Sharon Stone has only starred in one western, but she’s still quite the sharpshooter. Last week, Stone was at the Torino Film Festival in Italy to present her 1995 revisionist western “The Quick and the Dead” and didn’t hold back in sharing her feelings toward the film‘s director, Sam Raimi. Stone produced the film between 1993 and 1994, around the same time she starred in Martin Scorsese‘s Las Vegas epic “Casino,” for which she received her only Academy Award nomination. In comparing the two directors, Stone shared that the differences couldn’t be more stark.
“In Sam Raimi’s case, I really liked his films. I thought he was very intelligent and very funny, different from Marty because he’s Italian, he has loyalty, he has that family feeling, and because of it Marty and I still have a relationship and because of it Marty and I still work together,” Stone said. “Sam was a kid and he doesn’t have loyalty, he doesn’t have family, he didn’t ever talk to me again, he didn’t thank me, he didn’t hire me again, he didn’t acknowledge the relationship. Marty, because I worked so hard and because I admired him so much our relationship continues to today, there is depth there.”
Earlier during the panel discussion, Stone noted that “The Quick and the Dead” helped boost Raimi’s career, as well as the careers of others she had a hand in casting.
“I had my great Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti and I was very blessed to produce this film and to have the the opportunity to cast this film,” she said. “The director Sam Raimi, who I had an opportunity to bring from ‘B’ movies to ‘A’ movies, and then he directed ‘Spider-Man’ and became a very big a movie director. I brought Russell Crowe from Australia. I had the opportunity to cast Leo DiCaprio and bring him into a big leading role and I really enjoyed producing.”
Despite the hope that producing might lead to other opportunities behind the camera, Stone decided these endeavors were an uphill battle not worth the fight.
“After I produced ‘The Quick and the Dead,’ I came to the studio, I asked for $14 million, I had a script, I had the music, I had everything. I pitched it everywhere. I was told it was the best pitch anyone ever heard, but really a woman, ultimately in my period in the ’90s and the early 2000s, the resistance to women working, to me working, was so great that I couldn’t get back to direct and that was unfortunate, but I feel that my intelligence was wasted trying to convince lesser intelligent studio heads to allow me to direct,” said Stone. “So they asked me to come and help them cast movies at studios, which I did because obviously I was very good at producing. I just feel the resistance to women having power, the resistance to me having power, was very big and the resistance to allowing my intelligence to be helpful has been enormous and by people of lesser intelligence.”
Watch Stone’s full discussion below.
