The Writer's Cut

by Eric Idle

  “You’re a named writer,” says Morty. “People are quoting you.”

  It’s true. The Hollywood Reporter quotes a witty remark I never said at an opening I didn’t attend. “If I had a dime for every star I slept with at this party …”

  “I never said that, Morty.”

  “It doesn’t matter as long as it’s funny,” says Morty.

  “I wasn’t even at the opening.”

  “Lucky you. I was and it was god-awful.”

  I’m variously described as a wag, a wit and a man about town. Hollywood has come calling. Big time. Jeffrey Katzenberg is apparently miffed Morty won’t let him call me direct.

  “I told him you were too busy.”

  Too busy? I’m too busy to speak to the head of a studio!

  “Coppola wants to fly you up to San Francisco. I said you’re going nowhere. If he wants to see you he’ll have to send a jet.”

  I’m passing out.

  “Five managers have been on the phone. They all want to represent you. I told them you don’t need them. You’re hot already. Oh and Billy Crystal wants to do the screenplay. I told him it’s not really his field.”

  You did what, Marty?

  “HBO even returned my call. That’s how hot you have become. Chris Albrecht called personally. Apparently Hanks has been talking to him.”

  The book that doesn’t exist is soon to become a movie. I couldn’t come clean now, even if I wanted to. I can’t turn my back on all this. I’m famous.

  Gina Gershon calls me up.

  She wants to know whether she is in the book.

  I have never met her.

  “Gina what are you saying?”

  “I just want to know whether I’m in your book or not.”

  “What makes you think you might be?”

  “Well you know …”

  “What?”

  “I was pretty wild back then.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t remember some evenings too clearly.”

  Wow.

  “Gina,” I say. “I will never forget them.”

  “Them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re gonna put them in the book? You are, aren’t you? I just know you are.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh come on, Stanley, give me a break here. I’m always the one that gets blamed.”

  I agree to meet her for dinner to discuss it.

  Can you believe that? I have a date with Gina Gershon to discuss whether or not I am going to reveal something that never happened. I am being asked to hush up a sexual adventure I haven’t even dreamed of with a woman I haven’t even met.

  Wow. This book is powerful stuff.

  Gina is glorious. She’s only about twenty minutes late and looks stunning in tight black leather. Hardly surprising she doesn’t recognize me. I’m not miffed. We never met. When I introduce myself she stares at me.

  “Do I know you?” she says.

  I catch her staring at me like that throughout dinner. I think she is on to me. But it’s all worthwhile as she looks glorious. Her jet black hair, and those sexy cat’s eyes and those killer cheek bones. I have always been a big fan, but of course I don’t say so.

  We are at Il Sole. On Sunset. I used her name to get a table. Paulo, the owner, is very pleasant. He comes over and sits with us. He looks owlish behind his thin wire glasses. I love his Italian voice. His Italian gestures. His Italian food.

  “You know you are a very lucky boy,” he says looking at me. “She is a special woman, you know that. Many pretty women come in here, many actresses, but she …” He taps his forehead. “She is different. She has brains.”

  Gina doesn’t bat an eyelid at the compliment. She has been staring at me, occasionally narrowing her big black intelligent eyes. She waits until he leaves. Then she says “I didn’t have sex with you.”

  I say nothing. I can think of nothing to say. Luckily silence is my best defense, because she suddenly softens. And folds.

  “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I just don’t remember.”

  I like Gina. She is bright as hell. I think I bore her, but she tolerates me as I witter on. She tells me one tit-bit which I definitely intend to put in my book.

  “Whenever I visit a new town,” she says, “I always check out two things. The strip clubs and the junk shops. The strip club to see what their sex lives are like, and the junk shops to see what they’re throwing away.”

  I told you she was bright.

  I love her. When I wave her goodbye at Valet Parking I promise her a part in my new book.

  Because you see The Writer’s Cut is going to be a major motion picture.

  *

  Morty calls me with the news as I’m packing for New York. I was aware there had been a major bidding war raging, as frequent ecstatic calls from Morty had updated me with live news from the battlefield. He loves this. He lives for it. Live poker, he calls it. He acquaints me with the players, but I’m soon lost in a list of first names, Steven, and Barry and Michael and Mike and Jeffery and Sherry. He is in Agent heaven. He has something they actually want.

  “It’s like having sex without begging,” he says.

  All the controversy and the yards of publicity have simply strengthened his hand. William Morris has been sending out “coverage” on my novel for weeks now. Someone – who, who the fuck? – has carefully synopsized my non-existent book, and assessed its potential as a movie, based upon a brief précis which they had somehow spun out of the three pages from Stroke magazine I had sent to Richard Hume at Pangloss. Since the only scene they had was the celebrity blowjob in the Chateau Marmont, this was now a major theme in the movie, though it has become transmuted, by the alchemy of some anonymous professional reader, into a heart-rending story of a major actor, trapped in a loveless marriage, falling for a gifted but tragically unknown writer. This was nothing less than the old joke about the actress in Hollywood who was so dumb she fucked the writer, but I must say it had been very cleverly embellished into a compelling and funny synopsis. The reader warmly recommended the book, suggested it had major hit potential, and was likely to appeal to both sexes, but particularly young males of 16, the prime target of all Hollywood movies.

  Bingo. The phones were ringing. Actresses all over town were fighting to play this role. They were inundating the agencies with requests for the synopsis. So far Meg and Daryl and Courtney and Sandra were speaking daily to their agents about it. Even Gina asked me to put in a good word for her. I said I would. She had heard that Angelina was going after it aggressively, and that Billy-Bob wanted to direct.

  “There are so few good parts for women,” she said. “So few men understand us. You, Stanley, are an exception.”

  I know she was blowing smoke up my ass, because I heard later from a mutual friend that she thought I was a dork, and that dinner was a disaster, but I can’t blame her, it’s a tough world out there for actresses.

  7

  “You should be proud of yourself” says Morty, “it looks like you’ve got yourself a hit movie.”

  I swear it’s the coverage and not me.

  A must-see movie: a bright, intelligent, sexy comedy; a date movie, a feel good movie, a tent-pole movie that with the right casting can do really well in the summer with a wide release.

  Even I was convinced when I read it. Some anonymous reader had done quite a job on this.

  Morty is triumphant on the phone.

  “Are you sitting down, kiddo?”

  “Tell me. Tell me right now. How much?”

  I have become very mercenary now I’m a novelist. I wasn't like this when I wrote for money. I think success has changed me.

  “Three million dollars!”

  Even I am surprised. Shocked, in fact.

  “Three million dollars?”

  “That’s the offer.”

  Oh. My. God.

  “But there’s one little snag.”

  Oh no. No, no please.

  “They want to c
hange the title?” he says.

  “That’s all?”

  “I said no way.”

  “You said what?”

  “I told them the title was the very essence of this deal.”

  My heart is beating erratically. I’m having a heart attack, I’m sure of it.

  “You turned it down?”

  “I knew you’d see it my way.”

  “What do they want to call it?”

  “Kiss and Sell,” he says.

  “That’s not a bad …”

  “Can you believe it?”

  “I’ve heard far worse …”

  “I told them to take their shit title and shove it up their ass.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They’ll get back to me.”

  I have to crawl into bed. We have just been offered a three million dollar advance for the film rights of a book no one has written, let alone read, and my agent has turned it down. I have just lost three million dollars. This is a first for me.

  *

  Oprah won’t touch me.

  That’s what they keep telling me. They want to fly me to Chicago after New York but Oprah won’t touch me. It’s a big deal.

  “Oprah won’t touch you,” they say with a shrug. The idea of outing actresses is just too tacky for her. She’s into positive female imaging. My book of celebrity blowjobs is hardly her idea of reading chic. So no Oprah for me. The publishers are disappointed. Her Book Club sells thousands. She’s bigger than the Booker, bigger than a Pulitzer, bigger even than a Nobel. But she hates me. Won’t even consider it. Oh well. So I don’t go to Chicago. My New York schedule, however, is plenty busy. Howard Stern live in the morning, Letterman later that day if they can squeeze me on, otherwise Conan tomorrow. Regis in the morning. Print interviews with The Book Publisher, The New York Times, The Village Voice etc etc. Several live radio spots and some more TV. Perhaps The View.

  I am still reeling from the loss of the film deal. I have angst on the First Class seat all the way to New York. I call Morty the minute I check in to the Plaza to see if anything’s changed. “Not yet, kiddo. But I can hear them sweating.”

  They’re sweating? I’m in total meltdown.

  Morty isn’t fazed one bit. He loves this game. This is why he’s an agent. To him the three mill is not lost, it’s just sitting on the table. The way he sees it is the pot can only get bigger … By saying no he has reassured the other players at the table that this thing is truly worth the amount of money he says it is. He has reinforced the bid. Now he awaits their response. He doesn’t even blink. Personally I think Kiss and Sell is a great title. Matter of fact I’m thinking of using it instead of The Writer’s Cut. Morty brushes aside my pusillanimity.

  “Listen,” says Morty. “It’s all bullshit. We can say there is to be no title change, we can demand casting rights, we can get approval over the color of the panties that the leading actress wears but it doesn’t mean jack shit. Ultimately, the studio does what they want. Know why? It’s their money. First lesson in Hollywood. Second lesson, you can complain, you can moan or you can sue, doesn’t matter jack shit. They have more lawyers than you. They have more money than you. And they have more time than you. So they are just playing around here. Feeling if we’re hard.”

  He always resorts to sexual imagery. I wish he wouldn’t.

  Howard Stern wants to know if it is going to be a movie. I’m suitably vague.

  “I’ve been in movies ya know?”

  Duh, Howard, did you think we missed it? He asks me about Hollywood, which fascinates and offends him equally in that New York way. He implies he’s screwed more actresses than me, and then announces for all America to hear that I probably have a tiny dick.

  Stupidly I protest.

  “Well if it’s not true show Robin your dick.”

  Only in America. How can I be feeling defensive about refusing to show a laughing African American woman my penis on the radio?

  The best moment comes later when he relents, stops picking on me and persuades a blonde broad to flash her chest on the air. I’m sitting next to her and this is the most interesting thing that’s happened for a long time. She is flustered and bold at the same time. But she does it anyway with bravado, to applause and whistles. The breasts are clearly new. They might as well have Made in Hollywood stamped on them, but she has sly bedroom eyes in that dark sexy Ellen Barkin way, and long thin legs with exquisitely turned ankles.

  “Look at Stanley,” says Howard. “I think his tiny dick is definitely interested. You should talk to him honey, he’s casting a movie.”

  Robin winks at me. Howard laughs and it’s all over.

  “Just kidding, man. Having fun.”

  Hey, I’ve been on Howard Stern.

  And I got the blonde’s number in my pants.

  8

  As I step into the waiting limo there’s a call for me on my publicist’s cell. It’s Morty.

  “Congratulations,” he says. “Paramount have bought it.”

  I could kiss all New York I am so elated. I cannot speak, so Morty does.

  “We have agreed to leave the title issue to one side. They have bought it under whatever title and in the deal we agree The Writer’s Cut is pre-approved. They’re gonna wait and see how big the book sells. No point in them insisting they hate our title if it’s on every damn newsstand. I knew they’d see reason. Congratulations, kiddo. Aren’t you glad I insisted you write this thing?”

  Is he serious?

  Sure he is. The art form of Hollywood is claiming credit for other people’s success.

  “Morty?” I say.

  “Nah, don’t thank me. It would be nothing without you.”

  Actually it’s nothing with me.

  My joy at the movie sale is clouded by the revelation that I won’t get to write the screenplay.

  “Nobody does the first draft, kiddo. When did they ever shoot a first draft?”

  “But I’m a screenwriter, who better than me to adapt my own work?”

  What work? I am just dreading someone finding out there is no there there.

  “Let them do the initial drafts, then you come along and we take a lot more money off them to rewrite it.”

  “Well …”

  “If you want I can tell them you insist on doing it, but they have already started someone on the screenplay.”

  Excuse me?

  “Paramount has already started the writer.”

  They haven’t seen the book, but they have started “adapting” it. I am outraged for the minute it takes me to realize that there is no fucking work for them to adapt.

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  “Who is the screenwriter they’ve hired?”

  “Marvin Lutwig.”

  “Marvin Lutwig!” I’m having a heart attack again.

  “Says he’s a friend of yours and will stay very faithful to the book.”

  “Marvin Lutwig …”

  “Told Paramount you’d already spoken about the book last week. He loves you apparently.”

  I’m gonna die.

  “He told them it’s the best book he’s ever read.”

  “He said he read it?”

  “And loved it. Congratulations, kiddo.”

  Ahhh. Marvin Lutwig is adapting my non-existent book.

  My chest is exploding.

  My best enemy has conned Paramount into paying him to adapt my unwritten book.

  Oh thou Goddess of Irony, help me.

  *

  Now that The Writer’s Cut is a hot movie property I wonder if I even have to write the novel at all?

  Richard Hume certainly thinks so. He is panicking at lunch. We are dining at Michael’s on 54th. Michael himself hovers around the table smiling at me.

  “Heard you on Howard Stern,” he says. “I never miss him. How were the breasts?”

  It’s like he’s asking “How’s the chicken?”

  “Very tasty,” I say.

  Michael squeez
es my shoulder and leaves us with the menus. Richard Hume is too flustered to concern himself with food. He hasn’t been bull-shitting all morning. I am weary with lying. The New York Times was exhausting. I had to combine the right amount of modesty with just the right degree of boasting. They, being intellectuals, hate the screenwriter thing, but they love the fucking. It seems everyone in New York is interested in the shtupping in Hollywood. I had to be particularly inventive. I think I sold them on the idea of my sexploits as some kind of symbolic revenge on the treatment of writers in the movies. The penis as the wrath of God kind of thing. I hope I didn’t sound too much like Philip Roth. I made a silly gag about the Roth of God, which I think they liked.

  Now Richard Hume is trying to bully me.

  “We must have the text,” says Richard Hume. “The booksellers are crying out for copies. Here we have a runaway bestseller on our hands and no text.”

  “Well, when have I had a second? I’ve been busy promoting.”

  “We know that, and you’ve been brilliant. We don’t usually do it this way round. Normally we have the book and then we do the promotion, but things kinda got out of hand here. But look, we think if we can have the text right now we can turn it around in three or four weeks and still make our April deadline for finished books.”

  “You can have finished copies in four weeks?”

  “We have the printer standing by and if we get the text today, we can make our deadline, but any later and we are just not going to make it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Unless we can get the text to the printer tomorrow we’re gonna have to announce the book is delayed and that’s gonna impact on our sales. We may even miss the Beach Blanket market.”

  Now it’s my turn to panic. All that lovely money running out of the window.

  “So then you’d wait for Christmas?”

  “Can’t do that I’m afraid. We have a really busy schedule in the Fall. The whole point of the campaign has been to position you in airports, hotels and resorts. We’d just have to put it on hold.”