The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (54 page)

Try to work with directors who began as producers
.

J
oe Mankiewicz, Alan Pakula, and Irwin Winkler all began as successful producers and then became successful directors. Knowing so much about film, there is less chance that they view themselves as omnipotent auteurs.

If you hook up with the wrong director, it can be hazardous to your health
.

R
aymond Chandler: “I went to Hollywood to work with Billy Wilder on
Double Indemnity
. This was an agonizing experience and has probably shortened my life.”

Directors resent the money you’re paid
.

D
irector David Lean wrote a memo to the producer about Michael Wilson, the screenwriter they’d been working with on
Lawrence of Arabia
.

Lean wrote, “He’s shot his bolt as far as this script’s concerned and whether he’s bitter with you and me or both of us we’ve got to lump it. I only note him because I hope you are not proposing to give him the two and a half percent profit because, softy as I am, I would resent it very much.”

Some directors will try to take your credit away from you
.

S
creenwriter Walon Green (
The Wild Bunch
) on director Bob Rafelson: “If he wrote ten words, he’d say he wrote the whole thing.”

A Credit-Card Filmmaker

A guy who’s broke and can’t pay for an option on your script but wants to direct it—though he’s only directed a couple of TV ads in regional markets—and wants to sit down with you first to share some ideas he has about the script.

ALL HAIL

Director Philip Noyce!

My friend Phillip refuses to take the “film by” credit on any of his films.

He explained it to me this way: “I don’t deserve it any more than you deserve it or the stars deserve it or the DP deserves it or the editor deserves it or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

Beware of world-famous, highly publicized auteur directors
.

F
ilm editor Lou Lombardo, who worked with both men, compared Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman this way: “Peckinpah is a prick and Altman is a cunt.”

Don’t work with a busy director
.

D
irector Jon Avnet and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne were having a script discussion on the phone, when Avnet got another call and told Dunne he’d call him right back. He called him back
eleven days later
, but explained that he’d been very busy.

A director can agree to direct your script for the wrong reasons
.

D
irector Phillip Noyce, on directing
The Saint
: “It was an opportunity at the time to create a franchise. Although in the end, what I really found attractive about it was the opportunity to choose my own location to set the story. So, it became as much about the adventure of making the film as the adventure of the story of the film. It was as much about the adventure
off the screen
as the adventure
on the screen
. I satisfied my curiosity about post-Soviet Russia during the making of that movie.”

In other words, Phillip just wanted to take an extended trip to Russia.

Some directors are only as good as their wives
.

B
ob Rafelson’s and Peter Bogdanovich’s best work was behind them the day Bob divorced Toby and Peter divorced Polly Platt.

Directors are incessantly looking for their next job
.

T
he director Adrian Lyne and I were discussing
Flashdance
many years after we’d made the movie. A young supporting actress in the film had died tragically, as had studio executive Dawn Steel and our producer, Don Simpson.

“But that’s nothing compared to
Superman
,” I said. “George Reeves, the guy who played him on TV, was murdered. Look what happened to Christopher Reeve, and then there was poor Margot Kidder, found wandering around that guy’s backyard out near the airport.”

“Bloody hell,” Adrian said. And then he added, “Do you think there’s a movie there? Our sequel?
The Curse of Flashdance
?”

If you wrote and directed it, then you’re an auteur
.

I
f you’re the screenwriter, you are not the author of the film; you, the director, the producer, the actors, the editor, and the cinematographer are
collaborators
.

That’s why it’s immoral and absurd for directors to take a credit that reads “a film by Bill Hotshot.”

Newspapers and magazines, staffed by reporters and critics who’d love to make screenwriter wages, rub this in. They refer to movies as simply “by” the director.

Don’t ever refer to a movie as the director’s possession; that’s incorrect and morally wrong
.

I
t is not George Roy Hill’s
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. It is not Steven Spielberg’s
E.T
. It is not Sidney Lumet’s
Network
. It is not Sam Mendes’s
American Beauty
. It is not Clint East-wood’s
Million Dollar Baby
. It is not John Avildsen’s
Rocky
. It is not Ridley Scott’s
Thelma & Louise
. It is not Richard Marquand’s
Jagged Edge
. It is not Paul Verhoeven’s
Basic Instinct
. It is not Billy Friedkin’s
Jade
.

It is just as wrong to refer to a movie as the screenwriter’s possession, but it’s a helluva lot of fun
.

I
t is William Goldman’s
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. It is Melissa Mathison’s
E.T
. It is Paddy Chayefsky’s
Network
. It is Alan Ball’s
American Beauty
. It is F. X. Toole’s and Paul Haggis’s
Million Dollar Baby
. It is Sylvester Stallone’s
Rocky
. It is Callie Khouri’s
Thelma & Louise
. It is Joe Eszterhas’s
Jagged Edge
. It is Joe Eszterhas’s
Basic Instinct
. It is Joe Eszterhas’s
Jade
.

When working with the director, always say “my movie” while talking to him
.

T
his is, of course, your revenge for what you will see on-screen and in ads: a film
by
the director.

Just because the Writers Guild doesn’t even care about this usage doesn’t mean you can’t get your sweet little pound (okay, ounce) of flesh.

Orson Welles told the truth
.

W
elles told French critic André Bazin, the father of the auteur theory, this: “Directing is an invention of people like you. It’s not an art, it’s at most an art for one minute per day.”

Yours is a creative art; the director’s is interpretive
.

S
creenwriter/novelist Donald Westlake: “I am not a proponent of the director’s auteur theory. I think it comes out of a basic misunderstanding of the functions of the creative versus interpretive arts.”

You’ve got the power
.

A
screenwriter and a director were on a trip, scouting locations.

The script called for “white houses dotting the hillsides.” The hills they were looking at were perfect except for the fact that blue houses were dotting the hillside, not white ones.

The director, a freak for authenticity, turned the location down because of the blue houses.

The screenwriter took the script out of the director’s hands, then crossed the word
white
out and replaced it with the word
blue
.

The director approved the hillside.

The vision is yours, not the director’s
.

I
had an agent named Rosalie Swedlin, who, after a research screening of my film
Betrayed
, turned to the director (Costa-Gavras), who was standing next to me, and congratulated him for his “vision.”

I fired her the next day.

Anybody can direct
.

P
roducer David O. Selznick: “There is no mystery to directing. I don’t have time. Frankly it’s easier to criticize another man’s work than to direct myself. As a producer, I can maintain an editorial perspective that I wouldn’t have as a director. I consider myself first a creative person, then a showman, and then a businessman.”

You, too, can give your director directing lessons
.

D
irector David Lean not only asked screenwriter Robert Bolt to read his script of
Lawrence of Arabia
but also taped Bolt reading it. When shooting began each day, Lean listened to Bolt’s recording of that day’s scenes before he started shooting.

Directors can’t write
.

V
incent Canby of
The New York Times
wrote, “Mr. Cimino has written his own screenplay whose awfulness has been considerably inflated by the director’s [Mr. Cimino’s] wholly unwarranted respect for it.”

When will they ever learn?

M
artin Brest directed the hit movie
Beverly Hills Cop
, written by Danilo Bach and Daniel Petrie, Jr. He then directed the hit movies
Midnight Run
, written by George Gallo, and
Scent of a Woman
, written by Bo Goldman.