The book wasn’t the first surefire hit that didn’t make it in Hollywood. No musclebound heroes, no big explosions, no huge robots, no monstrous aliens—who’s going to see it?
(No big studio picked up Behind the Candelabra, either. Who wants to watch a love affair between a gay piano player and a dumb but muscular farm boy? The answer was: a lot of people.)
The other book was Death of a Marionette, a mystery thriller by Paul Hull (a pseudonym) and me. Hull had done some work for me at one time and wanted to be an author. He mapped out an idea and asked me my opinion. It had possibilities and I made some sugestions. They didn’t work. More suggestions and they still didn’t work. I finally agreed to collaborate with him, thinking he would pick up pointers.
The book sold—not for a fortune—but Hull had disappeared and I didn’t have an address to give him the good news. I finally found him in Oakland, right across the bay, through the State Department. His wife was the chief medical officer for an embassy overseas.
I called him, gave him the happy news, and in a cold voice he told me he wanted to see me. He came over, sat in the big easy chair opposite my couch, and bitched at me for an hour, nonstop. It hadn’t sold for a lot of money, there was no paperback edition tied in with the contract, it hadn’t sold to Hollywood, and it was all my fault.
He had some ability—he was good at atmosphere (his wife worked for the embassy in Brussels, Belgium, and he had lived there for two years and had his description of the city down pat) but he couldn’t put it all together. He couldn’t tell a story. Like a kid who knew all the letters in the alphabet but couldn’t write a sentence. Hull couldn’t plot, he couldn’t handle action.
Raymond Chandler summed it all up for me:
“I have done everything from plotting and rewriting stories for would-be writers and I have found it to be all waste. The people whom God intended to be writers find their own answers. Those who have to ask are impossible to help. They are merely people who want to be writers.”
But in one sense, we came close. The book section of The Washington Post gave the novel a review on its front page and compared us to John Le Carré: “deservedly comparable to the classic The Spy Who Came in from the Cold … every line is sterling, and the whole is a small, laconic masterpiece.”
We also got an enthusiastic review in Kirkus Reviews (“an updated version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.”)
And still another rave in Publishers Weekly (“it all adds up to one tough spy thriller.”)
And one more in the Lansing State Journal: “Robinson and Hull are a great team, superbly maintaining tense suspense in a very controlled atmosphere.”
The publishing company did no promotion, despite the glowing reviews—but it did get a second printing. (Note to film studios: the line forms on the right.)
My last effort at working with other people was with—of all the millions out there—Francis Ford Coppola.
One day my agent called saying that Coppola wanted to talk to me. Agents don’t give out phone numbers of their clients, so I made the call and Coppola asked me to bring down all my “unencumbered” (meaning books not under contract for film) to his office on Columbus Avenue. There were a lot that were free: The Dark Beyond the Stars, Death of a Marionette, The Great Divide, the manuscript (at the time) of Waiting. I spread them out on a table in Coppola’s office and he poked through them.
Coppola himself was a somewhat pudgy man, instantly likable (make that “lovable”).
He picked out The Dark Beyond the Stars and I was thrilled. A science fiction film made by Francis Ford Coppola! I found out later that he wanted to make a movie in every genre that he had missed. I was not his first choice in science fiction—somebody had recommended Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. Filed on the shelf next to it was The Dark Beyond the Stars. The Dark was a thinner book than Red Mars, and besides, Francis was familiar with my name. In film school (so I was told) he’d wanted to option The Power but had no money.
I was excited working with Francis on a science fiction film—no way could it miss. Coppola’s first offer via the agency was so low I told the agent to tell Francis that I was not chopped liver, I was worth more than that. Francis upped the offer—no fortune, but I thought I could learn a lot from working with him.
He turned out to be much more than just a teacher. I was invited to the winery, had lunch with his crew, and was invited to the anniversary party for The Godfather. He wanted me to meet his son, Roman, in Hollywood, and invited me to the opening of the restored silent version of Napoleon by Abel Gance—shot partly in three-screen format, with a musical score by Carmine Coppola, father of Francis. One Christmas season Coppola’s wife called to see if I had a copy of a 1913 All-Story as a Christmas present for Francis. They had started a literary magazine titled Zoetrope All-Story. I found a copy and sent if off. Soon after, Zoetrope All-Story published an excerpt from Tarzan of the Apes. (The novel had appeared complete in a single copy of the original All-Story. A copy of that issue in fine shape would now run you about $30,000.) I edited the excerpt and corrected the errors—a lot of them.
I finished the first draft of the script for The Dark Beyond the Stars and took it up to the winery. I had lunch—I felt like part of the family—and then Francis glanced over the script, running his eyes down the middle of the page to catch the dialogue. He tore out page after page that he didn’t think worked. I wrote a second draft (not a bad one—I still have it and reread it recently), but no studio was interested in this one, either.
The impression I got from nosing around was that science fiction films cost a lot of money to make and nobody was willing to trust Francis at this point in his life with $100 million, despite his past successes.
Francis also submitted the manuscript copy of Waiting to Hollywood Pictures. They bounced it. Next season I noticed a new series on ABC—Prey. Soon after I started getting phone calls from friends who complimented me on peddling Waiting to TV.
I hadn’t and neither had Coppola. I thought of suing ABC and Hollywood Pictures, then watched the second episode and shrugged. It wouldn’t last and it didn’t. The third episode was the last. (Just incidentally, Hollywood Pictures and ABC were both owned by Disney.)
This was my introduction to the “Hollywood haircut.” Take a story you like, add and delete a few scenes, change the names of the characters and the title, and presto—a new project! And you didn’t have to pay the original author.…
Francis faded out of my life for a while, then called and asked if I wanted to write a script based on a treatment he had written. It would be for Paramount, and this time it would be for real money. He wanted something of blockbuster stature, something like The Guns of Navarone. I had trouble putting the two concepts together, but what did I have to lose?
The treatment came in, and to my shock it was not quite two thirds of a page. Furthermore, the idea was hardly new—a takeoff on Orpheus in the Underworld. A Greek myth, it had been turned into an operetta by Offenbach and filmed as Black Orpheus (a remarkable movie that I didn’t think anybody could ever top).
Orpheus’s girlfriend is kidnapped by Hades, and Orpheus goes to Hell to retrieve her. At the top of the page Francis had written his hopes for it: “Blockbuster.” I called my agent, who told me to go ahead and try it—that it was never going to be made into a movie. Take the money and run.…
To my eventual regret, that’s exactly what I did. I tried twice, and failed each time (by contract, if you fail the first time you have a second chance—money accordingly). My first draft, a screenwriting friend told me, had failed because I had made hell into a version of Las Vegas, with Hades as the doorman to a casino (someting of a John Goodman type).
My friend broke it to me gently: Francis had lost a pot of money with One from the Heart, set in Las Vegas. I had never seen the film, but I could understand if Francis was unwilling to go there again.
(Francis might also have objected to my ending—the most grisly I had ever written. Even
Game of Thrones would probably have bounced it.)
My second effort also bounced. I called Francis and told him I was willing to try a third time if he’d give me more directions on what he wanted.
Francis was surprisingly cool on the phone. Why didn’t I talk to the man at Paramount who was the one who had really bounced it and get suggestions from him?
What was his name? I asked. Francis didn’t remember.
How about his phone number? Francis said he didn’t know that either and hung up.
(Sometime later it occurred to me that Francis and Paramount had wanted to break up their relationship and I was the fall guy. Shows you how far paranoia can take you.)
I sat there holding a dead phone while inside my head a hero crumbled. I stared at the phone and remembered that Francis had been very nice to me. And I could, of course, have turned the project down.
For most of his films made in the ’70s and ’80s, Francis deserves great credit. He used outstanding books as the skeletons for many of them, hardly a novelty in Hollywood. In the “research” that Zoetrope sent me was a sixty-to-seventy-page treatment with “Inferno” written at the top along with “Blockbuster.”
Not exactly an outstanding treatment. But it was comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one who had failed.
I stared at the phone and remembered how friendly Francis had been to me. And to be honest, I had been free to reject his initial offer.
Francis had used many popular books to serve as skeletons for his movies, which, of course, is standard practice. But I had been asked to create a “blockbuster” from the small bone he had sent me. I hadn’t been able to do it, and I doubted that anybody could. (Francis now owns one of California’s largest wineries, two or three hotels and resorts, a literary magazine, and I suspect a roomful of trophies and awards. I doubt that he’s involved in making films anymore.)
I hung up the now dead phone and went straight to the hospital with a case of atrial fibrillation. This time the paddles burned off what little hair I had on my chest. I also had to learn how to walk all over again—one of the risks of modern medicine.
XXIX
MY NEXT BRUSH with filmmaking was far more pleasant and far more important to me.
I had gone to city hall for the funeral services for Jimmy Rivaldo, a former political advisor for Harvey. After the services I noticed a middle-aged man with a very handsome younger man at his side. Somebody had gotten lucky, I thought.
A friend of mine nodded at them and said, “The older man is Gus Van Sant, a movie director. The younger guy is a screenwriter—they’re here to do a movie about Harvey Milk.”
There had been a biography about Harvey, a local play about him, a TV special about him, a DVD, an opera, and now there was going to be a movie.
About damn time.
Later I heard they were going to do location shooting, including re-creating Harvey’s camera store. I drifted down to the camera shop (on Castro, a few blocks from where I lived) to see how they were rebuilding the replica of the original. It had been something of a knickknack store, and all the display cases and shelving had been removed. The major restoration was primarily based on photographs that Danny Nicoletta had taken years before.
I couldn’t have told the difference. To me, the store looked exactly the same as it had forty years before. Not quite, I was told. They’d had to hunt up an old red couch to replace the original, and the old dental chair had been replaced by one even older. A new black dog had replaced Kid, long since gone to doggie heaven, and was flaked out on the couch, relucantly moving when somebody wanted to sit down.
A few days later Anne Kronenberg called to say that Van Sant, the screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and the star of the show, Sean Penn, wanted to interview me. They had already hired an actor to play me but apparently they were delighted to get the real McCoy. (I met the actor later on—nice guy.)
The three showed up and made themselves at home in the usual clutter in my living room. It seemed that Penn wanted to interview me as to how Harvey delivered his speeches—hand movements, if he changed the content, etc.
What I could remember was that Harvey copied the repetitious phrasing of black preachers, chopped my longer sentences into two and three parts, and—most important—never forgot the nature of the audience he was talking to.
After they finally broke I took them to dinner at the neighborhood Nirvana Restaurant—exotic foreign food. The headwaiter was a friend of mine and cleared out the back room (complete with potted palms) so we’d be alone. Everybody in the front of the restaurant knew perfectly well who was eating in the back room, and the buzz of conversation occasionally drifted back. But nobody came back to bother us—except the waiter’s mother, who showed up with an autograph book and quickly made the rounds of the table. (I think my guests were secretly glad somebody had noticed them.)
I thought I’d be in awe of all three but I wasn’t. One hardworking actor, the director who was the master of the show, and the handsome screenwriter who I wanted to get to know better.
I was, of course, boring them to death with my tales of experiences in Hollywood, and at one point said a few nasty things about Francis Ford Coppola. Penn glanced up from his plate and remarked, “Francis is one of my best friends.” (As soon as I got home I wrote a note of apology and gave it to Lance to give to Penn.)
A little later Penn had to leave for an appointment, leaving me with Gus and Lance to entertain. I told them tales about gay life in Chicago, etc., which interested them, but after twenty minutes of my monologue Gus interrupted and asked, “How would you like to be in my movie?”
I felt embarrassed and told him I was no actor, that when I had been cast as the lead in my grammar school play I had forgotten every single line. Gus said it was only going to be one word: “dogshit.”
I hesitated, then said, “I think I can manage that,” and my career as a movie star was born.
On the way out, I told Lance that if I had a word—any word—in the movie I should have a copy of the script so I’d know how to say it. He choked back a smile, but I got a copy the next day.
I was what they call a background actor—just hang around in the background so the audience wouldn’t think Harvey was a Pied Piper surrounded by a retinue of young kids. When we were all gathered in the front of the camera shop, Penn suddenly appeared in makeup. I gasped (so did everybody else), then broke into applause. He was Harvey to a T. A few inches too short, voice an octave lower—but Harvey Milk in the flesh.
So. Action. “Danny,” young boy of all work, was filing photographs in the back—he would become one of the most skilled photographers in the city. (He was played by Lucas Gabreel, star of High School Musical on the Disney Channel.) Two of Harvey’s political consultants were talking in the background, James Franco (playing Harvey’s lover Scott), was sitting at the front desk, and I was slouched in a corner of the couch pretending to be wallpaper—I’m to be seen, not heard.
I could hear the cameras start and then Franco looked at me and said, “Hey, Robinson, did you get laid last night?”
Franco had decided to play agent provocateur.
I stared for a split second—I had no words—then remembered I had been writing dialogue before he was born.
“Yeah, I got laid last night.”
“What’s his name? Maybe I want to date him.”
“You’d like him, Scott—he’s got an inch for every letter in his name.”
“Yeah, but what’s his name?”
“Joe.”
The back room erupted, and the cameramen and Gus and Cleve Jones came running out, Cleve saying, “Frank, I never thought you had it in you!”
They made me a member of SAG immediately. From a hundred bucks a day to a thousand …
Later in the movie I ad-libbed a scene or two with Penn, but they never got in the movie. The Writers’ Guild of America was on strike, which meant that not a word of the script could be changed. (Maybe someday there’ll be a direct
or’s cut!)
The only way I could trade lines with Penn—hey, an Oscar winner!—was to pretend that he really was Harvey Milk.
There were a few mob scenes at night shot at Castro and Market, and one time I popped out and went across the street to the Hot Cookie—a coffee and fresh baked cookie place. Lance Black came in afterward, and I told him that I had read his screenplay twice (he later won an Oscar for it) and thought it was great. “And I’m not blowing smoke.”
He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Frank, you can blow smoke at me anytime” and kissed me. (It’s the little things that make life bearable.)
Some months later, I watched the Oscars and cried when Lance gave his acceptance speech when receiving the Oscar on what it was like to grow up “different” before the audience of a thousand in the auditorium and perhaps a billion around the world.
I’ve read a number of screenplays by Lance since then, and for my money, he’s an ace screenwriter. (J. Edgar—the screenplay of a man whom Americans almost universally hated—was a damned good character study. In the movie the makeup on Hoover’s lover when he aged was atrocious, and one of the stars insisted on having Hoover put on a dress in a scene, apparently to fulfill the expectations of an audience that had bought into the myth. It had never happened in real life. Lance had done what could be done in explicating the personality of a man who had none.)
A few more scenes of sitting around, and then Gus asked Penn and me to improvise a scene where Harvey originates his most popular speech, about “hope.” I had no idea how the speech came into being—I think it was one of those that just originated from a number of speeches. My contribution to the improvisation was to whine “We’ve got nothing to give the public, Harvey—not even hope.” Penn turns and (as Harvey) walks away muttering to himself, “hope, hope…”
It was as good an origin as any but it didn’t matter—the script was frozen, and our little improvised bit would never appear on-screen.
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