The title of Irwin Winkler’s memoir is self-explanatory. A Life in Movies: Stories from 50 Years in Hollywood recounts the long career of the man who produced Rocky and Raging Bull, The Right Stuff and The Wolf of Wall Street. Winkler got into the movies through the mail room and stepped up through alertness and good fortune. Speaking of his original production collaborator, Bob Chartoff, Winkler writes: “We had gotten into Hollywood through a series of almost unbelievable lucky breaks, and once there just plowed straight ahead.”
In four years they produced six films, including the box-office hit Point Black (1967) and the Oscar-nominated They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). During that time they worked with Elvis (he was “gregarious, gracious”) and blew-off John Denver (telling him he should go back to his original career of teaching school). Winkler was surprised when his idea for a musical, New York, New York (1977), attracted the attention of emerging director Martin Scorsese. It was the beginning of a 40-year relationship with Scorsese and that film’s star, Robert De Niro.
A Life in Movies is a chronicle collecting good stories, many of them doubtlessly told over and over to friends and colleagues. Some reveal how wrong even a lucky guy can be. In 1971 while planning The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, he received a pitch from the young Francis Ford Coppola. Winkler checked him out and “decided there was no reason to think Mr. Coppola could direct a gangster film—no reason at all.”
