Do you think this sometimes resulted in wooden performances, like Sean Connerys in Marnie?
Sean Connery I particularly asked about, because I was puzzled why he was so wooden in Marnie. Hitchcock said: “Well, that man never could act, you know, he could only play 007.” And I was astonished, because Connery was giving some of his greatest performances – oh, I shouldn’t say his greatest performances, because I think he became even better later, when he did The Man Who Would Be King, and some of his later films. But he was already doing marvellous work in that period, and Hitchcock didn’t seem interested in it at all – he didn’t seem interested in actors. When you went to work for Paramount in 1979, at the urging of Warren Beatty, you helped to shepherd some movies into production, right? Yeah, but I’d rather not talk about that, because in some cases the directors didn’t know I had a hand in getting their movies produced. We were talking earlier about Jean-Luc Godard, whose early movies you championed. I haven’t seen many of his more recent ones, because I haven’t been in New
