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Sharon Waxman in the NYT pokes around at the news that 69-year-old director William Friedkin is going to make yet another movie for Paramount, where his wife Sherry Lansing is the studio boss. Since 1994, Friedkin has made four films for Paramount, three of them flops, the other merely a "financial disappointment," Waxman writes. Asked if nepotism played a role in Friedkin's hiring for this new project, producer Brian Grazer made it perfectly clear...:
"I don't know," Mr. Grazer answered. "I don't know. It's a tough one. I have no answer. What answer can I have?"
Waxman points out that in his new memoir, Hollywood Animal, the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas claims that Friedkin directed his film Jade in 1994 only because Lansing begged that he support her husband.