Did anyone read John Lithgow's new book?

There's a chapter in John Lithgow's book, Drama, titled Mr. Pleasant, in which Lithgow describes an actor who sabotaged film takes that didn't include close-ups of him so that the director/editor had to use close-ups of the vain actor in the final edit. In particular, Lithgow describes how this actor sabotaged his female co-star so that the final edit of a certain scene, the focus would be on him rather than her. Lithgow says he was afraid that he would also be sabotaged so he stroked this actor's ego, making the actor feel he was imparting wisdom to a relative newcomer to film. Lithgow says that other than this, this actor was an affable person and he was pleased about this actor getting a role in a blockbuster movie (presumably Spider-Man 2002).


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Overall, I really enjoyed this film. The Bernard Hermann score was amazing and I loved the moody atmosphere and pacing of the film. The film is marred by some illogical plot contrivances but those are minor defects, imo.

Yep. That's the book. Just reading it now. I think the upshot of the story is that Lithgow ended up feeling pity for an old-school movie star nearing the end of his career, still playing old movie tricks to make the filmmaker favor him in the final edit (rather odd, considering that Robertson was the actual star of the movie).

The other thing that I find interesting is that I like Robertson's performance in this film, and remember that when I saw the film in the late '70s I thought Lithgow's performance was amateurish. Perhaps it was because Robertson's tricks undermined Lithgow's confidence in himself (Lithgow goes into some detail in his book about his confidence problems), and he overcompensated with a too-theatrical performance. Also, Lithgow had hardly any film experience at the time, certainly compared to Robertson. But I will also say that this is not the only negative report on Robertson that I've seen; read Michael Caine's book What's It All About for an account of working with Robertson on Too Late the Hero when Robertson was up for his Oscar on Charly. Caine, of course, doesn't avoid naming Robertson in his story.

I will point out one more thing; Robertson was not the only actor to play tricks like this to force the editor to favor him. Glenn Close in her interview in "Inside the Actor Studio" levels the same charge against Robert Redford during the making of The Natural.