Robert Radnitz on what it takes to make a quality film

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Movie producer Robert Radnitz, who died Sunday at 85, was respected for making children’s films that also appealed to adults. With literature as his source, he turned out such classic movies as ‘Sounder,’ ‘Misty’ and ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins.’

He was on his fourth decade in Hollywood when he told The Times in 1992 that the quality of a film was directly related to who made it.

Show three filmmakers a script, he said, and they will come up with three different approaches. He shared this anecdote with film school classes:
‘You could take a story about a guy in college, and he decides to go home for the holidays, and what does he find? He finds that his father has been murdered, his mother has married the guy who probably murdered his father and has implicated herself. And on top of that, his girlfriend has gone bananas. Now, you could make garbage based on that. Or you could make ‘Hamlet.’ ‘

-- Valerie J. Nelson