Hollywood Animal (14 page)

“Why don’t you go back home,” she said, “and think of some screenplay ideas and send them down to me.”

I went back home and did that. It wasn’t easy. The house we were renting was so small and Steve and Suzi were so loud that I had to put an earplug into each ear to try to think. After about a week of doing that, both ears got infected and now I had doctors’ bills on top of all the other bills.

I finally got a note together to Marcia with some ideas. One of them, in very brief outline form, was about a screenplay to be called
F.I.S.T
., about a truckers’ union.

Marcia liked the concept and asked me to come down to L.A. again to talk about it. She asked what I had in mind. I explained that from my reading and the stories I’d heard from old union people on the West Side of Cleveland, where I grew up, I understood that the early years were a war, that people had died in the struggle, that the reason some unions became intertwined with the mob was that union members were immigrants fighting a brutal WASP power structure and were forced to turn to other immigrants for help just to stay alive.

What I had in mind was a big, sweeping historical piece that would necessitate a lot of research and would explain the intertwining of labor and the mob on a human level.

Marcia said, “Fine.”

I said, “I beg your pardon?”

She said, “Let’s do it.”

“Just like that?”

She laughed. “Just like that.”

I laughed. “Well, what do we do?”

“Do you have an agent?”

“I have a book agent.”

“Fine,” she said, “we’ll work it out with your book agent.”

The deal they made with me was what they called “a step deal.” I would do the research, then write what they called a “treatment,” then write a screenplay, and then make revisions on the screenplay—and if the movie was made, I would earn a total of $80,000. I was told that at any time along the line they could decide to end the process and end my payments.

It was, I knew, a risky proposition. I didn’t know anything about writing a screenplay. What if they just took my research and said “Thank you very much”? What if the research took me longer than I thought it would—what would my family live on?

But it offered the possibility of freedom if it worked out. I wouldn’t have to go to New York with Jann, I wouldn’t have to go through closets for change, I
wouldn’t
have to leave the sun. And it sounded like fun when it didn’t sound scary. I’d always enjoyed doing historical research and that’s how this would begin.

Before everything was finalized, Marcia asked that I meet with Mike Medavoy, the head of the studio. He was pleasant and friendly. His back wall was filled with photographs of himself with actors, politicians, and public figures.

“It sounds fine to me,” Mike said. “But how do I know you can write a screenplay?”

“His book is really cinematic,” Marcia said to him. “You’d see this is no problem if you read it.”

“Yeah, but it’s a book,” Mike said. “I’m talking about a screenplay. How do I know he can write a screenplay?”

I said nothing. My Adam’s apple was probably bobbing, butterflies were making their way through my esophagus toward my open mouth.

“Mike, I’m telling you,” Marcia said.

“We’re not making a book deal with him, we’re making a deal for a screenplay.”

“Oh,” I suddenly blurted. “That’s no problem. I took a couple of film courses in college.
I wrote a couple scripts.”

He looked at me a long moment, a twinkle in his eye. “Fine,” he finally said, “no problem then. Let’s do it.”

Twenty years later, Mike Medavoy said to me. “I knew it was bullshit, but that wasn’t the question I was really asking you. The question I was asking you was if you really wanted to do this and the lie told me that you did.”

The research took longer than I expected. I drove across the country to places like Ypsilanti, Michigan; Sandusky, Ohio; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Passaic, New Jersey; talking to veterans of the labor movement—to people who’d been gassed and beaten because they stood up for their rights as working men and women against a cruel conglomerate made up of bankers and company heads with goon squads and National Guardsmen at their beck and call.

I knew I could put my heart into this piece. I had been called a “greenhorn” and a “hunkie” and “trash” as I grew up on the streets of Cleveland. They were the same epithets hurled at those in the labor movement.

It was time to write a treatment and send it to Marcia. I had no idea what a treatment was. I knew what an outline was, but a treatment was evidently not that, nor was it a screenplay.

I wrote an eighty-page exegesis which bore the results of my research and also included some rudimentary notes in search of a story and characters.

To my utter amazement, Marcia called to tell me she liked the alleged treatment very much and also to say that the studio already had a director interested in making the movie.

“But there’s no script,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “he likes the idea.”

“There not much of an idea there, either,” I said.

“Don’t worry. There’s enough there to interest him. You’ll work out the rest of it together.”

“Together?” I said. “He’s not writing it,
I’m
writing it. He’s
directing
it.”

She laughed at me. “It’s part of directing,” she said.

“What—writing?”

“Yes.”

“But has he written anything before?”

“No,” she said, “he’s not a writer, he’s a director, why would he have written anything before?”

Bob Rafelson was the director. I knew his work and had greatly admired one of his movies:
Five Easy Pieces
. I also knew that he was a very in-demand director, a star director, and I was flattered that he was interested in directing my script even though it wasn’t a script.

“There’s a great movie in here somewhere,” Bob said when we met in L.A., “all we have to do is find it.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“You’ll find it, all I’m going to do is give you directions.”

What we had to do, Bob said, was talk. We had an awful lot of talking to do, he said, and somewhere in all that talk we would find the words that would go into the script.

“Fine,” I said, “but I’ll write the script, right?”

“Of course you’ll write the script,” he said, “I don’t know anything about writing.”

We made plans to do our talking in Aspen, where Bob had a home.

“You better plan to stay awhile,” he said. “A couple weeks.”

“A couple
weeks?
”

“Well, we’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

The morning of the day before I was to leave for Aspen Bob called, got my flight information, and said he’d meet me at the Aspen Airport.

That afternoon, Marcia Nasatir called me and told me I wasn’t going to Aspen.

I said, “Yes I am, Bob’s going to pick me up.”

“No he isn’t,” she said.

“Yes he is, I just spoke to him.”

“He’s off the project,” she said.

“No he’s not, he’s really into it, he’s got all kinds of ideas.”

“We
took
him off the project,” she said.

“You said he’d be perfect for this.”

“We saw the rough cut of
Stay Hungry
.” It was Bob’s new movie.

“Yeah?”

“It’s awful.”

“You said he was one of the most talented directors in the business.”

“He is,” she said, “but the movie’s awful.”

“How can the movie be so awful if he’s so talented?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re taking him off
F.I.S.T
.”

She said the studio would start looking for a new director. Meanwhile, she advised me, I should “sit tight.”

The next afternoon, my phone rang.

“Where the hell are you?” Bob Rafelson said.

I said, “I’m sorry?”

“I’m at the Aspen Airport and you’re not. Your plane just got in and you aren’t on it. What the hell’s going on?”

I didn’t know what to say. For a long moment, I said nothing.

Bob kept saying: “Hello? Hello?”

I said, “They told me not to go.”

He said, “Who told you not to go?”

“UA.”

“UA?”

“Yes.”

“But—why?”

I said nothing again. Bob said, “Hello? Are you there? Is something wrong with this connection?”

“They took you off the project.”

“UA took me off the project?”

“Yup. That’s what Marcia told me.”

“But why did UA take me off the project?” I could almost hear a snicker of disbelief in his voice.

“Because of
Stay Hungry
.”

“
Stay Hungry?
What does
Stay Hungry
have to do with this?”

“They said it was awful.”

“They did?”

Bob Rafelson hung up shortly afterward and moments later Marcia Nasatir called, very angry.

“What did you tell Bob Rafelson?” she asked.

“I told him I wasn’t going. Why didn’t
you
tell him I wasn’t going?”

“It was an oversight. Did you tell him I said
Stay Hungry
was awful?”

“Yeah.”

“Why in the world would you tell him that?”

“Because you told me it was awful.”

“But I didn’t tell you to tell him that.”

“He was at the airport. He wanted to know why I wasn’t there. What was I going to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “anything else. Tell him anything else, but don’t tell him I said his movie was awful.”

The phone didn’t ring for weeks after that. I didn’t know what was going on.

When the phone finally did ring, Marcia sounded very happy. She kept calling me “honey” and “darling” and it sounded like I’d been forgiven for my Rafelson indiscretion. She was calling, she said, with great news. We not only had a director who was “just perfect,” but we also had a producer who was a “powerhouse.”

Gene Corman was in his fifties—his brother Roger was a Hollywood legend for making low-budget movies directed by people who became stars: Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma and Jonathan Demme. Gene was very excited about producing the project and said he loved my treatment.

“This movie is going to be like
Zhivago
,” he said.

“
Zhivago? Zhivago
is a love story.”

“Well, so is
F.I.S.T.,”
he said.

“It is? It’s about the labor movement.”

“Of course it is,” he said, “but before we’re done it’s going to be a love story, too. That’s what makes
Zhivago
great—it’s history with a love story in the middle of it.”

“Well, I hadn’t really considered the love story aspect,” I said.

“I know that,” he said, “but you’re just at the treatment stage. The love story usually comes out of the third or fourth draft.”

Gene was “awed” by our new director: Karel Reisz, a Czech-born Englishman who had directed the English classic
Morgan!
and the critical rave
Isadora
, with Vanessa Redgrave. He had also just shot a movie called
The Gambler
with James Caan, which, Gene Corman said, “has hot word of mouth.”

“You’ve got to talk Karel into doing this,” Gene said.

“I thought he wanted to do it.”

“No, he’s interested in doing it. He likes your treatment.”

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. If he likes your script, then he’ll commit to direct it.”

“How can I talk him into doing it until I write the script?”

“You can make him part of the process. You can make him feel like he’s writing it with you. Get him pregnant.”

“He’s not going to write it with me.”

“Of course he’s not, but make him feel like he is.”

“How do I make him feel that he’s writing it with me?”

“Listen to his ideas. Put his ideas into the script. Tell him how well his ideas are working.”

“What if I don’t like his ideas?”

“Pretend that you do. He’s probably developing five other things. He probably won’t remember what his ideas were.”

Karel Reisz was a very wired, chain-smoking man who seemed like he wasn’t even sure that he liked my “treatment.” He didn’t call it a treatment. He called it a “
document
.”

“I think it’s a very interesting document,” he said, “with a great many interesting things in it.”

We talked a lot about the labor movement during our meeting in L.A. and I recounted some of the more powerful anecdotes I’d picked up in the research.

“It could be a tough, hard-hitting movie,” Karel said.

“Not
Zhivago
.”

“
Zhivago?
” he said. “My God no. I don’t see this as a love story, do you?”

“God no,” I said. It was a great relief to me that at least we agreed about that.

Karel was going home to England and we made plans for me to join him there so we could continue to talk about the movie that was possibly there in the “document.”

The week before I was to leave, Marcia Nasatir called and told me that Karel Reisz was off the project. The UA executives had seen
The Gambler
and agreed that it was nearly “unwatchable.”

“Will you tell him he’s off of
F.I.S.T.?
” I said to Marcia.

She laughed. “I’ll tell him.”

“Will you tell him today?”

“I’ll tell him today.”

“Do you promise, Marcia?”

“I promise.”

Gene Corman called to tell me I shouldn’t worry about Karel Reisz’s departure from the project. Gene was no longer “in awe.”

“He wasn’t the right director for this anyway,” Gene said. “
Morgan!
’s very funny, but it’s certainly not an epic.
F.I.S.T
. is an epic.
Isadora
has some scale, but it doesn’t work as a love story. It ain’t
Zhivago
.”

Three days later Karel Reisz called from London saying he was looking forward to my arrival and asking about my hotel reservations.

“Have you talked to UA?” I asked.

“Not since I left,” he said. “Why?”

“I’m not coming,” I said.

“You’re not coming?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re off the project, Karel,” I said.