Which Lie Did I Tell? (47 page)

I want to stop here for a while and talk about the movie.

Half the movie, really. George Roy Hill once said that if you can’t tell your story in an hour fifty, you better be
David Lean. I will go to my grave agreeing with that.
George S. Kaufman once said, “Everything needs cutting.” I’m 100 percent for that, too. I cannot think of a flick over the last decade—including
Shawshank Redemption,
in which I put up with anything—that could not have been better with some, as they say, judicious cutting.

I think what you’ve read would run about forty-five to fifty-five minutes. Dialogue scenes go quickly. Action scenes run long. The drowning sequence, for example, should take many minutes on film. You’ve got to know—at the start of it—that he’s going to rescue her. Then you’ve got to know—one-third in—that she’s going to rescue him. Then there has to come a moment—I did it with a long shot of the two of them and they are simply too far away for anything to happen—when you are meant to think, I know Climber’s not going to die, I know that because this is only the first part of the movie and he gets top billing
—but how is he going to be saved
? And, please,
somebody do it.
And then the rescue with her knifing through the water and him sinking and the distance getting closer but it’s still too rough, they’re too far apart—

—and then he sinks under.

Well, all those beats are written in there for a purpose. To
thrill
you. And also so the asshole director will
get
it. (Remember, this is the selling version.) Once Mr. Fox says, sure, here’s seventy-five mill, get some stars and make the movie—well, that version of the script doesn’t have to sell so hard.

But you know what? I’d keep it in anyway so the female star, when she reads it, can think, hey, what a great scene
for me. Love
that drowning sequence.

And you know what else? Male stars will
hate
the sequence. They’re happy as shit jumping through closed windows and showing how perfect they are—but being weak? Worse, being rescued? Worse yet, being rescued by
the girl
?

Here’s what most male stars would do to that sequence, if they have the power. They would absolutely leave it in. They would be thrilled unto death to play the fucker—

—with one teeny proviso. Don’t gag when I tell you what it is—

—that the audience already knows Climber is a swimmer of at least Olympic calibre. And that Echo, poor sweet thing, has a lifetime terror of the water. Get it?

He
doesn’t need help, he’s helping
her
get over her fear.

That’s how insecure they are. And that’s how big they want us to think their dicks are. And if this all makes you sick, get out of the business. I have been dealing with it for thirty-five years.

It gets no easier.

The main reason I’ve stopped the screenplay at this point is to ask some questions, most importantly this:
What do you think’s going to happen?

Please do me a favor here—put the book down and decide what the answer would be
for you. What would make you satisfied
?

Example: Do
you
think there’s any chance for Echo and Climber to forgive each other? And if you believe he can get back into her good graces, do you also believe he can get back into her
heart
?

Shirley and Phoebes? Their family’s been ripped apart again and I think they have to think it’s their fault. Not only that, but their father is gone again. (Do you think those chaperoned visits are going to work out? I sure don’t. I don’t think that kind of thing
can
work out.)

Trip? How is what he did going to affect his getting married? I think he did a rotten thing. But Echo must think differently. Do they get married? How does Climber take that? Do the kids fall apart? They have to hate him for taking their father away. And what happens when (or if) he moves into their mother’s life and bed?

And finally Echo. Obviously she is still more than a little interested in Climber. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t torment him the way she does, wouldn’t ask if he hated what he saw. But he put her beloved children in danger.

Other questions: Is anybody going to get hurt? Who? Are you sure? Why do you think that? Is anybody going to die? Who? Are you sure? Why do you think that?

I have answers for some of those questions.

But not all. Not at this point anyway. And I have been continually surprised at what you’ve read. (I don’t want that to come off as mystical
shit. It isn’t. But as I’ve told you, I don’t know what I’m doing, not in any logical way, I’m totally instinctive. I knew when I started that the kids had different lives with the different parents. I knew Climber would be found out. But I didn’t know, till the day I wrote the scene, that when he took them out on their first case the bodega was going to be robbed.

I knew there could be a bodega if I needed it. I’ve seen lots of streets like that in the Village, one nationality taking over from another, but gradually.

What I had no answer for was this question: How deeply would I need to bury old Climber? I knew he had to be separated from the kids. I knew Trip was going to be the suspicious person. But it was possible that Echo’s merely seeing them working at night, however safely, would be enough to enflame her.

But as I started into the sequence, I think this fear came along—that if all Climber did was play the overly enthusiastic parent, taking his kids into his work life, and Echo found out and took the children away from him, so that he could only see them with others around, it would be difficult to believe the Sinclairs, even with all their money, would be able to make that stick. But worse than that was—

—we would just plain hate Echo. She was already running the risk of being a rich bitch, period. If she was a neurotically overprotective mother, I’d never be able to get her back for the audience.

—so I used the bodega robbery. I felt I needed it. Climber had to take a legitimate fall—because with the addition of the robbery he does a terrible thing:
he puts his children at risk.

I think writing has always got to be an act of exploration.

I want to share with you now, typos and all, exactly what my first note was for this story, back on January 16th, 1995.

MOVIE IIDEA—AUDREY HEPBURN WHEN TWENTY IS IN TROUBLE AND SAVED BY BOGART AT 33 AND THEY FALL IN LOVE AND BOTH TERRIFIC AND HAVE KIDS BUT SHE IS RICH AND INTO CHARITY AND HE LIKES WHAT HE DOES DO THEY EVENTUALLY SPLIT—MAYBE SHE HAS REMARRIED
RALPH BELLAMY OR SOMEONE

ANYWAY, THE KICKER IS THEY HAD A GREAT KID, 17, AND HE LIVES IN THE MANSION DURING THE WEEK BUT GETS TO HOLIDAY WITH DAD WHO TAKES HIM OON CASES. THE KID I SERIOUS ABOUT IT

SENIOR AT FANCY PREP SCHOOL—HOME WITH MOM
DOING RICH STUFF AND WEEKENDS DOING CRIME. CAN ACT LIKE A JUNKIE OR ALL KINDS OF STUFF. CAN DISAPPEAR ON THE STREET.

MAYBE THIS WEEKEND HIS SISTER PHOEBE HAS TO COME ALONG. SHE IS REALLY GIFTED.

FATHER MIGHT TEST KID, TELL ME WHERE THE LETTER OPENER IS OR ASKS QUESTIONS REQUIRING WATCHFULNESS AND KID IS GIFTED BUT MAYBE PHOEBE IS A GENIUS AT IT. MAYBE PHOEBE CAME HOME UNEXPECTEDLY FROM SCHOOL OR WHATEVER

FATHER WO4RKS THE KID HARD—LOOK AT THIS ROOM, WHO DID IT

KID LOVES BOTH PARENTS AND THEY ARE BOTH GOOD BUT NOT GOOD WITH EACH OTHER.,

KID HATES HIS FANCY NAME—ELLIOT OR SPANGLER. WANTS TO BE BUCK OR FLASH. MAYBE FATHER WILL CALL HIM THAT WHEN HE EARNS IT

WOULD IT BE PLEASING TO YOU

That story had been in my head for four and a half years, till May 20th of 1999, when I wrote the scene of Climber rescuing Echo.

You can see how much it has altered from the original notion.

But the
heart of the piece
has remained the same.

At least it has in my head. But, my God, the changes. The boy was seventeen. He was seventeen for a year or two until I realized that made my lovers too old, too much time would have to be covered in the story—and as I have told you, movies don’t do that well. If it’s ten years, you don’t need a lot of makeup and stuff. If it’s seventeen, you do.

But that’s a minor change. Here are two big ones—this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, yes? Well, what happened to Echo? She’s all but disappeared.

And the kids have exploded.

I didn’t mean for that to happen, but when I hit the moment at the end of the scene when Climber is given tickets to take them to the Bartok concert—well, the three of them were just terrific together, I thought. So I went with them. Could not wait to get the three blabbing on.

I know this—I have to get Echo back.

And I believe this—I have to get the four of them back together. What I do not know at the moment is: Can I bring that off?

I had no idea, when I started, that this story was going to fit into three acts. There is no proper number. A lot of mine seem to have five acts. (When I say “act” I mean a moment of power, a moment that in the theater would bring the curtain down to start an intermission.)

Butch
is really two acts. The first act, the Wild West part, ends with Butch yelling to the world, “The future’s all yours, ya lousy bicycles.” It is the end of their life as we and they have known it. The South American act starts when they get there, ends with their death. And in between, a brief New York interlude.

Well, I’m writing along here in
The Big A
and it hits me that this was three. The first act in my head I decided was this:
things going good.

That’s up till the moment when he brings them home and Trip has the cryptic line about Climber’s secret for making the kids so unhappy. You can read that straight—Trip is fooled. But later, when you realize he was on to their charade, the line has irony.

Anyway, here’s Act I—what I would have put on my wall.