But Enough About Me: A Memoir

by Burt Reynolds

  Before shooting started on the remake, Adam Sandler asked if I had any advice.

  “Just one thing,” I said. “Get a walk. Pretend you’re a motorcycle cop striding up to some poor guy’s car. He knows he’s in trouble before he rolls the window down.”

  I’m not sure if he took my advice, but if he did, it didn’t help.

  —

  I WANTED TO WORK with Bob Aldrich again, and I optioned a screenplay by Steve Shagan about a burned-out detective who falls in love with a high-class call girl. Bob and I flew to Paris and managed to persuade Catherine Deneuve to come to Hollywood.

  Catherine is one of the most beautiful women in the world. The camera loves her, and she’s even more breathtaking in person than on the screen. I’d catch myself staring whenever we were together. She was elegant, intelligent, and independent. She dressed like a fashion model, she had a good sense of humor, and she could discuss any subject—in six languages. Catherine had children without being married before that was acceptable, and she became a feminist icon without sacrificing her femininity. The first day of shooting, there were twenty secretaries on the set. I thought they were there to watch me until I realized they’d come from offices all over the studio lot to see Catherine.

  Bob treated Catherine a little rough and I felt bad about it, but not to the point of confronting him, I’m ashamed to say. Bob was a strange man, God love him. He was wonderful with men—The Dirty Dozen and that kind of action movie—but I noticed that he didn’t seem to like any of the women on the set. Catherine handled it well, but I should have stepped up and protected her.

  I’d read somewhere that the French love picnics, so one day I got a boxed lunch for two and a bottle of wine and drove with Catherine to right up under the Hollywood sign. She was wearing high heels and slacks and a beautiful silk scarf. When I complimented her on it, she took it off and gave it to me. We sat on a blanket, looking down on the city. It was a clear day and the view was magnificent.

  “Do you like this?” I said.

  “Non!” she said.

  There was nothing to do but pack up and leave.

  I thought I’d blown it big-time, but a few days later, out of nowhere, she said, “Why don’t we go and park?”

  “What?”

  “Park? I hear people do that here.”

  We drove down to the lake and she said, “What happens now?”

  What happened? As much as possible under the circumstances. But it didn’t go any further. I knew the next move was mine, but I didn’t go there. I was intimidated. I didn’t think I was in her league.

  —

  ONE DAY between setups on the set of Hustle, Bob said, out of nowhere, “You know, you’re not the only one who ever played football.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re not the only one who ever played football, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I never said I was, Bob . . .”

  Before I could finish he turned and walked away.

  The next day I tried to talk to him, but he was too busy, and from then on he was never available to me. I still don’t know where it came from. Maybe it was the pressures of directing a movie. Or maybe somebody who was jealous of my relationship with Bob, or what they thought it was, said something to him about me, and he believed it. I didn’t want to think that Bob considered me an obstacle or that he wanted me to be a puppet. And I know I wasn’t being difficult. I thought he knew what I could do and that I had always delivered for him.

  But I’ll never know, because we didn’t discuss it again and never communicated beyond what was necessary to shoot the picture. I’ve often thought that we might have straightened things out if we could have sat down and cleared the air.

  But I got along great with Bob’s wife Sibylle, who was a sports fan. “Bob changes on me,” I told her. “One day he’s pitching softballs that I can knock out of the park, and the next day he’s throwing at my head. What the hell should I do?”

  “That’s him,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. I know he likes you.”

  “Really?” I said. “I’d hate to see it if he didn’t like me.”

  All I know is that we’d had enormous success with The Longest Yard, and that should have been a plus, but he turned on me and I didn’t know why. I was fond of him, and it still bothers me that we were never able to reconnect.

  Hustle got good reviews but lost money, because my character dies at the end. It wasn’t in the script. Bob changed it at the last minute, and I couldn’t talk him out of it.

  It was my fault because I’d ignored Duke Wayne’s advice: “Never play a rapist and never die in a movie,” he said. “People don’t like to see their leading men die.”

  —

  I MADE A PICTURE in Mexico with Samuel Fuller called Shark! (1969). It was a terrible film and Sam was tough, but I loved him. Know what he did instead of saying “Action”? He shot a gun off. There I was with my arms around the gorgeous Mexican star Silvia Pinal ready to do a tender love scene, and all of a sudden, BAM!

  “Sam,” I pleaded, “can’t you just say, ‘Action’?”

  He puffed on his cigar and said, “No.”

  —

  FRANK CAPRA is one of my favorite directors. He made some truly great pictures: It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Some people think they’re schmaltzy, but I love them. They’re touching and beautifully made.

  I once sat in a restaurant with Woody Allen and picked ten movies we’d want on a desert island. Woody didn’t take a single Capra picture and I took two. Woody took three Ingmar Bergman films. I’d rather be shot in the leg than watch a Bergman film. Though the actors are wonderful, I find his films depressing. I didn’t say anything to Woody, but I thought, Bergman? You’re shipwrecked on an island! Why would you want to be more miserable than you already are?

  I made one picture with Woody, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). It was just a little cameo: Tony Randall and I played sperms. Woody never said anything to us. We had fun and he was very nice, but he never gave us direction.

  I don’t think he has a very high opinion of his own talent as a director, even though he’s made some wonderful films. If there has ever been an independent filmmaker, it’s Woody. He’s actually made a picture a year since the 1970s without ever having to beg for money or take script notes from studio execs or check with anyone on casting, because he finances them privately. He takes three months to write a film, three months to shoot, and three months to edit. And he always has final cut. He’s unique in the industry.

  —

  PETER BOGDANOVICH has made some terrific films, especially the first two, The Last Picture Show (1971), and Paper Moon (1973). When I worked with him in At Long Last Love (1975), with Cybill Shepherd and Madeline Kahn, he was writing and directing, and I don’t think writing is his strong suit.

  Peter was living with Cybill at the time and they were wrapped up in each other. The movie was a showcase for her and he wasn’t interested in anything else. I could have fallen down and bloodied my nose, but if she was good in the scene, he would have printed it. I felt like the two of them were making a movie and I was along for the ride.

  Cybill has been criticized for her acting, but she can be good. Her work was a little uneven in those days, and though I don’t like to do a lot of takes, I think the film would have benefited from a few more in some places. The problem was that neither of us could sing, and it was the first time anyone had tried to record live musical numbers in a feature film since 1932. The orchestra was right there on the set with us. And Cole Porter, no less! Dinah told me that his songs are the toughest in the world to sing. Yet Peter wanted us to do them in one take, and if a truck rumbled by outside the sound stage, we’d have to do it over. I kept telling him, “You know,
I can’t sing,” but he kept saying, “Yes, you can.” So I kept trying. I must have been out of my mind. Maybe if we’d had a little thing at the bottom of the screen that said, “THIS WAS DONE LIVE,” we might have gotten some credit.

  The only bright spot was Madeline Kahn. She pulled me through. Especially the singing. She encouraged me and practically held my hand in rehearsals. Then she confessed to me that she couldn’t sing either.

  I told her that was ridiculous. “You’ve sung opera!” I said. “You’ve sung on Broadway, for God’s sake!”

  “Only because I was playing someone who could sing,” she said.

  What a wonderful answer.

  Madeline was both sexy and funny, and I had a terrible crush on her. I think it was mutual, but we never did anything about it. She was a lovely woman and a huge talent.

  Peter had done something unusual: He went from being a film critic to a successful director, and the other critics hated him for it. And he does like to pontificate. He’s brilliant when he talks about films, but you can’t talk a scene. You have to know what you want and how to get it from the actor. But he just talked and talked and talked. That’s how we spent most of our time on the set, listening to him talk. And he loved to give line readings. It drove me crazy, but I’d just smile and say, “I don’t know if I can do it that badly, but I’ll try.”

  —

  JOHN AVILDSEN was a polarizing director. No, that’s too wishy-washy: He was an arrogant prick and the biggest asshole I ever had the misfortune to work with. He was good technically, but there he was in Nashville shooting W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975) surrounded by the best country musicians in the world, including Mel Tillis, and he hadn’t done his homework. He didn’t understand the South. Just had no idea who these people were.

  Mel is a sweet man. He was in the Grand Ole Opry for years and years and had a huge recording career. He’s been a stutterer all his life. The only times he doesn’t stutter is when he sings or when he’s drunk.

  One night after a take, Avildsen turned to Mel and said, “Cut the stutter.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Cut the stutter,” he said. “It isn’t working for me.”

  “Let’s go outside, John. I need to talk to you,” I said.

  We were shooting in a gas station and we went around back. It took everything I had not to strangle him. I got up close and said, “You don’t know anything about the people you’re working with! How can you tell Mel Tillis to ‘cut the stutter’? He has a speech impediment!”

  While we were having our little discussion, Mel had got hold of a fifth of brandy and chugged it, so by the time we got back on the set, he was no longer stuttering. We did one more take and he said his lines perfectly. Avildsen looked at me like I was some kind of maniac, and gave me a wide berth for the rest of the shoot.

  —

  ONE DAY MEL BROOKS called and said, “I want you to do a little part in my next picture.” He went on to describe Silent Movie (1976), his tribute to the great silent comedies of the 1920s. I said I’d be happy to do it, especially since Dom DeLuise was in the cast.

  Mel wanted me to ride around in a wheelchair and do all kinds of funny things, but I said, “Look, the thing I have the most fun doing is kidding myself, so make me a movie star with his name on top of his house who can’t pass a mirror without spending five minutes in front of it.”

  Mel loved the idea. In my scene, three guys surprise me in the shower: Mel, Dom, and Marty Feldman, whose one eye goes east and the other goes west. Shooting it was one of the funniest days of my life.

  I liked Mel and thought he was very clever. But he could be cruel. He has a nasty sense of humor that’s hysterical if you’re not the brunt of it. I think he considered himself a tough guy. I don’t know where he got that idea. Maybe because his father died when he was a baby and he grew up fending for himself in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. He was proud of the fact that he’d been a drummer. He told me that Buddy Rich, another “tough guy,” had taught him how to play. We’d kid around. Mel would warn me not to fuck with drummers, and I’d say, “You don’t wanna know how many drummers I’ve whipped.”

  It seems silly now, but we went back and forth like that on different things. One night I was at his house for dinner and he suggested I do a movie with his wife, Anne Bancroft.

  “That’s a great idea,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’ll bring them into the theater and she’ll keep them there.”

  That cut me to the quick, and I didn’t talk to Mel for a long time afterward. We got to be friends again, but it was never the same.

  —

  HAL NEEDHAM was the first stuntman to make the leap into directing. Beginning with Smokey and the Bandit, he directed ten features, and every one was successful. He was a good director. He knew when to leave the actors alone. But he would watch, and when he noticed something that wasn’t right, he knew how to fix it. He was always open to suggestions on line readings and blocking, but he never needed advice on car chases. And he didn’t give a shit about your “tertiary motivation.”

  I want to walk away when I hear the word motivation. All I need to know is whether I’m on the right track with the character, and if there’s anything the director wants different: bigger, smaller, whatever. But when they start talking about motivation, I pretend to listen and then do what I want.

  All of Hal’s pictures made money, but the critics panned every one. He got so disgusted he decided to put an ad in Variety with quotes from his worst reviews and a picture of him sitting in a wheelbarrow full of money. I thought it would be a big mistake, and I tried to talk him out of it. I told him point-blank: “This is not a good idea, Hal. It’ll only piss them off more.”

  Of course he didn’t listen and of course that’s what happened. They were really mad. If he’d been anybody else, he never would have worked again, but Hal got away with it.

  —

  MY CHARACTER in Starting Over (1979) is me. He’s the closest I’ve ever come to playing myself in a film, and I approached every scene as if it was me in that situation. Because of my wisecracking playboy image, I had to campaign like hell to get the part. My own agent said that audiences wouldn’t accept me as a divorced guy living in a Greenwich Village loft, struggling in the singles world. But I had dinner with the director, Alan Pakula, and he finally said, “Let’s do a test.”

  I liked Alan a lot. He was a gentleman, and a different kind of director than I’ve ever worked with. He made some wonderful films as a writer-producer-director, from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) to All the President’s Men (1976). On the set he was slow to make up his mind, but once he did, he was firm. I always felt welcome to voice my opinion about a scene, and he often took my suggestions.

  I also had a terrific time working with Candice Bergen and Jill Clayburgh. Jill was a wonderful actor and a lovely woman. It’s a tragedy that we lost her so soon. I loved Candice. She’s a great wit, and one of the most intelligent and well-educated people I’ve ever met, but without a hit of pretentiousness. I was happy to work with her again in Stick (1985).

  She sings in one scene and said, “God, what do I do? I’m supposed to sound lousy.”

  “Candy,” I said, “just sing the best you can, honey.”

  I was afraid she’d be insulted by that, but she laughed. She’s very special.

  I saw Starting Over recently and was bowled over. I think it captures the spirit of the times: The swinging sixties were over and we were still dealing with the hangover. There’s a scene where I have a panic attack in Bloomingdale’s. I say, “Does anybody have a Valium?” and thirty-five people throw them on the counter.

  —

  I MET DAVID STEINBERG at a party and I liked him instantly. I’d thought he was funny as a stand-up comic and I loved the way he skewered the people and things he thought were phony. I’d heard that David ha
d stuck up for me with people who were putting me down and I thanked him for it. “Nah,” he said, “it was nothing.” But it meant a lot to me.

  We became good friends, and a year or two later, when I had the chance to pick the director I wanted for Paternity (1981), I chose David, even though he hadn’t directed a movie before. I knew he could do it because I’d watched him direct television skits. He knew how to work with actors and he was always right about where the joke was.

  I made the right choice. David did a hell of a job on Paternity. I’m sure he could’ve had a big career as a film director. He just didn’t take the ball and run with it. He had his reasons, I suppose, and I respect that.

  —

  I NEVER HAD the privilege of working with him, but Orson Welles was a dear friend. He had more talent than any ten directors combined. He had such a strong and original style. Everything he did was fresh, even the credits.

  Orson was a natural and he learned fast. When he came to Hollywood at the age of twenty-five to make his first movie, Citizen Kane, he had a secretary write him a little manual with all the terminology and the different camera shots. He used it to communicate with his cameraman, Gregg Toland.

  I was in awe of him. He did everything in a big way. One day I watched him polish off a breakfast of a dozen eggs and a couple of steaks, then consume ten Cuban cigars and twenty cups of coffee before dinner.

  Orson was curious about everything, including things you might not expect, like football. He’d say, “Tell me about football. Tell me why you love it.” And I would go on and on about it and he’d listen intently and be enthusiastic and finally say, “Yes, I understand! It’s like boxing, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” I’d say, “in some ways, maybe . . .”

  Orson and I talked about everything. We talked about the Mercury Theatre, that wonderful radio ensemble he brought with him to films: Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins.

  “I notice you use Ray Collins a lot,” I said.