The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (11 page)

Schtup Music

An old producer’s term for romantic music.

If you make it, you’re going to need an accountant
.

I
f you don’t get one, you’re going to spend all your time bookkeeping and worrying about taxes—not writing.

You have to pick your accountant carefully, because some people have been robbed blind: Allen Funt, the creator of
Candid Camera
, lost everything he had to an unscrupulous accountant. Your fellow screenwriter Sylvester Stallone lost millions, too, to an accountant.

But for a set figure each month, based on what you’ve earned, you can get full-scale protection … the kind of protection where you won’t even receive your own bills, since everything will go to the accountant.

Just make sure you get a weekly cash-flow report,
signed
by your accountant.

You, too, can be addled by accountants
.

J
im Harrison (
Wolf, Revenge, Legends of the Fall
): “Entering a bank made me sweat, lawyers frightened me, and accountants addled me so that I couldn’t write for a day or two. Despite learning how to make money I couldn’t quite figure out that I had to give half to the government.”

P
ERK OF SUCCESS: MY ACCOUNTANTS ALMOST KILLED ME
.

The day after I had my first meeting with accountants, I had a full-blown anxiety attack that was initially misdiagnosed as a heart attack
.

Your accountant may fire you
.

T
his is especially true if you have gotten behind on paying your taxes. The good accountants in L.A. all have excellent relationships with the IRS.

The IRS knows that if you are being represented by an accounting firm it’s done business with, the odds are very good that you won’t be cheating on your taxes—which makes an audit of your returns a waste of time. So it won’t audit you if you are represented by one of these firms.

But if you can’t pay your taxes, your accounting firm will worry that your problems will affect its relationship with the IRS, and its other clients, so it will quickly rid itself of you.

Sometimes the accounting firms get rid of a client too quickly and regrets it. Sharon Stone’s accounting firm got rid of her the year before she starred in
Basic Instinct
. They made a big, big mistake.

Congealed Snow

What screenwriter Dorothy Parker called Hollywood money.

Hire a good lawyer, too
.

P
eter Guber: “In business, you don’t get what’s fair. You get what you negotiate.”

Be sure to hire a
damn
good lawyer
.

J
ohn Gregory Dunne: “The attitude studio business affairs attorneys seem to take toward writers is that a writer’s time is nowhere near so valuable as that of a director, producer, or star; that the writer always needs money; and that stalling is a tactic that will ultimately cause the writer who is a little short on the do-re-mi to cave in.”

You’re going to need an agent, too
.

T
here’s no heart as black as the black heart of an agent,” my longtime agent, Guy McElwaine, once told me.

You need an agent right now, right this minute
.

T
he playwright Brendan Behan sold the rights to all of his plays at the pubs where he drank—sometimes to customers, sometimes to bartenders, sometimes for as little as a couple of drinks.

It’s still the same old story
.

S
ixty years ago, studio head Howard Hughes sent his executives a memo saying he only wanted to make movies “about fighting and fucking.”

It’s always
been
a meat market
.

M
arilyn Monroe: “Expensive cars used to drive up beside me when I was standing on a street corner or walking on a sidewalk and the driver would say, ‘I could do something for you in pictures. How would you like to be a Goldwyn girl?’ I figure those guys in those cars were trying for a pickup and I had an agent so I could say to those fellows, ‘See my agent.’”

It is still the same old meat market, too
.

P
roducer Brian Grazer and I were driving back to town after a meeting in the Valley, when Brian spotted a gorgeous young woman walking down the street.

He pulled over, got out, and said, “Hi, I’m Brian Grazer, the producer. Has anyone ever told you you should be in movies?”

She gave Brian a dazzling smile and said, “Thank you. My agent tells me that all the time. I’m represented by CAA. Here’s my agent’s card.”

Don’t be too sure
.

W
ell, that’s the last cock I have to suck,” said Marilyn Monroe after she signed her first big studio contract.

You see what I mean?

I
crawled the hill of broken glass and I sucked and I sucked until I sucked all the air out of my life,” Sharon Stone told me after she became a big star.

It helps to be Hungarian, though
.

I
am Hungarian-born. I dallied with the star I created, Sharon Stone. André de Dienes was Hungarian, too. He dallied with the star he photographed, Marilyn Monroe. The famous William Morris agent Johnny Hyde was part Hungarian (Ivan Haidabura). He also dallied with the star he created, Marilyn Monroe.

But it’s not
enough
to be Hungarian
.

I
n the early days of the film business, there were so many Hungarian filmmakers in L.A. that there was a sign at the MGM commissary that read “
IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO BE HUNGARIAN. YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THE CHICKEN SOUP
.”

The Panic List

Allegedly kept by the studios, it is a list of those who badly need money and will work cheap. The only time I heard direct mention of it was in a studio meeting with a Paramount executive, who suggested hiring a well-known director for one of my scripts and said, “He’s on the panic list. He just bought a house on Martha’s Vineyard and needs to go to work.”

ALL HAIL

Hail Paul Rudnick!

He not only has put together a lengthy and successful career as a screenwriter but, as columnist Libby Gelman-Waxner in
Premier
magazine, he has also wickedly trashed most of the town’s heavyweights and gotten away with it.