The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  “Exaaaaactly,” said David Wally with a confident smile.

  Days later we were parked in an mgm conference room, facing off with the vice presidents of this and that who, through the implication of their notes, wanted to turn True Believers from a scary film in the vein of Jacob’s Ladder into something closer to a puzzle picture in which everything made such complete sense that all real undercurrents of fear and wonderment would essentially be erased. Hideo, flanked by David Wally on one side, yours truly on the other, made his carefully crafted case for what truly makes a movie scary. Our resident bulldog, Arnold Rifkin, was there to close.

  “Have you seen his movies?” asked Arnold, not holding back a lick of his patented incredulity. “We brought him over here from Japan because he obviously knows what he’s doing. Let him do his Goddamn job.”

  The executives retired to discuss and (possibly after screening one of Hideo Nakata’s masterful films) they folded.

  Though victory was ours, it was in true Hollywood fashion, totally short-lived. Because next came the studio’s newest twist.

  “They want a partner,” said David Wally in a conference call.

  “What kind of partner?” asked Hideo.

  “Financial partner,” said David Wally. “They want to lay off some of the risk. Find somebody to come in with half the budget.”

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  “They’re talking to Lakeshore,” said David Wally.

  I could feel Hideo’s reticence over the phone.

  “All positive,” I told him. “Studios lay off risk all the time. Sometimes it’s just a matter of splitting the domestic and foreign. Totally normal.”

  “Good,” said Hideo. “So we are still moving forward.”

  “Exaaaaactly,” said David Wally.

  About a week later I received word from my agent that, sure enough, Lakeshore wanted into the True Believers deal. We were told they were thrilled at the prospect of being involved with Hideo Nakata’s first English language film.

  “One slight hiccup,” said my agent. “Lakeshore has a bunch of notes.”

  My stomach flipped. It felt as if we were in a muscle car, blazing down a desert highway. But every time we were about to shift into the last gear, we discovered someone had littered the asphalt with spike strips.

  “Hideo’s not gonna like that,” I said.

  “Part of the game,” said my agent.

  “He’s worked the script into a spot where he’s com

  fortable. And not two weeks ago we had to fight off mgm’s idiotic thoughts. Now we gotta tell Hideo that Lakeshore has notes?”

  “How bad can their notes be?” asked my agent.

  He hadn’t a bloody clue.

  “I don’t understand,” Hideo said to me. “They say they’re excited to produce my first American movie. Then they see the script that I want to film and they want to change it.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I told him. “But first we need to hear the notes. We can’t say no without sitting down with them.”

  “Put on my steel jockstrap,” joked Hideo, having learned well from David Wally and myself.

  So with our galvanized underwear polished and secured, we marched our True Believer’s act into Lakeshore’s Beverly Hills office. The conference room was duly stuffed with executives and producers. The three of us sat, hands in our laps like good little schoolboys, listening to Lakeshore’s thoughts on our movie. If the déjà vu of the moment was lost on us at the start, it certainly wasn’t by the time the main course was served. To our ears, it was mgm group-think all over again. Carving the edges off what was intended to chill and replacing story points with scare-free logic. With every passing moment, David Wally and I could both sense a swell of righteous rancor building inside Hideo.

  We chose not to respond to the notes. At least not in the room, explaining that we’d need some time to marinate in them. In truth, the move was a strategic retreat to Santa Monica and the Cheyenne offices. If we were going to cut off this newest attack, we would have to be quick and surgical. We chose to jump on a late-in-the-day conference call with Gary Lucchesi, Lakeshore’s president.

  “We’ve fought this battle more than once,” I recall saying. “Hideo has been here for six months, getting the script just the way he wants it.”

  “This is the movie I want to make,” added Hideo. “The movie I must make otherwise I will have to go back to Japan.”

  Gary Lucchesi politely and respectfully understood. He would inform mgm that they wouldn’t partner with them on True Believers.

  But what would mgm do? Would they throw up their hands and flush the movie or would they seek another financial partner? We imagined all the other co-financiers who’d set up shop around town advertising fat, foreign checkbooks. How many more would we have to battle? We held our collective breath and waited.

  At the time, most of mgm’s major motion picture decisions were made by either the language-sensitive ceo or by their very friendly production president. Somehow, the choice whether to seek a new money partner or dump True Believers altogether was moved upstairs to the chairman’s office—the very top of the lion’s corporate ladder.

  The following is a grossly simplified paraphrasing of how the internal studio conversation transpired.

  “What’s the budget on this thing?” asked the Chairman. “Twenty-five million? Is that all? What the hell are we looking for a partner for? I love this movie. Why would I want to share any of the profits?”

  So there it was. A booming voice of unconditional support. The script was adored. So was our Japanese director. If only the voice had finished talking.

  “Who did you say the producer was?” asked the Chairman. “Arnold Rifkin? You kiddin’ me? Arnold Mother-Fuckin’-Rifkin? Jesus H. Christ! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  As it turned out, Arnold Rifkin’s recent history with mgm hadn’t been so rosy. His last two movies with Bruce Willis, Hart’s War and Bandits, were mgm pictures. Neither had made any real noise for the studio. And the mgm chair, looking for somebody to blame other than himself, had long ago decided to lay the box office defeat at the pointy tips of Arnold Rifkin’s designer cowboy boots.

  But the mgm boss didn’t make it to the chairman’s office by cutting off his nose to spite his face. So this was his edict. He would commit to making True Believers with one, simple qualifier. Because of his distrust for Arnold Rifkin, the studio would require the production to take on another producer. One beholden only to the chair.

  I fully expected the studio’s newest ploy to be wholly rejected by Arnold. It was, at this point in the game, an insult of glacial proportions. The next move would surely be for Arnold to go nuclear, blow up the whole deal only to later try and resurrect some shadow of a movie out of the ashes.

  Well. I was wrong. Arnold either conceded for the sake of the film or caved due to his need to make a non-Bruce Willis movie. Whatever his actual motive, he agreed to take on the studio’s producer.

  Enter Voldemort. Or at least that’s what David Wally and I eventually came to call him, named after the infamous Harry Potter villain. Only this man-who-shall-not-be-named came in the guise of a friendly journeyman who had line-produced a few highly-decorated period dramas. He arrived with humility and handshakes. Implored us not to worry. Assured us that he was only on hand to assist us toward a start date.

  He did, though, have a few “script issues.” Small, detailed items—a meeting would help him to get underneath the material. Hideo, David Wally, and I assembled.

  Then, from the man who openly claimed to “not have a clue” how to make a movie like the one we’d been prepping, came a familiar song. His ideas might have well been titled Déjà Vu, Part 3D.

  I don’t recall who was quicker to cut Voldemort off at the pass. David Wally or myself. And though we attempted to politely inform the new producer that we’d been down that dead-end road twice before, I’m sure we came off as something less than gracious.

  Hideo, in the meant
ime, was shut down and frustrated. He felt sandbagged. Once again he was being informed by a stakeholder how excited he was to be working with a filmmaker of such gargantuan talent, while at the same time our new partner was openly questioning his screenplay choices. Only Hideo’s de facto way of dealing with such confrontation was to withdraw and consider his next maneuver. That left only me and David Wally to defend script.

  That first session ended with he-who-shall-not-be-named taking me aside.

  “You know,” said Voldemort. “I’ve worked with a lot of great, great writers. Oscar nominees. And every one of them has been grateful for my input.”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked. “That I’m not a ‘great’ writer if I disagree with your notes?”

  “Just saying you could learn things from me,” said Voldemort. “This isn’t my first go ’round.”

  “Look, pal. You might not think I’m much of a writer,” I said. “But I’m the writer of this movie. A Hideo Nakata kind of movie. The kind of movie you already copped to ‘not having a clue how to make.’”

  “Hey, look,” relented Voldemort, hands in the air. “I’m not big on conflict. I’m all about getting along. So I’m just gonna back off.”

  I might have thought that was it. Issue resolved. Our new producer had reached his moment of clarity.

  Then came a meeting at caa.

  We’d been having some difficulty landing a proper leading man. Mark Wahlberg had said yes but his agent demanded something like seven million dollars. John Cusack said yes, then no, then after re-reading the script he said yes again, then as if flipping a coin changed his mind for the umpteenth time. And despite Robert Downey, Jr. wanting to do the movie for a bargain basement price, mgm didn’t want to pay the insurance required for casting one of America’s most gifted actors because he was barely a year out of rehab. It was Voldemort’s idea to do a round of big agency meetings with Hideo as a way of ginning up some assistance.

  I recall picking up Hideo at his apartment and driving the short couple of miles to Beverly Hills. When we landed in the caa conference room, Voldemort didn’t even try to mask his annoyance.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked me.

  “I was told there was a meeting,” I innocently replied.

  “Doug gave me a ride,” added Hideo.

  “I wasn’t aware Doug was also producing the movie,” said Voldemort.

  “I’m not,” I defended. “But I am the writer.”

  “Well, writers don’t generally attend casting meetings.”

  Whatever. I shrugged off the idiotic comment to producer Voldemort’s discomfort with the command structure. I merely rolled my sleeves up for the meeting and pushed ahead.

  Next came a late afternoon phone call from David Wally.

  “Just a heads up, said David Wally. “There’s rumbling over at the studio that you’re gonna get fired.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Wonder whose big idea that was?”

  “This guy’s gonna totally fuck up our movie,” groused David Wally.

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “It’s still Hideo’s movie. As long as he’s on board, it’s gonna be his way or the highway.”

  “I guarantee (Voldemort) is working over Hideo’s agents as we speak. They’re gonna try and convince Hideo that you’re why the movie’s not going forward.”

  “So let ’em,” I said. “If they get rid of me, my bet’s Hideo will walk.”

  “You know that and I know that,” said David Wally. “But the studio doesn’t know that.”

  “Well. Maybe it’s time he told ’em.”

  The real question was, when push came to shove, would he?

  “I talked to my agents,” said Hideo over the telephone. “And I talked to the studio. And I told them if they fire you then I would have to leave the movie.”

  “Thanks, Hideo,” I said, relieved to the point of no longer feeling that I had to vomit. “I’m sorry this has been so difficult.”

  “I’m wearing my steel jockstrap,” joked the Japanese scare-meister. “I think I even sleep with it now.”

  I laughed without reserve. I’d grown to so appreciate this filmmaker. Hideo was huge talent. But it was encased in an even bigger heart.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why they would want to fire you. You and I work so well together. And I will need you on this movie.”

  We’d spent nearly a year together. We’d worked through the script until it was a tightly wound bundle of thrills and chills. We’d weathered content assaults by the studio, fought off potential financial partners who

  wanted to radically change the movie, and more recently, adjusted to the addition of Voldemort.

  “I appreciate you defending me to the studio,” I told Hideo. “But you might want to express your feelings directly to (Voldemort).”

  “I don’t understand (Voldemort),” said Hideo. “He’s been so generous to me when it comes to answering production problems. Why would he have problems with the writer who’s so helpful to me?”

  I knew the answer all too well. That and the grapevine had been very active with chatter about our upcoming film, True Believers.

  “He thinks that when it comes to the script,” I said, “that you’re my puppet.”

  “That is not true,” said Hideo, insult rising in his voice. “We are collaborators.”

  “You know that and I know that,” I said. “But in Hollywood, many look at writers as second-class citizens to directors. Very disposable. And easily replaced.”

  “How can you be replaced? It’s based on your novel. You wrote the screenplay.”

  I reminded Hideo that he and I had already had versions of this discussion many times over. How Hollywood does not run on logical business decisions nearly as much as it does on money, ego, and bad blood.

  “Should I also tell (Voldemort) that when we shoot the picture that I’m going to want you on the set with me?” asked Hideo.

  “I’m flattered. And you should tell him,” I answered. “But you might want to videotape it. It’ll be like that scene in Scanners.”

  “Is that the awful Cronenberg film where all the heads explode?”

  “As David Wally would say,” I joked. “Excaaaaactly.”

  Hideo and I both laughed openly and loudly as we had so many times before. Humor is the salvation to the insane circumstances which pretty much surround most of the movie making process. Onward, I told him. We have a picture to make.

  Then as if an Arkansas twister had touched down in the middle of the night, we woke up the next day to find our world turned utterly upside-down.

  “We’ve been traded,” said David Wally in an early morning phone call.

  “What do you mean ‘traded?’ I asked.

  “A trade,” said David flatly. “Like in baseball. MGM traded us to Dimension.”

  “Traded,” I repeated, as if saying it would make me actually believe it. “Can they do that?”

  See if you can follow this. About a month or so earlier, around the time the Weinstein brothers’ Dimension Films announced that it was going to make a film called The Amityville Nightmare, MGM decided they were going to resurrect their own Amityville franchise. In a clichéd this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-two-Amityville-movies-motif, lawyers on both sides began launching broadsides against the competing studio via the big mouth entertainment press. But while loud volleys were being publicly traded, the studios were actually negotiating to co-mingle their assets in order to produce a single and harmonious Amityville film from which they would share both the liability and the spoils.

  So what does this have to do with True Believers and Hideo Nakata? Apparently, moments before the Amityville agreement was to be finalized, the Weinstein brothers demanded that MGM hand over the “Hideo Nakata picture” as some kind of a deal-closing scalp.

  MGM said yes.

  Of course there were all sorts of ugly caveats and penalties attached with the trade. I promise more on that later. Still,
the damage was done. It was as if Hideo and I were a pitcher and catcher duo, both called into the front office only moments before we were expected to sprint from the bull pen to open the big game, only to be told that we’d been dealt to a completely different team.

  As I expected, Hideo was crushed beyond words. Just like David Wally and myself, we had absolutely no clue what to expect from Dimension or what Dimension would expect from us. The only positives we’d heard were that MGM had imposed some extraordinary financial penalties on Dimension if they didn’t make True Believers into a movie within a year’s time. So if in that few months they had to give us a green light, how badly could the new owners screw up our movie?

  Please. Don’t get ahead of me. At least not before this second silver lining I’d so gratefully discovered.

  My truest hope was, as a result of the surprise trade, our not-so-dear producer, Sir Voldemort of Lion House, would be kicked off the team bus. But when I expressed my dreamy hopes to David Wally, he cocked and laid the wood to me.

  “Off the movie?” said David. “This whole deal has (Voldemort’s) fingerprints all over it!” David went on to remind me of Voldemort’s long-standing relationship with the Miramax side of the Weinsteins’ business. “How the hell else would they have known to trade for our movie?”

  Because my children and extended family sometime read this blog I won’t directly quote the string of unholy curse words which so loudly wretched from my innards. I was totally aghast. Lost for a thought in my skull. Every way I looked at it felt as if I’d just stepped in front of an oncoming train.

  Then came a light. Less than a sliver but bigger than a pinhole. It allowed for some hope. The two-year option on my underlying literary property was coming due in a matter days. If Dimension and MGM wanted to proceed they would have to cut me a gargantuan check. It was for such a prohibitive amount that, were I to kindly extend the option agreement for free, it might give us the time and leverage to sit down with the new owners and work things out until we were all on the same Hideo Nakata movie page.