The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (6 page)

You are more important than the director
.

I
t all begins in the script,” says director Milos Forman. “If what’s happening is interesting, it doesn’t matter where you shoot from, people will be interested to watch. If you write something boring, you can film from mosquitoes’ underpants and it will still be boring.”

Hollywood will hate you
.

T
he relationship between Hollywood and the writer is basically adversarial,” says writer Jim Harrison. “The film business acts as if it wishes it could do without writers, but it can’t, and it has accepted the fact without grace.”

ALL HAIL

Billy Bob Thornton!

A hard-nosed screenwriter (
Sling Blade
) who went to the wall with several studios that wanted to change his scripts, he even jumped atop a studio head’s desk once. … Billy Bob is the realization of all of our dreams: He became a movie star; he became a rock and roll star; he married Angelina Jolie.

Tony Kushner is no role model, either
.

K
ushner: “I didn’t write
Angels in America
. The actors wrote it, the directors wrote it, we all wrote it.” Can you break your Pulitzer Prize into little pieces, then, Tony, and share it with all the others?

This is you
.

S
creenwriter Milo Addica (
Birth
): “The writer is the lowest man on the totem pole, but potentially he has the most power. He comes up with the idea; he makes it work. You can’t make a building without the blueprint; you can hire the labor and buy the material, but to make a building, you need a blueprint—which means someone has to sit at a table, rack their brain, and figure it out. That’s what a writer does.”

You ain’t nothing but a
Hessian
to them
.

J
ohn Gregory Dunne: “Screenwriters are regarded in the industry as chronic malcontents, overpaid and undertalented, the Hollywood version of Hessians, measuring their worth in dollars, since ownership of their words belongs to those who hire and fire them.”

How about sleeping with the screenwriter
?

H
edy Lamarr: “The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude but true.”

These are the rules of the game
.

O
ld Hollywood adage: “In the beginning, when he is writing the script, the screenwriter has the gun. When he turns his script in, he turns the gun over to the producer. When the producer hires the director, he hands the gun over to the director. When the director turns in his final cut, he hands the gun over to the studio. The studio then takes the gun and shoots the writer, the producer, and the director. The studio then hands the gun to the stars of the movie, who are going out to publicize the film. In rare cases like
Heaven’s Gate
, the studio turns the gun on itself and blows its own brains out.”

The Oscar

Woody Allen: “An inanimate statue of a little bald man.
”

You’re not in Kansas anymore, sweetie
.

M
ike Medavoy: “The movie business is probably the most irrational business in the world … it is covered by a set of rules that are absolutely irrational.”

Nobody knows anything
.

T
his is Bill Goldman’s famous (and accurate) phrase, but its flip side is:
“Everybody thinks he knows everything there is to know about writing
.”

Which includes the cabbie, the waitress, the director, the traffic cop, the producer, the sanitation engineer, the studio head, the massage therapist, and the star.

Scott Fitzgerald didn’t know anything, either
.

H
e did an uncredited rewrite on
Gone with the Wind
. This is what he thought of the book: “I read it—I mean really read it—it is a good novel—not very original. … There are no new characters, new technique, new observations—none of the elements that make literature—especially no new examination into human emotions.”

He thought it was a good novel, though, right?

Poor, poor Scott Fitzgerald
…

C
an you imagine Scott Fitzgerald’s pain as he rewrote Margaret Mitchell?

Fitzgerald to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: “I was absolutely forbidden to use any words except those of Margaret Mitchell, that is, when new phrases had to be invented one had to thumb through it as if it were Scripture and check out phrases of her’s which would cover the situation!”

These are words Hollywood lives by
.

K
eep your friends close to you, but keep your enemies closer.” These words of advice were first given to me by a woman producer who still occasionally slept with her ex-husband, also a producer, even though she had remarried and was “absolutely in love” with her new husband.

Her ex-husband had beaten her, sold naked photos of her to a Web site, told the court she was a “whore and a druggie” in a custody fight, put a .45 Magnum into her mouth and pulled the trigger, and tried to blackball her in the industry.

She loathed and feared him but slept with him whenever he wanted to “keep him close” and neutralize him.

Over the years, I heard the same advice from studio head Sherry Lansing, superagent Michael Ovitz, and producer Ray Stark.

If you get reamed, take him or her out to lunch
.

M
ike Medavoy: “Breaking bread with them that wronged you is as common as air kissing in the movie business.”

The key to winning in Hollywood is to let them think
they
won
.

I
admit there are people in Hollywood who are much better at this than I am.

Among them is director Phillip Noyce (
Sliver, The Quiet American
): “My own directorial style can be described as ‘nudging’—nudging people. I don’t believe much is achieved by confrontation, except resentment. I mostly get exactly what I want. But the secret of doing that in movies is to allow the other person to think what
you
want is what they really want.”

Barry Diller knows what he’s talking about
.

T
he studio head and corporate mogul said, “People get corrupted. They don’t lose their brains. God knows, they don’t lose their talent. But part of the process of success and what it does, it corrupts in the way that it removes their objectivity, it
removes their instincts
.”

Most of what you’ve heard about Hollywood is true
.

S
creenwriter William Goldman: “Understand this: all the sleaze you’ve heard about Hollywood? All the illiterate scumbags who scuttle down the corridors of power? They are there, all right, and worse than you can imagine.”

God bless us everyone
.

P
roducer Robert Evans: “In this town everybody’s a whore. Everybody can be bought.”

You’ll need to be a really good liar
.

S
creenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “The art of lying is the art of the practical. It ought never be indulged in for the pure pleasure of the thing, since over-usage dulls the instrument, corrodes the character, and despoils the spirit. The important thing about a lie is not that it be interesting, fanciful, graceful or even pleasant but that it be believed. Curb, therefore, your imagination. Let the lie be delivered full-face, eye to eye, and without scratching of the scalp. Let it be blunt and forthright and so simple that you can repeat it in detail and under oath ten years hence. But let it, for all of its simplicity, contain one fantastical element of creative ingenuity—one and no more—designed to capture the attention of the listener and to convince him that, since no one would dare to invent the improbability you have inserted, its mere existence places the stamp of truth upon everything you have said. If you cannot tell a believable lie, cling then to truth which is always our secret succor in times of need, and manfully accept the consequences.”

It’s all good news, all the time
!

W
hat absolutely no one does in Hollywood is tell you bad news. If someone doesn’t like your script, they won’t tell you that. You’ll simply never hear from them. If somebody doesn’t like your movie, they’ll tell you they haven’t seen it yet.

Hold out for the fifty cents
.

M
arilyn Monroe: “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”