I spoke a couple of times to Herbert Ross when I was a Cannon press kit writer. It was in the fall of 1987 when his Mikhail Baryshnikov film, Dancers, was being prepared for release. During our second chat I was asking him about something I wanted to put into the Dancers press kit, and somehow I miscommunicated my intention. Ross got the idea I was trying to debate him.

“Look, this isn’t that kind of conversation!,” he said sternly, almost shouting. I immediately backpedaled and grovelled. “No, no, Mr. Ross…I apologize, that’s not what I meant,” etc. I cooled him down but after I hung up, I said to myself, “Jesus God, that is one fierce hombre! He was ready to take my head off!”

Of course, any director who’s elbowed his or her way into mainstream Hollywood and maintained power in that realm over any period of time has to be tough as nails.

“All strong directors are sons of bitches,” John Ford allegedly said to screenwriter Nunnally Johnson sometime in the late ’40s or early ’50s. His point was that Johnson, in Ford’s view, was too much of a nice, thoughtful, fair-minded guy to cut it as a director. Directors basically can’t be too mellow or gentle or accommodating. They need to try and be reasonable and constructive about the usual problems, but they also need to be tough, pugnacious and manipulative mo’fos in order to get what they want. And if they’re too deferential, they won’t last.”

Contrast my Ross anecdote with his analysis of The Last of Sheila (’73), which he produced and directed between early ’72 and early ’73: “If you have a group of people on a ship, the ship becomes a metaphor for existence,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s not a symbol one strives for, but it does happen. It’s not a picture about film people, it’s about people…I’ll tell you what this picture is about. It’s about civilization and barbarism. You cannot make up for the absence of civilization.”

Set on a yacht off the Cote d’Azur, Sheila is about venal, barbaric behavior, sure, but “not about film people”? Not about talented but necessarily opportunistic scrappers who are invaruably shrewd, manipulative, gregarious, clever, hungry and deceptive? Of course it is!James Coburn‘s producer character certainly meets the standard. The whole film, really, radiates the way things felt back then (pre-Watergate Nixon administration)…a certain jaded, opportunistic, defiantly anti-spiritual mindset.

Sheila is a darkly playful parlor game about seven dodgy, flinty, cynical people playing ruthless mind games with each other. It’s a glamorous vacation film, quite cynical and entirely cerebral. There’s no trusting the emotional moments, of course, because the players are such gifted liars so it doesn’t exactly radiate depth. But thanks to Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, it’s very sharply written.

The irony for me is that a character who seems like the least malicious and easily the most mild-mannered, sensible-sounding fellow on board — Richard Benjamin‘s Tom Parkman, a screenwriter — turns out to be the worst of them.

On-screen, I mean. Off-screen, the worst may have been costar Raquel Welch.

According to an 11.12.72 Chicago Tribune piece titled “Raquel Plans Suit Against Director”, there were also complaints about Welch’s behavior.

Welch announced she was suing director Herbert Ross for assault and battery as a result of an incident in her dressing room. She claimed she had to flee to London during the shoot “to escape physical harm”. Warner Bros. later issued a statement supporting Ross and criticizing Welch for her “public utterances”.

Excerpt: “Shooting the monastery sequence just off Cannes proved to be troublesome for Welch. Gale force winds and rain disrupted the night shoot, and Welch was reluctant to leave her Venice hotel for fear of getting stuck in the storm.”

Mason said that Welch “was the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with”.

McShane: “Raquel Welch isn’t the most friendly creature. She seems to set out with the impression that no one is going to like her.”

From an AFI catalogue: “An 11.22.72 Variety article reported that the film was made for a little over $2,000,000.

“During production actress Raquel Welch, who portrayed ‘Alice Wood,’ took a brief leave from the film to promote her 1972 film Kansas City Bomber. As her absence necessitated a change in the shooting schedule, according to the article, James Mason reportedly called her departure ‘inconsiderate.’ Her public rebuttal and subsequent criticism of the film, as well as Warner Bros.’ disapproval of her comments, were widely reported in the press.

“An 11.15.72 Variety news item reported that production was temporarily shut down due to threats by Black September, the Palestinian terrorist organization, which took offense at the number of participants in the film who were Jewish.”