My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  Fred said to him, “Your Honor, it is possible to cure cancer and die of the disease.” So, Fred was sentenced to fifteen weekends in the Beverly Hills jail. He shared a cell with a kleptomaniac who took his pen.

  Tuesday Weld was really in trouble, freaking out one night, and I called Fred and asked him if he'd go out and meet her. I think he saved her life. Tuesday had the attention span of a hamster. She saw him once and she called him the Wizard. This is why I love Fred so much. In the early seventies, when Elizabeth Ashley and I were going together, she gave a dinner party at her house. The buffet table was outside. In the center of the table in a jar were joints. There were lots of people from the music business. Tuesday was there. I asked Fred to come. I said to Tuesday, “We're going to ask the Wizard.” Fred came by for a drink. He stood there, looked at Elizabeth, who he thought was clearly nuts, looked at me, then looked at Tuesday. He asked Tuesday and me to go into the corner with him. He said, “Do either one of you ever talk about me, that I'm your analyst or I'm helping you?”

  I said, “No,” and Tuesday said, “No.”

  Fred said, “Good. Keep it that way. I have a reputation to uphold. I would hate to have people think that you were my patients.” Then he left. That kind of analyst I really enjoyed.

  The other analyst that I had was more serious. I would ask, “When is this over?”

  He would say, “Well, when do you think it should be over?”

  “When I'm cured.”

  “What do you think a cure is?”

  “When I'm coping.”

  “Are you coping?”

  “If you answer one of my questions with a question again, I'm going to come over and wring your neck.”

  “You see, you are crazy!” I had been through so many bad relationships and I was really depressed that I started to go five days a week. Then, thank God, Superman came along. I had to go to England. I was there for a long time and I never went back. By the way, I felt a lot better not going back, because part of my experience with the second round of analysis was like self-flagellation. I was punishing myself every day by saying what I wasn't doing right. And son of a gun, I had a romance with maybe the loopiest, in the most wonderful way, person I was ever with, Margot Kidder, and I could handle it just fine. It wasn't destroying my life. Nobody knew Margot was bipolar. She had many eccentricities. I said to Dick Donner, who always joked with me about crazy people, “Margot is the only person I know where all the craziness is directed against herself. She's a kind person. There's nothing about her that intentionally tries to hurt anybody else. Although she makes so many missteps, they're all directed against herself.” I could understand a person like that.

  There was one relationship—I don't want to name her specifically—in which the woman wound up being one of the few that's not a friend anymore. She was nuts. One day I came home, and I had a problem. She was so uninterested in it because she was so narcissistic. I turned to her and said, “You know what? For the past ten months, I have been a combination lover, father, brother, psychiatrist to you. I've poured myself into you, and I come home with a problem one day and you're off in the corner putting chewing gum on the cat's face.” I meant that figuratively speaking.

  She said, “Oh, no, Mank.” But, I knew.

  I just said, “Okay.” It wasn't so much anger as disappointment that she wasn't interested in my problem and I didn't have what I thought I had, which is somebody who was going to reciprocate when I had a problem.

  There's no question that abandonment is a huge deal for me. In my relationships, I would leave first because I was sensing that they were going to. I live alone, and I feel guilty leaving a dog in my house if I'm gone all day. But I've grown to love cats, and cats have personalities that are so matched with mine. I decided to get two cats. I went to the Amanda Foundation and found a cat named Margot—that was the name from the shelter. She was two or three years old. They said, “She's a touch nuts, Margot, and you're probably best off with a kitten. If you get another cat the same age, they'll probably fight.” I found a little orange tabby, a kitten. Brought them back home. I had the litter box and the food set up. Margot just terrorized this kitten for two or three days. Margot would live behind the television set. I would never see her, but I could clearly see she ate in the middle of the night. She used the litter box. But she would terrorize the kitten. After three days, I called the Amanda Foundation and said, “I'm afraid I'm going to have to give one back.”

  The girl said, “No, no, we were waiting for the call. Poor Margot, she doesn't get on with anybody.”

  I said, “No, I want to keep the crazy one. I'm going to have to give the kitten back because the kitten is going to find a wonderful home. She's great.” Abandonment. I couldn't even drive the kitten back. Three days! There was no relationship. Annie, my assistant, had to drive the kitten back to the Amanda Foundation.

  Then Margot sat behind the television for another two days. One day she was walking through the living room on her way to eat, and I was watching television. There was no contact between us. I said, “Hey!” She turned and looked at me, and I said, “It's just you and me, kid. Just the two of us in the house. Better get used to it.” She walked on, and about ten minutes later, I'm watching television and I feel Margot rubbing against my knee. Then we were so close. She was with me nine years. A raccoon got her one day. I felt a sense of abandonment that I hadn't felt since my mother died, like I'd lost mother again. Margot had left me. It wasn't that she had been killed by a raccoon, but she left me. Here I was, fucking alone again. Yes, it was a cat, but I had poured so much affection. We were inseparable. I said, “Okay, I'm gonna get cats again.” I was not going to be dependent on one animal. So I got a mother and son: Colors is a calico and Mr. Squirt is an orange tabby. The three of us are like a traveling act around the house. The two keep each other company, but it also has to do with I'm never going to rely on one animal, because if that animal leaves me, I am alone again.

  Almost every woman I've ever had a relationship with of any import is a friend today. Always made sure that they were still friends. I tend to make friends for life. Margot Kidder and I just talked the other day. Stefanie Powers and I are very close. So many women that I've slept with and had relationships with, I still know. Not Elizabeth Ashley, I don't see her. She got to be a theatrical impersonation of herself. But she was very smart and bright when I was going out with her. I'm friends with almost all the women.

  Time Out of Life

  I lived a charmed life working with Cubby Broccoli on the Bonds, Donner on Superman, and Jack Haley Jr. with the musical specials. But the business side just got uglier and uglier and uglier. I was getting older, I'd sold the house in Kenya, and I'd gotten on the Board of the L.A. Zoo. They elected me chairman, and I started to meet all these wonderful people who were in different walks of life. I thought, you know, unless a project is really good, I don't give a shit now. I was with Ron Mardigian at William Morris through Superman. Then I moved to Jeff Berg and ICM. Jeff sought me out. Then Ovitz and CAA. Ron is a very good friend of mine right now. If you look me up, my representation is Ron Mardigian, because we have a perfect relationship—I have no intention of working, and he has no intention of getting me work. Working was a release to a lot of people. I'm sure John Candy felt that way when he was working. It was almost time out of life. Of course, you're privileged if you're good at what you do, you have an assistant like Annie and another assistant back at the bungalow, and they'll pick this up for you and a teamster will drive you home, and you don't really have time to think about what isn't going well in your life because you're shooting again tomorrow. You've got problems there, but they're wonderful problems. We're all rowing in the same direction. So for me, working was easier than living a lot of the time.

  This was the perfect time for me to have lived, both as a writer and director, aesthetically and politically. The talking movie is eighty years old. And I knew people from every generation in its history. Billy Wilder and G
eorge Stevens were directing in the thirties. My father was producing in the thirties. I saw television come into being, then cable and DVDs. I saw the biggest revolution in American history, the sixties and the seventies, when people started free love and “Hell, no, we're not going to fucking Vietnam”; unbelievable tragedies with Martin Luther King and others saying, “No, we're not going to put up with this racial shit anymore.” The whole country was in revolt. My generation changed this entire country, the landscape of movies, of social mores. I saw rock ‘n’ roll come in. People smoking grass. People saying thank-you by screwing each other after a date. It was a whole different mentality. Films became very different. There were wonderful filmmakers like the Hal Ashbys, the Sydney Pollacks, and Mike Nichols in his way. They were so observant about what was happening to the country and what was happening to the world.

  I think now everything has been debased a little, communication's been cheapened a little. You think about when you were driving and you didn't have a cell phone on which to tweet or text, and you actually had to think about things. I would not want to be twelve years old today. Even if there's never another world war, I don't envy what's going to be happening to the world. There's too much communication now. When Antonioni was making all of his films, there was a wonderful comedian named Tom Lehrer who was a mathematics professor at MIT and played little, wonderful, satirical songs. At one point, he said, “This man keeps making films about how there's such a lack of communication in the world. I feel if you're obsessed with that, the least you could do is shut up once in a while.” There's too much communication. Stop communicating!

  The best advice I ever received, life-wise, was what Cubby Broccoli said to me: “First, you've got to be a gent.” The people I dislike the most are people who are rude, who put people down to their face, who humiliate or marginalize people. There's plenty of time to do that when you're alone or with your friend in another room. But first, you've got to be a gent. The best professional advice was Dick Donner saying to me, “If you're over budget and over length and it's a good picture, all they'll remember is it's a good picture. And if you're under budget, under schedule, and it stinks, they'll never remember you were under budget; they'll just remember the film stinks. So don't worry about that. It's really difficult to fire a director unless he's making a fool of himself or spending money like water. So figure out the movies that you want to make, and if you're a few days over, you're a few days over.”

  Leonard Goldberg said the same thing, having done thousands of hours of television. Most hour-long series, in those days, were on a seven-day shoot. He said, “If a guy comes in in five days and it's a lousy show but we saved a lot of money, I don't mind. If a guy comes in at eight and a half days and it's the best episode of the season, I don't mind. The only thing I mind is somebody comes in at eight and a half days and it's a lousy show.” If you throw yourself into the project and you're true to the project, that's all they remember. Nobody remembers the dramas and crises in Superman that Dick and I went through. They only see what's on the screen.

  We were shooting Hart to Hart and it was about to rain. I said, “Let's just do this all in one because it's going to rain.”

  R.J. Wagner said, “It's not going to look very good, is it?”

  I said, “No.”

  He said, “See, it won't say on the bottom of the screen the reason this looks so shitty is it was about to rain. They don't get to see that. So why don't we shoot it properly and hope the rain holds off?”

  Good advice very early on. All the audience knows is what they see.

  Acknowledgments

  Pat McGilligan, Anne Dean Watkins, Liz Smith (copyeditor), Bailey Johnson, David Cobb, Mack McCormick, the staff of the University Press of Kentucky, Grace Kono-Wells and Vernon Wells of Keystrokes, Ashley Zastrow, Dan Leonard, Andy Erish, Chapman University.

  Bob Stevens, Ann Moss, Russell J. Frackman and Abe Somer of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp, Gail and Jerry Oppenheimer, Stefanie Powers, Jill and R.J. Wagner, Richard and Lauren Donner, Alex Mankiewicz, Sandra Moss, Cedric Castro, the Palm West Hollywood, Connie Morgan, Genie Vasels.

  Desly Movius, David Arnoff, Kathy Holt, D.J. Hall, Toby Watson, Judy Diamond, Deborah Hildebrand, Richard Harris, Barbara Margulies, Leslie Bockian, Jerry Henderson, Istvan and Rosa Toth, John Cerney, Bret Gallagher, Jane and Doug Poole, Kel O'Connell, Marilyn Bagley, Dr. Joe and Liz Ruiz, Susan and Joe Coyle, Jonne-Marie and Paul, Steve and Pete.

  Leslie Bertram Crane, Meagan Hufnail, Chloe Crane, Anne and Charles Sloan, Deborah Agar, Eric Agar, Ian and Kim Agar, Steve and Karen Wilson, Bill and Marlene Bertram, Michael Bertram, David Bertram, Bob Page.

  Christopher Fryer, David Diamond, Suzy Friendly, Niki Dantine, Drs. Tom and Jeri Munn.

  Filmography

  Writer

  Superman II: aka The Richard Donner Cut (2006; Video; Warner Brothers)

  Richard Lester, Richard Donner (uncredited)—director

  Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster—creators

  Mario Puzo—story

  Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Tom Mankiewicz (uncredited)—screenplay

  Tom Mankiewicz—creative consultant

  Ilya Salkind, Pierre Spengler—producers

  Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine, Marlon Brando, Jackie Cooper, Terence Stamp, Susannah York, Ned Beatty—cast

  Dragnet (1987; Universal Pictures)

  Tom Mankiewicz—director

  Dan Aykroyd, Alan Zweibel, Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Bernie Brillstein, David Permut, Robert K. Weiss—producers

  Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, Harry Morgan, Elizabeth Ashley, Dabney Coleman—cast

  Ladyhawke (1985; 20th Century Fox/Warner Brothers)

  Richard Donner—director

  Edward Khmara—story

  Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas, Tom Mankiewicz, David Peoples —screenplay

  Tom Mankiewicz—creative consultant

  Harvey Bernhard, Richard Donner, Lauren Shuler Donner—producers

  Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Leo McKern, Alfred Molina—cast

  Gavilan (1982; MGM Television/NBC)

  Tom Mankiewicz—creator

  Leonard Goldberg—executive producer

  Robert Urich, Patrick Macnee, Kate Reid—cast

  Superman II (1980; Warner Brothers)

  (credits—see Superman II: aka The Richard Donner Cut, above.)

  Hart to Hart, “Hit Jennifer Hart” (1979; ABC/Columbia Pictures Television, Rona II, Spelling-Goldberg)

  Tom Mankiewicz—director

  Tom Mankiewicz—teleplay, creative consultant

  Rogers Turrentine—story, teleplay

  Sidney Sheldon—creator

  Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling, David Levinson—producers

  Robert Wagner, Stefanie Powers, Lionel Stander—cast

  Hart to Hart, “Pilot” (1979; ABC/Columbia Pictures Television, Rona II, Spelling-Goldberg)

  Tom Mankiewicz—director

  Tom Mankiewicz—teleplay, creative consultant

  Sidney Sheldon—creator

  Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling—producers

  Robert Wagner, Stefanie Powers, Lionel Stander—cast

  Superman (1978; Warner Brothers)

  Richard Donner—director

  Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster—creators

  Mario Puzo—story

  Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, Tom Mankiewicz (uncredited)—screenplay

  Tom Mankiewicz—creative consultant

  Alexander Salkind, Ilya Salkind, Pierre Spengler—producers

  Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Jackie Cooper, Susannah York, Terence Stamp—cast

  Mother, Jugs & Speed (1978; 20th Century Fox Television)

  John Rich—director

  Tom Mankiewicz—teleplay

  Bruce Geller—producer

  Ray Vitte, Joanne Nail, Joe Penny—cast
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  The Eagle Has Landed (1976; Columbia Pictures)

  John Sturges—director

  Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Jack Higgins—novel

  David Niven Jr., Jack Wiener—producers

  Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter, Donald Pleasence—cast

  The Cassandra Crossing (1976; Avco Embassy Pictures)

  George P. Cosmatos—director

  Robert Katz, George P. Cosmatos—story

  Tom Mankiewicz, Robert Katz, George P. Cosmatos—screenplay

  Giancarlo Pettini, Carlo Ponti—producers

  Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Martin Sheen, O.J. Simpson, Lionel Stander, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster—cast

  Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976; 20th Century Fox)

  Peter Yates—director

  Stephen Manes, Tom Mankiewicz—story

  Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Joseph Barbera, Tom Mankiewicz, Peter Yates—producers

  Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, Harvey Keitel, Allen Garfield, Larry Hagman, Bruce Davison—cast

  The Man with the Golden Gun (1974; United Artists)

  Guy Hamilton—director

  Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Ian Fleming—novel

  Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman—producers

  Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Maud Adams, Herve Villechaize, Clifton James, Bernard Lee—cast

  Live and Let Die (1973; United Artists)

  Guy Hamilton—director

  Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Ian Fleming—novel

  Cubby R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman—producers

  Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour, Clifton James, Bernard Lee—cast

  Diamonds Are Forever (1971; United Artists)

  Guy Hamilton—director

  Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz—screenplay

  Ian Fleming—novel

  Cubby R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman—producers