The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (74 page)

“Humphrey Bogart had never met Kissel. … It was early in the evening when Kissel encountered Bogart in the foyer and asked him if he could eat glass. Bogart admitted he could not.

“ ‘I can,’ the writer boasted.

“ ‘Well, eat this,’ Bogie said, pointing in the direction of an eighteenth-century mirror. And before you knew it, Bogie had smashed the mirror and handed a piece to Kissel. And Kissel immediately swallowed half the piece Bogie had given him.

“ ‘If you can do it, I can do it,’ Bogie said.

“He tried, but all he did was cut up the inside of his mouth.”

Actors bring their own strengths and weaknesses to the part
.

R
obert Redford belches a lot, one reason he’s mostly so cool and poker-faced on screen.

If Redford gets interested in your script, delete any scenes where he might be laughing.

Actors live their parts
.

H
edy Lamarr: “How deeply do actresses become involved in their roles? Very deeply. I know when Ida Lupino did a string of neurotic characters, it had a definite effect on her. The doctor recommended happier pictures. The same thing happened to Bette Davis. I remember that during the making of
Samson and Delilah
my libido was definitely aroused.”

Sometimes, very rarely, very very rarely, once in a blue moon, hardly ever, an actor will improvise a line better than any writer could have written it
.

A
t the Academy Awards, after a streaker crossed the stage, actor David Niven said, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes and showing his shortcomings?”

Actors really do respect, um, the screenwriter
.

T
im Robbins: “There are the scripts you don’t want to touch at all, that are so brilliant that you just have to figure a way into the character, and that’s your job. There’s other stuff that you have to fill out on your own and flesh out on your own. I try not to get involved with rewriting. I don’t think it’s necessary for an actor to do that. I think it’s necessary for an actor to say, ‘This doesn’t really ring true. Is there something else we can do here?’ But only after really trying. Sometimes actors can be wrong about their instincts and, without trying to go to a place emotionally out of some kind of reluctance, think they need a rewrite. But I trust—99 percent of the time—the writer’s instinct.”

I wasn’t a dirty old man then, but maybe I am now
.

W
hen she was cast as the lead in my film
Jade
, Linda Fiorentino told
Daily Variety
, “It’s an absolutely brilliant screenplay.”

When
Jade
failed, Linda Fiorentino told reporters, “I had a lot of doubts about the script. It reads like it’s written by a dirty old man.”

Actors are ingrates
.

I
asked Paramount to cast Tom Berenger in
Sliver
. Tom and I were friends—we had met on the
Betrayed
set.

Paramount didn’t want to cast him—he hadn’t had any hit movies and he was drinking too much.

I finally went to Brandon Tartikoff, the head of production at the time, and asked him as a personal favor to me to cast Tom.

Brandon finally agreed—but told me I owed him a big one.

During the shoot, I discovered on the set that Tom was indeed drinking too much—he had vodka bottles in his trailer that he was sucking on, but I stood by him. The studio didn’t replace him.

When the movie was released (and failed), Tom told
USA Today
, “Yeah, well, Joe can be real sleazy sometimes.”

Actors have short memories
.

A
sked at a New York political fund-raiser what children should say no to, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose movies have included more than five hundred shootings, maimings, or knifings, said, “How about violence? We should say no to violence.”

Actors are loyal
.

D
avid Caruso, about my film
Jade
: “You’ll see.
Jade
will be re-discovered by audiences in the future. In fact, I will make a prediction that this film will have a resurgence.”

Gina Gershon, about my film
Showgirls
: “I’m not embarrassed saying I was in that movie. And I can’t tell you how many people still come up to me and tell me how much they liked that movie. I think the
Showgirls
phenomenon has to do with the media. There were such high expectations that by the time the movie came out, it was bound to fail. And then when the critics started blasting it, people were scared to have their own opinion. I don’t think it was as bad as some people said.”

Shit happens to actors, too
.

H
edy Lamarr: “At times, sex has been a disruptive factor in my life. The men in my life have ranged from a classic case history of impotence to a whip-brandishing sadist who enjoyed sex only after he tied my arms behind me with the sash of his robe. There was another man who took his pleasure with a girl in my own bed, while he thought I was asleep in it.”

It ain’t easy to be a star
.

I
stopped believing in Santa Claus at an early age,” said Shirley Temple. “Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph.”

To Do a Garry Shandling

To sue, as Shandling did, your own agent or manager—an absolute nono in the business. Look at what’s happened to Shandling’s career in the past five years: nada.

No hobbies, no kids, no nothin’
…

C
hristopher Walken (
The Deer Hunter, King of New York
): “I hardly turn down anything, that’s true. I don’t have hobbies. I don’t have kids. I really like to go to work. And when you’re working, you want to stay a little bit fit and thin—so you look nice and your diet’s better.”

Macho Isn’t Mucho

Said first by Zsa Zsa Gabor. In today’s industry, macho definitely isn’t mucho.

Try to avoid Method actors
.

M
y fellow Hungarian Tony Curtis: “At the studio’s urging I made a stab or two at the Method school of acting. … They called it sense memory. You had to recall the feeling of an icebox, or the exact sensation you had when you held a glass ball in your hand or felt the fabric of your tie. It was valid enough for some young actors, because it gave them something to do. But the truth is, acting was the only profession
people thought about a lot
and
did
very little. … It was a mind fuck: Go off in your head somewhere and find some other reality for what you were doing,
regardless of what the script intended
.”

Poor Victor Mature …

H
edy Lamarr complained to director C. B. DeMille that in every scene she had with Victor Mature, her back was to the camera.

De Mille said, “Do you think there are any men in America who would rather look at Victor’s face than your ass? Up to this point in your life, every man in the audience wanted to marry you. After this picture every man will want to go to bed with you. I have taken you out of the living room and brought you into the bedroom.”

To Do a Jennifer Grey

To get the kind of plastic surgery that destroys your career.

It helps if the director is your ally and not the star’s
.

D
irector Phillip Noyce, discussing
Sliver
: “We were only a few weeks from shooting and basically Sharon was saying she wanted to start back with the script at square one. My own loyalty to Joe Eszterhas, as well as the practicality of the situation, meant that I had to say ‘No, we’re not gonna do that.’ That was the issue—whether we were going to rewrite the script from the first page, and that was the issue on which I took a stand. I gave her the appearance of submitting, whereas in fact we did shoot Joe Eszterhas’s script. But I allowed Sharon to feel she had won—that she was the most powerful person in the relationship. Joe Eszterhas has failed to understand that you can often achieve exactly what you want to by appearing to let the other person win.”