Empire Australasia - May 2018

compliment from a guy who tills the same soil. I

take it as a high mark.

You say in your book that you felt “bulletproof ”

as you started makingSorcerer. You’d just had

two giant hits withThe French Connectionand

The Exorcist. Were you feeling very conident?

Yes. To give you a simple, short answer.

At the time it under-performed. Given you had

been feeling so conident, how did it feel when that

happened?

You can answer that yourself. You don’t need

me to give you a quote. You’ve obviously done

tremendous research, which I appreciate, but

if you wrote something that was not received

well, how would that make you feel? I know

a number of ilmmakers who have stopped

when they did not have a success that they

thought was going to be a success. But

I went on and tried to make other ilms. 

What was it about that story that

hooked you?

Oh, everything. It had the potential for

tremendous suspense. I decided to do it

with four characters that were not necessarily

likeable heroes. They were all anti-heroes,

which was kind of a gamble at that time

and would be more so now. Because what

audiences mostly expect from a thriller are

heroes and villains. And the heroes went out.

I saw it in a much more realistic way. I also

saw this story as kind of a metaphor for

the world situation, which again is more

prevalent today. A group of strangers who

don’t like each other who have to co-operate

or they will explode. They’ll blow up. That

metaphor really stuck with me. I thought it

was relevant in the ’70s, because of the

Vietnam War, and even much more so

today. I don’t know how much of the

relevance of that metaphor is responsible

for the continuation of the ilm. But audiences

tend to sense something beneath the surface of a

ilm, if there is anything beneath the surface. And

that’s what beneath the surface ofSorcerer. 

Is it true you toyed with calling the

ilmBallbreaker?

That was my original title. And the head of

Universal said, “Absolutely no way.” And then

I was going to call itNo Man’s Land. I was in

touch with Harold Pinter and he was writing

a play which he subsequently produced before

my ilm came out calledNo Man’s Land.And

so those were the two titles I was going to call it.

You can’t copyright a title, but I wouldn’t call

itNo Man’s Landout of deference to Pinter.

Universal was not going to go forBallbreaker.

But that’s what the movie is, you know.

There’s a story that you met with the studio in

post-production, and they suggested shooting

inserts of the mileometers, to which you said,

“I don’t shoot inserts.” You then said you’d

need to get the actors back and go back on

location so you could do it with wideshots.

That’s true to some extent. But that was the

one good suggestion I thought that they had.

I had not shown, in the cut that I showed them,

the distances that had been travelled. And at

the famous luncheon that I had with the head

of Paramount and the head of Universal, most

of their suggestions were stupid, but that one

I thought was good. And I did go back and

shoot inserts of the mileage travelled. But

frankly I had no respect for those guys and

wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what they

suggested. Except for that. I took two guys

to the meeting — Bud Smith, my ilm editor,

and Wally Green, who wrote the screenplay

forSorcerer— and told them that the

suggestions we were going to hear were

largely things that we would probably

want to ignore.

Do you recall any of the other suggestions from

the studio?

Sid Sheinberg, who was the head of Universal,

Left:Hanging

by a thread:

Kassem ‘Martinez’

(Amidou) leads

the nitroglycerin-

laden truck across

a perilous bridge in

the heart of the

South American

jungle.Above right:

Motley crew: three of

the truck drivers,

Victor Manzon

(Bruno Cremer),

Jackie Scanlon

(Roy Scheider)

and Kassem.

ALAMY, PHOTOFEST ❯