Adventures in the Screen Trade (30 page)

What you pray for is this: (1) a movie that people will remember and (2) a movie that people may actually go and see.

Movies with that double potential come along not too often, and when one does, and you're offered a shot, I think you have to take it.

I had no idea whether anyone would want to see a picture about Watergate, but Redford, then the number-one star in the world, was not just going to produce it. he was committed to playing the Woodward part, so obviously that didn't hurt. But the Watergate story had been so important to the country for so many months that I felt if it could be pulled off, people might remember. Now, there were problems.

(1) Watergate had been so heavily dealt with in the media that a lot of people, rightly, were already sick of it.

(2) Certain kinds of subject matter were viewed with less than glee by studio executives: sports, for one; politics, for another. And All the President's Men certainly was a political story.

(3) The book had no structure that jumped out at me. And very little dialog.

(4) There were all those goddam names that no one could keep straight: Stans and Sturgis and Barker and Segretti and McCord and Kaimbach and Magruder and Kleindienst and Strachan and Abplanalp and Rebozo and backward reeled the mind.

(5) Great liberties could not be taken with the material. Not just for legal reasons, which were potentially enormous. But if there ever was a movie that had to be authentic, it was this one. The importance of the subject matter obviously demanded that. More crucially was this: We were dealing here with probably the greatest triumph of the print media in many years, and every media person who would sec the film, if there was a Kirn-every columnist and commentator and reviewer-would have spent time at some point in their careers in a newspaper. And if we "Hollywooded it up"-i.e., put in dancing girls there was no way they would take it kindly. We had to be dead on, or we were dead.

(6) Redford himself. He was not to be a hired hand on the project. Being the producer meant that a lot of directors might shy from the job, since they don't like having their star be their boss.

Plus this: He wasn't just the star, he was the co-star. The Bernstein part would have to be equal. At least that. Because if you are a star, and your co-star is your producer, your part can disappear pretty quickly in the cutting room. And we needed a star. If we had gone with a relative unknown-say, Robert De Niro at that time-not only would it have thrown the balance out of whack, Redford was very much aware that people would say he was afraid of an equal and wanted it all for himself. There were only two equals who had the proper ethnic qualities for Bernstein-Hoffman and Pacino. If we couldn't land either one of them, we were in trouble.

(7) And this turned out to be one of the great jokes-my wife remembers my telling her that my biggest problem would be somehow to make the ending work, since the public already knew the outcome. Was ever a man so naive? Before I went down to Washington to meet with the authors, I began my preliminary research, and one of the things I found that I hadn't known was the inept quality of so much of what went on.

The famous break-in of June 17, 1972, the event that triggered everything, was not their first attempt. The burglers had tried several times before, and they kept goofing it up. Once, they got trapped and had to hide for the night in an empty room in the complex. Better than that, another attempt failed because the keys they had made to get them into Democratic National Headquarters didn't fit. Now, they had had these keys made in Miami, and after their bungle some of them went back to Miami to have keys made all over again.

The reason I suppose I liked that stuff was my obsession with the likelihood that everyone assumed they knew everything about Watergate. So I felt whatever I could bring in that was surprising would help us.

Anyway, still winter, I shuttle to Washington to meet the Post editors and, most particularly, Woodward and Bernstein.

It was not a good meeting and I suspect it was my fault. Bernstein was late, but when he arrived the three of us began to talk and I remember talking about the incompetence of so much of what went on, and I said, "It's almost like a comic opera."

The look on Bernstein's face when "comic opera" came out was not one of joy. The story had taken him from being a young, not all chat successful reporter and had already given him a certain amount of fame and was soon to make him rich. And here was this Hollywood asshole talking about it being something less than serious. (Not my intention, obviously, but it was not the best phrase for me to use on a first meeting.) At any rate, although I met with Bernstein a couple of times in the months that followed, his contribution to the film was, for a while, nil.

And that doesn't make him wrong. When a movie company lakes a property of yours, it's not yours anymore. I think it was Hemingway who advised "Take the money and run." Not without wisdom.

Woodward, on the other hand, was available to me constant- ly. I cannot overemphasize his importance to the screenplay. When he was in New York he would call and we'd often meet. When I was in Washington, he gave me everything I needed in the way of knowledge and support.

And I needed plenty. Because it was an incredibly complicated story and trying to find the handle was a bitch. He'd been working on it for dose to two years and I was new. Forget, for now, trying to make a screenplay; I was struggling just trying to get the events straight.

If Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, was the hero of the film, Bob Woodward was the hero of the screenplay. I hacked away at the morass of material and finally reached one conclusion: Throw away the last half of the book.

Bernstein and Woodward had made one crucial mistake dealing with the knowledge of one of Nixon's top aides. It was a goof that, for a while, cost them momentum. I decided to end the story on their mistake, because the public already knew they had eventually been vindicated, and one mistake didn't stop them. The notion behind it was to go out with them down and let the audience supply their eventual triumph. If I ended there, and I began around the break-in, I didn't have a whole structure but at least I had the start of one. I fiddled with the rest of the narrative, tucking things in as best I could, and then Woodward came to my office. I asked him to list the crucial events - not the most dramatic but the essentials-that enabled the story eventually to be told.

I think there were thirteen of them and he named them in order. I looked at what I'd written and saw that I'd included every one. So even if the screenplay stunk, at least the structure would be sound. Then I went to work writing.

In August of '74 I delivered the screenplay to Redford in Utah, where he has a home and a ski resort. My family came along, we rented a house in the area. The month was to be spent working.

He read the first draft, liked it well enough, and copies were sent out. Obviously to Warner Bros., which was the studio that was to make the film-if they liked what they read. (If they didn't, they could have gotten rid of me and brought in another writer of their choice, but that would have been very damaging in terms of lime. I'd been working for six months at least by August, and it wasn't the kind of material another screenwriter could have whipped off easily.)

And copies were sent to the editors of the Washington Post, who were portrayed in the movie. And, of course, to Wood- ward and Bernstein. I'm not sure as to whether we were legally bound to give them copies or whether it was done for goodwill and courtesy, but it was done.

Now Redford and I began to wait. We met each day usually near his house, and we talked about changes and who would be best for director, etc. But mainly he talked and I listened.

It was a very strange time. We had known each other now for half a dozen years, had worked on three pictures together Butck, Hot Rock, Waldo Pepper.

Shortly after Batch opened he was on the cover of Life, which identified him as "Actor Robert Redford." I remember him saying to me that each time he looked at the cover he had to look twice because he was convinced it said "Asshole Robert Redford."

Well, he wasn't an asshole anymore. Now he was a phenomenon.

He'd also become secretive. Not only did I know him, our wives knew each other, so did our kids. And he had asked me to come to Utah for the month to work with him- -and he wouldn't give me his phone number. In order for me to contact him, I would have to call his secretary, and she would then call him and he would then call me,

None of this mattered, of course, once we heard from Wamers that they liked the screenplay and we were a "go.' The movie was to become a reality. President's Men had been the most difficult and complicated movie work I'd done till then and I felt a greater sense of accomplishment at that moment than ever before.

If only I could have ridden off into the sunset then and there. One of the things I have tried to avoid in this book is to rewrite history. Some of what you're reading comes from talking to people, but the greater amount comes from memory. And I've blocked a lot of what happened between August of '74 when the news came from Wamers and the following June when photography actually began.

The rest of this chapter is material I've been unable to block, no matter how hard I've tried.

It's still August, Redford begins the search for a director. But we still haven't heard from the Washington Post. And we still haven't heard from Woodward and Bernstein. The first director we sent the script to-who must remain nameless for legal reasons'-said yes. Incredible.

Then things started getting funny. Phone calls weren't returned, meetings were delayed. Many weeks later I was finally told-who knows if it was true?-that the director was involved in litigation against Wamer Bros. and had only said yes in order to do any little thing he could to take out his vengeance on the studio. He never had any intention of directing the film, he just wanted to cost Warner's time.

By the time this news surfaced, we still hadn't heard from Woodward and Bernstein.

But we had heard from the editors of the Washington Post- -and they hated alt the jokes I'd put in their budget meetings.

A word now about just what a budget meeting is. The Post had two of them a day. And the main purpose was to budget space for articles-especially front-page articles. If you are reporter or an editor, you want your stuff to appear on "page one above the fold."

When I was spending time at the Post, they were decent enough to allow me to attend their budget meetings. (They were all decent, by the way. Courteous and helpful as much as their very busy schedules allowed.)

Okay, I go to my first two budget meetings and they were, of course, fascinating. But afterward, the top editors came up and

told me that they weren't as funny as they usually are. Because one of the editors-Harry Rosenfeld, the part played by jack Warden in the movie-was out that day. They assured me that when Rosenfeld was back, and he would be tomorrow, I'd get a different picture.

The next day Rosenfeld was back and was, as advertised, hysterical. In these meetings, the various editors-metropolitan. national, foreign-all argue with each other about the importance of their stories and the prominence their stories should receive.

And every time one of these guys would tout a story, Rosenfeld would zap him. Funny, funny jokes. And sitting in a corner of the room, I copied down Rosenfeld's lines in my notebook.

And in the screenplay, when I wrote the budget meeting scenes, I used Rosenfeld's lines.

Which infuriated them, because now they felt they looked like a bunch of clowns. So that was the Washington Post's reaction. Still nothing from Woodward and Bernstein. It's now fall, I'm back in New York, in my office, and the phone rings. It's Redford. He says that Bob and Carl are with him and why don't I come on over.

I go on over to his apartment, elevator up, ring the bell, go inside. My mood was pretty good as I remember. And I had absolutely no warning bells going off in my head that I was about to begin experiencing the worst moments of my movie-writing life.

Redford's in the living room. Woodward's in the living room. Bernstein's in the living room. And there is a script on the living-room table. I say hello to Redford, shake hands with Woodward, shake hands with Bernstein. And now there is this silence. And that script is still on the living-room table. Then Redford said really the most extraordinary thing: "Lis- ten-Carl and Nora have written their version of the screen- play." (Nora being Nora Ephron, a writer, then Bernstein's girl friend, whom he was later to marry and divorce.) I just stood there. Probably I blinked.

But I sure couldn't think of anything to say. As a screenwriter, I test very high on paranoia. I'm always convinced of any number of things: that my work is incompetent, that I'm about to get fired, that I've already been fired but don't know yet that half a dozen closet writers are typing away in their offices, that I should be fired because I've failed, on and on.

But all those nightmares-and on occasion they've all happened -are within the studio system. The producer goes to the executive and says, "Goldman can't cut it, let's get Bob Towne." And then the executive calls Towne's agent and a deal is struck and money changes hands and the first I hear about it is when my phone doesn't ring when it's supposed to.

But for two outsiders, a hotshot reporter and his girl friend, to take it upon themselves to change what I've done without telling anybody and then to turn it in to the producer-a "go" project, remember- -not in this world possible. But there was their script on the living-room table. I stood silently, staring at the thing, and I wanted Redford to scream at Bernstein, "You asshole, get out of here, don't you know what you've done?"

Redford said, "I've gone over it a little and I think you ought to read it."

I wanted my producer to defend me-I'm eight months on the project now, and I've done a decent job-Wamers said yes. I wanted to hear "You're a dumb arrogant fuck, Carl, and I'd like you to shove that script where the sun don't shine."