JULY 2008

After all the horror stories I've heard about successful Hollywood producers, I can say only one thing about Albert S.Ruddy: This is a nice man.

Nobody knows Hollywood like Mr.Ruddy. As a producer for more than 4 decades, he guided both "Cannonball Run" movies to the big screen. Of arguably more importance (kidding!) he also won two Best Picture Academy Awards as producer of "The Godfather"(1972) and "Million Dollar Baby"(2004). He was Executive Producer of the Chuck Norris series "Walker Texas Ranger", which ran for 9 seasons-an eternity in television, and has worked on over 40 projects which he either produced, wrote or both.

Ruddy first worked with Burt Reynolds on "The Longest Yard" in 1974. The two have been close friends ever since, teaming up again not just on the "Cannonball" movies, but recently on the comedy "Cloud 9"(2006). He currently has several projects in the works including "Raging Fury" with Jet Li, the adventure flick "Airborne" and another teaming with Clint Eastwood called "Remembering Mark Twain".

Mr. Ruddy was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to talk to me about his work, past, present and future. Mr. Ruddy is Canadian by birth, as am I, so we started off this July 1st interview by wishing each other a Happy Canada Day. It was, for me, a perfect, yet perfectly ironic, way to start off a chat with one of Hollywood's all time greats.

You've won two Academy Awards, but you've also produced a lot of movies that are just "fun" like the "Cannonball" movies. Of all the stuff you've done, do you have a personal favorite?

You know, it's almost impossible...I did an interview with the British press the other day because Paramount's coming out with a new version of "The Godfather"(on Blu Ray)and their take was, I produced the greatest movie of all time, and I said, "Look, I don't know anyone who produced 'the greatest movie of all time'. Each movie is different. Comedy is one thing, drama is another thing. It's apples and oranges, you can't pick. Do I think it's one of the most watched movies of all time? Yes I do. Do I think it's the greatest movie? That's a long discussion. There's a lot of movies, but it's all semantics. It's all nonsense. It's good to try to hook something into a conversation. To answer your question, (the original) "The Longest Yard", because it's a movie nobody wanted to make. I had to get private financing to close the deal. Paramount pulled the plug on the movie. This was three weeks before it was supposed to start. We were all set to go at the Georgia State Penitentiary, the studio pulled me aside and said, "Burt Reynolds is a hack, he did that Cosmopolitan Magazine and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." There was a fellow member of the commonwealth, John Hayman who was a tax attorney in London. His son is David Hayman, incidentally, who's now doing all the "Harry Potter" movies. I called John Hayman up, and I got a tax deal out of John that kept the movie going. So in spite of all the obstacles, the movie got made. That was my movie after "The Godfather" and it was a huge success, and obviously the "Cannonball Run" movies. I just love them. I still laugh when I see them.

I prepared for this by watching the DVD with the commentary track with you and ("Cannonball Run" 1&2 director) Hal Needham on it, and you both seem to be having a great time watching it again.

When we shot the movie, so you know, we had 20, 25 single card credits. The audience started applauding the credits.

How did you come to be involved in the "Cannonball" movies?

I had done "The Longest Yard" with Burt, and I had got to know Hal Needham. Brock Yates and Needham were both in the real "Cannonball Run", so they got me a script- I use that term loosely. It was rather thin.

I have no doubt!

But the idea was great, and I thought, "Jesus, that could make a lot of money." So we started to focus on getting the movie made and Needham was doing "Smokey" with Burt at the time.

And you offered Burt some insane amount of money?

Yeah, we offered Burt 5 million for four weeks of work, which was almost twice what he was making.

That made him the highest paid actor in the industry at the time, didn't it?

Absolutely. Though I did very well with Burt in "The Longest Yard". He had just done "Deliverance", and "Hustle" in a more serious vein. Then he got into this whole "Hooper" and "Smokey" and "Cannonball Run" and all these movies which generated an enormous amount of money.

Those made his career for awhile there.

Made him rich, rich, rich.

That leads into my next question: You and Burt go back a long way, from "The Longest Yard" all the way to "Cloud Nine". What is it that keeps bringing you guys back together? Are you good friends?

Look, Burt Reynolds is an enormously gifted actor. Forget the fact that I like him a lot as a human being, but also I would like to do a comedy- I offered a movie for him to direct, a comedy, but he didn't think it was his kind of movie-but I think Burt Reynolds would have a great career as a director, because actors love Burt. Every actor in the world, they have good feelings about Burt. They respect him for the work he's done. He's been a great citizen in Hollywood. He's been great to everybody. So, I would love to find something because I think directing is really his future. I mean there are very few guys out there who know anything about comedy. Burt Reynolds has thrown away better laughs than most guys build careers on. "The Longest Yard"- the script was never written as a comedy. He made it funny. There's a scene with the guards where he does a double take, and you just scream! He's a naturally gifted comic genius. Not that he has to be limited to comedy- I think Burt could do anything, but there's so few people who can do comedy well, so it would be great to try to find a comedy for Burt and establish him.

Do you two still keep in touch?

Oh yeah, I saw Burt just a couple of weeks ago. He was in Europe shooting a movie ("A Bunch of Amateurs") and had just got back to town.

I interviewed Hal Needham a little while ago and he was terrific, full of great stories.

Forget the great stories, he's just a great person. You wanna talk about a guy you wanna hang around with!

And I spoke to Brock Yates as well who was also just great to talk to.

Great guy, world class people. Honest, hard working, gifted. I did two "Cannonball Run" movies and "Megaforce" (with them).

"Megaforce" has a real cult following nowadays. I don't know if you knew that.

Oh I know. We've had offers to remake it.

Are you kidding?

No, I'm serious. I'm at a a party and these two guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the "South Park" guys, come up to me and say "You did my favorite movie" and I'm thinking oh yeah,here comes "The Godfather" again, and they say, "Megaforce". I said "You guys haven't been smoking anything have you?", and they said "No!" They thought the camp quality was so great. They fell in love with the movie. Anyway, it's great working with Hal. He can do everyone's job better than they can.

Can I ask you a few questions about some of the other people who worked on those movies?

Sure.

How about Dean Martin.

Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, who worked together, were just one of the great gifts of all time. They are stars by being who they are. There's no affectations. There's no chewing the scenery by trying to be "an actor". They were so gifted that you loved to just watch them work. They couldn't have been nicer. There was never one complaint. "My trailer's too small, it's too hot outside...whatever". Nothing. They did their job and they had fun doing it. In the sequel we got Sinatra. Dean got a call from Frank and Frank said "I want in" because he knew how much fun they had on the first one. We never thought Frank would do the movie. I locked horns with Sinatra on "The Godfather" because he felt that Mario Puzo had based this character, Johnny Fontaine, on him, so he tried to stop the movie. But when I got the call from Dean saying, "Yeah, Frank wants to be in the movie"...it was great!

You don't say no to Sinatra.

It was really an amazing moment. He flew in on his own plane to Tuscon, Arizona. Got there in the morning, worked all day and left. Everyone went to the airport to see him go, and I swear you'd think The Pope was heading back to Rome.

What about Roger Moore. How did he come on board?

I knew Roger Moore personally, and we were gonna do "High Road to China" but Roger was unavailable, so we eventually did it with Tom Selleck (in 1982). Anyway, Roger was great in the movie and again, there wasn't one person who ever worked for him...everyone was enjoying the movie. There was one day, when Terry Bradshaw and Mel Tillis jumped the car into the pool...I was laughing so hard, Needham said "Ruddy I can hear you laughing on the goddamn soundtrack!"

Dom DeLuise?

The relationship Dom had with Burt was symbiotic to the relationship Dean and Sammy had. They play off each other. Dom and Burt have those moments that were never written that are hilarious. You get Dom and Burt together with a straight scene, and they'll have you howling within five minutes.

You also discovered Jackie Chan, gave him his first work in America on that film.

We have a studio in Shanghai. Actually, we just did a movie called "The Warlords" with Jet Li and Andy Lau, a 33 million dollar movie which became the highest grossing movie in Chinese history. Andre Morgan, my partner, who actually did all the Bruce Lee movies, produced it. Anyway, years ago, he was a young American in Hong Kong who worked for (Producer and head of Golden Harvest Productions)Raymond Chow. Jackie Chan was one of the kids he used to hire to do stunts and they were trying to break him in the United States, so they said "What the heck, let's put him in "Cannonball". We're gonna do a movie with Jet Li next. We're doing a movie called "Raging Fury" with him.

As long as he beats the crap out of a lot of people, I'll be a happy man. Anyway, at the end of the DVD commentary for "Cannonball", you and Needham talk about doing another one. Ever gonna happen? Maybe a remake?

We'd like to do another one, but the rights get very convoluted as you can imagine. Raymond Chow sold his library to 20th Century Fox for a fortune, so getting a chain of title is a lot more complex than it used to be. If we can work it all out, than we can do another one.

Would Burt be involved? I don't think you can do a "Cannonball" without Burt.

Absolutely not. We'd have to put Burt in somewhere, like when we did "The Longest Yard" (remake). We'd try to get as many of the other guys as we could. I mean, Jamie Farr was funny. When he says "Get a physical"to the waitress in the first "Cannonball"...hilarious!

He was the only guy in "Cannonball" 1 and 2 who was also in "Speed Zone!", which I guess was sort of "Cannonball III".

It wasn't really "Cannonball III". We made sure we stayed away from calling it "Cannonball". But you know what it is with these guys? The interesting thing about a "Cannonball", that sort of movie, is every actor had to be there at the beginning and the end, but then you can pick up an actor for two days and shoot his whole part, so you don't have to carry an actor through eight weeks. We ended up with a lot of people who we picked up who wanted to be in the movie once we had Burt. So, whether Jamie was in this or that...I mean the only actors we went out of our way to carry in to "Cannonball II" were Dean and Sammy, Burt and Dom...we didn't have Roger in the second one.

I thought he was kind of missed in the second one because he was so funny in the first. Didn't the Broccoli family (The James Bond producers) threaten to sue you?

We skirted a legal problem because they thought we were doing a James Bond thing with Roger and the Austin Martin. So what we did with the insurance policy was, he wasn't a guy who was trying to be James Bond, he was Seymour Goldfarb, and he was trying to be Roger Moore, so that was just enough from an insurance point of view to kill any Cubby Broccoli coming after us. But, what Cubby did after that was he made sure in his contracts with Roger that Roger couldn't do these kind of movies anymore.

I understand Pierce Brosnan had a clause in his contract that he couldn't wear a tuxedo in any other films while he was playing Bond.

"Cannonball Run" was the one where Cubby got wise and said "Wait a sec, we gotta stop our guys from getting spoofed." Roger got away with it the first time, but definitely couldn't do the sequel. As it was, we did alright.

I don't think there's anyone who knows the industry better than you. What would a movie like "Cannonball" with all those huge stars cost today? I mean let's say you remade it with Tim Allen, Jack Black, people like that. With what you have to pay these people today it would probably cost a fortune.

I would say today that movie would be probably 80 million dollars. Remember, we did the first movie for 20 million dollars, including Burt's salary. Everybody. All in.

Here's something different...my wife wanted me to tell you that her favorite movie growing up was "Ladybugs".

(Laughs) Y'know I wrote "Ladybugs" because I used to watch my daughter play soccer, and I told my wife "There's a gold mine in this thing somewhere." We developed it, and...well, I don't think it was a mistake, but, Warner Brothers, Terry Semel said "You have a genius idea, but Rodney Dangerfield is a dirty old man! People don't want to see him playing with young girls." I said "I don't give a shit." He was so funny in that movie. He was a genius. He always had another line if he felt a scene didn't work and I kept having to tell him "Rodney, we don't have to keep doing scenes over and over again. That was hysterical." That movie gave me great joy. To this day, that movie is still very popular on video. Whenever I wear my "Ladybugs" jacket, some woman will always come up to me and say "That was my daughter's favorite movie." We had fun making it, so thank your wife, because it's always nice to hear someone say you did something worthwhile.

Well there ya go, that's the way a lot of people feel about the "Cannonball" movies.

Generally the movies I've done, whether it was "The Longest Yard" or the "Cannonball" movies, anyone of those things, basically you wanna say something nice about the human spirit. They do good things.

When I spoke to Brock Yates, he said that there's so much dark stuff out there nowadays, that something light like a "Cannonball" remake would do really well.

I agree. When we did "Million Dollar Baby", you walk in there thinking it's gonna be "Rocky". When she has the accident, the audience is stunned. It sucks all the oxygen out of the theatre. They just sit there for a second. It's not what they thought. We had a hard time making that movie, even with Clint. Nobody wanted to make it. Too much of a downer.

Shouldn't Warner Brothers just let Clint do whatever the hell he pleases at this point?

Well, they didn't. We had to go get financing on the foreign side, but once they saw the movie, they got behind it. I'm doing another movie with Clint in the spring called "Remembering Mark Twain".

Is he starring? Directing? Both?

He's directing the movie, and he's gonna bookend the movie playing Samuel Clemens in the hospital. It's a really sweet, beautiful movie. So that's what I'm all about!(laughs)

Alright, back on track here for a minute. When I interviewed Needham, he told me about a scene in "Cannonball Run II" where they ran over the producer's Porsche with a big wheel truck. Was that actually your Porsche?

That was my partner's. It was the 928 that we couldn't destroy. I mean that car...we had to run the big wheel over it twice and then we still had to hit it with some hammers!

Well, I've taken up enough of your time and I just want to thank you for speaking with me today, Mr.Ruddy. It's very kind of you.

Don't be silly, anytime I can give you any more information, feel free to call me.

It'd be great to know if that remake or sequel ever happens...

I'm putting you on the email list right now, you'll be one of the first to know if this thing gets going. We'll keep you apprised as it goes down the road.

cannonballrunpitstop@yahoo.ca

 

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