Page 6 - JIMMY REARDON LETTER TO CHICAGO CRITICS

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that they would not allow River to promote a movie with that line in it. Finally I

said that this was maybe the most powerful line in the movie because it still rang in

my ears from the night I heard it from the lips of my mother’s best friend, just as

River heard it in the movie, only in my case it was “Billy, I want to fuck you” and

that besides, the word “fuck” was one of the single most used/abused words in the

English language and that no English language ilm today could possibly be con-

sidered authentic without it. But after around an hour or more I realized that the

keeping the whole-hearted acceptance of my star and young friend and his parents

was an okay reason to break my veracity/authenticity rule and I agreed to silence

the line, but not remove it, as I had silenced the lines of Elizabeth Taylor in “Win-

ter Kills” years ago. This seemed to mollify them, but it turned out River’s mother

never got over my not taking it out completely, and refused interviews about the

movie, adding to the ultimate fate of the picture as described below.)

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: MURDER FOR A SOUND TRACK

One morning the Island Executives and I were invited to a screening room at Fox

so that the Fox movie-sound-track expert could present his new musical selection

of “hot Oldies” for our movie. I was astounded. They’d managed to make all our

past effort and intentions suddenly appear trashy and exploitive. Naturally, I got

very angry, and told Schwartz and the others what I thought.

I remember saying: “You won’t get away with this! I can think, I can fast, I can

wait – and I can write!” Never did I think that 20 years later I would be writing,

and it would be this letter. Nor did I discover until just recently that River was

named from the book I quoted that day, SIDDHARTHA.

In fact I felt that my movie had been assassinated and replaced by an impostor. If I

later came to peace with that impostor, and even helped create it, I always grieved

for the true work that went unseen.

RIGHT AFTER THAT AWFUL SCREENING I composed (written in blood, my

lawyer said) a six-page letter delivered to the likes of Barry Diller and Goldberg

and Scott Rudin and Cynthia Wick which called the Island President a traitor and

referred to Fox marketing as knaves. I felt especially betrayed by Schwartz, a fella

I brought into Island from his desk in the bullpen at Landmark. I helped him get

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