My Life as a Mankiewicz (28 page)

She said, “I agree.”

“And the movie's twenty minutes too long, but every movie's twenty minutes too long today as far as I'm concerned. Daniel Craig, you should keep him and lock him in a cellar and don't let anybody else have him. He should do fifty of these.”

It was a wonderful movie. I didn't like
Quantum of Solace
because I couldn't follow it. I didn't know who was fighting who and what was going on. One critic said it correctly: Bond should introduce himself with “My name is Bourne, Jason Bourne.” This is
The Bourne Identity
, and that's not Bond. The idiosyncratic wit that's in Bond. The car that swims underwater. Those things are missing. And the audience misses them. You miss Q and the preposterous, the bizarre that's in Bond. The thing that differentiated Bond from
Lethal Weapon
, from
Bourne
, was its sense of humor. It's bizarreness. You could just stop the movie dead with a huge belly laugh at a remark of Bond's. I thought the writers were so smart in
Casino Royale
to make it all about Bond, because this guy's in here for the long haul. He's a wonderful actor. Daniel Craig can play anything. Now if they can just get some of that fun back. Guy Hamilton was a great instructor for me in terms of getting the bizarreness. He said, “Never forget, Tom, in a Bond movie, if you want to start a fire, first you call the fire department. Everything works backward.”

Sean remains, to me, the best Bond because he was Bond when the audience broke in with him. But also, he had that glimmer of violence in his eyes. When Sean is in physical fights onscreen, you'll notice he's smiling a lot. It's not a big smile, but it's like he's enjoying it. He looks like a bastard. If you were a woman, you would never want to marry Sean Connery, but boy, would you like to spend a weekend with him in Brazil. Sean had that violence and excitement in him. Roger was Fleming's Bond, and did a great job. Pierce Brosnan was neither great nor terrible. He was just Bond. He was fine.

The best actor they ever had playing Bond was Timothy Dalton. Cubby asked me at the time, “What do you think of Tim Dalton for James Bond?”

I said, “How about Tim Dalton for a James Bond villain?” There was something slightly androgynous about him, and evil. A wonderful actor. He only did two. A very good friend of Cubby's. An interesting guy who would go to the Arctic Circle and help wildlife, and he had a long affair with Vanessa Redgrave.

Daniel Craig is just terrific. He was a shot in the arm when Bond really needed it, because it's an amazing series. It's been going fifty years.
Dr. No
was 1962. I saw it when I was in college. I saw
From Russia with Love
when I was in college, and
Goldfinger
the year after I got out of college. There have been twenty-two of these. Nothing like that's ever happened in the history of film. Bond went great with the times. Sean was the guy for the sixties. The seventies got Love, Love, Love and marijuana. It was a bit more freewheeling, and what I brought to the Bonds was a lot of humor. I think I was right for the seventies. Then all of a sudden, it got too much. By the time
Moonraker
was made, they became silly pictures.

And Away I Go

I was now a hot writer. But I was really tapped out on Bond. You can only write so much of the same thing for so many years. Jackie Gleason, who had been in vaudeville, was a giant when I was growing up.
The Jackie Gleason Show
from Miami Beach—”A little traveling music, Ray”—and Reggie Van Gleason. He was fabulous. The hottest producers on television were Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, who had
All in the Family, Maude
, and
Sanford and Son.
I got a phone call from Norman Lear one day in 1974. He said, “Listen, you'd be the ideal guy for this. I'm going to do a series with Jackie Gleason; he's coming back. And he's going to play a conman. I mentioned you to Jackie, and he loves the idea.”

I flew to Miami and a car and driver picked me up, and I went to Jackie's house. He had a big sunken bar, and he started to make a drink. I was looking at Jackie Gleason, and there was something very aggressive about him. He was, after all, “the Great One.” He was the guy at Toots Shor, he had done
The Hustler
, Minnesota Fats. Now he was doing
Smokey and the Bandit
playing the sheriff. We were talking about the show. It was going to be called
Panama Fargo.
I said to him, “Jackie, I've got some ideas for some supporting characters that—”

He said, “Oh, fuck those supporting characters, pal.” He called you “pal” all the time. “They get too famous and they have too much to do.”

“Really? Because they were terrific in
The Honeymooners.”

“That's what I'm talking about. This will just be me.”

I said, “I have one specific idea. When the main title comes on and it says ‘Panama Fargo'—”

He said, “Let me interrupt you, pal. That's not the title of the show.”

“That's not the title? Because Norman told me—”

“No. The title of the show is ‘The Great One Is Panama Fargo.'”

I said, “Okay. All right.”

So we talked for a couple of hours. He said, “I look forward to seeing the page.”

I got back to the Jockey Club and called Norman. I got his assistant because Norman was on the set. I said, “Tell him I'm coming back. I thank him very much. I don't want to do this. And I think if he really talks to Mr. Gleason, he's not going to want to do it either.”

I got back to L.A. about ten hours later and I had a message from Norman Lear saying, “You're right. I just talked to him. I don't want to do it either.” And that was the end of it. Still, you gotta love Jackie Gleason.

Columbo

I got a reputation as a fixer. I'd done the Bonds. That's where Peter Falk got my name. I had met Peter a couple of times, but I really didn't know him. It was the strangest job I ever had. Peter Falk was doing Columbo. It was a big hit internationally. He threw a snit at the studio. He said to Universal, “I want somebody on this show to look at the scripts and to make sure that everything is right. That the clues are at the right time. Independent; not our staff.” He had great writers; William Link and Richard Levinson and others. He said, “Here's who I want: either Len Deighton”—a novelist who had written
The Ipcress File
—”or Tom Mankiewicz.” Where he got Len Deighton from, I don't know. He'd seen my name on three straight Bonds. It was a demand for renegotiating.

My then agent, Ron Mardigian at William Morris, called. “I got the strangest call from Universal. It's an offer but a nonoffer. Peter Falk apparently wants you to read
Columbo
scripts. But Universal is saying, ‘Forget it, we don't pay writers to read; we pay them to write.' I said, ‘Look, he's doing features. He's obviously not going to go on Columbo.'”

Apparently, Peter Falk made a big stink, and Universal called Ron back and asked, “Well, what would he want to read a script?”

Ron had checked, and the writers got $15,000 for
Columbo.
He said, “Mankiewicz would want five thousand to read it. A third. He'd read it and supervise it.”

They said, “You're out of your mind,” and hung up on him. Then Universal called back and said, “All right, seventy-five hundred a script. Take it or leave it.”

Ron joked, “If we'd turned them down again, we might have gotten ten.”

So, for one year of
Columbo
, I read scripts. I apologized to Link and Levinson. I said, “You guys are doing a great job. I watch Columbo all the time.”

They said, “No, no, we understand.”

I got along fine with Peter. We were having lunch one day. It was the day of the Emmys. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Long Form. I asked, “So, you going down to the Emmys tonight? You're knocking off early?”

He said, “I don't think I'm gonna go.”

“Why, Peter, for Christ sakes? You're going to win.”

“Yeah, but I'm only up against Dennis Weaver for
McCloud.
It's just the two of us, so if I win, I just beat Dennis Weaver.”

I said, “Look, you want to be loved by the audience?”

He said, “Yeah.”

“If you win, come up and say, ‘Sorry, Dennis, it came up tails,' and they'll love you.”

He said, “That's not a bad idea. I'm going.”

I'm getting ready to go out to dinner—I'm putting on my tie and my jacket or my Nehru jacket—and I'm watching the Emmys. The presenter says, “And the winner is, Peter Falk.” Peter gets up and says, “Sorry, Dennis, it came up tails.” The audience gives him a round ovation, and he says, “Thank you, Tom Mankiewicz.”

I get to my dinner, and everybody says, “Boy, we had no idea you were so intimately involved with
Columbo.
Peter Falk won, and he thanked you first.”

I said, “No, no, that's not for Columbo, that's for the line!”

I've never been actually paid not to write or direct or produce but just to read. I would go into the office with Peter and say, “I think you could hold back discovering the bloody handkerchief and it would be more effective at the end of act three.” I would feel I wasn't earning my $7,500 unless I had some ideas. They were wonderful scripts because he had a great writing staff. He was just exercising some muscle. Television, unlike features, is the medium in which supporting actors can become big stars. Telly Savalas, always a supporting actor.
Kojak
, huge star. Peter,
Columbo
, huge star. Dennis Weaver was doing
McCloud.
He would never have been a leading man, but he was a huge star in television. One of the great character actors who was in
The Sopranos
, Joe Pantoliano—Joey Pants, as he was called—said, “You know why we have a good show? Everybody in it's a supporting actor. It's just good fucking actors.” In film, the director is everything. In series television, it's the writing and the stars. Let's say you go out and direct
Columbo;
if Peter doesn't like you, you don't do another
Columbo.
I counted on
NCIS
thirteen different producing credits. It says co-producer, co-executive producer, supervising producer, co-supervising producer. Most of those are writers. They get that credit because you can't list the writing staff. My cousin John fixed
In Plain Sight
, a series for USA. It says: “Co-producer, John Mankiewicz.” He didn't do any producing, he just fixed the scripts. So in television, it's writing and the stars.

No Thanks, CIA; Hello, Mother

I made one stupid decision: I said, “No, I don't want to write
Three Days of the Condor.”
That was a wonderful movie. I wish I had done it, but it was CIA and I thought, oh, God, here we go again. John Huston said, “All your films are your children and you love them all equally.” I don't think that's true. There are films you love more.

Joe Barbera of Hanna Barbera, the huge cartoon place (Yogi Bear, all of that), wanted to do a film about ambulance driving. He got some young guy to write a script at Fox. They were very happy to give Joe development money because he had a lot of money himself. This kid did not deliver. I said, “Boy, that's really interesting, ambulance driving, because there's so much you could say about society.” Joe Barbera heard that I was interested, and he was very interested in me because I was a James Bond writer. I said, “Can I ride in an ambulance for a couple of weeks and just see?”

He said, “Sure.” He got me to the Schaefer Ambulance Company. I rode in an ambulance with a driver named Tom “Hap” Hazard and his partner. It was just amazing.

On the Sunset Strip, we pulled up and a guy with a stab wound was bleeding to death, but he wouldn't go with us. Hap said, “We can't take him against his will. Under the law, that's kidnapping.”

The sheriff's deputy said, “He's a material witness to a stabbing. Take him.”

We took him to UCLA, and he tried to attack the attendant on the way down. We found out it was going to be his third strike. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and he didn't want to go to the hospital because he knew they'd find out who he was.

We went to an old people's home where there was a guy dressed as a four-star general who was losing it, and his wife was calling because she was afraid he was going to kill himself. We went to heart-attack victims. I said, “Boy, there's a terrific movie in there.” So I wrote an original called
Mother, Jugs & Speed
about this little ambulance company run by a crook in an unincorporated area. It was a wild group of people. I was at a party at Natalie Wood's—she was a great friend of mine at the time—and I met a British director named Peter Yates, who had directed
Bullitt
with Steve McQueen. He was hopping a red-eye that night, leaving at ten thirty for New York. We were talking, and I asked, “What are you going to do next?”

He said, “I'd love to do a comedy, but I'd love to do one with a little bite to it.”

I said, “Well, I happen to have one in the back of my car.”

He said, “Really? Can I read it?”

So I gave it to him. He got on the plane and called me the next morning from New York and said, “Let's do it.” Things like that happen. I could have easily not had it in the trunk of my car, or he could have read it and not liked it.

So we now gave it to Alan Ladd Jr., who had just taken over as head of Fox. I knew Laddie. Laddie read it and said, “This is about the most offensive script I've ever read in my life. There is no group you don't insult in this movie. Can you guys make this for three million bucks?”

“Yes,” we lied.

We thought Gene Hackman was the perfect guy to play Mother because he was a mother hen. I knew Gene a little bit, and I flew down to Baja California, where he was shooting a movie called
Lucky Lady
with Liza Minnelli and Burt Reynolds. Stanley Donen was directing it, and when I got down there, it was clear everybody was hating the experience. Stanley said, “Did you come down here to fire me? Is that why Fox sent you down?”