Amadeus (Deep Dive Into The "Torture Chamber" of Making An All-Time Classic)

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watch this tonight,

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there's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today on the

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show, I'm doing one of my
deep dives into the making of Amadeis.

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Imidais obviously is one of the greatest
movies ever made. I think that's not

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a controversial opinion. At this point, it has lost none of its power.

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I saw it relatively recently at the
Hollywood Bowl and it was amazing.

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You know, they had the orchestra
and the whole thing, and it was

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packed by the way, and people
laughed and just like really had an experience

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with it. And I always thought
when I watched Amadeus that it was fascinating

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to me that this is clearly an
expensive movie and the guys who starring it

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are not big names. And even
back when they made this movie, I

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still wondered, like, how do
you finance a movie like that. I

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mean, I you know, there's
it still is the film business, like,

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how do you get the money to
make this big, lavish period piece

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without really big name actors. So
I was wanted to know, so I

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dove it in the research and I
found out and the answer is actually pretty

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wild. So I want to just
share with you the whole saga of the

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making of Vamadeus. But I think
particularly how there was kind of you know,

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the way we have a twenty four
and Megan Elison now Saul Zaints.

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I think I'm saying his last name
right. Hopefully was that for his day.

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So yeah, this is the making
of Vamadeus. Movie nominated for eleven

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Oscars one Best Picture and is still
an awesome, awesome movie. How did

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this movie get made? Well?
New York Times thankfully covered in nineteen eighty

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four. It starts with this great
odd couple of Peter Schaeffer and Melis Foreman,

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and writing the script for the movie
was a huge pain in the ass.

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I always love this. This makes
me feel better when you have a

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great movie, you know, occasionally
you have situations where people were like,

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well, you know, oh,
I just it just kind of came out

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of me organically or I actually wrote
it pretty quickly. It really wasn't that

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difficult. You occasionally get situations like
that, and if you're a creative person

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you hear that, you're like,
fuck that guy, and so it was.

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It was quite reassuring to hear that. Peter Schaeffer and Melis Foreman struggled

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mightily, According to The New York
Times, So the English playwright that's Peter

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Schaeffer, spent four months hold up
in a Connecticut farmhouse with Melish Foreman,

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the Czech film director, isolated from
the rest of the world. In what

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they called their torture Chain. The
collaborators suffered from writer's block together, listen

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to Mozart records together, and improvised
scenes from the play together. Much of

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their afteran work sessions, however,
was devoted to arguing. They argued about

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scenes and words and the order of
scenes and words. They argued about who

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would say what in the film.
They even argued about which of them would

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cook dinner. In the end,
nothing went into the movie that both did

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not agree upon. This Honestly,
this is what I think has led to

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most movies kind of sucking. Now. If you notice, I mostly do

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television on the show. And that's
not because I don't love movies. I

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love movies. It's because I think
that in general, on average, the

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quality of film has gone down a
bit, and I think it's because of

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something that in theories sounded great,
which is streamers. They're making a ton

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of stuff. It sounds like the
development process is not as arduous working with

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them, and so it's a great
as awesome. But I think that,

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as you see from this description,
nobody likes as Actually many times show nobody

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likes doing a million drafts of a
script and really fighting over every word.

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It sucks, not fun at all. But out of that hard work a

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lot of times you get the best
stuff, apparently. And again this is

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the New York Timesmil's foreman was so
worried the elements from the stage would creep

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in and make the film stale that
he developed a quote unobjective resentment toward everything

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in the original show. Mister Shaffer, who received screen credit for writing the

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movie, remained considerably fonder of the
play he'd spent two and a half years

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writing, and found himself trying to
quote get in the script as much as

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possible of the original end quote Given
these two points of view, the collaboration

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between the playwright and the director naturally
took on an adversarial, if still amiable

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air Quota was like playing a good
game of ping pong or tennis, says

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mister former, recalling that an argument
over a single word could go on for

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hours. End quote. Some changes
from the play. Salieri had these long

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monologues that they had to figure out
a way to make visual. So instead

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of Salieri cursing God in a long
monologue, he throws a crucifix into a

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burning fireplace. Instead of confessing to
the theater audience, he confesses to a

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priest. Peter Shaffer said about the
movie. He said, you know,

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in theater, if you play music
a lot, it turns into a concert.

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But film welcomes music, it eats
it up. In this case,

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it's not background music. And by
the way, you might notice that there's

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a bit of Mozart playing under this
episode. That's because I found and I've

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learned this from making a lot of
stuff. A mozart is in the public

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domain, but performances of mozart are
not necessarily in the public domain. But

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I did find a royalty free version
of this that was posted as being a

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royalty free and so I'm using that
in this episode underneath, just like Peter

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Schaeffer was saying, it's not background
music. It's there to heighten atmosphere,

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to heightened grief or joy or any
obvious emotion. In the film of Amadeus,

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music almost becomes a character, the
most important character in a way.

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Meilish and I, as it were, met on that middle ground. He

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from film, I from the stage, he from the visual, Ie from

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the verbal. We met on the
ground that is neither visual nor verbal,

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but acoustic and abstract. We met
there in the music. End quote.

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Now, the movie is not historically
accurate, nor is it really supposed to

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be. But there's been a lot
of writing about the movie versus reality and

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how probably most people assume that it's
real and all that there was part of

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it that's real, like, for
example, the way that Mozart was a

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bit childish. This is from a
Slash Film article quote. As for his

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childishness, Mozart's letters revealed that he
had a body and sometimes scatological sense of

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humor. He even composed a piece
called Leck Mitch Marsh, which probably needs

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no translation, don't I'm missuing let
me, I actually will translate because I

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don't know what that means. Oh
okay, I found it. The English

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translation is lick me in the ass
quickly. So there you go, people.

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That makes it feel credible, just
that. So, just to finish

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that quote from flash film. Historians
have noted that these kind of yucks were

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common in middle class Viennese society at
the time, and not specific to Mozart

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in quote. Also, historians apparently
place little credence in the notion that Saliari

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killed Mozart. In real life,
the two composers had a cordial, if

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at times prickly, professional relationship.
Unlike the solitary, pious Salieri in the

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film, the real Salieri was a
far more tragic character whose wife and son

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both died. There was also evidence
that Salieri attended Mozart's opera The Magic Flute

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and raved about the work to the
composer afterwards. It's also been documented to

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Salieri tutored Wolfgang's young son and music, which seems odd behavior for a supposed

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rival. Enduote. Wikipedia said that
they that Peter Shaffery emilish form and did

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not care if it was based on
reality. They called it quote a fantasia

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on the theme of Mozart and Salieri. Quote. So in the movie,

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Salieri is again a pious loner trapped
in a vow of chastity. In reality

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he was a married man with eight
children and at least one mistress. All

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right, so now you got these
scripts, Now you got to go make

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the movie. This is from Independent
UK. So Saal Zaints almost didn't get

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to make this movie because the original
backers, which is twenty Century Fox,

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shut it down because Zains declined to
cast it with bigger names. Mirramax came

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to rescue, with Zaints putting up
cash of his own to round out the

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budget. The La Times, quoting
Michael Douglas, Michael Dougas apparently said Saul

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is a wonderful mixture. He's a
street smart guy from New Jersey who has

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impeccable taste. There are a lot
of people in this town who pretend to

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have both toughness and good taste.
But with Saul, it isn't pretense.

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His power comes from his joy and
enthusiasm for a project. Quote. So,

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Zaints is from New Jersey. He
ran away from home at the age

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of sixteen, supported himself hawking peanuts
at the Saint Louis Cardinals training camp in

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Florida. In gambling, he served
in North Africa and Sicily during World War

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Two. Never held a steady job
until he moved to San Francisco at age

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twenty six. Or He worked for
a jazz producer and then he bought a

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record company and made millions from Credence
clear Out Revival, and that funded him

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going into the film business. John
Lithgow said about Saul Zaints against Ally Times.

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Being on the set playing Hearts with
Saul, I realized the secret to

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his success. He can spot everyone's
strengths and weaknesses right away. He was

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a killer. He shoot the moon
three out of every four games end quote.

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He owned an Italian villa. He
had four hundred olive trees in the

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property and there was a label on
his private stock and had said not one

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lira of profit from this olive oil
will go to any worthwhile charity. So

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real character saw Saints as one of
the few remaining independent filmmakers who fund movies

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with their own money again formally Times. He has a very personal stake in

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his projects. His box office success, the movie that he did with Lithgow

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costs him twenty million dollars. It
was owney. But and here's a really

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interesting part, and this is Milischwarman. He said, Saul gives you wonderful

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ideas, but he never forces them
on you. He never meddled in my

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sphere, the creative decisions. So
again, it's very reminiscent of Megan Elson,

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like someone who's super rich, who
has good taste, and who gives

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artists the money they need to make
their movies and doesn't mess with them.

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That's my sense of Megan Elson.
That's certainly what people were saying about saltz

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Ants. As far as the casting, so from DJA, dot Org and

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Wikipedia, apparently Kenneth Branow was one
of the finalists. Mark Hamill was going

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to play Mozart as well, and
Foreman decided not to cast him due to

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his association with the character of Luke
Skywalker. A different actress was cast as

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Mozart's wife, but she tore a
ligament in her leg the day before shooting

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started. Meg Tilley was that actress. Speaking about f Mary Abraham English,

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Foreman said to the DGA, he
was very obscure. He had been in

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some films but I think if I
had seen him in them, I might

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not have cast him. He came
in to read for a smaller part the

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opera director Rosenberg, and when he
was finished, I asked him to stay

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and Redtailieri with a young actor I
was auditioning for Mozart because nothing seemed to

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be at stake. He was so
relaxed, so natural, so real.

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So I'm a Days finally came out
in nineteen eighty four SPIM nineteenth. It

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made ninety million dollars in nineteen eighties. Money was nominated for fifty three awards

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and received forty, including eight Academy
Awards, including Academy Awards for Best Picture,

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four Bathto Awards, four Golden Globes, a Director's Guild of America Award.

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As of twenty twenty three, was
the most recent film to have more

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than one nomination in the Academy Award
for Best Actor category. In nineteen ninety

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eight, the American Film Institute ranked
at fifty third on its one hundred years

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hundred Movies lists, and twenty nineteen
the film was selected for preservation in the

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United States National Film and Registry by
the Library of Congress as being culturally historically

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or esthetically significant. So yeah,
I'm a dais awesome movie still great and

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could have been could have starred Mark
Hamill and or Kenneth Branno. I would

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love to see those versions. I
think both those guys would be interesting.

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But honestly, like, how do
you touch what Tom Holst did with the

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part? I don't know. I
would would you go for one of those

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versions? I would love to see
it. That is the show for today.

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I have a guest interview that I'm
so excited about as our next episode

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that I don't even want to tell
you about it because I'm afraid it will

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jinx it. So I'm not going
to say a word about it, but

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just keep an eye out. If
I get this interview, it'd be pretty

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cool. As always, thank you
for listening. If you enjoy the show,

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please leave us a five star review
and Apple Podcasts and you can always

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reach and you can always reach out
to me at Dan Advoyagemedia dot com.

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Watch This nant on Instagram, bettmore
Dan on Twitter, Watch This Night podcast

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on TikTok, or you can join
our Facebook group Watch This Tonight. Thanks

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for listening. Byeye