Forget about the hobnobbing you’re doing with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, forget about the NFL franchise the papers say you’re working on—(What for? Does anybody really miss the Rams?). The town is not the same without you. It is like the Yankees without Ruth, boxing without Ali, the Tonight Show without Carson, the Kremlin without Stalin.
It’s so boring that I don’t even give the CAA building the finger anymore. Now I wave. I had fun giving it the finger. I feel middle-aged waving.
Nobody gets inscribed copies of The Art of War anymore. Nobody gets Japanese techno-gadget birthday presents. (Remember the wake-up clock and the watch you gave me?) Nobody gets the kind of expert medical care you used to provide. (Remember the acupuncturist you were going to send up to Marin County when I hurt my back in Santa Fe?)
When you were around, there was this mad, amok buzz all the time about the skullduggery that was either going on, thought to be going on, or hoped to be going on. It must have been the kind of power breakfast gossip that went on around the Borgias—deals and conspiracies and turnarounds and buyouts and princes in favor or out of favor. Michael Ovitz couldn’t even take a trip out of town without the hall mice and the wannabe hall mice, the sycophants and the guileful, spinning their red-sky-at-sunset theories: His assistant says he’s in Tokyo, but that must mean that he’s not in Tokyo, otherwise the assistant wouldn’t have said he’s in Tokyo.
Michael, I saw a producer who barely knew you call Jimmy’s, the Grille, and the Palm one mid-morning to try to find out if you were having lunch there that day. I saw the man reduced to near hysterical desperation when he couldn’t get a straight answer. Do you know what he did? He went from one place to the other, hoping to find you, and when he didn’t, he went over to the Hamburger Hamlet and disconsolately scarfed down a pound of cheesy meat.
About a month ago, a friend of mine saw you eating in the executive dining room at Disney. You were having lunch with Cruise. My friend said Cruise looked great, with that extraordinary sparkle the man has. And he said you looked … bored.
I’ve worked with Michael Eisner, I like Michael Eisner, although I think he makes too much money. (I know, I know, people in glass houses, etc. etc. etc.) But conspiring with Michael Eisner can’t have the same jolt as conspiring with Ronnie at CAA. You and Ronnie Meyer went after the world. You and Michael Eisner are going after the cash.
You are in an Elba of your own creation, Michael.
Come on, man, gather the foot soldiers and grab the guns. I miss the sound of gunfire in the night. I miss the smoke in the air. Wilshire Boulevard has become a demilitarized zone. If things go like this, one of these days someone will graffiti the CAA building.
Come back and kick ass, Michael. Send out the copies of The Art of War again.
That’s the difference. You kicked it. Richard Lovett shows it.
Betty Thomas had changed her mind about directing Male Pattern Baldness.
Paramount, naturally, was upset.
The studio had made a $4 million deal with me with Betty attached to direct it. They wouldn’t have made a deal that lucrative with me without a hot director like Betty attached.
Jeff Berg and Jim Wiatt were even more upset. This was the second time this had happened.
New Line had paid me $4 million for One Night Stand, with Adrian Lyne attached to direct it.
The next time we went out with a spec script, Jeff and Jimmy feared correctly … with a director attached … every studio would remember what had happened with Betty and Adrian.
· · ·
I had lunch with Betty at the Bel-Air Hotel to try to find out why she didn’t want to direct Male Pattern anymore.
She told me that she had lost faith in the script. She had organized a “reading” with some actor friends and the script, she said, “just didn’t play.”
She was also questioning who would go to see the movie.
A contemporary hit comedy, Betty said, was “laughs and liberal inserts”—whereas my script was an assault on liberal political correctness.
“Maybe the fly-over people will see it,” Betty said. “But they don’t go to movies. Hit movies are made by the two coasts and I don’t think the coast people will like this attack on political correctness … because they’re too politically correct.”
Betty said she feared the movie would fall “between the pews.”
I told her I’d heard a rumor that she didn’t want to do her next movie for Paramount and was making a case against the script so she could get out of her commitment.
Betty Thomas looked at me, smiled, and said, “Esty, I just can’t believe you sometimes.”
Sherry Lansing told me she had the hottest young director in town signed up to Paramount and he wanted to direct Male Pattern Baldness.
Mark Illsley had just directed Happy, Texas, a Sundance Film Festival hit that Harvey Weinstein had bought for Miramax for $10 million. The movie hadn’t been released yet but everyone knew, Sherry said, that it would be a big critical and commercial hit.
I asked to see it and both Naomi and I thought it was nothing special. We couldn’t believe it would be a hit and couldn’t believe Harvey had paid $10 million for it.
Mark Illsley, a pleasant young man, came to the house and told me how much he loved my script and how little he wanted to change it.
He gave me his suggestions and I responded by saying his suggestions would change the script not “a little” but “a whole lot.”
His response was to shrug and tell us that on the day Naomi and Bill Macdonald’s house burned down in Venice … Mark had been hanging around Evans’s office, heard about the fire, and drove out to Venice to see if he could help. He had carried some of Naomi’s and Bill’s scorched possessions out of the house.
Mark Illsley was clearly a nice, good-natured, and sympathetic young man. I liked him.
His suggestions were sophomoric, idiotic, and asinine.
· · ·
I considered his suggestions for a while and finally wrote Sherry Lansing a letter:
Dear Sherry,
I have grappled for months now trying to do the rewrite with Mark Illsley on Male Pattern Baldness. After trying several drafts, I’ve concluded that I’ve involved myself in a process which is, simply, a mistake. It isn’t just that Mark’s vision of the third act is sophomoric … that Frank not kill himself, that the movie end with shit (literally) flying from sewers and faucet taps and fountains … it is a catastrophic diminishment and trivialization of what my script is about.
The title of the movie is Male Pattern Baldness. It is a comedic and metaphoric examination of what is happening to many men in our society today. Men are being made to feel isolated, alienated from the ethics and values which they grew up with. They are, in Susan Faludi’s terms, “stiffed.” More and more men are angry and more and more men are responding in the classic primal male way—by getting a gun and going to war with the world. It is happening over and over again—two days ago in Honolulu, yesterday in Seattle.
It is that explosive male rage which this script taps into. But you can’t tap into something by removing the “something.” By removing the rampage and the suicide at the end of the third act, we would be castrating the script at its core. The script is timelier than ever—indeed, tragically, it seems to become timelier each day. By removing the rampage and the suicide, we are removing its very timeliness. If the script is filmed without compromise, the movie can be a shark that bites deeply into the national psyche. By removing the rampage and the suicide, the movie will be a tranquilized shark without teeth and will swim by audiences who won’t even notice its presence in the water.
We have a script that could become a movie that forces America to pay attention. The news is our greatest ally. You say you want to make a movie about male rage and the part you want to leave out is the rage. I don’t get it.
Sherry Lansing didn’t respond to my letter, but Happy, Texas was released and bombed both critically and commercially.
My script went up on the shelf and is still unproduced.
A couple months after Mark’s departure from Male Pattern, I considered writing Sherry a note suggesting that Billy Friedkin would be perfect for it—but I started to laugh so hard thinking about it that I didn’t do it.
There was still a chasm between us and Steve and Suzi, but it wasn’t as wide as it had been.
When they came to visit, they slept in our house and we ate together, although they still had little to say to Naomi.
Now Naomi also came with us on our day-long jaunts and ate lunch with us. What gave me great hope for the future was that when Steve and Suzi visited separately or with a friend they were significantly warmer to Naomi than when they visited us together.
I thought I understood that: together, they wanted to show each other that they were being loyal to Gerri’s hatred of Naomi, but separately, they couldn’t help showing that they had always, before the breakup, liked Naomi very much.
When Mark Canton left Sony, I applied for his job. I wrote a letter to Mr. Nobuyuki Idei, the president of the Sony Corporation. It appeared in Daily Variety. It was headlined “I Want Mark’s Job.”
Dear Sir:
In your honor I am writing this not on my manual typewriter but on a computer.
Since you seem to be having some difficulty replacing Mark Canton, I thought I’d tell you why I am perfect for the job.
I realize this situation is so grave that everyone is losing hair over it. Here are my qualifications:
I have more hair than Jon Peters and Peter Guber combined. Theirs is thinning—Jon’s more than Peter’s.
I once called Mark Canton “benighted.” It has taken you some time to agree, but we clearly think alike.
I have recently produced only male offspring.
Women, the most important moviegoers, discuss my films endlessly.
I have won three major industry awards—one Sour Apple, two Razzies.
I smoke heavily. So does most of our country.
I stayed at the Kahala Hilton at the same time as Mr. Morita. We swam in the same ocean.
The media loves me. My wife and I were both picked as two of the scariest people in Hollywood. If I get this gig, we will entertain!
I don’t speak Japanese, but I do speak Hungarian. I used to speak broken English; the critics say I write it. We can communicate.
Pat Buchanan once attacked me in a column for being a “foreigner.” Solidarity, Mr. Idei.
I refused to rewrite Gangland for your studio because the notes were dumb. I did it for you, Mr. Idei. You would have been embarrassed. Now you can thank me honorably.
I gave your company $2 million back when I refused to do that rewrite. You have already profited off of me.
I drive a Toyota Land Cruiser, listen to a Sony Discman, and watch a big-screen Mitsubishi.
The Los Angeles Times says Michael Ovitz has been giving you advice. He has given me advice in the past, too.
Michael Ovitz sent me The Art of War. I read it. I learned from it. I sent him a letter.
Sharon Stone and my wife and I have an intimate connection. So we wouldn’t have to pay Sharon $20 million per movie.
My wife refers to herself as my “faithful concubine.” That’s got a historical ring to it, doesn’t it?
I know Jack Valenti. He always asks about my health.
I know Jerry Bruckheimer intimately. We interviewed strippers together.
I would make a three-picture deal with myself. That would cost you $20 million.
I wouldn’t publicize the deal, but it would leak. I would publicize nothing, but everything would leak.
I would convince Paul Verhoeven to turn Starship Troopers into the first NC-17 bug movie with a spiritual message.
Kevin Bacon is a friend of mine. All roads lead to Kevin Bacon. (It’ll help with casting.)
I tried to reflect the Japanese point of view in Showgirls … “In America, everyone is a gynecologist.”
I’m a writer. Studio executives want to be writers. They’re crazy. I want to be a studio executive. I’m not crazy.
You fired Jon Peters. But my coffee table broke his hand. (You’re welcome.)
My father called the day after his birthday and said, “You didn’t call me to wish me a happy birthday.”
I said, “You haven’t called me for years.”
“So you punish me by not calling me on mine?”
“Is treating you the same way that you treat me punishment?” I said.
He laughed and said, “Touché.”
I said, “Why don’t you call me on my birthday anymore?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe I have Alzheimer’s.”
“You don’t have Alzheimer’s.”
“I know,” he said, “but can’t we pretend I do so you’ll feel sorry for me and forget me not calling you on your birthdays?”
He laughed.
“By the way,” he said, “happy birthday.”
I said, “It’s not my birthday.”
My father said, “I know, but store my best wishes away for when I don’t call you next year.”
I said, “Happy birthday to you, too.”
He said, “Thank you. That’s why I called you. To hear you say it. And now you did.”
He hung up.
Cathedral Latin’s alumni association wrote asking me to be their guest of honor at an alumni event.
Naomi wrote the president of the alumni association back.
We received your recent correspondence and I would like to reply by informing you that my husband does not remember you. As a matter of fact, the only memories he does have of Cathedral Latin School are painful ones he would rather forget. … While I certainly can’t hold you responsible for the treatment my husband was subjected to at your school, I strongly encourage you never to write to him again. Also, please communicate to other members of the alumni association that Joe Eszterhas wants nothing to do with your organization nor any of the people who may have attended school with him. Do not send him your newsletter nor solicit him for donations. Do not invite him to attend any other events.
My husband has always loved Cleveland and has spoken many times publicly and privately of his deep affection for the people there. Unfortunately, those feelings do not extend to Cathedral Latin. Please do not continue to assume they do.
I did the Today show with a Mormon video store owner from Utah who was editing sex, violence, and profanity out of the videos he was renting out. He even edited out Rhett Butler saying he didn’t give a damn in Gone With the Wind.
I said, “You have no right to do these things. You’re a vandal and you should be viewed as a vandal.”
He said, “And you’re a pornographer.”
I said, “You’re a terrorist.”
That night we met again on The News with Brian Williams.
He called me a pornographer again.
I said, “Mormon is only one letter away from moron.”
My kindergartner, Joey, came home one day all excited. One of his classmates had brought his daddy’s Oscar to class on “Share” day.
Joey had held the Oscar, had felt it, had liked the feel of it.
Joey wanted to see my Oscar, too.
I told him I didn’t have one.
Joey said, “How come?”
Those of us who lived in Point Dume had the bejesus scared out of us one night when it felt like the world was suddenly exploding. Car alarms rang, dogs howled, babies screamed while the adults ran around trying to figure out what had happened. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was louder than a sonic boom. It couldn’t have been fireworks since it wasn’t the Fourth of July.
We rocked the babies, shushed the dogs, turned off the car alarms, and called the cops. The cops told us there was nothing to fear. Brad and Jennifer were getting married down near the beach and their ceremony had gotten delayed and they had imported some super-megaton fir
eworks from Bali.
We forgave Brad and Jennifer. It was obviously an industry event and they were the new golden couple and we forgave them just like we forgave the helicopters and the sound trucks which were always down there below us on Westward Beach filming, keeping us awake.
We all fed off the Industry tit, so how could we complain about Brad and Jennifer or Jerry Bruckheimer re-creating Pearl Harbor right outside our bedroom balconies?
Two weeks later, though …
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Holy Jesus, the babies were screaming and the dogs going nuts and the car alarms screeching and the cops told us it was another wedding.
Two nobodies had read about Brad and Jennifer’s wedding, and decided to copycat it right down to the imported fireworks from Bali. Two people who didn’t work in the industry. Two civilians.
Two civilians? Waking us up? Making our babies cry and our dogs howl and our car batteries run down? The Malibu City Council passed a resolution the next week. All weddings with fireworks would have to be approved on an individual case-by-case basis by the City Council.
Naomi’s journal:
Our housekeeper, Aurora, whom I adore, was talking about her hair yesterday. It’s black, but the ends of it are red. She said she wished it were all one color.
“Why did you dye it? Did you want a change?” I asked.
She said, “Oh no. This lady I work for in Beverly Hills, she ask me to.”
I asked why.
She said “She tole me her cats are afraid of dark-hair peoples. She say if I dye it, she pay for it. So I did. Why not? Is free!” She smiled.
I said I couldn’t believe anyone would actually say that.
Then she told me about the time she used to have to sweep the Pacific Coast Highway. The woman she worked for didn’t like the sand that stirred up every time a car went by, so Aurora would wait for a lull in traffic, run out, and sweep as much as she could from the road in front of the house.
“I did that every day, for one year, and then one day she told me I was too fat, so I go.”
CAA, the agency formerly headed by Michael Ovitz, asked me to participate in a fifteen-minute comedy film that premiered at the agency’s annual company retreat.
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