What Just Happened?

by Art Linson

  MORSE: To get the money.

  GREEN: Ooooh. The money … Now it’s the broad, now it’s the boodle … nothing is safe. (pause) That’s what I’m saying … Rich man. All anybody wants, take something from you. And they want it bad enough to kill you. (pause) You know what … the rich are different.

  Alec wasn’t reading this stuff, he was performing it with gusto. ‘Now it’s the broad, now it’s the boodle?’ He took to Mamet’s language and cadences like a dog to hamburger meat. For those of you who have seen his cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross, he fills Mamet’s characters with extraordinary life. I glanced over at Lee, thinking, ‘Hey, this is gonna work, Alec’s gonna knock the shit out of this part. Let’s get out there and make this baby.’

  Bob, on the other hand, was delivering his reading of Morse in an expressionless monotone. Very simple. One word following another, making no attempt to do anything. For the first ten minutes, I wondered if this was some charade, a bad breakfast, or perhaps some way of letting me down gently: ‘Oh, well, I tried.’ That sort of thing. As the reading went on, Bob continued with the same flat delivery. Everyone else in the room became more animated just to make up for it. Now when the bear roared, the narrator really roared. Whatever Bob was intending to put up on the screen, I knew it couldn’t be this. Weeks later, when we were alone, I brought up the subject.

  ‘What were you doing in the reading?’

  ‘As readings go, I thought it was a good one.’

  ‘Easy for you, you weren’t doing anything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘One word after the other, no emotion.’

  ‘It was very helpful.’

  ‘You were Mr. Robotman in there, how can you tell if it’s working?’

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘Why not rev up the engine a little bit?’

  ‘That wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if I haven’t yet made a decision as to what I want to do, I don’t want to do anything. For me, it’s better to do nothing than to make false or careless choices.’

  ‘All right then, s’all I wanted to know.’

  As usual, Bob was ahead of the curve. As the reading wound down to the climactic moment of killing the bear, the narrator continued:

  The bear turns on Morse. Green staggers to his feet and winces in pain as he sees Morse and the bear in mortal combat.

  MORSE: (De Niro) Kill me! You killed my friend …

  It doesn’t matter anymore … Kill me!!

  The bear attacks. Morse holds his ground. The bear surges toward him. At the last moment, Morse drops the butt of the spear down against the boulder and angles the spear up into the bear as it charges.

  I glanced over at Bob, noticing what I believed to be a slight flicker of interest. Maybe he was warming to this thing. I now realize I was grasping at straws. His twitch could have been anything. It was so slight it could have been gas.

  The bear closes over Morse and lunges. The spear tears through the bear’s back as the bear ROARS and drops on top of Morse. As Green watches, the bear dies.

  For a moment nothing moved.

  Except for Bob. I definitely noticed a wince and a forward body motion. He was thinking about it. The reading soon ended, and everyone went his separate way. It was not the time or the place to ask the unaskable: ‘Are you going to agree to do this fucking script or what?’ Bryan Lourd walked out nodding with an inscrutable expression. He whispered to me, ‘I’ll call you later.’ Alec seemed happy. He knew that he was going to cream this part if we ever did get the movie off the ground. And Lee and I were cautiously pleased. If we had discovered nothing else, we had at least confirmed that this was going to be a compelling story. We just had to cast Morse and get the money.

  I met Bob later for a drink. I knew as soon as I saw him walk in that he was not going to do the part. You learn to read the signals. It’s not what he does, it’s what he doesn’t do. And I also knew that he probably wouldn’t share his exact feelings as to why.

  ‘Don’t say anything, I can tell it’s over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not gonna commit.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  ‘The bear worries me.’

  ‘The bear?!’

  ‘The bear.’

  ‘Y’sure it’s not Alec or Lee?’

  ‘For now, it’s the bear.’

  ‘What part of the bear?’

  ‘You know, fighting with a fake bear. Might not work.’

  ‘We’re gonna use a real bear some of the time.’

  ‘A real bear is interesting.’

  ‘Well, then we’re gonna use a real bear a lot.’

  A beat.

  ‘The bear … the bear still concerns me.’

  There was no sense in belaboring this. Bob was not going to do the movie.

  Well, actually, a week later, I decided to take one more shot. I was able to get a rough cut of Mulholland Falls, the picture that Lee Tamahori had just finished for Dick and Lilli Zanuck, and I set up a private screening in Santa Monica for Bob’s and my eyes only. I told Bob that I understood trying to say, ‘Are you looking at me … are YOU looking at ME?’ to a mechanical bear (or even a real bear) might be a tall order, but perhaps after seeing Lee’s movie he might have a change of heart. Bob responded, ‘Maybe we can have the bear fuck the photographer, that might be interesting.’

  When the lights slowly came up, he reached for his cell phone and started dialing. I did not perceive this as good news. When we got outside, I pressed him for his thoughts.

  ‘Whataya think?’

  ‘The hats.’

  ‘The hats!’

  ‘All the actors kept their hats on throughout the movie.’

  ‘I noticed that.’

  ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘Can’t we put the hats aside?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He made another call from his cell phone. This was clearly going nowhere.

  ‘What were you wearing at the reading?’ Jerry asked. We were waiting for our cars outside the Ivy.

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘Well, I had to sit through a description of the CAA couture look.’

  ‘It’s just not relevant.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Trust me, it’s not.’

  ‘Lemme guess. Black leather sport coat, tattered T-shirt, faded Levi’s, and Prada loafers without socks.’

  ‘This is stupid.’

  ‘Dressing like a fat Don Johnson is stupid.’

  ‘Frankly, Jerry, what I was wearing is not the point.’

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘No … I would never wear Prada loafers.’

  A black-on-black BMW came up from the underground garage; three people simultaneously reached for the driver’s door before they realized it wasn’t their car.

  ‘It’s not that this story of yours about readings is dull,’ Jerry continued. ‘But if you weren’t paying for lunch, I would have been facedown in my crab cakes.’

  ‘It’s background.’

  ‘But where’s the suspense? We know Sir Anthony Hopkins ended up with the job.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to go slow.’

  ‘Hell, next time let me smell some blood.’

  ‘I aim to please.’

  Rick Nicita, Anthony Hopkins’s agent, called to say his client wanted the part of Charles Morse. This was a particularly good call because there were no strings attached, no qualifications. Hopkins signed off on the script, loved the idea of doing it with Alec Baldwin, had seen Tamahori’s first movie, thought it was excellent, and was ready to approve him. Check! All that was left, once I finessed the predictably annoying nay-sayings of Tom Rothman, was Bill Mechanic’s and Peter Chernin’s endorsements.

  It had become evident over the last few months that Chernin was inc
reasingly taking himself out of the line of fire. Where he used to engage directly in the major green-light decisions, now Mechanic was the only one in the room. Chernin was exhibiting expert Teflon instincts. He had no choice. Titanic was in the middle of production and the costs were staggering out of control. While I was trying to get this small movie launched, Fox was completely absorbed and distracted by James Cameron. With astonishing costs and an unquenchable appetite, Cameron was making it crystal clear that he was not going to quit until the batteries ran out. Chernin knew he had to cushion the fall. He bravely decided to let Bill jump in front of the bus and try to slow it down.

  James Cameron, after making Aliens and True Lies for Fox, was a company star long before either Mechanic or Chernin were ever considered for their jobs. This made dealing with him an extraordinary task. Who would want to be the guinea pig to tell this guy to stop spending money? Rumor has it that when Bill was sent to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, to try to put a tourniquet on the wound, Cameron demanded that Bill not only leave the set but also leave the country and that he would not continue filming until Mechanic was gone. If you’re the head of a studio, this is like getting a prostate exam courtside at a Laker game during halftime. ‘We’re doing spectacle,’ Cameron said. ‘And spectacle costs money.’ Bill handled all of this madness with a solid equanimity. He wanted this job and he was willing to put up with an awful lot of abuse to hold on to it.

  How corporately savvy for Chernin to be in a position to say to Rupert that Mechanic was the guy to be on top of this mess. What a luxury. When the costs rocketed past $100 million, he could say, ‘Rupert, I told that son of a bitch that the movie was going to get too expensive, and he better get that director to toe the line.’ When the movie crossed the $150-million mark, he could say, ‘Don’t worry, Rupert, three strikes and Mechanic’s out of here.’ And when the explosion hit $200 million, he could say, ‘You know, Rupert, it’s so damn hard to find good help these days.’ With all of the chaos that was swirling at Fox, the myriad decisions that had to be made on other movies seemed less monumental.

  It was a good time to get something done.

  Putting Tony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin together for the first time was perfect casting artistically. Both were extraordinary actors. Both were perfectly suited for their respective roles. Hopkins playing a bookish, gentle rich man lost in the wilderness having to survive with Baldwin, playing a younger, slicker, duplicitous photographer who was planning to kill him and take his wife and his money, was an exciting combination. The only hitch (and I knew that it would soon surface) is the perception that Anthony Hopkins doesn’t really ‘sell tickets,’ another Hollywood euphemism for ‘He ain’t no Tom Hanks.’ Who is?

  I came up with an ingenious way to sell this stew. Since neither actor can ‘carry’ a movie by himself, according to studio executives who were pulling up their past grosses over the last few years, why not view this combination of actors as logarithmically larger than the whole? The idea being that Hopkins plus Baldwin is much bigger than either of them alone. And that, maybe, just maybe, the two together would equal one big, fat movie star. Think about it. Would you trade one Keanu Reeves for Edward Norton with Richard Gere? Maybe. It was clear from the start that if we’d attracted a Tom Cruise, we could have cast the rest of the movie with actors who ‘don’t sell tickets.’ But that didn’t happen.

  ‘Bill, I’ve got a theory.’

  ‘Oh, here it comes.’

  ‘One plus one equals three.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘One plus one equals three.’

  ‘You need something to clear your head.’

  ‘Stay with me.’

  ‘I’m not leaving.’

  ‘Don’t ya think one Hopkins and one Baldwin together for the first time on the screen equals one Harrison Ford?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Bill, together these guys are gonna sell tickets. I feel the sizzle.’

  ‘They might … but I’m certain Harrison Ford will.’

  ‘Go with me … the sum of these guys is greater than the parts.’

  ‘I learned to add differently from you.’

  ‘Trust me on this.’

  ‘I don’t need to ’cause we’re going to make the movie anyway.’

  ‘I don’t care if … come again.’

  ‘If we can make their deals and you can make the movie for under thirty million dollars, we’ll green-light it.’

  ‘I’ll take yes for an answer.’

  Obviously, my little theory wasn’t the catalyst that had pushed Bill into a start date. Over the last several weeks he had been pushing Lee and me to deliver the best possible package without putting Fox at risk. He knew after our exhaustive search that Hopkins and Baldwin was as far as we were going to get. And it wasn’t too shabby. Making it at the thirty-million number would be right at the risk line for this kind of picture. Between video, DVD, foreign, and cable, it would only have to perform modestly in the United States for Fox to get their investment back. Even though it might have lacked the sexiness of a Brad Pitt movie or the grandness of a Titanic, it was still a good piece of business. Fox’s huge distribution system had to be fed, and not all pictures are going to feel like slam dunks. With this cast, Bill could commiserate with Chernin, and neither would be called out for embarrassing themselves.

  As I left Bill’s office, we shook hands.

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘One plus one equals two.’

  ‘If you say so, it’s so.’

  FIVE

  After Shave

  Canmore, a picturesque small town nestled in the Rockies about sixty miles west of the Calgary airport, was chosen as the production headquarters for Bookworm. With towering mountains and expansive forests, it was an ideal location to film an outdoor adventure picture. We decided to build a lodge on a nearby lake, and the rest of the locations would primarily be found in the surrounding wilds. The actual shooting of the movie, compressed to fifty-five days, went along rather uneventfully. There were, of course, the occasional complications from using an eighteen-hundred pound real bear. But, all in all, our man-eating ‘Bart the Bear’ was a total pro. He could give us several different looks, growl on command, and even do comedy if it was required. Lee kept referring to him as John Wayne. The animatronic bear, which we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to construct, turned out to be less effective. Next to a real bear who can ‘act,’ a robot bear becomes extremely artificial. As filming progressed, the fake bear spent more and more time in the prop truck. He was our insurance policy, our pinch hitter.

  Shortly after the movie was released, Bart often received as much or more attention than the rest of the cast. Norm MacDonald, on Saturday Night Live, said, while pointing to a large picture of Tony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin bravely trying to ward off the bear, ‘Bart the Bear delivered an outstanding performance and was paid in raw meat, bear whores, and cocaine.’

  A brief scare did occur during filming. Hopkins, who was taking painkillers for a severe pinched nerve in his neck, went down with hypothermia after spending several hours in freezing water enacting the plane crash. Apparently, the painkillers were so deadening that he couldn’t feel the harsh, icy conditions. While in the hospital for the hypothermia, the pain from his neck without painkillers became so acute that an immediate operation was necessary. This caused a shutdown of production for several days. As you might imagine, with all of the genuine concerns for our star, the real relief for the studio execs came when they were assured that the entire incident was covered by insurance. The calls to Tony were ‘Get well soon, big guy,’ and the calls to us were ‘What’s our deductible, what’s our deductible?!’ The English-knighted Hopkins, who had yet to become an American citizen, showed his valor by maintaining a ‘stiff upper lip’ and soldiering on with a quiet smile.

  One wrinkle, however, had a far-reaching and dampening effect on the morale of the whole shoot. The problem began ten days before principal photography – nothing s
o severe as careening off the side of a cliff at high speed, but still, for Lee and me, what was initially anticipated to be an idyllic summer-camp romp for grownups turned into a psychobabble set filled with hidden tensions.

  Lee decided it would be a good idea to take one more look at the script. He called for a reading the following morning in the large conference facility that had been built for the 1988 Winter Olympics. A final script run-through would provide that last overview for the director to examine the material as a whole. There is an old showbiz maxim once shooting starts: From then on, making a movie is like eating an elephant with a teaspoon – one nibble at a time. One last look at the script can be a good idea. Since everyone in the room already had his or her respective job, these readings were usually relaxed and fun.

  Tamahori, Elle Macpherson, who had landed the cameo of Hopkins’s trophy wife, Harold Perrineau, the photographer’s assistant, L.Q. Jones, the lodge owner, Don McAlpine, the cinematographer, the script girl, and I were seated around the conference table when Alec and Tony entered the room. For those working behind the scenes, seeing two stars together for the first time can be heady stuff. After the first week of photography the exhilaration quickly turns to work and becomes old hat, but in those first few days, we are reduced to hopeless fans. And in an odd way, you can sense that the performers feel the same sense of awe for each other.

  I had just arrived from New York and I hadn’t seen Alec since that odd reading at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills several months before. Surprisingly, Alec was wearing a full beard. Not just your average beard; this beard had run amok. It looked as if he had entered a Grizzly Adams look-alike contest. I assumed he probably wanted to see what he was going to look like when he was stranded out in the wilds for several weeks. Like any diligent actor, particularly someone as intense as Alec, he was simply exploring the character. It had an interesting impact. Twenty pounds heavier than he had been at our lunch, and with the flowing gray beard, he had completely stripped himself of his leading-man looks. The effect made him look older than Hopkins. No longer the predatory good-looking lothario who was the character at the onset of the film, Alec looked like the beaten man who was to be bested by a bookworm out in the wilds. I thought, what a clever and effective way to explore the character by experiencing the end first.