I bought a bottle of Kaopectate as soon as I reached the hotel.
No joke. For the first several years, whenever I was in Los Angeles, I went nowhere without a bottle of Kaopectate hidden in a brown paper bag.
The summer I spent working with George Hill on Butch Cassidy, I rented a house in Santa Monica for my family and I commuted every day to the Fox lot in Beverly Hills. I hate to drive. As I've indicated, I get lost, but worse, my mind wanders.
So most mornings that summer, I took a taxi to work.
Now that fact probably doesn't seem like it's worth a paragraph, except that in L.A., you just don't do that. It's bizarre, every bit as oddball as strolling the sidewalks of Beverly Hills.
I am not by nature flamboyant, but I think I have never been as colorful as during that Butch Cassidy summer, when I got out of the taxi each day, a script of Butch clutched in one hand, my bottle of Kaopectate in the other.
To repeat: Los Angeles terrifies me.
But my particular crazies are not why I find writing so difficult. It's more this: Everything's so goddam nice out there. Sure, they bitch about their smog, but unless you're a Hawaiian born and bred, the weather is terrific. And so many of the basic necessities of life are made so easy for you: The markets are often open twenty-four hours, nobody snarls at you in the stores when you're trying to buy something. It's all just... swell.
But writing is essentially about going into a room by yourself and doing it. Writing isn't about meetings and it's not about backhands.
And when you have sunshine. And the beach. And a pool. Or access to a pool. And the public tennis courts are open all the time. And the golf course is nearby. And the drive to Big Sur always beckons. Who the hell wants to go into a room and shuffle papers around?
Maybe you can do it breezing. I can't....
The danger of Los Angeles comes with success.
(If some of you just groaned, "Is he crazy?--gimme some of that danger, lemme at it," I wouldn't blame you a bit.)
Sure, success is what we strive for; it's what's drummed into our little heads from the playpen on. And yes, success is better than failure. And "I been poor and I been rich and rich is better."
Here is an alphabetical list of eight successful movie people:
Woody Allen
Paddy Chayefsky
Francis Coppola
John Huston
Nunnally Johnson
Ernest Lehman
Joseph Mankiewicz
Billy Wilder
These were the first eight names that came to me when I asked myself which screenwriters I admire. I'm not saying they're the eight best: If I thought for a little longer, I could come up with eight more I admire just as much. But these will do. What they have in common is this: They all began as screenwriters in movies, but if the names are familiar to you, it's as directors or producers or stars. They all became hyphenates as soon as they could. Why? Strictly guesswork on my part, but I'll have to go with it. More money? Maybe. More power. Absolutely. But I'll bet the primary reason is neither of the above.
It's because just being a screenwriter is simply not enough for a full creative life.
And I'm not using the word creative in a loaded sense--I mean, shit, someone "created" How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.
Creative in the dictionary is defined as "having the power to create," and create means "to bring into being, to cause to exist."
The primary success available to a screenwriter is financial, and that's all well and good for bankers and businessmen, how else would they keep score? But if you are the kind of weird person who has a need to bring something into being, and all you do with your life is turn out screenplays, I may covet your bank account, but I wouldn't give two bits for your soul.
Those of us who were permanently altered by the little engine bringing the toys over the mountain, or Piglet getting rescued with the honey jar, or whatever else it might have been, never daydreamed, as we grew, of becoming Jacqueline Susann. We were after the giants--we wanted to make wonders.
Screenwriting isn't about that.
There is a Women's Liberation term called shitwork and it means work that when it is well done is unnoticed. Like dusting or cleaning. Rare is the husband who walks in from a hard day at the office and says, "Darling, the windows just sparkle, how lovely." But he may well walk in and say, "This place is filthy, what am I breaking my ass for, to come home to a zoo?"
Well, screenwriting is shitwork. Brief example: Waldo Pepper. Waldo was basically an original screenplay of mine, I say "basically" because the pulse of the movie came from George Hill, the director, and we worked for ten days on a story. So Waldo wasn't as "original" as Butch, but it was a hell of a lot more mine than any adaptation I've ever done.
Okay, we open in New York and three daily papers are split--two terrific, one pan.
In neither of the laudatory reviews was my name even mentioned. But you better believe I got top billing in the pan. I had screwed up George Hill's movie.
Nothing unusual at all about that--it's SOP for the screenwriter. That is simply the way of the world. You do not, except in rare, rare exceptions, get critical recognition.
But you do get paid.
And as you get hotter, you get paid more. (Now we're into the danger zone.) You don't get banished to Siberia at Chasen's.
And you get flattered in meetings. And at first you sit there thinking, "Can you believe this asshole, bullshitting me like that?" But the flattery continues as the heat rises. And at first, again, you remind yourself that none of the heat has to do with literary quality, it's because people lined up to see your last picture.
But eventually, inevitably, you say to yourself, "Since so many people tell me I'm a terrific writer, what's my voice against the multitudes? Forget my voice--they're right. I am; check my box-office receipts if you don't believe it--terrific."
And you're finished but you don't know it.
That child who wanted to bring something into existence is long gone. And the only way to save him is this: You must write something else.
Anything else.
Epic poems or rhyming couplets, novels or nonfiction, I don't care. But there has to be an outlet where quality matters, where the world is not measured by the drop in box-office receipts in the second weekend in Westwood.
Maybe I'm crazy; I may be dead wrong. Maybe you know people who have spent their lives doing nothing but writing screenplays. If you do, ask them about the road not taken....
So why go to L.A. at all?
For the same two reasons I would urge a young playwright to do his best to get to New York; one of the reasons being practical, the other emotional.
To begin with the practical: Simply put, they know things out there the rest of the country doesn't, and they get that information first. The movie business is a part of the fabric of life in Los Angeles, and that just isn't true anywhere else. It is, if you will, in the air.
Take, for example, Porky's.
It is now the first week in May '82, and since I began writing, Porky's has opened. With no stars. And no name director. And less than flattering reviews.
It's still too soon to say what the final fate of the movie may be, but it's certainly a freak hit, and there are many who feel it will end up as the most popular comedy in the history of American films.
Now, if you're sitting in Chicago, or Miami, and you saw Porky's in April and you sat there thinking, "I can do better than this," and you went home and set to work on a screenplay dealing with the sexual awakening of teen-agers, and you did a wonderful piece of work, really quality stuff, and you had an aunt who went to grammar school with a kid who now works in the legal department of the William Morris office, and you asked her would she get it to him, and she did, and he loved it, and he got it to a top Morris agent, and he loved it, you know what?
It would all have been an exercise in futility.
The Morris agent would read the script and think, "Too bad, if only I'd had it six m
onths ago."
Six months ago? The movie just opened.
But they knew. They knew late last fall, the Fox people did, because they had test marketed the film and it had done sensationally. Now, they couldn't have predicted that it would become the present phenomenon. But they sure were aware they had something.
And everyone else in the business out there knew the same damn thing. And you better bet that before Porky's opened, every studio had at least two Porky's rip-offs in development. And when Porky's II opens--believe me, there will be a Porky's II--it will have been preceded by maybe three or four similar films.
The word on a film starts before the film starts.
"Hollywood" is basically a very small community, and there are precious few secrets. When a studio gives a green light to a project, before casting or crew is completed, a lot of people know the project well: Remember that the majority of films have been turned down already by the majority of studios. (Probably a slight overstatement, but only slight.)
Now, as principal photography approaches, there are hundreds of people working on it. And they know, collectively, thousands of people, the majority of whom work in the picture business. And these technicians are talkative and, since everyone's a critic, opinionated. "The director's on the sauce, brace yourself" "The goddam girl's all wrong, shit, we could have really had somethin'." "I don't know, it all feels awfully good so far." And like that.
Then, when photography starts, any number of people are seeing the "dailies"--snippets of film that make up the previous day's shooting. Most important of these people are the studio executives, and I have found they are shockingly honest, if you know them, about their product. If a movie's a stiff, they won't come out and directly say that, but they will say, "Perhaps our hopes were a bit too high on that one" or "There really is more, I think, than we're getting on the screen."
And when they really like what they're seeing, they're thrilled--because, among other reasons, we all would like, from time to time, to be involved with something that isn't dreck.
And when they really like it, that word really spreads. (Obviously, "the word" isn't infallible. Sure, people in Sioux City knew that Heaven's Gate was in trouble while it was still shooting, and that turned out to be true. But in my experience, the movie that was in the most talked-about trouble--both real and imagined trouble--was the first Godfather. (There was a famous story, I suspect true, about Francis Coppola returning from a final location trip in preproduction and getting off a plane where a wire from his agent awaited him, saying, "Don't quit. Make them fire you,")
Once shooting is over and there is a rough cut of the film available, studios often have screenings for their own personnel. I remember a secretary at Paramount talking to me months before Saturday Night Fever was released. And remember that at this time, Travolta was just another poster pretty boy from a schlock tv series. And she said, "I saw Saturday Night Fever and I loved it and John Travolta is sensational, I don't care what anybody says." I was not surprised at the success of that movie, primarily because of that quick conversation. She didn't have to bring it up, I didn't ask her about it--she just plain loved the film and couldn't stop talking about it.
That may seem trivial to you, but there has yet to be a movie that was damaged by wonderful word of mouth.
After these studio screenings, most films have "sneaks," and that's when you really begin to get a strong sense of fate.
Two giant musicals are going to open in the next months or so--maybe a hundred million dollars cost between them, counting prints and advertising and publicity. They are Annie and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The reaction I've heard on Annie has been mixed. Some say "tremendous" and others say "bland." But everyone has said that it will do business. And so I suspect it will.
About Whorehouse I have heard--absolutely nothing. Not a syllable. Which leads me to suspect it's in trouble. We shall see.
The only reason I'm reasonably current is because I've been researching this book for a long time now and I'm making an effort to talk to a lot of people and ask a lot of questions. But ordinarily, since I live and work in New York, I'm pretty much like everybody else: I know what I read in the papers.
Out there, though, even an introverted loner at USC film school knows more than I do now. Sure, a lot of successful movie people live in the East or San Francisco. But how many of them started there? And how many of those were screenwriters?
It just seems to me to be common sense to start in the center, in the town where there is the most interest and activity. I think if I wanted a screenwriting career today, I would go along with Mr. Greeley. L.A.'s a great place to visit.
And there's no law that says you've got to stay....
Enough of practical matters. The emotional reason is at least as important.
I don't think most people realize--and there's no reason they should--the amount of demeaning garbage you have to take if you want a career in the arts. I mean, going off to med school is something you can say with your head high. Or being a banker or going into insurance or the family business--no problem.
But the conversations I had with grown-ups after college...
"So you're done with school now, Bill."
"That's right."
"So what's next on the agenda?"
Pause. Finally I would say it: "I want to be a writer."
And then they would pause. "A writer."
"I'd like to try."
Third and final pause. And then one of two inevitable replies: either "What are you going to do next?" or "What are you really going to do?"
That dread double litany... What are you going to do next?... What are you really going to do?... What are you going to do next?... What are you really going to do...?
The first ("What are you going to do next?") implying failure.
The other ("What are you really going to do?") implying that my life's daydream wasn't a serious occupation.
That may not sound like much to you, and maybe it isn't, but, you see, I had a secret: I knew they were right. Maybe not about the seriousness of being a writer, but there was no doubt in my mind that I would fail.
I would have been crazy to think otherwise. I came from a businessman's family and I lived in a businessman's town. At Oberlin, I took the one class they offered then in creative writing. There were maybe a dozen of us, and the eleven others all took it for one reason: It was a gut course. I was the only one who wanted to write. All the others got grades of B or better. I got the only C.
In summer school at Northwestern I took another writing class. I don't know about anyone else's ambitions, but the result was the same: I got by far the worst grade.
At Oberlin there was a literary magazine and I was the fiction editor. There was also a poetry editor and an overall head of the magazine. Everything was submitted anonymously and every issue I would sneak in a story and the three of us would meet and I would listen while they both agreed whoever wrote this thing (my thing) was not about to get published. I was the fiction editor and I couldn't get my own stuff included.
When I came to New York in '54 I remember going to a party. I am not good at parties. My SATs in partygoing are among the lowest in history. But there was this girl there, a native--Sarah Lawrence, I think--and we were gamely going through the motions and she said where are you from and I said where are you from and she said where do you live and blah blah blah until she asked, "What do you do?"
I told her. "I want to be a writer."
And on that, she literally turned her back, but before she did there came a look on her face and she said it: "Oh, another one."
... Oh, another one....
When you are Jamie Wyeth and you are starting out to paint, well, Daddy did okay. But most of us are entering uncharted ground, and we have hope, but we also know the odds against us. Failure keeps us company.
And that's almost the only company we have. Because no one's going to do it for you. We have tunes in our he
ads, but what if they stink? We have color and composition dancing behind our eyes, but what if no one cares?
If you think we're a long way from Los Angeles now, I disagree. Every taxi driver out there is just an actor between jobs, that's in the city charter. And of course we know that every shop girl fantasizes being Streisand.
But you would be amazed how many screenwriters there are stocking the grocery shelves at Ralph's or waiting on tables in Westwood. They are multitudes, and even if you're the King of the Nerds, you can't help but meet them. And talk to them. And drink with them and bitch about the Industry and argue about craft. In other words, if you want to be a screenwriter and you live in Des Moines, that's a terrible curse to bear. It's a terrible curse in Los Angeles, too--but at least you're not alone.
And oh boy, when you're beginning, does that matter....
Agents
Agents are the Catch-22 of the movie business: Everybody starting out desperately needs one and nobody starting out can possibly get one.
My memory is that in the years I've been around the business, whenever I meet anyone interested in screenwriting, there is really only one question on their minds: How do I get an agent? No one starts out by inquiring after craft or the color of Paul Newman's eyes. It's always "I need an agent, how can I get one, how?"
Obviously, it's impossible.
But you can try. Intelligently. Before getting to that though, this question ought to be answered first: What can an agent actually do for you?
Nothing magical.
If you've written Fire Maidens from Outer Space or Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula, not even the legitimately legendary Lew Wasserman at his peak could have snookered David Lean into directing your efforts.
But the major agents can save incredible amounts of time. If, say, Sam Cohn of ICM wants to deal with Paramount, more than likely he will not call any of the numberless executives that work for the company, he will dial Barry Diller, the boss. And Diller will take the call. Because he knows not only Cohn's client list, he knows Cohn and he knows Cohn wouldn't be calling unless there was a project of genuine value to market.