Old you is, folks. It's time people paid good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone for tend Podcasting Isn't boring Off, Lee Marman, Ernest mort Knight, Robert Bryan, Jimmy Brown, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Trenny Lopez, Richard Jail, Robert Webber, Lenz Water, Ralph Dirty Dozen in television Metalward from NGA, Hey, folks, woking by a very special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm
your host, Mike White. On this episode, we have Dwayne Epstein back and the Booth. He was on our prime cut episode all those years ago, episode one ten, and he is back with a new book looking at the Dirty Dozen. It is called Killing Generals. The Making of the Dirty Dozen, the most iconic World War Two movie of all times, and let me tell you that it is a terrific book. Dwayne really puts together a
great story about one of the greatest movies. I don't know if it's the most iconic World War two movie of all times, but it's definitely up there. It's one of those books where you sit down and you start to read it and next thing you know, you are fifty pages in, and next thing you know, after that, you are are done reading that book, because it is just a page turner to read all about the background to the movie and how it was actually put together. It was wonderful, highly recommended,
and I hope you enjoy this interview. Did this come out directly from your research on Lee Marvin or did you come to this through another avenue both. The way it happened was Lee Marvin point blank was an unexpected but wonderful
surprise, and its success wells critically and financially. Financially, it made it to number four in the New York canadastseverals was and critically, it won a couple of publishing awards, was one of the Independent Book Awards Book of the Year, It was wonder Forward Magazine's Book of the Year, and it was up for several other awards. But anyway, what happened was in the interim after it came out and it was successful. My agent, a wonderful man
by the name of Mike camel Bag. You don't meet a lot of really decent people in men's life, you meet nice people, good people, schmucks, bad people. But Mike Hammelberg was a true editalemnch. He really was. And what what can happened was we were working on another project, but Mike passed away. A matter of fact, I spoke to him literally the
day before he died. He left a message on my answer machine about the project we would be working on, and I did a proposal, and he called me the day before he had a stroke and he never came out of the comma and passed away. And what he said was what you did here was great. Now the ball is in my park and I got to go out and push it. And he passed away. So I was devastated. But in the interim, without having an agent and not having any real connections
in the publishing world, I was a free fall. Now what happened was the gentleman who published the Marvin's Point Blank was the guy named Tim Shapnell, who is an open minded publisher, independent publisher in the truest sense of the words, company Shaffner Press, and eventually he agreed to publish a biography on Charles Bronson, which was going to be my next project. And in the
interim. I had gathered a whole lot of exclusive information, all kinds of grids that I interviewed people Bronson went to school with close friends, associates, co workers, what have you. And Tim liked the idea. So I was moving forward with that. But then at one point another possibility of a great project came up. So I asked him, can I take a kind of sabbatical on the Bronson book, but I work on something else? And he said okay. And I worked on something else, which I won't go
into because it's still in the work to believe it or not. But once I had it down, I came back to the Bronson project and talked to Tim and said, I'm ready to come back to work on the book. And Tim said, this has done to an email. Tim said, you're gonna have to call him. You have to talk. So I called him and what he said to me was, I've been thinking about it when at the time took off, and I want to move my company into another direction. So what we can do is this, you keep the advance, I'm
canceling the contract. Yeah, So once again I was back in free fall. This was about twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, and I wanted up having to take a day job to pay my bills. You do what you can in the And then an interesting thing happened. There's a gentleman by the name of Lee Sobel who is a literary agent who specializes in nonfiction, specifically retro pop culture, which as if this guy was made for me. And he contacted me, which is really weird. He contacted me and said, I originally
Marvel. What can I like it a lot? Do you need an agent? And I thought, agents don't do that. Writers seek out agents don't necessarily seek out planet generally speaking. And I told him that, and he said, why are writers so cynical? An agent can do what I'm doing? And I thought, I can. Agian is doing what you're doing. There's something not quite on the up and up here. It seemed like a hustle. So I lift them up. I checked them out from ten ways to Sunday. And then I got back to him. When I said,
all right, you know what I need an agent? My agent passed away and he knew my AP two. By the way, my Camilo, that's how great Hamilburg rudge, And he said, okay, what you got in mind. So I told him a couple of the ideas that I First off, I said, how about a bio on Charles Bronson? And he went, no way, And I said why, and he goes, One reason is that most of the publishers I deal with aren't interested in celebrity biographies.
You're interested more in books about a specific film. If you want to do a bio on Bronson, you've got a contact a university press, and they don't pay very well. But that I knew anyway. So then we started talking about possible movie ideas, and he said books about movie. The first one he said was point blank, and I said, I liked that movie. It's a good movie, but certainly not a favorite compared to some of
the other film Billie Marvin made. And the very next thing I said was what about a book on the dirty doesn't And he said, yeah, I don't know. I don't I don't know. And then he said he got back to me a couple of days later and he said, you know what, he actually said this to me, I'm a fool. I don't know what I'm talking about. Apparently, a book on the dirty doesn't like just work you think you can get a proposal to me, Yeah, I'm gonna work on it, and so I did. Now, this is the amazing
part, actually part of the whole thing sound amazing so far. But he says to me, get me a proposal and I'll shop it around. And I did. Now, while he was shopping it around, my landlord decided to fumigate our building because we had a problem with termites. Next timing right, So I was out of the apartment for three to four days, and we had been contacting each other and usually through video place or my phone. But while I was out of the apartment, I wasn't able to check my
email. Then I went to the library my girlfriend. I went to the library so I can plug in and check my email, and I got four messages from him, the last one going where are that? F are you in capital letters? So I answered, and what I got was a response that said and I looked at the previous messages too, and the previous messages were like, they're offering this much, they're offering that much. And then by the last one where he went where they yep are you? They had
gone their limit. They wouldn't go any higher. So it was a good thing. I was at home because he asked me, I need you to tell me yesterday do we take this deal or not? And I went leave take the deal, and then he got back to me two seconds later when he said, we're on and I'm in the library, a library, and I'm hooting and hollering and everybody's staring at you. It's like a scene right out of a movie. So that's how the Brook Killing Generals came to be.
When was the first time you saw that? Dirty doesn't know? What did you think? I'm old enough to. I'm not old enough to. Actually I was, but I didn't. I was about six or seven when it came out. The first time I saw it was on television. When it first aired on TV. I don't know if you remember this or not. I don't even know how old you are. When they first aired it. They used to air it in two parts, CBS Thursday Night Movie and CBS Friday Night. And even when I watch it now, I can remember
vividly when both parts started and ended. And then years later I got to see it in an repertory theater here in la and back in the eighties and nineties, used to be a lot of it before I used to go to those theories once or twice a week, and I think it was up to New Beverley where they showed it and show in the big screen. As much as I remembered and loved the movie, it blows your way on the big screen. You were overwhelmed by it. And that's when I first saw it,
and I'm watching it ever since. And by the way, even if you don't want to see it, it's kind of inevitable if you're watching TCM on any given night, because I guess it was and it is. When it ted Turner's favorite films, it doesn't have gone with the win because they show it constantly, and I think that's a good thing. I really do watching every time as Yeah, it's funny. As we're recording this, it's
just a few days after D Day. It's week after Memorial Day, and they were playing World War Two movies all day on Memorial Day on TCM, and right there smack in the middles the Dirty, doesn't you bet you. I knew they would even before I saw the list, and because I'm signed up to their emailing list. Once I saw they were going to do it the Memorial Day. At the time, I was like, all right, where's the dirty Yeah, they gotta have it. And I saw it.
It was on Monday, ten thirty in the morning on the Pacific standard time, and so it was in the middle of the afternoon back Eave. So to my mind, other than primetime, it was a perfect time to show it. Oh yeah. And I was sitting there watching at the entire right on. It's got some of the best stuff, especially the best bringing together of the team and exploring that dynamic, and then the whole thing of Lee Mervin breaking them down, putting them back together. That magical moment where John
Casavetti's refuses to shave, that really just brings the whole team together. It's magical, boy. I love that, Franco. It's one thing. It was such an influential movie. At the time it came out. MGM was hoping it would be successful. They had no idea it would be as successful as it was. It was the number one box office hit in the country of the year was released, and it was a pretty seminal year in terms
of great films. There was a sea change in American filmmaking. In the heat of the night, cool Hen Luke to graduate Bonnie and Clyde all came
out the same year. And what's interesting is the influence of that film exists to this day, by the way, which I won't go in through anything moment, but what I find interesting is anything that's ever either either in homage to The Dirty Dozen or sometimes an out mount rip off, they all seem to miss one important factor, which is the main thing that made the film successful. Have been warm movies before, there have been warm movies since.
There certainly was warm movies during the time The Dirty doesn't came out. But what made The Dirty doesn't stand out? It was not necessarily at the premise, but it was so character driven, really character driven. Even the smallest role practically had an important backstory, and we knew who these people were. And they forgot that over time. That they even made a couple of TV
movie sequels, and they made that mistake. They thought it was more about the outrageousness of a plot, like in the first TV movie sequel, they tried to save Hitler's life because it would prolong the war too long. Hitler was killed. This is stupid, I'm sorry, and other examples like that. But The Dirty doesn't even the minor characters, the one they called the Bottom six, even they had moments. And the other thing about the film
that I loved was the effect it had on every single person's career. Everybody from director Robert Aldridge and producer Ken Hyman, whom my interview by the way, he's still alive, to meeting man Lee Marvin, all the way down the cast list. Everybody's career either exploded or was launched by and there is a difference by The Dirty Dozen, and I can give you example after example.
It was amazing the effect it had on everybody's career. There's the whole just the Dirty Dozen themselves, along with of course Lee Mervin, but then all the other people around them, like Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy distellar cast
all the way through. George Kennedy never really had a leading role until after The Dirty Dozen, and rather ironically, John Cassavettis was the only member of the cast who got an OSCAR nomination for Best Supporting Actor Kennedy book rather ironic, but once The Dirty Dozen came out, George Kennedy started playing leads in character leads, but leads casser Vettis didn't want to do The Dirty Dozen.
But he talked into it by Ken Hyman and really not only resurrected his career John Cassavettis, it saved his career for a reasoning that I go into in the book. Cassavettis was basically blacklisted because of a series of events that took place for another film he had made, and as he put it, he couldn't get into a Looney Tunes cartoon if you wanted to. Ken Hyman approached
him. Cassavetties reluctantly agreed because Ken Hyman said, look, I know you're working on a movie of your own, and you run out of money. Make The Dirty Dozen and you could use that money to finish your film.
And that's how we talked him into it, the movie Cassavetties was working on with Faces, and he did, and the end result was John Cassavetties became the father of American independent filmmakers because from there after Faces, his career as a filmmaker took off, and it started a process he did for the rest of his life. He would do a movie for the money and use the money to make the movie he wanted to make, which is what a lot
of filmmakers do now. He was the first. He made Rosemary's Baby after The Dirty Dozen, and he hated it because you couldn't stand working at roll with Laski, which is the opposite of working with Robert Aldrin. He loved working with Audrey. And here's another example. Robert Audrey is the king of
the Maverick filmmakers. And there was this rumor that existed for a long time that the reason why he didn't get a Best Director nomination for The Dirty Dozen was because he didn't want to change the end of the film, that ultra violent explosion of the Chateau. I asked Ken Hyman if that was true, and he said, absolutely not. It's just not true. He told me that Altre didn't get a nomination because he didn't like the Hollywood establishment, and
the Hollywood establishment didn't like him. No matter how successful his films were, he never got a nomination for whatever happened to Baby Jane or Frush Sweet Charlotte, or Kiss Me Deadly or Fly to the Phoenix The Longest Yard. I think I had a great career, but he didn't like Hollywood and he was filmmaking. And he famously said at one point about not getting nominated for The
Dirty doesn't. He said, look, if I made a biblical epic, I wouldn't get nominated, which is an interesting thing for him to say, because he didn't want to make a biblical ethic. It was Solomon Gomorra. Now, after The Dirty Dozen came, it was so successful, he had already had his own production company, and to show you what a liberal he was, the company was called Associates and Alternate. He put the people who worked for him ahead of himself, and the money he got allowed him to
do something he had always wanted to do. He bought his own studio. He had his own production company, but just allowed him to buy a studio where he can film on site. Now, ultimately the studio really didn't work out, but that's another story. For Ken Hyman, who produced The Dirty Dozen, it was so successful it allowed him to become the head of Warner
Brothers Seven Arts. He became the CEO. And it was because of him being the head of Warner By the seven Arts, we got films like a Wild Bunch, We got Paul Newman directing debut Rachel, the launch of Paul Mazerski's film directing career. The tentacle effect that The Dirty Doesn't had on people's careers fascinating to me. Launched Jim Brown's career launched on A Sutherland's career.
Made Charles Bronson a superstar because he stayed in Europe after the movie was over and then went on to make some of the best Bureau of Crime and Western's ever made by anybody, And by the time he came back to the state, he was a superstar. Like I said, it had this wonderful ripple effect for everyone. Now, I know, obviously you've done a lot of research on Bronson. You obviously had done a lot of research and Lee Mervin,
how else are you approaching this? Tell me your methodology of actually doing the research for this project. The main thing I did was approach it as best as I could, because there's information out there that's all over the place, and so I had to get what I could chronologically. And I was extremely lucky in that a friend of mine who's also a fiction writer film history.
Her name is Beverly Gray. She did a wonderful bio on Ron Howard used to work for Roger Corman, and she wrote a book about that. But she also wrote a book called Seduced by Missus Robinson the effect the graduate had on a generation, and I used that book as a kind of a template about how to write the dirty doesn't. And ultimately, because we're friends, I had told Beverly what I was working on and she said to me,
oh, really, that sounds like a great subject. By the way, did you know I did an interview with the author of the novel, E. M. Nathanson. Now Nathanson died in twenty sixteen, okay, so whatever I could find on him was peace meal. And I said, did you get this interview published? And she said, no, it never came to pass. Would you like it? And I went, Beverly,
I think I love you. So she did, and it round up becoming the best jumping off point you can imagine, because he talked so candidly to her for seven hours that it gave me the entire genesis of the project. And he went on and all the way up to projects he was working on shortly before he passed. So that was the best jumping off point I could get. It put me in the direction of where to go with anything and everything else. And the way the novel came about is one of my favorite
stories, believe it or not. It involved, of all people, the king of sexploitation, Rush Meyer, which just amazed me, and it was incredible. You know, he was often called the King of the leader. R russ Meyer was friends with Mick Nathanson. That's what friends and family called it. Mick. He hated the name Irwin and who could blame him? A matter of fact, at one point he even tried to legally change his
name. But I don't remember why. It didn't happen to any event when I think, I'm not positive, but I think they might have known each other in the service just slightly. You know, Nathanson was living in New York. He decided to move to LA and when he moved to LA, he looked up russ Meyer, and Nathanson's son told me that Meyer and his wife at the time would come over to their house and put gin and cocktail
whatever. And at one point during a conversation, Nathanson was working on a project involving the Navy and some scandal involving some officers who had done something illegal whatever. And when he told that to russ Meyer, Meyer said, interesting, reminds me of the dirty doesn't. And Nathanson said, when he told me that and the story surrounding it, he goes, the hackles on the back of my next stood up, which is why I named that chapter that,
and russ Meyer proceeded to tell him about the Dirty Doesn't. The story goes when russ Meyer was in the service, he was a combat photographer in a unit under patent of all People, and he was assigned to go to a military prison and photograph these gentlemen who had decided that they were calling themselves or the guards had called them the Dirty Dozen, and they were being trained
for a mission overseas behind enemy lines. And rush Meyer took their photos, shot some film live action action, but yeah, film, and turned it in to his superiors. And he came back about a month later, curious to find out where they weren't what happened to because they weren't there anymore, And the commanding officers said, oh, they went on the mission and they were all killed. And then rush Meyer decided, that's the case. I
got to find out what happened in my film. So he did a kind of a trail to find out what happened or that film, and everywhere he went he was either stonewall or sent somewhere else and told that we don't know where that is. So he took that story to Nathanson, and Nathan decided, whatever I'm working on now, Because he was a professional writer, he worked for some newspapers and magazine and he goes, whatever I'm working on now, I'm dropping it and I'm going to focus on the Dirty Dozen. He
spent the next two years looking to find what rush Meyer had done. And he had access to the Pentagon Archives, the National Archives, the Quantico Archives in Virginia, military assignments to what have you. And he went two years searching for all this and came up with nothing. There was no record of anyone. Now, even when it comes to top secret information, it means that exists. And he had top secret clearance, and he never found anything.
We know about classified and he classified stuff now because they're the former president and he would have been able to access it, but he never found anything.
So ultimately, but what he did do was in the research he was doing, he discovered the transcripts of many military trials and he found out how these trials went, what has been were convicted for, how they attempted to defend themselves, and he went through the psychiatric record of these men with the help of another friend of his who was a military psychiatrist, who gave him the records and the transcripts to go through to make notes, and so consequently,
at some point he decided, you know what, I'm going to write a work of fiction. I'm going to base it on some factual events I'm aware of, but otherwise this is a complete work of fiction. And I discovered where he got some of what he got. It's fascinating. One of my favorite things about what he wrote was in the book, the character of Maggot is one of the more interesting characters in the film. In the book,
he's actually three different characters. There's a character who is a Southern bigot racist, there's a character who is a sexual psychopath, and there is a character who's a religious fanatic. Three different characters. When they wrote the screenplay by Nunnie Johnson and Lay, it was revised by Lucas Heller. They decided
to make it one guy. And what amazed me was when you watched the movie, you'd never know it. Telly Savalas plays that guy so believably that you can believe the sex perbet, racist religious pig is all one guy. So strange. It's interesting too. Mathanson told Beverley where the character of Maggot, because Maggot in the book is just a murderous bigot, And it was based on a real person. And they actually made a movie about this incident.
There was a town. It was called Phoenix City, either Alabama or Arkansas, and it was near a military installation fort somewhere and I don't know. And it was a wild West, scandalous written, lawless town, prostitution, gambling, murder. In fact, the da who was hired to clean up the town and was elected shortly before he took off as he was murdered. And they made a movie out of it, and it was called Phoenix City Story. And it's a great movie because it just pops. It was
me in the fifty but it goes like this. And the character John Larch, great character actor, the character he played in the movie, he was the basis for Maggott. He was a torpedo for one of the gambling bosses and anybody who didn't fall in line, John Lark's character took care of him. So that's how it was based on the fact interesting stuff. I think Valas is just oh another just stellar performance. One of my favorite things about
him in that movie. Jim Brown wrote his autobiography. When they went to the screening of the film and after tell Us of Villas is bumped off by Jim Brown, he was sitting next to Jim Brown and tell Us elbowed him and went, I'm out of the movies over and he got up and walked out. Isn't that great? Another man had a famous ego? But that that, to me is amazing. He missed the conclusion of the climat but
you probably did because he wasn't there for that. So anyway, I thought it was pretty cool that interview with the author almost false to your laugh. Amazing you get to talk with at least one of the producers. Who else did you talk with for the book? Oh got lucky. The film was made over fifty years ago, so there weren't a whole lot of interviews I could have done. I did get to interview Donald Sutherland were still with us. Oh wow, you managed to make it past this person. Huh.
I sent her my resume and my bio and she said, I'll have to let mister Sutherland know, and I don't know when I'll go back to me. I don't think he'll be interested in this ultimately, I guess. When she did talk to Sutherland, surprised her. She said, to me, believe it or not, mister Sutherland will indeed be interested. However, he cannot talk to you directly. I don't know if he couldn't or she wouldn't let him. She said, you submit me some questions and I'll send it
to him. I'll send it down to him, which is what I did, and he allowed me one follow up questions. I wanted to do more, but no, he's done it not And then when the book came out, I contacted her and said, would you allow me to send a copy of the book to Donald Sutherland? And she went, yes, send it to me and I'll send it to him, and that's exactly what I did.
So that worked out. Now, when you asked me about who else I was able to talk to, one of the things I wounded up doing was when I worked on Lee Marvin point Blank, there were still some coworkers that were still alive at the time that I was able to talk to, and naturally in Lee Marvin point Blank. I wrote about The Dirty Dozen, and one of the people I spoke to was Point Walker at the time. Another wound up being, as you probably are made aware of when you read
the book, a gentleman who told me some of the best anecdotes. The guy named Bob Phillips now or Robert Phillips in his credit. I got to call him Bob because he liked me and I liked him. But what wound up happening was I met him to talk about Lee Marker, and he worked with Lee on several films. Dirty Doesn't, but he worked with him on The Dirty Does. In the March, we went to lunch. We wounded up finishing lunch, going out into the parking lot and talking for another couple
of hours. What happened was I was with him about twenty minutes and he's telling me some stories, and twenty minutes into it, Bob says to me, you know there were two bad guys in that movie The Dirty Dushan said, yeah, Robert Ryan as Colonel Everett Dasher Breed. But who was the other one? And then he looked at me and he smiled, and he goes, do I look familiar? And I didn't know who he was, and I went, oh, you were a corporate margin, weren't you.
And they didn't like that. And then he got a big grin and he said, yeah, I considered myself the other heavy in the film. And from there the stories took off and he was a fascinating man. He left us, I think it was in nineteen ninety nine or two thousand, but what a resume he had. He was from football, a pro football player. He was a self defense instructor in the Marine during World War Two.
He was Adonie Stevenson's personal bodyguard. He was an LA police detective whose main source of information was Johnny Stampanado, which she loved that name, the guy who was stabbed at that by Lanta Turner's daughter, and all kinds of great background. And when he got the role in The Dirty Dozen to play Corporate
Morgan, the script he had read. Morgan was a bigger part. He was on screen, but he's still on screen a lot because he's in the background, but he doesn't have a whole lot of dialogue, and that really pissed him off. But he was going to do the movie anyway, and consequently he ended up making a little bit more money, because as the way Ken Hyman said it to me was that Bob Phillips served a dual purpose. He was the character of Corporate Morgan, and he was also Lee Marvin's bodyguard.
Now, that was the term that Ken Hyman leaves. When I talked to Bob Phillips, he said, bodyguard my ass. I was Lee Marvin's babysitter. I was the guy who had to make sure he showed up the work every day and showed up sober. Now, a couple of the stories he told me went into Lee Marvin point plank. The overwhelming majority of stuff
he told me didn't, but they went into killing generals. And matter of fact, one of my favorite quotes of his was something he said to Army Archer while the film is in production that I wound up using at the chapter title. It was Bob Phillips saying, I guess he was pissed off his role was cut back. He wrote that Charles Bronson has more lines on his face than I have in this movie. So I love that when Bronson confronted him, and when did you really say that? In Bob Phillips, Army
Archer made that up. You know, the stories he told me having to be leave babysitter. Most of them are hysterical, some of them are tragic and pointed. And the thing is hecaused his character didn't go on the mission. At the end of the film, Richard Jacob does boss Head MP, but because Bob Phillips didn't go on the mission, his time in the movie
was done and he went back to Hollywood. The movie wasn't quite done, and that meant Lee Marvin didn't have a babysitter, which also meant when they were shooting the end of the movie, Bronson was quite anxious to get back to Hollywood so he can marry his fiance, Joely Iray. They weren't married there and the last day of filming and once Aldred said cut, Bronson was going to be on a plane back to la What happened was they were waiting
for League. They were waiting for Lee, and they were waiting for Lee, No Lee Marvin to be found. Ronson was getting beyond pistol ken. Hyman told me, I had a pretty good idea of where Lee was, so he goes. I jumped in my limo, drove to this bar called the Oh. It had a really Olgravia or something like that, and it was in London because the movie was shot on the outfits and limbo, and it was very famous because apparently that's where the English Great Train Robbery had been
planned, was in this pub, so it had a reputation. Hyman said, when I got there, Lee was on the floor happily singing to himself, which of course meant he was blato, so he goes. I picked him up, poured him into the limo and started shoveling coffee down a stroke and then the time it took back to get back to location, and Lee began sobering up. But when he got when he fell out of the limo, Ken Hymen said, Charlie took one look at him and went, Lee,
I'm gonna fucking kill you. And Marvin was all smiles and with Charlie, what's the problem. And then Ronson started to move on Marvin and Ken Hyman got between them and said, please, Charlie, don't hit him in the face. We got to do close ups on him yet, so eventually Ronson simmered down and they got the shot. And what's interesting is the sequence, and I think if you watch the movie the sequence they were waiting to shoot was having that half track go over the other drumming car and over the
bridge. Okay, if you watch that scene close, watch Marvin try to shift. Okay, it's interesting. It takes them several tries, and I think that's why he actually did drop har But a matter of fact, I found up the first time he tried it, he was given lessons. He was like piece of cake, no big deal. He ran it into a wall. It took somewhere lesson and like I said, that happened because Bob
Phillips wasn't around it. Amore. He became very good friend for John Cassavettis, and when Phillips arrived in London, he was extremely upset about what was going to happen to his character. He did do some voice over work in the film too, when the dozen are grumbling about this side or the other. But cass he told Cassavettis how pissed off he was that Cassavettis gave him
some very safe advice. He said, look, I know you're upset, and you have reason to be upset, but do yourself a favor if anybody asks you how this movie is going tell him it's great. Tell him it's the best thing you ever did. Why Because they're not going to know for another year until the movie comes out. If you tell him it's great and they don't know anything about it, it'll get you more work. And Bob Phillips said, that was probably the smartest thing anybody ever said to me,
because that's exactly what happened. And Cassavettis was no fool. He knew how the game was played. And one of the things I loved about, aside from the fact that he's my favorite thing in the film. Look, I love Lee Marvin and he was great, but Cassavettis commits grant theft, larceny. He just steals that movie. He's incredible and I love finding out. He had told a biographer that he's said, I didn't think I'd get along with Robert Aldred, but believe it or not, I got along break He's
the best director other than myself, I ever worked with. And he said the reason why was he called He said he was more than a coach. He said he called his cast the monsters. Be like during rehearsal, all right, monsters around the table, and every time we do the read through, Casservetti said, I had no fear. Anytime he wanted somebody to do something or come up with an idea for something, Cassavetti said, I'd shoot my hand up right away. I'll do it. You want somebody, I'll
do it. And he said, and all the other dogs that would be grumbling under their breath. But many of the things Casservettis did on screen were complete improvisations. He'd work it out in rehearsal, but it wasn't in the script necessarily. And Lee Mormon had said to another cast member, he loved working with John because he goes. John plays his part so well. He gives me so much to work with. It makes my job easier. I can go with whatever he's giving me, and it winds up being brilliant.
And if you think of some of the scenes they together, you can see it when Marvin interviews cassavetties in the cell at the beginning of the movie, and Cassavetti says that great lascivious laugh, and he's had you a general, yet out of general, because only a general can grant my reprieve. And
you see Marvin Rolla's eyes and go look stupid. It was the way they played off each other that was so brilliant, and Cassavetties know it and so did Marvin, and it worked great, and Marvin was the same way at certain moments in the movie. Jim Brown was the one who said in his autobiography that Cassavetties was our spiritual leader. He was a great little mentor, because whatever mood he was in that day was the way Franco wasn't the way we all were. Okay, he goes, If Franco was going to be
mischievous, John was mischievous, and so were we all. If Cassavetties was moody, Franco was moody, and we were moody. We all took our queue from him. He goes. He was a great natural teacher. And I think that rubbed off if you remember that scene where Triny Lopez is supposed to climb the rope and he can't do it, and then which by the way, he's right out of the book. They changed the at certain aspects of it that it wasn't the yeminager was another character. But anyway, and
I can't make it major. And then Lee Marvin cuts the end of the rope right by his feet with the machine gun, and you see him scramble up the rope and then Marvin says, all right, who's next, and Cassavetties goes partially improvised line. He goes that you said Mayonaise was the only one's supposed to climate get to the top of the shot too, by the way him calling ms Mayonnaise, great touch all Cassavetties, and Marvin holds his gun on his hip and the way he says this line not written this way.
He has written this way, but you can't put this in the script of how it's supposed to be played. He rolls his eyes and he goes west to pause him and gets call before he makes it to the top of the Chataul just really making fun of Cassavetties. And it's brilliant doing this effeminate voice because I don't have time for this. There's a brilliant way to do
that scene. And then he tells Clinton Walker, one of the few references in the film to Walker's character being a Native American, saying, all right, posy, let's see some of that apatche know how that rope and then he'll try to Captivady to go all right, Franco, you're next, just really sticking it to him. A lot of great moment and like I said, making my point, it's about character, not the mission, although the
mission itself is pretty impressive. He talked about how this would play on TV over two nights, and I can see that because it's a long movie. But did they have to pad it out at all to make it fit with commercials? Did they have any scenes that were shot and never put back in the movie or just played for TV? First of all, they used to show a lot less commercials in those days. That's one thing. There was usually only one or two sponsors for a given program. Now there's like thousands,
especially on cable. But that aside. When I saw it theatrically many years later, I think it was like teams appointments. To my mind, I don't remember them. I hadn't cut anything, and it was done in such a way it isn't long movie, longer than I after to feel like that. And it was two and a half hours. So if you cut that completely in half in a two hour time slot, making it a kind of a four hours, than then the extra thirty minutes are just commercials.
So that's how they did it, and also too in part two they also had to do a kind of a revamp of a minute or two a book from the night before, and then you would always go and now part two of the Dirty Dozen. I do know for a fact that because for several reasons, there were major changes made in the script that was cut for purposes of censorship and also cut the purposes of time. Because the movie was running along very it ran way over schedule and way over budget, which was something
that Jim jam was very fearful of. It's just going to pay out somehow, and so much so. It's also the reason why Jim Brown quit the NFL and was supposed to go back to the sixty seven season and go into
the preseason workouts. He was only twenty nine, but he retired from the NFL, and he held the press conference during the making of the movie saying why which that's the kind of publicity you can't buy because I'm sure people who may have seen that press conference on the last half of the news but thinking
how great a movie must this be? If the greatest running back in the history of NFL is willing to quit to finish the film, so there was that, and in the script, as in the novel, there were many changes made it which I point out in the book, taking a hit on the book criticism about me summarizing the novel to make the point about what's different
from the book from the film. That's why I did it. And there were several people who said things like, oh, read the beginning, read like a book report, but then it gets exciting, or I didn't this, now I got to read the novel, no schmuck. You don't have to read the novel now. I just summarized did and I summarized it with the intent of showing what the the film was different. Now having said that,
there were two female characters that were in the book. One of them was a major character in the book later completely taken out, as well as the other character who was a barmaid girlfriend of Major Reisman, who's a captain in the book by the way, Captain Reisman, and they cut her out
completely. That was for censorship reasons. The censors read the script and when you can't have this, and it was sixty it was going to be released sixty seven, so the production code was like in Flux there were changes,
but there were still rules they had to apply. And what's funny it was the very next year, in sixty eight, is when they came out with the gpg r X, But in sixty seven it didn't exist yet, and any time the barmaid whose name was Tess, was mentioned, the censors just went not, no, you had because whenever she's in the screen screenplay, she's having sex with Reisman, and at one point I think the censor wrote he can't be her again in a memo. And there was another character who
was a major plot point named Lady Margot. She's in the very beginning of the book and she's throughout the book, and she's an important character and anything about her. She is a rich British widow who owns the property that the dirty doesn't here training them, and Reichman has to make nice with her and try to make nice with her, and he doesn't succeed because she's very cold and meant to him, but she's forced to because of the War Department,
and she tries everything she can to get back at Richman. One of the things she does is in the book she's having an affair with Colonel Breed, so One of the things they never explained in the movie is how does Breed know what the compact is when he evages He finds out in the book from Lady Margot because she's sleeping with him. Yeah, things like that. All of that was completely taken out of the film. There were sections where it's in there, but with the revise script they decided to cut it out,
and Aldridge really didn't have a problem with that. In fact, there's a memo of him writing to Ken Himan about how we're over budget and we're overscheduled. We got to start doing some cutting. You just have to, and anything that's not important to the plot, we've got to go. Now. In the sequence where they're at Breed's parachute school, okay, other than the scene where Bronson gets beat up into latrine, everything else was cut out.
Also when they first got there, Donald Sulvin imitates to general okay, everything else was cut out, And there was a whole lot more to that sequence. There were seen a Breed making fun of Reisman in front of the Dirty Dozen, Reichman getting back at him, all this other stuff. It was
all cut out, all of which were also in the book too. Now Aldridge also wanted that scene of Bronson getting beat up cut out too, but Heyman made the point, obviously, you can't do that because that's when the dozen't decide first of all, that they can't trust Reisman, but it also leads into the scene when Breed comes into the compound, they see the two guys who beat up Waterslaw and go Hey, Reisman was on the up and up all along at that he wasn't in on this, so that's why it
was left in. But all the other stuff that was all cut out, and because of that, there are certain moments in the movie that Dale Die. You know who he is, okay. Dale Die is a military advisor to motion pictures and TV ever since the early eighties, and he helps filmmakers make movies war films more believable, which they really hadn't been in the past. He worked on Saving the Private Ryan, He Will Come Platoon, worked on a lot of movies making them more believable, and he loves the dirty
doesn't. He's on record as saying how much he goes lean Robert can read
the phone book, I'm gonna watch this movie couldn't matter. But he was extremely critical of the filmmakers and what they did to make the film, and it's all in the DVD commentary, and he points out some very good obvious mistakes, things like during the raid on the chateau, why are they wearing shiny combat helmets, It doesn't make any sense, and things like that, and also about some of the equipment they were using being too modern, things
like that, and that's all valid, But I had my own problems with the film that for a long time went unanswered. One of the biggest things most fans of the film just scratched their heads over to this day is what happened to Posy. They never show what happened to him, but they do show him on the crawl at the end of the film about everybody who would die, so clearly he's dead. But because they don't show him die, many fans thought, hey, Posy survived. No, he didn't survive.
There was a thing that was written up. They show everybody else being killed, but they didn't show Posy being killed because Posy had a specific way of dying that Clint Walker was very much looking forward to. In that it was they took two different scenes from the book and put it together. At the end of the chateau explosion to a posy and what he was gonna do when he was up in the machine gun nest for Bravos when they looked like they
were being overrun by Germans. He rips off his shirt, he smears himself with wallpaint, grabs his grease gud and just starts shooting and screaming like Rambo
and until he shot down. They were planning on doing that, Clint Walker said, I rehearsed it and everything, but then because Robert Aldwards knew that they were short on time, he decided, we're gonna shoot Jim Brown throwing those green age into the event, and we're gonna have to not be able to show what happened to Hint Walker, because after what happens to Jim Brown, everything else is not the climb actor. And a matter of fact,
that was the main reason why Jim Brown was hired. Alds loved football, but he didn't know Jim Brown could act on that, so he asked Jim Brown's agent. I loved the story. Legendary agent named Phil Gersh who represented Brown in his first film, Everybody Thinks Dirty Doesn't was the film debut. It wasn't it was a western he made a year two before your conscios.
So when Phil Girsh presented Jim Brown to Robert Aldred as a hospible cast member because Sidney Portier passed by the way, Aldred said, look, I know this guy can play football, but what the hell else can he do? And Phil Gurrsh smiled and said he can run faster than any actor you've got, and Aldred said, okay, I think we could do something with that. And when you watch it, he does Another great little side anecdote about Jim Brown was just before they were to shoot that scene, which is really
well done, and everybody's hanging him on. Come on, Jefferson. Just before he was going to do that, he had his own in prov as well. Brown turning to Aldred and he goes, luck, I've had a lot of fun making this movie. But before I throw the grenade, will you let me kill a Nazi? And Altrid goes, You've got one of the best scenes in the movie. Why do you want to kill a Nazi? And he goes, oh, come on, let me kill a Nazi. It'll be fun. And when you watch that scene, just before he
does the run with the grenade. A sniper at the top of the chateau and he shoots down on Brown, and Jim Brown fires at him when he falls through the glass. Then he throws the grenade, so he got to kill a nasty Going back to what you were saying earlier, I really appreciate the way that you summarize the novel and that you gave us that point in comparison. So I thought that the book was put together so well, and I hope overall it's been positive response because it's terrific. I haven't gotten a
whole lot of professional book reviews. I've gotten about three or four, and all of them have been positive. But some of the reviewers on Amazon, who with all due respect, may not be able to read a book too well. But some of them, I'd say maybe two or three at the most. Out of I think twenty physical reviews, not just rating but physical reviews that I got, most of them have been very positive and outstanding,
mostly five star reviews. To trying to get more reviews, I got one from the Library Journal and I got one from the Washington Examiner, very positive reviews. They got it, they understood what I was trying to do. In the first couple of chapters, I started the book with a biography of Nathanson, which I think is important to do because you got to know where the author's coming from, working throughout how he got to write The Dirty Doesn't. And by the way, like I mentioned before, I didn't do his
son, Michael Nathanson. He was a published author himself, and a lot of people don't know this, but in the eighties he wrote other stuff mcknathanson, other novels with varying degrees of success. But I think it's like nineteen eighty three eighty four, he actually wrote a sequel to The Dirty Doesn't, and it was called A Dirty Distant War. And as far as writing goes and story, it's better than The Dirty Does It, truly is. I
read it. It's incredible and the premises this he told an interviewer at the time. I think it was at the La Times that when he came up with the idea for it, it was based on the adventure years of a philosopher doctor who had gone to Vietnam and what his experiences were, and he goes, I found that fascinating, and what he decided to do was write a novel about our entrance into Vietnam. And it takes place during World War Two. It's not before the French got there or anything like that. It's
during World War two. And he said, I was sick and tired of John Reisman. I didn't want to go anywhere near John Reisman. But he goes the way this story was playing out, I realized John Reisman is the perfect league. He's the guy to play this, to be in the story, the Catalystican story. And so consequently, the many of the Dozen who didn't die in the novel came back in Dirty Distant War to help Reisman on his mission. Now Reisman's mission in the novel The Dirty Dozen, he's not
in the Army. He is in the Army, but he's in a special unit of the OSS. And if you know anything about the OSS, they're actually the precursor of the CIA. It was started by wild Bill I mean escapes me. Robert de Niro played it in a movie, and so they're all about undercover works and the Nathanson said, the reason why he made Reisman in the OSS is because it made it more believable, Because he said the US Army would never come up with something like this, it would have to
be something really subversive and covert. And so John Reisman's job in A Dirty Distant War is to go into Southeast Asia under the guise of another mission, but his real mission is to find out where are the Chinese, where are the French, and where the Cambodians in Southeast Asia? But then it was called Indo China. Where do they stand in terms of who side they're on
during the war, because they're getting mixed. And when he goes there and he starts finding stuff out, one of the people he encounters is this little revered man who had done time in a Chinese pow camp and he had done this, that and the other, and whatever adventure he had been in. He changes his name and at the time Reisman meets him and bonds with him. He asked him what his name was, and he tells him, my name is Vietnam means for everyone's uncle. And so Reisman asked him what does
that mean? And this gentleman goes, people call me ho chi men. And after I read that, I looked it up and apparently Nathanson did his homework. That's true. And from there it takes off into all these amazing adventures that are very believable. And as a friend of Nathanson told me who I also went into a Guynan Frank McAdams, He goes, when I read the novel, you do this sometimes when you read something that really gives you pause, he goes. I closed the book and sat on my couch for
thirty minutes just staring at the back cover. It affected me that much. And it's funny once he told me that I did the same. It's really well written, and it ends by letting you know, this is just the beginning. Really well done. There's a lot more to it tells about everybody in the calf. Oh, when you ask me who I interviewed, I also interviewed a gentleman in Colin, Maitland who was one of the dozen in
the lower dozen. Several other people. Dora Riser, who is the only known female in the cash other than the prostitutes they bring in who only have one or two lines. But she's the woman that tell us about his taunt and ultimately kills. I interviewed her great interview talk about ironies. She is
the one who is she's basically a nachi prostitute, right. Or she called it herself a Nazi horror, and the interesting irony is she's a Holocaust survivor, right, And she told me some interesting things about having to play that
character and the way it affected her another person I had interviewed. In terms of the book itself, I think people can still buy it based on however much I just shot my big mouth off because there's a whole a lot of stuff in there that I didn't mention, much of it being Bob Phillips stories about babysitting Lee Marvin. They're great, They're terrific story. They're a lot of fun. Obviously, we want to leave some mystery and try to get some more people to pick up your book. But I did want to ask
you, what are you working on now? Immediately after I turned into the manuscript to Killing Generals, my agent called me up and said, Mazeltop, that's great, congratulations, what's next? What are you gonna do next? So he goes, okay, you got a week and then come back back to me with something. So what I did was we okay. We talked about several possibilities. One of them I thought was really going to happen.
A book about the making of a Hustler now the pol Neman movie. Now, naturally that movie came up about eight years before The Dirty Dozen't, so there's a whole lot less people around now. Piper Laurie, she's still around. I think she's still on her ninety she's still around. I had a contact to talk to her. The guy who wrote, directed, and produced the film, Robert Ross, and his daughter is alive and she was involved
in the filmmaking. I did get to contact her. My agent was friends with the guy who wrote the sequel, Richard Price, an amazing writer. Everything he does is just spectacular. He said, I'll put you in touch with Richard Price, won't you get the proposal together. I did all of that, and because who were gonna write, I was gonna write about the
sequel as well. He had contact with Scorsese, Tom Cruise. We were going to do all of that, and he wanted me to highlight the fact on the cover that Tom Cruise was involved in the film in the sequel, because Tom Cruise is red hot, and I was like, he's always read hot. He never went out of the box office. And I put the whole thing together, kept my fingers crossed and ultimately the publisher who had published The Dirty does in mine. No, I don't think, so that went
to the wayside. Then I talked about the possibility of doing the book on one of my all time favorite films, Sweets Model Success BT Lancaster, Tony Curtiff. God, I love that movie. It's a near perfect film, and it's a gritty New York movies. There's no gangsters, there's no underworld figures, there's no crime story involved other than how crooked the lead characters are. And I put together what I considered to be a really good proposal,
but once again I was told it's too long ago. Nobody really cares. Never mind the fact that the film may have flop when it came out financially, got rave reviews, and more importantly, it is a bona fide cult film. Then it's off the charts. It's incredible anyway, He's the editors still passed out. It wouldn't even bring it up to the editorial board for the publisher that the thumbs up the thumbs down. After that, my editor said to me, my excuse me. My agent said, look, I
know you have favorite films and favorite actors. Why don't you, one of them being, by the way, Burt Lancaster, as I mentioned a moment though, also James Cagney. Oh, that was another possibility. I was thinking about writing a book on White Heat, but I don't know why. This is weird. He was able to get a contract to a book on the making of Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt Hitchcock films from
the forties. I wanted to do White Heat, and he said to me, Hey, that's one of my favorite movies too, But there's nobody around to fortify your research. And I was very disappointed in that. So I tried Lancaster, I tried Cagney. You can try Paul Newman. Then he said, what about Steve McQueen film and An Hour on the Right Track? Because of the three, Steve McQueen is numero always has and I have a specific reason why. Nan He asked me what movies haven't been written about specific
books? And the first one he said, it's how about the Great Escape? But a little bit about five books written about the making of the Great Escape and the actual escape itself, And he goes, how about a bullet went, I mean books have been written about bullet there's actually a lot, and there's actually a book called Bullet McQueen and his Machines. They've actually then
books about the cars in the movie. And he said, ask you what's your all time favorite Steve McQueen movie, And I said Papian And he said, sorry, not going to happen. It's not popular enough. And then he said, let me ask you what was a popular Steve McQueen movie that nobody's written about. And I told him, and he said, that can work. I think we can get this to work. Now. I'm not going to tell you what movie that is, because I don't want to put
the jinks on it. And it's right now currently in the hands of the publisher who likes it and wants me to polish it a little bit more. And so maybe in a month or two i'll get a yea year in a of course, we'd like to think it t a but I think this can work, and if I can, I'm going to tell you the reason, if you don't mind, why I'm such a Stephen queene. Always like him
anyway, even when I was a little kid. But I don't want to go too much into detailed but I had a kind of a rough childhood personally, and part of that was based on the way I was raised. And at one point, a matter of fact, the week the movie came into theaters, it was the summer of seventy three when it came out. Now, I snuck out and I went to see it. And movie affects people emotionally more than a psychologically, or maybe even as much spiritually, but emotionally.
There's that scene in the movie when he's in solitary confinement. Hands down, one of the best pieces of acting I've ever seen. It's not only so believable, it's heart lending. And when he's first in solitary confinement, he jumps up on the bars and whispers, I'm still here. You bastards. Got to me like nothing else. At the end of the movie, when he's on the raft made of coconuts and he looks right in the camera and says, hey, you bastards, I'm still here. That had an
effect on me like nothing else. I got it. It makes me cheer up even now because of what I was going through, and it made me realize things are tough, but if you believe and fight back and don't let them get to you, you will rise, you will survive, and I'm not making this up. I went home that night and I watched The Great Escape. It was on TV that night, and when you see him not quite making the jump over the bob wire and he puts his hands up and
he looks at the Germans and the Nazis and he smiles. He's not giving up. This is not the end of the Cooler Kid. And then about a day or two later, it must have been like Steve McQueen week,
I don't know, it was weird. TV showed the Reavers and there was that great scene in the movie when he tells Mitch Vogel the little kid about how they're gonna steal their grandfather's car and go all the way to miss it to wherever it is they're going, and Mitch Wogel goes, I don't know, Grandpa ain't gonna like this, and Steve McQueen looks at the kid and he goes, I put a lot of story into what your grandpa said.
I do. But if you ever want to reach your manhood, you got to say goodbye to the things you know and hello are the things you don't. I swear to God he was talking to me he was because he was probably looking at the cab anyway, and it was like some kind of disciple or like apostle or something. And then everything I've ever seen him in since may not affect me the same way, but he's never let me down.
In terms of an actor. Now, I know everybody thinks of them, those who like him and remember and think of him as the King of cool, which to a certain extent he was. I won't take that away from especially in his most famous film, but that's not the Steve McQueen. I loved the Steve McQueen who reflects what he really was as a person and the
way he grew up. Because I know he came from a really rough childhood from what i've read, and I've read a lot about him, as well as other film stars other than maybe Carrie Grant, Charlie Chapter and Marilyn Monroe. I think Steve McQueen probably had the worst childhood I've ever read about, and nowhere near I didn't have that kind of childhood, thank god, but
it was pretty bad. And knowing that and seeing what he did with certain characters, I would always notice he's not playing He's playing the character yet, but he showed to play that character because it's in his life. He knows what that was like. He knows what it was like to be beaten, to be sent away, to be put in the prison camp which he was as a child, to be hungry on the streets, all that stuff, and it's in those performances help us for heroes. Maybe The Rain Must Fall,
Soldier in the Rain, Love with the Property Stranger. A lot of the films that aren't as well known, those are, in my opinions, his best performances The Sand Pebbles, which he got an a combination for, but it's not really remembered as much, and that's unfortunate because that's why I'm a Steve McQueen fan. I love Burt Lancaster because he was just so bigger than life. And I got to meet him once that was not only meet him, but talked to him a monel for twenty minutes, and it was
a movie bucket list moment. With James Cagney, it was because he was the little guy who always was tougher than anybody else in the movie. And I'm a little guy. And he had said in his contract that every movie he make made. He could never hit a guy who was the same side. You always had to hit a guy that was bigger than him. And I love that. That's so cool. And he was a firecracker. He was never in repose. He was always like this, And that's one of
the things about most modern actors. I can't stand they put you to sleep. But I like actors who have energy, who have spark, and a lot of people probably wouldn't think that about Steve McQueen, but he moved in a movie. He had a grace and a style about him, and sometimes he moves so fast you didn't even notice it. Carl Malden said that about him. He said, there was this danger about Steve mcquin when he was on screen. You never knew if any given moment he was just going to
explode, and when he didn't, he was still waiting for it. Things like that. So I'm going off way too much about movies I like. But I mentioned that thing about Steve McQueen because it looks like there's a very good chance I'm going to be able to write about Steve mccleen movie and would I hope it comes to pass. Twayne, Thank you so much for your time. This is so great talking with you. I'm I'm glad we can do this. Oh, thank you for being such a receptive audience. You've
been a great hope. You let me babble on and gave me reason to babbylon I thank you for that