At any rate, I was in that mood of impotence when I read a very short article one morning in the Daily News dealing with the Boston Strangler. All the paper reported that day was a new theory that had begun to gain credence: Perhaps there were two Boston Stranglers, not one.
I was living then on Eighty-sixth Street and my office was two short blocks uptown and on that trip that day, something happened to me that never occurred either before or since: A novel literally dropped into my head. Full blown. Based on the simple idea that what if there were two stranglers and what if one of them got jealous of the other.
At my desk I scribbled down one note after another, each of them shorthanding a scene. Done, I looked at it and didn't know what the hell I had. Because what I wanted to write was the last four or five hundred pages of Boys and Girls Together and what I held in my hands sure wasn't that. Was it another trick? Was it something to take me further from where I desperately needed to go? What if I started this one, got halfway through it and came up dry again? Much worse off than before, doubly blocked.
I talked about it with some friends and thought about it before deciding if I flew through the strangler notion--it was to become No Way to Treat a Lady--maybe it would unblock me. But as a hedge against disaster, I gave myself ten days only to do the strangler book. At the end of that time, if I was done, terrific; if not, pitch it.
In order to give myself added confidence, I wrote the book with as many chapters as I could. Even if a chapter was no more than a paragraph, I could start another page at the top. I could get moving. Get something, anything, under way.
I got it done in the allotted time. It looked a little weird--160 pages and 53 chapters. But it was a book that eventually got published under a pseudonym, Harry Longbaugh, the real name of the Sundance Kid. This was six years before the Western came out, but I had been researching the material for a good four years and I loved his name.
Enter Robertson.
He called and asked if we could meet. We did so that evening. He explained that the quality work of his career to that time was mainly on television, and when movies came to be made of the tv shows, he had not gotten the parts. The Hustler and Days of Wine and Roses were two roles he'd lost out on. So in this case, he explained, he'd optioned the basic material, a short story by Daniel Keyes entitled "Flowers for Algernon." (The resulting movie, Charly, won Robertson an Academy Award for Best Actor.)
Robertson went on to explain that he'd gotten hold of my strangler "treatment" and liked it. I remember thinking, "Treatment? That was a novel." But probably the odd look of the thing, all those chapters, accounted for his thinking. None of this is important, except to note that I entered the movie business based on a total misconception.
He gave me a copy of Keyes's story and asked if I would read it and, if I liked it, write a screenplay. I said of course. He left. I read the story as soon as he was gone. It was a glorious piece of work about a retarded man who becomes, briefly, a genius because of a scientific experiment. The experiment, however, fails, and at the end Charly is retarded again.
It was midnight now and I said to my wife, Ilene, that I'd finished it and she said how was it and I said just wonderful and we talked for a few minutes more all very calmly until suddenly it hit me--
--I didn't know what the hell a screenplay looked like!
Madness.
I tore down to Times Square, where there was an all-night bookstore. There aren't shelves full of books on screenwriting even now, but back then, what we have today seems like a gusher. I nervously asked the clerk did he have any books on what a screenplay looked like and he sort of nervously waved me back in the general direction of the rear of the place. Everyone was nervous in Times Square at two in the morning, then and now, in bookstores or on the streets. The other few customers eyed me strangely and I suppose I gave as good as I got. God knows what they were doing there, pushing, dozing, maybe bookworms with insomnia or other budding screenwriters; they went their way, I mine. I don't know how long I took, but there was one copy of one book with the word screenwriting in the title so I grabbed it, blew away (truly) the dust, clocked the contents table, flicked through until I finally got to the pages that showed what a screenplay looked like.
More madness.
To this day I remember staring at the page in shock. I didn't know what it was exactly I was looking at, but I knew I could never write in that form, in that language.
The book is gone from my library now, lost probably in some move or another, but the form is still clear, and what I would like to do now is take a famous scene--I have chosen the shirt scene from Gatsby--and put it in the form that so threw me.
For those who may not know the plot, it's simply this: Gatsby, a bootlegger, is showing Daisy and his friend Nick around his famous house. Gatsby and Daisy knew each other before. Daisy is married now. Gatsby is still terribly and obsessively in love with her. Here goes--
100. EXT. THE LAWN OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.
GATSBY leads NICK and DAISY toward his mansion. It has never seemed larger or more impressive. DAISY stops for a moment, looking around, admiring it all.
101. EXT. THE LAWN OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. MED. SHOT.
GATSBY glances at her. Excited, doing his best to control it. After a moment, they move on.
102. INT. THE MUSIC ROOM OF GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.
The room is enormous, ornate. Done in the style of Marie Antoinette. GATSBY leads NICK and DAISY through.
103. INT. THE MAIN SALON IN GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.
Another ornate, impressive room. The style here is Restoration. GATSBY, NICK and DAISY wander through, continuing their tour.
104. INT. THE MAIN SALON IN GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. MED. SHOT.
GATSBY hasn't once ceased looking at DAISY. It is as if he is reevaluating everything in his house according to the response it draws from her well-loved eyes.
105. INT. THE MAIN STAIRCASE IN GATSBY'S HOUSE. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.
The staircase is as large and impressive as everything else we've seen. GATSBY leads them up. At the top of the stairs is a door. He opens it, beckons them inside.
106. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. ESTABLISHING SHOT.
The room is simple, in sharp contrast to what we have seen before. There is a dresser on which is a toilet set of pure dull gold. There are two hulking cabinets. A bed. Little more.
107. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U.
DAISY, with delight, takes the brush from the toilet set and smooths her hair.
108. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT.
GATSBY begins to laugh hilariously. He has been so full of the idea of having her here for so long, has waited at such an inconceivable pitch of intensity that now, in his reaction, he is beginning to run down like an overwound clock.
GATSBY
(still laughing, he looks at NICK)
It's the funniest thing, old sport. I can't--when I try to--
109. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. LONG SHOT.
GATSBY recovers, goes to the two hulking cabinets, opens them.
110. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U.
The cabinets hold his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
111. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. LONG SHOT.
GATSBY
I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.
112. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U.
GATSBY takes out a pile of shirts and begins throwing them into the air where they land on the bed. Shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lose their folds as they fall in many-colored disarray.
113. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT.
NICK watches GATSBY throwing the shirts, watches DAISY as she admires them.
114. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. MED. SHOT.
GATSBY takes an
other pile, throws them into the air toward the bed.
115. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U.
The shirts fill the air, shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue.
116. INT. GATSBY'S BEDROOM. DAY. C.U.
Suddenly, with a strained sound, DAISY bends her head into the shirts and begins to cry.
DAISY
They're such beautiful shirts.
(she sobs on, her voice muffled in the thick folds)
It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before.
This scene from the novel (the writing is mainly Mr. Fitzgerald's) is one of the most moving in a desperately moving book. We know damn well Daisy isn't weeping over the beauty of the cloth or the quality of the tailoring, she's mourning what's happened to her life.
Not only is this one of the high points of the book, it works on film. It worked in the recent version when Redford played the title role. My God, it even worked with Alan Ladd in the lead. But it sure doesn't work here. Why?
Because the form of the screenplay is basically unreadable. Everything brings your eye up short. All those numbers on both sides of the page and those Christ-awful abbreviations and the INT.'s and the EXT.'s and on and on. None of that has any bearing on what we are talking about. It has nothing to do with screenwriting, nor with the selling version of the script.
Those are all for the other technicians when the movie actually shoots. The shot numbers, for example, are for the schedule maker. If we're going to shoot Gatsby's bedroom, he will indicate that tomorrow's work will entail shots 106 through 116. Which lets the production designer know he better damn well have the bedroom set finished. And wardrobe can read this and think, ooops, better get those damn shirts folded and the suits and dressing gowns on hangers.
All that matters emotionally to the scene is the hairbrush and the shirts. The sight of her delightedly touching her hair with his brush sends him slightly out of control, and he begins flinging the shirts in the air because there are no words. He tried to talk, couldn't finish his thought, so to do something, anything, he begins grabbing and throwing his shirts.
Back in Forty-second Street of course, at two in the morning, I was a long way from Gatsby. I bought the book and taxied home, wondering how in the world I was ever going to try and write a screenplay.
Some weeks later, I got a call about Masquerade.
Masquerade was sort of a gentle spy parody (the James Bond craze had hit) concerning a failed soldier of fortune who gets involved with trying to protect the child heir to the throne of an Arab oil country. He doesn't protect him very well, adventures ensue, all ends reasonably happily. Rex Harrison was to play the lead but he dropped out, Robertson replaced him.
Dialog had to be altered to fit the new star, and to my astonishment (because he hadn't read the Flowers for Algernon script yet) Robertson wanted me to do the altering. I met with the English producer Michael Ralph, and after the standard case of writer's panic, I went to England to attempt the job.
Five points quickly to be made about that experience.
One: Since the picture was already well into preproduction--locations, casting, etc., were pretty much set--most of what I did was what I'd been hired to do: fuss with the dialog. This basically reenforced my misconception that screenplays were dialog, that talk was the crucial contribution the writer could supply.
Two: A single sequence might be mentioned. Two-thirds of the way through the picture, Robertson finds himself trapped in a large circus cage that is set in the middle of a barn. (The circus people are in on the kidnapping and have trapped Cliff and imprisoned him.) Next to Robertson's cage is another large cage containing a monstrous and very hungry vulture. Now the circus people leave for a conference, but one of them stupidly leaves a large ring of keys on a nail maybe ten feet away.
Robertson spots the keys, and when the villains have left him, he tries reaching for the keys, but it's obviously hopeless. Then he realizes the monster bird is sitting on a couple of long bamboo perches. Sucking it up, he reaches into the bird's arena, tries slipping one of the perches out. The bird, naturally, has a certain territorial sense and pecks the hell out of Robertson's hands. But he perseveres and, knuckles bleeding, frees a piece of bamboo, reaches with it for the ring of keys.
Still too short.
Balefully, he eyes the vulture, takes a breath, and goes back into the cage again, hands getting zapped worse than before. It really smarts, but there's nothing else he can do, and after great effort he grabs the second piece of bamboo, ties it to the first, goes to the bars of his cage, reaches just as far as he ever can, tries to get the shaky bamboo pole around the rings, can't quite get it, tries again and again until God smiles, he lifts the ring of keys from the nail, raises the pole up so that, at last, the keys slide along it, and when they're close enough he grabs them, puts them in the lock of the cage--
--and they don't fit, they're the wrong keys.
I guess this was the first reversal I ever wrote, but it sure wasn't the last. Because that's what a lot of screenwriting is: putting new twists on old twists. The audience is so quick, so smart, they grasp things immediately, and if you give them what they expect, if they reach the destination ahead of you, it's not easy for them to find it in their hearts to forgive you.
Three: I went to Spain with the production when shooting was about to begin, in case there were last minute adjustments that needed doing. The day before principal photography, I was walking in the hills with the director and the production designer. The purpose of the walk was to discuss a location for a vehicle crash. We found the spot and stopped.
The plot involved simply the capturing of Robertson by the villains. He was being driven along the road in a limousine and the villains were to roar out from hiding in a wine truck, surprising the driver. There would then be the crash and the capture.
The designer pointed to the side road and the hiding place and started to talk. "What I thought we might do is this," he said. "Here comes the Cadillac limo. Now we cut to the wine truck starting to block the route. Then cut back to the driver, surprised, trying to avoid the collision. Then back to the wine truck. Then we have the sound of the crash and we cut to the limo on its side, wheels spinning, and inside the driver is unconscious and Robertson is stunned. They pull him out, dump him in the wine truck, and drive off."
To which the director replied, "I think that's perhaps the most cliched description of a crash I've ever heard in all my life."
Silence for a while. The designer pulled on his cigarette. These were two very English men, and very proper. "You really think it's that terrible, do you?" the designer asked.
"Absolutely the worst," the director answered.
Now the designer flicked away his cigarette and turned to face the director. "I have a suggestion, then," he said. "Give me..." and now he paused for emphasis. "Give me two fucking Rolls-Royces I can destroy and I'll give you the greatest fucking crash you've ever seen."
They went on chatting and I went on listening and what it was, of course, was the first discussion of budgets I'd ever heard. (Not only couldn't we buy and destroy two Rolls-Royces, we couldn't even destroy the Cadillac: I found out later it was rented and had to be returned unscratched.)
I had always assumed, until then, that what you saw on the screen was what was meant to be on the screen.
Wrong.
A crucial if not the crucial problem of every film today is what it will cost. And within that context, how can you make what you've got to spend look like something. "It's all up there on the screen" is a common expression in Hollywood, and it has a positive meaning: We can see where the money went.
Masquerade was, as stated, of the James Bond genre, but it didn't have a James Bond budget. A Bond film would have wrecked two Rollses. Or whatever else they felt would be telling: They're meant to be expensive, part of their appeal is their scope.
Masquerade wasn't like that; nor are most pictures. That's why producers and directors fight like hell for every penny they can get to spend. Probably it's fair to say that nobody shoots what they really want, not all the time.
They shoot what they can afford.
Four: My first day on the set.
Probably I have been more excited in my life, but not often. Watching a movie, a real live movie, actually being made was something I'd never dreamed of, even six months before.
(I suppose it was similar to the first time I ever went backstage in a Broadway theatre. I was in my middle teens and visiting New York and a cousin of mine had gone to high school with Judy Holliday, who was starring in her greatest hit, "Born Yesterday." After the matinee my cousin escorted me backstage to Miss Holliday's dressing room. We were introduced, I doubt that I managed to get out more than "Hello" and "Thank you" before I was ushered out. The entire encounter may have taken five minutes, more likely two.
To me, today, it still seems like hours. I'd never met an actress, much less a star. I have no artistic sense whatsoever. Even my stick figures stink.
But I could draw that room. I remember every goddam thing about it. The size, the color of the walls, the pictures hung there. I remember the bright lights on her dressing table, all the jars of makeup, the color of her hair, the texture of her skin, the angle of her neck as she looked up and smiled so sweetly at me. A lot of people believe Judy Holliday died years ago.
I am not among them.)
Back to that Spanish morning in 1964.
A shot was being set up when I got there and I remember being surprised by two things most of all: the heat of the lights and the incredible number of people on the set. It wasn't a big picture, but there had to be over a hundred technicians.