My Happy Days in Hollywood (26 page)

In addition to empowering Bette and Barbara, during
Beaches
I felt the range of my own power as director for the first time. I cast a little girl named Mayim Bialik to play the young Bette Midler. Unfortunately the casting was not picture perfect: Mayim has blue eyes, but Bette has brown eyes. So we knew we had to get brown contact lenses for Mayim, and we did. That was an easy fix. Except one Saturday we were shooting and Mayim lost one of her contacts. She was just an eleven-year-old, and like most kids she just lost one. So we had to get another pair, but the doctor’s office wasn’t open on Saturday, and to make things worse the doctor was on vacation in Lake Tahoe. The editing department said we could fix the mismatched eye color digitally in postproduction, but I didn’t want to waste time or money on that. I had another idea.

We called the doctor and asked him where he kept the contact lenses in his office. So basically I was making the decision to break into the doctor’s office. It was cheaper than losing a half day of shooting on the movie. A group of teamsters went over to the doctor’s office, broke down the door like thieves, and got the replacement contact lens. I remember the day I said, “Knock down the door!” It was the first time I really understood how much power a director has. I had the power to authorize a burglary. Again it all came down to staying on schedule and doing whatever it took to spend the least amount of money. It worked. We got the right eye color and the scenes made sense. We did shoot one scene with the different color eyes, and it remains in the movie. The scene takes place in a hotel on the boardwalk where the two little girls sit in the hotel dining room to have a treat. In the background sits my father, who rarely acted in my movies but made it into
Beaches
as an extra.

One of the highlights of
Beaches
was that Bette got to sing. She was very influential in the selection of music for the film, and because she clearly had more experience at it than I did, I often deferred to her. But I tried my best to make her shine as an actress as well. Bette already had a successful career in music, and
Beaches
was a great vehicle to help broaden her appeal as an actress. She was eager to learn and improve as an actress, too. She had a habit of popping her eyes out during a scene, and I found it very unnatural. So when I would catch her doing it I would remind her to stop. One time I even told her, “I’m going to Scotch-tape your eyes shut if you pop them again!” She laughed and promised to do better on the next take.

One of the funniest lines in the movie had to be cut. There is a scene where the two girlfriends are fighting, and reveal some of their secret, longtime jealousies. Bette says to Barbara that she is so envious of Barbara and other actresses with “hair that moves.” The line was so honest and heartfelt, I wish I could have left it in the film. But the truth was it broke the momentum of the scene; it was too funny for a serious fight. Bette really
is
jealous of Barbara and other actresses who have beautiful hair that moves. So ultimately I made the
decision to cut the line from the movie, but it still appeared in the preview because I didn’t cut it out until after the trailer was released.

We explored many aspects of female friendship in the course of
Beaches
. At one point Barbara’s character is pregnant. I asked my wife for ideas on what would be a nice thing for a friend to do for another friend who is pregnant and uncomfortable. My wife suggested that Bette’s character paint the toenails of the pregnant Barbara. I thought it was a great idea, so we set up that shot. The day we shot the scene Barbara, of course, was there early and Bette came rolling in just before I yelled “Action!” Bette took one look at Barbara’s toenails and said, “Barb, what gnarly toes you have! Have you been working in the garden with those toes?” Barbara walked off the set crying.

“What happened?” asked Bette.

“You upset her,” I said.

“But Garry, you saw those toes!” said Bette. “They
are
gnarly!”

“I know. But you should go and apologize,” I said.

Watching the relationship between Bette and Barbara develop was similar to watching the ups and downs of their screen characters. The subject of female friendship was one of the reasons I wanted to direct
Beaches
. Women and men, for example, fight in completely different ways. Women can say terrible things to each other one day and then go out shopping the next, letting go of all of their differences. Men, on the other hand, look cross-eyed at each other and then don’t speak to each other for the next ten years. So with Bette and Barbara, I tried to play referee when they needed me to.

Beaches
was a transitional time for all of us. Barbara was coming out of her experimental period and looking forward to more mainstream moviemaking. Bette was settling into her domestic period—with her husband, Martin, and young daughter, Sophie. I was struggling with my financial problems, still on the brink of bankruptcy. I was trying to make as much money as I could to keep my house and my family afloat. I guess if I can give myself some credit for that period, it is that I was able to work at all. I found the strength to block out my financial stress and come to the
set each day with a razor-sharp focus on the cast, crew, and plot. I lost myself in my movie. Creativity is a great place to hide out from the real world.

Humor always has been my lifesaver, too. In the later scenes of the movie I noticed that Barbara was spending more and more time in the makeup trailer applying white Pan-Cake makeup. She was starting to look very strange and almost scary. So I took her aside to discuss the situation.

“Barbara, what’s going on with all the makeup? You’re starting to look like death warmed over,” I said.

“Good!” she said, proudly.

“Why is that good?” I asked.

“My character is dying. I want to look like death,” she said.

“But you’re not dead yet, so ease up on the makeup and steer clear of
ugly
. We don’t want to scare away the audience before the ending.” When your face is ten feet tall on a movie screen, you have to consider its impact on the audience.

There are problems on any movie, and as a director you just have to manage them as best you can. John Heard, for example, who played Bette’s love interest in
Beaches
, was going through a real-life divorce during our shoot. So some of the scenes in which he and Bette had to fight were difficult for him. We helped him through it. Bette possesses the kind of professionalism that you hope for and count on in an actress. However, even the most experienced actors can lose their cool once in a while. There were a few times when Bette got fussy over something, and I cleared the set so I could talk to her privately. I told her that would be our arrangement. If she started yelling about the dialogue in a scene and I thought she was wrong, I would clear the set. It’s not good to argue with the actors in front of the crew. I cleared the set a few times, and she understood the routine. However, one day she started to scream and I just sat in my director’s chair and listened to her. My calm demeanor made her pause.

“Garry,” she said. “Why aren’t you clearing the set?”

“Because this time you are right to yell. We brought you in here at eight in the morning. It is nearly four and we still haven’t filmed
your scene. So I want the crew to hear me tell you how sorry I am for bringing you in so early and making you wait.”

Bette smiled. We worked well together. One of my favorite moments with her was during the cast party. She sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” while I played the drums in the band behind her. At one point she came over to the drum set and sang directly to me. It was very moving. In fact the song was so moving that we couldn’t have her sing it directly on the screen. We had to make a montage of it over a series of scenes.

When it came out the critics skewered
Beaches
for being too schmaltzy, but ultimately audiences enjoyed it. Girlfriends went together to see it in droves in the way they would go to see
Sex and the City
years later. When all was said and done,
Beaches
was a hit in my book. However, my financial problems were still not over. I believe in karma and spiritual signs, so I decided to seek out a psychic when I was back at home in Los Angeles. A man who played basketball at my house on Saturday mornings told me about a psychic who had a gold fang, which was the source of her power. She turned out to be a pleasant-looking, heavyset blonde who I might cast as a waitress in a diner, except for the gold tooth. I went to see her a number of times and she said that my life was going to turn around and there would be four people who would be influential in helping me: someone with the letter
M
, someone named Joyce, someone named Elizabeth, and finally someone with a
z
in his or her name.

When I told my wife, Barbara, what the psychic had said, she was doubtful. Firmly grounded in reality and the medical profession, my wife is not a fan of the occult. However, even she was amazed that everything the psychic said turned out to be true. Within weeks of my visit to her, I not only hired a new business manager named Marshall Gelfand, but had my friend Marty Garbus working on the case round the clock. So there was my
M
. Marshall introduced me to his head accountant, and her name was Joyce. Marshall’s daughter’s name was Elizabeth. Finally, a big real estate investor named Doug Stitzel (with a
z
in his name) helped me out by buying my remaining properties in Pasadena. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe I just wanted to believe I could find all the right letters, but
the visit to the psychic gave me great comfort that someday I would have this financial crisis behind me. Marshall also introduced me to my head of business affairs Cathy Berry, whose loyalty and honesty have kept me financially safe ever since.

I have never been to a therapist. My wife has often said that if a therapist got ahold of me he would have a field day. Instead I like to rely on friends in the business to analyze my progress and advise me on career decisions. People told me never to feel trapped in my personal life or my profession. Barbara and I talked about the fact that we could lose our house and have to move into an apartment. We could borrow money from Penny, which in fact we did. I could make extra money producing television shows in addition to directing movies.

Sometimes the way out is to go back to where you started. I don’t have a big ego, so even doing a television commercial was not out of the question. I ended up directing a Coca-Cola commercial with Art Carney, and it won an advertising award. I was fifty-four years old, and I decided I was not going to let stress or depression over money kill me just yet. I even created a few pilots for money—including one based on my movie
Nothing in Common
. The show ran for only six episodes. In my mind, it probably wasn’t a success because my heart was not in it. I was just trying to get myself out of debt.

Shortly after my declaration to myself, the script for
Pretty Woman
came across my desk. If a movie can change a man’s life, this would be that movie for me.

Meeting a Hooker with a Heart of Gold and a Girl Named Julia

I
N THE MINDS
of the executives of Disney,
Beaches
had been a hit in part because of me. I had taken a script with a serious story and dark ending and turned it into the feel-good girlfriend buddy picture with a great sound track. As a reward Disney gave me another dark script to lighten up. The script was originally titled
3000
, and it was the depressing story of an older, on-her-last-dime prostitute and a tough-as-nails businessman with the opulence of Beverly Hills as the backdrop. Disney asked me to “lighten it up” as I had done with
Beaches
, but with my own special blend of humor and romance. I decided to make the prostitute new to the profession so we could hire a younger actress. The title ultimately was changed to
Pretty Woman
, and the film starred a new actress named Julia Roberts and Hollywood’s sexy bad boy Richard Gere. It remains the most famous movie I ever directed.

I’m getting ahead of myself because when we made
Pretty Woman
it was a low-budget picture without big stars that no one in Hollywood thought would become a hit. When you make a big-budget movie and it is a hit, you pat yourself on the back and say to your colleagues, “We did it. Aren’t we smart?” But when a movie like
Pretty Woman
comes along and surprises everyone with its success, charm, and longevity, you can run into a production assistant or cameraman who worked on the movie years later and say to him, “How lucky we were to have been a part of that. How nice to see that magic still exists in Hollywood!”

J. F. Lawton wrote the original script on spec and had written eleven other scripts all on spec, or speculation, which means with no money up front. Lawton was a testament to the adage that good things come to those who are patient and persistent. He sold his twelfth script,
Pretty Woman
. Producer Steve Reuther got ahold of the script, and paired it with Julia Roberts, whom nobody had heard of before her debut in a small movie called
Mystic Pizza
. Reuther took the script to Disney, who then called me. The year was 1989, and at the time I worked out of a small suite of offices on Riverside Drive in Burbank two minutes from my house.