The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  “They did, yes.”

  “So now you know (Mr. Celebrity Screenwriter) totally fucked me on the script.”

  “Appears that he did,” I concurred. “Sorry he did that to you.”

  “Okay. So you read everything. So tell me why you think you’re the writer to fix my broken movie.”

  “You don’t know?” I asked.

  “No,” said the boss, glancing to his D-crew as if he hadn’t received an all-important memo.

  “I have an extraordinary affection for this story,” I said, squaring myself to keep a straight face. “And I feel really really close to it.”

  “So you like it a lot,” added the former partner, attempting to move the conversation along.

  “I don’t just like it,” I said. “I love it.”

  “I do too,” said the boss. “That’s why I paid that bastard four million to write it.”

  I think I must’ve been grinning like Charlie Sheen high on Charlie Sheen because I suddenly felt the stares.

  “Seriously,” I said. “You don’t remember?”

  The studio boss looked around the table and shrugged, completely at a loss.

  “Do you recall when you acquired the treatment?” I asked. “The big deal. Big trade announcement. Then there was this… problem?”

  “Okay,” said the boss. “I remember something, now. Some kind of legal thing.”

  “The story you bought,” I said. “Something about it having been ripped off from another writer.”

  Once again, the studio boss looked to his compatriots for help, but received none.

  “I know,” I said. “It was supposed to be a secret. Only the lawyers and the original writer were supposed to have actual knowledge of it.”

  “But you do?” asked the studio boss. “You have knowledge of the situation?”

  “More knowledge that you can imagine,” I added.

  “Because you’re the writer!” burst the former partner as if he was deaf and just formed his first bingo. “The stolen story was yours!

  “The very same,” I said. “We have a winner.”

  “Oh my God,” said the former partner, slapping the table with both his palms. The development duo looked suitably perplexed, completely unaware of the secret deal to conceal the theft of my legal thriller.

  I turned to the studio boss, fully expecting a look of astonishment. But I was wrong. Not that he wasn’t surprised at the lottery-like coincidence; the boss man was just that cool, snipping the butt end of a Schwarzennegger-sized stogie and putting flame to it with five practiced puffs of smoke.

  “So I guess this means you’re the right guy for the job,” smirked the studio boss.

  “Ya think?” I glibly sat back in my seat.

  And that was it. Maybe the shortest audition of my writing career. The studio boss stood and shook my hand. Then he laughed and added:

  “(Mr. Jellyfish) is not gonna like this one bit.”

  And he was so right.

  The moment Mr. Jellyfish was informed that I’d landed the gig, he began a series of angry protests, all of which fell upon deaf ears. In addition to my old deal, a new agreement was negotiated that paid me a premium to pen a spanking new script.

  Upon my delivery, the screenplay was received with great excitement.

  All’s well that ends well?

  Not so fast. The once cash-rich independent studio, after financing a sudden succession of big budget bombs, eventually ran out of green, selling the rights to my movie off to another indie company which, soon after, also flipped belly-up in the tough economy. Sadly, the ownership of the property remains murky and the picture has yet to find cast or a director. But I’m hopeful that star-spangled legal thrillers make a comeback to the big screen.

  As for the other players? Well, like many in showbiz, Mr. Celebrity Screenwriter has moved from hot to cold. From time to time he shows up on the Hollywood radar. And not long ago, a studio talked to me about taking on a Tv project that Mr. Celebrity Screenwriter had been long attached to. Over a year had gone by without the famed scribe having come up so much as a log line. Clearly having tired of waiting, the studio wanted to move on to someone else. I declined and wished them luck.

  Mr. Euro has pretty much turned into a vanishing act. I have absolutely no clue to his career whereabouts nor do I much care.

  Then there’s infamous Mr. Jellyfish. After unraveling his whole heinous act, I repeated the tale to a major film and tv producer. It turns out he knew Mr. Jellyfish all too well, having once caught the thief with a dirty hand in an entirely different cookie jar. I obviously wasn’t the first intended victim. I sincerely doubt I was the last. Despite his lousy rep, Mr. Jellyfish has been able to forge a career, stenciling his name as a producer on no less than ten movies and tv shows in the years since our unfortunate encounter.

  If the cream rises to the top, so apparently does the scum.

  For those of you who still wonder if I made the right decision in choosing to negotiate a deal instead of blowing up the entire thieving enterprise, I stand by my political decision. The super agent who once repped the celebrity screenwriter eventually left the agency biz and turned to producing. We developed a number of projects together, one of which turned into a hit movie.

  So I rest my case.

  The Worst Note . . . Ever

  I can’t say this any simpler. This is about the worst script note I ever received. Was it an unfortunate situation to be in? Hardly. It came from the mouth a movie studio president. I was behind the doors of his Citizen-Kane-sized office, comfortably parked on his couch, at the end of a legal pad choked with my handwritten scrawl, and was well into my fifth Diet Coke. Never forget, I was getting paid a small fortune for this opportunity. Most writers would eat their young for the chances I’ve had. But first, before I tell you the content of the goo I was expected to swallow, a little perspective.

  Notes are part of a screenwriter’s life. They are as real as ink. Always changing. Inconsistent as hell. Sometimes requiring a level of deciphering that would elude Sherlock Holmes.

  Notes are like two sides of a coin. Good and bad. Good notes are not just easy. They’re flat out awesome. They inform. They assist. And after I execute them, the credit for whatever genius I incorporated to improve my work is usually afforded to me.

  Good notes are also rare. And, as my pal Jeanne Bowerman wrote in her always excellent Balls of Steel column in Script Magazine, good notes—most often—are earned. But this blog isn’t about good notes. It’s about the flip side. And not just bad notes. I’m talking about the very worst. The kind of notes that big name writers and show-runners used to claim were not fit to use as toilet paper.

  First a primer. Bad notes shouldn’t be confused with honest feedback. That kind of criticism, usually solicited, is given in order to help me turn my jumble of words into

  a rip-reading page-turner. And where bad notes are also a form of feedback, they’re not given as suggestions. They are usually directives from an authority with the power to fire my writer’s ass.

  Bad notes can be harsh. Bad notes can be so hurtful they require some hours of cocktail therapy. Bad notes can be delivered with a smile by angels that mean well but haven’t a clue of their script-crippling consequences. They can show up in an email or a whisper or come across the walkie-talkie while I’m on a cold nighttime set in the back of a passenger van trying to fix the scene we’re about to shoot… again. Bad notes can come from an insomnia-prone movie star over the phone at four in the morning when I’m sleeping and he’s not.

  One more thing about bad notes. I’m required to listen to them. I must try and discern their source. I must find if, somewhere within the bad note, there’s any merit whatsoever and try like hell to spin it into golden yarn.

  I once described listening to bad notes as having to put my mouth around the muzzle of a loaded shotgun and pretending to like the taste.

  So there I was, in that aforementioned studio president’s office. Producer to my r
ight. A couple of postadolescent VPs to my left. The movie project in question was a very realistic terrorist-with-a-nuclear-bomb thriller I’d pitched and sold them. Well researched. But on this crappy day, not well received. The studio president, who’d publicly branded himself as a “friend of comedy,” had just finished ninety minutes of pacing back and forth, pontificating that every “real” aspect of the script was bad for box office. His notes were lengthy, self-contradicting, and not at all in kind with the nature of the project his studio had excitedly bought from me only months earlier. The

  notes were so toxic, I hadn’t a glimmer on how I was going to recycle them into anything worthwhile.

  Then it happened. This is when I heard the worst note ever.

  “Hey. One last thing,” said the studio president, his incessant pacing mercifully ceased as he reached for the last catered bagel. “Attach Tom Cruise and you can forget every damn thing I’ve said.”

  Forget everything he said?

  So the last hour and a half of my life… those twenty legal pages blackened with one lousy script note after the other… the insults to my last three months of effort… could all be scrubbed from history if Tom Cruise agreed to star in the movie?

  Just retelling this tale makes me throw up in my mouth.

  Well, Tom Cruise never said yes. He never say no, either. Instead, a similar themed movie called Peacekeeper with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman was ramped into production and released to ho-hum results.

  And that studio president? He was soon retired into a rich producing deal where he continued his reputation as a “friend of comedy.”

  I moved on to other picture projects… and more bad notes.

  Action Prison Blues

  With the express intent of busting out of my oh-so-comfortable action-thriller box, I’d concocted and sold a career-shifting pitch to Paramount. It was a tear-jerker of a melodrama that took place both inside and outside a maximum security prison. But for that one unforgettable night I’d spent in a South Bay jail cell, I hadn’t a glimmer about what life was like “on the inside.” Thus I felt some research was in my immediate future. I made a few calls and secured myself an invite to the infamous Folsom Prison.

  Cue the Johnny Cash music.

  It was going to be a simple day trip requiring an early morning flight from Burbank to Sacramento, a rental car, and a promise to the War Department to be home before Leno. Since the studio needed to approve my sortie, I dialed up the project’s producer, the one and only Mark Gordon, and ran my prison plan up the flagpole.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said Mark. “Where are you going?”

  “Folsom Prison,” I said.

  “The Folsom Prison?” asked Mark.

  “There’s only one,” I said.

  “Want some company?”

  “It’s prison, Mark. Dangerous men. Don’t think it would be a good idea to send Betsy,” referring to Mark’s development exec at the time, Betsy Beers.

  “Not talkin’ about Betsy,” he said. “I wanna go.”

  “You sure?” I said. “It’s up and back in the same day.”

  “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  So that’s how it began. We inked it for a coming Friday. We flew, grabbed lunch in quaint, historic Folsom,

  then arrived around one in the afternoon at the outskirts of the old prison. The hand-cut granite walls and turn-of-the-century guard towers loomed in the distance—massive gates and no visible windows for those locked inside to peek at the world outside.

  But first, we needed to formalize our prison business. We shook hands with the guards assigned to conduct the tour then proceeded to climb into some fudge brown jumpsuits.

  “What are these for?” I asked.

  “So the fellahs in the towers can tell you from the prisoners.”

  “What’s wrong with what we’re wearing?” asked Mark.

  White shirts and blue jeans were the traditional uniforms of the Folsom incarcerated. As it turned out, Mark and I had both chosen to travel in our own spin on casual Hollywood chic. In other words, precisely the same garb as the convicts.

  “Whoops. Didn’t get the memo,” I recall saying.

  Next, Mark and I were directed to review and sign a couple of legal documents. Having already been prepped over the phone, I knew what the signatures were for so I was quick to scrawl out my name. Mark, on the other hand, wisely didn’t want to scratch his name on anything without it getting looked over by an attorney. With none present, Mark tried to unscramble the legal mumbo jumbo on the printed form.

  “What’s this for?” asked Mark.

  “It indemnifies the State of California and the Department of Corrections from liability,” said the Tour Guard.

  “Liability from what?” asked Mark.

  “In case,” said the Tour Guard. “Things like riots and whatever.”

  “You have a lot of riots?” asked Mark.

  “Hardly never,” said the Tour Guard. “But the d.o.c. makes everybody who visits sign.”

  Mark continued to read the document.

  “Essentially what you’re signing is this,” I explained. “It gives the guys in the guard towers—you know, the ones with the high-powered rifles? It gives them the right to shoot us.”

  “You’re shitting me,” said Mark.

  “It’s real,” I said. “It’s a deterrent to keep the prisoners from taking us hostage. This makes sure they have no leverage.”

  This was all on me for not having informed my travel companion on all the Folsom fine print. My bad.

  “So if the prisoners take us hostage,” confirmed Mark, “we’re giving the guards permission to blow our heads off.”

  “Pretty much,” I smiled. Not that I was laughing in the face of imminent danger. Like I said, I’d already been given the details and dangers over the phone. So I was sanguine with the deal. Somehow, I’d forgotten to tell Mark… and my wife.

  “Look,” I apologized. “If it’s too weird for you, then we can do what we can without the prison and I’ll come back another day.”

  “No, no,” said Mark. “If you’re good, I’m good.” But then he turned to the Tour Guard and asked, “It is safe, right? You do this all the time?”

  “Why we have the forms to sign,” said the Tour Guard with a grin. “Haven’t had to shoot a visitor yet.”

  “That’s comforting,” said Mark. We all laughed and began the short drive to the prison.

  If you haven’t seen photos of the famed Folsom State Prison, think The Shawshank Redemption. Completed in

  1920 from granite and sweat, it’s housed more killers than Quentin Tarantino’s imagination.

  After walking through a few electronically operated locks, we found ourselves walking across a neatly mowed grassy area and into a widened space filled with picnic tables, a baseball diamond, and exercise equipment. As the Tour Guard rambled about architecture and history, Mark began to gaze at the men ambling about wearing the same casual chic we’d arrived in.

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Mark. “But where are we now?”

  “This is the main yard,” said the Tour Guard.

  “You mean we’re inside the prison?” asked Mark.

  “Yes, sir,” said the Tour Guard.

  “So these guys walking around…”

  “Killers. Rapists.”

  “I… I… I… didn’t know,” said Mark. “… that we’d be inside the prison. The actual prison.”

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “I thought we’d be just outside, you know?” said Mark. Then he laughed, “Sorta like a zoo.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, joining in.

  “Prisons aren’t built for spectators,” said the Tour Guard. “You’re either inside or outside. No middle ground.”

  I began to wonder if the sortie was a mistake. Was Mark suddenly looking pekid? Or was that his normal pallor from years spent indoors either grinding or cajoling agents and executives on the telephone or reading countless
lousy scripts in search of Saving Private Ryan.

  Yes. I said Saving Private Ryan. Mark spent years developing the classic war movie with my old college classmate Robert Rodat before Steven Spielberg had so much as heard of it. And if this reads like a shameless shout-out to the talented duo, so be it.

  Now, back to the story.

  Noting how pale Mark appeared, I asked him if he was okay.

  “Fine, fine,” he said. “Any more surprises?”

  “Plenty,” joked the Tour Guard.

  “Okay,” laughed Mark. “So bring ’em. And let’s hope I don’t get shived.”

  I believe we walked every cell block. Learned that despite our liberal thoughts on segregation, keeping the race populations separate was a matter of life and death on the inside. Then after interviewing a couple of lifers who spent their days in the prison library, we stopped by a guard’s station that was only yards across from a prison shower. About twenty naked inmates waited their turn at one of the six nozzles streaming freezing cold water. Two women guards stood watch, blasé about the endless parade of male anatomy.

  Mark and I were kind of shocked though. Then he gamely joked, “Maybe we should’ve brought Betsy.”

  “Isn’t this dangerous duty for women?” I asked. “I mean these guys are killers and rapists.”

  “In fact,” answered one of the duty guards, “The inmates are extra polite to the women guards otherwise they’ll find a nightstick upside their skulls.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “Ask ’em,” suggested the Tour Guard.

  And that’s just what I did, siding up to one of the women guards for a brief interview. Meanwhile, Mark had spotted himself an old, rotary-styled phone sitting on the duty desk. Only the phone had no dial. Mark asked if the phone connected to an outside line. I’m not certain anybody had ever asked before.

  “Just need to call my office,” said Mark.

  Moments later, Mark was hooked up to his Paramount office via the prison operator. Once he was con

  nected to his assistant, he could roll all the calls he wanted. I grinned and watched as Mark, with his feet up on the desk, mere yards from violent—not to mention—naked felons standing in line for a twice-weekly shower, returned some of the two hundred or so calls he gets in a day.