The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood

by Joe Eszterhas

  After seeing The Outlaw Josey Wales, Warner Bros. studio executive David Geffen said to director Clint Eastwood, “I only want to suggest one thing: I think it would be better if it was twenty minutes shorter.”

  Clint said to David, “I’m glad you took the time to see the picture, and I appreciate your comments. But why don’t you study the picture some more and see if you have any more thoughts. When you do, give me a call over at Paramount.”

  David said to Clint, “Why over at Paramount?”

  “Because that’s where I’ll be making my next movie,” Clint said.

  David said, “The picture is perfect. I wouldn’t change one frame. Thank you very much.”

  Clint said, “Thank you.”

  Don’t ever quit a job.

  If you’ve been hired to work on a script and you loathe the director and the producer and you feel that what you wrote is being truncated and transmogrified into dog shit, don’t quit. Keep telling them that you are “ready, willing, and able to perform”—legalese right out of the contract that you signed.

  If you are pleasantly intransigent, they will fire you. That’s what you want. You’ll be paid in full and the trades will report that because of “creative differences,” you’ve left the project.

  He was talking about Hemingway, honest, not about me.

  Screenwriter/novelist Raymond Chandler: “He never really wrote but one story. All the rest is the same thing in different pants—or without different pants. And his eternal preoccupation with what goes on between the sheets becomes rather nauseating in the end. One reaches a time of life when limericks written on the walls of comfort stations are not just obscene, they are horribly dull. This man has only one subject and he makes that ridiculous. I suppose the man’s epitaph, if he had the choosing of it, would be: Here Lies a Man Who Was Bloody Good in Bed. Too Bad He’s Alone Here. But the point is I begin to doubt whether he ever was. You don’t have to work so hard at things you are really good at—or do you?”

  Our scripts turned Garbo into a recluse.

  Screenwriter/playwright Mercedes de Acosta, an intimate friend of Greta Garbo, said Garbo’s reclusiveness was caused by disappointment in herself “for not fighting harder for better scripts.”

  In other words, bad screenplays screwed Garbo up.

  If you make an ass of yourself, don’t make an even bigger ass out of yourself.

  Screenwriter/novelist Anne Rice looked silly when she said the biggest movie star in the world at the time, Tom Cruise, was too short to play her character Lestat in Interview with a Vampire.

  But she looked even sillier when, after seeing the film, she took a two-page ad in Daily Variety saying how much she had loved Cruise … and the film.

  ALL HAIL

  Ben Hecht!

  Agent Swifty Lazar: “No one was better at beating the moguls at their own game than Ben Hecht. The deal I made for him with Sam Goldwyn certainly proves that he had Sam beat.

  “ ‘I get paid two thousand dollars per day—in cash,’ Ben told me. ‘I want it in hundred dollar bills on my desk, or I don’t show up for work the next day. And, by the way, there’s a very pretty girl who’s a wonderful secretary. You’ve got to get her a contract while I’m still out here. She’ll make a thousand a week. I know that sounds like a lot, but she’s a great actress and a great typist—and I want her to have a part in the picture.’

  “ ‘Can she really act?’ I asked.

  “ ‘She thinks she can. I think she can. Nobody may agree with us, but I can tell you right now. I’ll fight for her.’ ”

  Don’t join a writing committee.

  The writing committee is a relatively new phenomenon, first seen when a few writers (very few) began getting more publicity on their films than the directors they were working with.

  So the directors decided to bring not one writer on board a project, but half a dozen—on the theory that if there were half a dozen cooks in the kitchen, it would be obvious that the director was the auteur chef who told them what to do.

  Don’t do “quick job” rewrites.

  These are rewrites done at the behest of the director or a studio days before a movie goes into production.

  There is no time to write anything except what the director or studio tells you to write.

  Screenwriter William Goldman has done many of them.

  “I make a point of never reading anything I’ve written in these rewrites,” he says.

  Be respectful of those whose work you adapt for the screen.

  I adapted Brian Moore’s novel The Doctor’s Wife, and on the front page of my script I wrote, “Screenplay by Joe Eszterhas, from the novel by Brian Moore.”

  The executive in charge of the project at United Artists, Marcia Nasatir, said to me, “In all my years in the business, I’ve never seen the screenwriter put the novelist’s name on the title page of the script.”

  I did the same thing with Ira Levin’s Sliver.

  I did it because I knew that without their novels, without the story and characters they created, I wouldn’t have this job of translating their work from book to screenplay.

  This is what you do when you are asked to rewrite the last draft of Gone With the Wind.

  Ben Hecht read the previous seven drafts, which had been done by different writers. He turned his rewrite in three days later. And he never read the novel.

  Write original screenplays, not rewrites.

  Director David Lean: “We want someone who has written original stories. We don’t want a scriptwriter who has spent his time embroidering on other people’s ideas.”

  The more writers on a movie, the worse it will be.

  If a character has been rewritten by, say, six or eight or ten writers, that character will not have a distinctive and original voice; the voice will be a hodgepodge of a bunch of characters’ voices, as each writer envisions the character for himself.

  The actors aren’t smart enough to realize that their lines are being homogenized, and directors feel that their imprint on the film will be more felt the more writers there are on it.

  Even the Writers Guild is happy about all the writers employed—the wealth is spread, there are fewer unemployed writers, and they’re all being paid handsome sums to fuck one another’s work over.

  Oh yeah? Then how come Premiere magazine named me one of the one hundred most powerful people in Hollywood?

  Screenwriter William Goldman: “There are still a few lost souls who actually think that screenwriters have some authority. If only it were so. We have none. … There are lots of reasons. We’re not, most of us, so terrifically talented. And we’re so easy to fire—at least half of the people in positions of authority in Hollywood know the alphabet. You don’t fire composers often; editors are safe, too. But it’s not unusual, despite what you see on the credits, to have two or three or eight writers write on one film script. As well as being inept and disposable, we’re also, truly, disliked. Why? Because you can’t make a movie without us. If it’s going to be a decent flick, it better have a decent screenplay; directors know this and it drives them maaaaaaad.”

  Don’t sprinkle their piss.

  If, that is to say, the studio execs agree to kill the script they are asking you to rewrite.

  If you can create a whole new plot with all new characters, then it’s probably worth putting your creativity to work on the rewrite.

  Otherwise, you’re just being asked to pour the director’s or the producer’s or the studio execs’ piss into the stew.

  They piss into the bottle, hand it to you, and let you sprinkle it into the script however you want. But it’s still piss—and it’s their piss.

  The Robert Towne award goes to …

  I may not be the slickest screenwriter in Hollywood,” said William Faulkner, “but I know how to fix a screenplay.”

  Faulkner rewrote Hemingway.

  Everybody out here rewrites everybody else,” said screenwriter William Faulkner as he adapted Ernest Hemingway’s
To Have and Have Not. Ironically, adapting the Hemingway book was Faulkner’s greatest success as a screenwriter.

  But I didn’t rewrite Gore Vidal.

  Vidal did an adaptation of Lucian Truscott’s novel Dress Gray, which Paramount wanted me to rewrite.

  I tried to explain to the Paramount executives that I wasn’t comfortable rewriting Gore Vidal, but they didn’t understand why not.

  I didn’t rewrite William Goldman, either, but I should have.

  Bill wrote an original script about Ross Perot that ABC Films wanted me to rewrite.

  I tried to explain to the ABC executives that I didn’t feel comfortable rewriting Bill Goldman, but they didn’t get it.

  Time to retire, Bill.

  William Goldman: “No matter how much shit you may have heard or read, movies are finally only about one thing: THE NEXT JOB.”

  He even capitalized those three words in a book to make sure you got the point.

  It’s time to get off our hands and knees.

  Norman Mailer, writing to a friend in 1949: “We found us a house high above Sunset Boulevard in the hills west of Hollywood, and can see half of that horrible city that lies below us … the writers are walking around on their hands and knees, not knowing where their next job is coming from.”

  Sometimes you won’t get any credit for what you’ve written.

  Director Phillip Noyce: “Steve Zaillian wrote the script of Patriot Games that we shot. Uncredited, because the Writers Guild decides on credits, and they usually give it to the original writer. In this case, two of them: Peter Iliff and Donald Stewart—the guy who wrote Missing. Their names are on the credits, but eighty percent of what was shot was written by Steve Zaillian.”

  Don’t break Milton Berle’s rule.

  Uncle Miltie said, “Don’t tell jokes only the band laughs at.”

  I wrote a whole movie filled with esoteric in-jokes about the movie industry—An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.

  No one understood the in-jokes. And no one went to see the movie.

  Write an animated film.

  Screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune): “The Incredibles was the wittiest film of the year, as witty as Sideways and maybe more. There was a degree of verbal and visual wit that you just don’t see anymore, that we saw in the films of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s—the good ones. They had a lot of great writers then who were allowed to write, and today there are a lot of brilliant writers who are not allowed to write—no one is interested in wit, except in animation.”

  Bill Goldman should have been a mailman.

  Goldman: “In twenty-five years of movie work, I’ve never been late. I do crazy things to make that happen sometimes—once I called in and said I’d be late and asked for a week’s extension, got it, then went into sleepless overdrive and turned the screenplay in by the original date. The work may stink, but it arrives.”

  You’re not doing slave labor, are you?

  Screenwriter James L. White (Ray): “When I started working on the Ray script with director Taylor Hackford, our workday would start at 9:00 A.M. and sometimes go until two in the morning. I was doing that seven days a week! We would go for stretches of a month and a half or two months, and in the last days I can recall two occasions where we would actually be up straight through for twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  When all else fails, those jealous of you will say your script doesn’t “play.”

  That’s after you’ve sold it for a lot of money and the studio is sending it around to directors and actors.

  Some midlevel studio exec you’ve never met—but who is pushing some other script to be made—will say “Sure, it reads like it’s brilliant. It makes sense why we bought it, but my gut is that it doesn’t play.”

  If everyone passes on your script, he will say, “See, I told you so.”

  If it gets made and fails, he’ll say, “I kept trying to tell all of you.”

  A successful screenwriter’s writing schedule …

  Screenwriters John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion liked writing at the exclusive Kahala Hilton Hotel on Oahu.

  Dunne: “Our schedule did not vary: a sunrise swim, breakfast, then four hours’ work in the suite; an hour for lunch, then two more hours’ work in the afternoon; another swim, then three more hours’ work before a late dinner. After dinner, we went over the day’s pages, then printed out a schedule of scenes for the next day.”

  The way to celebrate an option …

  Screenwriter/novelist James Brown: “When an independent producer in New York options my third novel, I am excited but cautious. … I run out and buy an eight-ball of methamphetamine because it is cheaper and stronger than coke, a few cases of Budweiser, a half gallon of Smirnoff, Dewar’s scotch, and Seagram’s 7 and invite my friends over for a party. But most of them are busy for some reason and what few do show end up leaving early when I make an ass of myself.”

  If you make enough money to buy two houses, at least don’t build your own road to reach them.

  Screenwriter Albert Maltz on his friend and fellow screenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “There is no question that Trumbo had talent for much greater literary work than the film work that he produced. The reason he never did what he could have done was this obsession of his with making money and living in a grand manner. I never knew what made it necessary for him to have both a house on Beverly Drive and a ranch that he had to build a road to get to. It kept him writing, and writing, and writing, though. Why do writers write, after all?”

  The deal every screenwriter should aspire to …

  Yes, I did sell a four-page outline for 4 million, but …

  Paddy Chayefsky made a deal with a studio, which paid him 1 million for the script. They had a year to make the movie.

  If production didn’t start within the year, Paddy could sell his script elsewhere … and keep the million dollars.

  Don’t think twice, it’s all right.

  Screenwriter William Faulkner, writing from Los Angeles to his New York agent: “Things are going pretty well. My father died last month, and what with getting his affairs straightened out and getting Hollywood out of my system by means of a judicious course of alcohol in mild though sufficient quantities before and after eating and lying down and getting up, I am not working now.”

  Maybe it’s not all right.

  At a script meeting with director Howard Hawks, screenwriter William Faulkner, who had been seen sipping earlier on a silver flask, said, “This is what I think, Howard.”

  He smiled, raised his hand to make a point, fell on his face, and passed out.

  Bob Towne is a big William Faulkner fan.

  While waiting for executives Barry Diller and Michael Eisner to decide whether they would release his movie Personal Best, Bob Towne kept pouring scotch for himself from Diller’s bar. He passed out on the couch before they came back into the room.

  PERK OF SUCCESS: A NEW PURDY SHOTGUN

  Screenwriter/director John Milius always demanded a brandnew Purdy shotgun as part of his screenwriting deals.

  He told friends he needed the guns so he could arm a battalion in case it was necessary to overcome the government. Every studio making a deal with him complied. His friends say Milius could now arm a small army.

  Words to live by …

  Paddy Chayefsky’s last words: “I tried. I really tried.”

  Don’t buy a Hungarian dog.

  Robert Towne did—a rare komondor, so big that it wouldn’t fit into the back of his car. So Towne let the dog ride next to him in the front seat and put his wife in the back. Then he and his wife got divorced.

  LESSON 6

  Don’t Take Your Clothes Off!

  If you really want to learn about the industry …

  Hide in a bathroom stall in the men’s room of The Grille in Beverly Hills any weekday lunch hour, overhearing conversations. At the end of that time, you will have learned everything you need to know about Hollywood.

  Don’t obsess ab
out getting rich.

  Paddy Chayefsky: “You make a lot of money and you never get rich.”

  Research all celebrity auctions you may be involved in.

  A man paid thousands of dollars at a celebrity auction to have lunch with me. He wanted to be a screenwriter and used the lunch to get screenwriting tips.

  His name was Jerry George. He was an editor of the National Enquirer. I used the lunch to get celebrity tips. I asked him more questions than he asked me.

  It’s possible I learned more from Jerry George in that lunch than he learned from me. And it didn’t cost me anything

  Don’t ever write a script for a movie-star couple who are allegedly in love.

  I t will fail.

  Consider: Shanghai Surprise with Sean Penn and Madonna; The Getaway with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger; Husbands and Wives with Woody Allen and Mia Farrow; Mortal Thoughts with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore; Proof of Life with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan; Made in America with Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson; Eyes Wide Shut and Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; Bounce with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow; Gigli with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

  You, too, can live the screenwriter’s life.

  Hunter S. Thompson described his “workdays” in Hollywood as “Violence, joy, and constant Mexican music.”

  PERK OF SUCCESS: YOU, TOO, CAN GET MAXFIELD’S ON MELROSE TO SEND YOU A $ 150,000 SELECTION OF GOLD AND DIAMOND CROSSES

  If, that is, they know you’ve sold a lot of scripts for a lot of money. Then they’ll send you their selection of crosses—wherever you are in the world—by FedEx by ten o’clock the next morning, and trust you to send the unbought crosses back to them.

  Help those who’ve helped you.

  Marcia Nasatir was a studio executive at United Artists when she discovered me, in 1974. She had read a book that I had written, which had been nominated for the National Book Award.

  As the years went by, my career as a screenwriter prospered, while Marcia had turned to the shaky world of independent production.