During a Q&A held at the Torino Film Festival, Sharon Stone reflected on her 1995 revisionist Western film The Quick and the Dead, during which she called out director Sam Raimi for his lack of “loyalty.”
The iconic actress, who was in the northwest Italian city to receive a lifetime achievement award and present the film’s screening, contrasted her experience working with Raimi — then largely known as a cult filmmaker for The Evil Dead and Darkman — to her time with Martin Scorsese on his epic crime drama Casino.
“I had my great Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti, and I was very blessed to produce [The Quick and the Dead] and to have 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 [pre-Gladiator]. I had the opportunity to cast Leo DiCaprio [pre-Titanic] and bring him into a big leading role, and I really enjoyed producing.”
While the Basic Instinct star said she enjoyed Raimi’s projects, she maintained that their working relationship didn’t last.
“In Sam Raimi’s case, I really liked his films,” she continued. “I thought he was very intelligent and very funny — different from Marty Scorsese, 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. 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.”
The Quick and the Dead, though a flop upon release with mixed critical reviews and a low domestic gross, has since become a cult classic of sorts. The action-thriller follows a mysterious woman gunslinger (Stone) who disembarks in the town of Redemption to avenge her father, killed by the town’s sadistic mayor (Gene Hackman).
When asked why Stone didn’t continue her work behind the camera as a director, she listed Hollywood’s sexism as a large obstacle.
“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,” she explained. “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. 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.”