The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (57 page)

To Do a Terry Malick

To acquire a towering international reputation for very little work.

Break his ribs
.

W
hen screenwriter/actor Sylvester Stallone had a creative disagreement with director Ted Kotcheff (
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
) on the set of
First Blood
, Sly smashed a jarring left hook into Ted’s rib cage, breaking three ribs.

Brass-knuckle him
.

I
f a director insisted that Frank Sinatra do more than two takes of a scene, the director got a visit at home that night from Frank’s pal Jilly Rizzo.

Jilly carried a pair of brass knuckles given to him by Frank and inscribed “To Jilly with love from Frankie.” Jilly would show the director he visited these brass knuckles.

Shoot him
.

S
creenwriter Abraham Polonsky about director Elia Kazan: “I’ll be watching, hoping somebody shoots him.”

Yes, I know, I know—Abe
might
have had personal issue with him: Kazan testified in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; Polonsky refused to testify and therefore became a blacklisted screenwriter.

Spit in the producer’s face and call him a pig
.

T
hat’s what Katharine Hepburn did when she finished the last shot of
Suddenly Last Summer
.

She spit in the director Joe Mankiewicz’s face and called the producer “a pig in a silk suit who sends flowers.” Then she spat on the floor.

Seduce his wife
.

I
was introduced to Martin Scorsese a few years after I publicly fired his good friend and agent Michael Ovitz. Marty looked at me superciliously, barely taking my hand.

I knew he was the King of the Auteurs, while I was the auteur-slayer. I knew how seriously he took himself, while I prided myself on being the “rogue elephant” of screenwriters.

I knew all those things about him and I knew a whole lot more that he didn’t know I knew, things I had learned from one of his wives, things she had told me after we’d made love on the kitchen floor of Marty’s house while Marty was off on location, shooting, being the auteur.

Throw something in his face
.

A
ngry at Roman Polanski, Faye Dunaway peed in a coffee cup and threw it into his face.

Did poor Francis lose his marbles?

W
hen studio head Mike Medavoy arrived on the set of
Apocalypse Now
in the Philippines, director Coppola spoke to him mostly in the language of the natives he’d been living with.

Coppola said to Medavoy, “Maybe it should be a perpetual work in progress. I don’t know if I want to finish it this year. I might want to finish it next year. Or maybe I should just start improvising and see where it goes.”

Francis can teach you how to write a screenplay, though
.

H
e can do this for you, even though he hasn’t written anything in decades, even though he spends most of his time these days greeting tourists at his Napa Valley winery.

If you pay Francis
3,250 plus air fare to Belize, you can stay at his Blancaneaux Lodge, sleep in teak cabanas, drink wine shipped from Francis’s vineyard, and talk about writing a script—not with Francis, no, since he’ll be back home in Napa greeting tourists, but with the editors of his
Zoetrope
magazine.

Francis who?

A
ccepting her Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Sofia Coppola thanked no writers for inspiring her. She did, however, thank a long list of directors.

Not among them, however, was her father, Francis Ford Coppola.

She did thank her mother “for inspiration.”

No wonder Francis went bankrupt
.

A
BC offered Coppola
10 million for the TV rights to
Apocalypse Now
. He held out for
12 million. After the film came out and failed commercially, he sold it to ABC for
4 million.

The gods get angry sometimes
.

B
ecause he was the director, Francis Ford Coppola was able to hire his father, Carmine, to do the score for
The Godfather
.

Carmine did the score so well that he won the Oscar for Best Original Score.

But on the way back from the stage to his seat, he dropped the Oscar and it shattered.

Were they also screenwriters?

W
hen two studio executives from Columbia Pictures showed up on the set of
The Cincinnati Kid
, director Sam Peckinpah had them stripped, hog-tied, and left in a seedy motel far away from the set.

ALL HAIL

Norman Jewison

Yes, I know he’s a director, but he’s a man I admire, and he’s also a friend of mine.

A male star threw a punch at Norman on the set, then came back and apologized and said he was ready to go back to work.

Norman said, “After you apologize.”

“I just apologized,” the star said.

Norman said, “You have to apologize to everybody. The whole crew. You insulted them.”

The star apologized to the whole crew.

Directors are human
.

D
irector Victor Fleming suffered a nervous breakdown during the shooting of
Gone with the Wind
. Francis Ford Coppola had a near breakdown/heart attack during the shooting of
Apocalypse Now
.

Director Robert Harmon suffered a heart attack while reading a memo I’d sent him, questioning his ability to direct
Nowhere to Run
. Harmon recovered and went on to botch the movie, just as I knew he would.

I swear, though, that I didn’t know—didn’t know, did not, did not
know
—that Harmon had a preexisting heart problem when I sent him my near-lethal memo.

Directors are feminists
.

S
am Peckinpah: “Women have very complicated plumbing that I’m fascinated with.”

Another romantic director
…

D
irector Blake Edwards said about his wife, Julie Andrews, “She has lilacs for pubic hairs.”

A director is a visual artist
.

M
ore than anything, he’s a painter—but he likes to think of himself as a writer.

Gus Van Sant did oil paintings before he began to direct films, and he still paints. Peter Weir says he wishes he could “cram my trailer full of Gauguins and van Goghs and all the great art in history.” Paul Verhoeven is a comic book artist who actually draws images of the scenes on the pages of the screenplay. Adrian Lyne knows more about modern painters than most art critics. Howard Zieff, Jerry Schatzberg, and Stanley Kubrick all began their professional careers as photographers.