The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (63 page)

Unfuckable

A producer’s term for an actor or actress whom he doesn’t want to cast in the movie.

Because they can’t do what we do
.

S
creenwriter Nick Kazan: “If we refuse to make destructive changes, why are we considered ‘difficult’ rather than ‘principled and passionate’? Why are we not considered experts, both in general and, most especially, on the distinct universe of the script which we have written?”

A powerful producer can even move the White House
.

W
hen I needed serious government help with a personal problem (a psychotic brother-in-law), I went to Robert Evans, who was walking around his house those days with a commander in chief ball cap from the Bush White House.

Evans got the government involved for me and solved my problem.

Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater had been a guest in Evans’s guest house.

Bring ’em a towel from the rest room
.

A
producer and I met in the little bar at La Scala on Little Santa Monica. He proposed a deal and it sounded good to me. We shook hands on it.

I told my agent about the deal and the agent said, “Forget it. There’s no way I’ll let you make that deal.”

The producer went ballistic when he heard we had no deal.

Six months later, he asked me to dinner. His wife joined us. We went back to La Scala on Little Santa Monica.

We had a couple of martinis at the bar. He said to his wife, “You see this stool I’m sitting on? He fucked me right here on this stool. Right here.”

She laughed and laughed. The producer sort of smiled, but he wasn’t laughing. I was laughing, but I was forcing it.

I went into the bathroom and got a paper towel. I took it out to the bar and told the producer to stand up a second. He did and I put the paper towel under him on the stool.

Now he started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and so did his wife and I.

“You son of a bitch,” the producer kept saying, sitting on the paper towel, but he was still laughing.

To Do a Burt Weisbourd

He was the hottest producer of the early eighties, the producer of
Raggedy Man
and
Ghost Story
. He was working with Robert Redford on
Red Headed Stranger
when, word is, he went up against Redford and got into a major battle with the star. He went from being one of the hottest producers in town to getting out of the business.

Give ’em music lessons
.

S
creenwriter Nick Kazan: “The next time someone reads your script and either really hates something that you know works or makes cavalier and foolish suggestions … perhaps you should ask them: Did you ever hear a song for the first time and hate it and then two weeks later find yourself singing it?”

Producers outbid themselves sometimes
.

P
roducer Charles Evans bid on a house that he wanted to buy. He forgot that he’d already made a bid; then heard about another bid, which was really
his
bid.

So he made another bid, bidding against himself, and bought the house.

Creative Parasite

A wannabe producer who pals around with you and cultivates your friendship in the hope that if you sell your script, you’ll get him the job of associate or executive producer on the movie is guilty of creative parasitism.

Producer Don Simpson was the reincarnation of David O. Selznick
.

S
creenwriter Nunnally Johnson, who turned down working on another project with Selznick: “Working with you consists of three months of work and three more of recuperation.”

Joel Silver stopped when he was seven
.

S
creenwriter Ben Hecht to producer David O. Selznick: “The trouble with you, David, is that you did all your reading before you were twelve.”

This producer’s a real clown
.

D
avid Nicksay was once employed as a clown by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He even graduated from clown school.

Producers have to start somewhere
.

I
rwin Winkler, the Oscar-winning producer, once worked as a “laugher” for live television.

Nobody messes with Sean Connery
.

P
roducer Peter Guber was going to tell Sean Connery about a new ending needed for a movie.

When Connery poked his finger in Guber’s chest and said, “Now what’s all this shit about not shooting the ending we want?” Guber backed off and said, “No, I just came by to wish you luck.”

David Geffen is tougher than Michael Ovitz
.

S
aid Ovitz to producer Geffen: “You’re so smart, so bright, so aggressive. … I wish to God you could take all your venom and turn it into something positive. Your whole life is so negative. It’s not enough for you to win. You have to have everyone else do poorly around you. They have to do badly. I don’t get that, David. If you keep saying bad things about me, I’m going to beat you up.”

In the end, it’s all BS
.

P
roducer Peter Guber: “Success is more attitude than aptitude.”

Some studio bosses can’t read very well
.

O
ne studio head hated reading so much that he sat with an assistant for an hour a day as the assistant told him the plot summaries of the scripts the agencies had submitted.

That’s the sound of one hand clapping
.

P
eter Guber: “The perception of power is power.”

Stay away from hands-on producers
.

I
will not work for dominating people like Selznick or Goldwyn,” said Raymond Chandler. “If you deprive me of the right to do my own kind of writing, there is almost nothing left.”

The producer was a pimp
.

D
avid Merrick defined producer Robert Evans this way: “He’s Paramount’s vice president in charge of procurement.”

Robert Evans’s role model
.

J
oe Schenck, powerful studio head and producer, was known for discovering and “sponsoring” women in Hollywood. He prepared them for other men and even marriage to other men. He took care of them and asked for “a little consideration along the way.”

One of the women Joe Schenck discovered and sponsored was Marilyn Monroe.

Don’t take any meetings at a producer’s house
.

M
arilyn Monroe: “He had me come over to his house. It was a mansion. I had never been any place like that. He had the greatest food, too. That’s when I learned about Champagne. What I liked was hearing about all the stars I had seen in the movies. He knew them all. He seemed to have this thing about breasts. After dinner, he told me to take my clothes off and he would tell me Hollywood stories as he played with my breasts. What could I say? He didn’t want to do much else, since he was getting old, but sometimes he asked me to kiss him—down there. It would seem like hours and nothing would happen, but I was afraid to stop. I felt like gagging, but if I did, I thought he’d get insulted. Sometimes, he’d just fall asleep. If he stayed awake, he’d pat my head, like a puppy, and thank me.”

Producers can be assinine
.

O
n my film
Jagged Edge
, producer Marty Ransohoff kept trying to get rid of Glenn Close, claiming, “Her ass is too big.”

After lunch with Helen Mirren, producer Sam Spiegel said she was wrong for the part in his film. “Her ass is too big,” he said.