There were other changes in Hollywood, too. With the first generation of film-makers dying off and ticket sales falling, the studios began to be sold to conglomerates. Where once they’d been in the hands of people who’d begun in movies by operating nickelodeons, they were now divisions of large companies who ran airlines, car-rental and life-insurance businesses. Keener on money than movies and anxious to cut the studios’ severe debts, some of the conglomerates sold off more assets, with 20th Century Fox making a quick $43 million with the sale of 180 acres of its back lot for redevelopment. On the day in 1968 when a 22-year-old George Lucas arrived at Warner Bros. to begin an apprenticeship under director Francis Ford Coppola on Finian’s Rainbow, Jack Warner left the studio for good, having sold the company he’d co-founded in 1918 to a television company. Apart from Finian’s Rainbow, there were no other films in production on the Warners’ lot.
The uncertainty within the studios in the 1960s did, however, allow a new generation of film-makers to emerge with off-beat and mature films such as Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, Shampoo and Taxi Driver. Then, in 1973, George Lucas’s American Graffiti showed that a low-budget film with no stars could become a major hit.
It was Jaws, however, released two years later, that really changed things. Problems with the weather and the special effects had pushed the film three times over budget for its 27-year-old director Steven Spielberg, but Jaws went on to be a bigger hit than Universal had ever imagined. Then in 1977, George Lucas’s Star Wars beat Jaws’s box-office record. The message seemed to be that younger directors were changing the face of Hollywood. Some were, but not always for the better.
Heaven’s Gate
United Artists was doing well in the 1970s from the James Bond and Rocky films, but both franchises lacked prestige. Aspiring to make something with greater significance, UA signed up writer-director Michael Cimino, who’d just made The Deer Hunter (1978), an Oscar-winning hit about the Vietnam War. Cimino was now in a position to make great demands on his next film, Heaven’s Gate (1980), a poetic, epic Western. But things quickly began to unravel for both him and UA.
Filming in a remote part of Montana, the cast and crew lost four hours each day just travelling to and from the location.
A single film can bring down a studio. Allowing the movie to go four times over budget, United Artists had hoped that Heaven’s Gate would be both a blockbuster and a masterpiece. It ended up being neither and bankrupted the studio.
‘Cimino was building sets and rebuilding them, hiring 100 extras, then 200, then 500,’ Steven Bach, United Artists’ head of worldwide productions, later wrote, ‘adding horses and wagons and hats, shoes, gloves, dresses, top hats … with hundreds of miles of exposed film.’ Filming in a remote part of Montana, the cast and crew lost four hours each day just travelling to and from the location. After 12 days of meticulous shooting, the production was already ten days behind schedule. By the time a fifth of the script had been shot, the perfectionist Cimino had already spent the entire original budget.
Under the old studio system, Cimino would have been replaced long before things got so out of hand, but, as the star director, he’d negotiated himself final cut on the editing and length of the film. Perhaps, the studio must have hoped, Heaven’s Gate would, like Jaws, be a troubled production that still became a landmark Hollywood hit.
Alas, the movie, which ultimately went four times over budget, proved to be an underwhelming drama dressed in a series of beautifully composed images. It hadn’t been worth the wait or the cost. It did become a Hollywood landmark, however. Not only did Heaven’s Gate lose the studio $40 million, it almost bankrupted United Artists. Following this disaster, United Artists was sold to MGM, which effectively ended UA’s existence for many years. The studio that had been set up by Charlie Chaplin and others to give them the freedom to make films the way they wanted had been brought down by a director with too much freedom.
The result was that from the 1980s, directors were reined in by the studios, who reasserted themselves. If there were excessive productions, it was the producers, for the most part, who were deemed responsible.
The Monster of Blockbusters
Jaws not only showed how films could make more money, but also how they could cost a great deal more to release. With heavy TV advertising and nationwide releases on the same day, rather than being rolled out slowly across the country, Jaws became a major event. This was, however, an expensive and risky approach. If a movie released that way failed at the box office, the studio was saddled with hundreds of prints that soon weren’t wanted, and the cost of massive, but fruitless, advertising.
Nevertheless, in hoping to ape the success of Jaws, the studios were willing to spend more, directing their focus at children and the 16–24-year-old age groups – youngsters keen to get out of the house. Not that that guaranteed a success. As William Goldman, the screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, wrote about Hollywood: ‘Nobody knows anything.’ No one can predict a flop or a hit. If they could, why was Raiders of the Lost Ark turned down by every studio except Paramount?
No one can predict a flop or a hit. If they could, why was Raiders of the Lost Ark turned down by every studio except Paramount?
At a test screening of Jaws, Steven Spielberg saw a horrified man run from the auditorium and be sick. At first, the director feared the audience hated his film, but when the man returned to his seat, Spielberg knew that he had a hit.
In trying to secure some guarantee of success, the studios have also increasingly pursued stars. With a star, at least they can say that the film should be popular. And while a hit movie doesn’t necessarily follow, the stars can increase their fees, in turn making the movies even more expensive. This gears the studios to releasing star vehicles or special-effects spectaculars – sometimes one and the same – but leaves them less inclined to make cheaper, lower-profile films that would previously have been released slowly and been able to build a following.
Don Simpson’s drink and cocaine excesses – he’d wrecked his car three times in a year – led to him being fired by Paramount.
Producers
While a criticism of the studio system was that they were factory assembly lines, since the 1970s the allegation has been that Hollywood is now run dispassionately by agents and lawyers who can make great deals, but who haven’t made films themselves and don’t understand the artistic side of cinema. ‘I’ve had creative meetings,’ wrote William Goldman, ‘only to realize half an hour in that the producer or executive hasn’t read my script at all.’ Jon Peters, once a celebrity hairdresser and boyfriend of Barbra Streisand before becoming the producer of The Color Purple, The Witches of Eastwick and The Bonfire of the Vanities – all adapted from novels – even admitted: ‘I’ve never really read a book.’ This didn’t seem to hinder a very successful producing career or hold Peters back from being given the job co-running Columbia in 1989. That said, within a couple of years he’d been fired, and his time there is considered one of the studio’s most financially disastrous.
Don Simpson
Stars and some directors become famous, but not many producers do. In the 1980s, however, as the studios and the producers regained their muscle, some movies were made that could be identified by the names of their producers alone. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these, both in his films and personality, was Don Simpson.
Before becoming a producer, Simpson had been head of production at Paramount. He may have been talented, but he was also obnoxious. When he didn’t want to cast Debra Winger in a role, he told her: ‘I need someone f**kable. You’re not f**kable enough for this part.’ The film was An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), and Simpson was clearly no gentleman – though, despite his reservations, Winger was cast in the role.
An Officer and A Gentleman became a hit for Richard Gere and Debra Winger, but Gere had turned the script down eight times and the studio hadn’t wanted to cast Winger.
Eventually, Simpson’s drink and
cocaine excesses – he’d wrecked his car three times in a year while under the influence – led to him being fired by Paramount and offered a deal as a producer affiliated to the studio. This was a come-down and a decade later he’d still be known to bring it up: ‘They had executives buggering boys in the backseats of their Porsches, and they fired me on a f**king morals charge!’ Nevertheless, it was as a producer that he made his name. With partner Jerry Bruckheimer, he produced Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun – glossy, loud and brash stories that were very successful. They also had hit songs on their soundtracks that crossed over well to the newly emerging MTV. And, unlike the executives who barely read, Simpson was a producer heavily involved in the development of the scripts he commissioned, once sending Joe Eszterhas a 48-page memo of notes in response to a draft of his Flashdance screenplay.
Producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer became known for Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun. ‘A series of soundtracks in search of movies’ was how another producer described them.
In the month of July 1995, Simpson had a $12,000 bill from one pharmacy – but he was using at least seven others.
When he wasn’t working, Simpson enjoyed a great deal of sadomasochistic sex with prostitutes working for Madam Alex and Heidi Fleiss. In one encounter, according to the book You’ll Never Make Love In This Town Again, he paid for two prostitutes where one was forced to drink from a toilet bowl into which Simpson was peeing, while the other, a dominatrix with a dildo strapped to her, had sex with the first girl.
Nor did being fired by Paramount curb his drinking or cocaine-snorting. Although there were spells in rehab, by the 1990s he was also on a mix of prescription drugs, while later he began using heroin. In the month of July 1995, he had a $12,000 bill from one pharmacy – but was using at least seven others.
In addition to his drug-taking, his binge-eating and plastic surgery began to make him unrecognizable to friends. He had collagen implants in his chin, lip and cheeks, tummy tucks and liposuction treatments. Nor did he just want to look different, he wanted to feel different, too. He had testosterone injected into his buttocks to increase his sex drive – although it just made him aggressive – and had penis-girth enlargement surgery, which turned out to be a disaster. The fat injections became infected and had to be removed.
It might come as little surprise that he wasn’t easy to work with. Assistants could be fired for bringing him his coffee with the wrong cream, or would be woken in the middle of the night if he wanted them to order him a takeaway – even when he was in a hotel in Hawaii and they were in Los Angeles.
DAVID BEGELMAN
HEADS OF HOLLYWOOD studios are paid handsomely and enjoy generous expense accounts, so it was particularly surprising in 1976 when the president of Columbia, David Begelman, was discovered to have forged the signature on and cashed a $10,000 cheque made out to actor Cliff Robertson. On investigation, it was revealed that Begelman, under whose leadership Columbia’s fortunes had revived, had embezzled a further $65,000 from the studio. He was sentenced to community service, and the studio, announcing only that he was suffering ‘emotional problems’, quietly fired him.
Given his status in Hollywood, he could have easily borrowed the sums – not vast by movie standards – but Begelman had always lived on the edge. When he’d been an agent in the 1960s he’d been sued by his client Judy Garland for money she claimed he owed her, and he was known to gamble heavily. He lied, too. From a modest upbringing in the Bronx, he’d talked up his wartime training on the Yale University campus into having graduated from Yale.
In the early 1980s, he found new work, first as president of MGM, but was unable to repeat the success he’d enjoyed at Columbia, and by the mid-1990s had to declare himself bankrupt. He committed suicide in 1995.
Having increasingly run the Simpson/Bruckheimer show alone while Simpson was absent due to health problems, Bruckheimer broke up their partnership in 1995. A few months later, in January 1996, Simpson died of heart failure brought on by cocaine and prescription drugs.
Simpson’s movies weren’t passion projects from writers, directors or actors. ‘The movie is the auteur,’ said Simpson. But it was Simpson and Bruckheimer themselves who left the greatest impression on their films.
Creative Differences
‘The trouble with making movies is that it’s such an intimate experience,’ said Dustin Hoffman. ‘You get married when you start working together, before you’ve become friends.’ And those forced marriages, between actors, directors, producers and writers, are often fraught. Take Kirk Douglas, for example, who called his director Stanley Kubrick ‘a talented shit’. As actor and producer of Paths of Glory and Spartacus, Douglas had been impressed with Kubrick’s skill, but was riled by the director’s later comments knocking the star, disowning Spartacus, even though it put him on the A-list, and claiming that Douglas was merely an employee on Paths of Glory, when it was Douglas who’d hired Kubrick on both films.
Film is a collaborative business, they say, but for screenwriters, David Mamet feels, the adage should be rendered: ‘Film is a collaborative business: bend over.’ Having dreamt up a movie, the screenwriter, once money has changed hands, can be, and very often is, fired. If kept on the production, screenwriters will often be asked to ignore their contracts and repeatedly rewrite for no further money, and to revise the script to the demands and whims of the star, director and producer. Daring to resist, a writer can easily be replaced, thus ensuring what he most fears coming true: that although he has caused this movie to be made, he will have absolutely no say in the final version.
‘To attend one of these script meetings is to understand the cold truth of the saying that a camel is a horse made by a committee.’
Once a script has been commissioned, the studio and producers can only wait until the writer has finished. This, says screenwriter Robert Towne, ‘explains the historic hatred Hollywood has always displayed for the screenwriter’. His collaborators feel contempt because they have to wait for the writer, but also fear because they realize they need him.
And, although only cinematographers understand lighting, almost everyone in Hollywood can read. Thus studios will call script conferences with 12 executives and assistants offering their thoughts on a project. ‘To attend one of these meetings is to understand the cold truth of the saying that a camel is a horse made by a committee,’ said writer John Gregory Dunne. After being harassed with too many opinions, once a film is shooting, the writer often finds himself excluded, needing to be invited to be allowed on set and having to push to remain part of the collaboration.
Film-making can be a testing collaboration. Star and producer Kirk Douglas (right) was both impressed and exasperated by the talent and ego of director Stanley Kubrick (seen here with him on 1957’s Paths of Glory).
So it further stings writers when directors elevate their names with the possessive ‘a film by …’ credit. The theory that the director is author of the film – the auteur theory – was developed by French critics in the 1950s. It may make just a little more sense in France, where the director often co-writes the screenplay, has final cut over his film and even owns the copyright. But, as William Goldman put it, ‘it sure as shit isn’t true in Hollywood. I haven’t even met a director who believes it’. Nevertheless, almost all Hollywood directors use the possessive credit, some arguing that it’s in response to the growing list of producers’ names now credited on films.
The director, of course, has his own off-screen dramas to handle. He has to cajole performances out of, at times, temperamental stars, keep filming on schedule and allow the producers and the studio, who often all have different opinions, to believe that the film he is making will be exactly what they imagined. As Billy Wilder said: ‘A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.’ But whatever credit directors take, they almost always admit that Alfred Hitchcock was correct when he said: ‘There are three things you need to make a good movie: a go
od script, a good script and a good script.’
Anthony Pellicano
When Los Angeles Times journalist Anita Busch returned to her car one day in 2002, she found a rose and a dead fish on the broken windscreen. Attached was a card reading ‘STOP’. She contacted the police and an investigation led them to private detective Anthony Pellicano – ‘PI to the stars’, as he was known.
While searching Pellicano’s offices, the police found explosives, two hand grenades and extensive wire-tapping equipment, including a recording of a telephone conversation between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman around the time of the break-up of their marriage.
A NIGHT AT THE OSCARS
AT THE ACADEMY Awards in 1983, Polish film-maker Zbigniew Rybczynski (pictured, left) earned the dubious distinction of being the only person to win an Oscar, and, within minutes, be arrested and jailed. On receiving his award for his short animation, Rybczynski, who’d left Poland to seek political asylum in Austria the previous year, tried, through an interpreter, to make a brief political comment in support of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Instead, the Academy’s orchestra cut in with the Looney Tunes music and Rybczynski was ushered off the stage.
Still holding his Oscar, Rybczynski stepped outside the theatre to smoke a cigarette. When he wanted to return to the ceremony, a security guard refused to allow him in. With Rybczynski protesting, the confrontation escalated and the police were called. Rybczynski, according to the police, was intoxicated and shouted ‘American Pig … I have Oscar’, before trying to kick one of them. He was arrested, put in the cells and his Oscar booked as ‘property’. In time, a celebrity lawyer and interpreter were found and he was released without charge. Reflecting on his Oscar night, Rybczynski said, ‘Success and defeat are quite intertwined.’
Dark History of Hollywood: A Century of Greed, Corruption and Scandal behind the Movies (Dark Histories) Page 18
