Robert Sellers

by Hollywood Hellraisers

  It wasn’t long before Taos became a magnet for hip Hollywood, with actors, filmmakers, journalists, photographers all coming down, sometimes as many as twenty at a time. A frequent guest was a stuntman hired by Universal to be Dennis’s bodyguard. In reality the executives had this guy spying on Dennis and reporting back about what progress was being made on the film. The ploy backfired: Dennis quickly corrupted him, even had him act as a courier for drugs on his frequent trips between Hollywood and Taos.

  The editing continued. Dennis had to cut forty hours of material into a two-hour movie; it would take him over a year. Hardly a surprise when you think he compared editing a movie to ‘having a child and cutting its arms off — putting its eyes out’. When the suits at Universal called asking when the damn thing would be finished Dennis went nuts and cursed them down the phone. Then when they came all the way from Hollywood to see a rough version Dennis ignored them and went into the local bar instead to get pissed. Friends thought he might be destroyed by his own movie. He was constantly changing the message he wanted to convey. As one friend revealed, ‘None of us really thought he would finish the movie, we thought he would have a nervous breakdown long before that.’

  Finally, it was ready, but things didn’t look good. Certainly people expecting another Easy Rider were going to be disappointed. After a test screening at the University of Iowa Dennis was booed and jeered as he got on the stage. People were throwing stuff; they were really hostile. Dragged out into the lobby, Dennis spied a very attractive girl standing by a vending machine. ‘Mr Hopper,’ she said. Dennis smiled, ‘Yes, my dear?’ The girl walked over. ‘Did you make this film?’ Dennis said he had. Suddenly — thwack — the girl let him have it, straight on the nose. Blood spurted out. ‘You sexist fucking pig!’ she yelled. So, not the best preview in Hollywood history.

  Universal certainly thought The Last Movie was a bucket of shit. One executive said to Dennis, ‘Great, so you made an artistic film. What are we supposed to do, kill you? Only a dead artist makes money. We’ll only make money on this picture if you die.’ Dennis was livid. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. You’re talking to a paranoiac.’ And he wasn’t joking.

  Dennis refused to recut the movie into a more commercial form. Friends weren’t surprised by his attitude. Jack sympathised, but again thought Dennis was going about things the wrong way. ‘You don’t take someone’s bread and then walk across the street and say, fuck you.’ It was Dennis playing the rebel again. ‘I was young and thought I had power. I had no power at all. I had a big mouth.’

  In the end audiences were puzzled and critics tore the film apart, calling it an ego trip, at best just plain bad. Time’s review summed it all up: ‘That sound you hear is of checkbooks closing all over Hollywood. Dennis Hopper has blown it.’ Universal played it just for a couple of weeks in LA before shelving the thing, despite the fact it had won the Critics’ Prize at the Venice Film Festival, though this said more about how far the festival judges had their heads up their pretentious arses than the merits of Hopper’s film.

  Dennis was adamant that he never wanted to make another movie for Universal again. They felt much the same way. ‘In fact,’ said Dennis, ‘they don’t ever want to hear my name again.’ And that pretty much went for the whole of Hollywood. Incredibly, Dennis had gone from unemployable rebel to industry saviour with Easy Rider and back to unemployable rebel again, all within about eighteen months. Asked years later if The Last Movie had damaged his career, Dennis replied, ‘Did it damage my career? I’ll tell you, man, it ended my career. But I’ve no regrets.’ However, this time the road back would prove much tougher as Dennis plunged into a self-created abyss of drink – and drug-induced psychosis.

  Hey, pard, you know how to square a circle? Shove a four-by-four up a mule’s ass.

  After a mini sabbatical Warren Beatty returned to making movies, though with more muted raspberry than fanfare, replacing Frank Sinatra as a compulsive gambler who falls for chorus girl Liz Taylor in The Only Game in Town (1970). Astonishingly Beatty chose this bilge over Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid because ‘I didn’t feel much like getting on a horse and riding around.’ Maybe the real reason was director George Roy Hill’s contention that Beatty’s demands frustrated him so much he told the star to take a hike and got Robert Redford instead.

  Despite the fact that The Only Game in Town is set in that most American of locations, Las Vegas, Taylor insisted it be shot in Paris so she could be near hubby Richard Burton, then working in the French capital. So at huge expense Vegas streets, shops and casinos were recreated on a Parisian soundstage. The film stiffed. Warren didn’t mind working in Paris, far from it. While there he dated opera diva Maria Callas, still smarting after being dumped by shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. Indeed, Liz and Burton watched goggle-eyed as most of the female aristocracy of France arrived in Paris to sniff the stud over. Not for nothing did Liz Taylor rate Warren, physically, a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10.

  Back in London, looking for fresh meat, Warren hooked up with Polanski again at a party, also attended by the stunning Britt Ekland. Warren saw his chance and together they hotfooted it round the capital’s top night spots, ending the evening in one or the other’s bed, having sex ‘until sleep came from sheer exhaustion’, as Britt later poetically put it. For a woman formerly married to Peter Sellers and romanced by the likes of Rod Stewart and Ryan O’Neal, it was quite a claim when she revealed that Warren was the most divine lover of all. ‘I had never known such pleasure and passion in my life. Warren could handle women as smoothly as operating an elevator. He knew exactly where to locate the top button. One flick and we were on the way.’

  The ride was brief, though, lasting barely two months. Britt must have known she didn’t stand a chance when out in LA together Warren dodged photographers, fearful Julie back in England would see them together.

  Julie was definitely still the one, and in a bid to cement their relationship further they decided to make a movie together. Or David Foster decided for them. A former publicist trying to produce his first movie, Foster had bought a book that would make a neat revisionist western, about a gambler who pitches up one day in a little mining town and goes into business by building a whorehouse. It was called McCabe and Mrs Miller. For director he hired Robert Altman, who’d just finished making M*A*S*H. Then, wearing his publicist hat, Foster thought what a coup it would be to get Warren and Julie, these two famous lovers, to work together for the first time. ‘So I talked to Bob about it and he said, “How do we pull that off?” And let me tell you, my God, it was hot stuff, and I was right about getting them. I mean, we had to beat the press away with a friggin’ baseball bat.’

  Warren was in London when his agent told him about McCabe and that Altman was going to direct. There was a pause. ‘Who’s Bob Altman?’ said Warren. (M*A*S*H had yet to open outside America.) ‘And to Warren’s credit,’ says Foster, ‘he got on a plane and flew to New York, saw M*A*S*H, loved it, got back on a plane and flew to LA to meet with us and made a commitment to do the movie.’ But he wouldn’t sign a contract. Verbal commitment is one thing, but in Hollywood studios wanted you to sign a contract before monies were paid and they officially green-lit the movie. ‘Warren had a reputation for always being dragged kicking and screaming to commit to a movie,’ says Foster. ‘He kept saying, “I’ll do the movie, I’ll do the movie.” But Warners were saying, “You’ve got to sign the contract.” And he kept putting it off until finally we called his agent and said, “If he doesn’t sign the contract by six o’clock Friday night we’re going to get another actor.” At quarter to six he signed the contract.’

  According to Foster, almost from day one ‘there was a strange relationship between Warren and Bob. I lived it and I’ll never understand it.’ Altman was so meticulous in his preparation, so knowledgeable about what he was going to do, it probably unnerved a guy like Warren. As a filmmaker himself coming off a huge success with Bonnie and Clyde, Warren obv
iously had his own ideas. ‘Warren was very intense,’ says Foster. ‘And he’d constantly question Bob on set-ups and dialogue, and Bob was like, I’m the fucking director here!’

  On location in Vancouver, British Columbia, clashes between the two men were frequent. Warren liked lots of takes, working his way into a performance, Altman preferred to shoot fast and loose. Take the scene in which Warren is alone drinking in his room: the bottle falls off the table, he catches it and pours out another shot. It was take twenty and still Warren asked for another one. Tired, and probably pissed off, Altman announced to the crew, ‘Print seven and eleven — I’ll see you guys tomorrow,’ and walked out. The assistant director took charge of the scene and twenty more takes were completed before Warren was satisfied. ‘Warren is basically a control freak,’ Altman complained. ‘He wants to run the show.’ Altman got his revenge by ordering Beatty to do twenty-five takes of a scene in a biting cold snowdrift.

  With such childish battles going on, little wonder that McCabe and Mrs Miller, when it opened in July 1971, was a stylised mess that didn’t find an audience. Warren and Altman, predictably, blamed each other. ‘Had I been the producer I would have killed Robert Altman,’ said Warren. Altman’s two cents’ worth was that Beatty, in his view, was, ‘really a bit of an asshole’.

  Ironically, Warren’s performance in McCabe is amongst his best, but he never gave due credit to Altman, says Foster. ‘To the day I die I’ll never understand it. Actors loved Bob, that’s why he had this company of actors who always worked for him. Paul Newman loved him. Julie was the complete opposite to Warren, she put herself totally in Bob’s hands and to the day he died she was close to him. The only guy he had a problem with was Warren.’

  Who knows if bad feeling remained between the two men? ‘But the last time that the three of us ever saw each other is burned indelibly in my brain,’ says Foster. There’s a chic little studio in LA called Lantana Studios. Inside is a wonderful restaurant and a lot of film folk go there because they don’t get bothered by fans. Foster had a lunch date one afternoon with a director to discuss a film; around the early 2000s. ‘I walk into the restaurant and there’s Bob Altman. He jumps up: “Hey, Foster!” He was a big burly bear of a man. All of a sudden in walks Warren Beatty. And he sees me and Bob and walks over and we all throw our arms around each other in the middle of this restaurant, it was like a group hug. It was the last time we were all together and it was like a moment in history where all the bad vibes were gone.’

  Warren and Julie’s rented home on the McCabe location was the scene of numerous dinner parties and at one of them Jack turned up. He and Warren had never met before, but Jack certainly ingratiated himself by taking one look at Warren and declaring, ‘Now, that’s what a movie star looks like.’ It was the beginning of one of Hollywood’s most enduring and infamous friendships.

  Warren and Julie’s setting up home together, be it only on a temporary basis, suggested to some that marriage wasn’t too far away. Although Julie confessed that the institution itself ‘frightens me’, she almost certainly would have taken the plunge if only she could have believed that Warren would be faithful. Of course he knew his failings, that monogamy would bore him, that marriage scared him to death. ‘Why should I get married when I know I’ll get divorced in two or three years?’ said Warren, not unreasonably. Both he and Julie weren’t living so differently from married people anyway, he thought; they’d just not signed a piece of paper.

  After finishing promotional duties for McCabe, Julie went off to buy a cottage in Dorset. Very un-Hollywood. But then she did and always would shun the facile side of show business. She never craved adulation. And this made her so very different from Warren, who quite enjoyed playing the movie star. ‘I always remember Julie sitting on the outer edges at parties,’ said Altman, ‘while Warren was at the centre of things.’

  Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?

  With his Easy Rider earnings Jack bought a large property on Mulholland Drive, tucked away in a private canyon. Marlon was his neighbour. In the early seventies Jack’s home became well known as ‘the epicentre of the era’s drug-soaked social scene’, according to one report. A notorious late riser, for obvious reasons, a sign over the doorbell asked visitors: PLEASE, DON’T RING BEFORE 10 A.M.

  Not just a home and retreat, Jack’s place grew into one of the world’s most prized private art collections, including paintings by Dalí, Picasso, Bacon and Magritte. It expanded to the point where there was little space left on the walls. One visiting reporter counted fifteen works of art stacked in the guest bathroom, including two Japanese prints and an Egyptian sculpture, waiting for free wall space.

  Happy in the creative commune of BBS, Jack made his directorial debut for them. But, as usual with Jack, Drive, He Said (1970), a college drama, proved to be both unconventional and controversial. As indeed did his search for an actress to play a cheerleader, who had to briefly appear nude. Even though this was a minor role and had no direct relevance to the plot, Jack’s resoluteness and unswerving dedication in interviewing a hundred girls, each of whom had to take their clothes off in front of him, was a testament to his professionalism.

  Drive, He Said went further than any previous movie in its depiction of full frontal nudity and the sex act. After a screening at the Cannes Film Festival there were boos as well as cheers and some audience members got to their feet to wave indignant fists toward Nicholson. Then a fight broke out that had patrons running for the exit. Back home a scene where a couple fuck in a two-seater sports car was the subject of much discussion, with some critics finding it all a little degrading and unpleasant, having to watch a girl bent over the front seat taking it like a good ’un from behind. Jack hit back: thanks to personal knowledge, he could confirm that was the only position in which one can fuck in a sports car.

  He came to terms with his directorial debut misfire, but relations with Mimi were near breaking point. An ambitious actress herself, Mimi was fed up being known only as Jack Nicholson’s girlfriend, so had begun sleeping around within Jack’s extended entourage. Not best pleased, Jack was in no position to complain as he was doing the same himself. But, hell, sex was an important part of Jack’s life. He argued that if you’re not releasing sexual energy, you’re in deep shit. Away from home and, ‘not relating to a chick’, in Dr Jack’s words, ‘pretty soon that’s all you’re thinking about. Within three days in a new town you’re thinking, Why can’t I find a beaver in a bar?’

  Eventually it was Mimi who walked out. ‘We were two maniacs who couldn’t live together or apart,’ she bemoaned. As for Jack, he felt, ‘dumped on’ and for a time broke into a cold sweat at the very mention of Mimi’s name. He sought solace with pal Harry Dean Stanton, who recalled Jack was, ‘almost incoherent. I’ve never seen such despair.’

  Jack always found it amusing that because of his reputation men would ask him for advice about women. Close friends never did. ‘They think I’m too goofy about women. In love with love. Too easily injured. Idealistic.’ In relationships Jack commits like a freight train, which means when it hits the buffers, the pain is that little bit stronger. When it comes to the opposite sex Jack has three guidelines: ‘They’re stronger, they’re smarter, and most important they don’t play fair.’

  After years in the wilderness it must have felt strange for Jack to have directors like Mike Nichols, who refused to even let him audition for The Graduate, now falling over themselves to have him in their movies. Nichols described Jack as ‘the most important actor since Brando’ and personally cast him in Carnal Knowledge (1971) as Jonathan, an unrepentant philanderer, a role Jack was all too familiar with and gleefully took on, unaware of the backlash it would create. This was a character who didn’t know how to communicate with women beyond fucking them, a situation Jack freely admitted he’d been in himself. ‘When I began sexual activity in earnest, my point of view was simply to try to seduce everyone
I could.’

  The impact of Carnal Knowledge and Jack’s performance caused the growing feminist movement, dubbed ‘political lesbians’ in Washington, to have a collective seizure. No matter how hard Jack tried to explain that he was merely replicating what the script required of him, which was, in his view, a legitimate portrait of male attitudes at the time, the women’s libbers had their bras in their ears and weren’t listening, ranking him public enemy number one along with other reprobates such as Playboy owner Hugh Hefner. Jack probably didn’t do himself any favours with quotes such as: ‘I’ve balled all the women, I’ve done all the drugs, and I’ve drunk every drink.’ Such statements seemed deliberately antagonistic.

  So, despite protesting that ‘I am not trying to get into the pants of every woman I’m interested in,’ Jack’s role in Carnal Knowledge pretty much cemented in the minds of the public an image of Jack as an out-of-control shagging machine, male chauvinist and rabblerousing establishment-baiter. He was never to live it down, if indeed he ever wanted to.

  Still down in the dumps over Mimi, Jack hooked up with Michelle Phillips, taking care to first phone Dennis in Taos to say he was dating his ex. ‘Best of luck, man,’ said Dennis. ‘It’s over between her and me anyhow.’

  Michelle was a stabilising influence, despite her being just as much of a free sprit as Jack and highly ambitious. Right from the start she’d been happy to accede to Jack’s ground rules of not wishing to be tied down and refused to share a house. ‘The idea of living with him was just horrible because he’s set in his ways.’ No problem, Michelle and her daughter rented a house nearby and Jack happily carried out stepfatherly duties such as taking the kid to school.

  Soon he was coming out with stuff like, ‘Expanding sexuality is not most satisfied through promiscuity but through continuously communicating with someone specifically.’ Could Michelle be the one to stop his philandering ways? Jack admitted that in the past there had been weeks ‘when I’ve been with more than four women’. He dismissed that now as being nothing more than an ego trip and also regretted having once told a reporter that he’d already bedded all the women he wanted to. ‘Well, man, every chick I ever related to really resented that statement.’