Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me...

by Stevie Phillips

  *

  Tommy Tune is terriffic—brilliant and smart and charming and fun. He’s a great entertainer, and he knows how to make things entertaining. I loved his work from the first moment I saw it in Buffalo in a show called Sunset. So I met him for lunch with his agent and told him I would make him a rich man. I was moved to say that when I saw he was wearing pants held at the waist with an oversize safety pin. I didn’t know if it was a fashion statement or simply that he couldn’t afford pants that fit his six-feet-six frame. The show needed better musical staging than Pete Masterson, a fine actors’ director, had offered at the Actors Studio, and, for me, TT was the answer. I hired him first, and told Masterson, King, and Hall after. That was doing things backward, and they could have refused but they didn’t. It was Tommy’s first directing job on Broadway, and he shared the credit with Pete, who was as gracious about it as anyone could be. Tommy, who got a percentage of the box office, did get rich. They all did.

  It was my first time casting—and it was so much fun. In the late seventies there were no reality shows like American Idol and all its imitators, and so the process of talent elimination seemed unique to me. Hundreds of talented actors read the ad in Backstage, and it seemed like thousands showed up to strut their stuff. From the masses we would cull a chorus of eight men and eight women. The creative team and I auditioned them forty at a time. First they danced. That usually eliminated at least thirty out of the forty. The remaining ones sang. That usually got rid of another five. Anyone left got to read.

  When casting was over we had “whores” who were each individual, and guys who looked like college football players.

  Casting stories are legend. Here’s my favorite: After a run of a few years, every show develops a revolving door. Actors move on, and our show was no different. It seemed like we were always advertising for new “whores.” Many of the women we saw felt obliged to do a striptease for us. This was never asked for. One of the girls, however, found a way to go beyond even that: After she’d taken off all her clothes, she took out her teeth.

  Rehearsals can be hell. I would sit in the orchestra watching the musical take shape, there only to give my support and encouragement, and to keep the lines of communication open between my authors, who fought with each other over everything, starting with “Good morning,” which was never good when they were hungover.

  Once you decide on your creative team, you have to let them do their thing. But as it turned out, I didn’t always like their thing. Tommy and the three authors devised a big production number called “Two Blocks from the Capital.” The underlying message was that around the corner from our seat of government anyone can buy whatever diversion or perversion he wants. The point was valid, it was a good song; the lyrics were funny and right on the money, and the cast member performing it was terrific. But in my opinion the staging was way too edgy. Chorus girls feigning sex onstage with animals and tickling each other’s asses with feathers just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t imagine inviting the Universal top brass to see it without total embarrassment, without risking my future. It had to go. My creative team was most unhappy, especially Tommy Tune, whose brainchild this had been. They stood together against me, but I would not be moved. I called an end to rehearsals until they agreed to dump the song. “Go home,” I told them. “Rehearsal is over until the number is gone.” No one was willing to risk the entire production. The number was gone. I felt vindicated.

  *

  Okay, unions. I think they’re both important and necessary, but—and here comes my big butt—they caused me problems, expensive ones.

  1. When we moved from off-Broadway to the big time, I had to pay for the set to be “repainted.” This involves neither paint nor brush. The union (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) simply stamps the set “approved.” IATSE’s seal of approval cost us $400,000.

  2. The show happily ran off-Broadway for six weeks with four stagehands. When we transferred uptown, we needed fifteen men to run it. Same show, same set, nothing had changed. The good news is that the union guys were never again short a hand for the backstage poker game.

  3. We had a nine-piece band onstage. On Broadway, however, we paid the AFM for twenty-five musicians, and we paid it for almost five years. Some of the guys we paid were retired and living in Arizona, and some were playing their trombones in heaven. We never once laid eyes on them. But that was the agreement the union had with the Forty-sixth Street Theater, and I had to be good with it until we moved to a smaller house, the Eugene O’Neill, where its contract called for only fifteen musicians. The union muscled me, saying, You’ll pay what you always paid. Big mistake. I fought them and won. But it got nasty. Not one other producer stood at my side in the grim battle, so when I was not able to turn my victory into a precedent to benefit all of them, I shed no tears.

  We couldn’t use the word “whorehouse” in newspapers or on TV. No way could we persuade the venerable New York Times to take our ads for important preopening publicity, and we needed those badly. What to do? We did the only thing we could: We went topless: No media marquee. It was a first, and the press we got out of the story made up for the loss of our “good” name. For the TV market we showed a big production number with lots of boots, cowboy hats, dancing, and singing; and the message was, Y’all come down and have a foot-stompin’ good time!

  The Times finally relented, and so did the other media in New York, but the name was always an issue wherever the show traveled. My favorite moment came when I submitted a list of potential ads to the agency that makes the ad buy for the MTA buses that span the city. From a long list of possibilities—all rejected—they finally agreed to put banners along the sides of the buses that read: “Come to the Whorehouse.” Whoopee! The hierarchy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral that had just annihilated us in the press had to stand outside the church watching the buses pass by.

  We had a first national touring company, a second national touring company, a bus-and-truck company—all the accruals of success. Our brand was known nationwide. We were a megahit. Universal had no problem deciding to make the film, and spared no expense attendant upon doing so. They exercised their cheap option, and we were in preproduction. That’s what I’d given the studio in return for immediate financing. Back then the authors were jubilant that they could go to work on the show immediately, and they would not have been able to do so without our giving Universal the option. But now they were stuck with it, and I was stuck with their change in attitude. There was a chill in the air. They weren’t going to earn the millions the authors of A Chorus Line had. Of course they did not have the credentials the authors of that show enjoyed. They felt cheated and angry. But I make no apologies. I had fought hard for our deal and had gotten them as much as I could, probably a little more than the usual because I’d been an agent who’d made these kinds of deals in the past. So I knew what was doable and always practiced what that mighty Texan Lyndon Johnson, quoting Otto von Bismarck, called “the art of the possible.”

  Best of all, I was able to tie everyone, including Tommy Tune as director and myself as producer, to the movie—unheard of then at studios, which almost never ever encumber themselves with a show’s talent. The creators of the show then negotiated their own deals for working on the movie, and they were all paid extremely well. I was busy congratulating myself while the creative team was busy sticking pins in my doll. It didn’t matter. I loved the authors, and I loved the show. Nothing and no one could stop me from moving ahead, except Universal. They did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Hollywood Gets Another Whorehouse

  Tommy Tune started casting the movie. We placed an ad for singing cowboys to come audition at the Forty-sixth Street Theater. There was one proviso: Every guy had to have a minimum height of six feet two inches. Four thousand actors showed up on the appointed day, causing the police to shut down traffic on Forty-sixth Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. Tommy saw the men in massive lineups on the stage, and we re
marked to each other that looking only at their heads presented a jagged skyline. Some guys were six feet five, and others no more than five feet four. And each time Tommy would ask a five-footer his height, the actor would answer, “I’m six foot two.”

  *

  My first job as the film’s producer was to find a location I liked where we could shoot the film. I couldn’t wait to get started. Ned Tannen, whose gambling spirit had made the show possible, told me we would film it entirely in California. What? I cheerfully offered that I didn’t think any part of California looked like Texas. Ned got a little annoyed. “Tell the audience it’s Texas, and they’ll think it is,” he said. Given that Hawaii has been a standin for Vietnam, and so on, I decided to shut up and smile. To mollify me and prove he was right, he suggested I have a helicopter take me around the state. Is he really putting a helicopter at my disposal? My oh my! The chopper landed everywhere, north to south, east to west—and wherever it landed we could see mountains in the background. Worse, we could see the ocean. The open range dotted with grazing longhorns? Not there. The flatlands covered with oil rigs? Not there. Well, we could limit ourselves to two-shots and head shots. “We’ll film it tight,” I suggested to the pilot. We both laughed in disbelief. But when I told Ned about the ocean that existed alongside his home state, the funny thing is he didn’t laugh at all. Moving on.

  *

  Universal could not be sold on Carlin Glynn and Henderson Forsythe, whose amazing performances had earned them both Tony Awards. This was hardly unusual. Many other hit shows had been remade as movies, and rarely with the actors who made them hits on Broadway. Universal demanded big marquee names, and so if we couldn’t have the cast we wanted, we might as well have the biggest names in LA. Unfortunately sometimes one’s wishes come true.

  Although Burt Reynolds was not our first choice, he was on the studio’s short list, and he wanted to do it. He wanted especially to meet Tommy Tune, and a date was set when Tommy, Pete, and I would visit him on location of Smokey and the Bandit II in some sleepy town deep in the South. Burt, partly undressed for the part, greeted us at his door naked to the waist and wearing high-heeled cowboy boots. His pose included a shirt rakishly draped over his shoulder. Instead of hello, he pushed a glass of white wine at me, saying: “Isn’t this what you ladies drink?” “You ladies”? Is he for real? I almost rolled my eyes.

  After a few minutes of chat, Burt wanted to spend some time alone with Tommy, and they went into another room to talk privately. Pete and I sat quietly in the living trying to figure out what was going on in the other room, but we would never find out, for when Tommy returned he didn’t discuss it. Our meeting was over. We politely said our good-byes and left.

  Tommy was fired a few days later in the New York Times. Neither he nor I got the courtesy of a phone call first. His firing was public and mean-spirited, and it filled me with resentment, but left me with no cards in my hand.

  *

  Burt Reynolds turned out to be the worst thing that happened to the film. Because he was tasteless—witness his greeting at the door—he made changes to the script and the casting that turned a funny and somewhat touching show into a sadly second-rate movie. Do I sound like I’m whining? I mourned for the show for a week and then cried all the way to the bank to deposit my hefty producer’s fee. Lest anyone have any doubt, big stars run big studios. In this case Burt, who was hot at the time, was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Ned Tannen managed to create one last memorable moment for me before this imbroglio was over. I now started to shine up my old agent armor that was rusting in my mental closet as I prepared for a meeting with Ned to discuss director replacements.

  By the time the meeting took place, we had also cast Dolly Parton, who seemed to me to be every bit as lovely as the image she projected on television. I liked her immediately. Clearly she was good casting and was also chosen because she had recently done a successful film, Nine to Five. It was directed by an Australian she liked, Colin Higgins, who became Tannen’s first and seemingly only choice to replace TT. If it’s true that in Hollywood you’re only as good as your last work, then Colin’s recent success with Dolly was enough for Tannen to love him. Colin Higgins, however, had never done a musical, had never been in Texas (not a requirement, but helpful), and wasn’t even an American. Of course I told Ned that I would be delighted to meet him, and so a little get-together was quickly arranged.

  The Colin I met was a kind man. He was sensitive and intelligent, and by the time we were introduced he seemed to know already that the film was his. So I decided to leap into creative territory. I asked him what his musical concept for the film would be. He didn’t have a clue what a musical concept was. In fact he knew so little about music and Broadway musicals that I left the meeting thinking that this man couldn’t find his way to a piano if it were the only piece of furniture in a well-lit gymnasium.

  I was totally discouraged. I now knew that his having the job had nothing to do with any choice I had in the matter, and, worse (putting aside my ego and my lack of control), Colin’s having no musical qualifications could not possibly benefit the movie we were about to make.

  The next meeting in Ned’s office for the purpose of discussing the creative concept was the beauty part. Even though I knew it would be useless, I told Ned straight out that I didn’t think Colin, likable as he was, was the right man for the job. Picture Ned, emblematic of studio heads—dyspeptic and probably suffering from high blood pressure, upset by his day before I even set foot in his office—now listening to the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. I might as well have just doused him with gasoline and lit the match, considering how he exploded. It was cosmic. He turned bright red, the veins popping in his neck as he screamed the following: “I don’t give a fuck about what you think or a fuck about the fucking whorehouse. All I care about is seeing fucking Burt Reynolds fuck Dolly Parton’s brains out for two fucking hours for the fucking fifteen-year-olds!”

  “Uh-huh!” David Begelman’s advice on how to answer when you don’t know how to answer was coming in handy yet again. I told Ned I’d like to go home and think about what he’d said. What now? It was clear I couldn’t hold on to the movie.

  It wasn’t long before I got a phone call in my New York office from the business affairs department of Universal with an offer to negotiate my leaving. Two very successful television producers by the names of Tom Miller and Bob Boyett were “willing” to replace me, but I had the contractual right to be the “named” producer. If Universal, however, could deliver to these very successful chaps a major Hollywood movie with their names on the screen instead of mine, then maybe they would deliver a successful TV series to Universal. What a great bargaining chip—so Hollywood. It remains a place where everyone has an ax to grind, a place where relationships are everything. Nothing ever changes about that.

  Calculating what I wanted for my departure was easy. I donned my agent’s cap and prepared to negotiate. Universal turned its business affairs department loose on me. A studio insider warned me that they were getting ready to make hash of me, but I knew full well that Universal never fully understood the financial potential of a hit Broadway show back then, in spite of the fact that they were getting the box-office checks. Perhaps the lawyers and bookkeepers never conversed. I took advantage of that gap in their knowledge and traded my film salary and producer credit for additional points: 2.5 percent of gross in the Broadway and touring companies. I settled on a film credit of “executive producer,” and I managed to retain part of my profit position in the film. I was delighted with the contractual result; I knew I had the better bargain. I thanked the universe for my training as an agent.

  As it turned out, I never saw a penny of profits from the profitable film (hardly unusual in Hollywood, where profits are ephemeral and one’s salary is usually all one ever sees), but the additional points that I bargained hard for in the show set me up financially for the rest of my life. It only takes one hit. How I
would love to have another!

  *

  The film of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas turned out about the way I thought it would. The studio was kind enough to give me a private screening, and seeing it made me want to take my name off the final credits. And I did. What bothered me was the missed potential. The hilarious truths in the Texas humor were gone, as was the sweet sadness in the original stories of the girls in the house. But there was still enough good stuff there to make it a moderately successful film—mostly based on the title and its success on Broadway—and I was delighted that Universal had had a profitable experience. It boded well for their continuing in theater.

  Hollywood’s lack of knowledge about Broadway has changed totally in recent years. They now understand everything. Universal has been blessed with its hit Wicked, and they know down to the penny exactly what it’s worth. And nobody knows better than Disney that Broadway can be an enormous profit center. Little did I imagine that every studio would start taking old B movies off their shelves to remake them as Broadway musicals!

  *

  What came after Whorehouse for me were some stinkers of my own, four to be exact: Wild Life, Open Admissions, Nuts, and The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public. I loved every one of them in spite of their failure. The last was a disaster that cost Universal nine million dollars. They took it on the chin. Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg could not have been more understanding. They, like me, loved the musical. All of these shows had writers I loved, actors I loved, designers whose work I loved, and crews that I loved working with. They were all good experiences, and theater can be a fine, creative arena in which to play ball—or to play with your balls, as the case may be. I can think of nothing more exciting than standing hidden in a theater and watching audience members enjoy themselves as they’re transported by a show that you’ve been a part of creating. It had been no different with Judy—always thrilling to watch what happened to the audience when she was in the spotlight, but that was all her. To be a creative intelligence on words and music that have a shot at making a little piece of theater history: That’s been mine; it’s been hugely rewarding.