San Francisco Film Society Oral History Project Interview with ...

MARGARITA LANDAZURI: The box office was up, thanks to adding the Castro, but you still had a
deficit, right?
CLAUDE JARMAN: Correct. As I mentioned, we always had a deficit.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: (LAUGHS) You made sure you did.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Yes, we always said we had one. We didn’t want to get into that situation again.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Who were some of the staff people involved at this point? Was it still
pretty much the same team?
CLAUDE JARMAN: Yeah. This was ’77? We had George Gund, we had Lorena Cantrell, Mark Chase,
Marty Rubin, and Frances Moffatt did all our activities. And she was great, she really was. She was a
no-nonsense person, because she was the Society writer at the Chronicle for a long time. But she had a
very sharp tongue. You’d call her on the phone—she was almost like a newspaper person still. She’d ask
you a question and you’d give the answer, and she wouldn’t say thank you or whatever; she’d just hang
up. (LAUGHS) You’d say, “Where’s Frances?” “She’s gone.” Oh, she was great.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: So anything else stand out for you about 1977?
CLAUDE JARMAN: Let’s see.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: Claude Lelouch also had a tribute.
CLAUDE JARMAN: Yes. We used to laugh because Lelouch would make so many films, they’d call it
“Lelouch du jour.” That’s what the critics would say.
MARGARITA LANDAZURI: (LAUGHS) OK. Let’s go on to ’78. Money problems—the papers said
there was a 50 percent budget reduction in the wake of Prop. 13. What did Prop. 13 have to do with it?
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