I thought he was, um, when he wanted to be, an incredibly, charming, short charlatan. The very first meeting we had was in the Grand hotel which was his castle in Zurich. He liked to travel as little as possible because I gather he paid the governor of Costa Rica for a diplomatic passport. He was cultural attaché to Switzerland for Costa Rica which made him immune from arrest in Europe but he was not in this country [U.S.A.] which is why he never came to any of the openings because he was wanted on several charges on financial misdemeanours and the FBI said: "A cultural attaché from Costa Rica to Switzerland doesn't cut any ice over here."

Anyway, the first time me and Dick wanted Goldie Hawn to play Miss Teschmacher and Goldie agreed and she wanted the same money as Gene Hackman which was too much, and they were not going to pay it. She wanted two million dollars, a million a picture. Second choice was Ann Margaret who wanted five hundred thousand per picture, she agreed, one million for both. We were very happy with Valerie Perrine and she did a great job, so Valerie was third choice and she wanted $250,000, by the way, these figures are not accurate but they went down like that - so we are at the Grand Hotel in Zurich and Pierre Spengler, their hatchet man, and Pierre was very charming, but they use to saddle him with all the dirty jobs like when bad news had to be broken, anyway Pierre came running in from some phone bank and he said "We've just made a deal with Ann Margaret for Miss Teschmacher", and we said, "Oh Alex, thank you so much". And he said, "You see Mr Mankiewicz and Mr Donner, the money you make me spend", and we're all toasting each other. An hour later, Pierre runs back in and says, "We've just made a deal with Valerie Perrine."

I said, "Wait a minute, didn't you just say you made a deal with Ann Margaret?" And Alex retorted, "She can sue".

Okay, we're in for it here guys and we were warned because of what happened on the Three/Four Musketeers when they tried to pay the actors for one movie not two. They were told they were making one movie. Both Dick and I had our salary paid Escrow in a Swiss Bank. So a certain amount was released to me and Dick every Monday morning.

I thought Pierre did yeoman duty. He was saddled with all the dirty work but he knew more about making a film than Ilya and Alex did. Pierre was very limited in his authority. He could not make a decision i.e. I need three more days to finish this, or that scene, it wasn't up to Pierre, that went to Zurich and, by the way, it happens all the time, I think the Salkinds promised their investors much more than they could deliver and they were in desperate need of more money and desperately needed to get this picture over and done with as quickly as possible and still have a wonderful picture, if they could. My God, they spent a lot of money by the time Dick came on and they had to pay Guy off a very healthy salary and they had to start from scratch from set design and everything else.

So they had spent a lot of money and that was the basic problem, Dick, during the whole film, never saw a budget and they kept saying, "You are over budget." Dick kept saying, "What is the fucking budget? Tell me how much money you guys got and how many days?" Or, as he used to say, "I tell you what, I'll schedule the rest of the picture for two days and I'll be nine months over, what am I suppose to do?" I've never actually saw in my forty years working in any job where a director never saw the budget.

There was one day where they were trying to make things look better for the investors and Warners, of course, were starting to pump in more money because they were seeing the rushes and were saying, "Hey, this could be a very good movie."
The super villains break into the White House, where they come through the ceiling and the marines are firing at them, I think that was scheduled for half a day and Dick said, "Are you outta your mind? First of all, if they fly through wrong the first time, we will have to put the dome back, this is two days, even in television it's two days, you got a gun battle, machine gun fire, we got stuff flying all over the place, you can't schedule this for a half a day!". It was like that every day.

Promotions guy, and this isn't any antipathy to the Salkinds, but I don't remember any creative input from the them at all.

There was a time when the old man, with everything going on, considered me as co-producer, and I flew down to Zurich and he said to me, "Every time Mr Donner", he always called him Mr Donner and he always called me Mr Mankiewicz, anyway he said, "Every time me and Mr Donner have an argument you'd be siding with Mr Donner", and I said "That's probably true, Alex, because he knows how to make a picture, he really does."

I give you an interesting story: I found Alexander Salkind very charming but I didn't have to work for him in the capacity that Dick did, but that trip to the Grand Altar was just to meet him and talk about this or how the picture was going. I had in my contract that where ever I went I had a suite because I can't live in one room and I prefer to write in the hotel, much easier than the studio, and I don't want to bore you but I actually like to write in bed, and I remember the agent saying, "Don't let the Salkinds ever take one thing from you, if they do then they'll take more". I go to the Grand Altar and have a single room and it's a beautiful room. I'm just down there for a meeting, it doesn't matter to me.

The phone rings, it's Alex, he says, "Mr Mankiewicz, you see what your friend, Mr Donner is doing to us, here I am in my single room calling you in your single room", so he says "I'll meet you at six o clock at the bar". So I go down the centre staircase and I can hear Alex yelling in Deutsche, whatever, and I go down the hall like a cheap nosey guy and there he is talking to all these investors in a big suite! So at 'six o clock' we have a drink and I say to Alex, BTW, it's just a little thing, why did you call me and say that I'm calling you from my single room to your single room because you are in rooms 260 to 275 [laughs]. Why would you lie about such a little thing like that and he said to me, "I can't help it." [pause] I thought it was very disarming and very charming. It was his style of life.

Lester asked me to come back to the picture and Terry Semel came down to my office and I told him, "You know I can't do that, Dick is my friend." He then said, "Could you go to London and accidentally arrange to run into Dick Lester and have dinner with him and talk about it?" I said "I can't do that" And Terry said "I understand" and wasn't any slight to Dick Lester, I have a lot of respect for him.