Still Foolin’ ’Em

by Billy Crystal

  Robert Wuhl was again writing with me, and we set out to give the show the same kind of unpredictable feel we’d given the Grammys. Jack Nicholson would be in the audience and had just made a fortune as the Joker in Batman. We decided to write jokes about that, like “Jack is so rich, Morgan Freeman drove him here tonight” and “Jack is so rich, Jon Peters”—the former hair stylist and now studio head—“still cuts his hair.” I also had the idea to create a musical medley that would parody the usually lame musical numbers at the Oscars, especially the “Proud Mary” moment from the prior year. Marc Shaiman and Bruce Vilanch came on board, and we wrote the first of what would become a favorite feature of my hosting appearances: the medley. I would sing special lyrics for each of the five nominated films. It wasn’t easy to write a funny lyric for a serious movie. Oliver Stone’s JFK was the most daunting. How to pick a song and rewrite it with funny special lyrics about the murder of our president? We wanted to parody “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof—“A gunman on the knoll. Sounds crazy, no? Suspicion!”—but we couldn’t get permission from the composers. Instead, to the tune of “Three Coins in the Fountain,” I sang, “Three shots in the plaza, who done it, Mr. Stone?”

  Walking out there that first time as the host of the Oscars was one of the best moments of my life. With each challenging experience in my career, I felt I had grown more muscle. I’d come a long way from the nervous, dry-mouthed kid at his first Tonight Show. I wasn’t overwhelmed; I could feel that the audience wanted me there, and I wanted them to know I loved being there. I also walked out there not just as a comedian but as one of the stars in a movie that people loved. I felt proud and, more importantly, I felt ready; in fact, I wasn’t even nervous. I was excited. The monologue was strong and loose, and the medley really scored.

  I had a long break during the show and was in my dressing room freshening up my makeup and looking at my notes when somebody knocked on the door. I opened it, and there stood Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. “Thanks for talking about my money,” Jack said.

  “You’re doing great, and we wanted to tell you,” Warren said. This was the first time I had met these two icons, and this gesture of theirs blew me away. Since then I have spent a lot of time with Warren, who is one of the smartest and most charming people I have ever met, and Jack and I have gone on to be friends. It’s like being pals with Babe Ruth.

  * * *

  After the success of When Harry Met Sally…, Rob and his partners Martin Shafer, Alan Horn, and Andy Scheinman formed Castle Rock, a new film production company, and came to me and said, “We want you to be part of our company. Create movie ideas, and if we like them, we’ll make them. If you want to direct, you’ll get a chance to do that as well.” What could be more perfect?

  For the first time I had a nice office, an assistant, and a discretionary fund with which to develop projects. Stand-up would have to be put on hold for now. Coming up with material for my act is difficult enough, but creating and developing movies is much harder, so I wanted to focus on only that. One day while sitting at home watching television, I saw a show about fantasy vacations. This one was about a scuba diving resort with a sunken ship that you could dive into and explore. Groups of friends were going, and when interviewed they talked about how much it meant to them to do the trip together. One diver said, “It helped the midlife crisis I was having. Going with my friends on an adventure was just what I needed.” I picked up my pen and pad and started writing: “City Slickers, three friends go on a fantasy cattle drive. City guys who have to learn how to be cowboys. Crusty trail boss (Jack Palance) dies during the trip and they have to bring in the herd themselves. Metaphor for what’s missing in their lives. My character, like me, in his 40s … midlife crisis. Secrets that friends have from each other.”

  The Castle Rock group loved the idea of a “coming of middle age” film and we met with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who had not only written Parenthood, but Splash as well. We were all the same age and had similar feelings about turning forty. We spent a few weeks knocking out the beats of the story, and they went off to write the screenplay. It was that fast. No studio interference, no midlevel executives, no notes on every page, instead, it was simply: Go do it.

  One day, as I was driving to the office, someone on the radio was talking about the running of the bulls in Pamplona, which would occur in a few days. Bingo! I thought. Let’s open the movie at the running of the bulls. These three pals always did stuff like this, and wouldn’t it be a great opening if we could pull it off? We went up to Martin Shafer’s office and told him the idea, and without missing a beat he was on the phone getting a crew, hotels, and stunt people, putting everything in motion so we could shoot in Spain in just a few days. To this day, I’ve never seen a studio executive move that quickly.

  That also put into motion an aspect of the movie I am asked about all the time: Why did I wear a Mets hat? Okay, here’s the story. HBO brought Comic Relief to Radio City Music Hall, in New York, that year. We asked the Yankees to do a Comic Relief Day at Yankee Stadium—let us sell our T-shirts and give away our “Groucho” glasses, and Robin, Whoopi, and I would sing the national anthem and do an inning or two on TV. The Yankees, for whatever reason, turned us down. The Mets not only gave us the day but made a big contribution to the charity. So when it was time to shoot the stuntpeople in Pamplona as they ran with the bulls, something we would re-create at Universal Studios (it’s not easy to run with Hollywood bulls; they’re always on their cell phones), we needed to dress the man who was stunting for me. In Spain, the stuntman had a Mets jersey and hat and a Yankee jersey and hat. The Mets would waive the licensing fee, which was $40,000, and the Yankees wouldn’t, so we went with the Mets. That’s how the decision was made. The Mets deserved it.

  Look, I love the Yankees. I was a Yankee (more on that later). I will always love the Yankees, and there’s a scene in the film where I’m asked to describe my best day. Riding on horseback and not wearing the hat, I talk about my first game at Yankee Stadium, not Shea, watching Mickey hit one, not Ed Kranepool. Later, when I got friendly with George Steinbrenner, he asked me why the Met hat, and I told him the whole story. He understood. I hope no one was fired, because shortly thereafter, the Yankees did a terrific Comic Relief Day and made a large contribution to the charity.

  Training to be a cowboy for City Slickers brought about a bizarre case of déjà vu. In 1975, Janice and I had made our first trip to California. We knew that at some point we might move there, so it was sort of a scouting trip. One day while driving through Joshua Tree National Monument, near Palm Springs, I pulled over because I was having a strange anxiety attack. The western landscape suddenly looked very familiar. I had the strongest feeling that I had been there before. Specifically, the feeling was that I’d once been a cowboy and had ridden this same territory, not in a rental car but on horseback. “It’s not a pleasant feeling,” I said to Janice. “I know this place.”

  Okay, stop muttering “Bullshit.” This is exactly how it happened. It threw me for a few days because, let’s be honest, there weren’t many Jewish cowboys. Growing up, you never saw Hopalong Chassidy.

  So fifteen years later, when we were writing the script and creating the river chase where Mitch ropes Norman the calf, who was swept away in the rapids, Lowell Ganz asked, “Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” I answered. I don’t know why I said that—I hadn’t been on a horse since I was nine years old. When we started training on horseback, I took to it very quickly. One day we were working on roping a steer from a galloping horse, the first step in learning how to do it for the river sequence, and sure enough I chased the sprinting steer holding the reins in one hand and twirling my lariat like the rodeo boys do with the other. When the steer was in range, I threw the rope, and damn if it didn’t go right around the steer’s neck. I pulled the horse up and jumped off and tied the steer up. Jerry Gatlin, a veteran cowboy and stuntman who was teaching us, came running over, patted me on
the back, and said, “Wow, you must have been a cowboy in your first life!” I wasn’t sure what to say. Was I? Had there been a first life? Are we all recycled as time goes on? And if so, why do we get buried—shouldn’t we be put into the green bin? Big questions, no answers. So I just accepted that maybe I had had a previous life and enjoyed this life’s experience of being a cowboy.

  The three “slickers” had to be unlikely cowboys, everyday men who are thrust into a tough situation. Bruno Kirby would play Ed, a pudgy sporting goods salesman, and Rick Moranis was set to play Phil, the introverted henpecked supermarket manager. The role of Curly, the old cowpoke who would lead this motley crew, was the plum role in the picture. Jack Palance was our only choice. The first movie I had ever seen was Shane, where Jack played Wilson, the bad guy who gets it in the end. I never forgot how scary he was.

  Ron Underwood, our terrific director, set up a meeting with the man himself at the bar at the Hotel Bel-Air. We arrived early, and when Jack walked in, we were both a little starstruck at first. His large head was the perfect finish to his long, athletic body. He had a certain natural spookiness to him, and as we talked I could see that he loved to play on it. He was very well read, smart, and, in a word, classy. He loved the script and wanted to do it, but he had a scheduling conflict with another film and wasn’t sure it was going to work out. We were crushed, and since shooting was to begin shortly, we needed a backup. With a twenty-four-hour window facing us, we secretly reached out to another icon, Charles Bronson. His agent assured us that he would read the script right away. The thought of Bronson in this role was in its own way very appealing. He was an intense actor—scary, of course—and would make a tough and hilarious Curly. The next day I was told to be at my office at a certain time as Mr. Bronson would be calling me. I sat by the phone, nervous about talking to him. The phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said cheerfully.

  “Fuck you,” he replied. I waited for the punch line. There wasn’t one.

  “Fuck you. I’m dead on page sixty-four! How dare you send this to me.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” he went on. “I don’t die in my films.” I was about to remind him that he died in The Magnificent Seven, but before I could, he said it again: “Fuck you.”

  “Mr. Bronson, I’m sorry you feel this way. It’s a great part.”

  “No, it’s not—I’m dead on page sixty-fucking-four.” And he hung up.

  I sat there, stunned, and then the phone rang and it was Jack’s agent saying he’d blown off the other film because he wanted to do this one, and we were home safe.

  We went into full rehearsal, and then tragedy struck Rick Moranis. His wife had been diagnosed with a serious illness, and he had to leave the film. Danny Stern came on to play Phil, and the three of us made perfect sense together. Bruno was the unlikely pudgy tough guy, and Danny the tall and timid Phil. He arrived the day before shooting started and never had time to train on his horse. Bruno and I had become good enough on our horses to be able to look bad, but all Danny could do was look bad, which was perfect for the character of Phil.

  My horse, Beechnut, would become my best friend on the shoot. A nine-year-old gelding cutting quarter horse, Beechnut had a beautiful black coat, with a white blaze on his nose and four white socks that made him pop on the screen. He had the instincts of an actor and the reflexes of a great athlete. Riding him at a full gallop was like driving a Porsche. If I had a seven A.M. call, I would come in an hour early just to warm him up and push our herd of cattle with our wranglers. One early morning, we were chasing some deer in tall grass, which at the time I didn’t realize is not a good idea. You don’t know what’s under the grass—there could be holes, barbed wire, tree stumps, all sorts of things that could cause an accident. Suddenly Beechnut pulled himself up and whinnied. I almost flew out of the saddle. He grunted and stuck his nose down into the tall grass, then turned to show me that his white nose was covered with wet mud. He was warning me that he didn’t want to run in this stuff, that it was dangerous and he was protecting me. Amazing animal, amazing friend.

  I found a sense of peace on Beechnut. I could just walk him around or gallop him and not have to say a word. In between takes, I would sit with the cast and Beechnut would stand behind me, sometimes with his head on my shoulder. I didn’t have to tie him up; he would just stand there. I loved being a cowboy … again. The only other times I’d felt this sense of peace had been while fielding ground balls or playing catch on a baseball field or doing stand-up when everything was working. When filming was over, my agent, Andrea Eastman, gave me Beechnut as a surprise gift. At first, I didn’t want him. Owning a horse is an enormous responsibility, and I was concerned that my relationship with him was just a location romance. But I accepted, and I rode him until 2009, when he passed away at the age of twenty-eight.

  Dean Semler was our director of photography. He’d won an Oscar for Dances with Wolves, but his first love was comedy. Many of the scenes we had to film were very challenging—most shots had a few hundred cows in them, and our real heroes were the cowboy wranglers, who kept the cows in frame. Our stunt coordinator, Mickey Gilbert, had been Robert Redford’s stuntman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and he designed every shot with Ron Underwood to make the action look real and, at times, dangerous.

  And it didn’t just look dangerous: for the river crossing, Danny, Bruno, and I actually brought 450 head of cattle down a muddy hillside and into and across the swiftly moving river. Huge fire hoses and giant fans simulated a rainstorm and pelted us with water from above. Nets had been set up downriver from bank to bank, to catch any animals or actors that might get pulled away by the current. In the scene, Norman the calf would get swept away from the herd and I would ride along the riverbank and heroically rope him, only to take a fall into the surging river myself and then go after him when he got caught in the swirling rapids. My stuntman, Brian Burrows, did the majority of the white-water-rapids work, but I got in there as well. The water was fifty-two degrees, and I wore a wet suit under my clothes. Mickey kept telling me to pee in my wet suit when I got cold: “Remember, pee is ninety-two degrees.” Holding the calf was very difficult; he weighed about seventy-five pounds, and you know how heavy suede gets when it’s wet. The underwater rocks were the real danger—you couldn’t see them, and breaking a leg was a real possibility. I was not only worried about me, but I had Norman to keep safe as well. At one point, I was in the middle of the river with the calf, and he went under. I grabbed him and, terrified, he started kicking me, which was really painful. The more he thrashed, the harder it was to keep him and me from going under. We got the shot, but I was covered with bruises. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that dangerous— oh wait, I did, just a few days later. In that scene, the herd hears the sound of my portable coffee grinder and stampedes. We wanted a moment when Mitch would be in a lone Joshua tree as the hard-running herd swirled around him. I thought the tree they found was too tall and didn’t look dangerous enough, so we found a smallish dead one just above eye level for the steers. The herd was driven to its starting point, about a hundred yards away, and I mounted the barren tree, something I guess lonely shepherds have done for millennia. The steers had not yet been fed, and their food was in a large corral behind me. The wranglers fired some gunshots into the air, and the starving cattle started running, fast, toward me, the dope in the low dead tree between them and their breakfast. It was just like my relatives at a buffet—the difference being that cattle don’t bring to-go bags. They went by me like a tsunami. A steer’s horn actually grazed my foot, which is in the movie. We filmed the scene with no movie magic, no special effects, we didn’t use three steers and digitally make them look like 450. That incident lasts for only a few seconds of footage in the film, but it felt like a lifetime to me.

  After we’d shot for five weeks in Durango, Jack joined us for two weeks of shooting in New Mexico. We were a well-oiled machine by the ti
me “the Big Cat,” as we called him, arrived. The crew was as excited as I was about his arrival. When Jack, dressed all in black, arrived on the set, everyone applauded. Jack’s first shot was to confront a ranch hand who was making lewd remarks to Helen Slater’s character. He would rope the dude around the neck and then enter the corral and confront him and me, which would start our relationship. Ron, who is a gentle, sweet man, easily mistaken for a puppeteer, softly explained to Jack what he wanted: “Then you come through the gate and see Billy and give him a glare—”

  Jack pounced: “What the fuck does that mean, give him a glare? I don’t glare, I’m a fucking actor—tell me what I’m thinking, not what I’m doing!” He then took off his hat and threw it and a shit fit. The crew, just moments ago so excited, was now confused and pissed off. Things had been going swimmingly, and now “the Big Cat” apparently had a thorn in his paw and was attacking Ron, whom they really liked. I quieted Jack down, and Ron apologized to Jack as best he could.

  I did this in my first life also.

  “Let’s just fucking do this!” Jack yelled.

  “ACTION!” Jack got off his horse, walked through the gate, and gave me a glare like a laser beam that went through my head and burned a hole in the fence behind me. “CUT, PRINT!” said Ron. It was a lesson to us all. Jack knew what he was doing, he knew who he was, and he needed to be talked to in a certain way. After that day, Jack and I were alone for ten days shooting all of our scenes together, including the one where we birth Norman, our little calf. That scene is one of the most talked about in the film. I’m asked all the time what it was like to birth a calf, because it looked so real. Our special effects crew created the rear section of a cow. (Apparently one of them was once a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles.) It was a perfect anatomical replica, complete with “lungs” that would breathe as a cow in distress would. They covered a few-days-old runt calf in realistic bloody jelly and folded the little guy up, and I pulled him out of the faux birth canal. He must have been thinking, Didn’t I just get out of here? It was a lovely moment between Jack and me.