Page 14 - JIMMY REARDON LETTER TO CHICAGO CRITICS

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them? Would they sacriice a whole movie for a show of power? Oh, in a heart-

beat; the beat of their hearts, anyway.

And the game was not played fairly. When I took Chris Blackwell’s offer to work

with the studio as best I could, nobody mentioned that the studio would refuse to

have any press screenings for critics, an industry signal of a movie in trouble.

Sheila Benson was the exception; she called Fox from the LA TIMES and insisted

on seeing the picture. When they refused, she got the picture from somebody at

Island and screened it herself. When she gave it a rave, Fox put out the word that

Ms. Benson’s daughter was

somehow involved in the

production and that Ms.

Benson’s review was a

ringer. In response, Ms.

Benson wrote an article

even more laudatory of the

movie; a brave person.

When the movie grossed

nearly 3 million the irst

weekend, the LA TIMES

reporter came to my house

in Venice and interviewed

me for a Sunday magazine piece. Fox and Schwartz had the article delayed and

then killed, fearful of what I had told the reporter.

Soon afterward, all of the ilmed interviews with River and Meredith and Matthew

and Ione and Ann about making the movie disappeared.

After the LA Times article was killed, I don’t remember giving any press or other

interviews of any kind at all about this movie, come to think of it, in all these 20

years.

On the night Fox’s edit opened in Westwood I watched little kid after little kid

walk out in bewilderment at what they were seeing on the screen.

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