The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (36 page)

Don’t rush to finish your script
.

B
en Hecht wrote
The Unholy Garden
in two days, dictating it to two secretaries. Sam Goldwyn congratulated Ben on his brilliant work. The script was shot without a word changed.

“It was one of the worst flops ever turned out by a studio,” Ben said later.

Take your time writing your script
.

I
wrote
Basic Instinct
in a blind frenzy while listening almost nonstop to the Rolling Stones.

I didn’t outline the script and I didn’t know my ending until I was almost two-thirds finished.

It exploded out of my head—I kept hearing lines of dialogue and had to hurry to keep up with the voices I was hearing. I woke up at four in the morning and wrote lines of dialogue down.

I wrote it in two shifts each day—from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon and from three in the afternoon to eight o’clock at night.

From the time I began writing till the day my agent sold it at auction: thirteen days.

No Attachment to Outcome

This is
Gorillas in the Mist
screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan’s phrase: “When I get bogged down I say ‘No attachment to outcome.’ Don’t worry about what’s going to happen to this. Just write the next word.”

Shut the world down
.

I
have found that for me, the best time to write is from seven in the morning till one o’clock in the afternoon. I get up at six, shower, drink some carrot juice and tea, and am at my writing desk by seven. I don’t take calls when I’m writing; my wife disturbs me only for emergencies.

I quit writing at one and have lunch with my wife. Sometimes I take a nap after lunch, but I’m back at my desk at three. Then I edit what I’ve written, sometimes rewrite it extensively, and make a note about scenes I’m going to write the next day.

I’m usually finished with that by five o’clock. I walk five miles then and spend the rest of the night with my family.

Put your laptop away
.

I
write my first drafts longhand. That’s right—
longhand
, with a
pencil
. I feel it puts me more in touch with my characters.

I go to my laptop on my subsequent drafts.

That’s a lie. I don’t know how to
use
a laptop—I go to my manual Olivetti Lettera typewriter—but you can use
your
laptop while sipping a double latte at Starbucks. In my drinking days,
I
used to suck on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s as I wrote—the only danger was that I sometimes couldn’t read my own handwriting the next day.

Go sit in the tub
.

S
creenwriter Dalton Trumbo, revered as one of the legendary screenwriters of Old Hollywood, wrote most of his screenplays in the bathtub.

I’ve written a lot of scripts in the tub, too, but I’m Hungarian-born, and Hungary (a landlocked country) has more public baths than any other country in the world.

It also has the highest suicide rate in the world. That means that if your script is not going well, you can just slide down in the tub and …

If you’re masturbating and writing a script, stop masturbating (but keep writing)
.

S
creenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “It is then, while panic tightens my sagging throat, that I whisper to myself: It’s true, after all. It
does
make you crazy. It
does
cause the brain to soften. Why, oh why did I like it so much? Why didn’t I stop while I was still ahead of the game? Was it only one time too many that caused this rush of premature senility? Or a dozen times? Or a thousand? Ah, well—little good to know it now: the harm’s done, the jig’s up, you’re thoroughly addled, better you’d been born with handless stumps.”

Write six pages of script a day
.

S
tick to this schedule no matter what. You’ll have a finished first draft in roughly twenty days.

Then go back and edit what you’ve written. Spend no more than five days on this edit.

Then rewrite your script from page one—with your edits. Spend no more than one week on this rewrite—that means twenty pages a day.

Put the script away for a week; don’t even look at it.

Then edit it once again. Spend no more than four days on the edit this time.

Then rewrite it again from scratch with your edits—taking another week. This will be
your third draft
.

Now begin the process of trying to sell it—this, your official
first draft
.

At least write something every day
.

J
ohn Lennon once said, “I haven’t picked up a guitar in six years. I forget how heavy they are.”

If you don’t feel like writing today
…

C
omedian Rita Rudner: “People don’t want to get up and drive a truck every day either, but they do—that’s their job and this is my job.”

Don’t watch TV if you’re writing
.

H
unter S. Thompson: “No music and bad TV equals bad mood and no pages.”

Don’t watch any movies while you’re writing
.

Y
ou don’t want to wind up “borrowing” from or paying “homage” to whatever it is you’re seeing. There is a tendency while you’re writing your script to feel lost and desperate, as in, Oh, Jesus God, I know this isn’t “working.” All you need is to watch some stupid movie that will give you a bad idea.

Keep your brain as inviolate and isolated as possible from
everything
while you’re writing.

Music can help you
.

A
s I said, when I wrote
Basic Instinct
, I played the Stones all the time, especially “Sympathy for the Devil,” over and over again.

All the music in the film was supposed to be Stones music and “Sympathy for the Devil” was to play over the final credits.

The studio even bought the rights to “Sympathy” from the Stones for
750,000, but the director, Paul Verhoeven, changed his mind about using the song in the film, and the Stones were
750,000 richer.

Don’t smoke while you write; if you smoke, stop!

S
creenwriter Albert Maltz about his friend, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “He’s a very feisty man, you know, a regular fighting cock. It’s that damned cigarette smoking of his that put him in the shape he’s in today. He just couldn’t stop. He used to smoke the things one after another.”

So did I. I smoked four packs a day and
always
chain-smoked when I was writing. I started smoking when I was twelve years old.

In 2001, when I was fifty-seven, I was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and 80 percent of my larynx was surgically removed.

I had a trache tube for months afterward and had difficulty breathing and swallowing.

I finally stopped smoking and have been smoke-free now for five years.

After I stopped smoking, I couldn’t write for a year and a half. I can write now, finally, without missing the cigarettes.

Don’t do what Dalton Trumbo and I did to ourselves; stop before it’s too late.

Pay attention to every word
.

C
omedian Joe Bolster: “The difference between a laugh and no laugh is often a single syllable. You remember the ‘Where’s the beef’ campaign? Initially, it was ‘Where’s
all
the beef?’ But the director took out ‘all’ and without [him doing] that, it probably wouldn’t have been as effective.”

Keep a night-light, pen, and paper on your nightstand
.

Y
ou never know when you’ll wake up with a script thought in your head. That’s how I came up with the ending of
Basic Instinct
.

I literally dreamed the final scene, with the ice pick under the bed. I woke up and jotted it down and used it when I wrote the ending.

Treat yourself well after a good day
.

T
he novelist H. G. Wells told interviewers that after a good day’s writing, he always celebrated by having sex.

Don’t think you’re better than your audience
.

B
en Hecht did: “But among all my fantasies is none of writing and directing a movie that becomes the most famous movie of the week or even the month. I know why I don’t have this fantasy. It is because my mind balks at the partner in this daydream—the audience. I have never fancied the pleasures that come from its applause and approval.”

Write cinematically
.

R
aymond Chandler said to a friend, “I suppose you know the famous story of the writer who racked his brains [about] how to show, very shortly, that a middle-aged man and his wife were no longer in love with each other. Finally he licked it. The man and his wife got into an elevator and he kept his hat on. At the next stop a lady got into the elevator and he immediately removed his hat. That is proper film writing. Me, I’d have done a four-page scene about it.”