are not putting Herman Munster in this movie.

• 1:01:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Such a lack of vision, Bob. Fred Gwynn is so good.

• 1:01:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Sometimes he really misses it. I know. He did on Al Pacino, too.

• 1:01:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Pet Sematary, that's when I first met him. He's

• 1:01:16Lizzie Bassett?

  My Cousin Vinny.

• 1:01:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the thing. He's the judge, right? In My Cousin Vinny. Yeah, he's wonderful.

• 1:01:21Lizzie Bassett?

  He is great. But it also kind of seems like Francis Ford Coppola knew this was his chance to lay down the law. And so he's like, oh, you don't want to cast Fred Gwynn? Well, I'll be on a plane back to California at 6:00 PM. If you don't give me decision making authority on this and everything else, look at My contract. And though Evans wanted to tell him to take a hike, he said, Francis, it's yours. At this point, it seems like Evans knew the jig was kind of up and he retreated to focus more on the investors than on the actual production. Evans wrote of Coppola, quote, "How could a guy I plucked from near obscurity to stardom vent his vitriolic hatred? No mistake about it, this was an ingeniously conceived 10-year festering comes shot, a royal fucking from Prince Machiavelli himself."

• 1:02:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so interesting how, you know, especially in Hollywood, so many directors, I'm sure, but really producers and executives. And I think back to Selznick, for example, who really felt responsible for the careers of so many of the actresses, for example, that he feels he had plucked out of obscurity. And that phrase is always used.

• 1:02:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:02:20Chris Winterbauer?

  And they always want their name included in everything that that person does. Because were it not for me, they would not be where they are right now. And it all ties into that Evans credit dispute, you know, at the end of the day.

• 1:02:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Meanwhile, Coppola was filling out the cast and crew with his family, Nick Cage, his nephew, of course, in a starring role. And I believe that this, at this point, is either simultaneous with or before Valley Girl, even though Valley Girl, I think, comes out first.

• 1:02:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 1:02:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Valley Girl.

• 1:02:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Valley Girl's great. We got to cover it.

• 1:02:48Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so good. His son, Giancarlo Coppola, was brought on as a second unit director. He did tragically die in a boating accident just a few years after this.

• 1:02:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Lizzie Bassett?

  And his daughter, Sophia, came on as a child in the street. I think maybe she's one of the ones to close Cage's associate murders.

• 1:03:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. I was wondering that. When I saw her name and I thought, oh no, is she one of the little girls that gets mowed down by Nick Cage? Coppola's such a sick bastard.

• 1:03:15Lizzie Bassett?

  He already used her as Michael Corleone's son.

• 1:03:17Chris Winterbauer?

  I know.

• 1:03:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And you know what? Gregory Hines was doing the same, and I love him for this. He got his brother Maurice on board and also his ex-wife and daughter in bit parts. Meanwhile, in July, amid endless fights, Coppola was given a copy of a book called Legs by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy about the gangster Jack Legs Diamond. And Coppola loved it. He invited Kennedy to join him and work together on The Cotton Club. But according to Bob Evans, quote, "Burdened with the enormous responsibility of an imminent start date, Coppola cried for help." In the form of a 10 day script polish from Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy. Kennedy was then brought in for a heavy green polish. 10 weeks later, he was still writing and still collecting heavy green.

• 1:03:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Now Evans wasn't just pissed because of the cost, he was pissed because William Kennedy was tarnishing the Godfather trio image that he had sold the movie on.

• 1:04:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not Puzo, Evans, Coppola and Kennedy. Regardless, Coppola and Kennedy started working on the script hard. According to Kennedy, from July 15th to the end of August, when filming began, he and Coppola wrote, how many scripts do you think, Chris?

• 1:04:19Chris Winterbauer?

  How many drafts?

• 1:04:21Lizzie Bassett?

  How many drafts?

• 1:04:22Chris Winterbauer?

  A month and a half, six weeks, 42 days. I'm guessing they're turning a draft around every seven to eight days. So we're guessing five drafts.

• 1:04:29Lizzie Bassett?

  12.

• 1:04:30Chris Winterbauer?

  What? That's insane.

• 1:04:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I think I'd like to try me some of that cocaine.

• 1:04:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:04:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Including five scripts during one 48 hour window.

• 1:04:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I don't know how you actually type that fast. That's pretty crazy.

• 1:04:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I would love to see those scripts.

• 1:04:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Lizzie Bassett?

  By the end of production, they had churned out somewhere between 30 and 40. This was almost certainly due to Coppola's desire to keep tinkering. Quote, "One of Coppola's methods was rewriting to lift the climax of reel six, say, and put it in reel two. This does things to reel three that you probably hadn't counted on and also leaves you with a problematic hole between reels five and seven. At times, he would ravage the entire script, insert long dead sections of old scripts and offer up an unrecognizable new document."

• 1:05:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it seems like this is more like Frankensteining, you know what I'm saying, as opposed to completely rewriting.

• 1:05:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:05:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But yeah.

• 1:05:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, sometimes he did though.

• 1:05:21Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I'm sure he did. I'm just saying there are instances where maybe a draft is more a rearrangement of prior drafts.

• 1:05:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And Kennedy said Coppola viewed each version as raw material, like the actors he and I were in rehearsal for the final product. And as they kept iterating, they also kept moving farther and farther away from the script that both Richard Gere and the Dumani's had approved. But of course, this didn't just affect the cast, but also the entire production crew who were busy building based off of scripts that they'd been sent. But then all of a sudden, they'd receive a new script and an entire new set had been added or excised. At one point, Coppola shared a new script with Dick Silbert that included a note saying- And quote, "I haven't thought it out yet in terms of sets and settings. Try not to get too anxious." They were six weeks away at that point.

• 1:06:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I mean, you should have your lumber up. You know what I mean? Like, the frames of your set are established six weeks out. I mean, you think about it, like, you need time for paint to dry, let alone to get everything in place.

• 1:06:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. In a 1988 LA Times interview, Richard Gere reflected on his time on the Cotton Club set by saying, "It was so bizarre working on that movie. There was no script. There were levels of madness there that will never be surpassed in movie making." And speaking of Richard Gere, it turns out, he hates improv, and Coppola loved it. He would have these 12-hour-long rehearsals where he put the actors up against a blue screen. So they're just in a weird blue room, and, you know, he's putting a jazz ace picture behind them, but they can't see that. And then having them do improv exercises with the quote-unquote script. And Richard Gere was not happy.

• 1:06:48Chris Winterbauer?

  It seems like he's trying to do jazz, right?

• 1:06:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:06:50Chris Winterbauer?

  With the acting.

• 1:06:51Lizzie Bassett?

  That's exactly right, which is an interesting idea.

• 1:06:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Richard Gere is not the right person to cast in this. Lonette McKee said, quote, "He wanted it right there, written the way he wanted it. He didn't realize he had to make it the way he wanted it." But other actors saw the opportunity and they ran with it, coming up with new lines, scenes, arcs, and pitching them to Coppola. In fact, Maurice and Gregory Hines were really able to spin out their narrative as two brothers rising together when one decides to go solo, because it wasn't far at all from their own experience.

• 1:07:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say, yeah, Maurice is the older brother, right?

• 1:07:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. They had broken out as a duo on Johnny Carson, opened for Ella Fitzgerald. But Gregory had dreams of being a movie star, and Maurice wanted to dance. He wanted to choreograph, direct, stay in the theater. Maurice told Vanity Fair, quote, "I wouldn't say there were hard feelings. I understood what Gregory wanted. He wanted a different kind of career, and we had gotten as far as we could." So The Cotton Club was actually a reunion for the two of them, and most of their scenes together were not scripted at all. They were just the two of them going off a very basic idea from Francis Ford Coppola. They're some of the best scenes in the entire film.

• 1:07:56Chris Winterbauer?

  My favorite moment, my favorite scene is when Bumpy says-

• 1:07:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Get up there with your brother?

• 1:08:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Why don't the brothers dance together? And we should also mention the Nicholas Brothers, right, are the real-life dancing duo that I think- They are loosely based on in this movie.

• 1:08:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Chris Winterbauer?

  They're incredible together. As good as they are on their own, they play off of each other so well. They elevate each other. Gregory Hines brings so much humor to this movie that feels natural. And the other scene that I love is the hotel scene with Lynette McKee, when with Lila, when they go up to the room and he strips for her.

• 1:08:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Chris Winterbauer?

  In a kind of funny, sexy way, it feels so human. It doesn't feel like a movie all of a sudden. I really love that moment.

• 1:08:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I think both of them and Maurice Hines were very comfortable with the way that Francis Ford Coppola was working.

• 1:08:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it seems like it.

• 1:08:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, this was all very fun for them. That scene that you just mentioned, I think, was also heavily improvised.

• 1:08:47Chris Winterbauer?

  It must have. It seems very improvised in a good way.

• 1:08:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Richard Gere, though, not really in the same ballpark as those people and was desperately uncomfortable with the uncertainty of the process. So the big question hung over everyone. Would he show up to film? And on August 28th, 1983, when cameras started rolling, they got their answer. He did not. Richard Gere blew that popsicle stand with zero warning. And suddenly the cast and crew had to scramble to shoot scenes that didn't involve Gere at all. Gregory Hines, who was not scheduled, was called in and basically pulled that tall, tan terrific number out of his ass. As did Dick Silbert, who had to convert a ballroom that was intended for a wedding scene with Gere into the luncheon room that that number happens in.

• 1:09:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Hines also was told to do the scene opposite Laurence Fishburne's Bumpy Roads where he's furious with some gangster about something. But the scene where the club manager physically assaults him in front of his girlfriend hadn't been written yet. So he had no idea what he was reacting to.

• 1:09:46Chris Winterbauer?

  That's interesting. That scene, it's not that the scene doesn't work, but it does feel a little off in terms of the stakes maybe, or the reaction from Hines. That's interesting.

• 1:09:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. It was also already a tough scene for Hines because he is not someone who gets easily angry. So he just felt completely at sea there. Meanwhile, Evans was desperately trying to negotiate to get Richard Gere back on set, to which I say, just replace him. Replace him. He doesn't want to be there. But Gere managed to squeeze out a guaranteed three. Million dollars to return to the project. His initial rate had only been 1.5. On Gere's walk off, Evans said, "Richard stayed at my house for five months, then he put a gun to my head." So, he came back, but he probably shouldn't have because he and Francis Ford Coppola absolutely hated each other. They had constant screaming matches, including one where Coppola allegedly shouted, "You don't like me, you never liked me, but let me tell you something.

• 1:10:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not only older than you, I'm richer than you. Now get out of here." To which I say, Francis, you're not richer than Richard Gere at this point, you're broke.

• 1:10:50Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the thing. It's like, yeah, he's bust. He busted out at the craft table, you know? Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:10:57Lizzie Bassett?

  The script continued to change so frequently that the first script coordinator walked off set and never came back. The cast would be standing around for hours in full hair and makeup with no idea of when they were going to be called to set. According to Bob Hoskins, quote, "I gained 20 pounds waiting around for something to happen. You sort of sit around and eat and drink and philosophize, and then suddenly you've forgotten what you do for a living. Then somebody says, 'You're on the set,' and you say, 'What do you mean I'm on?'"

• 1:11:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Bob Osborne, a veteran film critic and a newscaster on LA's Channel 11, reported, quote, "I have interviewed several people involved in the day-by-day shooting of The Cotton Club. The word that all of them used most consistently was 'waste.' Waste of time, waste of shots, waste of money. Over $1 million, for example, was spent just on extras for a single nightclub sequence because of insufficient preparations. This is their interpretation, not mine on the part of Coppola. Other accusations include nepotism, also drugs. One cast member told me, 'There was so much coke on the set, you wouldn't believe it.'" I would believe it, based on what we've learned thus far. Victor Sayah, the Dumani's partner, was so fed up with the process that at one point, he got into a heated argument with Melissa Profit at Bob Evans's townhouse,

• 1:12:03Lizzie Bassett?

  and according to Profit, threw her against a plate glass window. And then he decided producing films wasn't for him and fucked off back to Denver. So Ed Dumani got on a plane to take his place. To save money, Dumani moved into Evans's townhouse and got an up-close view of the day-to-day life of Robert Evans. It turns out Bob Evans had handed off a lot of things, like, I don't know, reading documents and important contracts to his subordinates. Ed Dumani said he would often sign things without reading a single word.

• 1:12:33Chris Winterbauer?

  And he would sign them F.

• 1:12:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Mr. F. Ed meanwhile was like, I'm gonna read every word and figure out what we actually bought here. At which point he realized, oh, this is very much not a $20 million film. In fact, he realized it had never been a $20 million film and the line items he had seen were all round numbers because nothing had actually been broken down or budgeted out. They had just ballparked the whole thing. Dumani discovered numerous instances where they were paying like $1,300 for light bulbs that should have cost $700. Some execs had been promised a $50,000 bonus if they came in under budget, but they hadn't been given a budget to come in under. People cited the Francis effect, which meant they had no idea what Coppola was gonna want on any given day, so they constantly over-prepared.

• 1:13:19Lizzie Bassett?

  At one point, this included renting and prepping 22 vintage cars for a sequence that only required five. Ed Dumani went to set and watched Francis in action, which basically just meant watching his money disappear. And by September, it was time to shoot the dance sequences, but even the Dumani's were running out of money. Ed literally had to borrow from his son's trust fund. There's so much more that went on in the production. We don't even have time to get to Coppola fired a bunch of other people, including, I believe, at one point, the choreographer, but we gotta keep moving.

• 1:13:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, what's also interesting, Lizzie, is that it's clear Evans thrived in a studio system position where he had the infrastructure around him to handle reading the documents and doing the budget. And yes, studios can be repositories of waste and profligate spending, but there are mechanisms, including accounting teams, in place that are designed to make sure that there is a budget and that we're not paying twice what we should on light bulbs, et cetera.

• 1:14:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, well, and you know, it's easy to blame Coppola for the budget going wild, but I actually don't think that's fair to the point that you just made.

• 1:14:21Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not his responsibility.

• 1:14:22Lizzie Bassett?

  No, and according to Coppola and Kennedy, they were never really given a legitimate budget in the first place, which matches what Ed Dumani said when he started looking at the itemized budget, is that it was phony. The script he was asked to write would never have come in at $18 million. Coppola was under an enormous amount of pressure to reduce the budget as they were in production and pre-production, which is part of why they kept rewriting stuff. So to a certain extent, he was kind of set up to fail because there was no solid foundation to this movie, ever. He was also under extreme personal financial pressure, thanks to all of his debt, and now a new lawsuit from his Apocalypse Now tormentor, Marlon Brando.

• 1:14:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I can't believe Marlon Brando sued him.

• 1:15:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Hey Frances, hey Frances, you want, you want some of Cheesecake? He's just such a troll.

• 1:15:05Lizzie Bassett?

  He is a troll. I believe it's because he had not been paid certain things, so I guess he did deserve his money, but.

• 1:15:11Chris Winterbauer?

  He was also suing the Salt Kinds over Superman 2, I believe, at this point, yeah.

• 1:15:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Marlon.

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• 1:16:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Despite all of this, Gregory Hines said that Coppola was very focused on set, although DP Goldblatt described that focus being broken by calls about new fires to put out that would leave Francis angry, dark, and mean for hours. By the end of October, Coppola still hadn't been paid, and to top it all off, Evans and Dumani were trying to renegotiate his contract to penalize him if he went over schedule, at which point Coppola said, "Fuck this," and flew to London for three days. Dumani and Evans relented, paying Coppola his $2.5 million fee, but when he came back, he discovered there was someone that they hadn't paid: the cast and crew! So Coppola reportedly paid them out of his own pocket at one point before Dumani sent an armored car full of money to cover their checks.

• 1:17:43Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like a pyramid scheme. This is just absolutely wild.

• 1:17:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It's insane. So as the costs continued to soar, the Dumanis pulled together a deal with Orion, who was already the distributor at this point, to put forward an additional $15 million to finish the film. And as a condition of this deal, they cut Bob Evans out as producer, and they wanted to remove his name. It's such an asshole move. On top of this, the Dumanis sent out actual, real-life gangster Joey Cusamano to monitor the remainder of filming and to try to intimidate Evans into completely giving up control. But here's the thing: Joey was kind of fun.

• 1:18:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Doesn't Joey have a credit on this movie?

• 1:18:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:18:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Didn't I see Joey Cusamano's name in the title credits?

• 1:18:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Hold on, we gotta spend a little bit of time on Joey Cusamano because he's so funny. When he met Academy Award-winning costume designer Melena Cananero, who of course had won an Academy Award for Chariots of Fire, he asked, "How'd you get an award for shorts?"

• 1:18:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Love it. I love it. It's just like The Sopranos when Chris Moltisanti meets Sir Ben Kingsley. It's so good.

• 1:18:45Lizzie Bassett?

  So ironically, he actually ended up getting along really well with Francis Ford Coppola and became kind of a great line producer for the movie. He's like sort of what they needed the whole time.

• 1:18:56Chris Winterbauer?

  You know what's so funny? The mob, great enforcers of budgets, it turns out.

• 1:19:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, he wasn't just a good enforcer of the budget, he actually ended up really Protecting Coppola, he was urging the Dumani's to stay away and let him work.

• 1:19:09Chris Winterbauer?

  And he would say, hey, give the man his space. And then he's the one who goes back, why are these light bulbs so crazy?

• 1:19:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:19:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I think we need to come down on these numbers or I'm gonna break a lot of things besides your light bulbs.

• 1:19:19Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. You know what he said? He said, you gotta let Francis be Francis. And he was right. People on set really liked him, started calling him my favorite gangster.

• 1:19:30Lizzie Bassett?

  So funny. Meanwhile, Coppola was convinced that a Wall Street Journal article detailing the behind the scenes disaster of the movie had been planted by Evans as a way of shifting the blame to Coppola ahead of release. Probably true. But back to Joey Cusamano, our favorite gangster slash line producer. He was very concerned about the money. By late 1983 or early 1984, Cusamano reviewed what had been spent in order to get ready for the final two weeks of filming, and it was not good. In the first 18 weeks of filming, they had spent $21 million. On top of that, you had fees for Coppola, Puzo, and Richard Gere adding up to over $6.5 million.

• 1:20:06Lizzie Bassett?

  The second unit crew headed by Coppola's son had cost $800,000. And then you add in the cost of insurance, extras, sets, and Joey realized they'd spent more than $47 million.

• 1:20:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no.

• 1:20:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah, buddy. Other reports indicate this may have actually been as high as $58 million.

• 1:20:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Was Cleopatra still the most expensive movie inflation adjusted of all time at this point?

• 1:20:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe so, yes.

• 1:20:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, yeah. But we're starting to get up close to those numbers.

• 1:20:36Lizzie Bassett?

  57 is a bit disputed. I think there is reason to believe it got that high, though.

• 1:20:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, but I'm just saying like Empire Strikes Back, which notoriously went over budget, the number I'm seeing online really quickly, $31 million.

• 1:20:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah, we're way past that.

• 1:20:49Chris Winterbauer?

  You're 50% over that, minimum, basically.

• 1:20:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:20:53Chris Winterbauer?

  That's crazy.

• 1:20:54Lizzie Bassett?

  So Joey figures they've got like 1.5 million they can scrape together to cover these last two weeks of shooting, which already were a disaster because many actors had left to start other projects, including Bob Hoskins, who had shaved his head and was like, fuck you, I'm not coming back. And they were like, yes, you are. Here's a wig. They tried to get insurance money from a day lost to Diane Lane's actual teenage skin breaking out and then cut any other costs that they could. It was just enough, and filming wrapped on March 31, 1984. And as post-production kicked off, so did the lawsuits. In May, Bob Evans countersued the Dumani's, saying that they had threatened him with physical violence and that he's again trying to retain creative control of the project.

• 1:21:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Victor Sayah filed suit against the Dumani's and Evans, saying it would be impossible for him to recoup his investment. He also alleged that the Dumani's were doing some creative accounting with that $15 million from Orion, and that it may have been a tactic to make profit impossible for other investors like him. He also said that they should not have edged Evans out of creative control, which is interesting. In June, a judge ordered that Evans would not be edged out, and that he was the controlling partner, while Coppola would legally have control of the creative. And yet, despite the court ruling in his favor, Evans ceded total control of any profits to Ed and Fred Dumani in August of 1984. He retained his title and was given a cash settlement. In the end, it was probably

• 1:22:20Lizzie Bassett?

  financially a smarter move. But he had lost so much at this point, it doesn't even matter. The Cotton Club was edited by Barry Malkin, Coppola's longtime collaborator, and Robert Q. Lovett, and Evans was effectively denied any participation in the final cut. But according to Coppola, there was still plenty of meddling with it. The financiers and distributors told him, quote, "Films too long, too many black stories, too much tap dancing, too many musical numbers." So Coppola found himself trying to retcon a movie that focused on the, as we've said, much more boring, white storylines, and excised much of the black storylines, and the result was a mess. Coppola briefly kind of blamed Evans for this, but then he backtracked and said that he didn't think that Evans was the one pushing for this, and I don't think he was, especially given what his original vision of this movie

• 1:23:04Lizzie Bassett?

  was. Maurice Heinz told Vanity Fair in 2019, quote, "There was some sort of controversy. Gregory and I, our scenes were really wonderful, and they wanted to cut some of our scenes out. I don't know who it was, I can't say, because Richard Gere was wonderful to us, and he was great to work with, so I don't think it was him." But they said that- Gregory and I, our storyline was stronger and we were stealing the movie because we not only acted, but we danced together and it was too much. And I'll be honest, they do steal the movie. Now, as to why Coppola gave in and cut those scenes, he would later say, quote, "The post-production of The Cotton Club was such active warfare. There were threats of seizing the print. After working on three or four difficult productions, I must say I was starting to lose it in terms of my tenacity."

• 1:23:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say, you know.

• 1:23:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, he's exhausted.

• 1:23:46Chris Winterbauer?

  His health was just, he was in a constant state of poor health from, he's on a, you know, five-year run from Apocalypse Now to this, and Apocalypse Now took forever to shoot. He had chronic back pain as a result of that. I remember in post, he was doing, it's funny, he and Bob Evans both were basically flat on their backs.

• 1:24:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, tied to a stretcher.

• 1:24:05Chris Winterbauer?

  For a lot of these periods of time.

• 1:24:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:24:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Tied to stretchers, yeah. I mean, they just destroyed themselves to make these things.

• 1:24:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And you might say, this doesn't make sense because legally Coppola had final cut and creative control. But he told Vanity Fair a story in 2019 about his lawyers meeting with some of the shadowy financiers behind the film. They laid out all the contracts on the table and said, "Look, Francis has final cut. Here are all the contracts, look at them." To which the financiers reportedly swept all the contracts off the desk and said, "Well, now they're off the table."

• 1:24:32Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, it reminds me of, we just, when we were talking about Terry Swigoff in Bad Santa.

• 1:24:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, you can have final cut, but ultimately.

• 1:24:40Lizzie Bassett?

  They can still strong-arm you.

• 1:24:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's your ability to enforce the contract and contract enforcement requires a legal process and that is expensive and time-consuming and.

• 1:24:48Lizzie Bassett?

  And he's broke.

• 1:24:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Coppola's broke.

• 1:24:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Chris Winterbauer?

  And he also wants the movie to be released so he can make more money off of the backend to pay off his debts.

• 1:24:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. And according to his co-writer, William Kennedy, "The Cotton Club's post-production showed the attitudes among show business gatekeepers were pretty much the same as they had been in the 1920s." He said, quote, "I mean, the fact that here was a black club and black entertainers of the highest order and black people can't get in to see it, that mentality more or less carried over into the distribution people who were telling Francis to cut it down and keep out the black tap dancing." On December 14th, 1984, The Cotton Club was released. The film made $2.9 million on its opening weekend, placing fifth after Beverly Hills Cop, City Heat, Dune, and 2010. The movie's total box office tally was only $26 million, less than half of its reported $58 million budget.

• 1:25:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Assume 58, assume just 20 in marketing, which would probably be a little low.

• 1:25:44Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, they said flat out it would have required at least $100 million to break even.

• 1:25:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, no, no, it would have required more than $100 million to break even. I'm just saying, assume a 70 million spend. You did 26 in receipts, so you got 13 coming in after the distributors. You know what I mean? That's, you're losing at least $50 million on this movie.

• 1:26:05Lizzie Bassett?

  You're losing more, yeah, a lot more. After The Cotton Club was released, Evans and Coppola publicly feuded over who was responsible for the ballooning budget. Bob Evans would say, "I have not been blamed for the overages and in a way, it was my fault. I was the one who hired Francis Coppola."

• 1:26:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Way to take responsibility, Bob.

• 1:26:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, in response, Coppola said, "Had he not hired me, the movie wouldn't have been made. I got a call and took over the picture and now they're blaming me for what happened in the last five years. I have to side with Coppola on this one." Critical reviews were mixed at best, with some stepping up to champion that there was indeed some brilliance in it, but most everyone agreed it was a mixed bag and a bit of a strange mixed bag in terms of the stories that it focused on. It was, however, nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes. It received two Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Film Editing. Diane Lane was nominated for Razzie as Worst Supporting Actress. I don't think that's fair. I don't think she's that bad in this and also she's like 18, 19 years old.

• 1:27:01Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I don't think she stands out at all. Again, I think the storyline's a little weak, but she doesn't bother me.

• 1:27:05Lizzie Bassett?

  No, she's fine. So let's talk about where everybody went after The Cotton Club. For Bob Evans, after the Coke scandal and ensuing murder trial for Roy Raden, in which he pled the fifth on every answer, and The Cotton Club's ultimate flop, Bob Evans never really recovered. According to The Guardian, he went from being worth $11 million in 1979 to having $37 10 years later. According to Peter Bart, his right-hand man at Paramount, quote, "Bob always had a premonition that his career would peak before he was 50 and fade downhill. He lived by it. He was haunted by it." Evans tried to come back in 1990 with The Two Jakes, which bombed, marking his complete descent into financial ruin. As for Coppola, in 2015, he came across a Betamax tape that contained-

• 1:27:49Lizzie Bassett?

  His original longer cut of The Cotton Club and he liked what he saw. He spent $500,000 of his own money to recut it, restoring many of the elements that he had felt pressured to cut back in 1984. So he actually cut, I believe, 13 minutes out of the movie and then he added 24 minutes of unseen footage back in. And that footage included much, much more of the black narratives. It restored Lonette McKee's valid stormy weather, which had been cut out. It brought in a lot more and enhanced the bumpy roads storyline. It brought much more focus to the performers at the speakeasy. And it brought both narratives together into a much more coherent whole. But again, did not exclusively focus on the white narrative.

• 1:28:32Chris Winterbauer?

  So you know what's interesting about that, Lizzie is I made a note about two scenes in particular. There are a few moments in, I bought the Blu-ray, but I'm guessing that the streaming version is the same file. There are a couple of scenes in particular I noticed where the film scan looks damaged or like underexposed or something like that. The first is the, the first couple of shots of the mob negotiation. In the beginning of the movie between the Dutchman and the gentleman that he ends up killing, that Bob Poskins, Sonny Madden is negotiating. The shots in the hallway of them going to the meeting and the first couple of shots of the meeting. The film just looks damaged. And then similarly, there's some coverage of Diane Lane's character as she's telling Dixie Dwyer, Richard Gere in one of their first dance scenes, I want to own my own club.

• 1:29:14Chris Winterbauer?

  That film also looks damaged, but what's interesting is then the scenes that you mentioned, for example, the stormy weather scene, which is an amazing sequence. That sequence looks fine. That looks great. So it seemingly isn't necessarily correlated with the stuff that he has restored. There may have just been some damaged sequences in the original film. But I was half expecting you to mention those scenes. You know what I mean? And not the other scenes, which I think look completely consistent.

• 1:29:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I mean, he pretty heavily recut the whole thing. So it's possible that he was using damaged footage for scenes that he was moving around. Yeah.

• 1:29:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:29:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, The Cotton Club Encore premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2017, and then it ended up receiving a much wider release in 2019. It was critically lauded as a major improvement over the original cut. And at the New York Film Festival in 2019, Coppola admitted that he had agreed to cut scenes featuring black performers back in 1984 because, quote, "I was just afraid they'd take the film away from me." And in fairness to him, they probably would have. Bob Evans was not well enough to attend this 2019 screening and died only a few weeks later on October 26, 2019. Upon Bob Evans's death, Coppola released a statement. "I remember Bob Evans' charm, good looks, enthusiasm, style, and sense of humor. He had strong instincts, as evidenced by the long list of great films in his career.

• 1:30:33Lizzie Bassett?

  When I worked with Bob, some of his helpful ideas included suggesting John Marley as movie producer Waltz and Sterling Hayden as the police captain, and his ultimate realization that The Godfather could be 2 hours and 45 minutes in length. Also, making a movie out of The Cotton Club, casting Richard Gere and Gregory Hines, and bringing Melena Cana Nero, George Faison, Richard Silbert, and many other talented people to work on the film. May the kid always stay in the picture." This is like the first time Francis Ford Coppola ever said anything nice about Bob Evans, and he was dead. It also kind of seems like he maybe acknowledges that Bob Evans was not the one pushing to cut down The Godfather, which is a narrative that he'd been pushing for a while.

• 1:31:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It doesn't seem like Evans was honestly involved enough at that point. And both Evans and Coppola were fighting just to stay involved to a certain extent. They were each fighting their own battles, as opposed to fighting each other, it seems, by that point in the production.

• 1:31:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It's such a bummer that these two couldn't get their shit together and work together, because they actually were an incredible team, if they had been able to, like, get out of their own butts, basically.

• 1:31:36Chris Winterbauer?

  There are so many interesting examples of this throughout history and the pairing that I've been reading about recently that I'm really excited to cover. The movie that I want to cover is Rebecca, the Hitchcock film.

• 1:31:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:44Chris Winterbauer?

  And Hitchcock and Selsnick was his first US producer when Hitchcock came over here. And they made a couple of incredible movies together, but it only worked when Selsnick was actually distracted on another production. Had good story instincts for Hitchcock and was very helpful in the script stage. But then he was overbearing when it came to post-production and he needed to have something else that would take his attention away for the relationship to work. And it's too bad that they couldn't get out and Hitchcock had his own faults. And it's again, when it was never by their own recognition, but when circumstances forced them to pull back on their respective excesses, the synchronization of their skills, like we've seen here in The Godfather,

• 1:32:29Chris Winterbauer?

  could yield something really special. But God, the egos involved are just so Titanic.

• 1:32:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:32:36Chris Winterbauer?

  But then without the ego, do you have somebody who's willing to liquidate his savings? And go down to $37 to make-

• 1:32:43Lizzie Bassett?

  No, you don't. He was a crazy person.

• 1:32:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. I would never do this and-

• 1:32:48Lizzie Bassett?

  But he really believed in it.

• 1:32:49Chris Winterbauer?

  He did, and it's such a double edged sword. But and it's not a selfless belief. He also believed this would be the thing that would rocket me back to the top.

• 1:32:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:32:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's again, at the end of the day, these men are all Mario Puzo. They are addicted to going back to the table and gambling it all on another movie.

• 1:33:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Chris Winterbauer?

  That's what they're willing to do. And I mean, Coppola did it again with Megalopolis more recently.

• 1:33:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Well, someone who did not have a Titanic ego was Gregory Hines. He passed away in 2003 from liver cancer, so he never got to see the encore that he truly deserved. But his brother Maurice did. And when asked if he thought Gregory would have been happy, Maurice said, "He's smiling right now. Are you kidding me? He's dancing away, tapping away."

• 1:33:30Chris Winterbauer?

  He's so good. He's so good. He's so good in this movie. I'm so, I feel very lucky that I had a parent who, my dad's not into, he's not a dancer or anything, but he always appreciated it deeply. And I feel so lucky that I got to see, you know what I mean? Some of these people before they passed away.

• 1:33:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Brief fun fact before we get to what went right, Chris. You mentioned Stomp earlier in this episode. I famously fell asleep during the production of Stomp.

• 1:33:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh yeah, you told me that. How? That's insane.

• 1:33:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know. I fell asleep. My mom looked over and was like, are you okay?

• 1:34:01Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not only great, it's quite loud. Like, I fell asleep during the Phantom of the Opera when I was little, but not stop. Okay.

• 1:34:09Lizzie Bassett?

  There was something soothing about it. All right, what went right, Chris?

• 1:34:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, this episode, thank you, Lizzie. This was, I love, I love when we cover movies like these. Again, I think this is a huge swing movie. I do think the encore version is really good. And I really love it, even though I do think it has some serious flaws that we discussed. So my what went right, I am going to give mine to the Heinz brothers.

• 1:34:32Lizzie Bassett?

  You got it.

• 1:34:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Because I think their storyline is just so compelling. They're so good. I need to re-watch. I saw Tap when I was really little, and I haven't seen it in forever, which is, I think it's Gregory Heinz, and I think it was Sammy Davis Jr.'s last movie. But Gregory Heinz is wonderful, and he didn't do that much film. And I am sad that we didn't see more of him on film, but it sounds like he did everything else that he wanted to do also. So maybe there's no reason to be sad about that. So I will give mine to them. Can I pitch? So first of all, I want to shout out Gwen Verdon, who, Bob Fosse's ex-wife, right? Who plays Dixie Dwyer's mother, Tish, in this. And it's very, there's a fun moment at the end where she's showing the kid how to dance.

• 1:35:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I give you my pitch for who revisionist history should have played the duo of Dixie Dwyer and Vera Cicero?

• 1:35:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:35:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Have you seen The Fabulous Baker Boys?

• 1:35:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, you're going for Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 1:35:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 1:35:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh, yeah, very good.

• 1:35:29Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my combo.

• 1:35:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:35:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And Michelle Pfeiffer, who had proven she could do gangster stuff with Scarface, as well as music. She would prove she could do the music with Baker Boys, which was 1989.

• 1:35:39Lizzie Bassett?

  And Prince of Egypt. She sings in Prince of Egypt. And I want to make this very clear, because I don't think I made it clear enough in the episode. Richard Gere is an incredibly talented musician. He is playing the cornet in this movie. He's also playing the piano.

• 1:35:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, he's a great musician.

• 1:35:51Lizzie Bassett?

  He's amazing. And as we saw in Chicago, he is a wonderful performer. I just think he's not having fun here. And that is kind of the bummer of this for Gere at the center of this movie.

• 1:36:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Don't you feel like Damien Chazelle probably has seen this movie like 50 times? I felt like so much of La La Land. And Babylon were references to the Cotton Club.

• 1:36:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Definitely.

• 1:36:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe I'm wrong.

• 1:36:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No, for sure. In terms of my what went right, you stole it because I, they are the most clear what went right across all of this. The Heinz brothers are so wonderful in this movie and just endlessly watchable. Lonette McKee is as well. I think she's really amazing.

• 1:36:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Who plays the Cab Calloway-esque character, the band leader?

• 1:36:26Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great.

• 1:36:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Who's that?

• 1:36:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Larry Marshall.

• 1:36:29Chris Winterbauer?

  He's amazing. He looks just like Cab Calloway. He's so good.

• 1:36:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Larry Marshall, he's amazing. Also, gotta shout out my boy, Tom Waits, who is so much fun every time he's on screen.

• 1:36:41Chris Winterbauer?

  As the emcee, it's so fun.

• 1:36:43Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great. He's got his little megaphone that he would continue with for many years. And Laurence Fishburne, he has like two scenes and he's just wonderful.

• 1:36:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Bob Hoskins, I love how Stephen Graham has like taken on the mantle of Bob Hoskins' energy. I feel like in so many ways.

• 1:36:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, all right. So my what went right outside of all of those actors we just mentioned, who I think are really wonderful in this movie.

• 1:37:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Which one you gonna pick?

• 1:37:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm gonna pick both. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm gonna pick both and neither because I'm gonna pick the Cotton Club encore as what went right here. Francis Ford Coppola's decision to go back into the footage, use his own money and re-edit this and restore. I think right a wrong that he had regretted for three decades at that point when he went ahead and did this. And I really appreciate that he did that. I think that the recut of the movie is fantastic. And it really makes it something worth watching and worth studying. So that's my what went right.

• 1:37:38Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great what went right.

• 1:37:39Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, Chris, if anybody wants to support us, how would they do that?

• 1:37:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Just a few easy ways. You can grab that cornet and trumpet it from the rooftops. Guys, check out What Went Wrong. It's pretty good. If you're listening to us on a podcatcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, whatever, leave us a rating and review. We appreciate it. It helps us with visibility. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow on whatever podcatcher you are using. So every Monday and occasionally Friday, you get our newest episodes right in that feed and you can listen ASAP. If you would like bonus content, we offer that in a few different ways. For $4.99 a month on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can sign up and get at least one bonus episode every month. These bonus episodes are framed a little differently. They are typically reviews of newer movies.

• 1:38:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And right now, we're doing a really fun run where we are covering all of the best picture nominees for 2026, all the way up until the Oscars. We just did a review on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, so make sure you check that out. If you'd like even more content, you can head to Patreon. For $5 a month, you get all of our bonus episodes and an ad-free RSS feed, as well as updates, musings, et cetera, from us on the Patreon platform. That is www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast. For $50, you can get a very special Cotton Club shout-out, just like one of these. Lizzie, you damn flapper, take it away.

• 1:39:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Can I do it as Bob Evans? The only voice I can do?

• 1:39:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Do it as whatever you want.

• 1:39:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. Hello, it's me, old Cocaine Bob. Angeline Renee Cook. Adrian Peng Korea. Ben Schindelman. Ben, you have to help me with my child. Blaze Ambrose. Brian Donahue. Brian, Bobby, you're looking great. Brittany Morris Brook. Cameron Smith. C. Grace B. No cheap ticket, that's C. Grace B. Chris Lille. Chris Zucker. David Friskelanti. Darren and Dale Conklin. Don Scheible. Ellen Singleton. There are three sides to every story, Ellen, your side, my side, and the truth. M. Zodiac, Evan Downey. Felicia G. Film it yourself. Frankenstein.

• 1:39:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Half Greyhound. Full Greyhound. Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids. We're gonna touch that magic again, Galen and Miguel. Grace Potter. James McAvoy. Jared, pronounced again. Jason Frankel. J.J. Rapido. Jory Hillpiper. Nothing travels faster than raunchy gossip, Jory.

• 1:40:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Jose Milano Salto Del Giorgio. Love the name, Bobby. Karina Kanaba, Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lazy Freddy, Lena LJ, Lydia Howes, Lydia, I would rather be remembered than be rich. Mark Bertha, Mariposas Humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Nathan Centeno, Rosemary Southwood, Royal Jer, Sadie, just Sadie. Why is it just Sadie? Sadie, why are you alone? Do you want me to come over? Scott O'Shea, Solman Shinani, Steve Winnebauer, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family, the O's sound like O's. There is no spoon. All right, Chris.

• 1:41:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, thank you so much. That was a blast, a great episode. Can you tell the fine folks? Or should I tell the fine folks? Who should tell the fine folks what we have next?

• 1:41:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Why don't you tell them what's coming up next?

• 1:41:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Next week, I am erasing Lizzie from my mind because we are covering Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the indie darling romance movie that taught us all that love is not worth having. Thank you, Charlie Kaufman. We are very excited to dive into that very surreal movie that I think is a nice sister film in some ways to the movie that we started off the year with, Memento.

• 1:41:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Chris Winterbauer?

  So we look forward to seeing y'all for Eternal Sunshine in a week.

• 1:41:42Lizzie Bassett?

  See you then.

• 1:41:49Speaker 07

  To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, whatwentwrongpod.com for more info. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winnebauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.