Adventures in the Screen Trade (48 page)

The ending of the story centered too much on the family. I wanted the influence of Bimbaum to be what we were left with. How, though? Finally I get the notion for the scene where Willie is playing the harmonica and Bimbaum tells him everyone was terrible once. And in that scene Willie says how if he masters the harmonica he'll get a guitar and if he masters the guitar, then he'll get a piano.

So I blithely write the ending with that thought in mind. It's so easy-I just type a few words. The music goes from crummy harmonica to good harmonica to guitar to piano. Final fade- out.

Then Grusin tells me what you've just read about the end- ing-that I'm asking music to accomplish something that it may not be able to do. And of course, he's dead on the money. What I wrote was a literary conceit, and sometimes they don't shoot so hot.

The point is, if the ending can be made to work, it won't be because of me, it will be because the composer, in this case, finds a solution. For me to be at my best, I need everybody. We all, always, need everybody.

One last thing-I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned, now and forever, Willie's going to be a clarinet. . . .

Director: George Roy Hill

George Roy Hill studied music at Yale and acting in Ireland. He began directing for live television- Night to Remember, Judgment at Nuremberg. For a time he worked on Broadway. and the first play he directed, Look Homeward, Angel, won the Pulitzer prize in 1957. Among his dozen films are:

The World of Henry Onent Hawaii Batch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Slaughterhowe-Five The Sting The Great Waldo Pepper Slapshot The World According to

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ON DIRECTING

The principle job of a director is to first get his script and get it right and get it playable and get it almost foolproof. Then his job is to cast it as perfectly as he can.

If he does those two things, he can phone in the direction, because it doesn't make any difference, his work is eighty per- cent done. The fact is that no director with a poor script that is badly cast can make it work through his direction. On the other hand, if he gets the script right and the actors right, then he can invent, then the rest of it is fun-I don't mean it's all fun, it's partly a pain in the ass, but I mean, then you have a solid basis on which you can create.

ON SHOOTING

The most anxiety-producing time is the actual filming, because by that time you have the picture in your head. And to make the scenes all correspond to what's in your head is very difficult. Because there's nothing more artistically devastating than the atmosphere of a movie production. There are so many people around, so many people bothering you, asking you ques- tions, actors wanting to know what tie they're going to wear- you're in constant danger of being fragmented, and the vision you have of the scene gets eaten away by a thousand different problems. It's a physical drain-I exercise and get into shape, but shooting is always a very, very tough time for roe.

ON STUDIOS AND STARS

If I went in tomorrow and said I wanted to do, say, David and Goliath, the studio might send out a research organization to find out if the public wanted a biblical film.

And if they got back certain replies they might say, "All right, do it, but we want to have a star play David or Saul" or what have you.

That's perfectly all right with me if the name values fit the movie. But if I go in and say, "Look, I've found this wonderful kid for David and an old actor who's been working in regional theatre and I want him for Saul," they might say, "All right, we'll do it, but we won't give you more than X million dollars."

Then you have to make up your mind. If you want to, you can do it for X million dollars, or you can compromise and take a star and get a bigger budget. But this is a constant, it's a continual give-and-take proposition when you're preparing a film.

Once I get the go-ahead, I never hear from them again; I don't know.if that's unusual or not, but I don't get bothered by them. Except in the case of Hawaii, where things were disastrous.

ON DA VINCI: THE ARTIST AS SHIT

What you've done here is take a story that works pretty well on paper, but you really make some fundamental errors in your screenplay-and since you are very glib and very clever and very able, you have covered up those errors and masked them so that most people would not see them. But I would, I think be inclined to unmask you.

Da Vinci is an allegory and I don't much like allegories-I agree with Mrs. Malaprop that allegories should stay on the banks of the Nile.

This story, as you yourself say, is about how an artist cannot survive in the modern world-you claim it's about a guy losing a job but that's not really accurate. And if it is accurate, it's pretty damn dull.

This guy loses a job because of his integrity, his artistic integrity. Fair enough. But you also make him a shit, which is a cliche - that in order to have integrity you must behave like a shit, Shaw did it first, I think, with Dubedat in "Doctor's Dilemma," and since then it has become a popular dramatic concept. I don't buy it. The people I've known with the greatest artistic integrity are usually the most professional and the most considerate, while I've unfortunately run into a few second-rate artists who behaved like shits in the belief that this somehow automatically endows them with talent and integrity.

ON DA VINCI: THE ARTIST AS A BARBER The first thing to say, the artist as a barber is a very tough visual thing to do. You have, in some of your more purple prose, described the effects of these haircuts.

Well, you've left the poor fucking director saying, "Jesus Christ, this kid gets a haircut and everybody falls down." Now I've seen lots of kids and lots of haircuts, but I've never seen a haircut that made me want go "Ooh-ooh-ahh," especially in a small midwestem town.

It just doesn't happen-unless you let him have a fright wig in the first scene or a hairpiece of snakes, like Medusa, and then you clean him up. In which case, it's going to be fairly obvious-

And then when Willie gets the haircut and Porky sees it and says, "What a beautiful haircut"-you say in your notes that kids don't talk that way. Well, you're right there, they sure as hell don't. I mean, you could have Willie back-lit and you could have the Hallelujah Chorus coming in and have a close-up of him through gauze and you'll create an effect, but in fact, you're striving to do something that's false. No kid's haircut is going to bring the world to an end.

In the story, you accept this, because you don't have to deal with the visuals, but in the screenplay, you run smack into them, and there's your director saying, "What the hell can I do?" I would sure try and pull every trick I knew-have the kid back-lit, have his hair a kind of glowing nimbus-but I'm going to have to light him through the whole movie that way, and it's going to take for fucking ever.

So you've got a very basic problem in the fundamental visual concept of the piece-and you're on very thin ice when you start accepting a haircut as a great, work of art.

ON DA VINCI: THE HARMONICA SCENE

In your notes you say it would be phony, bad, dangerous, to write a scene that establishes a relationship with the boy arid Bimbaum-and then you go ahead and write one. The very thing you say is bad, you write. The thrust of that scene where he's playing the harmonica is to give something to the old man. He softens his attitude toward the boy for one moment. It's the crotchety but dear old man-that's the artist saying what every young artist wants to hear. You know what I've written in the margin beside that scene? "Ugh." Enjoying this. Bill?

ON DA VINCI: WILLIES BEHAVIOR

He knows he's going to destroy his father-he's a cretin if he doesn't know he's going to destroy his father, because Porky's already done it. So this kid is so vain about how gorgeous he looks in his new haircut that he can't bear to have his father touch his head-is he suddenly Narcissus, in love with his hair-cut? Is that your basic sympathetic character? I'd boot the little kid's ass from here to doomsday.

I'm not suggesting this, but if he had a girl friend who, in- stead of Porky saying, "My God, you're beautiful," said, "Come on, I'm taking you to bed," and then later said, "I'm not taking you to bed anymore because you don't look so good," that would give him motivation to go get the haircut. Granted, a girl who behaves that way may not seem a girl with outstanding qualities, but we don't all pick the best, particularly when we're young. Then the boy is in the grips of an overpowering emotion-sex, which we all know drives people to all kinds of desperate things. Of course, this would change the balance of the story-it would now be about a boy who destroys his father because he wants to gel humped. And Mr. Bimbaum goes floating away.

ON DA VINCI: HYPE

This script as written has things in it that set a director's teeth on edge. Look at your opening page-"Pull back to reveal a schoolyard on an agonizingly beautiful spring day." Well, the studio executive reads that and he says, "Oh, an agonizingly beautiful spring day, that's great." The director says, "When have I ever agonized over a spring day?" Then he says to his cameraman, "Get me an agonizingly beautiful spring day."

It's all hype-you write it, the executive reads it, and after I've shot it, everybody looks at it and says, "Wait a minute, that isn't agonizingly beautiful, why isn't it?" It's the director's fault.

More hype-when we see Porky after his haircut, you say, "Porky, need it be said, has vastly improved his appearance." Well, what the hell can I do to improve his goddam appearance, I've only got hair. I've got to make everything suddenly wonderful, with hair!

One of your more egregious examples of hype is in the sec- ond haircut-where the river isn't like before, it's the Nile of the Amazon-"but whatever it is, it makes you gasp." Jesus God.

I wonder what Shakespeare would have read like if he wrote this way? "And it's the most agonizingly beautiful dawn you've ever seen and the ghost appears and it's the most staggering fucking-looking ghost anybody ever saw."

ON DA VINCI: CONCLUSION

A lot of the questions I ask, a lot of my attack on a property, is io tear it apart and see if it can stand up under really rigorous assault. Because you're going to be attacked later on, you might as well be your own attackee.

As far as Da Vinci is concerned, when I was in live tv, I worked on lots of worse things than this. . - .

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Pretty withering.

But pretty helpful too. Because Hill has as good a story mind as any director I've come in contact with.

Which is not to say he is without flaw. He does hate what he calls hyping the script-a lot of directors do. John Schlesinger didn't tike the hype I stuck into Marathon Man-but he took the job. Hill was driven almost mad by some of the hype in Batch Cassidy. I remember him being furious about the way I wrote the entrance of the Superposse-where I had half a page about the camera zooming like a racing car toward this stopped train. But again, he took the job.

And I don't think he's right at all about the harmonica scene-it's meant to be stern and tough. That's Bimbaum at his most arrogant, not Captain Kangaroo befriending a puppy. There are a lot of things I disagree with in what Hill said- -but he may be right.

I don't think Bimbaum's a shit and I don't think the artist as shit is a cliche- -but Hill may be right.

I don't think this is a screenplay about a kid who knifes his father in the back- -but Hill may be right.

And I think the haircuts can work, I think they can be magi- cal. I think a lot of things in opposition to what's been said here. But when somebody very smart gives you the benefits of

his wisdom, you better listen. Of the Da Vinci interviews. Hill was alone in much of what he felt. But that doesn't make him wrong. And if the others had agreed, in part or in whole with his insights, that wouldn't necessarily make me wrong. But it just may.

If enough people tell you you're drunk, it's not inadvisable for a screenwriter to consider lying down. .

CHAPTER EIGTEEN

The Relay Race

Inherent with every screenwriting job is a moment of mourn- ing. This moment has nothing to do with the quality of the work experience. It's there, if I am replaced (Charly) or rewritten (The Stepford Wives) or still writing even after the completion of principal photography (A Bridge Too Far). And I'm not sure if the moment exists in any other kind of narrative writing-I don't believe it happens with plays, and it never occurs in any books I've been involved with. The moment involves a terrible sense of loss. It's possible to conceive of the making of a film as a relay race. A long one, two to three years long. The starter of the race, usually, is the producer. He acquires the property. Then, again usually, he hires the screenwriter and the race is on.

When a producer hires me, what he is buying, rough rule of thumb, is six months of my life. That's about the length of time from when I first,read the property to when I deliver the first draft.

Most writers, when they are at work on a project, any project, become interested, and then involved, and then obsessed. And when we are in the obsessive phase, our personalities split. We may look the same, act the same, but a very large part of our brain is cut away, intent only on the project at hand.

We never know when help is on the way. An example from this book: One night I had insomnia and was watching very late-night tv and The Blob was on and I stared at it until that scene, mentioned earlier, where Steve McQueen has that dopey moment in the car with the girl. And suddenly you sit there, thinking, "Shit, I can use that." I didn't know then I was going to write a section on protecting the star, but I knew that car moment was something.

Not only don't we know when help is coming, we don't know where. A remark by a cabdriver may spark a thought. A book title seen a thousand times may suddenly take on a useful meaning. Help can come from any direction, so we have to stay on the lockout, because we all need, do I have to add, all the help we can get.

In the months when I'm not writing, sometimes I hear or see things and consciously think, "I ought to remember that, that may come in handy sometime." And then the next instant it's gone. But when I'm in the obsessive stage. I'm a sponge. And not a whole lot of use to anybody. Wherever I am, obviously that's where the physical part of me inhabits space. But always, a large part of my mind is where I am right now, staring at white paper, wondering how in hell to fill it with words. Until I have filled enough pages, there is no movie. As I said, filling those pages is six months of whatever time I have left. And those first months are as full of research as I can make them. I read and reread the source material, and I fiddle. I interview people and jot down what I hope will help. I read and reread other material that may deal with the same or a similar subject. I listen to music that may jog something. Music is becoming increasingly important to me. I've been alone in my pit for a quarter century now and I can't take the silence any- more. So I constantly put on a stack of records and let them play in the background. For Bridge, to take an example, I bought a bunch of military-oriented records-Sousa marches, etc.-and had them on quietly all day; for Waldo Pepper, pop tunes from the twenties.