While I appreciated Bluhdorn’s refusal to be judgmental, I was disturbed by his unwillingness, and that of my colleagues, to face up to our mistakes and analyze the causes. It was as though any form of self-criticism was utterly alien. The sheer onrush of events provided the perfect cover for all of us. There was simply no time for looking back and seeking perspective.
In reaction, I began to keep a careful log on the projects I was most closely involved in, charting the good, the bad, and the ugly decisions along the way. Over the course of the ensuing months and years it would, I hoped, become clear to me where my instincts proved valid and where I went drastically wrong.
The lessons that I logged in were roughly as follows.
LESSON: Politics and movies are a disastrous mix.
Haskell Wexler’s phone calls were always cryptic, if not abrupt, but his taut tone at the other end of the line this time put me on alert. “I am going to make a proposal,” he said. “I don’t want to back you against the wall, so I’m going to pose it this way: If you approve of my proposal, do not say anything. Just hang up. I’ll understand and will move forward. If the answer is ‘no,’ just tell me now and I will stop.”
Over the next five minutes Wexler told me his proposal for the movie. I listened to him carefully, and when he was done, I promptly hung up. As far as I was concerned, it was a done deal.
A brilliant young cinematographer (he’d shot such films as Who’s A fraid of Virginia Woolf? and In the Heat of the Night) and a committed social activist, Wexler had made a deal with Paramount to shoot a movie called The Concrete Wilderness about a kid growing up in the slums of Chicago. I had liked the novel and felt Wexler represented exactly the sort of savvy and dedicated filmmaker I’d been trying to recruit. Under his stewardship, Concrete could be a tough, street-smart urban thriller.
Only now Wexler had a better idea. Even as he was in preproduction in Chicago, the Democratic Party was gathering for its 1968 political convention and the chaos was already building. The cops were beating back demonstrators, waves of tear gas wafted through the streets, and there were rumors of intervention by the National Guard.
Wexler had originally intended to shoot his story with a sort of guerrilla film unit, but now he and his crew were pinned down, caught between the warring factions that were poised for revolution on Chicago’s streets. Hence his phone call: Though he was in preproduction on Concrete Wilderness, he felt driven to shoot another story entirely—a movie about the events swirling around him. He would concoct the script as he went along. It would revolve around a news cameraman, to be played by Robert Forster, who was filming the violence on the streets but who also found himself involved with a young schoolteacher whose little boy had become lost in the maelstrom.
Wexler vowed that he would come up with “combat” footage of the convention that had never been seen in an American film. “No one in your corporation will ever be able to claim you said yes to this project,” Wexler reiterated. “All you did was hang up on me.”
I was grateful for Wexler’s protectiveness (though dubious about its effectiveness), and I also felt deep satisfaction that we were making his movie. This was the mirror opposite of Darling Lili. This was real. Wexler even wired me a suggested title for his guerrilla film: Medium Cool.
I did not inform my colleagues at the studio about the details of my Wexler arrangement. I told Evans that Wexler had decided to shoot a different story which I had approved; it would be set against the backdrop of the Democratic convention. He responded with a conspiratorial nod and said no more.
Wexler started shooting, his production shrouded in secrecy. Now and then, dailies would arrive at the studio. I saw them alone. It was war footage—the nightmare of the convention protesters being gassed and beaten. The snatches of dialogue were almost incidental to the overall devastation.
“It’s great material but don’t lose the personal story,” I urged Wexler on the phone.
“It’ll work. I promise,” he replied.
When Medium Cool was shown to the studio, the shock waves could be felt across the company. The movie carried a ferocious emotional impact. No American movie had ever depicted the nation’s incipient political anarchy. One or two of my colleagues pointed out that the central story was thin. A love scene between the two lovers crossed the censorship bounds with full frontal nudity on display.
But protests soon started emerging from New York. A key member of Gulf & Western’s board of directors was also a top leader of the Democratic Party and he demanded that Paramount ignore its distribution commitment and suppress the movie. Picking up on this, a couple of the more senior marketing executives dispatched memoranda predicting that Medium Cool would never find an audience.
Wexler and I had been conspiratorial in fostering Medium Cool, but I watched in anger as yet another conspiracy formed within the company. I hammered away at the marketing and distribution executives, but could elicit only vague promises. Yes, the movie would open, but nominally. Yes, there would be advertising support, but marginal.
The critics by now had discovered the movie—I had seen to that much—and their response was exuberant. Screenings in Los Angeles and New York brought rave reviews. Wexler was winning praise for his bravery as well as his talent.
But his movie was disappearing into studio quicksand. It was as if the old Paramount had decided to swallow up the initial product of the new Paramount.
When I confronted Bluhdorn and his ever-hovering sidekick, Martin Davis, their response seemed synchronized. “Movies and politics don’t mix, kid,” they said together. They were right of course—at Paramount, that is.
Since Paramount essentially pulled the rug out from under Medium Cool, the studio perhaps deserved the nightmare of yet another failed political film several months later. While Medium Cool had effectively come in through the transom, a project with the unfortunate title of WUSA arrived proudly through the front door. Its advocate was none other than Paul Newman, a superstar with strong liberal ties.
The plot was set at a radio station in New Orleans—WUSA—that espoused ultra-right-wing propaganda. Newman played an announcer on the station who nonetheless hated its bias. His wife, Joanne Woodward, was cast as a prostitute who’d been arrested during a political protest. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, who had guided Newman through Cool Hand Luke, the movie had an illustrious supporting cast that included Laurence Harvey as a bogus evangelist, Pat Hingle as a demagogue, and Anthony Perkins as a deranged welfare worker.
When agents for Newman and Woodward marched into the studio to submit their star-laden project, the studio stood up and saluted. Having read the script, I promptly told Bluhdorn and Evans that the material was shrill and depressing. Evans was quick to align himself with me; he hated political movies and reminded everyone that the studio had subverted Medium Cool.
Bluhdorn predictably liked the idea of a Newman-Woodward movie. He pointed out that the script was based on a well-reviewed novel by Robert Stone, titled Hall of Mirrors. How bad could it be?
The inevitable face-to-face confrontation took place. I told Newman I respected his commitment, but I was candid about my opinions. The movie was shrill. It simply didn’t work.
The star did not disguise his disdain for my position, reminding me of my origins with the New York Times. “I’d expected a more intelligent response to a gutsy project,” he said.
My colloquy with Newman was mild compared with the one to follow. When Frank Yablans saw WUSA at a test screening in Boston, he became livid. Yablans bluntly declared that he hated the movie and wished he could flush it down the hotel toilet. Incensed, Newman rose from his seat and started toward Yablans. His producer, a former agent named John Forman, restrained him, but started shouting insults at Yablans, which were returned at a higher decibel.
As with Medium Cool, WUSA did not find support at Paramount. The studio’s era of political cinema had now stalled out.
LESSON: Satire doesn’t work on the screen either.
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When I read the first draft of The President’s Analyst, I found myself laughing out loud. Concocted by a TV comedy writer named Theodore Flicker, TPA, as it came to be known, revolved around a psychiatrist who was conscripted to treat the president of the United States. The shrink, played by James Coburn, was besieged by spies of various nations who hounded him for political secrets. Ultimately he, like the president, became convinced that he was surrounded by conspiracies, with the bad guys including the FBI and even the telephone company. As in most sixties movies, the shrink takes refuge in a hippie commune where even further insanity unfolds.
Evans shared my enthusiasm for the movie and felt that the heavy dose of slapstick made the satire palatable. Initial results from test screenings were encouraging.
Immediately after the movie opened, however, Evans’s fondness for the movie darkened. Two men in dark blue suits pulled up to his house. “They say Mr. Hoover sent them,” the housekeeper announced. Since Evans had hired an agency to find a new butler, he assumed they were candidates for the job and had been sent by the Hoover Agency. He sent for them and started to question them on their experience. The men quickly clarified their mission. The “Mr. Hoover” was J. Edgar Hoover and they were FBI agents who had been dispatched to question Evans about Paramount’s motivations in frivolously depicting the agency’s work.
Evans was bewildered. He explained that The President’s Analyst was a comedy, that the agency’s name had been changed to FBE. The two visitors did not seem to buy this explanation, but left after a half-hour conversation.
In the coming weeks, Evans came to understand the impact of their visit. His phones were now being tapped. His home was watched. The Hoover Agency, he learned, did not have a sense of humor.
TPA ultimately opened to favorable reviews, but to many filmgoers the movie seemed more disturbing than entertaining. As for Bob Evans, he wished we hadn’t made the film at all. He didn’t like the idea that someone out there was peering at him.
LESSON: Directing represents a complex skill set, and it’s dangerous to entrust neophytes to the process.
My enthusiasm about opening the doors to new talent would turn out to be riskier than I presumed. It was one thing to bring a Francis Coppola to the studio—he had made student films, had studied filmmaking and had honed his craft—but it was a far different proposition with an individual who was not only unprepared but indifferent to mastering the intricacies of filmmaking.
When I first learned that Elaine May had written a romantic thriller called A New Leaf, I hurried to get my hands on her script. May was not only an accomplished writer but also, together with Mike Nichols, was a brilliant practitioner of an idiosyncratic brand of stand-up comedy.
While A New Leaf was not officially available, a friend at the William Morris Agency sneaked me a copy of the screenplay. I promptly read it and communicated to colleagues that May’s work was witty and bizarre—she had even tossed in a couple of murders to seduce her audience. When I phoned my friend at the agency, however, I learned that May and her producer, Hillard Elkins, were doing some furtive packaging. They had approached Walter Matthau to costar, and he had expressed interest. The reason they had gone star hunting was that May had made an unexpected decision. She wanted to try her hand at directing, and she knew that the “muscle” of a star was necessary to find financial backing.
To my surprise, all my colleagues—Bluhdorn, Evans, Yablans—were willing to go with Elaine May as a director without even testing her or, for that matter, restricting her creative control over the material she would shoot. Indeed May demanded, and won, a wide degree of autonomy. Once a shooting script had been accepted, the studio was barred from demanding changes. It was unclear whether these constraints would also affect the final cut—an issue that would later come to haunt us.
I had a short meeting with May before the movie started shooting, and, as with Silvio Narizzano on Blue, was surprised by her shoddy preparation. Furthermore, she was not interested in taking meetings to discuss her script or shooting schedule. This was going to be her show and comments or ideas from the studio would not be welcomed.
I told Evans and Yablans that I didn’t like or trust Elaine May and suspected that she didn’t know which end of the camera to look through. They dismissed my fears as alarmist. Like a ship headed for an iceberg, A New Leaf drifted toward production.
After the first week of principal photography, Howard W. Koch, the executive producer, called me to confide that Elaine May had not composed a shot list nor had she ever inspected key locations. “We’re headed down the road to disaster,” he said. “Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?” It was a twist on an old joke, but I could tell he was not joking.
I heard Koch’s words loud and clear; what was not clear was what I should do about them. It would be difficult to remove her—Matthau might quit and there would be long delays. And it seemed all but impossible to reason with her.
Two or three weeks into the schedule, Bluhdorn and Evans advanced their solution: Since Howard Koch wanted out, they would put Stanley Jaffe on the movie as executive producer. He’d be the man in charge. Jaffe would not be intimidated by May. Indeed, he had just brought in his first production, Goodbye, Columbus, on budget and on schedule and his team had been impressed.
Was the twenty-nine-year-old neophyte producer the right man for the job? Alarm bells went off when Jaffe reported the results of his first foray on the film. “She has finished the first thirty of her thirty-four-day schedule,” he said. “But she is incredibly thirty days behind schedule. She’s managed to get nothing done.”
I wondered whether Jaffe, in advancing this report, really wanted the movie to be summarily canceled. That way he could escape the blame.
But Bluhdorn was adamant that Jaffe and May were to work as a team, however unlikely a team that would be. The movie would go forward and his orders were to be obeyed.
Each day on the set, however, new combat erupted: Jaffe resolutely pushed for a quicker pace as May constantly changed her mind about the actors’ lines and the camera angle.
“This movie is never going to end,” Jaffe moaned to me one day. Remarkably, it finally did. While Elaine May went off to edit her picture, Stanley Jaffe went on vacation, and the entire studio breathed a sigh of relief.
It was short-lived. If May’s behavior on the set seemed in- decisive, her work in the editing room carried those traits to another level. Her cut turned out to be almost three hours long.
Paramount Pictures 1938
A hopeful star-in-the-making, Robert Evans wields his cape for The Sun Also Rises, 1957.
Evans and Peter Bart confer prior to a 1968 press conference to announce their new slate.
Evans and Bart, 2010, at an industry event.
Mario Puzo, author of the worldwide bestseller The Godfather, with director Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, and producer Al Ruddy as they officially sign on to start their movie.
Evans and Coppola on the set of The Godfather debate a story point.
Adolph Zukor (seated), at his 100th birthday party with (from left to right) Frank Yablans, Charles Bluhdorn, and Robert Evans, 1973.
William Friedkin on the set of The Exorcist, 1973.
Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, Downhill Racer, 1969.
Clint Eastwood and Ingrid Pitt, Where Eagles Dare, 1968.
Evans and Ali MacGraw reflect on their upcoming marriage, 1969.
Warren Beatty and Paula Prentiss, co-stars of The Parallax View, 1974.
MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal during rehearsals of Love Story in Boston, 1970.
Henry Kissinger lends his gravitas to the premiere party of The Godfather, 1972.
Evans tries to buoy Mia Farrow’s morale during production of Rosemary’s Baby, 1968.
Polanski and Jack Nicholson ponder a key scene in Chinatown, 1974.
Newlyweds Polanski and Sharon Tate on the Hollywood party circuit, 1968.
Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon developed a bon
d during Harold and Maude, 1971.
Bart (center) and director Franklin Schaffner (right) in Kauai in midproduction on Islands in the Stream, 1976.
Director Hal Ashby and Jack Nicholson share a laugh during filming of The Last Detail, 1973.
Daily Variety’s front page hailed Paramount’s sudden rise to the top.
The moment the lights went on after the first screening, the argument started. “It’s too long,” Evans admonished. “The comedy has been lost. It’s not funny.”
“It’s not supposed to be a comedy,” May shot back, and the conversation went downhill from there. This was her cut and she didn’t intend to change it. She apparently truly wanted a three-hour movie.
Evans, Jaffe, and I met the following morning and decided on a new course. We would hire a new editor and make our own cut. This was not a course of action we would follow with a respected filmmaker, but none of us respected Elaine May. She had worn out every shred of goodwill.
In hiring a new editor, my edict was to be respectful to her original script. In accordance with her first draft, the pacing should be brisk, and any opportunity for comedy should be exploited.
After the new cut was shown to May, we did not hear from her, but rather from her attorney who let it be known she was suing not only the studio but also Stanley Jaffe personally. The legal argument was opaque: May’s contract provided that the studio could not alter her shooting script without her permission and by altering her cut, the lawyer argued, Paramount was effectively altering her script.
Peter Bart Page 14
