Sadly folks, this third and latest trailer for The Mist is what’s passing for movie news in these heady days of writer’s strikes.  Yup, it’s still about a devil fog.

But fret not, for I have secured FilmDrunk an exclusive that will provide you with bathroom reading and desk job slack off material for weeks on end (and heck, might even introduce you to some fine literature).  That’s because I’ll be posting large sections of Allen Weisbecker’s latest book, Can’t You Get Along With Anyone. 

Parlaying a career as a drug smuggler into Hollywood writing jobs on the original Miami Vice and various movie scripts, Weisbecker is the rightful heir to Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo crown.  He’s the author of Cosmic Bandidos, perhaps soon to be a major motion picture starring John Cusack, and certainly the funniest book ever written on the subject of quantum physics; and In Search of Captain Zero, perhaps soon to be a major motion picture starring Sean Penn.

Plenty of his revelations from the book support FilmDrunk’s suspicions about Hollywood producers vís a vís their intelligence level.

Care to find out why he physically threatened John Cusack, or why Sean Penn wrote him, “…I encourage you to stay (in Central America) until something that resembles death.”?  Stay tuned…   

[From CYGAWA Chapter 12]

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they were willing to actually remain fools. -Alice Walker 

Aside from the Cosmic Banditos movie contract fiasco, as described, it was right around this time that the In Search of Captain Zero catastrophe reached a possible turning point. The current option period was up. (To be exact, on February 18, 2004.) To recap the deal:

The studio (via Sean Penn, the other producer and the director) had not bought the rights to my book; they’d optioned the rights, a year at a time, at $5,000 per. So it was put-up-or-shut-up time on that date each year. I know: chump change, considering they’d already spent a couple hundred grand for my adaptation – the whole “it’s-brilliant-then-it’s-not-the-script- we-expected” fiasco – plus a producer’s fee went to the above trio. Not chump change, in total.

Thing was, though, everything had gone so poorly that my feeling was they might let the option expire, stop throwing money into the fire. I certainly would have, had I been in their position. But hold on. A version of my catch-22 kicks in here, no? Something like Anyone dumb enough to think there’s a movie in my book in the first place is dumb enough to keep throwing money into the fire.
 

And now there was another catch-22; or rather, the first catch-22
becomes a compound catch-22, which is sort of like an exponential whammy.
Something like Anyone dumb enough to think there’s a movie in my book in
the first place and then, in the second place, dumb enough to ignore a really good
screenplay that somehow gets written, is certainly dumb enough to keep throwing
money into the fire.

So it was absolutely guaranteed that they’d keep throwing money into
the fire.

I’m just realizing this now, as I write about it. At the time I thought maybe
they wouldn’t keep throwing money into the fire. And that would have
been fine with me, since I’d get back the movie rights to my book. There
was a problem here, though. Steven fucked up and failed to negotiate a buy-
back clause in the contract, which meant that I’d get the book rights back
but the studio and producers would still own the screenplay I wrote based
on the book. The bottom line of this piece of Hollywood ridiculousness
was that nobody could make a movie out of my book (at least not from
the screenplay I wrote). Yes, still another catch-22, of the simple, classic
variety.

But hold on. What’s the problem here, really? If someone else, another
studio, say, wanted to shoot my screenplay, couldn’t they just buy it from
the current studio/producers, those morons?

No.

Why not?

The studio/producers wouldn’t sell it to them. They’d just sit on my
screenplay and swallow the money lost.

Why would they do this?

Because if someone else made a movie from my screenplay and it was a
hit, the studio/producers would look…. how?

Right: Foolish

So forget that.*

If no one could make a movie out of my book and, indeed, if I got the
rights back it would cost me in option money not earned, then why did
I want the rights back? I’m not sure, but here’s an analogy that comes to
mind: Imagine you’re in love and your mate starts fucking someone else,
some scumbag. You leave your mate, it’s over. Then you find out that your
mate and the scumbag are not fucking anymore. You’re happy about it,
even though it’s still over between you and your mate.

Why are you happy about it?

Same thing here, somehow.

I wonder where that came from.

There was an amusing aspect to the option situation, though. Steven
called and said the studio suggested that I extend the option for free –
presumably because they figured that either, One, I liked them all so much,
or, Two, money was not a concern of mine.

Insofar as it’s possible for one to laugh in a Hollywood movie studio’s
face through an intermediary – in this case, one’s attorney – from a cell
phone at the end of the road at the bottom of Central America, that’s what
I did.

So they sent me the $5,000.

While the studio was busy making nonsensical proposals to my attorney
and then sending me money, I was busy too. I mean aside from dealing with
Lisa and her distressing antics, plus the hit man/Ron fiasco, plus crack-head
thieves moving onto my property, plus my attorney telling me to sign a
contract authored by Amy-frickin-Nickin without reading it, and so forth. I
was busy trying to get my draft, the “brilliant” one – written before the one
wherein I went into the tank – to Sean Penn. Aside from putting the draft
on my website and asking anyone who knew Sean to please give it to him,
I’d sent the draft to his Hollywood manager with a note asking him to read
it and, if he liked it, send it along to Penn.** I knew this wouldn’t work but
I gave it a shot anyway. I knew it wouldn’t work because Penn’s manager
was also the director’s manager,† and the director, along with the other
producer and along with the studio did not want Penn to read my draft. I
also knew the manager wouldn’t do anything as intelligent as reading the
draft and giving it to Penn because (if you’ll remember) the manager was
one of the idiots who thought there was a movie in my book in the first
place. Right: That catch-22 again (or a slight variation of it).

Regarding that catch-22: That catch-22 did not apply to Sean Penn because
he still hadn’t read my book (and hence had no reason to know there is no
movie in it). I know this because I’d asked the other producer if Sean had
got around to reading it. She told me no, but that Sean’s wife, actress Robin
Wright Penn, told her a copy of my book was sitting on their living room
table.

“But you know Sean,” the producer said. Meaning that a copy of my
book’s current location on Sean’s living room table wasn’t a whole lot of
progress towards him reading it.

“No, I don’t know Sean,” I said. Not only did I not know Sean, but I
hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in quite a while — since the breakfast
meeting at the Four Seasons, actually, when the producer repeated how he
gets involved early in the script stage and how I will enjoy working with
him. So, no. I didn’t know Sean, but I was getting the drift.

In case you haven’t figured it out: I wanted to get my draft to Sean Penn
because I figured he’d like it and straighten all the morons out – my draft
would go back to being brilliant (plus I’d be a genius again). Which was
why everyone was petrified of Penn reading it, since they’d look foolish if
he did like it. 

Can you wrap your mind around all this stuff?

My other move was to dig up Penn’s assistant’s name and address and
send the draft to her. Sent it off to Hollywood (the state of mind Hollywood,
since her address is in San Francisco) from Big Turkeys then waited to see
What Would Happen Next while all this other shit was going on.

As I say, it was a busy time.

* This particular studio did do this once, i.e.; sell back to the writers a screenplay they owned but
didn’t like. I’ve mentioned this one before, in another context. There’s Something About Mary.
Right: You wanna talk about looking foolish?

** It’s still on my website (the aweisbecker.com one), so you can read it there too – see if I have my
head up my ass like everyone else.^{$
     $} As Steven made sure to point out, putting my draft on my site was illegal since I don’t
own the draft, the studio/producers do. They could sue, Steven said. To which I say:
Good luck to the fuckers! I imagine some Hollywood asshole in a suit with a briefcase
showing up at Big Turkeys to serve me papers and getting accidentally shot by a hit man
looking for my sorry ass or mugged by the crack heads on my property or bit by the
deadly terciopelo viper.

†  Still more Hollywood incest, and still another example of how I was surrounded.

PART 8 COMING SOON…

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PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
PART 5
PART 6
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTERVIEW

 

[From CYGAWA Part II, Chapter 10]

There is only one thing that can kill movies and that is education.  -Will Rogers

There’s a character in this In Search of Captain Zero movie deal confederacy of dunces* that I’ve so far only mentioned in passing, but who deserves more words: the director of record on this project.

As mentioned back in Part One, this fellow directed a documentary that Sean Penn narrated and that the producer who originally approached me about optioning my book had produced. As part of the producer’s pitch – sensing my wariness about letting her have the option – she sent me a cassette of the documentary, a history of the skateboard subculture in America. The movie was supposed to be an indication of how brilliant the director was. I watched it with Mom down in North Carolina – this was in early 2001, a few months before Mom died. It was good, if a bit long; it had a certain pizzazz. Thing was, though, about halfway through I noticed something that gave me contemplative pause regarding the director’s brilliance: almost all the footage, certainly the pizzazz-rife footage, was archival, from the early days of skateboarding and surfing in Venice, California. In fact, the director himself was a character in the movie; he was a kid for most of it. It was obvious that he hadn’t shot or directed this stuff. By the end I realized that the director had only “directed” the interviews with the now-aging characters from the archival footage, which was maybe 10% of the movie. All he had directed was talking heads. 

Also, documentaries are not principally a director’s medium to begin
with. Although there are lots of fine lines and blurry distinctions in the
implications of who-did-what based on credit given (as there are in feature
films), documentaries are primarily an editor’s medium, depending on who
develops the final structure – the order in which the images are presented.
In a feature film the structure is defined by the screenplay, i.e., the writer,
but in documentaries this is not necessarily the case. What often happens
is that the producer and/or director will dump a mountain of raw footage
in front of the editor and say, “Find the movie.”

So the movie Mom and I watched really indicated nothing about the
director’s ability to conceive of and execute a filmed narrative. That no
one at the studio noticed this before hiring this “hot new” director should
have completely, formally, tipped me that my catch-22 regarding the whole
bunch of them was not only on the money but an understatement.** So here
we have still more Hollywood nonsense. Imagine watching a Larry King
Live and saying, “The guy who shot that is a fucking genius! Let’s get him
to direct our next star-studded feature!”

But direct evidence that the director was not only not the genius he
was purported to be but an outright dimwit was forthcoming. Not only a
dimwit, but a rude and discourteous and unprofessional dimwit.

In September of 2002, more than two months after I handed in my “first
draft” of the Zero screenplay, I went up to Hollywood for a meeting with
all involved (minus Sean Penn): the producer, the director, the studio
executives. They flew me up from Pavones (first class, as the Writer’s Guild
demands) and put me in a hotel on Venice Beach, just a few blocks from
my old beach pad from the late 80s and early 90s (where the getting-laid-at-
Venice Beach-Jon-Voigt anecdote took place, my asshole-screenwriter-with-
a-Porsche days). 

Before our meeting with the studio the producer and director came over
to my hotel for a strategy sit-down. Having struggled for months to come
up with a draft that worked, I expected us to go over the work in order
to solve the problems I myself knew were there, and which I’d told them
about.

 I’d been sending the script pages as I wrote them, a practice frowned
upon by the Writer’s Guild; since the producer/director/studio can send
notes on changes during the writing of a draft, the writer may in effect end
up writing two (or more) drafts for the price of one. I didn’t mind this – my
main concern, my only concern, was to “give the studio exactly what I said
I would.” I just wanted to make this deal work, and see the movie made.
And I was getting nothing but accolades in return for the pages sent, at
least from the producer. The director was largely silent, only occasionally
making minor suggestions, none having to do with the essence of the story,
i.e., the conflicts that define the turning points of the narrative, which had
been agreed to by everyone at that breakfast meeting at the Four Seasons.
I’d further refined them in detailed memos sent weekly. In Hollywood,
silence is taken as a sign of approval.

In meetings such as this one, the purpose of which is to analyze the
screenplay in detail, everyone brings his own copy, which is invariably
marked up in the margins and blank facing pages. My assumption was that
since I’d gotten nothing but accolades for the pages sent, we’d concentrate
on the problems I myself had seen in the story, and on minor issues such as
the specifics of dialog.*** In fact, since the two had read the screenplay over
the months of its writing, I did not expect any surprises at all. I was wrong,
of course, as I so often am in expecting Hollywood stuff to proceed in a
rational, efficient, professional manner. I was wrong big time.

The first surprise was that neither the producer nor the director brought a
copy of my screenplay. A bad sign on top of a surprise. The second surprise
and bad sign was the producer saying this: “This isn’t the screenplay we
thought we’d get.” If this sounds familiar, if you recall the producer saying
this before, I’m not reproducing the previously mentioned instance; that
instance (months later while I was on the phone on the beach here at
Pavones) was the second time she’d used the pronoun “we” in referring to
an “unexpected screenplay” after she’d been reading it as I wrote it.

And both times she used the words “unexpected screenplay” she’d been
sending me accolades about the work as she read it.

As it turned out, the producer had not been passing my pages along to
he studio. They had recently been given the draft in its entirety, however,
which they’d read. Hold on. One of them (at the studio) had read it, the
executive who had been at the breakfast meeting at the Four Seasons
and who had approved my approach to conflicts and turning points. The
studio head, of course, hadn’t read it, nor my book; I’m quite certain he
never reads anything. “They” decided they didn’t like it, in spite of there
being no surprises in it; all the major story events had been approved at the
breakfast meeting.

You wanna talk about a writer’s queasy gut?

But it gets better. Since neither the producer nor the director could point
out where I’d gone wrong in my draft – or, for that matter, how what I’d
written was different now that it was bound together with a title page –
they started in on how I’d over-written stage direction. Stage direction is
when you describe action: “Sam Spade picks up the gun and checks to see
if it’s loaded” kind of stuff. Overwriting means you’ve got stuff in there
that can’t make it to the screen: “Sam Spade picks up the gun and checks to 
see if it’s loaded, unaware that he would never get to use it.” The last clause
might work in a novel, but it should not be in a screenplay since there’s no
way to translate “unaware that he would never get to use it” to the screen.

And it was true. I had overwritten my stage direction, although not as
blatantly as the above example. My overwriting was more of the flowery
prose sort, as in, say, going on too long about how beautiful a sunset is. I
had already told them I’d correct the problem. That should have been that,
end of problem, for this reason: Regarding story, the specific wording of
stage direction is irrelevant. What happens is what counts. 

But they just would not stop. Had to point out each and every bit of
description I’d overwritten. Thing was, even with this nitpicking they
often had their heads up their asses. Near the beginning of the story, for
example, I have the two main characters at age 17 sitting on a fence at the
back of a drive-in watching the movie The Endless Summer and reciting
Bruce Brown’s narration by rote. I add by way of description, “They’ve
seen The Endless Summer 20 times.” The director said to cut that line since
it wouldn’t make it to the screen. While that was technically true, I replied,
the line gives the actors something to work with – it explains why the two
kids know the narration by heart, gives a feel for what’s going on.

The director shook his head in disgust at my ignorance and insisted that
the line should be cut. (If you’re already wondering what the fuck is with this
guy, all I can say – via a little looping [call it a loopette] – is you ain’t seen
nothin’ yet.) 

Here I had an idea. Upon arriving at Hollywood I’d asked the producer
if she had any good screenplays lying around, something I could read. I
love reading good screenplays – believe me, they are tough to find. She
did, one called Fever Pitch, by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, maybe
the best writing team currently working in Hollywood. The story was
about baseball, or, rather, baseball fans; it follows the hopes and dashed
dreams of a group of rabid Boston Red Sox fans, via the travails of another
losing Sox season.**** A terrific screenplay, funny and poignant and superbly
crafted. The screenplay was there on the table; I’d breezed through it the
night before. I held it up. 

“Wonderful screenplay, right?” I said.

The two agreed vociferously.

“Maybe the best writing team working today, right?”

The two agreed vociferously.

“No problems with the writing, the stage direction?” 

They had no problems with the writing, the stage direction. 

I flipped the screenplay open to a random page. Near the top was a
description of an establishing shot of the crowd at Fenway Park on opening
day. I read aloud: “It’s opening day and the Sox haven’t broken any hearts
yet.”

The two nodded approvingly. For some reason they didn’t see where
I was going with this. Which was here: “How do you put ‘they haven’t
broken any hearts yet’ on the screen?” 

Here the director not only shook his head at my ignorance but let out a
scornful blast of air. As I pictured myself strangling him, I repeated my query:

“How do you put ‘they haven’t broken any hearts yet’ on the screen?”

The director wouldn’t stop shaking his fucking head, that dumb baseball
cap on it, which I suspect made him feel more like Ron Howard, a real
director, one who often wears a baseball cap. (A lot of directors, real and
otherwise, wear baseball caps. I have a theory to explain this phenomenon,
but now’s not the time.) 

“I suppose in shooting this crowd scene the director could bellow
through his bullhorn to 20,000 people, ‘Remember that the Sox haven’t
broken your hearts yet!… And… Action!’” 

Still the head shaking.

You know, I said, and the image of my hands around the guy’s neck
lingered, screenplays are written to be read. Sometimes lines like “They
haven’t broken any hearts yet” and “They’ve seen The Endless Summer 20
times” are there solely to make them readable. And in the case of my line,
it actually does have a purpose.

The producer, who was marginally less of a dimwit than the director,
was aware that I was right. We have some ideas, she said, in order to
change the subject, then suggested that the director describe “that scene
you thought of.”

The guy’s eyes lit up (at least he’d stopped shaking his head) as he
described a scene in Mexico wherein the main character (me) gets a sea
urchin spine in his foot and uses his own piss to extract it (urine supposedly
helps dissolve urchin spines). That was it, the scene he thought up. Had
nothing to do with advancing the story or anything else, but he loved it.

Here I made a mistake. I humored him. Although I knew no such scene
would make it into a screenplay I’d write, I suggested that maybe – in order
for the scene to have an actual purpose – our guy is with a bunch of local
fishermen and is short of urine. So the fishermen pass a cup, piss in it; he
uses their urine to get the spine out. Although this is dumb too, at least
this dumbness could result in our guy bonding with the locals, and if well
executed the scene might be marginally humorous. Truth is, it doesn’t
matter whether my version had any merit. The instructive aspect of this
piece of business is in the director’s reaction: More head shaking at my
ignorance, along with an even more explosive snort of derision.

“What?” I wanted to know as the strangulation image resurfaced, now
with some added stage direction about veins popping on his forehead
(which could be put up on the screen).

“An actor would never let someone else piss on his foot!”

This is what he said, verbatim (hence the quotes). Hold on. I gotta ask
you something, and it’s important because it goes to the veracity of this
narrative: Do you think I could make up this shit, a line like that? Okay.
Good.

In the larger sense, anecdotal stuff like the above does not equal truth, in
this case meaning how Hollywood is. Maybe most Hollywood people are
actually smart and creative and I’ve either been unlucky or am exaggerating
to make my Can’t-I-Get-Along-With-Anyone point; trying to say “It’s not
me! It’s everyone else!” When it actually is me.

In my twenty-some-odd years and thirty-some-odd Hollywood projects,
at least two-thirds (I’m being conservative) of the people I’ve been subjected
to were of this caliber; small bore intellects. Fucking BB guns.

For now, just one more example, one that reflects not only dimwittedness,
but the life’s work, i.e., the only real goal, the raison d’etre, of Hollywood
folks, which is this: To avoid looking foolish. Or, failing in the avoidance of
looking foolish, which they invariably do, this: Cultivating and maintaining
the denial that they in fact do look foolish.

Early on in my career, before my comeuppance (the phone stopped
ringing), I was offered one assignment after another, based on my first
original screenplay, which Michael Mann had optioned, and then my
quickly getting a movie into production with an Oscar-winning producer
(but before that turkey came out). And, God help me, I took ‘em. Hey, 75
grand for three month’s work (in early-to-mid 1980’s dollars). So what if
the studio-supplied ideas behind these projects were dumb or even un-
writeable? Who cares? What, me worry?******

One such assignment was to write a Richard Pryor vehicle – this was
pre-cocaine-self-immolation/pre-multiple-sclerosis and Pryor was a very
hot property. The premise I was shouldered with doesn’t matter – it was
no dumber than the rest – but I did a decent job with the first draft. I was
dealing with the actual head of the studio (now defunct), which is unusual;
an underling exec is usually the go-between with the writer. The guy loved
my writing samples, liked me and liked my first draft. I was optimistic that the
movie would fly. The studio head called me in to go over the draft prior to my
doing revisions. His notes were minor, which was a relief. One little problem
involved the Pryor character calling CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I
had the operator at CIA answering “CIA, how can I direct your call?”  

The studio head turned to this page, shook his head at my ignorance, and
said that the CIA doesn’t answer the phone like that.

I said I thought it pretty much did.

More head shaking. Didn’t you see Three Days of the Condor?

I said that I had.

The studio head said when Robert Redford called the CIA, they answered
with a code of some sort.

That was different, I said. Redford was calling a CIA covert operation H.Q.
Here we’re calling headquarters at Langley.

As often happened in my Hollywood life, the idiot I was meeting with
would not stop with the head shaking and frowning at my ignorance of how
things are. (At least he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap.) Here I made another big
mistake, one that may have cost me getting a movie made, a Richard Pryor
vehicle at that, which would have quadrupled my base assignment pay and led
to a higher-end Porsche and more getting-laid anecdotes. Instead of agreeing
with him and making the wrong, dumb ass, nonsensical but minor dialog
change he wanted (which would have been corrected later anyway, after the
movie was a “go”)… instead of letting him feel harmlessly useful, out of pure
self-destructiveness I suggested we call CIA headquarters at Langley and find
out for ourselves.

Here I got the snort of derision, plus this: You think their phone number is
listed?

I said that I thought it was.

The studio head put his assistant on the speakerphone and told her to get us
CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. He smirked and sat back, eyes bright,
waiting for vindication. Waiting for an example of why he was the head of
a studio and I was a lowly screenwriter. A matter of seconds later – after
information spouted the CIA’s number in Langley, no problem – an operator’s
voice boomed over the box, “CIA, how can I direct your call?”

The studio head’s head bobbed in astonishment. He looked at his watch and
said he had another meeting he was late for.

I had fucked with the studio head’s raison d’etre. His denial.

My screenplay suddenly had fatal flaws.

I never saw the guy again.*******

—– 

* Later, through a friendly secretary at the studio, I managed to secure coverage of my first draft
– the half-dozen underling executives’ written reaction to it. They all loved it as much as the
studio head initially did. No one actually told me what the sudden fatal flaws were.  

** That the director won an award at the Sundance Film Festival is proof that even folks who
theoretically should know better (so called “independent” filmmakers) in fact have their heads up their asses just as far as the rest of them.

*** Contrary to popular perception, dialog is one of the least important aspects of a screenplay.
Much more important are the events – the turning points. Even if the events involve dialog
– and they very often do – the words spoken are the means to the events, not the events
themselves. There’s a story about Alfred Hitchcock that is instructive here. When asked how a
particular screenplay was coming, he replied, “The screenplay is finished. We just have to add
the dialog.”

**** I can only imagine Lowell and Babaloo’s horror when the Sox came back to win eight straight
in the 2004 playoffs/World Series to take it all, effectively destroying their story’s premise.
(Months later Fever Pitch was released: The boys had solved the problem by rewriting the
screenplay, now setting it during that miraculous season, using the Sox’s incredible comeback
as the crux of the ending. A smart move, all they could do, really, but the ending didn’t have
the same melancholy yet uplifting pizzazz as the original.)

***** Even I had my limits, however. One assignment I turned down was based on a studio executive’s
idea that a great white shark befriends a young boy. The great white is severely misunderstood;
in the end the boy saves his buddy from the evil shark hunters. Sort of a cold-blooded Free Willy.
The exec’s solution to the problem of how to make this believable was the following: “We just
have to make the shark… you know… fuzzy…”

****** Later, through a friendly secretary at the studio, I managed to secure coverage of my first draft
– the half-dozen underling executives’ written reaction to it. They all loved it as much as the
studio head initially did. No one actually told me what the sudden fatal flaws were.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 7 

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PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
PART 5
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTERVIEW

 

 

[From CYGAWA Part II, Chapter 5]

If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come sit
by me. – Alice Roosevelt Longworth

My thinking last summer (2003) when I stopped working on this book and while I was in the process of getting hit by a van was this: Having finished Part One, I’d take a getting-hit-by-a-van break and bang out my whoring draft of the In Search of Captain Zero screenplay, which I did, going into the tank while doing so. Meanwhile, I’d send out Part One of this, get a new literary (book) agent, since I had fired my old one for treachery during the editing phase of Zero.

The new agent would sell Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? as “a work in progress.” I’d come back to the writing all raring to go. I have two books in stores, both in their 4th paperback printing (Zero was still in hardback too), both making money. Both have “legs,” as the expression goes. I have movie deals. Hey, Sean Penn and John Cusack both want to play me. I’m being interviewed and profiled, doing my own promotion. I found the German house that bought the rights to Zero. Banditos has sold to nine foreign markets, the last being the Turks, of all people. I put that deal together too. Point being that agents should be clamoring to rep my sorry ass. In theory.

    So I send Part One to my Hollywood attorney, Steven, figuring he’ll send
it to agents. Steven knows everyone, or can get to them via the doing lunch
grapevine. Steven reads Part One, tells me it’s not publishable. Since I’m
not famous, he says, no one will care about my life and times and problems
with people. Won’t send Part One to any agents.

    Okay, only slightly depressing. Steven’s a fucking lawyer, what does he
know? That I didn’t see what was really going on is a perfect example of my
denial regarding stuff I should know better about. I merely figured Steven
had his head up his ass, not that there was anything duplicitous afoot. 

    But within days of this development I get a call from the producer who,
along with Sean Penn and the studio, optioned In Search of Captain Zero for
the movies. She’s threatening a lawsuit, talking about restraining orders.
Turns out that Steven told her about the book I was writing, this book,
what I wrote about her and about the other people involved in the deal. He
may have even sent her the manuscript.

   Think about that.

   No one who wants to make a movie out of my book is smart enough to get it
done.

   And, if you flip back and look, there’s plenty more where that came
from.

   Steven also spilled the beans to my ex-Hollywood movie-writing agent
(as opposed to my book agent), whom I fired for her behavior during the
Zero movie deal (as opposed to the book deal), and whose email response
to that is the title of this book. Among other details, he no doubt told her
where the title of this book came from.

   Word quickly reaches me through multiple sources that I am persona
non grata in Hollywood. One agent, a major one who works in a big talent
agency, a guy who surfs and who read and loved Zero and hinted that he’d
like to represent me, will now not return my calls – a major disappointment,
since anyone in Hollywood who reads is unusual (let alone one who surfs),
and is to be sought after and treasured.

   Meanwhile, the deal to write the screen adaptation of Cosmic Banditos
is mired, tied up in the contract stage, Steven says. Tied up in the contract
stage? Odds are that Cusack’s people, directly or indirectly through Steven
were informed of my writing about that deal as well, and are in the process
of backing out. In other words, they will not hire me after all, fearing that
I’ll expose their shortcomings.

    I must repeat: This is my attorney who did this, a contractual associate
(for over 20 years) who legally and ethically should not do anything to
harm the interests of his client, me.

   As if this isn’t enough, during the conversation wherein Steven informs
me that the book you are now reading is un-publishable, I ask him to get
“my” draft of the Zero screenplay to Sean Penn (the draft immediately
preceding the whoring draft wherein I went into the tank). As I say, Steven
knows everyone, or can get to them; he could no doubt get my draft to Sean
Penn.

    Before I press on, it gets weirder. I mean weirder if you’re not familiar
with how Hollywood works, how the people there think, if you can call it
that.

    Last spring (2003), three or so months before Steven got treacherous on
me and before I got hit by the multi-faceted van, I sent the producer my
second-to-last contractual draft of the screenplay. The one before I went
into the tank as a reaction to the notes from the studio. I like this draft a
lot – I like the way I reinvented my book.

   The producer read the draft and called to say it’s brilliant. It’s so brilliant,
in fact, that before she called to say it’s brilliant she gave it to another writer
she works with and trusts to see if it’s as brilliant as she thinks it is. The
other writer read it and agreed that Yes, it’s as brilliant as she thinks it is.
According to the other writer, I’m “the real thing.”* Another line of hers I
can put quotes around because I remember the exact words: “You gave the
studio exactly what you said you would.”

   Also: I’m her “little genius.”

   She sent the studio the draft and expected to hear from them soon.

   A note regarding geography, chronology, and state of mind. I had the
above conversation here in paradise at the end of the road at the bottom
of Central America, getting my sorry ass ready to go meet Lisa on the
Caribbean island where The Horror would soon take place. Down on the
beach with my cell phone in my ear, sitting on a piece of driftwood with
my dog Fang (short for Jack London’s White Fang, my favorite book from
childhood), who was just a puppy at the time, wandering around nearby.
Looking out at the pristine waters of El Golfo Dulce, The Sweet Gulf, perfect
waves rolling in. Although I was pleased as punch at hearing that my draft
is brilliant and that I’m the real thing and a genius who gave the studio
exactly what he said he would, I felt a subtle stirring in my gut listening to
the producer go on. In retrospect, I believe the stirring was a flutter of my
writer’s queasy gut. Or maybe I’m projecting this because I should have felt
a flutter. In any event, the queasy gut flutter, assuming I had it, was based
on the producer having to ask someone else for his opinion of the draft
before actually voicing her opinion to me. But still, my draft is brilliant and
I’m the real thing and her little genius who gave the studio exactly what he
said he would.

   According to the producer, my agent whose email response to my later
firing her is the title of this book, and who also was the producer’s agent,**
agreed with the other writer regarding my draft’s brilliance and so forth. So
that’s two people’s opinions the producer had to hear before she voiced her
opinion to me. Hold on. The producer’s boyfriend also read my draft (and
agreed with the other two opinions). So that’s three opinions she needed
before voicing hers to me, not two. This was all a bad sign, even though the
three other people thought the draft was brilliant and so forth.

    You may be wondering where the director is at this point, and what he
thought of the draft, its possible brilliance and so forth. Maybe you’re not
wondering that, on second thought. But I was. So I asked the producer. He
hasn’t read it yet, she said. This is another bad sign, since the director had
told me that the Zero project was number one on his list of priorities. But
letting the mounting bad signs go for the moment, I asked the producer
if Sean Penn had read the draft. I mean everybody else she knows had,
apparently, except the director. No, the producer said. He didn’t have a
copy. She’s going to let the studio send it to him.  

    Still another bad sign. A doozey of a bad sign, as it would turn out.

    A matter of days later I was on the phone in a San José hotel room, finding
out that Lisa had been screwing her ex-boyfriend then lying about it. So,
all fucked up over this development, I went to the Caribbean island where
The Horror would soon take place (and where I started this narrative).
As mentioned in Part One, while there I got the email from the producer
saying that the studio executive read my draft – this email resulted in
my going into the tank. One reason I decided to go into the tank was the
producer saying in the email that my draft was “not the draft we were
expecting.” Important for our purposes is that she now included herself
in this assessment of my draft. My draft was no longer brilliant. I was no
longer the real thing and her little genius who gave the studio exactly what
he said he would.

    My response to this email was terse. I didn’t bother reminding the
producer that she completely flip-flopped on her opinion of the draft based
on someone else’s opinion, or that in pure force of numbers it was either
four-to-one or three-to-two or three-to-one in favor of my draft still being
brilliant and me still being the real thing and a genius who gave the studio
exactly what he said he would. (The numbers depending on how you now
view her original opinion, whether you count that opinion, or her flip-flop
opinion, or cancel her opinions altogether due to lack of consistency – this
last one seems most reasonable, no?) I just wanted to know when Sean Penn
was going to read the draft. I wanted his opinion. By now the flutter of my
writer’s queasy gut, assuming I’d originally had it, had bloomed into my
full-blown writer’s queasy gut.

   The producer emailed back saying that the decision had been made not
to give the draft to Sean Penn. The draft was “not ready” for him to read.
I emailed reminding her that in talking me into the original option deal
she’d assured me that Sean “gets involved early in the script stage.” Since
I already wrote two drafts of the screenplay and was now about to launch
myself into the third, we were way past any reasonable interpretation of
the concept “early in the script stage.”

   I have her reply here in front of me as I write. Rather than quoting it, I’ll
sum it up. The email is words to the effect of “That’s different.”   

    Back to the conversation with Steven that occurred three months after
the above nonsense. After he tells me that the book you are now reading is
un-publishable and therefore he will not send it to any agents, Steven tells
me he will not try to get my draft to Sean Penn because, “Sean Penn is just
a stoned-out actor who doesn’t read anything.” I can frame Steven’s words
in quotes because I wrote them down, figuring they would come in handy
someday.

    To sum up, in case you’re confused by all this convoluted Hollywood
shit: Aside from the Cusack/Cosmic Banditos deal likely going into the toilet
and the unlikelihood that Sean Penn will ever read my once-brilliant draft,
I’m persona non grata in Hollywood, plus in the publishing business, aside
from my similar status with a guy down here at the paradise known as Big
Turkeys, this nutcase Logan who figures to run me out of town.

   And then there’s Lisa, the love of my life.
 

 

*If this sounds familiar, Jon Voight also labeled me thus. For some reason, this “real thing”
accolade is a favorite in Hollywood. Possibly they got it from that old Coca-Cola commercial
and it just stuck.

**If it sounds a little iffy, conflict of interest-wise, that my agent was also the producer’s agent:
My attorney Steven was also the producer’s attorney and the director’s attorney as well. Not
only that: Steven and my agent used to be a guy-gal couple. So in a sense there was some incest,
on top of the conflict of interest. In other words, I really should have seen Steven’s treachery
regarding his big mouth and this book coming.

PART 6 COMING SOON… 

Subscribe to Allan’s Newsletter.  Check out Allan’s new book.

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTERVIEW

[From Chapter 14 of CYGAWA]

I went out there [to Hollywood] for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday,and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.  – Nelson Algren

By way of Hollywood backstory: 

John Cusack Makes Quantum Leap in New Movie
January 10, 2001 1:55 am EST
By Claude Brodesser
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) – John Cusack, last in theaters with “High Fidelity,” has committed to star in and produce “Cosmic Banditos.”

Based on the soon to be republished novel by A.C. Weisbecker,
“Banditos” follows the adventures of some Colombian marijuana
smugglers on the lam in the jungle – one of them an American
expatriate who would be played by Cusack. The tome will be
republished in March by the New American Library trade imprint.

The book will be adapted for the screen by “Sid and Nancy”
scribe Abbe Wool and Jimmy Fishman, the producer of 1999’s
“Desperate But Not Serious.”

“It’s just really original,” said Cusack, adding, “It deals with
quantum mechanics in a gonzo, gung-ho sort of way.”

The picture concerns what Fishman, a former solid-state
physicist turned producer-screenwriter, calls a group of smugglers
“whose chaotic and random lives are suddenly given meaning by
the laws of subatomic physics.” The expatriate has what Fishman
calls “a quantum epiphany” about how their lives are governed by
particles.

Cusack said he first became interested in physics while shooting
the 1989 picture “Fat Man and Little Boy” in the New Mexico desert
when he was 21. The film allowed him to spend time discussing
the Manhattan Project and the Los Alamos labs with numerous
physicists consulting on the picture.

“Those first atomic physicists were real cowboys,” he explained,
“like mystics, only they dealt with numbers instead of language.”
The project will be developed by New York-based independent
producer The Shooting Gallery.

    Know how I found out that this major star intended to produce and
star in a movie version of my book? (Keep in mind that the article is from
January, 2001, two years before the email from Cusack offering me the
adaptation.) A friend read the above Variety piece and emailed it to me,
several days after publication. Then the Hollywood writer I refer to as a
shitball motherfucker called to say he saw Cusack on TV, talking about
how great the book is and how he was going to make a movie from it. The
shitball motherfucker was trying to sound all rosy and happy for me but I
could imagine his green-with-envy complexion and forced grin – imagine
a seasick jackass chewing on a swarm of yellow jackets. See, he already
knew about the Captain Zero movie deal, Sean Penn wanting to play me.
Now with Cusack joining the ranks of movie stars wanting to play me,
we’re talking about an envious shitball motherfucker here.  

    But the point being: Does the above strike you as odd? Like maybe I should
have known about the deal before it appeared in the trade publications,
and Cusack himself blabbed about it on the tube? 

    Here’s how it went: Around June, 2000, the guy mentioned in the above
article, Jim Fishman, calls me and then my agent (my New York book agent,
not my Hollywood movie agent) about optioning the book. Fishman says
he’s a buddy of John Cusack, who loves the book, and maybe he could get
Cusack involved in the future, but he doesn’t have a lot to spend on an
option, blah blah. I say, Okay, why not, and Fishman coughs up $1,500 for
a year option. A clause in the contract states that if Fishman makes a deal
with a third party – any third party – he’d immediately owe me another
$15,000. 

     Months go by. It’s now January of 2001 and I’ve haven’t heard anything
from Fishman. Suddenly and without warning, according to the above
article and the interviews Cusack has done on the tube, deals have now
been struck (by Fishman) with three third parties: screenwriter Abbe
Wool, the production company called The Shooting Gallery, and Cusack
himself.

    To repeat: No one, not Fishman nor Cusack nor The Shooting Gallery
notified me about the deals. If you’re thinking that this is incredibly rude,
and completely unprofessional, you’re absolutely right. It’s out there, even
by Hollywood standards. But you know what? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    So my agent (my book agent) makes a flurry of phone calls to the people
involved. Nobody will take her calls or return them. How could this be?
They owe me money, the fifteen grand, that’s how. I know: By the standards
of the movie biz, chump change – although it isn’t chump change to me.
Plus I’m pissed off at the insult, the lack of respect. Not surprised, just
pissed off.

    January goes by, then February, then we’re well into March and still no
money. I call Fishman myself, whom I already talked to once, about the
adaptation he and Woole are doing. Fishman tells me to call The Shooting
Gallery about the money. Okay, I say, figuring to play his game for the
moment. I do remind him about our contract, which has no assign-the-debt
clause. In other words, he owes me the money, not The Shooting Gallery.
From his response, I can’t tell if Fishman is simply a moron or if he’s
stonewalling me, trying to make me believe there’s something wrong with
me in expecting him to live up to our agreement. Anyway, although he
admits that there’s no assign-the-debt clause in our contract, he still insists
– without logic or explanation – that he no longer owes me the money and
that I should deal with The Shooting Gallery. Talk to Amy at The Shooting
Gallery, Fishman says.

    So I call this Amy, one Amy Nickin, a lawyer at The Shooting Gallery.
Nickin chit-chats a streak, saying how much everyone at The Shooting
Gallery loves my book and respects the material and how it’s going to
make a helluva movie and so forth.

    I go along with this until I can’t stand it anymore and ask, Where’s the
money?

    Oh, that, Nickin says. No problem. Says they’ll pay me in 30 days. Can’t
pay me right now because The Shooting Gallery is merging with some
big company and has a cash flow problem. Just be patient and I’ll get my
money. To this I ask Nickin if they’re telling, say, the electric company that
The Shooting Gallery has a cash flow problem and that the light bill can’t be
paid but they’ll get their money if they’re patient. Or if her own paycheck
is being held up.  

    Nickin, of course, says That’s different.

    I surprise her here, I think, given my query about the electric company
and her salary check, which queries had sarcastic subtext, although my
tone was pleasant. I say, Don’t worry about it. I tell her that Fishman owes
me the money anyway, not her company. 

    She tells me that Fishman doesn’t have the money either.

    I know a rip off coming when I see it, from my old smuggling days. There
is now no question in my mind that Fishman and The Shooting Gallery
have no intention of paying me the 15k. But why would they do this, rip me
off for a measly 15k when the movie will cost millions?

    I have a theory. Based upon the conversation about the adaptation
I already had with Fishman, I’m thinking that there is zero chance that
the screenplay being written by Fishman and Woole will be shootable. In
other words, there will be no movie, no millions spent. This is obvious to
everyone involved, I figure, especially to The Shooting Gallery, which is
stalling payment after being nearly three months late to begin with. (The
Shooting Gallery probably agreed with Fishman to shoulder the 15k debt,
but that had nothing to do with me; that was between them and Fishman.)
Cusack himself, I’m figuring, doesn’t give a shit about me getting paid or not
getting paid – there’s no way he’s made himself liable for any outlay. He’s
free-riding it on this, as movie stars do, based on Hollywood entitlement,
as with Sean Penn and my other book.

    Why do I figure the screenplay is unshootable? During our conversation
about the adaptation Fishman informed me that “one change” was being
made from the book to the screen story. What change is that? I wanted to
know, and yes, my writer’s queasy gut was already flaring.

    The change was that they made José, the Full Blown Bandito, the Cosmic
Bandito of the title, a woman…

    If you happened to have read the book, and if you happened to be dead
right now, you’d be spinning in your grave. And while spinning in your
grave you’d maybe be concocting variations of catch-22s about dumb
people and movies not getting made. But I have to assume you haven’t
read the book. So imagine this. Imagine that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid was originally a book. Imagine that a movie producer options the book
and then tells the author that he loves and respects the book, and the one
change they’re making is that Butch is going to be a babe.

    Now try to imagine how the movie would go… instead of one of the
classic buddy movies of all time… instead of that great scene at the end
when Butch and Sundance are all shot up and about to be slaughtered by a
thousand Bolivian soldiers and they’re arguing about where they’re going
next… instead of that climactic scene now imagine they have a lover’s spat
about… about that time Sundance was insensitive when Butch was PMS-
ing. (Butch would be the babe, I figure, since a babe who robs banks is
going to be… well… butch.) 

    Hearing the above about José now being a woman, I was too astounded
to respond. All I managed as a stalling tactic while I regrouped was a query
about what the babe full blown bandito was now named. 

    Still José, Fishman said.

    I don’t understand. José is now a woman but she’s still named José?

    Yes! Fishman said. As if this is some sort of subtle stroke of genius. A
touch. 

    Maybe Fishman was also comparing the scenario to Butch Cassidy and
figured that if Butch could still be called Butch if Butch was a babe, he
should call José José even if José was now a babe. 

    Or maybe he kept the name José out of respect for the material.

    Boy, I’d like to read the screenplay, I said. I was curious, in the morbid
sense. (Right: It would turn out to be The Worst Screenplay in the History
of the World.) 

    Sure, Fishman said, but first he wants to give it to The Shooting Gallery,
see what they think, and then give it to Cusack. My theory at the time
was that Fishman gave the screenplay to The Shooting Gallery and The
Shooting Gallery wanted to save 15k by ripping off the author of the
original material, me, since the screenplay was unshootable. 

    As it will turn out, I gave The Shooting Gallery too much credit by
assuming they even realized the screenplay was unshootable. As it will
turn out, the reason The Shooting Gallery intended to rip me off was less
subtle and imaginative, albeit sleazier.

    After talking with The Shooting Gallery’s lawyer, Amy Nickin, the lying
slug, I call Fishman back and get right to the point. I tell him if I don’t get
the money by the next day I’ll come out to L.A. and deal with the problem
in person. I add that since I don’t like dealing with lawyers – or even being
in close physical proximity to the shitball motherfuckers, even Steven, my
Hollywood one – I have no intention of suing him. I then muster a tone
best described as…. demented… and say that I’m really looking forward to
meeting him, if he gets my drift. Thinking about the Men’s Journal guy’s
reaction to this sort of thing, I’m figuring a FedEx-ed check will arrive the
next day. 

    Fishman tells me Great and that he’s looking forward to meeting me and
lunch will be on him. I swear to God that’s what he said. I have it right here
in my contemporaneous notes.

    I don’t want to fly out to L.A., I’m thinking, especially with Mom so sick
and all. Plus, beating up Fishman would probably not get the job done;
I’d just get in trouble, or maybe get myself beat up. The guy didn’t sound
tough, but who knew? The thing about dumb people is that sometimes
they’ll surprise you. All that unused brain power can surface in weird,
unexpected ways.

    So I ponder my options.

    Who should I turn my attention towards?

    Why not Cusack?   

    So I call his company, New Crime Productions, and speak to the executive
in charge of the deal. To my chagrin, she’s very nice, seems really genuine
and concerned when she tells me that she understands my frustration at
not getting paid, and at finding out about all the deals that had been struck
through articles in Variety and calls from envious shitball motherfucker
Hollywood writers, words to that effect.  

    Before she can get too nice and genuine and concerned – which would
cause me to lose heart in my mission – I muster a tirade to the effect that
I’m coming out to L.A. to look up her boss Cusack and confront him for the
money since it was he who blabbed all over the TV and to the Hollywood
trade papers that he had control of my book and was now a producer on
the project along with the dumb-ass Fishman and since producers are
responsible for seeing that writers get paid I don’t care who my contract is
with so I’m coming to L.A. and I’m really pissed off. I may have worked in
my outrage over my Full Blown Bandito José character now being a woman
who is somehow still named José. If I didn’t, I should have.

    An added plus here is that the main source of humor in Cosmic Banditos is
that the narrator is pretty much out of his mind (if not outright demented);
he is the drug–addled perpetrator of rampant criminality, blatant and
unapologetic nihilism and all around chaos and destruction. And keep in
mind that the narrator is based on me. This is all anyone involved in the
deal really knows about me. I haven’t yet met any of them.  

    In the wake of my mustered tirade the woman executive is still nice
and genuine and concerned so I do what I have to before I lose heart and
apologize for my ranting hostility. I hang up.  

    I wait to see What Happens Next.

    It’s spectacular.

    The phone will not stop ringing.

    First my then-literary agent calls wanting to know if I’m crazy or what
and then Amy Nickin, the lying slug of an attorney for The Shooting
Gallery, calls, all irate that I’m “behaving unprofessionally.” Fishman calls
saying… I don’t remember; I have no notes or recollections on the call.
Maybe something about our upcoming lunch, whether I have any dietary
preferences.

    The phone keeps ringing, various Hollywoodites wanting to know if I’m
crazy and accusing me of unprofessionalism and so forth. Sitting by the
kitchen phone at Mom’s house in North Carolina, I’m rather enjoying all
the fuss and dismay.  

    Mom is toward the end of her life during all this; she will die in a few
weeks, in late April. She’s weak but still lucid. She says she’s worried about
me threatening people but has faith that I know what I’m doing. I tell Mom
not to worry, that I do know what I’m doing, and that the situation and how
I’m handling it is the usual with Hollywood deals. This isn’t strictly true, of
course. I say it to un-worry Mom.

   Late that same night Cusack himself calls, wakes me up. He’s affable,
chit-chats a bit, asks how Mom is; I’ve made no secret that I’m taking care
of her in her illness. (The image of a demented writer taking care of his
dying Mom may be a source of further worry about what I’m capable of — I
think Jeffrey Dahmer loved his Mom, too.) He seems genuine, mentioning
something about his own Mom. Then he gets to the point, says he didn’t
know about my treatment by Fishman and The Shooting Gallery. He’s off
promoting his latest movie and out of that loop. He doesn’t blame me a bit
for my behavior and promises that my money is forthcoming, and soon.
Says he’ll be personally responsible for the payment.

   Okay, I say. Great. Thank you. I definitely believe him on all this. I didn’t
threaten the guy because I figured he directly had anything to do with the
problem; I just figured it would work. I tell him this and we laugh. I even
apologize if I’ve upset anyone other than Nickin or Fishman, although
in my opinion I haven’t upset Fishman since Fishman apparently doesn’t
realize that I have threatened anyone. Fishman isn’t the brightest bulb on
the Hollywood marquee, I say, words to that effect. Cusack laughs, but
with a little edge to it; I’m talking about his producing partner here. But our
conversation winds down naturally and quite cordially.

    The guy’s all right, I’m thinking. Provisionally. I wait to see if the money
shows up.

    The check arrives by FedEx the next day. Issued by The Shooting
Gallery.

    But one last thing. I wait to see if the check clears.

    It does.

—

As I say, I was wrong in my theory that The Shooting Gallery was refusing
to pay me because they knew the movie was not going to get made (due to
the script being unshootable), and they were trying to save the 15k. They
were trying to save the 15k but for a different reason.

    I monitored the situation to see What Would Happen Next. 

    Less than a month later The Shooting Gallery went belly up. Chapter 11.
Poof. Gone. 

    Remember Amy Nickin’s promise that I’d get my money in 30 days? 

    Right: They had no intention whatever of paying me before running for
the bankruptcy hills.

    But why did they pay me? 

    Because everyone involved in the company figured they’d soon enough
be back working in Hollywood (maybe they’d immediately start another
company fresh and debt free) and therefore did not want to alienate John
Cusack, who no doubt made an irate call to them, demanding that I be
paid.  

    I was crazy and unprofessional but I got my money.

    Mom loved it that all this worked out.  She even saw the humor in it, my
threatening a movie star and so forth. But she worried, too. She worried
about all the problems I was having with people, like my demented Zero
editor, who by now had cut off communications with me, partially due to
treachery on the part of my then-book agent. 

    But the main thing Mom worried about was that I’d find someone to love
in this world. 

READ ON FOR PART 5: THE GOING GETS WEIRD

Subscribe to Allan’s Newsletter.  Check out Allan’s new book.

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTERVIEW