My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  The Audience Speaks

  Cubby was always the voice of the audience. In Diamonds Are Forever, I wrote a line in a scene toward the end. Bond is held prisoner by Blofeld on an oil rig. He says, “Well, Blofeld, it looks like you've won.” And Blofeld, played by a very sophisticated actor named Charles Gray, says, “As La Rochefoucauld once observed, Mr. Bond, humility is the worst form of conceit. I do hold the winning hand.” Cubby read this and said, “La what?”

  I said, “It's La Rochefoucauld. He's a French writer, sixteenth, seventeenth century. Wrote maxims like Humility is the worst form of conceit.”

  He said, “Get it out.”

  Guy Hamilton, the director, said, “Oh, no, Cubby, it's wonderful.”

  He said, “No, no, get it out.” And every draft would come back and there was still La Rochefoucauld. Eventually, Guy shot the scene in such a way that it could not be cut. The only coverage is Blofeld saying the line. It was shot and there was nobody to cut to. Cubby was just furious. As we started Live and Let Die, Guy Hamilton said to him, “Cubby, I want you to know I saw Diamonds Are Forever in Paris, and the La Rochefoucauld got a big laugh.”

  Cubby said, “France is the only place we didn't make any fuckin' money.”

  He was like a foster father in films to me. The other thing in Diamonds Are Forever was there's a coffin that arrives via airplane. Sean is pretending to be a guy named Franks, and he's looking at the coffin with the CIA agent, Felix Leiter. The diamonds are being smuggled in in the coffin. Felix Leiter says, “I give up. The diamonds are in there somewhere, but where?” Sean says, “Alimentary, my dear Leiter,” meaning the alimentary canal. The diamonds are stuffed up his ass. Cubby said, “No one is going to know this ‘alimentary.’”

  I said, “You know ‘It's elementary, my dear Watson’?”

  He said, “Yeah, I get it, but nobody's gonna fuckin' know this.”

  So Guy again, who loved all these things, said, “Oh goodness, Cubby, let us have it. Sean likes it.”

  He said, “All right, Jesus Christ, alimentary, my dear Leiter.”

  Diamonds Are Forever is playing at Grauman's Chinese, and Cubby and I go, and we're standing in the back. It's a full house. Sean says, “Alimentary, my dear Leiter.” And two people just laugh like hell out of the hundreds. Cubby turns to me and says, “Big deal, two doctors.”

  Richard Maibaum wrote a lot of Bonds. He was a great friend of Cubby's. A sweet man to me. Just wonderful. Always very complimentary about me. We shared credit on Diamonds Are Forever and Man with the Golden Gun. Dick was a good deal older than I was. He has more Bond credits as a writer than anybody. Somebody said, “Well, maybe Dick's written himself out. This is his tenth.” We shared credit, and he gets first credit because it's alphabetical. M-A-I, and M-A-N. We shared credit without ever having met, but later on I met him at Cubby's, and he was a wonderful guy. And a good writer. I felt so lucky to have my name on a James Bond picture at that point in my life.

  Live and Let Die: Presenting the Next James Bond

  Thank God, the picture was a hit, and Cubby and Harry were going to ask me back for Live and Let Die. They thought, we'll take one last shot at Sean. During 1971, I'd already doped out a lot of the script. Harry produced most of Live and Let Die. He called me one day and said, “Here's the scene. Sean's asleep. He thinks he's in bed with Solitaire. He feels something, wakes up, and there's a crocodile in bed with him. Isn't that great?”

  I said, “Harry, let me ask you a couple questions. First of all, if the crocodile's in bed with him, why didn't the crocodile eat him? He's asleep, I mean, the crocodile would munch on him.”

  He said, “I don't know. You're the writer.”

  “And the other thing, they have these tiny little legs. How did he get on the bed? Is there a ramp or something that he walked up?”

  “I don't know. You're the writer.” This was Harry.

  So I went to lunch with Sean. I told him about ideas for the new script, including the crocodiles and whatnot. Sean leaned toward me. “You know what I hear, boyo, all the time? It's my obligation to play Bond.” He was the only Bond as far as everyone was concerned. Except for George Lazenby, he had been Bond in every movie and the audience loved him. Sean said, “When is my obligation over? After eight Bonds? Ten Bonds? Twelve Bonds? When do I stop having an obligation to play Bond? There's only two things in my life I've ever wanted to own: a golf course and a bank, and I have both.” He had a little Scottish bank, and he owned a golf course in Marbella, Spain. You could understand completely. There were so many different parts that he wanted to play, and he wanted to work with people like Sidney Lumet. But the audience says, “No, you owe it to us.” Like Bobby Darin singing “Simple Song of Freedom” and people are yelling, “Sing ‘Mack the Knife’!” like it's your obligation.

  So here comes Roger Moore. Live and Let Die. Harry said, “Let me negotiate with Mankiewicz's agent.” Cubby said, “Be my guest, Harry. We want him, Guy Hamilton wants him.”

  I had kept company, as they say, with Harry's assistant, Sue Parker, who's just a beautiful girl and a wonderful person. Sue said, “Your agent, Robin French, is calling tomorrow at ten. Why don't you come to the office, and you can listen in to the phone call from outside?”

  I said, “I'd like to.”

  On the phone, Robin said, “All right, here's the deal, Harry. Tom wants $100,000.” Now, that was a lot of money in 1971 for a screenplay. One hundred thousand dollars for a kid who's twenty-nine years old. All right, I've written Diamonds Are Forever, but $100,000 put you in a certain league.

  Harry said, “What did we give him on this picture, $1,500 a week or $1,250 a week? Tell you what. We're willing to step forward. We'll guarantee him $50,000.”

  Robin said, “No, he's gonna need a hundred, Harry.”

  “I'll have to check with Cubby,” Harry said. “We might go as high as sixty, I don't know.”

  Robin said, “Here's another way we could do it, Harry. He'll do it for fifty.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “And he wants 2 percent of the net profits.”

  There was a silence. Then Harry said, “Well, let's not talk science fiction. Okay, he'll get one hundred.”

  I lived at the beach in Malibu until 1971. When I got Live and Let Die, I said, “I'm going to buy a house.” I'd been renting this kind of shack in the Malibu Colony. The heat didn't work, it was tiny, and it made the least use of the little lot. It was forty feet wide. On the beach. To show you I've never been a great businessman, I asked the owner, “If I were to buy this house, what would you charge me?” I'd lived there for seven years.

  She said, “I'd make you a good deal, but I'd have to charge you what I think it's worth, $85,000.”

  I said, “You must be out of your mind. I'm not paying $85,000 for this house.” I was renting it for $500 a month. I'm pissing away $6,000 a year on this house.

  When she said $85,000, I came into the city and looked. I was getting good money for Live and Let Die, and I found the house that I'm in now. It was on a dead end with a great view. I could see all the way to the ocean. There was no dining room. It had a tiny little kitchen. I put the office in. Over the years, I've just added and pushed out. When I started to make really big money, a couple of times I said to myself, “I'm going to look for another house.” I'd look around and say, “You know what? I come home and I'm happy here.” I just am. Two minutes away from Sunset. Five minutes away from Beverly Hills. It was not that chic. Now it's very chic. Lots of actors live up here. Forty years ago, we had foxes and snakes, and a couple of mountain lions would come down. It wasn't as built up. Lots of wildlife, which has gradually been pushed out as it has around the world. So I've always been very happy here.

  I made a little compound for the cats. I love cats because they're highly affectionate and full of mischief, but they're also independent. They sack out a lot of the day, and they want their own time. They gradually take over the house, and it becomes their place. They can go in and o
ut of their compound all day, and no predator can ever get to them. I have this strange communication with cats. Lenny Bruce, whom I met a few times, just before he died, used to say, “The difference between a dog and a cat is you work all day, your boss is yelling at you. You get home, your wife starts yelling at you. It's just a terrible day. You get in a chair, try to read the paper, and here comes a dog with a rubber ball in his mouth, and you hit him on the head with the newspaper. Five minutes later the dog's back again with the rubber ball in his mouth.” He said, “You hit a cat in the head with a newspaper and you don't see him for six months. Never put up with that shit.”

  At this time, Dad was living in Pound Ridge in Westchester County. He had a beautiful thirty-acre estate with a pond. He always wanted to live up there, and he was an easterner. Every time I went to Europe on the Bonds, which was a lot, I would stop by. I would fly to New York and spend the night up in Pound Ridge. Then I'd take the Concorde the next morning, which was just three hours and twenty minutes across the Atlantic to London. It was the most wonderful plane ever. It was Live and Let Die time, and by then, instead of renting a car or taking a cab, I had a limo with a driver. United Artists was paying for it. I arrived at the house in a limo to spend the night, and Dad was out in front of the house in this little circular driveway of the estate. I got out of the limo and said to the driver, “Ralph, tomorrow at seven o'clock.”

  He said, “Absolutely, Mr. Mankiewicz,” and took off.

  Dad looked at me and said, “Wow, a limo.”

  I said to him, “Yeah, everybody who makes a couple hundred thousand a year takes a limo now and then.” Which was really stupid and crass. He grinned. What I was trying to say was, “I'm independent.” It's the stupidest thing I ever said to him.

  Boyo

  Ian Fleming was still alive for the first two Bond films. He had a house in Jamaica called Golden Eye. Cubby would tell you the reason the Bond movies got started in the first place was Harry and Cubby had optioned all of the books except Casino Royale and Thunderball. They couldn't get those two because they were already optioned by two separate parties. But all the other books they got. They had a deal with United Artists, and Dr. No, the first one, was made for $1.2 million. Sean got $25,000. Nobody had ever heard of him. And United Artists was almost unwilling to put up the $1.2 million, saying, “God, we don't know, there's never been a picture like this.” John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. It was 1960. He was charming the world, and he had written Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Somebody asked him in a press conference, “What do you read for relaxation?” And Kennedy said, “Well, when I really want to relax and have some fun, I read the exploits of a British secret agent named James Bond.” No one had ever heard of the books. All of a sudden, everybody was buying James Bond books, and United Artists said, “Let's go.”

  Cubby always said they might have gotten it off the ground anyway, but still, “I've got to thank President Kennedy for getting the financing for the first one.” Charlie Feldman made a picture of Casino Royale with five James Bonds and Woody Allen, but it was not a hit. The Broccolis finally bought it back and made it with Daniel Craig. Thunderball was owned by a man named Kevin McClory. He knew to play ball with Cubby and Harry because, by that time, From Russia with Love had been made, Goldfinger had been made. It was clear you weren't going off with your own James Bond. The world was in love with Sean Connery. Thunderball says, “Produced by Kevin McClory, Executive Producers are Broccoli and Saltzman.”

  Later on, McClory and Sean decided to make a picture called Never Say Never Again that was based on Thunderball. Broccoli and Saltzman sued and went to court, and the court ruled that McClory and Connery could make Never Say Never Again, but it had to be a remake of Thunderball. Other Bond characters that were in the other books and had been in movies were not allowed to be in it, like Q, the guy who made all the gadgets, who was not in Thunderball. Sean asked me to write it. I said, “I can't.” He was fighting with Cubby. “The Broccolis have been so wonderful to me, and for me to go off and write the picture now…” I told Sean I thought he was fabulous and I wished him luck. Sean understood.

  When they finished the picture, Sean called me and asked, “Would you take a look at the rough cut? We're going wrong in some places.” It was for Warners, and I was at Warners.

  I called Cubby and asked, “Do you mind if I take a look at the picture?”

  He said, “Please do, and give him every suggestion.”

  I saw the movie and it wasn't bad at all. I had a couple of ideas. We all went back to Bob Daly's office. Bob Daly and Terry Semel were running the studio. Terry started off. “It seems to me the problem is—” and Sean said, “Now, quiet. Let's hear from boyo there.” I'm a little older, but still I'm boyo to him. “Boyo wrote Diamonds Are Forever, which makes no fucking sense at all, and it was wonderful.”

  Sean returned to James Bond, and Kevin McClory was the producer, a snake in the grass to do that. That's the kind of behavior Cubby wouldn't tolerate. That was not gentlemanly, not ethical behavior. Sean had sued Cubby and Harry and United Artists for money he thought was owed to him. Sean's way of getting back at them. I had always talked to Sean about if you ever really want to hang it up as Bond, you should do a farewell to Bond film where he is just a step slower and he realizes the villain that he's up against is a little faster, and he has to use his wits. The leading lady should be somebody your age, like Sophia Loren, who was still so beautiful. At the end of the picture, you do what Fleming wrote. You go back to Scotland and retire with Sophia. He didn't do it.

  At Different Stages

  The only time my father and I ever worked together on the same lot, on different movies—it was toward the end of his career—was when he was doing a picture called Sleuth with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine at Pinewood, and I was writing Live and Let Die. We would drive in together, and we had a totally different relationship then because I was free and clear. I didn't need anything from him, and we really got along wonderfully. He had one soundstage for Sleuth. It was that one magnificent set by Ken Adam, the house. Two actors. That's the whole movie. The Bond film had seven soundstages.

  Dad walked onto our stage, which contained a big underground cave, a lagoon, a mechanical shark swimming around, guys with machine guns, and a rubber inflated version of Yaphet Kotto. Dad looked at it and he said, “My God, what do you people do in here all day?”

  Roger Moore, God bless him, said, “Oh, please don't tell him, Tom. He'll just go out and make a film exactly like it.” It's now called the James Bond stage. You can flood it, and we later used it on Superman for the Fortress of Solitude. Revolutionary at the time.

  Back in London, a car would always drop Dad off five blocks from the hotel so he could walk. He liked to walk. One night we were walking, and he said, “Tom, I think if this one works out, I just may hang it up.”

  I said, “Oh, Dad, you're just tired.”

  He said, “No.” And son of a bitch, Sleuth was a big hit. Olivier was nominated. Michael Caine was nominated. Dad used to joke, “The only film I've ever done where the entire cast was nominated.” He was nominated for Best Director. I think he thought, okay, this is a way to go out after forty years of doing this.

  After that he pretended to be interested in making films. Redford came to him with All the President's Men. Paul Newman, who lived nearby in Westport, Connecticut, brought lots of projects. Dad would always find an artificial reason not to do them. I knew now he was never going to do another picture. So Sleuth was the last one. Cleopatra pretty much did that to him: it was such a physical ordeal. He took so many drugs on the film to get through it. For a year and a half, he was a half-assed junkie taking pills. He was always a master of self-control. I don't think he ever drank too much. His one vice was his pipe. He used to talk about when he was a compulsive gambler, but I don't think he ever was a compulsive gambler. He was always very measured. So for him to be a half-assed junkie before he got off
it, I think was humiliating for him. It was a terrible ordeal.

  While I was writing the script in London, I got into tarot cards. A lot of scenes are with the lovers and the hanged-man death cards. I started to do people's tarot. I was pretty accurate. Things happened. (Obviously, it's pure luck.) Michael Caine and I were friends. He had a house just outside of London, on the Thames. He was having a big Sunday brunch all day, and he asked, “Bring your tarot cards, will you? Everybody's asking, they want to get their tarot done.”

  It was no fun in the beginning, because everybody was drinking and having a great time, and I was in the corner at a table doing people's tarots. I got through with all of it except for this little girl that Michael was banging. She was very shy. I knew he was going out with her. She was Miss Guyana. I said, “Well, I guess I'm finished.”

  She said, “You haven't done mine yet.”

  She sat down, and I started doing the cards, and I said, “You're presently in love.”

  Michael was listening, behind her. She said, “Yes, I am.”

  Michael was giving me the high sign, like “Look out.” I said what the cards said: “You're going to marry this man.”

  He was shaking his head, like “No, no, no!” She said, “I am?”