by Rob Lowe
All unknown actors struggle to overcome the “gift” of that first breakout role. Some of them will not have the opportunity or the range to do it. But the really good ones will.
I did a movie with Jonah Hill. He had just blown up from Superbad, a movie that is even better than you think it is. We were on location in Boston and people would yell, “Hey, it’s Superbad!” What’s up, Superbad?!” I was envious of Jonah for having gotten the part of a lifetime but not at all envious of his having to move beyond it. I needn’t have worried; within a few years Jonah had a number of signature roles and award nominations, and no one was calling him Superbad.
Every profession has its inherent pitfalls. Acting is no different. At the pro level, the farther you rise, the more you are going to be in conflict with the inherent disconnect between “show” and “business.” One of the few great things about being a struggling actor is that no one cares about the artistic choices you make, or anything else you do for that matter. But when Viacom or Comcast or Disney is writing your paychecks, oftentimes they are going to want to have their say. This is absolutely fair; it’s their money. Most of the time everyone coexists peaceably. But when it goes bad, it does so in a hurry, because unlike most businesses, the boss and the employee have two completely opposite worldviews. The owners of the studios and networks want to make a profit; their employees want to make “art.” In my experience, the two concepts meet about 25 percent of the time. Unfortunately, too many executives and too many artists each distrust the ethos of the other; if they could meet one another halfway in terms of the product they make, I believe the success level could be more like 40 percent.
Businessmen often distrust artists, and often for good reason. Another childhood favorite of mine was the show Alias Smith and Jones. With today’s perspective I would’ve known it was a blatant rip-off of the recent hit movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but as a little boy I loved it and found it totally original. And when my favorite actor, Pete Duel, who played Jones, blew his brains out, ending the show, I was devastated. I didn’t even know what suicide was. And a concept that I’m sure the suits at Universal weren’t looking to sell to ten-year-olds across America was nevertheless brought into my living room courtesy of a deeply troubled actor.
With one sad and tragic act, a franchise was lost, scores were out of jobs and millions of the studio’s dollars were gone. Creative people are often their own worst enemy when it comes to commerce. I’ve seen a number of charismatic, talented, funny and great-looking leading men break apart on the shoals of insisting on playing only destitute, drug-addled, eighteenth-century quadriplegic Irish poets. It’s true that every once in a while you need to shock people, but Cary Grant had no issue with always wearing the same dark suit and haircut and he did just fine. The fact that he never won an Oscar has nothing to do with his talent and everything to do with how easy he made it look, how good he looked doing it and how easily enraptured Oscar voters are with fake noses, phony accents and histrionic acting. Also, it didn’t help that Cary was funny. They don’t give Oscars to funny people. Today, more than ever, when comedies are one of the few reliably profitable genres and the Oscars are even more about pushing product, you’d think at some point someone funny would end up at the podium. Don’t hold your breath. It’s one of the clearest examples of the great and growing disconnect between what the public is interested in and what the Hollywood establishment wants to recognize as “good.”
The story that perhaps best illustrates the conflict between artists and their benefactors is the famous David Geffen–Neil Young lawsuit. Geffen had been Young’s comanager for years and signed him to record two albums for his new label, obviously hoping to continue a brilliant catalog containing everything from “Old Man” and “Cinnamon Girl” to “Heart of Gold” and “Like a Hurricane.” Instead, Neil recorded one album where he sang through a mechanical voice box like a robot or Woodstock-era Daft Punk member and another where he appeared like Roy Rogers on the cover while doing swing band/western mash-ups. The lawsuit accused Neil Young of “making albums that were not characteristic of Neil Young.” Which is obviously both true and not true. An artist has every right to create whatever they want (especially a genius like Neil), but you can imagine Geffen’s frustration at underwriting Young’s debut as R2–D2.
I’ve never really understood why anyone would be drawn to the entertainment business who wasn’t an entertainer in some form. Without the emotional payback of creating, I would flee show biz quickly indeed. I wouldn’t willingly choose an endeavor that trades so heavily on fear, lemming-think and doublespeak. I’m always amazed and a little sad when I meet a parent who tells me that their son or daughter “wants to get into the business.” The statement itself is faulty on its face; what goes on daily in Hollywood bears absolutely no resemblance to any business whatsoever. I cannot think of another enterprise where you can’t get principals on the phone when a multimillion-dollar decision hangs in the balance or that shuts down completely from a week before Thanksgiving to a week after New Year’s (this seven-week period is called “the holidays”). It is also increasingly a business that has no memory of why it can be great—you can routinely bring up fairly obvious classic film references and be met with silence. Unfortunately, on the other side of the desk, more and more, the goal isn’t to make Network or Bringing Up Baby, it’s to make your quarter numbers and get promoted to run the jet engine division of your parent company.
Counterintuitively, in a business that should be based on the written material it makes (or chooses not to), few actually do any reading. And I’m not talking about Atlas Shrugged or the lesser works of Jerzy Kosinski; I’m talking about the scripts they are actually considering making into movies or television shows. Instead, many rely on the industry’s version of CliffsNotes.
There exists, in Hollywood, a thing called “coverage.” This is an extremely condensed version of the script: plot points, characters, tone, genre and truncated synopsis of the story. Coverage is put together by readers employed by whoever does not want to read the actual script. Usually people who are on the front lines of trying to discern which ones are viable, agents and studio executives. These “readers” are often unpaid interns just out of USC film school, or perhaps a newly hired agent’s assistant. Sometimes coverage is farmed out on a script-by-script basis to people who do nothing but create coverage. As opposed to creating actual movies or TV shows. And the last element in the process is the opinion of the coverage creator. They do a full-on Pauline Kael–meets–Irving Thalberg recommendation on whether the script should be made. Most of the time if a script’s coverage is anything less than glowing, oftentimes based on the opinion of someone who is writing from a Starbucks with spotty Wi-Fi and has never stepped foot on a movie set, it is DOA.
Can you imagine the number of great things that would’ve never been made in other businesses if they got bad coverage? If the “deciders” (as G. W. Bush would say) went on the opinions of interns working for free in, for example, architecture and construction? I can imagine coverage on the plans to build the Lincoln Memorial. It might read something like this . . .
PROPOSED PROJECT
TITLE: The Lincoln Memorial
Terrible title, completely unimaginative. Maybe Lincoln’s Lair? Or possibly Dome of the Great Emancipator? (Although the plans submitted are not that of a dome.)
STRUCTURE: Poor
It is heavy, portentous and overwrought. It feels dated. One seems to be drowning in limestone (which hasn’t worked as a popular building material since the WPA era).
DESIGN: Not very good at all.
You can’t even see Abraham Lincoln from the street! Also, there are way too many stairs to climb to get to him. We need to see Abraham Lincoln much earlier. He is the star!
The blueprint submitted for our approval also shows a profound lack of understanding of what works in the marketplace. Exhausted stair-climbers do not want to enter a huge, dimly lit room and crane their necks to loo
k up to see the statue. The Lincoln statue should be at our audience’s eye level. Also, his hands are too large and completely unrealistic. Everyone knows Lincoln was not thirty feet tall. Looking at this plan, I did not even once think I was looking at the real Abraham Lincoln.
I also hated the words on the walls. Way too serious, and a little depressing. People don’t want to hear about dead soldiers and slaves. Can’t it be funnier? Or maybe keep the slaves and soldiers on just one wall and come up with some of Lincoln’s jokes on the other?
COMMENTS: I think the designer was going for a majestic, dramatic and somberly emotional testament to a human being who faced godlike problems. I suppose you could make a case for those themes, but would the public really be interested in that? I don’t recommend you actually take the time to review the Lincoln Memorial. PASS.
Meanwhile, I can also imagine things I love and that did get made receiving bad coverage.
PROPOSED PROJECT
TITLE: Sesame Street
First of all, the title is misleading and dangerous. It brings to mind a road made of extremely hard-to-eat nuts. This being a proposed children’s television show, I don’t think it should be named after both a choking hazard and a very unsafe place for kids to play.
SUMMARY: I found the show’s setting troubling. Why would young children be happy about playing among urban tenements? The show should be reimagined in the suburbs, at a grassy park, with many trees. No one is interested in manholes.
The writer shows a complete lack of discipline by creating an extraordinarily inconsistent vision of the characters. Some are humans and some are puppets! If there are to be puppets, the world should be a total puppet world. Anything else is confusing and possibly frightening. Especially to children.
I found the tone misanthropic. One of the main characters is even named Oscar the Grouch. (I did like some of his dialogue, however. Perhaps just rename to Oscar the Great?)
I was also thrown by the descriptions of the adult characters. One is a young, idealistic black man; one is an old, kind, Jewish store owner and still others are identified as white, Chinese and American Indian. It is a confusing cultural hodgepodge. Young children are free to roam unaccompanied without supervision; these disparate cultures blend seamlessly in harmony and goodwill, while the characters act as mentors and friends to the children. This is completely unrealistic and unlike any neighborhood in the real world. Children are impressionable. We need not expose them to relationships and experiences they are unlikely to have in their own lives. Recommendation: PASS.
In spite of this system, obviously gems still get made. But more and more I feel this is in spite of it rather than because of it.
Behind the Candelabra is a perfect example. Written by Richard LaGravenese, one of Hollywood’s handful of top guns, it was a movie no one wanted to make. Everyone said no. It was “too gay” or “about a star who kids don’t remember” or whatever. Even with Steven Soderbergh directing and two A-listers, Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, no studio would touch it. Even at a rock-bottom budget. For a long while it languished until the producers gave up on its being a theatrical movie and took it to TV, for HBO, and they said yes (although in the rest of the world it did play in theaters). This is another clear indication that television is the inevitable future destination for the bulk of smart, unique entertainment.
Behind the Candelabra, considering its pedigree and tiny budget, one would have thought, was a small bet worth taking. HBO said yes, and that’s why it was nominated for eighteen Emmys instead of eighteen Oscars.
It’s a new world. Change in all our lives and our business, whatever it may be, is inevitable. One can bitch about it, like I just did, or suck it up and roll with the tide, as I always try to. There is almost always an unforeseen silver lining to frustrating and demoralizing new barriers. Candelabra didn’t get to be a studio movie, but more people saw it on TV in America than ever would have seen it in a movie theater. Although I enjoyed being a part of its success, what was most comforting was its reinforcement of what I sometimes struggle to remember: Sometimes you can beat the system and a chorus of no’s is rendered irrelevant by a single yes.
As a caveman, with Jonah Hill in a lost scene from The Invention of Lying.
Visiting one of my favorite places.
Just Do It
There came a point when the water of Long Island Sound began leaking into my small raft at such a rate that I began to consider what my obituary might say. The wild-eyed young production assistant, whom I had bribed to row me out to the middle of the bay for a clandestine rendezvous with a seaplane, fumbled with his walkie-talkie.
“Do you have Rob out there?” a voice I recognized as that belonging to the director of the movie I was attempting to flee asked with panicked suspicion.
“Don’t answer him,” I ordered, and handed the kid another $20.
“Is number one with you?!” he demanded, using the slang term for the star of a movie, based on the actor’s top position on the day’s call sheet.
I shook my head at the kid vigorously. “Just be cool. Don’t respond.”
I needed to find this seaplane. We were bobbing around, whitecaps rising and slopping over the rubber bulwark. If it didn’t appear soon, my cohort and I would either be rousted by someone from the movie or be forced into the swirling, choppy drink.
“I . . . I . . . have to say something,” said the PA. I realized he was probably right. And I didn’t want to get him into any more trouble than he was clearly in already.
“Okay, tell them that they’re breaking up and you can’t really hear them. Tell them you’ll be back right away.”
As I had been lying flat and hiding under a blanket like a defector from East Berlin, I was confident the kid would be fine if he stuck to his guns and didn’t crack under the questioning, which would surely be fairly intense, as the production discovered that I was indeed AWOL.
I hadn’t meant it to become such an ordeal. It was 1987 and my beloved Los Angeles Lakers were locked in an epic, rigorous conflict with their loathed, bitter rivals, the Boston Celtics, for the NBA championships. I was a courtside season ticket holder and never missed a game. When I was on location, the Lakers front office would send Jack Nicholson and me tapes of our missed games via FedEx. Sometimes I even went on the road for important matchups. And there was none more important than game four in the dreaded Boston Garden.
Happily, I was a mere forty minutes away by air. I was making a movie (Masquerade) and although I was done for the week, the producers, knowing my Purple and Gold loyalty, had forbidden me from traveling to Boston. If something went wrong and I missed my return flight, I could’ve driven back in time for shooting, but they didn’t care. Faced with such an indefensible and draconian house arrest in the Hamptons, I planned my escape.
We were shooting on the gorgeous but logistically challenging Shelter Island. I had missed the last ferry and was stranded. The seaplane was to meet me as soon as I wrapped at East Hampton Airport to make the tip-off. I had no time to waste. I had the plane rerouted to Shelter Island, but the charter company had been having a hard time relaying the new coordinates to the pilot, who had been circling over the set, tipping the plane’s wings and waving his arm out the window.
“Do you know anything about this?” shouted my producers.
“Nope,” I said.
I could tell that they didn’t believe me, but without proof their only option was to shoot it out of the sky.
I ran back to my trailer and picked up my state-of-the-art Motorola “brick” cell phone.
“Please get that thing away from the set!” I’d begged the hapless charter representative. “Put it down out on the water. I’ll meet it on Long Island Sound.”
Now, as I began to bail water out of the raft, I saw no sign of the plane. Had it gotten the message? Did it mistakenly return to the airport? Should I head for shore and miss the game or should I risk drowning for the home team?
This wouldn’t be the
last time my youthful pre-sobriety enthusiasm and Laker love would put me in a pinch.
In the 1988 finals against the “bad boys” from Detroit, after benevolently attempting to share the wealth and sending some eager, loitering and pretty fans up to the players’ rooms, I was banned from the hotel by Pat Riley. In that era, it was common to have a wonderful contingent of local supporters waiting to greet me in the lobby at most hours. I knew how lonely the road could be and wanted to do what I could to help the boys from Showtime (the team, not the network) have some needed R and R. Coach Riley was not amused. In fact, he took it out on me later during an unspeakably competitive and grueling match on Emilio Estevez’s beach volleyball court, where he crushed me like a peasant uprising. The dude standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square met a better fate.
Back in LA for the same Detroit final, I hosted one of the Lakers stars at Mr. Chow after a Sunday victory. In those days I played for serious keeps when I was between movies, and I never considered that my Laker pal still had some big fish left to fry in the series. After trying to keep up with me into the wee hours, he returned to the Forum and promptly went into a career-low shooting slump that continued into the next season.
I’m glad Riley never got wind of that one.
Had I actually drowned attempting to flee the set of Masquerade, my Laker pal might’ve had better stats. But eventually I did secretly meet up with the seaplane and even made it to my seat in the Garden for tip-off. Perhaps as a Beantown welcome, I was seated next to notorious Laker hater and towel-waving former Celtic enforcer M. L. Carr. Every time I rose to my feet for Magic and company, old M. L. stared me down with hostile intent.