The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (83 page)

You don’t get it, Bobby. The name of the game is to get the million bucks and
still
get it made exactly as you wrote it … which is exactly what I have done with many of my movies.

Your movie needs a little luck
.

T
he advance word on
The China Syndrome
was bleak. The movie lacked any buzz; everyone expected it to bomb.

Three days before it was released, a nuclear catastrophe at Three Mile Island got the attention of the whole world.
The China Syndrome
, a movie about a nuclear catastrophe, was a smash hit.

You need a little luck, too
.

A
reporter for ABC television did a lengthy
20/20
piece about my screenwriting success. I had just sold several scripts for millions of dollars and I had just fallen head over heels with the love of my life. I was floating when I did the interview.

ABC’s correspondent Judd Rose told me off-camera in the course of our day together that he felt like his luck in life had run out. He was a young man and he had recently been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

For luck, I gave him a beautiful antique Hawaiian walking stick, one of my most treasured objects.

But a couple of years later, Judd Rose died.

Avoid the gods of irony
.

M
ike Medavoy: “The gods of irony wield a lot of power in Hollywood.”

Don’t let it kill you
.

P
roducer Alan Carr died as a result of the failure of his Academy Award telecast; director Richard Marquand died as a result of the failure of his film
Hearts of Fire
; Paddy Chayefsky died as a result of his directorially butchered film
Altered States
.

If you fail, don’t kill yourself
.

W
riter and producer Dominick Dunne: “For me, the pain of failure exceeded by far the joys of success. My plight was hopeless. I almost jumped in front of a train in Santa Barbara. At the last second I let it pass me. I had a major flirtation with a kitchen knife that I took to bed with me. The love that I felt for Los Angeles turned to hate. I ran from there.”

Creatively Reliable

A person who is so screwed up on drugs or booze that he is personally unreliable … but can still function as a screenwriter.

Remember that chicken shit can turn into chicken liver
.

M
y film
Showgirls
, trashed as one of the worst movies ever made when it was released, is now a cult classic.

A sequel and a Broadway show are planned.

Remember that chicken liver can turn into chicken shit, too
.

T
itanic
, the world’s most successful film in history, winner of God knows how many Academy Awards, was voted one of the worst movies of all time in 2003 by the viewers of England’s BBC.

You don’t want to turn into Joe Gillis
.

I
n
Sunset Boulevard
, Joe Gillis, screenwriter (played by William Holden), wound up as the kept man of a broken-down movie star who hadn’t made a movie in decades. She spoiled him, belittled him, and finally killed him. In the last scene of the film, we see him floating facedown in her swimming pool.

Someone asks him in the film, “Don’t you sometimes hate yourself?”

Joe says, “Constantly.”

This is the way Joe Gillis describes himself: “Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of B pictures to his credit. The poor dope.”

Don’t let this be your self-portrait
.

W
illiam Goldman: “Everybody knows that writers are miserable—the line between novelists and alcoholics is constantly talked of. But we’re weird. We’re antisocial, and if you’ve seen us on the tube, you know that, except for Gore Vidal, we’re not a whole lot of fun. You expect the unhappiness.”

If you’re a boozer, go clean yourself up
.

I
did. I was the complete functioning alcoholic. I never staggered or slurred or passed out. I rarely even had hangovers.

But I started drinking when I was fourteen, and by 2001, I was drinking a fifth of tequila, bourbon, or gin a day and two bottles of white wine or two six-packs of beer.

I developed throat cancer and had to detox before the surgery. After the surgery, to have a chance to live, I had to stop smoking and drinking.

I did. I’ve been sober five years. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, but I did it. So can you.

Remember that first and foremost you’re an entertainer
.

D
irector Phillip Noyce: “I first became interested in movies as a result of my fascination with the traveling tent shows that came to my small country town when I was a child. And my fascination with the tent shows was an attraction to the ability of the performer to engage the audience. So I’ve always seen myself as an entertainer of the public. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to sit in a cinema where one of my films is screening and to feel the pleasure that I’m giving to the audience. That’s what makes it all worthwhile. I’d make films for nothing if they told me there was no other way of getting a film financed, just so that I could continue to feel the thrill of that contact with a satisfied public as you take them into the make-believe world that you’ve created for them.”

Hold on to the magic
.

I
liked the cinema better before I began to do it,” said Orson Welles. “Now I can’t stop myself from hearing the clappers at the beginning of each shot; all the magic is destroyed.”

You can become an echo
.

I
f your script doesn’t sell, there’s still hope for the future. My script about soul singer Otis Redding,
Blaze of Glory
, wasn’t made for eight years—until the Ray Charles biopic,
Ray
, became a hit movie—and then suddenly my phone didn’t stop ringing. People were now showing interest in
Blaze
.

Screenwriter Larry Gross bought the rights to and adapted two Andre Dubus short stories. He couldn’t sell his script for
twenty years
—until another Dubus piece,
In the Bedroom
, became a hit movie.

“My partner and I dusted off the script,” says Gross, “did a couple of more changes, and all the reasons people had passed on it now were ignored because it was from the author of
In the Bedroom
.”

And you can create an echo
.

W
hen I wrote
Flashdance
, there hadn’t been a hit musical in many years; after the movie’s success, there was suddenly a vast variety of musicals being filmed.

Ditto with
Jagged Edge
. There hadn’t been a hit courtroom mystery in a long time; after
Jagged Edge
’s success, one after another were released.

If everybody passes on your script
…

P
roducer Robert Evans’s favorite saying is “Aw, fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all!”

If you get discouraged
…

R
emember that while
Confederacy of Dunces
is now hailed as the funniest novel ever written and won the Pulitzer Prize, every single publisher passed when it was first sent to them.

You’re in good company: Screenwriting almost killed Raymond Chandler, too
.

T
he last picture I did at Paramount,” said the novelist/screenwriter, “nearly killed me. The producer was in the doghouse—he has since left—and the director was a stale old hack who had been directing for thirty years without once achieving any real distinction. Obviously he never could. So here I am, a mere writer and a tired one at that screaming at the front office to protect the producer and actually going on the set to direct scenes—I know nothing about directing—in order that the whole project might be saved from going down the drain. Well, it was saved. As pictures go, it was pretty lively. No classic, but no dud, either.”

The film Chandler was talking about was the noir classic
The Blue Dahlia
.

Don’t look to Marilyn for inspiration
.

J
ohn Kennedy Toole, unable to sell his novel
A Confederacy of Dunces
, drove to California and visited Marilyn Monroe’s grave.

He then drove back home to Louisiana and killed himself.

Be philosophical about life
.

W
hile the PC police were organizing posses everywhere to lynch me for the sex in
Basic Instinct, Showgirls
, and
Sliver
, the president of the United States and his intern were practicing analingus in the Oval Office.

Don’t get bitter
.

S
creenwriter and author John Fante (
Ask the Dust
) was sixty-nine years old and a resident of the Motion Picture and Television Hospital. He was blind. Both of his legs had been amputated.

He said, “The most horrible thing that happens to people is bitterness. They all get so bitter.”

If you get discouraged
…

R
emember that fabled (and smart) studio head Frank Price had first crack at a Steven Spielberg project and passed. The project was
E.T
.

Come on, you’ve only had one cable movie made, Bobby
.

R
obert McKee: “What I teach is the truth; you’re in over your head, this is not a hobby, this is an art form and a profession, and your chances of success are very, very slim. And if you’ve got only one story, get the fuck out of here. …”

Try not to burn out
.

S
creenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “For several years I have disliked motion pictures and planned tentatively to get out of them. … I have an overpowering desire never again to have anything to do with this depraved industry, and an equally overpowering desire to get what cash I can and blow.”

Analysis Paralysis