“Well, we’re just not certain that farm movies are working right now.”
“Dust,” I suddenly said.
Jeffrey nodded.
“What did you say, Squire?” Richard said.
“Dust,” I said, “there’s lots of dust on a farm. No dust.”
“No dust?” Richard said. He looked like a man trapped in a straitjacket now.
“No.”
The damn dust, it had me again. First at ABC Films and now here.
Our butterfly wasn’t going to flutter.
Guy McElwaine was now the number two man at Columbia Pictures under Frank Price, known as the Sphinx, a studio head made famous for passing on the opportunity to make E.T.
“Do you know who Marty Ransohoff is?” Guy asked me one day.
“He’s the wild boar of the business, from what I hear.”
“You’ll like him. He’s got a great idea, come on down and meet him.”
Marty Ransohoff, I knew, was one of the all-time, all-star producers in Hollywood. The producer of The Beverly Hillbillies and Mr. Ed on television, he had then produced The Americanization of Emily, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sandpipers, Catch-22, The White Dawn, and Silver Streak.
He was obviously larger than life; mythical stories attached themselves to him.
He owned much of the Big Sur coastline … he was close to the top business honchos at Columbia, especially to Herb Allen, and had been integral in the studio’s ouster of former studio chief David Begelman, caught forging a check … during the making of The Americanization of Emily, he had chosen to stay loyal to Paddy Chayefsky and had fired the director William Wyler … Budd Schulberg, the writer, had called Marty “The messiah of the New Hollywood” … Joyce Haber, the columnist, had called him “L. B. Mayer without the overhead” …
Knowing all of that, I still wasn’t prepared for our meeting. He was loud. He spoke in four-letter words. He had a Buddha-like gut. He wore a wrinkled Banlon top with wrinkled pants. He had a few wisps of white hair that were artistically placed across a mammoth bald skull.
“Blood and hair on the walls, that’s what I want,” he growled. “You got that? It ain’t gonna work without blood and hair on the walls.”
What he had in mind, specifically, was a courtroom drama involving a shocking, bloody crime. There hadn’t been a courtroom drama made in years. One of Marty’s favorite movies was Anatomy of a Murder.
“If you make it a woman lawyer,” Guy said, “I think I can get Jane Fonda into it.”
“She’s a pain in the ass,” Marty said. “What do we want to get her into it for?”
“She’s a big star,” Guy said.
“You just want to boost your boyfriend’s deal,” Marty said, nodding at me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Guy smiled.
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about,” Marty growled. “Fonda gets attached and your boyfriend will get more money for writing the script than he’s ever gotten before.”
“You know what your problem is?” Guy said. “You’ve been in this town too long.”
He laughed; so did I.
“Fuck both of you,” Marty said.
The next day Guy, Marty, and I met with Frank Price, the studio head, and two young creative assistants.
I understood quickly why they called Frank Price the Sphinx. He listened to what we had in mind with an utterly stone-faced blank expression. He lit up a cigarette and looked blank. He lit another and looked blanker. He lit another and …
“It’s gonna have blood and hair on the walls,” Marty said. Frank looked blank, the creative assistants nodded.
“It’s gonna have a fuck-’em-if-they-can’t-take-a-joke ending,” Marty said.
Frank looked blank, the creative assistants nodded.
“It’s gonna have great word of mouth on it,” Marty said. “Fuck the critics, it’ll be an audience picture.”
More blankness, more nods.
Marty’s litany went on: Nastier than In Cold Blood, lots of sex, scare-’empissless moments, forget Witness for the Prosecution, forget Anatomy of a Murder, forget that bullshit Perry Mason confess-at-the-end bullshit. We were gonna scare the living shit out of all those assholes out there.
“What assholes?” I said.
“The audience,” Marty said.
“I think I can get Jane Fonda,” Guy said.
The Sphinx finally spoke. Mirabile dictu!
“You can?” Frank Price said.
“I think so,” Guy said.
“That’d be great,” Frank Price said.
“That’d be great,” a creative assistant said.
“That’d be great,” another creative assistant said.
Frank Price lit up another cigarette and looked blank.
The meeting was over.
I looked at the assistants and said, “Do you guys ever do anything but nod?” The assistants laughed nervously.
Frank Price looked at me, his expression blank.
That night Guy and Marty and I met with Jane Fonda at a Japanese sushi place in Century City. We had to take our shoes off.
“I’m not taking my shoes off,” Marty said.
“For Christ’s sake,” Guy said, “it’s a sushi place. She picked it. You gotta take ’em off or you can’t come in.”
“I hate these places where you gotta take your shoes off,” Marty said. “What the fuck kind of place is it where you gotta take your shoes off?”
“It’s a sushi place,” Guy explained.
“I hate fucking sushi,” Marty said.
“You should eat more of it.” Guy smiled, glancing at Marty’s very swollen belly.
“Don’t tell me what the fuck to eat, okay?” Marty said.
“I’m looking out for your health, that’s all,” Guy said.
“Don’t, okay?” Marty said. “Look out for your own fucking health, not mine.”
Marty finally got his shoes off—it wasn’t easy; he looked like he’d burst when he bent over—and Jane joined us ten minutes later, looking radiant. She had just come from taping an exercise video.
She and I talked for a while about Kent State and the Silkwood project we’d tried to put together and then Guy started telling her about what we had in mind.
“It’ll be a big classy piece, like Witness for the Prosecution,” he said. “You’d play an attorney fighting a seemingly impossible case—”
“It’ll have blood and hair on the walls,” Marty said.
Jane lowered her sunglasses and stared at him.
“What?” she said.
Guy cut Marty off.
“The crime itself will be shockingly violent, but not the movie,” Guy said. “We probably won’t even show the killings.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Marty said. “We gotta show the killings.”
“Well, not necessarily,” Guy said, “there are ways of doing it without—”
“It’s nuts,” Marty said, “you gotta show it.”
“It’s up to Joe,” Guy said. “He’ll decide whether we show it or not.”
“He’ll show it,” Marty said. “Did you see Flashdance?”
“I liked Flashdance,” Jane said.
“I don’t know whether I’ll show the crime or not,” I said. “It depends on the material.”
“We’re not making a fucking art movie here,” Marty said.
“You don’t have to make an art movie to make a classy one,” I said.
“You’re damn right,” Guy said. “I suggest we let Joe write the script he wants to write.”
Jane looked at me and smiled.
“Do you want to write it?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at her, “I think it’ll be fun.”
She held my smile a moment and said, “Okay, I’m in.”
“That’s great.” Guy smiled.
“I still think we gotta show it,” Marty said.
We all laughed.
Marty pushed his sushi away. H
e hadn’t touched it.
The next day Guy went to Frank Price, told him Jane Fonda had become “attached” to the project, and suggested that Columbia pay me $600,000 for the script.
Frank thought the number too high and said he’d make the deal for $500,000. Guy suggested that at that rate the studio would be wise to make a three-picture deal with me. Frank agreed to the three scripts at $500,000 apiece and Guy informed Marty.
“It’s bananas,” Marty said, “it’s fuckin’ bananas. The guy’s had two pictures made and on both of them he got a shared screenplay credit. He’s never written a movie that he had sole credit on. And you’re paying him $500,000 for three of ’em? Bananas!”
From then on, that’s always what Marty called me: Joe Bananas.
Marty and I took off for Chicago and New York in an effort, as Marty said, to make the script “authentic.” I tried to tell him that I had covered trials as a reporter, had even been hauled in front of a grand jury once in a prosecutor’s attempt to force me to divulge my sources, but Marty said this would give the script “the seal of approval.”
In Chicago we had an appointment to see a woman criminal attorney who had won all forty-three of her felony cases. It was sweltering when we got to her office and Marty’s gargantuan head was soaked in sweat.
The attorney told us that she felt she had won most of her cases in jury selection.
“If you get the wrong jury,” she said, “no matter what you do, no matter how good a case you present, no matter how articulately, passionately you present it, you’re going to lose.”
“That won’t work,” Marty said.
“On the contrary,” she said with a smile, “with the right jury, it’s worked for me all the time.”
“Not in the movie it won’t,” Marty said. “We’re putting blood and hair on the walls, we’re not doing a movie about jury selection.”
“Well,” she said. That’s all she said.
I asked her if she had ever represented a client she knew in her heart was guilty.
“I’ve never known any of my clients to be guilty,” she said.
“Do you ever ask them if they did it?”
“It’s the one question I never ask.”
“Is it important for you, as a human being, to know if you are possibly freeing someone who committed a crime?”
“It’s more important for me to know that I am doing the best job I can, as a professional, in behalf of my client.”
“Do you ever feel badly about maybe turning a guilty person free?”
She looked at me.
“Whoa, whoa there, Bananas,” Marty said, “she’s not on trial here. She’s helping us.”
“Jesue Christ, Bananas,” Marty said in the street outside, “what the fuck were you doing in there?”
He seemed to be gasping for breath in the dank, humid air.
“I was just asking some questions that I thought might be relevant in the script.”
“Don’t go off track here,” he said. “I don’t want this to be a Jane Fonda movie.”
“It is a Jane Fonda movie,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be a Jane Fonda movie just because she’s in it,” Marty said.
We went to New York to interview Judge Burton Roberts, a Runyonesque New York character, an old friend of Marty’s, and later a model for one of the characters in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities.
“I don’t understand what we’re talking to this guy for,” I said to Marty. I explained to him that I knew all about the court system. I had even spent an enjoyable afternoon with F. Lee Bailey once during the second Shepard trial in Cleveland.
“He’s very well liked, very well known, and very respected,” Marty said of Judge Burton Roberts.
“That may very well be true. But I still don’t understand why we need to interview him.”
“He’s going to be our legal adviser on the movie,” Marty said.
“Great,” I said, “but what will we interview him about?”
“We’ll take him out to lunch and chat,” Marty said, “and that will be the interview. We’ll pay him some money for him to be our legal adviser and then, when those fuckheads at the studio put their fuck-you shoes on and try to find some legal flaw in the script, Burt’s going to tell them they’re full of shit and they’ll throw their shoes back in the closet.”
“Got it,” I said.
“You got a lot of learning to do, Bananas,” Marty said.
We had a very pleasant lunch with Judge Burton Roberts at an Italian restaurant near the courthouse. Judge Roberts told some timeworn brightly polished anecdotes, signed on as our legal adviser, and thanked us for the lunch.
“We flew all the way to New York for this?” I asked Marty afterward. “Couldn’t we have made the deal with him over the phone?”
“You still don’t get it,” he said. “We’ve got a personal connection now. You’ve got a personal connection now. He liked you. You may not have any sole credits, Bananas, but occasionally you’re likable. So when we need him to write a letter defending your script on a legal basis to the studio, he’ll write a good letter. He’ll care.”
“Wouldn’t he do the same thing if we just had a deal with him?”
“This isn’t about the money,” Marty Ransohoff said. “That’s one of the things you still haven’t learned. This business isn’t always about the money.”
I was ready now, thanks to all of this stimulating, extensive, and in-depth research, to write the script, but Guy stopped me.
“Frank wants an outline,” he said.
“I don’t do outlines. My deal doesn’t call for an outline.”
“I know that,” he said, “I made your deal.”
“So what are you asking me for an outline for?”
“I’m not asking you, Frank Price is.”
“Tell him it’s not in my deal.”
“He knows it’s not in your deal,” Guy said. “He’s asking you as a favor.”
“I don’t owe him any favors.”
“You owe me some,” Guy said.
“I know I do,” I said.
“So I’m asking you.”
“You said Frank was asking me.”
“That was before. Now I’m asking you.”
Frank Price, he explained, had started as a writer. He had written a great many television dramas and had then gone on to be a TV executive and then a movie executive.
“That’s why he’s so good at what he does,” Guy said. “He’s a writer. Don’t you have any respect for your fellow writers?”
“For my fellow screenwriters?” I asked. “You know the answer to that. He isn’t even a screenwriter. He’s a TV writer.”
· · ·
I wrote the outline, finally, as a favor to my new friend, the Sphinx. Guy “loved” it. Marty said, “It’ll work.”
It was the story of a newspaper publisher in San Francisco, Jack Forrester, who is arrested for killing his wife and her maid in a brutal “blood and hair on the walls” way. He is defended by a woman named Teddy Barnes who believes in his innocence and then begins to think that he is guilty. To my amazement, Frank Price spoke as soon as we began the meeting about my outline. He was still smoking, his expression was still blank, but he was speaking.
“Your ending won’t work,” is what he said.
In my ending, Jack Forrester is guilty of the killings and Teddy Barnes shoots him to death. She shoots him after they have had an affair during the trial.
“We have to have an upbeat ending that audiences will love,” Frank Price said. “You can’t break their hearts and then have them walk out of the theater.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because they’ll hate the movie, tell their friends they hate the movie, and nobody will come to see it.”
“This is a mystery,” I said. “If you fake them out of their seats, if you shock them at the end, won’t they walk out having gotten their money’s worth?”
“They don’t l
ike to be faked out at the end of a mystery,” Frank Price said. “They don’t like to feel stupid. If you make them feel stupid, they’ll hate the movie.”
The two creative assistants nodded with such gravity that I was afraid their heads would hit the table. Guy and Marty said nothing, looking as blank now as Frank.
“You mean you give them a predictable ending and they’ll be pleased? If they figure it out before they see it, then they’ll like it?”
“Exactly,” Frank Price said.
“Exactly,” the creative assistants echoed.
“Bullshit,” I said.
Guy cleared his throat. Marty kept touching the few strands of hair across his head, atop which was a halo of sweat.
“Is that the kind of mystery you like?” I asked Frank Price. “Where you can figure out what happens before it happens?”
“No,” he said, “it’s not.”
“There you go,” I said.
“But I am not your audience. I am more intelligent than your audience.”
“You’re more intelligent than the audience and your intelligence tells you that they’re dumb.”
I phrased it as a statement. I wanted the Sphinx to give me a flat “yes” to that.
He didn’t, though. He gave me a look that said: Are you getting cute with me here?
Then he said, “You cannot use this ending.”
Then he said, “This is the ending I want you to use.”
He detailed it for me. The movie had to end with Jack Forrester and Teddy Barnes holding each other. He was innocent. She had mistakenly thought for a moment that he was guilty, but he was innocent.
“You mean she’s dumb, too,” I said.
The Sphinx was glaring at me now. I was using this word “dumb” too many times in one meeting.
“Why ‘dumb’?” he asked. It was like he didn’t even want to say the word.
“Because she mistakenly thinks for a moment that he did the killings.”
“That doesn’t make her dumb,” Frank Price said.
“What does it make her?”
“A woman who fell in love and lost her head,” Frank Price said.
He laid it down again. This was the ending I had to use. This was the movie the studio would make. If I insisted on my ending, the studio wouldn’t make it and would bring in some obedient writer who’d change it.
There was a chill in the air now and, in an effort to warm it a little, the Sphinx suddenly became avuncular. “I know what I’m talking about, Joe,” he said, “believe me.” He told me of all the TV things he’d written and supervised.
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