So I wrote a book about Broadway called The Season. In the course of a year I went hundreds of times, both in New York and out of town, saw everything at least once. But the show I saw most was a terrific comedy called Something Different.
By Carl Reiner.
He was terribly helpful to me and I liked him a lot. When the book was done I sent him a copy. And a few years later, when The Princess Bride was done, I sent him the novel. And one day he gave it to his eldest son. "Here's something," he said to his boy Robert one day. "I think you'll like this."
Fortunately for all concerned, Carl was right. Rob was years away from being a director at that point. He was starring in the number-one TV show of the decade, All in the Family, created and produced by Norman Lear. Ten years later Rob was a director and had formed a little company with his friend and producer Andy Scheinman. Rob had directed This Is Spinal Tap, had just finished a rough cut of his second movie, The Sure Thing. They were sitting around one day wondering what to do next, when Rob remembered the book, talked about it, reread it, got excited.
Eventually we met and the movie happened. But in between there was a lot of frustration because the movie that established him as a commercial director, Stand By Me, had yet to happen. But he can be magnificently stubborn, and eventually Norman Lear got us the money. I was grateful then, still am, always will be.
We had our first script reading in a hotel in London. Rob and Andy were there. Cary Elwes and Robin Wright were there, Westley and Buttercup. Chris Sarandon and Chris Guest, the villains Humperdinck and Count Rugen. Wally Shawn, the evil genius Vizzini. Mandy Patinkin, who played Inigo, was very much there. And sitting by himself, quietly--he always tried to sit quietly--was Andre the Giant, who was Fezzik.
Not your ordinary Hadassah group.
Sitting suavely in a corner was moi. Two of the major figures of my time in the entertainment business--Elia Kazan and George Roy Hill--have both said the same thing to me in interviews: that by the time of the first cast reading, the crucial work was done. If you had gotten the script to work and cast it properly, then you had a chance for something of quality. If you had not, it didn't matter how skillful the rest of the process was, you were dead in the water.
This probably sounds like madness to the uninitiated, and it should, but it is very much true. The reason it sounds like madness is this: Premiere magazine isn't around when the script is being prepared. E.T. isn't around for the casting. They are only around during the shooting of the flick, which is the least important part of the making of any movie. Shooting is just the factory putting together the car. (Postproduction--editing and scoring--is waaaay more important.)
But shooting is all most people know--from those awful articles in magazines or stories on the tube that purport to be on the inside but are only bullshit. The movie company knows who is watching and they behave accordingly. Stars do not misbehave when the enemy is about. Directors do not admit their terrors when the enemy is about. Writers, to give us our due, are not even there when the enemy is about. (And when I am forced to be there, and the enemy is about, I lie. "Oh, this is an amazing shoot, it's just been a dream." "I don't know where Dusty [or Barbra or Sly or Eddie or fill in your own blank] gets this bad rap about being hard to work with, he's [she's] been a dream here." So it goes.)
I was there in London, at the script reading. And I was terrified. Not only is that my natural state when I am around actors, this was almost a decade and a half from when I helped scale the Cliffs of Insanity. Most of the people in the room I knew of. The others I had heard read. But there were two who were essentially new to me.
Robin Wright, our Buttercup, was new to everybody, except the faithful watchers of the soap Santa Barbara. A California kid of maybe twenty, she was neither experienced nor trained. She was being asked to be first a farmgirl, unspoiled and in love, then a princess, regal and emotionally dead, all this, by the way, with an English accent. (Turns out she has a brilliant ear.)
It also was important that she be the most beautiful woman in the world, and of course that is all a matter of personal taste, there is no single most beautiful woman. Except looking at Robin that London morning, watching her as she sat there with no makeup, she sure made one hell of a case. We started the reading then, and this is what I thought when we were done--
--I thought she was going to be the biggest lady star in the world.
Hasn't happened. I don't know her, have seen her once in five years, we have no friends in common. Still, I think I know why. She doesn't want it.
To be a star, yes, you have to have talent, and my God, do you ever have to be lucky, but riding alongside is this: desire. One so consuming that you are willing to piss away everything else in life. Stars have no friends, they have business acquaintances and serfs. They can only fake love on screen.
But they get the good table at Spago.
And if that is your heart's desire, and it is a lot of people's heart's desire, get rid of everything personal that might hinder you, and good luck. I promise to stare as you go by.
Wright has been in a few movies, and her work is always fine. But I think what she wants is to spend some time on the occasional job, and to spend a lot of time with her family. She had not been in a big commercial success until Forrest Gump. She was almost in one earlier; she was to be the lead opposite Kevin Costner in Robin Hood. But she had to drop out because she was having a baby.
I remember, when I read that, thinking: Barbra Streisand does not get pregnant at such a time ...
A. R. Roussimoff was the other new kid on the block that rehearsal morning. Actually, he was not precisely new to any of us, he was just new as an actor, because as Andre the Giant he was the most famous wrestler in the world. I had become a lunatic Andre fan, would go to the Garden to watch him entertain the masses. I became convinced that if there ever was to be a movie, he should be Fezzik, the strongest man.
Andre was always still. When he entered a room he would look for a place in a corner and go there. A man with a great and good heart, I suspect he had grown weary of the strange ways humans reacted to him. They either took to him immediately, as we all did--Andre was by far the most popular figure I have ever been around on a movie set--or they panicked.
Andre came from France and his voice came from the basement, so he was not always a thrill to understand. When Reiner gave him the part, he also gave him a tape that had his part recorded on it. Reiner, a wonderful actor, had done the line readings himself. He hoped Andre would take the time to memorize his role. Which in point of fact he had. But his readings that morning, to be honest, had a certain rote quality to them.
After the script was read, Reiner broke some scenes down and had the actors work on them. One such occasion involved Andre and Cary Elwes rehearsing their talking fight scene. They stood in front of us, went through it very slowly, said the words, and it was cool in the room as Andre began to perspire. We are not talking a little shvitz here. As we watched we were all stunned to see Andre's shirt become, suddenly, sopping. We kept watching. In a few moments more the shirt was dry. You turn your head away--soaked. It was simply the first physical manifestation of how different giants are from the rest of us. There was never any odor to the perspiring. It just became part of the day, "Oh, Andre's wet again."
It was a beautiful afternoon when we broke for lunch and we found a nearby bistro with outside tables. It was perfect except the chair was far too small for Andre--the width was for normal people, the arms far too close. There was a table inside that had a bench and someone suggested we eat there. Except Andre wouldn't hear of it. So we sat outside, and I can still see him pulling the arms of the chair wide apart, managing to squeeze in, then watching the arms all but snapping back into place, pinioning him for the rest of the meal. He ate very little. And the utensils were like baby toys, dwarfed by his hands.
After lunch we rehearsed again, and now Andre was working with our Inigo, Mandy Patinkin. They were doing one of their scenes and Mandy was
trying to get some information out of Andre and Andre was giving one of his slow, rote memory readings. Mandy, as Inigo, tried to get Fezzik to go faster. And Andre gave back one of his slow, rote memory readings. They went back and tried it again and again, Mandy as Inigo asking Andre as Fezzik to go faster--Andre coming back at the same speed as before--
--which was when Mandy went, "Faster, Fezzik"--and slapped him hard in the face.
I can still see Andre's eyes go wide. I don't think he had been slapped outside a ring since he was little. He looked at Mandy and it was all so sudden and there was a brief pause ...
And Andre started speaking faster. He just rose to the occasion, gave it more pace and energy and you could almost see his mind going, "Oh, this is how you do it outside the ring, let's give it a try." In truth, it was the beginning of the happiest period of his life.
It was my happiest movie experience, too. I am almost never around the set, mainly because it is so boring. Now, Andy Scheinman, the producer, and I would arrive late morning and stay through dailies. There were the standard tensions caused by weather, budget, and ego--all movie sets are plagued by weather, budget, and ego--but beyond that, the shoot went wonderfully well. Postproduction was difficult for the same reason the whole project was difficult, why so many bright and talented men had wanted to make it and ultimately failed--just what was the movie? Was it a comedy? Fingers crossed, yes. Action flick? Fingers crossed again. Spoof? I don't do spoofs, but a lot of people thought it was. Romance? Believe it.
We were in dangerous terrain--because whenever you mix genres in a movie, that's where you end up. I remember George Hill calling me in despair the day after the first Butch Cassidy sneak. Because the audience hadn't liked it? The reverse. They had loved it--they just thought it was so funny. And George was convinced that the balance had to be right, because if it was too funny, the shootout at the end wouldn't be moving. And if it was too dour, the whole beginning third--the fun and games part--would just lie there. So he set out the next morning going through the flick and taking out laughs until he got the balance right.
Reiner fought the same battle and eventually, like Hill, won. When we started having sneaks, the audience loved us. The test scores were sensational, among the top results of that year. Fabulous. We were flying. And we should have been.
I was talking once to a famous critic's darling director and he said this: "People talk about movies in three parts: preparing, shooting, and postproduction. That's wrong. There are really only two parts: the making of the movie and the selling of the movie." I'm not sure he isn't right.
The studio did not know how to sell us. (No criticism intended here. Heartbreak sure, but everybody was behind the movie.) But what the hell was it? They never figured it out. Our trailer--one of the more crucial selling tools--was so confusing I was told it was pulled from theaters, something I had never heard of before. The ad campaign was changed and changed again. We had nothing to sell us, no stars. The book, successful, was a cult success, but no King, no Grisham.
We came out and were a mild hit: $30 million, would have been $60 today. A double, to use their terminology. (A home run today is over $100 million in box-office gross--although your children will live to see the day when that's a flop.) Audiences loved us once we got them in. They just didn't see any reason to come. When we came out on cassette, word of mouth had caught up with us and we were the hit we should have been in theaters.
It had been a difficult wait, a decade and a half. I had started writing something for my kids when the '70s started. The movie hit the theaters in 1987. It's the new millennium now and your kids can see it on tape. When you say that, smile.
Andre died in early '93. I hadn't seen him but once since the movie was done, but I was terribly upset. I spoke to Rob, Andy, Billy Crystal, all the same. We told Andre stories, made ourselves feel better. We were shocked, you see, but not surprised. Andre, who was turning forty when the movie was made, knew it was coming soon. Here is what I wrote when I heard the news.
REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT
PARIS. Jan 30 (AP) -- The professional wrestler Andre Rene Roussimoff, a native of France who was known to fans as Andre the Giant, died this week, apparently of a heart attack. He was 46.
He was handsome once. I remember a photo he showed me, taken at a beach with some friends. Dark, good-looking kid, maybe 17. Big, sure--he said he was around six foot eight then and weighed 275--but that was before the disorder really kicked in. Acromegaly. Something goes haywire with the growth hormones. He was working as a furniture mover during the day, taking wrestling lessons at night, sleeping when he could.
At 25, he topped out, but I don't think he ever actually knew his size. I met him in England when he was playing the rhyme-loving Fezzik in The Princess Bride. I had written the novel and now the screenplay. This was in the summer of '86 and Andre's publicity listed him at seven foot five, 550 pounds. Close enough. All he was sure of was that he'd had pneumonia a little while earlier and had lost 100 pounds in three weeks in the hospital.
Gone now at 46, he was the most popular figure on any movie set I've even been on.
He was very strong. I was talking to an actor who was shooting a movie in Mexico. What you had to know about Andre was that if he asked you to dinner, he paid, but when you asked him, he also paid. This actor, after several free meals, invited Andre to dinner and, late in the meal, snuck into the kitchen to give his credit card to the maitre d'. As he was about to do this, he felt himself being lifted up in the air. The actor, it so happens, was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who remembers, "When he had me up in the air, he turned me so I was facing him, and he said, 'I pay.' Then he carried me back to my table where he set me down in my chair like a little boy. Oh yes, Andre was very strong."
When Arnold Schwarzenegger tells me someone is very strong, I'll go along with it.
Andre once invited Schwarzenegger to a wrestling arena in Mexico where he was performing in front of 25,000 screaming fans, and, after he'd pinned his opponent, he gestured for Schwarzenegger to come into the ring.
So through the noise, Schwarzenegger climbs up. Andre says, "Take off your shirt, they are all crazy for you to take off your shirt. I speak Spanish." So Schwarzenegger, embarrassed, does what Andre tells him. Off comes his jacket, his shirt, his undershirt, and he begins striking poses. And then Andre goes to the locker room while Schwarzenegger goes back to his friends.
And it had all been a practical joke. God knows what the crowd was screaming, but it wasn't for Schwarzenegger to strip and pose. "Nobody gave a shit if I took my shirt off or not, but I fell for it. Andre could do that to you."
Andre never knew what reaction he might cause in people. Sometimes children and grown-ups would see him and be terrified. Sometimes children would see him, shriek with glee, and begin clambering all over him as if the greatest toy imaginable had just been given them. And he would sit, immobile, as they roamed around him. Sometimes he'd put a hand out, palm up, and they'd sit there, for what they hoped would be forever.
Andre would never come out and say that wrestling might not be legit. He fought 300 plus times a year for about 20 years, and all he ever admitted was that he didn't like being in the ring with someone he thought might be on drugs. When he was in his prime, men who weighed 250 or 300 pounds would hurl themselves on him from the top rope and he would catch them and not budge.
But even seven years ago his body was beginning to betray him. There is a scene at the end of The Princess Bride where Robin Wright--and yes she is that beautiful--jumped out of a castle window, and Andre was to catch her at the bottom.
The shot was set up for Robin to be lifted just above camera range and then dropped into Andre's arms. Maybe a foot. Maybe two. But not much and Robin was never that heavy.
The first take, she was dropped and he caught her--and gasped, suddenly white like paper, and almost fell to his knees. His back was bad. And getting worse, and soon there would be surgery.
Andre once said to Billy C
rystal, "We do not live long, the big and the small."
Alas.
* * *
McKee
Can you learn how to write movies?
No easy answer, but I would say if you have zero facility for the form, no. If you have some, writing courses can sure help a lot. At the very least, you will not write something like this, which I recently had to wade through. (Names changed to protect the innocent.)
OPEN UP ON A HALL IN A CASTLE. Medieval times. Footsteps are heard.
KING
Where are my troops?
PRIME MINISTER
Mounting up, sire.
CRIES ARE HEARD FROM SOMEWHERE.
PRIME MINISTER
(to a guard)
See what that was.
THE GUARD DEPARTS.
KING
I did not like that sound.
I think I made it to the top of page four before surrendering. When I pick up something like that, I feel sadness. Someone spent months on it. Someone has dreams of how the manuscript will change his life.
Personally, I must have had considerable facility for the form. I never saw a screenplay until I was thirty-three, and when I did, wrote one that got me fired (Charly). But my second screenplay, Harper, was a hit and is still shown today. Butch came two screenplays later.
Facility, hell--I could make a case--I don't want to but I could--that it's been downhill all the way since then.
The main thing to remember is this: you have to try to know. You have to grind one out and have it read before you can chance a guess. You may know you can't write poetry or novels, but this is so different, you have to give it a shot if you even think it's what you want to do with your life.
And an awful lot of you are taking that shot. The number of writing applications to one of the nation's top film schools, NYU, for example, has close to tripled in the last decade.
You may not have the time for that kind of thing. Or the amazing amounts of money required. There are still an awful lot of people teaching courses in screenwriting. I hope they're all terrific, but the one I audited is the most famous: Story Structure by Robert McKee.