... Another work
during this period included The Genius (1975), an Italian western in
which he played a rough and sadistic military officer.
“I’d never worked on an Italian film before. It was chaotic and very badly organized.
We were in
Rome and they had to go on location to one part of Spain and then come back to
Italy and go to another location. I wasn’t involved in this piece and didn’t
have to go. So, I said to the production officer, “Where do you want me to be?”
He said, “You had better stay around because we might get finished early.” I
said, “Where should I stay? In Rome” He said, “No stay in Spain somewhere.” I
said “Well, where will you be?” He said, “We’re not sure yet.” I said “You’re
going on location in two days! And you don’t know where? Here’s a piece of
paper. You write down some phone telephone numbers where I can contact you,
some number. Is there going to be a production office here?" He said,
“Yes, it will still be here.”
He gave me two
numbers. And I called up a hotel I knew in Granada and booked in there for a
week, with the possible extension for another week. And I gave the production
company my address and telephone of the place where I was staying and said
THAT’S where I’ll be. I won’t move until I hear from you. You will call me,
won’t you?
After about 3
or 4 days I called the production office in Rome to see how they were getting
on. There’s no production office. “We’ve never heard of them.” “There was
somebody like that here at one time, but they’ve gone now.” No one had the
names of the people on the crew list and none of those people were there. No
accounting office there? I’d been in it! Everything was gone. “We don’t know
anything about them… stop bothering us.”
So, I called
another number. “Never heard of them.” I was stranded in Granada with no film
company. Then, in the middle of the third week, I suddenly got a call. They had
decided to go back to Rome.
It was
chaotic. They don’t shoot live sound. There was one scene I had to do in a
whisper and you had 60 technicians all gathered around shouting as we were
doing it. They get just enough sound to know what was being said.
And I had to
ride a horse in it. The poor animal; it was must have been mistreated for life
because it wanted to kill anyone who got on its back. That was tough, I just
couldn’t control this poor thing.
And when it
finished, I got a call about five months late saying, “Can you come over to
London tomorrow to do your post-syncing?” In other words, to put my voice to
these lines that were never properly recorded in the first place. I said, “I
can’t.” One day’s notice? I was doing something else and couldn’t leave. They
said, “That’s all right, don’t worry.” That was the last I heard from them.
Some friend of mine saw it somewhere; in France, I believe, the English version of it in France. He said, “Have you heard how you talk these days?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “They got someone to do your voice…sort of lisping jerk.” They got someone in London to do the work. They didn’t care!
It was a
nightmare! I’ll never ever do a movie in Italy again…unless I can take over an
American or British film crew. Madness! Madness!
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