When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man

by Jerry Weintraub; Rich Cohen; George Clooney

  When we got home, my father sat me down and asked, "Why did you do it, Jerry?"

  "Why? Because I wanted to see the world."

  Everything but the Girl

  I had no desire to go to college. I figured the world would be my classroom. Freshman year was the U.S. Air Force. I enlisted in the spring before high-school graduation. At seventeen, I was not old enough to sign the form, so I had to ask my parents for permission. My mother was distressed, but my father knew there was no holding me. "Sign it," he told her. "Just sign it."

  Why the Air Force?

  Because I did not think I could survive the Marine training, because I did not want to be an Army grunt, because I hated the Navy uniforms.

  My basic training started at Sampson Air Force Base, in upstate New York, then continued at Kessler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, where signs on the lawns near town said: "No niggers, no kikes, no dogs." What you learn in such a place is not just what they are teaching. I mean, yes, they taught me to work a radio, talk in code, sit in a bunker with earphones on my head, tracking jets across the sky, but what I learned was America, the South, people from other parts of the country, how to stand up and take care of myself.

  I had a good old boy, son of a bitch sergeant named Harley. He used to mangle my name at mail call, really Jew it up: WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! I got lots of letters from my high-school sweetheart--she became my first wife. She used to send cookies and candy. Harley would rip open the packages and throw the cookies all over the floor, yelling, WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub! So one day, we're in chow line, just him and me, and I go up and whisper, so he has to lean close to hear me, "I am going to kill you."

  He shouts, "What did you say?"

  I speak even softer the second time: "You heard me, Harley. One day, I am going to find you in town, when you're alone, and I am going to kill you."

  He goes nuts. "Who the hell do you think you are, Jew boy? You can't talk to me like that." He hits me across the mouth. I wipe away the blood and look up smiling. "Now I've got you, you son of a bitch. You're screwed." I went to the colonel and filed a complaint. Harley was gone. There are all kinds of ways to deal with an adversary: fists, words, taunts, compromise, submission, complaint, and courts-martial.

  On one occasion, a service buddy, knowing I was far from home, invited me to his house for the weekend. We got in late Friday and went right to sleep. When we came down to the kitchen Saturday morning, there, sitting at the table, eating his breakfast, was my friend's father dressed in a white robe with a Klan hood next to him in a chair. I kid you not, this actually happened. I sit down, nervous, smiling. He shakes my hand, asks my name, then says, "Weintraub? What kind of name is Weintraub?"

  "It's a Jewish name, sir."

  "You a Jew?" he says. "No, you no Jew. If you a Jew, where's your horns?"

  "Oh, they're there," I tell him. "Just had to file 'em down to fit under the helmet."

  I got one of the bleakest postings in the Air Force--Fairbanks, Alaska. It was the wild frontier: dirt streets, trading posts, a saloon with the sort of long wood bar you see in old westerns. Soldiers and contractors stopped in town on their way to the Aleutian Islands, where we had radar stations and listening posts. It was as close as you could get to the Soviet Union without leaving American soil. These men were stationed on the islands for long stretches, did not see a woman for months, did not see the sun for just as long. When they returned to Fairbanks, they picked up their pay in a lump sum, then went on a spree. Aside from soldiers, the town was just bartenders and hookers, both in pursuit of the same mission: separate the doughboys from their cash. I learned a lot in Alaska. In the control tower, I learned how to read coordinates and communicate in code, which, even now, as I'm trying to sleep, comes back in maddening bursts of dots and dashes. In the barracks, where I ran a floating craps game--it appeared and disappeared like the blips on the radar screen--I learned the tricks of procurement. In town, I learned how to move product.

  One day, I spotted a beautiful coat in the window of the Sachs Men's Shop in Fairbanks. (Note the spelling: S-A-C-H-S.) It was called a Cricketer. (I always had a weakness for clothes.) It was different from the James Dean jacket. It was a sports coat, tweedy and sharp. I went in, stood in the showroom at top of the world, tried on the coat, looked in the mirror. The owner came over, gave me the pitch.

  "Yes, I know, I know, but how much?"

  "Twenty dollars."

  "Sorry, out of my league. I'm an enlisted man."

  "Well, how much have you got?"

  "Three dollars."

  "Okay, how about you give me your three dollars and we do the rest on modified consignment. Give me two dollars a week. That way, you can enjoy the jacket as you're paying for it."

  "All right."

  As he's writing up the ticket, he asks, "What's you're name?"

  "Jerry Weintraub."

  He looks up, surprised. "Jewish?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where are you from?"

  "New York."

  "Hey, me, too!"

  He thinks, then says: "Why don't you come here and help out when you're not on duty?"

  That's how I ended up working full-time at the Sachs Men's Shop while serving full-time in the Air Force. Between the military pay, the dice game, and the new gig, I was starting to make real money. Selling clothes was okay, of course, but I was ambitious. I wanted to get something bigger going. It was just as it had been with my delivery business: Once I saw the money, I could not stop seeing the money.

  Now, as I said, every few days, another crew of guys shipped in from the Aleutian Islands, picked up their checks, and went on a spree. So when these guys, chilled to the bone, holding their cash, came into the street, what's the first thing they saw? The Sachs Men's Shop. I decided to tell a story, to package a fantasy right in the big front window. I made a beach scene there, with a guy in a bathing suit sitting beside a gorgeous girl, drinking rum under an umbrella as waves break. The men stood there, mesmerized. Then they came in and talked to me. I took some of their money and in return set them up with a whole package, the plane tickets, the Florida hotel, the clothes, the beach stuff--everything but the girl. It was the Star of Ardaban all over again.

  By the time of my discharge, I was running the show. I was not sure I would ever again have such a firm handle on things. Mr. Sachs asked me to stay on as a civilian, but this made me laugh. I was anxious to get back. This much I knew: As soon as you feel comfortable, that's when it's time to start over.

  Because I Wouldn't Wear Tights

  When I got back from the service in 1956, the Bronx had changed. Everyone was seventeen when I went away, in varsity jackets and white bucks, hair slicked into ducktails, on the corner into the night, nothing but time to argue and boast. Everyone was twenty when I returned, and ready to get on with their lives. I wandered the streets in my Cricketer coat, hands in pockets, looking into windows. The corners were empty, my friends were gone. You go away believing that when you return, your world, your house, your parents--all of it will be waiting for you when you get back. But time passes, and you change, and as you change, everything else changes, too, so when you return you realize there is no home to return to. It's gone. When you stood at the train station, waving good-bye, you did not understand what you were waving good-bye to--the world of your childhood dissolved behind you. Maybe it's better that way. If you knew how time works, you would never do anything.

  One morning, my father asked me to meet him at his office. He wanted to have a talk. I'm not sure I've said enough about my father. He was a wonderful, sophisticated man, who crossed the world with nothing but a jewel case and his mind. He built a business, supported a family, taught us right from wrong. He was the greatest man I have ever known. I sometimes think his generation accomplished feats that later generations could never match. They carried their families through the Depression and the war, instilled hope in even the worst times, took terrific knocks but went on. But my fathe
r was a product of his era and many of his ideas were traditional. There was a way to do things, and a way to live. A man should, for example, build a business, which he can pass on to his sons. He should have a paycheck, a regular source of income, and, most important, he should have an inventory. Inventory--the word rang like a bell in our house. It was magic. A man should be able to go into his storeroom and count his stock. Here is something he told me: At the end of the day, write down exactly what you have. Put that number in your left pocket. Then write down exactly what you owe. Put that number in your right pocket. As long as the number in your left pocket is bigger than the number in your right pocket, you will have a good life.

  We met downtown. He was in his forties, glowing with life. He had a special expression on his face, a sweet smile. He said, "Sit." There was a leather case on a chair next to him. It was black and monogrammed with the letters J. W.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  He put a hand on the bag. "This is your sample case," he told me, "for when you go on the road and sell jewelry."

  The blood rushed to my face, the hair on my neck stood up. This monogrammed case--it was like seeing my own coffin. I stuttered and stammered. I said, "No, no, no. I can't. I just can't. That's not what I am going to do. I can't."

  He seemed genuinely surprised, shocked. "What do you mean? You're my son. You are supposed to come into the business, learn it, carry it on. That's how it works."

  "That's how what works?"

  "The world--that's how the world works."

  "No, not my world."

  "What are you talking about?" he said. "It's a wonderful business. You will be able to pay your rent, buy a house, feed your family when you have a family."

  "Don't worry," I told him, "I'm going to be able to pay the rent and support my family."

  "How?"

  "I don't know yet."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know, but whatever I do, I will do it well, the way you taught me to do everything."

  It might sound like a sad scene, in which a father tries to pass a tradition on to his son and his son turns away, but it was not like that at all. It was joyful. I respected and loved my father, but I did not want to live his life--and he understood that, and let me go, and, in a sense, in going my own way, I was actually following his example, which was to find my own way, freestyle, packaging and selling my own Star of Ardaban, checking the number in the right pocket against the number in the left.

  I decided I should go back to school, but I was not sure what kind of school. I looked over the list of colleges covered by the GI Bill. Cornell, Haverford, Colgate. I could not picture myself carrying a philosophy text across some leafy campus. I had trained in the South, stood up to bullies, had breakfast with a member of the Klan, sold suits in the tundra--I was just not ready for that kind of college. I decided to audition for the Neighborhood Playhouse School instead. This was one of the acting schools that taught the Method pioneered by Konstantin Stanislavsky, wherein you don't pretend to be a character so much as become that character. In the age of Marlon Brando, everyone wanted to slouch his shoulders and mumble, "Not my night? Oh, Charlie. I could've taken that bum with one hand tied behind my back." I chose the Playhouse because, yes, I liked acting, I loved attention and being on stage, but also because I figured the Playhouse was an ideal spot to meet girls--all those hopefuls fresh from the suburbs and farms of America with dreams of making it on Broadway.

  The school was on West Fifty-fourth Street, in midtown Manhattan. It was run by Sandy Meisner, the legendary acting teacher. I went up a flight of stairs, gave my name, and just like that was alone on stage for a tryout, with light pouring down, being studied by Mr. Meisner and his assistant Sydney Pollack, who would later become a great friend of mine. I read some lines, acted some scenes, threw my arms around and shouted, a street kid from the Bronx spewing dialogue from one of those great midcentury plays about the nobility of suffering.

  Mr. Meisner stopped me in the middle of my monologue.

  "What the hell are you doing?" he asked.

  "What do you mean? I'm auditioning."

  "Yeah, but you're no actor."

  I just stared at him.

  "Okay," he said, "walk across the stage."

  I walked across the stage.

  "I like how you walk," he said. "You walk like John Wayne. But you're still no actor."

  "Yeah," I said, "but maybe I will be."

  He whispered back and forth with Sydney Pollack, then said, "Okay, you're a big, good-looking kid. Maybe you're right. Maybe you will be. You're in."

  I had moved out of the Bronx by then, and was living with two hookers above P. J. Clarke's on Third Avenue. I had met them one night when everyone was drinking and the air was filled with smoke. I followed them home. I started having an affair with one of them, and they moved me in. I was in class most of the time anyway. The school was a powerhouse, packed with talent. James Caan, Dabney Coleman, Brenda Vaccaro, Elizabeth Ashley--they were all at the school around this time. I remember doing an improvisation with James Caan, the two of us getting so mixed up between the real and the make believe that we came to blows on stage. It ended with me sitting on him, shouting, "I'll kill you, I'll kill you!"

  I was not going to be a movie star, that much was clear. I did not have the passion for it, or the talent. "You're no actor." Well, Mr. Meisner was right. In my life, I have only been comfortable playing one role: Jerry Weintraub. Still, I had not made the wrong decision. I learned things at the Playhouse School that have been invaluable. About actors and artists for one, what drives them, what terrifies them (this is often the same as what drives them), what they need. (Managing talent is my business, after all.) These are people who do not make a product, perform an essential service, or, as my father would say, have an inventory, so even the most successful of them are haunted by the following thought: "Who really needs what I'm making?"

  If you go to a movie set a week before wrap, you will see the biggest stars in the world on the phone in a panic. "What do I do next?" "Who wants me?" It's not that these people are unusual--it's the situation that's unusual. The on-again, off-again nature of the work would test anyone.

  So what do I do? I help. I take the pressure off. I handle the mundane concerns so the actor or director or writer can do what only he or she can do: perform, create. An artist who attempts to get into business--to do what I do, produce or deal or whatever--is an artist who has stopped being an artist. Most important, I do not treat artists like children. I do not patronize. Some people on the business side of entertainment do patronize. They feed off the insecurity of the situation: Your fear is money in their wallet. These are sharks. But other people help artists through that bad stretch after they have finished and before they have started again--these are the David O. Selznicks and Bryan Lourds, the producers and agents who built Hollywood.

  I learned a lot from the improv exercises, too. For me, this was less a matter of becoming another person or character than learning to trust the logic of my own mind. Sometimes, when you're up against it, maybe this is an old Bronx thing, you just have to open your mouth and start talking. I can't tell you how many jams I've gotten out of by talking, seeing where the words take me. "What are we going to do about it?" "Well, I'll tell you what we're going to do about it..." And I open my mouth and see what happens. That's improv.

  For me, the end of the Playhouse School came during dance class--or, to be more specific, when Jimmy Caan and I went to buy clothes for dance class. This was Martha Graham's workshop. It was legendary--every student had to take it. Jimmy's father drove a fruit truck and took us to Capezio on Broadway in that truck. We get out--and we were street kids, you'd never peg us in a million years for actors--and go up to the showroom where they sell the clothes. A saleswoman puts a tape measure around my waist, chest, shoulders, then comes back with a stack of stuff, slippers, tights, whatever. I put it on and look at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, "Whoa! Wait a
minute. If I walked down the street in my neighborhood like this, they'd kill me." And here's the kicker: They would be right to kill me! I would deserve killing! So I look at Jimmy, and say, "Nope. Uh-uh. Can't do it. No way."

  I go to the class in my jeans and T-shirt. I'm surrounded by dancers, these beautiful butterflies. I never felt so big in my life. I was Sylvester Stallone trapped in a painting by Edgar Degas. Martha Graham comes out, elegant, floating around, and says, "Where are our tights and dancing slippers?"

  I shrug and say, "I can't wear that stuff."

  "In my class," she says, "you wear my clothes."

  "Look at me," I tell her. "I'm never going to be a dancer. I don't want to buy the clothes."

  She puts her hand to her chin and cocks her hip and sighs. "Okay. Let me see you walk."

  Now, by walk she did not mean walk. She meant ballet walk. Up on your toes. When I get across the room, turn, and look, she throws up her hands and says, "You, sir, are a klutz!"

  This was the dividing line, the moment of truth. Jimmy Caan put on the slippers and tights, so his name appears in the credits as Sonny Corleone or whatever, whereas I, being filled with normal human shame, did not put on the slippers and tights, so my name appears in various credits as producer.

  Years later, I produced Martha Graham on Broadway. Did she remember me from class? Of course not. It's opening night. I sent her ten dozen roses, filled her dressing room with flowers, then showed up in my tuxedo, doing the whole F. Scott Fitzgerald routine, walking through the lobby, smiling and waving. A girl grabbed me by the cuff. "Ms. Graham wants to see you right away." I went to her dressing room, knocked. She threw open the door with a flourish. She was tiny but had huge gestures, was very dramatic. She took me by the wrists, pulled me close, and said, "You sir, are my impresario! My impresario, oh, my impresario! The greatest impresario in the world!"

  "No," I told her," "I'm not your impresario. I'm your klutz."