Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me...

by Stevie Phillips

  *

  Stark tried to renege on a cheap script-development deal with a young writer, Steve Tesich, he had contracted for a mere fifteen thousand dollars. The deal was for a treatment based on Steve’s original story idea. The writer delivered the treatment under the terms of the contract, and Stark didn’t like what he had written. However, Stark owed him the money. For Ray the amount was nothing, but it would mean food on the table for a year for the writer’s family. Marian Searchinger, a lovely woman in my department, came to me in tears, begging me to intercede on behalf of the fledging writer who was a minnow in the pool where Stark was the shark. Stark was also one of Begelman’s best friends, and we did lots of business with him. Too bad! I made Stark pay what he owed by being terribly nasty, threatening never to allow the film department in New York to work with him again, and he relented, paid the bill, and never forgave me.

  This happened just as Redford was starting to film The Way We Were. The other unrelated thing that happened in the same month was that I broke my leg badly in a skiing accident. Oddly enough, my broken leg, the young writer, and Bob’s concern about the script on The Way all came together in a gesture of uncharacteristic kindness from Ray, who sent me a dozen yellow roses with a sweet note. He had suffered a similar skiing accident a couple of years earlier, and the note was your run-of-the-mill “from one skier to another,” wishing me a speedy recovery.

  I was pleased that Ray was willing to put the bad feelings away, and I wrote a similarly mundane thank-you for the roses he’d sent. Ray then took my thank-you note and scribbled the following on the bottom: “Dear Sue, we really should have shot her!” (Referencing what one does to a horse with a broken leg.) Sue Mengers, who how lived on the West Coast, was also a good friend of Ray’s, and it was she who had persuaded Ray to send me the flowers in the interest of burying the hatchet someplace other than in my back.

  Unfortunately Ray Stark’s busy secretary made a mistake, and instead of sending the note with Ray’s scribble on it to Sue, she accidentally sent it back to me. Suddenly I’m looking at my ordinary thank-you bearing Ray’s addendum, knowing how Ray really felt: that he preferred to kill me flat out. I took this awful note and sent it to Redford, who was busy filming and hating every minute of Ray’s interference on the set. He was known to show up with different hookers in tow from time to time—hookers whom he put on the movie’s payroll.

  Redford and director Sydney Pollack decided to order Ray removed from the set—permanently. Ray’s response was to send a case of good wine to Bob, hoping Bob would relent and let him back in. Bob now took my thank-you note for the flowers (with Ray’s ugly addendum), and he scribbled on the very bottom of it, “Dear Stevie, let’s shoot the gift horse instead.” And he had his secretary send it to Ray, along with the unwanted case of wine.

  *

  God bless producers who talk a good game and then don’t pay up. I reaped the benefit of just such a mistake. It arose out of Bob’s quest for interesting original material. Bob was a serial developer of scripts, and early in the seventies he saw a six-page photo spread in Life about a man who was single-handedly trying to save the bighorn sheep in the mountains of Montana. He thought it would make a good movie. The savior, an environmentalist named Jim Morgan, was an interesting character and by no means an ordinary mountain man. He held a doctorate in ecological studies and, while living in the mountains, was also busy filing impact statements with the EPA in Washington, DC. Redford asked me to get the rights to Morgan’s life story, and off I went in hot pursuit. Not an easy man to find—even using Redford’s name liberally wherever I called. I finally got a callback from Morgan, who found one of the messages I’d left at a diner in Idaho Falls. When at last I heard Morgan’s voice on the other end, I introduced myself and told him the reason I was calling. But before I even got Redford’s name out of my mouth, he interrupted with: “Are you one of those Hollywood cocksuckers?”

  “Well, yeah! I am.” He then told me that he had already granted the rights to another producer whom I happened to know, Edgar Scherick, and he hadn’t gotten paid. Boy, was he angry! “Why don’t you send me the contract?” I suggested. He took down my address and then hung up. I was surprised when the agreement arrived, a one-page, two-paragraph contract, handwritten in pencil on grease-stained yellow legal-pad paper, and it was airtight. I called Edgar, whose offices were just down the block from the agency, and suggested forcefully that he send the check over immediately:

  “Edgar, you dine out on more than this each week. You’re depriving a man that’s trying to save America for you and your children. Aren’t you ashamed? Send me a check for two thousand dollars [the full amount] within the hour, or I’m going to embarrass you by telling this story in places you’d rather not have your name mentioned in the same sentence as ‘thief.’” The check came within the hour, and I forwarded it to Morgan immediately. He was so grateful he said he was determined to “do something wonderful” for me, and I let him.

  He asked me to put together a group of my friends—as many as I wished to invite—and he would host a float trip for us down the Salmon River, otherwise known as the River of No Return. I collected eleven buddies—the most famous of whom was a producer on 60 Minutes—and on the appointed day we showed up, as instructed, in a cornfield near Idaho Falls, where we were picked up by small planes belonging to the Idaho Fish and Game Department. We were then flown at a thrillingly low level through the magnificent Snake River Gorge and dropped off in Salmon, where, that night, at dusk, we were led on horses to a scenic overview that “breathtaking” doesn’t begin to describe. It was all about the light; “purple mountain majesties” is right on the nose.

  The next morning we rendezvoused with the guys from Idaho Fish and Game at the Salmon put-in, and started the float. They brought everything. The entertainment was provided by Morris Morgan, Jim’s older brother, a real mountain man who hunted for his food, built his own shelter, sewed all his clothes from animal hides, and had wonderful campfire stories.

  The River of No Return: long placid pools and horrific rapids. Close to the onset of fast water, you could hear the rapids’ intimidating roar as loud as a jet plane just overhead. The object of the exercise was to brave it in a McKenzie, a tiny rowboat with a flat surface underneath less than two feet, created so that it could easily be swiveled into a channel by a strong “river rat” capable of reading the current in advance. I’m proud to say that I went over the Salmon River Falls in a McKenzie rowed by the head of Idaho Fish and Game, and I lived to tell the tale. This amazing experience opened up a new world of rivers for me, and in later years I ran the Middle Fork River, the Upper and Lower Rim of the Colorado, and the Arkansas, Roaring Fork, and Animas Rivers. The film about Morgan, incidentally, never got made.

  *

  Nothing is forever, as we know. And I knew that representing two out of the top five or six stars in America could not go on forever, but I did not expect it to end the way it did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Betrayal

  Freddie told me more than once that they all move on. Every client—every star, and actors not yet stars—all ultimately believe they can be better served elsewhere. No matter how hard you have worked, or how well you have succeeded for your clients, they eventually find it difficult to refuse all the good meals at great restaurants that are accompanied by strong selling from the next agent in line. In a business where one’s only commodity is one’s own self, selfishness rules. And when a star is being courted by competition that uses flattery and promises—the great tools of our trade—it is hard for the star to resist the overtures. There is some loyalty in showbiz, but one has to look hard to find it. I’m still looking, and basically I’m an optimist. Freddie did sign many more clients than he lost, and when he lost them he took it in stride. I didn’t.

  When I lost Redford in 1975 I was heartsick. Bob was straightforward and honorable about leaving. He met with me and told me he wanted to move on. I knew I couldn’t hold on wi
th all the rumors flying around—that is, with Sue Mengers bitching and moaning on the phone every day that Freddie had sold the company and sold her out—all long before any announcement was made. I always knew that part of Bob’s attraction to CMA was Freddie Fields, who would no longer be there. It was speculated that Freddie would head a studio or make an independent-producer deal at one. And then there was also a new kid on the block. Mike Ovitz, trailing heat wherever he went, was forming a new agency with the top young agents at William Morris. The buzz was all about Ovitz, who was seen holding hands with every important star in Hollywood. It took Ovitz four more years to get Redford, who went to William Morris first.

  I thanked Bob for seven wonderful years. Truthfully, his career only got better once he was gone because he added another gem to his crown. He started directing, and first time out he won the Best Director Oscar for Ordinary People, which I thought was brilliant. I dropped the ball by not knowing he wanted to direct, by not pushing the envelope with him. Directing may have been his idea, but it should have been mine. He was doing everything during our representation of him that directors do except calling the shots. He was always on the hunt for good material and good writers, he worked on the development of the movies he starred in, he conferred on casting and locations—it was clear what came next, and I didn’t see it.

  I hold myself responsible for not coming up with the first directing project before anyone else. That might have saved the day. I did not introduce him to enough new writers or find source material that was fresh. I was on automatic pilot. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t one step ahead of the next guy, which is where I needed to be to hold on to an actor as intelligent and thoughtful as Bob. And that, after seven wonderful years, was the end of my professional relationship with “Ordinary Bob.”

  However, Redford gave me the American West as a present. I skied a thousand runs, hiked a hundred trails, climbed a number of Colorado’s fourteen-thousand-foot peaks, did horse-pack camping trips in the high-country wilderness, fished for trout in uncharted mountain streams, and fell in love with the Navajo and Hopi cultures because he showed me the beauty of that part of our country for the first time. I owe him. Some of my favorite Redford films—The Natural and Out of Africa—were made soon after he left. And it’s still heartbreaking.

  *

  Losing Pacino was less straightforward. CMA did not lose Al Pacino, only I did. But I learned a big lesson that would serve me well: The blame game is not worth playing. It’s a waste of time. To start with, Al and I were not pals like Bob and I were. We did not speak on the phone three or four times a day like Bob and I. I’d always found Al difficult to talk to, and consequently we never grew close. Al had a business manager, Martin Bregman, who handled Al’s money and that of other clients, like Barbra Streisand, Alan Alda, and Liza Minnelli. He and his good buddy Begelman worked together on a one-hand-washes-the-other basis. They brought each other clients, and that enriched them both.

  Bregman got involved in some tax shelter/cattle scheme and invested lots of his clients’ funds in the deal. Bregman was attractive and smart, and I don’t think he had any evil intent here; however, some deals work, and some are losers. This one turned out to be a scam, unbeknownst at the outset to Marty. But while the clients lost lots of money, Marty lined his pockets with the commissions he got for putting his clients into the deal. “No bloody fair,” I whined, and pulled Liza away from his management. It was easy to do because Liza was upset at the loss of her money. So was Streisand, and she, too, left Bregman. In return Bregman took Al away from me, which he was easily able to do.

  The whole mess left me wondering how much Al knew and how much money he lost. He wasn’t yet as high up in the earning ranks as Liza and Barbra, both of whom lost tens of thousands. Had I kept my mouth shut and left Liza with Bregman, I could have maintained my representation of Al; I would have been able to continue talking for him, and looking for material on his behalf. But there was no integrity in my not informing Liza. Besides, it went right along with the slimy way Begelman did business, which might have been to let Marty fast-talk his way out of it, promising to get it back in the next investment, and so on. I owed it to Li to speak up. However, I believe that, had I thought about it more, I might have found a better way to handle this mess. There was a compromise in there somewhere. I couldn’t see it then. Everything was so black-and-white to me. It was a good object lesson. Moving on!

  The rumors about the sale of the company that year turned out to be true. The new owner, Marvin Josephson, also came from the agency world and was very successful, but he wasn’t anyone I knew. I had followed the Fields plan, which was to keep my head down and not bother about what other agents were doing. Meanwhile, all my associates knew Josephson but me. I was uncomfortable. I had grown up with F&D. In a way Freddie was my surrogate father. I didn’t want a new environment. I didn’t want even to give it a chance. Besides that, having lost Redford and Pacino, I would now have to prove myself all over again, build a new client list, and maybe even take a cut in salary. Who knows? I did a lot of speculating. Of course there was still Liza, at the pinnacle of her career. Liza! Yes! I decided on a new life plan: Liza and I would go into business together.

  *

  In spite of cracks that were now showing up on the well-paved road to Liza’s fame, I thought everything would be okay. I looked at my Liza, the brilliant and lovely young woman who, upon winning the Oscar for Cabaret, showed up a day later in my office with a basket of flowers three feet high. She needed help to put the huge arrangement on my desk, and then came the best part. She handed me a card that said, “We did it.”

  I truly cared about Liza, and I believed in her. Although I knew that her voice was not as good as her mother’s or Barbra’s, she worked hard, very hard, to win over audiences, and her quirkiness, her please-love-me desperation seduced them wherever we went. She was a good actress, and a great entertainer. I had enough confidence in her ability and in my own to imagine that together we could build a successful independent production company of our own. I believed that I knew how to turn her great success into greater profitability, how to make the deals work for her, how to make it all happen for the both of us. And if we worked closely together, I thought I could keep her straight. Boy, was I wrong!

  It would start with a simple three-or four-picture deal tied to one of the studios. It would give her a chance to develop her own scripts, ones she could star in and maybe one she could produce for someone else. Of course the films would have to be successful for the escalations in the contract to work, as well as for the options to be picked up. There were deals like that going all the way back to Bette Davis, and there is no question that this kind of deal was available to Liza. It was an easy setup for me, and worth taking a chance on.

  I imagined creating musicals utilizing the talents of Li’s buddies Fred Ebb, John Kander, and Marvin Hamlisch; I imagined developing dramatic vehicles with good writers and directors, scripts that would exploit Liza’s specific strengths. I spoke to Li about it with great enthusiasm. She got excited, too, and agreed that it was the way to go. And so, after fifteen years, I resigned from CMA. I told my new boss, Marvin Josephson, that I would be gone in less than two weeks. I told my lawyer to prepare an agreement with Liza. I had one foot out the door, and I was very excited about the future, truly looking forward to a new kind of professional independence. That’s when I got the call.

  It was a phone call from a man whose name I had only ever heard just in passing: Mickey Rudin, a powerful entertainment attorney in Los Angeles who was known as Frank Sinatra’s mouthpiece. It was he who answered the questions about Sinatra’s gambling interests and underworld acquaintances. In dispatching me, he was nothing if not totally direct; brutal is more like it: “Liza will no longer require your services!” And he hung up. It took him fifteen seconds to relieve me of everything it had taken me fifteen years to build. I started to get nauseous, thought I would throw up, and the hand holding the phone shook so ha
rd I almost dropped it. I hadn’t made a single response. He didn’t give me time to make one. I sat there staring for a long time, not moving—not able to move. My body temperature dropped, like in the old days with Judy. My hands were freezing. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t make myself move. I just sat there. I was in shock.

  And where was Liza? Nowhere to be found! I knew she was in California. She had a new love in her life: Desi Arnaz, Jr. She was spending a lot of time with him and his family. I can’t recall ever meeting him, and I had had no inkling he would have such an impact on me. I didn’t know how to reach him. I called Li’s father and all the people we knew in common; I left word for her all over the West Coast, but there was no return call. Liza knew how to disappear when she wanted to, and she never did it better than in the few months following my firing. Did she know that I was now out of work, that I was jobless, divorced, and supporting two children? My physical shock lasted less than an hour. The shock to my psyche lasted more than a year.

  For days I was too depressed to move. My children, who were five and six, had no patience for that. I had to give up self-pity to play with them. How could Mommy be home and not play? They wouldn’t allow me to feel sorry for myself. But then, self-pity hasn’t ever been my trip. When I started to come around, I instinctively knew I couldn’t win a battle with Rudin. Thinking like an agent, trying to estimate where I would come out if I took him on, I figured I’d be the one with the short straw, because I understood that Rudin could not have made that phone call if Liza had not given him the authority to do so. And, of course, hiding out was Li’s usual response to such circumstances.