From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

Some light hit hot, the Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, the original Pink Panther in the heat of the night.

One man was responsible for these movies.

My guest, Walter Mears, who also has a new book, is called I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History.

Walter, thanks so much for being here.

It's good to be here with you, Alice. One of the things that comes up in the book, obviously, is that you worked a lot in low budget, certainly starting with monogram studios, but you also made, in the heat of the night, it was actually crucial that it stuck to a certain budget because there was some trepidation about the material, because it was a movie with a black lead in the 60s, and you guys thought you made it for a certain budget,

it could at least make us money back in the north.

Yes, that's so.

The problem, of course, was that that film was made right in the teeth

of the civil rights revolution in this country.

Tempers were very high, and there was concern with all the financial people

that the picture might create unrest and hopefully not make the situation even worse.

However, I thought that it could make it better.

I very, very desperately was anxious to make the picture

because I think it had something to say about race relations

that was terribly, terribly important.

I had worked on the development of the screenplay for a long time,

and I'd gotten Sidney Poitier interested in it.

And once he became interested, he and I worked on it together,

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