Peter Bart

by the Mob (And Sex) Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies

  When Blue imploded, several issues became clear to me. There was no sense developing a script with Redford, because he was simply too difficult to communicate with. He would show up an hour or two late for a meeting, never offering an explanation or apology. His comments on material were opaque and he didn’t show much interest in the points of view of others.

  Though Redford’s sudden exit from Blue had caused a chill in his relations with the studio, I still felt that the right Redford project at the right time would be a win. With this in mind, I kept in touch with a shrewd young British agent named Richard Gregson, who I knew had a solid relationship with the actor and who also yearned to become a producer. One day I told Gregson that I’d read a gripping screenplay titled Downhill Racer, which dealt with Olympic skiers. Given Redford’s passion for skiing, I said, this was a subject that might stir some interest.

  A week or so later Gregson phoned to say that we’d hit pay dirt. Redford was not only a passionate skier but had also wanted to buy property in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah—an undeveloped area some 6,000 feet up. Within a decade, not only would the actor purchase thousands of acres in that area, but they would become home to his Sundance Institute and to its resident festival—the mecca of independent film.

  Richard Gregson was witty and worldly and I felt I could be candid with him. If Downhill Racer became reality, I would help him through the Paramount intricacies if he would deal with Redford. I was intent on keeping my distance from his star and from his resentments. The project, I warned them, already had become politically complicated because it had been dangled before Roman Polanski as part of a possible two-picture deal involving Rosemary’s Baby. The Polish filmmaker, too, was a devoted skier. On top of that, Polanski was at that point considering Redford as the possible lead in Rosemary’s Baby (a role which ultimately went to John Cassavetes).

  In the end, Redford decided to focus on Downhill Racer and Polanski on his demonic thriller.

  Gregson and Redford decided to hire a novelist named James Salter to rewrite their skiing script, which was based on a 1965 novel written by Oakley Hall. They went to Grenoble, to hang out with the U.S. ski team, traveling with them on buses and taking notes. When they returned, Gregson and Salter filled me in on the specifics of their central character, to be named David Chappelet. He would be something of a golden boy, remote and self-centered, a humorless young athlete who, while a member of the Olympic team, was never a team player. As they described Chappelet, I realized that, consciously or not, they were also describing Redford. The central character of this movie would be as emotionally inaccessible and fiercely focused as the movie star who would play him.

  With the new script in development, the search for a director became crucial. I had become friendly with a bright young filmmaker named Michael Ritchie, who’d been working mainly in long-form television. Ritchie was an articulate Harvard graduate and an avid skier. I felt Ritchie would be an interesting match for Downhill Racer, but, as I’d learned on Blue, Redford would never be comfortable if he felt he’d been assigned a director. It would have to be Redford’s idea.

  That would become Gregson’s problem, and he negotiated it well. He showed some of Ritchie’s work to his star before setting up a meeting. Ritchie’s intellect impressed Redford. Since Ritchie was six feet eight inches tall and Redford, like many stars, was somewhat undersized, the height differential also made the director’s arguments more persuasive. Ritchie was signed to direct the film.

  Even as Downhill Racer was being prepped, yet another important screenplay possibly involving Redford was stirring interest at Paramount. Titled Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (and written by William Goldman), the script was put up for auction by the writer’s agent and the bidding quickly passed $300,000—a formidable figure at that time for an original screenplay with no “elements” attached. I offered a bid for Paramount, telling my colleagues that the two leading roles would surely attract top stars and that our studio could benefit from another star vehicle. Redford was clearly a possibility, but he had not as yet read the script, nor had Paul Newman, who would finally get the other lead role.

  Ultimately, my bid was topped by Twentieth Century-Fox. Within a couple of weeks, firm offers went out to Newman and Redford and Fox had itself a superb package.

  Meanwhile, Downhill Racer rolled into production on colorful Alpine locations in Wengen, Switzerland, and Kitzbühel, Austria. The racing scenes were made vividly realistic through the use of handheld cameras. Redford’s skiing double managed to ski downhill at upwards of fifty miles per hour toting a 35 mm Arriflex camera weighing forty pounds. The audience would feel the swerves and bounces, all the while hearing the crunch of snow and sensing the bone-chilling blast of air.

  The finished film was superbly spare and understated. Chappelet remained a man of few words; though he didn’t get the girl, he won his Olympic medal and emerged a classic antihero.

  In test screenings, filmgoers reacted with admiration to Downhill Racer, but their praise seemed tentative. Some commented that the characters seemed as chilly as the setting. They wanted a story that was both warmer and more entertaining.

  They got it in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which opened on September 25, 1969, six weeks ahead of Downhill Racer to ecstatic reviews and audience reaction. Indeed, Downhill Racer seemed to be pale and spartan compared with Butch Cassidy. It was a well-crafted art picture, and Butch Cassidy was a classic Hollywood blockbuster.

  Evans and I were both disappointed in Downhill Racer, but we were already developing yet another Redford picture—one that was also a racing story. In Little Fauss and Big Halsy, however, the setting was far from the clean white slopes of Olympic skiing. This was a down-and-dirty script by Charles Eastman, a cult favorite among writers and young directors, and it was set in the dusty Southwest biking circuit. It was a buddy picture that focused on a homely but earnest loser and his womanizing, thieving partner on the circuit. The project was brought to me by Albert S. Ruddy, a tall, fast-talking young producer with a gravelly voice and an off-center sense of humor.

  Ruddy’s notion was to match Redford with a hilariously eccentric young actor named Michael J. Pollard. And the director would be Sidney J. Furie, a young Canadian, who had made an impact with his thriller The Ipcress File.

  To my surprise, Redford liked the lowlife role and the colorful setting, and felt Furie had an original take on the material. He also was intrigued by the sexual tension generated by a sex object named Rita Nebraska, who was to be played by Lauren Hutton. The bike racing, too, interested him, even though Big Halsy was anything but a champion.

  Redford’s behavior on the movie was typically cool and professional. Consistent with the subject matter, Ruddy put together a boozing and hard-living cast and crew. Redford showed up every day on the Arizona location looking like the down-and-dirty Halsy, but he and his wife opted to live at an upscale resort far from the gritty location. He did not “hang” with the cast, and while other actors tended to ham it up during the shoot, Redford’s performance was carefully understated. It was as though he was buying into the funky setting but also Redfordizing it.

  Little Fauss did not especially embellish Redford’s career. If anything, it was irrelevant to it. By the time of its release, a different destiny in the film world had taken shape in Redford’s mind. He had yearned to be a movie star, but that was now a means to an end. The vision of Sundance had captured his imagination, the notion of establishing an environment for independent filmmakers that would become at once an alternative to Hollywood, and also a preparation for it. Redford would himself mature as a skilled director of films that occupied a shadow world between the two domains. Ordinary People reflected the sensibility of independent filmmaking but achieved widespread mainstream recognition. Lions for Lambs, by contrast, aspired to challenge mainstream sensibilities, but turned out instead to be a failed polemic.

  Redford’s contemporaries Beatty and Eastwood each went on to momentous achievem
ents as filmmakers. Beatty’s supreme moment, Reds, surpassed expectations in every way. It was challenging as a work of pop culture; it was wildly excessive in terms of cost, and, finally, it achieved recognition on a scale that exceeded even Beatty’s formidable ego. The depth of Clint Eastwood’s work similarly mirrored the star’s own personal growth. In a sense, Gran Torino was a response to Dirty Harry; Letters from Iwo Jima was a counterpoint to Kelly’s Heroes. The Man with No Name had molted into a sort of Everyman, who was determined to teach as he was himself learning.

  When I first encountered them, Redford, Beatty, and Eastwood, each was desperate to find a good role in movies and in life. Surely none would have imagined the mythic roles they were destined to play out.

  CHAPTER 11

  Unholy Alliances

  During my years at Paramount, I grew to admire the company’s ability to cope with failure. The failure of many of our films fostered a certain fatalistic civility among the principal executives; since no one seemed to expect the best, it was easier to accommodate the worst. Besides, the blame-iton-Bluhdorn syndrome provided a convenient channel for explaining away mediocrity.

  By mid-1971, however, I sensed a dramatic shift in the metabolism of the company. As The Godfather worked its way through production and postproduction, with all its intrigues and controversies, the change in mood was discernible. Failure was no longer considered an inevitability: a more ominous phenomenon was now looming—the anticipation of success. And, judging from the neuroses that were beginning to emerge, I was dubious whether the cast of characters running Paramount would be able to cope with success as deftly as they had coped with failure.

  Certainly, there had earlier been some bright patches amid the aura of gloom. Hits like Rosemary’s Baby in ’68 and True Grit in ’69 and, of course, Love Story in ’70 had provided glimmers that a new sensibility was working its way into the studio’s mind-set. Still, the abject disasters not only of the big musicals but also of Catch-22 and The Molly Maguires continued to cast a pall over the Paramount landscape, reinforcing the notion that this was a creaky company that could not escape its past.

  The community sensed there were new forces at work. The roster of filmmakers now included Hal Ashby, Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Yates, Karel Reisz, Nicolas Roeg, and Roman Polanski. And it was no longer Charlie Bluhdorn who dominated the news about Paramount. Robert Evans, fortified by the success of Love Story, and by his megapublicized marriage to Ali MacGraw, was now gaining acceptance as a savvy player in Hollywood’s power pyramid, as was Frank Yablans, the forceful and outspoken new president. Both reflected a new confidence and brashness, yet shared a self-image as outlaws.

  The media suddenly was touting Paramount’s new power team even as I was observing the seeds of its self-destruction. Indeed, as The Godfather was nearing its release, I became convinced that there was no way Evans and Yablans could survive their own success.

  Evans had been apprehensive about Yablans from the moment of his ascension to the Paramount presidency in February 1971. He was baffled that Stanley Jaffe, only thirty years old, could have blown his relationship to Bluhdorn so quickly. “Stick your opinions up your ass,” Jaffe had shouted at Bluhdorn and had refused to apologize for his outburst. Bluhdorn had been more shocked than offended, but he’d also come to realize something more important: that his “boy wonder” (Jaffe) was not temperamentally mature enough to fulfill his responsibilities.

  But would Jaffe’s successor, the bantam-size Yablans, prove any more stable? Jaffe had warned Evans that Yablans had been aggressively taking credit for Paramount’s creative decisions. Even as a humble assistant sales manager, Yablans had boasted that he’d “saved Bluhdorn’s ass.”

  Among all Paramount executives, the individual who was most shaken by Yablans’s appointment was his brother, Irwin Yablans, who had worked for several years as West Coast sales manager for the studio and was well liked within the company. Upon learning the news, Irwin Yablans took Evans aside and confided: “This is never going to work. Trust me—Frank Yablans is crazy. I should know—I’m his brother. He’s doing well where he is, but he’ll never be able to handle this much power.”

  Evans was shaken by Irwin’s warnings—even more so a day later when Irwin Yablans was summarily fired by his newly appointed brother. “I think we’ve ended up with the wrong Yablans,” Evans told me during our drive home that evening.

  Early into his presidency Yablans had begun to show signs of incipient megalomania. Visitors to his office in New York noticed that his desk was now positioned on a platform so that Yablans, self-conscious about his diminutive stature, would now look down on his guests.

  Amid all this, Yablans could mobilize great charm and display extraordinary intelligence in tackling company problems. He instinctively understood the complex superstructure of the distribution and exhibition business, knowing what buttons to press to trigger action—or panic. “I respect Frank Yablans—I even like him,” one crusty exhibitor, Sumner Redstone, told me at the time. “That doesn’t mean I trust him.”

  One key source of Yablans’s insecurity was the decision to move Paramount’s creative team to new offices on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. Though Yablans had participated in the decision, it was a precedent-setting move. Before this, no studio had severed its umbilical cord to its back lot.

  The abrupt move away from the studio had been prompted by the sale of the acreage and the soundstages to the Italian company Immobilière, but it also provided an extraordinary opportunity to cut costs. Fully 75 percent of the staff had been let go, leaving a skeletal production team consisting of Evans, myself, and three creative aides. And instead of a commissary and several screening and conference rooms, the Canon Drive facility offered one small conference room and a screening room seating twelve. Instead of the fabled commissary, there was now a sandwich shop across Canon Drive, which served salads and meat loaf.

  In structure and operational design, the Canon Drive operation resembled an independent production company rather than a studio. The budget provided no studio amenities. When a star or a director arrived for meetings from New York or Europe, he or she was sent a minimalist budget covering their trips—no limos or private jets or lavish hotel suites.

  It was this “independent production” style that aroused Yablans’s suspicion. He was the president—the boss in New York—and he didn’t want his Beverly Hills vassals to feel that they could set their own policies.

  If Yablans was walking with an increasing swagger, he was not self-conscious about it. In an interview with Time magazine, he commented, “It’s easy to be humble if you were born a prince. I came from the ghetto.” He’d recently gotten his father a job as a cabdriver, Yablans said, but before that his dad had earned a living plucking chickens.

  Yablans made no effort to thwart his growing reputation as a bully. Exhibitors gossiped that he’d once phoned a district manager at his hospital room on Christmas day, instructing him to check his theaters because Love Story was attracting subpar audiences relative to other theaters in his region.

  Yablans’s fear of losing control over the studio was exacerbated by the delays in editing The Godfather.

  When Evans took personal control of the editing process, and began complaining about his severe back pain, Yablans told him bluntly that his back wasn’t the real problem. The issue was cocaine.

  “We’ve all managed to climb a mountain but now we’re getting altitude sickness,” Yablans said. “Nothing in Hollywood is built to last. The whole town’s on an ego trip. Everyone is coked up or smoking so much dope they don’t know where they are.”

  The issue of drugs was becoming one of Yablans’s favorite riffs—the moral decay of Hollywood. In Yablans’s mind, he represented New York sanity trying to deal with an unruly bunch of Hollywood sybarites. “Bob Evans is the core of the problem,” he railed. “It’s all about coke.”

  Yablans’s observations were mistakes, but prescient. Evans was rarely in his of
fice anymore. He would check in once a day, saying he was in the editing room or at home. He sounded distracted, his sentences wandering off. His Godfather obsession had overtaken him.

  Every few days he would ask me to visit him in the editing room to see a reel of The Godfather that he had been working on. Often he’d be stretched out on his gurney, his eyes hooded, his hair tangled. “You’re becoming Howard Hughes,” I challenged him once. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s my back,” he would say. Back pain was his blanket explanation. And I felt a mounting frustration about how to intervene. I pondered calling Evans’s personal physician, Dr. Lee Siegel, but I distrusted him as well. Though he seemed to be a responsible, matter-of-fact man, Lee Siegel was in fact a “Doctor Feel-good” who kept his star patients on a steady diet of dubious pharmaceuticals. Dr. Siegel frequently visited our office to give shots to Evans and on a couple of occasions he’d given me “treatments” to help me get over a bout of the flu. Siegel described them vaguely as “vitamin shots” but my entire body sizzled after the injections, as though I’d been injected with amphetamines (which was probably the case).

  Frank Yablans, for one, was keenly aware of Dr. Siegel’s treatments. On more than one occasion, Yablans demanded, “Doesn’t Evans have a legitimate doctor somewhere in his Rolodex?” To the Paramount president, Evans’s bizarre schedule was severely inhibiting his ability to run the studio, but with the fate of The Godfather on the line this was not the time to do anything about the problem.

  Aside from Evans, Yablans was troubled by the story of another important player in the community whose career was being jeopardized by coke. Ted Ashley, the CEO of Warner Bros., a key Paramount rival, had been one of the industry’s premier agents. Ashley, a short, scruffy but supremely self-confident man, had assembled a top production team at the studio headed by John Calley. They had turned his company around.