What Just Happened?

by Art Linson

  PB: What was De Niro’s reaction?

  AL: It’s always the same, ‘It’s good, it’s good.’

  PB: How did you know it was a go for him?

  AL: He never said it wasn’t.

  PB: The movie is packed with stars and great actors, not only De Niro, Penn, and Willis, but Catherine Keener, Robin Wright, Stanley Tucci, Michael Wincott, and John Turturro. How much did it cost?

  AL: The budget was just under twenty million. The actors frankly didn’t work for long periods of time. I think we shot Sean in a day and a half, we shot Robin in three days, we shot Bruce in one day. It was done in the spirit of an independent film. It comes off being a bit more glamorous than that, but that wasn’t my intention.

  PB: Was De Niro the magnet who attracted the other actors?

  AL: No, I think it was a combination of De Niro, Barry Levinson, and the script. With Barry, at least we weren’t going to embarrass ourselves, the script made me laugh, and then De Niro’s in every single scene, how bad can it be? If the movie works, it’s because of what Bob brought to it as much as the writing. For him to play a guy hanging on for dear life, and just being the mayonnaise in the sandwich, is just a hard role to play for a guy who doesn’t play that kind of stuff. In 95 percent of his movies, he plays guys who say, ‘I don’t take shit from you, I’ll kill you first.’ He feels comfortable doing that. He rarely plays a guy where things are being done to him. He strikes back. That’s why in this movie when he attacks Stanley Tucci, for a second you’re thinking, ‘Oh, he’ll have to do ten years in prison,’ because that is what he does so well, you don’t ever think we’re being tricked. Bob is really good at this, because it’s not him and yet it is him. As a person, he’s extremely powerful, successful, he does not take shit from anybody, and yet he became completely absorbed in playing someone totally unlike himself. Bob, just from being around me and doing this thing, he instinctively, he saw this man hanging on for dear life.

  PB: Your character is dying to get back with his ex-wife, played by Robin Wright, but there’s that scene in the restaurant where a young wannabe actress comes on to him, gives him her phone number, they sleep together, and then she disappears from the movie. What was that about?

  AL: I put that in as a moment of showing that this guy is not clean. To me the irony—a bad word for Hollywood, a death word—the irony of it was, well he is bitching about the fact that some writer may be sleeping with his ex-wife, but he has no problem fucking this girl, like it’s completely a separate issue. There is this kind of odd double standard, don’t you think? Guys have it and they’ve always had it: I’m getting laid and all that stuff, but you’re fucking my ex-wife!

  PB: You started producing in the early seventies with Car Wash and your career spans nearly four decades. Is the picture you paint of the producer’s life, the producer’s job, the same as it would be now for a kid in his midtwenties, say, who comes out to Hollywood and wants to produce?

  AL: The business has changed. When I started, studios never lost money, so you could make movies like Car Wash or Melvin and Howard or This Boy’s Life. Those would have to be independently financed today. After Car Wash came out, Lew Wasserman buttonholed me on the Universal lot. You almost fall to your knees, ‘Mr. Wasserman, sir.’ He said, ‘I just want you to know we made all our money back in two nights. Thank you.’ Today, there are no Lew Wassermans. The studios are part of multitiered, multinational vertically integrated corporations, so the guy over here who is making the decisions, it only works for his career if he attaches himself to a Johnny Depp megahit like Pirates of the Caribbean. I’ve never met Dick Parsons. He’s not interested in making $5 million on This Boy’s Life. It’s a waste of his time. These big distribution companies just want to make sequels, and they sort of opted out of the other business. That’s what’s changed. But that’s created an opportunity for these smart business guys who have made their money elsewhere and have suddenly seen an opening in Hollywood that they haven’t seen in the last ten years. They’re going, ‘No, no, there are some real good movies we can make, and we can make money on these movies, and the studios don’t want to do this anymore and they no longer understand that business.’ Sean Penn’s movie on Harvey Milk with Gus Van Sant directing is being independently funded by Michael London’s company. So for somebody like me, who has to get things made, that’s great.

  PB: But is the ‘getting things made’ part the same as it used to be?

  AL: It’s one thing if you’re one of those trust fund babies with $30 million in the bank, and you don’t have the pressure to make money, but to do it the way I did it is the same. You’re still saying, ‘I find that book or that newspaper article or that script interesting, let’s option it. In other words you’ve found something that you think is going to work, then the producing takes over and this is where the real craft begins, if there is a craft, which is, ‘Okay, how do I take this idea and nurture it in a way to get it financed?’

  Obviously it starts with the writing, but even with a good script you have to ask, ‘How do I get a good script made?’So you tell the writer, ‘Don’t write this script for the ten million people you hope are going to want to see it—write this script for the guy who is going to make it, so that he’ll go, ‘I can take a risk on that because I can justify the loss, or, ‘I believe that we have a shot.’ That is the hidden secret that most people don’t know. As a producer, I have never designed anything for the public. Everything I do first has to interest me, but once I get past that test, the next thing is who is going to do it and am I redesigning this thing so that they find it irresistible? If it’s for Barry Levinson or a director like that, is this the kind of thing when they read it they go, ‘I have to do this.’ If it’s for Bob De Niro, you’d have in your mind this is a part for a guy in his fifties. There are seven actors who fall into that category who can get your movie made, so you write it for them. Because even if a young executive says, ‘This is just terrific, I love it, we want to option it,’ and then they give it to those seven actors, if they turn it down, you’re out of business. So in Bob De Niro’s case, you have to write it so he says, ‘Fuck, I want to be that guy.’ Because then your executive is saying, ‘Wow, this got Bob De Niro,’ or Al Pacino or Michael Douglas. If you start to think about it clearly, you’re not writing this thing for millions of people, you are creating it for such a small group it’s scary. So in this particular example, I knew it would get Bob—I knew it had the humor, I knew it was taking him to a place as an actor that he doesn’t usually get to go to because he’s always got to be a tough guy like in Heat where he’s got to kill somebody, and this is completely opposite. Bob can even play a Woody Allen kind of character if he wants to, making him sympathetic. And I know Bob as a person can’t resist that.

  PB: As you put it, your character is just a snail that is trying hard not to slide down the glass.

  AL: He doesn’t ever acknowledge how bad things are to himself, to his ex-wife, to his friends, to anybody. So even at the end, after Cannes, at a Paris airport, with a private jet leaving him standing on the runway, he has his ex-wife on the phone and she says, ‘So when are you coming home?’ and he says ‘How often am I going to be in Paris?’ He can’t even say, ‘I’ve just been fucking ditched by the studio,’ you know.

  PB: He’s still trying at the very end.

  AL: Of course. It’s me trying, I’m still trying. With one studio less to work with!

  ONE

  Negative Pickup

  ‘Bog snorkeling, baby.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I was grabbing the knee pads for decades.’

  ‘Very colorful, Jerry, but not what I remember.’

  ‘Every day in my office screaming, “Cesspool! Cesspool!” I thought you knew.’

  ‘Knew what? You were on top.’

  ‘It was a ruse.’

  ‘Hey, a legend who quit before his time … takes big balls if you ask me.’

  On the word legend, he blew me a kiss.
His engine was starting to rev up now.

  ‘Nonsense, I was eating the pound cake every day. That’s right, every day, and thank you, I’m well out of it.’

  ‘I … I never knew.’

  But, of course, I did.

  Jerry was sitting in a small booth in the rear of a Malibu coffee shop, one of those garden restaurants with bad lighting, across from the coast highway. It was breakfast time and the place was nearly empty. I had entered alone looking for a seat near the window where I could read the trades, but when our eyes met, the reunion became inevitable. Finding another table was not an option.

  ‘So, how long has it been, Jerry? Two years, four years?’

  ‘You think I count? For me, Hollywood and everyone in it died and I’ve never been happier, never.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Have a seat. Join me.’

  I wasn’t ready yet.

  ‘Lookame … I’m so fuckin happy … c’mon, siddown.’

  ‘Well … Jer, to me you’ll always be the guy that told Ovitz that you were going to put him in the penalty box, and that’s when he was Ovitz.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ Jerry grinned.

  On that note, I could have graciously ended this exchange. No reason to start up this horror again, but I guess I couldn’t resist. A look back at the past, revisiting one of the wasted. Who could resist?

  Actually, at first I hadn’t recognized Jerry. It had been only five years, but he seemed smaller, less square-jawed. Sudden loss of power, engines failing, and a public dumping could affect anyone’s appearance. After all, wouldn’t Katzenberg seem a whole lot smaller without a job? Standing awkwardly trying to figure my next move, I tried to hide Variety and The Hollywood Reporter inside my New York Observer. It was too late. I got the ‘Oh, you still read that silly shit, do ya?’ look as he patted the seat at the end of the banquette.

  When I finally sat, he stood.

  He pointed to his waist with his left hand and his chest with his right.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at me.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Pilates. I could lift this table and throw it through the kitchen and then touch my toes with my legs crossed.’

  ‘Jerry, please sit down, I’m getting scared.’

  ‘I’m so fit I could kick my son’s ass.’

  The last time I’d seen him, he was one of the few running Hollywood. You know that catch phrase studio head? Well, he was one of those. He had told me then that soon, very soon, he was going to get out. ‘Get outta Hollywood and get a life.’ He’d said that the losses were no longer salved by the victories. And Jerry had had some losses. Movies were bombing in bunches. They were his calls. Some of those movies I’d produced. He was starting to drink at lunch. He said that just reading the trades pushed him to the rim of rectal bleeding. There was no good news. If a story about him was negative, he shuddered. If an item aggrandized an acquaintance, his stomach tightened. Greed and envy grinding him up before noon. Near the end, his own staff struggled to make eye contact with him at the Monday morning meetings.

  When the bell tolls for studio heads, instead of jail time they get stock options. They get ceremoniously dumped and are soon forgotten. Being the effects of such a twisted system can beat the shit out of the very best—especially when the flow ain’t quite going their way. Jerry was just another one of those guys on the chain.

  He was big.

  Was.

  ‘Are you sayin’ that you don’t look back?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  I must say his bitterness was brilliantly concealed.

  ‘Jerry, I don’t mean in some sentimental way, but you know … out of curiosity.’

  ‘Curiosity’s not my thing.’

  ‘C’mon, there’s gotta be some tap dance on some grave tha—’

  ‘I know where you’re going. You think I want to get even with …’

  ‘Last I recall, Jerry, retribution used to be your vitamins.’

  ‘That chapter ended.’

  ‘You were the one that said when I run somebody over, I want the cocksucker facing me so I can enjoy watching him experience the full impact.’

  ‘Yoga. I’ve buried my anger.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I only see blue skies now.’

  After ten minutes with Jerry, I couldn’t avoid reflecting on my own Hollywood mortality. Let’s face it, time was running out. In fact, the sand in the hourglass was hemorrhaging. For me, producing hit movies had become an increasingly far-fetched affair. And in this town, where ‘new’ is best, I could feel that black hole of Hollywood purgatory waiting for me.

  As I continued my catch-up with Jerry, my mind drifted. Strangely, I started to wonder if David Begelman had shot himself to avoid the nuisance of being alive while he was doing his time ‘out of the biz.’ Truly a show business conundrum. Begelman, who had neatly survived the embarrassment of embezzling money when he’d run Columbia Pictures, had had a much tougher time when his horsepower dried up. Apparently, after being deposed, the horror of not getting a CAA agent on the phone turned out to be life-threatening.

  I looked back at Jerry.

  ‘You could use a hit, by the way,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’

  Was that a vindictive remark? I couldn’t tell. His mouth, filled with oatmeal, hid his expression. Was he telling me that I would soon join the pack of the dispossessed? I think so.

  ‘What do you mean, I need a hit?’

  ‘Trust me, you need a hit.’

  His smile was slight but dangerous. He was surely vibing me with ‘Get ready, you’re next, it’s almost over.’ I admit I was vulnerable. It’s not that I hadn’t had my share of successes, but I’d just completed a five-year run at Twentieth Century Fox, and to say that I’d left that incompetent brothel bloodied, scorched, defeated, and monumentally pissed off would be a grand understatement.

  ‘Last I checked, everyone needs a hit,’ I said.

  ‘Especially you.’

  ‘For someone so blissfully out of the game, how’d you know?’

  ‘Your face gives it away.’

  ‘I think not.’

  I looked down at the menu.

  ‘Actually it’s a whole aura sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Once you know what to look for, it’s as loud as acid-green paint.’

  Perhaps I did feel a little rocky. I just didn’t know that it showed at nine in the morning. I had to wonder, if success smells so sweet, what must the other thing smell like? I guess even a slim dose of desperation travels across the table.

  ‘What would you like to order?’ the waitress interrupted.

  I started. ‘Egg whites scrambled, tomatoes on the side, no potatoes, no bread, a side of well-done bacon, and black coffee.’

  ‘Acid-green paint, clear as day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The protein thing. Holding on to the withering testosterone, are you?’

  ‘Lookit … It’s been five years and you’re already pimping my diet. Jerry, don’t let’s turn this thing into some darker thing. It’s too soon.’

  Actually Jerry was raising some serious stuff. This wasn’t going to be a lesson in how to get by in Hollywood. This was about how to get out. We’re talking about the endgame here. Checkmate. What happens when the career begins to slide. It’s a myth that when people in this town lose their viability, they long for some motion-picture relief home. This is Hollywood! There is no relief. No one leaves without a fight, and no one ever thinks he’s too old. Even women executives in this town get erections. And by the way, let’s not be fooled by those of us pretending to leave. No one is going anywhere. Everyone is fiercely gripping their balls, as I bet Jerry was now. For those of us who are really in bad shape, steeped in false sentimentality, we tend to burst into a river of tears when someone says, ‘Whatever happened to Sydney Pollack?’

  ‘I was just trying to point out that you don’t seem to be the kinda hit maker that
makes the good old boys pleased to see you,’ Jerry quickly added.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well, you’re not exactly Jerry Bruckheimer, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘No point.’

  ‘Let’s get serious. I produce, or I try to produce, good movies. Some work, some don’t.’

  ‘Whooey. Let’s not talk about good. Let’s talk about failure. This is a business. You ride in here trying to make money, and you get carried out if you don’t. Who are you fooling?’

  ‘Hey, I’ve produced some hits.’

  ‘Oh, I believe it’s been quite a while.’

  ‘What kind of sinister shit is this? I came in here for breakfast, run into a bitter has-been …’

  I hesitated. At least his frontal assault on my lack of success was more honest than the usual approach. Most times, within hours of the release of a movie that mercilessly tanks, your dearest Hollywood friends can’t pass up the chance to ask, ‘So how did your movie do?’ Oh, they know how it did. They know the number. In fact, they know the number exactly. And they know its implications, but they can’t resist watching you squirm at the news. At least Jerry’s approach wasn’t camouflaged with pity.

  I was starting to wonder when my food would come.

  ‘You’re just pissed off because occasionally my phone rings and yours doesn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t get so defensive. I was just trying to state the obvious. After all, it was you, I believe, who wrote, “In this town, three strikes and you’re out.”’

  ‘Well, I was referring to …’

  ‘You did say that, right?’