The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood

by Joe Eszterhas

  Buy your own shredder and carry it with you.

  Screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park): “A screenplay is a collaborative business because making a movie is collaborative. You write synopsis after synopsis until you find one that’s agreeable to the executives. Then you write your first draft and get sixty pages of notes from producers and 150 pages from the studio, then you write the second draft and the director comes in with 400 pages of notes, and then the star does their thing. I understand all of that, but there is a time when you get a little tired trying to accommodate a billion different interests, of the fact that your business is one of compromise where your voice is constantly being given direction.”

  You didn’t have to do it, Ben; you elected to.

  Ben Hecht wrote, “My chief memory of movieland is one of asking in the producer’s office why must I change the script, eviscerate it, cripple and hamstring it? Why must I strip the hero of his few semi-intelligent remarks and why must I tack on a corny ending that makes the stomach shudder?”

  The director tells you to rewrite your script in a way that you know will damage and possibly destroy it. What do you do?

  William Goldman: “This is not an isolated incident. It happens to us all. And it happens a lot, usually because of star insecurity, but directors can fuck things up pretty good, too. I did what Michael Douglas wanted. The alternative, of course, was to leave the picture. Which would have been stupid, I think, because the instant I am out the door, someone else is hired to do what I wouldn’t.”

  This is the moment when you separate the writers from the whores. I was confronted by the same dilemma—with the same star.

  Michael Douglas (and the director, Paul Verhoeven) wanted me to make a bunch of changes to my first draft of Basic Instinct. Convinced that the changes would destroy the film, I refused.

  I publicly walked off, which made me look like the greatest intransigent ass-hole in the world, because I had been paid 3 million for the script.

  I kept arguing publicly that the script should not be changed, putting a lot of pressure on Verhoeven (and Gary Goldman, the writer he brought in to rewrite me).

  And guess what happened? Because of how hard I fought, because I had publicly walked off, and because I refused to mutilate my own child, Verhoeven, after working with the new writer, changed his mind.

  He went back to the first draft of my script and shot it. He fired the other writer. He made Michael Douglas accept the fact that my script could not be changed. And he publicly apologized, saying that he hadn’t understood “the basement” of my script and was wrong.

  I saved my script from being destroyed by my intransigence and my willingness to fight.

  Our scripts are our babies; we create them. Bill Goldman mutilated his own baby and advises that you should mutilate yours—at the behest of a star or a director.

  Please don’t do that.

  I don’t know how you (and Bill Goldman) can look yourself in the mirror once you do that.

  P.S. The script that I wouldn’t change was the biggest hit movie of the year. The script that Bill Goldman changed was a disaster.

  If you start rewriting, you can be rewriting for years.

  From the time screenwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion began work on a script called Golden Girl until the time it was filmed as Up Close and Personal, they did twenty-seven drafts of the script over the course of six years.

  What can they do to you if you refuse to make their changes?

  Nothing.

  They can fire you and bring another writer in to do their dirty work. Chances are good that they’ll even pay you fully. They can’t blackball you, because the town runs on greed and tomorrow you might write something that would make some studio or producer 100 million.

  Steven Bochco, probably the best writer working in television, once said, “What are they gonna do? Take me out on the back lot and shoot me? What are they gonna do? They can’t take my typewriter; it’s mine. They can kick me off the lot, but I’ll just write another one.”

  The agent Michael Ovitz once wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do, and I wrote him a letter that ended this way: “So do whatever you want to do, Mike, and fuck you. I have my family and I have my old manual imperfect typewriter and they have always been the things I’ve treasured the most.”

  Notice how Bochco and I love our typewriters?

  Spell it out for ’em.

  If they want you to rewrite your script in a way you disagree with, point out to them that script is the root of the word scripture, as in Holy Scripture.

  They wanted Paddy to do some rewriting, too.

  So don’t get discouraged if you’re asked to rewrite. But Chayefsky said, “Can you believe it? These cruds want rewrites.”

  Don’t explain anything to anybody.

  Screenwriter Dan Pyne (Pacific Heights): “When you go to make the movie, you’ve got to be able to explain to everybody on the movie, from the director on down, what that core idea [for the script] was so that they can see where you started. You have to strip it all back away.”

  No, you don’t. Your deal is to write it, not to write and explain it. To begin with, have no discussions with anyone on the set except the director. Explain this by saying the director is in charge of the set and you don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you’re undercutting the son of a bitch.

  Otherwise, you’ll be having creative discussions with the stars, the gaffers, and the makeup people, who stand around doing nothing and want to express how creative they all are.

  Don’t strip it away for them. Tell them it’s complex and works on different layers, so everyone is free to interpret it according to his or her own layer.

  Try to do what I did when anyone I met who had seen Basic Instinct asked me to tell them if Catherine really did it. I said, “I’m not allowed by contract to tell you that. But go see it again and look for a clue that will definitely give you the answer.”

  Don’t ignore it, fight it.

  Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2): “I get notes on a script from the lowest-ranking junior executive’s assistant reader, who suggests rewrites for dialogue. And I have to endure this. I throw the notes away. I ignore them. I just pay no attention to them at all. You shouldn’t fight it. You should just ignore it.”

  No, Jeffrey. You should fight it. You should write the person who sent you the notes a memo, pointing out how stupid, insipid, and benighted his or her ideas are. You should point this out at length and in great detail. And you should send a copy to all the other executives, the producer, and the director.

  Your movie has been cast and shooting has begun. They want you to go to the set. What do you do?

  Hell no, don’t go.

  Screenwriter John Gregory Dunne: “I think the writer’s presence on the set is just another element in what is often a volatile mix. Tension is the given of a movie, and it has less to do with ego than with the intensity of short-term relationships, a lifetime lived in a seventy-day shoot; if there are location romances, there are also equally irrational location hatreds. If the writer is hanging around, actors ask for a script fix, or why a speech from draft eight can not be substituted for the one in the scene just setting up. I also never speak to a star actor on a set unless spoken to first; this is the actor’s office and in his office he or she sets the rules.”

  In my own experience, everyone will come up to you and present some dumb-ass idea to incorporate into the next scene.

  If an actor is having a problem with the director, he’ll try to get even with the director by sucking up to you and trying to get you to take a position against the director.

  If the director is having trouble with an actor, he’ll recruit you to talk the actor into doing the scene his way, not the actor’s.

  The actor Peter Lawford saw that Dalton Trumbo was on the set of Exodus, the script of which Trumbo had written. He went over to Trumbo and asked if he could
discuss his character with him.

  Otto Preminger, the director, saw Lawford huddled with Trumbo and yelled to Lawford, “You are not to discuss the script with Mr. Trumbo. He is here as a guest and not as a writer.”

  Lawford said, “Yes, Mr. Preminger,” and hurried away from Trumbo.

  Don’t get too excited watching your film’s dailies.

  Sam Goldwyn said, “If everyone likes the dailies, the picture’s gonna stink.”

  Try to get videotaped copies of the dailies of your film.

  Do this for posterity, of course, and also for eBay, if times get tough in the future.

  I’ve got all the dailies of Sliver, including three full tapes of Sharon and Billy “rutting,” as Robert Evans, the producer, termed it.

  “They’re like horses at each other” was the way Evans described it.

  Anybody interested?

  Steal as much memorabilia from the set as you can.

  Everybody does it. If you don’t do it, the director will.

  Dick Donner has a house in Montana furnished mostly with props and sets from his movies. I visited Steven Spielberg’s house in the Palisades years ago and it was filled with what he called “toys” from his sets.

  A friend of mine stole the real ice pick from Basic Instinct (Planet Hollywood was displaying a phony one for a while), and someone stole my old Royal typewriter—the typewriter I’d actually used to write the script and which also had a cameo in the film—from the Jagged Edge set.

  The Theory of Creative Conflict

  As defined by producer Sam Spiegel: “Films that run smoothly are colorless—only those which are produced in strife have an outstanding merit.”

  A Production Fuck

  An affair that lasts only as long as the shoot.

  You can make sure your film will be distributed.

  Afraid that Disney wouldn’t release An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, I was ready to show it myself in church halls and school cafeterias.

  So I had a copy of the negative illicitly duped, and then I stole it (a federal offense)!

  I still have it in a closet in the baby’s room, hidden underneath a big box of old toys.

  Sit in the back row at a studio screening of the rough cut.

  John Gregory Dunne: “Don DeLine, the head of production, was sitting directly behind us, and I wished we were sitting behind him so that we could measure his reaction, see where he took notes.”

  If the Writers Guild arbitrates your screen credit …

  Remember that the Writers Guild committee that will decide whether to award you screen credit (and more money) is made up of people like you—writers who want credit (and more money) on their writing projects.

  The people on this committee want to award you the credit, so make it easy for them. Give them a lengthy, scholarly, lawyerly document pointing to all your plot, character, and name changes—and be sure to use a lot of yellow Magic Markers.

  I know a screenwriter who, in an effort to get screen credit, sent the Guild committee a document that was longer than his script.

  You might have to stand in line to get your screen credit.

  John Gregory Dunne: “Prevailing industry wisdom is that the more writers there are on a script, the better that script will be. On our version of A Star Is Born, eight of the thirteen writers who actually worked on the script filed for credit.

  Scratch and claw for your credit.

  Screenwriter Budd Schulberg: “The billing on On the Waterfront soured the sweet taste of all of it for me. There was Sam Spiegel’s billing twice as big as life, while the name of the writer, and in this case the originator of the project as well, is either left out entirely or reduced to almost ridiculous minuteness.”

  Your director will try to screw you with your screen credit.

  Two easy and common ways:

  Your name as screenwriter stays up on-screen for three seconds; the director’s name stays on-screen for eight seconds.

  Your name on-screen—in black letters—is against a black background, so the audience can hardly make it out. The director’s name—also in black letters—is against a crisp white background, so it is glaringly visible.

  If the movie has little to do with the script that you wrote, take your name off of it.

  Unless you want to paint the scarlet letter on yourself, don’t let your name be on something that isn’t yours.

  I realize giving up the credit may cost you money, but I argue that you will damage yourself more by feeling like a hypocrite or a hooker.

  When I saw the final cut of Nowhere to Run (starring Jean Claude Van Damme), which was based on my script Pals, I didn’t recognize it as mine. I told the studio I wanted my name off of it.

  The studio said no. They wanted to use my name in the trailers for the movie, running the line “from the writer of Basic Instinct, Joe Eszterhas.”

  I went to the Writers Guild and demanded that my name be taken off, but the Guild said I couldn’t do it—I’d been paid too much money by the studio.

  So I petitioned the Guild to give credit to the two guys who’d rewritten me, as well. I was told that it was the first time in Guild history that a writer had petitioned for credit for his “competing” cowriters.

  The two guys who had rewritten me got credit behind me, and that way, at least, I was able to spread the blame for the mess that was on-screen.

  If they ask you how you like the movie you wrote, tell ’em the truth.

  Director Joseph von Sternberg: “When he saw the movie he wrote and I directed, Ben Hecht told the press that he was about to vomit, his exact words being—‘I must rush home at once, I think it’s mal de mer.’ ”

  Try to find something positive to say about your film.

  Sharon Stone, after the release of Basic Instinct: “At least it proves I’m a natural blonde.”

  You might have to drink whiskey from a vase.

  If you’re attending the first screening of the film and you wrote the script, that is.

  Tennessee Williams, attending the first screening of his film Suddenly Last Summer, drank whiskey from a vase and muttered, “Who wrote this shit?”

  Watching your movie might hurt.

  Jim Harrison: “Sitting there in the dark before the projector starts you have the distinct feeling you might be raped by an elephant or, if your imagination is running to the sea, a whale.”

  Don’t tell your friends when or where your movie will be screened.

  Actor/producer Danny DeVito: “I’ve heard stories where people have actually paid other people to call newspapers and say they’ve seen screenings of movies that were bad—just because they wanted to sabotage the movie. That happens all the time.”

  Do whatever you can to stop the studio from market-researching your film.

  Director Phillip Noyce: “Then we did the first screening for a recruited audience on the lot at Paramount, as was customary for a Paramount film. The guys from a company called National Research Group, run by Joseph Farrell, would go out to malls and cinemas and recruit an audience for these previews. In Los Angeles people are pretty used to being invited. It’s a way of getting the lowdown on films many, many months before their release, and, in a town devoted to the entertainment industry, it’s also become a way for the ordinary man and woman to have their say. They can become not just a film critic but a film executive. The tick of their pen, the cross of their pencil, can decide the fate of the movie they’re judging. The preview audience’s power has been further increased since the late 1990s by advance reviews appearing on Internet sites such as ‘Ain’t It Cool.’”

  Don’t go to any focus-group screenings.

  L.A. is a city full of make-believe film critics who wanna be screenwriters. They turn out en masse at focus-group research screenings.

  Every twit out there thinks he’s a critic, and they all think they know better than guess who?

  Not the director, because the director knows things about camera angles and cameras th
at they don’t.

  Not the actors, because, well, they’re handsome or beautiful or, minimally, graduate students of the Method.

  Okay, all together now, they think they know better than—ta da—the highly paid, millionaire screenwriter!

  And here are all these twits, gathered together in this room, part of a focus group, with the screenwriter usually there, and they have a chance to tell him (with studio execs listening) how it should have been written.

  And maybe, in the process, they’ll be discovered by the director or producer—it’s their big chance at the brass ring, at discovery, at stardom, if they can just sound smart enough about what the screenwriter did wrong.

  I saw one guy in his late thirties in three of my focus groups at research screenings—the same guy at three of them, at Jagged Edge and Betrayed and Music Box—and in all three cases, the guy lectured me about how bad my ending was.

  See your films in a theater with real people.

  Most people in Hollywood see movies in a screening room or on their home screens. But it’s important for a writer to see how a film affects real people—especially the impact your own lines of dialogue and your story have on them.

  This should be the final part of your creative experience of writing a screenplay. It begins in a little room, with you sitting there all alone, making it up, and it ends in a big room, with hundreds of people communicating to you their reactions to what you’ve written.

  If you don’t experience what you’ve written with an audience, then you’re not bringing your communication process to a conclusion.

  Avoid the industry premiere of your film.

  Mike Medavoy: “Industry screenings might be the ultimate hypocrisy in a business that can be very hypocritical. The audience is usually composed mostly of the filmmaker’s genuine friends, who applaud and laugh at all the right moments. They want the studio executives in the audience to hear what a great film it is so the studio will support their friend’s film with marketing dollars. The studio executives tend to be a group of people who either inherited the film from a previous regime or don’t want anything to do with what they think is a potential turkey, so they walk out and praise the film in Hollywood doublespeak. Typically, they can be heard telling the producer and director things like “You did it again” or “What a picture!” neither of which says what it really means. Those executives also know they might need that producer or director in the future. So in the end, everyone runs from a failure and tries to walk alongside a success.”