The director Sharon Stone accused of disloyalty: “He didn’t ever talk to me again”
Sharon Stone isn’t afraid to speak her mind. The star of Total Recall and Basic Instinct is known for giving very frank interviews, often relating to how she feels betrayed about her time in Hollywood. She has enured a particularly rough go of it throughout her career, going from in-demand star to totally forgotten about in record time, and in her mind, one director shoulders some of the blame for that transition.
Reflecting on troubling periods of her life during an interview with IndieWire, Stone explained how she felt particularly let down by Sam Raimi. The two worked together on 1995’s The Quick and the Dead, a western in which Stone played the lead. Raimi directed the project, which was also produced by Stone. It didn’t get great reviews at the time, but has undergone something of a reevaluation in recent years. It’s also notable for featuring a very young Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his earliest roles.
“In Sam Raimi’s case, I really liked his films,” she said while explaining her decision to collaborate with him. She compared working with him to working with Martin Scorsese, who directed Stone in Casino around the same time. “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 then proceeded to go all in on Raimi, who was in his mid-30s when The Quick and Dead was being made. “Sam was a kid and he doesn’t have loyalty,” she accused. “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.”
“I had my great Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti and I was very blessed to produce this film and to have the the [sic] opportunity to cast this film,” Stone continued. “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.” The role in question was ‘The Kid’, a brash young gunslinger who befriends Stone’s character of ‘The Lady’. This was one of DiCaprio’s first starring roles, and just one year later, he grabbed international attention as the titular loverboy in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
Stone claimed some level of responsibility for boosting the Evil Dead director’s credentials, saying she helped take him “from ‘B’ movies to ‘A’ movies.” Raimi went on to make the likes of A Simple Plan and For Love of the Game after this, before landing his biggest success with the first of his ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy in 2002.
“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,” Stone continued, outlining plans she had to direct a movie following her foray into producing. “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 1990s 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.”
