My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  What I Really Want to Do…

  I told Dick Donner, “I'm going to direct,” and Donner said, “Why? If you're good at it, I'm going to lose my best writer.”

  I said, “Give me some tips. What am I looking at here?” I had worked on crews, I'd produced movies.

  He said, “Don't overprepare, you'll lose your spontaneity. Know the direction you're shooting in. Rehearse the scene, but leave yourself open for all kinds of things that are going to occur, because you're also going to be rewriting while the scene's going on because you're a writer. Don't have a shot list. You know enough about movies, for God's sake. You've worked on them in every area. That's number one. Number two, don't worry about going over a little. Don't worry about making a schedule. If you're on time and on budget and the show's no good, all they'll remember is the show wasn't any good. If you're a little over budget and a little over time and the show's wonderful, all they'll remember is the show was wonderful. And remember, it's very difficult to fire a director once you start shooting; very difficult. It happens very seldom.” And the last thing Donner said, “Don't admit you're wrong to the crew. They'll turn on you like a bunch of Dobermans. Just say, ‘No, I was right, but we can do it another way.'”

  When you're on a feature and shooting two and a half pages, you don't need as much spontaneity as you do when you're flying by the seat of your pants on a television episode shooting eight pages a day. I know orderly writers, good writers, who literally do their screenplays in advance, scene by scene on three-by-five cards, and they move them around. I'm much more spontaneous. I know two or three key points in the screenplay that I'm going to do: she finds out that that's not her mother, and later on, she almost drowns. I've never written a treatment in my life. I tend to start writing. Dick knew that because I've never written a treatment for him. He said, “You're spontaneous and that's your strength, so do that. The best directors are spontaneous directors. Suddenly, an actor has an idea and it's a good idea. If you're all locked up and you've got your shot list, you don't know what to do with that good idea.”

  I couldn't have had a more welcoming and easier time of starting to direct with people who were total pros. We started shooting, and the very first day, I was so psyched up, so overprepared, I thought, boy, this is going to be a tough day. But I was through with R.J. at three o'clock in the afternoon, and there was another little scene I could shoot. I turned to him and said, “That's all, R.J., you're through. I'm going to go around the corner and shoot this other scene.”

  He said, “Old fellow”—we always called each other “old fellow”; I don't know where it started—”can I give you some directorial advice?”

  I said, “Sure, please.”

  He said, “Never look an actor in the eye and say, ‘You're through.' Say, ‘That's all for today, R.J. See you back in the morning, R.J.' But never say, ‘You're through.' It sends a chill right through you.”

  I'm a big fan of five- and six-page scenes between people, like Superman landing on Lois's balcony. There's a long scene in bed with R.J. and Stefanie early on in the piece. She sneaks in his window with a gun; you think she's going to kill him. She gets into bed and they have this long scene. Now, because of the way the sets had to be built and how we had to schedule the shoot, this was the third day, and Stefanie got into bed with R.J. Normally, you wouldn't want to shoot a scene like that until they'd been working together for a couple of weeks. Bob Collins was the cameraman. He finished Superman and Superman II after Geoffrey Unsworth died. Collins was in his twenties; very, very good. I asked him, “Can't you shoot two overs at the same time?”

  He said, “No, you can't do it, because if you light her, you can't light him.”

  I said to Bob, “There's got to be a way to light both of them.”

  He said, “No, there isn't. Not inside. Outside we could try for it. But if you're going to light her, and she's beautiful, and you're going to be shooting over him, if you want me to light him over her, it's going to look like hell. I know what you want, but you can't do it. If they're lying on the grass in the sunlight, we'd put silks on both sides and we could try that. But not in here.”

  I said, “Let's try.”

  He said, “I'll do my best.”

  I looked at the rushes the next morning, and he was absolutely right. It looked like hell. A lot of this stuff I knew in my gut from all the movies I'd worked on and all the movie sets I'd been on, but it was great to have a bullshit detector like Bob Collins. I was thirty-six and he was in his late twenties.

  Everybody was rooting for me, which was a great thing. R.J. was so helpful. We were friends. Stefanie was great, and they were both pros. When a crew sees that you're getting along with the actors wonderfully and they can feel that they're getting good stuff, they go right with you. If you are good to the crew and you take a special interest in them personally—when you're waiting around for five minutes you strike up a conversation not with your leading lady but with the grip, and you find out about him—there comes that time when you have to do six setups and you've only got forty-two minutes of light left, and they'll drive off a cliff for you; they will work so hard for you. Years later, when I was rewriting Legal Eagles in New York, I walked on the set with Ivan Reitman, the director, and not one crewmember said hello, not because they disliked him, he just had no interest in the crew. If I walked through a stage door where I was directing, I would have said hello, by name, to fifteen people and laughed with them about something by the time I got to the camera. I wasn't sucking up to the crew—it's just instinctively you're interested. It's because I started as a third assistant director in Moab, Utah, and I know what it's like.

  One day Leonard Goldberg came on the set and asked me, “How's it going?”

  I said, “Leonard, God help me, they're married.” Stefanie on idle is like somebody else at top speed. She has fifty things to do. She's got an engine in her. R.J. can sit around and watch stew simmering in a Crock-Pot for an hour. But onscreen, they were just terrific. Everybody knew R.J. was married to Natalie Wood and Stefanie was going out with Bill Holden, but when we would go out on location, everybody thought they were married. They would just accept them as the Harts.

  The tag of the Hart to Hart pilot was a poker game with seven jets in a private hangar. I wanted camels to show that it was an Arab country. There was an animal farm eighty miles away that had camels. I was getting ready to shoot one morning and I asked, “Where are the camels?” The camels were on a truck that broke down in Banning. I was waiting for the camels because I'd got to pan past them for a shot. I was supposed to start shooting at eight, and it was now nine o'clock.

  Leonard Goldberg called and asked my assistant, John Ziffren, “So how much do we have in the can?”

  John said, “Well, we don't have anything. We're waiting for the camels.”

  Leonard said, “What do you mean we're waiting for the camels?”

  “Well, the camel truck broke down in Banning, but they're repairing it, and Mank wants to wait till the camels get here.”

  Leonard said, “You tell Mankiewicz that if he's not shooting within five minutes, I'm going to come down there and fire him personally.”

  I said, “You tell Leonard, ‘Shooting now, boss. We're shooting.'” We had no camels. Stefanie comes out of the plane, she hears a camel sound and looks off. We cut to stock footage of some camels against a wall, playing the score from Lawrence of Arabia behind it. And it works fine.

  My camera operator was Michael Chevalier, a big guy. You trust the operator so much because he's looking through the barrel of the camera and you're not. It was the last shot of the pilot. R.J. and Stefanie looked like a million dollars, he was in a dinner jacket, she was in an evening gown, and their two faces were pressed together because they were about to kiss. People from ABC, Aaron, and Leonard were waiting for the final shot with champagne and a big cake. The last shot was a slow push-in on the two of them until they filled the screen; just their mouths and their eyes. Son of a g
un, the first take, they were just great. I said, “Cut it. Print it. That's a wrap.” Everybody cheered.

  Michael Chevalier came up to me and he said, “I don't think you're going to like it, boss.”

  I said, “Why?”

  “When you get in that close, she's too heavily made up on the side of the eyes and you see the makeup. It's too much, and I don't think you're going to like it.”

  I said, “Thank you.” I announced to everyone, “Ladies and gentlemen, sorry, we have to do it again. We had a flutter in the camera and we're not sure about the flutter.”

  Michael said, “Stay farther back. Don't go in so tight on her, and tell the makeup lady to refresh her makeup and use a little less.”

  So I told her that and I said, “But don't tell Stefanie.”

  We stayed a little farther back, and the second take was almost as good as the first, and that's the one that's in the pilot. The next day I looked at rushes, and Michael was absolutely right. You depend on your operator to do that. And a great operator does that. I've had operators say, “I think I got it. Yeah, I got it.” And they didn't get it. It was the last shot of the movie, and it was going to look awful, and it would have cost a fortune to get everybody back. Peter Yates, on every picture, would write down a wardrobe lady's or an assistant prop man's name who did something wonderful. When he started a picture, he would say, “Are any of these people available? Because I want them.” The Scorseses and Spielbergs of the world tend to work with the same directors of cinematography, the same editors. Every picture Marty does is edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. If she weren't available, I think he'd postpone the start of the movie to wait for her, because it's really important. By the way, there were a couple of camels present at the Hart to Hart wrap party.

  When I was directing Hart to Hart, I had an office at Fox called a star dressing room that in the old days was for the big stars. It had your own private bathroom, a little outer office, a little inner office. You were out on the lot, you weren't in some office building. My dressing room connected with John Williams's dressing room. He had just done Star Wars for Fox. We knew each other. John had a big piano in his room. Mark Snow had written the theme for Hart to Hart, and he wanted to play it for me. I asked John, “When you go to lunch, can this young guy and I come in to your office? He wants to play me the theme. He's going to play it on the piano.”

  John said, “Absolutely, sure.”

  So he went to lunch, and Mark and I went in. He played me the theme, and it was terrific. On top of the piano was music for Dracula that John had been writing. I left John a note on top of the piano saying, “John, thanks so much. I think we found everything we need. Tom.” About two hours later, John popped his head in the doorway and said, “That was a joke, wasn't it?”

  The greatest joy of my life is that I had a chance to work with so many people like that; you feel like there's an elite club, whether it's a stuntman like Terry Leonard or a cinematographer like Geoffrey Unsworth or Vittorio Storaro or a composer like John Williams. These are the best of the best, and you're so fortunate to be able to work with them.

  Executive Decision

  They ran the pilot in New York. Leonard Goldenson, who owned ABC, was a very old man at the time, and apparently ours was the last pilot he viewed. He was sitting in the screening room. He asked, “Can I go home now?”

  Brandon Stoddard, the head of production, said, “No, it's two more hours, Mr. Goldenson. It's called Hart to Hart.”

  “Oh, God.” So he fell asleep during the pilot, Brandon told me later. At the end of it, the lights came up, Goldenson awoke and said, “It's The Thin Man. I like it.”

  The landscape of television in those days was all network. There was almost no cable at all in 1979. We were an instant hit, and we once got a 45 on a skiing show in Vail I directed. That meant almost half of the sets in the country were watching you. You couldn't do that today. Today, a hit share is maybe 18, because you're competing with everything on cable. ABC had a pilot with Lou Gossett Jr., whom I'd done The Deep with, called The Lazarus Syndrome. He played a doctor in those days, no black character had ever carried an hour. Brandon said, “I don't think this is going to get good ratings. It's a wonderful show, but I've got to put it on at ten o'clock Tuesday; that's our strongest night. I've got to be fair to the show.” One of the executives with real class. For the first two weeks, we ran on Saturday night, and son of a bitch, they pulled the plug on The Lazarus Syndrome; got no ratings. So we moved to Tuesday night, where we stayed for five years. We beat some really good shows like St. Elsewhere that were, in their own way, at least as good as we were. But if you went up against Hart to Hart at ten o'clock on Tuesday night, you didn't win. That night belonged to ABC because they had Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Taxi, and Hart to Hart.

  A series is a home, and it has a different balance than a movie. It was my script, and they were kind of my characters, and I directed the two-hour pilot. Directors in television are visiting firemen, whereas in a movie, they control the picture, or they should. What's all-important in television are the writing, the writer-producers, and the stars. Once you have a hit with R.J. and Stefanie, it is virtually impossible to replace them, because the audience knows who they like and if you suddenly said, “Starting next season, Suzanne Pleshette is Mrs. Hart,” they'd go, “No, she isn't.” They won the People's Choice Awards. Stefanie was unused to stardom and real recognition. She had been doing guest parts in television. Early on, we were out on location and fans would come. R.J. signed for anybody; he would always take time for people. A couple of fans asked, “Mr. Wagner, can you help us out? Ms. Powers won't come out and sign autographs.”

  R.J. said, “Oh, she won't, huh?” He went over to her motor home and knocked on the door. “Stefanie, it's R.J. Come on out and meet the people who pay your salary.”

  As an actor, Stefanie was a total pro, except for one night when she had to go someplace and we were shooting late. She had a little scene with Max at the kitchen sink, and she did it. I said, “Cut it. We'll do one more.”

  She said, “Why? That was great.” She wanted to go.

  I said, “I just want to do one more.”

  “You mean you have absolutely no direction to give me whatsoever. There was nothing wrong with the last take, you just want to do one more.”

  “That's right.”

  She said, “All right, let's do it.”

  She was about three times as good in the second take. And I said, “Cut it. Print ‘em both. Stefanie, which one do you think I should use?”

  She said, “The last one.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  She called me later that night to apologize. She said, “I am so sorry. Thank you for making me stay.”

  Midnight Mank

  I learned a lot. I started directing episodes of Hart to Hart like peanuts, and I had a wonderful cachet on the show since I had rewritten it and, in essence, put it on the air. I had a credit called “creative consultant” that was on all 110 episodes. I directed fourteen of them in the first couple of years. I was called “Midnight Mank” because I would keep people very late. On the wall of the stage, there was the schedule of directors, and somebody from the crew had written alongside each guy—Earl Bellamy: “No Money”; Leo Penn: “Some Money”; Tom Mankiewicz: “House Payments.” You shot an episode every seven days. A lot of directors were doing three Hart to Harts, four Fantasy Islands, and a couple of Charlie's Angels. They would finish seven days, and there'd be one scene left to shoot. At the end of four or five episodes, you would have a “slop day,” which meant all the scenes that hadn't been shot. Usually, I would come in and direct the slop day. The Directors Guild would say to Leo Penn, “You have the right to go shoot that extra scene.” Normally, Leo Penn would be shooting another television series and he'd say, “No, no. Let somebody shoot it.” I'd go in on slop days because it was really valuable for me. There were different guest casts and there was different stuff to do. If the whole series was
, let's say, nine days over schedule, somebody would write an episode where the Harts get stuck in an elevator so you could do it in four days.

  Doris DeHerdt, who was an old British script supervisor on Hart to Hart, would always say to me in the morning when I directed, “Good morning, Tom. You have anything for me, or will we be winging it as usual?”

  And I would say, “Doris, we're winging it as usual.”

  Some television directors hand the script supervisor a shot list. Doris was really good at her job. We were shooting in Hawaii, and there was a scene with R.J., Stefanie, and a coast guard captain. It was a walk-and-talk scene, and I was shooting with two cameras: one was dollying alongside them, and one was a long-lens camera the three of them were walking toward. We did one take, and it was absolutely fine. I said to the dolly cameraman, “Tighten up on R.J. and the captain because they've got 90 percent of the dialogue and I've got Stefanie covered anyway. On the long lens, I just want R.J. and the captain.”

  Doris said, “You can't do that.”

  I asked, “Why, Doris?”

  And she said, “Because the captain will go from the middle of the screen over to the right of the screen.”

  I said, “Doris, look, I'm starting with the three of them walking. Everybody knows where they are and that they're walking.” She mumbled the whole time and she was a very proper British lady and so dedicated to her job. I'd hear her mumbling behind me, and I would say, “Please, don't mumble, Doris. If you think I'm an asshole, just speak up.” The day we had this little contretemps about the coast guard captain going from the center of the screen to the right of the screen, I went home that night and flipped on my television set, huge Jack Daniel's in hand, and there was Lawrence of Arabia. Claude Rains, Peter O'Toole, and Jack Hawkins are walking together. Suddenly, David Lean cuts right in to the two-shot. So Claude Rains goes from the center to the side. I picked up the phone. “Ms. DeHerdt's room, please.”