The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (72 page)

T
AKE IT FROM ZSA ZSA

Don’t marry an actor.

Actress and famed Hungarian femme fatale Zsa Zsa Gabor: “When you are married to an actor, you have the feeling you are nothing but an understudy to him. He only has eyes for himself. It is really the one situation I know of where, with just two people, you have a triangle! Both of you, madly in love with
him.
They probably have these big ego problems because deep inside, they are not secure, like little boys. There is a saying that an actress is something more than a woman and an actor is something less than a man.”

Please, Bill, you’re embarrassing me
.

S
creenwriter William Goldman: “I have worked with Redford. I have been in a room with Beatty. They are brilliant men, passionate about what they produce, and boy are they not dumb. Well, Michael Douglas is their equal. And Douglas did something no other actor did with me—he spent
time
. On the script. Going over it and over it. Actors just don’t do that. They are simply too busy. But Douglas spent literally days locked in a room with me and with Stephen Hopkins, who did a wonderful job directing the movie.”

Oh boy, Bill, I know you think it’s about
the next job
, but you don’t have to be this
desperate
to get one, do you? You “have been in a room with Beatty”? Hallelujah, man! They’re “brilliant” and “passionate” and “wonderful”? Have you no gag reflex left?

Michael Douglas, in my experience, is not brilliant and may very well, in some cases, be dumb. This is the guy who wanted to change the ending of
Basic Instinct
because he said it wasn’t “redemptive.” Pressed, he said he was the star of the movie and “she one-ups me at every turn.” The ending he wanted was for himself to shoot Sharon in the final scene. Even when the movie came out and was a huge hit, he kept bellyaching and asking, “Where’s the redemption?”

If he’s so brilliant, then why doesn’t he understand that not every movie has to end (especially in film noir) with redemption? And that ambiguity is a much more interesting way to go than redemption, which is, at the same time, a disguised way of soothing a star’s ego.

You don’t want theater tickets, do you?

A
gent Swifty Lazar: “The actor Jacob Adler induced some actress to sleep with him, only to have her hit him up for money. ‘Mr. Adler,’ she told him, ‘I need bread!’ To which he replied, ‘Then fuck a baker. Fuck an actor, you get theater tickets.’ ”

This means Robert McKee is a great actor
.

T
he better the actor,” said screenwriter/novelist Truman Capote, “the more stupid he is.”

Billy Friedkin agrees.

Friedkin: “I’d rather work with tree stumps than actors.”

To get actress Angie Everhart into the right frame of mind for her character in
Jade
, Friedkin slapped her. He also slapped a bit actor, a priest, on the set of
The Exorcist
.

Mike Nichols agrees, too.

Asked how many smart actors he knew, Nichols said, “One and half—Anthony Perkins is smart, and Richard Burton is something.”

Barbara Kingland, who had an affair with Richard Burton when she was thirteen, was impressed by all the wise things Burton was always saying to her—until, when she was older, she found them in
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
.

Drew Carey studies Robert McKee
.

C
omedian Drew Carey has taken Robert McKee’s screenwriting course twice—which means he’s spent sixty hours listening to him.

John Cleese studies Robert McKee
.

T
he comedian John Cleese has taken the Robert McKee screenwriting seminar three times. In other words, he’s spent ninety hours listening to McKee.

Joan Rivers studies Robert McKee
.

C
omedian Joan Rivers has taken Robert McKee’s screenwriting course—but only once.

Actors can be smart
.

D
ebra Winger called me at midnight in California from the
Betrayed
set in Canada. She said she had a script idea.

I listened. Then I told her why her idea was uninspired.

She listened. Then she said, “You’re right, damn you!” and hung up.

An Immersive Actor

An actor who never steps out of the part, a potential Oscar winner, a phony, a pain in the ass.

But actors aren’t geniuses
.

M
ontgomery Clift turned down the Marlon Brando role in
On the Waterfront
, the William Holden role in
Sunset Boulevard
, the Paul Newman role in
Somebody Up There Likes Me
, and the James Dean role in
East of Eden
.

Actors aren’t narcissistic, either
.

J
ennifer Aniston: “The last thing we think about is our looks, even though people think we do, because our wardrobe and hair are so great.”

Actors are human; they’re insecure, too
.

I
f an actor says, “My character wouldn’t do that,” it usually means the actor is afraid he can’t act that scene.

Jim Carrey: “When the camera’s on, I’m a desperate motherfucker.”

Actors are dumb
.

F
or many years, Robert De Niro, always brilliant on-screen, couldn’t even say two words on his own. He’d sit there, not speaking, stuck inside the mannerisms of the last character he’d played on-screen—woefully, miserably, pathetically lost without the words of a script.

But actors are no dummies
.

W
hen she was in her midforties, Sharon Stone legally adopted a woman as her grandmother.

The woman was a multizillionaire wife of a New York City parking magnate.

Actors are sensitive
.

S
haron Stone told the English press that she was so “traumatized” by having to do killing scenes in
Basic Instinct
that during those scenes, she asked that paramedics be near with a tank of oxygen and a mask in case she passed out.

It was a complete crock. She was as ruthlessly efficient in her killing scenes as she was in her sex scenes.

Actors are so very sensitive
.

S
haron went up to the
Basic Instinct
cinematographer with a gun in hand and waved it in his face.

“If I see one ounce of cellulite on-screen,” she said, “you’re a dead motherfucker.”

You, too, can create a monster
.

S
haron Stone: “People who have seen
Basic
stand two feet away from me. They speak to me in careful tones. They don’t condescend to me at all anymore.”

Beware of “ach-trusses.”

S
haron Stone put a clause in her
Diabolique
contract that she wouldn’t do any nudity.

Here’s my two bucks
.

S
haron Stone to Carrie Fisher: “I’ve often thought that if I could get a 900 number and charge all the people who say they’ve had sex with me—or say they know someone who’s had sex with me—two dollars a call, I’d never have to work again.”

Maybe it’s not such a good idea to sleep with your leading lady
.

A
ctor James Woods to actress Sharon Stone: “Look, Sharon, maybe everyone can’t wait to get in there, but once they get it in, the big problem is getting it out again.”

Some actors have guts
.

A
s feminists everywhere were trashing
Basic Instinct
after the movie’s release, actress Demi Moore, who had been offered the Stone part, told the press that she was upset at herself for having turned it down.

She particularly liked the scene where Catherine Tramell is interrogated by a roomful of policemen. Demi thought it was “the best female empowerment scene in movie history.”

The Suicide Years

Used in reference to actresses who are in their thirties.

Actors are nutcases
.

M
arlon Brando’s contracts for many years specified that he could leave the set in the midafternoon to see his shrink.

Actors can’t write
.

H
udson Hawk
, one of the great total disasters of our time, was cowritten by Bruce Willis, who also cowrote the title song, which also bombed.

Not even Warren can write
.

J
ohn Gregory Dunne: “Warren Beatty does not write as much as he supervises, in the manner of an architect.
Teams of writers
in effect work under the pseudonym Warren Beatty.”

Be careful making suggestions to actors
.

S
aid George C. Scott to Paddy Chayefsky when Paddy tried to give him some acting tips: “You do your fucking writing! And I’ll do the acting!”

But actors can be mellow
.