Which Lie Did I Tell? (14 page)

What made Redbeard different was he was a legend even to other professionals. In other words, the greatest hunter in the world.

In the very first draft, his part was relatively small. Patterson was in terrible trouble. The lions had stopped the railroad. Redbeard entered, sized up the situation. Now, I couldn’t have him win immediately, because that would have denigrated the lions. So his hospital idea failed. That helped me, because it gave a chance for even
him
to be impressed by the greatness of the lions. Then he came up with the notion of putting Patterson high up, all alone, in a clearing, on a rickety wooden support. (It was called a “machan,” and in real life it was Patterson’s idea. He had used one before, in India.) Patterson is alone and helpless. Redbeard
is in the area. The Ghost comes. (In real life it circled Patterson for hours and hours, before it struck. Couldn’t use that in the movie, it wouldn’t shoot well.) Then The Ghost attacks, Redbeard wounds it, together they kill it and triumph.

The point now was for the audience to relax. The cavalry had come to the rescue.

Then, the next morning, when Redbeard is eaten, Patterson, poor helpless fellow, would be alone against The Darkness, what chance could
he
possibly have if even Redbeard had failed?

The fact is this: Redbeard worked as a device.

My problem, Doctor, was he worked
too well.
In all the succeeding drafts, the powers that be wanted
more
of him. Obviously, they saw a costarring part. Fine for them.

Biiiig problem for me.

Let me try and explain why.

One of the great exchanges in movie history—I don’t mean “great” in the sense of Shakespearean, because screenwriting isn’t about that; I mean “great” in the sense of being supremely helpful, of defining character—anyway, it’s in
Casablanca,
by the Epsteins and Howard Koch. Probably you remember the moment. Bogart is talking to Claude Rains in front of his club.

Let’s talk about this for a moment. First of all, it is wonderfully elegant dialogue. Witty, plus it makes you laugh out loud. I wish to God I’d written lines as glorious as “I was misinformed.”

But what does it tell us? Well, it could be telling us that Rick is geographically challenged, coming to the desert for a water cure. But I think “I was misinformed” tells us he knew exactly where he was.

What it tells us is this:
Don’t ask.
What is tells us is:
Bad things happened, it’s dark down there, and I will die before I tell you.
A lot of that comes from the dialogue, a lot from the speaker of the dialogue. If the Hansons are in Casablanca, you know it’s because they have a gig there. Or some high school girl they like is taking summer school. But Bogart—Bogart
then
—forty-four years old, with the gravel voice, the sad wrinkled face, that man understands
pain.
And no power on earth will make him talk about it, it’s that awful.

The character of Rick, of course, is very old—he is the
Byronic hero, the tall dark handsome man with a past. Most movie stars—actors, not comedians—have essentially all played that same role. And they have to always face front, never turn sideways—

Because, you see,
there’s nothing to them.
Try and make them full, try and make them real, and guess what? They disappear.

They are not well-rounded figures. No one in that kind of movie is.
Paul Henreid is playing Honor and wonderful Ingrid is playing Anguish and my adored Bogie is playing Wounded Bravery. (When he died, I was working in my really awful pit and one of my roommates knocked on the door and said, “I have to tell you, Humphrey Bogart just died.” I was done with writing for that day. Just before he died, I was riding a bus uptown and passed a movie theater and there was an old Jewish couple sitting behind me and the man said, pointing at the marquee, “Look, it’s a Humphrey Bogart,” and the woman said, “He’s so wonderful.” I wish I’d known him at that moment. So I could have told him. Even
Byronic heroes don’t mind a bit of good news.)

Let me rewrite that exchange for you now. Let’s say Rains is talking not to Bogart, but to
Dooley Wilson.

Think about what that does to one of the greatest of all Hollywood movies.
It makes Rick a wimp. It makes him a loser.
Kills the flick, ruins it, destroys it, makes it an Adam Sandler flick. Never forget the following:

Hollywood heroes must have
mystery.

Okay, back to Billy’s little Redbeard problem. I had written a Byronic hero. He’s Shane. The village is in trouble, he rides in, saves it, rides out. For that very great western directed by the very great
George Stevens, it is crucial that we know
nothing
about the guy. Ever.

The bigger Redbeard’s part became, the more risk for me, because the more you expose that character to the sunlight, the more he starts to fade. Redbeard, in ensuing drafts, kept appearing earlier and earlier. In the finished film, he’s half the picture. I did the best I could, gave him action to do. And did my best to always keep him in shadow, but …

As good as the game. If I speak of his producing life first, it is because that is what he was on
The Ghost and the Darkness
first (the performing decision came later). Here are a few of his producing credits:

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 ever 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. Good days they were too. Michael understood the story, understood Patterson and had ideas of how to improve him, understood Redbeard, the man with no past. I remember saying to Hopkins after, say, six hours in a room, just the three of us, that I had never had that before.

In that room, you forgot he was this Oscar-winning producer and actor. He was just this other, well,
guy
who wanted to improve things. Lots of his ideas were terrific. Lots of them weren’t. But unlike so many stars, you could call it on Douglas. You could tell him his suggestion sucked. And when he would ask why, if you could explain it well enough, he would just make some self-deprecating remark and on we went to the next problem.

If you get the feeling I cannot say too much about Michael Douglas the producer, you are on the money.

In the beginning, a quarter of a century back, I tended to think of him as either this TV sidekick working the streets of San Francisco, or Kirk’s son. But then this unusual thing happened before our eyes: he started getting good, then he
was
good, then he was better than that. Most of the time, stars arrive full-blown.

Douglas was okay in
Coma,
back in ’78. And he was overshadowed by
Jack Lemmon and
Jane Fonda in
The China Syndrome,
the year following. Between ’79 and ’84, he was only in three flicks, none memorable.
Then in ’84 came
Romancing the Stone,
where he was just terrific, the same in the sequel,
The Jewel of the Nile,
in ’85.

It was 1987 when he exploded.
Wall Street
and
Fatal Attraction.
He won the Oscar for the former, deservedly, but I thought he was even better in the other.

After that,
The War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, An American President.

Who’s better?

My answer is: at what he does, no one. And just what does Douglas play so brilliantly? This:
the flawed, contemporary American male.

I now repeat something I wrote earlier in this book. It bears repeating: by the first day of shooting,
the fate of the movie is sealed.
The point, once again, is that if you have prepared the script right, if you have cast it right, both actors and crew, you have a shot. If you have made a grievous error in either script or casting, you are dead in the water.

Val Kilmer was set as Patterson. All the other parts, except Redbeard, were to be played by the best actors we could get who were not going to be prohibitively expensive. A good decision because the lions were also expensive costars.

Redbeard was limited as to number of weeks. We wanted a star at least the size of Kilmer. Ahh, but who?

I will get into this in detail some other time, but personally, I write my star parts for dead or old stars. It helps me define in my head the character I am trying to write. I use Cary Grant a lot, Cagney a lot, and for the women, for years I wrote everything for
Jean Simmons.

Gable would have been fine as Redbeard—he’d played a hunter, and well, in
Red Dust,
later in the remake,
Mogambo.
And since he died so rarely, his death would have been terrific.
John Wayne would have been good too, and he died even less than Gable.

But
Burt Lancaster was my man.

Who did I want today? Eastwood, obviously, who got famous thirty-five years ago playing The Man With No Name in his spaghetti-western period. But I knew that was ridiculous, because he never plays supporting roles. And though Redbeard clearly was the star in his time on screen, he was also clearly a supporting role.

Connery would have been perfect.

We went to Connery, had high hopes, made a good offer—but
Jerry Bruckheimer made a much better one, grabbed him for
The Rock.
(And a great move it turned out to be—I don’t think the movie works nearly as well without Connery.)

Back to square one.

Tony Hopkins came next. For me, along with
Morgan Freeman, the two best movie actors of the era. I had no idea what Hopkins would have done with the part, but it would have been fascinating.

He had, I think, agency problems at the time, and was not in a position to accept anything when we needed him. (Understand that if I am not as accurate or juicy in these paragraphs as you want me to be, it is because of this: screenwriters tend not to know this kind of stuff.)

Square one again.

My memory is we were thinking very seriously about going to the French star
Gerard Depardieu when the earth moved.

Michael decided to play the part himself.

My initial reaction was delight. He is a major star, he gave the movie all the weight it would need. He also ensured against any catastrophe that the movie would get made.

More than that, I knew the script would be protected because I had spent hours and days with him going over it and I knew he understood where the strengths were.

But shit, as we all know, has a way of happening.

The first thing that went was the name.

No big deal, you are probably thinking, and of course, you are correct. It is not a big deal. Except writers are
nuts
—that is a law in the State of California as you no doubt know—and we
love
the names we give our made-up friends and acquaintances. A lot of us can’t even
start
until we know our people’s names.

I loved “Redbeard.” I thought it was a terrific name; and I thought it was helpful in trying to make the guy mythic. Just that single word, those two syllables and you were talking about someone whose exploits had filled the nights beside a thousand campfires.

I lucked into the name Remington pretty quickly. Sold myself that if not as good, at least it didn’t suck. Still the one word, and there was the echo of the gun that was so famous in settling the Wild West.

Sigh of relief.

Then, sharply, I was into nightmare.

Michael wanted Remington to have a history.

This next scene is one of the worst things I’ve ever written. I actually remember my stomach cramping when I did it. It comes the first night Michael Douglas has arrived to save the day. In the background, a
bunch of warriors are getting ready to jump around and give themselves courage. Douglas is talking to Kilmer and Samuel, who is the narrator of the film, a native helping Patterson as best he can. Another native comes up and indicates to Remington that they are ready. Remington leaves and the camp doctor, who has also been present, comments that Remington is indeed a strange man. Here is what Samuel replies to that—get ready, hold your noses.