Strike It All

Strike It All

The Industry Season 5, Episode 7

Dan Delgado: If, if you have this, this influence of, from, from Graham Greene on Adult Fun, and, and then you've also done a couple of adaptations. So what does Graham Greene mean to you personally?

James Scott: Well, for me, Graham Greene has the great attribute of Being a popular novelist at the same time as being someone who is talking about things beyond just the story and the plot.

Dan Delgado: This is British director James Scott. I'm asking James about legendary author Graham Greene in part because James's first feature length movie, 1972's Adult Fun, is listed as a combination of three influences. Jean Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, and Graham Greene. He

James Scott: He takes it into the world of meaning, of relationships, of the concept, basically, that, you know, he was a Catholic, and He had this sort of great sort of fears of the elements of guilt, which comes through many of his works.

But also what intrigued me was the fact that he was an outsider, that he had to really leave England to find himself. And he writes about England very much from the point of view of someone who has emigrated, left the country. And I think the other thing that also intrigued me was the fact that he was in a secret service, and was very much, he was, in a way, he was a kind of spy, too.

So, that, that whole element. Intrigued me as well.

Dan Delgado: And yes, it's true. Graham Greene is only one third of that equation. But James connection to Graham Greene doesn't stop there. Ten years later, he would direct the short film, and Graham Greene adaptation, A Shocking Accident. And the 25 minute short film was so good, it won an Oscar.

Dan Delgado: As it turns out, just like with Best Picture, it's the producer, in this case Christine Oestreicher, who gets the gold statue and not the director. And no, there's not a Best Director for a short film. But hey, at least James got thanked.

Dan Delgado: And this leads up to his second Graham Greene adaptation, a feature film that James would direct of Greene's novella loser takes all, but getting this ready to shoot did take a while. Probably

James Scott: more than two years. It was probably closer to three. And really what, what was needed at that point, because I needed to get finance and the, I had on my side, the film finance corporation, which was, is now, so BFI.

I had their support and I had support from another small British company. And I believe the Virgin Films was involved too. You know, we needed at least another half of the budget. It was a very low budget, but we needed to get another half. Without getting a guarantee of American distribution, you couldn't raise any money in England, because they would say, well, you know, we, you've got to have an American distributor commit to the film.

And that was one of the hardest possible things to do. And then, I was lucky enough to, the script went to Molly Ringwald. And, she just loved the script. And, it also went to Robert Lindsay, who loved the script. And the two of them became completely committed to it.

Dan Delgado: James needed an American distributor. And, as it turns out, he found one.

James Scott: At that point, we had been dealing with Harvey Weinstein and Miramax films. In the early stages, we'd be dealing with them.

Dan Delgado: This is in the 1980s. Long before Harvey Weinstein was outed as a serial abuser, a ruiner of careers, and convicted on four counts of rape, and one count of sexual assault. It was also just before he would be known by a nickname in the industry. A nickname earned for his constant meddling and recutting of films.

Harvey Scissorhands.

My name is Dan Delgado. And in this episode, we're taking a look at a Graham Greene adaptation that was turned into else. Welcome to The Industry.

Before we continue, I just want to briefly explain for those of you who do not know, just who Graham Greene was. Born in 1904, Graham Greene was a celebrated author and journalist whose works have been adapted to film, at least by my count, 24 times. The first one being Orient Express in 1934, and the most recent being Brighton Rock in 2010.

It's The Third Man from 1948 that film fans probably know him best for with the famous Orson Welles chase through the sewers. Or maybe you can make a case that film fans might know him better from 1958's Our Man in Havana starring Alec Guinness as a vacuum cleaner salesman recruited as a spy. Though personally, I would recommend Ministry of Fear, a great movie with an absolutely nutty plot, though Greene himself reportedly did not like that adaptation.

And then there's Loser Takes All, the subject of this podcast today. It first appeared serialized in Harper's Magazine before being released as a novella in 1955. The next year, it was adapted by Greene himself, no less, into a less than memorable movie. Greene himself also referred to it as a disaster. So, 30 years later, why not give it a go?

While Greene would categorize his story as an “entertainment”, a category he would give his less serious work, it was nonetheless a very entertaining entertainment. And James Scott had already proved himself to be quite adept at making a Greene adaptation already. James even found good luck in getting Molly Ringwald and acclaimed stage star Robert Lindsay to star.

In a piece she wrote for the New Yorker in 2017, Molly Ringwald wrote about her experiences making this film.

Molly Ringwald (Excerpt): I accepted a supporting role in a small movie based on Loser Takes All, the short novel by Graham Greene. I was 20 years old. The idea of playing a supporting role in a small British movie appealed to me after having just made a big splash in the John Hughes movies.

Plus, I was an enormous fan of Greene's writing.

Dan Delgado: Now that's not Molly herself, but a voiceover actress reading from her article. You'll hear more from her throughout the episode. And everything sounds good going into the production of Loser Takes All, but of course, the rub is that somehow, James ended up with Harvey Weinstein as a production partner.

And how that happened, well, it's probably not that surprising.

James Scott: Before we had the script that we got the commitment from Molly and Robert, and they had been incredibly obstructional, and trying to bring in another writer, and doing all kinds of things without actually even Committing to the film, they hadn't contractually even committed to it.

We were sort of very upset. And when Molly and Robert committed to it, we then found another American distributor who was happy to do the film, Kings Road, and they said, we'll do it and we'll give you twice the budget and you've got more money. And we'll, we're very happy for you to do it. We went back to Harvey Weinstein.

Miramax and said, thank you very much, but we've now got someone else we're moving on and he knew we had Molly Ringgold and Robert Lindsay, and he said if you take this away, I'm going to sue you and I said we don't have any agreement nothing He said I'm gonna make it impossible for you ever to make this film and unless you bring it back to me And he went on and on about it and really bullied us into it.

And then what happened was, I said, if you give me final cut on the film, and you give me a lot of commitments in terms that you won't change anything, that He will give me freedom to make it. He said, I'm quite happy to do all that.

Dan Delgado: So James will get the final cut, which we all know is exactly what a director values, maybe most of all.

With that promise in place, the production should go forward, but it doesn't, because the deal begins to change.

James Scott: He then said, I'm prepared to sign off on this with you, whatever you want, and we signed the agreement. And then, sometime later, when we were ready to go forward, He said, I'm sorry, we can't go forward with the contract that you made because HBO won't allow your final cut agreement.

We're going to have to take you off in that way, and we're going to have to change the agreement. So we didn't have at that point any alternative because we were really committed to the actors we were about to lose, Molly Ringwald, because of terms of timing. And all those things. So we were forced into accepting this contract, this new contract, which didn't give me the rights at all.

And we went forward from there for that. So that was the sort of beginning of the end, actually.

Dan Delgado: Once the overall deal changes and James's final cut is out the window, then comes all the other changes. Most of them having to do with the script.

James Scott: It was somewhere, a very fancy restaurant somewhere. And he said, Oh, I've got another script for you.

And I just was flabbergasted. And he said, Yes, we had the script rewritten. And I said, how can you do that? Because we're, we've already been in production. We, we can't go ahead with another script. And then basically, when he tried to get Molly Ringwald and Robert Lindsay to commit to another script, they said to him, look, this is not on.

We've committed to James's script. We love it. And without James's script, we're not going ahead. So, we went ahead with my script.

Dan Delgado: And if changing the script wasn't enough, there was also the idea of changing the casting, namely the lead actor, Robert Lindsay.

James Scott: I did feel that, because outside of wanting the script.

He tried to get me to change the casting. He tried to bring in Christopher Plummer to play one of the parts. He had actually promised the part to Christopher Plummer. He, Christopher Plummer called me up and said, Oh, I've been given this part. And I said, that's the first I've heard of it. Harvey Weinstein isn't in charge of the casting.

And he was very upset. And he then insisted on a different cinematographer. I wanted to use the one that I'd used on a shocking accident. On most of my films, they didn't want that. They wanted a different cinematographer. They then said, we're going to have a representative, a Miramax representative on the shoot with you, talking about your shot list every day.

Already, they have put down these sort of markers. Which were incredibly hard to work with.

Dan Delgado: And to be clear, there was one place that these changes were coming from. Harvey Weinstein. I did attempt to get in touch with Robert Lindsay, but received no response. However, he did very briefly touch on his experience making this film in his 2012 memoir, Letting Go.

In it, he wrote, “I had a run in with Miramax during the shooting of Strike It Rich, when I discovered that they were still rewriting it. I was told they got a screenwriter from LA to give it an overhaul. But in fact, it was Harvey Weinstein, the Miramax founder himself. I caught him putting pink script pages under my hotel bedroom door one night.

I opened the door and there he was, in his pajamas, padding back towards his room.”

And, yes, you heard that right. Lindsay referred to the movie not as Loser Takes All, but Strike It Rich. Another change Weinstein would insist upon. But we'll get into that later. Instead, we're going to continue to focus on the other changes of the production.

Molly Ringwald wrote about some of these changes.

Molly Ringwald (Article): When we began filming, in France, I was warned about the producer, but I had never heard of him and had no reason to fear him. The feeling on the set was that he and his brother Bob were becoming powerful and were difficult to work with, and that it was inadvisable to cross them.

The worst I had to contend with was performing new pages that Harvey had someone else write. Which were not in the script.

Dan Delgado: And with most productions staying on budget, seems to be a priority from the higher ups. But according to James, it seemed here like spending more money was being encouraged, whether it was needed or not.

James Scott: There was a scene that in the station at the end, he wanted that to be a completely different set. He didn't, in fact, he never really liked my art director. He was, he said, we'll put more money into this. It will give you an extra so much money so that you can do this in a different way. And we want you to, and he sent me another script and he started putting in the scenes that weren't in the film, additional scenes.

And he said, you've got to shoot these scenes. And if I shoot them, I know I don't need them. And they're going to end up on the cutting room floor. So it's a complete waste of money to do them.

Dan Delgado: Somehow, despite the constant and seemingly endless interference, James is able to finish the movie. He does his cut and turns it into Miramax, who then rejects the film.

So, what was the problem?

James Scott: We did our job, we put the music on, we did everything, and we sent him the final cut, and he rejected it. And we said, what are the reasons you're rejecting it? And he said, because it doesn't conform to your script. He said, he said, you left some scenes out from your own script. And I said, naturally, when you write a script, you, what goes actually into the final cut, a lot of things are cut out, but just in order to make it a battle film, that's normal.

And he said, I'm going to sue you and all the rest of it. And he said, I'm going to personally sue you and the producer for the whole budget of the film. And I then consulted lawyers and stuff. And they said this: This is not going to cost you a lot of money, but it's going to potentially make the film never happen, you know, never be released.

Dan Delgado: Of course, James wants the movie to be released. Having it end up unreleased would be a disaster. So, what is it going to take to make that happen? As it turns out, there was a list of things needed. Weinstein tells James…

James Scott: I want to have a different editor. I want to do a recut. I want to put different music on.

Um, the music that I had was written by Johnny Dankworth, who had composed music for a number of very well known films, and was doing it for nothing, virtually, and was incredibly collaborative on the film. He took Johnny Dankworth's, uh, music off. And Johnny Dankworth told me, I said, I'm so sorry, but I don't have any control.

Johnny Dankworth said, Oh, I had lunch with, I think Mancini recently and said, this happens all the time. I understand completely. That's okay. He put on new music, they shot scenes which I thought were totally unnecessary, he put in additional material that I'd never shot.

Dan Delgado: Yes, somewhere along the way, while all this was happening. Miramax had new scenes written and filmed without James involvement at all.

Molly Ringwald (Article): My costar Robert Lindsay and I had signed off to do a film adapted and directed by one person, and then were essentially asked to turn our backs on him and film scenes that were not what we had agreed to. We hadn't even finished filming and the movie was already being taken away from the director.

Dan Delgado: And after they filmed new scenes, changed the score, and completely re edited the movie that James had made. They stepped back, and took a good look at what they had made.

James Scott: And basically they realized it was a complete mess, what they'd done to it, and they realized it wasn't going to go anywhere. They basically withdrew any money for promotion or advertising.

It went out, it was just left to die, basically.

Dan Delgado: Oh, and of course, there was that title change, from Loser Takes All to Strike It Rich. And it's one thing to change the title of your movie, But, remember, in the world of movie making, there's money to be made from books as well. And since the movie was already based on a book, Miramax figured it would be easy to simply rerelease the novella it was based on.

The only issue is with that title.

James Scott: Harvey Weinstein came to me and he knew that I was friends with Graham Greene and he said we want to rerelease the novel while, when the book, when the film comes out, we want to. Release of the novel, but we want to have the novel have the name of the film and we don't want to use the name Loser Takes All because we can't have a title that has the word loser in it.

Because that is not good commercially. So, he said to me, he said, Could you go to Graham Greene and ask Graham Greene if he, if he would uh, agree to the title of the novel being changed so we can rerelease it as Strike It Rich. And at that time, I just threw up my hands and I just really didn't say anything.

I mean, it was just so ludicrous. That, that this man could actually think that I could do that and that Graham Greene could do that. I mean, it just shows how completely out of touch he was with the whole thing.

Dan Delgado: Graham Greene's novella would be re released under the original title of Loser Takes All, but with a picture of Molly Ringwald and Robert Lindsay on the cover.

And clearly, Miramax thought the way to make their movie Strike It Rich actually Strike It Rich for them was to put Molly Ringwald front and center. And not just on the book.

Molly Ringwald (Article): Weinstein named it Strike It Rich because he insisted that Americans couldn't stand to have the word loser in a title. He also changed the poster.

He had my head stuck onto another body, dressed 1950s pin up style dress. With a hand reaching out to accept a diamond, like Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes. I wouldn't have posed for a picture like that, since it had nothing to do with the character I portrayed. It struck me as ridiculous, false advertising.

Molly Ringwald (Article): In any case, the film tanked.

Dan Delgado: Strike It Rich was released in January of 1990 to 206 theaters and minimal advertising and finished in 15th place in its opening weekend.

Its total box office gross was less than $600,000. It was a loser for everyone involved. Well, almost everyone.

Molly Ringwald (Article): I had a percentage of the gross and As it turned out, you still make money if you have a gross percentage. I found this out about a year later, when my lawyer called to tell me that I had been denied the percentage owed to me.

She asked if it was okay if she went after the Weinsteins. I ended up suing them for the money, which I got, and I never worked with Harvey or the company again.

Dan Delgado: One thing I wanted to know was, what was the difference between the cuts? What was the difference between the film James had made, Loser Takes All, and the movie Miramax released, Strike It Rich?

James Scott: Well, it was like night and day, because if I had made the cut of the film, it would have had my sort of signature on it, as it will, as a filmmaker, it would have been far more experimental.

It would have had qualities about it that would have been sort of part of my style, as it were. The film that they made had no relationship to anything that I would have done and was intended sort of as a sort of a commercial film in the worst possible way. It was trying to be a Grace Kelly type film.

With a lot of style and it just was not it was nothing like that at all.

Dan Delgado: At one point during all this madness James thought about taking his name off the picture but changed his mind It went out with his name, even though he felt it really wasn't his picture at

James Scott: all I think that in some ways I did it because Robert Lindsay and Molly Ringwald had given a lot of time to this film And they wanted something to come out and they, they had, you know, really sort of gone up against Weinstein to be able to do it.

And I felt that, you know, for me to just back out of it and let that film go out with their names on it but without mine would have been a sort of almost disloyalty.

Dan Delgado: But being the team player and keeping his name on this film didn't help the movie. And it didn't help his career either. Despite having consistently worked up until Strike It Rich, this is the last feature film James Scott has currently made.

And James believes he knows exactly why that is.

James Scott: Basically my career was going to be ruined by, um, by Harvey Weinstein, who said, you know, I'm going to stop me working. And, um, he went, he did go about that. And so all the projects that I was developing with people, Everyone backed out of and I realized he'd been putting the word about out about me and he did the same with Robert Lindsay.

He basically terminated Robert Lindsay's career.

Dan Delgado: In 2017, Robert Lindsay talked to the BBC about how Weinstein ruined his film career after Strike It Rich.

Robert Lindsay (archive audio): It was a lovely, lovely script. And then Weinstein bought himself into it with Molly Ringwald, bought Molly Ringwald over from America. And then fired the director, fired, and then changed the title from Loser Takes All, because he didn't like Loser in the title, as he called it Strike It Rich.

James Scott: And we like that. And then he just started to change the whole thing. And I confronted him one day. In fact, physically, um, I lost my temper with him. And I had several phone calls from people saying, you shouldn't have done that, this guy's gonna be big. And then years and years later, I was cast in Shakespeare in Love, and then two days later, wasn't, uh, to find out that Harvey didn't want me involved in the film.

So I, I paid a price.

Dan Delgado: Now, I have to point out that I don't have any direct proof of what James has told me, other than his own word. But it certainly does sound a lot like what we've heard about Harvey Weinstein over the last several years and with his film career seemingly over, or at least the Hollywood type of filmmaking.

That is, James turned back to his first love the art world.

James Scott: I always just love to paint and make art and I was trained as an artist. I went back to that and I started a body of work and it was actually called the last of England. I don't know. And I made a film about that as I was making the work, and I had an exhibition in New York of the, of the paintings, and the video was part of that exhibition, it was sort of installation in the exhibition, so that was my first sort of move back to film in a way, was sort of combining the two.

And, and then the technology of film was changing so fast then because of the digital revolution. But I realized I could make films in a completely different way to needing big budget and 35mm and, and sort of stars. That I didn't need any of that. And I went back to sort of, in a way, using my phone to make films.

Many years later I made another film with an artist that, just using my phone, called Fragments. And that got picked up for Rotterdam Film Festival and got quite a lot of acclaim. And I realized I could. I still pursue a, not exactly a career, but an interest in making films about artists, and I just continue to do that.