Hollywood Animal (20 page)

Jon Boorstin and I went in there and Jon started telling the bartender that
we
were from Hollywood and were doing a movie that he was going to produce.

She liked that. “Oh yeah? You gonna put me in it? I can be sexy.” She laughed, swayed her hips, and licked her lips with her tongue.

There were fifty of the roughest-looking guys I’d ever seen listening to all of this and they sure didn’t look like happy campers. The only relatively beautiful woman in town was acting like she was ready for the casting couch with these two Hollywood assholes who had no business down here on the bayou.

I tried to tell Jon to cool it but Jon was into it, he was having fun and, from what I could tell, so was she.

It went on for a while—she was full of all kinds of questions about Hollywood, not questions really but periodic quasi-observations like: “That Robert Redford, he must be really somethin’ huh” or “Burt Reynolds, now he can park his boots under my bed anytime!” and as she and Jon kept talking I noticed two Cajuns glaring at us.

They were rip-roaring sky-high drunk, the empty Pearls a fort around them, and after a while they got into an argument with each other which, the best that I could make out, had to do with their scars.

They took their shirts off and one of them said—“Lookit this here, now this a .38 Magnum went clear on through.” The other said, “This one here, it’s that Bowie knife Willie Joe got for Christmas year fore last.”

They kept giving us glances as the enumeration of wounds went on.

Then they suddenly started yelling at each other about something and it ended with one of them saying to the other, “Fuck you, motherfuckin’ sonofabitch fuck! I’m gonna kill you!”

The one using the words jumped up and tore ass out of the bar.

I grabbed Jon by the lapels of his sport coat, said, “Okay, we’re out of here,” and dragged him outside and down the stairs while he all the while kept saying, “Are you completely nuts? What’s wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?”

We had turned the corner and were heading into our motel court—the ground was littered with seashells—when we heard the gunshots. The Cajun had meant it. He’d gone to his car and gotten his gun and gone back into the bar, where he shot his friend and two others.

Had we still been in there, I’m convinced, the two Hollywood assholes would have been the first two dead men.

I went back home, happy to be alive, and wrote the script based on my interviews and research, still dealing with my now familiar morning ritual: first you throw up and then you write the screenplay.

I went to New York to discuss it with Alan Pakula. He hated the script and gave me the best writing advice I ever got from anyone.

“Forget the research,” he said. “Go back home and use your imagination,
make
it up. Don’t lean it on great lines and great characters you’ve heard and seen, just,
make the whole thing up.”

I went back home and did exactly that. It was the most fun I’d had writing anything. It was the first fun I’d ever had writing a screenplay, the greatest natural high I’d ever felt. Out on a high wire every morning, way out on an edge, playing God, just …
making … it … all … up
.

And, after nearly three years of my morning ritual, I stopped throwing up.

I sent the new script to Alan and he loved it. He had the script budgeted and started sending it out to cast it. He was thinking about Burt Reynolds and Jane Fonda. The budget came to $40 million.

Forty million dollars?

Forget about it, the studio said.
Heaven’s Gate
had just put United Artists out of business.
Forty million dollars?

We had to cut the script—but we couldn’t cut the script, Alan pointed out. Most of the money was in rebuilding and re-creating pipeline conditions in Alaska, with the inherent dangers of blizzards and windstorms delaying shooting.

In the middle of the budget hassle with the studio, both Burt Reynolds and Jane Fonda passed. “If you want a star to do a movie,” Barry Hirsch, my lawyer, said, “don’t set it in a blizzard in Alaska for God’s sake.”

When Burt and Jane passed, Alan Pakula called to tell me that my script, entitled
Rowdy
, was going into the drawer with Pat Resnick and Alvin Sargent.

“Well,” I said, “will you let me find another director for it?”

“Absolutely not,” Alan said. “It’s a great script and if my phone stops ringing one day, who knows …”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” I said, but I almost didn’t care.

First he’d threatened to put me out of business if I didn’t write his script. Now that I’d written the script and written it well, he wasn’t allowing anyone else to put it up on-screen; he was hiding it in his drawer.

The damn script had almost literally left me a dead man in Bayou Country, but he had given me the best writing advice I’ve ever had and I will be forever grateful to him.

Alan Pakula also told me one of the truest stories I’ve ever heard about film journalists:

“When
Sophie’s Choice
was coming out, one of the news magazines sent a writer to do a major feature on me. He came to my office to do the interview and, during it, he told me about a script he had written. He just happened to have it with him and he gave it to me.

“Three days later, he called me and asked if I’d had a chance to read his script yet. He told me that he was in the middle of writing his profile about me.
I
knew what he was doing: he was shaking me down. While he was in the middle of writing a profile of me which would be read by millions of people, he was asking me what I thought of his script.

“I told him that I’d been very busy, but hoped to read his script that weekend—which I knew was past his deadline for submitting my profile.

“‘Oh,’ he said, sounding disappointed, ‘I was hoping you’d have it read before then.’

“I thought about it. A favorable profile in a magazine with that kind of mega-circulation would certainly help the movie. I was worried about
Sophie’s
box office anyway. The subject matter itself would scare some people off.

“I called him back and told him that I’d finished reading his script and loved it. I told him that I wanted to produce it—not direct it, but produce it like I had produced other movies earlier in my career.

“‘Oh,’ he said, sounding disappointed, ‘I was hoping you’d direct it.’

“I called him back the next morning and told him I’d thought about it more. I told him I liked his script so much that I wanted to
direct
it. As my next movie.

“There was a pause and he said, ‘I hear you’re an honorable man. Do I have your word on that?’

“‘Absolutely,’” I said to him. ‘I give you my word. You’ve written a brilliant script.’

“‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘this is probably the greatest moment of my life. By the way, I think you’re going to like the profile I’m writing.’

“We made plans to get together in a week—way past his deadline—to celebrate.

“When the profile came out, it was long, glowing, and flattering and I’m sure it helped the movie’s success.

“He called me after the article came out and he kept calling for days, but I wouldn’t take his calls.

“He sent me an anonymous note in the mail, but I have no doubt it came from him.

“All it said was: ‘You fucked me masterfully. I applaud you. I deserved it.’”

My agent, Bob Bookman, was leaving the agency to be head of production at ABC Films, an attempt by the network to go into film production. I liked “Bookie,” as everyone in Hollywood called him. He was one of the few people in Hollywood I’d met who actually loved to read. A fanatical Francophile, he was the kind of guy who’d carry a wine tip sheet listing undiscovered new brands and vintage years into a restaurant.

I asked Bookie to recommend another agent. He said he’d have to think about it.

The man he finally recommended was Guy McElwaine.

Guy McElwaine, then in his forties, was the premier actor’s agent in town and one of the heads of the agency. He had represented everyone from Peter Sellers to Yul Brynner to Burt Reynolds.

“What writers does he represent?” I asked Bookie.

“He doesn’t represent any writers.”

“What writers has he represented?”

“He’s never represented any writers.”

“You think I should be represented by an agent who’s never represented a writer?”

“Yeah, I think you’ll like each other,” Bookie said.

He spoke to McElwaine and I made an appointment to see him. I did some research on him. He was an ex-jock, known as “The Golden Beef” in the days when he outpitched Don Drysdale in high school. He began as a publicist for Frank Sinatra and then Judy Garland. He was famous for the large number of gold chains he had once worn around his neck. He was now on his sixth marriage.

I was nervous the afternoon I was supposed to meet him. This person sounded like a real Hollywood animal to me.

Had I hurt Bookie’s feelings somehow? Was McElwaine some kind of twisted Francophile revenge? I knew, after all, how much Bookie loved Proust.

Our appointment was at 2:30. I was in Guy McElwaine’s outer office at 2:15. The outer office had a framed photograph of John F. Kennedy with the words: “To Guy, All My Best, Jack” written on it. JFK’s pal wasn’t there at 2:30. He wasn’t there at three o’clock. He wasn’t there at 3:15.

“I had an appointment at 2:30,” I said to his assistant, “it’s now 3:15, I know I’m only a writer, but—”

She was sweet. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m really very sorry,” she said, “he got delayed, he’s on the way.”

At 3:30, Hunter Thompson arrived.

Hunter Thompson? Here?

In Guy McElwaine’s outer office? Wearing his Hawaiian shirt and shorts and safari hat and carrying his doctor’s bag? Was I
hallucinating?
I hadn’t seen him since I left
Rolling Stone
.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I said.

“In the building,” he mumbled, “heard you here. Wanna beer?”

He took out a cold Heineken from his bag and handed it to me.

“Fuck motherfuckers,” he said. “Don’t take any shit, vultures, jackal screenwriters, Sunset Marquis, call me,” and Hunter was gone.

At five minutes to four, as I was finishing Hunter’s Heineken, Guy McElwaine floated in.

I mean, he
floated
.

He was dressed immaculately in a beautifully tailored suit and he was inside a cloud of fumes that smelled like Jack Daniel’s fine sipping whiskey to me.

With him was Peter Falk, wearing his Columbo raincoat.

First Hunter Thompson and now
Peter Falk in his Columbo raincoat
?

Maybe I was having some sort of bizarre acid flashback that had kicked in after all these years.

“Come on in, come on in,” Guy waved. “Peter left his keys.”

No apology for being late, no hello, just a wave to the butler to follow him into the house.

Peter Falk couldn’t find his keys. He started doing his Columbo number.

“Jesus, I’m really sorry here,” he said, looking around couches and on the floor, “I know I held you up here, kid, it’s all my fault, Jesus where could I have put ’em, I thought I left ’em right here, you don’t see any keys around anywhere, do you, kid?”

I shook my head no. As Columbo stumbled around, McElwaine poured himself a drink at his own private bar. He didn’t offer me one.

I saw what he was pouring for himself: it
was
Jack Daniel’s!

“Here they are!” Falk suddenly said. “Well what do you know? I must’ve dropped ’em. How about that? I thought I looked there—my eyes must be gettin’ worse—Jesus, maybe I should see my eye guy. See you, Guy. Great lunch, huh?”

“Always a pleasure,” Guy McElwaine said.

“Good luck, kid.” Peter Falk winked at me and stumbled, Columbo-like, out of the office.

Guy McElwaine and I looked at each other. I felt my ears burning. My blood pressure must have been through the roof. McElwaine looked cool, professionally unperturbed. He looked at his gold watch and sat down at a couch across from me, his Jack Daniel’s in hand.

“So, tell me,” he said, sipping his drink, “what ambitions do you have in this business?”

He glanced at his watch again. I think it was that second glance that did it.

“You’ve got a lot of balls,” I said. “You come in here an hour and a half late—you don’t even apologize—you sit down like King Shit condescending to some servant! I don’t care who you are! Or who you represent! I don’t care if I’m just a writer and not one of your big stars! But you don’t have a right to treat another human being this way!”

He stared at me, his eyes cold, his face expressionless, and took another sip of his drink as I was carrying on.

I ended my tirade eloquently.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said, got up, and headed for the door. I was almost there when I heard him.

“Come back here and sit down.”

I turned but I wasn’t going back.

“I’m sorry. I apologize. It’ll never happen again.”

“You’re goddamn right it won’t,” I said, and turned back to the door.

“For Christ’s sake!” he said, his voice low but hard. “Come back here and sit down and have a drink with me!”

I looked at him. He was shaking his head and grinning. I went back and sat down on the couch across from him.

“What can I get you to drink?” he said.

“Jack Daniel’s sounds great.”

“I think I’m gonna like you,” Guy McElwaine said.

Sometime during that first meeting, Guy McElwaine, grinning, drink in hand, said to me: “Remember this. There is no heart as black as the black heart of an agent.”

I grinned back, drink in hand, and promised to remember it.

I went into what everybody in town called Development Hell, writing scripts that I enjoyed writing but that weren’t made. My price per script jumped each time—I sometimes suspected that studio executives were simply not prepared to be dealing with Guy McElwaine, superstar agent, wheeling and dealing on behalf of a freshman writer.

I had countless meetings with countless executives over countless projects, getting to know people. I was also getting to know Guy, who sort of adopted me, taking me to places like La Scala, Le Dome, Ma Maison, and the Bistro and introducing me around.