My Happy Days in Hollywood (23 page)

A reviewer for the
Herald Tribune
said that the film was a “delightful surprise” and that Matt “looked like he enjoyed acting” again. Roger Ebert said it was one of the top ten summer movies and had a “surprising emotional impact.” David Ansen, covering the film for
Newsweek
, wrote about my directing, “This big change of pace suddenly reveals a filmmaker to watch closely.”
USA Today
called it the best movie about young people since
American Graffiti
. I was very excited when
The Hollywood Reporter
said that my movie was a winning version of
Goodbye, Columbus
because I loved that film. The bottom line was that
Young Doctors
showed I was funny and
The Flamingo Kid
showed I was a filmmaker to watch. All I had to figure out was what my third script would be. I felt like I had just been given a golden ticket that said: “Proceed with caution, you may now direct again.”

Working with the Great Ones—Hanks and Gleason

I
HAD A COMPLICATED
relationship with my father. He taught me many things, including how to be in charge and a leader, but we did not have the same close relationship I saw other sons have with their dads growing up in the Bronx. He sometimes treated my sisters and me like business colleagues, as if we shared the cubicle next to him. There wasn’t much I could do to repair the distance between me and my dad, even after he moved to Hollywood and worked with me at Paramount. I did, however, make a pledge to myself that if I ever had a son of my own I would hug him a lot, and tell him how much I loved him and was proud of him. I was able to do that when my son, Scott, was born.

I was thinking a lot about fathers and sons as I set out to direct my third movie,
Nothing in Common
, written by Rick Podell and Michael Preminger. The story of an adult son forming a relationship late in life with his dad was set to shoot in Chicago. That’s when it became clear to me that a lot of the movie business is out of town. The problem with that is that I am a homebody. I love my San Fernando Valley house and my office, which are a five-minute drive apart. But the good news about
Nothing in Common
was that at the time my daughter Lori was going to Northwestern University, my alma mater, just outside of Chicago. So at least I would have family close by.

I had worked with producers Jerry Bruckheimer on
Young Doctors in Love
and Michael Phillips on
The Flamingo Kid
, and both ran
in mainstream Hollywood studio circles. But
Nothing in Common
came to me from another direction. Alexandra Rose showed up at my office one day with the script. She said she was a big fan of
The Flamingo Kid
and had been one of the producers on both
Norma Rae
and
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
. Alex was bright, ambitious, and kind. She was a Phi Beta Kappa from Wisconsin who had the looks and brains to work with anyone. I’m glad she picked me. The moment I met Alex we got along, and I liked that she was a healthy person and took care of herself through yoga and a macrobiotic diet. After years of smoking and bad eating, I was trying to take care of myself, too, and she was a good example.

Tom Hanks was attached to the script for
Nothing in Common
from the beginning. It is the story of a hotshot advertising executive who must balance his demanding job with the unraveling of his parents’ marriage and health. The movie centers on the relationship between the son and his father, a Willy Loman–style character whose professional and personal lives are falling apart. I knew Tom casually from passing him on the Paramount lot, where he filmed his series
Bosom Buddies
near our
Happy Days
soundstage. He had also done one episode of
Happy Days
, playing a bully who Fonzie beat up, and even played on the
Happy Days
traveling softball team a few times. I always thought Tom was a funny and talented comedian, but when we started
Nothing in Common
he was anything but funny. He was miserable, going through a bad breakup.

Initially Tom didn’t tell me anything was wrong. This often happens with stars: You sense there is something wrong with their
private
lives but they are too
private
to share it with you. You have to do your homework and talk to their agents or managers or personal assistants to find out exactly what is eating at them. Another secret weapon I use to ferret out information is my wife, Barbara. One night we went to dinner with Tom and his wife, Samantha. After the dinner that I thought was great, my wife said, “They are going to get divorced.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“They didn’t look each other in the eye,” she said.

A few days later Tom called to tell me he and Samantha were indeed getting divorced.

Another bump that occurred during preproduction on
Nothing in Common
was that I learned Tom didn’t want to do the movie. He was locked into a deal with TriStar Pictures, the company that was bankrolling the film. Our producer, Ray Stark, told Tom that if he didn’t do the picture TriStar would block him from working in Hollywood for two years. Even I knew it was not optimal to have a disgruntled star. I didn’t want to walk on eggshells around anyone. I think the best way to confront a problem is to bring it up. So I asked to meet with Tom alone one day.

During our private talk I told him that I was sincerely sorry about his marital problems and I was sad he wasn’t rushing to do this movie. But I said that the cast and crew and I had nothing to do with his divorce or his contract issues. We were all innocent bystanders, so he shouldn’t take it out on us. After our talk I promised him that I would make a good picture, and that I would somehow find a way to make it fun for him. Shortly after that Tom made peace with the project, and he was a delight to work with for the entire shoot. First, we discussed the character fully, and then I asked him how he liked to be directed. He said, “Louder, softer, faster, slower.” And I said, “Perfect!” Years later I ran into Tom, and he said a famous director once told him before a scene, “I see this scene as
chartreuse
. Act that way.” Tom had no idea what that kind of direction meant. He was a meat-and-potatoes kind of actor and liked his directors that way, too.

What excited both Tom and me about the film was the chance to work with the man who had been cast to play his father: Jackie Gleason, otherwise known as the Great One. Jackie was on the fence about doing the film until we had a meeting with him. He was tired and not feeling well, and was hesitating about doing another movie at his age while his health wasn’t good. However, Ray Stark crafted a very convincing argument. He reminded Jackie that his last film was
Smokey and the Bandit II
. Did he really want to go down in the history books with
that
being his last movie credit? When Ray framed the opportunity like that, Jackie smiled and said, “Where do I sign on the dotted line?” As I had with Tom, I promised Jackie that if he came onboard I would make a film that we could all be proud of and
have fun making. Although it was only my third film, I had already learned that to make the time together work best, you had to have fun. A movie can take up to a year of your life to complete, and if things aren’t going well, that time can seem like an eternity.

During the film Jackie’s health was fragile on the screen and on the set. Every day he had to be wrapped by 5:00
P.M
. So every day, shortly before the clock hit 5:00
P.M
., I would have a production assistant play Jackie’s exit music from his television show on a boom box, and he would smile and trot off the soundstage or location set. His wife, Marilyn, had been a good friend of my mother. Marilyn was the sister of June Taylor, who coordinated all the dancers on Jackie’s show, and she knew my mother from her tap dancing days. My mother would have loved the fact that I was directing a movie starring the Great One. It was a little sad that she’d died the year before and was not around to see the movie.

As a relatively new director, I found it fascinating to direct a movie with one star on the rise and the other one a legend. Both men could not have been more generous or gracious with each other. One day Jackie’s dressing room trailer broke down, and it would take some time to get him another one. Tom stepped up and said, “Give Jackie my trailer. I’ll wait for the other one.” The truth was that Tom didn’t spend much time in his trailer. He preferred to hang outside and toss the softball with me and other actors and crew. Jackie, however, thought it was bad form to take Tom’s trailer from him. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “Tom’s the star. I’ll wait for another trailer.” But the Chicago heat was escalating, and we didn’t want Jackie to be without air-conditioning. So we came up with a plan: Since most trailers look alike, I had a teamster take Tom’s name off his trailer, drive the trailer around the block, and come back to meet Jackie. The teamster said, “Here’s your replacement trailer, Mr. Gleason!” Jackie accepted the trailer, thinking it was new, and quickly ducked back in to enjoy the air-conditioning. I was learning that when directing a movie, diplomacy is as essential as a solid script.

Nothing in Common
was my first film with drama in it. There were some emotional scenes when Jackie’s character was in the hospital
and his son had to leave his job to care for him. One day we shot a hospital scene and it didn’t work. Jackie and I tried to figure out what was wrong with it. He came up with an idea: He felt there were too many opportunities for humor in a hospital room, and we needed to get rid of that humor. He suggested doing a “comedy exorcism” of the room. So Tom came in, and the three of us recited every bad hospital room joke we could think of until we were laughing so hard our sides hurt. We riffed on nurses, needles, bedpans, and more. After we were done we felt better and were able to go ahead with the dramatic scene between father and son. In one tender moment Tom even cried over his dad, which was new territory for Tom as an actor, because he had mostly done comedy before.

I never like the producers to talk to the actors. Francis Coppola taught me that. There can only be one director at a time, and if the producers start giving the actors notes on scenes, it undermines the strength and influence of the director. So I nearly flew off the handle one day when I saw my producer, Alex Rose, in a private, sidebar-style discussion with Tom Hanks. I was just about to intervene when Tom opened a door and revealed a large birthday cake for me. Birthdays are big deals on movie sets because often you can’t be with your friends and family and have to celebrate with the cast and crew. I’m usually the one planning the birthday surprises. But on this day Alex and Tom fooled even me.

I think I’m a pretty easy director to get along with, but once in a while I meet someone on a movie set who just doesn’t like my style. On
Nothing in Common
I was still developing my style of directing, but my cinematographer, John Alonzo, didn’t like it one bit. He had worked on many movies before this one, and most notably shot
Scarface
and
Norma Rae
. John thought that he knew more about directing a movie than I did. The truth was that he probably did. But the reality was that he wasn’t the director and I was. This didn’t stop him from suggesting throughout the film that I would direct more effectively and command more authority if I stood on a ladder with a bullhorn. I didn’t want to direct that way. I wanted to direct with a toothpick in my mouth and my feet firmly planted on the ground. It was just something we didn’t see eye to eye on.

I worked well with Tom Hanks, and I worked hard to make him feel as comfortable as possible. I cast Hector Elizondo as his boss at the advertising agency, and they got along swimmingly. Tom, however, told me one thing he was not comfortable doing was sexy scenes. Maybe it was his divorce, or maybe it was just the way he felt in general about the big screen, but he was not comfortable doing love scenes at that time. We rewrote the script to make him feel more comfortable. While the film was a drama, the romantic part was mostly comedy, so it didn’t call for any heavy love scenes anyway.

To play one of his love interests we cast a southern cheerleader and homecoming queen named Sela Ward. At the time she told me she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to become an actress. She was mulling over a career as a stewardess, but this movie was a big break for her. I told her I would let her know after the movie was done whether she should head for the airport or stay in film, and I did. (She, of course, went on to work steadily in Hollywood for years and years.) The other love interest we had for Tom was Bess Armstrong, who had much more film experience than Sela.

I learned on
Nothing in Common
that as a director you not only have to work with the actors but also have to step back and look at all the other elements that come into play. How is the lighting? How is the wardrobe? Is the makeup subtle or too distracting? I was learning on the job, so I had to rely on the heads of all of those departments to bring me up to speed. In doing research for the movie I went to visit an advertising agency. On my tour I noticed that the ceiling was made of foam so the young copywriters would sometimes throw their pencils at the ceiling and the pencils would stick in the foam permanently. I came back and told my production designer to build that same ceiling so we could throw pencils up at it.