Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (21 page)

Let’s talk about Hollywood.

Must we?

For someone who has a good amount of experience as a screenwriter—you’ve worked on numerous screenplays over the years, including
Stir Crazy
and
Splash
—you seem to have a healthy attitude toward the film industry.

I don’t know of anyone who ever had more fun out there than I did. The work was not especially appealing, but I did have a great time. In fact, I would get offended when I was interrupted on the tennis court and asked to do some work. I thought Hollywood was supposed to be about room service and pretty girls, orange juice and champagne. When I was gently asked to write a few scenes, I was annoyed.

I did my work in Hollywood with professionalism and never took any money I hadn’t earned. But I could never tap into the same source I did when I wrote my books and stories—or plays, for that matter. Perhaps if I’d had some hunger to make movies at an earlier time, I could have learned the camera, studied the machinery of moviemaking, and it would have been different. But for me, the gods at the time were Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner; there were girls in the Village who wouldn’t sleep with you if you had anything to do with movies: “You’d actually
sell
your book to the movies?” This was spoken with horror.

Shortly after I arrived in Hollywood, Joe Levine, the producer of
The Graduate
, summoned me to his office. He was a fan of my play
Scuba Duba
. He said, “You will never again have to worry about money.” When I left the office, I felt great.
I’d never have to worry again about money!
But he was wrong. Never a day passed that I didn’t worry about money. Later, I met Joe at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I reminded him of his prediction. He waved it off and said, “Oh, well, you have so much of it anyway.” Not the rapier-like response I’d hoped for.

Screenwriting is the only writing form in which the work is being shot down, so to speak, as you’re writing. It’s always going to be, “Fine, now call in the next hack.” If someone were to submit the shooting script of [1950’s]
All About Eve
—updated, of course—it would only be considered a first draft. And a parade of writers would be called in to improve it. Hollywood doesn’t want a singular, unique voice. If F. Scott Fitzgerald, over the course of his career, could only earn one-third of a screenplay credit [on 1938’s
Three Comrades
] then what does that tell you?

Or Joseph Heller in Hollywood.

Right. He was there for years, but only had partial credits on two movies [1964’s
Sex and the Single Girl
, 1970’s
Dirty Dingus Magee
], and on a few episodes of the [early 1960s] TV show
McHale’s Navy
.

There’s an old-fashioned phrase—
pride of authorship
—that I never felt on the West Coast. I’m sure Woody Allen feels it, and maybe only a few others. Still, for a time, I was delighted as a screenwriter to be a well-paid busboy. And, oh, those good times!

Anything you care to tell me about?

I played tennis on a court alongside the actor Anthony Quinn. Back then, I was actually told that I resembled him. He kept glancing over at me. We both had shaky backhands.

I collided with Steve McQueen in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. A hair dryer fell out of my suitcase. Needless to say, it was embarrassing to have McQueen know that I used one.

And I spent one summer as a “sidekick” of Warren Beatty’s. My main function was to console his army of rejected girlfriends.

How did you even come to know Warren Beatty?

He loved
Stern
, and he was convinced he could play the central role in the film. I had to explain, patiently, that it was a bit of a reach. He was no schlub.

We would go to the clubs in LA, including a place called the Candy Store. I never saw anyone who could bowl over women the way he could. He was a sweet, charming man—gorgeous, of course—and he made you feel that you were the only one in the world that he cared about. I don’t mean to be a tease, but there were a few episodes I’d be uncomfortable mentioning—especially now that he’s a family man with all those kids. Maybe if we have a drink sometime.

Hollywood is something. The name-dropping that goes on there is incredible. I had a friend who was an actor, and he called me one day. I could tell he had a cough. When I asked if he was okay, he told me that he had caught Pierce Brosnan’s cold. Another time, while I was on a movie set, a guy offered me a cigar and bragged that he had gotten it from someone who was close to Cher.

Were you happy with the first version of
The Heartbreak Kid
, which was released in 1972? It was based on your 1966 story for
Esquire
“A Change of Plan.”

I thought the first version was wonderful. I’m permitted to say that because I didn’t write the screenplay—Neil Simon did. It actually sounded like something I might have written. Simon said that in writing it, he pretended he was me—although we’d never met.

What did you think of the 2007 remake, starring Ben Stiller?

I thought the first part—the revelation about the wife—was hysterically funny. The rest, for me, fell off a cliff. There are five screenwriters listed in the credits, including the Farrelly brothers. And Lord knows how many
uncredited
screenwriters. The budget was north of $60 million. You would have thought that a simple phone call to the fellow who invented the wheel would have been useful. Maybe I knew something. Maybe Neil Simon did. I would have helped out pro bono. But it would never have occurred to someone to make that phone call. I’m not upset about this. Just curious . . . amused.

I read a story about you that I assume cannot be true: that actress Natalie Wood once worked as your secretary.

No, that’s true. It was either my first or second trip to Hollywood. I was working on the movie version for the Broadway play
The Owl and the Pussycat
, and I needed a secretary. Or, at the very least, it was
assumed
I needed one.

The producer Ray Stark [
The Sunshine Boys
,
Smokey and the Bandit
] said, “I’ll find you a good one. Don’t worry.” I went over to his beach house and there, sitting by the pool, was Natalie Wood. Stark said, “Here is your new secretary.”

As a joke?

I said, “That’s very amusing, Ray. But this is Natalie Wood, from
Splendor in the Grass
,
West Side Story
,
Rebel Without a Cause
. Every boy’s fantasy.”

She looked up and said, “No, I
really
am your secretary.”

She was between marriages to Robert Wagner and seemed dispirited. I don’t think she was being offered major roles, and a shrink might have suggested that she try something different. This is self-serving, but I’d seen her at a party the night before and we had maybe exchanged glances. Who knows, maybe she liked me. What’s the lyric—
I can dream, can’t I?
In any case, she was my secretary for about a week.

Each morning, I’d pick her up in Malibu and drive her back to the Beverly Hills Hotel, all the while thinking, I’m sitting here with Natalie
fucking
Wood—and she’s my secretary. It was difficult staying on the highway.

Can you imagine a Hollywood actress doing that these days?

Unlikely.

What Hollywood project were you working on at the time?

I went out to California to work on
The Lenny Bruce Story
. Lenny had died a few years earlier. The executives wanted a writer who was crazy and strange, but also wore a suit. They wanted someone who would be presentable at a meeting—I was that guy. But I never worked on the project.

Why not?

I had never seen Lenny Bruce, but I knew of his legend. I really wasn’t interested in that type of work, actually. I just didn’t know enough about him to be a fan or to not be a fan.

I once heard of a woman at one of Bruce’s performances who stood up in the middle of the act and started screaming, “Dirty mouth! Dirty mouth!” I wanted that to be the title of the film—
Dirty Mouth!
, but I didn’t realize back then that I, as a screenwriter, was nothing more than a busboy. It was just a different world than what I was familiar with. The most important thing back then was to be a novelist. Now it’s the opposite.

You left the Lenny Bruce project?

I did, yes. But only after a truck pulled up to where I was staying, with men hauling boxes and files and every scrap of paper related to Lenny Bruce’s life—every letter, every deposition, every piece of correspondence. I remember that I hurt my leg carrying some of these boxes up to the attic.

I just got smothered with it all, and I ended up not doing it.

I don’t think I’ve ever discussed this before, but I found aspects of his life troubling. It made me uncomfortable. There were some similarities of his life that brushed up against mine. I was having domestic problems of my own, and the whole story made me uncomfortable.

Plus, I didn’t want to be the one to fuck up the Lenny Bruce story. I knew about his legend, even though I never saw him perform, and I knew how important he was to many people.

There was one piece in particular of Bruce’s that I thought was absolutely brilliant. It runs a little over twenty minutes, and it’s called “The Palladium.” I think it’s one of the best twenty minutes of comedy ever.

My friend Jacques Levy, who directed the stage production of
Oh! Calcutta!
and then later Bob Dylan’s
Rolling Thunder Revue
, once said that all contemporary comedy springs from that half hour.

In what sense?

Bruce uses a few different voices throughout the piece, which I’ve often found myself slipping into while writing. It’s this “What are you nuts? What are you crazy?” type of attitude; it was a very modern sensibility when he performed it in the mid-sixties.

It’s about a minor Vegas comedian named Frank Dell who wants to perform in “classy rooms.” He just bought a new house with a pool and patio.
6
His manager gets him into the Palladium in London. He starts off with his bad shtick: “Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen! You know, I just got back from a place in Nevada called Lost Wages. A funny thing about working Lost Wages . . .” He bombs so badly that he starts to say anything to get a response: “Screw Ireland! Screw the Irish! The IRA really bum-rapped ya.” He still bombs and causes a near riot.

What did you make of the Bob Fosse–directed movie
Lenny
when it was finally released in 1974, starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role?

I thought Hoffman was miscast. The movie just barely scratched the surface of that man’s life. The film didn’t work at all for me.

You’re credited with writing the screenplay to 1980’s
Stir Crazy
, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Were you happy with the finished product?

I liked that movie very much; I just liked the way it worked out. I could recognize my voice every once in awhile watching that movie.

The idea wasn’t mine—it was a producer’s named Hannah Weinstein, who told me about this phenomenon in Texas where prisoners staged a rodeo. That’s all I was given. I wrote the screenplay, and Hannah was able to cast Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.

There was one instance where I wasn’t happy. At the last minute, another writer was brought in to punch up the script or to add some dialogue. I visited the set during the scene where Gene mounts a mechanical bull. He pats the bull and says, “Nice horsey” a couple of times.

Well, I don’t write “Nice horsey.” I mean, it’s simply something that I would never write for a character. Bed wetters say “nice horsey,” but not my characters. I didn’t know the rules and I was a little offended, so I started to walk off the set. So Richard—someone I had never met before—came running over and said, “Gee, I never met a writer like you. Take the money; don’t take any shit.” He said, “I’ve got fifty in cash. I think I’ll get out of here, too.”

He then said, “You ever get high?”

I said, “Once, in the spring of ’63.” I was just teasing, but I was in good form. I said, “Jews rarely tend to become junkies. For one thing, they have to have eight hours of sleep. They have to read
The New York Times
in the morning. They need fresh orange juice. So, no, I’ve never gotten high.”

We walked into his trailer and, the second we did, I knew I wasn’t going to be comfortable. Everything was foreign to me: pipes and wickers and just crazy things. It was all new to me. If we lit a match, we were finished.

My one regret with
Stir Crazy
is that I didn’t do more with Richard’s character. I should have fleshed his character out more, and I didn’t. I feel bad about that. What’s interesting is that Richard treated every word you wrote as if it were scripture. Gene was looser. For Gene, the dialogue was just a starting point.

You knew satirical writer Terry Southern quite well, didn’t you?

We were good friends, particularly in his late years.

Do you think Terry’s contribution was important to
Dr. Strangelove
? Terry co-wrote the script with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George, but Kubrick later claimed that Terry’s role wasn’t as significant as many people thought.

I would trust Terry’s account in this area. He was always collaborating and getting into awful squabbles about credits. He was a generous man and easily taken advantage of—picked apart, really—by the wolves.

How does a writer like Terry Southern age—where you always have to produce work that has the capacity to astonish?

Some keep it up. Some fade. Others simply push on. Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Terry had an especially tough time throughout the last decades. Had the culture changed? Was he out of sync? There is always that worry.

It’s a shame. He had the most unique voice of any writer I knew. He was a brave man in print, but vulnerable in life—no doubt a familiar story.

I once leased an apartment in New York that had an S&M room. Terry saw the black walls, the mirrored ceiling, the whips and chains stored in the closet. A room that had his name on it. He said, “Grand Guy Bruce, would you mind terribly if I crashed in here for a bit?” I said fine. It was three in the morning.