completion and failure and would take forever.”
Scald ’em with chicken soup .
M ike Medavoy: “I had lunch with Paddy Chayefsky. We were talking about directors for Paddy’s script Network and Paddy asked me what I thought of Sidney Lumet.
“ ‘Sidney Lumet to do Network ?’ I gasped. ‘What was the last funny movie he made?’
“In response, Paddy turned his bowl of chicken soup over on the table. “
‘You’re right, Paddy,’ I replied, ‘he’d be great.’ ”
If you make it, don’t brag about it .
M y fellow Hungarian, actor Tony Curtis: “It was a miserable, rainy late afternoon, my chauffeur drives me down Fortyeighth Street, and who do I see out front, standing under the marquee, but Walter Matthau. He’s got a long, heavy coat on and looks as grumpy as he’s ever looked in his life … he’s looking out at this cold miserable world he’s got to live in. He hates it. I’m getting this reading as I’m sitting in my limo, warm and comfy, looking at this poor guy on the sidewalk staring into the gutter and saying to himself, ‘What’s ever going to happen for me? Nothin’.’ You could see that on his face.
“So I say to the driver, ‘See that guy standing under the awning? Drive up to him as slowly as possible, and when we’re alongside of him, stop.’ He says okay, so we drive up, and I see Walter watching this limousine come rolling up, and it stops right where he’s standing. I roll the window down, I look at him, and I say, ‘ I fucked Yvonne DeCarlo! ’
“Then I just rolled that window back up and told the driver to get the hell out of there.”
To Do a Hughie
To trip on your own dick, like actor Hugh Grant.
The definition of “creative differences” …
T he producer had a reputation for having a nasty temper, so some people were surprised when he was named to take over the studio.
He soon developed a conflict with a lawyer in Business Affairs who kept questioning some of the personal expenses that the new studio head was writing off—expenses like an airplaneful of orchids sent to an actress girlfriend in Rio.
The studio head told the lawyer several times to back off. The lawyers’ friends told him to back off.
Yet he kept after the studio head, questioning expenses in meetings—expenses like twenty thousand dollars for a party involving three girls who worked for a club in Vegas.
One day, at a meeting in a studio conference room full of executives, the lawyer nitpicked about some suspicious expense. The studio head punched him in the mouth, judo-chopped him in the throat, and kicked him in the head and ribs while the other studio executives sat there and did nothing.
The lawyer was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He recovered quickly. He left the studio and received a5 million settlement.
Raymond Chandler, role model …
P roducer Ray Stark told screenwriter/novelist Jim Harrison that as a young agent one of his jobs was to get Raymond Chandler off the floor of his apartment, where he sometimes slept fully dressed in a drying pool of his own vomit.
Never hug an actress on a soundstage .
Y ou’ll screw up her hair, costuming, and makeup. She’ll hate you.
LESSON 5
Don’t Let ’Em Bleed on You!
You’re on your own .
A fter I sold Basic Instinct for3 million to Carolco, Disney studio honcho Jeff Katzenberg wrote a memo lamenting the fact, and studio heads got together in meetings to discuss ways of keeping future script prices down. ( Daily Variety reported both the memo and the studio meetings.)
The Writers Guild should have filed an antitrust action against the studios for conspiring to keep writers’ prices down, but the Guild, great on matters of health plans and insurance and awful on matters of creative rights, did nothing.
The multimillion-dollar script frenzy ended within six months, making it pretty clear that the studios had successfully put the writers back in their places: the schmucks at the bottom of the totem pole.
In
Scald ’em with chicken soup .
M ike Medavoy: “I had lunch with Paddy Chayefsky. We were talking about directors for Paddy’s script Network and Paddy asked me what I thought of Sidney Lumet.
“ ‘Sidney Lumet to do Network ?’ I gasped. ‘What was the last funny movie he made?’
“In response, Paddy turned his bowl of chicken soup over on the table. “
‘You’re right, Paddy,’ I replied, ‘he’d be great.’ ”
If you make it, don’t brag about it .
M y fellow Hungarian, actor Tony Curtis: “It was a miserable, rainy late afternoon, my chauffeur drives me down Fortyeighth Street, and who do I see out front, standing under the marquee, but Walter Matthau. He’s got a long, heavy coat on and looks as grumpy as he’s ever looked in his life … he’s looking out at this cold miserable world he’s got to live in. He hates it. I’m getting this reading as I’m sitting in my limo, warm and comfy, looking at this poor guy on the sidewalk staring into the gutter and saying to himself, ‘What’s ever going to happen for me? Nothin’.’ You could see that on his face.
“So I say to the driver, ‘See that guy standing under the awning? Drive up to him as slowly as possible, and when we’re alongside of him, stop.’ He says okay, so we drive up, and I see Walter watching this limousine come rolling up, and it stops right where he’s standing. I roll the window down, I look at him, and I say, ‘ I fucked Yvonne DeCarlo! ’
“Then I just rolled that window back up and told the driver to get the hell out of there.”
To Do a Hughie
To trip on your own dick, like actor Hugh Grant.
The definition of “creative differences” …
T he producer had a reputation for having a nasty temper, so some people were surprised when he was named to take over the studio.
He soon developed a conflict with a lawyer in Business Affairs who kept questioning some of the personal expenses that the new studio head was writing off—expenses like an airplaneful of orchids sent to an actress girlfriend in Rio.
The studio head told the lawyer several times to back off. The lawyers’ friends told him to back off.
Yet he kept after the studio head, questioning expenses in meetings—expenses like twenty thousand dollars for a party involving three girls who worked for a club in Vegas.
One day, at a meeting in a studio conference room full of executives, the lawyer nitpicked about some suspicious expense. The studio head punched him in the mouth, judo-chopped him in the throat, and kicked him in the head and ribs while the other studio executives sat there and did nothing.
The lawyer was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He recovered quickly. He left the studio and received a5 million settlement.
Raymond Chandler, role model …
P roducer Ray Stark told screenwriter/novelist Jim Harrison that as a young agent one of his jobs was to get Raymond Chandler off the floor of his apartment, where he sometimes slept fully dressed in a drying pool of his own vomit.
Never hug an actress on a soundstage .
Y ou’ll screw up her hair, costuming, and makeup. She’ll hate you.
LESSON 5
Don’t Let ’Em Bleed on You!
You’re on your own .
A fter I sold Basic Instinct for3 million to Carolco, Disney studio honcho Jeff Katzenberg wrote a memo lamenting the fact, and studio heads got together in meetings to discuss ways of keeping future script prices down. ( Daily Variety reported both the memo and the studio meetings.)
The Writers Guild should have filed an antitrust action against the studios for conspiring to keep writers’ prices down, but the Guild, great on matters of health plans and insurance and awful on matters of creative rights, did nothing.
The multimillion-dollar script frenzy ended within six months, making it pretty clear that the studios had successfully put the writers back in their places: the schmucks at the bottom of the totem pole.
In
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