What would you say if I told you that Steven Spielberg, who rose to fame with Jaws, fears water due to sharks? Or that Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest in 1915 and couldn’t even qualify for the final? Orson Welles weighed 400 pounds and once got stuck in his car and had to be cut out (the car was cut, not the actor!). These are just a handful of little-known facts that you will learn about the greatest filmmakers of all time in Robert Schnakenberg’s Secret Lives of the Great Filmmakers.
Film directors have been called the last cowboys but even cowboys had some sense of right and wrong unlike our friends here who were strange beings behind the scenes. This book chronicles their anecdotes ranging from weird to bizarre, stupid to crazy to at times abnormal, making you question whether they were really the people behind the blockbusters we idolize. Trust me, after going through this book, you will never look at these directors the same way.
In over 100 years of filmmaking, there have been good directors and there have been bad ones. But this book is about the good directors who have been bad people - behind the scenes. While one director was obsessed with croquet (Howard Hawks), another (Stanley Kubrick) was fixated on Napoleon. One (Alfred Hitchcock) loved to show off his ‘belly button-less’ stomach while the ‘father’ of all directors (D.W. Griffith) sexually harassed silent movie actress Miriam Cooper. Some even had a casting couch that was famous for other reasons but here we will discuss anecdotes that haven’t been disclosed elsewhere; things that have nothing to do with sex, booze and women.
D.W. Griffith made Birth of A Nation which was considered a classic even when it was released a century ago. The director was known for his classic forgetfulness - once he invited a friend for dinner, forgot about it and then threw him out for stealing food. The next day he forgot, invited the same guy again. Not bad for someone who once asked, where is the Art and Science in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Science? His successor, Cecil D. Mille, was a legend in his own mind, having only made six successful films (and 64 flops) and was feared by all, loved by none. He may have made The Ten Commandments, but that doesn’t mean he followed them! He was the one who suggested footprints in wet cement but that was because he loved feet, especially females ones … literally. Toe sucker!
Then there was Charlie ‘The Tramp’ Chaplin who had a thing for teenage brides and that cost him a fortune. Even after his death, he was worth something as his corpse was stolen and held for a £400,000 ransom - too much for a person who had phobias of everything from rubber, warm milk and being assassinated. This book also reveals the deep dark secrets of Hollywood director John Ford who loved to kick ass literally and was alleged by actress Maureen O’ Hara to be gay.
The narrative of this book is simple yet sarcastic. Take a look at how Howard Hawks’ death was described. "His family was convinced he would live forever but his German shepherd had other ideas." Cool, isn’t it? Well not so cool when you get to know that he turned down the offer to direct Casablanca and lived till the 1970s to realize what a mistake he made.
If you didn’t know that William Dieterle asked for his astrologer’s permission before starting a film or that Frank Capra was racist, don’t worry. This book gives you an insight into their lives as well as of people like Walt Disney who was known to be a bad pay master and couldn’t even draw his own characters. Plus he isn’t dead, he is cryogenically frozen somewhere, claims the author because the whereabouts of his grave aren’t known.
But the location of Stanley Kubrick’s grave is known; he was buried behind his house beside his favourite tree. There is apparently a conspiracy that the 2001: Space Odyssey director was the one who sent the Man on the Moon, instead of NASA. Hard to believe especially for someone who was comically phobic and banned anyone with a cold on the set, who always travelled in his car that never moved at more than 30 miles per hour and wanted to buy insurance on losses caused by the possible discovery of aliens before the release of his above-mentioned film in 1968. He also had a fear of flying and once flew a dentist from America to England, with the US Embassy duplicating as a clinic since the doc didn’t have license to operate in England. Wow!
The author claims that this book has strange-but-true-tales of cross-dressers, drug addicts, foot fetishists, and phobics but he fails to add in the synopsis that there were those (Sam Peckinpah) who believed that aliens were monitoring them, movie-geek turned video store clerks (Quentin Tarantino) who became world famous directors, rapists (Roman Polanski) who had to escape American soil and settle abroad and one Allan Stewart Konisberg who had a sexual relationship with his own adopted daughter, whom he later married. He goes by the name of Woody Allen in Hollywood these days.
Ever wondered why the leading ladies in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were always icy blondes? Why Akira Kurosawa was not able to make a film in Hollywood despite his potential? Why Oliver Stone’s characters are so real-life like? You have to read this book to find out. All I can say is that Oliver Stone based the Wall Street character on his father and he hated him so much that he once tried to drug him! The illustrations and the words of wisdom in this book are remarkable and even multiple readings will not satisfy you.
Charlie Stunk: Charlie Chaplin was known to wear the same suit for two weeks straight.
Uncle What? Mickey Mouse creator Walt Disney was an obsessive-compulsive hand-washer.
Akira Godzilla: Akira Kurosawa dreamt of making the ultimate Godzilla film.
Costly Miss: Orson Welles turned down being the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars.
Star Wars Crawl: It was Brian De Palma who helped George Lucas write the opening "crawl" for Star Wars.
Alfred Blue Hitchcock: The director liked to throw "blue dye" dinner parties with everything from food to martinis dyed blue.
To Bee or Not to Bee: Woody Allen is known to wear a beekeeper’s mask to prevent being stung on sets.
M.A.S.H.E.D. up: Robert Altman wanted to be a dog tattoo artist but became a director instead.
Marty Who Can’t Fly: Martin Scorsese is afraid of flying; once missed taking an award at Cannes for that very reason.
No Tibet For Stone: The Kundun director Oliver Stone can’t enter Tibet anymore.
Godfather of Porn: Francis Ford Coppola started his career with two porn flicks, one of which was in 3D.
Even Steven: Steven Spielberg suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, has been stalked most number of times and ate a transistor when he was young.