My Life as a Mankiewicz (48 page)

I sold my house, finally, because though I'd go there for weeks at a time, I'd only been there four or five times. I'd been all over the country and I'd been on safari, but I was also working. It's not like having a house in Lake Arrowhead. It's a big schlep, and you don't go unless you can spend a lot of time there. You can't go for three days; it takes you two days to get there. I have not been back in years, and I don't want to go back because it's not going to be the same. I'm not the same person, and it's not going to be like when I was bopping around the country with Stefanie and Don and Iris. Iris is sick now, and Stefanie might not be there, and I'm older, and it's just not the same.

Mank One

Warners treated me very well, even though they really only wanted to use me for rewrites. They wanted their money's worth. They were giving me a huge bungalow with four or five different rooms, and I had a development person. Frank Price at Universal said to CAA, “I'd really like to get Mankiewicz over here. He can make a picture. I'm not sure which picture, but he can make a picture here.”

I had left Jeff Berg, my agent at ICM, because Mike Ovitz had romanced me. He said, “You know, every project that my clients are involved with all have something to do with you. There's Dick Donner and Steven Spielberg—Mankiewicz is doing this, Mankiewicz is doing that. And I thought, why doesn't he join us?” At the time, it was clear Ovitz was the most powerful agent. Donner said to me, “You're a fool if you don't come to CAA.” They also happened to represent Frank Price, and Ovitz said, “You know what? Frank would like you to come to Universal.” Ovitz was the latter-day Freddie Fields. Freddie, when he had Sue Mengers with him, was the first guy who really started to cock around with producers and became as big as the movie and the actors and the actresses were. Ovitz couldn't have been more charming and more humble. He could be really seductive, and at the time, there was no question that CAA was the place to be. I called Jeff Berg and said, “I'm going with Mike Ovitz.” I've never fired anybody without cause. Jeff Berg was head of ICM, which was a big agency. But I really felt like I was better off going to CAA. I really wanted to make pictures. And here was Frank Price dangling this deal at Universal. I had fulfilled my obligation to Warners on so many different projects, and I couldn't get my own picture off the ground there.

So Annie Stevens and I moved to Universal, where we got a really nice bungalow, “Mank One Productions.” And the first thing Universal did was to ask me to fix a movie for Colin Higgins, who had done
9 to 5
with Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin. Higgins was having trouble with a script for a sequel to
9 to 5.
Frank Price said, “Listen, while you're settling in, will you work with Colin? Colin would be delighted. He wants to work with you.”

Colin was at a loss. Jane Fonda didn't really want to do a sequel. Dolly Parton did. She had done
Best Little Whorehouse
at Universal. We had meetings with her. She was the brightest person. I mean, she plays “Dolly” real great. I'm not surprised at her huge musical or acting success. She's real smart. Look at Dollywood. But the sequel was never going to happen. I helped Colin as much as I could. We had lunch three times a week, and I'd go through pages with him and say, “How about blah-blah-blah?” I don't know if his heart was in it. So I said to Frank, “I don't know if this is happening.”

He said, “Okay, now listen. I swear to God you'll make a picture here, but there's one more script…”

I said, “Oh, boy, here we go again.”

Legal Eagles:
The Package

In the Ovitz era, what was happening to Hollywood was “the package.”
Legal Eagles
started as a project for Bill Murray. It was a buddy movie. Bill Murray was represented by Ovitz. But he backed out. Jim Cash and Jack Epps, who'd written the script, were represented by CAA. Robert Redford mentioned to Ovitz that he'd love to do a romantic comedy. In a CAA meeting, the agents said, “You know what? We can retool this buddy movie as a romantic comedy. They're both lawyers. This would be like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.” So it was Redford, then Debra Winger, whom CAA represented. It was being done at Universal, where Mike Ovitz represented Frank Price; and Ivan Reitman, whom they represented, was directing it. It needed a rewrite. Neither Reitman nor Redford nor Winger thought that the script was good enough. So, who're you going to call? I was on the lot; Mank One Productions. Frank said, “Look, we're going to get a picture for you to make, but in the meantime, you've got to do this. It's Redford and Debra Winger.”

Ovitz called me. I said, “Mike, this is a television movie. I know what's special is Robert Redford and Debra Winger, but this is a TV movie.”

“No, no, no, it's going to be great. When you get home tonight, Ivan is coming over to see you.” Now, if the director of
Ghostbusters
is coming to my house, it's like the old days at Warners, if Terry Semel's coming down to see me, then they really want something. I agreed because I was under a lot of pressure. I was CAA, the actors and director were CAA, and the studio head was CAA. I thought, I certainly can make it better.

We scheduled a meeting with Ivan, Redford, and me. Debra Winger was in New York. Redford was the guy you had to please, he was the huge star. Bob was an hour late for the meeting; Ivan and I were just sitting there. There were all these phone calls, “Redford's on his way. Redford's on his way.” I gather this is something that he had really gotten into in his life; he always was late, inexcusably late. Melanie Griffith, on a movie that Redford directed called
The Milagro Beanfield War
, said, “I remember it was so hot in New Mexico, where we were shooting. It was the first day, and we all sat and waited in the heat, made up, for Redford. He finally showed up at nine thirty. We were ready to go at eight. He was meeting with the cameraman, Robbie Greenberg. Redford said, ‘We're shooting here?' And Greenberg said, ‘Yes, Bob, you picked it.' He said, ‘No, we can find a better place than this.' Then Redford took off looking for places.” He was maddeningly late all the time, and I don't know when he got into that habit.

But we had a meeting. It was pleasant. He remembered me very well through Natalie Wood and Alan Pakula. I hadn't seen him in years. I was at the wedding of David Lange, Hope Lange's brother, Alan Pakula's brother-in-law, in Toronto, where David's wife's family came from. I was one of the two best men at the wedding. Me and Bob Redford. He was a young actor. Alan had worked with him on
Inside Daisy Clover.
It was a Sunday night, and you couldn't get a drink in Toronto on Sundays except in the hotel. We were in the hotel bar, and Redford got a phone call from whatever charlatan was running the Foreign Press Association. The Golden Globes were the next night. And he said, “Congratulations, you've just won the Star of Tomorrow Award. You have to be here to accept it.” It was so clear that they had given it to somebody else who wasn't going to be there so they decided to give it to Redford.

He said, “Unfortunately, I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow from New York with my wife, Lola, so I can't be there.” Then they clearly said he had to be there in person to receive it or they wouldn't give him the award. Redford said, “Listen, I don't care about the award so much, but since you guys offered it to me, if I don't get it, I'm going to reprint this phone conversation on the back of both trade papers.” He got it. The Golden Globes were quite a different thing then.

We all agreed on what had to be done. The picture had to start because everybody had a window. Redford said to me, “Listen, when you're writing, I don't say funny lines very well.”

I said, “Gee, I'm sorry to hear that, Bob, because it's a comedy. That's really devastating.”

He said, “But I react great. So give her the funny lines and then cut to me. I'm great reacting.”

So I started writing. I got to New York. I met Debra, crazy about her. She was kooky, talented, had a husky little voice, and she was obviously emotionally troubled in some ways. In our first meeting, she stood on her head. She asked, “Does this make you nervous?”

And I said, “No, I went with Tuesday Weld for three years,” and she laughed and fell down.

She called me in the middle of the night as pages were flying out of my suite at the Helmsley Palace. She said, “Do you know what's wrong with this picture?”

And I said, “No, Debra, what's wrong with this picture?”

She said, “This is a Tracy-Hepburn comedy and I'm playing Spencer Tracy. When did I get all the funny lines? When did I become Henny Youngman?”

I said, “Ms. Winger, meet Mr. Redford. Mr. Redford doesn't like to say funny lines.” She and Redford didn't get along. I mean, they didn't hate each other.

She said, “Redford is always the love object; he's never the leading man. In
The Way We Were
, Barbra Streisand played the man, he was the love object. In
Out of Africa
, Meryl Streep was the man, he was the love object. In
The Electric Horseman
, Jane Fonda was the man, he was the love object on the horse. Jesus, even in
Butch Cassidy
, Paul Newman was the guy and Redford was the love object. So this is what he wants to be.” Years later,
Indecent Proposal
presented the same scenario—Redford as the love object in the sense that there was a million dollars offered to spend the night with him. There was a scene in
Legal Eagles
where Redford had to sleep with Daryl Hannah. He was really upset about it. Originally, he took her to bed, and then he thought that was really bad because he realized she was half his age. Also, he didn't do that as Robert Redford. I had to twist the thing around so that he falls asleep in bed, he wakes up, and she's just lying there next to him saying, “I couldn't sleep either.” So it was like she forces herself on him. Again, he was the love object.

Debra Winger was going with Governor Bob Kerrey of Nebraska at the time, and he was in New York. She had a limousine and a driver at her call twenty-four hours a day. She had her German shepherd with her named Petey. Once, I was in a rush to do something and I asked, “Is your car down there? Can I borrow your car?”

She said, “Oh, damn, I wish I'd known. He's out with Petey.”

And I said, “What?”

She said, “I never know what to do with the car, so I say to the driver, ‘Why don't you show Petey New York?'” So he's driving the fucking dog around New York. Show him Central Park. She felt guilty about being in New York with this dog. You didn't want to keep him in a room all day. So it was the only car and driver that was showing a German shepherd New York.

Terence Stamp was in the cast as a villain. We had a great reunion because he was General Zod in
Superman.
What a terrific man. Redford was a handful. The problem was that Ivan Reitman was not in control of the movie. Nobody was in control of the movie. Ivan Reitman's wife wanted to be a director. She was onset always standing in Debra Winger's eye line. And Debra would say, “I don't want to work if your wife's on the set.”

Ivan had scenes written by art experts, which he would hand me. His dentist had ideas. I'm not exaggerating by much. I would get forty pages from different people, and Ivan would say, “See what you can do with this.”

Laszlo Kovacs was the cameraman. I knew Laszlo very well, and I'd known him for years. My assistant, Annie, was married to Bobby Stevens, who had been his operator on all the famous pictures. Outside of Laszlo, I don't know that Ivan knew anybody's name on the set. You can get a buzz off a set. Many times they would wait for Redford. I said to Ivan, “Can you talk to him?”

Ivan said, “What am I going to do, fire Bob Redford? I can't fire Bob Redford. I've talked to him. He says, ‘I'm sorry.'”

Now it's Christmastime. I've finished my rewrite, and I'm going to my house in Kenya. I call Mike Ovitz. “Mike, I just want you to be aware, I'm going to Kenya on the fifteenth. I've done my draft.”

He says, “Bob doesn't want you to leave.”

I say, “Well, I'm really sorry about that, but I have gone through it. I've done a whole draft, and I've talked to him. Bob has been in movies for thirty years. Surely he knows somebody who he would want to work on it.”

Mike calls me back and says, “He does, and it's you.”

I say, “I can't do it. I'm going to Kenya.”

Ovitz calls again later. “Bob wants to know, can you come through New York on your way to Kenya? Oh, and Bob has a message: ‘It's not a lot of fun in Kenya.'”

I say, “No, it is a lot of fun there.”

I liked Redford a lot when I knew him earlier, and I'm sure he's done a lot of wonderful things as a person. So I take the red-eye to New York so that I can be down in SoHo where they're shooting by eight in the morning so I can meet with Redford. Then I can get on a plane in the afternoon to go through London on to Kenya. I get there, downtown, eight o'clock. Everybody's shooting, but Redford's not there; he didn't show. Nine o'clock, he's not there. Ten o'clock, he's not there. Now Ivan's run out of other stuff to shoot. Finally, at eleven thirty, Redford shows up. He gets out of the car and says, “Oh, hi, Tom. I'll be just a minute.” He goes into his motor home and shuts the door. A few minutes later, he says, “Come on in.” So, I oblige.

I'm sitting there. Bob says, “So, I think the script's looking pretty good.”

I say, “Well, I did my best, Bob. Are there any particular scenes that you think still need some work, because I can be doing them on the plane and send them.”

He says, “No, I think we're in pretty good shape.”

I say, “Well, thanks. That's it?” And that was it. I thought, no way to prove it, but it's just his ego. He felt fucked if I was just going to take the next flight to Kenya. So instead, I stopped in New York to see him. There was no reason for the meeting.

It was a lesson in how not to make a movie, because it started all wrong. If this had been a Bill Murray-Dan Aykroyd buddy movie about two lawyers, it would have been completely different than what it turned out to be. Nobody was in it for the right reasons; Redford thought he wanted to do a romantic comedy, which he hadn't done in a while; Debra Winger needed that kind of part; this was a property Universal owned anyway, and they had the guy to rewrite it. But there's no reason to make the movie. And you saw so many movies like that in that time. CAA was involved with a lot of them. The reason to make the movie was the package.