The Smoking Gun

by Doug Richardson

  And when the tall, feline exec eye-balled me with her am-I-ever-going-to-hear-a-story glare, I could no longer hide my disdain.

  Some twenty minutes later, when Señor Brit finally ceded the floor to me, I chose to keep my comments brief.

  “Nope. I think you said it all. That’s our pitch. Really appreciate your time.”

  So there I was. Standing at the elevators, hoping to get a solitary ride down to the lobby when I heard Señor Brit’s voice behind me.

  “Overall, I think that went well. Not exactly how we planned it but… So what do you think, Doug?”

  That’s when the fantasy came to me in a near electrical flash. The one where I pivoted and proceeded to shove Señor Brit out the fourteenth floor window and watch him tumble to his cinematic death—saving countless other writers the mental anguish he was certain to inflict had I not acted with such extreme and precise prejudice.

  “We’ll see,” was pretty much all I could muster in response.

  We said our farewells in the parking garage. And as I drove home, I waited for my mobile to ring.

  “That was a disaster,” said Big Daddy over the phone. “I thought you’d worked out a pitch plan with him.”

  “I did. He didn’t stick to it. So I’m done.”

  “With the movie?”

  “It’s not a movie yet. Not even a pitch. At least not something I can sell with him attached.”

  “You can’t step off. Not just like that.”

  “I just did.”

  “Lemme talk to him.”

  “And say what? It’s the writer or you? And I choose the writer?”

  “You know I can’t do that. He’s my friend.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I thought you loved the property?”

  “I do. But I can’t fathom a development process with that guy. Seriously. I’m out.”

  “I’m not accepting your answer. It’s too soon. Go home. Cool down. We’ll talk next week.”

  So that’s what I did. I returned to my home and family and eventually cooled on my silly murder fantasy. But my resolve to withdraw from the movie never abated. I was done.

  I don’t know if they ever found another writer to continue the dance. And like so many other false starts and failed movie alliances, I’ve pretty much relegated my tête-a-tête with Señor Brit to my storage shed of bad memories.

  Yet what always lingers after nearly every one of my aborted collaborations is a story I wanted to write but was never given the opportunity to do so. A few have come back to me. Most though, remain as ghosts. Lost loves never to be consummated.

  Turning Japanese

  “We’ve been traded,” said David Wally, producer, friend, and at that point in the mess, a co-survivor.

  “What do you mean “traded?” I asked.

  “A trade,” said David flatly. “Like in baseball. MGM traded us to Dimension.”

  Just when I thought I’d seen most of it. Done some of it. But heard all it all. Out of David Wally’s mouth came the humdinger of the decade.

  “Traded,” I repeated, as if saying it would make me actually believe it. “Can they do that?”

  “It just happened. So yeah, I guess they can.”

  “Jesus,” I think I said.

  “And the weird just gets weirder, huh?”

  “Does Hideo know yet?”

  “I have a call in to him. But I think his agent may have already told him.”

  “He’s gonna freak,” I said, meaning I was pretty certain our Japanese director was going to bolt from the movie. He’d already been abused enough. There had to be a last straw somewhere. My guess is this was it.

  “Exaaaaaactly,” said David Wally. His favorite and rather overused word. It was his intonation that told you exactly what that particular “exactly” meant.

  But as usual, I’m ahead of myself and you, the reader. So let me walk this one back a couple of years.

  My second novel, True Believers, had landed in bookstores with a bit of a whimper. The week of its release, Harper-Collins had stepped in and purchased Avon-Morrow. Which meant nearly everybody in the publishing house was left scrambling to either update their resumes or fill in all the vacation days they were about to

  forfeit. But I wasn’t depressed. That’s because I knew my baby would have a second shot at flying off the bookshelves when the movie adaptation landed in theaters.

  What was that you just said? That I’m an optimist? Hell, yeah. Otherwise I wouldn’t be in this whacky trade.

  Though the book rights hadn’t sold in the initial auction to the town, former-agent-turned-producer, Arnold Rifkin, stepped up with some interest. With Bruce Willis as a partner, they’d recently hung out a production shingle called “Cheyenne.” The company occupied a rustic-styled swath of upstairs real estate in Santa Monica, only a few blocks from the beach. Like most meetings with Arnold, the first True Believers sit-down was efficient and to the point.

  “I feel I can sell the book to MGM as a non-Bruce-starring movie,” Arnold said. “But I gotta know how you plan to adapt it.”

  I was glad to answer. That’s because I’d always planned a rather radical adaptation. You see, I’d already written the book. Was happy as hell with how it had turned out. And some of the liberties I’d taken with the story had everything to do with it not being a movie: multiple points of view; a coast to coast canvas. It was a gas to pen. But for the movie, I wanted to scale it down. Constrict the geography. Take it out of Washington D.C. and give it a more blue-collar spin. Why, you ask? I say why not? Like I said, I’d already written the book. It was effectively carved in stone. And I never saw the movie version in the same way.

  Arnold liked my tack and, days later, we optioned the book rights to MGM with a healthy deal for me to write the screenplay.

  Enter David Wally. Though he was on the Cheyenne payrole, he was less a development guy and more an in-

  house producer. As I worked through drafts of the script with David, we locked in on the movie we wanted to make. Eerie. Paranoid. A sort of Rosemary’s Baby meets Helter Skelter. We batted around budget and casting ideas with the movie studio, which in turn gave us permission to seek out a director.

  Now, the standard way to attach a director without an actual studio offer is to either make up a list of candidates and then present the script to each of the helmer’s agents—or to present the script to a variety of talent agencies and let them make the lists of both the usual and untested suspects.

  Neither approach made much sense to either David or me. We felt we’d developed a special screenplay requiring extra special attention. Thus, proceeding to procure the correct director required a more acute approach. Targeted. As in find the perfect man or woman for the job then make a full-court press. We tossed names into the air. Blew each other’s ideas out to the sky. Then one day David called me and asked this question:

  “Have you ever seen The Ring?”

  “Sure,” I answered. “What’s the guy’s name who directed it? Gore…”

  “Gore Verbinski,” answered David. “But that’s not who I’m thinking of. The movie you saw was a remake of a Japanese movie called Ringu. You heard of that?”

  No. I hadn’t.

  “The director’s name is Hideo Nakata,” David continued. “And if you liked The Ring even a little bit, you’ll dig Ringu. That’s because the American version is pretty much a carbon copy or the original. Anyway, I’m sending over a dvd along with a couple of his other films.”

  I know what you’re thinking. What a rough job I have. People messenger me dvds. I pop a couple Diet

  Cokes, blaze up a cigar, then kick back and watch movies on my office flat screen. Hey, I do what I gotta do.

  And in this particular case, I watched Hideo’s films. First was Ringu. Now, I’ve seen remakes. But rarely one as faithful as Gore Verbinski’s. Some sequences were nearly shot for shot identical to Hideo’s original. Next, I screened Dark Water. And if I wasn’t sold with that, I watched C
haos. All Japanese, subtitled in English, masterful in technique and brilliant as hell.

  I phoned David and informed him of my rabid opinion.

  “He wants to make an American film,” said David. “He’s repped by Endeavor.”

  “So we’ll send him the script?”

  “Way ahead of you.”

  “I’ll cross my fingers.”

  “Exaaaaactly.”

  Enter Hideo Nakata. It was about a month or so later when we met at the Cheyenne spread. Hideo arrived alone with a copy of my screenplay sandwiched next to a very school-like spiral notebook. An unassuming forty years old. Soft in just about every way. With a gentle handshake and just the slightest of bows. The three of us retired to the conference room and began to chat.

  “Before I read your script,” said Hideo. “I must have read fifty or sixty American scripts. Yours was the first script I wanted to direct.”

  Now, I can be pretty suspicious of hyperbole. Especially Hollywood hyperbole. But something about Hideo told me that he wouldn’t even know the equivalent Japanese word for hyperbole. Everything about the man was humble. Even his smile. It was hard to look across the table at him and imagine this was the filmmaker who’d already served up so many masterful movie chills. The

  meeting was total kismet. Hideo’s thoughts on the script were simple, succinct, and impressive.

  I was hooked on the director. And so was my compadre, David Wally. With Arnold Rifkin’s rubber stamp, we moved on to meetings at the studio. I recall Hideo’s words to me as we waited inside the mgm lobby.

  “I’m very nervous,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “They’ve already seen your films. They’re impressed before you walk in the door.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Hideo with his usual reserve. “But I come from a country of very shy people. And in my own country? I’m considered very shy.”

  I patted Hideo on the back and gave him my complete and total confidence. I knew I had the best possible director for my film. A man who I was certain would bring brilliance to my words.

  The first meeting with mgm’s president of production went swimmingly well as Hideo and the studio boss traded stories of movie classics; the Japanese director proving to be an astute student of American cinema. But the second meeting with the company’s ceo had a bit more edge to it. Hideo exuded such deference to the mgm Chief that he came off as something a notch or two short of being respectful. I found myself piping in for Hideo, teeing him up so he could close the deal. We ended with a strong finish. All that was left for us to do was wait for the call from the studio to give us their approval.

  Then again, this was Hollywood. If something could go sideways, it usually did. We didn’t have to sit around for very long.

  “We’ve got a problem,” sounded Arnold the following day. “Studio’s not as impressed as we are. They’re refusing to make a deal for Hideo.”

  I don’t know who said “what?” louder. David Wally or me.

  “They don’t think his command of the English language is near good enough to make a movie for ’em,” continued Arnold.

  To say the least, I was utterly gobsmacked. That’s because David Wally and I had already spent beaucoup hours with the Japanese scare-meister. Not only was his English beyond sufficient but he’d also proven to be an excellent communicator in just about every frequency. Hideo’s only issue was that he was thoughtful to the point of being introverted.

  Then came the unofficial word out of mgm. As we eventually heard it, the mgm chief had suffered language issues working on pictures with both John Woo and Chen Kaige, Asian filmmakers who’d helmed expensive flops for the studio. Whether the language conflict was real or just an excuse, prejudice, or wise studio practice, it was a damnable obstacle.

  “Now what the hell do we do?” I asked David Wally. “This is our guy. This is our director.”

  “Just calm the fuck down,” said Arnold Rifkin in his usual, bulldog tone.

  To describe Arnold as abrasive is akin to describing road tar as black and sticky. He did, though, have a knack for treating his projects like a rabid dog protecting a bone. I liked that about him.

  “Hideo’s our Goddamn director and I’m gonna get a deal done,” he continued. “We just gotta get creative about it.”

  David Wally called me the following day with encouraging news.

  “Problem solved,” said David Wally. “Hideo is going to return to Japan to finish up some personal business, then move back to LA and enroll in a semester of English classes at ucla.”

  “You’re serious?” I said.

  “It works for us this way,” explained David Wally. “While Hideo is here he’ll be working on the script with you and prepping the movie. All good.”

  “Making him learn English is an insult to Hideo,” I said. “His English is just fine.”

  “You know that and I know that. But Hideo’s a team player. He’s gonna do what he needs to do make his first American movie. That’s why we he’s our guy.”

  Well, “our guy” proved true to both his word and his esteemed character. Once his directing deal was cemented, he leased an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard and began attending English classes at nearby ucla. And on the occasional afternoon, he dutifully occupied a swiveling bar stool in my backyard office as I carefully retooled the screenplay to suit his vision.

  To say it was an education is an understatement.

  Not that Hideo tinkered that much with my script. He’s the antithesis of your typical micromanaging film maestro. He very much left the writing to me. What Hideo would do so brilliantly was look at a sequence and suggest a change in the order of things; moving this scene here; slipping that shot over there. But in such a way that it would not only elevate the drama, but tighten the screws on the tension or fully dial up the paranoia to a ten.

  His flourishes were simple, but genius. I’d flat-out gone from admirer to fan. I’d decided that where Hideo led, I would willingly follow.

  During this period, we also began casting. The studio wanted stars but didn’t want to pay full freight. With a budget targeted at around twenty-five million, that was no easy task. Mark Wahlberg loved the script but wanted something near seven million dollars. Meanwhile, Robert Downey, Jr. was game to star for a much leaner slice, but because he’d just recently returned to work after a public excursion into rehab, mgm didn’t want to pony up the bond. So while Arnold went about seeking a leading man who wouldn’t break the bank, Hideo, David Wally, and I went about looking for “the girl.”

  In fact, there were two strong women’s roles in the script: one, the pregnant Gwen; the other, Izzy, the femme fatale nanny. For the latter part, it seemed that every hot young actress in Hollywood was queued up for the gig. The conga line of women who sought the sexy role must have felt neverending for Hideo. One after the next they sat down with us in the Cheyenne conference room for a chat about the part. Rosario Dawson, Mena Suvari, Kristanna Loken, Eva Mendes... just to name a few. To describe Hideo as a kid in a candy store would be a gross understatement. The sweetest of directors and self-confessed bashful boy was sometimes paralyzed in the presence of so many high-wattage stunners. The coup de grace might have been Jessica Alba’s eyelash batting charm attack. What she obviously lacked in acting prowess she more than made up for in some sexed-up eye contact.

  “Jessica might not be such a good actress,” I recall Hideo confessing before a punchline. “But she’s probably too beautiful to work with. I might be too distracted to make a good movie.”

  “Too beautiful for you, is that it?” I laughed.

  “I need to be focused,” he said. “As you could see when I was sitting with her, I couldn’t see past her face.”

  “The face, the body, the whole package,” chimed David Wally.

  “Oh, yes,” smiled Hideo.

  Of course Hideo’s comments were full of his usual good humor, most of which was humility-based and so self-deprecating. Still, we thought it a good idea to
get Hideo used to interacting with American actresses. So we organized a series of scene reads from my script. The casual evening settings were populated by some serious acting talent. David Wally and I were both heartened to see our shy Hideo in his directing element. He took quick command of the cast, easily proving his mettle. Once again, I knew the right man was at the helm.

  Then, from out of left field, came a set of shocking studio notes. Critique so radical to the movie we wondered if the studio had ever actually read the earlier drafts. As we soon discovered, it hadn’t. Despite a tentative, yet fast-nearing production date, it appeared that my screenplay had only been vetted by the top brass. Suddenly, the company bosses wanted to know what their overpaid development team thought. Nothing like a little studio group-think to muck up the process with a fusillade of knee-jerk notes.

  “I don’t know what to think of these,” said Hideo of the mgm notes. In his experience, once the director had been brought aboard, it was a refining process. What the studio was suggesting was rather deconstructive to say the least.

  “A lot of the way we do things here is back-assward,” I told him.

  “Back… assward?”

  “Figure of speech. From ass-backward which still probably doesn’t make sense to you. It’s just how bad movies get made.”

  “I don’t want to make a bad movie,” said Hideo. “And we’ve worked very hard to get the script just right.”

  “No worries,” encouraged David Wally. “It’s just about getting in the room with them and making the case—point by point about how you intend to make this movie.”

  Hideo took in a deep breath. The prospect of a group face-off with the authors of the asinine studio notes was hardly something to look forward to. He looked as if he’d rather have his skin poached with battery acid.

  “Gotta strap on the old steel jockstrap,” I told him. As a veteran screenwriter, I was quite familiar with the equipment required for Hollywood survival.