The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (55 page)

And then he directed
Gigli
, which he also wrote. It was one of the biggest cinematic disasters in years.

Stay away from Michael Cimino
.

M
ichael Cimino directed
The Deer Hunter
brilliantly. He didn’t write it. He won the Oscar for Best Director; the movie won for Best Picture.

Then he directed
Heaven’s Gate
. He wrote it. It became the greatest financial and critical disaster in film history.

Michael Cimino has directed many films since then. He has cowritten or written all of them. All of them have failed.

He is rewriting himself now. He is sometimes seen around Hollywood wearing dresses and a wig.

Renny Harlin’s writing advice
…

H
arlin (
Cliffhanger, Exorcist: The Beginning
): “I don’t want accidents, I want disasters. I don’t want dirt, I want filth. I don’t want a storm, I want a hurricane. I don’t want fear, I want panic. I don’t want suspense, I want terror. I don’t want humor, I want hysteria.”

Directors confuse psychodrama with drama
.

A
drian Lyne, the director of
Flashdance
, tried to talk me into having Alex, the central character, be raped by her father at the age of eight.

Larry Peerce, the original director of
Love Story
, wanted Ryan O’Neal to be a returning Vietnam veteran suffering combat flashbacks.

No wonder he screwed up my script of
Jade.

B
illy Friedkin, to an interviewer in 1967: “The plotted film is on the way out and is no longer of interest to the serious director.”

Your director will hate you because you can write
.

O
n July 18, 2003, Alessandra Stanley wrote this in
The New York Times
: “Mr. Affleck and Mr. Damon, who were themselves awkward newcomers when they won an Oscar for best screenplay for their first film,
Good Will Hunting
, sponsored a competition for thousands of unknown, inexperienced writers and directors, summoning the semifinalists to the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Erica Beeney, 28, whose screenplay about a troubled teenager in Shaker Heights won first place, was teamed with Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin, both 30, long-time friends and directing partners. … The two directors’ desire to exclude the reticent Ms. Beeney becomes increasingly obvious in each episode. By this Sunday, she had finally moved from wounded perplexity to sarcastic rage. ‘Do phones work?’ she finally barks at Mr. Potelle when she realizes that they have once again made last-minute changes behind her back. She bonds with the slick producers who report to Miramax and try to keep the directors’ inexperience and egotism in check.”

Writing is more difficult than directing
.

W
riter/director Elia Kazan: “Writing, in case you don’t know it, is much harder than directing films. It may be the reason why I, perverse I, do it.”

A director isn’t a writer or an artist; he’s a general
.

D
irector Orson Welles: “A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a director an army.”

Directors are artists
.

D
irector Herbert Brenon delayed shooting a scene while an assistant searched Hollywood for a fifty-pound note.

When the note was brought to him, Brenon sealed it in an envelope and handed the envelope to the actor, who, the script said, was carrying a brown envelope with a fifty-pound note in it.

It’s the scenery that makes a great movie, not your script
.

D
irector David Lean in a memo to his
Lawrence of Arabia
producer: “Listen to me. The thing that’s going to make this a very exceptional picture in the world-beater class are the backgrounds, the camels, horses, and uniqueness of the strange atmosphere we are putting around our intimate story. … This is our great spectacle which will pull the crowd from university professor to newsboy.”

What to do when a director calls you to tell you he likes your script
.

W
hen Barbet Schroeder called screenwriter/novelist Charles Bukowski to tell him he liked
Barfly
, Bukowski said, “Fuck off, you French frog!”

Directors certainly haven’t changed much
.

B
en Hecht, discussing a first meeting with a director in 1937: “I’ve never met anyone so eager to flaunt his stupidity, low-grade human values and jackass vanities in the world.”

Directors hate what they do
.

D
irector Stephen Frears (
My Beautiful Launderette
): “There’s nothing more loathsome than actually making a film.”

Directors use people
.

T
hey don’t say, “He’s perfect—we’ll cast him.” They say, “He’s perfect—we’ll use him.”

Don’t give any ideas away
.

T
he director Ivan Reitman was the producer of
Big Shots
, a comic adventure about two little kids.

As Ivan and I talked for days about the script, I suggested putting adult stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito into the kids’ parts.

A couple of years after
Big Shots
, Ivan made a comic adventure about two adult kids. It was called
Twins
and starred Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

Big Shots
failed, but
Twins
was a huge hit.

Most directors are passive-aggressive snakes
.

T
his will seriously complicate your life.

It means they won’t tell you if they dislike your script or something in your script. They’ll rewrite it themselves behind your back or try to get a screenwriter friend to do it. Or they’ll tell you they love your script but that the studio wants another writer to come in and do some “very minor rewriting … nothing more than some touching up, really.”

They hate confrontations and will agree with you about most things and then do exactly what they want to do when you aren’t on the set. And if you see the finished film and then confront them and say, “What the fuck did you do to my script?” they’ll say, “What do you mean? I didn’t change a comma.”

Or: “I didn’t have a choice. The studio ordered me to make those changes. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how bloody upset you’d get.”

Or: “I was just trying to prevent you from getting hurt.”

Or: “The star just didn’t want to do the scene. I tried to insist on doing it the way you wrote it, but you know how arrogant he is. Defending your script almost cost me my job.”

Martin Scorsese is paranoid
.

M
artin Scorsese puts a mirror on top of the monitor while he’s filming, so he can see who’s standing behind him, watching.

When he was shooting
Gangs of New York
, producer Harvey Weinstein put a giant truck mirror on Scorsese’s monitor. Written on it were these words: “Caution, objects in the mirror are larger than they appear.”

In the middle of the jumbo mirror was Weinstein’s huge face.

The director always thinks he is the star
.

A
ccording to Hal Ashby’s producing partner, Charles Mulvehill: “Hal felt the picture should be the star, not the actor. But what that meant is that the star was the director, Hal Ashby.”

ALL HAIL

Barbet Schroeder!

He’s a director, I know, but still …

Learning that the studio had just pulled the plug on his film, he bought a Black & Decker circular saw, took it into the office of the studio head, plugged it in, turned it on, and held the blade over the studio head’s hand, threatening to slice his finger off.

At that moment, the studio head changed his mind and decided to make Barbet’s film.

Directors have always been full of it
.

S
creenwriter Ben Hecht: “My movie,
Underworld
, was the first gangster film to bedazzle the movie fans; there were no lies in it—except for a half dozen sentimental touches introduced by its director, Joe von Sternberg. I still shudder remembering one of them. My head villain, after robbing a bank, emerged with a suitcase full of money and paused in the crowded street to notice a blind beggar and give him a coin—before making his getaway.”

You don’t want to get
this
close
.

A
ccording to the producer Gerald Ayres, who worked with them, screenwriter Robert Towne and director/star Warren Beatty liked having sex with different women at the same time in the same room.

Hanging out with your director can be deadly
.

S
creenwriter/film critic James Agee went off to write at the San Ysidro Ranch, near Santa Barbara, with director John Huston. They drank and played tennis, and Agee had a heart attack and almost died.

ALL HAIL

Carole Eastman!

Screenwriter Eastman (
Five Easy Pieces
) “felt she would become polluted if she had to talk to the director,” said her friend Richard Wechsler.

You don’t want a director as your best friend
.