June 2, 2022 • 24 mins
THE DON Season 2: Maverick, Top Gun, Don’s Greatest Hits, And The Addictions That Killed Him”
In Episode 3, we go into Don’s last days as a Paramount executive. His obession with making a third Godfather film puts him in direct conflict with the Vatican mob. Don’s partying gets him in trouble at the company retreat. And his producer on "Grease", Allan Carr, goes all in on his epic Village People movie, “Can’t Stop the Music”… With Allen wallowing in despair over the colossal failure of Can't Stop The Music , there is nobody to help Don on another runaway train wreck, Grease 2.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Episode three, Don goes home to Alaska and the mafia
comes looking for him. In this episode, Don's quick assent
as a rock star studio executive hits a bumpy patch.
His godfather three projects surrounding a scandal at the Vatican
triggers the Vatican Mafia to come after him. His efforts
to make Richard Pryor a movie star falls flat when
(00:25):
he insists on an interracial love story and a disastrous
Village People Origin story movie starring Steve Guttenberg and Bruce
Jenner has ripple effects on Don's sequel, Greece Too. It
may have been the most turbulent year of Don's life.
Reagan has just been elected president. Two months later, he
(00:47):
would be shot in the chest by John Hinckley. Pope
John Paul the Second had visited Poland and formed an
alliance with Reagan to combat the rise of Communism in Poland.
It was later discovered that a secret Masonic lodge known
as Propaganda Duet had been operating in existence for over
one hundred years, and that this group of Italy's most
prominent politicians and businessmen were plotting with the Pope and
(01:08):
the US to destroy Communism and the extreme left during
this time, Pope John Paul the Second would survive his
own assassination attempt. Meanwhile, the entire Italian government would resign,
and the Vatican Bank and the mafia that enforced their
illegal financial dealings would go on a killing spree as
they fell into economic collapse. They would even go after dawn.
(01:30):
That's right, Don was a target of the Vatican mob. Now,
Don couldn't have possibly known of the complicated dealings with
the Vatican and a secret Masonic lodge, and the Cold
War politics of anti communism, and how he, a Hollywood
film executive, would be a bit player in the saga.
Don was having his own troubles. By many accounts, he
(01:51):
was out of control. His career and his personal life
were unraveling. Some would say his self destructive behavior at
Paramount may have started with the tuna boat incident. The
story was recounted to Pierce by a former executive Paramount
who was on the lot at the time. The way
I heard it was Don was driving up to his
(02:13):
parking spot at the studio and there's this stretch Limo
parked in his parking space. He jumps out of his
ferrari and starts kicking the limo to Holy hell, I'm
going to teach this tuna boat captain not to park
his boat my fucking parking space. Jeffrey Katzenberg. Don's assistant
runs down, tries to tell him he's kicking the CEO
(02:33):
of Paramounts Town car, Charlie Bluedhorn. But Don's in a rage.
He can't control himself. It's like he's possessed. Finally, Don
calms down and begins to succeed the damage he's done.
There's nothing left of the car but a heap of metal.
At this point, all the executives are looking out the window.
Nobody says a word. Everybody's waiting for Don to say something,
(02:57):
and finally he says, the boat is here, but where
the fuck is the captain? There is nobody running this
fucking studio. And sadly he was right. In Charlie Bluehorn's
final days, he had become more reclusive than ever. He
(03:19):
was being investigated by the SEC. New Yorker journalist Seymour
Hirsch had published a series of reports on his illegal
business practices. If the reports were true, Bluehorn was ruined
to escape the press. Bluethorn had retreated to his sugar
plantation estate in the Dominican. Unbeknownst to Don and everyone
else at Paramount Bluethorn had a secret he was dying.
(03:42):
When he died, he was on his private jet flying
over his newly built Dominican paradise. Frank Sinatra had reportedly
just performed to christen what had become a utopian city.
No cause of death was reported. It was clear to
those closest to Don that the fire had gone out.
He had given up on the dream he could one
day succeed Blue Torn As the last of the studio moguls.
(04:04):
He was becoming increasingly at odds with his marketing team.
There was one test screening in particular that really shook
down up. Pierce re counts the story in an interview
with w p n Y. I think the test screening
in Alaska was a cry for help. I mean, who
goes all the way to Alaska for a test screening?
(04:24):
It had to have been Don's idea. But why, why
all of a sudden did Don want to go home
after being away for over a decade. Perhaps he was
looking for approval or I don't know, perhaps it was
some form of spite. Maybe he wanted to come back
to his hometown with his Hollywood crew and hold a
big red carpet event, just to prove to his parents
(04:45):
that their son wasn't this degenerate loser that they made
him out to be, but in fact was the head
Haunt Show president of production at the top film studio
in the world. The movie Don may Or may not
have been screening for his parents was some kind of
hero m Richard Bryor. When he's good, he's very good.
(05:06):
But when he's bad, he's terrific good. I think, Dad,
he's gonna get a big kick out of here. Kit, Sir,
stick up. I don't believe I heard you. Stick up,
Smooth Tiger actions robbery. Richard Pryor is some guy of hero.
(05:26):
Don had been working on finding Richard Pryor a star
vehicle ever since he arrived at Paramount. Prior may have
been the only thing that Pauline Klee and Don had
in common. Kao called Prior's first stand up film, Richard
Pryor Live in Concert, as the greatest of all recorded
performance films. Prior had characters and voices bursting out of him.
Watching this mysteriously original physical comedian You can't account for
(05:50):
his gift and everything he does seems to be for
the first time, I went to Africa. I went to
the motherland, find my roots right. Seven hundred million black people,
not one of them motherfucker's knew me. I looked in
(06:11):
every full look in Africa. I didn't find one. Goddamn Prior.
Don believed Prior could also be a serious dramatic movie star.
But Prior was not going to play by the Sydney
Potier rules of the black movie star. In a Potier
film studio, executives wouldn't allow for a romantic relationship in
(06:32):
some kind of hero. Prior was going to break down
those constraints. The movie would feature a black movie star
in a romantic and sexual relationship with not one, but
two women. It was unprecedented. I'm sure Dawn's parents would
have been appalled by the film if they'd actually seen it.
By all accounts, they never accepted his invitation. By all accounts,
(06:56):
nobody did, friends, classmates, teachers. This was supposed to be
Don's homecoming, the first time back in Alaska since the
Great Quake. It was December in Alaska, the state was
covered in a blizzard. Don was rational enough to understand
why nobody showed up to his screening, But his heart
was broken. Here he was standing out in the cold
(07:18):
watching a trickle of movie goers enter the theater. Did
they not understand what a big shot he was? Back
in Los Angeles? The few Alaskans who did come out
for the movie didn't like it. The main problem was
the interracial love story. Just as the studio had feared,
it was Sydney Potier all over again. White audiences wouldn't
(07:38):
accept a black movie star in a relationship on screen.
Prior's co star, the Great Margot Kidder, who would later
co star with Prior and Superman two, recounts the studio's decision.
We had a long originally of four orgasms sex sying,
and we were both to have four orgasms and I
(08:00):
and it was cut out of the movie for for
various reasons. But originally in the script we mate and
I bet him that every time we make love it
will be better. He says, how can you prove that?
And I said, look, I'll prove it to you. So
we make love four times. Now in the script we
both four times. Well, I thought, I'm damned to find
on make those noises four times. Paramount took out the
(08:24):
groundbreaking love story and much of the dramatic storyline in
order to tailor it as a comedy, hoping to play
on priors following the movie didn't work. There was a
sad time you know here he was in Alaska at
a screening he didn't want to show in his hometown
where he didn't want to be at a studio that
had no use for him anymore. And then the Vatican
(08:45):
Mafia ships on his desk. When we return, Don confronts
the Vatican Mafia and learns of their alliance with Charlie Bluehorn.
Don returns to his Paramount office to find it's been ransacked.
(09:08):
Someone or something had defecated on Don's secretary's desk. They
ransacked his office. Reportedly, all of Don's files on The
Godfather three had been taken. Godfather three was Don's passion project.
He had been developing it for years. The pitch was
that Michael Corleone would take on the most powerful and
(09:30):
corrupt institution in the world, the Vatican. At the time,
nobody in Hollywood was covering the greatest scandal in Vatican history,
but Dawn was obsessed with it as crowds gathered before
the Vatican and St. Peter's Square, The almost incredible news
is released to the world. Pope John Paul the First
is dead. The announcement is received with a mixture of disbelief, shock,
(09:53):
and sadness. John Paul, the smiling Poop, as he came
to be known, that won the hearts of Catholics and
non Catholics throughout the doing one of the shortest reigns
in people history. Cardinal Lamberto, who would become John Paul
the First, declared he would shut down the corrupt Vatican Bank,
only to die mysteriously thirty three days into his papacy.
(10:15):
This is all in Don's movie version. There was no autopsy.
His family claimed he was poisoned and asked to have
the Pope's intestines examined. Cardinal Jean Marie Vlow, suspected to
be at the heart of the Pope's assassination, released a
statement that the Pope's intestines had already been burned. Then
three days later, Robert Calvey, who headed the Vatican Bank
(10:37):
and who had threatened to expose the Vatican, was found
murdered hanging with heavy bricks tied to his body under
Blackfriars Bridge again also in the movie version, Dawn went
deep into the scandal. What he didn't know was at
the time that the players involved in the scandal owned
the very offices which Don was working in. Unbeknownst to
(11:00):
Don and most everyone else working at Paramount, the Vatican
Mafia owned Paramount. Charlie Bluehorn Needing Cash had struck a
deal with the Vatican Bank's chief financier, the notorious MICHAELI Sindano.
He was known as the Godfather Banker. He would go
down as perhaps the greatest mafia criminal of the twentieth century.
Sindano would take a twenty five percent share of Paramount Studios. Together,
(11:25):
blued Hoorn and Sindano would create a portfolio of shell
companies to shelter profits from the tax audits. Don knew
nothing of the blued Horns Sidano partnership. All he knew
was that the Vatican Mafia had threatened him at his
place of work. Don had no choice. He had to
bury the movie franchise he revered more than anything. The
(11:47):
Godfather three was dead. It would be a decade before
the movie was finally made. We're unsure if the Mafia
incidents set gone off, but his behavior seemed to change dresstically.
He spent considerably less time at the office. His slate
of movies weren't looking good, and he was particularly worried
(12:08):
about Greece too. His friend Alan Carr, who was supposed
to be producing the sequel, was partying a lot. It
was like Studio fifty four had moved into Allen's estate
in Beverly Hills. One day, I was over there when
a messenger from Paramount arrived with an envelope. It was
a check for eight million dollars Alan's profit share in Greece.
(12:30):
I think the success of Greece was just too overwhelming
for Alan. Yes, and it is the largest grossing musical
and the history of the movies, what is it up
to at that point? It's actually taken in over three
hundred million dollars worldwide. People are paid all over the
world in places like Mexico and Latin America and Sweden
and Norway and Israel. Plays. They don't know what American
(12:51):
High School was, and so had brought back the musical.
Dawn pleaded with Allen not to make the Village People movie.
He told him it would destroy his career. Alan saw
(13:16):
all the young people watching The Village People perform and
saw they were the same fans who loved Greece, and
so he came up with the idea to make a
movie for them that he would call Can't Stop the Music,
a Village People origin story, with Steve Guttenberg playing the
founder of the group. At the time, Steve Guttenberg was
a relatively unknown actor working mostly in commercials. That's a
(13:39):
wind that shot after he's Kingdom I King of the Chile.
That's a wind that shine. Hey, it ain't cool if
you don't shut That's a wind that shine. His only
other lead performance was in the nineteen seventies seven high
school sex comedy The Chicken Chronicles. You took a four
(14:00):
rolled ravishing hooker to the senior prom kiss me. These
wonderful people, those wild events in these uncompromising chronicles, The
(14:20):
Chicken Chronicles. In the spirit of Si, nobody will be
a hero. Nov I don't know. I promise it's foolproof
David Herma. The movie became a collection of everything Alan
wanted to see in one movie. Hot young guys wrestling,
(14:43):
hot young guys in speedos, hot young guys jumping rope
and most of all hot young guys dancing. It was
an all star cast play. Steve Gutenberg. Alan thought it
(15:11):
was a good idea to hire Nancy Walker from the
Bounty Commercials to direct. If elected, I promise immediate action
on three issues. Betty's making a nervous speech that means
another spill, But I am ready half a bounty bounties,
the quicker pickle up. It's proud about half a shade
(15:32):
proven with Steve Guttenberg, Bruce Jenner, the Village People, Nancy Walker,
and lots of cocaine. What could possibly go wrong? But
the movie was a major disaster. Even on opening night,
before the word was out about how bad this movie was,
the theaters were already empty. Nobody wanted to go in
the first place. Well, I think the problem in the
film industry that this film is an example of is
(15:52):
the pre sold package. The guy made this film Alan
car took Greece a few years ago an established package
on Broadway and made it a movie. Smash it. But
Greece had a story already established. He tried to do
it again. Take a music group, the Village People, put
them in a movie. Forgot the script movie. These are
narrative movies. They need stories that make us want to watch.
(16:13):
The characters can't stop. The music broke out and spirit
Dawn had warned him that it would ruin him, and
it did. He was in bad shape. He should have
taken some time off, you know. But he was under
contract to make Greece too. He didn't want to do it,
not without Travolta. Paramount had a one picture left on
(16:37):
his three picture deal, and they didn't want to waste
it on Greece. They thought the picture was strong enough
because it's such such a phenomenal business that we didn't
need them. And I said, this is a big mistake.
I don't want to do this, but I was contractually,
you know, signed into the sequel. So UM. Then at
one point they were going to do um they agreed
(16:59):
to do I don't why it fell apart um a
closing number at the end of the picture. There was
one actor that had caught Alan in Don's eye. And
I found this new actor who auditioned in my living
room dance and went to the studio, met the director
and one of the executives and said, oh, he's too
(17:21):
short to be in the movies, or to be a
movie star Tom Cruise, So that's Little Life's Little Adventures,
So it could have been Tom Cruise. Michelle Peifer Don
would have to wait four more years to work with
Tom Cruise. But Alan and Don, to their credit, did
find Michelle Peiffer. She had been discovered at a checkout
(17:41):
line at Vaughan's by a talent agent. Alan was besotted
with her. Look, where are you gonna get the picture?
If you've been want to know what I wanted? Looking
for the training mono, me and machine with Ellen his elkin.
(18:09):
It's gonna be wild? Is the wind? When? Why not?
I'll be well in our time? Looking back at greece To,
the movie wasn't at all as bad as the critics
had declared it to be. The musical numbers by legendary
choreographer Patricia Birch were super fun. There were some catchy
(18:32):
songs and a great performance for Michelle Peiffer in her
first leading role. But Michelle Pheiffer couldn't save the movie.
Nobody could. With Alan losing control of greece To, the
question was where was Don? When we return? Don gets
naughty at the company retreat, sealing his fate at the studio,
(18:58):
he was anywhere but near the set of Greece Too.
He stopped showing up at the office. He was partying
all the time. There was the incident of the company retreat.
Don might have reached rock bottom at the Paramount Retreat
in Palm Springs. The story goes that Don egged on
Jeffrey Katzenberg to challenge him in a cannonball style race
(19:19):
from l A to Palm Springs. The two set out
in their sports cars, driving at top speed through the desert.
Katzenberg showed up to the retreat on time, while Don
was detained by the police for speeding. When he did
finally show up for the executive lunch, he was wearing
a Hawaiian shirt and munching on a sack of cheeseburgers.
Some say he had been drinking. By the end of
(19:39):
the meeting, Don had reportedly passed out face first in
a bowl of soup. Dillar and Eisner knew right then
and there that Don had to go. It was the
Grease Too screening at the Cinerama Dome that would see
his fate. Prior to the screening, Michael Eisner had sent
down a list of edits. Don told him he implement
(20:00):
the cuts. When Eisner sat for the screening and realized
Don hadn't used his cuts, he knew he finally had
the ammunition to fire Don. After a hit streak of
seven movies in a row that hit the one hundred
million dollar mark, Don had a string of flops. Greece
two was the nail in the coffin. Don found out
real fast the other studios weren't interested in hiring him.
(20:23):
Executives were hired off their relationships with talent. Don had
done little to cultivate director relationships. In fact, he had
done more than anybody to put the great autour directors
of the seventies out of work. Don was out of
the executive ranks, and a lot of people were happy
about it. When Don got fired, he asked that I
meet him at his house on Horseshoe Canyon. Don always
(20:45):
had a hippie counterculture vibe around him, and living in
Laurel Canyon, just up the street from Joni Mitchell appealed
to the restless artist in him. Anyway, I was curious
about the neighborhood, the Wonderland murders who just happened the
key witness in the murders was Liberati's former lover Scott Thorson.
(21:05):
Matt Damon had played Thorson in the miniseries. I arrived
at Don's place to a pile of clothes in the driveway.
He was upstairs blasting Frank Zappa, who lived just a
few houses down. He'd thrown all of his business suits
out the window. He called it a purge. He'd no
longer have to wear a suit to work. I think
there was some sort of metaphor with the suits. I
(21:28):
remember he had to borrow a suit to interview at
the studio. Back then, he had big dreams to become
a studio head. That was over. I could see he
was already drunk. He reached from my tape recorder press play,
and then precisely dictated how I would write about his
firing from our amount, How he was looking forward to
(21:49):
working with Michael and Jeffrey, how his first love had
always been producing. But you could tell he was heartbroken.
He missed those guys. They were the only family he'd
ever had. I remember looking up at a woodpecker pecking
away at Don's window. It was clearly damaging the wood,
but Don was too numb with drink to care. After
(22:12):
a long silence, I finally found the nerve to ask
Don the inevitable question, what's next? He said, Paramount, let
me choose one script. On the way out the door,
he said, it's Absolute Ship, a tawdry comic book of sex,
alcohol and stupidity. I only kept the title, rewrote the
(22:34):
whole thing. It's about flash dancers. What flash dancers, I asked.
Flash dancers don't actually exist. We just like the sound
of the title. It's about a welder who moonlights as
a stripper who wants to be a ballerina. Now imagine
that poster with the greatest dance soundtrack of all time.
That's my next movie, The music driven Female Rocky Here.
(23:00):
I had gone to Don's house to check in on
someone who'd be fired in the most humiliating of circumstances,
and I left feeling like Betty everything I had on
Easy Combat. What Don didn't tell Pierce was that Paramount
had no interest in the script for Flash Dance. It
was at the bottom of their development pile. Studio exects
(23:23):
were surprised to see Don choose the project, and perhaps
a few were none too pleased. Hoping to see Don
once again fall on his face. The Dawn season two
is executive produced by Will McCormick and David Harris Klein.
Klein also wrote and created the series. Mike Jursts is
the editor, sound designer, and producer of the series. The
(23:46):
podcast is produced and narrated by Malia Rivera. Drew That's
Louis Weymouth voices the character of Pierce and also produces
the series. For more episodes of The Dawn season two,
listen to the series on the I Heart Radio app
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episode three, Don goes home to Alaska and the mafia
comes looking for him. In this episode, Don's quick assent
as a rock star studio executive hits a bumpy patch.
His godfather three projects surrounding a scandal at the Vatican
triggers the Vatican Mafia to come after him. His efforts
to make Richard Pryor a movie star falls flat when
(00:25):
he insists on an interracial love story and a disastrous
Village People Origin story movie starring Steve Guttenberg and Bruce
Jenner has ripple effects on Don's sequel, Greece Too. It
may have been the most turbulent year of Don's life.
Reagan has just been elected president. Two months later, he
(00:47):
would be shot in the chest by John Hinckley. Pope
John Paul the Second had visited Poland and formed an
alliance with Reagan to combat the rise of Communism in Poland.
It was later discovered that a secret Masonic lodge known
as Propaganda Duet had been operating in existence for over
one hundred years, and that this group of Italy's most
prominent politicians and businessmen were plotting with the Pope and
(01:08):
the US to destroy Communism and the extreme left during
this time, Pope John Paul the Second would survive his
own assassination attempt. Meanwhile, the entire Italian government would resign,
and the Vatican Bank and the mafia that enforced their
illegal financial dealings would go on a killing spree as
they fell into economic collapse. They would even go after dawn.
(01:30):
That's right, Don was a target of the Vatican mob. Now,
Don couldn't have possibly known of the complicated dealings with
the Vatican and a secret Masonic lodge, and the Cold
War politics of anti communism, and how he, a Hollywood
film executive, would be a bit player in the saga.
Don was having his own troubles. By many accounts, he
(01:51):
was out of control. His career and his personal life
were unraveling. Some would say his self destructive behavior at
Paramount may have started with the tuna boat incident. The
story was recounted to Pierce by a former executive Paramount
who was on the lot at the time. The way
I heard it was Don was driving up to his
(02:13):
parking spot at the studio and there's this stretch Limo
parked in his parking space. He jumps out of his
ferrari and starts kicking the limo to Holy hell, I'm
going to teach this tuna boat captain not to park
his boat my fucking parking space. Jeffrey Katzenberg. Don's assistant
runs down, tries to tell him he's kicking the CEO
(02:33):
of Paramounts Town car, Charlie Bluedhorn. But Don's in a rage.
He can't control himself. It's like he's possessed. Finally, Don
calms down and begins to succeed the damage he's done.
There's nothing left of the car but a heap of metal.
At this point, all the executives are looking out the window.
Nobody says a word. Everybody's waiting for Don to say something,
(02:57):
and finally he says, the boat is here, but where
the fuck is the captain? There is nobody running this
fucking studio. And sadly he was right. In Charlie Bluehorn's
final days, he had become more reclusive than ever. He
(03:19):
was being investigated by the SEC. New Yorker journalist Seymour
Hirsch had published a series of reports on his illegal
business practices. If the reports were true, Bluehorn was ruined
to escape the press. Bluethorn had retreated to his sugar
plantation estate in the Dominican. Unbeknownst to Don and everyone
else at Paramount Bluethorn had a secret he was dying.
(03:42):
When he died, he was on his private jet flying
over his newly built Dominican paradise. Frank Sinatra had reportedly
just performed to christen what had become a utopian city.
No cause of death was reported. It was clear to
those closest to Don that the fire had gone out.
He had given up on the dream he could one
day succeed Blue Torn As the last of the studio moguls.
(04:04):
He was becoming increasingly at odds with his marketing team.
There was one test screening in particular that really shook
down up. Pierce re counts the story in an interview
with w p n Y. I think the test screening
in Alaska was a cry for help. I mean, who
goes all the way to Alaska for a test screening?
(04:24):
It had to have been Don's idea. But why, why
all of a sudden did Don want to go home
after being away for over a decade. Perhaps he was
looking for approval or I don't know, perhaps it was
some form of spite. Maybe he wanted to come back
to his hometown with his Hollywood crew and hold a
big red carpet event, just to prove to his parents
(04:45):
that their son wasn't this degenerate loser that they made
him out to be, but in fact was the head
Haunt Show president of production at the top film studio
in the world. The movie Don may Or may not
have been screening for his parents was some kind of
hero m Richard Bryor. When he's good, he's very good.
(05:06):
But when he's bad, he's terrific good. I think, Dad,
he's gonna get a big kick out of here. Kit, Sir,
stick up. I don't believe I heard you. Stick up,
Smooth Tiger actions robbery. Richard Pryor is some guy of hero.
(05:26):
Don had been working on finding Richard Pryor a star
vehicle ever since he arrived at Paramount. Prior may have
been the only thing that Pauline Klee and Don had
in common. Kao called Prior's first stand up film, Richard
Pryor Live in Concert, as the greatest of all recorded
performance films. Prior had characters and voices bursting out of him.
Watching this mysteriously original physical comedian You can't account for
(05:50):
his gift and everything he does seems to be for
the first time, I went to Africa. I went to
the motherland, find my roots right. Seven hundred million black people,
not one of them motherfucker's knew me. I looked in
(06:11):
every full look in Africa. I didn't find one. Goddamn Prior.
Don believed Prior could also be a serious dramatic movie star.
But Prior was not going to play by the Sydney
Potier rules of the black movie star. In a Potier
film studio, executives wouldn't allow for a romantic relationship in
(06:32):
some kind of hero. Prior was going to break down
those constraints. The movie would feature a black movie star
in a romantic and sexual relationship with not one, but
two women. It was unprecedented. I'm sure Dawn's parents would
have been appalled by the film if they'd actually seen it.
By all accounts, they never accepted his invitation. By all accounts,
(06:56):
nobody did, friends, classmates, teachers. This was supposed to be
Don's homecoming, the first time back in Alaska since the
Great Quake. It was December in Alaska, the state was
covered in a blizzard. Don was rational enough to understand
why nobody showed up to his screening, But his heart
was broken. Here he was standing out in the cold
(07:18):
watching a trickle of movie goers enter the theater. Did
they not understand what a big shot he was? Back
in Los Angeles? The few Alaskans who did come out
for the movie didn't like it. The main problem was
the interracial love story. Just as the studio had feared,
it was Sydney Potier all over again. White audiences wouldn't
(07:38):
accept a black movie star in a relationship on screen.
Prior's co star, the Great Margot Kidder, who would later
co star with Prior and Superman two, recounts the studio's decision.
We had a long originally of four orgasms sex sying,
and we were both to have four orgasms and I
(08:00):
and it was cut out of the movie for for
various reasons. But originally in the script we mate and
I bet him that every time we make love it
will be better. He says, how can you prove that?
And I said, look, I'll prove it to you. So
we make love four times. Now in the script we
both four times. Well, I thought, I'm damned to find
on make those noises four times. Paramount took out the
(08:24):
groundbreaking love story and much of the dramatic storyline in
order to tailor it as a comedy, hoping to play
on priors following the movie didn't work. There was a
sad time you know here he was in Alaska at
a screening he didn't want to show in his hometown
where he didn't want to be at a studio that
had no use for him anymore. And then the Vatican
(08:45):
Mafia ships on his desk. When we return, Don confronts
the Vatican Mafia and learns of their alliance with Charlie Bluehorn.
Don returns to his Paramount office to find it's been ransacked.
(09:08):
Someone or something had defecated on Don's secretary's desk. They
ransacked his office. Reportedly, all of Don's files on The
Godfather three had been taken. Godfather three was Don's passion project.
He had been developing it for years. The pitch was
that Michael Corleone would take on the most powerful and
(09:30):
corrupt institution in the world, the Vatican. At the time,
nobody in Hollywood was covering the greatest scandal in Vatican history,
but Dawn was obsessed with it as crowds gathered before
the Vatican and St. Peter's Square, The almost incredible news
is released to the world. Pope John Paul the First
is dead. The announcement is received with a mixture of disbelief, shock,
(09:53):
and sadness. John Paul, the smiling Poop, as he came
to be known, that won the hearts of Catholics and
non Catholics throughout the doing one of the shortest reigns
in people history. Cardinal Lamberto, who would become John Paul
the First, declared he would shut down the corrupt Vatican Bank,
only to die mysteriously thirty three days into his papacy.
(10:15):
This is all in Don's movie version. There was no autopsy.
His family claimed he was poisoned and asked to have
the Pope's intestines examined. Cardinal Jean Marie Vlow, suspected to
be at the heart of the Pope's assassination, released a
statement that the Pope's intestines had already been burned. Then
three days later, Robert Calvey, who headed the Vatican Bank
(10:37):
and who had threatened to expose the Vatican, was found
murdered hanging with heavy bricks tied to his body under
Blackfriars Bridge again also in the movie version, Dawn went
deep into the scandal. What he didn't know was at
the time that the players involved in the scandal owned
the very offices which Don was working in. Unbeknownst to
(11:00):
Don and most everyone else working at Paramount, the Vatican
Mafia owned Paramount. Charlie Bluehorn Needing Cash had struck a
deal with the Vatican Bank's chief financier, the notorious MICHAELI Sindano.
He was known as the Godfather Banker. He would go
down as perhaps the greatest mafia criminal of the twentieth century.
Sindano would take a twenty five percent share of Paramount Studios. Together,
(11:25):
blued Hoorn and Sindano would create a portfolio of shell
companies to shelter profits from the tax audits. Don knew
nothing of the blued Horns Sidano partnership. All he knew
was that the Vatican Mafia had threatened him at his
place of work. Don had no choice. He had to
bury the movie franchise he revered more than anything. The
(11:47):
Godfather three was dead. It would be a decade before
the movie was finally made. We're unsure if the Mafia
incidents set gone off, but his behavior seemed to change dresstically.
He spent considerably less time at the office. His slate
of movies weren't looking good, and he was particularly worried
(12:08):
about Greece too. His friend Alan Carr, who was supposed
to be producing the sequel, was partying a lot. It
was like Studio fifty four had moved into Allen's estate
in Beverly Hills. One day, I was over there when
a messenger from Paramount arrived with an envelope. It was
a check for eight million dollars Alan's profit share in Greece.
(12:30):
I think the success of Greece was just too overwhelming
for Alan. Yes, and it is the largest grossing musical
and the history of the movies, what is it up
to at that point? It's actually taken in over three
hundred million dollars worldwide. People are paid all over the
world in places like Mexico and Latin America and Sweden
and Norway and Israel. Plays. They don't know what American
(12:51):
High School was, and so had brought back the musical.
Dawn pleaded with Allen not to make the Village People movie.
He told him it would destroy his career. Alan saw
(13:16):
all the young people watching The Village People perform and
saw they were the same fans who loved Greece, and
so he came up with the idea to make a
movie for them that he would call Can't Stop the Music,
a Village People origin story, with Steve Guttenberg playing the
founder of the group. At the time, Steve Guttenberg was
a relatively unknown actor working mostly in commercials. That's a
(13:39):
wind that shot after he's Kingdom I King of the Chile.
That's a wind that shine. Hey, it ain't cool if
you don't shut That's a wind that shine. His only
other lead performance was in the nineteen seventies seven high
school sex comedy The Chicken Chronicles. You took a four
(14:00):
rolled ravishing hooker to the senior prom kiss me. These
wonderful people, those wild events in these uncompromising chronicles, The
(14:20):
Chicken Chronicles. In the spirit of Si, nobody will be
a hero. Nov I don't know. I promise it's foolproof
David Herma. The movie became a collection of everything Alan
wanted to see in one movie. Hot young guys wrestling,
(14:43):
hot young guys in speedos, hot young guys jumping rope
and most of all hot young guys dancing. It was
an all star cast play. Steve Gutenberg. Alan thought it
(15:11):
was a good idea to hire Nancy Walker from the
Bounty Commercials to direct. If elected, I promise immediate action
on three issues. Betty's making a nervous speech that means
another spill, But I am ready half a bounty bounties,
the quicker pickle up. It's proud about half a shade
(15:32):
proven with Steve Guttenberg, Bruce Jenner, the Village People, Nancy Walker,
and lots of cocaine. What could possibly go wrong? But
the movie was a major disaster. Even on opening night,
before the word was out about how bad this movie was,
the theaters were already empty. Nobody wanted to go in
the first place. Well, I think the problem in the
film industry that this film is an example of is
(15:52):
the pre sold package. The guy made this film Alan
car took Greece a few years ago an established package
on Broadway and made it a movie. Smash it. But
Greece had a story already established. He tried to do
it again. Take a music group, the Village People, put
them in a movie. Forgot the script movie. These are
narrative movies. They need stories that make us want to watch.
(16:13):
The characters can't stop. The music broke out and spirit
Dawn had warned him that it would ruin him, and
it did. He was in bad shape. He should have
taken some time off, you know. But he was under
contract to make Greece too. He didn't want to do it,
not without Travolta. Paramount had a one picture left on
(16:37):
his three picture deal, and they didn't want to waste
it on Greece. They thought the picture was strong enough
because it's such such a phenomenal business that we didn't
need them. And I said, this is a big mistake.
I don't want to do this, but I was contractually,
you know, signed into the sequel. So UM. Then at
one point they were going to do um they agreed
(16:59):
to do I don't why it fell apart um a
closing number at the end of the picture. There was
one actor that had caught Alan in Don's eye. And
I found this new actor who auditioned in my living
room dance and went to the studio, met the director
and one of the executives and said, oh, he's too
(17:21):
short to be in the movies, or to be a
movie star Tom Cruise, So that's Little Life's Little Adventures,
So it could have been Tom Cruise. Michelle Peifer Don
would have to wait four more years to work with
Tom Cruise. But Alan and Don, to their credit, did
find Michelle Peiffer. She had been discovered at a checkout
(17:41):
line at Vaughan's by a talent agent. Alan was besotted
with her. Look, where are you gonna get the picture?
If you've been want to know what I wanted? Looking
for the training mono, me and machine with Ellen his elkin.
(18:09):
It's gonna be wild? Is the wind? When? Why not?
I'll be well in our time? Looking back at greece To,
the movie wasn't at all as bad as the critics
had declared it to be. The musical numbers by legendary
choreographer Patricia Birch were super fun. There were some catchy
(18:32):
songs and a great performance for Michelle Peiffer in her
first leading role. But Michelle Pheiffer couldn't save the movie.
Nobody could. With Alan losing control of greece To, the
question was where was Don? When we return? Don gets
naughty at the company retreat, sealing his fate at the studio,
(18:58):
he was anywhere but near the set of Greece Too.
He stopped showing up at the office. He was partying
all the time. There was the incident of the company retreat.
Don might have reached rock bottom at the Paramount Retreat
in Palm Springs. The story goes that Don egged on
Jeffrey Katzenberg to challenge him in a cannonball style race
(19:19):
from l A to Palm Springs. The two set out
in their sports cars, driving at top speed through the desert.
Katzenberg showed up to the retreat on time, while Don
was detained by the police for speeding. When he did
finally show up for the executive lunch, he was wearing
a Hawaiian shirt and munching on a sack of cheeseburgers.
Some say he had been drinking. By the end of
(19:39):
the meeting, Don had reportedly passed out face first in
a bowl of soup. Dillar and Eisner knew right then
and there that Don had to go. It was the
Grease Too screening at the Cinerama Dome that would see
his fate. Prior to the screening, Michael Eisner had sent
down a list of edits. Don told him he implement
(20:00):
the cuts. When Eisner sat for the screening and realized
Don hadn't used his cuts, he knew he finally had
the ammunition to fire Don. After a hit streak of
seven movies in a row that hit the one hundred
million dollar mark, Don had a string of flops. Greece
two was the nail in the coffin. Don found out
real fast the other studios weren't interested in hiring him.
(20:23):
Executives were hired off their relationships with talent. Don had
done little to cultivate director relationships. In fact, he had
done more than anybody to put the great autour directors
of the seventies out of work. Don was out of
the executive ranks, and a lot of people were happy
about it. When Don got fired, he asked that I
meet him at his house on Horseshoe Canyon. Don always
(20:45):
had a hippie counterculture vibe around him, and living in
Laurel Canyon, just up the street from Joni Mitchell appealed
to the restless artist in him. Anyway, I was curious
about the neighborhood, the Wonderland murders who just happened the
key witness in the murders was Liberati's former lover Scott Thorson.
(21:05):
Matt Damon had played Thorson in the miniseries. I arrived
at Don's place to a pile of clothes in the driveway.
He was upstairs blasting Frank Zappa, who lived just a
few houses down. He'd thrown all of his business suits
out the window. He called it a purge. He'd no
longer have to wear a suit to work. I think
there was some sort of metaphor with the suits. I
(21:28):
remember he had to borrow a suit to interview at
the studio. Back then, he had big dreams to become
a studio head. That was over. I could see he
was already drunk. He reached from my tape recorder press play,
and then precisely dictated how I would write about his
firing from our amount, How he was looking forward to
(21:49):
working with Michael and Jeffrey, how his first love had
always been producing. But you could tell he was heartbroken.
He missed those guys. They were the only family he'd
ever had. I remember looking up at a woodpecker pecking
away at Don's window. It was clearly damaging the wood,
but Don was too numb with drink to care. After
(22:12):
a long silence, I finally found the nerve to ask
Don the inevitable question, what's next? He said, Paramount, let
me choose one script. On the way out the door,
he said, it's Absolute Ship, a tawdry comic book of sex,
alcohol and stupidity. I only kept the title, rewrote the
(22:34):
whole thing. It's about flash dancers. What flash dancers, I asked.
Flash dancers don't actually exist. We just like the sound
of the title. It's about a welder who moonlights as
a stripper who wants to be a ballerina. Now imagine
that poster with the greatest dance soundtrack of all time.
That's my next movie, The music driven Female Rocky Here.
(23:00):
I had gone to Don's house to check in on
someone who'd be fired in the most humiliating of circumstances,
and I left feeling like Betty everything I had on
Easy Combat. What Don didn't tell Pierce was that Paramount
had no interest in the script for Flash Dance. It
was at the bottom of their development pile. Studio exects
(23:23):
were surprised to see Don choose the project, and perhaps
a few were none too pleased. Hoping to see Don
once again fall on his face. The Dawn season two
is executive produced by Will McCormick and David Harris Klein.
Klein also wrote and created the series. Mike Jursts is
the editor, sound designer, and producer of the series. The
(23:46):
podcast is produced and narrated by Malia Rivera. Drew That's
Louis Weymouth voices the character of Pierce and also produces
the series. For more episodes of The Dawn season two,
listen to the series on the I Heart Radio app
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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