Stevie Williams (Interview)

A teaser for the Stevie Williams (Interview) segment referred to in the Dawn Steel post on this blog.

Marshall Brickman

Following on the reception of our project based on the Stevie Williams story from my series (Interview), David Permut asked to see some other episodes for development consideration. I sent some cassettes to his office and a few days later David is calling me saying we had another winner. "Which one?" I asked since I'd sent a random selection of four tapes that were within my reach at the time. "Clarence Conly, of course!" was his reply. The story was about Clarence, a meek assembly line worker at the GM plant in Van Nuys who wins six million dollars in the lottery and parlays it into a nine million dollar debt. A few minutes into the taping, I began breaking up as the actor was giving such a marvelous performance as this hapless character and I could not contain my laughter. As we continued taping, I felt that my uncontrollable response was ruining the show but that we could tape it again after I'd gotten the laughter out of my system.

Later when we looked at the show, I realized that any interviewer in his right mind would also be laughing at the improbable, yet earnest, responses 'Clarence' was giving. Me (as interviewer): "If you could do it all over again, would you do it differently?" Clarence: "No, I would probably do it all the same"--thus ending up with a monumental debt again. We'll let well enough alone, I decided, and it was the right decision as David was still laughing at what he had watched when he got me on the phone. We made the same deal as before but this time, I had something in mind. "Have you given thought to a writer/director?" I asked him. He said he hadn't. "What if I can get Marshall Brickman interested?" David replied, "Perfect!"

I knew of Marshall Brickman as Woody Allen's co-writer on Sleeper, Annie Hall and Manhattan. He had also written and directed The Manhattan Project and, years later, would co-write Manhattan Murder Mystery with Woody. I had never met him but felt he had the flair to deal with 'Clarence' having collaborated so well with Woody Allen. I called Marshall's agent in Century City and asked simply, "Do you know who David Permut is?" He did, indeed, came the immediate response. I told him that David and I had a project that we would like to propose to Marshall Brickman as a writer/director. Would he care to receive the submission? Yes, he would, and so it was that I sent over a tape of Clarence Conly (Interview).

Not only did Marshall like the material, he took it upon himself to write up his vision of the film making a reference to The Fortune Cookie, the great Billy Wilder comedy. David and I were thrilled, but now began the process of turning interest into a deal with a studio. The process dragged on and did not conclude. Later, David told me that Orion had made an offer that had fallen short of expectation and that was that.

I still retain the rights to 'Clarence' and the story is timeless though six million dollars isn't what it used to be and would need to be adjusted. The way this all came together so easily with A-list sluggers makes for a very fond memory. It also goes to show that nothing is certain in Hollywood.

Checkmate

Back when my friend Matthew Ettinger was wheeling and dealing Corvettes, a situation arose where a former employee who had taken a direct loan to purchase one of the 'Vettes had stopped making payments and showed no interest in paying off the balance. In fact, the fellow made a game of taunting Matthew playing games to underscore the fact that he had the car and Matthew did not.

One day, Matthew saw the fellow in the Corvette and a pursuit of sorts developed that, while maybe not exactly on a par with the car chase in Bullitt, involved high speeds on city streets and ended with Matthew on the side of the road in an incapacitated automobile. The fellow doubled back to gloat calling out, "I'm always one step ahead of you. It's like a game of chess!" That's when I got a call from Matthew.

After Matthew recounted the highlights of the situation, I asked for any details about the fellow that could prove helpful. Right off the bat, Matthew had a gem. "He's trying to collect on a car insurance claim and the insurer is stalling." That's all I needed to hear. The next day, I called the fellow telling him I was the adjuster on his claim and all I needed was his signature to authorize the settlement. We could do it by mail or he could meet me tomorrow if he wanted a faster disposition. He emphatically wanted to meet tomorrow. I gave him the address of an auto wrecking yard near the San Bernardino Freeway telling him I would be there at four o'clock tomorrow. I told him to be on time as I would not be hanging around and that he could find me in the yard, not the office.

I brought in a friend to play me--'the insurance adjuster'. His job was to wear a sport coat, carry a briefcase and walk the fellow to the farthest corner of the junk yard, look at a wreck and then walk him back to the front gate where, he would tell the fellow, the paperwork was ready for signature in his car. Another friend, Gary Wales (like Matthew, a former Breadvan owner), was brought in to play the role of 'some guy'. Gary was to sit on the steps of the wrecking yard office and, if the fellow went towards the office instead of the yard, say to him, "The guy you're looking for is over there." Matthew informed local law enforcement that we would be repossessing a car at the address should there be a report of auto theft.

Sure enough, at four o'clock the fellow shows up in the Corvette, parks on the street and makes his way towards the office. Gary tells him, "The guy you're looking for is over there." While my friend walks the fellow to the end of the property, a van driven by one of Matthew's associates pulls up to block the Corvette. Matthew exits from the rear of the van and gets into the Corvette using a spare set of keys and fires up the engine. The van pulls clear and off goes Matthew in triumphant possession of the 'Vette.

I pull my own car to the yard gate where my friend is returning with the fellow who is very anxious now to sign the document and get his money. My window is down and I call to my friend, "I have a message for you" whereupon he comes over to my car and gets into the passenger seat as prearranged. Then I call out to the fellow and say, "I have a message for you, too. Checkmate!" As we drove away, I could see the fellow jumping up and down in frustration like a cartoon character in the middle of the street.

It was a day well spent and I've often wondered if the fellow's insurance claim was ever settled to his satisfaction.

Dawn Steel

My very first Hollywood pitch meeting was with Dawn Steel when she was production chief at Paramount Studios. She was the second woman ever to head a major film production department, Sherry Lansing being the first at Twentieth-Century Fox. The meeting came about after David Permut, a producer who had two movies then in release (Blind Date with Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger and Dragnet with Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd), had seen my Stevie Williams (Interview) segment on cable and called to inquire about the rights to the book being discussed on the show. "There's no book, David. You were watching a fictional interview," I told him. "It's a great story," he replied. "What do you want for it?"

We made a deal for the property that also positioned me as one of the producers and David brought in Tom Donnelly who was a respected screenwriter and had directed the Kevin Bacon movie Quicksilver to do the screenplay. Tom turned my story of a New York call girl who helped NYPD track down the 'Perfume Killer' into a full-length script. He and I met to bounce ideas back and forth but it was his to write. So it was that in my first pitch meeting, I find myself in company with David and Tom sitting across from Dawn Steel. She declined--"Too dark," she said. Rob Cohen would later acquire the project for Taft-Barish and David set me up with a first-look deal at Tri-Star Pictures linked to the (Interview) series.

As a bookend to this story, Dawn Steel did purchase a project based on one of my stories, The Barbara French (Interview), that had been seen on cable and acquired by Charlie Evans Jr. It wasn't too much later that she succumbed to a brain tumor and the project went into hibernation at Warner Bros.

Confessions

I was thinking about an idea for a nighttime soap opera to pitch to a television network. Using members from my one hundred strong repertory company of actors, I wrote roles for many of them in the way that characters were created for Tamara, a play back in the eighties where every role was a lead and the audience could follow their favorite characters as the story progressed. While developing the concept, it occurred to me to experiment with the Internet as a delivery system and take the product directly to the end user rather than navigating the hierarchy and labyrinth of network television. The show was called Confessions. I knew very little about the Internet and it would be at least three years before I would create my first email account. At the time, there was no such thing as streaming video. YouTube had not yet come on the scene.

The first season of Confessions concerned the murder of Jimmy Beacon, an undercover policeman of questionable integrity. Set in Briarwood, a community not unlike Brentwood in Los Angeles, the characters were all major or peripheral figures in the local Catholic church and each, it seemed, had played a part in the events that led to the demise of the unfortunate Jimmy Beacon. Kathi Carey played the icon role of Madonna Hewitt, appearing on the poster, whose father is a Supreme Court Justice and whose husband Preston is an attorney on the fast track for a seat in the US Senate. Throw in Preston's mistress who was one of Jimmy Beacon's informants, a financial speculator who is funding Preston's campaign and a priest who has heard--perhaps even done--too much and the stage is set.

The only other web soap at the time was The Spot which offered photos and text. My approach was to do likewise adding WAV files to the site so one could listen to dialogue as though it were a radio play. To see the episodes, one had to order a cassette of the half-hour episode or subscribe to the entire season. An extra element was the Briarwood Breeze, the fictional community's newspaper that posted intriguing, sometimes enigmatic, stories about what the characters were up to day by day. The newspaper articles told stories that were not in the episodes and were interstitial in nature. Appetizers, you might say.

The launch party attracted media from around the world. My first television interview about Confessions was given that night to a Chinese television crew. My second was for CNN at their location on Sunset Boulevard in the following days. The press response was immediate and positive.--front page and inside double-truck in the Santa Barbara paper where the exteriors were filmed, front page and inside in the Business section of the Daily News in Los Angeles. The Daily News referred to it as "Dynasty meets The Thorn Birds". Our press clipping service confirmed articles in about thirty papers around the country. Fans from twenty-five countries visited the site regularly to follow the stories. Would that we could have had streaming video instead of relying on video cassettes via the mail. We were, you could say, an early, primitive version of Netflix.

Carrera Panamerican preview

An early look at the documentary I am now shooting.

Toni Suttie

Recently I conducted a workshop on the Action/ReAction technique I authored for actors in my film and television repertory company but which also has an application in advertising and marketing. Toni Suttie, who has a diverse history in the entertainment business including the enviable pleasure and privilege of working with John Daly, assembled a group of actors of her acquaintance for a morning of theory and practical application. I enjoyed the session and extend my thanks to Toni and all those who participated.

[Photo by Djeneba Aduayom]

Robert S Lecky

Robert Lecky was instrumental in my career in a number of ways. He was often uncredited in his efforts and he was a man of many parts. He was an ordained minister, an intellectual and a realist when it came to making motion pictures. He was very influential as part of Mel Simon's transition from building shopping malls to making movies. Later, he was a presence at Golan-Globus. One day Robert asked me to go to lunch with him. When I arrived at his office, he introduced me to Geno Havens, a casting director who was holding casting sessions for Robert's next movie--don't bother looking on IMDB for that credit; ninety percent of Robert's work is invisible on the movie database. If I recall correctly, Robert wanted me to come up with an idea for a movie that hit a certain pitch with regard to action and entertainment. He asked me to write a treatment, which later I developed into a full script called Razzle Dazzle which Robert submitted to a Hollywood production company which was known as Shapiro-Glickenhaus with whom he had contact.

The day after our lunch, Robert asked if I would mind if he gave my number to Geno Havens who had read an article in Drama-Logue about my work in Paris and wanted to talk. Like many casting directors at the time, Geno conducted an actors' workshop and he invited me to sit in. For many months, I would attend his class and write scenes for the actors to work on. We developed a friendship that lead to two rather curious events.

The first ended by me spending a day kissing Brooke Shields. Geno was casting a film titled Running Wild with Martin Sheen and Brooke Shields for a South African director. He asked if I would do him a favor and play one of the parts. I agreed to meet with the director, we talked about Paris and that was that. The part was mine without an audition. On the day, I showed up at a studio in Burbank and sat with Brooke whilst make-up people made us the right color for the film they were using. She was a very pleasant conversationalist in spite of suffering from a cold. Later, after donning a tuxedo in my dressing room, I watched the crew shooting scenes until they were ready for me. I played the part of an awards presenter giving Brooke's character an award for her documentary. She asked me to kiss her after my announcement and as I was handing her the award. I didn't object.

The second event was just as curious. Geno wanted to move into producing and asked if I had any suggestions. I told him he needed to find a property and he told me about a book he really liked. He sent me a copy of Madison Smartt Bell's Waiting for the End of the World. It was the story of a desolate character who volunteers to be the human detonator for a nuclear bomb with which a group of anarchists want to blow up New York City. If ever there was a sure-fire hit destined for a Christmas release, this wasn't it. I could have said, "Geno, don't do it!" but, as a friend, my role was to help him get it done. I called Madison's agent and negotiated an option that we could all live with. Geno had a property.

The next part wasn't going to be so easy. Who could we get to direct the film based on this book that would likely be a career ender? Geno had a list of potential directors which I vetoed on sight. There's only one person on this planet that has the balls to do this and actually make it work--Marlon Brando. Marlon had been in touch with me after seeing one of my fictional interview shows on cable and I felt he had the right combination of devil-may-care and expertise to make this project into something worthwhile. Let's offer him the project as a writer/director and not ask him to act in it. Geno couldn't believe what he was hearing but he liked the idea. I called Marlon's house and spoke to Aiko, his secretary, spelling it out for her. The next day, she called back and asked me to send over a copy of the book. Marlon would consider the idea.

About a week later, Aiko calls to say that Marlon liked the story and would consider the proposition. The only problem was that he was leaving for Tetiaroa and didn't know exactly when he would return. Were we in a position to wait or did we have a deadline? I didn't say "What deadline?" but I did convey our interest in having him write and direct even if it meant a considerable delay. We were very pleased with ourselves, Geno and I, not realizing that tragic events in Marlon Brando's life would overtake the petty concerns of two filmmakers.

In a way, these two are signature events in the Robert Lecky legacy. He was a man who was the catalyst for many projects and associations. Those who knew and worked with him have nothing but fine things to say and remember about him. According to IMDB, he almost didn't exist at all.

Carrera Panamericana

The photograph above was taken yesterday as I interviewed Dr. David Scully about Ak Miller's Carrera car at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (notice Steve McQueen's Jaguar XK-SS in the background).