They were pumped up on more than just spinach.
The set of 1980s kids’ hit “Popeye” was knee-deep in cocaine, according to movie mogul Barry Diller.
“You couldn’t escape it,” Diller — who was CEO of its studio, Paramount Pictures, for a decade — told Anderson Cooper this week at the 92Y.
The Robin Williams and Shelly Duvall movie was filmed in Malta, and “film cans would be sent back to LA daily for processing the film.”
“And we found out the film cans were actually being used to ship cocaine back and forth to the set,” he said, “Everyone was stoned.”
Diller says viewers may actually be able to see the effects on screen. “Think of… [vinyl LP] record speeds,” he told the audience, adding that if 33rpm is the standard speed for playing an LP on a record player, “this is a movie that runs at 78 rpm.”
The film’s orchestrator Van Dyke Parks previously told the Telegraph that famed producer Robert Evans was almost caught when his cocaine-packed luggage went missing at the airport during the movie’s shoot.
He also remembered the set being full of hidden drugs.
“I was the hero of the regiment for opening up a walkie-talkie to change the battery and finding a bag of cocaine,” Parks said. “I don’t remember how much there was or to whom I gave it. But I remember that I recoiled, because I knew that it would be a component in the way people behaved, and the difficulties of the production right up to the top.””
Evans, who also did movies “The Godfather” and “Chinatown,” was arrested for unrelated cocaine trafficking while the flick was in post-production.
It was later wiped from his record, but he said during a 1994 interview, “Bob ‘Cocaine’ Evans is how I’ll be known to my grave”.
Williams spoke often about his cocaine addiction around the time “Popeye” was made. He later got sober.
Diller, who is promoting his biography “Who Knew.” also talked about some jealousy between his butler and now wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, when they first met.
Diller recalled von Furstenberg visiting him in LA for the first time and and going to the kitchen in the morning while he was still asleep.
Diller, who has been married to fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg since 2001, opens up in the new book about his relationships with men.
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