The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (7 page)

To Do a Begelman

To commit suicide, like agent and studio head David.

Don’t live in L.A
.

E
veryone in L.A. wants somehow to get into the movie business or has a friend or a relative who wants to get into the business. Everyone is a wannabe, already in star training.

All the wannabe screenwriters you meet will quote you classic movie lines, which you are better off not hearing and certainly not remembering.

Lines like “I will not be ignored, Dan”—written by James Dearden in
Fatal Attraction
.

And “When you give up your dream, you die”—written by Joe Eszterhas in
Flashdance
.

And “It’s turkeytime, gobble gobble”—written by Martin Brest in
Gigli
. And “How does it feel not to have anyone comin’ on you anymore?”—written by Joe Eszterhas in
Showgirls
.

You don’t want to live in a tabloid, do you
?

A
ctress Jessica Alba (
Sin City
): “Literally the whole town is a tabloid. At every restaurant, every hotel, everywhere you go, people are looking at the door to see who walked in. It seems like no one is ever satisfied with their jobs or their lives, everyone is always sort of maneuvering for something else, something better.”

Just another Hollywood burnout
…

S
creenwriter/novelist Jim Harrison: “I was driving on the Hollywood freeway, crossing the hill over toward Burbank, when we stopped in traffic. I looked up at the apartment buildings stacked against the wall of the canyon and on a deck a young man was standing in an open robe, whacking off and looking down at the freeway.”

Forget everything you’ve heard about networking
.

I
t is
not
who you know in Hollywood. If you write a good, commercial script and start sending it out—-
someone
will recognize that it is good and commercial.

It is a town that runs on greed, filled with desperate people who will do anything to make money.

If they think your script will make them money, they will option or buy your script.

You can write your script anywhere. I suggest that you write it anywhere but in L.A.

You won’t be able to write real people if you stay in L.A. too long
.

L
.A. has nothing to do with the rest of America. It is a place whose values are shaped by the movie business. It is my contention that it is not just a separate city, or even a separate state, but a separate
country
located within America.

Real Americans live in Bainbridge Township, Ohio.

If you have to go to L.A. for a meeting
…

D
o it as former Orion Pictures head Eric Pleskow advises: “Only as needed, like taking medication.”

And Truman Capote gave this advice to Dominick Dunne: “Remember this—that is not where you belong, and when you get out of it what you went there to get, you have to return to your own life.”

It’s still bedlam
.

A
fter two weeks of writing scripts in L.A., screenwriter William Faulkner wrote home: “I have not got used to this work. But I am as well as anyone can be in this bedlam.”

Don’t wind up weeping into your beer
.

N
orman Mailer, writing to a friend in 1949: “Hollywood stinks. I’ll probably stay here the rest of my life and weep into my beer about what a writer I used to be.”

A
Lanzman

A Yiddish term for a fellow Jew, it is used in Hollywood now to describe a good and loyal friend—being a
lanzman
is one rung above being a
mensch
(good people).

They can snort you there
.

P
roducer Bert Schneider took care of an ill friend for two years. When she died, he held a party and the guests snorted her ashes up their noses.

Save the horses
.

S
creenwriter William Faulkner bought a horse for his daughter in Hollywood. When he realized the mare was going to foal, he drove her home to Mississippi. “I’d be damned,” he said, “if I let a Faulkner mare foal in Hollywood.”

This isn’t the kind of place where you want to raise your kids
.

I
noticed our six-year-old, Joey, staring out the window of our Malibu house one sunny morning. Curious, I looked at what he was looking at.

On the patio of the house next door, a gorgeous naked young woman was with another gorgeous naked young woman.

Joey said, “What are they doing, Dada?”

I thought about it and said, “Saying hi, I guess.”

Joey said, “Like doggies.”

I smiled and said, “Yup.”

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Do you want neighbors like this?

Actress and Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Vera Krupp used to live next to me in Bel Air and they say that she got
25 million from her husband, the German armaments king, Krupp. With it, she bought the most unbelievable diamonds. Vera wasn’t in the least bit overwhelmed by any of her diamonds and used to wear them while gardening or doing the dishes. But Vera lost all her money when she went to Las Vegas, fell in love with a croupier there, married him, and gave him her entire fortune. When she died, she had her four black Great Danes cremated and buried in the coffin with her
.”

You’ll meet some mighty odd folks in L.A
.

A
gent Swifty Lazar: “Now, as everyone knows, I have a legendary fear of germs. The problem isn’t really germs, it’s the proximity of dirt that annoys me, especially someone else’s dirt. Howard Hughes, on the other hand, did have a germ phobia. So that night, as I always do when leaving a public toilet, I reached for a paper towel to use on the door handle so I wouldn’t have to touch it. Alas, there were none left. A few seconds later, Howard made the same discovery.

“So there we were, two germ freaks, both walking toward the door with dripping hands. I lingered, hoping to force Howard to deal with the door. But Howard saw that gambit and stepped aside, leaving me right in front of the door. Was I going to grab that germ-ridden handle? Not on your life. So we were at a standstill. Luckily, another man entered, giving us a chance to duck out before the door swung shut again.”

See a proctologist often
.

P
laywright/screenwriter David Mamet: “Writing for Hollywood is a constant trauma.”

You’ll need to get yourself some Kaopectate, too
.

S
creenwriter William Goldman: “I bought a bottle of Kaopectate as soon as I reached the hotel. No joke. For the first several years, whenever I was in Los Angeles, I went nowhere without a bottle of Kaopectate hidden in a brown paper bag.”

For almost twenty years while I was a screenwriter, I lived in Marin County in northern California and commuted to Los Angeles for meetings.

If I had a noon meeting in L.A., I’d be sitting at the bar of the terminal in San Francisco sipping two glasses of white wine at nine in the morning.

I’d have two Bloody Marys on the plane.

Upon landing, I’d go to the bar of the terminal in L.A. and drink two more glasses of white wine. Then I’d be ready for my meetings. I guess maybe Bill Goldman is smarter than I am. He limited himself to Kaopectate.

In Shallow Waters the Dragon Becomes the Joke of the Shrimp

Studio executive Dore Schary’s famous line, originally applied to a down-on-his-luck David O. Selznick. Later applied to Orson Welles, producers Allan Carr, David Begelman, Dan Melnick, and directors Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, and David Lynch, among others.