The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

“Do you think…”

  “Not for me,” I said.

  As I dropped the man off at closest service station, he both apologized and thanked me. I said goodbye and shoved off.

  My lunch with the British hottie was less than lukewarm. No sparks. I should’ve known it wasn’t meant to be when she barely cracked a laugh when I told her about my good Samaritan adventure.

  When I returned to my Jeep, I discovered a lone page of the script stuck under a rear floor mat. Without a clue how to return it to its owner, I ended up tacking it to the bulletin board of my Warner Brothers office. From time to time, bored visitors would glance over and read it. I’d watch their jaws drop.

  I’ve had screenplays left in my mailbox and slipped into my son’s gear bag by Little League coaches. I’ve seen golf starters hand producers manila envelopes on the first tee and heard stories of valets leaving anonymous gifts in the backseats of a mogul’s Mercedes. Numerous execs and directors have had scripts slid under the doors of bathroom stalls while they were indisposed on the porcelain throne.

  Mind you. I’m not suggesting any of these tactics. They come off as desperate acts of a person who might easily have written their movie epic in crayon and finger paints. On the other hand, remember Debra in her wedding dress? When I asked her what happened to the script the rabbi had presented only moments before she walked up the aisle? She said, “Oh. I found it a year later underneath a day bed. Still in the envelope. Of course, the script was total crap.”

  “But you read it,” I confirmed.

  Yes. She read it.

  It’s Not Who You Know, Punk

  This is one of my favorite tales. I’ve told it many times. At social occasions, I’m often asked by those who’ve already heard the story to repeat it with luster. Of course, there’s an eventual life lesson to be found near the end. Until that moment, enjoy this rather foolish example of pure, youthful moxie.

  It was my twenty-first birthday. I’d taken a few days off from attending film school at usc to join my family in Carmel for the celebration of my parents’ silver anniversary. Yes. It was my not-so-good fortune to have been born on my parents’ anniversary. There are worse days to be born. July 4th. Any day during the Christmas season. I suppose if my pop hadn’t loved my mom so much or had been the type to forget anniversaries, my birthdays might have had a bit more shine to them. But that’s way behind me.

  For you readers unfamiliar with Carmel by the Sea, it’s located in a romantic corner of Northern California, just south of the Monterey Peninsula. We’d just finished the celebratory dinner and bid my parents a fond goodnight, when my brother-in-law suggested we wander over to a joint called the Hog’s Breath Inn so I could order my first legal beer. The restaurant-slash-bar was pretty famous. Less for its food and drink and more for its co-owner, Clint Eastwood.

  “Why the hell not?” I replied.

  The Hog’s Breath is a bit difficult to find without an address. Its entrance is through a tight little alleyway and down three steps into a vine-covered courtyard. Restaurant to the left, saloon to the right. We’d barely found a place to hang before my brother-in-law pointed out that

  Clint was seated in the bar, enjoying some conversation and a bottle of Coors.

  At the time, Clint Eastwood was, without equal, the biggest movie star on the planet. His movies performed worldwide. His familiar features were chiseled into the American psyche like the faces on Rushmore. Were his fans to hold hands, they might’ve been able to circle the earth more than once.

  Somewhere around my second beer, I received my first official nudge. I don’t recall who began it. My brother-in-law or one of my two older sisters. But they knew how much I revered the movie icon. And they began suggesting that I approach him.

  I balked. I’ve never been comfortable approaching celebrities. Not that I’m by any means shy. I’m merely respectful, figuring that they have as much a right as anybody else to occupy a public space; their mere presence doesn’t give me or anybody else the right to accost them.

  But then again I was only two beers in.

  Somewhere around Bud number four, my better judgment somewhat impaired, I began to consider some kind of approach. With the constant egging by my siblings I was eventually able to rationalize plausible and important reasons for me to wedge myself between the movie star and his companion. I was in college. A hardscrabble film student, no less. I could ask Clint Eastwood for career advice. Or maybe I could convince him to critique one of my student films. Better yet, I might be able to secure some kind of internship working on one of his features.

  Damn right I had good reason. Barmaid? Bring on more Budweiser.

  As I plotted my approach, my primary obstacle was the woman at the bar with whom Clint had struck up

  a conversation. I recall she was in a green dress, had jet black hair, and on a scale of one to ten she landed somewhere between knockout and drop dead gorgeous.

  “Go talk him,” nudged my brother-in-law.

  “Before he leaves!” said my middle sister.

  “No,” I stalled. “Look who he’s with. I don’t want to interrupt that.”

  “Fans talk to him all the time,” said my older sister.

  “I’m not just some fan,” I defended.

  A fresh beer arrived. I remained on my perch, seated atop the cinderblock wall overlooking the courtyard.

  The rest happened very quickly. I never saw Clint get up to leave. As my brother-in-law alerted me that the movie star was on the move, I glanced up from a bowl of peanuts and saw Clint striding across the courtyard toward the alleyway. The woman in the green dress held his hand, trying to keep up while wearing some rather steep heels.

  I didn’t think so much as act. I dropped down and gave chase. Clint had just cleared the steps up into the alleyway when I first spoke his name.

  “Mr. Eastwood,” I called out.

  The six-foot-four icon’s head swiveled forty degrees to his right and, without missing a stride, he replied with his trademark hiss:

  “It’s not the time,” said Clint.

  “But Mr. Eastwood,” I said, stupidly undaunted.

  “It’s not the time,” Clint repeated in the same practiced move. Head turned forty degrees to the right, just enough for me to see his Dirty-Harry profile.

  I should’ve stopped, turned around, and respected the man’s privacy. Clearly he had better things to do.—such as go home and ravage the woman in the green dress,

  which I reckoned was his immediate plan. But common sense had escaped me with that fourth beer.

  “Hey,” I said sharply. “I’m no autograph hound.”

  With that, Clint stopped, turned around, his eyes naturally squinted into a threatening glare. He was microseconds from crushing my soul with a mind-your-own-damn-business remark when I mentioned two words that caught him by surprise.

  “I’m friends with Harry Sanford,” I blurted out.

  The movie star’s scowl retreated as he recognized the name I’d just dropped.

  “Harry Sanford?” Clint confirmed. “From Arcadia?”

  “Well, he’s not really my friend,” I corrected. “He’s my dad’s best friend. He’s sort of my Dutch Uncle. I grew up with him.”

  A brief primer. Harry Sanford was a famed big game hunter, amateur botanist, and gun inventor. More importantly, he was a renowned American tough guy who Clint not only knew, but admired so much he’d tried to get Harry to appear in the action comedies Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. Though Harry had always humbly declined, he remained friends with the star and even built Clint a special gun that was employed in the fourth Dirty Harry film.

  “So you know Harry,” said Clint.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’m a film student. I was thinking of sending you a letter through Harry, maybe asking for an internship. But then I saw you here and thought I might help you put a face on it.”

  “Harry’s gonna give me a letter from you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. �
�Sorry to bother you and all. I hope you have a nice evening.”

  I reached out and shook the star’s hand, made solid eye contact, then turned and walked away. Yeah. That’s

  right. I left Clint Eastwood standing in the alley with the black haired beauty wondering who the hell was that kid who just interrupted his mac-daddy mojo?

  Yeah. Right. But that’s how I choose to remember it.

  I returned to school, pounded out my letter to Clint Eastwood, mailed it off to Harry Sanford, and waited for the reply that never came. Not a word. Not a note. Hell of an impression I’d made, huh?

  Just a few years later, while working under my first writing deal at Warner Brothers, I’d often wander by Clint’s Malpaso Productions office. Sometimes I’d pass him on a walkway. He’d nod a polite hello to me just like he would anybody else who’d made eye contact with him. I never said a thing. And why should I? I’d already said my piece to the man in that Carmel alleyway.

  Zip forward twelve or more years. I was in Wyoming with my father and Harry Sanford. After a long day of elk hunting near the Great Divide, we retired to Harry’s little cabin on the river. While my father rustled up the evening meal, Harry handed me a cold one and asked:

  “Wanna hear a funny story?” Harry began. “Nadine and I were up in Carmel a coupla months ago. We were having dinner with Clint and he up and says to me that not too long ago he’d thrown on some old jacket. And when he reached into the inside pocket for his wallet, he came back up with that letter you’d written.”

  “The letter I sent you a long time ago,” I confirmed.

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “I hung onto it until the next time I saw him and put it right in his hand. Guess he stuck it in his jacket pocket and forgot all about it until like, Lord knows how long ago that was, he puts on the jacket again and finds the letter.”

  “Jeez,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “He told me he remembered you

  stoppin’ him in that alley outside the Hog’s Breath. He was gonna tell you where to go before you dropped my name on him.”

  I laughed a hard, satisfying laugh. At least I was memorable.

  “So get this,” continued Harry. “Clint finally reads the damn letter. Feels kinda bad. Then asks me if there’s anything at this late date he can do for you.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I told him thanks, but you were doing just fine.”

  Indeed, I was.

  It’s said that showbiz is a relationship game. And to some extent it is. But it’s not the who you know business that so many who don’t succeed in it often claim it is. My who you know moment came in that Carmel alleyway on my twenty-first birthday. I made my big play and missed. My who you know moment paid me zero in career points.

  Thank the Lord I didn’t let that particular failure define me.

  Live Free or Die of Pneumonia

  It was the day we burned the Hostage set. Bruce ambled onto the soundstage and dropped a script onto my lap. The title was Die Hard 4.0. I could tell by the date it was the most recent writer’s attempt at the fourth installment of the series.

  “Do me a favor and read it will ya?” asked Bruce.

  “Over the weekend?” I asked. “Or overnight?”

  “Over lunch if you can do it,” he asked. “Really wanna talk about it.”

  Okay. So I bailed out to my office before the morning’s last set-up, ordered a few slices of pizza and locked the door. Two hours later, I was encamped in Bruce’s trailer. He was reclined on the couch, lamenting about how much he loathed the script. I agreed that it didn’t live up to the franchise. But then again, it was number four.

  “What would you do?” Bruce asked. “Studio loves this script.”

  I reminded Bruce that it wasn’t on me. He was the guy whose name was above the title.

  “Do you even wanna see a Die Hard 4?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “So what’s a Die Hard 4 you’d wanna see?”

  This is when it happened. Me and big fat mouth. I began to think out loud about a new Die Hard 4. A relevant Die Hard 4. A harder Die Hard 4 that would challenge and surprise both fans and critics. I should’ve just shut my hole and hiked back to the set.

  The very next day I was in Fox Chairman Tom Rothman’s office. It was sold to me as just Bruce and me, continuing the “conversation.” All along I could read that

  look in Tom’s eye. I could tell he really liked the current script. That the present incarnation was something he could market. That he was willing to commit untold millions to it. But in just a single hour of offhanded chatter with Bruce in his trailer, I’d just broken Tom’s script.

  Whoops.

  In the eight months that followed, I went on to finish Hostage, delivered a first draft of a delayed assignment to Paramount, then finally sat down to pen my relevant version of Die Hard 4.

  The studio was more patient than Bruce, who’d call every couple of weeks. Is it good? How close are you? When can I see it? My answer was always the same. I’m happy. You’ll see it soon enough. Any slow going on my part was due to me knowing that expectations were insanely high. It was on me to deliver a Die Hard 4 Bruce Willis was willing to get behind. So I was grinding. Second guessing. Losing sleep. And when I was finally near the end I got sick.

  I was at El Torito, a local Mexican franchise, having burritos with my family when Bruce called from Montreal.

  “Time’s up, Doug. I gotta read it.”

  “Not finished,” I told him. “Really close.”

  “Well, you can finish it on the plane.”

  “What plane?”

  “Flying you up to Montreal tomorrow. You can meet Sir Ben and Morgan Freeman.”

  “Got a thousand notes I’ve made that I still have to incorporate into—”

  But Bruce had already handed the phone off to Stevie, his personal assistant, whose efficiency never failed to astonish me. Stevie had already booked me first class to

  Montreal where Bruce was currently filming Lucky Number Sleven. A car was picking me up at 7:00 a.m.

  I’d run out of refusals. I paid the check, packed a bag, ingested fistfuls of cold meds before powering through the rest of the night revising the script. I wrote in the car to the airport. I wrote in the airport lounge. I wrote on the aircraft. I wrote while waiting to change planes in Toronto. I wrote on the flight to Montreal. I wrote in the suv sent to deliver me to Bruce’s hotel. And I kid you not. I wrote “fade out” just as the valet opened my door.

  Done. I bagged my laptop, discovered I’d already been checked in, then boarded the private elevator to the hotel’s Presidential Suite. The doors opened and Stevie was there to grab my bags and lead me to a large unopened box.

  “Brand damn new printer,” he said. “Don’t worry. Couple hours I’ll have it cranking out the script.”

  “Where’s El Jefe?” I asked.

  “Waiting for you.” Stevie pointed. “Follow the music.”

  I’d already been up for something like thirty-six hours. Traveled thousands of miles. I was in Montreal. It was snowing outside. I calculated that pneumonia was just around the corner. Instead, I found a closet around the corner. Well, it wasn’t a closet anymore. At some point, in expanding the prez suite, the hotel had pushed through a walk-in closet to another suite to make the space, I suppose, more presidential. The closet had since been converted into a tight passage with bookshelves and a built-in desk with doors at either end. The door facing me was shut and bore a handwritten sign, reading “Doug. Leave the script with Stevie and your cares behind.”

  I entered. The cramped space was smaller than the average prison cell, lit with just a couple of scented candles. Bruce was hunched over a MacBook stuffed with

  seemingly every blues tune ever put down on wax. Hanging out was the acting guru, Irish Jerry, who waved his hands over a makeshift bar. I ordered a scotch on the rocks and, while Irish Jerry kept us served deep into the night, Bruce kept the music spinning.
/>   A note about Bruce Willis. There are few fellahs I’d rather tilt pints with until dawn. It’s as if all the movie star stuff fades into the ether. He becomes the guy from Jersey who loves great tunes, dangerous women, and trading laugh-out-loud stories.

  We pickled ourselves until we were crocked. Then sometime around 4:00 a.m., Bruce decides to call lights out. I don’t recall ever handing Stevie my thumb drive, but somehow he’d succeeded in printing a hot copy of Die Hard 4.

  Bruce fanned the pages of the script, held it up in the air, and said that he was off to read. I may have been drunk, but not stupid.

  “Bruce. Please don’t,” I strongly suggested. “Sleep it off. Read it sober.”

  “Sober enough,” he said. “Call you when I’m done.”

  I found my hotel room, locked the door and flopped on the bed. And though I tried to sleep, I couldn’t get a wink knowing that the damn phone was going to ring at any second and the voice at the other end wasn’t going to be cool Bruce, but it’d be a drunken movie star with notes. I’m screwed, I thought. Months of hard work. Flushed.

  Two hours later with a headache coming on, the phone hadn’t rung. And as sobriety took hold, I realized Bruce had most likely fallen asleep on page two and, while I was bathing in writer’s paranoia, he was sleeping it off. I showered, slept, and was awoken by the phone around noon.

  “Betcha thought I was gonna read it drunk.”

  “Naw,” I lied. “I bet Irish Jerry you wouldn’t make it past page two.”

  Bruce laughed. Promised he’d read it after we’d visited the Lucky Number Sleven set and he’d introduced me to Sir Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman.

  Bruce did read the script and loved it. A few days later, he sent me home with his notes. What happened after? Well, that’s between me and Bruce and a very powerful movie studio. Maybe someday I’ll write about it. But in the end, Tom Rothman convinced Bruce to make that earlier script he’d liked so much. It was released as Live Free or Die Hard. It made a gazillion dollars.

  Owned

  It’s out there. From my screenplays and novels to my hundred-and-forty-character Twitter sorties to my weekly blog. Whatever I say. Whatever I write, it’s mine. My name is on it. I own the content whether I regret having written it or not. I’ve tried to teach this to my children. Own your words. Own your actions.