Adventures in the Screen Trade

by William Goldman

  Attenborough's feeling the tension, too, more than any of the rest of us. But he can't show it. (A crew on location is wildly mercurial--they can go from happy efficiency to sullen plodding in a wink. Attenborough has a marvelous relationship with his crew because he's genuinely good with people. And he also always helps--if there's any kind of move to make from one kind of shot to another, he's always grabbing heavy equipment, lugging it along, and when the crew sees that--the director hustling that way--there's not much they can do but join him.

  A director on location is very much like a military leader and he has to behave in like manner so the men won't mutiny. There was a moment earlier in the shooting when Anthony Hopkins, who portrayed Colonel Frost, the hero of Arnhem, was playing a scene where he had to run from his building to the rest of his troops, headquartered across the street, and the street was in control of the Germans; there was constant sniper fire. It was not a safe place, that street, and Hopkins did the scene, running rapidly while the Germans fired at him.

  The real Frost happened to be on the set that day, and after the first take, while they were getting ready to try it again, the real Frost said to Hopkins, "Ah, you're running too fast," and Hopkins said, somewhat stunned, "Too fast?" and Frost answered, "Yes, you would never run that fast. You have to show the Germans and your own men your contempt for danger.")

  Well, Attenborough standing there on Nijmegen Bridge with the Million Dollar Hour approaching wasn't about to show fear, either, so he does what he always does in moments of stress: He whistles Handel and walks around in little mystic patterns that may have meaning to him, certainly to no one else.

  Eight o'clock is coming nearer and nearer and things seem as if they're starting to break. Everything's got to work because there's no time to go back and do things over but the weather seems as if it's going to be clear enough to shoot and now Redford's in position and the stunt men portraying German soldiers are climbing high in the girders of Nijmegen Bridge, roping themselves in, not for safety but because that's what the Germans did there in their final defense, and then the signal comes that all the stunt men are secured and you can begin to see the confidence flowing into Attenborough, because there can't be anything wrong on this shot, he's thought so much about it, covered it from every angle the mind of man can come up with, and as crew members come running up to him with last-minute questions he's snapping back the answers crisp and fast, "Is the machine gun nest all right like that?" and "Yes, fine" from Attenborough without a pause, and this questioner runs off while another comes up, going, "Will you see the sentry box emplacement in this shot?" and the immediate "We will, thank you," takes care of that and "Have the Sherman tanks been positioned properly?" and Attenborough quick takes a look, and says, "The Sherman tanks are splendid as you have them," and now an assistant director comes up behind with "The corpses, Sir Richard," and even though that's not a complete question, Attenborough knows precisely what to say and he says it, "The corpses must keep their eyes shut at all times, all corpses will be visible in this shot," and that cry echoes along the bridge as the assistant takes a megaphone and shouts to the extras playing dead Germans, "Corpses--listen now, you corpses--all corpses will keep eyes shut at all times while the cameras are rolling--you got that?--not one bloody blink from one bloody corpse and that's final!" and shooting time is almost on us now, and the rain is going to hold off, and now another assistant runs up, asking, "What about the smoke pots?" and Attenborough, on top of his game, replies, "You may start the smoke pots now, thank you very much," and right then, this trusted aide comes roaring up, excitedly saying, "What about the jeeps in the orchard, sir?"

  I was standing by Attenborough and for a moment his eyes glazed over and he had to be thinking that suddenly the world had gone mad or was the world sane and the mistake his--had he forgotten--forgotten something vital? He was standing on a freezing bridge--what orchard? what jeeps? Was there some part of the shot that he'd neglected, something involving an orchard and jeeps, and here he was, with smoke pots going and, high in girders, guys hanging and a star ready to shoot and 275 people waiting but this question must be answered because what if it ruins the shot and if the shot's lost a million dollars are lost and--

  --then he smiled very sweetly to his aide and said, "We will not require jeeps in the orchard at all, thank you so much for reminding me." This, it turns out, referring to the last half of a later scene to be shot afterward, the first half having been shot days before, all this in another location, and what this trusted aide had done was pick this particular moment to inquire if Attenborough's camera angle for this future sequence would require the placement of jeeps in the distant background in order to match what had been done before.

  The weather held, the shooting on the bridge went quickly, the last major disaster had been averted. As we left the bridge, there was a genuine feeling of exultation. Attenborough was cheery as usual, no more whistling needed that day. Later, perhaps, but not then. There are always "laters" lurking in the lives of film directors, jeeps in the orchard that need tending to.

  As I left Nijmegen Bridge that morning, with everybody on a high, I thought back to an earlier morning, two years before, when I had been walking along the street with Levine after he'd gotten a terrible piece of news--I forgot what, exactly, maybe that we couldn't use the bridges in Holland, which would mean we couldn't make the picture in Holland but probably in Yugoslavia, which has lots of tanks but no bridges, which would mean he would have to build his own bridge and keep reusing it under different disguises, except you couldn't build an entire bridge, only half, and only shoot from certain angles, and whatever it was, it meant the whole shooting match was up for grabs.

  He was moving slowly on his cane along the street and everyone was in a rotten mood and I remember asking him why he was involved in something when he didn't need it, all the grief, what was the point?

  And he whirled on me and he took his cane and pointed it dead between my eyes and his voice got very loud there on the sidewalk with people eddying by. "I'm seventy years old," he said. "I'm seventy years old and I want to do this thing."

  He did it.... Incredibly, Bridge was brought in on schedule and under budget.

  And then, as I said at the start of all this, the reviews came out. Or more precisely, the American reviews.

  I have long since given up trying to predict the reaction to a film, one I've been involved with or anybody else's. But in the case of A Bridge Too Far, I just knew one thing: The critics were going to love us.

  I knew that for a lot of reasons: (1) I had enjoyed the whole two-year experience so much, I couldn't conceive of anybody spoiling our party. (2) I genuinely believed the film was that good. (I still do; Bridge and Butch are, for me, the two top films I've been involved with.)

  (3) And this is the main reason: It seemed to me before we opened that half the civilized world had already seen the film and everybody went crazy.

  This last was unusual--most films are done in as much secrecy as possible. But because of the way Levine sold the film, it seemed to me almost like an open shop. Cutting rooms were set up in Holland, and as soon as ten minutes of film were done, they were available to be viewed by anyone interested in buying the film. (Levine realized early on the quality of what he was getting, so he held off taking offers, confident that those offers would increase as time went on. He was right--Bridge was four million dollars into profit long before it was released; that might have happened before, but believe me, not often.)

  When forty minutes of film were done, they were there for anyone to come to see. When we were halfway through, people would troop to Holland and take in the hour and a half.

  And the word of mouth would not stop building.

  These were tough professional movie people and they all were knocked out by what they saw. The size of it all, the fabulous photography by the late Geoffrey Unsworth, the performances, everything. (Maybe the most remarkable thing about the enterprise was this: All of the stars be
haved impeccably. They arrived on time, knew what they were supposed to do, did it adroitly and well, and, when they were done, left happily. No ego displays whatsoever, and this with fourteen stars involved.)

  When the movie was finally finished, everyone was flying. Convinced that we were going to have it all--the public and the critics flocking to us. (Commercially, by the way, the movie did well around the world--one of the most successful pictures of its genre ever. And in England we were nominated for a bunch of their Oscar equivalents and won several. Generally, the reception, outside of the United States, was very strong.)

  But we did not make it with most of the important American critics. And I was stunned. Not that the critics were wrong. But the main thrust of the negative comments seemed to me amazing--

  --they didn't believe us.

  The reason that amazed me was it was one line of attack we never in this world expected--because nothing dealing with the spectacularity of the film is invented. All those incredible heroics were true. Bridge is at least as authentic as All the President's Men and everyone took that film as sooth.

  Three quick examples. Dirk Bogarde played the role of a British general and one of the things he did was send British troops into a supposedly unoccupied area. Except he had information that German troops, heavily armed, had taken over the area. But he disregarded the information and sent the men to be slaughtered.

  Didn't believe that.

  The Jimmy Caan part involved perhaps the most extraordinary incident. He was a sergeant whose captain had been killed. What he does is he takes the corpse and drives a jeep wildly through German lines until he finds an Allied emergency medical area. And he carries the dead captain and puts him on an operating table. And a medical officer says, "Get that man out of here." And what does Caan do? He pulls out a gun, points it dead at the officer, and commands him to operate.

  And it turns out his captain was alive.

  Now, an enlisted man threatening an officer over a corpse, actually taking out a weapon and commanding the officer to obey him--I'd never heard of a thing like that.

  Yawn.

  I guess John Wayne had done that so often nobody gave it a second thought. Just another piece of phony Hollywood theatrics.

  A lot of people didn't believe Ryan O'Neal in the role of General James Gavin--O'Neal was so obviously too young to play a top paratroop general. Well, O'Neal was too young--but so was Gavin; O'Neal when he acted the role was the same age as Gavin when he took part in the Arnhem battle. Gavin was, I think, the youngest general in the Army at the time. Now, if I could have written a scene explaining that, it might have gone like this:

  BRITISH OFFICER

  (quietly, to one of Gavin's aides]

  I'd expected Gavin to be a bit more mature a fellow.

  GAVIN'S AIDE

  A lot of people are surprised, sir--but they don't know that Gavin's the youngest general we have.

  BRITISH OFFICER

  Oh, very good, carry on.

  Well, that would be like telling the audience, "Don't think about pink elephants." If I'd written the scene, everybody would have assumed it was there simply to explain the miscasting of Ryan O'Neal. Perhaps we should have tried for George C. Scott in the part--he would have been wrong, but maybe people would have believed him.

  But this movie, depicting this famous part of modern British military history, could not and would not be anything but dead-on accurate. Attenborough would never have permitted it; he had too great a sense of responsibility. I've never been involved in a project where authenticity was more sought after and achieved. And in the end, as far as many American critics were concerned, that may have proved our undoing.

  We were too real to be real....

  Part Three

  Da Vinci

  Introduction

  A few months ago, when I was fiddling with the structure of this book, trying to figure what to put in and where, my nineteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, appeared holding a tattered paperback and said, "Do you know you're in this?"

  I shook my head and asked her what the book was. She told me--a 1960 collection of essays, poems, and stories: New World Writing #17.

  "There's a story of yours, called 'Da Vinci,' " she said then.

  Now came a long pause. Mind totally blank. I was like some old toad blinking on a summertime log. Finally I said, "Oh yeah, I wrote that."

  "Obviously you wrote it," she said. "What's it about?"

  I hadn't the foggiest. She looked at me while I kept trying to remember. Finally, a flicker. "A barber," I told her.

  "Well, I'm going to read it," and with that, she left me alone, trying to remember what in the world I'd put to paper half a lifetime ago. She came back a little later and tossed me the book. I asked her how it was.

  "Not bad," she said. High praise, but then you'd have to know Jenny to realize that.

  As a very strong rule, I never reread anything I've written. But now I was fascinated, because I'd never had the experience before of someone giving me something I'd done that I had so totally forgotten.

  When I finished "Da Vinci" I was genuinely excited--not by the quality of the story, but because I realized it would make a wonderful subject for a short screenplay adaptation: It contains just about all the crucial problems that one has to deal with in translating a piece of narrative fiction into something fit for the screen.

  What follows, then, is in four parts.

  First: the reprinted short story.

  Second: thought processes setting out some of the problems of doing an adaptation. The same processes I always go through.

  Three: my screenplay adaptation of the story.

  Four: comments from my peers--a production designer, a cinematographer, an editor, a composer, a director--concerning how they would like the material altered to improve it. Plus what their problems would be in order to make the material work.

  My hope in this is that by the time we're done, we'll have taken a piece of fiction and seen it through all its various steps--not just mine, but everybody's.

  In other words, fingers crossed, we're going to make a movie....

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Short Story

  Mr. Bimbaum arrived on the first day of marble season.

  A light blue day, the middle of March. We were all out in the playground behind school. The earth was still hard, and here and there occasional puff piles of darkening snow dotted the ground. I was playing Little Pot with Porky McKee, running back, lagging up, then racing to see who was closer, when my father appeared, beckoning from the sidewalk.

  "Go take a haircut," he called, his breath white in the pale blue afternoon.

  "Now?" I said. "This minute? Can't you see I'm playing Little Pot with Porky McKee?"

  "Go," he repeated, and he pointed down along the road. I waved good-by to Porky and ran.

  My father was owner and proprietor of the only barbershop in town, a two-chair affair set in the midst of Main Street. Whenever he hired a new man, a filler for the second chair, I was the guinea pig. My father himself could not fulfill the function, being bald, totally, except for a fringe of fine white hair above his ears, which he handled himself.

  I opened the barbershop door. The overhead bell squawked. The new barber rose. We eyed each other. Mr. Bimbaum was a small man, aging and paunchy, with long beautiful fingers. I jumped into the chair. "Hurry it up," I said. "I'm due back soon. I'm playing Little Pot with Porky McKee."

  He did not answer, but stared silently, intensely. At my head. He bent down and looked up at it and stood on tiptoe and looked down at it and walked around it and placed his fingers on it and drew an imaginary replica of it in the air. Finally, he nodded and said one word.

  "Spherical."

  "What?"

  "Head shape spherical," he announced. Then he reached for a clean striped towel and tucked it around my neck. "Name?" he asked.

  "Willy," I said. He pumped the chair twice, adjusting my level. "Name?" I asked in my turn.
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  "H. Bimbaum," he answered.

  I broke out laughing. I whooped, kicking my feet, doubling up, screaming. When I was finished, he took his time and carefully swatted me on top of the head with the flat of his hand.

  "Hey;" I said. "That hurt."

  He nodded. "Was supposed to."

  I looked at him. He was still staring at my head, tilting his own head this way and that, muttering unintelligible sounds. "What's the 'H" stand for?" I asked.

  "That nobody finds out," he answered. "Nobody." He stood up on tiptoe and sighted along the part in my hair, squinting, one eye closed. "Some butcher gave you your last cut," he muttered.

  "Yeah?" I said, and I pointed to the other chair. "Well, my father gave it to me."

  He nodded again and leaned close. "Then your father is a butcher," he announced. "Now shut up and sit still."

  With that he reached for his scissors.

  A small pair, silver, with short rounded blades. He blew on the blades and rubbed them against his pant legs. Then he held the scissors high in the air and the silver caught the light, showering it about the room. I stared, listening as he brought the handles together, hearing the first soft "snip," and then, quickly, another "snip," and then another. I closed my eyes. The sounds made rhythms and I hummed silently along with "Jingle Bells" and "Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet" and "America the Beautiful." The blades never stopped singing as he moved around me, taking a tuft of hair, stepping back nodding, moving forward, taking another. I relaxed. The snips began to take on theme in addition to rhythm, and I stopped my silent humming, being content just to listen. I sat deeper in the chair; the music swelled, rolling in, filling the tiny shop, harmony now in addition to theme. It was a beautiful moment in my life; I sensed it then, although I didn't know why. I have felt it only one time since, when I first saw the village of Toledo braced before the storm El Greco had unleashed. I can describe it only as a moment of total calm, of complete relaxation, but a relaxation that has nothing to do with sleep. Rather, it is a respite born of the knowledge that the sign is up, "The Master is at work," and, at least for awhile, nothing is going to go wrong; no one is going to slip, stumbling on the everpresent banana peel that is always lurking just ahead of us as we walk along. Not this time, anyway; not just now.