Read Online Hollywood Animal by Joe Eszterhas - Free Book Online

getting stabbed in the back either: Arthur Hiller was the former president of the Directors Guild and the present president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! He was the symbol of the director as titan. He had
led
all directors; he was now
leading
the Academy. And, with the studio as my accomplice, I had stuck a shiv in his back. (At least he hadn’t suffered, like Bob Harmon, a real-life heart attack.)
    The Directors Guild was so angry at me that they debated changing the name “Alan Smithee” to some other name as their designation for a movie where the director took his name off it. I immediately did a gleeful interview pointing out that a mere screenwriter had stolen “Alan Smithee” from the all-powerful Directors Guild.
    Even Paddy Chayefsky—if I was Che, Paddy was Trotsky—hadn’t been able to accomplish
that
, although the posters for his movies didn’t just have his name on them—they had a
picture
of Paddy in the corner of the poster beating on his typewriter.
    I was never able to pull that off, though I did put the actual manual typewriter I used up on the screen in
Jagged Edge
. I don’t think any other writer in Hollywood history was ever able to put his typewriter—his actual weapon—up on-screen.
    Paddy Chayefsky began working in Hollywood in the fifties, a time when the dean of American screenwriters, Ben Hecht, was quoted as saying: “A screenwriter is a cross between a groundhog and a doormat. … All you have to do to make a screenwriter behave is gag him with thousand dollar bills.”
    Paddy was at dinner once at a studio head’s house and he felt the hostess was condescending to him. When he was leaving, she air-kissed him on both cheeks and said good night and thank you.
    Paddy air-kissed both of her cheeks and said, “Good night, thank you, and fuck you.”
    Paddy called NBC critic Gene Shalit a “professional clown.”
    Paddy insisted that he always be paid at least as much as the director of the movie and was often paid much more.
    “The director is an assassin in terms of story,” Paddy Chayefsky said. “You have to stand ceaseless guard against the director’s ambushes.”
    He also said:
    “Collaboration in film is fine, as long as it’s geared to the realization of the script that I wrote.”
“Becoming a director diminishes a writer—it may give him more power and control, but he loses the writer’s perspective.”
“All your life you aim for a time when you’re doing what you do for no other reason than that you like it, and I love writing.”
“You spill your guts into a typewriter, which is why you can’t stand to see what you write destroyed or degraded into a bunch of claptrap.”
“A writer does not have to compromise his talents in Hollywood. Good films can be made there as well as anywhere else.”
“The worst kind of censorship is the kind that takes place in your own mind before you sit down to a typewriter.”
“Can you believe this? These cruds want rewrites.”
    Paddy Chayefsky realized every screenwriter’s dream—not a word of his script could be changed. It was in his contract.
    The studio hired the English director Ken Russell to direct one of Paddy’s scripts,
Altered States
. Russell was the classic auteur director.
    Russell started changing things in Paddy’s script as he shot the movie. Paddy reminded the studio that by contract
nothing
could be changed. The studio reminded Russell.
    Russell went berserk. “He started to beat the shit out of the script,” the producer of the movie said. “He would make real lousy remarks. Just anything to get Paddy upset. He was really looking to dislodge Paddy from any position of authority, that was obvious.”
    Ken Russell said to Paddy: “Take your turkey sandwiches and your script and your Sanka and stuff it up your ass and get on the next fucking plane back to New York and let me get on with the fucking film.”
    Still, no matter how ballistic he was, Ken Russell, the auteur