The death of Dino De Laurentiis reminds me of many things, but my favorite has got to be this story about his attempt to collaborate on a film version of The Bible with the great Robert Bresson. The story comes via Bernardo Bertolucci (who himself knows a thing or two about domineering producers), who relates it in the Cinematheque Ontario’s monograph on Bresson, and concerns an encounter in the mid-60s. It’s actually more of a Bresson story than a De Laurentiis story (and it may also, for all I know, be apocryphal), but I still have to share it:
