The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  And that’s just what I did. For a month at a time, I allowed both Dimension and MGM to iron out the wrinkles in their Amityville deal without the threat of me withdrawing the book rights to True Believers. And if Dimension didn’t play nice, I’d simply seize my property and let the lawyers sort out the rest.

  My plan appeared to be working just fine until my agent called.

  “Somewhere, somehow, Dimension has come to the conclusion that Hideo Nakata is your little Japanese puppet,” said my agent.

  “That’s absurd,” I told him. “If anything, it’s the other way around.”

  “You’re a Japanese puppet?”

  “Seriously. I’ve done everything I could to protect his vision of the movie. Screw any more with the script and Hideo will be on a plane back to Japan.”

  “Someone has convinced Dimension otherwise,” said my agent. “Are you certain Hideo will cut and walk if you’re removed from the equation?”

  I was. And it wasn’t because I possessed such a lofty opinion of myself. My faith in Hideo came entirely from the year I’d spent with him in service of his vision. Gladly following him—learning how he processed the

  scene work and reassembled it back onto the screen page. In my entrenched point of view, the only reason Hideo had hung on so long is because David Wally and I had continuously and fiercely fought all comers to defend his first American film.

  After some twelve weeks of one option extension after the next, a True Believers meeting was finally set at Dimension Films. Here we go again, I reckoned. Time for the three amigos—Hideo, David Wally, and myself—to strap on our steel jockstraps and, once again, step into the breech.

  Then came word from my attorney. He’d just received a preposterously large check in the name of Velvet Elvis Entertainment, my personal loan-out company. MGM and Dimension, without a star or a start date or even a director they were certain was going to helm the film, had outright and fully purchased the pre-negotiated literary rights to True Believers.

  Whoops. There went all my leverage. Oh. And guess what? That’s right. They fired me.

  Hideo Nakata stopped returning my call. This was a first. After more than a year of working together, I’d come to depend on Hideo and he on me. There had to be a reason Hideo didn’t want to speak with me. My instinct was that he was angry. But angry at whom? Me? Why? Nobody was more loyal to him or his vision. Well, maybe producer David Wally. Together we were the three amigos, riding this movie into the sunset of success.

  Hideo wouldn’t be ducking my calls if he wasn’t pissed. The only reason why he’d be so upset that he couldn’t bear speaking to me must have been because somewhere, somehow, somebody, deposited a lie into his ear. A falsehood, I might add, with some traction.

  “I talked to him,” said David Wally. “You’re right. He’s mad at you. But I want him to tell you in his own words.”

  “All the better,” I agreed.

  The plan was to meet at Jerry’s Deli in Beverly Hills, conveniently across the street from Cedars Sinai Hospital. I wasn’t expecting a trip to the emergency room, but at that point, there’d been so many surprises on True Believers, anything was a possibility.

  Hideo was last to arrive, joining David Wally and I in the extreme rear of the restaurant. His demeanor was unlike anything I’d witnessed in our year of pre-production starts and stops. He’d been through the Hollywood ringer and I was pretty certain I’d experienced most of that good man’s moods. But this was different. He sat down. Somber, sad, and most clearly, hurt. Hideo didn’t know where to start.

  “Hideo,” I began. “David has explained that you’re angry with me. I’m just here to say that whatever I did—or whatever you think I did—I’m sorry that you’re hurt by it.”

  On the exterior, I was all apology. Yet on the inside I was twisting with rage. From the moment my director walked in, I knew it. The pained look of distrust on his face. Somebody had poisoned the well. And I had a pretty keen idea who was behind it.

  “My agent tells me that this was all your doing,” began Hideo after a soliloquy about his disappointing time in the United States, the year of studio crap he’d been required to swallow, in what he’d begun to call his “American dream” of making a movie here.

  “What was my doing?” I asked.

  “The delays in the deal,” he said. “Between MGM and Dimension. Why it took so long was because you

  wanted them to pay you.”

  “Pay me?”

  “For the rights to your book.”

  There it was. The lie. Laid out across the corner booth like a dead and stinking carcass.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “In fact—and David will back me up here—it’s the polar opposite of the truth.”

  David Wally was nodding.

  I told Hideo about the months of extending the option on the property. All for free. One thirty day period after the next, just to keep whatever leverage I had. The only leverage I had. That I had continued offering MGM and Dimension free rights to my book in order to give us time to convince them to green light movie we’d worked so hard to develop.

  “So you gave them the book for free?” confirmed Hideo.

  “It was the only play I had,” I said. “If they paid me off, they could fire me. Which, in the end, is what they did.”

  “So you didn’t hold the movie hostage?”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “Somebody told you or your agent a lie in order to drive a wedge between us.”

  “The thing you told me. They think I’m your Japanese puppet.”

  “You’re my friend. And, as far as I’m concerned, the only director of my movie.”

  This is when Hideo told us about his recent meeting at Dimension. His very first meeting on True Believers without David Wally or myself.

  “They want changes to the script,” said Hideo. “I told them I’d worked a very long time on the script with you and I was very happy with the result. That as far as I was concerned the script was done.”

  “How did you leave it?” David asked.

  “They asked me to think about the changes,” said Hideo. “And I said that I would.”

  “I wish I could help you, pal,” I said. “But they paid me off then fired my fat ass. It’s up to you.”

  “And if I tell them no?” he asked.

  Neither David Wally nor I had an answer. We’d been effectively sidelined, shown the door, and handed our hats all at once.

  We hugged it out and moved on. It eventually got back to me that someone in Hideo’s camp had assured Dimension that once I was removed from the equation, Hideo would roll over and agree to whatever changes the new studio wanted to affect. Imagine their surprise when they found out that all along, Hideo Nakata had backbone. That he wasn’t controlled by some over-opinionated writer. That he was motivated entirely by the movie he’d set out to direct. Whoops.

  And with a succinct yet polite “no thank you,” Hideo withdrew from the movie.

  I’d like to say the three amigos each went their separate ways. But while True Believers was being tossed back and forth between MGM and Dimension, Arnold Rifkin, Bruce Willis, and David Wally had roped me in to work with another foreign director on the movie Hostage. Hideo later confessed that he was terribly miffed that I’d moved on to a green-lit movie while he was left adrift in Los Angeles without a film project to anchor him.

  As good or bad luck would have it, Dreamworks had parted ways with their director only five weeks from photography on The Ring 2. Hideo was offered the job and said yes. Two years later, over lunch, Hideo confessed to me that it was a mistake jumping on to such a troubled

  production. As director he had even less control over the end product than anything he’d ever experienced.

  “The studio would send me new pages overnight. I had no idea what I was shooting. It was an awful, terrible nightmare.”

  “Like one of your Japanese horror films?” I asked.

  “Worse,” Hideo laughed.

&
nbsp; I had to ask him why, after all we’d been through with MGM and Dimension, he’d agree to such an impossible situation.

  “I was afraid I’d return to Japan without having made my American movie,” he said flatly, but dead honest. “I didn’t want my American dream to die.”

  I eventually broached the subject of True Believers. Nothing had come of it and the rights had just reverted back to MGM. But since the studio’s sale to Sony, my best guess was that the new management hadn’t a notion that they owned the property.

  “Maybe we could resurrect it,” I offered. “We could get David Wally, walk into Sony, and tell ’em a story. The three amigos ride again.”

  Hideo laughed a little more. Then turned momentarily somber.

  “True Believers… I love that script very much,” said Hideo. “But it’s like bad magic to me.”

  “Bad mojo?”

  “Yes. That’s it. Bad mojo. Too much bad luck for me with that movie. It would give me too much pain to return.”

  I understood him. Respected him. But I was still sad that we couldn’t return to the script we’d so lovingly labored over.

  “Never say never,” I said to Hideo.

  “Okay,” he laughed. “Never say never. Maybe one day when the hurt is all gone.”

  Because Dimension never produced a movie version of True Believers, per its agreement with MGM, they were forced to forfeit a significant portion of their profits on their Amityville coproduction. So maybe the Lion had the last roar after all.

  Hideo Nakata has yet to make another American film. He does, though, continue to make excellent movies in his native language.

  Auteur! Auteur!

  I’ve nothing against directors. The men and women who make magic with movie cameras have much to offer the civilized world. Skill, talent, vision. Some have an uncanny knack with those sometimes prickly artists we like to call actors. Others are technical wizards who find their primal purpose standing at the center of production chaos. I appreciate and applaud them.

  But are they authors? Or auteurs as the French so impolitely coined? Deserving of a possessory credit? Name before the title. A Scooby-Doo Film or A Film by Scooby-Doo or if Scooby-Doo were to follow Spike Lee’s example—A Scooby-Doo Joint.

  The fight over that damned credit is age-old. Tired even. Argued time and again, litigated in countless articles and argued across collective bargaining tables. So why am I writing about it? Well, I’m not going to bore you with my opinion. I can though illuminate the subject with a couple of encounters I’ve had with directors who’ve been willing to cross barbs on the thorny issue.

  A director friend and I were on our way to lunch when the issue bubbled up while I was stopped at a redlight.

  “I like the ‘film by’ credit,” argued my director friend. “If you think about the process of making a film it makes total sense.”

  “What part of it makes sense?” I asked.

  “I’m not taking anything away from writers,” said my director friend. “But a writer writes the film only once. A director writes it three times.”

  “Three times?”

  “Yes. A director writes the film when he storyboards it. He writes it again when he shoots it. He writes it a third time when he edits it.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s why a director’s job can seem more important than the writer’s. Considering all a director does.”

  “And deserving of an additional film credit...”

  “The ‘film by’ credit isn’t an extra credit. It’s another credit that says what the director did is has more value. It’s film. It’s about the medium.”

  “Well, not withstanding the part where a writer often writes and rewrites and retools his script over and over again, he’s written it many times more than the director can claim.”

  “But he’s also writing for the director.”

  “Or the producer or the studio or the star,” I added.

  “You’re not hearing me,” said my director friend.

  “I’m hearing that you want the ‘film by’ credit because you want to assume some form of authorship.”

  “It says that I’m the man who made this film,” confirmed the director.

  “And what did I do?”

  “You wrote the film. But writers write on paper. That’s their medium. A director paints with film.”

  “I might argue that you didn’t paint the film,” I said, “but that you indeed directed the film.”

  “But sometimes a director does more than just stand on the set and direct.”

  “Which is why in your opinion you deserve the additional credit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hear me out,” I said. “A director gives notes to the writer because that’s part of his job. A director storyboards the film because that’s part of his job. A director

  shoots the film because that’s part of his job. A director edits the film because that’s part of his job. It’s called directing. That’s why the director gets a directing credit.”

  Thinking I’d handed my friend enough rope, I wondered if he was ready to hang himself. Then came the following humdinger:

  “You still don’t understand,” said my director friend. “It’s more than all that. And very personal to me.”

  “Oh, I think I understand just fine,” I teased.

  “It’s not about authorship—the ‘film by’ credit says… I’m proud of the film.”

  “Proud?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So when I’m watching the movie. And the titles come on. And I see A (director’s name here) Film I should read it as the director’s proud of his work.”

  “Yes. I’m presenting my film.”

  “As something you’re very proud of.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So why not take that credit. Instead of ‘a film by’ it says ‘by the way (director’s name here) is really proud of this movie.’”

  “That would look stupid,” laughed my director friend.

  “Thus, my sharply pointed point,” I jabbed.

  “Are we really having this argument?” said my director friend, wanting to change the subject. “And where are we going for lunch again?”

  “I’m not done,” I said.

  “Of course you’re not done. You’re a writer. You’re never done.”

  “If the ‘film by’ credit says you’re proud of the film, what if the film didn’t turn out so well?”

  “What if the movie sucks?”

  “Yeah. Your movie and it blows chunks.”

  “Then I don’t want the ‘film by’ credit.”

  “But it’s still your film.”

  “You said the film sucks.”

  “Yes. Your film. And let’s say it sucks. It’s still your film. Based on your criteria, you made it three times. Storyboards. Production. Editing. Yours, yours, and yours again. But you still reserve the right to remove your precious ‘film by’ credit because the movie didn’t turn out as planned?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Are you serious? What about the writer? If the film sucks do you think I should be able to take my name off the film?”

  “Not talking about the writing credit or the directing credit. We’re talking about the ‘film by’ credit.”

  “You’re proud of the film?” I confirmed. “You should get the ‘film by’ credit. Not so proud? You should be able to turn it down.”

  “I think that sounds fair,” he said.

  “Never mind that you’re only getting the credit because it’s something a lawyer negotiated for you.”

  The discussion ended because we’d arrived at our destination. Waiting inside was a writer pal of mine who the director had wanted to meet. I’m sure the director’s instincts were to sever the argument before he had two word jockeys ganging up on him. I also felt it wasn’t worth endeavoring further into his thinly-veiled ego masquerading as weak rationalization.

  Now mind you. I don’t want t
o come off as a whining writer who finds it easy sport to bitch about narcissistic filmmakers. If I don’t care for the game I don’t have to play. And what keeps me from directing a film in order to hoist my own good name before the picture’s title? Aside from good sense, not a thing.

  As for authorship of a film I subscribe to a simple axiom. The writer who first pens the tale is the author. Everything after, including work by subsequent writers, is interpretive. Equally valuable. Artful even. Hell, I’m as much of a fan of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans as anybody else.

  Tparryhe only true value of the ‘film by’ credit is in marketing. If that name before the title drives box office, then by all means print it large and loud.

  My aforementioned director pal isn’t the only filmmaker I’ve parried with. There was once a particular A-Lister with whom I’d been developing a film. He was a nice enough guy. Decent with story. And a closet germaphobe. How in Hades we got about discussing the idiotic ‘film by’ credit I haven’t a glimmer. The A-Lister’s Mr. Nice Guy act faded quickly, revealing his megalomaniacal bite.

  “What a director does when making his film far outweighs the work of the writer,” said the A-Lister. “The directing credit isn’t enough, thus making the ‘film by’ credit not only necessary, but righteous.”

  I did my usual marketing, seeing how much rope I could sell the A-List snob before he had enough to fashion a noose to fit his snap-worthy neck. Once our argument ended, I asked if I could use his private bathroom. And though I made sure to wash my hands after I’d done my business, I waited to flush until the moment I was ready to step back into the meeting. With the unmistakable sound of toilet water swirling behind me, I made sure to give a friendly pat to the A-Lister as I returned to my seat. His eyebrows furrowed. Then before I could count to five, he stood and excused himself in order to secretly scrub off whatever bacteria he feared I’d deposited on him.

  I did this again and again, three meetings in a row, inciting the same phobic reaction from the arrogant SOB. I wonder if it was the smirk on my face that tipped my act to the director’s producing partner.

  “That’s really really mean,” chuckled the producing partner.