My Happy Days in Hollywood (35 page)

We both smiled as he headed to the airport.

I don’t know if her daughter still rides horses, but Richard and Carey are definitely still a couple and even now have a son of their own, named Homer, who is one heck of a baseball player.

Richard and Julia were more mature on this picture because they had both loved and lost, and both understood sadness. Julia had several close calls at the altar, including her almost marriage to Kiefer Sutherland and her very short marriage to Lyle Lovett. Richard had been married to Cindy Crawford and was hurt when that marriage ended. So both Richard and Julia brought more wisdom to their characters in
Runaway Bride
, and more poignancy, too.

The funny thing about
Pretty Woman
was that Richard and Julia couldn’t wait to do the kissing scenes because neither of them had a partner. In my opinion that is what made the kissing in
Pretty Woman
so sensational. During
Runaway Bride
, however, the kissing scenes were a little more challenging. Julia would say, “Make them shorter” or “Can we do it tomorrow?” I would say, “How about a little more passion, people! You’re supposed to be falling in love.” Eventually they did what they were supposed to do. Sometimes actors just need to act, and they both did a great job.

Despite the ups and downs of the movie, one thing remains for certain: Julia Roberts’s smile is worth $20 million. Paparazzi were
always swarming around our set. We were shooting in a church for one day, and I invited some of the reporters in to watch. Sometimes it is good to make your enemies your friends. We were all watching as Julia walked down the aisle to marry Richard. When she saw him she looked right at him and smiled, and everyone in the room melted. Then she bolted for the door. I have never worked with anyone else who could show so much love with her smile. I even joked with Julia that I could get piles of product placement money if we could figure out how to put a Nike swoosh on one of her two front teeth. She just laughed because she knew I always wanted to try something crazy.

On this picture I was the one who did something crazy, and it was all about music. By the time I did
Runaway Bride
, I knew that music is one of the keys to a picture. I knew that to open with a song by U2 would be a winner because U2 has the explosive kind of sound you want to open a movie with. The people in the music department, however, told me a U2 song would be too expensive. They were trying to convince me to use a Dixie Chicks song instead. I liked the Dixie Chicks and planned to use one of their songs in the movie, just not in the opening scene. The music people were making a record album, and I was making a movie. One music executive got ahold of a print of the film and edited in the Dixie Chicks song to open. He then sent it to me to demonstrate how right he was. I was livid.

I’m not the kind of guy who gets angry often, but this was too much. You can’t just mess around and edit a director’s movie without asking permission. So I first took a hammer and broke the plastic case of his CD. Then my editing assistant Robert Malina and I put it in the microwave until the CD was twisted and mangled. Then we sent it back to the music executive with a note that said, “Dear Sir, I don’t think your song is the right one to open my movie. Yet you keep sending it to me again and again. Please don’t send it to me anymore. You are making me crazy.” Later that year someone went into the executive’s office and saw that my charred CD was framed. The executive said it reminds him of the time he made a director very crazy. In the end we found the money to buy the U2
song to open the movie, and it fit perfectly. My son, who continues to shoot second unit for me on most of my movies, filmed the opening sequence of Julia racing through the woods on a horse, riding it superbly. It was exactly how I wanted to open my movie.

The reason this was such a big-budget picture was that Disney and Paramount combined forces to produce it. We shot for sixty-two days, much longer than my usual fifty-day shoot. But at the end of the picture I realized I had a problem: I had no ending. I knew the couple got together, but what were the last images I wanted to leave my audience with? A wedding ceremony in a quaint little church is not the way you end a big-budget picture. Paramount producer Sherry Lansing came to Baltimore to visit, and I explained to her that I needed another day of shooting. She agreed that the way I had planned to end the movie was not that exciting and said she would think about it. She looked toward a cornfield as we were talking.

“What is Scott shooting over there?” she asked.

My son was shooting some scenes in a cornfield, trying to come up with an ending for their story lines.

“Okay,” she said. “You can have the extra day. And I like that cornfield. That’s pretty.”

That’s when I realized I didn’t need to have Julia and Richard get married in a church. They could get married in a cornfield. We filmed them with their horses and wedding attire, then had the rest of the cast running in their wedding outfits with bouquets. It was a wonderful, uplifting ending. The only trouble we had was the last shot. I wanted someone to throw a bouquet into the air and then have the flowers land and cover the camera lens with a freeze-frame to black. My son shot it. Family can come in handy in so many different ways. It took Scott something like forty-seven takes, but he finally got the perfect shot to end the movie on.

Critics knew that with this cast we were going to do well at the box office. I think because of this knowledge, the critics were out to get us from the beginning. One reviewer wrote, “Forget the bride … just run away.” Women put it down. Men put it down.
Maureen Dowd wrote, “The woman treats the guy badly. So now women can be just as jerky and self-absorbed as men.” Janet Maslin had some compliments, including praising a single joke. She said the movie contained “a FedEx joke so good it deserves a best place scenario for product placement.” Hector Elizondo delivered that joke with excellent timing.

I knew
Runaway Bride
was not going to be praised by critics or win any awards. It was not that kind of movie. Instead it was a very commercial love story and a moneymaker. It cost $72 million to make, and opening weekend it earned $34.5 million. By the end of the year it had made more than $151 million. The sound track of
Runaway Bride
rose to the top ten. The film did great in Europe, too. My wife and I went on a press trip to Stockholm, Munich, Paris, Madrid, London, and Amsterdam to promote the movie. Europeans seemed to love Julia and Richard as a couple as much as or even more than American audiences did. They couldn’t get enough of them on the big screen.

I was suddenly back in demand as a director. I was, however, a sixty-four-year-old director. And when you are that old, in addition to getting lifetime achievement awards, you start seeing your friends die. During the
Runaway Bride
shoot one of my best friends died. His name was Harvey Miller, and he suffered a drug overdose. Shortly before his death he did a one-man show, the first show ever staged at my Falcon Theatre. When he died I left the set to attend his funeral. It was hard because I was so excited for the new movie and working nonstop. When a friend dies, however, it puts everything in perspective.

It is interesting to note that two of the best speeches at Harvey’s funeral were given by the dynamic director Nancy Meyers and Harvey’s longtime masseuse.

Shortly after we wrapped production on
Runaway Bride
, I got a handwritten note from Julia. “Dearest Garry, well it is time again not to say goodbye but until we meet again. Director, teacher, father, brother and most of all special friend. Thank you is not enough. So … I will watch over you and make you smile and remind you I
love you most. Love,… aka Maggie aka Julia. Don’t wait another ten years to guide me.”

We filmed
Pretty Woman
in 1989. We filmed
Runaway Bride
in 1999. Exactly ten years later I called and asked Julia to star in my new movie
Valentine’s Day
. She checked to make sure it had been ten years, and said yes again.

Giving the Royal Treatment to Andrews and Hathaway

“W
HEN CAN I WATCH
Pretty Woman
?” asked Charlotte on one of our walks. Charlotte and her twin sister, Lily, were my first grandchildren, born in 1995.

“How old are you now?” I asked.

“Four years old and a half,” she said.

“You’re not old enough to see
Pretty Woman
yet,” I said.

“But
why
? How old do you have to be?” she asked.

“Definitely older than four and a half,” I said.

“Well, I already know it’s about a hooker,” she said.

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“I heard my mom talking about it with her friends,” she said.

“You have good hearing,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “So what exactly is a hooker?”

“When you know the answer to that question, you will be ready to see
Pretty Woman
,” I said. “Deal?”

“Deal!” she said and smiled.

Later that night it bothered me that Charlotte and Lily were both too young to see most of my movies. The preschool set wasn’t rushing to rent
Beaches, Frankie and Johnny
, or
The Flamingo Kid
. I remembered feeling the same way when my three children were small and weren’t interested in
The Odd Couple
. They rejected the sophisticated humor of Oscar and Felix and instead couldn’t get enough of
The Brady Bunch
and
The Partridge Family
. That was one of the reasons I created
Happy Days
, so my kids would tune in to
me. Now I felt compelled to make a movie that Lily and Charlotte would want to go see with their friends. Everybody says career decisions are based on where you are in your life, and at that moment I was a grandpa.

“If Pop made a movie you could see, what would it be about?” I asked.

“I want you to make a movie about a girl named Belle who wears a yellow dress and gets chased by a big scary Beast and then they get married,” Charlotte said, as if giving a studio executive her one-line pitch.

“I’m afraid that has already been done, and done well I might add. What else?” I asked.

“What about a story about a Chinese girl. You can call it
Mulan
!” chimed in Lily.

“That’s already been done, too. And don’t even try to pitch me anything about a girl with a mermaid fin and a good voice. Been there and done that.”

“Well, it has to have a princess in it,” said Charlotte.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because all kids want to see a movie with a princess because there’s always a big castle and a happy ending!” said Charlotte.

The next day I called Disney and told them to find me a script with a princess and a happy ending.
Runaway Bride
, a collaboration between Disney and Paramount, had been designed to become a hit, and it did even better than expected. So the powers that be at Disney were eager to sign me for another picture. I felt excited about finding something that would be a good fit for Lily and Charlotte as well as me.

I soon found out that Disney owned
The Princess Diaries
, based on the Meg Cabot book with a script by Gina Wendkos. The movie was about a San Francisco teenager who discovers she is a princess, the granddaughter of the queen of a country called Genovia. Whitney Houston owned the rights to the movie and was set to produce it. Several years earlier Whitney had starred in my sister Penny’s film
The Preacher’s Wife
. Penny had gotten along well with Whitney, and I thought that was a good sign. Also, this movie was small and
had no stars attached. There was no pressure to make it a big studio film, and that’s just the kind of movie I like. When people give me room to create amid low expectations, I like to surprise them. Now I just had to find my princess and my queen of Genovia.

When I was an enlisted soldier, before I shipped off for active duty in Korea, I knew I could get into Broadway shows for free if I was wearing my army dress uniform. So one night in 1956, I went in my uniform to see
My Fair Lady
. I missed the beginning because they let you in after the paying customers, but once I was inside I took my place in the standing room section. I watched as Julie Andrews played the part of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons so she can pass for a lady. I remember standing in the dark, in my khaki army uniform, and just smiling from ear to ear. I had never seen a performance as impressive or delightful. She just exuded a type of charm and grace that, having grown up in the Bronx, I had never seen before. I was blown away, and it’s pretty hard to be blown away when you are standing for a two-hour show. But Julie Andrews was perfection onstage in my book, and I never forgot her performance.

On paper Julie and I couldn’t be more different. She is an elegant dame from England who drinks tea and wears silk suits without wrinkles. I’m a guy from the Bronx who grew up playing street games, reading superhero comics, and wearing torn corduroy pants that made a noise when I walked. She speaks with perfect diction. And I mumble with a New York accent. She likes rose gardens and writing books for children. I like playing softball and started my career writing humorous riffs for comedians in dirty nightclubs. But that’s one of the things I like best about making movies: You meet people who aren’t from your neighborhood. While I had worked with Goldie Hawn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bette Midler, and Julia Roberts, working with Julie Andrews was not something I’d ever thought I would get the opportunity to do back when I was a kid wearing army dog tags. But after I read the script for
The Princess Diaries
, I thought of her immediately.