There’s no secret to remembering lines. We all have our own system. But good writing helps. It’s easier to remember dialogue that’s truthful. If it’s a good script, you can memorize a speech quickly and you won’t have a problem with it. The trick is finding the heart of the watermelon. What’s in the middle of the speech that you’re trying to get to? What’s your character trying to say? If I can figure that out, I’ll coast through the rest of it. But getting there is tough if you’re anxious about it. It also depends on the other actor. If I was working with Ossie Davis, I could talk all day because he always stayed right there. But when an actor drifts on me, I lose focus. I don’t know whether it gets me angry or what, but it throws me.
There are basic notions about playing drunk. The idea is that you try to be sober. If you work hard at that, you look like you’re drunk. That’s the theory, anyway. I try to show my students how to sip a glass of fake whiskey in a convincing way. It’s usually lukewarm tea without sugar, so it’s bitter. I always drink like it’s pretty awful at first. But the more you drink, the better it tastes, and you get into the swing.
The question comes up: “When you see an actor in a movie waking up, how do they get that look?” Charley Durning, God love him, would mash his head into the pillow. He’d start ten minutes before the take, and by the time the director said, “Action,” he’d look like he’d been run over by a truck.
Students want to know about having to kiss a stranger in a scene. I always try to find something about the woman that I like and hope I can make her laugh before the scene. It’s like a first date.
The big difference between making a TV show and a movie is that the budget is usually much higher on a movie, where you do two or three pages a day. You work much harder on a TV show. You’re often shooting all night, and you’ll do eight, twelve, sometimes fourteen pages. I like that pace rather than sitting around. In my experience stage actors generally behave better than movie actors when they make a film. No matter how big a star they were on Broadway, they don’t pull rank on fellow actors and they’re available to the director. Another difference: On the stage you use your body more than on film. You have to reach the back row, so you make gestures that wouldn’t be seen in close-ups on film.
I love what old radio dramas used to do with just the spoken word, and lately I’ve been assigning parts to my students from shows like Inner Sanctum. I’ll have the rest of the class turn their chairs around so they can’t see the actors. I tell them they have to work without using their bodies because it won’t mean anything to the listening audience.
It’s said that all a film actor has to do is think it and the camera will pick it up, and I believe that’s true of good actors.
In The Snake Pit (1948), Olivia de Havilland plays a sane woman who’s committed to an asylum. She tries to convince them she’s not crazy, but no one believes her. In one scene she collapses into a corner. She doesn’t speak, but there’s a look on her face of such despair, it says more than ten pages of dialogue.
Many actors went on the set and watched Gary Cooper, thinking, What’s the big deal? He isn’t doing anything. But on the screen there’s a whole performance not seen in person. Good film actors don’t do much because everybody around them is saying it and doing it for them. To illustrate that, one day in class, Wynn Handman showed us a film of three actors and asked us what we saw in their faces. Between close-ups of the actors’ faces, there’d be a pitcher of ice water dripping with condensation. They’d cut back to one of the actors and you’d swear he was dying of thirst. They’d show a sexy woman and then cut to a guy looking at her and you’d see the most lascivious look on his face. What a pervert! The point is, when you act in movies, you don’t have to do much because the film does it for you.
As a teacher, I try to use as much of my own experience as I can. Most beginners are scared to death of auditions, and understandably so: They’re among the toughest things actors have to do. You look around and there are thirty-seven guys in the room who are taller and better-looking than you are. And they sound better, too. You think, What the hell am I doing here? I must have been crazy to think I had a chance. But actors have to get past that.
Screen tests aren’t much fun either. I did one for a picture called But Not for Me (1959) with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. The other actor up for the part was named Barry Coe.
I tested first. When I was introduced to Gable, he said, “Do you duck-hunt?”
Trying to be funny I said, “No, I can’t shoot anything since I saw Bambi.”
He looked at me like I was crazy, and my test was a disaster.
I hung around to watch Barry Coe’s test.
When Gable asked him if he hunted and Barry said, “Yeah, I’ve got a Browning over and under and I go duck-hunting all the time,” I knew he had the part and I was out. Barry went on to play Mr. Goodwrench in a series of TV commercials. I never saw Gable again, except on the screen.
—
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN curious about people, no matter who they are or what they do, and I try not to be judgmental. I think that’s important for any actor. How can you do justice to a character if you’re looking down on him? I tell them that the old line is true: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” What people dismiss as “light comedy” is tougher to play than deep drama, and I think it’s easier to make a dramatic actor out of a comedian than vice versa. I tell my actors that if you’re in a comedy, never beg for laughs, forget you’re in a comedy, and just be real. If the laughs are there, they’ll come. I tell them that no part is ever beneath them, and that no part is too small, as long as they bring something interesting to it. I tell them that acting isn’t about them, it’s about a gift they’re giving to other people. And I repeat Spencer Tracy’s advice: Never let them catch you acting.
Burt
I’ve done more than a hundred movies. I’m proud of maybe five of them. And I’ll match my record of missed opportunities with anyone in the business. There’s only one actor I can think of who can rival me in that department, but I have to go back pretty far. In 1941, George Raft passed on The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, and Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart did them all, of course, and they made his career.
In a few cases I was unlucky, but it was mostly bad decisions. For a long time I took roles that would be the most fun, not the most challenging. In the process I missed out on some wonderful parts.
I backed away from the original Batman TV series (1966–68) because I doubted I could bring it off and didn’t think it was a star-making part. I wouldn’t have been nearly as good as Adam West, who was brilliant as Batman. But as it happened I was right: Batman didn’t do much for his career.
I tested for Rosemary’s Baby (1968), but Roman Polanski went with John Cassavetes.
Brian’s Song (1971): The role of Brian Piccolo, the Chicago Bears running back who was stricken with terminal cancer in the prime of his career, would have been perfect for me, but I lost out to James Caan. (It was perfect for him, too.)
I don’t know if it was before or after both Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson passed on the part of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but I was up for it. Someone told me that Marlon threatened to quit if I came in.
I was dying to do Blume in Love (1973) and A Touch of Class (1973), but George Segal got both.
In 1977, when I was the top box-office star, Francis Coppola said he wanted me for the title role in Tucker, about the visionary car designer who took on the Big Three automakers in the 1940s.
I flew to San Francisco, and over a long dinner we made plans for the film. I stayed the night, and the next morning Francis screened seven different endings of Apocalypse Now and asked me which one I liked. Then he showed home movies of Preston Tucker, who looked just like my dad. We talked in detail about how to make the picture and agreed on just about everything. I left that afternoon thinking I had the part.
A few days later s
omeone called from Paramount saying that they wanted to make Tucker but not the five other pictures Francis had pitched them. It seems he tied all the projects, most of which he was only going to produce and not direct, to me! He was using me to bootstrap his other films. We never spoke again. (He made Tucker with Jeff Bridges ten years later.)
When Sean Connery held out for more money to play James Bond, Cubby Broccoli came to me and said, “We want you to play Bond!” and I said, in my infinite wisdom, “An American can’t play him. The public won’t accept it.”
For a long time afterward I’d wake up in a cold sweat going, “Bond, James Bond!”
I was the first choice for the part of John McClane in Die Hard (1988), but I passed. That’s okay. I don’t regret turning down anything that Bruce Willis took.
I declined the Richard Gere role in Pretty Woman (1990). I saw it the other night and thought, Damn, Julia Roberts! What the hell was I thinking?
I turned down two parts that went to Jack Nicholson. I was Milos Forman’s first choice for R. P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Jack won the Oscar for it. But by far the dumbest thing I ever did was turn down the role of the dissipated ex-astronaut in Terms of Endearment (1983) because I was committed to make Stroker Ace (1983) with Hal. It never occurred to either of us that we could simply postpone it. Jack got another Oscar for it. He was so good in both roles, I can’t imagine anyone else in them, including me.
I’ve been told I was considered for Trapper John in M*A*S*H (1970—Elliott Gould) and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976—Robert De Niro). I’d love to have done both.
I turned down the part of Han Solo in one of the Star Wars sequels. I guess it would have been nice to be part of film history, but I don’t regret it.
I was in awe of Sally in many ways, not least for her ability to pick up a phone and ask a director to work with her. I could never do that. I wanted to call Peter Weir and ask to play the cop in Witness (1985), but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Peter made a terrific movie with Harrison Ford.
Sidney Lumet wanted me for the lead in Power (1986) and I would have loved to work with him, but I had a serious ear infection and he cast Richard Gere instead.
I coveted the Nick Nolte character in Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). At the time I felt like I was down and out in Beverly Hills, so it wouldn’t have been a stretch.
I had to pass on the Kevin Kline part opposite Sally in Soapdish (1991) because Loni would have poisoned me.
Sylvester Stallone was parking cars when he wrote a script about a South Philly pug who gets a shot at the heavyweight championship. He took it to United Artists, who had three actors in mind for the title role: Ryan O’Neal, James Caan, and me. But Sly said he’d have never forgiven himself if the film was a hit without him playing Rocky.
The studio still wanted an established actor, so they offered him $300,000 for the script to make him go away. At the time he had $100 to his name, but he held out for the part and kept the rights to the character.
The rest is Hollywood history. Made for a little over $1 million, Rocky grossed $250 million, its five sequels have earned more than $1 billion, it won the 1976 Best Picture Oscar, and there’s a statue of Sly as Rocky Balboa on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
—
I DON’T HOLD GRUDGES. There are people who kicked me when I was down, but I don’t want to get even. The only way you can get even with anyone in this business is by succeeding and hurting their pocketbook, or by smiling and not giving up. I’m living a happy and fulfilled life. It’s the best revenge.
I’ve been lucky in terms of the people I’ve met professionally and how loyal they’ve been to me, like Jon Voight. I don’t see Jon as often as I’d like, but we talk on the phone and send each other little notes. I got a card from him the other day that said: “Dear Burtram, I’m gonna find a film for you.”
I see George Hamilton and Joe Namath because they both live in Florida, and I have dozens of colleagues all over the world whom I stay in touch with. I’ve known my manager, Erik Kritzer, since he was Sue Mengers’s assistant at an agency in the 1990s.
I have a diverse group of people outside of show business who keep me on the straight and narrow. Jess Moody is more than a spiritual adviser, he’s a dear friend. Mo Mustaine is my lifelong pal of sixty years and counting. We share so many memories, we finish each other’s sentences.
—
HAVE I DONE it my way? Yeah, I think so, even when it wasn’t the best way. If I had it to do over, are there things I’d change? Of course. For one thing, I’d be nicer to certain people. I was too rough around the edges in some situations. And there were people I wish I’d gotten to know better who were friendly toward me, but I just moved on. Especially actors I respected who’d been big stars but were reduced to smaller parts later in life. There was an actor named John Bromfield who was an ex-jock and a great-looking guy. He made feature films after World War II and then a TV series called Sheriff of Cochise in the fifties that lasted a few years. Then he moved down to playing heavies. John was a real gentleman and we liked each other. I would love to have had the benefit of his experience in the business. I’ve always regretted not making the effort to know him better.
Like everybody, I’ve had my ups and downs. Well, maybe not everybody: The chart of my career looks like a heart attack. I’ve been through every career phase imaginable, some more than once. I was number one at the box office five years in a row, which I don’t think anybody has done since. In 1978, I had four movies at once playing nationwide. If I met you then, I’m sorry. I was flying through life trying to take a bite of everything. My only excuse is that I was on top of the mountain, where the air is thin. How can you smell the roses when you can’t breathe?
When you’re on top, you’re surrounded by people telling you what they think you want to hear. All you have to do is say, “I’d like a Diet Coke,” and forty-eight people run to get it for you. If I’d wanted, I could have had three people pulling up my zipper in the john. It’s easy to lose touch with reality and believe your own publicity. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be number one. It’s even harder to explain what it’s like to go from number one to number sixty-eight. When you’re on top you know there’s only one way to go, but you can’t prepare yourself for it, in the same way you know your mother and father are going to die but it still comes as a shock when it happens.
By 1980 I’d done a string of car chase movies—White Lightning, Gator, Smokey and the Bandit I and II, and Hooper. I wanted to try other genres and swore that I wouldn’t drive a car over the speed limit in another movie. Then Hal and the automotive writer Brock Yates came up with The Cannonball Run, a script based on an illegal cross-country car race. It sounded like so much fun I couldn’t resist, and I was paid $5 million to make it. (I was told that set a record at the time.) A year later I couldn’t get my phone calls returned. I’d chosen too many films because I liked the location (“Jamaica? I’ll take it!”). Or the leading lady. Or because I’d be working with friends. If the script was crap, I rationalized that I could make it better, and I usually did, but it was just better crap. I didn’t open myself to new writers or risky parts because I wasn’t interested in challenging myself as an actor, I was interested in having a good time. As a result, I missed a lot of opportunities to show I could play “serious” roles. By the time I finally woke up and tried to get it right, nobody would give me a chance. I’m not bitter about it. It happens to a lot of actors. I feel my best performance is still ahead of me. I’d love the chance to give it, but it won’t kill me if I don’t.
Teaching is the most important thing in my professional life now. I love sharing the knowledge I’ve gained over the years, but I’m also still curious. (If you want to learn, teach!) Maybe that’s one of the secrets of staying young. If I had to choose, I’d take being a good teacher over being a good actor,
and if I have a legacy, it’s the actors I’ve taught.
—
I’VE BEEN RICH and I’ve been poor . . . and miserable both times. Rich and miserable is better. I don’t know how much money I’ve made and spent, and I don’t want to know.
I’m not proud of the fact that I haven’t always handled it well. But money was never at the top of my list. I just wanted enough so I didn’t have to worry about it. My biggest mistake was trusting people who took advantage of me. I went through bankruptcy, and it’s not pleasant. People treat you like a leper. They think their money will disappear if they touch you.
I didn’t save my money like some people. (A lot of those people never pick up a check, so maybe that’s the secret.) I’ve owned big houses, a ranch, boats, private jets, helicopters . . . and I enjoyed them all. But I don’t miss them. I feel like a man whose house was blown away in a hurricane. His possessions are gone, but he’s thankful to be alive. He realizes that objects aren’t important.
I cannot put into words my gratitude and love for my niece, Nancy Lee Hess. Nancy Lee’s brother, Rick, runs the feed store in Jupiter Farms near what was once my ranch. They both inherited the best qualities of my sister, Nancy Ann.
I had some lawyers, accountants, and real estate advisers who didn’t have my best interests at heart. When it all started unraveling, I asked Nancy Lee to help straighten things out for me. She had just retired from the phone company and was planning on doing some traveling, but she dropped everything and said yes. She’s done an amazing job. I know she’s been under a great deal of pressure and lost a lot of sleep in order to help me through some very stressful issues. I almost think of her like a stuntwoman taking the falls for me in the business world. I dedicated this book to her in gratitude for all that hard work, and because I love her so much.
But Enough About Me: A Memoir Page 27