by Art Linson
‘Oh, no.’
‘Consider it a favor.’
‘Send it to me.’
‘I already did, you’ll have a tape of it tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’
‘Dave … I need this one.’
‘If I do this … if I do this … hear me, I don’t want anyone to know.’
‘You have my word.’
All right. Here’s a bit of the narration that opened the picture. The last line seems to have a prophetic resonance.
There either is or is not a Way Things Are. The color of the day, the way it felt to be a child, the feeling of salt water on your sunburned legs.
Sometimes the water is yellow and sometimes it is red.
But what color it may be in memory depends upon that day. I’m not going to tell the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.
With Alfonso’s lavish direction, Mitch’s inventive screenplay, and spiked with Mamet’s narration, we somehow wriggled our way to a decent picture. After this production wrapped, Mitch, Alfonso, and I didn’t speak to each other for a couple of years. Some of the wounds are still wet.
TEN
Pushing Tin Downhill
The expression pushing tin is not an inside joke coined by a traveling tuna can salesman. In the dimly lit operations room of the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, air traffic controllers say they are ‘pushing tin’ when referring to the daily grind of carefully guiding airplanes through the sky so they don’t crash into each other. The allowable margin of error for this job is zero.
When I first read the article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, written by Darcy Frey, documenting the horrors and the pressures of this occupation, my producer’s heart started beating. The arena was a large room filled with radar scopes occupied by savagely bug-eyed air traffic controllers twitching and cursing as they tried to keep themselves from ‘going down the pipes’ – words used for the high anxiety of dealing with the possible near-miss or the midair collision that was always one bad mistake away. As the multitude of dots on their respective radar screens randomly run amok, reaching their peak on holiday weekends, the controller, to retain his sanity, has to convince himself that these little dots are not metal death ships filled with real people, they are just dots.
The maddening pressures inherent in the job are so extreme that all of these guys are emotionally kicked in the ass one way or another. They either drink, adopt weird physical tics, cheat on their wife, acquire peculiar superstitions, or just go categorically nuts. One guy, according to the article, while guiding ten jets in a great curving arc toward Newark, New Jersey, suddenly lost his communication system as he turned his pilots onto final approach. He rose from his chair shrieking and started tearing off his clothes. By the time someone stepped in to land the planes, he was quivering on the floor naked before being taken away. He was discharged on a medical leave until he could regain his wits. He tried a few times to visit his buddies at the TRACON station, but he never had the cojenes to return to the scopes again. When he did come in, his buddies looked the other way, superstitiously hoping that his bad juju wouldn’t rub off on them.
What an arena! M.A.S.H. on wheels. The fallout of all this stress would be where the drama, the dark humor, and the morality tale would come together. There it was: The perfect setting for a movie. I figured it was so good, the geniuses at Fox would never get it.
I called Bill Mechanic and explained.
‘Bill, we gotta buy this.’
‘I agree.’
‘But, Bill—’
‘I agree.’
‘Bill, it might be expensive.’
‘I like it. Run it by Ziskin.’
I called Laura Ziskin, who was running Fox 2000.
‘Laura, I just spoke to Bill.’
‘I read the article.’
‘Laura, we gotta get this.’
‘I agree.’
Huh? This was eating ice cream for breakfast. Too easy. Within a week we were the proud owners of the article for the princely sum of $200,000, which included the right to use real moments from some of the controllers’ lives. Things were so smooth, I started to hum the title song from Car Wash. I couldn’t get the rhythm riff out of my head for three days. This must be what it’s like to be Spielberg when he gets an itch for an idea. Everyone nods ‘yes’ like a spring-loaded doll’s head. Didn’t anybody stand up and ask, ‘Who wants to see a bunch of nuts freaking out in front of radar screens and then go home and fuck their neighbor’s wife?’?
Quite frankly, no.
The next step in the producer’s handbook after securing the rights to a stellar idea is to hire a screenwriter. The story seemed to be shaping up as a drama/comedy exposing the foibles of people whose jobs put them under massive anxiety. Actually, at the time, we didn’t know whether it would be a comedy or a drama or maybe both, but the delineation of that didn’t concern us. It was going to be a movie about people crashing, not necessarily planes crashing. I began the agonizingly endless procedure of reading screenplays from lists and lists of writers who might be right for this kind of an idea, someone who understood how to write comedy while drawing from real situations and real people. If you are looking for excellence, the list narrows quickly. Very high in this group were Les Charles and Glen Charles, the brother team that was the creative force behind the classic television series Cheers. I was being diligent. In fact, the more I thought about the Charleses, the more I thought they would be ideal. I was about to call Ziskin to make my case when the phone rang.
‘Hi, it’s Laauurra,’ she purred, always seeming to be surprised by the sound of her name.
‘Hello, Laura.’
‘I got an idea for you.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you know who the Charles brothers are?’
‘Well, yeah, I wa—’
‘Their agent just called the studio and said they want to write the air traffic thing.’
‘Laura, they called us?’
‘Yeah, he said they want to write it bad.’
‘Laura, I was about to ca—’
‘I think we should hire them.’
‘Uh … me too.’
I must have been in dreamland.
‘Laura, aren’t they very expensive?’
‘So what?’
Could this producing thing get any easier?
I learned later that while we at Fox were trying to buy the article, the Charles brothers had read it, liked it, and tried to buy the piece privately. We got there first. They liked it so much, however, they decided to offer their writing services anyway. A deal was quickly struck.
Working with the Charles brothers was interesting. They came from TV. There’s a weird line drawn in Hollywood between those who work for television and those who work for movies. Granted, the line has been blurred on numerous occasions, but the way I see it, in most cases TV producers/writers end up with the money (real big money) and film people are mainly left with attitude. The earnings from the syndication rights from a hit television series are so vast that the recipients never have to work again. Glen and Les Charles never had to work again. This was new for me, working with screenwriters who are laced with money and have no attitude. They were even politically connected. During the prep period when our production staff was struggling to get access to some California TRACON facility, one of the brothers unassumingly said, ‘Why don’t I call Barbara Boxer [then a California U.S. senator]. I’m sure she or her office would be glad to help.’ My God, a screenwriter with pull was almost an oxymoron.
Not only were they eager to write the script, they actually wanted to please us. They were always open to ideas, willing to collaborate, and available at all times to meet and rethink the direction we were going. Dealing with the Charles brothers was like melting butter. During filming, when I offered to fly them to the set in Toronto to discuss some additional script work, they politely declined our reimbursement gesture, saying they would come at their o
wn expense. We soon discovered they had their own private plane and didn’t want us to know they didn’t like to fly commercial. It gets better. When the script was finally completed several months later, it was excellent.
It was just a first draft, but I decided to turn it in.
‘Bill, what’ya think?’
‘It’s good.’
‘Bill, is it too soon to discuss the next step?’
‘Go get a director.’
‘Bill, that’s the step I meant.’
‘I know.’
Hmmmm.
‘Hi, it’s Laauurra.’
‘What’ya think?’
‘I really like it.’
‘I’m so glad.’
‘Go get me a list of directors.’
‘Why not?’
It was Groundhog Day for producers. I woke up and everyone said ‘yes.’ I woke up the next day and everyone said ‘yes’ again. Hell, let’s find a director.
Before I had a chance to really examine all of the possibilities, I got another call from Ziskin.
‘Hi, it’s Laauurra.’
‘Hello, Laura.’
‘What do you think of Mike?’
‘Nichols?’
‘No, Newell.’
‘Oh.’
Mike Newell’s star had been rising quickly. He had directed the low-budget comedy hit Four Weddings and a Funeral and the recently released Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp. Without my knowing him, he seemed to have the right sensibilities for this piece. Maybe I should think it over. Whom was I fooling? I thought he would be terrific. I just wished that I had thought of it.
‘Well …’ I said.
‘He’s a friend of mine and I just talked to him about it,’ she cooed.
‘You did?’
‘Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘He responded.’
‘Is there anything I need to do?’
‘Not really, I’ll send it to him.’
‘Okay, then.’
You get where this is going. Of course, Newell wanted to direct the movie. I became immobilized. I sat at my desk waiting for the phone to ring so I could yell, ‘Blackjack!’
With Newell’s commitment we were able to assemble an outstanding cast of special actors. John Cusack would play the high-flying air traffic controller Nick Falzone, the best of the best. That is, until the crazed daredevil Russell Bell, played by Billy Bob Thornton, comes to town and derails him. As they engage in games of one-upmanship, their respective wives, Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie, get embroiled in the complicated mess.
To save money we agreed to shoot the movie in Toronto and make it look like Long Island. Production went along swimmingly. The dailies looked good. In one scene, Angelina Jolie grabs Billy Bob’s ass, then nuzzles his neck, which made me think that was some damn fine acting until I was told they had fallen in love on the set for real. We even stayed on budget and pretty much kept to the schedule. We all got along, and even the artistic disagreements were manageable. But by now, you already knew that.
There was only a minor hint that everything might not be kismet. After the movie was screened in Los Angeles, I was walking down the hallway by the marketing division, near Bob Harper’s office, where I thought I overheard a female voice saying, ‘Does anyone really want to see John Cusack naked?’ I stopped to listen for the answer. I leaned into the doorway. Too late. Two secretaries looked up. The moment had passed, and I chose to ignore it. Anyway it was compensated for by Peter Travers’s Rolling Stone review, which said, ‘Like the best movies, Pushing Tin takes us into a new world. And this world, which finds fresh hell in the phrase “fear of flying,” is a lulu. It’s rowdy, raunchy, and action-packed, even if it is bound to turn audiences into infrequent fliers.’
A couple of weeks after The Matrix overwhelmed the box office, our movie opened in eighteen hundred theaters, April 23, 1999.
Total cost: $38,000,000.
Total domestic gross: $8,400,000.
Do the math.
ELEVEN
The Fox and the Hound
‘Get it, Jerry … do the math.’
‘I get it.’
‘You see what I’m sayin’?’
‘Sure, sure.’
‘Stay with me, Jerry.’
‘I am. I liked the last bit.’
Greased on wine and waiting for dessert, Jerry had conspicuously lost interest in my journey. By this time, Giorgio’s was packed. Getting from one table to the next required moving and bumping into people’s seats just to get to the door. Each table was filled with some Hollywood type. Agents, producers, writers, directors, and those that service these people were all jammed together. Oddly, even though all the patrons knew that the layout of the room forced intimacy, each person was doing his best to ignore the others. Jerry was completely moonstruck. His mood had turned wistful and sour simultaneously. He was no longer paying much attention to what I had to say.
‘Look who’s here.’
‘Jerry, look who isn’t here.’
‘No, turn your head to the right over that fat girl in leather pants.’
‘I don’t turn.’
‘It’s Ovitz.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, it’s interesting’s all.’
‘What’s interesting about it, Jerry?’
‘He’s gritty, I’ll give him that.’
‘A real battering ram,’ I said.
‘What a shame, huh?’
‘What part?’
‘Falling off the power chart’n’ all.’
‘Shit happens quick.’
‘It’s cyclical, don’t you think?’
‘Like a karma thing, Jerry?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I see … what comes around …’
‘Yeah, it’s a circle, pal. Ovitz shoved some testicles down some people’s throats and then, of course, Eisner shoved them down his throat.’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, he did get a ninety-million-dollar check as a booby prize.’
‘Jerry, I’m glad to see you keep current.’
‘You gotta like it, it’s got symmetry.’
At that moment, Ovitz and his group got up to leave. They had to make the uncomfortable slide past our table. He got so close, I had to move my chair forward. As he tapped my shoulder to get through, I was forced to turn. He glared down on us, semisurprised, with a steeled grin. The effort made him appear as if his dinner had suddenly rotted from the inside. My first reaction was to say, ‘It’s not my fault,’ but I went the other way.
‘Hey, Mike. You, of course, know Jerry.’
Ovitz glanced at Jerry, then looked for another escape route, but he was trapped.
‘Before you did,’ he said through his teeth.
‘Hiya, Mike.’
‘Hello, Jerry.’
I pushed my chair off to the left, giving Mike a bit more space to get through. He darted off.
‘Great to see you,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
That was it, short and uncomfortable. I looked over at Jerry. I could only imagine what sort of horror had occurred between those two when Jerry was still in action. Both were well known for inflicting pain, a great deal of pain, when they enjoyed the upper hand. We sat there in silence until Ovitz finally made it through the door.
‘Let me tell you a story.’
‘Go ahead, Jerry, I’m a sucker for showbiz stories.’
‘No. It’s a World War Two story, s’got nothing to do with Tinsel Town.’
‘Go for it.’
‘It was during the final stages of the war. Himmler was the head of the Gestapo. You remember Himmler, right?’
I nodded.
‘Sometime in the early part of 1944, he was hosting an awards dinner for his men. They had just finished a sumptuous meal, had drunk cases of the finest French Bordeaux rouge, when Himmler proudly got up to make a toast, celebrating their effort in the final solution. Standing
in front of a giant swastika, he removed his side pistol and clanged it against his glass, calling for quiet. “Gentlemen,” he went on to say, “in the future, our future, history will record that one of our greatest accomplishments …” Himmler took a pause for emphasis. “We did the thing we had to do while never losing our innate sense of decency.”’
Jerry then fell silent. I dug deep trying to respond. I even opened my mouth a couple of times, but nothing surfaced.
I called for the check.
TWELVE
Fight Clubbed
The exterior door to Screening Room C opened abruptly and out spilled seven of nine Fox film executives. Two of them remained inside. It was late in the afternoon on the Fox lot, and the deep shadows from the surrounding buildings camouflaged their expressions as they tried to adjust their eyes to the daylight. The director, David Fincher, and I had just screened a high-quality video rough cut of Fight Club. At one time or another over the past eighteen months, this group had all read some incarnation of the script, and a few of them had even watched some of the dailies. This was the day that they experienced the full impact of what they had paid for. The anticipation had been high. After all, the movie starred Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter and was directed by one of the truly gifted young filmmakers. The last time Fincher and Pitt had joined forces, the movie Se7en had surprised everyone in Hollywood with its riveting originality and, more important, its over three-hundred-million-dollar worldwide grosses.
Numbers like that can make an executive’s year. Hell, in most cases, that kind of success can define his or her tenure. The executives might not have admitted it, but they had as much personally riding on the outcome of Fight Club as did the filmmakers. They walked in, almost giddy, all smiles and chatty, backslapping and hugging Fincher before taking their seats. The mere possibility that Fincher and Pitt might provide the same kind of lightning a second time made them all rubbery with expectation.
I had met David five years earlier when he was editing Alien 3. I’m not sure how the meeting came about, but I received a call that he was interested in talking to me about some ideas. I’d heard that he’d had a difficult time dealing with the studio on his first movie, so I assumed he was interested in taking advantage of a producing partner on future stuff. He was already being touted as a wunderkind. He had a big rep as a sophisticated music-video director, had done some remarkable commercials, had dated Madonna, and although he was still in his twenties, Fox (under the Joe Roth regime) had given him one of their family jewels, an Alien sequel, to be his first feature directing assignment.