Rebels on the Backlot

by Sharon Waxman

  118 “I had an interest in it”: Anderson, author interview; David Konow, “PTA Meeting,” Creative Screenwriting 7, no. 1 (January 2000); Lisa Y. Garibay, “Anderson’s Valley,” IFP/West Calendar, December 1999.

  118 sixty-inch rear-projection television: Dylan Tichenor, author interview.

  118 “he’s fascinated by sex, to some staggering degree”: Tichenor, author interview.

  118 “It’s my own guilty feelings about pornography”: David Konow, “PTA Meeting.”

  119 “audiences will be storming out”: Shaye, author interview.

  119 “I felt personally like I’d missed Pulp Fiction”: Mike De Luca, author interview.

  120 “I couldn’t get my ducks in a row”: De Luca, author interview.

  121 “I knew what the response would be”: De Luca, author interview.

  121 “I thought it was genius”: De Luca, author interview.

  121 “No, no he will bring it down”: Shaye, author interview.

  121 “I could sell it that way, as a worst-case scenario”: Mitch Goldman, author interview.

  122 “He had this five-thousand-page script which was completely misogynistic. I loved it”: Karen Hermelin, author interview.

  122 “The company was growing up”: Shaye, author interview.

  122 “He’s very talented. And very hard to work with”: Shaye, author interview.

  122 “What is this exactly?”: De Luca, Anderson, author interviews.

  123 “I’m the blank-check guy”: De Luca, author interview.

  123 Shaye “crawled onto the train”: Goldman, author interview.

  123 never touched drugs before his mid-twenties: Steven Soderbergh, author interview.

  123 “Is cocaine worse than alcohol?”: Stevey Soderbergh, Getting Away With It (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p. 23.

  124 “It made me never want to make a movie again”: Laura Bickford, author interview.

  125 “It wasn’t how we’d thought about it”: Bickford, author interview.

  125 “It kept hitting me in the face”: Bickford, author interview.

  126 “He was not snobby”: Bickford, author interview.

  126 “We were in love for a long time”: Bickford, author interview.

  126 “We tried to make it work …”: Bickford, author interview.

  127 “It was a very sad thing in my life”: Bickford, author interview.

  127 privileged and grasping: Confidential source, author interview.

  127 He couldn’t bear to watch Bickford marry someone else: Confidential source, author interview.

  128 “I had come to the end of anything that I had to say about myself”: Steven Soderbergh Interviews, edited by Anthony Kaufman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 151.

  128 “inherently evil and morally wrong”: Gavin Smith, “Hired Gun,” Film Comment, January 2001.

  128 “Why should the best directors only have $2 million to make their films?”: Bickford, author interview.

  128 “It’s once again in vogue …”: Claudia Eller, “The Economics of Independents; Specialized Movies Are All the Rage These Days for Major Studios,” Los Angeles Times, January 31, 1997.

  130 “It was scary to have those two places say no”: Bickford, author interview.

  130 “You couldn’t point to another film of its type”: Steven Soderbergh, author interview.

  131 About an hour later she’d come walking in: Confidential source, author interview.

  131 “It was a metaphor for what was going on”: Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 219.

  131 “It was getting hard … I just want to look through the fuckin’ records”: Biskind, 216–217.

  132 “There’s the ultimate case for not giving the director final cut”: Confidential source, author interview.

  132 friends knew Tarantino to disappear for days at a time: Confidential source, author interview.

  132 “This was not Martin Scorsese …”: Peter Biskind, “The Return of Quentin Tarantino.” Vanity Fair, October 2003.

  133 “just a fun B movie”: Laura Holson, “New Tarantino Film to Be Released in 2 Parts,” New York Times, July 16, 2003.

  133 “I had romantic ideals …”: Roger Avary, author interview.

  134 “My threshold for anything is high, except animal cruelty”: Avary, author interview.

  134 ran into each other on the red carpet: Sylvia Desrochers, author interview.

  134 “the best friend I ever had”: Avary, author interview (via e-mail).

  Chapter Five

  136 “We shouldn’t be making movies like that. …I take the flak for this”: Tom Sherak, Ross Bell, author interviews.

  136 “it’s a brilliant film …”: Sherak, Bill Mechanic, author interviews.

  137 “Those idiots just green-lit a $75 million experimental movie”: Confidential source, author interview.

  137 It will make people squirm: Bell, author interview.

  139 “Everything I read had to be reassessed”: Bell, author interview.

  139 On Monday she ponied up $10,000: Laura Ziskin, author interview.

  140 “I should have read the book sooner”: Bell, author interview.

  141 Bell got both of Fincher’s assistants to read it first: Bell, author interview.

  141 “I know why he looks up to Tyler”: David Fincher, author interview.

  141 “If Fox buys it, I’ll never have anything to do with it”: Fincher, author interview.

  142 “it was always sort of about getting to make movies”: Fincher, author interview.

  143 “big movies—were being made by a guy down the street”: Fincher, author interview.

  144 “There’s a whole group of guys like him …with a little bit of a mean streak”: Steve Golin, author interview.

  144 “from that moment on that’s all I ever wanted to do”: Fincher, author interview.

  145 “Bob Fosse was one of my favorite moviemakers”: Fincher, author interview.

  145 “a fucking drag”: Fincher, author interview.

  145 “When I wasn’t doing that I was making movies with a Super 8”: Fincher, author interview.

  146 “My whole thing was, ‘Just keep busy and eventually you’ll get out of this place’”: Fincher, author interview.

  146 “…. to make assets for the USC Film School”: Fincher, author interview.

  146 “That movie sucked shit through a straw”: Fincher, author interview.

  148 a place with “intense contempt for creativity”: Fincher, author interview.

  148 “he’s very drawn to things that reveal the lie”: Edward Norton, author interview.

  148 the director insisted that the movie didn’t work without it: Mike De Luca, author interview.

  149 “This is a seditious movie about blowing up people like Rupert Murdoch”: Bell, author interview.

  149 “To me it was a new form of existentialism: Your life is what you make it”: Mechanic, author interview.

  149 “It’s violent, but nothing you haven’t seen before”: Sherak, author interview.

  150 “He’s like from the Dark Side, but he is a visionary filmmaker”: Sherak, author interview.

  150 “everyone felt we could get guys …”: Sherak, author interview.

  150 the “shock of truth”: Ziskin, author interview.

  151 “It was naïve of me”: Ziskin, author interview.

  Chapter Six

  154 “at least it won’t be derivative”: Steve Golin, author interview.

  155 “It doesn’t pitch well”: Tom Pollock, author interview.

  155 “I don’t think we need more people learning to write that way”: Interview with New Times, October 29, 1999.

  156 “certain things that I am anxious about, and they wind up in my script”: “I’m in you.” Filmmaker Magazine, Fall 1999.

  156 “nobody was interested in producing it”: Claudia Eller, “Quirky Being John Malkovich Ma
y Have the Last, Best Laugh,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1999.

  156 Golin would look sheepish, then go away for a month before bringing it up again: Pollock, author interview.

  156 “I did everything I possibly could to prevent the movie from happening”: Michael Kuhn, author interview.

  157 “I was laughing my ass off”: Holly Sorenson, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Marty Bowen,” Premiere, April 2004.

  157 hack television show; Ibid.

  157 “I want to meet Charlie Kaufman”: Sandy Stern, author interview.

  158 Drew Barrymore attached to star: Stern, author interview.

  158 “if I could write as well as Charlie could”: Spike Jonze, author interview.

  159 served in city government under Mayor John Lindsay: Jonze, author interview.

  160 pulled the plug: Girl Skateboard Company magazine, August 1995.

  160 …worried that the skaters had actually been killed: Evan Wright interview with Spike Jonze (unpublished).

  160 “I didn’t know that wasn’t his fake name”: Evan Wright interview with Rudy Johnson (unpublished).

  160 “before we got anything”: Wright interview with Jonze.

  160 Jonze’s joining Propaganda in 1993: Jonze, author interview.

  161 “If it can be small, I try to keep it small …”: Wright interview with Jonze.

  161 “I spent another 20 minutes trying to finish it”: Peter Kobel, “The Fun and Games of Living a Virtual Life,” New York Times, October 24, 1999.

  162 “He’ll totally get this script”: Stern, author interview.

  162 “He sat there with his arms crossed …”: Stern, author interview.

  162 his attempts to make a feature film: Vince Landay, author interview.

  162 Sony, going through one of its periodic executive reshuffles: Jonze, author interview.

  163 “I just didn’t get it”: Bob Shaye, author interview.

  163 “I just couldn’t get it throught the system”: Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1999.

  163 the script was put into turnaround, and handed back to Stern and Stipe: Stern, author interview.

  163 “I don’t think there’s a movie there …”: Golin, author interview.

  164 “What is Spike seeing in this?”: Landay, author interview.

  164 “He’s got a golden touch”: Landay, author interview.

  164 “Some of it may be an act”: Golin, author interview.

  164 “I thought it was a piss-take …”: Kuhn, author interview.

  165 “I’m the guy who will get in his underwear”: Paul Thomas Anderson interview on The Charlie Rose Show, October 30, 1997.

  166 “I was unsure about the subject matter …”: Sydney Pollack, author interview.

  166 “I was a dope for not doing this”: Pollack, author interview.

  166 saw the “moral center” clearly: Anderson interview with Charlie Rose, 1997.

  166 Lyons was able to reel him in: John Lyons, author interview.

  167 “He struck me immediately as having a huge amount of talent …”: Joanne Sellar, author interview.

  167 “Paul needed someone all the time”: Lyons, author interview.

  167 “He could be very angry, abusive, thoroughly insulting …”: Confidential source, author interview.

  168 This is the greatest movie we’ve ever made at New Line: De Luca, Mitch Goldman, et al., author interviews.

  168 “I was led to believe it would be a normal motion picture length”: Shaye, author interview.

  168 “I drank the Kool-Aid with Paul”: De Luca, author interview.

  168 “I really don’t want to mess with that scene” De Luca, Tichenor, author interviews.

  168 “I’m not going to force you”: Dylan Tichenor, author interview.

  168 violated and hurt: Shaye, author interview.

  169 got a lower score: Tichenor, author interview.

  169 Anderson’s cut tested about as bad as any movie could: Goldman, and confidential source, author interviews.

  169 “I remember being confused …the math doesn’t say what you were feeling”: Paul Thomas Anderson, author interview.

  170 “The truth was—people didn’t want to say they liked it”: Goldman, author interview.

  170 “Everyone backed away from the movie”: De Luca, author interview.

  170 stomped on the shreds: Confidential source, author interview.

  171 “naked, humping butts …”: Tichenor, author interview.

  171 “We put it in the movie, got the rating”: Village Voice, October 14, 1997.

  171 He quietly showed the version to Newsweek critic David Ansen: Tichenor, author interview.

  171 “gloriously alive”: David Ansen, “Get Inside His Head,” Newsweek, November 1, 1999.

  172 “What can you say?”: Lynn Hirschberg, “His Way,” New York Times, December 19, 1999.

  172 At the opening screening in Pasadena: Tichenor, author interview.

  172 “this year’s fireworks event.” Janet Maslin, “An Actor Whose Talents Are the Sum of His Parts,” New York Times, October 8, 1997.

  172 “Like Spielberg’s Sugarland Express”: David Ansen, “Born in the U.S.A.,” Newsweek, October 6, 1997.

  172 “Boogie Nights is a startling film”: Kenneth Turan, “Ford Had Wayne, Capra Had Stewart, Scorsese Has De Niro,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1997.

  172 “triumph of substance over style”: Cineaste.

  173 “I feel I should thank you …”: Mim Udovitch, “Light … Camera … hold it, hold it,” Esquire, October 1997.

  174 I feel like I’ve been assaulted”: www.tranquileye.com/historyofporn/boogie_nights.html

  174 “I couldn’t justify it in practical terms”: De Luca, author interview.

  174 “How do you feel about making a movie with frogs falling out of the sky?”: Sellar, author interview.

  Chapter Seven

  175 “I’m not interested in making the movie with you”: David Fincher, author interview.

  176 who he derisively called Saucy Rossy: Fincher, author interview.

  177 “Brad will have to cut his fee”: Laura Ziskin, author interview.

  178 “He looked very young and yet…”: Fincher, author interview.

  178 “I love it, but do you think it’s funny?” Edward Norton, author interview.

  179 they had to pay him $2.5 million to woo him away: Fincher and Brian Swardstrom, author interviews.

  179 “They had me over a barrel”: Norton, author interview.

  179 “I ultimately said, ‘I’m not gonna be out of this film’”: Norton, author interview.

  179 sent the script to a friend: Fincher and Cameron Crowe, author interviews.

  181 Pitt and Norton also learned how to make soap: Norton, author interview.

  181 “She was this tiny little pale thing”: Fincher, author interview.

  182 “Her mother was just howling, she was rolling in the aisles”: Fincher, author interview.

  182 “It had to be a woman …”: Fincher, author interview.

  183 “At $50 million it was a good bet”: Ziskin, author interview.

  184 “The more I talked to Charlie …” Spike Jonze, author interview.

  185 “It was a scary thing …”: Jonze, author interview.

  185 “There’s something so enigmatic about him”: Jonze, author interview.

  185 Jonze … wooed Coppola in the oddest of ways: Ethan Smith, “Spike Jonze Unmasked,” New York Magazine, October 25, 1999.

  185 “Francis said, ‘In 10 years we’ll all be working for him’”: Peter Kobel, “The Fun and Games of Living a Virtual Life,” New York Times, October 24, 1999.

  186 In late 1997, on a gray day in Paris: Jonze, Landay, author interviews; John Malkovich interviews in New York Times, et al.

  187 “I am ridiculous.” Kobel, “The Fun and Games of Living a Virtual Life.”

  187 “I kind of felt like it was a lose-lose situation …” Jonze, author interview.

&nb
sp; 187 “in Hollywood that means yes”: Steve Golin, author interview.

  188 “I was trying to figure out how to get out of it”: Michael Kuhn, author interview.

  188 “It was a famous script …”: John Cusack, author interview.

  189 “When I first met her I was really skeptical …” Jonze, author interview.

  189 “We started pushing the character …” Jonze, author interview.

  190 “I was so stubborn”: Claudia Eller, “Quirky Being John Malkovich May Have Last, Best Laugh,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1999.

  190 The director called: Kuhn, author interview.

  190 “I couldn’t think of any more excuses, so I said okay”: Kuhn, author interview.

  190 “Golin’s penis is on the line in a big way”: Eller, “Quirky Being John Malkovich May Have Last, Best Laugh.”

  190 “I was going to castrate him”: Kuhn, author interview.

  190 “I don’t think anybody felt confident …” Tom Pollock, author interview.

  191 “Tell Paul I’ll sweep the floors in his next movie”: John Lesher, author interview.

  191 “I thought it had amazing energy …” David O. Russell, author interview.

  192 “If you can get Cameron Crowe’s dick …”: Danny Bramson, author interview.

  192 “I was in a position I will never ever be in again …”: Lynn Hirshberg, “His Way,” New York Times, December 19, 1999.

  193 “I see Paul in all the characters …”: Mim Udovitch, “The Epic Obsessions of Paul Thomas Anderson,” Rolling Stone, February 3, 2000.

  193 “I consider Magnolia a kind of beautiful accident …”: Hirschberg, “His Way.”

  194 Apple and Tichenor had tears in their eyes: Dylan Tichenor, author interview.

  194 “I thought it would be an important film”: Mike De Luca, author interview.

  194 “I wanted to make something that was very intimate …” John Patterson, “Magnolia maniac; At the age of 30 and with just three films to his name, Paul Thomas Anderson has already been granted the heady power of the Final Cut,” The Guardian (London), March 10, 2000.

  195 “There are certain moments in your life when things are so fucked-up …”: David Konow, “PTA Meeting,” Creative Screenwriting 7, no. 1 (January 2000).

  196 “It was really foggy and the mountain road was covered in ice …”: Ibid.