The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (60 page)

Gore Vidal!

Screenwriter and novelist Vidal (
Myra Breckinridge
): “I was having a meeting with a producer and I said to him, ‘Look, I’m tired shitless of your complaints. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You know marketing, you may know how to make deals, but you don’t know how to make movies, and you intrude on other people who are talented and do.’ He exploded. ‘How can you say that to me?’ he said. He was halfway across the room. ‘I will hit you!’ he said. Then I started toward him and said, ‘I am going to throw you out of this window.’ And I came at him. We were about three feet apart and he was running toward me and he couldn’t stop because of how much he weighed—he was very heavy. He veered off to the right and ran into a wall. I heard his nose crack against the wall.”

A producer today isn’t what a producer was yesterday
.

M
ike Medavoy: “Producer credits today are given out like lollipops in a pediatrician’s office—to managers, wives, girlfriends, lawyers, and development executives. They are the ego badge of the business.

Schnorrer

A flimflam man who can talk you into and out of anything … especially your wallet. It’s a term usually applied to producers.

You, too, can be a producer today
.

T
he Assassination of Richard Nixon
boasted
sixteen
producers.

That sound you just heard was Sam Spiegel and David O. Selznick rolling over—and over and over—in their graves.

Beware of producers’ offices that are in fancy buildings but have no furniture
.

I
had a meeting once with a well-known producer in an office like this and called my agent as soon as the meeting was over to tell him that I didn’t trust the fact that there was no furniture in the office.

“They just moved in,” my agent said; “the furniture is on the way.”

Two weeks later, the producer declared bankruptcy and closed his office.

Producers are intellectuals
.

I
con producer Sam Spiegel said his two favorite things in life were “great food and very young girls.”

Producers are honorable people
.

S
aid writer/director John Huston about producer Sam Spiegel, the winner of three Oscars for best picture: “If you had committed murder, a totally unjustified act of which you were guilty as hell, Sam would be one of the two or three friends you would turn to, certain that Sam would help.”

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

You don’t want to seduce your producer.

Actress and Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “Everyone thinks that the one kind of man you find most in Hollywood is the ugly, vulgar producer who smokes big fat cigars. This image is, of course, exaggerated. Some of these ugly, vulgar producers smoke little thin cigars, and nowadays some of the producers are young bearded men who smoke pot.”

Producers are demanding
.

P
roducer Charles Evans advanced me
2 million to write the script of
Showgirls
. When I was more than a month late turning it in, he threatened to sue me unless I agreed to rewrite for free a script that he owned called
Bloodlines
(after I finished writing
Showgirls
).

When I finished
Showgirls
and Carolco agreed to finance the project, Charles Evans received
3.7 million—a
1.7 million profit on his
2 million investment.

But even after he made such a whopping profit, he still insisted that I had to rewrite
Bloodlines
for free.

My lawyers told me I had no choice but to rewrite it. I did.

But my rewrite somehow wasn’t very good.
Bloodlines
was never made.

No one can force you to write anything
.

A
las, as hard as I worked on that free and forced
Bloodlines
rewrite—as much of my heart and soul and guts I put into it—alas, alas, alas, my rewrite was god-awful. But I completed it and Charles Evans couldn’t sue me.

Joel Silver is demanding, too
.

W
hat do you want out of life?” someone asked the producer Joel Silver.

Joel said, “
Everything!
”

So was the great Selznick
.

P
roducer David O. Selznick, looking back at his career: “I was a pig. I worked so hard and waited so long, I got piggish and wanted everything.”

How to deal with a European producer
…

Q
uote Paddy Chayefsky to him in your first meeting. Paddy said, “You America-haters bore me to tears. Europe was a brothel long before we came to town.”

The Nipple Check

A producer’s role at the casting call.