Here's something from Pleiades that you ought to check out.
Wyler, a notoriously difficult director, was one who secretly relished the responsibility and autonomy he was given by the Mirisch brothers, Relyea says.
As Wilder wrote in his 1970 book, The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily: "All the Mirisch Company asks me is the name of a picture, a vague outline of the story and who's going to be in it. The rest is up to me. You can't get any more freedom than that."
Relyea worked with Wyler on The Children's Hour starring Audrey Hepburn, and during the halcyon days was assistant director on such films as The Great Escape and West Side Story. He left to work as an independent producer and watched as the Kerkorian-led MGM and UA was sucked into one of Hollywood's greatest disasters, Heaven's Gate.
Michael Cimino's 1980 film followed his stunning The Deer Hunter and he made it with all the hubris of an over-praised talent. His indulgences bankrupted UA and spawned one of cinema's best books, Steven Bach's Final Cut.
"I just couldn't believe it," Relyea says of Cimino's scandal.
"It's so wrong because you are owed responsibility. If William Wyler can adhere to that, then everybody should respond to that.
"To think of the damage, observing from the outside, when you take a fine studio like that and take it under with one picture."
Relyea returned to MGM-UA in the '90s to supervise films including Tomorrow Never Dies, The Birdcage, Get Shorty, Legally Blonde and Rob Roy. The business has changed dramatically in his 50-year career.
"I don't know what the word studio means now," he says.
"I'm not sure any of them will exist (in the future). There's going to be distribution companies with names you and I recognise but I think in terms of a studio being run by an Irving Thalberg or Jack Warner, I don't think that's going to come back, I'm afraid.
"Sony and Time Warner or Transamerica, they're not in the motion picture business, they're in a lot of businesses," he adds.
"I don't want to sound like they were the good old days because they weren't always good, but I'm just wondering if when one guy was saying, 'My gut instinct tells me this could make a good picture,' we weren't getting better product. That's what history tells me."
I cut and pasted that bit because it shows the double edged sword of letting directors have control. Some of them are Willie Wyler, some of them are Michael Cimino. The hyper-industrialised model has yielded a non-stop procession of comic book fodder with built-in audiences and therefore minimal risk taking. I know I took the Oscars to task for not reflecting what the audiences actually thought with their wallets, but you have to say that the film business today is less adventurous than decades ago.
Anyway, this all got me to be thinking...
Back in 1990-1991, US$40million was considered astronomical. Bruce Willis was mercilessly pilloried for his vanity project 'Hudson Hawk', which was a quirky stinker that had that price tag. Within 12months James Cameron would rewrite the budget rule book with 'Terminator 2', which came in at US$120million.
This is back in the day when a big budget movie in Australia were like... err..., there was exactly one: 'Blood Oath', had a fraction of 'Hudson Hawk'. At that point in time, the Australian Industry began its contraction, and under the misguidance of the FFC, proceeded to make quirky movies with no market appeal at about A$2-5million, when the international budgets exploded. You could say it was the moment that Australian cinema got relegated out of the first division of international cinema.
I don't know why people missed that the playing field changed dramatically with the advent of the super-budgets. It seems awfully obvious in retrospect.
Belatedly, 'Australia' went out to the world as the super-budget film from Australia and promptly tanked. Some would say this justifies not making films with huge budgets. I would think it says it jutifies not making films that brown off audiences.
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