The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (14 page)

Darling and Honey

These are two of Hollywood’s most meaningless and overused words and greatest clichés. In the past few decades, there has been a trend away from using these words, although longtime Paramount head Sherry Lansing insisted on calling everyone “darling” and “honey,” perhaps as a homage to Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Robert McKee and I agree about one thing
.

M
cKee: “Movie-making is a collaborative endeavor—requiring great skill and talent by the entire cast, crew, and creative team—but the screenwriter is the only original artist on a film. Everyone else—the actors, directors, cameramen, production designers, editors, special effects wizards, and so on—are interpretive artists, trying to bring alive the world, the events, and the characters that the screenwriter has invented and created.”

You’re the storyteller, not the director
.

T
he director takes your story and characters and translates it and them to the big screen.

If anybody in your presence refers to the director as a “storyteller,” deck him (or her).

In musical terms,
you
are the composer; the director conducts the orchestra.

The director is passé
.

W
illiam Goldman: “There is a theory put forward by some (Gore Vidal for one) that the true influence of the director died with the coming of sound. In the silent days, Griffith could stand there and, with his actor’s voice, he could talk to Lillian Gish or whomever and literally mold the performance with long, heated verbal instructions
while the camera was rolling
. Not anymore. Now the director must stand helpless alongside the crew and watch the actors work at their craft.”

You are more important than the director
.

S
ometimes even directors admit this. Famed director Akira Kurosawa (
Rashomon
): “With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.”

Aren’t you worried about your
next job,
Bill?

S
creenwriter William Goldman: “Directors—even though we all know from the media’s portrayals of them that they are men and women of wisdom and artistic vision, masters of the subtle use of symbolism—are more often than not a bunch of insecure lying assholes.”

You’re the asshole responsible
.

S
creenwriter Robert Towne: “Until the screenwriter does his job, nobody else has a job. In other words, he is the asshole who keeps everyone else from going to work.”

They all know you’re the asshole responsible
.

A
ctress Barbara Stanwyck: “The performer can’t work miracles. What’s on paper is on the screen. If it isn’t there, it isn’t on the screen.”

Without you, nobody gets paid
.

M
ike Medavoy: “Writers get directors. Directors get actors. And the right combination of all three gets the money.”

Don’t let ’em fart at your ideas
.

P
roducer Bert Schneider could fart whenever he wanted and farted often during story meetings with screenwriters at ideas he didn’t like.

Like I said, damn it, don’t let ’em fart at your ideas
.

S
creenwriter Robert Carson was summoned to producer David O. Selznick’s house to pitch a script.

Selznick was in the bedroom, lying down, in pain from an attack of the stomach flu.

Carson said, “David, I don’t think you’re really in any shape to listen to a story.”

Selznick said, “That’s all right—go ahead.”

Carson told his story.

Selznick listened in bed as he groaned, strained, and passed gas.

The next day, he informed Carson that he was passing on his project, too.

The War Zone

Beverly Hills, Bel Air, the Palisades, north to Malibu and Point Dume and Carbon Beach … where most of the industry’s wealthiest and most powerful “player” warriors live.

Haunt streets, saloons, and whorehouses
.

B
en Hecht: “I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops. I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.”

Live your life fully so you can write fully
.

S
creenwriter Michael Blake (
Dances with Wolves
): “Characters do come out of the thin air. I think writers acquire characters by living a life in which something is risked. It’s only by being defeated, rejected, exalted, by going through all the peaks and valleys, that you can acquire anything worth writing down.”

Don’t see a movie; read a book
.

D
irector Akira Kurosawa: “In order to write scripts, you must first study the great novels and dramas of the world. You must consider why they are great. Where does the emotion come from that you feel as you read them?”

See some
good
movies
.

S
creenwriter Michael Blake: “My approach to learning how to write screenplays was to watch the best movies. I tried not to watch lousy movies, because I didn’t think I could learn anything from them. I didn’t take any classes. I just kind of dreamed it.”

Don’t see too many movies
.

N
ovelist Charles Bukowski: “People who hang around celluloid usually are.”

Don’t turn into a film geek
.

I
t’s okay to see movies, but it’s not okay to get caught up in movie trivia if you want to write screenplays—that is, to become a film geek who can tell you the name of the DP on the movie
Two-Lane Blacktop
, directed by Monte Hellman … or the name of the character in Jack Nicholson’s first bit part.

Knowing these things will clutter up your brain. Knowing these things won’t help you become a screenwriter.

Knowing too much about movies can be hazardous to your creativity. Put that energy into learning about real life and the loves, hopes, aspirations, guilts, failures, and dreams of the human beings around you.

There’s hope for you; Faulkner couldn’t write screenplays, either
.

J
im Harrison: “A good screenplay takes a sizable measure of talent and I hadn’t yet studied the genre. Later on at Warners when I read a half dozen of William Faulkner’s screenplays I was appalled and amused by how terrible they were.”

To Do a Joe Eszterhas

To get out of town and live somewhere in flyover country, in some town no one has ever heard of.

Put a piece of paper up above your writing desk
.

M
ine says, “The first thing a writer must do is protect his own ass.”

Novelist/screenwriter Jim Harrison’s says, “You’re just a writer.”

Novelist Mickey Spillane’s used to say, “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!”

After he was born again, Mickey replaced that with “Oh Lordy! Oh Jesus!”

Repeat to yourself: “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

T
hat’s what screenwriter Callie Khouri kept telling herself as she wrote her first screenplay. “I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve got nothing to lose!” She was writing a groundbreaking and original script, which won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay:
Thelma & Louise
.

Exempt yourself from shit
.

N
ovelist/screenwriter Harlan Ellison has a typewriter emblazoned with “I am an artist and should be exempt from shit.”

ALL HAIL