Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade

  Movie stars must have mystery.

  By now you must be thinking this:

  Well, Bill, why did you do it? I will answer that for you, but the bigger point is this:

  What does a screenwriter do when he is asked to damage his own screenplay?

  This is not an isolated incident. It happens to us all. And it happens a lot, usually because of star insecurity, but directors can fuck things up pretty good, too.

  I did what Douglas wanted. The alternative, of course, was to leave the picture. Which would have been stupid, I think, because the instant I am out the door, someone else is hired to do what I wouldn't.

  In this case I did it for another reason: Douglas's intelligence. I know he must have known what he wanted was horseshit, was damaging to a project in which his name was going to be billed in several places. From those hours in the room with him, I just knew he would see the lack of wisdom in his ways and we could cut it all out in the editing process.

  If you saw the movie, you know it didn't get cut out. His past and his pain is there for all to see. (When the screenplay was printed in a collection, I got rid of all this. Too late, of course, but I felt a little better.)

  Did Michael Douglas suddenly get stupid?

  Nosir. What happened, I think, was that in that room he was a producer, and later he became a performer, a star--with all those terrible feelings of fraudulence stars live with, with all those different insecurities.

  Michael wanted the audience moved when Remington died. That's what I think was at the heart of the changes. And the best way to do that was to win sympathy for Remington. What he succeeded in doing was destroying him.

  Another thing. In Adventures in the Screen Trade I wrote a lot about Dustin Hoffman's less than ideal behavior during Marathon Man. Hoffman always felt he had a problem with himself in the part, which was that he was far too old to be playing a graduate student at Columbia. And of course he was dead right, being close to forty at the time. Well, remember what I wrote about Douglas, what he plays so brilliantly? The flawed, contemporary American male? I underline "contemporary" because I think that might have been the problem for Douglas--playing a man from a different century.

  I think he did not feel he could play it as written, so changes were made to make him more comfortable. To make his character one the audience would care about and be moved by.

  Guess what--when we had our first sneak, one of the questions the audience was asked was to rate the characters in order of how they liked them. And the audience rated Michael Douglas fourth.

  Panic Out There.

  A lot of cuts and pads were made to be sure he was more sympathetic the next sneak. The audience wasn't buying it--they still rated him fourth. Kilmer was third. Now, fellow scriveners, remember this advice--when your two stars are rated below two supporting players, do not put a down payment on that beach house in Malibu.

  The Shoot

  Brutal, as expected.

  I was only in South Africa a couple of times, but a few memories:

  (1) Two of the lions were gay. The bigger of the two was dominant, the male. The smaller (we're talking comparatives here), the lady. Now, they traveled a long way to get to the location, and on the journey, one of the lions took sick. The bigger one. He lost so much weight that he became the smaller of the two. And when this happened, the smaller, now the larger, became the dominant, the male. I offer this anecdote to any sociologists amongst you.

  (2) One afternoon we were screen-testing lions. No, not right and left profile, but what kind of expectations could we have in behavior. We had giant mechanical lions that had been built, but what we wanted to find out was what, if anything, the real beasts could do.

  We are in a bare soundstage that we built. Primitive, obviously; imagine a high school gym and you get the picture. There is a tiny set--some long grass, actually. And the camera crew is all ready; they are also in a thickly barred cage. I am watching from another thickly barred cage. Because this lion we are testing is savage.

  A door slides open and in comes a circus-cage kind of thing on wheels with a single lion inside. The tension in that large room was immediate and terrifying, because here was something primitive in with us now. The trainer, an elegant and well-dressed French man, unlocks the cage--he is the only thing on earth the lion responds to. He brings the lion to his spot. Stephen Hopkins, directing from behind bars, asks for a few basic things. The trainer speaks to the lion in French, and the animal does surprisingly well.

  Back they go to the circus cage and as they get there, this wondrous thing happens. The trainer in his lovely suit bends slightly, puts his arms out wide. And the lion goes up on its hind paws and for a moment, they dance.

  Hours later I ran into the trainer and talked about how touching the moment was. I asked if the lion cared for him. He said this: "Mr. Goldman, I feed him." But it was so gentle, I went on, I got the sense he cared for you. "Mr. Goldman, I feed him," he said again. I was persistent. "But he wouldn't ever hurt you, would he?"

  He came next to me and took off his glasses and pointed to what the thick-rimmed glasses had hidden--his entire eyebrow covered a long and very frightening scar. "I made a mistake once," was all he said.

  (3) Michael Douglas arrived when we were many weeks into shooting. His first day was a scene with a thousand extras, where Val Kilmer was trying to convince the leader of the workers not to leave, that he needed them.

  Val couldn't get it.

  I don't know if he hadn't learned his lines or if he hated his lines. Or if, as the character of Patterson, he didn't want to ask for help. This is important stuff: stars hate asking for help.

  (Shhh--they're afraid their fans will find them wimpy.)

  A lot of bad things have been written about Val Kilmer's behavior. I will not add to them here. I will say he was going through a terrible time. His marriage had fallen publicly and painfully apart a few weeks before. He had come directly to us from a nightmare, The Island of Dr. Moreau. (How much he contributed to that nightmare is a subject much debated.) He was exhausted and not, I think it's safe to say, at his best on our shoot.

  As I said, Douglas arrives and Kilmer cannot get his lines right in front of a thousand extras. His producer hat very much on, Douglas takes Kilmer aside and asks, approximately, the following: Do you want a career like Eric Roberts? Do you want a career like Mickey Rourke? Well, you can have that if you don't shape up.

  I am not telling this to you because it is such great gossip, because obviously it isn't that. But there was clearly not a whole lot of chemistry between these two stars as the movie unfolded.

  And does that matter? It's certainly not the reason the movie didn't do what I had hoped. If you were to ask me those reasons I would begin with this: the script was not good enough. I always think that on every movie I'm involved with if it doesn't work.

  I also think the time was wrong. Not the time of year when it was released, I mean the time for lions. In our long history, perhaps no other animal has had such graph changes. From being vermin to being gods.

  Now is a cutie-pie stage. Born Free and The Lion King. I don't think the audience wanted much to hear about these two monsters that shredded so many lives.

  But I also feel that if Douglas and Kilmer had been in Butch Cassidy instead of Redford and Newman, you would not remotely be listening to anything I might have to say about Hollywood ...

  * * *

  Killing Gatsby

  I don't think anyone out of the business realizes (nor should they) just how fragile movies are, how even the greatest successes run, at least for a while, neck and neck with failure.

  As an example, nothing in my experience equals one of the major overhyped disasters of the '70s, The Great Gatsby.

  In my entire life dealing with the madness Out There, there was no project I wanted to write as much as Gatsby. It is as great as any American novel ever and I love it. So when there was a whisper of the rights becoming available, I got into it, told everybody
of my undying passion.

  Francis Ford Coppola got the job. Not to direct, just to write. I'm not sure where in his career he wrote the script, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was before The Godfather made him famous.

  I was a huge fan of his writing in those days, You're a Big Boy Now, The Rain People, Patton. But nothing prepared me for the Gatsby script. I still believe it to be one of the great adaptations. I have never met him (still haven't) but I called him and told him what a wonderful thing he had done.

  If you see the movie, you will find all this hard to believe.

  Gatsby, for those of you who don't know, is a bootlegger who, one summer on Long Island, gives the most glamorous parties imaginable, mainly to impress his great love, Daisy, who is married to a prig. These are the parties that today the magazines and newspapers would kill to cover. All the perfumes in Arabia-type deals.

  Well, the director who was hired, Jack Clayton, is a Brit, and like most Brits we fawn over, less talented than you might think. But he had the one thing all of them have in their blood: a murderous sense of class. All they need is to hear you speak a few words and they know everything they need to know about you. It is their least appealing trait.

  Well, Clayton decided this: that Gatsby's parties were shabby and tacky, given by a man of no elevation and taste.

  There went the ball game.

  As shot, they were foul and stupid and the people who attended them were foul and silly, and Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, who would have been so perfect as Gatsby and Daisy, were left hung out to dry. Because Gatsby was a tasteless fool and why should we care about their love?

  It was not as if Coppola's glory had been jettisoned entirely, though it was tampered with plenty; it was more that the reality and passions it depicted were gone. I was in a rage when I left the theater, because we have so very few chances in our careers of doing things so well.

  Writers can screw things up, actors too, directors certainly. Even as great a flick as Chinatown was almost destroyed by the wrong score, but it was changed in time. I've written this before and please tattoo it behind your eyeballs: we are all at one another's mercy ...

  * * *

  Absolute Power

  [1997]

  * * *

  Absolute Power is the hardest screenplay I have ever written. Eventually, it stopped me cold--for the first time I was faced with an assignment that I simply could not complete. And would never have been able to had Tony Gilroy not come to save me.

  The Novel

  November '94.

  Martin Shafer, who runs Castle Rock films, called and said he was sending me Executive Power, a first novel by a young Washington lawyer, David Baldacci. Shafer mentioned nothing specific pertaining to the plot but he did tell me this: that Baldacci, in the last three weeks, had sold the worldwide book and movie rights for five million dollars.

  Better than a sharp stick in the eye.

  The next day a 466-page typed manuscript arrived. I had never read a novel with that kind of early success. (Few ever had.) Curious as hell, I started reading, wondering what magic potion Mr. Baldacci had come up with. It broke down as follows:

  Chapter 1, this page-this page

  A great old thief, LUTHER WHITNEY, breaks into a deserted mansion belonging to eighty-year-old WALTER SULLIVAN, one of the more powerful billionaires around. It is very tricky and tense, the break-in, pitting sophisticated burglary tools against a top-of-the-line security system.

  LUTHER makes his way to the master bedroom, takes what looks like a VCR remote from a nearby table, points it at what looks like an ordinary mirror, and clicks. The mirror swings open to reveal a room-sized vault--a vault with a chair in it, the chair facing the door.

  LUTHER enters and starts bagging the goodies--cash, jewelry, coins, bonds, stamps, millions of dollars' worth.

  During this, a limo and a van are approaching the mansion. In the limo are two women and a man. One of the women is trying to undress the man, who is good-naturedly trying to fend her off. Both are drunk. The other woman sits opposite, watching with some distaste and dealing with a large appointment book.

  LUTHER hears the cars, realizes he is in trouble because it's too late to escape. So he hides in the vault, shuts the door, sits in the chair.

  Footsteps come closer and closer and the bedroom light is turned on and LUTHER is shocked and blinded and for a moment, he thinks he's been found out. Then he realizes this: the door is a two-way mirror.

  From the bedroom, it's just a mirror. But from where he sits, it's a window on the room--he has a life-sized view of what's happening in the bedroom just a few feet beyond--

  --and what's happening is this: two very drunk people are clearly going to fuck.

  LUTHER recognizes the two people: THE WOMAN is the gorgeous twenty-five-year-old CHRISTY SULLIVAN, wife of WALTER SULLIVAN, the ancient billionaire. THE MAN is clearly not her husband--and LUTHER is stunned when he realizes who he is ...

  Pretty terrific start.

  I had no idea where the story was going, but I knew I wasn't about to stop reading. I also had no idea who the main characters would be, but I guessed this trio would be around:

  LUTHER WHITNEY, the great old thief

  CHRISTY SULLIVAN, the philandering blonde

  THE WELL-DRESSED MAN whom she was philandering with

  A total of three.

  The reason for the detail here is because of one simple truth: movies are not Chekhov. You have your star part, that's essential. And depending on what kind of flick it is, you have your love interest or your villain. Or often, both. Those are your key roles.

  But you cannot have even half a dozen main characters. The Big Chill, sure. Peter's Friends, Return of the Secaucus Seven. But the glory days of the all-star MGM movie is, because of budget primarily, as removed as the Ice Age.

  Chapter 2, this page-this page

  That same night, JACK GRAHAM, an attractive, athletic young Washington attorney, returns home from a fancy party. JACK has pretty much everything going for him, but be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

  JACK is engaged to JENNIFER BALDWIN, who is gorgeous and the heiress to the Baldwin fortune, run by her father, RANSOME BALDWIN. JACK has a job at one of the top Washington law firms, which happens to handle the Baldwin interests. JACK is new there, having taken the job at JENNIFER's urging, and because of his connection with the Baldwins he will become a partner at the next review.

  JACK goes to bed, where he takes down a picture of his former fiancee, KATE WHITNEY. They have not seen each other in four years but he knows she is now a State's Attorney. JACK loved KATE, still misses her, but also misses, and almost as much, her father, LUTHER, with whom he was very close.

  JACK decides to call KATE, dials her, then hangs up after the beep sound on her phone machine as he loses his nerve ...

  Short, helpful, very tense--because while you are reading, what you are thinking is this: Get back to the bedroom. There were also several new characters I knew I would be meeting again.

  JACK GRAHAM, clearly to be the hero

  KATE WHITNEY, even though she hasn't done much yet

  JENNIFER BALDWIN, the rich and beautiful fiancee

  Along with, please remember--

  LUTHER WHITNEY, the great old thief

  CHRISTY SULLIVAN, the philandering blonde

  THE WELL-DRESSED MAN whom she was philandering with

  Bringing the total to six. Six major characters.

  So far.

  Chapter 2, this page-this page

  Back to the vault.

  LUTHER, helpless, watches as the sex begins, heats up, gets violent, gets bloody. THE MAN tries to strangle CHRISTY but she slashes him in the arm with a letter opener and is about to stab him in the heart when he screams and TWO WELL-DRESSED MEN race in and blow her brains out.

  Now to a new place.

  At this same time, KATE WHITNEY is working late in her office. She thinks momentarily of her hated father, LUTHER, calls her
home for messages but there is only a breather who hangs up. She goes back to work, watched by a photo of herself and her mother from which LUTHER has been unmistakably ripped away.

  Back in the bedroom.

  The naked and bleeding ALAN RICHMOND, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, is staring dumbly at the bloody letter opener in his hand that almost killed him. BILL BURTON, the older of the two Secret Service men, who did the shooting, is almost sick at the sight of blood and brains. His partner, TIM COLLIN, steadies him. PRESIDENT RICHMOND passes out as Chief of Staff GLORIA RUSSELL, the other woman in the limousine, races in.

  COLLIN reports the facts to RUSSELL. RUSSELL plans a coverup. The room is sanitized and they all leave. But unknown to RUSSELL, the letter opener, which she commandeered, has fallen from her purse behind the bed.

  THE PRESIDENT, RUSSELL, BURTON, and COLLIN hurry down to the waiting cars, preparing to get the hell gone--

  --which is when RUSSELL realizes the letter opener isn't in her purse.

  LUTHER, who has left the vault, has taken it with him as he uncoils a rope and goes out the window.

  THE SECRET SERVICE chase him on foot, almost catch him in a thrilling footrace, but he manages to make it to his car and zooms off.

  RUSSELL, BURTON, and COLLIN return to the bedroom, realize two facts, neither of them good for the Jews: (1) the letter opener is gone, complete with fingerprints of both the PRESIDENT and the murdered CHRISTY SULLIVAN on it; and (2) there was an eyewitness.

  They know they are in very deep shit indeed. And will be until they have murdered the eyewitness and have the letter opener back.

  LUTHER knows the power of his enemies--he returns to his home, packs, flees into the night ...

  Whew.

  It was clear at this point why $5 million had been spent. I thought it was just about the best opening of a commercial novel I had ever read. It was also clear that I was not reading the book strictly for pleasure. Sure, that's present and crucial--

  --but I was also being asked to turn it into a movie. And clearly, it was not going to be easy money at the brick factory.