The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (43 page)

What you have to do is much less demanding (both physically and morally). You have to sit in a comfortable chair and make up a story that hundreds of millions will want to see.

And while you don’t have to sleep with an agent, nobody is saying your story can’t include a bit of sex and violence. You can still carry the cross to the altar, even after writing
Basic Instinct
and
Showgirls
. You don’t have to be cynical yourself to write about corruption and corrupt people (either in a script or in a book cynically entitled
The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood
).

Don’t follow Madonna’s example
.

S
he appeared in the office of Barbara Boyle, Orion’s head of production.

She dropped to her knees and sexily said, “I’ll do anything to get this part.”

Boyle said, “I’m happily married and I’m straight.”

Madonna said, “You should try everything once.”

Madonna got the part in
Desperately Seeking Susan
.

Don’t follow Warren’s example, either
.

W
hen Warren wanted to convince studio head Jack Warner to make
Bonnie and Clyde
, he grabbed Warner by the knees, fell to the floor, and said, “I’ll kiss your shoes here. I’ll lick ’em.”

Jack Warner was not convinced.

He said, “Yeah, yeah, get up, Warren.”

If you need the home address and phone number of an agent who’d be perfect to help you, this is what you do.

G
o to Variety.com and read stories about screenwriters selling scripts to the studios for big bucks. Make a list of five screenwriters.

Call the Writers Guild of America West and identify yourself as an assistant to producer Scott Rudin (or Joel Silver, Jerry Bruckheimer, or Edward Pressman). Ask the Guild to tell you the names of the agents representing the five screenwriters you picked from the Variety.com site.

Armed with the names of the five agents, get in touch with a Los Angeles private eye and make a deal with him to get you the home addresses and phone numbers of the five agents. (There will be a fee involved here, but it will be well worth it.)

Send your script to the home addresses of the five agents and wait a week. After a week, call them at home and ask if they’ve read your script. If you get any kind of positive (or frightened) response, convince the agent to meet with you at his office.

If you get a rude refusal to read your script, take it in stride and keep sending your script to the agent’s home once a week.

Always be very polite. Most agents are abject cowards. If you keep bugging them (nicely), sooner or later they’ll read your script—or have it read by an assistant—and see you just to be rid of you.

A more traditional way to find an agent
.

S
creenwriter/director Ron Shelton (
Bull Durham
): “The best way to get an agent is to send the manuscript to every agent ten times. That’s how I got an agent. I spent three years sending my script to everyone who would read it and knocking on doors. I sent it everywhere. Everyone in town is always looking for something they can sell. Get a list of the agencies that read unsolicited manuscripts.”

Or you can do what Andrew Kevin Walker did
.

H
e worked at Tower Records in L.A. for three years while writing the script he entitled
Seven
.

When he was finished, he called the Writers Guild with a list of writers who had written scripts about mass murderers. He asked for the names of their agents.

Then he called the agents, but, of course, he couldn’t get through to them directly. However, he spoke to their assistants, who told him that they wouldn’t accept unsolicited screenplays.

And then, brilliantly, he pitched his script to the assistants very simply: “It’s about a serial killer who kills according to the seven deadly sins.”

He went down the list, pitching to the assistants, until one of them said, “Okay, send it. I’ll read it.”

She did, loved it, and gave it to her boss.

Seven
, a brilliantly written piece, became one of the biggest hits of 1995. And Andrew Kevin Walker quit his job at Tower Records.

Or you can join the Church of Scientology
.

M
any big-time Hollywood actors belong to the Church of Scientology, and you just might meet them if you join. If you meet them, you just might get a chance to slip them your script.

On the other hand, screenwriter Floyd Mutrux, a longtime member of the Church of Scientology, hasn’t had very many movies made, making me think that the rumored rigorous discipline of Scientologists might not be worth the access to a star.

On the other hand, there’s that machine called the E-meter that vets each screenplay its members are asked to star in.

If that’s really true, though, I wonder how
Eyes Wide Shut
got past the E-meter for Tom Cruise.

If you don’t want to become a Scientologist, this is what you can do to get your script read by someone important
.

• You can skydive from a rented plane onto Steven Spielberg’s Pacific Palisades estate and hope your daredevil exploit impresses the house manager enough so that she will give your script to Steven.
  
• You can streak naked through the shower room at the Riviera Country Club and hand your plastic-bagged script to Sylvester Stallone. (If he likes it, you’ll probably have to share credit with him.)
  
• You can swim to shore off Brad Pitt’s Santa Barbara estate and leave several copies of your script around the pool, then race back to the beach and swim back to your boat before security gets you.
  
• You can visit the Coppola Winery in the Napa Valley, shake Francis’s hand, and slip him a couple of C-notes to get your script to Sofia.
  
• You can pretend to be an exterminator and show up at the door of David Geffen’s estate in Malibu. Since Malibu always has a rat problem, chances are excellent that someone will let you in.
  
• You can go down to Maxfield’s on Melrose or Chrome Hearts on Robertson and slip a clerk a couple of twenties for some Maxfield or Chrome Hearts boxes. You can then send the boxes (with your script inside) to the agents, producers, or directors of your choice.
      Maxfield’s and Chrome Hearts boxes are almost always immediately opened by the addressees themselves, not assistants, because the addressees are afraid their assistants will steal whatever goodies are inside those boxes. Also, if the agents, producers, or directors are successful, chances are excellent that he or she shops at Maxfield’s or Chrome Hearts.
  
• You can go down to the Coffee Bean on Sunset and slip your script to Jennifer Aniston.
      My brother-in-law, a sometimes-aspiring screenwriter, drinks double lattes there but so far has not had the cojones to slip any of the beautiful people there his masterpiece. He does, however, keep a chart on his wall of the stars he’s sighted at the Bean, along with time and date of sighting and witnesses.
  
• You can go down to the office of Dr. Robert Koblin on Robertson or that of Dr. Edward Kantor off Wilshire Boulevard and wait around. Koblin is an internist who treats many of the most powerful people in the industry; Kantor is known as the “ENT man to the stars.” These folks who walk into these offices may not exactly be happy to see you there waiting for them with your script, especially if they are in pain or stressed to the max, but you’ve got a living to make, don’t you?
      And as my director friend Richard Marquand used to say, “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!”
  

You can follow them into the john
.

M
ike Medavoy: “I’ll be using the men’s room at the AMC Century 14 and some one will hand me a script. ‘You should make this script,’ the man will say; ‘it’s a lot better than the last film you made.’ There hasn’t been a woman in the men’s room yet, but there will be.”

A Script Stalker

A screenwriter capable of following you anywhere or doing anything to get you to read his/her script.

Even Steven Spielberg needs an agent
.

S
teven Spielberg hadn’t had an agent in many years. He felt he didn’t need one. Then he sent Tom Cruise a script he wanted Tom to do with him. More exactly, he sent Tom’s agent at CAA—the Creative Artists Agency, run by Michael Ovitz—the script he wanted Cruise to do, an old F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.

Steven didn’t get an answer—not a yes, nor a no—for six months.

At the end of six months, Steven Spielberg signed CAA up as his agents—so he would get an answer from Tom Cruise.

He got his answer: Tom Cruise said no. He didn’t want to do that script with Steven, although he did hook up with Steven about a year later.

Steven Spielberg must have felt he needed an agent pretty badly
.

I
t couldn’t have been easy for Steven, the most powerful director in Hollywood, to sign up with CAA.

He knew that before he married Kate Capshaw, CAA head Michael Ovitz had chased her around his office.

Why Steven Spielberg has never been represented by Jeff Berg at ICM
…

J
eff’s brother, Tony, said, “A Steven Spielberg film is a classic example of a third-rate melodrama elevated way beyond its depth. I can’t think of a filmmaker whose stuff I like less. His work is so manipulative.”

Mike Medavoy isn’t smart about everything
.

W
hen his client Steven Spielberg didn’t walk out on his deal with Universal as he had recommended, agent Medavoy fired Spielberg. Medavoy: “I’m just glad that wasn’t the defining point of my career.”

An agent will help you to hold on to your aureole
.

W
riter/director Elia Kazan: “Let your agent tell the lies. Get a hireling to drop the axe so that you never fog your aureole of culture and gentility.”

Your first agent won’t be your last agent
.

I
had an agent who told me we’d spend decades together; six months later she stopped being an agent and became a very successful interior decorator in New York.

I had an agent who said, “My job isn’t to give you advice. My job is to respond. When you say ‘Jump,’ I say ‘How high?’ ” I fired him.

I had an agent who told me it would take him two weeks to read an original screenplay I’d written. I figured he was too busy to be my agent or that he moved his lips when he read. I fired him.

I had an agent who spoke with a thick English accent many years after she’d spent six months working in London. After awhile, the accent was driving me nuts. I fired her.

I had an agent who, in the middle of a negotiation with a studio, disappeared for ten days. Nobody knew where he was. He finally reappeared and whispered to me, man to man, that he’d gotten hold of a “big bag” of cocaine and had been in Puerto Vallarta with a well-known sexpot movie star. I fired him
after
he concluded the negotiation successfully. It’s not impossible that I fired him because I was jealous.

I had an agent who was depressed and gloomy much of the time while he was representing me. A producer friend and I had a bet that one day he’d drive into the desert (he liked to go to Joshua Tree alone on weekends) and blow his brains out. But we were wrong. He went on Prozac, stopped being depressed, stopped driving out into the desert, married a beautiful, smart woman, and is now one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. I fired and rehired him
twice
in my career. I like him.