SPEED-THE-PLOW
Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting fucked.
—Speed-the-Plow
Washington is Hollywood for ugly people. Producing is Hollywood for ugly people.
The actual writers, directors, and actors get into it for the fun, the prestige, and the excitement. Some find, intermittently, some of the above; some few find stardom, and some few make a regular living. These last used to be the crafts-and-support folk: musicians, prop makers, stuntfolk, model makers, armorers, dressers, and character actors—Hollywood’s mid-century equivalent of Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue.
These folks and their crafts are largely gone (like Lex). The parking spaces they once used are now held down by drones. The crafts people wanted to make a living and were blessed by the ability to do something they could sell of which they could be proud. Their reward was not eventual but actual: they had and they held good, satisfying jobs. But who got or gets into “producing”?
There is no day-to-day satisfaction in production, for producers, like their kind in Washington, produce nothing. Their time, in both cases, is spent scenting the wind and looking for an opportunity to advance. How can one advance in an occupation that makes nothing? Through deference, betrayal, chicane, or luck. Toward what might one advance? Power and money.
Folk music was popularized in the thirties by the musicologist Alan Lomax. He went to the Appalachians, and down south, and recorded the end-of-the-birth-of-the-blues. He was to meet Robert Johnson, who died while Lomax was in transit, and a local man suggested he meet this other fellow, Muddy Waters (with thanks to Wikipedia).
Through concerts, on the radio, and through the Smithsonian, he brought the songs to American Consciousness. And copyrighted many of them. Irving Mills produced the recordings of Duke Ellington and demanded and received co-credit for most of them.
Well, there are no new sins. Producers, like government and bank tellers, are too close to it. Their road to Damascus moment, “If I can take some of it, why not take it all?” Irving Mills’s name on the sheet music makes me ashamed to be a Jew; and writing of Alan Lomax, ashamed to have enjoyed the Kingston Trio—their relationship to folk music as Pilates is to boxing.
Describing oneself as involved in a “relationship” is a semantic risk—the ambiguity of language, that is, lessens the ability to evaluate behavior. The terms “spouse,” “partner,” “mistress,” “fling,” “buddy”—each suggests reasonable expectations. “Producer” is a similarly ambiguous term, allowing for unfortunate latitude in behavior.
A Producer may be one who initiates, funds, or endorses a film. He may also be a colleague or assign of same. An Executive Producer is one who lends an imprimatur to the project. An Associate Producer is, as per Joe Mankiewicz, “one who would associate with a producer.”
There are also those self-promoters who troll for ignorant talent, promising representation, funding, or influence. They are pimps.
None have anything to do with the actual exposure of film. The actual filmmaker must doubt and mistrust their statements and be wary of their operations, for they will never be frank, considering him, generally, a beast of burden that, curiously, has the power of speech, which speech is foolish when it is not unintelligible.
I will use the term PRODUCER in this book to refer to these.
But there is another to whom the term applies; this is the Line Producer, or UPM, Unit Production Manager. He is the General Contractor, and the filmmaker’s ally and friend.
Well, it’s a racket. When a racket goes legit, the thrill is gone; but the form may still be sold to those who don’t quite get it. (Hefner’s Playboy Clubs were whorehouses that sold everything but sex.)
Of Agents:
A friend called one the other day and was told she, the agent, was going on yet another junket-vacation. The friend asked, “When do you work?” And the agent said, “I’m as close as my phone.”
The question, “If what?”
If (as was the case) the agent was just answering requests for my friend’s services, why was she getting 10 percent of the take?
The truth is, if you’re hot you don’t need an agent; and if you’re not, the agent doesn’t need you.
Two CAA pitches. CAA, you will remember, was started in 1975 by Mike Ovitz and Ron Meyer. They looked the truth, above, in the face, and turned it on its head, thus: “Howzabout,” they said to some very famous actors, “howzabout we represent you, BUT ONLY TAKE FIVE percent?”
They signed some few of the famous, and adjacent brothers and sisters clamored to get on the bandwagon. All the newcomers paid the Old Rate, and CAA rose to preeminence. Much of their power came through exploitation of the original stars: “I’ll get you X if you take Y”; and, perhaps, “I’ll give you X at a slightly reduced rate, if you take A, B, and C.”
The CAA pitch of old:
“I want to be in the David Mamet business. Tell me your dreams. You want to direct more, we’ll make it happen. What else? I know you write songs. You should have your own record label, we’ll bring that about. And, don’t you think—as we do—you should have your own Movie Company? After all, you know X, Y, and Z, and you, AND THEY, should BE IN CONTROL of output. What about your wife. What does she want? What about your dog…?” No fooling. A script of the immutability of mine when I sold carpet over the telephone. The wisdom of the boiler room, “Stick to the script, it works.”
Who can resist flattery? An ancient technique of fundraisers: “How would you like your gift to be used?” Well, the gift is going to be used how and as the new owner wills.
A twice-told tale, and I hope the reader will excuse me, as this book must contain several; I trust the reader’s affection—obvious from his devotion to my work sufficient to observe the repetition—will be matched by his courtesy in overlooking my senescence.
I received the above pitch from a CAA agent (Tony Krantz). He pointed out that if I wrote a half-hour pilot, I might make some real cash. How long, he said, would it take you?
“To write a half-hour pilot?” I said. “A half hour.”
“For writing that pilot,” he said, “I could get you two hundred thousand dollars. For one half hour’s work.”
“That,” I said, “is four hundred grand an hour, which is sixteen million dollars a week, and eight hundred million a year, if I took two weeks off.”
“If you were making that kind of money,” he said, “you couldn’t afford to take two weeks off.”
Time passes, all things decay and die. I was looking for a new agent and asked my friend Ron Meyer for a recommendation.
He, that is, who was partners with Ovitz. I met him through a mutual friend when I came out to Hollywood. I was told he was a “regular guy,” but how would one discover such in Hollywood?
I went to a party at his house, shot a few balls with him on his pool table. “You shoot pool,” he said. “Let’s shoot some pool sometime.”
“Sure,” I said. But the next morning he called to say he was at the pool hall near my house, and was I free? Good enough for me. An actual Studio Head (then of Paramount) who could shoot pool and, equally improbably, meant what he said. (And could run eighty-five balls.)
Anywaythzz (as Daffy said), I called Ron for a recommendation, and he cross-decked me to the then head of CAA, who said they’d love to have me, and he would be “Just as Close as His Phone.” Having kicked me downstairs, he sent what I was free to consider the Highest of His Henchpersons out to give me the pitch.
I was looking forward to it, as one would to a beloved old movie. For was I now not Wise? I knew the charity-beggars would use my dough however they saw fit—most likely for their own salaries—and that CAA would blow smoke, and count on my cupidity to sign me up, and “put my ass on the street and bring back some money.” But, wise and inured as I now was, I could be amused by (as I was, of course, immune to) the upcoming flattery.
But the pitch, in my case, had changed. And the triumvirate of Men in Suits explained to me that my career was over, as I’d fucked everything up; but they would take me, studio to studio, on the Perp walk, where I could apologize, and accept my now rightful place in the Applicant Pool.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Howard.”
“Howard who?”
“Howard the mighty fallen.”
