Barry DillerThe book tour of his memory recently published “Who Know” struck the 92Y in New York, where moderator Anderson Cooper asked Diller during a Q&A to reveal “the most coked-up shoot” which he ever visited during his mandate as CEO of Paramount Pictures. The former director of the studio had the answer almost immediately: Robert Altman “Papeye(1980).
“Set of coked-up movies?” Oh, “Popeye”, replied Diller (via Weekly entertainment). “By the way, you can watch it. If you watch ‘Popeye’ ‘, you watch a film that – you think about it in the thing they did about recording speeds, 33 (rpm), it doesn’t matter. It is a film that extends to 78 rpm and 33 speeds.”
Diller was chief of Paramount Pictures from 1974 to 1984. His illustrious mandate at the studio included successful successful films such as “Saturday Night Fever”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Grease” and “Beverly Hills Cop”, among other classics. But it is the “Popeye” of Altman who wins the distinction of having the most “coked-up” shooting.
“You could not escape it,” said Diller about drug use on the film set. “They actually shipped in car cans at the time. Film cans would be returned to Los Angeles for a daily processing film. It was shot in Malta. And we discovered that the film cans were in fact used to send cocaine as a set. Everyone was stoned.”
Robin Williams Played as the main character of “Popeye”, who marked the first actor role on the big screen of the actor after having made a name for himself in the successful television series “Happy Days” and his spin-off “Mork & Mindy”. The film played ordinary Altman Shelley Duvall in the role of Olive Oyl. The film was a success at the box office with $ 60 million worldwide (not adjusted for inflation), almost double its production budget. Critics, however, have been mixed.
Variety written in his original “Popeye” examination: “It is more than the praise of saying that” Popeye “is far, much better than it was, given the treacherous challenge it has presented. But avoiding the disaster is not necessarily the same as success.
