Adventures in the Screen Trade (21 page)

But this summer's three big pictures so far are E. T., Rocky III. and Star Trek II. So, for the present, I think we may as well prepare ourselves for seven more Star Wars sequels and half a dozen quests involving Indiana Jones. By the end of the decade, we may well be seeing E. T. Meets Luke Skywalker.

As Bette Davis advised us, I think we all ought to fasten our seat belts. Because it looks from here like we're entering a long and bumpy night. . . PART TWO

ADVENTURES

INTRODUCTION

I suppose what follows is the most autobiographical part of the book. I have had some wonderful times in the movie business Batch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, rehearsing with Laurence Olivier-but scratch a screenwriter and you're bound to find horror stories, and some of those are in here too.

The movies are taken in chronological order-with the exception of A Bridge Too Far. I've saved it for the end because it was, without question, the most unusual experience I've ever had....

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLY AND MASQUERADE

Cliff Robertson got me into the movie business, in late 1963. I had been a published novelist and failed short-story writer since 1956; I had been a movie nut all my life. But looking back on it now, I truly don't believe the thought of combining my writing career with my love of movies had ever surfaced. I grew up before the prominence of "film schools." Like my peers, I assumed that the directors did it all, and when they came up dry, the actors made up their lines.

My meeting with Robertson was no more circuitous than most people experience when there is a shift in career direction, but it probably ought to be mentioned here, because if I have managed to maintain any sanity at all after nearly two decades of movie work, it is mainly because of this: I was a novelist first and I am a novelist now, but one who happens also to write screenplays.

My first three books had all been, relatively speaking, short. And, like a great fool, I thought it might be interesting to tackle the problems of a genuinely long piece of work. All of my friends at this time in New York seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I discussed this with my beloved editor, Hiram Haydn. I said I was distraught with the world around me, that I wanted to write about it at length, but that I hadn't the least notion what the hell the shape of the book would be. He told me just to put it down, everything down, and eventually we would find some kind of order in the chaos.

So, for my sins, I began Boys and Girls Together. (Note to fledgling writers: Under threat of torture, never write a long novel. I once met James Clavell, who only writes monsters, and asked him how he got the courage to start when he knew what was going to happen to him before he reached page 1,500. His answer was simple: Each time he began he genuinely believed this one was going to be short. And that once he was into it and it began expanding, he was trapped.)

I wrote for maybe a year and a half and I suppose I had six or seven hundred typed pages, the piece perhaps two-thirds completed, when I stopped to do two Broadway shows, a play and a musical. Both died bouncing, which was not a lot of fun. (Note to fledgling writers: Never never write for Broadway. Nothing is as wracking as a show that stiffs in New York. Because of the immediacy. When a novel dies, or a movie, it's usually at least a year between when your work is over and disaster overtakes you. But in the theatre, you've just finished that week and you have no defenses. If you ever have an urge to write for Broadway, be kind to yourself and write a long novel instead.)

After my mourning period, I returned to Boys and Girls Together and discovered, to my genuine horror, that I was, for the First time in my life, totally and completely blocked. Perhaps only other writers can understand the panic that takes hold then. You go to your desk, you sit for two hours, six hours . . . and nothing. A week, a month . . . nothing. You try to trick your demons, perhaps by going to the movies instead of to work, and casually, after a double feature or two, you slide in behind your typewriter at the end of the day when there's absolutely no time to write anyway, so all the pressure is off. ... nothing.

You read what other writers have done to win their similar battle.

Doesn't work for you. Nothing works for you.

And then you enter into despair. Because drying up permanently just may be the ultimate nightmare if what you do for a living is battle empty pages. For almost without exception, this happens to every writer. Few of us drop in our traces. Mostly, our energy goes; we fiddle awhile, try this, that, and then it's over, and how do you fill the rest of your days? (Please understand that I am aware of the melodramatic content of these last paragraphs, but in a very real sense, the end of creativity is for a writer not unlike Alzheimer's Disease: You don't know for sure it's going to happen, but you know it's there. Waiting.)

At any rate, I was in that mood of impotence when I read a very short article one morning in the Daily News dealing with the Boston Strangler. All the paper reported that day was a new theory that had begun to gain credence: Perhaps there were two Boston Stranglers, not one.

I was living then on Eighty-sixth Street and my office was two short blocks uptown and on that trip that day, something happened to me that never occurred either before or since: A novel literally dropped into my head. Full blown. Based on the simple idea that what if there were two stranglers and what if one of them got jealous of the other.

At my desk I scribbled down one note after another, each of them shorthanding a scene. Done, I looked at it and didn't know what the hell I had. Because what I wanted to write was the last four or five hundred pages of Boys and Girls Together and what I held in my hands sure wasn't that. Was it another trick? Was it something to lake me further from where I desperately needed to go? What if I started this one, got halfway through it and came up dry again? Much worse off than before, doubly blocked.

I talked about it with some friends and thought about it be- fore deciding if I flew through the strangler notion-it was to become No Way to Treat a Lady-maybe it would unblock me. But as a hedge against disaster, I gave myself ten days only to do the strangler book. At the end of that time, if I was done, terrific; if not, pitch it.

In order to give myself added confidence, I wrote the book with as many chapters as I could. Even if a chapter was no more than a paragraph, I could start another page at the top. I could get moving. Get something, anything, under way.

I got it done in the allotted time. It looked a little weird-160 pages and 53 chapters. But it was a book that eventually got published under a pseudonym, Harry Longbaugh, the real name of the Sundance Kid. This was six years before the West- ern came out, but I had been researching the material for a good four years and I loved his name. Enter Robertson.

He called and asked if we could meet. We did so that evening. He explained that the quality work of his career to that time was mainly on television, and when movies came to be made of the tv shows, he had not gotten the parts. The Hustler and Days of Wine and Roses were two roles he'd lost out on. So in this case, he explained, he'd optioned the basic material, a short story by Daniel Keyes entitled "Flowers for Algernon." (The resulting movie, Charly, won Robertson an Academy Award for Best Actor.)

Robertson went on to explain that he'd gotten hold of my strangler "treatment" and liked it. I remember thinking, "Treatment? That was a novel." But probably the odd look of the thing, all those chapters, accounted for his thinking. None of this is important, except to note that I entered the movie business based on a total misconception.

He gave me a copy of Keyes's story and asked if I would read it and, if I liked it, write a screenplay. I said of course. He left. I read the story as soon as he was gone. It was a glorious piece of work about a relarded man who becomes, briefly, a genius because of a scientific experiment. The experiment, however, fails, and at the end Charly is relarded again.

It was midnight now and I said to my wife, Ilene, that I'd finished it and she said how was it and I said just wonderful and we talked for a few minutes more all very calmly until suddenly it hit me -

-I didn't know what the hell a screenplay looked like! Madness.

I tore down to Times Square, where there was an all-night bookstore. There aren't shelves full of books on screenwriting even now, but back then. What we have today seems like a gusher. I nervously asked the clerk did he have any books on what a screenplay looked like and he sort of nervously waved me back in the general direction of the rear of the place. Everyone was nervous in Times Square at two in the morning, then and now, in bookstores or on the streets. The other few customers eyed me strangely and I suppose I gave as good as I got. God knows what they were doing there, pushing, dozing, maybe bookworms with insomnia or other budding screenwriters; they went their way, I mine. I don't know how long I took, but there was one copy of one book with the word screenwriting in the title

so I grabbed it, blew away (truly) the dust, clocked the contents table, flicked through until I finally got to the pages that showed what a screenplay looked like. More madness.

To this day I remember staring at the page in shock. I didn't know what it was exactly I was looking at, but I knew I could never write in that form, in that language.

The book is gone from my library now, lost probably in some move or another, but the form is still clear, and what I would like to do now is take a famous scene-1 have chosen the shirt scene from Gatsby-and put it in the form that so threw me.

For those who may not know the plot, it's simply this: Gatsby, a bootlegger, is showing Daisy and his friend Nick around his famous house. Gatsby and Daisy knew each other before. Daisy is married now. Gatsby is still terribly and obsessively in love with her. Here goes- 100. EXT. THE LAWN OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. 100.

ESTABLISHING SHOT.

GATSBY leads NICK and DAISY toward his mansion. It has never seemed larger or more Impressive. DAISY stops for a moment, looking around, admiring it all,

101. EXT. THE LAWN OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. 101.

MED. SHOT.

GATSBY glances at her. Excited, doing his best to control it. After a moment, they move on.

102. INT. THE MUSIC ROOM OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. 102.

DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.

The room is enormous, ornate. Done in the style of Marie Antoinette. GATSBY leads NICK and DAISY through.

103. INT. THE MAIN SALON IN GATSBY'S HOUSE. 105.

DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.

Another ornate, impressive room. The style here Is Restoration. GATSBY, NICK and DAISY wander through, continuing their tour.

104. INT. THE MAIN SALON IN GATSBY'S HOUSE. 104.

DAY. MED. SHOT.

GATSBY hasn't once ceased looking at DAISY. It Is as if he is reevaluating everything In his house according to the response it draws from her well-loved eyes,

105. INT. THE MAIN STAIRCASE IN GATSBY'S 105.

HOUSE. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.

The staircase Is as large and Impressive as everything else we've seen. GATSBY leads them up. At the top of the stairs Is a door. He opens it, beckons them Inside.

106. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. ESTABLISH- 106.

ING SHOT.

The room Is simple, in sharp contrast to what we have seen before. There is a dresser on which is a toilet set of pure dull gold. There are two hulking cabinets. Abed. Little more.

107. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U. 107.

DAISY, with delight, takes the brush from the toilet set and smoothes her hair.

108. IHT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT. 108. GATSBY begins to laugh hilariously. He has been so full of the idea of having her here for so long, has waited at such

an Inconceivable pitch of Intensity that now. In his reaction, he Is beginning to run down like an overwound clock.

GATSBY

(still laughing, he looks at NICK)

lt.'s the funniest thing, old sport. I can't--when I try to

109. INT. GAISBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. LONG 109,

SHOT.

GAISBY recovers, goes to the two hulking cabinets, opens them,

110. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U. 110..

The cabinets hold his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

111. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. LONG 111,

SHOT.

GATSBY

I've got a man In England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.

112. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U. 112.

GATSBY takes out a pile of shirts and begins throwing them Into the air where they land on the bed. Shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lose their folds as they fall in many-colored disarray.

113. IKT.GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT. 113

NICK watches GATSBY throwing the shirts, watches DAISY as she admires them.

114. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT. 114.

GATSBY takes another pile, throws them into the air toward the bed.

115. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U. 115.

The shirts fill the air, shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids In coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue.

116. INT.GATSBY'S BEDROOM.DAY.C.U. 116.

Suddenly, with a strained sound, DAISY bends her head into the shirts and be- gins to cry.

DAISY They're such beautiful shirts. (she sobs on, her voice muf- fled In the thick folds) It makes me sad because I've never seen such-such beautiful shirts before.

This scene from the novel (the writing is mainly Mr. Fitzgerald's) is one of the most moving in a desperately moving book. We know damn well Daisy isn't weeping over the beauty of the cloth or the quality of the tailoring, she's mourning what's happened to her life.

Not only is this one of the high points of the book, it works on film. It worked in the recent version when Redford played the title role. My God, it even worked with Alan Ladd in the lead. But it sure doesn't work here. Why?