The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF HOLLYWOOD He regarded me dispassionately with electronic eyes, as if I were something that had to be filed for reference. He is a formal man and it was a formal interview. I said, "Since you became head of production at MGM you have made some very good uncharacteristic films like The Blackboard Jungle. But you've also made some dreadful films like Diane. ... It seems difficult to understand that the same man was responsible for both." He said without resentment, "Nobody sets out to make bad films. Something just went wrong with Diane. I don't know why. We had a good writer on it, Christopher Isherwood. But these things happen." I said, "You have been accused of abandoning the old MGM policy of making family pictures, what they call films with 'heart', in order to make 'problem pictures'. How do you feel about this charge?" He said, "There is no such thing as a 'problem picture'. A film becomes a 'problem picture' if it is a failure. When a film makes money nobody describes it as a 'problem picture'. We shall make a fortune out of The Blackboard Jungle — so it's not a problem picture." His hands rested on the glass-top of his desk : not a finger moved by as much as a centimetre: he was as motionless as a Yogi. I asked, "What special quality do you think you bring to your job which perhaps other people in a comparable position do not have?" "I like to think of myself as being first and foremost a writer," he said. "That has been my training. I wrote many films before I became a producer. I still like to keep my hand in as a writer — I do the occasional article or a commentary for a film. I think I understand the writer's problem; I hope I am sympathetic to what he is trying to do in the film medium." 190