To make this a bit more difficult for Leaphorn, there’s a long history of animosity between the tribes. (In the old days Zunis seeking initiation into the elite Bow Society were required to submit a Navajo scalp.) Since Leaphorn was investigating the murder of a key personifier in the Zuni Shalako Ceremonial, his position was touchy and he didn’t have any more knowledge of the Zunis than was available to interested outsiders. In other words, no more than I did.
Considering the problems, I think it came off well. The book was judged the best mystery novel of 1973 by the Mystery Writers of America and I broke my pledge never to wear a tuxedo by wearing one to the MWA Edgar Award banquet. Another movie option followed and the kids at Zuni High School voted to ask me to be their commencement speaker.
But nothing in Zuni is as simple as it seems. When I showed up at the auditorium, the man who greeted me told me the “tribal historian” would like to talk to me after the ceremony. Not the sort of message you like to receive when you already have pre-speech nerves. When I was escorted into the principal’s office the “tribal historian” proved to be seven or eight elderly men—the spokesman for whom held a copy of the book. The questioning, formal and courteous, had a single focus. The elders asked where I had derived specific bits of information about religious matters. I cited my sources, most of them from scholarly publications, some from attending various ceremonial dances, from watching the personifiers of the Council of the Gods coming down Greasy Hill to enter the village, from chatting with those feasting on the goodies provided for visitors in the Shalako House. All true, and also correct, since none suggested the member of any of the kiva organizations had been revealing sensitive stuff to an outsider.
Somewhat later I had a call from a tribal official. The Albuquerque Journal and the Tribune were printing an advertisement for a city bar that featured a drawing of one of the kachina spirits as a waiter serving drinks. Did I know how this sacrilege could be stopped? I said I would call the publishing company’s advertising manager. I did. He stopped the ads.
The Dance Hall movie option was with a production company that I will call BB Films, which specialized in doing programs for television. I was hired to write the script. That sent me to the library to check out a collection of award-winning screen plays, and to actually see a movie, which I believe was The Thomas Crown Affair. Not a word was spoken for the first eight minutes, which made it look easy. It was, requiring about three weeks of evenings. The producer declared it fine and dandy and paid me my fee, which I later learned was about half the Screen Writers Guild’s minimum rate. But the check didn’t bounce—which as everyone in show biz knows is the important part of the story.
The option was renewed a couple of times and then dropped. Shortly thereafter my agent called. BB Films company wanted to renew the expired option. Okay? I said sure! A costly mistake. No movie was made, of course, but had I read the original contract I would have known that with that final renewal check the producer had bought television rights to Joe Leaphorn. Years later when Robert Redford decided to option the Navajo police books, I found my lieutenant was held hostage. Ransoming this figment of my imagination cost me twenty thousand dollars and earned me a place in Guinness Book of Records if it ever lists classic stupidities.
However, the circumstances behind this surprise option renewal provided me with another adventure in tinsel town. Someone at BB, or perhaps at Warners, had spotted a possibility at NBC-TV. Would I come out to Beverly Hills and talk? I came. We talked about whether I could come up with an outline for a one-hour pilot film that would use Joe Leaphorn as the central character and would lead into a series of brief TV episodes. Sort of like “Hawaii Five-O” except mountains and desert instead of ocean. Could I do that? I said sure. (And who among those reading this couldn’t?) They would have more meetings and let me know. I went home, turned in my expense account, and promptly received a check.
Weeks pass. Another call. We have an appointment with the NBC-TV mogul for program acquisition. On the first trip I had been housed in nice little hotel up Rodeo Drive. On this one the reservation is in the Beverly Wilshire, which in the seventies was very posh indeed. The scent of money must have been detected.
The Mercedes convertible of the BB Films owner (hereafter referred to as Owner) has just been stolen from the parking garage so we arrive at the très chic luncheon place in his Mercedes sedan. The haughty parking lot attendant sneers at it and hides it at the bottom of the lot, behind a screen of Ferraris, custom-built beauties, Jaguars, Lolas, etc. Inside we find two young men awaiting us, a representative of Warners and someone who must have been an agent. Warners does the talking. First, the mandatory words of high praise for Dance Hall of the Dead. Second, the sad fact that it must be modified for the pilot film. Then the news that this modification must be outlined in “five hundred words or so” to be presented to the new vice president for Program Acquisition at NBC-TV at a meeting we have with him at 10 A.M tomorrow. Okay?
Being a veteran of the “deadline every minute” regime of United Press it sounded okay to me if he could provide a typewriter and a place to write. Owner volunteers both.
Now phase two begins, with the usual preamble of praise.
“I loved that ending,” says Warners, “but you understand you can’t kill that boy. You need an upbeat ending.”
That boy being George Bowlegs, a desperately unhappy Navajo kid seeking admission to the Zuni heaven, which ends with the villain killing him. Since I believe in life after death and a God who loves us I consider it a happy ending. I say the kid wanted to go to heaven. He goes to heaven. Upbeat ending.
“Not in the movies it’s not,” says Warner. “Takes too long to explain.”
We agree that I can think of an alternate, which takes us to the next revision. “Leaphorn’s a great character,” says Warners, “but he can’t be a Navajo tribal policeman.”
To put it mildly I am taken aback. “Why not!”
“Just think about it,” says Warners. “You’ll have to come up with about fifteen episodes, maybe more. You have fifteen Navajo police ideas?”
At that moment I can think of maybe two. I suggest we could have Leaphorn transfer to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Law and Order Division.
“Same problem,” says Warners and he asks me if I know what department the Hawaii Five-O cops belong to. I admit I don’t. “Exactly,” says Warners. “Neither does anyone else.”
With that settled, Leaphorn being licensed by some ambiguous agency, we move on to the next subject. Warners points out that Leaphorn is the only “continuing character” in the book. The girl in it is a hippie, with cigarette burns on her hands and hard life behind her. Not the heroine a TV series needs.
I can see that. I will provide another heroine. Easy enough to write in the shapely blue-eyed blonde Hollywood prefers. And now Warners tells me we’ll also need a comic relief. “Somebody like Gabby Hayes?” I ask. Exactly, says Warners, who is immune to sarcasm.
By then Listening Woman had been published and Warners had noticed in it a cranky trading post operator named McGinnis. He suggests we use this guy in the pilot. Easy enough. Once one abandons any notions of artistic integrity, professional skills, etc., one sees no problems in any of this. And if you are honest with yourself you admit you left all that behind when you booked the flight to tinsel town. Piece of cake. No problem.
Then Warners says: “It will have to have an urban setting.”
Urban setting? I presume that anyone who has gotten this deeply into this memoir knows that my Navajo tribal police stories are not urban. The great, beautiful, high, dry country of the Colorado Plateau is the setting. I had decided early in this conversation that I was writing a pilot for a “Hawaii Five-O” type series, with deserts replacing the Pacific Ocean. Now I am lost and Warners sees it.
“It has to appeal to the young urban audience,” says he, and explains the demographics, which buyers of TV advertising measure. A handful of city yuppies are worth half the elderly
farmers in Iowa to the marketing people. It sounded a lot like a page from one of my Social Effects of Mass Communications lectures. “But,” Warners continued, “you could do it by putting Leaphorn’s office in the city. Have the episodes start there so the city audience feels comfortable with it.”
“It wouldn’t have to be a big city,” says Owner, who has been mostly quietly taking notes and who has an offspring living in Santa Fe. “Why not use Santa Fe?”
And so we decide that Leaphorn will have a Santa Fe office next door to a shop specializing in Southwest Indian art. This will be run by pretty blue-eyed Jane with the help of grouchy, comic relief Gabby Hayes. Maybe I will consider adding a very traditional, unwise-in-white-ways assistant for Leaphorn, whom the audience and I will think of as Tonto.
The waiter brings the dessert menu. Time is short and the waiter suggests a new specialty the très chic café is introducing. It will be complimentary. He hurries away and returns with four frozen Mars bars, each encased in its original, but now frosty, package paper. When Owner got me to a typewriter back in his suite of offices on Rodeo Drive it was still too hard to bite.
Warners drove us out to the NBC-TV offices the next morning in his convertible Rolls-Royce, the only one of these beasts I have ever seen. We were ushered into the new VP’s office right on time. He was a handsome young African American. A copy of the pilot treatment was already on his desk, so I presume he had read it. I also presumed that his race caused my companions to believe he might be an easy sale for a minority film. Whatever the reason he listened patiently to the pitch Warners and Owner jointly made. (I had been told to respond only to questions and none were asked.) After maybe fifteen minutes the VP said he would think about it and let us know his decision. Out we went.
Back in Albuquerque, I typed up my expense statement, sent it in, and waited. I have never been told the decision of NBC-TV but when years have passed with no check arriving to refund one’s expenses one presumes the response to one’s work was negative.
I’ve had a few other encounters with the film industry. A New Mexico–born movie actor of considerable repute dropped by the house one day and said if I would give him a free six month’s option on an article I’d written on a screwball bank robbery attempt in Taos (The Great Taos Bank Robbery) he would raise production money. A film would be made in which he would perform and we would both profit handsomely. I told him he could have it for $100. We typed up the document, signed it, and I still have it. The $100 is long since spent.
Another approach came from a fellow who identified himself as a producer who had come to Albuquerque to negotiate an option on Listening Woman. I invited him to the house. He didn’t have transportation. Could I come to see him? He named a Motel Six beside Interstate 25. I pleaded a tight schedule and suggested he take a cab. Well, he was a bit short of cash. How had he reached Albuquerque? By bus. Nothing came of that offer.
The film deal that brought me prestige among moviegoers, the friends of my teen-aged daughters, the daughters themselves, and about half of the members of the poker club to which I have been contributing for almost forty years, came from Robert Redford. Mr. Redford has a longstanding interest in the Mountain West and its tribes, and has many friends among them. His idea was to produce a series of three films using the Navajo tribal police characters, the maximum of Indian actors practical, and to do as much as the form will allow to provide an accurate view of tribal culture. We negotiated a renewable option with the understanding that I would clear up Leaphorn’s hostage situation. That cost the $20,000 previously mentioned.
My improved standing with my fellow gamblers came because Redford called one Tuesday before any deal was made and suggested we get together for dinner that evening and discuss it. Since 1965 Tuesday night has been poker night. I told Redford I’d be tied up. He said how about tomorrow at lunch. I said fine. I mentioned the above at the game and it produced a wonderful example of generational differences. The old duffers understood perfectly (as did Mr. Redford) with no explanation needed that no decent person would break a social engagement to talk business. The younger players were amazed. I am sorry to report that I am still frequently asked (always by people under sixty) if this really happened. When I explain that Redford would not have expected me to forgo the poker game they look at me as if I am either a liar or an idiot.
As this is written one film was produced as a result of that option (The Dark Wind), the contract remains in effect and a report has reached me in Albuquerque that Redford’s company may make Skinwalkers and A Thief of Time into TV-format films.
Producers of films tend to involve writers of books in the moviemaking process as little as possible, for the sensible reason that it’s hard enough to make a film without having an interested amateur meddling in the process. The scriptwriter for The Dark Wind sought my advice a couple of times. I told him I thought the plot of the novel was far too complicated, twisted, and convoluted for a movie and he cut some of it. But not enough.
Redford, in Cuba making Havana, had hired a noted maker of documentaries as director. When he returned, he asked me to take a look at the “rough cut” and to let him know if I wanted my name taken off the credits—giving me the impression that he wasn’t happy with the product. Lots of beautiful scenes but I (who had written the book) found it hard to follow the story line. It wasn’t released in the United States but was shown in France and England with fairly good reviews and finally turned up in the video rental stores.
On the positive side, this affair put a dent in one of my most cherished prejudices—a disdain for show biz in general and the acting profession in particular. I was written into the script as the state penitentiary warden. I take Jim Chee (played by Lou Diamond Phillips) into the clerk’s office, introduce him, and tell the clerk to show Chee the records. After blowing the lines three times, my part was cut to two lines and in the final version I was left (as we actors say) on the cutting room floor. I was also left with some respect for those who can act.
Later, this movie produced an incident so bizarre that I have trouble believing it happened. I was on a book-signing tour in France and on this miserable rainy day Rivages (my French publisher) had sent me to Toulouse, escorted by Pierre Bondil, the translator of all my books. I presumed this would involve sitting behind a table in a bookstore, signing French editions and pretending to understand my French readers speaking their version of English. (The French have no better luck speaking intelligible English than Americans do pronouncing French.) My presumption proved wrong. Pierre, who had become a friend as well as my interpreter, had also been ill-informed. Now he learns I am to make a speech in the downtown Toulouse movie theater. I am rushed in, the film is interrupted, the manager and Pierre herd me onto the stage, where I stumble through a few words about the Navajo culture, with Pierre repeating it (and I hope improving it) in French. That done, we leave the startled audience, the movie resumes, and I am rushed off to a news conference.
The sponsors of this affair had set up a free bar, which attracts reporters as well in Toulouse as it does in Chicago or Albuquerque. I say a few words about Navajo taboos, etc., with Pierre translating. Then it is question time. Two or three easy ones, adroitly handled, then a burly middle-aged reporter (henceforth called Burly) asks Pierre a question that sounds sort of hostile. Instead of passing it along to me translated, Pierre responds himself. This provokes another question—this one sounding puzzled. Pierre responds. Another question, clearly angry. Pierre deals with it, and gets another from the same fellow. Other reporters in the audience now join in the affray, yelling at Burly, booing, whistling, etc. I sit there clueless. As the other reporters subdue Burly, Pierre explains. Burly has seen The Dark Wind movie with French subtitles. He thinks Pierre is Lou Diamond Phillips and refused to believe otherwise. He is angry because the Jim Chee role should have been played by a Navajo. Pierre clearly is not a Navajo. It is equally clear to anyone not lubricated with five or six bourbons that he is not Lou Diamond Phillips. You
’d be as likely to mistake Woody Allen for Clark Gable.
Ah, well. No damage was done. We move through the rainy day to our next stop and I am left with the memory of my oddest book tour experience.
28
Breakout Book
I was introduced to the notion of “breakout book” at a lunch with Perry Knowlton, operator of Curtis Brown Ltd., and Larry Ashmead, senior editor of what was then still Harper & Row. They agreed I should write one. I said I didn’t know how. They didn’t know how to explain it, beyond suggesting I read novels at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Easy enough. I stopped at a bookstore on the way back to the hotel, picked the latest Ludlum off the bestseller rack, and read the first chapter. We’re on a merchant ship being buffeted by a terrible storm in the English Channel. The hero is struggling with two men. He is stabbed. He is shot. He makes it to the heaving deck, is swept overboard, and vanishes beneath the waves. Then the ship explodes. Good chapter, I think. Efficiently written. Nary a word wasted. But where did it lead? All the characters established have been thoroughly killed. Even the evidence of the crime wiped away. I turn quickly to Chapter 2. A hospital room, a terribly injured man in bed. Who could it be? I read on. Light dawns. The fellow I’d seen fatally stabbed, shot to death, drowned and detonated is here before me, recovering. I put the book back where I found it. Clearly my creative imagination is too feeble for a breakout book. But I tell Ashmead and Knowlton I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try harder. Maybe reading tastes will change.
I must pause here and explain why Knowlton is now my agent instead of Ann Elmo, and Ashmead my editor instead of Joan Kahn. Ms. Kahn had disagreed with Harper & Row management, resigned, and began editing for another publisher. Ashmead, who had joined Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), inherited some of her writers, including me.
Previously, after the business of buying back TV rights to Leaphorn, I had decided to handle the contract for Listening Woman with Joan Kahn myself. I asked her the names of agents she liked. She mentioned several. I called the top fellow on the list from my hotel. He suggested I send him a book. I did. He took a look at it and said he’d represent me. Good. When I get my next book written I’d have him handle it for me. A few weeks later I get a terse letter from him firing me. I had caused embarrassment to him and his foreign rights people in Europe. They had started peddling a book agented earlier by Ann Elmo. Elmo had already sold the German rights.
Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir Page 28