What Just Happened? Read Free Page B

financed?’
    Obviously it starts with the writing, but even with a good script you have to ask, ‘How do I get a good script made?’So you tell the writer, ‘Don’t write this script for the ten million people you hope are going to want to see it—write this script for the guy who is going to make it, so that he’ll go, ‘I can take a risk on that because I can justify the loss, or, ‘I believe that we have a shot.’ That is the hidden secret that most people don’t know. As a producer, I have never designed anything for the public. Everything I do first has to interest me, but once I get past that test, the next thing is who is going to do it and am I redesigning this thing so that they find it irresistible? If it’s for Barry Levinson or a director like that, is this the kind of thing when they read it they go, ‘I have to do this.’ If it’s for Bob De Niro, you’d have in your mind this is a part for a guy in his fifties. There are seven actors who fall into that category who can get your movie made, so you write it for them. Because even if a young executive says, ‘This is just terrific, I love it, we want to option it,’ and then they give it to those seven actors, if they turn it down, you’re out of business. So in Bob De Niro’s case, you have to write it so he says, ‘Fuck, I want to be that guy.’ Because then your executive is saying, ‘Wow, this got Bob De Niro,’ or Al Pacino or Michael Douglas. If you start to think about it clearly, you’re not writing thisthing for millions of people, you are creating it for such a small group it’s scary. So in this particular example, I knew it would get Bob—I knew it had the humor, I knew it was taking him to a place as an actor that he doesn’t usually get to go to because he’s always got to be a tough guy like in
Heat
where he’s got to kill somebody, and this is completely opposite. Bob can even play a Woody Allen kind of character if he wants to, making him sympathetic. And I know Bob as a person can’t resist that.
    PB : As you put it, your character is just a snail that is trying hard not to slide down the glass.
    AL : He doesn’t ever acknowledge how bad things are to himself, to his ex-wife, to his friends, to anybody. So even at the end, after Cannes, at a Paris airport, with a private jet leaving him standing on the runway, he has his ex-wife on the phone and she says, ‘So when are you coming home?’ and he says ‘How often am I going to be in Paris?’ He can’t even say, ‘I’ve just been fucking ditched by the studio,’ you know.
    PB : He’s still trying at the very end.
    AL : Of course. It’s me trying, I’m still trying. With one studio less to work with!

ONE
Negative Pickup
    â€˜Bog snorkeling, baby.’
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜I was grabbing the knee pads for decades.’
    â€˜Very colorful, Jerry, but not what I remember.’
    â€˜Every day in my office screaming, “Cesspool! Cesspool!” I thought you knew.’
    â€˜Knew what? You were on top.’
    â€˜It was a ruse.’
    â€˜Hey, a legend who quit before his time … takes big balls if you ask me.’
    On the word
legend
, he blew me a kiss. His engine was starting to rev up now.
    â€˜Nonsense, I was eating the pound cake every day. That’s right, every day, and thank you, I’m well out of it.’
    â€˜I … I never knew.’
    But, of course, I did.
    Jerry was sitting in a small booth in the rear of a Malibu coffee shop, one of those garden restaurants with bad lighting, across from the coast highway. It was breakfast time and the place was nearly empty. I had entered alone looking for a seat near the window where I could read the trades, but when our eyes met, the reunion became inevitable. Finding another table was not an option.
    â€˜So, how long has it been, Jerry? Two