The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  The problem was with the De Laurentiis Company. They released the film in many parts of Europe, then went bankrupt. They reneged on money they owed me and others involved with the film and were unable to release it in the United States. The negative was tied up by the vendors to whom they owed money, the lab, the sound mixing studio, and others. Dino and his associates stopped answering my calls. There was no point in suing them; they had already declared bankruptcy. But for my long-standing relationship with the debtors, they would have come after me for their money, and that’s exactly what De Laurentiis proposed—that I was legally responsible for his debts. I never had a film implode so badly and go unreleased in the United States.

  I tried to get Dino to let me take the film to another distributor, but my appeals and those of my agents went unanswered. There was nothing I could do, and Dino flew the coop. He wasn’t around to feel the heat of my anger.

  Five years later, in 1992, I met Harvey Weinstein. His company, Miramax, was in the first flush of success. They were acquiring, not producing, international films that slowly achieved prestige if not large grosses. Their big successes did not begin until the early 1990s. I liked and admired Harvey. He seemed like a decent man with a passionate love for films and filmmakers. He knew about Rampage, which by then was in limbo for five years. Harvey contacted the bankruptcy trustee, arranged to see the film, then enthusiastically agreed to distribute it. Negotiations took almost a year. He suggested we preview my cut, as the film was now five years old. As a result, I decided to make major changes to the version I finished in 1987. In the original cut, Reece commits suicide in his prison cell after being found sane. For the new version, I recorded a voice-over with Alex McArthur, indicating he was found insane and is alive, writing letters of apology to the families of the victims. An end title card reads that he will be reevaluated in six months and eligible for parole, putting the film firmly on the side of the death penalty. This version is more ironic and unsettling. It was meant to be a serious film about murder and justice, but it played like a polemic. It was too serious, nor was it what audiences expected from the director of The Exorcist and The French Connection. My research was frankly more interesting than the film.

  I was fifty-five years old and hit bottom. I thought about what else I might do with my life. There have been successful filmmakers of my generation, before and since, who didn’t survive disasters like Rampage. They never directed another film. It was entirely possible the same fate awaited me.

  My personal life was also a shambles. I had been unhappily married and divorced three times; I had two young sons I dearly loved, but professionally, I was the instrument of my own downfall.

  Sherry

  One morning in mid-March 1991, I was on the San Diego Freeway heading south to Hollywood Park, the racetrack. My car phone rang. Tita Cahn was calling to see if I would take her to an Oscar party. Her husband, Sammy, didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to the track, but there was something plaintive in her voice, and for some reason—the mystery of fate—I turned the car around.

  Richard Cohen was a wealthy investor with a beautiful home in Bel Air. When Tita and I arrived, standing in front of me was a tall, beautiful brunette with a welcoming smile. Frankly, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  “Sherry, you know Billy Friedkin,” Tita said.

  “You’re much too young and cute to be Billy Friedkin,” the brunette said.

  Tita continued, “Billy, this is Sherry Lansing.” She wore a black Armani dress with one discreet piece of jewelry, an antique silver pin. In high heels she was as tall as me.

  “You’re much too young and beautiful to be Sherry Lansing,” I stammered.

  In that moment the course of my life changed. We watched the Oscars, but I don’t remember who won. I do remember winning the betting pool. And more than that. At the end of the evening Sherry and I exchanged phone numbers. I called her the next day at her office on the Paramount lot, where she and her producing partner, Stanley Jaffe, had their offices. I was going to Boston for a week to watch a couple of Celtics games and work out with the team. I asked her if we could have lunch or dinner when I returned.

  Each night while I was in Boston I called Sherry, and we made plans to have lunch the following Saturday. On Friday I asked her if she had ever been to Muir Woods in northern California. She said it was one of her favorite places. “How about flying to San Francisco for a picnic lunch in the woods?” I asked her.

  I picked her up at her small white frame house just off Benedict Canyon. We took a shuttle to San Francisco, rented a car, and drove north to Muir Woods, a five-hundred-acre grove of majestic coast redwoods towering hundreds of feet above fresh water streams and smooth trails. Sunlight streamed through the fog forming long shafts as we walked for miles and talked about our lives.

  We both grew up in Chicago, she on the South Side, me on the North. She was nine years younger than me. She moved to Los Angeles in 1966, about when I did. It turns out we crossed paths many times over twenty-five years; we’d been in the same houses in different rooms, gone to the same screenings or sporting events with different people, but never met until that night in 1991. A year earlier I’d met with her partner, Stanley Jaffe, about a film project, and Sherry was in the next office but had no interest in meeting me, although she later told me that she saw Sorcerer in 1977, and it was one of her favorite films. I’ve always taken this with a grain of salt, but she swears it’s true.

  Her father, David Duhl, died at forty-two of a heart attack when she was nine, and her sister Judy three. Their mother, Margot Heimann, was born in Mainz, Germany, and was evacuated as a teenager when the Nazis came to power. When Margot left Germany she was sent to live with her maternal uncle Max, a haberdasher in Chicago. Her mother and father escaped shortly afterward, and when Margot married David Duhl, they moved to a small apartment near the University of Chicago. Sherry still remembers sitting on her father’s lap while he listened to opera recordings. He loved Madame Butterfly, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he would whisper to her, “Sherry, he’s not coming back, Lieutenant Pinkerton’s not coming back,” and Sherry would cry as well, not because she understood the tragic story but because her father was in tears.

  Margot was resourceful and self-reliant, and she raised Sherry and her sister alone while managing her dead husband’s real estate business. The scars of persecution remained with her throughout her life. She remarried a widower, a furniture manufacturer named Norton Lansing who had a young son, Richard, and a daughter, Andrea. As a teenager, Sherry went to the Lab School on the University of Chicago campus as a “gifted child.” She met a fellow student named Michael Brownstein, who was studying medicine, then she went to Northwestern University, majoring in English and Math, and she and Michael became engaged. When she was twenty, they married and moved to Los Angeles, where Sherry taught at some of the most dangerous schools in the inner city while also working as a model.

  She got small acting parts, but she and Michael saw little of each other, and their marriage fell apart. After a role in the film Loving, she worked for its producer, Ray Wagner, reading and analyzing scripts for $5 an hour. She no longer wanted to be an actress, but she loved the movie business and earned a number of positions difficult for a woman to achieve at that time: she was vice president of creative affairs at MGM, then vice president of production at Columbia Pictures. After moving to Twentieth Century-Fox, she became the first woman president of a major Hollywood studio. “Former Model Becomes Studio Head,” read the headline in the New York Times.

  Marvin Davis, a Denver oil man and investor, bought Fox and asked to meet the head of his studio. When Sherry arrived at his office, he was surprised to see a woman.

  “I thought your name was Jerry,” he explained. After a successful three-year run at Fox, during which she brought The Verdict and Chariots of Fire to the studio, she left to go into production with Stanley Jaffe, with whom she had worked on Kramer vs. Kramer. They produced Taps, wh
ich introduced Tom Cruise and Sean Penn; Fatal Attraction, nominated for six Academy Awards; and The Accused, which won an Academy Award for Jodie Foster. When I met her, she and Stanley were working on School Ties, a film about anti-Semitism at a New England college. The film introduced several young actors who later became stars: Brendan Fraser, Chris O’Donnell, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon.

  Many of our friends thought our relationship wouldn’t work—she was one of the most sought-after women in Los Angeles, beautiful, elegant, and self-sufficient, while the arc of my career was on a downward curve—but after three months we decided to get married. We both wanted a private ceremony, just the two of us.

  Weddings could be performed after a week’s residence in Barbados, so we rented a house there at the end of Sandy Lane Beach. A minister performed weddings in Barbados in the garden of the Royal Pavilion Hotel, but Sherry wanted a Jewish ceremony. She found a synagogue listed in the phone book, and after she’d called for several days, a woman finally answered. Sherry explained our situation.

  “The rabbi’s not here,” the woman said.

  “When does he come back?” Sherry asked.

  “In six months.”

  Sherry was upset. “Where is he?”

  “He lives in Argentina,” the woman explained. The synagogue dated back to the seventeenth century, but it was now only a landmark, with services performed every six months for the small Jewish congregation living on the island. Sherry was heartbroken. We went to observe a wedding at the Royal Pavilion. The minister was a native “Bajan,” clothed in white robes, with a large gold crucifix around his neck.

  Sherry asked if he could perform a Jewish wedding. He said yes, but she asked him to take the words “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” out of the ceremony.

  “Remember,” she told the minister. “You have to remove all references to Jesus.” He promised he would, and his wife nodded in agreement. Two days later, we were married in our garden at sunset. Our only witnesses were a maid, a cook, and the minister’s wife. The minister arrived in full regalia, and Sherry pointed to the crucifix around his neck, gesturing for him to put it away. His wife nodded and made sure he tucked it under his robes. The ceremony began:

  “We are gathered here in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Sherry shot me a quick look. I shrugged. After the third time he used the phrase, she yelled, “Stop!”

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Did you hear that? He used the J-word.”

  Sherry reminded the minister and his wife that he’d promised not to make reference to Jesus. The wife again nodded vehemently. With the minister’s agreement, Sherry took his Bible and crossed out all references to Jesus! The ceremony continued, and we spoke our written vows to one another.

  Later, she was in my arms as we watched the afterglow of the sunset and the first glimmer of stars.

  “Darling,” I whispered. “I have a confession to make.”

  She turned halfway toward me.

  “I have to tell you, I believe in Jesus.”

  Now she turned full around to face me. “You what?” she snapped.

  “I believe in Jesus Christ.”

  “You think he was a god!” she exclaimed.

  “Sherry, for more than two thousand years people believe He’s the Son of God.”

  “W-w-well,” she stammered, “well, he wasn’t a god!”

  “What was He?” I asked somewhat facetiously.

  “He was, he was . . . a nice guy!”

  We’ve now been happily married for twenty-two years, and she’s enriched my appreciation of life beyond measure.

  Less than two years after our marriage, Stanley Jaffe was elevated to president of Paramount Communications and asked Sherry to become chairman of the Motion Picture Group. The following year the studio released her final film as a producer: Indecent Proposal, with Robert Redford. When Sherry told me the story, about a billionaire (Redford) who offers a struggling architect (Woody Harrelson) a million dollars for one night with his wife (Demi Moore), I urged her not to make the movie. I thought it was ridiculous to suggest that Redford would ever pay for sex. Of course it was an instant success, but a year later Sumner Redstone’s Viacom Entertainment Group bought Paramount, and Jaffe was replaced by Jonathan Dolgen, formerly a top executive at Sony. Sherry and Jon became close friends, and they had an unprecedented succession of hits—Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titanic. All three won Best Picture Oscars. I remember the night Sherry brought home a script that was in turnaround from every studio for nine years. She was crying as she read it.

  “What’s it called?” I asked.

  “Forrest Gump.”

  “Lousy title,” I said, making my only contribution to this classic film. Sherry had an innate feel for public taste, developed over many years of producing and loving movies. She knew how to interpret a preview audience, a skill that can’t be overestimated. I didn’t have it, then or now. Even when my own films failed to resonate, I had no idea how to fix them. During Sherry’s run at Paramount, 80 percent of its films were profitable. As she was becoming a legendary studio head, I was on a downward slide, but she never allowed my spirits to falter, always offering support, encouragement, and the deepest love I’ve ever known.

  It was an uphill climb to the bottom. I used to collect newspapers and magazine articles and make notes of personal experiences, with the idea of one day developing films from stories that interested me. Eventually stuff piled up in closets, gathering dust. A lot of it is still in my closet, a constant reminder of failed ambitions and broken dreams.

  I owned a sixteen-room apartment on Park Avenue, a house on Big Bear Lake, a condo in Snowmass, Colorado, and a home on Mulholland Drive in L.A. With little income, I could no longer afford these extravagances, so Sherry and I moved to a small house in Bel Air. I also owned a Turner watercolor and a Corot oil, which had to go.

  Blue Chips

  I had no prospects, so many in Hollywood raised their eyebrows when I was offered a film at Paramount: Blue Chips, with a script by Ron Shelton—writer and director of White Men Can’t Jump and Bull Durham, two successful sports films—who would also produce it. Blue Chips was about a college basketball coach who, after a losing season, allows a corrupt alumnus to “buy” the best college prospects around—a morality tale, funny, disturbing, and prophetic. As a basketball fan I loved it, and I felt I could make it plausible and exciting. Did Ron and his producing partner Michelle Rappaport bring it to Paramount thinking it had a better chance of getting made because of my relationship with Sherry? Perhaps, but Sherry and Stanley Jaffe, later Jon Dolgen, had an understanding that only Stanley or Jon would determine whether I could direct a film for the studio. The executives at Paramount loved the script, and thought that if Ron wasn’t going to direct it, I would be a good second choice. Sherry recused herself.

  One of the problems with sports films is that actors are rarely believable as athletes. I decided to cast some of the best recently graduated college players around and let them play actual games. I would stage only the climactic moments of these games.

  Nick Nolte was our only choice to play the coach, Pete Bell. Ron based the character on one of the most successful but volatile coaches, Indiana University legend Bobby Knight. Shelton and I took the script to Nick and told him we’d camp on his lawn until he said yes. After a long courtship, he agreed.

  Through Red Auerbach I met Bobby Knight, who invited Nolte and me to come to Bloomington, Indiana, and follow him through the 1992 season—during which his team won the Big Ten Championship—including practices and locker room strategy sessions. Bobby had an irrepressible temper. Nick assumed his persona in an almost mystical way. He and I understood Bobby’s obsession, shared his inner turmoil, and knew that his anger was directed mainly at himself. Bobby would never do what Coach Bell does in the film. He occasionally had bad seasons, but he was never tempted to run a dishonest program.

  Shelton’s script is about the corruption of ama
teur athletics and the steep price of victory. At the film’s end, Nolte’s team wins its first game of the season, but the coach is plagued with guilt and resigns after publicly confessing his transgressions.

  At Bobby’s suggestion we went to Frankfort in north-central Indiana, population about fifteen thousand, home of the Frankfort High School Hot Dogs, winner of four state championships.

  Case Arena was only slightly smaller than a college court, seated fifty-five hundred people, and sold out every game. Frankfort was typical of the obsession with high school and college basketball in Indiana, and when we asked the mayor and the school board if we could stage our games there, we got a quick yes. We filled the gym just by bringing in great young players and top coaches and offering lottery prizes. We had fifty-five hundred rabid extras over three days. More than ten thousand tourists came to Frankfort the week we filmed there.

  When Nolte came on board, a terrific cast of actors followed: Mary McDonnell, Ed O’Neill, Lou Gossett Jr., J. T. Walsh. The games were filmed in real time with six cameras. I would go from one camera position to another adjusting the setups. Knight and Pete Newell, considered one of the game’s best strategists, taught Nolte the finer points of coaching. My friend Bob Cousy played the athletic director, and two recent All-Americans, Anfernee (Penny) Hardaway of Memphis State and Shaquille O’Neal of LSU, played two of the three young “blue chips.” Matt Nover, a star at Indiana, was the third. Shaq of course went on to a celebrated pro career, winning four NBA championships. He’s a warm, funny, gentle giant. Penny is introspective, shy, and focused. He practiced constantly, and when we brought him to Los Angeles he had not yet been drafted by the pros, and was dirt poor.

  The film was as much improvised as scripted. Nolte wrote a two-hundred-page novel about his character, which he asked me to read before we started shooting. That was his process, and he wanted his directors to share his “inner research.” It was filled with details that Shelton would never have considered, but it helped Nick find the character within himself.