#18. Our Broadway smash (up) with Hank Williams

#18.  Our Broadway smash (up) with heartbroken dead country legend Hank Williams.

A year had passed between the end of our Jerry Lee Lewis script and Phillip Browning's call about the possibility of a Hank Williams musical.

During that time some changes had come into my life.  I got eye glasses and suddenly I could read again.  I thought I had gotten too stupid to read or had somehow lost the ability.  But when I put on those glasses and everything popped into focus was one of the better days of my life.

Oh, and I got married again.  So I pulled up stakes in Hollywood (as if you could ever really leave that town) and moved to Cape Cod, a little house right next to a five acre cranberry bog.  And I learned how to write a TV mini-series (more about that later).

Best of all, I discovered my old friend Syd Field's recently published book on screenplays called, wisely, 'Screenplay.'  He finally wrote it, I finally read it.  It was a marvel.  Still is.

Phillip and I met in Nashville to figure out what story we wanted this musical play to tell.  How deep were we going to go?  In which direction?  And for how long?  At the hotel, Phillip handed me a cardboard box that  was filled with biographical material on Hank Williams: actual books, magazine articles, tapes (the pre CD days), and a self published book, a good one, too, by some guy who'd written it as his Vanderbilt doctoral dissertation on Hank.

But the big news was that all of Hank's famous music, the songs he had written, were tied up by one of the big Nashville family power brokers.  They also controlled Acuff-Rose Publishing and the legendary Grand Ole Opry; this was with whom Pierre Cossette and Phillip were dealing.  In those days -- like the historic relationship between Pittsburgh and U.S. Steel -- Nashville was a company town.  And that company was Gaylord Enterprises.

The Gaylord guy we were dealing with was very high up in the food chain.  But for the life of me, I cannot remember his name so we'll call him Big Suit.

His play was to sit in silence, listening, but his main response to anything was a small smile.  In that first meeting he did offer that he and his wife had seen "The Will Rogers Follies" in New York and loved it.  That's why they were taking this meeting.  That and the fact that Pierre, in his younger days as an agent, had represented Ur country legends Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.  Gaylord was sold on Pierre as a country music loving Keeper of the Flame, a real family man with Mary Mother of Five, a guy who could get the job done.

Now to the man who was going to write it.

Phillip asked Big Suit if he'd seen the tapes they'd sent him of "The Rose" and "Hooper" and "Gravy Train."  He just nodded and smiled.  While Phillip doubled down, extolling my several virtues, including the fact that I'd grown up with Hank Williams' music in a tiny town in the Blue Ridge mountains.  I could not take my eyes off Big Suit's unreadable face.  And slowly my blood began to run cold.

"What happened to your version of Jerry Lee Lewis," the Suitster asked.  Phillip responded, quickly spinning, that our script was just too good.  Too honest.  I was grateful to my friend but worried that remark might come back in the night, dressed as an E.M.T.

Big Suit had arranged our accommodations in the enormous Marriott-Opryland hotel, some meetings with the former members of Hank's band, and Minnie Pearl, still alive and, as we were to see, full of intelligence and light and lots of memories about Hank.

I spent the rest of that day and night reading the biographical material.  And oh, my Lord.  That wondrous hillbilly icon was a complete mess, God's very own blueprint for everything that could go wrong in a man's life.

He was born with spina-bifida and thereafter became addicted to pain pills.  As an alcoholic, he had a fear of being alone, had poor time management skills, was totally unreliable, had jug-ears and yet was a chronic catnip toy to women.  But most of all, and always, he had the high lonesome voice of a lost angel.

However, this is what great drama is made of.

And in the next days, meeting Minnie Pearl and Hank's old band members, more and more came to light.  Good and bad.  Hank was also a loving son, happy-go-lucky, generous to his friends, and up for anything.  He could write a great song in half an hour.  His voice was so achingly sweet, even when he sang a mediocre song, it sounded wonderful.  He was a terrible driver and an All-American depressive.

Jeez, I couldn't wait to begin.

In those pre-computer days, I was hauling my forty pound IBM correcting Selectric II around with me in an aluminum Halliburton suitcase.  I had already unpacked it, gave it some hay and water, and set it up in my hotel room.

I was chomping at the bit as we rode up in the elevator that afternoon; I already knew I wanted to start at Hank's memorial, where he would rise out of the coffin to narrate the show.  It would end the same way, only everyone would be singing "I Saw the Light."  And somewhere, my old Warner Bros. office buddy Billy Faulkner would be laughing.  Because along with Scriabin and all them guys, he liked Hank Williams, too!

GER-JUNK.

The elevator shuddered and jerked to a stop between floors.  I turned to Phillip about to laugh at another of our "fine messes."  Until I noticed the other couple in the elevator with us; a middle-aged nicely dressed man and woman.  She was white-faced and started to tremble.  She began to make panting sound as she sank to one knee and then a low moan.  "We're going to die," she said.

Oh, no, I thought because at that very moment I discovered that elevator panic is contagious.  My heart started to pound.  Phillip, good in so many situations, went to her side, leaned down next to her, put his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her so softly that I couldn't hear what he said.  And then the emergency alarm bell went off.  Her husband began to hammer the control panel with his fist as the woman got to her feet, the color coming back to her face.  Phillip stood and smiled at me.

Just as the elevator came back to life!

It began to ascend and the alarm shut off.  "You'll dine out on this, Puppy," said Phillip softly.  As often as I have been in elevators, this was the first and last time it ever happened to me.

About ten that night, Phillip stuck his head in.  Unable to resist temptation, I was already on page 9.  "Come on, let's go down to the bar.  They have a Hank Williams tribute singer."

Down in the hotel bar things were hoppin'.  The Hank Williams guy turned out to be good, if about twenty years too old.  Had the voice, though.  "Hey, good lookin', whatcha got cookin'..."  We found two seats at the bar and ordered Margaritas.  "We're going to die," said Phillip as we clinked glasses.

Just then, a gorgeous babe slipped into the chair next to me and put her hand on my shoulder.  Hey, now!

She leaned in real close.  I couldn't believe this.  Until she spoke.  "Why don't you introduce me to your friend there..."  I just lowered my head to the bar and bonked it softly a few times.  Phillip turned to see her glowing face staring hungrily at him and immediately assessed what had happened.

 Let's just say he was not exactly unfamiliar with his kind of situation.  And then, shutting it down, he explained to the girl he was very happily married to a glorious woman named Junius back in Malibu but he was grateful for her interest.

The next day we were on a plane to Branson, Missouri to meet Pierre.

                                 ****

Branson is Las Vegas for the geriatric set.

The small Ozark Mountain town was packed with enormous parking lots, filled mostly with picture window busses from all over America, motors endlessly running to keep the air conditioning on, in front of the dozens of huge concert venues, each owned by a corporate consortium or by the performing artist themselves.

Our destination was The Moon River Theatre owned and operated by easy-going crooner Andy Williams.  Who Pierre Cossette used to represent.  Andy had just had his dressing room(s), some three thousand square feet of it, featured in "Architectural Digest," and he was opening a new show.

Pierre explained that the Branson rationale, wildly successful, was to magnetically pull millions of people a year into a centrally located destination that was only about these shows.  There were no other distractions.  Like gambling.  Or sporting events.  Or famous scenic sights.  There were restaurants and Best Western motels to be sure, but it was only about the shows.  And nothing else.

Andy owned Moon River; he basically 'four-walled' his show, eliminating the greedy hands of promoters, agents, managers, and endlessly demanding talent.  The performer-owners controlled it all.  Those with a good business sense were raking it in.  Beaming, Pierre said Andy had never been so rich.  "And after 'Hank' finishes on Broadway, we're gonna bring it here to this theatre and you'll get rich, too!"  I didn't believe it for a second.  Not me.  I was too busy thinking about the new cowboy shirts and boots I could buy and books and records and all the dinners I could eat at Musso's and and and...

Andy Williams' opening night dressing room soiree was filled with music and Los Angeles royalty.  Not to mention the Mayor of Branson and the Captain of the Missouri State Police in his dress blues.  No one worked a room better than Andy Williams as he sidled over to us.  Pierre introduced me as "my guy who is writing my Hank Williams Broadway show," two possessive 'my's in a ten word sentence; not bad.

"Mr. Williams, half hour!" a crackling voice from wall mounted speakers.  "Half hour..."  With this, the party broke up and we were all led out and into the theatre itself.  Given programs, we were shown to our seats by uniformed locals.  "Enjoy the show, enjoy the show..."

The layout of the theatre was totally new to me.  About every ten or fifteen seats it seemed, there was an aisle up and down.  And when you sat in comfortable seats that whooshed when you sat down, there was at least four feet between your knees and the row in front of you.  "What's the deal," I asked Pierre.  He nodded to his right.  Here's your answer.  And there were two elderly couples, three of whom were using those aluminum walkers with the yellow tennis balls on the back legs.  As they made their way down our row, they smiled past without us having to even turn our knees to the side.

Of course, I am older now than they probably were then and I have learned how much it takes to navigate normal theatre rows even without the damn walkers.  Especially once the show started and all those pinched and tiny bladders began to kick in.  And the race to the bathrooms was on for, as my friend Wayne says, us Morse Code pee-ers.

Andy opened with Henry Mancini's "Moon River" and closed with the same timeless song.  In between, he did his other hits like 'Born Free,' pop song covers, the great American songbook, some light jazz and a few Bossa Nova numbers.  The man had an easy, wonderful voice and his orchestra was spectacular.  And yet, there I was, making notes on the back of the souvenir program booklet on possible Hank scenes.  "Stop that," whispered Phillip.  I couldn't.  Finally, he grabbed the program and started to read my notes by the ambient light.  A big smile came across his face.

And I knew I was headed in the right direction.

                               ****
         
Back in Hollywood, once I had my probable scene cards in the right order, I made an outline.  Then did it all again.  And again.  Finally I was ready to start.

Putting a play together is a whole other format I had to research and learn.  As best I could.  I had to remember that in the theatre you are dealing with a stage which is really only a big black box with lights and painted scenery, that only actors and what they say carries the story, that there are no close ups, no cutting to shift the attention, nothing is 'realistic' or natural.  It's ALL artifice.  It's supposed to be.

Drove me crazy.

Such experience and skills as I had learned in screen writing took me, every time, in the wrong direction.  So I read plays.  I saw as many as I could.  I talked to theatre people.  It got better.  I bought a laptop and typed faster: my first real computer.

And I loved it!  As far as I could tell, here was the laptop's only drawback:  One afternoon, I came into my office and my cat Frisco was on my desk.  Close to the keyboard.  Very close.  I got his attention and softly called him to me.  He turned and, as cats will, that little bastard walked away from me, ACROSS THE KEYBOARD thereby sending 3 prime, recently written pages of "Hank" into the ozone.

I yelled, I stomped, I freaked and I didn't see my cat for two days.  Good thing, too.  I know some of these tales end with the writer rewriting the pages and they are completely, joyously better.  Didn't work that way for me.  They were okay.  But the first ones were better.  I called it the Frisco Scene.  But I learned about some of them little buttons and clickers you could adjust to automatically save your material every 30 seconds.

Then finally, I had a first draft.  I read it over and over and over.  I don't know, I thought it was pretty good.  I thought people will like this Hank, these people in his life, the songs of course, but the whole thing just seemed...strong.

So I handed it in to Phillip and Pierre.  I didn't have to wait long.  Things started to move fast.

Phillip loved it, Pierre loved it, his son (and heir apparent) loved it, Mary Mother of Five loved it, assistants loved it, agents loved it; it caught fire.  Right up to the time Pierre sent it back to Nashville, to the Gaylords.

Oh oh.

Big Suit recognized its potential, its power, and its pedigree.  And how many people might see a play like this.  That was the problem.  I was told he thought it was too hard core, too tough.  Their main corporate mandate was to protect what would become known in the ensuing years as The Brand.  They wanted a safer Hank.  I found it ironic that the same people who had kicked him out of The Grand Ol' Opry for life, now found just the memory of those days too...icky.

But since without their full cooperation, there would be no "Hank" at all, EVER.  So I went back in and began to cut.  I took it from an R to the northern border of PG-13.  And when I read it, again and again, I thought it was still pretty good.  I missed its early rawness, its tough-minded overview of the angelic hellfire of his life.  But I still liked it.

And finally, begrudgingly I was told, so did they.  Nashville still had 'notes,' but at least it appeared to be still in play.  Then several things seemed to happen simultaneously.

We were given a green-light to put up a beginning production of the play in the Tennessee State Theatre.  Phillip called with the dates and made airline reservations for us all.  We would cast the show from back in Tennessee, using as much of their stock company as we could.  But they said we could bring a Hank if we had someone we thought was right for it.  I think they hoped Pierre and Phillip with their connections would come up with some magic voiced celebrity.  And we were, in fact, after one: Dwight Yoakam, a great singer/songwriter who was just getting his acting career started.

Then suddenly it was Thursday chaos by a flurry of phone calls.  Pierre's long-time Los Angeles attorney had somehow failed to send a check and renew the option with Gaylord.  The date had come and gone and it slipped his mind.  At least, this was the story I got.  Losing the rights is like taking off from the USS Lexington for a bombing raid on Tokyo and forgetting the airplane.

By this time Big Suit and his corporate cohorts decided they might as well do this show themselves; why did they need a bunch of suntanned Hollywood interloping fruit-burgers telling them what Hank Williams was really like.

I was actually packing for the trip when Phillip called.  "You remember that lady in the elevator in Nashville," he asked.  Umm, yeah.  "Well, she was right.  We're dead," he said quietly.  Then, nearly in tears, he explained it all.

And by the following day, in spite of beseeching phone calls to Nashville from Pierre, the whole enterprise had disappeared in a cloud of smoke.  Simply gone.

And that was that.

                              ****

A lot of writers don't like writing.

They like 'having written.'  I admit there is a certain relief in that but what I really love is the actual writing.  I don't like the schmoozing to get the job, I don't really like the research, I hate the interviews you have to do for story or background or both.  I am happiest behind this keyboard, and even though I am nearly the worst touch typist in history, I love pounding it out.  Part of the pleasure is the solitude.  And I like being alone.  No one to disappoint.  No checking in.  Silence.

Surely you have heard that Chows are not very social.  They mostly just sit and stare, glowering, not really knowing what the hell anyone is talking about.  Is it time for dinner?  Is it time for a walk?  No?  Then, you suck and I'm gonna take a nap.  I am sorrowful shamed by this, but it was my way for most of my years in show biz.  Even a little bit now.

Once in the old Earthling bookstore in Santa Barbara, my final wife was skimming a book on dog breeds.  I heard her laugh so I went over.  "Look at this," she said.  "Golden Retrievers are supposed to be good for families with kids.  Labs are good for couples.  German Shepherds good for a single person.  And here is The Chow."  She pointed to the page and right there it said 'a no person breed.'

Yep.

                               ****

SCRIPT EDITING

This is a crucial procedure: it can mean the difference between a made movie and 117 pages of telephone scratch pad.

When the first draft is finished, make a copy file immediately, one you're not afraid to play with and then, cut it to the bone!  Be brutal.  If you're doing this right, you have likely cut 30 pages out.  I know, it's absurd, you've just cut the heart and soul out of it, what in God's name have you done!?

You can't get your breath, this is an atrocity, oh my God!  Breathe, breathe, it's gonna be all right.  This is not Forever.  It's just to see what it looks like.  In the giant scheme of things, It.  Will.  Be.  All Right.  You have the original full file and a back up right there, a few clicks away.

So here's what you do next.  Go back to the beginning of this massacred new bare bones version -- and put back maybe 10 or 15% for flow and reading ease.  And try to do it without going back to look at the original.  Restore, say, three cool lines.  No more!  Now your page count is back up to 100.  And you're breathing a little easier.

Told you.

You want the version with the least amount of stuff that will clutter up the view and allow the light to shine through, illuminating the strength of your story.

Now, either email or print out enough versions to give to some friends who will read it and give you notes.  Even though they might be wildly divergent, these notes can sometimes mean the difference between success and failure.

Have you cut so deeply, that no one can follow the story?  Have you over-written so much that no one wants to?  Are eyes glazing over?

As you debrief your friends, do not be defensive or morose.  Of course this is hard.  But they are helping you and the most they will get out of it is dinner or a thoughtful gift.  They just did you a huge favor.

In the overall process of writing your three-ring notebook monster (keep all the drafts all of the time), you will encounter many demons, many angels. And some that come dressed as their opposite.  These are very dangerous because while they seem so cool, in fact, they can derail the whole train.  They might be majestic stretches of prose, a jaw-dropping brilliant scene, hilarious dialogue that jumps off the page.

You know, the kind of stuff you want to stop people in the street to show them.  I call these 'my babies.'

May I tell you a story I once heard?

It was the summer of 1898.  Auguste Rodin, the premiere sculptor of his time, had just finished an enormous commission in plaster called "Monument to Balzac."  It was to be a historical figure of one of France's greatest writers, driven, tortured, wrapped in the huge dark cloud-like robe he wore when he wrote.  When it was okayed by the powers-that-be, it would be cast in bronze.

When Rodin finished but before he showed it, he invited the members of his masterclass in to see it.  They were euphoric in their praise.  Oh, Master, they cried, how stunning, how magnificent!  You have captured all of humanity in Balzac's hands.  His hands are perfect.  His  hands say it all.  On and on they went.  Hands, hands, hands.

Finally, Rodin thanked them and sent them home.  That night, by firelight, he went in with his hammer and a chisel, and chopped off both hands.  He had certainly taken pride in their creation; from the drawings that remain, deservedly so.  But that piece wasn't about hands.  It was about the man, his work, the whole.  And that is why today you see Balzac in his robe that seems to come down and cover his hands.

What matters is knowing that sometimes you have to kill your babies.  Because there can be enough, of great hands, even of chocolate mousse.

Wouldn't it be perfect if the story were true?  But who knows?  In his earlier "The Burghers of Calais," you will see six figures and seemingly about a hundred hands.  All ropey arms and hands, hands, hands.

But who the hell am I to question The Great Man?  I was just a screenwriter who wouldn't even race Jerry Lee Lewis down his driveway, backward.  Yet here is my secret; I am willing to learn from the highest and the lowest, the best and the worst.  Even from myself.  And apparently, so was Rodan.

See, I didn't come just to load the wagon.  I am here to get in that sucker and, as the sun comes up, drive it to Glory.  I already got the pretty girl.

Yee-hah!

#17. Phillip Browning and Jerry Lee. The actual writing.

#17.  Phillip Browning and Jerry Lee.  And the actual writing of a screenplay.

Even though I am a hard core Leftie and his politics were dead flat Libertarian, Phillip Browning was one of my favorite people ever.  He brought me slam up to two of my all-time musical heroes: Jerry Lee Lewis and Hank Williams.  And got me paid me for it!

Since, criminally, Phillip is not Googleable, I will tell you a little bit about him.  Or what I gathered.  He grew up in Taylorville, Illinois -- the heartland of America -- where he trained and raced champion trotting horses.

After a stint in Air Force intelligence, he found a GI Bill birth in the American Theatre Wing in New York City and into the company of Katherine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic.  Phillip played Cyrano in one of their many New York productions.  They told him he was going to be the new Montgomery Clift who had started in a similar situation with Lunt & Fontanne.  Time passes and we all discover that even Montgomery Clift cannot be Montgomery Clift, new or otherwise.

So Phillip runs that string out and somehow ends up in Los Angeles as an associate producer on the Sixties music hit TV show "Shindig!" where he made relationships with every musician in pop music.  They all did that show, even The Beatles.  Seeing them at their best and worst, Phillip knew the whole roster.

When I met him, he was working with Pierre Cossette, the godfather of the Grammys TV show who was starting a new venture, to produce Phillip's project of "Will Rogers at the Follies" for Broadway.  "The Rose" had just been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Fredrick Forrest and the mighty Bette (but not moi).  Yet there for about forty five minutes, I was on the A-list.  It was during one of those minutes, Phillip Browning called me.

He was oddly formal in the roiling sea of Hollywood shuck and jive.  And he had a strange conversational rhythm that I liked.  He told me that he and Pierre had optioned the rights to "Great Balls of Fire," a Jerry Lee Lewis biography seen through the eyes of his former 13-year-old wife and first cousin Myra Gale Lewis.  And "Hellfire" by the great Nick Tosches which I had already read was also in play somehow.  Would I be interested?

Oh, mon frere, does a cat have an ass?  Of course.

I knew all Jerry Lee's work, even the country years on Mercury.  "What Made Milwaukee Famous Has Made a Loser Out of Me:" how're you gonna get better than that?!  Hell, I'd even seen him play Iago in Jack Good's "Catch My Soul," the rock and roll "Othello" in the big theatre downtown L.A.! What a brilliant stroke of casting.  And even though you could see him moving his lips for everyone else's lines (he thought he had to memorize the entire play), he was still Jerry Lee, he took the stage like a Cobra, and sang like Satan's very own angel.  I thought he was great.

So I went in to talk to Pierre and Phillip.  Pierre was Santa Claus without the red suit and beard; always moving, always smiling, always looking over the top of his reader glasses.  A deal a minute: get Mike Ovitz, hold for line four, what's the name of that little hotel in the French Quarter?  Pierre introduced me to his wife, in to join him for lunch, as Mary Mother of Five.  In the coming years, I never heard him refer to her as anything else.

A little older than me, Phillip was part Cherokee with browner and more perfect skin than Cher.  Who he knew.  He had grey curly mid-length hair and looked like the better-looking third Everly Brother.  Both of whom he knew, as well.  And apparently he had loved "The Rose" which endeared him to me forever, natch.

So we walked down to Pink's hotdog stand and had our let's-make-a-deal lunch under the greasy sun umbrellas out back.  Those hot dogs are seriously good.  And I was going to work!

                                  ****

The first thing Phillip and I did was to fly to Memphis to visit Jerry Lee who lived across the Mississippi state line down in DeSoto County, I think it was in Hernando.  Maybe Nesbit.  Since we'd be doing a lot of driving, we rented a big old Lincoln with the first car-phone I had ever seen.  We bought all the insurance, reprogramed the radio, half to country, half to rock and roll, and took off.

Casa Jerry Lee was set off a county road about a quarter mile up a winding drive.  It was nice and all, but definitely not fancy.  Over the years, he had been beset with career disasters, personal tragedy, and massive tax problems.  Mr. Lewis, as they say, was no stranger to the rain.

The first thing we saw running down the driveway, growling and barking, was the rattiest old Chow dog I had ever seen.  Being mostly Chow myself, I usually find common ground with the breed but not this one.  His name turned out to be "Killer" and as Jerry Lee strolled up to our long, black Lincoln, he called him off.  The patchy black dog slunk away.  You could almost see the fleas hopping on and off in the afternoon sunlight.

The second before Phillip introduced me to this legend, I was hit with an overwhelming wave of cologne.  Paco Rabanne, I believe.

"My dog is a Chow," said Jerry Lee.  "They're the meanest dog in the world.  You could look that little fact up.  Killer'd tear Jim Crotchy's Junkyard Dog down to his fruity pink paw pads!  You don't know nothing about Chows, do ya."  Phillip smiled as I shook my head.

Little old me?

Jerry Lee's handshake was very firm so I met it with what I hoped was matching firmness.  He increased the pressure, so I did too.  Then, it became a Thing.  Tighter and tighter.  But this man used his hands for his living!  And I was the supplicant, so I surrendered as gracefully as a combat handshake will allow.  When it rains, I still have pain in my little finger.

Just then, an old woman came out of the kitchen door.  She went straight to Phillip and give him a huge hug.  Her name was Lottie and she had been taking care of Jerry Lee for many years.  Phillip had been here before.  The three of them started for the house.  Suddenly, Jerry Lee turned and looked back at me.  "Betcha a hundred bucks I can beat you in a foot race and I'll run backwards!"

I believe, being the scribe and all, my exact words were "Say what?!"

"Come on, writer-boy, let's do it!"  Lottie rolled her eyes.  Phillip was laughing.  "I stay in shape, I practice on Killer," Jerry Lee said.  "Come 'ere, Killer!"

The hapless old Chow dog stuck his head out of the open garage door.  With that, Jerry Lee Lewis, the one time Crown Prince of rock and roll, 50s teen idol, scandal monger, country music star, and seller of twenty-five million records, began to run backwards down the driveway.  "Come on, Killer, you chickenshit!"

The dog just sat down.  I headed for the kitchen door.  This was Day One.

Day Two started a little better.  While Jerry Lee played his portable Yamaha keyboard, carrying it from room to room through the clouds of Paco Rabanne, we started drinking and discussing what kind of bite our movie should take of his life.  Jerry didn't much care for the biographies done on him.  "I guess that weirdo Toshes got some of it right," he said referring to 'Hellfire.'

While he talked, he continued to play his keyboard turned down low and some of the melodies, the endlessly rolling improvised ideas were striking.  Some were so great they stopped Phillip and me, mid-sentence.  Jerry just kept playing.  The man, simply, is made out of music.

"Tell ya what I DON'T want in this movie, he said.  "I don't want a whole to-do about Jimmy Swaggart (in the headlines then for soliciting prostitutes and over-crying), or when I lost Stevie, or the IRS buttholes coming up with trucks and takin' everything, or gettin' drunk all the time, or about Myra's bein' thirteen or whatever when I married her -- I'm tired of that shit!  Let's just have me singin' songs, man.  Hell, it worked for Elvis!"  With that, he broke into "Caught in a Trap."  And it was flat out better than Elvis' version.

Still, a two hour Jerry Lee Lewis concert film?  With his history of utter brilliance and misrule?  I don't think so, Sparky.

We drank tequila until it ran out.  Then, the vodka, the bourbon, and finally, peach brandy.  If Phillip and I had stayed there much longer, we'd have been drinking lighter fluid.  Lottie had long since given up and gone to bed.  At one point I smelled a foul gaseous stink.  I looked around and saw Killer, the ratty old dog, half asleep and settled into an over-stuffed chair.  He opened his eyes and said quietly, "What the fuck're you looking at, writer-boy?"  I told Philip we had to get back to the hotel; I wasn't feeling well.  At all.

Phillip drove the first three or four miles; out in the country.  But when we hit the first little town, he faded fast.  "Can you drive, Puppy?  I'm about half drunk."  Are you kidding, dude?  I drove in Paris, France and most of Europe!

He pulled the Lincoln into an abandoned gas station.  The old sign said low test had been 32 cents a gallon. Remember that?  Taking deep cold night air breaths as I walked around the car to the driver's side, I tried to judge my intoxication.  But since I had never been this drunk and conscious, it was anybody's guess.

But bad luck's salvation was on my side.  As I went to pull back out on the main road, I decided to cut across this long, large puddle next to where a rack of pumps had been, couldn't be more than a couple inches deep, no prob.

CURCHUNK --

The Lincoln veered forward to the left, dropped down onto its frame and we were stuck dead.  Low gear, nothing.  Reverse, more nothing.

 I got out and suddenly was in water above my knees.  "Guess what, Pup," Phillip called out.  We won't have to drive!  We'll get towed..."  He called AAA on the car-phone and a half hour later we were jammed into massive tow truck's cab and headed back to Memphis, towing the wounded Lincoln behind us.  Phillip promptly went to sleep, leaving me to make conversation with the Triple-A guy.

"Y'all from California, huh?"  Yeah.  "What're you doin' in Hernando?"  Visiting Jerry Lee Lewis.  The guy snorted.  "I figured.  I'm out there at least once a month.  Did he show ya his '40 Ford with the Caddy engine?  Fastest thing in the county but he keeps blowing the motors, can't keep it running."  By this time, even though I knew the hot rod Ford was going to be part of the script, I could no longer keep my eyes open.  So I passed out.  But not before I'd had my first inkling that I might be...how shall I put this...

An alcoholic?

This was the end of Day Two.  I couldn't wait to get to Day Three to start drinking again!  Booze: it made you crazy, it took your reason, made your breath stink, it made you piss in the houseplants and, speaking of that little arena, it killed the performance part of the sex drive.  Death by confusion.  I hated everything about booze...except the actual drinking of it.

There were other, better days to be sure.

One was our visit to New Orleans where Jerry Lee closed a huge outdoor celebration at midnight.  Right in the middle of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," he leaned back, sucked in a huge breath...and inhaled a moth the size of a small bat!  Twenty thousand people all went wooooo as Jerry Lee kept banging the piano in perfect rhythm, coughing wildly, trying to wretch up that monstrous insect, second after second -- woooo, cough cough cough, plink plink plink, woooo -- and finally, he spit it out!  The crowd cheered, he finished the song, and had never missed a beat.

I saw this from backstage, fifteen feet away.  It was as an Herculean musical feat as ever I did see.

Let's just say the life of Jerry Lee Lewis is an embarrassment of triumphant and maladroit riches.  God dumped down talent and bad luck in equal measure upon this man.  Once I had the incident cards collected, I knew I was ready to start writing.  So I went home, turned on my IBM Correcting Selectric II and typed almost my second two favorite words back then

FADE IN:

And again, I was off to the rock and roll races.

                               ****

And here we come to the ACTUAL WRITING OF THE SCREENPLAY.  I'll come back to Jerry Lee and Phillip later.

As I am sure you know, talent is utterly evanescent.  It cannot be bought, caught, or taught in some class.  Talent is mostly about who you are, not what you want.

It has to do with your entire life up to this point; it's innate, a gift that not many have.  If you do, if you are one of the lucky ones, don't strut.  You are only talent's keeper, often just its maid.  Sometimes it comes extravagantly, sometimes it dries up and blows away.  But having the bones of a great story, its outline, will help enormously if the Muse suddenly falls in love with someone else and heads south.  One does not have to be covered up with talent to have a decent career; an evening of network television illustrates this.

Screenplays are not the best vehicle for "good writing" anyway.  Fiction is better served by those gifts.  When we start out, we often think good writing is flowery and purple, worked and whipped within an inch of its life, dripping with metaphors and deep meaning.  This usually leads to a kind of monkey vomit baroque style that hides rather than serves the story.

Scripts should be deceptively simple.  They are like a strip tease -- intended to elicit a cheap but real response that will glue the reader to the characters and the arc of their story.  You want everyone who reads your script to feel like they are its director, its star, its cinematographer, even its writer.  Aww, I could do this, you should think.  I could do better than this!

As you write, you should NOT be calling attention to yourself.

If you still have to do that, find a therapist or go into stand-up comedy.  As a screenwriter, you are calling attention to a story, so the fewer the fancy flourishes, the better.  Yet this is just a rule-of-thumb.

Some stories call out for those gymnastics just as some writers are born gymnasts.  But few and very few.  These artists live trick shot lives.  It would seldom occur to them to think about such things.  In my thirty years in that business, I've only met, like, two and they have no idea of why people make such a big deal out of it.  In fact they don't even know what 'it' is.

So write simply, write clearly.  Remember the Bauhaus architectural dictum: less is more.

Happily there are times when it will look like screenplay poetry.  And it ends up having the added attraction of a shorter, easier read.  When an executive is faced with fifteen scripts on a weekend, they will be grateful, maybe even more inclined to the shorter, simpler ones.  In my scripts, I used to leave one or two faint lipstick traces of the hotshitery as evidence but they were few and far between.  I knew I shouldn't have but, hey, I'm a poor prideful Hollywood sinner too.

Action director/writer Walter Hill's scripts are stunningly short, sometimes well under ninety pages.  But those high testosterone stories cover a lot of ground with less verbiage than most.  This guy was the 2nd A.D. on "Bullitt," man!

The process of this kind of storytelling shakes out into the classic pyramid, but turned upside down on its pointed little head.  At the bottom, we have the story teller, then above him, the story itself.  Finally above them, getting wider and wider, is the audience.  Movies and TV are art for the marketplace.  So don't forget your audience.  Even though you can't see any of their faces, they are there and they are real.  And they are subject to being moved.

                                ****
         
I only wish I could have moved more of them when I handed in my script of "Great Balls of Fire."  It started out so smoothly; I liked it, Phillip liked it, Pierre liked it, Mary, Mother of Five loved it, apparently the reader at ABC Films liked it.  And then it got to honcho Stu Samuels.

He at least had the graceful balls to call me up and tell me they wanted to go in a different direction followed by this:  "It was a good script, just not what we were looking for."

My buddy Mark Waxman once jokingly wanted to name his production company: Well, What Are You Looking For Then?

The next I heard of "Great Balls of Fire," it was another movie with Dennis Quade, Alec Baldwin, and Winona Ryder, directed by Jim McBride.  I bet it's good but I haven't found the nerve to see it. But whatever it was, I would never have to smell Paco Rabanne again.

So I folded my tent, got paid, and we all went on to different projects.  Six months later I was watching the Tony Awards show on TV when I saw Pierre walk up on that stage and pick up his Tony for smash hit "The Will Rogers Follies."  Two days later I got a call from Phillip.  "Chow Puppy, you know, you're our writer.  And Pierre and I are about to close a deal to do the life of a favorite of yours --Hank Williams.  Have you ever thought about writing for Broadway?"

I believe my exact words were, once again, "Say what?!"  But not even waiting for an answer, I quickly followed it with --

  Hank         Hank  HankHank           HankHank
   Hank       Hank   HankHank        Hank
    Hank     Hank    Hank             Hank
     Hank   Hank     Hank           Hank
      Hank Hank      HankHank           Hank
          Hank           HankHank                 Hank
          Hank           Hank                             Hank
          Hank           Hank                          Hank
          Hank           HankHank               Hank
          Hank           HankHank    HankHank

#16. The death of "Lazarus." And more about dialogue.

#16.  More dialogue about, um, dialogue.  And "Lazarus" finally dies.

There are many different ways of talking even though, for the script, you are doing all of it.  It still must have many voices, many cadences, many differences.  And they must line up correctly.

A high school dropout from Alabama who went to work in the mills when he was fifteen will not express himself in the same way a bond trader from Darien will.  In fact, that mill worker will probably not sound quite the same as his shift supervisor.  Listen to Tommy Lee Jones' character in the woefully underseen "The Valley of Elah" or "No Country For Old Men."  God, I'm glad I don't have to live in Cormack McCarthy's head.

One good way to make sure all your characters don't sound alike is to go back and read each character's lines, set off by themselves.  Or better yet, if you have actor friends, give the script to them to read.  This was hard for me.  But screw up your courage and do it; ask them what they think, really think.

When you get a movie into production, it will be difficult and very costly to set things right if the dialogue doesn't work.  Unless your star is Christopher Walken who it's been rumored only reads the script to get the gist of the story and then throws out his dialogue and just makes it up.  The story in     "Pulp Fiction" he tells about hiding his buddy's watch in the P.O.W. camp is great...whoever did it.

Dialogue is the first, but not necessarily the most crucial, window into the soul of your characters. But I still think its importance is keyed to the story it serves.  Otherwise it's just an acting exercise. This is a point David Mamet makes forcefully in his book to actors, "True and False."  The whole idea is for the reader to keep those pages turning.  Not to stop and admire the literary scenery.

So start lush and get spare.  Edit and cut, cut, cut.  I think a script or painting or poem is done is when you can't take any more out of it.  What do you think?

The next posting will deal with the actual writing of the screenplay.  Calling all angels...

                     ****

But first, a few stories about people "along the way" from whom I took great joy, learned some things, and had tons of fun.

Like the time in Paris that involved me, my buddy Richard Compton, and the Marvelous Marvin Schwartz, you know, Good Marvin.

Since he had a fairly rich development deal with Fox, Marvin told me and Richard that we should come up with some cool story and pitch it to him.  He would pay us to develop it and then, we would make the movie and all grow old and rich together.

Here is what I can remember of "Lazarus," the story I came up with.  The protagonist was an old Hell's Angel, just out of prison for his involvement in a shooting in a rock and roll club like The Roxy on Sunset.  Laz and two of his buddies had been set upon by some early Euro-trash and their body guards.  Who had guns.  It left one of Lazarus's buddies in a wheelchair for life and another in Hell forever.  The Europeans bought their way out of the mess, the Angels got sent to San Quentin.

When they got out, during the 24 hours of tequila, nookie, and dope, they began to plan their revenge (always a good plot engine, said Marvin).  They would crate and air freight their choppers to Paris where they would hunt down the assholes who had ambushed them.

There were two things that positively electrified Marvin in this pitch: The head Angel, Lazarus, I would write for Lee Marvin.  And the other element that made him jump was -- for a plot reason I mercifully cannot recall -- that they teamed up with some French and German Hell's Angels chapters (man, we could get Klaus Kinsky and Belmondo!) to rob three Swiss banks AT THE SAME TIME.  Caper city!  Jeez, you wonder why Dostoyevsky never thought of this.

"I can see the 1-sheet!" Marvin said.

"But before we make the deal, I'll get travel money from the studio to send you guys to Europe to Hoover up everything in sight we might be able to use, like those corkscrew Swiss mountain roads filled with roaring choppers!  Whatya say?!"

I'd owned and ridden bikes for years; the aforementioned BMWs and the haul ass Ducati stranded in Mexico.  But the only chopper I ever had was a Veg-o-matic.  Nevertheless, I was ready to go and two days later, Richard (with his new French wife, Fast Annie) and I were on a plane, headed into a rising sun.

A few words about Annie.

Richard had met her when she was a working au pair girl for an A-list Brit transplant writer/director in Beverly Hills.  The Brit's three kids were well known little hellions so Annie knew how to handle things when the crazies busted loose.  She was quick, cute, young, and she thought her new husband Richard was the Second Coming.  In many ways, she was the perfect wife for a director.

Three weeks earlier, Annie'd had major minor surgery to deal with an ovarian cyst.  At her insistence, the doctor had given his reluctant permission to fly.  But we had to take it easy, take precautions.  Of course we would, certainly.  "And remember to take your prescriptions.  This one might make you sleepy but you have to take it."

When we landed in Paris, Fast Annie was in heaven; she was home where everybody spoke French, smoked Gitanes, and drank ten gallons of coffee a day.  We tagged along behind her like puppies (easy for me, of course) as she tore through one arrondissement after another: Lee Marvin and the Hell's Angels at the Eiffel Tower, at Notre Dame, at the Crazy Horse.  In a traffic jam, being flailed by an enraged grandmother with a loaf of bread!

Later that day, we rented an old Mercedes 600, got half a dozen maps to Switzerland, put Annie in the back seat to stretch out with her travel pillow where she was fast asleep before we pulled out of the lot.

Richard and I had both driven in Los Angeles for years so we thought we were combat hardened cowboys.  But, buddy, Paris France is like a Daytona 500 stock car finish.  We just missed death a whole raft of times before we hit the Swiss border a day later and Annie slept through it all.  Every now and then, she'd wake up to say, "Puppee, I muss slep more.  Wake me when we get to Surrik."

We loved Switzerland.  Who doesn't?  Maybe Orson Welles, what with all those cuckoo clocks.

In Zurich, I thought I'd be able to get plenty of information on the so-called secret Swiss banks.  Silly me.  Apparently, I'd forgotten what the word 'secret' meant.  Nobody in those days before Google would say ANYTHING, they'd just look at me with cold eyes and a half smile.  As I told them it was for a 20th Century Fox movie, the smile faded.  A Hollywood movie with Lee Marvin as a Hell's Angel!  They asked us to leave.

Back in Paris, we'd heard that the Swiss' main competition for this kind of banking was just over there in the land-locked micro-state 'country' of Lichtenstein.  We had some guide book that told the fanciful story of the Prince, a constitutional monarch, actually coming down from his castle to -- get this -- play darts in the local pub with his subjects.  And we believed it!

When we arrived in Vaduz, Lichtenstein's layer cake capitol, it was sunset and Richard and I were whipped.  But recently awakened Fast Annie was up and running.  All in French, she found us two rooms in a beautiful little hotel, got us booked for dinner in some snazzy restaurant, then located the very pub that the King (we're so Hollywood we'd already promoted him from Prince), was said to dart in.  "Come on," she urged.  "I'll bet zee King is in there right now!  We can ask him about banks."

Too many hours and Scotches later, no King.  On our way back to the Mercedes, we looked up the hill to the castle on the huge rock outcropping.  It was brightly illuminated by hundreds of mercury vapor lights.  Finally, half drunk and fully exhausted, I yelled up the hill, "Kingy, come down and play darts with us, man!  We're buyin'!"  Then Richard started to take it up.

Suddenly, we heard sirens as Annie pulled us into the car and drove us back to the hotel.  All the way, Richard and I made up songs about how great she was.

But that night, something slowed way down inside Fast Annie.

When we woke up the next morning, she was already awake, flushed and grimacing, doubled over in pain.  "Something is wrong wiv me.  Take me back to Paris, Reechard.  Please..."  First we took her to a local clinic for some pain meds.  Lichtenstein is tiny, about 60 square miles, maybe 30,000 people.  The richest country per capita on earth, they were extremely accommodating but spoke mostly German which none of us understood.

"Take me to Paris," Annie kept saying.

So we did.  But I have no clear memory of how.  Maybe we turned the car in and went high speed rail but I don't know.  Just that suddenly, it was all hands on deck.

Hell's Angels and darts with Kingy were forgotten as, suddenly without his French bride, Richard the director took over.  And that's what we needed.  Writers, process oriented, see too much; lost in the pixels, every road looks the same and yet different and each one has endless possibilites and a story behind each and blah blah blah.  Directors, goal oriented, see the way through it, to it.

Back in Paris, we ran into the most important fact about the big central hospital: it was all Catholic, all the time.  The place smelled like Clorox and was awash with nuns and their white billowing habits and stern, scrubbed red faces.  They seemed to stand as the first line of defense between the patients and the too few actual doctors.

After she'd been seen, Annie told us she explained to the ER nuns that the ovarian surgery had taken place in America.  Not good.  In California.  Worse.  In Los Angeles.  Worst of all.  She told us the nuns had become convinced she was lying, that she was hiding an abortion!

And that is why Annie in her hospital bed was given an injection of antibiotics and was told there was no room available for her.  She was finally pushed out into a long porch, under a roof to be sure, but completely open to the elements on one side.  No wall, no windows.  Just air.  Richard and I gathered around her bed as it began to snow.

I am not making this up.

At ten that night, Richard and I tried to wheel Annie's bed back inside but were stopped by a nun and an orderly.  Richard found a pay-phone and called the American embassy and briefly told them the story (if I'd made the call, I'd still be explaining it to them).  He tried to lodge a formal complaint and was told since it was after business hours, to call back in the morning.

So around midnight we went in and stole blankets from empty rooms, took them back out on the porch where we all hunkered down for the night.  About four, we tried to sneak her inside again, and again to no avail.

Sometime during that night, I realized there are some things more important than a screenplay.  When I thought of it, there was nothing left in my tank, my brain or heart for it.  All its half-cocked absurdities carried it away.  It didn't even wave bye-bye.  Just gone; in a long dark night in the City of Light.

So the next morning as Annie was fitfully sleeping, Richard and I ate oranges and dry cereal we stole from the hospital cafeteria.  Richard said, "Puppy, I gotta get my wife back to L.A., to her doctor at Cedars.  This place is going to kill her."  I told him WE would get her home.  I was coming, too.   Annie had two hands; he'd hold one, I'd hold the other.  This time, Lazarus was going to stay dead.

Eighteen hours later in L.A., Annie was in Cedars Sinai Hospital, Richard and I were across Beverly Blvd. in Jerry's deli, slurping down chicken soups.

The next day we drove in to Fox to confess to Marvin we had nothing on "Lazarus."  We had gone looking for a Swiss bank robbing, revenge bent Hell's Angel and found a very sick French girl in crisis who needed to come home immediately.

He was not thrilled but he understood when we told him all what had happened.  He had to swallow hard, but he got it.  Because he was Good Marvin.  And was a sucker for a good image.  I think it was the light dusting of snow on Annie's green hospital blankets as her husband and his screenwriter slept scrunched down on porch chairs next to her.

Every once in a while, I dream about those Goddamn French nuns.

Oh, and Annie fully recovered, Richard went on to direct hundreds of hours of episodic network TV, hell, he directed the pilot of "Baywatch," ka-ching, and the movie "Macon County Line" which made a ton of money, but it didn't keep them from getting divorced and the next time I saw Annie she was sixty at Richard's funeral some years ago.

Oddly, I love getting old.  I do.  But time's payback can be a bitch.  And I miss my friend Richard.

#15. Rock & roll hellfire, part 2. "The Rose," SHE LIVES!

#`15.  Rock & roll hellfire, part 2.  "The Rose,"  SHE LIVES!

Handing in a first draft is a butt-clenching process.  It happens quickly but feels like forever.

You've been with it, all alone for months; those characters living and dying on the page, rippling through your dreams, sucking up the air wherever you are.  It's a total takeover of trial and error.

I often worked ten hours a day, seven days a week, giving it everything I had.  And some I didn't.

This wasn't exactly work work, you know, like carrying sheetrock or slinging huge blocks of ice in a peach packing shed (both of which I'd done).  But it was so fulfilling, so concentrated that I had to leave notes for myself to vacuum, to water the houseplants, to change the cat litter...notes to remind myself to make more coffee, shower, and eat.   One one of my lists, it actually said "make list."  It seemed the only thing I could do on my own was write, pee, and smoke.

Almost every project I did in my thirty years, at some point seemed like a doomed good idea that had utterly consumed me on its way south.  Looking back on it, it's probably how I motivated myself until I wrote FADE OUT and then my two favorite words: THE END.

Finally, the first draft is over.  Suddenly all the blinds are torn open, the sunlight floods in from a dozen windows, and you are standing, pear-shaped and naked, in the middle of a strange room, filled with people who all turn and say sourly, "A hundred-and-fifty-one pages?"  Now the relief turns into Fear and its psycho twin, Panic.  Most scripts are a hundred-and-twenty pages.

In those pre-computer years, the idea of re-typing it to polish and cut, was completely overwhelming. I'm a 'touch typist' but slow,  s  l  o  w.  Most writer deals guarantee a first draft and two sets of revisions: I'd wait and get some perspective on this moose.  Hell with it, I'm handing in.  Plus which, I need to get paid.

I stopped at the Farmers Market to get some nerve-building coffee and everyone seemed to be eyeballing me sideways, even June, the weird coffee lady who puts her makeup on with a garden trowel.  Aren't scripts supposed to be shorter, she seemed to be asking.  And yours is how long?  "Do you want room for cream?"

My drive up Olympic Blvd to Fox seemed to take a week.  At this point the guards at the main gate knew me as the long haired writer in the old Woody who fed the backlot feral cats.  Normally, they waved me through.  Not this time.  One of the guards came to my window with a clipboard, checked me, checked the board, nodded.  "Handing in today, huh?"  Yeah.  "Good luck."

Now my heart was pounding, I had a headache, my mouth was dry, and my old car radio suddenly quit right in the middle of Rod Stewart's donut song.  "Every picture tells a story, donut," he wailed and then, silence.

In my short time as a screenwriter, I'd already had two Marvins, both at Fox, just down the hall from each other.  One was Marvin Schwartz, Good Marvin that I wrote about mostly in #12, a man I loved and admired.  This new one was clearly Bad Marvin...

Who, even though he knew I was coming in, was at a lunch meeting off the lot so I handed my script into his secretary.  This was before I learned never to do that.  She took it then weighed it in her hand and her eyes got big.  By this time, I was sweating in places I had never sweated.  That script had my sum total of rock and roll experience and imagination.  And I knew it was simultaneously not enough and WAY too much.

I started to take it back from her.  Her hand tightened.  I pulled, she pulled harder and snatched it away.  Quickly, she put in in one of her desk drawers, locked it, and dropped the little key down her secretarial showbiz cleavage.  "You'll get used to it," she said.  "In time."

But I never did.

                             ****

Back home, even my cats were looking at me suspiciously.  That cut it!

I sat down at my desk and went to work on the copy of the script I had made before I drove to Fox.  Earlier that year, I had bought my own copy machine!  It was absurdly expensive, orange and huge, and pulled so much juice, when you turned it on, the lights dimmed for a second.  It was like the electric chair in those prison movies: "They're fryin' Lefty," I said every single time.  But, baby, I loved that machine and I always had copies, one of which I mailed the next day to the Writers Guild script registration department.  Something I'd learned from my "Last American Hero" debacle.

Then, I started polishing, cutting, adding, re-arranging, cutting some more, correcting typos (stiffening one page with so much White-out, you could hold it out straight by the goddamn corner).  And for a while it actually seemed to get better.

But longer; counting my A and B pages, I now had 164 pages.  Oh, no.

Too much dialogue, too many 'good lines,' too many funny but pointless stories.  I was making it worse by making it better!  And even though I had officially handed it in to Worth, I was dead flat afraid to show it to any of my friends, a chronic disease with me.

So I waited.

And waited.

Then somewhere, someone heard that 20th Century Fox's president's long-haired son had convinced the old man that "The Rose" was a cool worthwhile project and even though they were looking for a new writer (shit!), it seemed now to have what they call a flashing green light!  As my agent was putting me up for new jobs based on the (ha ha) success of this last one.  Someone heard that one of the writers Fox went out to was the legendary Frank Pierson.  Apparently he sent it back with a note that said while he would love to have their money, his advice was to shoot it exactly as written, it didn't need him or anyone else.

Umm, that was a pretty good day.

Then -- still no word of any kind from Worth -- I read in the trades, Fox had hired Mark Rydell, a director with actual credits, some of them impressive.  By now, for reasons best known to drunken Hollywood angels, my agent J.P. had gotten me another job and I was off and running down some new tangent.  Hollywood script development is a booming but wild hair business.

So they were now making their movie.  And, as my name occasionally appeared in their publicity, I kept getting new job offers which re-tracked my mind on those things and the little house I'd bought up in Laurel Canyon; I G.I.ed it for under fifty grand!  It only had one bathroom but it had a washer and a dryer!  My first house, formerly owned by a former porn star named Rick Cassidy.  And it had roses in he garden.  I took it as an omen.  Y'know...Roses?  Where do I sign, baby?!

Then, I got a phone call from my mother back in North Carolina.  She had just read in Bob Thomas' column in the Asheville Citizen Times that "somebody named Betty Midler is starring in Fox's 'The Rose.'  Is that your movie, Puppy?"  Yeah, Mom.  I think it is.

About four seconds after I'd hung up from my mother's call, I telephoned Worth at Fox.  And surprise, surprise --

He wouldn't take my call.

In fact I never heard from him again.  But after someone had passed me a copy of the script (as it now stood), oh my, how I wanted to.  I had gotten no farther than the rewritten title page to discover my name nowhere on it.

Nowhere.

As I recall, it said "A Marvin Worth film.  Written by Marvin Worth and Michael Cimino and Bo Goldman.  From an idea by Marvin Worth.  Producer -- Marvin Worth.  For Marvin Worth Films @ 20th Century Fox."  But no Chow Puppy.  Not anywhere?

No.

First of all, it's not unheard of for such a naked credit crab by a producer.  They've often been with the script in all it's incarnations for so long and they are so familiar with it, they begin to think it's theirs.  And in the beginning of his career, Worth had been a writer, so his water just sort of settled that way.  But there is NO SUCH THING as an "idea by" credit.  "Written by," "Story by," and "Screenplay by," that's pretty much it.

Man, I was steaming.

So I called my lawyer Barry.  Then, he was steaming.  After a very short and tightly focussed phone call he made to Worth the following day, Barry was messengered a new title page and a signed agreement that subsequently attached it to all scripts of "The Rose" on which "idea by" was eliminated, about half the other Worth credits disappeared and my name was added to the growing list of writers.

After I read the current "Rose" script, I thought it was pretty okay.  There was lots of my work still in it and some new stuff that was real good.  Later I found out most of it had come from Bo Goldman who has a cottage industry in Academy Awards.  Dude can write.  I say if you're going to get rewritten, please God, let it be by somebody great.  That way your friends might think it was you.

Then, shooting was finally over and cast and crew were coming home.

When it came time for the pre-release Writers Guild credit arbitration, I began to prepare my case.   This time I hired a friend named Cathleen Summers who drove a little red car and had cats and who was real pretty and so smart she had at least two brains, one of them purely for screenplays.  She guided my brief, chapter and verse, to what I considered a successful conclusion: Screenplay by Chow Puppy and Bo Goldman, Story by Chow Puppy.  And after a week it became official.

Aww-RIGHT!  And thank God for Cathleen Summers.

                         ****

As an invited bunch of us got off the plane in Dallas to see the sneak preview of "The Rose," we passed a electronic billboard that announced that the Dow Jones had just cracked 700!  THAT'S how long ago this was.

It was the first time I had ever seen any part of the movie; my heart was hammering so loud, I thought surely they'd put me in the projection booth.  Calm down, breathe, in and out, as the lights came down and the movie started.

Holy suckaroonie: 35MM, color, Cinemascope, mag stereo sound, even the little effects like a limo door slamming seemed four dimensional!  And suddenly, there she was -- tiny Bette Midler staggering down the tour plane's stairs, half drunk, a little skimpy sixties dress clinging to her, a huge floppy hat bent low over her dark glasses as her manager, Alan Bates, looked at his rock and roll wreck with disgust.

It was everything I dreamed it would be.  And then the titles began.  Wow.  Look at all those names, all those people in this movie I wrote.  I was flying.  They save the last titles for Writer(s), Producer(s), and Director.  When the writer(s) titles came up --

       THEY HAD SPELLED MY NAME WRONG.
     
Both times!  My blood actually ran cold.  And I am embarrassed to say that it was like ten minutes until the power of Midler's cyclonic performance pulled me back into the story, into the sweep of the movie.

The preview audience seemed to like it, even with its sad ending, and the dreaded opinion cards were good enough so the trip back to L.A. was a happy relief for all.

In fact my relief was so happy, two days later I went out and leased a Cadillac Seville.  God, I loved my little house and Caddy; it's true, I'm a hillbilly.  But a by-God American one!

When my lawyer Barry brought it to their attention, Fox apologized all over the place about misspelling my name in the titles, changed it at no small cost to them and then sent a huge floral arrangement to my house in the shape of the corrected letter.  For a while, it looked like a Mafia funeral in my living room.  Until my cats zeroed in on it.  Then it looked more like the crime scene.

"The Rose" got some great reviews and some just meh.  And one from a former restaurant critic who absolutely hated it.  But Bette got the cover of "Rolling Stone" with an iconic shot by Annie Liebovitz and was universally praised for this courageous performance in her first film.  She still says it's her favorite.

It opened in Westwood and the lines went down the block.  I only drove by five or six times.  I swear.  For a long time (maybe even still) all its makers rode on the rocket coat-tails of Bette, the masterpiece song by Amanda McBroom, and its "dark" ending.

I happened to be in New York when "The Rose" opened there.  Bette had started in the NYC baths, was a Big Apple darling, so it was a huge deal.  My friend Jim Hart took me down to Times Square to see the campaign Fox had mounted.  It was epic.  The billboard took up what seemed like several buildings and the square itself.  It had everything but the Camel guy blowing smoke rings.  The display was so big, from down on the street, you could actually see my name as screenwriter.

And do you know, for about five minutes there, I was happy.

It was later that night I realized -- thank God -- that no matter how much praise I got, it would never really be enough.  Because, for me, it only lasts about five minutes.  Tops.  So I would have to let that go and take my joy from the work itself, from the actual doing of it.  And some of the people I would meet along the way.  The Farrellys, Tony Bill, Mark Waxman, Hannah Hempstead, Warren Miller, Gilda Stratton, the Dunne family...

Which changed everything.  I was finally out of that rock and roll hellfire.  But this was Hollywood, Jake.  And I'm me.

So of course, I immediately found a new one...which lasts until today.

Because I got sole story credit on "The Rose" when some people thought it'd possibly make an interesting Broadway type musical, I controlled the rights with Fox.  So who were we to argue with them?

This is where I first encountered manager Pamela Cooper, daughter of the legendary Frank Cooper, the guy who discovered Frank Sinatra!  She thought "The Rose" on Broadway was pretty good idea and signed on.

Still riding on Amanda McBroom and Bette's coattails, we fielded all kinds of offers: from London, from Sweden, from Australia, from Japan, from The Beatles' musical producer's son, from some actual track record folks who thought they might have famous unnamed pop star interested...right up until Ms. Unnamed broke up with her long term boyfriend and maybe saw the first draft script for the new "A Star Is Born" and got a good look at blue-eyed Bradley.

Hey, I never said her name.

But the one who put up some money to have me go to work on it, to develop it further was Karen, a whirlwind singer-florist who stuck with me through thick and thin, as we tarted our version around to every last human in America.  If we didn't contact you, check your unread emails.

Once that went south, Pamela found a well-known producer named Gail Berman.  She had a decades long relationship with Fox -- somewhere between helpful and crucial -- the check cleared and we got started all over again, this time without my so-called participation.  Which is where it rests now.

Karen is going to sell flowers and run for Mayor of Newark, Pamela's clients are working and she herself was nominated for a Tony for "Come From Away."  And I hope Gail will have a wild shot-in-the-dark success with "The Rose" somewhere, sometime in its new incarnation.  These are tough minded, dedicated women, my favorite kind.  But I would like to see it all happen before they have to wheel me down the aisle in an iron lung with a drool cup.

But now, I'm just here.  Hanging around, telling you these stories, loving my wife, grateful for my life and friends.  Much of which is fueled by the Writers Guild of America who kept everyone honest, and the men who recognized the car and filled the gas tank, Richard Moyer and Barry Beckerman.

Thanks again, guys.

#14. Rock & roll hellfire part 1. And words about dialogue

#14.  The Rose's rock & roll hellfire, part one.  And some words about dialogue.

                          "I ran the hellfire road
                   to chase the sweet smell of sin."

                 J. Mellencamp  'Troubled Man'

We were hippies once...and young.

We had pony tails.  And loved rock and roll.  And had been front row center for the entire  Monterey Pop Festival.  Netflix it; that's us four UCLA film schoolers in American flag shirts and black cowboy hats shooting my so-called thesis film.  We got half a page in color in Time Magazine's 1967 hippie issue!  My sister was thrilled, my southern small town parents were mortified.

Ten years later I was pinballing my way though Hollywood when agent John Ptak heard they were looking for a writer at 20th Century Fox for a Janis Joplin prototype rock and roll crash-and-burn story.  At this point, my hippie drag was wearing a little thin, even for me, but J.P. and I figured what the hell.  Once more into the breach!

So I threw my blue Bahne skateboard in the way-back, jumped in my '42 Ford woodie, and drove to Fox to meet producer Marvin Worth.

I think our simultaneous four word thought bubbles were "Are you shittin' me?!"  I was in a faded tie-dye shirt, skinny jeans, Fairchild moccasins, and my black cowboy hat with its American flag hatband.  I had a lit Winston clamped in my teeth.  I am cringing as I write this.

Marvin Worth was dressed in a beige cashmere turtleneck, a $300 pair of slacks, Italian loafers, and wore, around his neck what must have been a four pound silver Ankh, popular in those days with hep cat businessmen.

We probably should have just blown taps right then.  Neither of us could quite hide the look of disgust.  But neither could we hide the fact that both of us got, well, curiouser and curiouser.  So he half heartedly motioned me in and I barely made my way to a stuffed chair and we began our meeting.

They didn't have the data-urping internet in those dim days, so all we had to go on was reputation and rumor.

Worth seemed to be in his sixties with his perfectly done Prince Valiant long hair and his buffed and manicured nails.  I recently Googled him to discover he was only 12 years older than me!  In those days, I thought of myself as Young -- drinking, smoking dope, running around, no kids because I WAS THE KID!  I had two cats named Tector and Lyle and an empty refrigerator and a waterbed and a Mickey Mouse rug in the bathroom (still got it) and a skateboard, man.  The only thing I could cook from almost scratch was a Tater Tot omelet.

Is this not a kid?

Worth seemed so old.  And even though he'd had produced and managed the legendary Lenny Bruce (a complete hero of mine; I could do all his routines including Fatboy's Used Car Lot), I couldn't quite get past Worth's big shot bit.  To be fair, I'm pretty sure he felt the same way about me.

We looked at each other and slowly began to talk.  I found out what he wanted, he found out what he might be able to get.  And although we never became friendly, never lost the basic distrust from that first impression, we found a kind of peace with it, made the deal, and went to work.  Such are the sometime residents in that Hollywood Hotel.  In the end, with significant help, we put on a fairly successful party/movie down in the ballroom.  It was called "The Rose."

After my deal closed, Worth and Fox hired John Byrne Cooke (broadcast legend Alistair's son) a former bluegrass musician who had worked for the famous gonif manager Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan, The Band, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Odetta, Paul Butterfield, Janis Joplin).  During that period, John had been the road manager for Janis and had stories for days.

A good natured guy, he also had a four digit I.Q., made tri-lingual puns, could read upside down and backwards, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of music.  He was the first to notice that my parent's  zip code -- 28782 -- was a palindrome!  Over the next five months, he gave me much.

Like his notes he'd made over the years, access to his recollections and stories, and a New York introduction to Janis' band, producer John Simon, together again in the studio to work the tracks of her memorial 'final album.'

However thanks to my substance abuse and being swept away by time and events, here the memory begins to shake and cough.  So I will just say I learned some things thrilling, boring, even unpleasant about the record business.  From sung and unsung rock and roll heroes.

Over the years, I have come to spend some time with rock and rollers: Jim Morrison of The Doors, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, to name three.  Here is what I learned.  They are brilliant, gifted, and utterly damaged.  When they are at their zenith, very, very few say "no" to them.

They end up as children who throw spectacular autonomy tantrums to get their way.  After a while, just the threat of this is usually enough.  It becomes habituated behavior whose wheels are lubed by staggering amounts of money.  The music can be great but make no mistake, fame is a kind of stage four cancer.  With occasional fun.

Here is an illustrative (and perhaps apocryphal) story.  When San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane hit it big, I mean real big, "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" had been on the charts for months, Grace Slick and Marty Balin were in Los Angeles doing business when they got their first massive check.  Wowee wow, look at all them zeros!  They were taken forthwith to a Beverly Hills exotic car dealership down on Wilshire.

Where not a single one of the car salesmen would come over to help them.  And Grace was gorgeous!  But this was 1967 and to the staff, they were just a couple of no account hippies off the street.

Grace fumed.  She steamed.  And then she exploded.  Grabbing a cast iron base from one of the Aston Martin signs, she began to beat the steel grey DB-5 in a fury.  The first blows froze everyone cold.  They they all lept into action, running for her screaming "STOP!  What the hell are doing?!"

Grace calmly dropped the cast iron base the concrete floor and smiled sweetly.  "My name is Grace Slick, motherfucker and I want this car."  With that she pulled the RCA check out of her purse and showed it to them.  "All fixed up.  By tomorrow at five."

This story widely made the rounds: no clue if it's true.  But the underlying message is clear.  Fair is fair.  Money is money.  And I want what I want when I want it.  One pill makes you larger...

So with a whole raft of these kinds of stories and some vaguer ideas, I went to work on an outline, a kind of information dump, to see what I had.

A few years earlier, in the barely imaginable Time Before Computers, I had bought an IBM Correcting Selectric II typewriter, and it had become the new star of my life.  There was something mystical about its hum when you turned on; it painlessly opened a vein for me every time and suddenly my fingers were flying over the keys and the little silver printing 'golf ball' was chattering away, page after page.

May Rose Foster was going to be a glorious, out of control southern girl rock and roll singer at the top of her career.  She had been, as they say, rode hard and put up wet.  And now she was completely exhausted, worn out by the non stop tours, endless hours in the studio, the business she didn't really understand, interview after interview where they never quoted you right, the booze and drugs, the parade of nameless men...and women, and very little normal human contact.  She was always hustled from place to place by a phalanx of well-intentioned robots who treated her like a diseased queen.

She wanted a year off.  On her own.  To get well, to read, and to write new songs.  To recharge the batteries.  To find her creative center again.  Maybe in a little mountain cabin by a creek...

No one wanted any part of this.

Her millionaire manager Rudge Campbell (a British Albert Grossman type) had a plan to kill all of it.  He would guilt trip her, wear her down, threaten to replace her band, and cause her friends to betray her.  Then he would move to cancel the one concert venue she wanted, her "homecoming," all to turn her back into the golden-egg-laying goose.  He would make it all right again.  He would save the day.  He would save her.

It was always assumed that we were modeling our star after Janis Joplin.  True to some extent.  But to an old drama-junkie jazzbo like me, first there was Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, Peggy Lee,  Anita O'day, and even the short career and lost anguish of Johnny Ray.  I saw the Rose in all of them.

So I had my protagonist and my antagonist.  I had two clear characters (at least to me) and, most importantly, I had conflict.  And, of course, they had history.  Now it was time for me to invent the other characters, the every day events, scenes, and some kind of resolution.  Now the fun would start.  Runners take your marks...

This was in the days before Syd Field, before I really knew what structure was.  But let's be honest; it was also more fun.  The old Twain/Gottlieb writers' koan -- if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there -- had never been more true.  But mamma mia, I saw lots of wondrous stuff wandering on my Any Road, my rock and roll midnight freeway to hell.

I took off ramps, on ramps, overpasses, underpasses, rest areas; I even took runaway truck pull-offs!  Because I had left town with no map, and to flog the metaphor further, I tried to stay within sight of my freeway but it didn't always work.

You get happy and tranced, writing some scene that has absolutely no business in your story but the wasted time and effort is so enjoyable.  And my Selectric II printer ball couldn't have cared less.  He was just happy to be jumpin'.  I named him Russell Dehon and through the hypnotic hum, I could often hear him singing bebop a'lula, you mah baby!

So, lots of blind alleys.

But in some of those I found Sarah, an old lover of Rose's.  And Houston Dyer, an AWOL Silver Star winning Army combat vet on the run from Vietnam.  I found Dennis, Rose's road manager who was most like John Cooke.  I found Tiny and Mal, young soldiers on leave before their posting to Southeast Asia, rabid Rose fans, thrilled to get on the Tour plane with her.  I found her band, wild boogying horn dogs and all last named after former U.C.L.A. quarterbacks.  Hey, be true to your school.

Since I seemed to have most of my characters, I thought well, it'll be smooth sailing now.  I guess I can start.  Just see how and where it wanted to go.  You know, like novelists, real writers.  I'll let my characters talk for a while.  They'll show me where they want to go.
 
B.F.M.  Big fucking mistake.

Because like children left to their own devices, they're so happy to be up and running, they'll say anything.  Endlessly.  And here, for a bit, we are going back to THE SCREENPLAY.  Because where we left off if you recall was -- tah dah --

                 DIALOGUE

Many people think that dialogue is all that screenwriters write.  Until they read their first script (no easy task, believe me).  There is where they discover the whole movie; the story, the motivation, the  characters, the costumes, the way things look, the action sequences, and -- yes -- the dialogue.  In other words, the whole nine.

In a good script, it's nearly all there.  Or arrows that clearly point to it.

Someone who can write good dialogue has an odd gift that settles somewhere between the ear and the typing fingers.  It's fairly important but not crucial.  There are very good writers who have a tin ear for talk.  But if you can do it, you will find a niche in Hollywood.  Because characters tell who they are and what they think by what they say...or don't say.

As dialogue seemed to be a comparative long suit, I gratefully accepted its gift and turned my concerns toward structure, an area more troubling for me.  And it was my first attempts on "The Rose" that made this clear.  My peeps wouldn't stop talking!  Just blah blah blah.  After I had a stack of pages of this mess, I stopped typing, nearly out of breath myself.  

Going back through it, I uncovered about three lines that had some actual meaning, that revealed something, that I would keep.  One of them was the shortest sentence in the English language, just two letters long.  It was a woman saying "no."  I figured at this rate, it would take me about six years for a first draft instead of the projected six weeks.

About here is where the 3X5 scene cards began to look good.

Fortunately, I knew where the story started, I knew some of the stuff in the middle, and I knew where it ended.  Although then, I was not sure where SHE ended.  That came later.

Once I had a collection of possible scenes, I numbered them (as you recall) in pencil and push-pinned them to a bulletin board.  After I had rewritten the cards many times and switched them around and around and around, even though Sid Field hadn't written his book yet (come on, Syd, get busy!) I knew I had something up there that looked like a movie.  God, what a feeling.

It was that joyousness that propelled me into

FADE IN:

EXT. DALTON, GEORGIA - DAY

Your carpet probably came from this sleepy midsize town.  It has a well-defined class system -- race, money, and the railroad tracks -- with cotillions, cockfights, stock car hero Cotton Ravan, bankers in their sweat through seersucker suits, and The Rose.

It's a hot smokey day in late summer.

                  ****

I spent the next month and a half alone with my cats in my home office in the most exhilarating creative free flight I had ever known.  I believe if you are doing something you love, reach out with both hands.  My face hurt from smiling.

But, as bad times come to an end, so do good times.  Turned out that was what my script was about.  And keeping that balance was about to become a mess.  For both of us.  Because I had finally finished my first draft: standing there on the edge of the Hellfire Highway.

Where we'll start next time in Part 2.
                  

#13. Lunch with Bobby. And the wealth of charachters.

#13.  Lunch with Bobby.  The Cookie Jones.  And the wealth of flawed characters.

And God said, let there be producers!  So the poor screenwriters will have something to do after they get home from morning coffee at the Farmer's Market.

It was back in the mid-Seventies when ICM agents Mike Medavoy and John Ptak lined me and director Philip Kaufman up for a project-pitch lunch with Bobby.

These lunch (and sometimes breakfast) meetings are classic; the big shot producer or executive takes the hot(ish) writer and/or director out for a meal where he (or she) pulls up a stool and milks them for all they're worth.

The big shot writes off the lunches as development costs.  These used to be known as The Three Martini Lunch.  By the time we got there, they had morphed into The Two Bottles of Cheval Blanc Lunch.  The write off remained the same.

Bobby was the son of a famous art-collecting industrialist who will be headlined in ANY history of Pre War America.  Philip and I had been, as I recall, recruited by Hannah Weinstein, a golden era lefty producer who had come upon actual government documents laying bare the sordid details of U.S. Army PX fraud in Vietnam, perpetrated by four senior level Master Sergeants, sunk to the very top of their boots in ill-gotten everything.

My idea was to lay it out in a bittersweet story about Frank and Mindy Moon (I can't believe I remember this), a couple of first rate human beings, second rate entertainers, stuck in the third act of a career, doing PX shows for the troops in Saigon.  While their marriage is coming apart, their act is actually getting better as they fall headlong into the Master Sergeant scandal, beset by careerist government investigators and a sudden NVA attack.

Philip had already directed "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" and "The White Dawn" and was well on his way to a spectacular career.  And I was well on my way to lunch at The Palm, yum yum.

Bobby was late, so Philip and I got caught up on local gossip.  I'd just had that terrible walk-out lunch meeting at Le Dump with the two rock and roll millionaire geniuses and he'd just been fired off "The Outlaw Josey Wales."  I didn't know directors could even get fired: he said it happened while he was eating lunch.  He came back to the set and saw Clint Eastwood up on the Chapman crane rehearsing a shot.  In a half- joking manner, he called up to Clint, "Are you directing now?"  Clint didn't smile back.  He just nodded.  And that was it for Philip on Josey Wales.  Although he remained the lead credited screenwriter.

Bobby finally arrived and we set about to have lunch.  The Palm is noted for their steaks, so we all ordered them.  For many hot(ish) writers, these meals were sometimes the only grown up food they got, so chow down, puppies!

We had a nice lunch.  Philip and I told him our take on the Master Sergeant - Vietnam project; he seemed to like it.  Then, talking more show biz gossip, talking about Bobby's wife, a Grammy winning toast-of-two-continents type singer, beautiful and thin as a shoelace, who I had met when we were all prior versions.  Bobby said sourly she was always ragging him to lose weight as he forked another bite of ribeye into his mouth.  Philip and I thought it was great; we didn't care what he looked like coming out of the shower.  Bobby was a sweet guy, a scion-of, and would maybe produce our movie.  More Cabernet?

Then desert.  And coffee.  And a Sambuca or two.  And more stories.  I lock-jawed back a yawn.  But we weren't worried.  Until Philip looked at his watch.

It was four fifteen.  Jesus H!  We'd been there over three hours.  Most of these lunches last an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half.  Bobby excused himself for the men's room.  I signaled our waiter and asked him if Bobby had paid the check.  Or had an account there?  He smiled and shook his head.  Hmmm.  What was going on?

Philip requested a phone.  Hillbilly that I am, I remember thinking, Jeez, can you do that?  So while Bobby was still in the men's room, it was brought to the table, plugged in, and he called Mike Medavoy, the fount of all knowledge in Showbiz.

Philip quickly explained the situation.  Mike told him that he had been in Bobby's Century City townhouse and it was filled, honest to God filled with art: Picassos, Monets, Pollocks, he even owned the Larry Rivers' Confederate General, the one on the cover of the Brautigan book.  You know who his father was.  Bobby was rich, he was 'good for it,' he was a player!

"That's as may be," said Philip.  "But apparently not today."  We didn't think Bobby should have to sell one of his Renoirs for our lunch.  But maybe he had an extra velvet Elvis in his garage.  "I gotta go," said Philip.  "Rose and I have a dinner."

"I hope it's more real than this one," I said hauling out my brand new credit card.  He took his out, too.  "Splitzies?"

We paid, wrote a big tip for the long afternoon's service, and were on our way out the door when Bobby came back, an embarrassed but friendly smile lopsided across his face.  "Thanks, guys!  It was a great meeting, a great lunch.  If you see my wife, mention that I just had a salad.  I'll call your agent, we'll set something up.  And thanks."

We never heard from him again.  And the project, like so very many, disappeared in its own smoke.  Thank God the Monet and that velvet Elvis are safe.  Somewhere.

                      ****

JAMIE AND HER FRIENDS GET CONTROL OF THEIR COOKIE JONES

I have known Jamie Diamond for years.  We met in the mid-70s when I went to visit her bosses, producers Mitch Brower and David Foster at Warners to pitch them yet another exciting project that mercifully faded away half way through the meeting.  But on the way out, I stopped to talk to Jamie; she was tall, striking, and had a great sudden laugh.  We hit it off.

For about a week we tried to be...something, I don't know.  But that clearly wasn't going to work for reasons best known to the Baby Jesus, so we decided to just be girlfriends.  It stood us in good stead for the next forty years.

Jamie grew up in showbiz: her mother (now a certified scholar with a PhD) had been a showgirl/ dancer in Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in New York.  Jamie's father was a Hollywood press agent when he met and married Mamma Diamond.  Humphrey Bogart was their best man.  One of Jamie's first memories was standing in Bogey's lap while they all laughed and smoked and drank.

One day, Jamie showed me a piece she had written about a first date with a well known screenwriter/playwright.  I must have read it three or four times.  It was good.  I mean real good.  God, where does this talent come from; there she was working as a secretary/assistant to a couple of producers and she could write better than most of the scripts that came across her desk.  From 'good' writers.

Time passes and now she has written for the L.A. Times, the N.Y. Times, and God knows where else.  She also writes fiction and over the years, she's gotten even better.  And yet, not published; one of the great mysteries of life.

Down deep in her heart, I believe the following Cookie Jones story illustrates how and who she is.

Years ago in L.A., maybe still in high school or home from college, Jamie went out riding with two or three of her girlfriends.  They were hungry and nearly broke, so like many kids at that intersection, they stopped at a Ralph's Market.  Trooping inside and pooling their money, they bought a large flimsy plastic tray of chocolate chip cookies, the big ones, and went back out to the car.  Where each one had one.  Then, all watching their weight, they chunked the package of cookies into the dumpster and drove away.

They cruised a while, 'bumpin' on Sunset,' you know.  Pretty soon, one of them got hungry again.  Then, they all did.  Only now they were completely broke.  So they drove back to that same Ralph's, pulled in next to the dumpster, one of them boosted another one in, and THERE WERE THE COOKIES!  Untouched, still in the package.  Mostly.

Back in the car, they each had one -- okay, maybe two.  But that's it, swear to God!  Then, Jamie got out of the car and lined the remaining cookies up under the path of their car's left rear tire, got back in the car, put it in reverse and backed over them.  Okay, took care of that.  Wanna go to Westwood?

                     ****

A few more words about the screenplay.

Here are some of the smartest I've heard; spoken by Ben Afleck on The Charlie Rose Show, attributed to T.S. Eliot.  "When you're trying to break into your audience's subconscious, plot is the meat you throw to the guard dogs."

And to drive the plot, you use CHARACTERS.

Somebody smart (hell, maybe it was T.S. Eliot, too) said character is destiny.  And I believe that it's true.  Destiny not only for the Hero but for those around him.  Forces, both good and bad, follow him on his journey and often sweep everyone else to heaven or hell.  The Hero is kind of a destiny magnet.

Citizen Kane ends up a gazillionaire who destroys everything he loves: Jedidiah, Susan, Mr. Bernstein, the newspapers, even a priceless but ignored treasure house of the world's great art (and sled).  All gone because the only safe way he knew to love was to buy things and then choke them to death.  His destiny.

Dreaming up and writing characters is a difficult amalgam of showing how they behave, how they dress, how they speak, what they do.  As Freud pointed out "We are who we were" so we have to understand their past even if they don't.  It always helps to know what your characters love most, hate most, and crucially, as Robert Towne pointed out, what they fear most.  So much of our lives are run and ruined by this motor.

Even our President had said, more than once, that power is born out of fear.  And not coincidentally, it's the title of Bob Woodward's book about the 2016 Trump election.

Once you know these things, you add them in tiny little brush strokes, blending, even hiding, so it's not obvious and simplistic.  It's a good idea to salt the script with lots of cool details, factoids, behavioral tics, and throw-away moments.  So that everywhere you look, the sweep of the story is reflecting the myriad faces of the main character.  Remember: it's on the hero's back the whole thing rides.

Simpler, paint-by-numbers movies always go down easier for a mass audience.  You know, movies with lovable lead characters who generate oodles of what executives call "rooting interest."

I came to hate those two words.  Because even though it's the polar opposite of the exec's daily life, in this case they want their hearts engaged, not their brains.

However...

There are times when this is not dramatically possible.  Ideally, you want both heart and brain alive and working and above all, ABOVE ALL your main character has to be interesting.

You're not supposed to get an emotional woody over Hannibal Lecter but you still can't take your eyes off him.

You don't want to grow up to be Walter White in the legendary "Breaking Bad," but you follow his story wherever it goes because deep in our black little hearts, we know that could be us on our darkest day.

Even in comedies like "Tootsie," Dustin Hoffman's stubborn self-obsessed actor is not our ideal best friend or next door neighbor.  Can you imagine the meetings the studio had about "softening him up" so they could "expand the brand."  Thank god Hoffman and director Sydney Pollack held out.  It ain't easy when a bunch of tanned, handsome, well-dressed execs whose money you are playing with, all want you to just make these Few Little Changes.  And these are the same men (and a few women) who will hire or not hire you ever again because you might become known as "inflexible" or "difficult."

But, hey, there are good days, too!  The perfectly named "Bad Santa" got made, reviewed well, and did good business.  Steven Hunter, the smart, tough-minded critic for the Washington Post said the two most memorable Santas in film history are Edmund Gwen and Billy Bob Thornton.  Haven't seen it?  Netflix.

This balance between a lovable and a flawed main character is one of the hardest things to strike in screenwriting.

Orion Films originally paid a lot of money for the book "Silence of the Lambs" for Gene Hackman to direct and star in as Lecter.  But when Hackman saw what Ted Tally had written, he chickened out.  He'd won an Academy Award for playing Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection" but Hannibal Lecter was fucking EATING PEOPLE, man!  There is an old adage in Hollywood: They can kill ya, but they can't eat ya.  I guess Hannibal finished that.  Especially for Mr. Hackman.

For a while the project was as dead as Monty Python's parrot.  Then Orion's president (and my ex-agent) Mike Medavoy sent the script to his old pal and former client Jonathan Demme and the rest is box-office and Academy history.

All great dramatic characters have a fatal flaw.

It is simply a blind spot.  Because of who they are, how they were raised, what they became, they are unable to see the one thing that could save them.  Their glorious struggle to survive is what makes for great drama.

Take a look at James Stewart, driven by revenge and guilt in the Anthony Mann directed westerns of the early Fifties.  Or "Lawrence of Arabia." Or "Raging Bull."  Or "The Hustler."

Robert De Niro and Paul Newman gambled their careers on 'unpleasant' characters like these.  So did Bogart, Brando, Lee Marvin, Barbara Stanwyk, Joan Crawford, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, Faye Dunaway, Al Pacino and more recently, John Cusack, Sean Penn, Seth Rogan, and Matt Damon.  Hell, even Vin Diesel (is that a butch name or what?).

How these lead characters reveal themselves to us comes primarily though DIALOGUE.  What they say or don't say.

So that is where we will start next time.  And remember the wise words of actor Jake Gyllenhaal, "Freedom is just on the other side of discipline."

So keep going.  You'll find it.