“My way of protesting the ‘film by’ credit,” I said.
The producer howled with laughter, eliciting a response from the A-Lister, still closeted in his private bathroom.
“What’s so damn funny?” he shouted from behind the door.
Had I been frank enough to tell him, it might’ve ended the painful studio pitch meetings that followed. But that’s for another blog.
I’ve had great working experiences with directors who are respectful to what writers bring to the party. Then there’s the other side of that coin. The big time filmmakers who look at writers as some kind of disposable wipes, easily replaced with a flick of a thin wrist. Like I said before, much has been written about that kind of relationship. It’s tired.
But here’s a thought. I’ve shared barstools with screenwriters who’ve compared the importance of directors to that of those famed monkeys utilized in the Mercury space program. I don’t entirely agree. But I wouldn’t be surprised if someday in the future the monkeys organize and demand that NASA erect a monument in the name of monkey pride.
See No Evil
This story’s about a kind of evolution. To be more acute, it’s about my own twisting journey. From a puppy writer to who I am today with some earth-shaking obstacles in between. Follow and see if this vibrates your own tuning fork.
But first, the beginning.
I’d submitted a short film script to one of my college professors. His primary criticism was the oldest one in the writer’s handbook. His complaint was that I hadn’t written from a place remotely familiar to me.
“Write what you know,” he opined, repeating that tired old adage.
“I would,” I replied in full snark. “But I’m kinda full up on student films about socially retarded film geeks who can’t get laid.”
This might be explain why so many young movie nerds are infatuated with comic books and otherworldly science fiction. But me? I applied my lack of life experience to some dramatic fantasy on the grittier side. I was and still am fascinated by the world’s cultural underbelly. Good versus real evil. Antiheroes. Thus I consumed the films of the late sixties and seventies with the appetite of a boy who hadn’t lived beyond a suburban front yard and a Boy Scout sleep away camp. If my own truth wasn’t interesting enough to film, I’d write about the dark trials of those who’d already lived.
Years passed. I’d eventually written my way into a marketable position inside the Hollywood candy store. Imagine my geeky glee when I landed a gig writing a studio movie that took place inside the subterranean world of illegal New York City nightclubs. It was sup
posed to be a Romeo and Juliet story bridging the worlds of a hardened parole officer from New Jersey and a sexy dancer from Spanish Harlem who lived her life for the beat of salsa music. My goal was to out-grit those pictures that had raised me. I didn’t necessarily want the reader to live in the gutter. But I did want him to get at least of whiff of it.
And nothing was off limits. The darker, the more realistic I reasoned. On a nypd ride-along through the South Bronx I heard a horrifying story about a recent hostage situation. A cracked-out Dominican fugitive had held off a battalion of swat cops for hours by threatening to drop his one-year-old toddler out of the projects’ tenth story window. Sadly, the stand-off ended badly, resulting in the violent deaths of both father and child. Despite the tragedy, the writer in me was jacked at having been entrusted with a first-person account of the event. I even received a private tour of the crime scene. It was a must for me to include a version of the story in my screenplay. Not just for dramatic sake. But for the authenticity I so desired.
The final script got a solid reception, though the studio was always angling for a greater emphasis on the love story. And in the subsequent revisions, my harrowing real life account of that toddler-held-hostage by his drug-infected father was left behind for more romantic tones. Mind you, the script never lost its feel for the street or its sense of direction. I was only asked to excise the most extreme and harrowing moments that the old fart producers found difficult to digest. I wrote off their lack of guts to too many soft years lunching on watercress salads at the Polo Lounge. The pair were just too damned sensitive to brave some actual veracity in our film.
In the end, a couple of directors stepped in and out of the picture. Yet like so many other studio development projects, my script languished and was eventually forgotten.
Fast forward a few more years. It was a Friday date night for the War Department and me. On tap for that particular evening? The usual dinner and a show. Trainspotting was still playing in a few theaters. We picked the last showing, settled into our seats with a large popcorn, sodas, and box of Junior Mints, and relaxed while Danny Boyle’s and John Hodge’s film unspooled.
Maybe two or three reels into the film, I recall a moment when the toddler who lived in the apartment-slash-heroin den was framed in a doorway. I was instantly struck by the familiar look on the baby’s face. Barely a year and crawling on all fours, she gazed off-camera with a bemused smile that a child that age could only reserve for her mum or dad. Being a new father I knew this look all too well; my own baby boy often gifted me with such a trusting face. I even imagined the camera set-up with the mother just out of frame, flirting with her baby daughter to help the filmmakers capture the moment.
I know. It would seem I’m making much ado about a single five-second shot in a film. But please follow.
Not long after the aforementioned scene, there was a pov shot where the camera was pushing through the dingy flat and with every twisting turn, a woman’s wail grew louder.
“Oh, Lord,” I accidentally said aloud. “Don’t let the baby be dead.”
Yet I already knew the result. The writer in me not only saw the horrible moment coming, but would’ve probably scribbled it out in just the same way. Despite that, as the camera wheeled into the bedroom, nearing
the crib, ready to tilt down for the dramatic reveal, I lurched to my feet and fled the theater.
Up to that point in my movie-adoring life, I can’t recall ever voluntarily walking out of a film. No matter the content, from the repugnant to the inane, I viewed movie theaters and the works screened therein as sacrosanct. After all, I’d expect nothing less of someone who had paid to see one of my pictures.
The War Department eventually followed me out of the cinema. She discovered me seated on a bench trying to stuff a sock in my sobbing. I was angry and hurt. I couldn’t grapple with the fact that the filmmakers had, for the sake of their story, sacrificed that beautiful child. Fictional as the death was, it had emotionally walloped me as if real. So much so I had to vacate my seat.
Of course much of my frame of mind was informed by having recently become a father. And from that came some obvious and new sensitivity. I never would’ve imagined that I would allow those feelings to bleed into my taste in film. Hell, I was not just an artist, but a pro. Where was the detachment?
It took me a while to crawl out from my emotional stupor. As it turned out, my Trainspotting experience was hardly a one-off. Children in peril became my new hot button. I could stomach pretty much any kind of screen violence. Appreciate it in the correct context. At least until a young child was in imminent danger. My heart would break into a gallop. My palms would leak sweat. And I would be unable to keep my runaway imagination from placing my own children in harm’s way.
The same sentiment could also be applied to my writing. For a time I automatically steered away from writing scenes where kids were in grave danger. Not that it was difficult. Nervous executives are generally averse to
anything that might turn off an audience. Nobody was exactly twisting my arm to include that kind of drama in my work.
Then came Hostage. The story busts open with a horrifying situation ripped from so many present-day headlines. A deranged father holds a battalion of cops at bay by threatening to kill his wife and son. For the story to work, the sequence needed to end with the worst possible outcome in order to info
rm the trauma suffered by the negotiator played by Bruce Willis. Though I found it difficult to work through the scenes, I wrote most of the gut-wrenching action to take place off-screen. I chose to let the drama unfold on the face of the actors.
On the day prior to filming the scene in question, our chief of special effects swung by video village and asked me if I wanted to be there for the “blood test.”
“What blood test?” I asked.
“Of the kid who gets shot,” he said. “Got him all made up and hooked up to a pump that squirts blood out of his jugular until he bleeds out.”
I was aghast. I couldn’t do it and declined the invitation on the spot.
The next morning, I met up with Bruce Willis in his trailer. We discussed the scene. Bruce was wrestling with how much his character should melt down.
“All the way,” I suggested. “I think you should cry.”
“That far?” asked Bruce, concerned it would be too much emotion at the start of the film.
“I cried when I wrote it,” I said. “The scene deserves somebody shedding tears. I wouldn’t have written it otherwise.”
What followed was a lengthy chat about my evolution of feelings when it came to depicting screen vio
lence against children. Bruce, the father of three girls, totally concurred.
“If I’m gonna cry,” he said. “You gotta be there.”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” I assured him. “For having written the damn scene, I deserve all the pain I can withstand.”
I doubt very much that this is where my journey on this particular subject comes to a conclusion. It’s a ride from which I haven’t yet stepped off. Still, evolution as both a writer and a human being is a funny thing. It’s as much about what you select as what selects you. In other words, I choose what I write and how I write it. But some of the emotions that might get unearthed in the process? Whether I like it or not I believe they choose me.
From the Mouths of Babes
So here’s the scene. It was a Saturday backyard birthday party and barbeque for a friend’s ten-year-old. The winter afternoon was crisp enough for sweaters. I’d assumed my usual posture, Diet Coke in one hand, enjoying a little adult conversation while keeping one eye on the unheated swimming pool. No kids were swimming. And that’s just the way I planned to keep it. Me and my invisible pal, Hyper D. Vigilance, planned to make certain no children would be dunked or drowned on our watch.
I really couldn’t call this a purely showbiz gathering; it might be more accurate to refer to it as “showbiz-lite.” There were a few actors and directors and industry tradesmen attending with their offspring along with a host of other professionals and homemakers. Otherwise, a pretty darn typical kiddie bash. As the magician warmed up his rabbit act, white wine glasses were being topped off by our gracious hostess while our host leveled off the ice chest with cold beer and soda.
Then came the conversation. Three other grown-ups and myself had somehow veered from the subject of age-appropriate tv shows to the trials and tribulations of one woman’s quest to break out of her homemaker’s rut and hyphenate her way into working mom status. Some years earlier she’d graduated from film school with the usual hopes and dreams but had since been waylaid into marriage and raising a pair of hard-charging children. With both her kids finally ensconced in primary school six hours a day, she’d taken on a script partner and was preparing for a return to her chosen career path—writing movies that mattered.
“Awesome,” I told her in my de facto, always-be-encouraging mode. It’s both my nature and polite. I then asked, “What kind of movies are you working on?”
“Movies that mean something,” she insisted between swigs from a lime-choked bottle of Corona. “I mean, it’s not like I spent all that money on a film education to end up writing crap movies.”
“Crap movies. Yeah. There’s a few too many of those,” I added reflexively.
“I seriously don’t think I could live with myself if I had to support myself writing shit like Die Hard.”
Did she really just say that?
Even more acutely, did she know my credits or even have a clue that I was a working screenwriter? The woman, both pretty, petite, and if I recall, quasi-charming, was not much more than an acquaintance. Our shadows had passed a few times. Most of our encounters had been limited to me holding the preschool gate for her or at events like, well, children’s birthday parties. To date, this had been the most substantive discussion I’d ever had with the woman.
“Of course you can’t,” I responded, assuming either she or I had just been struck by the unlucky stick. After all, she was probably just being honest. And if anyone appreciates clarity and candor over the kiss-ass, candy-coating that permeates showbiz it would be me.
“It’s not like Die Hard or that kinda crap doesn’t have its place in the culture, I suppose,” she continued. “But I can’t imagine the lack of intelligence it takes to put that kinda crap on paper.”
Yeah. She went there. Definitely had my attention now. And I must admit I was really quite amused.
This is when I felt a certain and familiar tug on my shirtsleeve. My six-year-old daughter had snuck up on my blind side.
“Daddy?” asked my baby girl. “Didn’t you write Die Hard?”
“No, sweetie. I actually didn’t,” I said.
“Yes, Daddy. You did. I know you did.”
I looked at my daughter directly. Smiled. Careful not to flick my eyes in the direction of the mom who’d—accidentally or not—just pasted me with a sack of rotten tomatoes.
“Sweetie,” I said. “I didn’t write Die Hard. I wrote the sequel and little bits and pieces of the third.”
“Then what’s the movie you’re writing now?”
“Die Hard 4, honey.”
Now, I’ve had more than my share of foot-in-mouth moments. Hell, I’ve even chewed and swallowed. So I was hardly cheesed by the mom and hoped that I’d be facile enough to quip something clever to ease her embarrassment. When my gaze finally returned from my adorable daughter to the adult conversation, the quasi-charming mom was… gone. While I wasn’t looking, she’d scratched out a precise one-eighty and applied the gas.
God, I felt bad for her. That and I had to hold onto the emotional Advil I’d strung into words to salve the large caliber wound she’d inflicted upon herself.
Glad you said it. It was honest. And fair. And I appreciate it. There are plenty of folks out there who think my movies are crap. In fact, I can personally vouch that one of my pictures is crap. I’ve even had a New York Times’ reviewer blame me for wasting two hours of his life. So there. We’re all good, right?
Well, at least I thought it was a worthy speech. I regretted being unable to employ it, considering that qua
si-charming mom had chosen to hoof it as far as physics would allow.
Now, for those of you reading this who might surmise I’m full of hooey in my hardcore appreciation of the unvarnished truth, try and follow me for a few more paragraphs.
First of all, who doesn’t like a compliment? Especially when it concerns one’s own work. If I deserve it, dammit I want to hear it in a clear, bold font. But I’m not foolish enough to believe that everybody thinks my farts smells like puppy breath. Over my career I’ve found it excruciatingly difficult to get people to tell me the plain truth—at least from those whom you’d expect to give it. Time and time again I’ve begged my reps to keep it real and tell me the honest truth. If they didn’t like me in the meeting, tell me. If the studio hated the pitch, tell me. I’m a big boy. If I can’t handle the truth I have no business suiting up for the game. I’ve even employed classic dialogue from the Godfather as an example of my need for clarity rather than dipping every hard fact in maple syrup before serving it up.
“Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately.”
Of course, there’s the dark side when demanding the cold truth. I recall one agent who finally heeded my instructions, fulfilling my wishes with
long steak dinners where he’d proceed to unload every bit of bad news about me, his other clients, and the state of the industry in general. The War Department and I began referring to him as the Grim Reaper. I believe he’d begun to see me as not only a client, but a psychoanalytical vessel for him to deposit his turgid views on the business as a whole. Our conversations had turned so depressing that I eventually had to let the poor man go.
I’m a man of significant faith. But I’m also a writer, which means I’m a natural cynic. So it goes that I’m a believer in both light and dark and that without one we cannot truly understand the other. I prefer laughs in my drama. A little sweet with the salt. And fair and honest criticism with acknowledgements to anything I might have done that pleased the reader’s palate.
Yet I’ve also come to understand this. The truth about the truth is that few in entertainment want to tell it to your face. That and they’re so accustomed to powdering everything with sugary sweetness that it’s often impossible to know where you truly stand.
It was destiny that I’d bump into Quasi-Charming Mom again. That moment of inevitability occurred when I was lunching on Lebanese food with a director pal. The wannabe screenwriter entered the restaurant with one of her suv-driving friends. We noticed each other, exchanged polite smiles, after which I turned to my lunch date and regaled the tale of the kiddie birthday faux pas.
“So here’s what’s gonna happen,” I later explained to my director friend. “As we leave, I’m gonna introduce you to her.”
“Think she’d recognize you?” asked my friend.
“Already made the connection,” I said.
“Damn,” said my friend. “Cuz if she didn’t, you could remind her you’re the guy who wrote those worthless, shitty Die Hard movies.”
“No need to twist the blade,” I said. “What I wanna do is let her off the hook. Explain that I’d appreciated her candor that day. Maybe that’ll let some air out the balloon.”
“You are wayyyyyyy too nice,” said my friend.
The Smoking Gun Page 20
