by Jack Tewksbury

For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: a memoir of a very intense and rather colorful collaboration between James Woods and director Oliver Stone on the set of Salvador, in 1985. “We  fought  like  cats  and  dogs.  I  mean,  we  really  were brutally  at  odds  through most   of  the  film,  although  I like Oliver  Stone  very  much,  and  I  think  he’s  a  great  screenwriter.  Anyway,  the  movie  worked,  I  think  we  both  agreed. We  have  each  gone  on  record  as  saying  it  was  an  unbelievably  difficult  time  but  a  very  valuable  time  although  we  didn’t  talk  once  for  three  whole  days. If  he  said , “Action,”  I  wouldn’t  do  anything.  I’d  say, “Tell  the  first  assistant director.”  Once  he  called  me  a  rat  and  a  weasel and  he  told  me,  “I  hate  you.”  So  in  the  very  next  scene I shout,  “Okay, I’m  a  f***  weasel.” I just  threw  it  in  and  he  said, “You  had  to  say  it, didn’t you?”  And  he  added,  “I’m  not  going  to  print  it,”  and  I said, “Yeah,  you’ll  print  it,  cause  it’s  good.”  And  there  it is  on  the  screen.”