Read Which Lie Did I Tell? Online
Authors: William Goldman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Film & Video, #Nonfiction, #Performing Arts, #Retail
Which Lie Did I Tell? (20 page)
Hopkins had to go back to his torment and I found myself talking, for the first time in my life, with Gene Hackman. (I had written his previous movie,
The Chamber
—a total wipeout disaster, although not his fault or mine, and the reason I left it out of this
Adventures
section is, while it was a terrible experience, it wasn’t a very interesting one, and besides, I never saw the movie and neither did anyone else, so no one would give a shit. This kind of thing happens in the picture business—meeting someone even though you “worked together” before—where not only do writers get fired by failed directors, but the relay-race nature of the operation means that you only meet people who work the same time you do. And since writers are there at the start, and composers, say, are there at the end, I am not all that familiar with anyone who has ever scored a film I’ve been involved with.)
At any rate, Hackman and I are talking and then Eastwood comes over. I note, meaninglessly, that we are all kind of tall, unusual in Hollywood. Eastwood says, quietly, “We’re ready for you, Gene.” Hackman leaves us and Eastwood says how much he loves working with Hackman. I ask why Hackman in particular. “Because I never have to give him direction,” Eastwood replied. Then he said this:
“I like working with actors who don’t have anything to prove.”
Wonderful line, that.
The shot has been set up. Hackman, as President Richmond, is still blind drunk in the bedroom.
Scott Glenn plays the Secret Service man,
Burton, who, along with his partner, Collin, has just shot the woman dead. The scene was written like this:
Hackman is getting comfortable, lying on the bed. Scott Glenn waits in position. Hackman is the Gene Hackman we all know—then, suddenly, with nothing happening at all, he is blind drunk. Which is when Eastwood says softly, “Go when you want, Gene.”
A pause.
Then he gets it dead solid perfect.
Eastwood says softly, “Thank you very much,” and we are on to the next setup.
Look, I’m not praising his speed here. (We were nine days ahead of schedule at this point.) That’s just the way he works. Partially because he can’t stand waste, partially because what he wants more than anything on earth is to finish and get out to the golf course.
But what was so wonderful for me, after all these years, was the sheer professionalism. He is really the Mr. Abbott of the movie business. Being around the atmosphere he creates, I actually felt good about being in the picture business.
It can be so awful. The
ego-ridden stars inflicting their inadequacies on the rest of us. (
John Cleese, a friend, once made this observation: “Stars seem to think that their problems are more important than anything
else on earth and must take precedence over everything.”) The terror-stricken executives, in whose mouths the truth is so often a foreign object. The directors, panicked that you will find out how truly small their talent is. So they punish and fire, confident that the executives are too paralyzed to do anything about it.
Absolute Power
is not a great movie.
But for me it was a great experience.
Heffalumps!!!
“I saw a Heffalump today, Piglet.”
“What was it doing?” asked Piglet.
“Just lumping along,” said Christopher Robin.
For reasons lost to time, I have always thought of screenplays as being like Heffalumps, these strangely shaped
things
that no one really knows much about, such as what they look like, or are
supposed
to look like, or actually what they
do
(especially if aroused).
I think most people are intimidated by the way screenplays look when they first see them. (I know I was.) Now I read them as easily as fiction, as do most people in the business. It just requires a little familiarity.
In this section, you’re going to look at six movie scenes you already know, starting with Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Zipper Scene from
There’s Something About Mary
and Nora Ephron’s Orgasm Scene from
When Harry Met Sally.
These, and the others you’ll come to, are in different styles and come at different points in their respective movies, but what they all do, brilliantly, is thicken and improve the story.
I picked these scenes because I find them among the best I’ve read. I also talked to most of the writers about their scenes, how they came about, all kinds of good stuff.
Enough. We are now going to examine some Heffalumps.
And try not to be intimidated by how they look. Maybe even, if we’re lucky, get comfortable having them around.
First, I’m going to ask a favor from you now, and this is it:
(1)—turn to the next page, glance at it—but
don’t read it.
(2)—then go right on to the page after that.
Got it? Turn. Glance. Go on. Okay, show me what you’re made of.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
All right, class, what was it?
A description of a snowy place somewhere? I think that’s a proper answer, but it’s not what I’m looking for. A dissertation on loneliness by Robert Frost? I won’t argue, but still, not for me. One of the literary masterpieces of the century? I’d go along with that, too, but here’s the answer I want:
It’s a poem.
And why?
Because it
looks
like a poem.
Read it again. Here it is:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Still a (wonderful) poem, isn’t it? Why are we so sure? Because we’re
familiar
with the form. We have been looking at poems our entire life on earth.
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
The Frost poem rhymes. So does the story of Mary and her lamb. Many poems do. But they don’t have to.
Here’s one of my favorites, an all-timer, Johnny D. on a hot streak.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The Donne, besides being so gorgeous, says a lot, at least to me, about the human condition, or, if that’s too phony for a book on screenwriting, then about the way we live now. The creating of beautiful images is a huge weapon for any poet. But
Sappho says a good deal about life on earth in just six words, none of them lush with imagery.
Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop
Tough to be heartbreaking in six words. How did she do it? Here’s another strange-looking poem, somehow just as heartbreaking. (My father drank.)
I want to go on the wagon. Really
I want to, but I like it,
I like it, and I can’t, really,
I mean I can but
I won’t.
Not all poems are heartbreaking, obviously, and obviously not all are short. (Peek at Dante if you want proof.) But all poems have one thing in common. Probably you’ve forgotten from your courses in Basic Lit.
Long, short, doesn’t matter, rhyming, not, the same. All the rest, the same. Except if you can tell me
everything
a poem says more briefly than the poem does, then it isn’t much of a poem.
This next is a poem by E. A. Robinson that had a devastating effect on me. I think I was probably ten or eleven when I came across it, and I didn’t know poems could do this, y’see, tell a story I’d be interested in, because I was a sports nut then and only interested in games. You probably know “Richard Cory,” but if you don’t, let the last line surprise you, as it did me. If you want to read it out loud, that’s not a bad idea.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered while he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
That last line, the suicide, is a big moment in my life. I was going along, reading the story about this Cory, and he was a rich guy, and I figured he lived in a big house near this town he walked in, but he wasn’t some snob, he spoke to anybody and everybody he met along the way, and I liked that about him.
I didn’t know what “fine” meant when it says “in fine,” but I didn’t let that bother me. It was probably an assignment in school and I knew
it couldn’t take too long because I could see the end of the poem when I started reading it—still a huge plus for intellectual me.
Anyway, I knew it was a bad time in the town, money scarce, but this Cory was such a terrific guy
they didn’t resent him.
They wanted to
be
him, sure, but who wouldn’t, this wonderful guy born to money but not conceited or anything, in a time of pain and suffering, who wouldn’t want to be him? You could do what you wanted if you were him, you could leave your lights on all night long in every room of your house if you were him, you could eat the best of whatever the grocer or the butcher had to sell, not just bread and bread and more bread and—
—and then the suicide.
Whoa.
I’m this kid, remember, and what I did was, I knew I had gotten it wrong somehow, missed his pain, so I went back up to the first line and I put my finger under the words and went verrrrry slowly, saying them out loud as my finger moved, and I read that first sentence and what it told me was that Cory was a very big deal when he took his walks. Everybody looked at him, he was so rich and so well dressed and so, well, gorgeous.
So this great guy takes a walk. I had the first sentence nailed.
Second sentence, more of the same, talked to people, a decent down-to-earth millionaire who was so special he
glittered.
Third sentence, we find out he wasn’t just rich, he was richer than a king. And we know he’s human and kind but by now I get it: he’s
perfect.
No wonder we want to be that guy.
I’m ten or eleven, remember, looking for where I goofed, and I start the last stanza—but now I knew the kicker—this Cory is going to blow his brains out. And first line, no clue, we’re working and waiting for light; second line, it’s worse, we’re cursing our bread, which is what life has chosen for us, and then those last two lines, boom, end, and I thought, that’s the most amazing story I ever heard, this wonderful fabulous guy who had everything, every-single-thing, and couldn’t take it anymore.
I don’t think I knew I wanted to be a storyteller then—
Irwin Shaw was the sea change for me a few years down the line. But later, when Shaw gave me the guts to think I might somehow possibly give it a try, one of the thoughts I had then was, Jesus, to be able to tell a story as great as Richard Cory’s, what a thing that would be. I still think that. Hope you do too.
Poems can also, thank God, make us laugh. Here’s Nash’s “Reflections on Ice Breaking.” One of the famous short poems of the century.
| Candy | But liquor |
| Is dandy | Is quicker. |
Here’s another not so famous but for me, funnier.
Dorothy Parker, bitching about life as only she could.
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
“My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one has ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
You will be thrilled to know that poetry class is now over. But I have another favor to ask
—glance back at them.
Really take a minute and I think you’ll be surprised again at the way they look on the page, how different from one another. But we’re not afraid of them, we know they won’t hurt us, they’re just, well, these words put down in a particular way to have a particular effect.
Well, so are screenplays.
They won’t hurt you either. Screenplays
can
make you laugh
and
cry, they can shock and soothe and frighten the shit out of you and make you ache for the love always just out of reach. Screenplays can make a studio head reach for his checkbook and spend a hundred million dollars. Screenplays can make directors and production designers erect entire cities. They can make stars say yes and thereby change forever the lives of the writers who made the story come alive.
But too many of us are still way too wary. We were
not
read them as
children trying to go to sleep. (And if your family
did
read them to you, I don’t want to know about it.)
Get ready now. Here comes the Zipper Scene from
There’s Something About Mary.
Why did I rate
Mary
so highly? Because it’s so funny, sure, but more than that, because it made me care more than anything else in ’98. And these days, caring more is all I care about …