'Popeye' Starring Robin Williams Cited as 'Most Coked-Up Film Set' by Former Studio CEO

A certain Robert Altman title led by Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall has belatedly been given the distinction of “most coked-up film set.”

The honor was recently bestowed upon 1980’s Popeye by Barry Diller, who was CEO of Paramount at the time of the musical comedy’s development. In a recent interview with Anderson Cooper for the 92nd Street Y, as spotted by Entertainment Weekly, Diller was quick to cite the film when asked to name the “most coked-up film set” he had experienced.

Diller likened the film, which arrived the same year as Altman’s Health with Carol Burnett and Glenda Jackson, to a 78 RPM record.

“You couldn’t escape it,” Diller, currently promoting his business memoir Who Knew, told Cooper. “They were actually shipping in film cans at the time. The film cans would be sent back to LA for daily processing, the film. This was shot in Malta and we found out that the film cans were actually being used to ship cocaine back and forth to the set.”

Williams played the title character in Altman’s 1980 film, reviews for which have softened over the years. Early to praising the live-action feature was the late Roger Ebert, who wrote in his review that Altman had “breathed life into this material,” ultimately giving the film three and a half stars out of four.

At the time of Popeye’s theatrical rollout in 1980, Williams was still years away from defining film performances like Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. Duvall, meanwhile, was that very same year seen in Stanley Kubrick’s Stephen King adaptation The Shining.

In December, Popeye will celebrate its 45th anniversary. This June, another Altman film, the acclaimed Nashville, turns 50.