“Man. You’re makin’ it hard.”
“Hear me,” I said in utter and complete candor. “I just want the movie to be the best it can be. That means I need every scene to be the best it can be. And I will do anything within my meager power to make it so. Because in success, we all do better, yeah?”
“Yeah, man. You’re so right. I wanna do it. Lemme call my man back.”
“Seriously?” I said. “We both know what he’s going to say.”
“Naw,” he said. “He’ll be cool. I’ll ’splain it all to him. Make the best movie and all that shit. I’m good with it, now. Scene looks good we all look good.”
“Dude,” I said. “You don’t have to call your manager. You and I are adults. We can do this without adding more opinions to the soup.”
“I know, I know. Call you back in five.”
As you might expect, the day player didn’t call me back for the rest of the day. Then came the call from the Big Kahuna himself.
“So we gonna get together and turn your scene inside-out?” he asked.
“Still workin’ on the actor,” I said. “He wants to get paid.”
“He should get paid.”
“Then you call the production office, okay? Because I got a resounding ‘talk to the hand.’”
The movie star called me back after dinner.
“Can’t get it done,” said the Big Kahuna.
“Why not?” I asked, putting a muzzle on my incredulousness.
“I guess we don’t have the money.”
“Think that’s what I said—”
“Call the guy again. Tell him I said we really need to put a spark to the scene.”
“Already had numerous conversations with the guy. Your turn.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not.”
“Cuz I’m a producer on the movie. And we don’t need sag starting a shit storm.”
“Seriously, man. I don’t think I can make it happen.”
“I’m starting to really hate this mother-fucking scene, man. Maybe we should think of something else instead.”
It was precisely what I warned the day-player about. That damned scene was in danger of becoming waste water. Soon to be flushed and replaced with Lord knows what.
And with no scene, my newest actor pal would have no job at all.
The next morning, I tried the day player one last time.
“The scene’s in danger,” I told him.
“Man, my manager said you’d say that exactly somethin’ like that to get me to rehearse,” he said.
“I’m trying to save the scene,” I said. “No lie. I’m not the producer. I’m not the star. I’m not the director. I’m the writer and this is about my scene. Help me out, will ya?”
“Y’all playin’ chicken with me.”
“Nobody is playing games here,” I said.
“My manager says I should report this shit to sag.
“Be my guest,” I said. “And give sag my number. I’ll tell ’em the same damn thing I told you.”
There was a sudden and odd silence at the other end of the line. The pause of a man wrestling with the idea of growing a pair and painting outside the lines.
“Can’t do it man. Just can’t do it,” he eventually said.
I told the day player I understood and appreciated his situation. And I wished him luck.
“Think I’m gonna need it?” he asked.
“We’re making a movie,” I said. “We all need it.”
As you might guess, the scene was never rehearsed. And for awhile, it dangled by a frayed thread of gaffers tape, in danger of never seeing a frame of film. In the end, the scene stayed on the schedule and was filmed near dawn at the end of a very long and exhausting week.Even after making it into the picture’s initial cut it remained a bone of contention between the Big Kahuna and yours truly. It must’ve been in and out of the movie three times before I negotiated with the star to re-voice his part in adr.
The day player, you ask? He filmed his two days and cashed the check. Then disappeared from the production, nearly as forgotten as yesterday’s catering. To this very day I still don’t blame him for sticking with his manager’s advice. Nor do I have much issue with the unions or the strictures erected to protect artists from Hollywood’s abuse. It’s only when those sticky rules put the quality of the final product in danger that I get a bit creased.
Would the scene have been any better had the day player seen things my way, taken two hours out of his life, thrown back a few brews and helped us turn those two pages into something that may have been better? We’ll never know. But I’m certain that had he taken that little leap, there was a chance he’d have bettered his moment on screen, not to mention created an opportunity to better his career.
As for the movie star, he went on making movies. Me? Well, I continue writing movies. And last time I checked, the day player was still a day player.
Good Guys and Bad Boys
I needed an ice pack. Without warming up, I’d just tossed about what felt like a hundred fastballs to a Little League team I’d been coaching. I was doing a traffic-crawl to my home office, my right shoulder was in spasm, and Lucas Foster, who at the time was running development for Simpson/Bruckheimer, was calling me on my mobile.
“First I need to ask you if you’re available for a quick rewrite.”
“Depends on what and how quick,” I said.
“Can you get right over to Disney?” he asked.
“Only if there’s an ice pack waiting for me.”
Lucas assured me that despite Disney’s reputation for Cold War era frugality, there would be plenty of ice for my shoulder and a bottle of Advil waiting for me.
Oh. And if the meeting went well, a writing gig.
I’d never met Don Simpson or Jerry Bruckheimer. As a producing duo, they were the box office Kings of Hollywood at the time. Dynamic. Powerful. “Intimidating” didn’t quite describe them.
Jerry framed the situation as this. A year prior to our meeting there’d been a trade announcement. Disney’s Touchstone Pictures was in preproduction on a cop comedy called Bad Boys, starring snl alums Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. Making his directorial debut on the picture would be a tv-commercial-slash-music-video-whiz-kid named Michael Bay. According to Jerry, the script for the movie was never right. Both the studio and the producers had gone cold on the package and put the whole enchilada into turnaround. The producers brought the project to Columbia Pictures with the plan to retool it for Will
Smith and Martin Lawrence, who each starred in his own network sitcom.
Great. So what’s the problem?
Problem one? The movie needed to be prepped and shot immediately because both Will and Martin’s television hiatuses began in six weeks. Problem two? Yes, there was this script. But it was only half a script. Literally. Barely sixty pages of reworked farce written by a pair of Tonight Show joke-jockeys. Problem three? Will and Martin wanted to star in a kick-ass action movie.
There’s a dialogue snippet in the finished movie where actor Joe Pantoliano barks to Will and Martin, “Just do what you do. Only faster!” I stole that line from Jerry Bruckheimer because that’s precisely what he said when I asked him what would be expected from me if I said yes the gig.
Less than a week later I’m in Miami, vomiting script from my brain to my laptop. And thus began the hundred hysterical and tragic tales that I don’t dare publish. I seriously can’t tell you the story about the day of Don Simpson’s arrival or the story about casting the dogs or the one about busting the fish tank or how I negotiated which ethnicity of bad guy I could kill or what Tea said about the O.J. Simpson murder or how she was nearly handicapped for life in a stunt gone wrong or why I had to blow up the hangar at the end or why Marge Helgenberger as Alison Sinclair had to be a redhead or how writing Don Simpson out of the movie was the smartest thing I ever did or how I dealt with getting orders not to return the studio’s calls or why I was working in exchange for items circled
in the Sony catalogue… I can’t even tell you how and why we nearly set the historic Biltmore Hotel on fire.
Let’s just say there were many days when I was writing on Tuesday what we would film on Wednesday. We wrapped. He hugged and exchanged personal information. Everybody moved on to the next gig.
Sometimes after the first of the year, I received a call from the Writers’ Guild. A Notice of Tentative Credits had been submitted by Columbia Pictures to the wga Credits Department. The proposed writing credits for Bad Boys listed screenplay by yours truly along with Michael Barry & Jim Mulholland, with a lone story credit assigned to George Gallo, renowned for having penned Midnight Run from his counter seat at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City. The representative from the wga explained to me that I’d have ten days to protest the proposed credit or otherwise it would become final.
I was happy enough with the result. But I’d been around the arbitration block before. There were at least six other writers who had worked on earlier incarnations of the movie and whose names weren’t in the proposed credit. Arbitration was a probability.
Side note. It has been my experience—both personal and anecdotal—that as belly-wretching as the wga credit arbitration process is, credit generally ends up where it’s due. Of course, there are the stories where the process has gone completely sideways. And it’s usually the last guy to the party who gets robbed.
On Bad Boys, I was the last writer.
That wasn’t my only problem. As far as anybody could tell, there was never an actual final shooting script with my name on it. Yes, there’s a digital draft floating around the internet, but that was something strictly for budgeting that was tossed a week before we started shooting.
The true script was always in pieces. I wish I had a photo of my Biltmore Hotel production office. One of
the walls was plastered in corkboard onto which were pinned open manila envelopes. The envelopes were named for potential scenes. When a draft of a scene was finished, it would go into the envelope for distribution to the various departments. The night before the scene was shot, I would polish it and pray for the funny to show up.
Months later, I was feeling royally screwed even before the screwing had been officially executed. The idea that I might not get credit after I’d bled through practically every sprocket hole of the film left an indescribably foul taste. Lord knows I’d heard tales of writers who’d been the last mechanic on the assembly line. Writers who had toiled through the production, always at the beck and call of directors and movie stars and every damned producer’s whim—each expressing ill feelings toward a credit process that often left them without their name anywhere on the picture. Hell, the freaking caterer gets credit on the movie. Why the hell not the last bloody writer?
I gave myself the same pep talk I’d been given by my attorney. He’d repped plenty of writers who’d been in the same ugly spot.
Listen to yourself, pal. You knew the job when you accepted it, not to mention the risks where credit was concerned. You said yes to the money. Move the hell on.
I prepped myself for the days, maybe weeks, of assembling written material in defense of my case. I was mentally forming arguments to a trio of invisible arbiters.
Then came the expected call from the wga Credits Department. It was George Gallo who had filed to protest the proposed credit. He’d written the original script called Bulletproof Hearts. Eleven years later, that former screenplay had morphed many times over into Bad Boys. It was George Gallo’s certain right as a writer and an
artist to dispute the proposed credit and seek something more than just “story by” if he truly felt it was due him. I needed to respect that.
As I was expressing my thoughts and concerns to my attorney, super classy and cool Alan Wertheimer, he reminded me that George Gallo was also his client. And though it would be obvious malpractice for him to advocate or dispense arbitration advice for either of us, nothing in his code of ethics prevented him from encouraging George and me to get on the phone and talk. Alan assured me George was a stand-up guy.
So I took Alan’s advice. I dialed. George answered in his trademark gruff voice and I introduced myself. And as the last writer talked to the first writer, I wondered how often that had ever occurred. Not too damn often, I reckoned.
George and I must have talked for an hour. As veteran writers, we commiserated over his original script and the trials and tribulations of navigating through a tortured studio development process neither of us would wish upon terrorists. We also pored over the completed Bad Boys, the blood and sweat equity I’d invested in the picture, and the pending arbitration for credit.
“You think you deserve a credit?” George eventually asked me.
“I honestly do,” I said.
“And if I don’t protest, I’ll still get the story credit.”
“All yours,” I said. “Nobody can ever jack that from you.”
I fully expected George to say that he’d sleep on it or that he’d have to ruminate on the situation and eventually get back to me. Instead, George just quizzed over the idea for a few seconds and said, “What the hell? What do I gotta do?”
The next day, George withdrew his protest. The proposed credit would stand. The rest is history.
Whether I’d deserved credit or not on the movie, no matter the result of an arbitration that never happened, what George did for me was the biggest gift ever.
Months later, George Gallo got married. I did a bit of investigating and found out where he and his bride were registered for gifts and ever-so-gladly purchased an entire crystal set for them.
The Sh***iest Script Ever Written
I was on my way from lunch to a meeting at Paramount when my agent at the time called to inquire if I’d be interested in meeting a particular movie star to discuss a picture he had in mind. I thought my agent said it was a passion project for the actor, but with solid commercial prospects in the growing international market. Either the mobile connection was lousy or the Bluetooth in my car was channeling those little green men Jodie Foster was after in Contact. I turned down a side street, found parking and redialed. My agent picked up on the first ring.
“So what part didn’t you hear?”
“Think I got most of it. Movie star. Passion project. Foreign prospects. What’s the one liner?” I asked.
“Dunno. All I know is it’s about racing or something like that.”
I’m not much of a race fan. Cars, horses, go-carts, airplanes. If it’s a seemingly endless loop of left hand turns, I get bored faster than you can say, “Herbie Fully Loaded.” Still, movies are about characters. And if I could find an angle of attack, I was more than willing to be a convert. That and I was a big fan of the movie star.
“Okay,” said my agent. “We rep the producer and the director. But another agency reps the star. Okay if I give them your number so they can explain it?”
“No problem,” I said.
I hung up my mobile phone and continued east on Melrose when, nary two minutes later, the phone rang again. I answered. More static, along with an indistinguishable voice that sounded like it was coming from Jabba the Hut’s wine cellar. I said it was a bad connection and to please call back. I hung up, and no sooner had
I found an empty meter and set my parking brake than my phone trilled again. I switched off the Bluetooth and answered. As expected, it was the movie star’s agent. He was one of those serial speed-talkers, who was quick to the point so he could clear me off his sheet and move on to his next victim.
“Okay. It’s racing movie. There’s a producer and a director but we both know that it’s all about the movie star.”
“Yeah. When isn’t it?” I joked.
“Listen. I can tell you about it or you can see it for yourself.”
“See what?”
“Thought you knew. There’s a dvd. A sizzle reel from a documentary the director made.”
“So the director is a documentary filmmaker?” I asked.
“Y
eah, yeah. But it’s about the star. Get him in your pocket and you’re all good to go and pitch the five studios who want to be in business with him.”
Like I hadn’t heard that before.
“So you’re sending me a dvd?” I asked.
“Yeah. Better the dvd than the script.”
A script? This was news. Professional screenwriters like to know if producers or agents are talking about an original script or a rewrite. And often when it’s a rewrite, they don’t tell you until you’re more than a little pregnant with the idea.
“I hadn’t been told there was a script,” I said.
“It’s not technically a rewrite,” said the agent.
Now, this I had to hear.
“Look,” said the agent. “You can’t repeat this to him, okay? Because I’m his agent, I can’t exactly tell him the truth.”
“The star wrote the script?”
“Him and the director.”
“Okay…”
At this point, I was already close to passing. Too many early qualifiers by an agent almost always means the situation is untenable, impossible, and a good reason to change my phone number.
“Your agent will back me when I say this. And I didn’t officially say this, knowwhatImean?”
I did. Sort of.
“But the script that (the movie star) wrote is the shittiest script ever written.”
“That good, huh?” I said, hoping to add some helium to the moment. Plus it was time to wrap it up. My meeting at Paramount was in ten minutes.
“It seriously is the worst screenplay ever written,” said the agent. “I’m not lying. Unreadable. Just watch the dvd. If you think there’s a cool movie there, I’ll set up the meeting.”
Whatever. I said goodbye, attended my meeting, drove home in the usual why-did-I-book-a-late-afternoon-meeting-at-Paramount traffic, and arrived home to discover an agency package atop my mailbox. Ugh, I thought. Not the least bit curious about the contents, I stuffed it in my backpack and forgot about it for two weeks.
Fade up in Telluride, Colorado. My family and I are away on spring break as guests of friends with an amazing house on the slopes that I could never hope to afford. As I warm myself by the fire, I reach into my backpack for the book I packed and lo and behold, there’s the agency packet I’d deposited weeks earlier. Curious, I tear it open and out slip two discs and the aforementioned dubious screenplay. The first dvd was the five-minute sizzle reel I’d been promised. The other disc was the full-length documentary. Why not, I thought. I jacked the sizzle reel into my laptop, strapped on my headphones,
The Smoking Gun Page 8
