The script for Spielberg’s next film, 1941, was already under way, written by the two Bobs, Zemeckis and Gale. It was a broad comedy about an abortive Japanese attack on L.A. during World War II. Spielberg brought the script to Tanen, at Universal. According to Spielberg, Tanen hated it, ranted and raged, yelling, “I asked for a shootable movie, not the battle plan for Europe,” and threw it against the wall with such violence that the binding broke and the pages flew all over his office. “He frightened me,” says Spielberg, who took it to Columbia, which was eager to have it.
Before Close Encounters went into production, Spielberg bought a sprawling home on Alto Cedro, off Cherokee in Coldwater Canyon. John Belushi used to call it the House of Fear, because of its vast size and intimidating gates. Steven loved toys, and installed video arcade games like Space Invaders, Pong, and Tank. The Alto Cedro house was decorated like the Hyatt Regency, down to the $40 Italian architecture books casually lying open on coffee tables to what guests suspected were carefully selected illustrations color coordinated with the rugs. One wall was covered with macramé “art.” None of this was Steven, but he didn’t much care, didn’t have a personal aesthetic, personal taste, outside of what he guessed was cool, or what rich people had.
Spielberg’s mother opened a kosher dairy restaurant in Beverly Hills, but her son avoided it. He disliked his stepfather, who was an Orthodox Jew. Some of his more Jewish-identified friends regarded him as a self-hating Jew. Director John Landis used to call him “Shmuel,” his Hebrew name, to annoy him.
As his success and power increased, Spielberg became inordinately concerned with his own personal safety. He made it a practice never to accept packages through the mail. Picking up a cue from Watergate, he bought himself a shredder. He was one of the first of the movie brats to install an elaborate security system, and he traveled out of Beverly Hills with reluctance, worried about driving and parking his Porsche in, say, West Hollywood.
Spielberg was still seeing Irving, but the relationship was rocky. She visited him on the set, but he was preoccupied with the movie and had no time for her. She cried, and he apologized, saying, “Don’t you understand, I’m fucking my movie.” According to Rob Cohen, “Feminism was really coming into its own, and a lot of women were caught between a new spirit of independence and a desire to re-create the old Hollywood dynamic between men and women, where women were commodities of beauty and sexuality. If you were dating an actress, it was just presumed that one of the reasons she was dating you was you had the Jag XKE, and the job, and she was pretty and looked good in a halter top.
“On the one hand, there was all this easy sexuality, and on the other, there were these new kinds of women, young agents, young producers, and some actresses, who were writing a new script for themselves. Male-female relationships were extremely contentious, ‘What makes you decide where we go on Friday night, I have work also, I have to go to this screening,’ and so on. There were some really wild rides, on again, off again, angry, loving, vindictive, up and down—and Steve and Amy’s was one of them.”
Irving was afraid her career was going to be eclipsed by Spielberg’s, and it made her resentful and angry. His friends felt she used her considerable powers of seduction to humiliate and undermine him. She would say she had a headache, didn’t want to see him, and then go out with someone else. She was alleged to have gone to bed with Woody Allen and Dustin Hoffman. Later, rumors of Irving’s affair with Willie Nelson during the shooting of Honeysuckle Rose reached the press, although she always denied them.
According to a friend, Steven complained that Amy had slept with Dustin Hoffman while he was casting Straight Time. The friend told Steven to get rid of her.
“Why? She fucked Dustin Hoffman?”
“No, because she came home and she told you about it. She did it to tell you, to hurt you, to leverage you, for some reason, she’s manipulating you.”
“Oh, Amy, you know, she’s insecure, she needs to be reassured that she’s talented...” (Irving denies sleeping with Hoffman.)
His friends thought she worked him. Says Gottlieb, “I could tell from her behavior when he wasn’t on the scene, the way she talked to Penny Marshall and Carrie Fisher, that she had a fairly cynical take on their relationship. Basically, it was professionally useful. And that it was going to be very expensive for him to get out of it, and if it took having a child to cement that relationship, so be it.”
But the guys always felt defensive when a new woman appeared on the scene and changed the chemistry. “I liked Amy,” says Marcia Lucas. “Terrific gal, just tons of vulnerabilities.” The fact of the matter was, Irving just didn’t fit in, coming, as she did, from a considerably more sophisticated and intellectual background than Spielberg and his circle. Although she was able to delude herself about The Fury, she couldn’t help recognizing the limitations of the kinds of films they were making. At the time, she said, “I’m glad I didn’t do Star Wars because it was a nothing part. I would not want to get famous because of that movie.”
Steven fooled around as well. He thumbed through John Casablanca’s books looking for Elite models to date, a resource he had learned of through De Palma. Sometimes he told friends he didn’t want to date actresses, wanted to find a regular girl, a teacher. It was hard to say who had the upper hand, Steven or Amy. It was evident to his friends that her infidelities hurt him. He adored her, which made him vulnerable. At the same time, he was coming up fast, had the big house, the cars, and Irving was still a struggling actress. Adds Marcia Lucas, “Amy was like the houseguest.” She couldn’t use the leverage his infatuation gave her, because, continues Marcia, “I don’t think she felt she was worthy of that love.”
In any event, Amy moved in, and the couple began to entertain. One young director he invited to dinner recalls that there was a large assemblage hanging over the dining room table, comprised of a parchment sheet music to which were affixed real instruments—violins, horns, and so on—the kind of thing that might decorate the lobby of a bank. One guest politely asked, “Who made it?” Steven astounded everyone by replying, “I did,” while Amy rolled her eyes.
IN MARCH 1977, George and Marcia took a moment out to watch the Oscars. They had a rooting interest in Taxi Driver, which was up for Best Picture, along with All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, and Rocky. Jodie Foster had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. A few days before, Scorsese had received a letter threatening his life if Jodie won. It read something like, “If little Jodie wins on March 29 for what you made her do in Taxi Driver, you will pay with your life. I am serious. I am not a sicko. I love little Jodie. I would never do anything to hurt her. Never, never, never.” Several years later, after John Hinckley shot Reagan, a couple of Marty’s friends became convinced that he had sent it. “Without thinking, [Steve Prince] called the FBI after that letter came in,” says Jonathan Taplin. “They smuggled the stash out before they got there.” The coke was hidden in a thousand-foot can of raw stock sitting on a shelf in an editing room in plain view. FBI agents disguised as guests descended on Scorsese at the awards ceremony. Marty had his own agent, a woman in a gown with a gun in her bag. “Imagine ducking into the bathroom [for a few toots] with the FBI all over you,” chuckles Taplin. (At the same time, Scorsese was also receiving death threats from members of the Manson family, after he had been asked to play Manson in a made-for-TV movie, Helter Skelter.)
Bound for Glory, which hadn’t done very well at the box office, had gotten five nominations, including one for Best Picture. Wexler won for Best Cinematography. The threat against Scorsese said he would be killed a minute after midnight. Foster lost (to Beatrice Straight for Network), and Scorsese walked off into the night to the New York, New York editing rooms at MGM.
Lucas felt he was ready to screen Star Wars. The special effects weren’t finished, and George had cut in black and white dogfights from old World War II films, but you got the general idea. Alan Ladd flew up to his home in San Anselmo; it was the first
time he would be seeing anything. De Palma, Spielberg, Huyck and Katz, Cocks, and Scorsese met at the Burbank airport. It was foggy, and the flight to San Francisco was delayed. When it finally took off, Scorsese wasn’t on board. He was as nervous about Star Wars as Lucas was about New York, New York. He hated flying, but Huyck and Katz thought, Well, he’s very competitive, he really didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to know about the film. As Scorsese puts it, “You’d have the anxiety—if it’s better than yours, or even if it isn’t better than yours, you think it is. And your friends will tell you it is. And you believe it. For years.”
The screening ended, there was no applause, just an embarrassed silence. Without the effects, the picture look ridiculous. Marcia was upset, said, “It’s the At Long Last Love of science fiction. It’s awful!” and started to cry. Katz took her aside and warned her, “Shhh! Laddie’s watching—Marcia, just look cheery.” Lucas felt like he’d failed, that it wouldn’t cross over to adults. He kept repeating, “Only kids—I’ve made a Walt Disney movie, a cross between Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. It’s gonna do maybe eight, ten million.” Several people just left, and those that remained went to eat at a Chinese restaurant. George was quiet in the car, a little shell-shocked.
As he picked over his dumplings, George asked, “All right, whaddya guys really think?” Brian started in on him, was merciless, as George took notes. In the cut they had seen, the Force was called the Force of Others. Brian said, “What’s this Farts of Others? And the crawl at the beginning looks like it was written on a driveway. It goes on forever. It’s gibberish.” De Palma paused, looking at George to gauge the effect of his words, before continuing. “The first act, where are we? Who are these fuzzy guys? Who are these guys dressed up like the Tin Man from Oz? What kind of a movie are you making here? You’ve left the audience out—you’ve vaporized the audience. They don’t know what’s going on.” He attacked Lucas for making an obscure movie that only pretended to be accessible. Recalls Katz, “Brian wouldn’t let up, he was out of control. He was like a crazed dog. Marcia was getting angry at Brian, and she never forgot.” George needled Brian in return: “You should talk, none of your films have made a dime. At least I’ve made some profit.” They tried to rewrite the crawl so it made sense. “You gotta drop the Jedi Bendu shit, nobody’s gonna know what you’re talking about,” continued De Palma, relentless. Katz thought, This is hopeless. It’s never going to make any sense. George was ashen, but he was taking it all in, writing it all down.
Spielberg dissented, said, “George, it’s great. It’s gonna make $100 million.” In those days, almost nothing made $100 million. Katz thought, Steve is a moron. Lucas said, “I promise you, Close Encounters will make four to five times more than Star Wars.” Spielberg replied, “No, no, George, this time I’ve made the esoteric science fiction movie, you’ve made the crossover one.” They made a bet with each other on the relative box office of Star Wars and Close Encounters, wrote the figures down on matchbook covers and traded them.
That night, Ladd called Spielberg. “What do we have here?” he asked. “Is Star Wars going to be any good, is anybody ever going to come see this movie?”
“It’s gonna be a huge hit. You’re gonna be the happiest film studio executive in Hollywood.”
“How huge is huge?”
“At least $35 million in rentals. Maybe more.”
At the end, the ILM folks were working around the clock, seven days a week, three shifts. “I remember the day I made a loop of the first shot we finished for Laddie,” recalls Nelson. “It was about two seconds long, it was nothing, a shot of a starship going by real quick, so quick you couldn’t even tell what it was. All this money spent, here’s this one shot going around and around. He just sat there laughing. My hair was like dark when I started that movie. I came out of it totally gray.” But for Lucas, it was too little, too late. He did not come to the wrap party, angering a lot of people who had worked very hard.
Like the other Bay Area filmmakers, Lucas had always been interested in sound. Over Fox’s objections, he insisted on using Dolby Stereo. Says Walter Murch, “Star Wars was the can opener that made people realize not only the effect of sound, but the effect that good sound had at the box office. Theaters that had never played stereo were forced to do it if they wanted Star Wars.”
With the effects and sound finally finished, Lucas screened it again at the Northpoint, just like Graffiti. Marcia had taken a week off from New York, New York to help George. “Previews always mean recutting,” Lucas said gloomily, obviously thinking about THX and Graffiti, and anticipating the worst. The suits were there, Ladd and his executives. Marcia had always said, “If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn’t work.” From the opening shot of the majestic Imperial Starship drifting over the heads of the audience across the black vastness of space studded with stars blinking like diamonds, the place was electric. “They made the jump to hyperspace, and you could see bodies flying around the room in excitement,” recalls Hirsch. “When they get to that shot where the Millennium Falcon appears at the last minute, not only did they cheer, they stood up in their seats and raised their arms like a home run in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. I looked over at Marcia, and she gave me a look like, I guess it works, ya know? So we came out, I said to George, ‘So whaddya think?’ He said, ‘I guess we won’t recut it after all,’” Still, the signs were mixed. Word got back that when the picture was screened for the ratings board, several people fell asleep.
George made plans to be out of town, in Hawaii with Marcia and the Huycks for the opening of Star Wars, the way he was when Graffiti premiered. He was still afraid the movie was going to be a huge embarrassment. His attitude was, “I’ve done everything I can do, it is what it is. I’m not going to read a review, I’m not going to talk to anyone from the studio.” They were leaving on a Saturday. The Wednesday before, May 25, 1977, they were both still working at Goldwyn, Marcia on New York, New York, during the day, and George at night, on the monaural track. The only time they ever saw each other was when she was leaving and he was just arriving—for dinner. They were both so exhausted they had forgotten Wednesday night was the premiere of Star Wars, and went to the Hamburger Hamlet that happened to be directly across from the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. They didn’t notice anything going on, and it wasn’t until they were seated that they looked out through the windows onto the street and saw a commotion in front of the theater. “There were people all over the place, like a thousand people, two lanes of the street were closed off, there were limos out in front, it was just amazing,” recalls Lucas. But they still couldn’t see the marquee. When they finally finished and emerged from the restaurant, they recognized the distinctive Star Wars logo. As soon as George got to work, Ladd was on the phone, said, “The film’s a hit, the first screenings are great.” Lucas replied, “Look, Laddie, science fiction movies, they always open big, but it doesn’t really count until we get to the second or third week. So let’s not get too excited about this.” Then he and Marcia went to Maui.
By the time they got to the hotel, their box was stuffed with messages from Fox. They said, “Watch the six o’clock news.” George and Marcia and Willard and Gloria crowded in front of the TV and saw Walter Cronkite report that the lines were around the block. Lucas couldn’t believe it. They figured, We’re rich, we’re rich. The next day they went into town trying to spend some of their future earnings, but they were in Hawaii; the only thing they could buy was suntan lotion and shells. George said, “You know, these yogurt things are really going to take off, maybe I’ll buy a yogurt franchise.” He wanted to return to California to enjoy his success, but he couldn’t, because he had made such a big point of saying, “I don’t care what happens, I’m above all this crap.” Coppola, who was looking for financing to finish Apocal
ypse Now, sent him a telegram that said, “Send Money. Francis.” After a week or so, the Huycks left, and Spielberg arrived with Amy. George and Steven built sand castles on the beach, talked about an idea that would become Raiders of the Lost Ark. George would produce, and Steven, whom he had once looked down on because he worked inside the system, would direct. Spielberg hadn’t changed. Had Lucas?
Soon after Star Wars opened, Cocks was at director Jeremy Kagan’s house. Harrison Ford arrived, totally disheveled, his shirt half ripped off, looking like William Holden in Picnic. “Jesus, Harrison, what happened?” asked Cocks. “I went into Tower Records to buy an album, and these people jumped on me.”
THE SORCERER TRAILER Bud Smith cut played in front of Star Wars at the Chinese Theater. Says Smith, “When our trailer faded to black, the curtains closed and opened again, and they kept opening and opening, and you started feeling this huge thing coming over your shoulder overwhelming you, and heard this noise, and you went right off into space. It made our film look like this little, amateurish piece of shit. I told Billy, ‘We’re fucking being blown off the screen. You gotta go see this.’”
Friedkin went with his new wife, French actress Jeanne Moreau. Afterward, he fell into conversation with the manager of the theater. Nodding his head toward the river of humanity cascading through the theater’s doors, the man said, “This film’s doing amazing business.”
“Yeah, and my film’s going in in a week,” replied Billy nervously.
“Well, if it doesn’t work, this one’ll go back in again.”
“Jesus!” Friedkin looked like he had been punched in the stomach. He turned to Moreau, said, “I dunno, little sweet robots and stuff, maybe we’re on the wrong horse.” A week later, Sorcerer did follow Star Wars into the Chinese. Dark and relentless, especially compared to Lucas’s upbeat space opera, it played to an empty house, and was unceremoniously pulled to make room for the return of C3PO et al.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls Page 50