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The Last Movie 311 The film was not going to be linear in the way it was going to be cut. We tried to explain to PSO how they were going wrong with the editing, but they wouldn’t listen. —Andy Garcia on 8 Million Ways to Die Hal shouldn’t see the film; it would kill him. It’s a horrible, horrible thing. —Rosanna Arquette On December 16, 1985, just twenty days after Ashby finished shooting 8 Million Ways to Die, a five-ton truck arrived at the cutting rooms where Bob Lawrence was working. Producers Sales Organization (PSO) representatives confiscated the footage and refused Ashby and Lawrence access to the film. “PSO’s attitude was ‘Fuck him, he’s going to take the film to Malibu and cut it as some unreleasable art film,’” says Chuck Mulvehill.1 The following day, Ashby received a letter from PSO saying his uncommunicative behavior was being interpreted as an indication that he had resigned from the film—but that if he had not, he would be fired. There has never been a clear explanation given for why Ashby was fired. Mark Damon said later, “I think I’m a total professional, and what was done was done with the best interests of everybody. Our firing Hal wasn’t because we disagreed with or distrusted Hal’s creative vision of the film. It was a business decision.”2 After all the tussles and Machiavellian machinations so far, Ashby didn’t regard his firing as by any means final—it simply seemed like more of the same from PSO. His contract gave him complete control over postproduction, PSO had influence only after he’d completed three cuts of the film, and anyway SFR, not PSO, was Ashby’s employer, so PSO 25 312 Being Hal Ashby was in no position to sack him. Two days after his “firing,” Ashby wrote a patient letter to Mark Damon in which he pledged to do “everything possible” to have the film ready for the April release date: “Now, Mark, I would really appreciate it, if you and the rest of your people over at PSO would please, at long last, give me a break, and quit telling me how to do my job. I really do know more about making movies than anybody and everybody at PSO, and I’m getting a little sick and tired of being called irresponsible just because I went ahead and made a film from no script. Please don’t say you ever handed me a script that you thought should be shot. There were three (3) scripts that nobody—nobody wanted shot. So, what’s so irresponsible on my part[?]”3 Meanwhile, Ashby’s lawyers told PSO that it didn’t legally have the right to fire Ashby; PSO’s response was to force Steve Roth to fire him. The cast and crew were dismayed and distraught when they heard. “PSO thought they could edit the film better than Hal Ashby,” says Rosanna Arquette. “What kind of mind thinks that way? Who do they think they are? Confiscating that film was the lowest thing anyone could do.” Jeff Bridges said that Ashby’s firing made him feel “ripped around. In the first place, I did the picture to work with Hal. To have it pulled away at the stage where all his expertise lies—which is in the editing—made no sense to me whatsoever.”4 Work recommenced on the film in the new year, when Lawrence was given the few remaining days he needed to complete his assemblage. He only returned in the hope that he could convince PSO to bring Ashby back. Instead, however, the company brought in a new editor, Stuart Pappé, and encouraged Lawrence to work alongside him. Lawrence, however, remained loyal to Ashby and quit the film in protest. Now it was clear that his firing was permanent, Ashby went to the Los Angeles Superior Court, backed by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), claiming that both his contract and the DGA’s code had been violated when he was fired. He sued PSO for the money he had posted, $10 million for damage done to his reputation and loss of possible future business opportunities, and $50 million in punitive damages. The judge remanded the case to the DGA, deeming that it had jurisdiction over the dispute: Ashby produced documents to back up his case, but PSO claimed it needed time to produce the paperwork...

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