Streisand: Her Life (87 page)

N
EVER FULLY SATISFIED
with the finished script, Barbra took suggestio
ns from
anyone about how to improve a scene, and she encouraged improvisation. Richard Lawson played the Kid’s boxing nemesis, Hector Man
till
a, with an amusing accent. For a scene in which Hillary, barely able to keep awake, challenges
Mantilla to a winner-take-all match with Scanlon in the midst of a television interview hosted by the sportscaster Brent Musburger, Barbra, Ryan, and Lawson all winged it. “The lines were basically there,” said Lawson, “but the imitation Barbra did of my accent was improvisational. The scene took on a life of its own. It was written as a straight interview, but the whole aspect of her falling asleep and Ryan waking her up, and of her calling Musburger ‘Brett’ and ‘Burt’—all of that was total improvisation.”

Barbra’s desire to infuse
The Main Event
with some relevant points about the real-life battle of the sexes was most apparent in a scene she concocted and inserted into the film, against the advice of Zieff and others, after filming had wrapped. Finally giving in to their mutual attraction, Hillary and the Kid make love for the first time during their stay at a training camp. Barbra felt a “morning after” scene was necessary to further define the two characters and what this new physical relationship might bring. “I thought it would be [a chance] to see where these two people are coming from [and] how different they are emotionally. [A chance] to say something about men and women and the roles they’re supposed to play and yet be funny.” Although unsubtle, the scene allowed for some amusing role reversal as Scanlon expresses his concern that Hillary might not respect him now that she’s had her way with him.

I
MMEDIATELY AFTER
The Mam Event
wrapped production early in 1979, Howard Zieff began to construct his director’s print, even though he knew the final cut would be Barbra’s. In the meantime, work began on the musical eleme
nts of
the film. Producer Gary LeMel, who had helped steer Barbra’s
Superman
album to the top of the charts, asked longtime Streisand fan Paul Jabara (who had just won a Best Song Oscar for “Last Dance”) to compose a disco-style title number for
The Main Event
to capitalize on the most popular musical genre of the seventies. Written with Bruce Roberts, the song didn’t impress Barbra at first because the lyrics didn’t reflect the film’s boxing theme. Bob Esty, who had produced “Last Dance” for disco queen Donna Summer, suggested that the song be combined with “Fight,” a number he and Jabara had developed as a send-up of the camp disco group the Village People. Barbra liked the idea of a medley, but she was timid about venturing into dance-oriented pop for the first time since “Shake Me, Wake Me”—until twelve-year-old Jason responded strongly to the song. “He was the one who really sold it,” Esty recalled. “He loved it and [Barbra] listened to him.”

Warner Brothers opened
The Mam Event
in eleven hundred theaters across the country on June 22, 1979. The cornerstone of the promotional campaign was a sexy photograph of Barbra, braless in a tank top and tight satin shorts, and Ryan, bare-chested and in trunks, in a classic nose-to-nose boxing pose. Despite mostly negative reviews, Barbra’s popularity and the desire of many moviegoers to see if she and Ryan could re-create the magic of
What’s Up
,
Doc?
brought the film a glittering gross of $66 million, making it Barbra’s third most successful picture to that date, behind
A Star Is Born
and
What’s Up, Doc?

A film replete with annoying inconsistencies,
The Mam Event
disappointed many Streisand admirers, who had expected Barbra’s follow-up to
A Star Is Born
to be something worth waiting almost three years for. She has her amusing moments, but her Hillary Kramer is a bafflingly schizophrenic character. As the head of “Le Nez” (The Nose) perfumes, she’s the picture of competence and business savvy. But in her private quarters, or when confronted with the alien world of professional boxing, she calls to mind Lucy Ricardo at her dizziest. Even as a fish out of water, she is largely an unbelievable character. O’Neal’s bumbling, boyish charm is more appealing, but he too is hampered by the silly, sometimes turgid script.

Despite its shortcomings,
The Mam Event
showed “legs” throughout the summer, in part because of the success of the exuberant title song, sung by Barbra, which shot up to number three on the singles chart.

S
HORTLY AFTER THE
movie’s release, several press accounts depicted Howard Zieff as a director who had suffered a meddlesome superstar. A profile in the
Fort Lauderdale News
,
headlined “Wherein an Underrated Director Risks All to Tangle with ‘La Barbra,
’”
called Zieff “a Streisand survivor.”

The piece quoted Zieff, who chose his words carefully so as not to violate the clause in his contract that forbade him to speak ill of Barbra: “People look at you in amazement when you say you’ve just directed Streisand. They say, ‘He can handle movie stars and still bring movies in on time and around budget.’... Barbra always has final say on her movies.” In another interview he said, “She just took over the editing and cut the film to her own purpose... as producer, she had full control.”

Ryan O’Neal told Rex Reed, “In
What’s Up, Doc?
we did what we were told. Peter Bogdanovich ran the show. This time we tried all kinds of things. [Barbra] played the Bogdanovich role. Howard Zieff was under lots of pressures. I think he held up pretty well.”

Barbra avoided public discussion of her relationship with Zieff, but privately she admitted that the experience was only slightly less painful than her “collaboration” with Frank Pierson. She considered both men maddeningly unable to make up their minds. To her, “directing is a good job for someone who has opinions.”

What Barbra didn’t know was that she had been urged to hire Zieff as a practical joke. The producer Jennings Lang, in whose home Barbra had sung to raise funds for the Pentagon Papers Defense Fund, recalled that early in
1978 he
had attended the farewell performance of Zubin Mehta as the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “Everybody who is anybody is there,” Lang related. “[Walter] Matthau is sitting with his wife, Carol, in one row; Barbra Streisand is with Sue Mengers in the row in front of them. [Walter and I] had just finished a picture called
House Calls
,
and we had a lot of problems with Howard Zieff, our director, the man who can’t make up his mind. He’s a very talented guy, except he changes colors from black to white in ten seconds. He’s just not definitive about what he wants to do. He was driving everybody crazy, including Matthau, on the set.”

At intermission, Barbra and Sue Mengers stood up, and Sue noticed Walter Matthau.
“Walt
er, you know Barbra,” she said. Matthau put his arms around Barbra, kissed her, and burbled to Mengers, “I’ve always been in love with her. I always loved her. I miss her so much.”

Barbra quickly cut to the chase. “Tell me about Howie Zieff.”

“He’s the greatest director in the world!” Matthau exclaimed. “You
can’t
use anybody else. He knows every shot he’s going to take a week before he’s on the set. You won’t have to think; he’s
marvelous!
”

“G
ET MY LAWYER
on the phone!” Barbra screamed as she threw the magazine across the room. “I want this off the newsstands!” The offending publication, the November 1979 issue of the sleazy skin rag
High Society
,
had blazoned across its cover, along with a photo of Barbra in her modeling outfit from
The Owl and the Pussycat
,
not one but two banner headlines: “Barbra Streisand Nude.” The magazine’s editors had gotten ahold of several un-fogged frames of Barbra’s topless scene in that film and had published them to great fanfare.

Barbra sued for $5 million and demanded that the magazines be recalled. They never were. “We did agree to send out telegrams to our nearly five hundred wholesalers,” the editor Gloria Leonard said, “asking that, if they hadn’t already distributed the book to newsstands, they tear the pictures out and tape over the word ‘nude’ in connection with Streisand’s name on the cover.... Frankly, I know there will be some distributors who’ll just say, ‘The hell with the wire,’ and won’t go to the bother of following its instructions.”

The photos showed that Barbra had a very appealing bosom, and the issue quickly became a collector’s item. Barbra never won any damages from the magazine, but the nude frames, even though the fogging made it impossible to see much, were edited out when
The Owl and the Pussycat
was released on videocassette i
n 198
0.