The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (12 page)

Don’t gamble
.

G
ambling is part of ancient Hollywood tradition, going back to David O. Selznick losing much of what he made. David Begelman, agent/studio exec/embezzler/suicide was addicted to gambling.

I saw producer Don Simpson lose thirty thousand dollars in fifteen minutes at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

If you’re successful, you’ll be invited to industry poker games—some are legendary. Don’t do it.

I was even introduced to a little man who was the industry’s bookie to the stars. He was very rich and knew the works of George Bernard Shaw inside out.

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Don’t marry a writer.

Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Even though painters and sculptors and composers and writers have a romantic reputation all over the world, in my opinion they are worthless as ex-husbands, or as husbands, or as anything else you may have in your mind to do with them, except if you want to have a beautiful nude statue made of you. Honestly, no woman, even if she is the most alluring creature that ever existed, can win out when she is competing for a man’s attention with his precious muse. Artists spend all their time thinking about imaginary beauty
. …

“Let’s face it, nine times out of ten intellectual men would rather go to bed with a good book. Which just goes to show how unintelligent an intelligent person can be.”

If you get married, do it in Portofino
.

T
his, too, is an old Hollywood tradition. David O. Selznick was married there … and I had an agent who was married there—at the Splendido Hotel—three times to three different women.

I stayed there once, when I was already married to my first wife, Geraldine, and happened to arrive the first day that the Splendido opened for the season. In the dining room that night, Gerri and I found ourselves surrounded by German couples in their seventies and eighties.

“All Nazis,” our American waiter told us. “They came here to hide after the war, and on the first day that the hotel is open each year, they flock here to celebrate surviving another year without capture.”

Always let them pick up the check
.

O
nly pick a check up if you’re out with another screenwriter … and if you’re doing better than he/she is.

Agent Swifty Lazar, describing gossip columnist Walter Winchell: “He had a great way of not reaching for a check. He’d feign a move toward it, but if someone made the slightest protest, he’d redirect his hand and pick up his water glass. In all the years I knew him, I never saw him pay for a meal.”

You’re dealing with horribly spoiled people
.

A
ctress Hedy Lamarr: “If a man sends me flowers, I always look to see if a diamond bracelet is hidden among the blossoms. If there isn’t one, I don’t see the flowers.”

I sent Sharon Stone a hundred red roses once. She sent me a card thanking me.

I sent her a gold bracelet. She called and asked me to dinner.

Everything you’ve ever heard about Hollywood parties is true
.

A
ctress Hedy Lamarr: “At one magnificent party (for which I bought a gown that cost me two weeks’ salary) I excused myself to fetch a scarf that was in the sleeve of my fur coat. I couldn’t find a maid, so I went into the darkened master bedroom, where many furs were laid out on the bed. And when I got into the room I could see and hear that wasn’t all that was laid out on the bed. A man and woman were right on top of all the furs, taking desperate advantage of the occasion. I merely said, ‘Excuse me,’ reached under the young girl, and pulled out my green scarf. They never stopped for one moment. Later on I saw the two of them formally dressed, sipping champagne cocktails. They knew it was me, but they didn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed. Nor was I.”

Avoid Hollywood parties
.

S
creenwriter/novelist Charles Bukowski wrote this after getting home from a Hollywood party: “Sitting naked behind my house, 8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil over my body, Jesus, have I come to this? I once battled in dark alleys for a laugh, now I’m not laughing.”

F-bomb the world!

T
om Tapp, the editor of
VLife
magazine, published by
Daily Variety
: “Among moguls, crude language is part of routine business. In turn, the executives who work under them don’t exactly censor themselves. One network honcho is so well-known for his foul mouth that it’s become a calling card. Such language is not necessarily derogatory. It’s a colorful patois that can often be complimentary. Everyone understands this.”

Even Mel Gibson,
The Passion of the Christ
director and a devout Christian, described the man in charge of distributing the movie as “a very smart fucking guy.”

Bill Clinton belongs in Hollywood
.

P
roducer David Geffen took his boyfriend to meet Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.

Clinton said, “Is that a fuckin’ reporter?”

“No, he’s with me, Bill,” Geffen said.

“Oh,” Clinton said, “I thought he was a fuckin’ reporter.”

If you want to sound like a real Hollywood pro
…

A
lways refer to MGM as “Metro” and Twentieth Century–Fox not as “Fox” but as “Twentieth.”

Dirt Sandwich

Popularized by Sharon Stone’s reference to a boyfriend as such, it’s an old Hollywood term for someone who rips you off, someone who leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Be nice to the Godfathers
.

I
met Sidney Korshak, mob lawyer and Hollywood Godfather, in producer Robert Evans’s screening room moments after a young woman in her twenties had finished going down on him. Sidney was in his late seventies.

I’d stumbled into the screening room (literally) as the young woman was leaving and as Sidney was getting his pants up off his ankles.

I introduced myself and said it was a pleasure to meet him, and Sidney said likewise, reached out a hand, shook mine, and finished zipping himself up.

I went into the nearest bathroom and washed my hands just as the same young woman was coming out of it. A bottle of mouthwash was on the sink.

As I spent more time in Evans’s house, I realized there were bottles of mouthwash everywhere.

Hey, Sidney, I liked Estes Kefauver
.

S
idney Korshak once blackmailed Senator Estes Kefauver, the head of a Senate rackets committee, by showing him a photograph of a naked young woman going down on the senator in a Chicago hotel room.

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Don’t ask a Hungarian to help you.

The young Zsa Zsa Gabor went to see an old Hungarian friend, the producer Alexander Korda, when she got to Hollywood. She asked him to help her get an acting career started
.

He said, “Take your clothes off.”

She fled
.

Remain philosophical
.

A
n angry housekeeper who arrived and found a disastrously messy house said to the producer who owned it, “There’s shit everywhere.”

The producer said to her, “There’s shit all over the world.”

Think Yiddish, Dress British

A saying of Harry Cohn–era studio heads.

And William Morris was Jewish, wasn’t he?

W
illiam Morris agent David Wirtschafter described the industry’s perception of the agency this way: “In the minds of our competitors, we’re still a lot of old Jews dropping dead in our offices.”

But Walt Disney was a schmuck
.

E
verybody argues about who is entitled to call it “my film.”

Screenwriters hate it when a director or producer refers to “my writer.”

And during an interview with a reporter involving a financial question, Walt Disney said, “Before answering, I’d like to ask
my Jew
to come over and help me on this one.”