Questions for David Scott Milton

Sorry it's taken so long to get to this message. I just don't research "Born to Win" that often. Yes, the film was based on personal experience. I knew JJ. And indeed I was around for all of the film, even worked with the actors in some scenes and re-wrote on the set. Ivan Passer & I had a lovely relationship and we still are fast friends. I did get to know DeNiro. In fact I was responsible for his getting the part. Both George Segal and Ivan had reservations about Bobby: he had a habit of saying yes, yes, yes to direction & then doing exactly what he wanted. He had come into the initial meeting for the part with a thick book of characters he had worked on while studying with Stella Adler-- these were not composite shots, but fully worked out characters. I was tremendously impressed by the work he had done & implored Ivan & George to go with him-- he was the real thing, a real actor. After the film was completed he and I had a casual friendship out of mutual respect. I sent him a script for a small film-- this was after "Mean Streets"-- and he called me from Italy where he was doing the Bertolucci film, "1900": he liked my script but told me he felt compelled to do "larger" films now. Over the years we've had only fleeting contact. The initial reaction to "Born to Win" was a kind of indifference: that was from the newspaper reviews. United Artists immediately bailed on the film, but the magazine reviews were very strong, particularly Pauline Kael in The New Yorker and Paul Zimmerman in Newsweek. Kael was a great supporter of the film throughout a number of years. I'm very proud of the film-- certainly there are some things that I wish we had done better, but there were budget concerns and yes I was disappointed in the commercial failure of the film. My career as a screenwriter might have been different. For a number of years I regularly was employed as a screenwriter; had scripts optioned, but only sporadically had stuff done. Fortunately I write plays as well as novels-- had a play on Broadway, "Duet", after "Born to Win", and have had five novels published and a new one that should be out later this year. You can learn more about me at

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