Hollywood Animal

by Joe Eszterhas

  “He sent me an anonymous note in the mail, but I have no doubt it came from him.

  “All it said was: ‘You fucked me masterfully. I applaud you. I deserved it.’”

  My agent, Bob Bookman, was leaving the agency to be head of production at ABC Films, an attempt by the network to go into film production. I liked “Bookie,” as everyone in Hollywood called him. He was one of the few people in Hollywood I’d met who actually loved to read. A fanatical Francophile, he was the kind of guy who’d carry a wine tip sheet listing undiscovered new brands and vintage years into a restaurant.

  I asked Bookie to recommend another agent. He said he’d have to think about it.

  The man he finally recommended was Guy McElwaine.

  Guy McElwaine, then in his forties, was the premier actor’s agent in town and one of the heads of the agency. He had represented everyone from Peter Sellers to Yul Brynner to Burt Reynolds.

  “What writers does he represent?” I asked Bookie.

  “He doesn’t represent any writers.”

  “What writers has he represented?”

  “He’s never represented any writers.”

  “You think I should be represented by an agent who’s never represented a writer?”

  “Yeah, I think you’ll like each other,” Bookie said.

  He spoke to McElwaine and I made an appointment to see him. I did some research on him. He was an ex-jock, known as “The Golden Beef” in the days when he outpitched Don Drysdale in high school. He began as a publicist for Frank Sinatra and then Judy Garland. He was famous for the large number of gold chains he had once worn around his neck. He was now on his sixth marriage.

  I was nervous the afternoon I was supposed to meet him. This person sounded like a real Hollywood animal to me.

  Had I hurt Bookie’s feelings somehow? Was McElwaine some kind of twisted Francophile revenge? I knew, after all, how much Bookie loved Proust.

  Our appointment was at 2:30. I was in Guy McElwaine’s outer office at 2:15. The outer office had a framed photograph of John F. Kennedy with the words: “To Guy, All My Best, Jack” written on it. JFK’s pal wasn’t there at 2:30. He wasn’t there at three o’clock. He wasn’t there at 3:15.

  “I had an appointment at 2:30,” I said to his assistant, “it’s now 3:15, I know I’m only a writer, but—”

  She was sweet. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m really very sorry,” she said, “he got delayed, he’s on the way.”

  At 3:30, Hunter Thompson arrived.

  Hunter Thompson? Here?

  In Guy McElwaine’s outer office? Wearing his Hawaiian shirt and shorts and safari hat and carrying his doctor’s bag? Was I hallucinating? I hadn’t seen him since I left Rolling Stone.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I said.

  “In the building,” he mumbled, “heard you here. Wanna beer?”

  He took out a cold Heineken from his bag and handed it to me.

  “Fuck motherfuckers,” he said. “Don’t take any shit, vultures, jackal screenwriters, Sunset Marquis, call me,” and Hunter was gone.

  At five minutes to four, as I was finishing Hunter’s Heineken, Guy McElwaine floated in.

  I mean, he floated.

  He was dressed immaculately in a beautifully tailored suit and he was inside a cloud of fumes that smelled like Jack Daniel’s fine sipping whiskey to me.

  With him was Peter Falk, wearing his Columbo raincoat.

  First Hunter Thompson and now Peter Falk in his Columbo raincoat?

  Maybe I was having some sort of bizarre acid flashback that had kicked in after all these years.

  “Come on in, come on in,” Guy waved. “Peter left his keys.”

  No apology for being late, no hello, just a wave to the butler to follow him into the house.

  Peter Falk couldn’t find his keys. He started doing his Columbo number.

  “Jesus, I’m really sorry here,” he said, looking around couches and on the floor, “I know I held you up here, kid, it’s all my fault, Jesus where could I have put ’em, I thought I left ’em right here, you don’t see any keys around anywhere, do you, kid?”

  I shook my head no. As Columbo stumbled around, McElwaine poured himself a drink at his own private bar. He didn’t offer me one.

  I saw what he was pouring for himself: it was Jack Daniel’s!

  “Here they are!” Falk suddenly said. “Well what do you know? I must’ve dropped ’em. How about that? I thought I looked there—my eyes must be gettin’ worse—Jesus, maybe I should see my eye guy. See you, Guy. Great lunch, huh?”

  “Always a pleasure,” Guy McElwaine said.

  “Good luck, kid.” Peter Falk winked at me and stumbled, Columbo-like, out of the office.

  Guy McElwaine and I looked at each other. I felt my ears burning. My blood pressure must have been through the roof. McElwaine looked cool, professionally unperturbed. He looked at his gold watch and sat down at a couch across from me, his Jack Daniel’s in hand.

  “So, tell me,” he said, sipping his drink, “what ambitions do you have in this business?”

  He glanced at his watch again. I think it was that second glance that did it.

  “You’ve got a lot of balls,” I said. “You come in here an hour and a half late—you don’t even apologize—you sit down like King Shit condescending to some servant! I don’t care who you are! Or who you represent! I don’t care if I’m just a writer and not one of your big stars! But you don’t have a right to treat another human being this way!”

  He stared at me, his eyes cold, his face expressionless, and took another sip of his drink as I was carrying on.

  I ended my tirade eloquently.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I said, got up, and headed for the door. I was almost there when I heard him.

  “Come back here and sit down.”

  I turned but I wasn’t going back.

  “I’m sorry. I apologize. It’ll never happen again.”

  “You’re goddamn right it won’t,” I said, and turned back to the door.

  “For Christ’s sake!” he said, his voice low but hard. “Come back here and sit down and have a drink with me!”

  I looked at him. He was shaking his head and grinning. I went back and sat down on the couch across from him.

  “What can I get you to drink?” he said.

  “Jack Daniel’s sounds great.”

  “I think I’m gonna like you,” Guy McElwaine said.

  Sometime during that first meeting, Guy McElwaine, grinning, drink in hand, said to me: “Remember this. There is no heart as black as the black heart of an agent.”

  I grinned back, drink in hand, and promised to remember it.

  I went into what everybody in town called Development Hell, writing scripts that I enjoyed writing but that weren’t made. My price per script jumped each time—I sometimes suspected that studio executives were simply not prepared to be dealing with Guy McElwaine, superstar agent, wheeling and dealing on behalf of a freshman writer.

  I had countless meetings with countless executives over countless projects, getting to know people. I was also getting to know Guy, who sort of adopted me, taking me to places like La Scala, Le Dome, Ma Maison, and the Bistro and introducing me around.

  What a piece of work this Golden Beef was!

  We were on our way to La Scala for lunch one day—Guy was a permanent resident there with his own banquette.

  The sun was in our eyes and an attractive woman, walking toward us, stopped us.

  “Guy, how are you?” she gushed.

  “I’m just fine, thank you,” he said.

  He was peering at her, his Gucci shades on. I could tell he didn’t know who she was.

  “Well you look really great,” she told him with a smile.

  “Thank you.” He smiled back. “So do you.”

  “Guy, don’t you recognize me?” She laughed.

  “Well sure, of course I do,” he said but she and I both knew he had no idea who she was.
/>
  “But Guy,” she said, “I was your first wife.”

  Another time we were having dinner and there was a stunning woman in her forties sitting near us with a white-haired man in his seventies. When the man went to the restroom, she turned to us and said, “Guy, you never call me anymore.”

  He oozed charm and said he was very sorry but that he certainly would.

  “It’s been such a long time,” she said, “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, darlin’,” Guy said, smiling.

  When her friend came back from the restroom they left.

  “Who was she?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know?” I laughed.

  “Well, I remember her. I don’t think I ever knew her name, but twenty years ago she used to give the best head in this town.”

  Another night at La Scala with Guy, I also met a young agent who had just started his own agency. Michael Ovitz was with Sally Struthers and they stopped at our table on their way out.

  At the moment they stopped, I was holding a hunting knife that I’d bought on Wilshire Boulevard at Abercrombie & Fitch that afternoon.

  I was showing it to Guy and the six-inch blade was open when Ovitz and Struthers stopped.

  Guy introduced me to them and after a few moments of agent banter, Ovitz suddenly turned to me, glancing at the knife, and said: “Do you eat dinner with that thing?”

  “No,” I said, “but I carry it into all of my meetings.”

  “You’ll probably go a long way in this town.” Ovitz laughed.

  Sally Struthers asked to see the knife, so I handed it over, its blade open.

  “This thing is really lethal,” she said.

  She handed it to Ovitz, who checked it for heft, rubbed it admiringly, and made some stabbing motions with it.

  “Maybe I’ll borrow it sometime,” he said with a smile.

  “Not while I’m around,” Guy said.

  We all laughed.

  “Anytime,” I said to Michael Ovitz and he smiled and handed the knife back to me.

  One of the more memorable meetings in Guy’s office was with Jann Wenner, my old boss at Rolling Stone, whom I’d always called Napoleon, partly because of his size and partly because of his accomplishments.

  Jann had just gotten a three-picture producing deal at Paramount through his friendship with studio head Barry Diller and we were now talking about my writing a script for him.

  The irony didn’t escape me. I’d written magazine articles for him all those years and now here he was, back as my potential “producer.”

  The only problem with the meeting was that Jann was zonked out of his mind—not on grass or coke or some of the other more arcane highs that we’d shared ( ibogaine? belladonna?) … but on vodka.

  Even Guy, who must’ve been a part owner of Jack Daniel’s, was sort of taken aback. I was amused: when I was at Rolling Stone, Jann knew so little about alcohol that when Yevgeny Yevtushenko (a world-renowned drinker) came to visit us, I had to draw up a liquor list for his arrival.

  Now, in Guy’s office, Jann was lurching around and fixated on the boots I was wearing.

  “Those are Beatle boots!” he said.

  “No they’re not.”

  “Yes they are. They’re Beatle boots. I can’t believe you’re wearing Beatle boots.”

  “I am not wearing Beatle boots.”

  “Cleveland, you’re from Cleveland. It makes sense. No wonder you’re wearing Beatle boots. Guy, don’t those look like Beatle boots?”

  “Well, a little, I guess,” Guy said. “Maybe.”

  “Beatle boots!” Jann crowed. “Fucking Beatle boots!”

  I also met Don Simpson during that period of time. He was the head of production at Paramount, working with and under a stellar cast of people that included Craig Baumgarten, Jeff Katzenberg, Michael Eisner, and Barry Diller.

  I was in Don’s office to discuss adapting one of my books, Nark, to the screen, and in the room were Craig Baumgarten and a producer Barry Hirsch had recommended to me. I knew that Simpson had come out of the music business and I was immediately drawn to his let’s-kick-some-ass, passionate, rock and roll style. He was firing ideas off in machine-gun bursts and at one point in the meeting he got so excited about what he was saying that he got up from behind his desk and started hurling himself around the office.

  I knew that the producer Peter Guber was known in town as “The Electric Jew” but Simpson truly was some kind of dervish-like force.

  As Simpson hurled himself about the office, waving his arms, nearly booga-looing, I got up from the chair I was sitting in and wandered behind his desk, sat down in it, and put my feet up on it.

  Simpson gaped at me. He looked frozen.

  “What are you doing with your feet up on my desk?” he whispered.

  “I’m stretching my legs,” I said.

  He stood there, riveted to the spot, and smiled, then he started to giggle. Then we all started to giggle.

  “Make the fucking deal with him,” Simpson said to Craig. “Now I know what I’m dealing with.”

  And then, turning to me, he screamed—“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY DESK!”

  I did.

  It seemed sometimes that the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was becoming my temporary home.

  The suite I favored looked across Wilshire Boulevard down Rodeo Drive.

  I sat on my patio one night watching an army of policemen and SWAT team members as they cordoned Rodeo off. Helicopters buzzed the night sky. Spotlights turned night into day. Police sirens wailed.

  I wondered what movie they were shooting and was looking for the sound trucks when a bulletin on my TV set announced that a robbery had gone wrong at Van Cleef & Arpels Jewelers on Rodeo. Hostages had been taken. Police were on the scene.

  Maybe it wasn’t a movie being filmed, but what difference did that make?

  I had a great front-row seat!

  Steven Spielberg was an old friend of Guy’s. When Steven was starting out in the business, Guy would let him drive his car and offered him a spot at his Thanksgiving table each year. Now Steven was thinking about doing a remake of A Guy Named Joe and Guy wanted to bring the two of us together.

  I went to Steven’s house in the Palisades. It was filled with toys and miniatures of sets from his movies.

  Steven told me he was going through a tough time: he was breaking up with Amy Irving and he wanted to get into another project as soon as possible—meaning now.

  We watched the movie together at his house and when it was over he told me he had read a couple of my scripts and wanted me to do it. Was I interested?

  Yes I was, I told him, but I couldn’t get to it for at least another six months because I had agreed to write an idea from my old agent, Bob Bookman, for ABC Films, about migrant wheat farmers in the Midwest.

  “Did you sign a contract?” Steven asked.

  “No, but I agreed to do it,” I said. “Besides that, I hear nobody in town signs a contract.”

  “But you didn’t sign one, right?” he said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll talk to Guy,” Steven Spielberg said.

  Guy spoke to me the next day.

  “It’s no problem,” he said, “I can get us out of the ABC thing. We didn’t sign anything.”

  “But I gave my word to Bookie that I’d do it.”

  “This is Steven Spielberg we’re talking about here,” Guy said.

  “I’ll do it in six months,” I said.

  “He can’t wait,” Guy said, “he’s going through this breakup with Amy Irving. He wants to work on this right now. You’re probably going to have to go to London for a couple months to baby-sit him through it.”

  “I’m not a baby-sitter, I’m a writer.”

  “Well, you know what I mean,” Guy said. “Think about it.”

  I did and called him back.

  “I don’t feel comfortable with this,” I said. “I’ve given my word to Bookie
and I’ve never been good at baby-sitting anybody—”

  “Forget the baby-sitting part. I just meant spending time together, hanging out. Steven needs a friend right now.”

  “I don’t even know the man. I met him once and liked him but—”

  “Do you really want me to tell Steven Spielberg that you won’t work with him because of some dipshit ABC project about farmers?”

  I said: “Yes.”

  He called me back and said he had spoken to Steven.

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s pissed off at you.”

  “How can he be pissed off at me? What if I’d made an agreement with him and then did something else?”

  “Nobody does that to Steven Spielberg.”

  “Does what?”

  “Turn him down.”

  “What did he actually say to you?”

  “He said—‘I can’t believe Joe’s turning down a chance to work with Steven Spielberg.’”

  I went off to Nebraska and Iowa and hung out with the migrant farmers instead of Steven and sent ABC an outline.

  “This is a great outline,” Bookie said in his new corporate digs, “but we want you to do something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “We market-researched this idea. Market research says a movie about migrant wheat farmers won’t be a hit movie.”

  “Why didn’t you market-research it before we made an agreement that I’d write it?”

  “We probably should have, but we didn’t. Jeff was right.” Jeff Katzenberg, at Paramount, had issued a recent edict that movies with “dust” weren’t to be made because they were a box office turnoff. Wheat farmers meant a lot of dust.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bookie said, “we’ll find something else for you to do.”

  “But I’ve already done the research and I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out a story.”

  “What can I say?” Bookie said. “I’m sorry.”

  Guy wasn’t sorry when he heard what had happened, he was apoplectic. As I sat in his office, he called Bookie.

  “You’re sorry?” he said. “You made a deal with him to write this script on this subject. He began to perform. Now you don’t want him to perform because of market research? Well fuck market research! You pay him out completely and have the check on my desk in an hour! If you want to make another deal with him to write something else, we’ll consider it! If the check isn’t here within the hour, this agency will cease doing any business with ABC Films!”