Sherry and Bob: The casting couch strikes again.
A Director, Married to the Studio
by Sharon Waxman, The New York Times, Feb. 9, 2004:
When Variety published the news last week that the veteran director William Friedkin was attached to a new movie at Paramount Pictures, eyebrows went up in Hollywood. Not just because it is rare in the age-obsessed movie industry for a 69-year-old director to score a major studio assignment, but also because Mr. Friedkin would be making yet another movie at the studio where his wife, Sherry Lansing, is the chairwoman.
Since 1994 Mr. Friedkin, a celebrated director in the 1970’s, has made four feature films, all at Paramount, three of them box office flops, one a financial disappointment.
So the choice of Mr. Friedkin to direct a big-budget movie about the Hollywood lawyer Sidney Korshak is sparking new talk of nepotism at a moment when the studio is in poor financial health.
The more salient question: Why would Sherry Lansing hand her husband such bad scripts like the ones for The Hunted, Rules of Engagement, Jade, and Blue Chips?