My Life as a Mankiewicz (33 page)

The Deep
grossed more than $100 million in 1977, which would be like grossing $350 million today. Whether you get credit or not, everybody knows you were down there doing it: Peter Yates knows, Peter Guber knows, Robert Shaw knows, Jackie Bisset knows, and the studio knows. Peter Yates had a big piece of
The Deep:
10 or 15 percent of the profits. David Begelman, not the most honorable fellow, but a good executive who was running Columbia at the time, was a good friend of Peter Yates's. They were offering Peter another picture. Peter went to see David one day. He said, “First, David, let me just say, my business manager and my agent say that you guys owe me six million bucks from
The Deep.”
There was a silence. He said, “Six million. They've looked at the grosses.”

David said to him, in essence, “You're probably right. We probably do owe you six million dollars. We're going to offer you two; take it or leave it.” And Peter took it because he knew the alternative was to be in court with the studio for years. He said, “If I go on
The Tonight Show
and say two million wasn't enough, people will throw food at me. On the other hand, Begelman just cheated me out of four million dollars.” So you always have to make that decision when you have monkey points.

Clint Eastwood was a cash cow at Warner Brothers. They treated the people that they had deals with so wonderfully. But Clint finally went to them one day and said, “Here's the deal. I'm going to take Screen Actors Guild minimum. Take Screen Directors Guild minimum. When the picture opens and the theaters keep their 30 percent, it's ‘hello partner.' No deductions of any kind; not publicity, not cost for opening it, not interests, not loans, just ‘hello partner.'” A “hello partner” deal is when a studio partners with an actor to share box office gross on a film from dollar one. And they made a “hello partner” deal with him. He was the only guy who could do it then.

The best deal ever made was by two people who changed television and movies. Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball wanted to shoot
I Love Lucy
in L.A. because they lived there. It was going to be more expensive by—and we're talking the early 1950s—$5,000 an episode, and a whole episode only cost $40,000. And, Desi wanted to do it on film. He was a very smart guy, not the second banana to her, a really good business man. He said to the network, “I'm going to film it.”

They said, “No, you can't film it, for God's sake. Everything's on tape, on kinescope.”

Desi said, “I want to film it. We'll put up the five thousand extra every week, Lucy and I, and we want to own the negatives.”

The network said, “Absolutely.” They laughed at him because there were no reruns in those days. There were no videotapes, there were no DVDs, there was no ancillary market at all. Nobody could ever imagine rerunning them. All of a sudden, Lucy and Desi owned the shows. That was a big event.

I was watching
NCIS
and now it says, “Producer: Mark Harmon” in the eighth year.
Gunsmoke
is one of the longest-running series in the history of television. At a certain point, Jim Arness, playing Marshal Dillon, had to sign up again for three years. He said, “I want a piece of the show and I want to be executive producer.” Bill Paley was running CBS at the time. Another CBS executive said, “If we do this, we're opening a door that can never be closed.” The executive didn't talk with Paley, and John Meston, a producer- writer on the show, was hired in secret to write the show where Marshal Dillon is killed. Burt Reynolds, who was in the series at the time, becomes the marshal, and they'll just go on and call it
Gunsmoke.
The executive went to Bill Paley and said, “Here's the situation, Mr. Paley. This is what Mr. Arness wants, and his contract's up in three months. We had an episode written and we can kill him.”

Paley said, “You mean
Gunsmoke
, that's been on already for twelve years, and my kids' favorite show? Let me ask you a question: If we give Arness a piece of the show, his production company, are we still going to make money?”

The executive said, “Oh, yeah, we'll make money.”

Paley said, “Then do it.” And that started the trend where you see an actor's production company having a piece of the show.

Rewriting
Superman

At this point, in 1977, I had rewritten
The Deep
and
The Spy Who Loved Me
, among others. I was the fixer, and I didn't really want to be the fixer. I wanted to do screenplays like
The Eagle Has Landed
or
Live and Let Die
, where I was on from start to finish. Dick Donner had been a really close friend for so long. I was lying in bed, it was five o'clock in the morning, the phone rang, and it was Donner with the most unmistakable voice in the world. He never has to introduce himself. He said, “Get up, get up. I'm in Paris.”

I said, “Jesus Christ, Donner, it's five in the morning.”

“I know. I'm doing
Superman
, and so are you.”

“No, no, no. I'm not doing
Superman.
What is it, the Superman comics?”

“Absolutely, and you're going to do it, and there's a lady on her way to your house right now with the scripts.
Superman
and
Superman II.
It's two scripts. Two movies. And you're too nice a guy. I told her you'll come down and open the door.”

I said, “Oh, shit.”

The doorbell rang. I hung up on Dick and went downstairs. Here was this nice lady. The two scripts, which anyone can see in the “Making of
Superman”
featurette on the DVD, were between five hundred and six hundred pages long. I just looked at them and put them down on the hall table. I went upstairs and the phone rang again. It was Dick. “Are you reading?”

I said, “No, they're too heavy to get upstairs, Dick.”

He said, “I'll be back home tomorrow. Read them.”

I read them and they were very campy, although there was some wonderful stuff too. Mario Puzo had written a first draft. He was not a good screenwriter. But then the producers got Robert Benton and David Newman with Mrs. Leslie Newman. They're very smart writers. Benton is a wonderful writer. But the script went on forever. No comic-book character had ever been out on the screen successfully in the history of movies. And here I was rewriting again. I was taking somebody else's script.

When Dick got back, I called him and I said, “Look, I'd love to work with you, we're friends, but this is not the—”

He said, “Come over to my house,” which was very close. “Come over.”

I went over, rang the doorbell, and there was no answer. I went around the side of the house. I knew his house very well. There was Dick, standing in his garden, looking out at a view of Los Angeles, dressed in a Superman suit that they'd given him. He turned around and looked at me. I couldn't believe it. He said, “Just try the suit on and you'll do it.” He started running at me, the cape was billowing out, and I was laughing. Dick has got that infectious enthusiasm. He said, “If we can get the love story right, it'll work.” It was not stunts or flying, it was if we can get Lois and Clark and Superman right, and make them real, we'll really have a picture.

We had to work for the Salkinds. Alexander Salkind was the old man, and his son, Ilya, was the nominal producer, along with a kind of a hit man they had, named Pierre Spengler. The Salkinds weren't really producers; they were promoters. They had the idea to do
Superman.
Warners thought it was a lousy idea and let them have it for a negative pickup, which means, you go make the movie and we'll distribute it. As promoters, the Salkinds asked, “Who is the most famous writer in the world?” It was Mario Puzo at the time, because of
The Godfather.
They got him, and they went out and got Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman to commit by paying them a lot of money: Brando was guaranteed $3 million, Hackman was guaranteed $2 million. This was 1977. At the Cannes Film Festival, they had helicopters with banners saying, “Superman, Puzo, Brando, Hackman.” I got to know Hackman fairly well during
Superman.
We talked about it one night. He said, “You know, I came from New York from the stage. I don't know how I ever became a leading man. I was just going to be a supporting actor for my whole life, and I was happy as a clam.” But then, two films were released:
The French Connection
, where he isn't playing a romantic lead, but he was the lead and he was fuckin' great; and
The Poseidon Adventure
, where again, he was the lead but he wasn't a romantic lead. All of a sudden, he was a movie star.

Gene was delighted with the pages I was writing. Benton and Newman wrote some good stuff for him, but some of it was silly—not that Lex Luthor's part isn't silly. Gene had a mustache when Dick met him in L.A. Dick said, “You've got to lose the mustache, Gene.”

Gene said, “I don't want to lose the mustache. I love the mustache.”

Dick said, “Yeah, but here's the whole thing about Lex Luthor: he doesn't have any hair.”

Gene said, “You're just going to have to live with that,” and Dick said okay.

So the first day of makeup tests, Dick walked in wearing a mustache. It was the first time Gene had seen him in London. Dick said, “If you can't lick ‘em, join ‘em.”

Gene said, “You look great with that mustache.”

Dick said, “I'll tell you what, Gene; I'll shave mine if you shave yours.” Gene said okay. They put some lather on it and they shaved Gene's mustache, and Dick pulled his off. It was a fake mustache. Gene was fucking furious. Furious! And then he laughed because Dick really got him. He knew it was best for the part.

The picture started with Guy Hamilton as the director. They figured they'd get a Bond director. Guy would have been disastrous casting for
Superman
because he was a cynic. That's what made him so wonderful for Bond. He was also rather snobby; exactly wrong for
Superman.
But this is what I mean about the Salkinds being promoters as opposed to producers. They had no idea how to cast a director for it. They were going to shoot the picture in Italy, but all of a sudden the lira got more expensive and the pound was collapsing, so they decided to move to England. They figured they were going to save millions. They said to Guy Hamilton, “You'll be very happy, Guy; we're shooting this movie in England now, so you can be home.”

Guy said, “I'm sorry, but I'm a tax exile from England. I'm only allowed ninety days a year in the United Kingdom.” He was officially a citizen of Malta.

They said, “Okay, good-bye.” So Guy was paid off.

The reason they went to Donner was that
The Omen
was a smash, and it was opening in Europe and he was right there. When Dick came on, they'd already spent $5 or $6 million. I don't think the Salkinds ever raised more than $16 million, and they were going to do two movies, plus pay Dick and me a lot of money. It is the only film I've ever worked on or ever heard of where the director was never shown a budget or a schedule. They couldn't show him a budget because they couldn't tell him how much money they actually didn't have. There was a sequence from
Superman II
where the three super villains come through the ceiling of the White House to take over and there's a gun battle with marines. That was scheduled for a day and a half. Dick said, “Are you crazy? If they come through the ceiling of the White House wrong, that's going to be a whole day to put that back. You can't shoot this in a day and a half. I'll tell you what: Why don't you schedule the rest of the film for four days, and I'll be nine months over? It doesn't really matter. This is all fucking fiction.” The Salkinds had no idea how to make a movie. They'd been very lucky with
Three
and
Four Musketeers
because Dick Lester, the director, did know how to make a movie.

Donner liked to smoke marijuana. It was all very careful. The house he had on Floor Street—and I eventually moved into that house—was next door to Margaret Thatcher. She was the head of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition at the time, as the Labor Party was in power. She had cops in front of her house. We were asked over to a big Tory party at Mrs. Thatcher's. We went and met her.

It was the seventies, and people weren't drinking, they were smoking grass. One night we were out with John Standing, an actor friend of mine who was in
The Eagle Has Landed.
Dick rented the house that we were in from John's ex-wife. At the end of the evening, John gave us each a Thai stick as a gift. I was never a big drug taker, I was a big drinker. The next morning, Dick and I are up at six thirty. We're taking a flight to Zurich so we can have breakfast with Salkind, who didn't fly. We're at Heathrow, Dick's going through the metal detectors, and I'm waiting to put my briefcase on the conveyor belt. I open it up, and there's the Thai stick, right on top. And I know Stacy Keach is doing two years in prison. I snap the briefcase down and start coughing. I'm playing like I'm not feeling well. I open the briefcase, snatch the Thai stick, and stuff it in my sock; I don't know what to do. Dick is saying, “What's going on? Will you come on, we're going to miss the plane.”

I go through security and say to Dick, “There's a Thai stick in my sock,” as we're getting on the plane.

Dick says, “Oh, Jesus. Switzerland is worse than England. It's in your sock?”

I said, “Yeah.” And I did one of the shittiest things I've ever done in my life. We were in first class. It was a small first class, eight seats. Across the aisle from me was a little old guy in his seventies. At one point during the flight, he got up to take a leak and I took the Thai stick and jammed it in the back of his seat. He looked like such an honorable man. I thought, when they're cleaning the plane, if they do find it, they'll blame it on this guy. So maybe he gets arrested, but he looks like an honorable guy, so I'm sure he can get out of it, whereas I look like an absolute asshole in my thirties.

I told Dick, “I jammed it in his seat.” I hated that.