The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (62 page)

What’s it really like being a producer?

S
am Spiegel, who had escaped from Hitler’s Germany, said, “It’s better than being a lamp shade.”

“Some producers have hearts full of shit.”

D
irector Elia Kazan said that about Sam Spiegel.

Because we’re scared to speak up
…

S
creenwriter Nick Kazan: “Why do we writers accept notes (from producers, studio executives, development people) which will destroy what we have so painstakingly created?”

Don’t throw the damn thing back at ’em
.

P
roducer William Sackheim was known for throwing across the room scripts that he didn’t like.

If someone throws your script across the room, pick it up, tear off the first page, and make whoever threw it eat it.

Producers have impeccable taste (oh yeah!)
.

R
espected Broadway producer Cheryl Crawford turned down a new play Arthur Miller offered her.

She wept bitterly at the opening night of
Death of a Salesman
.

These are the kind of people who give you notes on your script
.

J
ed Harris was Broadway’s most famous stage director when he saw Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman
. Harris called it “a stupid play” and said “there is no drama in an ass like Willy Loman.”

It takes one to know one
.

O
tto Preminger, the director, and Sam Spiegel, the producer, met in Hollywood for the first time—they had known each other previously in Europe.

Preminger said to Spiegel, “You are the greatest, most treacherous son of a bitch that every lived. … You end up in Mexico where you get involved in selling dope. You also get arrested on a white slavery charge. You get thrown in prison. Somehow or other you bribe yourself out of prison and you sneak illegally into the United States at Tijuana.”

Spiegel looked at him sorrowfully and said, “It wasn’t Tijuana.”

Showman

The highest praise for a producer whose name, identified with a project, immediately gives it status: Sam Spiegel, Mike Todd, David Merrick, Irwin Winkler, Alan Carr, David O. Selznick, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joel Silver, Brian Grazer, Scott Rudin, Steven Spielberg, and Cecil B.

DeMille are showmen.

Nazis yes, producers no
…

S
creenwriter/playwright/director David Mamet: “It occurred to me that there are films about good Nazis, but there are no films about good producers. Every producer in every movie is bad. Of course, that makes sense, because all of the films about bad producers are written by writers.”

Don’t bugger any boys in the backseat of the Porsche, either
.

P
roducer Don Simpson, on why he was fired by Paramount as vice president of production: “They fired me for doing coke. They fired me on a fucking morals clause in the contract. They had executives buggering boys in the backseats of their Porsches and they fired me on a fucking morals charge.”

Some producers really know how to hype their films
.

E
xecutive producer Robert Redford, discussing
The Motorcycle Diaries
: “There’s a lot that’s touching, there’s a lot of humor, there’s a lot of comedy, but it’s real. It’s honest comedy that comes out of real experiences, particularly with the young guys on what starts as an adventure. But there’s also a lot of poignancy, and a lot of powerful emotional stuff in it, that’s also real, and for that reason, it’s all the more powerful.”

Some producers really
, really
know how to hype their films
.

E
xecutive producer Robert Redford, discussing
The Motorcycle Diaries
: “When you see the film, you’ll see that they really went through something to tell their story. Exactly what the characters actually went through. They followed the path that was absolutely authentic—the actual path they took on the motorcycle. They went to all the same places. And you see it, but more importantly you feel it. And if you feel it, then you’re going to feel how Ernesto Guevara was affected by it.”

Some producers
really, really, really
know how to hype their films
.

E
xecutive producer Robert Redford, discussing
The Motorcycle Diaries
: “This is a great story. This was not an easy film to make. They went to some really extreme locations that were next to impossible in some cases. The weather, you had the threat of violence along the way, political violence. You didn’t know how things were going to go. You were going to go into some pretty hot areas. So that’s all evidenced in this film.”

Some producers know how to hype the directors who work for them, too
.

E
xecutive producer Robert Redford, discussing Walter Salles, the director of
The Motorcycle Diaries
: “Walter’s work draws you in because, first and foremost, he is a natural storyteller. He blends, in a visually compelling manner, a specific world of characters, places and struggle that subtly reveals larger threads of shared human experience and emotion that link us all.”

Robert McKee took producer Don Simpson’s film course
.

P
roducer Lynda Obst: “Don created the three-act structure that we all use, the one that Robert McKee and Syd Field [another screenwriting teacher] use and take credit for. Don made up this logarithm. There is the hot first act with an exciting incident, and the second act with the crisis and the dark bad moments in which our hero is challenged, and the third act with the triumphant moment and the redemption and the freeze-frame ending.”

Some producers are true liberals
.

D
uring the South Central riots of 1992, producer Bert Schneider said, “I wish they’d come up here [to Bel Air] and burn my house down.”

Some producers really respect screenwriters
.

P
roducer Bert Schneider walked past writers’ offices on the Columbia lot, banging on their doors and yelling, “Get out from under your desk, motherfucker! I know you’re in there. Why don’t you go write something, turn something in, you jerkoff!”

ALL HAIL

Charles MacArthur!

In the middle of a script dispute, MacArthur (
The Front Page
) knocked producer David O. Selznick over a bed.

Selznick’s agent brother, Myron, jumped on MacArthur’s back to try to stop him, but MacArthur hurled himself on Selznick and bit him in the leg.

“Dracula!” Myron Selznick screamed.

A Pisher

An old term used by producers for a nobody.

Many producers are happy and well adjusted
.

T
he secret to happiness is whores,” said “the producer of producers,” Sam Spiegel.

If he speaks Hungarian, he’s not all bad
.

S
am Spiegel spoke fluent Hungarian.