The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (66 page)

The Green Light

The decision by a studio to film (green-light) a script.

Until recently, this was the decision of the studio head—he took the blame when the movie failed, or got the credit when it was a hit.

Today, though, many studio heads have figured out that they’ll last longer in the job if they alone don’t make the decision to green-light.

So, at many studios today, a committee makes the decision to green-light a script. The committee is made up of the top execs on all levels—even publicity, advertising, and marketing.

Since you can’t fire the whole committee (
all
the executives) and have a studio left,
everybody
holds on to their jobs.

Thanks to
The Mummy,
we got Graham Greene
.

T
he Quiet American
was green-lighted by Intermedia Films only when Brendan Fraser agreed to take the supporting role. Brendan had just starred in
The Mummy Returns
and the studio felt he was a big-enough star for it to be able to take a chance on Graham Greene.

Sherry Lansing speaks doublespeak
.

D
irector Phillip Noyce, discussing
The Saint
: “At the end of the first screening, Sherry Lansing, the head of the studio, was genuinely crying. She said it was a brilliant film and it was
Doctor Zhivago
-ish. … Later I did feel resentful that Sherry Lansing had initially been so enthusiastic about the movie, only to eventually talk me into cutting those things which had most moved her when she first saw the film.”

A Bomb Thrower

A studio executive who disagrees with a reader’s coverage of a script will be known as a “bomb thrower.”

To Do a DeLuca

To be caught publicly in flagrante delicto—as was then New Line head Mike De Luca at a party at then agent Arnold Rifkin’s house (with the sister of a William Morris agent). To trip on your own dick.

With ding-a-lings like this in charge
…

D
avid Picker, the former head of United Artists, MGM, and Paramount, looking back on his career: “If I would have reversed all my decisions—if I hadn’t made the pictures I did and made the pictures I didn’t, the results would have been exactly the same.”

A studio boss is an orchid
.

S
tudio mogul Louis B. Mayer: “You see, wherever I go there are girls who want to become actresses. I have a sixth sense for it. She would follow me into my stateroom, if I snapped my fingers, and stay all night. Just for a bit role in any picture. But I am not interested in fast affairs. I am interested in
relationships
. I am a human being. I need warmth—like an orchid.”

To Sweat Dollars

To wait for the box-office results from your film’s opening weekend.

It’s not about money, it’s about getting laid
.

A
n agent told Hedy Lamarr this story: “Phil Kamp has had an office at a major studio for four years and he has never made a picture. He’s a distant relative of the president of the studio. He just auditions girls. That’s his whole life. He gets a salary but he’s a producer who doesn’t produce. Phil is so dedicated to his art that he occasionally goes to another city and there he tries another variation. He puts in ads for a secretary to a movie producer—if he were to advertise for an actress it would look suspicious. As a producer, girls who are really secretaries often want to be actresses. Phil does well both in and out of town.”

They’ll want you to write dishonest stories
.

P
aramount studio head B. P. Schulberg: “We can’t afford to alienate our movie audience by telling them the truth about themselves.”

Creative Executive

There’s no such thing. It’s an oxymoron, like “lady producer.”

The barbarians are inside the gates
.

F
rank Pierson, screenwriter (
Dog Day Afternoon
) and president of the MPAA: “We had been having too much fun to notice: the barbarians were inside the gate. … We began to see Harvard Business School MBAs sit in on our story conferences. Lawyers multiplied.”

They don’t like to say no
.

C
olumbia studio exec Peter Guber was instructed by his boss, Leo Jaffe, to tell the once-powerful Jack Warner, now an old producer, that his movie
1776
was being canceled.

Guber went to see Warner but didn’t have the guts to tell him.

Leo Jaffe didn’t have the guts to tell him, either.

1776
was made … and bombed.