The massive Turin traffic jam at the heart of "The Italian Job" (the original, with Michael Caine) was real, he explains, brought about by Deeley and his crew.
While shooting "The Knack . . . and How to Get It" in London in 1965, he remembers, "[W]e needed a crowd of nubile young girls." So he scooted over to the Lycee Francaise, where his daughters were students, and "recruited the prettiest" of "the sixth-form girls" -- which is how Jane Birkin, Jacqueline Bisset and Charlotte Rampling first appeared on-screen.
Naturally, the most compelling parts of "Blade Runners" are those involving titanic personalities and films that have become classics.
Sure, Sam Peckinpah was a coked-out monster while shooting "Convoy," but did you know that on the set of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," David Bowie was "happiest when secluded in his big trailer with his books and his milk"?
Even Cimino gets a little love for his careful direction of the bloody "Deer Hunter" climax.
"Blade Runner" is the film of which Deeley is proudest and rightly so. Its back story has been exhaustively detailed on recent "final cut" DVDs and in Paul M. Sammon's 1996 book, "Future Noir: The Making of 'Blade Runner.' "
So it is surprising to learn that the infamous voice-over narration that marred the original theatrical release was not written by professionals (as others have long asserted) but "knocked out in a very amateurish way" by Deeley, director Ridley Scott and two others "in a bar one night."
"We just worked it out between us, trying to cover the holes in the story," Deeley notes. Oops.
As for his beef with Cimino, what really seems to gall Deeley is the director's claiming credit for originating "The Deer Hunter." In his words, "I had the satisfaction of knowing that 'The Deer Hunter' had been made because I had caused it to be made. I found the script, I hired the writer, I hired the director, I hired the star and I sold the package to a major U.S. distributor."
Actually, that statement does a fine job of both settling a score and explaining what a producer does.
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Levi is coauthor of "The Film Snob's Dictionary."
