The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (64 page)

A Truffle Nose

A nose that can find a treasure (truffles) hidden in the brush.

A nose only a successful producer can have.

A pig’s nose, since it is pigs that discover truffles.

Powerful producers can afford to wear dirty, smelly toupees
.

P
roducer David Merrick ordered a toupee from the man who made Fred Astaire’s. But Merrick never cleaned his toupee. It smelled. He didn’t even put it on carefully, letting it look like a dirty, smelly napkin atop his head. It was Merrick’s way of showing contempt for the people he worked with. He had so much power, he could walk around in a dirty, smelly wig … and not even bother about how he looked.

And they call Thalberg a genius
.

I
rving Thalberg passed on a movie and said to his boss, Louise B. Mayer, “Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture will make a nickel.” He was talking about
Gone With the Wind
.

In need of producorial stimulation
…

S
creenwriter Eleanor Perry and her director husband, Frank, wrote this note to a producer: “I’m afraid that both of us seem now to require your direct stimulation before we embark or agree on truly significant changes, in short, we need you.”

Don’t steal the crumpled paper
.

E
nglish screenwriter Ivan Moffat (
Giant, Black Sunday
) on working with an internationally acclaimed producer: “He was crablike and all-controlling. He would hold on to everything. I had idly taken a crumpled piece of paper from his desk. He said, ‘What is this, Ivan? No, please.’ And I had to put it back. On Saturday or Sunday, he would call up, saying, ‘Ivan, where are you going? Please leave a number. We might have to work.’ There was never any question of our working. I said something flippant at dinner with him once. He said, ‘Ivan, hold the humor.’ ”

Not only can you get snorted; you can get chomped, too
.

D
irector Robert Parrish (
Casino Royale
), speaking about a wellknown producer he had worked with: “He never chomped on a cigar. It wasn’t his style. He was too much of a gentleman to be caught ‘chomping’ anything, except maybe a script or a screenwriter.”

Murder is always an option
.

A
t 3:30
A.M
., screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s wife awoke, to find him not in bed.

He was in the bathroom, shaving.

She said, “Why are you shaving so early?”

He said, “Because I’m driving to New York to kill the producer.”

He would’ve loved Heidi Fleiss
.

A
Fox executive welcomed producer Sam Spiegel to New York. “I proposed showing him places like the Metropolitan Museum,” the executive said, “and all he wanted to go and see was Polly Adler’s—the best whorehouse in town. Sam spent the whole night there. I had to buy the place out—it was over nine hundred dollars.”

The best producers are the best liars
.

D
irector Elia Kazan said producer Sam Spiegel could lie “without betraying a tremor of his facial muscles. He kept me intrigued just to see how he got away with everything.”

David Geffen is refined
.

W
hen producer David Geffen went to a high-toned reception for Princess Margaret, he wore blue jeans.

He went up to her and said, “Hi ya.”

I’m not going to mess with David Geffen
.

W
riter Tom King did—in his book,
The Operator
. Only a few years after writing the book he died at a young age—of natural causes, of course.

Did you say that to Tom King, David?

W
henever producer David Geffen gets angry at someone, he says, “I hope you die!”

You have to love David Geffen a lot
.

D
avid Geffen said this to screenwriter Robert Towne about why he wouldn’t work with him again: “You just didn’t love me enough, Robert.”

I always liked Michael Eisner
.

M
ichael is a liar,” David Geffen said about Disney chief Michael Eisner. “And anybody who has dealt with him—genuinely dealt with him—knows he is a liar.”

But what if David Geffen is lying?

I
worked with Michael Eisner on
Flashdance
and enjoyed working with him. He disagreed with me sometimes, but he never lied to me—as far as I know. It is possible, therefore, that David Geffen is lying when he calls Michael Eisner a liar.

On the other hand
…

I
’ve dealt with David Geffen, too, and he never lied to me, either.

But he obviously wanted to fuck Tom Cruise
.

A
fter he read the script of
Risky Business
, producer David Geffen told the director, “I want you to cast someone in the role of Joel that I would want to fuck.”

Who’s that holding Ron Bass’s Oscar?

P
eter Guber produced
Rain Man
with his partner Jon Peters, even though director Barry Levinson rarely saw them on the set.

Yet Peter was photographed with “his” Oscar after the Academy Awards.

Alas, it wasn’t his Oscar; it was
Rain Man
screenwriter Ron Bass’s Oscar—Peter and Jon had asked Ron to “borrow it for the photographers.”

Why weren’t the photographers taking Ron Bass’s picture with his Oscar?

B
ecause photographers aren’t interested in taking screenwriters’ photographs.

They’re not
all that
interested in taking producers’ pictures, either, but they are more interested in producers than screenwriters.

Peter Guber doesn’t exist; Peter Bart invented him
.

P
eter Guber produced
Flashdance
, though I never once saw him during the making of that movie. He also produced
Midnight Express
, though the director, Alan Parker, said that he rarely saw him during the making of that movie. And he produced
Rain Man
, though the director, Barry Levinson, said that he rarely saw him during the making of that movie.

Don’t be a pawn in these games
.

P
owerful producer Irwin Winkler once asked me to write the “true story” of media baron Rupert Murdoch. I turned him down.

Powerful producer Scott Rudin once asked John Gregory Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, to write “the true story” of entertainment mogul Barry Diller. They turned him down.

Tough-guy producers are easier to work with
.

J
ohn Gregory Dunne: “In general, we prefer doing business with the bully boys than with the smoothies. The clout of the bully boys allows them to act as a buffer between you and the studio, shielding you from those mind-deadening omnibus meetings at which everyone present feels the necessity to say something; the bully boys do these meetings, and give you only the notes they think are worthwhile. If you let them know you will yell back at them when they yell at you, then they are more prone to listen—or else they fire you quickly; the smoothies just jerk your chain and smile as they measure your rib cage—for the ribs between which they will slip the stiletto.”

At all cost, even if you’re secretly writing a tell-all, appear loyal
.

P
roducer Peter Guber: “In Hollywood, even the appearance of disloyalty can shoot down even the most promising future.”

Avoid the producer who is a wannabe director
.

W
atching the filming of
Duel in the Sun
, producer David O. Selznick interrupted filming, dashed over to Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, and splashed more makeup blood on them.

The director, King Vidor, got up off his chair and said, “David, you can take this picture and shove it,” and left the set.

Producers know how to cheer themselves up
.

O
n days when he was depressed, producer Robert Evans said to his staff, “Go out there and find me some money!”

Producers are survivors
.

B
efore he became my friend and, on several films, my producer partner, he had worked in a bookstore in Mill Valley, California, and owned an art theater with its own restaurant in Sonoma County. After he and I parted ways, he partnered with someone else—this time in a new Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, where he also became the maître’d.

If a producer gets bored, he can always change his name
.

M
y friend Howard Koch, Jr., a very successful producer and truly nice guy, decided one day that he didn’t like his name anymore.

So he changed it. He became “Hawk” Koch.

He asked his friends to call him that, and he called himself that on all of his future film credits.

Everyone called him Hawk. Everyone liked Hawk better after he became Hawk.

A Velvet Octopus

A producer who wraps his arms around you with great affection and takes from you for free what you should be paid for: idea, outline, option, or script.

Don’t ever let yourself be caught by a velvet octopus.

Make the producer swim for your script
.

J
ohn Huston wrote the first eleven pages of his script and handed them to producer Sam Spiegel. Spiegel started reading the pages, but Huston’s pet monkey grabbed the pages from him and threw them into the swimming pool. Siegel jumped into the pool and swam underwater to retrieve the pages.

Make him hire armed guards to keep you at bay
.

P
roducer David Geffen hired armed guards to keep screenwriter Robert Towne out of those theaters in New York and L.A. that were showing Towne’s
Personal Best
.

One way to get even with a producer
.