Movie Magic
A Marketing Memoir
by
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Steve McQueen understood power, and always seemed bent on misusing it to everyone’s detriment, including his own. The misuse of this power reached its zenith on Le Mans, a $13 million production equivalent to $130 million today, had wreckage strewn far beyond the racing accidents seen on the big screen. It was to be McQueen’s Masterpiece, the greatest auto-racing movie of all-time was instead the most expensive and artistic flop of his career. Steve McQueen’s Le Mans was an auto-racing picture that would make all other auto-pictures pale in comparison. The production was scheduled to start in a few short months despite the fact that the script had yet to be developed. The picture’s start date was tied-in with the actual race in Le Mans, so some real decisions needed to be made … to reschedule for another year or cancel. The choice should have been apparent. Key production executives were not talking to one other. Cinema Center Films had an elaborate production staff headed by the respected Jere Henshaw and backed by Ken Evans, head of the literary department, and Bob Rosen, an experienced online production executive. These guys were good at their jobs, and it was their responsibility to interface with their counterparts at Solar Productions and develop a script. However, this was not happening. The result was that McQueen and his colleagues were to leave for Le Mans with only twenty pages of script, a decision that was a blueprint for disaster. McQueen was not concerned, though, and I always suspected that his overcoming an inadequate Bullitt script led him to believe he would be forever “Bullitt-proof,” and that the magic that worked for him in that movie would work for him in Le Mans.
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About the Book
When you work on Hollywood blockbusters as a senior marketing executive at DCA, Continental Distributors, MGM, Cinema Center Films, Paramount, and Columbia Pictures, you meet some people.
For Bill O’Hare, that meant working with movie stars like John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, and Elvis Presley—just to name a few.
Growing up as a kid in Lake Placid, New York, he never dreamed he’d end up working with such stars or that they’d actually listen to what he had to say.
In this behind-the-scenes memoir, O’Hare looks back at how he helped timeless films such as Doctor Zhivago, The Dirty Dozen, Viva Las Vegas, A Man Called Horse, and the 1967 re-release of Gone With the Wind become box-office smashes.
He also looks back at box-office busts such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lee Marvin’s Monte Walsh and Le Mans.
Join one of Hollywood’s leading marketers from the 1950s to the 1980s as he celebrates his craft and reminisces about being chauffeured in a Rolls-Royce with Sophia Loren, spending time at a race track with Steve McQueen, and enjoying Movie Magic.
About the Author
Bill O’Hare worked at major film studios such as DCA, Continental Distributors, MGM, Cinema Center Films, Paramount, and Columbia Pictures from the 1950s to the 1980s. He marketed iconic films, including Dr. Zhivago, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gone with the Wind, and Le Mans. He’s retired and lives in Burbank, California.