It's about reinvention and survival. While it looks like a search for love, it's really about a mother trying to
secure a better future for her kids while learning what truly matters.
Title: My One and Only 🎬
Faye Dunaway cared much about the role of Wanda in Barbet Schroeder's "Barfly" (1987). it is the only character she felt as much passion for after her role in "Network" (1976).
According to Dunaway, the project began to fall apart before filming began as Menahem Golan and Yoram Globas of Cannon Pictures, who were Executive-producers of the movie ran into financial difficulties. They were fighting to keep the company afloat. Their usual sources of money dried up.
Faye Dunaway spent a weekend talking to various producers, head of the French bank Crédit Lyonnais and many others to finance the movie. She insisted that the movie would make money. But by the end of the weekend, Golan and Globas had decided they weren’t going to make the movie.
Barbet Schroeder informed her that they had set an onerous turnaround figure—the amount that would have to be paid to them by another person who would come in wanting to make the movie. They wanted to be reimbursed for the money they had spent on the project. It was an impossibly high amount that she thought was inflated. They agreed to give the rights for the movie back, but only if the price was met.
Barbet Schroeder, who was also very passionate about the project and Charles Bukowski, wasn't ready to give up. One day, Barbet Schroeder went to the office of one of the producers carrying a tiny Black & Decker chainsaw, small but real. “See this finger?” he said, holding up his pinky finger. “I don’t need it, really.” Then he held up the saw, and flipped it on and off. “Every day I’m going to come here and cut off a piece of this finger,” he said. “I will come day after day, until nothing is left or until you give me my deal. I will be here tomorrow.”
Finally, Dunaway made them an offer they couldn't refuse. She agreed to work for no money up front, to forgo her salary in exchange for a deferment or a percentage of the profits. With that offer, Cannon found the money somewhere and gave Schroeder his deal.
("Looking for Gatsby: My Life", Faye Dunaway with Betsy Sharkey, 1995)