What happened from then on was one of those dreams come true—the kind that, when they do come true, are inevitably dis appointing. I began to meet very famous and important people—actors from Hollywood, who would call me up or arrange through mutual friends to meet me, and would then whisper in my ear that they were the only ones in the whole world who could play a certain role in Catch-22, usually the leading role.
I remember the first of these calls. It was from a person named Sam Shaw, who knows lots of Hollywood people, and Sam said, “Tony Quinn’s in town. He’s leaving for Yugoslavia right away and before he does he wants to talk with you. He’s got to see you right now.” So I said, “Okay, where do we meet?” And he said, “The Stage Delicatessen.” And I said, “What the hell is Anthony Quinn doing at the Stage Delicatessen?” And he said, “Interviewing a secretary.” So I went to the Stage Delicatessen, and as soon as Quinn had hired the secretary and sent her off to Yugoslavia, we sat down at a small table and began to talk about Catch-22. It turned out that his only reservation about playing Yossarian was that perhaps he was too old. And he asked me, “Do you think I’m too old?” And I said, “Of course not. You’re just the guy I had in mind when I wrote it.”
That was a reply I was to use twenty or thirty times in reference to actors ranging all the way from Wally Cox to Jack Lemmon and Mel Brooks. And I really believed it each time I was saying it. I really believed that any actor in the world could play Yossarian effectively with only a few slight changes. I don’t know whether it’s because I genuinely felt that Catch-22 was so adaptable and indestructible that any good actor could play in it, or whether I was just corrupt.
One reason Columbia didn’t get started on the film right away was because of what I like to think of as the year of the double war. The poor company found itself in the unfortunate position of sponsoring two antiwar movies in one year, and the Pentagon doesn’t like that. Apparently each studio is allowed to make one antiwar movie a year. But not two. What had happened is that Columbia had financed Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and an independent organization had financed Fail-Safe. Because there were certain similarities between the two films, lawsuits were starting, and the simplest way to resolve things was for Columbia to buy Fail-Safe. So they already had two antiwar movies and they didn’t want to embark on another one.
And all this time my reputation continued to suffer because the rumor kept spreading that Catch-22 was proving hard to adapt for the screen. Someone like Harold Robbins or Irving Wallace sells the movie rights to his novel the moment he thinks of writing one. It’s been proven by experience that their books lend themselves to screen adaptation. But I was getting stigmatized. People were saying, “Heller’s books don’t make good screenplays.” I was not invited to parties. My credit was cut off at Brooks Brothers and Arthur Murray Dance Studios. The story was that it was impossible to adapt Catch-22 to the screen. I knew all this time, of course, that no effort at all was being made.
Then, Columbia lured Richard Brooks away from another studio. Brooks had made two successful pictures, Elmer Gantry and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I believe, and he said he’d make movies for Columbia only if he could make two of his favorite works of literature, Lord Jim and Catch-22. Fine, Columbia said, for Columbia Pictures had long been known for its weakness for Joseph Conrad. So Brooks started on Lord Jim. Brooks is the kind of director who is very painstaking about details. He does everything himself. So, during a lull in the shooting of Lord Jim he came to New York and we spent about a week together. Brooks said he wanted to understand Catch-22 thoroughly. Then he mentioned that he’d like to have all my outlines and my notes and the various versions, and he asked if I’d mind getting them together for him. I said, “Well, it’s going to be an effort.” And he said, “We’ll pay you.” And I said, “Well, it’s going to be a very big effort.” Actually, I already had all the stuff catalogued and organized because I was donating it to the Brandeis University library. But there were more negotiations and I got twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars for giving Columbia Pictures copies of the material I had already given to Brandeis University.
I know it’s vulgar to talk about money, but in motion pictures money and art are the same thing, and in talking about money I am really talking about art. I hope you don’t think I’m rich now, for all of this goes back over ten years, and I’m not. I’ve wasted all that money and art. I wish I had it now.
At any rate, Richard Brooks went off to make Lord Jim. He spent two or three years doing that, and he came back exhausted from exotic places like Bangkok and London and Beverly Hills. When the movie came out, it got disappointing reviews and Brooks was so discouraged that he told Columbia he didn’t want to take on another tough movie just then.
So now Columbia had Catch-22 back and nobody wanted to make it. Nobody at Columbia, anyhow.
At about this time, Mike Nichols had begun to establish himself as a director. I admired Nichols. As a matter of fact, when I went to see Luv —Murray Schisgal’s play that Mike Nichols directed and Alan Arkin starred in—I called up Mike Frankovich at Columbia Pictures in New York and left word that I had seen this play the night before and that I thought he could do much worse than consider Alan Arkin for the role of Yossarian and Mike Nichols for director. I never heard from Mike Frankovich again. And then Nichols went on to direct other things, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? among them.
Also about this time there appeared on the scene a producer named Marty Ransohoff, who, according to some people, is possibly the most disliked person in an industry that includes Joe Levine, which is quite an achievement. Anyhow, Ransohoff wanted to make Catch-22. He spoke to Mike Nichols and said he’d like Mike to direct a movie for him. Nichols said he would agree to do it only under one condition: if the movie were Catch-22. So Ransohoff bought the rights from Columbia.
The first I learned that Nichols was involved was through a press announcement that he was going to direct Catch-22 and Alan Arkin was going to play the part of Yossarian. Now this was at a time when not many people west of Jersey City knew who Alan Arkin was; he hadn’t yet made The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. But Nichols’ contract gave him full casting control and he wanted Arkin, so that was that, and an excellent choice it was.
When the announcement that Nichols was going to direct Catch-22 was made, people for some reason began to congratulate me. They had some curious ideas about me in relation to the movie. When the movie went into production and the publicity began, people began acting so much nicer to me. The elevator man. The landlord. And then, as reports began circulating about the high cost of the movie, people assumed that the more money the movie cost, the richer I was becoming. My wife would go into a shop to have a fur coat shortened and the man would say, “Look at you! Wearing a coat two years old, and with a husband whose movie has just gone over budget again.” And then, when the rumors spread that the movie was costing twenty or thirty million dollars the feeling took hold—it’s totally irrational, I know—that I was getting it all. But I didn’t deny this, because I’ve discovered that when people think you’re rich, they’ll do anything for you. It’s those poor people who really need help who have trouble getting it.
Meanwhile, more years passed. And all this time, there was poor Buck Henry somewhere working away. He’s the writer who had the job of turning Catch-22 into a script. One day the phone rang and my daughter answered it. She turned to me and said, “It’s another one of your friends.” And I said, “Which friend?” And she said, “I don’t know but he’s giving me false names. He says he’s Mike Nichols.” So I got on the phone and sure enough it was Mike Nichols. He was very polite and charming and said he felt it might be a good idea to consult the author before the picture was made, and he wondered if I’d meet with him. I said sure and he said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
Fourteen months passed. Then one day one summer, I was out at the beach and the phone rang again and it was Mike Nichols getting back to me. The reason
he hadn’t gotten back to me sooner, he said, was that he wanted to get a script close to a final version before they showed it to me. I kept saying, “You know, you don’t have to show it to me. I might just raise questions that would complicate it for you.” And I really meant it. I’ve never felt that anyone had any obligation to remain faithful to the book or to me, or even to make a good movie. I don’t have much sympathy with novelists who go on television and complain about the bad movies that are made from their books, which are usually not much better to begin with.
Anyway, Nichols said, “No, we want you to see it. Buck Henry’s rewriting and the script is being mimeographed and we’re ready to meet with you.” So I said all right and he said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
Fourteen more months passed. Then I got another call from Nichols, who told me that the mimeographing was finished and a copy of the script was being sent to my house for me to read. There was a lot in it that I didn’t like and a lot more that I did. But I know this much about movie scripts: on paper, they all look terrible to anyone who reads and they all sound terrible. As literature they’re very bare and sparse. You can pick out very bad lines and improbable characterizations, and yet they may be very effective on the screen.
What I liked most about this script was the structure and intention. It indicated a real effort to include very tough scenes from the book, scenes that I myself would have eliminated automatically if I had been doing the screenplay. If I’d been doing it, in fact, I think I would have made it into the type of movie I detest, because that would have been the easiest and safest way. It would have had lots of sex in it and lots of wisecracking, and it would have been very funny. The script I read did have a lot of that in it, but it also had very difficult and very strong and sobering scenes. It was also too long—185 pages.
Nichols and Buck Henry and I met at a midtown Chinese restaurant that they think is very good. Having Buck Henry there was extremely awkward. After all, Nichols wanted to know what I thought of the script and right there at the table was the guy who had written it. But I did make some suggestions, some general and some specific. I gave them my opinion that there was too much dialogue, too much extraneous transitional talk, and also that the first seventy pages or so had lots of action and lots of comedy but that nothing seemed to be happening in the way of developing either the story or Yossarian’s character. Mike said, “Get up a list of specific suggestions and we’ll talk about it some more. You’ll be paid for it. I’ll get back to you.” I was halfway through the script, working up my list of specific suggestions, when I realized what “I’ll get back to you” means. I stopped right then and there and never did send him my list of criticisms and suggestions. I still have my copy of the movie script, and someday, I suppose, I’ll donate that to Brandeis University too— afterI sell it to Columbia.*
They finally all went off to make the movie in Mexico. I had a kind of lukewarm invitation to come down but I didn’t go because it wasn’t Acapulco. Instead, they were in some godawful place none of them could stand from the day they got there. People started going crazy almost at once; there was a story somewhere on it—in Newsweek or the Times Magazine. Bob Newhart went crazy one time or at least pretended to—nobody is absolutely certain which, but, either way, somebody finally rushed over and gave him an injection to make him happy again. Another reason I didn’t go down there is that I’d been on a set where a movie was being made, and I knew that if a person isn’t working he might just as well be on a torture rack, dying of boredom. Consider what happened to Jack Gilford. He started a scene, but for some reason they stopped and Nichols said, “Okay, we’ll finish in a day or two.” Seven weeks went by, and then Gilford mailed a letter to Nichols right from the movie set. It began, “Dear Mr. Nichols: You are in Mexico making a movie. I am in Mexico not making a movie. I have some acting experience and if you have a spot for me, perhaps to finish a single scene, I’d be happy to work for you.” The next day Nichols got Gilford and they did finish the scene.
Then John Wayne arrived. He breezed into the hotel uninvited in a blaze of expectation, but nobody knew who he was or cared—these were all intelligent people—and he got angry and drunk and broke a foot.
Then Orson Welles came and intimidated everybody. His presence alone was enough to get everyone tense. But even the people on the movie who, by then, were not too happy to be working for Nichols say that Nichols showed his true genius in his tact with Welles.
Meanwhile the cost of the movie kept going up. Nichols is a perfectionist. I have a feeling he makes a movie pretty much the same way I write a novel. I might write one page four or five times and then decide that the first way was best, or I might write three pages twelve different ways and then decide a paragraph will do. I think Nichols may have gone through somewhat the same process with this picture. At the end almost everybody in the movie was unhappy with his role, which seems to me a tribute to Nichols. It’s an indication he wouldn’t let any actor take over the picture, or even a scene. Nichols had his conception of what he wanted his picture to be. This is not to say that his conception was perfect, but he worked his best to achieve it.
In time, a sneak preview was scheduled in Boston. At first I thought I’d go, but then I heard that every actor in New York who was in the movie was going, along with everybody from Paramount Pictures, which by this time was the lucky owner of the film, and I decided I didn’t want to go. Instead, I went to a small town in Ohio to make a speech at a college there. Late in the evening I got a phone call from Mike Nichols. He said the sneak preview had gone well—he and Paramount both thought the reaction had been very good—and if I wanted to see the film he would stay over and show it to me and any friends I cared to invite. I said I’d very much like to see it. I went with just my wife and daughter—she was eighteen at the time—and we saw it in one of those little screening theaters.
I found it stunning, surprising, and overpowering, and when it was over I took Mike by the arm and said, “As far as I’m concerned, it may be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.” I meant it and he knew it and we were very pleased with each other and ourselves.
I’ll admit there was one change in the movie that took a lot of adjusting to. I’ve seen the movie three times now and only by the third time could I get used to Mike Nichols’ concept of Milo Minderbinder. It was a big change in characterization. But essentially, after that first screening, my wife and daughter and I found it a very grim and powerful and very engrossing and very disturbing movie. If a certain objective had to be striven for, I was pleased that it was a grim one, a melancholy one. The easy way would have been to emphasize the sex and the comedy.
I didn’t react to the comedy in the film as strongly as the audiences apparently did. A lot of times there was a kind of nonsense dialogue going on which added nothing; it was just time-filling. There’s a scene, for example, when Alan Arkin is trying to make love to Paula Prentiss on the beach. And she’s just talk ing nonsense: “I’m the only girl on the base and it’s so difficult.” In that moment, I think it would have been better to have gotten in what’s in the book, that she was breaking off a love affair of some meaning for him. She was, in fact, rejecting him, and it wasn’t simply a kind of rape scene.
There was only one thing I missed from the book. I wish they had put into the movie at least one of what I consider the interrogation scenes or inquisition scenes or trial scenes. There were three in the book, three fairly full ones, but none in the movie. In the stage version of Catch-22 I’ve just completed, this air of investigation and inquisition continues from beginning to end almost without interruption. And yet I can’t think of anything in the movie that I’d take out in order to gain the five or six minutes that would be necessary for one of those trial scenes.
I guess the most effective scene to me is the one with Yossarian and the old Italian woman in the whorehouse. He comes back to the whorehouse, you remember, and it’s empty and she’s just sitting there smoking a cigarette. And she
just answers, doesn’t react. There’s a kind of weary, age-old resignation in her remark. He is reacting to what she’s saying with horror and surprise. And then she says, “Catcha 22.” She realizes, that in the long view of history, this is how life is. She’s not happy about it, but why all this surprise? That remains, for me, the most powerful of the scenes. The gory scenes are gory, and they make an impact, but I don’t think they’re as meaningful as that scene.
You may have noticed a strange occurrence in the scene in Major Major’s office. Each time Major Major crosses in front of a photograph, the photograph changes. First it’s Roosevelt, then it’s Stalin, then it’s Churchill. I would say that was an attempt at humor—whimsical, arbitrary humor. It’s not something I would have recommended doing. There’s another thing in the movie that Nichols told me his friends advised him to delete; that was the Richard Strauss theme that was used in 2001. When Yossarian’s eyes fall on Luciana that theme is played and the audiences, when I’ve seen it, do laugh. I laughed, and I haven’t even seen 2001. Nichols was told by certain friends: Don’t do it, it’s inside humor, it’s self-indulgence. He said he wrestled with it and then figured that he’s allowed a certain amount of self-indulgence. So he left it in.
When Catch-22 finally opened, some reviews were ecstatic. Some were attacks, but only attacks on the movie, I’m glad to say. The book came through it all beautifully. I was surprised, in fact, to find that throughout the country there were so many reviewers who thought of Catch-22 as a very good book. There certainly weren’t that many when the book came out. For my part, I can’t think of any American film I’ve seen before, or any I’ve seen since, that I would put on a higher level.
Catch As Catch Can Page 29