by Robert Evans
N.Y. UNIONS CRIMP WORK HOURS TO LURE PIX—EVANS “CLUB” KICKS OFF “EXPERIMENT”
Breaking a sixty-year-old standing contract provision and taking a cue from the crafts in Europe who have benefited from a runaway production plight in the U.S., the Gotham-based picture locals have agreed to a shorter workday for the Robert Evans production of Cotton Club.
Instead of a twelve-hour workday starting at 7 A.M. and including obligatory overtime and a lunch break, crew for Evans $20,000,000 period piece will toil for eight hours from 11 A.M. to 7 P.M., and instead of breaking for lunch would partake in a continuous buffet set up when time allows.
At a crowded press conference Wednesday, where Orion Pictures chairman Arthur Krim confirmed that his company will distribute Cotton Club next year, Evans revealed that the unprecedented concession induced him to shoot the Harlem Jazz Era-themed pic in New York instead of running off to London where he said he easily could work within budget.
“I have $20,000,000 to make this picture,” Evans told the Hotel Carlyle press session. “Anything more than that and they’re going to take my house away.” He estimated his contract with the eight N.Y. craft unions will enable him to make a $30,000,000 or $40,000,000 picture for $20,000,000.
New York desperately wanted The Cotton Club made in the Big Apple. Everyone on cooperation-plus. George Kaufman’s Astoria Studios housed the production. Milton Foreman worked closely with the eight craft unions and watched every dime spent. I made him associate producer. My first choice for each key backfield player gave me thumbs-up. It’s never happened before, it’s never happened since. Hey, maybe it’s true: what goes around comes around. All were on board, protecting a maestro to be, his budget, his vision.
Cinematographer John Alonzo: “You got me. Fuck my other commitment. I owe it to ya. Made my bones on Chinatown, didn’t I?”
Richard Sylbert, numero uno production designer, snob: “You want me? You’ve got me. How can I say no? You’re the guy who made me Paramount’s production chief.”
To have a great eye, great savvy, and great ear for music is rare. All qualities fit producer Dyson Lovell. “Waited twenty years to work with you. When do I start?”
Ready to rock ’n’ roll, my all-star backfield was now in place.
Pre-production was now officially on go. Richard Sylbert started construction at Astoria Studios. Jerry Wexler signed on to supervise music. Milton Foreman all but lived at Astoria, checking the price of each nail, each piece of wood. The clock was now ticking at $200,000 a day.
Puzo turned in his third draft. Gere and Sylbert cornered me: “Still not there, needs a fresh eye.”
Scripts are never written, rather rewritten, rewritten, and rewritten. On a hunch, I called Coppola in Napa Valley.
“Who’s the best script doctor I can get? Need a quick rewrite.”
“Me.”
“Thanks, but I called for advice, not your pen. Can’t afford it.”
“How’s nothing sound? Get the script to me by tomorrow, we’ll speak over the weekend.”
Five days later:
“Needs major surgery. Don’t panic, I’ve got the key. Can you fly up to Frisco?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Have Gere, Hines, and Lovell come up too. Give us a few hours alone first, see if we agree. Then we’ll present it to them. We’ll start at ten. Have them here by three. Cook dinner at the house. Stay the night.”
Gere and Dyson were munching a salad when I broke the news of Coppola’s involvement on the script. Gere’s face lit up; Dyson’s didn’t.
Later Dyson told me, “Gere’s gonna do everything he can to get Coppola. Not just to write, but to direct the film.”
“Come on, Dyson. We’re working great together.”
“Don’t have a clue, do you, to an actor’s head?” laughed Dyson.
There I was in hilly Frisco, watching Francis smoke a joint. Just smelling it got me stoned. With chalk in hand, the Prince stood before a huge blackboard.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Harlem style. The rise and fall of The Cotton Club through the eyes of two minor characters.”
He brilliantly and meticulously chalked an entirely new Cotton Club canvas. Hours later, when Gere, Hines, and Lovell arrived, Coppola repeated his performance. That evening at Coppola’s Napa estate was love-feast time!
The next morning, Gere, Hines, Lovell, and I flew back to L.A. Gere cornered me.
“He’s a fuckin’ genius. We finally got a handle on it. Never thought it would happen. If I were you, Evans, I’d get on my knees, beg him to direct. That’s if you want The Godfather with music. You said it, I didn’t. Now you’ve got a chance. ‘Evans, Coppola, Puzo,’ not bad, huh? And you own it all!”
Did Dyson know his cat!
Coppola’s favor soon turned into a quarter-million-dollar pen job. The Doumanis and Victor Sayyah bristled.
“We like what we’ve got, sex, shoot-’em-up, music. What the fuck do we gotta bring someone else in? Fuck him and his quarter of a mil.”
They were right, but they didn’t have to deal with the fragile egos that come with the turf in making a film. That’s the producer’s headache. It was their money and no was their answer. Telling them about the shaking stage my Cotton Club was on wouldn’t have been smart. My shrinking pockets personally forked over the $250,000 to Coppola.
After six weeks of breathless waiting, Francis’s holy pages arrived, bearing no resemblance to his bullshit hype. My backers went nuts. My nuts went shrinking.
“Fuck Coppola—the old script’s great,” barked the partners three.
It was too late. Francis had already Elmer Gantryed the cast. Puzo’s million-dollar script was now a piece of shit. My backers’ smiles were fading too. My pockets also fading, I forked over another quarter of a mil for a Coppola look-see.
“Put what you chalked on the blackboard on paper, not this Harlem Renaissance shit. It’s my two bucks, it’s what I want. Nothing more, nothing less. Blackboard only.”
Weeks later, his second draft was now near finished. Gere, Hines, Dyson and I visited Napa again, Richard continually nudging me: “Convince him to direct.”
The clock was still ticking. Each day at another 200 Gs. What was originally a gift was now a $500,000 dent in my quickly shrinking pockets . . . and still no script. Instead of breakin’ his fuckin’ jaw, I kneed it, begging him to take over the reigns, direct the flick.
“You’ll make it great. Me—I don’t know.”
Charlie Bluhdorn was right: this business is fuckin’ crazy, the people in it even crazier. Here I am on my knees begging a guy who delivered a piece-of-shit script to take over everything. They should have put me away. Why didn’t they? Life would have been so much easier.
Days later, he finally accepted, but on one condition.
“It’s your picture, Evans, I’m just there to help.”
With that, the first royal nail was hammered in my coffin.
The cast, crew all on salary, and the investors were already in the Big Apple. At Astoria Studios a start date was being set.
Coppola was now the director. Me, his Siamese twin. Together we worked closely on cast, music, costumes, production design . . . still no script.
Burdened with the enormous responsibility of an imminent start date, Coppola cried for help in the form of a ten-day script polish from Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy.
The investors roared. “Is he nuts? Between Puzo and Coppola we’ve forked over a million and a half, ten Gs a fuckin’ page, now you tell us nothin’ on them? What kinda fuckin’ business is this?”
“A fuckin’ business. What can I tell you?”
“Don’t like it,” said the three.
“Don’t blame you,” said the fading producer.
Coppola’s request granted, Kennedy was brought in for a ten-day “heavy green” polish. Ten weeks later he was still writing, still collecting heavy green. When the flick finished shooting, he was still writing. . . . Couldn’
t have been The Cotton Club, that flick’s finished . . . still no script.
For a cover story that ran in New York magazine on May 7, 1984, Michael Daly interviewed a number of the cast and crew, including Bob Hoskins, who played Owney Madden:
“I gained twenty pounds waiting around for something to happen. You sort of sit around and eat and drink and philosophize, and suddenly you’ve forgotten what you do for a living. Then somebody says, ‘You’re on the set,’ and you say, ‘What do you mean I’m on?’”
And when an actor was finally summoned, there was a panicked rush to freshen the makeup and shake off the dullness that came from waiting. Hoskins often hurried onto the set with no clear idea of what Coppola wanted. He says “He would just toss things out in the air . . . I could never figure Francis out at all. I just did what he told me. It’s into Aladdin’s cave with him.
Ted Koppel devoted the entire December 9, 1984, “Nightline” to the making and near unmaking of The Cotton Club. Maurice Hines, who played the brother of his real sibling, Gregory, told Koppel:
If I forgot a line or forgot the structure, because all our scenes were improvised, Gregory and I improvised. Francis kept saying, make it real. . . . And if I forgot, I would sort of like grope. And he loved it. I said, “Francis, I’m messing up here.” He said, “But you’re groping in character.”
Back to the last Monday in June 1983, still no script, still no start date, $5 million down the drain, and the clock ticking away at 200 Gs a day. My financiers’ smiles had long disappeared. Coppola summoned the department heads, the three investors, and me to his office at Astoria Studios. With his wife Ellie beside him, he slowly panned each and every one before him. He knew the moment was right, the next nail was ready to be hammered in my coffin. Suddenly he thrust his finger in my face.
“It’s not The Godfather, Evans. I’ve had it! Fed up with you. Tired of your second guessing. Tired of everything about you. The family’s packed, we’re outta here. You do it or I do it. You stay, I leave.”
Shocked? I thought I was hallucinating. Thirty-six hours earlier, I’d feasted his entire family at Elaine’s for his son’s birthday. How could a guy I plucked from near obscurity to superstardom vent this vitriolic hatred? No mistake about it—this was an ingeniously conceived, ten-year-festering come shot, a royal fucking from Prince Machiavelli himself.
The guys from Vegas were in no mood for creative flak; leaving town was a better bet than testing their sympathy. Not wanting my life insurance canceled, I had no choice but to spread my legs. The Prince knew it, I knew it. Perfect timing, your highness. Siberia bound, I shrunk from boss to dwarf.
If only I signed the distribution deal at Paramount, the private financiers would have been covered. Then, had there been any flak from the Prince, his asshole would be the only place he’d be able to talk from. But if is a big word—instead I was at Orion. No ifs, ands, or buts, it was the beginning of the longest nightmare of my life.
Wicked Francis had convinced his virgin backers that a completion bond was a waste of money: “Don’t blow 5 percent on completion insurance. It’s an interior film, no weather problems. Made Rumble Fish at half this budget. Fuck spending a mil on insurance, have a good time with it. With twenty mil, it’s a shoo-in. If I bring it in below, will you throw in a bonus and fly my family back to Napa?”
I begged them not to listen, they didn’t hear. The Prince’s wand had already spelled its magic. The 20 mil? Erase it—write in 48 instead.
August 28, 1983, principal photography commenced . . . still no script.
William Kennedy also spoke to Michael Daly of New York magazine:
“It was like writing on deadline all the time,” Kennedy says. “And nobody but Francis and me really knew what was the future of this script.” At one point, Kennedy went to Albany to attend to some personal matters. As Kennedy was leaving his house to fly back to New York, an assistant called from the studio and said that Coppola needed a new scene immediately. Kennedy wrote while his wife drove him to the airport. Just before boarding the plane, he stopped at a pay phone.
“I called it in, and Francis shot it,” Kennedy says.
As new pages came in, the script supervisor, B. J. Bjorkman, struggled to shuffle them into what had already been written. She says, “Every time there’s a new draft, the pages are a different color, and finally you get such a spectrum of colors that you’re going, ‘Are these the new pink or the old pink?’ ”
Starting a flick minus a script is tantamount to waiting for an accident to happen. When it happens in a major studio, they send in the troops. The only troops here were the three investors, and Coppola got them to think they were Selznick, Thalberg, and Zanuck combined. Forget me, I was quarantined to what was commonly called the “crisis center,” a town house originally rented to be my home and office during production. Now there were more guys walking in and out of there seven days a week than at any brothel in town. Except at ours, there were no girls made, just threats. As the numbers escalated, the threats did too. I could fill a book of quotes that would be a best-seller in every jail in America.
Robert Osborne, veteran film critic, newscaster, and ace Hollywood reporter on L.A.’s Channel 11 news had this to say one night:
I have interviewed several people involved in the day-by-day shooting of The Cotton Club. The word that all of them used most consistently was “waste”—waste of time, waste of shots, waste of money. Over one million dollars, for example, was spent just on extras for a single nightclub sequence, because of insufficient preparations. This is their interpretation, not mine, on the part of Coppola. Other accusations include nepotism, also drugs. One cast member told me, “There was so much coke on the set, you couldn’t believe it.”
Thank heaven for small favors: they couldn’t blame me for that. Quarantined to the crisis center, I was not allowed on the set.
Harsher winds were in the air. Call it running out of money. Midway through principal photography, Francis’s onerous contract was still not signed. Miffed, he hopped off to Paris, a million-dollar-a-day vacation, paid for by the Doumanis. This forced them to capitulate to every contractual demand Coppola’s henchmen put before them. Angry? No, quiet—dangerously quiet.
Joey Cusumano, no professor he. In a story in the August 1983 issue of Life magazine on the U.S. government’s war against organized crime, he was referred to as “Joseph Cusumano, 47, reputed mob lieutenant.” But who cared? He was now riding shotgun playing producer, and getting credit as such in trade ads and eventually on the screen. No hood, but producer he, and an uninvited roommate at the crisis center. By now every bed was taken, many a night by guys I didn’t know or didn’t want to know.
It got worse. My great backfield? Francis fired Dyson Lovell, fired John Alonzo, fired Milton Foreman. Dick Sylbert? He was desperate for the axe, but he didn’t get fired—not because Coppola didn’t want to, but because Coppola’s longtime collaborator and buddy Dean Tavoularis was unavailable, busy on another flick. Sylbert later told “Entertainment Tonight” that The Cotton Club “was like this vampire. And you figured every night when it went back into its coffin, somebody would stick a stake in its heart and it would never rise up again. And every day it got out of its coffin and came to work.” Poor Dick couldn’t escape the vampire.
Another veteran whom Ted Koppel of “Nightline” interviewed was choreographer Henry LeTang: “I said, ‘Francis, I take the day off, you go berserk, you fire everybody, I say what the hell is going on?’ He said, ‘The only people that’s going to stay on this movie are you and Gregory Hines. The rest of them—out! I don’t want to have seen them.’ Real demonstrative person.”
Costs were skyrocketing, so heavy muscle ordered me to bring in extra green. I’d already given up my entire salary. In all good conscience I couldn’t go to someone I knew and ask them to invest in a flick with no script, no direction, no ending. But the boys weren’t interested in weather reports. “We’re borrowin’ against your house.” I could have sai
d no, but if I did, I probably would never see it again anyway. The shylocks who had forked over $3.5 million to my now distraught partners literally owned my house, lock, stock, and barrel. When an outstanding $46,000 insurance claim was finally settled, they cashed the check, not me. The roof kept leaking, and my insurance policy got canceled. How could it get worse? It did . . . still no script. Fuck the script, what about breathing? Not an easy feat.
Orion finally had to funnel $15 million to keep the skyrocketing Cotton Club shooting. In the process, the Doumanis were laid, parlayed, and relaid. Before the Doumanis would collect a dime in profit, the picture would have to outgross The Godfather. It didn’t.
Orion couldn’t care less how good the picture was. Their only interest was recouping their $15 million. If the film was half finished, it would still be released for Christmas.
Payroll was every Friday. Orion’s weekly $2 million advance had already been spent on other excesses as each week the bills mounted and mounted. There was nothing left in the coffers to make the next payroll.
“We need two million by Friday,” growled my new pal, Cusumano. “Get it.” Why he didn’t heist a bank I’ll never know, but get it he meant. No kibitzer Cusumano, he was more comfortable holding a .38 than a Steadycam. Orion’s next drop-off wouldn’t be until the following Thursday, far too late to make that Friday’s payroll. Not making it would shut the picture down. To reopen it a bond would have to be put in place. Forget the money for the bond, we didn’t have it for payroll. Muscle forced me to confront anyone I knew for a quick loan with guaranteed payback. In desperation, I met with four men. Each of them was many millions richer as a result of my talent, each knew the money was guaranteed by Orion (with papers to prove it). Each turned me down, each for his own reason.
I had one last shot to survive. Not the picture—life. Biting my tongue, I doorbelled a lady whom I had done well for, although not nearly as well as I had for the four men. I had opened a door for her, and once the door opened, it was her talent that made her millions. Before I could finish my first sentence, she interrupted, “How much do you need?” I told her. “Sure you don’t need more?” She wrote the check. It was deposited the next morning, saving the flick from closing down. Five days later I hand-delivered the $2 million, whereupon she said, “If you need it for reserve, keep it. Pay me back later.”
