Yul's son doesn't even name ADIOS SABATA in his book.

From: YUL

The Man Who Would Be King

A Memoir of Father and Son

by Rock Brynner

By now, he told me firmly, he regarded himself as a character actor, as if this were a rite of passage that the family ought to note. He was quite realistic about aging, and recognized that he had passed the point where he could play romantic leading men on the screen - such scripts just weren't proposed to him anymore. Instead, he was being offered roles as villains that, more and more often, were extremely violent. But by this time, for a variety of economic reasons, the film business was in such dire straits that even Henry Fonda was making spaghetti Westerns - and so was Yul. These were Westerns, shot in Italy and Spain, in which only the famous star spoke English; all the other characters were played by gnarly-looking Italians who merely mouthed the English dialogue, which was later dubbed. This was not the goal Yul had had in mind when he had studied with Michael Chekhov, but he regarded it as a personal insult when I pointed that out, as he noted that I myself was being supported by these awful movies.

Steve McQueen and Rock and Yul Brynner

From: YUL

The Man Who Would Be King

A Memoir of Father and Son

by Rock Brynner

"Dad, who's going to play the other cowboys in MAG SEVEN?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, I heard you say you were still looking, and there's this guy on TV who's really cool. He carries a sawed-off shotgun, and - I don't know, he's kind of like a teenager. His name is Steve McQueen. He'd be really good. He's already starred in one movie: THE BLOB...

"Your father's got exactly the right idea, Rock," McQueen said to me one afternoon on location outside Cuernavaca. Then he paused. "Perfectionism... you dad's perfectionism is legendary. Just learn to do one thing better than anyone else, doesn't matter if it's Ping-Pong or drawing a six-shooter real fast. Work to be best. Oh, you'll lose plenty of friends that way. Like Yul says, 'So, I won't win the Nice Guy of the Year award.' Anyway, I heard you'd seen me on TV, and put in a plug with your dad. I just wanted to thank you. You've got quite some father, Rock." And he paused again it occurred to me that my dad was a hero to my own cowboy hero. "He's gonna be a tough ol' man for you to live up to, all right." I didn't need Steve McQueen to tell me that. " 'Specially if he ever gets mean to you. He's real competitive."...

Preparations continued for a sequel to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN called RETURN OF THE SEVEN. When Yul had first hired Steve McQueen for the original film, McQueen had promised, informally, to appear in any sequel. But when Yul sent him the script to RETURN, McQueen's agent went back on Steve's word on his behalf. My cowboy hero had backed out on his word, and the little faith I had left in heroes was shatttered. Yul had half expected him to fink out, and went about finding a whole new cast for the sequel...

In the spring of 1966, Yul went to Alicante, Spain, to shoot RETURN OF THE SEVEN. The cast was a bunch of young, interesting men, who, everyone assumed, would soon be as famous as Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn ever were - they were Bob Fuller, Claude Akins, and Warren Oates. There was no obvious reason why this could not be as good a film as the original - indeed, so much had been learned on the first film that the second should have surpassed it. The fact that it was shot in Spain instead of Mexico need not have made much difference. There was the great Emilio Fernandez as the bandido this time. The director, Burt Kennedy, was no slouch. Why then did it have a cut-rate feel about it? It was as if an idea that had proven itself was now exploiting itself...

One day a plump, beared customer in dirty jeans and dark shades came up to me in the sushi bar. He looked like a low-rent biker. "Are you Rocky, Yul Brynner's kid?" he asked, and when I nodded cautiously, he removed his shades. It was Steve McQueen.

In words that I can barely remember, he said he's always meant to stop by this roadside shack. Recently THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN had been shown on television, and a carpenter working on his house mentioned to him that I worked at this sushi bar - that was why he was stopping by. Trying my best to ignore his appearance, I sat down with him at a table. He explained that by disguising himself as an ugly biker type he was free to move about publicly, the way ordinary folk do. I tried to picture Yul doing that. Then McQueen told me he'd been reviewing his life carefully for some months. "Yul and I fell out over some stupid thing, a couple of years after we made that movie." He paused. "I don't remember. Maybe it was something in the press. Or the plans to make a sequel. We had an argument about The Deal. I'm sure he doesn't remember exactly either, it was such a trivial thing." McQueen was wrong; Yul remembered perfectly.
"Anyway, I stopped by so's to ask you to give him a message, next time you speak to him." He paused, but this was a different kind of pause. It was difficult for him to say what he had to say. And yet during the several seconds that he paused, it was obvious that something had happened, something had changed inside his soul.

"Ask Yul to forgive me. I was always very grateful for what he did. He transformed my career and, with it, my life. Then we had some stupid argument because I wouldn't appear in RETURN OF THE SEVEN, and I never saw him again. Well, I came here today to ask you to give Yul a message. Tell him I did wrong, and I'm sorry for it. I never stopped feeling bad about it, because there's no doubt, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was the film that made me a star. And I never did forget that, or forget him."

I promised to give Yul the message, mentioning that Dad and I didn't talk much. I was going to say something about how unwell he looked, but then he might reasonably have asked what the hell I was doing working as a short-order cook. So I just told him that he'd been a real hero to me.

"I remember, Rock. You first suggested me to your father, because you were a fan of my TV show. I never forgot you either, all the time I was a star."

"But you're still a star," I objected. Steve McQueen didn't need me to tell him that. Then I was called back in to the office to finish the accounts, and we said good-bye. A few months later, Steve McQueen was dead.

Sergio Corbucci on his last Western.

Sergio Corbucci: For CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI CON LA RIVOLUZIONE? (aka WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?), I returned somewhat to the theme of a film I'd done with Tota and DeSica, I DUE MARESCIALLE; the story of a rascal who is forced to impersonate an heroic man and becomes a hero in spite of himself. It was a very funny film. Gassman was in it, much like his character in LA GRANDE GUERRA, and there was Paolo Villagio, this new comic just getting started. With CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI CON LA RIVOLUZIONE?, which would almost have been title CHE C'ENTRIAMO NOI col Western (or WHAT AM I DOING IN A WESTERN?) - I said farewell to the genre, which had been a magnificent adventure that had spanned almost a decade, with some rare returns to other sorts of films.

Pity that this adventure was a bit spoiled by Enzo Barboni, the only unworthy son of our enterprise, who with LO CHIAMAVANO TRINITA (aka THEY CALL ME TRINITY) dealt a death blow to the Italian Western, in the sense that he - my collaborator on twenty films and on almost all my Westerns - finding himself able to graduate to directing a little Western exploited everything we'd done together, even the films done with Toto - with the result of turning it all into a mocking comedy. He took Terence Hill, who was then developing as an imitation Franco Nero because of his resemblence to him, and paired him with that big lug Bud Spencer, turning them into a sort of Laurel & Hardy - a little strange, a bit rascally - and it had a big success. But he killed off the Western because after it had been made so ridiculous, no one could even again take a gunfighter blazing away seriously.

The disappointment of TARAS BULBA

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Sergio Leone on Rod Steiger

Sergio Leone: Steiger is a child without any personality of his own, who assumes a different character in every film, and even takes it home with him. Three months before the start of DUCK YOU SUCKER, he began taking lessons from a Mexican woman to learn the cadence and accent of one for whom Spanish is one's mother tongue, and how he'd express himself in another language (i.e. English). That's the sort of character he was going to play in the film. Well, for the three months preceding the first fall of the clapper, then throughout the shooting, and after till the end of dubbing, Steiger always spoke that way, on the set and in private. To the point that some girls who looked him up in New York for the weekend (he was divorced at the time) asked me: "What's happened to Rod? He speaks in such a way that, even in intimate situations, you can't understand a word he's saying."

For DUCK YOU SUCKER, the choice of Steiger and Coburn was somewhat imposed by the Americans. So, obviously, in order to adapt a movie that was already costing a lot to my criteria, I was forced to rewrite the screenplay day by day as we shot, and to tell the actors not to ask me today what we'd be filming tomorrow. From the start, Steiger complained a lot, even saying to me: "You belong to the type of presumptuous director, like Fellini and Rosi. I've worked with you, and I know that you detest actors, but I must make you aware that there are only six true actors in the world, every continent has one and you'd better learn to live with that."

I said, "Since it seems that I've hired one of those six, would you please do me the courtesy of telling me who the other five are, so I can remember in the future not to hire them."

Whereupon, we began to see eye to eye, also because, upon his nth outburst, I made such a scene a kilometer away. Whatever the reason, he became very docile, he didn't even protest doing the same scene over thirty times as happened for certain takes. I came to realize that on the first take, he'd chew the scenery, and the best method to obtain what I wanted was to tire him out.

Rodd on HORNETS NEST.

From: Rodd Dana

The Actor with the 3-D Name

Interview by Michael Barnum

VideoWatcHDog No. 143 Sep 2008

How did you become involved in the film HORNETS NEST?

Perhaps somebody called my agent for somebody who looked and sounded very American.

Did you have an opportunity to get to know Rock Hudson during the filming? Any recollections or stories about him?

As near as I recall, he was not very friendly and stayed pretty much surrounded by his "entourage".

How about Sylva Koscina and Giacomo Rossi Stuart?

Only saw La Koscina once and never spoke with her. I had known Giacomo from Rome; we played cards a couple of times. I was only on the set one day, then back to Rome.

Was this an American production?

Near as I recall, it was a co-production.

Sergio Leone on DUCK YOU SUCKER

Sergio Leone: I was only going to produce GIU LA TESTA (aka DUCK YOU SUCKER, aka A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE), and I proposed Peter Bogdanovich as director to the Americans. He had done revisionist takes on some old genres successfully (i.e. PAPER MOON and WHAT'S UP DOC?). But he wanted to "revisit" the Western along very conventional and stale lines, and, in any case, he understood he wouldn't be able to get away with that - not with me around, and not with that budget! - and he turned it down. I thought about Peckinpah, who'd have worked, or of my assistant director Carlos Santi - with me supervising, but the actors rebelled at this proposal. "Euro" was anticipating lots of cash returns, and we were ten days away from starting, and so I ended up directing it myself, and - slowly, slowly - I became enthusiastic about it, even though, at the beginning, I was feeling frustrated. I was already aching to do ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. There had been problems with the actors, because I wanted Jason Robards and Malcolm McDowell - two seperate generations - but Steiger and Coburn worked out just fine: the intellectual in counterpoint to the naif set down into world war, which also represents the world of today with all its horrors and looming problems. It's necessary to take as the subject the smallest characters taking on the biggest situation. In the end, it's the small character that explains to the intellectual - the slightly presumptuous intellectual who wants to serve the naif.

A Pygmalion in reverse in short.

And in the end, the intellectual throws away his books.

A character in the film says at some point: "He who talks revolution, talks confusion", and this was another theme at the heart of the film; a film in which the historical framework simply supplied a pretext to speak of much more general things.