The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (32 page)

Nunnally Johnson, Charles
MacArthur, and Joel Sayre!

Told by Dave Chasen one night that his restaurant was about to close, the three screenwriters picked Chasen up, took him outside, came back in, and locked the door.

D
O YOUR RESEARCH …
AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM

In my film
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,
the lead character, Smithee, has two props that he carries throughout the film: his Dogon fighting stick and his Tibetan rock. They are his talismans, holy objects he carries for luck
.

Stuart Baird didn’t carry those things around, but I did. I keep those holy objects near me—even now, as I write this
.

I made my holy objects famous! I put them up on the big screen!

You’re not writing children’s books
.

P
rofessor Andrew Horton, of Loyola University, in his book
Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay
: “Want to get a good feel for writing screenplays? … Check out an armful of children’s books from the library. I’m serious. Comic books do much the same thing—after all, they’re written in ‘frames’ with speech bubbles. But children’s books have become incredibly inventive and VISUALLY IMAGINATIVE JOURNEYS for kids.”

Avoid writing about living people
.

I
n my Otis Redding script,
Blaze of Glory
, I wrote about Zelma, his wife, and his friend and manager, Phil Walden.

Zelma loved the script and her depiction and had no problems. Initially, neither did Phil Walden, who publicly said he loved the script.

But after a couple of weeks, he changed his mind. While both Phil and one of his brothers had managed Otis, in my script, for reasons of dramatic tension, I showed only Phil (no brother) representing Otis.

Understandably, Phil’s brother didn’t like being left out of the script, and Phil, no doubt not wanting to make his brother unhappy, turned against the script—one reason it hasn’t been made in all these years.

W
RITE WHAT YOU KNOW …
FLASHDANCE

When I was nineteen years old, I dated a twenty-four-year-old woman from the West Side of Cleveland who worked for Republic Steel as a welder. She’d once dreamed of being a ballet dancer and went to every ballet performance in the city
.

Twenty years later, I wrote the story of the young woman who wants to be a ballet dancer and works as a welder—Alex, in
Flashdance.

Expose all your family secrets
.

Y
ou know all the family secrets—how Uncle John used to dress up as a woman on weekends and how one of his kids spotted him getting out of a car downtown; how Aunt Emily disappeared at the wedding reception for forty minutes with the best man.

Change all the names, of course, and if you sell your script and Uncle John sees himself on-screen, pretend that it has nothing at all to do with him. Chances are he won’t confront you because
he won’t want
the comparison to be made by anybody.

If someone in the family asks you how you came up with that particular story, just smile and say that your writing has nothing to do with you, that there’s a twisted little person inside you who makes all this stuff up.

Your toys can inspire you
.

A
n African Dogon hatchet that I bought at an antique fair became the murder weapon in
Jade
.

My favorite antique manual typewriter became the McGuffin in
Jagged Edge
—the clue that gives Jeff Bridges away as the murderer.

Compounded irony: I actually wrote the script of
Jagged Edge
on the very antique manual typewriter that was the McGuffin in the script.

If you’re good in the sack, you can make ’em laugh
.

C
omedian Jay Leno: “No one thinks they’re a bad lay. Everyone figures ‘I may be fat and acne-riddled or stupid, but I know, in the sack, I’m the greatest thing in the world’ … and it’s the same thing with comedy. Telling someone they have no sense of humor is like telling someone they’re bad at sex.”

If you want to win an Oscar
…

P
addy Chayefsky gave this advice to Gore Vidal: “If you want all the prizes, you gotta write shrill.”

“He had a point,” said Vidal.

Winner’s Walk

The passageway at the Academy Awards between the stage and the press room—the route taken by all Oscar winners.

If you want to win an Oscar, fight the good fight
.

A
Holocaust-related film was, for many years, a good bet to be nominated for an Oscar; in later years, it was a film about civil rights and black empowerment.

Today’s hot Oscar subjects are gay rights and gay empowerment.

An Oscar-winning producer said to me, “The Holocaust battle has been won. We’re winning on women’s empowerment, too. The best indication of that is the record number of copies sold of Hillary’s book. The real door-to-door political street fighting is about gay rights and gay marriage now. Those are the movies the Academy wants to reward, and there are a lot of shrewd people in this town who always figure out what the Academy wants to reward, before they sit down and go to work.”

POWs

Past Oscar winners.

If you write this script, you’re probably a sure bet for an Oscar
.

T
he script is about a saintly black man with a newly discovered mental illness who was abused by white foster parents as a child, and who has surgery now to become the woman he’s always wanted to be, so she can help other black children abused by white foster parents.

In the first half of the movie, he’s played by Denzel Washington. In the second half, the starring role is played by Halle Berry.

They both win Oscars—for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively—as does Michael Moore for Best Director.

Trophy Girls

Bimbos who carry the statues at awards shows.

Or, if you want to win an Oscar, try writing about
…

A
saintly heroic woman, a saintly heroic gay man or woman, a saintly heroic black man or woman, a victimized woman, a gay man or woman, a black man or woman …
who frees him or her
, or
himself and herself
from
victimization
and
empowers
any of the above gender/color combos, as well as anyone with autism, Tourette’s, or, best of all, a bizarre new neurological disorder that only Oliver Sachs knows about.