There is almost nothing better for me than when another writer, in agony of course, helpless of course, comes to me and we spitball. I tell you, I am sublime at such moments.
Now, when I am the one in trouble, all sublimity goes out the window. For one of the sad truths about the act is that you may be a whiz when the problems belong to others; nevertheless, you are totally helpless when they are your own. That is true for all of us--we are trapped in our own skins.
I guess it's like group therapy, which I did for years, and loved--what a joy to be able to say to another tormented soul, "Ed, Ed, don't you see, this girlfriend who is killing you is exactly the same as all the others. They just change hair colors." But when their visions are turned on you--"Jesus, Bill, this one is exactly the same kind of crazy destructive bitch as they all are"--you are stunned at the revelation.
There is only one rule to spitballing, and it is crucial: you must be able to suggest anything and make a total asshole of yourself at all times, secure in the knowledge that no one outside the room will ever know.
I remember once being in an office with a studio guy and a couple of people were sitting around, fighting the story. And one of the people said this: "What if they're all women?" Now the story, as I remember, was a male adventure flick. And this studio guy commented on that--"This is an adventure movie here, how stupid a suggestion is that?" Naturally the writer was finished for that day.
The truth?
It was a great spitballing notion, and the studio guy--gasp of surprise, right?--was the asshole.
Because making them all women opened up the world. I use it myself a lot now. Or what if the story is about a high-tech robbery and you suggest that it take place a hundred years ago? What if we make it a tragedy instead of the comedy we're stuck on?
What those ideas do, of course, is this: they make you think about why they are wrong. You have to defend and explain. And sometimes, out of one weird spitballing idea comes another idea that is also weird but less so, and then out of some divine blue, someone is shouting, "No, no, listen to me, I've got it--listen to me--"
--and there it is, the spine of the story, with all the sludge ripped away. You can see it and it's going to be such a great movie you wouldn't believe it. At its best, what spitballing does is give you the illusion that just this once you have slain hunger and beaten death.
One final note: I have never in forty-six years of writing used the word "viz" before. I don't even know if I used it correctly--I was coming to the end to the first paragraph and there it was, buzzing around, so I put it in. And I promise you this: Even if it is wrong, I won't change it, no matter what the copyeditor says ...
* * *
North by Northwest
by Ernest Lehman
* * *
My first trip to Hollywood for work was in 1965, when Harper went into production. I remember a lot of things from the experience (see Adventures in the Screen Trade), but one particular moment stands out.
A trim figure had come onto the set whom I did not know, but there seemed to be great goodwill in his being there--a lot of people flocked around. I had no idea who it was till, believe it or not, one of the camera crew said this: "That's Ernie Lehman the screenwriter--even his flops are hits."
We later met, became friends. But I never quite forgot the words of the camera guy. Because in that land of horseshit hyperbole, his remarks about Lehman were, if anything, an understatement. Here is what Lehman wrote from 1954 through 1966:
1954 Executive Suite
1954 Sabrina
1956 The King and I
1956 Somebody Up There Likes Me
1957 The Sweet Smell of Success
1959 North by Northwest
1960 From the Terrace
1961 West Side Story
1963 The Prize
1965 The Sound of Music
1966 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Amazing to me, still now. It may be unmatched in Hollywood history, maybe in any discipline. Because these weren't just, some of them, insanely commercial films, they were honored, fifty-some nominations in all, four flicks up for Best Picture, two of them won. More than that, most of them are good.
Even more incredible than the success are the screenwriting Oscars. Think a moment before you take your shot. How many wins? Go over the list and concentrate.
Zeee-ro.
Sabrina lost to The Country Girl; Somebody Up There Likes Me didn't get a nomination, but it would have lost to The Red Balloon; North by Northwest lost to, wait for it--Pillow Talk (barf). But my favorite is West Side Story, which got eleven nominations, won ten Oscars. (Guess which one it didn't win.)
He was nominated, sure, and he won a bunch of Writers Guild Awards, but I'm still pissed for him.
North by Northwest, briefly, is a mistaken-identity flick. Cary Grant plays an ad executive who is mistaken for a man named Kaplan, kidnaped, interrogated by James Mason as if he were Kaplan, then gotten drunk and stuck behind the wheel of a car on a mountain road.
He survives, goes to the UN to try and find out who Mason is, gets involved in a murder there, hotfoots it to Grand Central, takes a train for Chicago on which he meets the oh-so-lovely Eva Marie Saint, who works for Mason and tells him, once they are in Chicago, where he can at last meet Kaplan--a desolate Indiana spot filled with cornfields.
What follows is one of the very best pieces of action-adventure I have ever read.
* * *
The Crop-Dusting Scene
(written directly for the screen by Lehman)
DISSOLVE TO:
HELICOPTER SHOT--EXT. HIGHWAY 41--(AFTERNOON)
We START CLOSE on a Greyhound bus, SHOOTING DOWN on it, and TRAVELING ALONG with it as it speeds in an easterly direction at 70 m.p.h. Gradually, CAMERA DRAWS AWAY from the bus, going higher but never losing sight of the vehicle, which recedes into the distance below and becomes a toy-like object on an endless ribbon of deserted highway that stretches across miles of flat prairie. Now the bus is slowing down. It is nearing a junction where a small dirt road coming from nowhere crosses the highway and continues on to nowhere. The bus stops. A man gets out. It is Thornhill. But to us he is only a tiny figure. The bus starts away, moves on out of sight. And now Thornhill stands alone beside the road--a tiny figure in the middle of nowhere.
ON THE GROUND--WITH THORNHILL--(MASTER SCENE)
He glances about, studying his surroundings. The terrain is flat and treeless, even more desolate from this vantage point than it seemed from the air. Here and there patches of low-growing farm crops add some contour to the land. A hot sun beats down. UTTER SILENCE hangs heavily in the air. Thornhill glances at his wristwatch. It is 3:25.
In the distance the FAINT HUM of a MOTOR VEHICLE is HEARD. Thornhill looks off to the west. The HUM GROWS LOUDER as the car draws nearer. Thornhill steps closer to the edge of the highway. A black sedan looms up, traveling at high speed. For a moment we are not sure it is not hurtling right at Thornhill. And then it ZOOMS past him, recedes into the distance, becoming a FAINT HUM, a tiny speck, and then SILENCE again.
Thornhill takes out a handkerchief, mops his face. He is beginning to sweat now. It could be from nervousness, as well as the heat. Another FAINT HUM, coming from the east, GROWING LOUDER as he glances off and sees another distant speck becoming a speeding car, this one a closed convertible. Again, anticipation on Thornhill's face. Again, the vague uneasiness of indefinable danger approaching at high speed. And again, ZOOM--a cloud of dust--a car receding into the distance--a FAINT HUM-- and SILENCE.
His lips tighten. He glances at his watch again. He steps out into the middle of the highway, looks first in one direction, then the other. Nothing in sight. He loosens his tie, opens his shirt collar, looks up at the sun. Behind him, in the distance, another vehicle is HEARD approaching. He turns, looks off to the west.
This one is a huge transcontinental moving van, ROARING TOWARD HIM at high speed. With quick apprehension he moves off the highway to the dust
y side of the road as the van thunders past and disappears. Its FADING SOUND is replaced with a NEW SOUND, the CHUGGING of an OLD FLIVVER.
Thornhill looks off in the direction of the approaching SOUND, sees a flivver nearing the highway from the intersecting dirt road. When the car reaches the highway, it comes to a stop. A middle-aged woman is behind the wheel. Her passenger is a nondescript man of about fifty. He could certainly be a farmer. He gets out of the car. It makes a U-turn and drives off in the direction from which it came. Thornhill watches the man take up a position across the highway from him. The man glances at Thornhill without visible interest, then looks off up the highway towards the east as though waiting for something to come along.
Thornhill stares at the man, wondering if this is George Kaplan.
The man looks idly across the highway at Thornhill, his face expressionless.
Thornhill wipes his face with his handkerchief, never taking his eyes off the man across the highway. The FAINT SOUND of an APPROACHING PLANE has gradually come up over the scene. As the SOUND GROWS LOUDER, Thornhill looks up to his left and sees a low-flying biplane approaching from the northwest. He watches it with mounting interest as it heads straight for the spot where he and the stranger face each other across the highway. Suddenly it is upon them, only a hundred feet above the ground, and then, like a giant bird, as Thornhill turns with the plane's passage, it flies over them and continues on. Thornhill stares after the plane, his back to the highway. When the plane has gone several hundred yards beyond the highway, it loses altitude, levels off only a few feet above the ground and begins to fly back and forth in straight lines parallel to the highway, letting loose a trail of powdered dust from beneath its fuselage as it goes. Any farmer would recognize the operation as simple crop-dusting.
Thornhill looks across the highway, sees that the stranger is watching the plane with idle interest. Thornhill's lips set with determination. He crosses over and goes up to the man.
THORNHILL
Hot day.
MAN
Seen worse.
THORNHILL
Are you ... uh ... by any chance supposed to be meeting someone here?
MAN
(still watching the plane)
Waitin' for the bus. Due any minute.
THORNHILL
Oh...
MAN
(idly)
Some of them crop-duster pilots get rich, if they live long enough...
THORNHILL
Then your name isn't ... Kaplan.
MAN
(glances at him)
Can't say it is, 'cause it ain't.
(he looks off up the highway)
Well--here she comes, right on time.
Thornhill looks off to the east, sees a Greyhound bus approaching. The man peers off at the plane again, and frowns.
MAN
That's funny.
THORNHILL
What?
MAN
That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops.
Thornhill looks across at the droning plane with growing suspicion as the stranger steps out onto the highway and flags the bus to a stop. Thornhill turns toward the stranger as though to say something to him. But it is too late. The man has boarded the bus, its doors are closing and it is pulling away. Thornhill is alone again.
Almost immediately, he HEARS the PLANE ENGINE BEING GUNNED TO A HIGHER SPEED. He glances off sharply, sees the plane veering off its parallel course and heading towards him. He stand there wide-eyed, rooted to the spot. The plane roars on, a few feet off the ground. There are two men in the twin cockpits, goggled, unrecognizable, menacing. He yells out to them, but his voice is lost in the NOISE of the PLANE.
In a moment it will be upon him and decapitate him. Desperately he drops to the ground and presses himself flat as the plane zooms over him with a great noise, almost combing his hair with a landing wheel.
Thornhill scrambles to his feet, sees the plane banking and turning. He looks about wildly, sees a telephone pole and dashes for it as the plane comes at him again. He ducks behind the pole. The plane heads straight for him, veers to the right at the last moment. We HEAR two sharp CRACKS of GUNFIRE mixed with the SOUND of THE ENGINE, as two bullets slam into the pole just above Thornhill's head.
Thornhill reacts to this new peril, sees the plane banking for another run at him. A car is speeding along the highway from the west. Thornhill dashes out onto the road, tries to flag the car down but the driver ignores him and races by, leaving him exposed and vulnerable as the plane roars away and another series of SHOTS are HEARD and bullets rake the ground that he has just occupied.
He gets to his feet, looks about, sees a cornfield about fifty yards from the highway, glances up at the plane making its turn, and decides to make a dash for the cover of the tall-growing corn.
SHOOTING DOWN FROM A HELICOPTER about one hundred feet above the ground, we SEE Thornhill running toward the cornfield and the plane in pursuit.
SHOOTING FROM WITHIN THE CORNFIELD, we SEE Thornhill come crashing in, scuttling to the right and lying flat and motionless as we HEAR THE PLANE ZOOM OVER HIM WITH A BURST OF GUNFIRE and bullets rip into the corn, but at a safe distance from Thornhill. He raises his head cautiously, gasping for breath, as he HEARS THE PLANE MOVE OFF AND INTO ITS TURN.
SHOOTING DOWN FROM THE HELICOPTER, we SEE the plane leveling off and starting a run over the cornfield, which betrays no sign of the hidden Thornhill. Skimming over the top of the cornstalks, the plane gives forth no burst of gunfire now. Instead, it lets loose thick clouds of poisonous dust which settle down into the corn.
WITHIN THE CORNFIELD, Thornhill, still lying flat, begins to gasp and choke as the poisonous dust envelops him. Tears stream from his eyes but he does not dare move as he HEARS THE PLANE COMING OVER THE FIELD AGAIN. When the plane zooms by and another cloud of dust hits him, he jumps to his feet and crashes out into the open, half blinded and gasping for breath. Far off down the highway to the right, he SEES a huge Diesel gasoline-tanker approaching.
SHOOTING FROM THE HELICOPTER, we SEE Thornhill dashing for the highway, the plane leveling off for another run at him, and the Diesel tanker speeding closer.
SHOOTING ACROSS THE HIGHWAY, we SEE Thornhill running and stumbling TOWARDS CAMERA, the plane closing in behind him, and the Diesel tanker approaching from the left. He dashes out into the middle of the highway and waves his arms wildly.
The Diesel tanker THUNDERS down the highway towards Thornhill, KLAXON BLASTING impatiently.
The plane speeds relentlessly toward Thornhill from the field bordering the highway.
Thornhill stands alone and helpless in the middle of the highway, waving his arms. The plane draws closer. The tanker is almost upon him. It isn't going to stop. He can HEAR THE KLAXON BLASTING him out of the way. There is nothing he can do. The plane has caught up with him. The tanker won't stop. It's got to stop. He hurls himself to the pavement directly in its path. There is a SCREAM OF BRAKES and SKIDDING TIRES, THE ROAR OF THE PLANE ENGINE and then a tremendous BOOM as the Diesel truck grinds to a stop inches from Thornhill's body just as the plane, hopelessly committed and caught unprepared by the sudden stop, slams into the traveling gasoline tanker and plane and gasoline explode into a great sheet of flame.
In the next few moments, all is confusion. Thornhill, unhurt, rolls out from under the wheels of the Diesel truck. The drivers clamber out of the front seat and drop to the highway. Black clouds of smoke billow up from the funeral pyre of the plane and its cremated occupants. We recognize the flaming body of one of the men in the plane. It is Licht, one of Thornhill's original abductors. An elderly open pickup truck with a secondhand refrigerator standing in it, which has been approaching from the east, pulls up at the side of the road. Its driver, a farmer, jumps out and hurries toward the wreckage.
FARMER
What happened?
The Diesel truck drivers are too dazed to answer. Flames and smoke drive them all back. Thornhill, unnoticed, he
ads toward the unoccupied pickup truck. Another car comes up from the west, stops, and its driver runs toward the other men. They stare, transfixed at the holocaust. Suddenly, from behind them, they HEAR the PICKUP TRUCK'S MOTOR STARTING. The farmer who owns the truck turns, and is startled to see his truck being driven away by an utter stranger.
FARMER
Hey!
He runs after the truck. But the stranger--who is Thornhill--steps harder on the accelerator and speeds off in the direction of Chicago.
I suppose, along with the shower scene from Psycho, this is the most famous sequence Hitchcock ever shot. When you see the movie, it all seems so seamless it feels like the creation of it must have been pretty much the same way.
But no.
Lehman and Hitchcock knew each other a little, wanted to work together. MGM had just bought their first property for Hitchcock, a Hammond Innes best-seller, The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Briefly, the plot concerned a ship floating in the English Channel with nobody aboard, followed by a huge naval inquiry.
For weeks, Lehman would drive to Hitchcock's house on Bellagio Road in L.A. and they would spend the day talking. Which was when Lehman noticed that every time he brought the conversation around to The Wreck of the Mary Deare, Hitchcock would look anxious and change the subject.
Soon it was obvious neither of them wanted to do it, but they liked the time they spent together, so, without telling MGM, they decided to find something else they wanted to do together. Hitchcock had a lot of stuff he wanted to shoot, and he would spitball them to Lehman.
One of them was the longest dolly shot in history, without any cuts, which would take place at a Detroit auto factory and you would start at the beginning of the assembly line and slowly watch the car being put together and when the car is completed and ready to be driven off the assembly line there is a dead body inside.
Lehman in those days was very tough and famous for leaving projects as soon as he could. He was constantly quitting (he quit North by Northwest twice), only to be brought back soon after.
The car shot does me no good, he said.
Another Hitchcock moment: we are in Banff, Lake Louise, a religious group having its annual spiritual retreat--and a twelve-year-old girl takes a gun out of her baby carriage and shoots someone.