The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (10 page)

Are you really sure you want to be famous
?

O
ne of the most famous screenwriters in the world is Laura Hart McKinny, who teaches screenwriting at North Carolina College of the Arts.

She is one of the most famous screenwriters in the world, but she has never written a screenplay that has been made into a movie.

The reason she is one of the most famous screenwriters in the world is because of her former boyfriend.

His name is Lt. Mark Fuhrman, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department. Laura was going to collaborate with Mark on a screenplay about L.A. cops, so she made a lot of tape recordings with him about his true-life experiences. Her tapes wound up smack-dab in the middle of the O. J. Simpson murder trail.

There’s a lot to be said for
not
being famous
.

A
ctor Paul Newman: “I stopped signing autographs after I was asked to sign one while standing at a urinal in a restaurant. I was already quite cool about the idea after being asked for about the thousandth time, ‘Can you remove your sunglasses so we can see your blue eyes?’ I started saying, ‘I’m so sorry, but if I take off my glasses, my pants fall down.’”

Actor Robin Williams: “The paparazzi follow me into the men’s room. They say, ‘Robin, can you hold it up? Could you make the puppet talk? Oh, you’re having a bowel movement? Oh, great! It’s
Live-Stools of the Rich and Famous
!’”

You better stay forever young … or else
!

M
ike Medavoy: “This is a business that eats its elders instead of its young.”

Are screenwriters the victims of ageism
?

T
here has always been the issue of ageism directed toward screenwriters, directors, producers, and actors in Hollywood.

An agent sets up a meeting for a screenwriter with a studio executive.

The agent says, “How old are you?”

The screenwriter says, “I’m twenty-eight.”

The agent says, “Let’s make it twenty-three.”

How do you define success
?

D
irector Richard Quine (
Sex and the Single Girl
): “The definition of success is to be doing better than your best friend.”

If you make it, you won’t have any friends
.

I
n direct proportion to how successful one is, that’s how much the need is to chop him or her down,” said actor/producer Michael Douglas.

Producer Bernie Brillstein: “You’re no one in Hollywood unless someone wants you dead.”

Marilyn Monroe: “It’s funny how success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing things in the eyes of those around you.”

Question: What things, Marilyn?

Mike Medavoy: “Friendships are a funny thing in Hollywood. Everyone talks about what good friends they are with everyone else. In truth, most people in the entertainment industry have many acquaintances and few friends, at least in the way I define friendship. In a movie script, you can create a fifteen-year friendship in fifteen minutes. In real life it takes fifteen years.”

Some canaries make it and some don’t
.

M
y fellow Hungarian, actor Tony Curtis: “The Mocambo was on Sunset Boulevard in the middle of the Strip. It had a bar, a dining room, and a dance floor with a small stage, and along one long wall were cages with yellow canaries. We’d go there on weekends for an evening on the town, and I was always intrigued how those canaries were able to survive in that smoke-filled, noisy club. One night I found out. I happened to look over when one of the canaries toppled off its perch and fell to the bottom of the cage, dead. A waiter standing nearby just whipped out a fishnet from his pocket, opened the cage, and scooped it up. Another waiter came up instantly and replaced the poor dead canary with a live one. Nobody noticed it but me. So that was the mystery of the dead yellow canary. Some make it in Hollywood, and some don’t.”

Audience-Attuned

If you write movies that make a hundred million dollars each, you’re audience-attuned. Otherwise, you’re just another dumb schmuck writer.

You, too, can enjoy their pain
.

P
roducer Peter Guber: “As I was to learn and experience in Hollywood, it’s not so much your own success that is relished, but more your friends’ failures.”

How to make it in Hollywood
…

L
egendary light-heavyweight champion Billy Conn: “He was a nice fellow. I hit him in the balls and knocked his ass through the ropes in the thirteenth round. You’re supposed to do everything you can to win. Hit ’em on the break, backhand ’em, do all the rotten stuff to ’em. You’re not an altar boy in there.”

Studio head L. B. Mayer: “There’s only one way to succeed in this business. Step on those guys. Gouge their eyes out. Trample on them. Kick them in the balls. You’ll be a smash.”

To Do an Ovitz

To commit an act of homophobia in public; like agent Michael, who, some said, committed such an act in the pages of
Vanity Fair
.

They lie, they cheat, and they steal
.

S
tudio executives do not like to deal with honest men,” said screenwriter/novelist Raymond Chandler.

Hire a good accountant
.

A
ccountants,” said screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, “are the most important people in the world.”

Let your accountant be your rabbi
.

M
y accountant said to me, “In Hollywood, you only get ripped off by your friends and the people you trust.”

Invest wisely
.

A
well-known director in his sixties made millions of dollars and invested much of it years ago in a ranch in Wyoming. He visits his ranch three or four times a year but says he doesn’t really like to go there.

“Every time I’m there,” he says, “I think this is what my career amounted to—millions of dollars of horse shit.”

Save your money
.

S
ugar Ray Robinson, boxing champ, years after his retirement: “Do I still own a flashy Cadillac? No more. The car I drive now is a little red Pinto.
But I’ve been there
.”

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Tips to save money in Hollywood…

Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “When you open a new five-pound can of Beluga caviar and you are not able to eat it all right away, put what’s left over back into the refrigerator, where it will keep for five days, then you will always have nice fresh caviar handy. … Another hint to save you a lot is to never throw away any truffles. If, for instance, you open a can and you don’t use them all in the pheasant Souvaroff or whatever you’re making, don’t throw them in the disposal for garbage, but freeze them and they will be as good like new later
.”

One good way to avoid writer’s block
…

A
dvice to legendary producer David O. Selznick from his father: “Spend it all. Give it away. Throw it away. But get rid of it. Live expensively. If you have confidence in yourself, live beyond your means. Then you’ll have to work hard to catch up. That’s the only fun there is: hard work.”

The Three Cs

The “Three Cs” are what old-timers say Hollywood was once all about: “cocktails, cards, and cunt.
”