What does Mike Medavoy know?
Director Bob Rafelson went to studio head Mike Medavoy’s office to tell him that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be perfect in Stay Hungry.
Medavoy said to Bob, “I’ve known you were crazy for years and now I’m sure of it. This guy has an Austrian accent and he doesn’t look anything like a traditional movie star. Get out of my office.”
Your Script Is Too Soft
By this, they mean it’s too arty, too lyrical, not dramatic enough, lacking enough violence for a box-office hit.
Studio execs are very busy people, too.
Louis B. Mayer and his executives spent weeks trying to figure out how many times the MGM lion should roar on-screen at the beginning of a film. They finally settled on two loud growls followed by a yip.
Tweaking Your Script
If a director, producer, or studio exec tells you that your script is “terrific” but needs “a little tweaking” it means you are about to be paid off and another writer will soon come in and rewrite everything you’ve written.
In short, it means they hate your script.
You’re a jackass in a hailstorm.
Jack Valenti did give screenwriters some good advice.
Jack: “I do get frustrated; in fact, I do get depressed from time to time. But I’ve learned something. If I just hunker down, as LBJ used to say, like a jackass in a hailstorm and wait till the storm passes, it’s going to be all right. If I look down on a day or two, I know on the third day I’m gonna start rising again.”
A Round Conversation
One that is going nowhere.
Give studios you’ve been in business with before a first chance to read a brand-new script.
Just make sure the brand-new script doesn’t have too many coffee stains on it.
They have to pay you, but they don’t have to thank you.
Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn: “The word gratitude is not part of the Hollywood dictionary.”
ALL HAIL
Harlan Ellison
When screenwriter/novelist Ellison felt that a studio executive had lied to him, he messengered the man a dead gopher.
Bullet Points
What studio execs call their most important notes on a screenplay. Screenwriters say they’re called “bullet points” because these are the points that will kill the script.
This Is the Best First Draft I’ve Ever Read
Producers and studio execs say this when they know that an awful lot of work will have to be done on the script and when they want to cajole you into doing more drafts than what your contract calls for.
Garbage
This is what studio executives call the dialogue of a screenplay.
Sweet Jesus …
Academy Awards producer and former studio chief Joe Roth had this idea to start the show the year after The Passion of the Christ was released: “I say, bring Billy Crystal out in a loincloth, carried on a cross through the Academy.”
PART TEN
INSPIRING THE ACTORS
LESSON 16
Their Shorts Have Skid Marks, Too!
Don’t star-fuck.
William Goldman, on the making of his Marathon Man, starring Laurence Olivier: “But that moment—when the actor of the century asked me would I mind if he switched six words around—is the most memorable incident of my movie career. Olivier. Calling me ‘Bill.’ Olivier. Asking me would I mind. That’s high cotton.”
Actors have a social conscience.
Shooting Viva Villa in Mexico, Lee Tracy took a piss off of his hotel balcony while Mexicans beneath him were marching to celebrate their national independence.
In order to avoid an international incident, Tracy had to be replaced.
Do not genuflect before stars.
William Goldman: “Stars do not—repeat—do not play heroes—stars play gods. And your job as a screenwriter is to genuflect, if you are lucky enough to have them glance in your direction. Because they may destroy your work, will destroy it more often than not—but you will have a career.”
Listen to me carefully: I am my own best example. You don’t have to genuflect to anyone to have a lengthy and profitable screenwriting career.
You’ll pick up a lot of rug burns and need to carry mouthwash with you. (We already know that Bill used to carry bottles of Kaopectate.)
Aw, come on, their shorts get skid marks, too.
Screenwriter John Gregory Dunne: “I have a confession to make: I have a hard time calling Robert Redford ‘Bob.’ He is younger than I am, and yet I would let his diminutive cross my lips only if I could not get his attention by catching his eye or clearing my throat. To me, he is Robert Redford. In an era of faux egalitarian familiarity, when presidential contenders pass themselves off as Bill or Phil, ‘Bob’ is somehow diminishing; it would be like calling Woodrow Wilson ‘Woody.’ ”
ALL HAIL
The Old Scum-Sucking Swine!
Hunter S. Thompson was the only writer I’ve ever known who could make groupies out of movie stars.
Johnny Depp slept in a little room, which was filled with brown spiders, in Hunter’s basement.
Sean Penn, Jude Law, and Benicio Del Toro were all friends who tried to cheer Hunter up when he was depressed by reading to him … from his own writings.
I asked Hunter once how he was able to do this to actors.
“They’re actors,” he said, “I show ’em my guns. I let ’em play with ’em. Actors like to play with guns.”
Actors ruined everything a long time ago.
Producer David O. Selznick: “I don’t mind spending money, but there’s no more reason to believe that Marlon Brando is a producer than Karl Malden is. We always have difficulties but actors used to accept discipline. I’ve called Jack Barrymore into my office for not knowing his lines; he was contrite and apologetic. I had to speak to Leslie Howard, who was embarrassing Vivien Leigh by not being prepared for a scene. But you never had to speak again. They recognized their fault and corrected it.”
TAKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA
Don’t marry an actor.
Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “When you are married to an actor, you have the feeling you are nothing but an understudy to him. He only has eyes for himself. It is really the one situation I know of where, with just two people, you have a triangle! Both of you, madly in love with him. They probably have these big ego problems because deep inside, they are not secure, like little boys. There is a saying that an actress is something more than a woman and an actor is something less than a man.”
Please, Bill, you’re embarrassing me.
Screenwriter William Goldman: “I have worked with Redford. I have been in a room with Beatty. They are brilliant men, passionate about what they produce, and boy are they not dumb. Well, Michael Douglas is their equal. And Douglas did something no other actor did with me—he spent time. On the script. Going over it and over it. Actors just don’t do that. They are simply too busy. But Douglas spent literally days locked in a room with me and with Stephen Hopkins, who did a wonderful job directing the movie.”
Oh boy, Bill, I know you think it’s about the next job, but you don’t have to be this desperate to get one, do you? You “have been in a room with Beatty”? Hallelujah, man! They’re “brilliant” and “passionate” and “wonderful”? Have you no gag reflex left?
Michael Douglas, in my experience, is not brilliant and may very well, in some cases, be dumb. This is the guy who wanted to change the ending of Basic Instinct because he said it wasn’t “redemptive.” Pressed, he said he was the star of the movie and “she one-ups me at every turn.” The ending he wanted was for himself to shoot Sharon in the final scene. Even when the movie came out and was a huge hit, he kept bellyaching and asking, “Where’s the redemption?”
If he’s so brilliant, then why doesn’t he understand that not every movie has to end (especially in film noir) with redemption? And that ambiguity is a much more interesting way to go than re
demption, which is, at the same time, a disguised way of soothing a star’s ego.
You don’t want theater tickets, do you?
Agent Swifty Lazar: “The actor Jacob Adler induced some actress to sleep with him, only to have her hit him up for money. ‘Mr. Adler,’ she told him, ‘I need bread!’ To which he replied, ‘Then fuck a baker. Fuck an actor, you get theater tickets.’ ”
This means Robert McKee is a great actor.
The better the actor,” said screenwriter/novelist Truman Capote, “the more stupid he is.”
Billy Friedkin agrees.
Friedkin: “I’d rather work with tree stumps than actors.”
To get actress Angie Everhart into the right frame of mind for her character in Jade, Friedkin slapped her. He also slapped a bit actor, a priest, on the set of The Exorcist.
Mike Nichols agrees, too.
Asked how many smart actors he knew, Nichols said, “One and half—Anthony Perkins is smart, and Richard Burton is something.”
Barbara Kingland, who had an affair with Richard Burton when she was thirteen, was impressed by all the wise things Burton was always saying to her—until, when she was older, she found them in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Drew Carey studies Robert McKee.
Comedian Drew Carey has taken Robert McKee’s screenwriting course twice—which means he’s spent sixty hours listening to him.
John Cleese studies Robert McKee.
The comedian John Cleese has taken the Robert McKee screenwriting seminar three times. In other words, he’s spent ninety hours listening to McKee.
Joan Rivers studies Robert McKee.
Comedian Joan Rivers has taken Robert McKee’s screenwriting course—but only once.
Actors can be smart.
Debra Winger called me at midnight in California from the Betrayed set in Canada. She said she had a script idea.
I listened. Then I told her why her idea was uninspired.
She listened. Then she said, “You’re right, damn you!” and hung up.
An Immersive Actor
An actor who never steps out of the part, a potential Oscar winner, a phony, a pain in the ass.
But actors aren’t geniuses.
Montgomery Clift turned down the Marlon Brando role in On the Waterfront, the William Holden role in Sunset Boulevard, the Paul Newman role in Somebody Up There Likes Me, and the James Dean role in East of Eden.
Actors aren’t narcissistic, either.
Jennifer Aniston: “The last thing we think about is our looks, even though people think we do, because our wardrobe and hair are so great.”
Actors are human; they’re insecure, too.
If an actor says, “My character wouldn’t do that,” it usually means the actor is afraid he can’t act that scene.
Jim Carrey: “When the camera’s on, I’m a desperate motherfucker.”
Actors are dumb.
For many years, Robert De Niro, always brilliant on-screen, couldn’t even say two words on his own. He’d sit there, not speaking, stuck inside the mannerisms of the last character he’d played on-screen—woefully, miserably, pathetically lost without the words of a script.
But actors are no dummies.
When she was in her midforties, Sharon Stone legally adopted a woman as her grandmother.
The woman was a multizillionaire wife of a New York City parking magnate.
Actors are sensitive.
Sharon Stone told the English press that she was so “traumatized” by having to do killing scenes in Basic Instinct that during those scenes, she asked that paramedics be near with a tank of oxygen and a mask in case she passed out.
It was a complete crock. She was as ruthlessly efficient in her killing scenes as she was in her sex scenes.
Actors are so very sensitive.
Sharon went up to the Basic Instinct cinematographer with a gun in hand and waved it in his face.
“If I see one ounce of cellulite on-screen,” she said, “you’re a dead motherfucker.”
You, too, can create a monster.
Sharon Stone: “People who have seen Basic stand two feet away from me. They speak to me in careful tones. They don’t condescend to me at all anymore.”
Beware of “ach-trusses.”
Sharon Stone put a clause in her Diabolique contract that she wouldn’t do any nudity.
Here’s my two bucks.
Sharon Stone to Carrie Fisher: “I’ve often thought that if I could get a 900 number and charge all the people who say they’ve had sex with me—or say they know someone who’s had sex with me—two dollars a call, I’d never have to work again.”
Maybe it’s not such a good idea to sleep with your leading lady.
Actor James Woods to actress Sharon Stone: “Look, Sharon, maybe everyone can’t wait to get in there, but once they get it in, the big problem is getting it out again.”
Some actors have guts.
As feminists everywhere were trashing Basic Instinct after the movie’s release, actress Demi Moore, who had been offered the Stone part, told the press that she was upset at herself for having turned it down.
She particularly liked the scene where Catherine Tramell is interrogated by a roomful of policemen. Demi thought it was “the best female empowerment scene in movie history.”
The Suicide Years
Used in reference to actresses who are in their thirties.
Actors are nutcases.
Marlon Brando’s contracts for many years specified that he could leave the set in the midafternoon to see his shrink.
Actors can’t write.
Hudson Hawk, one of the great total disasters of our time, was cowritten by Bruce Willis, who also cowrote the title song, which also bombed.
Not even Warren can write.
John Gregory Dunne: “Warren Beatty does not write as much as he supervises, in the manner of an architect. Teams of writers in effect work under the pseudonym Warren Beatty.”
Be careful making suggestions to actors.
Said George C. Scott to Paddy Chayefsky when Paddy tried to give him some acting tips: “You do your fucking writing! And I’ll do the acting!”
But actors can be mellow.
George C. Scott (Patton, The Hospital): “I’ve always been mellow. I have been the most mellow son of a bitch you’ve ever seen.”
Actors will do anything to upstage one another.
Zero Mostel always ate a big dish of black beans and onions before the premiere of a play he was appearing in. He did that so he could fart easier (and louder and smellier) to distract the other actors.
Actors can be cheap.
Two actors I’ve worked with—Ryan O’Neal and Maximilian Schell—took all the clothes that they wore in the film they had just finished shooting.
Ryan O’Neal left the set so quickly with his new Armani suit that he had to be chased across town to bring it back—Arthur Hiller, the director, wanted to do another take.
Actors can be pissy.
This is especially true on a set, where they’re pumped full of diuretics like Diazide, which make them go to the bathroom three times an hour (that would make anyone irritable).
They take the pills to look lean and hollowed out for the camera. Some actors—like Jeff Bridges and Michael Douglas—put twenty pounds on between movies and have to go on a rigid crash diet before the shoot. And then they have to gobble their piss pills on the set.
To Do a Pee-Wee
To be caught in a dark place playing with it.
Actors are somewhat competitive.
Anna Magnani watched Marilyn Monroe accept a prize from the Italian industry and yelled this from the audience: “Putana!” (Whore!)
They’re so worried about wrinkles.
When Marilyn Monroe died, hair designer Sydney Guilaroff, one of her best friends, said, “I’m glad she died young. She could never have stood getting a wrinkle on her face. All she had was her beauty.”
HOLLYWOOD PARABLE
Dr. Haing S. Ngor worked as a gynecologist in Cambodia. When the Communists took over the government, he and his wife were taken to a prison camp as slave laborers.
He was crucified in the camps and had part of his right little finger chopped off. His wife, pregnant with his child, was beaten to death.
He escaped to a Thai refugee camp. The director Roland Joffe met him and asked him to play a lead part in his film The Killing Fields. He agreed to do the part only because he had promised his wife that he would do his best to tell the world of the horrors that had taken place in Cambodia.
He received a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for his performance, the first nonprofessional actor in nearly fifty years to win the Oscar. He played other roles in film and television but spent much of his time involved in Cambodian relief efforts.
In February 1996, he was standing in the driveway of his Los Angeles apartment when he was shot to death by three young men. They were members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz street gang and were trying to rob Dr. Ngor.
He resisted. He didn’t want to give them the locket around his neck. Inside it was a photograph of his dead wife.
If an actor has good lines, you’d better believe that he improvised them.
Director Richard Marquand and I loved Robert Loggia’s performance in Jagged Edge because he was the ultimate pro. He hit all his marks, said all his lines, never asked a question about his character’s motivation, and never improvised.
The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood Page 29