Adventures in the Screen Trade (32 page)

But those weren't dates we were talking about; that was theatre history.

During a break that afternoon, he was telling a story about being mugged. I was a good distance away, staring out the window like a fool, listening to every word.

The point of the story was he was in his home in Brighton, watching television with his family. And what was on television was one of his Shakespeare movies. He went downstairs for a moment, and when he was on the lower floor, the mugger clobbered him and he shouted. But on television upstairs, what was going on was a soliloquy, and his children just thought there was Daddy below, doing the speech along with the lube.

Well, when he told that story, when he told about being struck and shouting-Olivier really shouted.

I spun from the window, startled by the sound, startled and at the same time thrilled. Because there it was, and I was in the room with it: the famous Olivier stage cry, the sound that has mesmerized audiences for half a century. I stood still, frozen by the power.

Sure he was old, and God yes, the Fates had been dogging him. But even now, when he wanted to let it fly, it was there.

William Devane, a fine American actor with a lot of stage experience, played another of the villains in the story. He rehearsed his first scene with Olivier and it all went quickly and Devane was just terrific.

When they broke, I cornered Devane, who is bright and very articulate, and I told him how wonderfully he had done done asked what it was like, rehearsing with Laurence Olivier. "It doesn't matter," Devane replied. I didn't know what in hell he was talking about and said so. "This is rehearsal," Devane said. "It's nothing. When the camera starts to roll, he'll give me a little of this, he'll give me a little of that, and you'll never know I'm in the movie. No one's going to be watching me-that's Olivier, man."

Dustin Hoffman loves to improvise and he's expert at it. He and Schlesinger and Olivier were sitting around a table, going over the penultimate sequence in the movie, where Hoffman has Olivier at gunpoint and they begin a long walk. Hoffman said, "Lei's improvise it for a while."

Olivier said he'd really rather not. Improvisation is not some- thing he likes to do, it's not part of traditional English theatrical training.

Hoffman jumped up. "Let's put it on its feet and improvise." Olivier resisted again.

Schlesinger said he thought that since we were there to rehearse, why not try it. Olivier got up. Slowly.

He was, as I've indicated, recovering from whatever terrible disease had recently crippled him. His hands, even now, were bandaged. (I don't know the specific nature of this particular ailment; someone said it was the nerve disease that had killed Onassis, but I can't vouch for that. And when I say his hands were bandaged, I don't mean totally swathed. But there were Band-Aids crisscrossing his skin and all Scotch taped in place, perhaps to hide the sight of swelling.)

He was protected brilliantly in the movie. There is only one moment where you can tell how frail he really was. It's at the end of the sequence in the diamond district, when he was to try and run for a nearby cab, perhaps two paces away. If you watch closely, you can sec the struggle he had to put out to get to the cab. Even then two steps were almost too many.

But now, as he stood slowly in the rehearsal hall, we were months before the shooting of the diamond scene. Hoffman mimed a gun and said "Okay, get going" and they started to walk around the rehearsal hall.

Olivier tried ad-libbing, said again and again that he really wasn't skilled at it, could someone give him his lines, and Hoffman said, "You're doing great, just say anything, come on, we're getting somewhere." So they walked. And walked. And kept on walking.

I don't know why all this was allowed to happen. Improvising is a part of Hoffman's vast technique, and perhaps that was the reason. But Olivier, in spite of himself, scares the shit out of other actors. (I know of one giant star who insisted on Olivier being in a movie with him. This man was and is a friend of Olivier's. The movie was well into shooting when Olivier's role began, and the night before his first appearance, the star who cared for him and insisted on him was awake the entire night in, quite simply, panic. He was nursed through that night by his producer, who told me it was so sad, seeing this star all but helpless because he was going to have to act with Olivier the next day.)

And I think part of this was because of Hoffman's need to put himself on at least equal footing with this sick old man. -And I don't know why Schlesinger didn't stop it. Perhaps, as he indicated, to see what might come out of it that might help the sequence.

But I also have to think that Schlesinger knew that Olivier wouldn't give him any trouble: Hoffman was the star, Hoffman had the vehicle role, if anyone was going to bring him to grief, Hoffman was that man, and to go directly against his star's wishes so early on might not be a move of great wisdom-I'm not talking about the improvisation. I'm talking about the walking that went along with it-because inside of a few minutes, Olivier's ankles were beginning to swell.

But on they walked. And improvised. And Hoffman was terrific. And Olivier did his best. And Schlesinger watched it all. And Olivier would not sit down. Would not. Give in. He could have stopped, he could have asked for a chair, he could have requested a break. But he walked.

And now his ankles were bulging. Pain is impossible to quantify. What lays me up may be something you can deal with easily. No one can say how much anyone is capable of enduring. But watching it all lake place, seeing the old man grow increasingly pale, was something I knew then I'd remember. And I mean forever.

Truly skilled actors are rare. Of those, a few are blessed with brilliance. And of those, fewer still have even a shot at greatness. Most (Burton, Welles, Barrymore) blow it.

Every century or so, we are blessed with a tiny handful, and as impossible as their task may be, staying great is that much harder.

Olivier made his first stage appearance in 1922-he played Katherine in an all-boys production of The Taming of the Shrew. I doubt he was a great Katherine. But watching him as that awful improvisatory afternoon came to an end, I think I glimpsed why Olivier has been able to endure in that incredible rarefied atmosphere for so many decades. He was sure as shit great for me that day, and he'll be great on the day that he dies. Assuming he allows that to happen. ...

Last Olivier story.

He and Roy Scheider were rehearsing a scene. In the story they are very close to violence, but both are still trying to figure out what the other one knows. The dialog went like this:

OLIVIER

We must, talk. Truthfully, Are you to be trusted?"

SCHEIDER -No-

OLIVIER

-Was that the truth? Or are you trying to upset me?-

SCHEIDER

-I know why you're here-and I know that sooner or later you're going to go to the bank-

OLIVIER

--perhaps I have already been. Schlesinger interrupted them. He said, "Larry, that's supposed to go fast, and after Roy says the line about the bank, you're taking a pause before 'Perhaps I have already been.' Don't take the pause."

Olivier said "Of course," and they started into the dialog again. And then he stopped. "I have a problem about not taking the pause." We waited.

"I'm trying to find out information. Roy says, 'I know why you're here.' And I need to Find out what that means. Then Roy says, I know . . .' And I'm listening. Then he says, I know that sooner or later . . .' And I'm still listening. Now he says, I know that sooner or later you're going to go . . .' And I'm still listening. Finally he says, 'I know that sooner or later you're going to go to the bank. ' That pause I'm taking is to give me time to register the information about the bank."

"I understand," Schlesinger said. "But we've got to get rid of the pause."

Olivier turned to me, then. "Bill," he said, "could I suggest an alteration in the line? Would it be all right if I changed it so that the line went, I know that you're going to go to the bank sooner or later?' You see, then I could register the word bank while he was saying 'sooner or later' and I wouldn't need the pause."

Obviously it was fine with me and the line was altered and we went on without the pause. And probably this two minutes of rehearsal explained at length doesn't seem like much put down in black and white.

But that moment-when the actor of the century asked me would I mind if he switched six words around-is the most memorable incident of my movie career. Olivier. Calling me "Bill." Olivier. Asking me would I mind. That's high cotton. . . .

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff became, literally, a nightmare.

It began-innocently enough, as they say-in early October of '79, when a producer friend of mine called from California and told me to go out and get the Tom Wolfe book that dealt with the Mercury space program.

I had little or no interest in the subject matter. I'm not a space buff and I assumed that the story, so heavily detailed in the press, especially Life magazine, was pretty much known.

But I went out and bought the book. Then my producer friend called back and said he'd lost out in the scramble for the material to the producing team of Chartoff-Winkler, but that I should read the book anyway because it was terrific. I started to read the book. For my own pleasure. There is a universe of difference between reading a book on your own for yourself and reading a book that someone has asked you to read to consider making it a screenplay. You want the same thing in both cases: You want to be thrilled. But when you're maybe going to have to turn the piece into a movie, there is a constant governor at work. A scene may work wonderfully in a book, but part of you is always thinking, "Can I use this? Will this play? When I compress, will this stay in or is it off the narrative spine?" Endless questions intrude. But nothing intrudes when you're on your own-it's just you and the writer, you put yourself in his hands and hope he takes great care of you. I read The Right Stuff just as a reader. I had been told it was terrific, but that proved to be an understatement. It was just a masterly piece of work, one of the most exciting reads I've had in a decade.

But I sure didn't think it was a movie.

It's 436 pages long-no problem. Bridge Too Far ran 650 plus. But whereas Bridge, for example, focused on a single event, the Battle of Amhem, Tom Wolfe ranged all over.

Part of that is because the book is oddly constructed: Wolfe originally planned to write the entire saga; starting with the first seven astronauts, he was going to take the story all the way to the moon. But when he got as far as The Right Stuff takes him, he or his editor or somebody said, "Hey, this is a book right here."

So, for example, the first forty-plus pages deal with a character who was of no significance as far as the Mercury program was concerned, but someone who played a figure in later flights. The seven Mercury astronauts don't enter until close to page eighty. And although they are well handled, they are not the most exciting part of the story Wolfe tells. The real excitement deals with Yeager. Charles Yeager was one of those legends. A West Virginia kid who enlisted in the Army air force in 1941, at the age of eighteen. Wolfe describes him this way: ". . . he was the boondocker, the boy from the back country, with only a high school education, no credentials, no cachet or polish of any sort, who took off the feed-store overalls and put on a uniform and climbed into an airplane and lit up the skies over Europe."

By the end of the war he was a twenty-two-year-old phenomenon. He trained as a test pilot in '46 and '47, and on October the fourteenth of 1947, Charles Yeager flew the plane that broke the sound barrier.

An amazing character, dazzlingly brush-stroked by Wolfe. He would have made a wonderful central figure for a movie.

But the astronauts didn't begin until a dozen years later and Yeager had nothing to do with them. In other words, there were at least two central stories in the book and they truly didn't touch at any point.

Next I got a call: United Artists had bought the book for Chartoff-Winkler and would I talk with them? That event took place in early November, of course at the Sherry Netherland Hotel.

Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler have been best friends forever, and partners for damn near as long. Their producing career provides a fascinating split. In their first decade, they were connected with an awesome number of either critical or commercial disasters, or, most often, both. Here's a partial list:

Double Trouble The Split The Strawberry Statement Leo the Last Believe in Me The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight The Mechanic Busting S*P*Y*S Breakout Nickelodeon Valentino

Then, in November of 1976, came Rocky. It not only won them the Best Picture award, it made them, forever, rich beyond the dreams of avarice. These numbers are approximate, but Rocky cost barely over one million and took in, worldwide, probably close to a hundred million. When money comes in over the transom like that, no bookkeeper in Hollywood can hide it all.

With their success, the quality of the Chartoff-Winkler films altered abruptly. Among their productions since, as well as the Rocky sequels, have been Raging Bull and True Confessions. So when we shook hands in the Sherry that November day, I was meeting one of the lop producing teams in the business.

I told them what I thought-that it was a wonderful property, that I wished them joy, that I didn't know how to make it into a movie.

And then Winkler totally turned me around. He spoke very quietly and he said that probably we should forget the Yeager material and go with the astronauts, starting with their selection, then their training, then the Alan Shepherd flight, followed by the Gus Grissom fiasco, and climaxing the movie when John Glenn circled the earth.

What he had done, of course, was give me my structure for the movie. Five acts: selection, training, Shepherd, Grissom, Glenn.

But even more than that, Winkler had set something going in my head. Because, for the first time in my career, I wanted to write a movie that had a message. I wanted to "say" something using The Right Stuff's a narrative vehicle. I wanted to "say" something positive about America. Not patriotic in the John Wayne sense, but patriotic none the less- -because the hostages had just been seized in Iran. I think it's difficult today, in this terrible time in America, to remember back even three years and reconstruct just how terrible, in a perhaps different way, things were then.