The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (49 page)

Prepare for your creative meetings
.

I
realized a few hours before Jimi Hendrix’s sister and brother-in-law were to come to my house in Malibu that I didn’t have any paintings of Jimi on my walls, while I did have paintings of Dylan and the Stones on display.

I quickly called a friend who had a Ronnie Wood print of Jimi, and he took it off his wall and messengered it to my house. I put it up on my wall, replacing Dylan just as Jimi’s sister and brother-in-law were pulling into my driveway.

They were impressed by the print of Jimi they saw on the wall, but ultimately they turned down my offer to do a script of Jimi’s life.

If you’re going to your first studio meeting and you’re terrified, remembering this will terrify you
.

K
eep in mind what Mike Medavoy, former studio head, said about studio people: They don’t change their underwear all that often.

If you have a meeting at the studio, don’t park on the lot
.

S
creenwriter James Brown: “I meet with the producer at Warner Bros. At the main gate that afternoon is a long line of cars waiting for the guard to check them through. Ahead of me are a Mercedes, two BMWs, and a Porsche. I am driving an eleven-year old Nissan pickup with a broken muffler, and it’s loud. People are staring at me and I’m suddenly self-conscious. On a whim I put it into reverse, and instead of parking on the studio lot as I was instructed to do, I leave my old truck at a meter down the street and walk back to the guard’s booth.”

Don’t take any breakfast meetings
.

N
ovelist/screenwriter Jay McInerney: “A breakfast meeting is the nastiest and most inelegant of Hollywood inventions.”

Tell the people who want to meet with you for breakfast that you write at night and don’t get to bed till five or six in the morning.

Try to avoid meetings with a whole roomful of studio executives
.

J
ohn Gregory Dunne: “To attend one of those meetings is to understand the cold truth of the saying that a camel is a horse made by a committee.”

Check your crotch before a meeting
.

C
omedian Alan King: “Never walk into a meeting with a creased crotch.”

Don’t wear shorts to a studio meeting
.

T
here is a dress code you should follow—jeans, sneakers, vintage rock-and-roll T-shirt or new Tommy Bahama silk shirt (not oversized, but hanging out), and a baseball cap (not a MLB hat or a trucker’s hat—they’re for star actors—but the kind that sits snugly over your head and doesn’t sit like a crown up there). Shades are okay, but they should be taken off as soon as you walk into the room.

If you go to a script meeting at a studio, hug everyone there
.

H
ugs are much better now than they were in the past,” a retired agent in her seventies said to me. “People are in much better shape than they were in the old days, when a hug meant being bounced off of some fat belly.”

If you’re sitting in a story meeting
…

L
et them talk first, even if they want
you
to.

Dodge and say, “You know, I’m really interested in hearing your ideas. I’ve always been much more of a listener than a talker.”

Someone in the room will invariably say, “That’s why you’re such a good writer.”

Smile shyly then and, looking humble, say, “Thank you.”

In a story meeting about a script they haven’t yet bought
…

S
ay as little as possible.

There are probably people in the room who will steal what you are saying and plug it into another project they are overseeing.

The surest way for a studio to get a bunch of fresh ideas on a doddering project is to do a series of meetings with auditioning screenwriters who want to be hired for the project.

Chances are good that the studio will steal your ideas and then hire a “pro” who doesn’t do auditions.

The studio will then give the this so-called pro their “notes,” incorporating all the ideas that the studio execs stole from all the screenwriters they auditioned.

In a story meeting after they’ve bought your script
…

U
nderstand that no matter how friendly these people are being to you, all they really want to do is to
impregnate
your script with their syphilitic story ideas.

You can do a little kissy face, and you can even do a little petting, but don’t let them stick it in. Once they stick it in, they will not pull it out before the movie comes out.

When the movie comes out, it will minimally look like them and not like you.

If you let them stick it in often, the movie won’t look like you at all. It will be all theirs.

Know, too, that if the movie is stillborn, the film doctors will blame
your
script for its demise. The name on the script will be yours, not that of the studio executives who stuck it into you.

Steal their cigars
.

S
creenwriter Calder Willingham felt producer Sam Spiegel was picking on him unfairly during their story meetings. So each time Spiegel went to the bathroom, Willingham stole one of his cigars.

Studio execs know they can’t write
.

T
hat’s why they need
you
.

So as you sit there in a meeting with them, don’t take notes on the stupid ideas they are telling you, and don’t tell them how smart they are, because underneath their BS, they know they can’t write.

Don’t be afraid to tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about;
they know they don’t
and in their hearts (deep, deep in their plaqued-up hearts) they agree with you.

To put it in Hollywood terms:

They won’t respect you if you swallow. So gag.

And spit it back up in their faces if you don’t like the taste of it.

It’s okay to throw up after a meeting
.

S
creenwriter/playwright Harold Pinter: “As soon as he read my script
Accident
, the producer Sam Spiegel summoned me to his office. He began his commentary by saying, ‘You call this a screenplay?’ He then said, ‘You can’t make a movie out of this. Who are these people? I don’t know anything about them. I don’t know anything about their background. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t understand what they’re up to. I don’t understand one thing. I think you have to seriously rethink the whole script.’

“I said, ‘No, I’m not rethinking it. That’s it.’ When I got out of there, I was sick on the pavement.”

Your script is probably doomed
.

D
irector Jean-Pierre Melville: “I’ll tell you what makes a good film. Fifty percent is the choice of the story. Fifty percent is the screenplay. Fifty percent is the actors. Fifty percent is the director. Fifty percent is the cinematographer. Fifty percent is the editor. If any of these elements goes wrong, there goes fifty percent of your film.”

If they can’t find a director willing to direct your script
…

R
emember that Elia Kazan, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Carol Reed, William Wyler, and Fred Zinne-mann all passed on directing
The Bridge on the River Kwai
.

If they can’t find a producer willing to produce your script
…

R
emember that producer Sam Spiegel passed on the first James Bond script, saying, “It’s utter nonsense.”

If they’ve been trying to cast your script for six months without success
…

R
emember that Albert Finney and Marlon Brando turned down playing the lead in
Lawrence of Arabia
.

If you want Spielberg to read your script and Tom Hanks to star in it
…

C
onvince Lori Goddard, who highlights hair in Beverly Hills, to read it.

If she likes it, she can tell Kate Capshaw about it—Lori does Kate’s highlights.

If Kate likes it, she’ll tell her husband, Steven Spielberg, about it and Steven will read it.

If Steven likes it, he’ll tell his friend Tom Hanks to read it, too.

Don’t worry about getting a big star into your film; stars don’t matter
.

W
hen we got Sylvester Stallone into
F.I.S.T
., coming right off of
Rocky
, we were overjoyed. The movie tanked.

Jeff Bridges hadn’t had a hit movie in many years when he did
Jagged Edge
; nevertheless, the movie became a hit.

Sharon Stone was perhaps the biggest star in the world when she did
Sliver
, coming right off of
Basic Instinct
. It didn’t matter. The movie failed.

Nobody had ever heard of Jennifer Beals when she did
Flashdance
; despite that, the movie went on to make
500 million.

I got Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, and Whoopi Goldberg into
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn
; the movie bombed.

Also think Harrison Ford in
Random Hearts
, Kevin Costner in
The Postman
, Sean Connery in
The Avengers
, John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman in
Mad City
.

How not to deal with the director of your film
…

Y
ou don’t have to bend over
this
low … or stick it up in the air
this
high.

Screenwriter Ron Bass (
Rain Man
): “I wasn’t smart enough to get it right away, but Steven Spielberg was extremely patient with me. He talked with me until I started to realize this was not only something to get behind but was really a much better way than I’d been going. Then we started to meet with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. There were four-way meetings at Steven’s house at the beach. Tom was in many of them and Dustin was in all of them.
They were cowriters
. It was just unbelievable. We invented scenes together; we invented the character together. … I can’t tell you how much Dustin contributed and how much Steven contributed. Then I went away and wrote this long draft. Dustin really liked it and Tom really liked it. Steven liked it, but he felt it needed more work than the actors did. So we continued to meet and talk about what it needed. And then we reached a moment in time when Steven realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do the movie … so [Dustin] went to Sydney Pollack, obviously one of the great directors who’s ever directed. … And he’s a very gracious guy. … These are like the nicest guys, these directors. They’re not only great directors, they’re also really great people to work with.”

Don’t be open to too many ideas about changing your script
.

Y
ou’re
the writer;
they’re
not. Plus this: Most of
their
ideas will be asinine. Believe me: I’ve heard
thirty years
of asinine ideas.

Gather around, class, here’s point number one: A gaffer on the
Betrayed
set told me he had an idea about my script that he wanted to discuss with me. I grabbed him by his lapels, bounced him off the wall, and hit him in the liver with a beautiful left hook.

Point number two: I carry a hunting knife with me to studio meetings sometimes. I began one meeting by taking the knife and sticking it into the middle of a studio conference table, a stunt I had learned while I was a writer at
Rolling Stone
.

Point number three: I left a gigantic dent in a William Morris Agency’s conference table by smashing it with my African Dogon walking stick.

Class dismissed, boys and girls.

If they mess with you, give them a little taste of the old ultraviolence.

Fight the morons if they want to change what you’ve written
.

P
addy Chayefsky: “You spill your guts into the typewriter, which is why you can’t stand to see what you write destroyed or degraded into a hunk of claptrap by picture butchers.”

After a young director butchered one of my scripts behind my back, I sent him a twenty-page memo when I discovered what he had done. The memo questioned his brains, his lineage, and his masculinity. He had a heart attack after reading the memo and almost died. He was in his
thirties
.