Robert Sellers

by Hollywood Hellraisers

  Back in the production office producer Harold Schneider had the unenviable job of calming Belushi down. It didn’t work and he continued to talk in an incoherent fashion before picking up a large kitchen knife which Schneider feared he intended to use on himself. Then the other producer arrived. Harry Gittes had hired Belushi on Jack’s instruction and was taking no crap from a TV comic. ‘You are a real asshole,’ he blasted. ‘You’re acting like a complete asshole. You’re going to put us all in deep shit.’ Belushi seemed not to be hearing this. Instead he collapsed in a convenient chair and fell asleep. ‘What’s this?’ snapped Jack, arriving back from the set. ‘A crash pad?’ He didn’t want to hear explanations, he wanted Schneider to get Belushi back to his hotel room. Easier said than done. Stirred from his audible slumber, Belushi became wild and abusive and a pissed-off Schneider would surely have belted him one if he hadn’t been restrained.

  It was a coy and still rather hungover Belushi who emerged on the set the next day full of apologies. Jack was having none of it. ‘You asshole,’ he bellowed. ‘Any other producers would write you out. You only stay in because they’re my friends. If Paramount people were here, you’d be kissed off and your career in movies would be totally fucked.’

  As filming went on Jack wanted desperately to like the comedian, who was fundamentally a nice guy, someone he could take under his wing, but Belushi remained belligerent on set and had a problem controlling his anger. He also continued to make petty demands and fought with the producers. Partly in response to his behaviour, Belushi’s role seemed to shrink. By the end of production he’d harsh words to say about the experience: ‘Jack treated me like shit on Goin’ South. I hate him. If I see him, I’ll punch him.’

  Besides the difficult Belushi, Jack found it awkward to balance his twin roles of star and director, setting up shots through the viewfinder one minute, then leaping into the scene and acting the next. ‘I will never direct myself again!’ he was heard to yell at the top of his voice after one particularly difficult shot. Most of the crew, though, seemed to enjoy the experience. Cinematographer Nestor Almendros likened Jack to ‘a force of nature; exuberant, tireless, able to film ceaselessly from dawn to dusk, then go to a party and enjoy himself till daybreak’.

  As the seventies drew to a close Jack’s huge personality was threatening to swallow the parts he played. Bizarrely, the more famous Jack got, the more difficult his job as an actor became. Often he found himself having to un-Jack his characters in order to get audiences to separate the public persona from his work; un-Jacking meant toning down the mad eyebrows and cheesy grin and all the other Jackisms. It was a challenge because some directors hired Jack to be, well, Jack. As Bob Rafelson says, ‘Jack is much bigger in all respects than the characters he plays. He would never throw a dog down a disposal chute, as he does in As Good As It Gets; he would choke it to death right on the spot.’ Over the next few years Jack faced accusations that he was merely trading on his celebrated wild image, criticism that he couldn’t care less about. ‘I love to put myself somewhere where they can say, “Jeez, he’s overacting again.” Which I am, but damn, that’s why I’m good!’

  Your name is Kal-El. You are the only survivor of the planet Krypton.

  It was one of the most anticipated movies of the decade: Superman (1978). Once the exhaustive search for an actor to play the superhero concluded, with the unknown Christopher Reeve donning the cape, thoughts turned to who would play the pivotal role of Superman’s father Jor-El. Director Richard Donner wanted Marlon Brando, and together with screenwriter and creative consultant on the film Tom Mankiewicz visited the great man at his house on Mulholland Drive.

  Once inside they began discussing the script and Brando’s role. What happened next, as Mankiewicz recalls, was bizarre to say the least. ‘Brando looked at me and said, “You know that long speech I have, well maybe on Krypton we don’t speak English, maybe we make electronic sounds you know, beep, beep, and we have subtitles.” I went, “Yeah.” He then turned to Dick and said, “And maybe we don’t even look like people, maybe I look like a green suitcase.” We said, “A green suitcase!” By this point Dick and I are sitting there and our spirits are just dropping so fast, here’s our big legendary star and he’s going to appear on screen as a green suitcase making electronic sounds.’

  Donner couldn’t take this nonsense any longer and said in a booming voice, ‘You can’t look like a green suitcase and make electronic sounds because every kid in the world knows that Superman’s dad is a handsome guy.’ Before he could finish Marlon roared with laughter. ‘What was so obvious in that instant,’ says Mankiewicz, ‘he was putting us on. He wanted to know what kind of people he was working with.’

  When Marlon signed on his fee of $3.7 million for twelve days’ filming made headlines around the world. ‘But he was a dream to work with,’ recalls Mankiewicz. ‘He gave us eleven free days on that picture that he didn’t have to give us; we just had a ball with him. And he literally saved my life on Superman.’ The film was produced by Alexander Salkind, whose wife Berta fancied herself a writer and repeatedly sent Mankiewicz script rewrites, which he ignored. After Brando’s final day on the movie Mankiewicz and Donner took the actor to dinner on the King’s Road. The Salkinds got wind of it and joined them unannounced, Berta squeezing herself into the booth between Mankiewicz and Marlon. ‘She was drunk,’ recalls Mankiewicz. ‘And she turned to me and said, “I keep sending you these rewrites and you never reply to me.” I said, “Mrs Salkind, I apologise, I’m just so busy.” To the whole table she said, “You know how much my husband is paying him.” And then she announced my salary to everyone; it was just awful. “You should get on your hands and knees,” she said to me, “and thank my husband for hiring you.” Well, Alexander Salkind was about four foot eleven, and I said, “Mrs Salkind, I’m always on my hands and knees when I’m talking to your husband so I can look him straight in the eye.” Suddenly she grabbed a steak knife and went right for me — the knife was four inches away from my chest, I swear to God — and Marlon grabbed her hand and shoved her down in the booth saying, “Will you behave?” She nodded, and then came right at me again. You always wonder when something like that happens to you what you’re going to do, and I’m afraid in my case I flunked, because I was so aghast I didn’t try and stop her. So I do owe Marlon one. I tell you what, even at Marlon’s age then, boy his reflexes were awful fast. Got her just in time.’

  Marlon’s scenes take place in the opening ten minutes of the film, in the lead-up to the destruction of the planet Krypton, and were played for the most part with Susannah York. ‘He was absolutely enchanting,’ she recalls. ‘So nice to me, filled my dressing room with flowers and fruit. I liked him very much. I was certainly very astonished by cards being put up for his lines, that took me a bit of getting used to. And I remember asking somebody why he didn’t learn the lines, because he obviously could, and this guy said, “I don’t think Marlon has very much respect for the profession he’s in.” And that made me feel rather sad for Marlon because he was such a great man, and somebody so wonderful at what he did, and not to feel much respect for it was just enormously sad.’

  Stunt man Vic Armstrong, doubling Christopher Reeve in the flying sequences, was also mystified by Marlon’s use of cue cards. ‘It was actually true what they said about him, that when he scratched his head it was to look over at the idiot boards. Guys were walking around with great big cards with lines of dialogue on in different parts of the set and he’d look at them and that’s how he got those long thoughtful looks on screen. It was amazing. But Brando was a very generous, nice person. Of course I was in awe of him, he was an icon.’

  I told her you had a small dick!

  After his appearance in the belated release of Apocalypse Now Dennis Hopper was sure movie offers would come rolling in. At last he had exposure in a major movie that would be seen by millions. Nothing of any merit turned up. His agent suggested he move back to LA in case he be obliterated completely from
Tinsel Town’s subconscious. For a while he took the advice, but the sheer phoniness of the place had him yearning for his sanctuary back in Taos.

  Waiting for him there was a predictable slide into excess. Things were starting to get a little crazy, even by his standards. He bought a two-ton Cadillac while high on drugs because he thought it was a tank. He gave interviews depressed about his career, the fact he’d had to look for film work in Europe instead of his native land. ‘I can’t say I wasn’t angry and upset during that time,’ he said later, ‘because I was.’ He was particularly desperate to return to directing, to prove himself once again behind the camera. He just had to make films, he said, ‘because that’s what I feel justifies my existence’. He was literally going nuts, and in need of some creative release picked up a brush and started painting again. ‘I was stopped so many times from acting and directing that if I had not had art as an outlet, I don’t know what I would have done.’

  Still, there was an air of desperation about Dennis: his expression emoted pain, befuddlement and disillusionment; his angry eyes were soul-piercing. As one journalist put it, ‘He has the face of a human train wreck.’ At least he was still alive to feel miserable; three-quarters of his friends died before he was thirty. Talking to Bob Dylan once, Dennis said, ‘When we hit forty, man, we can look at each other and really talk to each other, like hey, how did we do that?’

  With no one prepared to gamble on Dennis he bummed around with some old friends including Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and rocker Neil Young, and together they churned out a movie that was something like five years in the making, with Young acting as co-director putting something like $3m of his own money into the project. It was called Human Highway and filmed partly on location around Dennis’s home. The film didn’t see daylight until the mid-80s, whereupon it was not well received. Entertainment Weekly said, ‘The nicest thing you can say about Human Highway is that as a filmmaker Neil Young is a great guitarist.’

  As might be expected of a Dennis Hopper movie, all did not run smoothly and he ended up in court on an assault charge. Actress Sally Kirkland alleged that one day a doped-up Dennis, who played a cook in the film, was performing knife tricks on the set with real knives. Fearful of an accident, Sally attempted to grab the knife off him and in the struggle received an injury to her hand serious enough to require surgery and two days in hospital. She sued Dennis for $2m, along with the producers, blaming them for not keeping the actor under control. Her lawyers alleged that Dennis and the crew were ‘smoking and in other ways ingesting dangerous and illegal drugs and drugs known to cause violence and dangerous behaviour’. In the end no criminal charges were ever filed against Dennis.

  Don’t touch me unless you love me.

  When Heaven Can Wait was showered with several Oscar nominations Warren Beatty turned up at the ceremony arm in arm with new girlfriend Diane Keaton. God knows what she must have thought when Shirley MacLaine bounded up onto the stage and joked, ‘I want to take this opportunity to say how proud I am of my little brother, my dear, sweet, talented brother. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you tried celibacy!’

  Warren met Diane Keaton at a party thrown by her former lover Woody Allen, and for days afterwards besieged her with flowers and calls. Would she go to dinner with him? Would she fly to Acapulco for the weekend? It had never failed before. Playing it cool, Diane turned him down several times before finally agreeing. Diane fitted the template of many previous Warren girlfriends: highly successful, a star in her own right. ‘Warren likes ladies whose names appear above the title,’ joked Bonnie and Clyde actor Michael J. Pollard. ‘But he makes exceptions — lots and lots of exceptions.’ Those exceptions might be waitresses, secretaries and Hollywood groupies. A few years back, at a party Roman Polanski hosted at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, Warren parked his car and immediately started to flirt with one of the girl valets. A Hollywood executive was witness to this and it struck him as more than odd that here was Warren, a top movie star, trying to pick up a parking attendant in the middle of the night. ‘His conquests were a matter of chemistry,’ Robert Altman once said. ‘And a hell of a lot of stamina.’

  Diane Keaton had fancied Warren for years, of course, first laying eyes on him as a young actress browsing through the Beverly Wilshire bookstore. She looked up and there he was in the lobby. ‘I thought, my God, he’s so beautiful. He looked at me for a second, and then passed me by. I thought, I’ll never know him. He’ll never be somebody in my life.’

  Theirs was a contentious, complicated relationship; ‘volatile’ was a word Diane once used to describe it. ‘Warren,’ she said, ‘really likes women who kick his ass.’ According to reports Beatty bought Diane a pair of handcuffs, an ironic comment on their relationship perhaps, or were they just kinky bastards? ‘God help me, no,’ Warren said when confronted with the suggestion. ‘I’ve never been into that.’

  Besides Diane, Warren was seeing other women. When Ali McGraw left husband Steve McQueen the news spread along the bachelor grapevine faster than meths goes down a tramp’s throat. Warren immediately called her former husband Robert Evans. ‘Your old lady, she’s free. Do you mind if I call her?’ Evans couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy; everyone knew he was involved with Diane. ‘If you weren’t living with Keaton,’ Evans replied, ‘Ali would be the best thing that could ever happen to you, but she’s too good a dame to hurt for the sake of a notch. You’ve asked me, so I’m telling you — pass.’

  Amazingly, just two minutes after Warren’s call, Jack rang Evans with the same question. ‘Whaddaya think, kid? Now that your old lady’s free, is it worth a dial?’ Evans’s advice to Jack was much the same as he’d just given Warren. ‘Call her if you want, but you’re with Anjelica and Ali’s too vulnerable for you to play it shady. Got it?’ There was a slight pause. ‘Got it,’ said Jack. Years later Evans recalled what happened next. ‘One called and called, and the other passed. Who do you think called?’ Doesn’t take a genius, does it?

  Did Warren make a habit of this, one wonders. Friend Richard Sylbert once said. ‘I remember years ago Warren used to scan the trade papers, looking to see who was getting a divorce. He was great with wounded birds.’

  Warren had no qualms about stealing the vulnerable Ali from McQueen, since the two megastars had been rivals for years. McQueen saw Beatty as white collar and limos, he was blue collar and motorbikes. Later, when Warren was dating supermodel Barbara Minty, McQueen exacted his revenge. After seeing Barbara’s picture in a magazine, McQueen called her up for a date. Barbara was intelligent enough to know that her relationship with Warren was never going to lead anywhere, so agreed. They rode round for a while on McQueen’s bike, and afterwards he confessed to a friend that the moment he felt her cruise missile breasts against the back of his leather jacket, ‘I knew this was the woman for me.’ As Bill Maher, McQueen’s business manager, put it. ‘She was Warren Beatty’s girlfriend. Steve stole her away from him.’

  Around this time Warren was dating Jackie Kennedy Onassis, whose second husband Aristotle Onassis had recently died. Once more a grieving widow, Jackie had moved into a flash apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York. How serious their relationship was is open to speculation. In 1997, when quizzed about it on television, Warren denied they ever had sex. Ever on the lookout, though, Warren was flirting like mad with Cher at one party and when the singer refused to leave with him his radar instead switched to a beautiful pair of girls. He knew they were lesbians but that didn’t stop him having a go. In the end one of them said, ‘What the fuck do we need you for?’

  Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in.

  Jack Nicholson had wanted to work with Stanley Kubrick for years and made no secret of the fact that he’d told Stanley if there was anything that he thought he was right for he’d drop everything and be on the first flight over to England, the American’s home since the sixties.

  As soon as he read Stephen King’
s chilling novel The Shining Kubrick recognised its cinematic potential and saw Jack as the only actor with the intensity to play the central role of a family man driven to mental collapse who tries to kill his family with an axe. ‘The character is a desperate, driven man,’ said co-screenwriter Diane Johnson. ‘And Jack can play insanity better than anyone.’

  Jack arrived in London in the winter of 1978, where he’d remain for the next year as the film progressed at a fairly methodical rate, befitting Kubrick’s reputation for perfectionism. To an actor who learned his craft in the Roger Corman wham, bang, thank you, ma’am school of filmmaking, Kubrick’s habitual fifty or sometimes sixty takes for the more difficult scenes was a real challenge for Jack and something quite new. ‘He’s demanding,’ said Jack, with just a hint of understatement. Kubrick’s approach was: how can we do it better than it’s ever been done before? ‘A lot of actors give him what he wants,’ Jack went on. ‘If you don’t, he’ll beat it out of you — with a velvet glove, of course.’

  Jack’s method of dealing with such eccentricity was to bitch and moan behind Kubrick’s back, ‘I’m a great off-stage grumbler.’ Poor old Shelley Duvall had nowhere to vent her frustrations, storing it all inside to such a degree that she almost suffered a nervous breakdown. Apparently Kubrick demanded 127 takes from Shelley in one scene.