Melnick was a strange man, he had a... he had a complex that his office had to be changed every two months and the carpet renewed and the furniture renewed; this is all on the Fox lot, right? And, I remember he had an English secretary, who was lovely, and she always warned me, she said, ‘If you go into the office be careful you don't touch the desk or do anything’. And, I mean, if you tried to touch the desk or anything he said, ‘Don't sit on that chair’, and so on. And one day I come in and... and Elizabeth, who says, ‘Don't... you can't go in your... into your offices’, I said, ‘What's happened?’ ‘He said he's re-carpeting it.’ I said, ‘But the carpet was as... brand new’. ‘Yeah, but he wanted the shade of grey to be a little darker.’ Well, you know. And, every time I went into a meeting with him he said don't do this and don't do that and don't touch this, and anyway.
So, I knew, you know... I didn't know this would eventually blow up, but it did. And Marvin Davis and... who was the Head of Fox, had a terrible row with Danny Melnick and this great scheme was... Special Project never was born, unfortunately. I'd worked on it for over a year and I had the order to roll out there too. And Danny Melnick was such a snob, he said – because normally you can't drive your cars into the studio lot – he said, ‘You're allowed to take the Roller and park it in front of my bungalow, it gives us some class, you know’. But it was very sad because I had some very good assistants with me and, you know, old Hollywood producers who were too old for running a film studio and so on, but they were working with me. And it just wasn't made, and all this because Danny Melnick – poor Danny is dead now – but he had this mania about renewing his bungalow every two weeks and Marvin, I can't blame Marvin Davis, you know, for saying, you know, finish that, you know.