From Mia Farrow's memoir What Falls Away, about the tension between Roman Polanski and John Cassavetes on the set of Rosemary's Baby:
One workday, while we were waiting to shoot, Roman was discoursing about the impossibility of long-term monogamy given the brevity of a man's sexual attraction to any woman. An impassioned John Cassavetes responded that Roman knew nothing about women, or relationships, and that he, John, was more attracted than ever to his wife, Gena Rowlands. Roman stared at him and blinked a few times, and for once had no reply.
Interviewer: With History of Violence, did you want to address sexuality in a different way than you had in the past?
David Cronenberg: No, not really. Sexuality is of interest to me for all the obvious reasons — plus the body-specific reasons — but I have to forget about my other movies when I'm making a movie. The sexuality comes out of the characters and out of the plot. There are two sex scenes, which are interesting because they take place between a married couple that have children.
You don't see that anymore. It's either adolescent sex or forget it, whereas anybody who's married knows that sex gets more interesting and more complex and deeper as you get older. So I was interested in that.
In the original script, there were no sex scenes. I added them. I felt in some ways you could call this movie Scenes From a Marriage. I have to know about the sexuality involved in that marriage if I'm really going to understand it.
And Ernst Lubitsch:
Who had an astonishing imagination for innuendo, and also made a romantic, complicated and bittersweet depiction of marriage in this subtle film:
Of course the star of the Heaven Can Wait remake (script by Elaine May) deserves at least an honorable mention:
He's got at least one out of two.
From Peter Biskind's new biography of the conquistador, Beatty's phone technique:
Never identifying himself, speaking in a soft, insinuating voice rarely raised above a whisper, flattering in its assumption of intimacy, he asked them where they were, with whom, where they were going next and would they be sure to call him when they got there.
One morning he called Leslie Caron at 5am, waking her. According to her, he said: “You’re sleeping! You’re not thinking about me!”
