Hollywood Tales
Anecdotes and tall tales about working in Hollywood.
Allen, Jay Presson: “[Hitchcock] taught me more about screenwriting than I learned in all the rest of my career.”
Apatow, Judd: “I just loved comedians — I couldn’t believe they would talk to me. So I wrote for dozens…”
Arch, Jeff: “Virginia. 1990. I’m thirty-five years old, married with two very young kids… I get an idea for a love story where the two main characters don’t even meet until the very last scene… I call it Sleepless in Seattle, and I know it’s going to be a monster. I can feel it.
Arndt, Michael: “Part of the romance of movies — one of the elemental myths of show biz — is their ability to transform lives seemingly overnight (‘You’re going out there a nobody, kid, but you’re coming back a star!’). That has been, to some degree, my story.”
Arquette, Rosanna: “In Hollywood there are a lot of very insecure men running the business.”
August, John: “I worked as an intern-slash-reader at a little Paramount production company during my first semester of graduate school, and the contrast between the crappy scripts I read there and the great scripts I read for class was really illuminating.”
Axelrod, George: “He [Billy Wilder] said, ‘You will do the following: you will get on the airplane in the morning; then you will come out here and . . . ‘ Right away, he started running my life.”
Bass, Ron: “I’ve had great relationships with directors, and I’ve had more difficult relationships with directors. Executives… I frequently have lots of trouble with. I have never really had trouble with the actors.”
Beatty, Ned: “I want to see the writers strike because the writers, god bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood.”
Bogart, Humphrey: “I came out here with one suit and everybody said I looked like a bum. Twenty years later Marlon Brando came out with only a sweatshirt and the town drooled over him.”
Brackett, Leigh: “I had been writing pulp stories for about three years, and here is William Faulkner, who was one of the great literary lights of the day, and how am I going to work with him?”
Brancato, John: “I was dreading yet another enervating and hopeless studio meeting, this one at Fox about developing a vehicle for a Brat Pack actor (one not that hot at the time, and since even colder)…”
Brooks, Albert: “Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy…”
Brooks, Richard: “‘Do you remember how it sounded, do you remember any words, how was it?’ I told him, ‘One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock.’ He said, ‘Let me find out.’ He called about two weeks later. He said, ‘Ya, there is a record like that, but it died — they played it for a week — you want that record?’ . . . So he got this 78 record and I used to play it all day while I was writing the screenplay.”
Cameron, James: “He went to the chalk board in the room and simply wrote the word ALIEN. Then he added an ‘S’ to make ALIENS. Dramatically, he drew two vertical lines through the ‘S’, ALIEN$. He turned around and grinned. We greenlit the project that day for $18 million.”
Chandler, Raymond: “Working with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity was an agonizing experience and has probably shortened my life, but I learned from it about as much about screenwriting as I am capable of learning, which is not very much.”
Chayefsky, Paddy: “Names are fun. In Hospital I used a lot of mystery writers. Had a nurse named Christie. A doctor is named Chandler. Sometimes I go to baseball box scores and pick out names…”
Cody, Diablo: “I hit upon the idea for Juno. It didn’t take me very long. I don’t think writing movies is hard — when I hear people have spent years nursing a single script I can’t imagine what their day looks like!”
Cohen, Larry: “His subconscious generally fills up both sides of a ninety-minute cassette, which his conscious self then pays a typist to turn into about twenty-five pages. With ‘ a fix-up here, a fix-up there — but surprisingly very little,’ he says, five good writing days can yield a finished screenplay. Each year, he offers as many as six of these completed (or ‘spec’) scripts for sale to the highest bidder.”
Coppola, Francis Ford: “…it’s difficult for me sometimes to place these scripts because usually there is a kind of leapfrog effect in which I write a script, get three quarters through it, decide that it’s terrible, abandon it, and then put it away and forget about it. “
Costner, Kevin: “But that’s not why a movie works. Movies are not about elements. They’re about stories. The script is everything.”
Cowie, Peter: “The presence of oranges in all three Godfather movies indicates that a death or a close call will soon happen.”
Didion, Joan: “We agree we need to make Talley (Savitch) a more sympathetic character and define a clearer arc for her. We feel it’s essential to show that Talley has other aspects to her personality besides her ambition. If we are to root for her, we must see she has doubts and insecurities, compassion and love…”
Disney, Walt: “He [Mickey Mouse] popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad… on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at their lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.”
Disney, Walt: How Walt Disney saved Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by meeting with Bank of America executives… and acting out all the parts of the movie.
Dixon, Leslie “I attribute success to having the background of just loving the great stories of the world — and that’s what makes the most successful films — combined with my trashy, vulgar appreciation of all that is modern Hollywood.”
Dixon, Leslie: “And I said ‘Listen, you hardly know me but I’ve written a bunch of movies. I will write this script for you, virtually for free.’ Actually I used the phrase ‘This will get you in your Hasidic scrotum.’”
Dunne, John Gregory: “In the early 1990s, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion wrote an original for Disney based on the life of 1980s television journalist Jessica Savitch — this is one installment of the notes the studio sent them…”
Dunne, Philip: “I moved out here (Los Angeles) because I had sinusitis, and the doctor recommended a warm climate…”
Eszterhas, Joe: “(Sharon Stone) was so despised by co-workers that on one of her films…”
Farrelly, Peter: “We work out a first act and that’s all we work out. And then we get together and we say, let’s see where this things wants to go.”
Faulkner, William: “I think I have had about all of Hollywood I can stand…”
Ford, John: A humorous anecdote about the time Ford hired a local Navajo Medicine Man to predict the weather when shooting The Searchers in Monument Valley.
Gaghan, Stephen: “Believe me, if I’d had any idea how it worked, I would have quit, I’m sure. My best friend was ignorance. Don’t underestimate its importance.”
Groening, Matt”I had no idea I was going to make cartooning a career. I was doing it merely to assuage my profound sense of self-pity at being stuck in this scummy little apartment in Hollywood.”
Hayes, John Michael: “ I think you couldn’t repeat the cultural phenomenon that was happening at the time “Thelma & Louise” came out. The first wave of women senators started getting elected, the Anita Hill thing was happening, there was a lot going on…”
Hecht, Ben: “ I never knew when I was writing a movie, whether my heroine would end up being called Joe or Mabel or whether the locale would be Peking of Akron.”
Hensleigh, Jonathan: “The pictures I made with [producer Jerry] Bruckheimer… are not the pinnacle of taste, but they’re well-crafted action pictures.”
Huston, John: “Hollywood has always been a cage… a cage to catch our dreams.”
Jackson, Peter: “Jackson was shocked when they told him that if he didn’t agree to do LOTR as one movie, they already had a writer-director lined up who would do it their way. Jackson asked if he could try to set up the movie elsewhere. Miramax gave him 2 weeks.”
Koepp, David: “In writing Jurassic Park, I threw out a lot of detail about the characters because whenever they started talking about their personal lives, you couldn’t care less.”
Khouri, Callie: “And I felt the idea was so strong that I could write it without knowing what I was doing.”
Kier, Udo: “the script is the most important thing. First of all the story, and then you go from there. You know, it’s like you stand in the kitchen, and say are we making a fish or do we grill a steak? And you go from there.”
Konner, Lawrence: “There is a power attached to screenwriting — a power I discovered in the first weeks of my first paying job as a staff writer on a television drama. The producer called late one night: a new scene needed to be written for the next day’s shooting…”
Lardner Jr., Ring: “For about two minutes, Ingo and I discussed making it Vietnam instead of Korea and quickly realized the war that was still going on was just too close to many people for us to be funny…”
Lehman, Ernest: “Then Hitchcock arrived at MGM and he signed Cary Grant and fixed a starting date. Here I am, sweating my way through a first draft, and I still didn’t know what the whole third act would be…”
Linson, Art: “I began to notice that some of the women, and a couple of the men, would occasionally jerk their heads backward, a sudden ticlike movement, as if they were trying to avoid a collision.”
Lorre, Chuck: “This is the shot I’ve been given to communicate as a writer,” he said. “This is my shot. This was the door that opened, and if I take it for granted then it’s ridiculous.”
Macleod, Hugh”The bars of Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years. Meanwhile their competition is at home…”
Maddow, Ben: “He called Simon and Schuster and said that he had just sold a screenplay of a Western to Warner Brothers and were they interested in the book from which it was taken? Well yes, they would be interested. Then, he called the script department at Warner Brothers and told them he had sold a book to Simon and Schuster and would they be interested in the screenplay? He’d send it right over, which he did.”
Mamet, David: “We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is…”
Mayes, Wendall: “So if he (Billy Wilder) hadn’t been a bridge player, I would never have been employed.”
Nathanson, Jeff: “I think that you’re always kind of faking a little bit. Every notes meeting is sort of an act. Going to sit next to Steven Spielberg on a set and pretending like you belong there.”
Nichols, Dudley: “John [Ford], dressed only in a bathrobe and chomping on endless cigars, dictated the script scene by scene. [Dudley] Nichols often found himself standing up and shouting to make himself heard…”
Nichols, Mike: “The famous ending of “The Graduate,” for example, came about because as it came time to film the scene where Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross get on the bus, Mr. Nichols found himself growing unaccountably irritable…”
Norman, Marc: “My best writing has been on the the scripts I wrote as suicide notes to the industry — sort of, ‘Fuck you, guys, I’m outta here.”
Phelan, Anna Hamilton: “When Dian Fossey was still living, they (Universal) had bought that book…”
Polanski, RomanRivera, Jose: “When I decided to make the jump into screenwriting, within a month or two I was pitched four films. One was a film about El Salvadorian gangs in L.A. One was about girl gangs in East L.A…”
Schrader, Paul: “Each day I waited for the food to run out and the power to be cut off. There was like three weeks left on the rent. These violent self-destructive fantasies that one normally holds at bay started to prey upon me.”
Silliphant, Stirling: “”I wouldn’t trade the hour that followed [with Hitchcock] for anything I can think of at the moment… The man was BRILLIANT. He fucking dictated the script to me — shot by shot…”
Solomon, Ed: “Sometimes they [other screenwriters] want to be [rewritten]… Or sometimes they’ll say, ‘Look, I don’t want to be rewritten, but it’s gonna happen.’ What I’m talking about is, I won’t rewrite someone who really doesn’t want me to do it. It’s not worth it to me. I don’t want to do that to someone’s work.”
Sorkin, Aaron: “I’m really weak with plot. With nothing to stop me, I’ll write pages and pages of snappy dialogue that don’t add up to anything.”
Sorkin, Aaron: “The movie [The Social Network] comes out of two separate depositions, happening concurrently, from two lawsuits that have been brought against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook… so I exploited that for the purpose of storytelling to create a Rashomon effect.”
Tally, Ted: “The upshot is that every time there was a hiccup in the road to getting this movie done — with [Gene] Hackman, with Pfeiffer, whatever — it always led to something better. It’s like that with the rare, charmed moments in your life: Even the accidents are good ones and turn out for the best.”
Theron, Charlize: “Local talent manager John Crosby happened to be standing in line behind her… asked if she was, perchance, an actress. Theron, somewhat flustered, replied that she fully intended to become one and Crosby promptly signed her on as a client.”
Thompson, Emma: “Lindsay goes round the table and introduces everyone — making it clear that I am present in the capacity of writer rather than actress, therefore no one has to be nice to me.”
Thompson, Hunter S.: “The [Hollywood] film business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side.”
Towne, Robert: “He [Jack Nicholson] talks about everything but seduction, anything from a rubber duck he had as a child to the food on the table… but you know it’s all oriented toward trying to fuck this girl…”
Wambaugh, Joseph: “Screenwriters are like little gypsies swimming in an aquarium filled with sharks, killer whales, squid, octopuses and other creatures of the deep. And plenty of squid shit.”
Waters, Daniel: “No one has to go through an uglier, middleman-packed, Chinese telephone torture than a screenwriter does — producers, directors, investors, studio executives, opinionated craft-services people…I have never written a bad ending, yet everyone of my films has one.”
Welles, Orson: “Orson Welles, famed for his obsessive perfectionism, once spent an entire day making alterations to a garbage dump — ‘Move that ketchup bottle over there, turn it on its side, move this tin over there, take the label off the beans…’ — to shoot a single line of dialogue there!”
Wenger, William: “Producer Walter Wanger had two writers under contract for $2,500 a week named Towne and Baker… Wanger claimed they wrote every sequence on toilet paper, which they hung on the wall.”
Wilder, Billy: “The original scripts [for Sunset Blvd.] were printed with the title A Can of Beans, because the writers were afraid the studio wouldn’t support a script that might be seen as negative about the business.”
Zaillian, Steve: “His [Spielberg’s] great strength is really being able to visually interpret a script.”
