Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  Well, if I'd known that we would have to build maybe one glider in toto and parts of some others and the rest would have to be made by movie magic, I don't know if I ever would have gotten started.

  What finally untracked me was this: I lucked into the structure.

  There was a scene I knew we had to have where a British general explained to his armored commanders what was about to happen, how they were about to belt across all these bridges the paratroopers had taken and wheel into Germany. I fiddled with his speech and it went like this at the end:

  GENERAL HORROCKS

  I like to think of this as one of those American Western films--the paratroops, lacking substantial equipment, always short of food--these are the besieged homesteaders. And the Germans, naturally, are the bad guys.

  (he pauses; then--)

  And we, my friends, are the cavalry--on the way to the rescue.

  That was the light bulb at last going on. Because I realized, for all its size and complexity, Bridge was a cavalry-to-the-rescue story--one in which the cavalry fails to arrive, ending, sadly, one mile short.

  That was my spine, and everything that wouldn't cling I couldn't use. All five Victoria Cross stories fell out of the picture. Super material went by the boards. But it had to.

  The first draft was done by November and was well received. Shortly thereafter, Levine began one of the most remarkable weeks in his long, remarkable career....

  In order for his gamble to pay off, what he needed were stars. For two main reasons:

  (1) Movies are no longer a local operation; they are, all the most successful ones, international. And stars still have meaning in foreign markets.

  (2) In foreign countries, there are still giant theatre chains and distribution companies, and they are wildly competitive with one another because of a continual shortage of product. What that means is, if Japan represents five percent of the world movie market, a smash can do a tremendous amount of business. (Towering Inferno, for example, took in over sixteen million dollars in Japan alone, more than the entire cost of the picture.)

  Well, if my chain bought Towering Inferno--and I could only get it by outbidding your chain--that means that my theatres take in all that money and you are stuck playing Bruce Lee imitation contests.

  What Levine planned to do was to try to assemble a package that would eventually prove so appealing to the chains and distributors that they would pay him record-breaking sums of money in advance of receiving the film, and with those advances he would pay for the film as it went along.

  Obviously, there were bobby traps. Like (a) what if he couldn't assemble an appealing enough cast? Or (b) what if the distributors wouldn't come up with the sums he needed? Or (c) what if they did come up with enough and then the picture got into trouble and ran wildly over budget--there was no one to turn to, he would be stuck with the overrun.

  In early January of '76, Levine and Attenborough went to Los Angeles for the talent raid. Certain English performers were already set--Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier--but the crucial American performers were nonexistent.

  By "crucial" the foreign distributors meant two names: Robert Redford or Steve McQueen.

  Levine felt he had a decent shot at them: Redford was familiar with the project and had let it be known that he looked on it not unfavorably. McQueen was not familiar with it, but he and Attenborough had known each other for years, since they'd acted together in The Great Escape and The Sand Pebbles.

  They arrived on a Monday and set to work. Redford agreed to meet on Friday. Attenborough got the script to McQueen, who agreed to read it overnight and have lunch the following day.

  Now two problems arose, the first involving paying stars percentages for their agreeing to work. All stars get profit percentages, and the biggest ones work off gross.

  Levine knew he couldn't pay any percentages because he needed too many stars. So he had to make up for that lack with salary. The figure of a quarter of a million dollars a week was agreed on, half a million a week for either Redford or McQueen.

  Those numbers were, at the time, gasping, and news of the project did not go unnoticed among the agents of Hollywood.

  But now came an unexpected crusher: The agents demanded guarantees. What Levine had hoped to do was take the actors' acceptances and use them to flush out the foreign distributors. In other words, pay the actors as he got paid for them.

  Many agents doubted the project would ever happen. Levine was not young, he had been away, etc. And they demanded protection for their clients. "Did I scream," Levine said. "I never screamed louder in my life. I'd never given in to a guarantee before, I swore I never would--but I didn't have much room to maneuver; if I did, I didn't see it." So anything Levine agreed to pay out now, he was legally bound for. Himself.

  They met with McQueen the next day at the Brown Derby in Beverly Hills. McQueen was prompt, courteous, terrific.

  But he said no.

  Permanently.

  This was Tuesday, and now the Friday meeting with Redford was the shooting match. On Wednesday, Jimmy Caan said yes. Gene Hackman too. So did Elliott Gould. By Thursday they had Sean Connery and Michael Caine. That night they got word that Ryan O'Neal was in.

  Friday, they went to the Burbank lot where Redford was getting President's Men ready for an April opening. He was interested but he was exhausted; there was still a ton of work to be done on the Watergate film. He asked for the weekend, promising to give them an answer by Monday.

  That weekend, McQueen came back in.

  Or wanted to. But there was now only one star part left and it had been officially offered to Redford.

  The reason for McQueen's change of heart had to do with another film that was casting at the same time and which had raised their money on the promise of delivering him to star. When he refused, they kept upping their offer and he kept refusing. Finally they reached three million and he said no.

  Then someone got the idea of doing the two films back-to back--McQueen insisted on both or nothing--and he would play three weeks in one, three weeks in the other.

  McQueen's representatives and the other film's lawyers begin flooding Levine's hotel rooms. They explain that McQueen is now available. Levine explains that he has no part to offer. It's all up to Redford now.

  "You'll never get Redford," McQueen's people assure Levine. "I know one thing and it's that you have no chance in this world to get Redford and I don't think you ought to take the chance of passing up McQueen."

  But there is no part to offer McQueen.

  "You're not listening," McQueen's people say. "You will not get Redford. Not possible. Now do you want to know McQueen's terms? Three million for three weeks. He'll do the two pictures, you'll schedule them so he doesn't have any time in between, six million for six weeks."

  Anything else? Levine wonders.

  "He has some people he'd like to take along."

  How much for the friends? Levine asks.

  "Fifty thousand maybe."

  Levine nods.

  "Then there's the house in Palm Springs."

  The what?

  "Steve's house. He's got a place in Palm Springs he can't get rid of. So you'll buy that."

  That's very nice of me, Levine says. How much do I get to buy the house for?

  "$470,000."

  The demands go on and on, the madness building, until the weekend is over and Redford says yes, he'll do Bridge. Levine is on the next plane out, the raid done. He's been there for nine days, the longest stay of his career, but he's got his cast.

  And he's also personally on the line for well over ten million dollars. Was he worried? He said, "You've got to remember a couple of things about me. First, I've always been a gambler. Second, I'm not exactly on my first time around. I've set some records no one'll ever touch, no matter what they do. When I did Jack the Ripper--this was after Hercules--I bought Jack the Ripper and I booked it into 643 theatres across the country and I gave a luncheon for all the major e
xhibitors.

  "And I borrowed a million dollars--cash--for half an hour. Had a lot of trouble getting it, too, but finally it arrived at this luncheon--one million dollars--a thousand thousand dollar bills--is that a million?--I think it is. Twenty Brink's guards move into this room with all these exhibitors and they're to bring me the bills--cost me nine thousand dollars to borrow the million. Anyway, I took those bills--and I held them high in the air--and I said to those exhibitors, 'the next time you see this million it's going to be working for you--TV ads, newspaper ads, billboards--that's what I'm spending on this picture.' And I spent it too. Every penny. And we opened across the country--643 theatres at once--and we dropped dead in every one! You'd think somewhere, a small town maybe, someplace, it would have done business. But no. That's a record they'll never come close to. I've got a lot of them." He pauses. "Was I worried? You think I'm crazy? I couldn't sleep. Well, that's not saying a lot because I don't sleep anyway very much. But if I could have slept, I couldn't sleep."

  That Levine was able to get any rest at all during the six months of shooting was due to two factors: the weather (it turned out to be the driest summer of the century in Holland, and the picture never lost a full day due to rain) and Richard Attenborough.

  Richard Attenborough has had a most unusual career. He became a British stage star before he was twenty, playing the lead in the adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock. This was in 1943, and after the war, he became a British film star in the movie version of that book. He has remained a star in England ever since. He has won their equivalent of the Oscar for male actor, and he was the star of the original production of Agatha Christie's Mousetrap. He has also produced and starred in several marvelous films, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, among others.

  He was knighted during the production of A Bridge Too Far. True story as to how he found out about his knighthood. Attenborough loves painting, and the ambition of his life has been to be placed on the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery in London. One morning he's going through the mail and there's a letter from the prime minister. He opens it.

  And there it is--he has been invited to join the board. Now, Attenborough is known as a very emotional man. He will cry if you tell him the wind is changing. Naturally, news like this reduces him to rubble. He's about to go tell his wife the news when he sees, on the bottom of the pile, yet another letter from 10 Downing Street. He opens this one and it tells him he's going to be knighted.

  His reaction is right and proper: He is convinced he has totally lost his sanity.

  His wife, Sheila, in an upstairs room, sees her husband come through the door, gripped by tears, holding out these letters to her, muttering, "Please--you've got to help me; do these letters say what I think they say?"

  Having suggested on occasion that many film directors are given more credit than they are always due, I would like to talk about the one thing involved with the job that no one gives them credit for.

  It's hard.

  I don't mean hard like it was hard for Van Gogh to fill a canvas or for Kant to construct a universe.

  I mean hard like in coal mining. Directing a film is one of the most brutally difficult occupations imaginable. We are not aware of this particular facet of the job because, in the first place, we only read about directors in tranquillity--when they are moving around the country selling their films. And they are only sent on these junkets when the studio feels the product has a chance to be, or has already proven to be, commercially successful.

  In other words, we most often hear from directors when they are reflecting on success. But that man--the director in the Sherry Netherland sipping Scotch while he chats with an envoy from the Times or New York magazine--that man isn't a director anymore, he's no longer an artist, he has taken off that hat. He is a salesman now. And the reason that's the only man you see, and not the person trying to function in crisis, is because when he's directing, that's work, and the last thing anyone needs on the set is interruptions from outsiders.

  How hard, as Mr. Carson would ask, is it to direct a film?

  In the first place, for a major film, it is terribly time consuming. When A Bridge Too Far opened, in June of '77, Attenborough had spent more than twenty-four months of his life focused entirely and relentlessly on one single piece of material.

  Remember our earlier division of the making of a film into three equally important parts: (1) preparation of the script and casting, (2) shooting the film, (3) editing and scoring. The writer is usually present only for the first part, the performers for the second, the composer for the third.

  The director, if he cares, and all the good ones care desperately, is as involved in script talks as he is in dealing with the composer over a year later. He doesn't write the script, any more than he composes the score, but he imparts what he hopes you can get down. He has to maintain both passion and objectivity over a long period of time.

  In Attenborough's case, it wasn't just twenty-four months; it was twenty-four months, seven days a week, for an average of eighteen hours per day. (When shooting was finally finished, Attenborough went to bed and literally slept around the clock for three days, waking up to eat, then back to bed again, very much dead to the world.)

  There was also a great deal of travel involved. He lives in London, the producer and writer were in New York, many of the actors were in Los Angeles, and the movie was shot in Holland. If this wasn't enough, there was constant shuttling all across Europe for casting--nine trips to Germany alone.

  For over ten months of 1976, he lived on the second floor of a small (twelve-room) hotel in Deventer, Holland. On an average day, he would be up by six, be on the set well before the morning start time of eight or whatever it was, stay till late afternoon when shooting was done.

  Then he would go back to a factory the company had found empty and turned into a construction area and cutting rooms. There, in a makeshift theatre, he would watch the rushes of the previous day's shooting. Then a meeting with crucial staff people--the production design staff, the special-effects staff, the location heads--whoever was vital for the next day's shooting, because you've got to try to get your problems ironed out before you're shooting.

  Following this, at nine, ten, whenever, he would return to his hotel and have a bite of dinner along with more meetings--production problems, cost problems, staff problems--and after that meeting, eleven, twelve, whenever, he would go to his room, try and study whatever the shooting could cover tomorrow, make notes for himself--

  --then to bed.

  Now, this kind of thing is obviously wearing on anybody, but in the case of a film director there's one additional element always present: the pressure of failure. Studios (or in this case, Levine) are very aware of two things: what a picture grosses (Attenborough had never had a hit, remember), and sometimes, even more importantly, what it costs to make.

  And the pressure of cost was never as heavy on Attenborough as during the Million Dollar Hour.

  The Million Dollar Hour was the hour from eight to nine in the morning, Sunday, the third of October, on Nijmegen Bridge.

  To explain just why this was so, I've got to backtrack again a moment. Nijmegen (pronounced "nigh-maygen") is one of the biggest bridges in Europe. If you want to think of San Francisco's Golden Gate or New York's George Washington in this country, you're dealing with the same scale.

  We needed to shoot on Nijmegen Bridge. The climactic action involving the Redford part took place there in 1944, and since authenticity was vital in every aspect of this production, the use of Nijmegen Bridge had to be cleared for the company.

  Well, you just don't call up the Nijmegen Town Council and say, "Hello there, we're making this war movie, close the bridge for us, please." They use their bridges in Holland and you can't just shut something off to suit a movie company's needs, not anything the size of this bridge, because if you did, the traffic jam would likely spread into neighboring countries. What was finally agreed on, after negotiations that literally went
on for half a year, was the following: They would close the bridge for one hour only, starting at eight in the morning, for several successive Sundays.

  October 3 was to be Redford's last Sunday. Which meant that if the weather made shooting impossible, we could not duplicate the conditions until the following Sunday, if the good people of Nijmegen could be talked into letting us have the bridge an extra hour a week down the line.

  Redford was actually contracted to work till Wednesday; he was getting out ahead of schedule. So, since we needed this sequence, if the weather stopped us again, Redford would have to stay over the extra days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, until we could shoot again the following Sunday.

  There is a word in the movie business and it is called "overage." It refers to what you pay an artist if you go beyond the boundaries of his contract. (People are hired for specific lengths of time, and if you need them for longer, assuming they are available, you have to pay them for it, usually a percentage of their weekly salary.)

  Well, considering Redford's weekly salary, his overage would come to $125,000.

  That's per day.

  Multiply that by four, and keeping him till next Sunday means half a million dollars.

  That's just for him.

  This is also the end of the giant part of the production. There were three days left, but they were basically two scenes involving Dirk Bogarde. The movie was due to finish Wednesday. That was the final day of shooting; everyone was paid only until then.

  There were 275 people working that morning. And if we couldn't shoot, it meant that all of them would get extra salary (and meals and lodging and whatever else you can think of) to wait around to shoot the following Sunday.

  If we could get the bridge the following Sunday. (The feeling was we couldn't.)

  And if the weather, which was bad and getting worse, would be shootable a week down the line. (The guess was that it probably would not be.)

  So when this was called a Million Dollar Hour, that's speaking conservatively. Everyone was standing around in the dawn chill, hoping. The unit call had been for six in the morning on location at the bridge, which meant that you had to get up hours before that. As well as being cold, it begins to look like rain. A lot like rain. And there is a terrible cutting wind. Personally I have never, on a movie set, felt anything close to such tension.