It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive (7 page)

As my meeting with Arnold Rifkin approached, my mind was filled with fantasies of how he might influence my career. Would he offer me representation as an actor by William Morris? Might he choose to take me under his own wing? I might as well have been skipping along the Yellow Brick Road, so unrealistic were my expectations – and so Oz-like did The Mighty Rifkin turn out to be.

I was nervous about my appearance before the wizard. There was, indeed, some form of rock garden and fountain arrangement that I passed on my way to his inner sanctum. Once I’d seated myself across from him, it wasn’t long before it became clear that Mr. Rifkin’s mission that day was simply to secure something his client wanted, and that I was the obstacle standing in the way of his client’s desires. The fact that what his client wanted was the right to tell the story of my catastrophic illness and unlikely recovery – as told and popularized thus far by myself – didn’t seem to weigh on anyone’s mind but my own.

I don’t mean to suggest that Arnold Rifkin was rude. He was polite and asked about my play. He expressed admiration for my history. He seemed impressed by my determination in telling my story. He exuded something I would place on a map somewhere south of sincerity but well north of brusqueness. And then he made a proposal so ludicrous I found myself wondering whether I’d be serving myself better by pretending to take it seriously, or by laughing out loud. In a tone resembling a dentist who offers a good child a lollipop, Arnold Rifkin told me that the William Morris Agency also represented the Busch Gardens family theme park. Should I consent to option the material to his client, I was told, he’d look into the possibility of creating a ride there based on the material in my play. About my leukemia. And how badly I’d suffered from it.

What is he talking about? I thought to myself. Can he possibly be serious? Can he think I’m going to be swayed in my choice by his dangling of the possibility of a
Time on Fire
ride at Busch Gardens? What would it be called?
Patients of the Caribbean
?

My response was to nod weakly. It’s a habit of mine I’m unhappy with to this day: my tendency to accept being treated as someone less intelligent than I am, in order not to insult the person who’s insulting me.

When my friend Tim grew exasperated with the length of time it was taking to conclude a deal, he made a pronouncement over the phone.

“I want you involved every step of the way, Evan. I want you involved in casting, and I want you on the set every day. I want your input on every decision, and I’ll never make a movie you wouldn’t agree with. It’ll be like a co-directorship, in everything but title.”

Anyone who’s got his wits about him, when encountering a phrase like “a
co-directorship, in everything but title,” might respond, “Why
‘in everything but title’
? If you want input in the capacity of a co-director, why not back it up with the title and make it mean what it says?”

But I didn’t ask those questions. I swallowed hard and said, “Okay.”

I didn’t keep my mouth shut entirely. Before I agreed to terms I made it clear I’d go into business together only with his promise that (a) I’d get to write the script I wanted to write, (b) I’d have a hands on, explicitly acknowledged (though still ill-defined and eternally undocumented) role as a co-contributor, and (c) I’d have the assurance that the final film would be a faithful representation of my own thoughts and beliefs in regard to its subject matter. How I expected either “b” or “c” to be enforced is still a mystery to me. Apparently I was doing what I’d been encouraged to do much of my life by people who knew my doubting nature: I was running on faith.

Over the next few months Tim included me as a crucial element of the sales pitches he was making for the film. I was (I like to think) impressive and charming when brought in to meet the executives of the company that eventually came through and offered financing for the film. I was thrilled when we got the go-ahead from them for him to direct his first feature film and for me to write my first commissioned screenplay.

I was, however, taken aback when Tim invited me to spend part of the summer working on the script with him at a property he’d rented in South Hampton. It wasn’t the invitation that startled me, but his instructions. Tim followed his description of the sumptuous estate we’d be sharing with the dictum, “
I do not want you to write a word before we start working together.”

I’d already been working on a script for some time. I’d started to fool around with various structures and ideas as soon as we started shopping the project around. Then, when I was officially hired by the financing company as the screenwriter, I was told to keep in touch with the vice president of the company, to show him my drafts, and to hand him my finished script when the delivery date arrived. They’d hired me in a separate deal, under a different contract, from the one in which I’d optioned the property to Tim. They’d also reimbursed him for that expense, effectively taking over the option from him. They were my employers now. It hadn’t occurred to me that my friend was going to want to closely monitor, or worse yet, participate in, the entire process of writing the script, from beginning to end. I’d assumed I’d write a draft, and then there’d be rewriting in the form of notes and adjustments from both him and the producers to cater the script to the tastes and inclinations of each. Like a couple who’d managed to throw a terrific wedding without learning any of the communication skills needed for a good marriage, we were ready to fly off on our perfect honeymoon.

A few years earlier Tim had shared with me some of the lifestyle changes his success had ushered in. Most of the changes were matters of practicality, like having a personal assistant take care of chores and return phone calls. Others had seemed a touch odd. The simple trick of returning his phone calls from various corners of the world, of trying to call at appropriate hours after figuring in time zone differences, was complicated by the instructions he left to ask for him under various assumed names. “Dick Trundle” is one I remember. “Scott Snead” another. There were occasions when I was told I could remember the name he was using by spelling his real name backwards.

I knew his TV show was popular, but were people really trying to track him down around the globe? This isn’t Oprah Winfrey we’re talking about. It isn’t Paul McCartney or Michael Jackson. Hell, it’s not even Ted Danson.

Then there was the issue of the assumed names themselves. “I’m registered as Reggie Jackson,” I heard once on my answering machine.

What’s up with that? I thought. Didn’t using the names of people much more famous than he was offset the intended benefit, whatever that benefit was supposed to be? Or was he actually trying to increase his profile by convincing people he was there, but that he was someone other than who he was? I was confused.

The personal assistant, on the other hand, was an adjustment that impressed me. This, I have learned, is one of the key tools utilized by successful people. “I don’t do anything for myself anymore,” Tim told me. “I don’t pay my bills, I don’t do my laundry, I don’t go to the supermarket.”

“How does your assistant know what to get?” I asked.

“She knows what I like.”

What about the good old impulse purchase? I wondered. If someone else did all my shopping, I’d end up eating the same thing, at the same time, every day of every week. I’d go mad. Apparently a reluctance to delegate personal chores is one of the facets of my personality that’s stood in the way of my enjoying greater success. It’s possible Tim didn’t know what he wanted on any particular day, either. Maybe his personal assistant was like TiVo. The more she was exposed to his preferences, the more accurate became her future predictions. A nifty feature.

By relieving himself of the duties most people have to slog through before even beginning their day’s work, he’d freed himself up to be able to concentrate on whatever he chose. He used his time to read and educate himself in regard to filmmaking principles and theories. Of course, few things are more tedious, or perhaps even dangerous, than a person who’s come to view himself as an expert solely from theoretical readings. But I put my misgivings aside, since the Hamptons were a nice place to be during the summer. Plus, I learned his assistant was to be briefed about my own culinary preferences.

“What do you like to have for breakfast?” I was asked. “I’ll have Kristin fill the refrigerator in the guest house for you.”

My first draft of the screenplay was a bloated overweight mess. It came in at 175 pages. For those of you not familiar with modern screenplays, that’s somewhere between 55 and 80 pages too long. Still, I wasn’t concerned. There were portions I was immensely proud of, and the length was, at least in part, in acquiescence to Tim’s doctrine of doing no work before we sat down together. I felt that arriving with what was clearly a rough first draft would go as far as necessary toward reassuring him that the script was very much a work in progress. I expected he’d be able to see that there was plenty of room for shaping it together, and that there would be abundant opportunities for him to put as much of an imprint on it as he might feel necessary.

Our first day of work together consisted of my old friend Tim reading my 175-page screenplay to me out loud. Himself. Playing all the parts. Badly. I was flabbergasted. Besides being flabbergasted, I was appalled. It’s not that one individual reading a screenplay a cappella is unheard of. I’d witnessed such readings in writers’ groups. I’d also read about it being done by renowned filmmakers with recalcitrant screenwriters in a few books. The same books, apparently, my friend Tim had been reading in preparation for our work together. What disturbed me was the presumption that he had gained a level of expertise qualifying him to play the role of teacher to my student. Tim’s awkward recitation was followed by his setting the script aside, pulling out a set of three-by-five inch index cards – a common screenwriting tool used in the first steps of designing a screenplay from scratch that I’d used and dispensed with weeks earlier –and announcing that we were now going to begin all over again. Together. Page one. Go.

Really. Just like that. Tim wanted to preapprove not only what scenes were going to be written and in which order they’d occur, but every single word that would be said within them. He also wanted to predetermine the precise length each scene would run
,
down to an eighth of a page, before a single word of dialogue was written. Before writing a single word of Scene one, he wanted me to declare the precise length I’d give to Scene seventy-six. I tried to find a way to play along and make it work, but my patience ran out within a matter of minutes.

“Look,” I said. “I can’t tell you how long each scene is going to be before I start to write any of them. That’s not going to work.” I told him I wasn’t comfortable writing as a team, or even writing in his presence. I told him that I understood the structural requirements of a screenplay, and understood how to outline one. I even added that I was happy to outline the script, in a more general way, with him. But the precise details of each scene would depend on what inspired me as I wrote, and what proved to work best as I progressed. I pointed out that the length of scenes and the pace of the final script could be shaped and sculpted in the rewriting process, allowing for the freedom I depended on to create…well, creatively.

“I’m not prepared – in fact, I won’t be able – to write my own adaptation, of my own book, of my own life story under your supervision, to your word-for-word specifications. That’s not what I signed on for. That’s not what we agreed to.”

This was the first half of day one. The second half consisted of my being scolded – complete with reddened face and bulging jugular – for having “deliberately disobeyed” him by writing a draft of the script on my own. I received a recitation of elementary principles of screenwriting from books and lectures I’d read and attended myself. I also heard, for the first time, the doctrine he intended to govern our work from that point forward. Growing more and more agitated, he told me that, whatever I wrote, the film that ultimately resulted would be his film, no one else’s film, and while he’d certainly take my feelings and opinions into consideration (thank you very much), he alone would choose what went into it, and how every moment would be rendered. Regardless of whatever assurances had been made, it became clear that (in spite of the lovely surroundings and Kristin’s super-intuitive expertise in amply supplying my favorite fruits, nuts, and cereals – yum!) I was in deep trouble.

From there things got worse. Every morning, out came the index cards.

“Scene twenty-seven, the hospital hallway. How many pages?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me a number.”

“How can I give you a number, Tim? I haven’t written it yet. None of it’s been written. None of it’s likely to come in at the length we’ve assigned so far.”

And then the screaming would start again.

“You can’t write without a blueprint!” I was told, as if I didn’t know this already.

“Writing a script is the same as building a house; you need a foundation!” Which is true.

“When you’re in the paradigm, you can’t see the paradigm!” (from Syd Field’s book
Screenplay
).

“Every movie is about one idea!” (from Robert McKee’s
“
Story Structure
”
seminar).

“The rhythm and tempo have to accelerate as the act climax approaches!” (Robert McKee, again).

Those are my attributions. Tim spoke as if these insights were his own. I’m not arguing against any of them. I simply wasn’t happy having them shouted at me by someone no more qualified than myself. (I would like to point out that even Mr. McKee states that “Any of these rules can be broken, if something more important is put in its place.” I know because it’s in my notebook from when I attended his seminar. Underlined. Twice.)

By now Tim would be leaning inches from my face, enraged, rabidly screaming.

“You’re being deliberately uncooperative! I’m the captain of this ship!” (
Mutiny on the Bounty
, I guess, Charles Laughton, 1935).