Six months later, he asked me to dinner. His wife joined us. We went back to La Scala on Little Santa Monica.
We had a couple of martinis at the bar. He said to his wife, “You see this stool I’m sitting on? He fucked me right here on this stool. Right here.”
She laughed and laughed. The producer sort of smiled, but he wasn’t laughing. I was laughing, but I was forcing it.
I went into the bathroom and got a paper towel. I took it out to the bar and told the producer to stand up a second. He did and I put the paper towel under him on the stool.
Now he started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and so did his wife and I.
“You son of a bitch,” the producer kept saying, sitting on the paper towel, but he was still laughing.
To Do a Burt Weisbourd
He was the hottest producer of the early eighties, the producer of Raggedy Man and Ghost Story. He was working with Robert Redford on Red Headed Stranger when, word is, he went up against Redford and got into a major battle with the star. He went from being one of the hottest producers in town to getting out of the business.
Give ’em music lessons.
Screenwriter Nick Kazan: “The next time someone reads your script and either really hates something that you know works or makes cavalier and foolish suggestions … perhaps you should ask them: Did you ever hear a song for the first time and hate it and then two weeks later find yourself singing it?”
Producers outbid themselves sometimes.
Producer Charles Evans bid on a house that he wanted to buy. He forgot that he’d already made a bid; then heard about another bid, which was really his bid.
So he made another bid, bidding against himself, and bought the house.
Creative Parasite
A wannabe producer who pals around with you and cultivates your friendship in the hope that if you sell your script, you’ll get him the job of associate or executive producer on the movie is guilty of creative parasitism.
Producer Don Simpson was the reincarnation of David O. Selznick.
Screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, who turned down working on another project with Selznick: “Working with you consists of three months of work and three more of recuperation.”
Joel Silver stopped when he was seven.
Screenwriter Ben Hecht to producer David O. Selznick: “The trouble with you, David, is that you did all your reading before you were twelve.”
This producer’s a real clown.
David Nicksay was once employed as a clown by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He even graduated from clown school.
Producers have to start somewhere.
Irwin Winkler, the Oscar-winning producer, once worked as a “laugher” for live television.
Nobody messes with Sean Connery.
Producer Peter Guber was going to tell Sean Connery about a new ending needed for a movie.
When Connery poked his finger in Guber’s chest and said, “Now what’s all this shit about not shooting the ending we want?” Guber backed off and said, “No, I just came by to wish you luck.”
David Geffen is tougher than Michael Ovitz.
Said Ovitz to producer Geffen: “You’re so smart, so bright, so aggressive. … I wish to God you could take all your venom and turn it into something positive. Your whole life is so negative. It’s not enough for you to win. You have to have everyone else do poorly around you. They have to do badly. I don’t get that, David. If you keep saying bad things about me, I’m going to beat you up.”
In the end, it’s all BS.
Producer Peter Guber: “Success is more attitude than aptitude.”
Some studio bosses can’t read very well.
One studio head hated reading so much that he sat with an assistant for an hour a day as the assistant told him the plot summaries of the scripts the agencies had submitted.
That’s the sound of one hand clapping.
Peter Guber: “The perception of power is power.”
Stay away from hands-on producers.
I will not work for dominating people like Selznick or Goldwyn,” said Raymond Chandler. “If you deprive me of the right to do my own kind of writing, there is almost nothing left.”
The producer was a pimp.
David Merrick defined producer Robert Evans this way: “He’s Paramount’s vice president in charge of procurement.”
Robert Evans’s role model.
Joe Schenck, powerful studio head and producer, was known for discovering and “sponsoring” women in Hollywood. He prepared them for other men and even marriage to other men. He took care of them and asked for “a little consideration along the way.”
One of the women Joe Schenck discovered and sponsored was Marilyn Monroe.
Don’t take any meetings at a producer’s house.
Marilyn Monroe: “He had me come over to his house. It was a mansion. I had never been any place like that. He had the greatest food, too. That’s when I learned about Champagne. What I liked was hearing about all the stars I had seen in the movies. He knew them all. He seemed to have this thing about breasts. After dinner, he told me to take my clothes off and he would tell me Hollywood stories as he played with my breasts. What could I say? He didn’t want to do much else, since he was getting old, but sometimes he asked me to kiss him—down there. It would seem like hours and nothing would happen, but I was afraid to stop. I felt like gagging, but if I did, I thought he’d get insulted. Sometimes, he’d just fall asleep. If he stayed awake, he’d pat my head, like a puppy, and thank me.”
Producers can be assinine.
On my film Jagged Edge, producer Marty Ransohoff kept trying to get rid of Glenn Close, claiming, “Her ass is too big.”
After lunch with Helen Mirren, producer Sam Spiegel said she was wrong for the part in his film. “Her ass is too big,” he said.
A Truffle Nose
A nose that can find a treasure (truffles) hidden in the brush.
A nose only a successful producer can have.
A pig’s nose, since it is pigs that discover truffles.
Powerful producers can afford to wear dirty, smelly toupees.
Producer David Merrick ordered a toupee from the man who made Fred Astaire’s. But Merrick never cleaned his toupee. It smelled. He didn’t even put it on carefully, letting it look like a dirty, smelly napkin atop his head. It was Merrick’s way of showing contempt for the people he worked with. He had so much power, he could walk around in a dirty, smelly wig … and not even bother about how he looked.
And they call Thalberg a genius.
Irving Thalberg passed on a movie and said to his boss, Louise B. Mayer, “Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture will make a nickel.” He was talking about Gone With the Wind.
In need of producorial stimulation …
Screenwriter Eleanor Perry and her director husband, Frank, wrote this note to a producer: “I’m afraid that both of us seem now to require your direct stimulation before we embark or agree on truly significant changes, in short, we need you.”
Don’t steal the crumpled paper.
English screenwriter Ivan Moffat (Giant, Black Sunday) on working with an internationally acclaimed producer: “He was crablike and all-controlling. He would hold on to everything. I had idly taken a crumpled piece of paper from his desk. He said, ‘What is this, Ivan? No, please.’ And I had to put it back. On Saturday or Sunday, he would call up, saying, ‘Ivan, where are you going? Please leave a number. We might have to work.’ There was never any question of our working. I said something flippant at dinner with him once. He said, ‘Ivan, hold the humor.’ ”
Not only can you get snorted; you can get chomped, too.
Director Robert Parrish (Casino Royale), speaking about a wellknown producer he had worked with: “He never chomped on a cigar. It wasn’t his style. He was too much of a gentleman to be caught ‘chomping’ anything, except maybe a script or a screenwriter.”
Murder is always an option.
; At 3:30 A.M., screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s wife awoke, to find him not in bed.
He was in the bathroom, shaving.
She said, “Why are you shaving so early?”
He said, “Because I’m driving to New York to kill the producer.”
He would’ve loved Heidi Fleiss.
A Fox executive welcomed producer Sam Spiegel to New York. “I proposed showing him places like the Metropolitan Museum,” the executive said, “and all he wanted to go and see was Polly Adler’s—the best whorehouse in town. Sam spent the whole night there. I had to buy the place out—it was over nine hundred dollars.”
The best producers are the best liars.
Director Elia Kazan said producer Sam Spiegel could lie “without betraying a tremor of his facial muscles. He kept me intrigued just to see how he got away with everything.”
David Geffen is refined.
When producer David Geffen went to a high-toned reception for Princess Margaret, he wore blue jeans.
He went up to her and said, “Hi ya.”
I’m not going to mess with David Geffen.
Writer Tom King did—in his book, The Operator. Only a few years after writing the book he died at a young age—of natural causes, of course.
Did you say that to Tom King, David?
Whenever producer David Geffen gets angry at someone, he says, “I hope you die!”
You have to love David Geffen a lot.
David Geffen said this to screenwriter Robert Towne about why he wouldn’t work with him again: “You just didn’t love me enough, Robert.”
I always liked Michael Eisner.
Michael is a liar,” David Geffen said about Disney chief Michael Eisner. “And anybody who has dealt with him—genuinely dealt with him—knows he is a liar.”
But what if David Geffen is lying?
I worked with Michael Eisner on Flashdance and enjoyed working with him. He disagreed with me sometimes, but he never lied to me—as far as I know. It is possible, therefore, that David Geffen is lying when he calls Michael Eisner a liar.
On the other hand …
I’ve dealt with David Geffen, too, and he never lied to me, either.
But he obviously wanted to fuck Tom Cruise.
After he read the script of Risky Business, producer David Geffen told the director, “I want you to cast someone in the role of Joel that I would want to fuck.”
Who’s that holding Ron Bass’s Oscar?
Peter Guber produced Rain Man with his partner Jon Peters, even though director Barry Levinson rarely saw them on the set.
Yet Peter was photographed with “his” Oscar after the Academy Awards.
Alas, it wasn’t his Oscar; it was Rain Man screenwriter Ron Bass’s Oscar—Peter and Jon had asked Ron to “borrow it for the photographers.”
Why weren’t the photographers taking Ron Bass’s picture with his Oscar?
Because photographers aren’t interested in taking screenwriters’ photographs.
They’re not all that interested in taking producers’ pictures, either, but they are more interested in producers than screenwriters.
Peter Guber doesn’t exist; Peter Bart invented him.
Peter Guber produced Flashdance, though I never once saw him during the making of that movie. He also produced Midnight Express, though the director, Alan Parker, said that he rarely saw him during the making of that movie. And he produced Rain Man, though the director, Barry Levinson, said that he rarely saw him during the making of that movie.
Don’t be a pawn in these games.
Powerful producer Irwin Winkler once asked me to write the “true story” of media baron Rupert Murdoch. I turned him down.
Powerful producer Scott Rudin once asked John Gregory Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, to write “the true story” of entertainment mogul Barry Diller. They turned him down.
Tough-guy producers are easier to work with.
John Gregory Dunne: “In general, we prefer doing business with the bully boys than with the smoothies. The clout of the bully boys allows them to act as a buffer between you and the studio, shielding you from those mind-deadening omnibus meetings at which everyone present feels the necessity to say something; the bully boys do these meetings, and give you only the notes they think are worthwhile. If you let them know you will yell back at them when they yell at you, then they are more prone to listen—or else they fire you quickly; the smoothies just jerk your chain and smile as they measure your rib cage—for the ribs between which they will slip the stiletto.”
At all cost, even if you’re secretly writing a tell-all, appear loyal.
Producer Peter Guber: “In Hollywood, even the appearance of disloyalty can shoot down even the most promising future.”
Avoid the producer who is a wannabe director.
Watching the filming of Duel in the Sun, producer David O. Selznick interrupted filming, dashed over to Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, and splashed more makeup blood on them.
The director, King Vidor, got up off his chair and said, “David, you can take this picture and shove it,” and left the set.
Producers know how to cheer themselves up.
On days when he was depressed, producer Robert Evans said to his staff, “Go out there and find me some money!”
Producers are survivors.
Before he became my friend and, on several films, my producer partner, he had worked in a bookstore in Mill Valley, California, and owned an art theater with its own restaurant in Sonoma County. After he and I parted ways, he partnered with someone else—this time in a new Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, where he also became the maître’d.
If a producer gets bored, he can always change his name.
My friend Howard Koch, Jr., a very successful producer and truly nice guy, decided one day that he didn’t like his name anymore.
So he changed it. He became “Hawk” Koch.
He asked his friends to call him that, and he called himself that on all of his future film credits.
Everyone called him Hawk. Everyone liked Hawk better after he became Hawk.
A Velvet Octopus
A producer who wraps his arms around you with great affection and takes from you for free what you should be paid for: idea, outline, option, or script.
Don’t ever let yourself be caught by a velvet octopus.
Make the producer swim for your script.
John Huston wrote the first eleven pages of his script and handed them to producer Sam Spiegel. Spiegel started reading the pages, but Huston’s pet monkey grabbed the pages from him and threw them into the swimming pool. Siegel jumped into the pool and swam underwater to retrieve the pages.
Make him hire armed guards to keep you at bay.
Producer David Geffen hired armed guards to keep screenwriter Robert Towne out of those theaters in New York and L.A. that were showing Towne’s Personal Best.
One way to get even with a producer.
Actor Timothy Bottoms disliked Dino De Laurentiis so much that he pissed on his shoes during the production of the movie.
If you’re a writer, don’t be a producer.
I never wanted to be a producer, but I had more movie ideas than I had the time to write them all. Plus, I was intrigued by the notion of setting up a production company that would give screenwriters more control over their scripts and more participation profit than they’d ever had before. And I had two good producer friends—I’ll call them Ben and Bill—whom I enjoyed hanging out with.
So the three of us started to set up our own production company. We even had the name for it: Renegade. We had the company icon all worked out, too. Our films would begin with a steel door slamming shut and then being sprayed by bullets that spelled out R-E-N-E-G-A-D-E. We even designed and ordered three beautiful varsity jackets with the Renegade logo on the back and the names Joe, Ben and Bill scripted on the front. We also had office space picked out and—get this—studios ready to begin bidding against one another to make a dea
l with us.
And then, suddenly, in the Hungarian way, with a great big bang (not a whimper) Renegade imploded.
Ben and Bill, I noticed, didn’t like each other and were trying to score points against each other—with me—behind each other’s backs. I finally realized that it was normal behavior—because they weren’t friends; they were—individually—my friends. I liked hanging out with Ben and with Bill—individually. There were serious strains in the subtext when all three of us were together. Each guy was jealous of the other’s friendship with me.
That was one good reason to forget about Renegade.
The other was that I fell in love with Bill’s wife and married her.
PART NINE
DEALING WITH THE
STUDIO
LESSON 15
You’re a Jackass in a Hailstorm!
Barry Diller ruined movies.
According to producer/studio boss Mike Medavoy: “Barry Diller’s Paramount regime was the beginning of the movie by committee syndrome that pervades Hollywood today.
“Diller and his lieutenants began setting the agenda at the script stage. Previously, it was left up to the director and the screenwriter to work out what the movie would say and how it would be said, and then run it by the studio for input. But at Paramount, the executive would get involved with the first draft of the script, typing up voluminous notes for the filmmakers.
“Next, they would hold story meetings so the executives and filmmakers could float their ideas, many of which were undoubtedly in conflict with one another. It was then left up to the filmmakers to cut and paste it all together.”
Killer Dillers
Executives hired by Barry Diller in whatever enterprise he is involved in.
Ingratiate yourself with your superiors.
The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood Page 27