Corey Parker

Here are Cristina Raines comments on Winner, in case you haven't seen them;

That was another one where Monique James told the director, Michael Winner, not to use me, and he told me that. He picked me anyway, but that was a terrible experience. All I can say is that the New York Teamsters, who worked on the crew of that film, saved my life. That's all I'm gonna say. They were a stellar group of guys and they protected me from Michael Winner. If any of them are reading this, I want to say 'Thank you' because they made a point of letting him know that he'd better not mess with me. And I've never been afraid of anyone before, but that man was scary. It was really a frightening experience working for him. That man put me through hell.


You know...he used people with real disabilities for the finale of that film. They were lovely and kind people, and he was unkind to them. He would also try to shoot Ava Gardner making her look really awful. Ava was still a stunningly beautiful woman, but he would go out of his way to light her badly, on purpose, to try and make her look bad. I wasn't aware at first that Michael was doing that. The cinematographer came over to me and he said 'Look at the way Michael's lighting Ava. He's trying to make her look horrible.'

So I said to him, 'OK, let me see what I can do to help out.' I would work with the cinematographer and we would be in cahoots together so that we could figure out a way to give her better lighting to make sure she didn't look bad. What we would do is that I would distract Michael long enough for the cinematographer to reset the camera, that sort of thing. NOBODY liked that man. He was just unkind."