On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 06:31:35 GMT, Ron Wanttaja
wrote:

:IIRC, the studio's behavior after the release of this film triggered
:Robertson's fight against the financial shenanigans the studios were using
:to shaft actors. Richard Riley probably has a better summary of that than
:I do....

That was actually just before "The Pilot" - it happened in 1977, the
movie was 1979. In fact, I'd guess that the reason the film was
co-written, directed and starred Robertson, for "Summit Studios" but
shot by New Line, was it was during the period that he was
blacklisted. What better time to do something completely on your own.

The "shenanigans" are detailed in the book "Indecent Exposure" by
David McClintick. It about how the head of Columbia studios, David
Begelman, was stealing money from the studio by cutting checks to
other people and forging their signatures. Robertson was one of the
forgees, found out about it, and brought it all to light, forcing
Begelman out. As a result of his stand up actions, he was (naturally)
blackballed for about 8 years. I once had a long talk with him, and
asked him about "Charlie" (an amazing performance). I asked if
winning the Oscar for it was the high point of his career, he said,
no, it was getting that crook Begelman. Begelman paid a fine and got
probation, and later got his record expunged after making a film on
the evils of drug use. Begelman killed himself in 1995, there's a
film about the whole thing that's been in development for years.

It set up the sale of Columbia to Coke, and thence to Sony, and thus
the move of Peter Guber and Jon Peters, the buy of the old MGM lot,
the Time/WB merger, AOL/TW, the fall of AOL - basically the entire
shape of the Hollywood today.

Full disclosure - I once TA'd a class for Norman Horrowitz, at the
time the head of international video distribution for MGM. He'd been
one of the Columbia execs under Begelman. He appears several times in
the book - each time someone tells him something very, very bad about
Begelman and he exclaims "Holy ****!" Thus, he was well known as Holy
**** Horrowitz. He autographed my copy of the book using the
nickname.