For a crusty, sometimes intimidating man, Jack was actually a very sensitive guy. He understood how to act on film better than anyone I had worked with up to that point. He knew how to hold the frame. More than anything, he knew that the size of his head was a powerful instrument. All great movie stars have big heads. Chaplin: big head; Spencer Tracy: big head; Gable: huge head; Meryl Streep: all head; Bogart: big head; Katharine Hepburn, Cagney—the list goes on and on. Jack found the right way to hold his big head, and Dean Semler understood exactly how to light him. He also was a poignant figure to me. Curly was meant to be the last of the cowboys, and Jack, at this stage of his life and career, embodied that idea of a dying breed. He had trouble remembering his lines at times. I would watch him rehearsing his words with his wife, and I would walk over and say I was having trouble with the scene and would he mind going over it with me. He labored some days to get his seventy-year-old body onto his horse for all the hours we had to be in the saddle. He never complained. On the night we finished shooting Jack’s work in the film, I had a quiet moment with him, and I told him what an honor it was to work with him. Then I asked, “Why did you go so crazy that day? Why did you yell at Ron like that and carry on?”
With Jack Palance in his last shot in the filming.
He looked at me and simply said in that gravelly voice, “It was my first day. I always get nervous on the first day.”
“How many movies have you made?” I asked.
“Counting the shit I did in Europe?… About three hundred.”
“And you still get nervous?” I asked incredulously.
“Only on the first day,” he replied.
We said our good-byes, and a few weeks later we finished shooting the film. Once it was cut, we had our first test screening, and it went through the roof, as they say. Other screenings went even better, and when it was finally finished, we were invited to take it to the Cannes Film Festival. We weren’t in competition; we were there to show it to foreign exhibitors for the European sale. Castle Rock threw a big party for the film and to honor Jack, who was an icon in Europe. We were booked at the Hôtel du Cap, one of the truly great hotels in Antibes, where everyone stays during the festival. Fresh from our party, Jack and I walked in together, and as the paparazzi’s flashbulbs were blinding us both, through the blue dots in my eyes, I spied Charles Bronson sitting on a couch with Sean Penn. Bronson and I made eye contact, and I nodded slightly toward him (though I wanted to say “Fuck who?”), and he quietly got up and left.
City Slickers was Castle Rock’s first movie and helped put the production company on the map, and to have gotten to make the film with my friends meant everything to me. Finally people stopped asking me if they looked mahvelous and started asking me what the “one thing” was, and how was Norman the calf? The Golden Globes honored us with several nominations, including Best Comedy, Best Supporting Actor for Jack, and Best Actor in a Comedy for me. We were sitting together when Jack won. I was elated—this meant he had a real shot at the Oscar. He made a short speech and came back to the table.
“Jack, you’re supposed to go to the press room,” I told him.
“No way—I’m gonna be here when you win.”
I was very moved, but then shortly thereafter I lost. Instantly, Jack got up to leave. “Where are you going?” I asked him.
“The press room—you lost.”
* * *
Next came the Oscars—one of the best nights I ever had as an entertainer, even though I was suffering from pneumonia. A fever of 103 degrees, cough, stuffed-up ears and nose—you name it. I was exhausted. Gil Cates was so concerned about me that he had talked about having Tom Hanks stand by in case I couldn’t do it. Janice’s chicken soup helped some, but I had no energy, and the powerful meds I was on sapped my strength further. I made my entrance being wheeled out by some medical personnel, strapped to a gurney wearing the Hannibal Lecter mask that nominee Anthony Hopkins wore in The Silence of the Lambs. I walked right off the stage and greeted him in the audience, saying, “I’m having some members of the academy for dinner—care to join me?”
Oscars opening with Anthony Hopkins—love at first bite.
During the show, from the stage I could see Jack’s big head above everyone else’s. In my gut I knew he would win, and of course he did. I was in the wings when he was named the winner, and I wanted to run across the stage to him, but I just watched as he uttered, “Billy Crystal, I crap bigger than you,” which was a line from the movie that no one remembered at the time. Many thought he had dissed me. He then, of course, hit the deck and did a few one-armed push-ups, and the place went wild. Bruce Vilanch and Robert Wuhl were in the wings with me. We huddled during the commercial break and I said, “Let’s run with this,” and we did. “Jack Palance just bungee jumped off the Hollywood sign,” I said, and, later, “Jack won the New York State primary.” There was a musical number with thirty children in it: “Jack is the father of all of these children.” It was just perfect.
Later in the show, I introduced Hal Roach, one of the great pioneers of movie comedy. Hal was the creator of The Little Rascals and had teamed Laurel with Hardy and was that night one hundred years old. After my intro, he was simply to stand up in the audience and wave to the crowd. Well, he stood up and started talking, but he wasn’t wearing a mike, and no one could hear his frail voice. He kept going on and on, and it became a little awkward. I was at center stage as they tried to get a mike to him, to no avail. My mind was racing with lines, and I knew the Cyclops was looking at me with its red light, letting me know that a billion people were watching me smile patiently at Mr. Roach and hope I could salvage the awkward moment. Suddenly, a line settled in my head, like the three cherries in a slot machine. “It’s only fitting,” I said. “He got his start in silent films.”
The crowd roared, the moment was saved, and for me, it was a time that I can say I was a good comedian. Later in the show, my fever spiked and I got very woozy. As I tried to introduce Liza Minnelli, nothing came out of my mouth right, and I just stopped and said sarcastically, “Didn’t inhale,” a reference to Bill Clinton, who had recently claimed he had smoked pot but hadn’t inhaled. The crowd laughed, but I felt seriously unwell. During a break they rushed me into Gil’s production office to get some fluids into me. Paul Newman was there, preparing for his appearance. He took a look at me and said, “You look like shit, but you’re having a great show.” I lay down, and a paramedic gave me fluids as Paul put a pillow under my head.
“Great to meet you,” I remember saying. I finished the show feeling better and went to the Governors Ball. People were very kind to me as Janice and I made our way into the celebration. Jack was standing at a bar with his lovely wife. He didn’t embrace me, he didn’t shake my hand; he simply put his hand, the one holding the Oscar, on my shoulder, stared at me for a moment, and said, “Billy Crystal … who thought it would be you?” I’ve thought about that line all these years. Of all the great parts he had, and all his fine performances, his career in Europe making countless B movies and then doing silly television shows like Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, he finally, at age seventy-three, gets an Oscar for doing two weeks in a movie opposite a comedian and a calf. From seeing him in Shane, to being him when we were writing the script, to acting with him and finally having that craggy big-headed icon getting what he deserved, I felt like some sort of Rubik’s Cube had been completed. We had a glass of champagne together, and I could only imagine what Charles Bronson was thinking as he went to sleep that night.
* * *
Mr. Saturday Night was the first picture I directed, and it was a backbreaker. Coming off Throw Momma, Midnight Train, When Harry Met Sally…, City Slickers, and the successful Oscar shows may not have been the right time to play a bitter seventy-three-year-old comedian, no matter how funny he was. I first did Buddy Young Jr. in the HBO special A Comic’s Line, without any kind of special makeup to age me. Then at SNL, in a film piece, we made me look older, and the character became an i
nsult comic doing a cheesy one-man show. I also did him on “Weekend Update,” where he was a restaurant critic who would leave the desk and work the live crowd. One night Christopher Reeve, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash were in the audience, and I went after them like Rickles would: “Waylon, nice hat—when did you go Hasid?” Still, I felt there was something more to Buddy, and when I did my Don’t Get Me Started special for HBO, I knew how to go after that. The makeup design was great; it aged Buddy naturally. And I created a “life” for him. His family, his wife, his career. It gave him the sort of natural poignancy I often felt when I was around older comics. He was now a real guy rooted in the world of borscht belt comedians, like Alan King and Gene Baylos. I was very comfortable playing older characters. Maybe I was getting ready for this book.
I loved talking to comics like Milton Berle and Red Buttons as much as I did old baseball players. After all the years on the road, they were still sharp and almost smelled of the nightclubs they had labored in for so many years. Buddy was interviewed by Rob Reiner in Don’t Get Me Started, and it plays as though he was being interviewed on 60 Minutes. When I showed some footage to William Goldman, the ultimate screenwriter, he said, “He’s a funny Willy Loman.” I started writing the screenplay during the shooting of City Slickers. I wanted it to be a story of not only Buddy’s up-and-down stand-up career but also of his relationship with his sensitive brother, Stan. David Paymer was one of the “ice cream” brothers in City Slickers. He’s gentle and kind, and also very sharp and funny. He was the very soul of the character I wanted to create opposite the abrasive Buddy. We got along great while making City Slickers, and without him knowing it, I started crafting the part for him. When City Slickers was done shooting, I showed Ganz and Mandel what I had written, and they came on board to write the screenplay with me. Castle Rock was totally behind the picture. We had a sixty-three-day shooting schedule and on fifty-two of those days I would be in the old-age makeup. The other days I was Buddy in his thirties. This meant fifty-two days of five hours or so to put the makeup on, another hour or so during the day for touch-ups, and almost two hours to take it off properly without ravaging my skin. I don’t know how Joan Rivers does it. That doesn’t count the ten hours of shooting. The math was impossible. It was like a Republican budget plan: the numbers didn’t add up.
We did tremendous research to capture the look and feel of each time period. One day we were shooting in the childhood home of the Yankelman family (Yankelman was Mr. Young’s real name). The set was based on both my grandma’s house and that of our production designer, Albert Brenner. When it was done, we walked the set and I said it was perfect except for one important detail: “It doesn’t smell.” Albert knew instantly what I meant. So we sent out for chicken livers and onions and garlic. We got a take-out order of chicken soup from a nearby deli, and we cooked up the liver and onions and kept walking the familiar concoction around the set. We left open bowls of soup out overnight and rubbed cooked onions into the doorways. We even smoked a few cigars. It was like a mini Jewish Woodstock. The next morning, when the background artists who would play the family came in, they couldn’t believe how great it smelled. “It’s my house!” one exclaimed. Another said, “It’s my grandma’s place.” That’s the level of detail I aspired to and demanded that we achieve.
We started shooting in New York in early November. The leaves in Central Park were perfect—faded metaphors, I thought, for Buddy’s career. The first scenes to be shot were of old Buddy and Stan taking their daily walk and then having a heartfelt talk about the end of his career. The sunlight would be gone by four-fifteen, so we had to really hustle to make our day. We also had to get a night shot of Buddy walking alone on Seventy-second Street. I left the Regency Hotel at one forty-five in the morning to start makeup at two A.M. to be on set by seven. We had rehearsed the scene in the park days prior, and Don Peterman, our director of photography, knew the shots, so he would be ready when Paymer and I were done in makeup. Saying “Action” the first time was quite thrilling. The filming was on time, and when we finally finished shooting on Seventy-second Street, I went into makeup to get Buddy off my face. I had “old” hands, which were immediately placed in plastic bags filled with chemicals to melt the rubber and glue. Peter Montagna and Bill Farley, my terrific makeup artists, carefully removed the hairpiece, and when Bill cut a small hole in my bald cap, you could hear a whoosh of hot air escape. I got back to the Regency at eleven P.M., only to leave again a few hours later for a similar kind of day. This went on for nine days. The crew started calling me “Iron Balls,” which is what my urologist calls me now.
End of a long day. Iron Balls gets to go home.
After the first week, Martin Shafer and Andy Scheinman flew into New York for a meeting. After watching dailies with me, they said, “We love the footage. But with a schedule this punishing, you’ll be dead in a week, so we’re going to add ten days to the schedule and the corresponding amount of dollars.” Believe me, this wouldn’t happen today. The studio would let you die and then CGI you into your remaining scenes.
Making Mr. Saturday Night was one of the great experiences of my life. I was naturally drawn to directing and knew more than I thought I did about the camera. I guess some of the days with Scorsese breathing down my neck must have done some good. Actually, it was the relationship with Don Peterman and our sensational crew that made this such a wonderful time for me. Seventy-two days after shooting began, we wrapped in Los Angeles, and the moment I said, “Cut, print, that’s a wrap,” I got sick. My body wouldn’t let me get sick during the shoot, so once it was done, all hell broke loose. That was the start of what would be the pneumonia I had when I walked onto the stage of that year’s Oscars.
Kent Beyda, a gifted young editor who had worked on Spinal Tap, did the cut with me. We were able to play with time periods and flashbacks, and the first cut was over three hours long, but the story was playing, which was the most important thing. Once we got it down to a playable time, we had our first test screening, and it went very well. The movie was funny and poignant, but I knew it wasn’t the commercial fare that City Slickers and When Harry Met Sally … were. As we went on through the testing process, we kept cutting and trimming; then Marc Shaiman wrote a beautiful score and we were done. The early reviews were great, and we had a fantastic evening at the Toronto Film Festival, where the movie got a standing ovation and the respected producer Scott Rudin introduced himself and said, “That’s a big hit movie.” Soon it was time for it to open. The early magazine reviews were positive, and then I spoke to Joe Farrell, the audience research guru of Hollywood; he said he thought the film would do $10 million the first weekend, which for this movie was a very big number. I’m always nervous before a movie opens, but things felt good.
Opening day came, and the reviews were very mixed, some good, some bad. Some critics thought it too sentimental; some said the makeup bothered them. I started to get really nervous. This birth wasn’t going to be easy. We took in only $4.7 million that first weekend, which meant the movie was pretty much toast. All that work, all of that effort and care, and you’re over with after one weekend. We hung around and eventually topped $27 million, but it was considered a box office failure, and I was dazed. I was sad, I was angry, but I was also really scared. I found myself rationalizing a lot, second-guessing our decisions: We shouldn’t have opened in so many theaters. It should have been a slow release to get word of mouth, because once people saw it, they loved it; we just couldn’t get enough people in to see it. Mr. Saturday Night has more laughs in it than City Slickers, but it isn’t a happy comedy. Seventy-three-year-old bitter Jewish comedians are an acquired taste. I’d had a great run playing a certain kind of a guy. Audiences liked that guy; they didn’t want to see that guy get old.
I didn’t process any of this easily. It was similar to the cancellation of my show at NBC, but worse. Hollywood is a winners’ town. When you’re up, it’s a great place to be. When you are a loser? Well, it’s a self-impo
sed hell. Getting a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy and David getting a Best Supporting Actor Globe nomination and then deservedly an Oscar nomination took a little bit of the hurt away, but not enough. I was thrilled for David, who totally deserved the recognition, and I took great pride in having directed someone to a nomination, but I was exhausted and disillusioned. After so many good things in a row, why didn’t my audience trust me? I didn’t want to host the Oscars that year. The previous broadcast had been so strong that I thought, End it there, take a break—you can’t top that one. Gil Cates, whom I had great respect and affection for, talked me into it, and I did the show with mixed emotions, which is not the way to do anything. I knew halfway through the show that I didn’t want to do it again for a while. Johnny Carson had told me that he did four years in a row, took a year off, and really didn’t want to do it a fifth time, but he eventually did, and he regretted it. I loved hosting the show, but it ate up so much of my time. I needed to do something different. What I had to do, I thought, was get my movie audience back.
It wouldn’t be easy. Even after When Harry Met Sally … and City Slickers, I always had to generate my own material, and thankfully I had great partners in Castle Rock. But the next string of films I did—Forget Paris, City Slickers II, Father’s Day, and My Giant—didn’t perform well. Most actors, even the most successful ones, feel that when they’ve finished a film, they’ll never work again. After a few off years like this, I was convinced that I was done.
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