The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (50 page)

Don’t let ’em convince you to rewrite it
.

A
playwright completely rewrote his play when producers told him it was unproducible. They also told him to change the title to
Free and Clear
.

He threw his rewrite away and decided to go with his original title. Arthur Miller did very well, thank you, with
Death of a Salesman
.

ALL HAIL

Harlan Ellison!

When
Star Trek
producer Gene Roddenberry rewrote one of Ellison’s scripts, the screenwriter/novelist publicly said this about him: “Gene Roddenberry has about as much writing ability as the lowest industry hack.”

If your script gets butchered, Robert McKee may have done it
.

M
cKee told a reporter in Melbourne, Australia, that he works for studios sometimes as a “story doctor.”

This is a doctor whose patients (his own scripts) have all died (unproduced) except for the one patient who lived and became a television movie.

First he teaches you how to write and then he kills what you’ve written.

Don’t worry about hurting their feelings
.

I
’ve said things like this to studio execs:

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in a meeting like this.”

“I make more money than you do, so don’t give me any suggestions.”

One executive called me “temperamental.”

Another executive said, “That’s why you write so well. Because you believe in yourself so much.”

Another thanked me for my “passion” and said, after I’d insulted her, “That’s why you’re so successful, because you’re so passionate.”

I grabbed her and kissed her hard, put her across her desk, knocking the silver-framed picture of her husband and kids down, and tore her black Prada. (Just kidding, and apologies to Mickey Spillane, Frank Miller, Michael Ovitz, and my friend Gloria Steinem.)

If the studio gives you script notes
…

T
ear them up.

That’s what screenwriter/novelist Michael Crichton does when the studio gives him notes. When he finishes writing his first draft, he walks away and says, “Thank you very much and fuck you.”

Most of the people who are writing these memos today have MBAs, don’t read, are too busy writing script notes to see too many movies. Their references in the script notes are to other movies—none going back past 1985—few of which they’ve actually seen, and certainly none shot in black and white.

If you listen to the suggestions contained in these notes, it’s possible that you’ll get your script made, but it is also very possible that critics will eviscerate it (and you) and other studio execs won’t hire you to do anything else or buy any of your other scripts.

Buy your own shredder and carry it with you
.

S
creenwriter Julian Fellowes (
Gosford Park
): “A screenplay is a collaborative business because making a movie is collaborative. You write synopsis after synopsis until you find one that’s agreeable to the executives. Then you write your first draft and get sixty pages of notes from producers and 150 pages from the studio, then you write the second draft and the director comes in with 400 pages of notes, and then the star does their thing. I understand all of that, but there is a time when you get a little tired trying to accommodate a billion different interests, of the fact that your business is one of compromise where your voice is constantly being given direction.”

You didn’t
have
to do it, Ben; you
elected
to
.

B
en Hecht wrote, “My chief memory of movieland is one of asking in the producer’s office why must I change the script, eviscerate it, cripple and hamstring it? Why must I strip the hero of his few semi-intelligent remarks and why must I tack on a corny ending that makes the stomach shudder?”

The director tells you to rewrite your script in a way that you know will damage and possibly destroy it. What do you do?

W
illiam Goldman: “This is not an isolated incident. It happens to us all. And it happens a lot, usually because of star insecurity, but directors can fuck things up pretty good, too. I did what Michael Douglas wanted. The alternative, of course, was to leave the picture. Which would have been stupid, I think, because the instant I am out the door, someone else is hired to do what I wouldn’t.”

This is the moment when you separate the writers from the whores. I was confronted by the same dilemma—with the same star.

Michael Douglas (and the director, Paul Verhoeven) wanted me to make a bunch of changes to my first draft of
Basic Instinct
. Convinced that the changes would destroy the film, I refused.

I publicly walked off, which made me look like the greatest intransigent ass-hole in the world, because I had been paid
3 million for the script.

I kept arguing publicly that the script should not be changed, putting a lot of pressure on Verhoeven (and Gary Goldman, the writer he brought in to rewrite me).

And guess what happened? Because of how hard I fought, because I had publicly walked off, and because I refused to mutilate my own child, Verhoeven, after working with the new writer, changed his mind.

He went back to the first draft of my script and shot it. He fired the other writer. He made Michael Douglas accept the fact that my script could not be changed. And he publicly apologized, saying that he hadn’t understood “the basement” of my script and was wrong.

I saved my script from being destroyed by my intransigence and my willingness to fight.

Our scripts are our babies; we create them. Bill Goldman mutilated his own baby and advises that you should mutilate yours—at the behest of a star or a director.

Please don’t do that.

I don’t know how you (and Bill Goldman) can look yourself in the mirror once you do that.

P.S. The script that I wouldn’t change was the biggest hit movie of the year. The script that Bill Goldman changed was a disaster.

If you start rewriting, you can be rewriting for years
.

F
rom the time screenwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion began work on a script called
Golden Girl
until the time it was filmed as
Up Close and Personal
, they did
twenty-seven
drafts of the script over the course of
six
years.

What can they do to you if you refuse to make their changes?

N
othing.

They can fire you and bring another writer in to do their dirty work. Chances are good that they’ll even pay you fully. They can’t blackball you, because the town runs on greed and tomorrow you might write something that would make some studio or producer
100 million.

Steven Bochco, probably the best writer working in television, once said, “What are they gonna do? Take me out on the back lot and shoot me? What are they gonna do? They can’t take my typewriter; it’s mine. They can kick me off the lot, but I’ll just write another one.”

The agent Michael Ovitz once wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do, and I wrote him a letter that ended this way: “So do whatever you want to do, Mike, and fuck you. I have my family and I have my old manual imperfect typewriter and they have always been the things I’ve treasured the most.”

Notice how Bochco and I love our
typewriters
?

Spell it out for ’em
.

I
f they want you to rewrite your script in a way you disagree with, point out to them that
script
is the root of the word
scripture
, as in Holy Scripture.

They wanted Paddy to do some rewriting, too
.

S
o don’t get discouraged if you’re asked to rewrite. But Chayefsky said, “Can you believe it? These
cruds
want rewrites.”

Don’t explain anything to anybody
.

S
creenwriter Dan Pyne (
Pacific Heights
): “When you go to make the movie, you’ve got to be able to explain to everybody on the movie, from the director on down, what that core idea [for the script] was so that they can see where you started. You have to strip it all back away.”

No, you don’t. Your deal is to
write
it, not to write and
explain
it. To begin with, have no discussions with anyone on the set except the director. Explain this by saying the director is in charge of the set and you don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you’re undercutting the son of a bitch.

Otherwise, you’ll be having creative discussions with the stars, the gaffers, and the makeup people, who stand around doing nothing and want to express how creative they all are.

Don’t strip it away for them. Tell them it’s complex and works on different layers, so everyone is free to interpret it according to his or her
own
layer.

Try to do what I did when anyone I met who had seen
Basic Instinct
asked me to tell them if Catherine really did it. I said, “I’m not allowed by contract to tell you that. But go see it again and look for a clue that will definitely give you the answer.”

Don’t ignore it, fight it
.

S
creenwriter Jeffrey Boam (
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2
): “I get notes on a script from the lowest-ranking junior executive’s assistant reader, who suggests rewrites for dialogue. And I have to endure this. I throw the notes away. I ignore them. I just pay no attention to them at all. You shouldn’t fight it. You should just ignore it.”