The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  That and with his foghorn voice, Hawk has a million Tinseltown war stories. All of them gems.

  Hawk described himself as a director’s producer, installed to have the helmer’s back. Defend the filmmaker from all matter of distractions and/or saboteurs.

  That included protecting the director from me... the writer.

  Hawk’s experience with writers was that we were all no good, meddling, wannabe directors. A necessary evil to movie-making, but best when kept locked in a hotel room and fed from a room service menu. Never ever to step foot into a production office or onto the sacred movie set. Hawk was, in part, correct. Screenwriters are, as a breed, frustrated filmmakers, looking for opportunities to control our work, nervous about handing our tightly engineered architectural schematics over to a contractor who might not know a hammer from a houseplant.

  But that wasn’t me. Not on this movie. I was still looking for a clean exit.

  Production neared. And every time I’d bump into Hawk, he’d inquire as to whether or not I planned to continue tinkering with the script as cameras rolled. I assured him that I couldn’t if I wanted to. I owed a script to Paramount, and Japanese horror maestro Hideo Nakata was long past waiting patiently for me to return from my French sabbatical.

  And then. The showdown.

  It was the second Wednesday in January. Filming was set to begin on Friday. Florent and I were going over some last minute script notes with Bruce at his Mulholland pied-à-terre when, as if I’d stepped on a Bouncing Betty land mine, I discovered a significant flaw in the movie’s first act. The pair of scenes in question were holdovers from the original Robert Crais draft. And within them, the actions of our three young antagonists set the rest of the narrative in motion.

  What an idiot I was!

  How the hell could I have missed it? Or for that matter, anybody else with a brain switched on? I expressed my concerns to Florent, then Bruce and David Wally. And where both Bruce and David instantly agreed with

  me, Florent wasn’t so sure. He’d already carefully storyboarded the first act of the picture, and the scenes in question were scheduled for day four of photography. Not only was I suggesting excising a scene, but also rewriting another in such a way that it would cause a ripple effect throughout the entire script, requiring even more last-minute revisions. There’s no way in Hades that the production was going to suddenly downshift on an eleventh hour notion from the writer. The producers, the director, and the movie star would need to see the changes on paper before ultimately deciding.

  With Bruce’s backing, I made the announcement that I would do a quick set of revisions that night. Unpolished, of course. But containing enough information to give all pertinent parties an educated vote. The most important vote, of course, belonged to Florent. I tanked up on Diet Cokes and climbed into my office chair. With David Wally as my go-to editor, we had the new draft printed by noon the next day.

  The reading summit was set for three o’clock. Drafts were hand-delivered to Bruce in Malibu and producers Arnold Rifkin and Mark Gordon in Santa Monica. In our Raleigh Studio production offices, doors were slammed shut to create a hush for those reading: Hawk Koch, assistant director Mark Catone, Florent, and Dominique Carrara. The rest of the crew tiptoed on eggshells while feigning to treat me as a stranger, the pariah writer who was looked upon as some kind of rogue wave threatening to capsize the smooth-sailing production. While we waited for the six o’clock conference call to commence, David Wally and I escaped outside. My erstwhile doppleganger must’ve blazed through two packs of smokes while I slowly prayed over a lucky Cuban cigar.

  Hawk quit reading after fifty pages and hauled me into his office. I could instantly read where he stood on the new pages. Content didn’t matter as much to him as how the changes would affect the carefully budgeted production which, by Hawk’s early calculations, would mushroom by around a half a million dollars if anybody was crazy enough to take me seriously.

  “We’re tight enough as it is,” he growled. “No place to steal a half a million out of an already squeaky budget.”

  “But I cut out an entire scene,” I argued.

  “On a set we’ve already built. Plus that moves us up one day onto a new set that we need to hire a swing crew to complete!”

  Hawk went on to nickel-and-dime me through the rest of the costs that I’d threatened to inflict with my rewrite. He argued that his primary job was to protect the director’s vision. And that’s precisely why he was staunchly against writers being anywhere near the production.

  And though I reminded Hawk that all movies were broken-down, story-boarded, and budgeted based on a screenplay created by the writer and not the director, he continued to play his parlor game of author versus auteur.

  Six o’clock arrived. While we all gathered in Hawk’s office, Bruce, Arnold Rifkin, and financing partner, Mark Gordon, were piped in via speakerphone. Hawk weighed in about the budget and the importance of Florent sticking to his vision based on the former script. Bruce topped Hawk by offering to cover whatever overages were created by my alterations. Arnold, of course, backed Bruce. As for Mark Gordon? He didn’t see any real differences between the drafts, though suggested erring on the budget-side of the coin flip.

  During the arguments that ensued, Florent stayed silent, quietly debating the choices in his head. At last, Mark Gordon said that in the end it was Florent’s decision.

  “So I must decide,” said Florent, “Between Hawk’s way? Or Doug’s way?”

  “Yes, Florent,” said Mark. “You’re the director.”

  “I don’t know which is better,” said Florent. “I need to think longer.”

  “No time,” said Hawk. “We start shooting tomorrow.”

  The silence that followed seemed to last a life’s sentence. The limiter on the speakerphone crackled as Bruce, Arnold, and Mark waited for Florent to make his decision.

  “Okay. I decide,” said Florent. “I trust Doug.”

  In my screenwriting career, I haven’t had—nor will I ever have—the kind of validation held in that singular moment. Not that I was vindicated or proven right. It was merely the fact that this Frenchman, who I’d met just months ago, had placed his faith in me.

  With the battle won and production beginning, I was leaving on high note. Sure, I’d be available if the phone rang. I might even stop in to watch a few dailies if invited. But the three-week favor was, at last, over.

  “You’re going to be on the set tomorrow, yes”? asked Florent via his cell phone. He was already on his way back to his rental in the Palisades. I was on my way back to the Valley.

  “Yes tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe Monday and Tuesday. But then I’m done.”

  “I don’t think you can go yet. I think I’m going to need you.”

  “Let’s just see how tomorrow goes,” I fibbed.

  But I was just lying to myself. It had only just begun.

  Week #22: Twenty-five Nights and No End in Sight

  It was late January, bitter cold, and the damned scene wasn’t working. We were at the end of the first of five grueling weeks of night shoots. And that three week-favor had just turned the corner into a what felt like one long, endless, black hole. I was ignoring both my family and my other assignments. I was still working without a deal. Essentially, my labor was free. Like I said before. I could’ve walked. I had every right. But director Florent Siri had begged me to not abandon him.

  Suppose it’s about time I replaced the theme song to Gilligan’s Island with an old Motown Diana Ross and the Supremes tune. Better ambiance.

  But that’s not why I stuck around. I was invested. The picture was now as much mine as anybody’s. At my marrow, I’m still that kid who’s desperate to make movies. That passion defies practical issues like common sense, not to mention paying for both a mortgage and private school for two young kids. I wasn’t getting paid a cent. It could be argued that I was behaving financially recklessly.

  Oh. And there was this little nugget. If I exited th
e picture the director and star might have to actually speak to one another. That’s not to say they didn’t talk. By all appearances they adored each other. Hugs and gifts and dirty jokes were exchanged. Yet truth be told, neither really trusted the other. I’d become the grease for their grinding gears. Dispute over a scene? Let Doug decide. Casting tug of war? Let Doug massage both egos. Bruce wants to fight? Send Doug in with his sleeves rolled up.

  Early on, it wasn’t so obvious. But something was evolving in those first tenuous weeks of filming. While Hawk busied himself making the set as uncomfortable

  for me as possible with stunts like telling the grips not to provide me with a chair, making sure the production office left my name off the call sheet, and verbally jabbing me with lines like, “Betcha got stuff to write at home,” I was trying like hell to get the star and director to converse on a substantive level. Florent liked to build his scenes in little filmic pieces. Bruce found that directing style disorienting, preferring to start with a rehearsal and a master shot to find his space before moving on to the close shots. From conflicts like this they made me their arbiter. As photography progressed, I kept myself near Florent and, between set-ups, made frequent visits to Bruce in his trailer. Between director, star, and writer, the system was working. But to some outside observers, I appeared to be nothing more than a meddlesome, wannabe moviemaker, inserting myself into whatever crack I could find.

  This dysfunctional story reached its nadir on a pair of frozen nights at the end of January. Our exterior set piece was a house on top of Tuna Canyon overlooking Malibu. The scene wasn’t sticking with our star. And now he had other ideas on how it should go. This is how I found myself locked in a heated passenger van with Bruce and Florent, discussing a scene rewrite I was about to attack on my laptop. I was ninety-eight percent certain that Bruce’s rethink would fall flat. But it wasn’t my ass up there on screen. And sometimes this is the sausage-grinding process moviemakers go through to ferret out the good from bad.

  So while a hundred or so of the crew puttered around in the wind and cold outside, getting paid to do next to nothing, Hawk Koch opened the van’s door and began to climb in. Bruce barked, “Get the fuck out, Hawk! This powwow’s for the creative people.”

  “But I’m the producer, Bruce. Crew wants to know what’s happening.”

  “Shut the Goddamn door!”

  Bruce’s acrimony toward Hawk stemmed from the not-forgotten summit over the script changes the day before we started production. He’d wanted Hawk fired that very night and I’d spent an hour over the phone talking him out of that tree. Nonetheless, Bruce booting Hawk out of the van wasn’t helpful or politic. That and I’ll never forget the anguished look on Hawk’s face. As if he’d just been sucker-slapped with a wet rag. Agree with him or not, Hawk’s a total pro, deserving of considerable respect and not to be treated like a towel boy.

  With the revised scene published, we rolled off a few takes then sat Bruce in front of the playback monitor. He got a chance to see what Florent and I already knew. The new scene played like day-old crap. We’d tried, failed, scrapped the new for the old, and were back to work. The only victims of the snafu were Hawk and the two lost hours of production time. At least that’s what I thought.

  Night shoots are grueling enough. But weeks on end of night shoots get under your skull cap like a bad melody you can’t shake. It’s a backwards world. I would drive home as the sun was coming up, kiss my wife and kids good morning, then stumble out to my office which I’d turned into a blacked-out den with yards of Duvatyne borrowed from the grip truck. Five was a lucky number. But closer to four hours of sleep was the norm. That’s because while the cast and crew slept, the rest of the production was awake and wondering why the hell we’d blown two hours of precious shooting time the night before.

  Ah. Ye old Hollywood axiom. When in doubt, blame the writer.

  My production cellphone was ringing and ringing. Mark Gordon, renowned producer—and partner in the finance company—insisted that he must talk to me.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on up there?” he asked.

  I wearily explained the movie star’s snafu and hoped that would be the end of it.

  “I’m gonna be blunt,” said Mark. “Some of the crew think you’re trying to direct the film.”

  “Not close to true,” I corrected him. “Florent is the director. I’m just the writer. But I can’t help it if Bruce and Florent drag me into every disagreement.”

  I was fudging a bit. I was no longer playing arbiter against my will. Talking through me was the only way the movie star and director would function efficiently. I described what had happened the night before. I suggested that whatever crew concerns existed about me trying to usurp our beloved French director could be traced directly to Hawk, who had clearly been stung by Bruce’s midnight insult.

  “Just do us both a favor and don’t hang so close to the playback monitors,” was Mark’s suggestion.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I trusted Mark. He’d produced more pictures in the past twelve months than I’d made in my dubious career.

  So the following night, a Friday, and our last of the rough week, I took Mark’s sanguine advice and busied myself far away from that collection of chairs and monitors known on many productions as “video village.” But first I updated my French friend on the politics and American customs of having a writer on the set. Florent protested. Still, I insisted on keeping my distance and made the excuse that I needed to attend to the script I owed Paramount. I promised that I’d be within radio range. Then came the first set-up of the night. During

  playback of, maybe, the first take, Florent looked to his left, wondered where the hell I’d crawled off to, then sent a call over the walkie-talkies to find me. A production assistant dug me and my laptop out of the camera truck and informed me that “Frog One” insisted that I watch playback with him. So much for my plan of following Mark’s advice. The rest of the night trucked along as usual with me, loyal Tonto, seated next to the director.

  Then the proverbial shit hit the fan.

  We were ninety minutes from the sun’s rising and spoiling our inky black backdrop. Florent was instructing the camera crew when Bruce took sudden exception to the set-up. We were prepping to shoot a follow-up to a scene we’d filmed the week before. I’d subsequently done a bit of rewriting of the scene to serve the sudden and unceremonial exit of one of our actors. Florent and/or Dominique Carrara, whose job was to storyboard every shot, had forgotten to make the adjustment to the shot sequence. The movie star was arguing that the camera set-up the director was prepping no longer fit the flow of the narrative. Most of the crew was conspicuously standing in a wide circle that encompassed the bickering pair, waiting for instructions while Florent and Bruce fought and burned through precious, pre-daylight minutes.

  For the first time in weeks, I stuffed a sock in my instinct to interject and play peacemaker. I stood two paces to the rear of our first assistant director Mark Catone, who turned to me and gestured, “Isn’t this the part where you step in and fix things?”

  “Hey. I’m just the writer,” I defended. “They can do this without me.”

  Then I heard Bruce shout, “Where the fuck is Doug?”

  “Too late,” said Catone.

  When I entered the circle, I could feel Hawk burning stare-holes through me. Bruce, in the meantime, couldn’t wait for me to weigh in on the issue of who was right. Director or movie star? As Florent flipped through the old story boards, I already knew my answer.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. “Bruce is right. With the adjustment we made last week, the storyboards no longer work.”

  “Ya see?” chimed Bruce.

  “Fine!” Florent said loud enough to be heard on Catalina. “You do it!”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “You direct the scene.”

  I chased Florent as he charged back to his video village retreat. “Florent, please. Don’t do this to me. Not tonight. Not afte
r what we talked about.”

  Florent stopped and apologized. He explained that he was short of sleep and had somehow lost his place in the story. And now the fucking sun was threatening to screw him out of keeping to an increasingly thin schedule.

  “Please,” he asked. “You direct the actors. I’ll stand with Gianni (Gianni Coltellacci, cinematographer) and find someplace to put the camera.”

  And so it went. With the eyes of an exhausted crew staring at me as if I’d just gutted Caesar, I walked Bruce and the actors through their moves. We eventually finished the scene, barely making our night. Then after, as I sped east into an eye-gouging sun, I knew sleep was far off. My eight-year-old had Little League tryouts. That and I had hours upon hours of tangled phone calls to look forward to as I tried undo the damage for which I’d surely be blamed.

  By Sunday afternoon I’d convinced Arnold and Bruce to release David Wally from having to produce his

  end of the movie from behind his Santa Monica office desk. And on Monday morning, Hawk gifted me with a permanent chair with my name on it. Later that week, there was even a sunrise ceremony and a huge cake with everybody, including Bruce, singing happy birthday to me. That pretty much sealed it. I was going to be on the movie until the last frame of film rolled.

  Now if I could only get paid for it.

  Week #28: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

  Author Robert “Bob” Crais had been the first to have a crack at adapting his novel. More often than I’d like to count, I’ve been the guy in his position. Adapting my own book to the screen or writing an original screenplay on assignment, only to have another word jockey take over my ride. Sure. It’s part of the business. But it’s never any fun to be outside the process looking in.

  Producer David Wally had expressed to me on more than one occasion that Bob was a straight-up good guy. Proving his point, he’d arranged for the three of us to meet up at a Topanga Canyon Mexican joint to eat a meal of chips and salsa and knock back a few too many cheap Cuervo margaritas. Bob was cool. We traded writers’ war stories. By the end of the evening, I’d promised from then on to keep Bob in the loop. I also made it my responsibility to make sure Bob got his fare share of any swag that came through. Logo’d hats, t-shirts. I delivered. When Bob requested an on-screen cameo in the movie, David Wally and I hooked him up with the part of a SWAT sniper and set him up for a fitting with the show’s costumer. And when the night shoots began, Bob helped me stay on schedule over the weekends by closing a few of our neighborhood bars with me.