Still Foolin' 'Em (26 page)

My Fifties

Leonardo DiCaprio spit on me. The large glob of phlegmy gook expelled from Leo’s mouth in a scene from
Titanic
landed perfectly on my forehead and got a huge laugh in my opening film for the 1998 Academy Awards, which would turn out to be the highest-rated Oscar show of all time. I’d love to take sole credit for the show’s success, but
Titanic
might’ve had a little something to do with it. Early the next morning, my assistant Carol Sidlow, an unflappable showbiz veteran, called me at home, sounding uncharacteristically excited and nervous: “Johnny Carson is on the phone … calling himself.”

I broke out into a sweat, took a deep breath, and said, “Tell him to fuck off.”

There was a pause. “Excuse me?”

“Carol, I’m kidding. Of course put him on.”

“Here’s Johnny…,” she said breathlessly.

“Johnny?” I said. Then I heard that unmistakable voice.

After the Oscars, my beautiful girls and their guys. Howie, Lindsay, Janice and I, Jenny, Mike.

“Hey, I gotta tell you, that was a great show. I was watching with some friends, and I said to Alex”—his wife—“how great I thought you were, total command, and Alex said, ‘Call him and tell him yourself,’ so here I am.”

“Johnny, thank you so much. I thought it went well.”

“Stop being modest,” he replied. “It was just great.”

“Johnny, I can’t tell you how much this means to me…”

“Billy, you just did…”

What a great way to begin my second of what I hope are three half centuries.

*   *   *

Spring came, and there was no other place I’d rather be than opening day at Yankee Stadium. I was sitting with Janice in the Steinbrenner box. She left for a short period of time, and when she returned to her seat, I could see that she was upset.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, but I know her too well. Finally, after much prodding, she told me that she had smuggled into the ballpark one of my prized possessions—a Joe DiMaggio uniform top—knowing that DiMaggio would be there that day. She’d just asked him to sign it, and he’d refused. He’d claimed he had an exclusive deal for his signature with a baseball bat company and that if they found out that he’d signed the jersey, they might cancel it. It was a foolish argument. I left Janice at our seats, swearing to her that I was going to the bathroom, but I went to talk to DiMaggio. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but the sight of Janice so upset made me angry, and given that the first time I’d met him he’d punched me, things couldn’t get much worse. Honestly, I thought I could take him. But when I found him, DiMaggio was disarmingly apologetic and told me about his concerns about the deal he’d made with the company.

“Joe,” I said, “I’m not going to sell it. This jersey is very rare and important to my collection. Do you really think if they found out you did this for me, they’d drop you?”

“I’m sorry,” he countered and handed me a ball with this inscription: “To a great Yankee fan, from your fan, Joe DiMaggio.” It is a very nice inscription, but honestly, it didn’t matter what he had written: twice he had shown me who he was. And by the way, I thought Willie Mays was the greatest living player.

*   *   *

Another opening day was about to happen with a lot more on the line than a baseball season.
Analyze This
was to be released, and I couldn’t bear another movie not succeeding. Test audiences had loved the film, the trailer was playing well in theaters, the TV spots were funny, but as I had learned, you never know. Our reviews were positive; critics loved our pairing, and the big story was that Robert De Niro was funny. Our opening Friday box office numbers were good, but Saturday would tell the story. On Saturday night, Janice and I went to a birthday party for Bob’s wife, Grace, at the restaurant Ago, where Bob is one of the owners. When I asked him what “Ago” meant, he joked, “It’s Sicilian for ‘Ago fuck yourself.’” This was thirteen years before the line was used in
Argo
, so please, no nasty tweets.

We started getting box office reports from the studio as the party progressed. It was like election night. The numbers kept going higher and higher, and when it was over, we had done over $18 million for the weekend and were the number one film at the box office. We were especially happy about that because we beat out
Cruel Intentions
, with Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, which was expected to dominate the two old guys’ flick. Bob and I had become good friends, and my respect and affection for him were tremendous. In some ways I was as happy for him as I was for me.

Two champs. Mom meets Ali. Notice the lipstick on Ali’s cheek.

In January 1999, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem had given me its highest honor, the National Scopus Award. The event was in Los Angeles, and Muhammad Ali was the dinner chairman. Not only did he lend his name and time to the evening, but he also came and sat with my family at our table. When he arrived, I introduced him to my mother. She told him how much he had inspired her. She told him about her speech to the draft board. She thanked him for being who he was and for being so kind to me. I’ve never seen Ali speechless, but for a moment he seemed overwhelmed. He gave her a big hug and called her “Mama” the entire night. I loved seeing them together.

*   *   *

Soon after, Ross Greenburg, a good friend and the head of HBO Sports, called and asked me if I’d like to executive-produce a movie called
61*
with him. It was the story of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle and that dream season of 1961, when they both chased the ghost of Babe Ruth in their pursuit of the single-season home run record of 60. I went to many games that summer and could still feel the excitement as if it had just happened. Also, Mickey had told me about how he and Roger had lived together that year in an apartment in Queens, something not many people knew.

A movie about these two teammates and rivals, who ultimately became such good friends, was right up my alley. We worked on the script with an excellent young writer named Hank Steinberg. I imitated Mickey in our sessions. I knew Mickey’s speech patterns, and I could use things he had actually said to me, so his presence in the script rang true. Ross kept pushing me to direct the film, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to, until we made a scouting trip to Detroit to take a look at old Tiger Stadium.

To me, the biggest problem, of course, was who could play these two icons, and the next issue was finding a stadium that felt like Yankee Stadium of 1961. On a freezing cold day just before Thanksgiving, we toured the now vacant Tiger Stadium. Wind whistled through its empty seats, the November sun peeked through lonely archways. Like an old relative waiting for a visit from his family, the stadium seemed to be aching for a crowd to cheer one more time. It had been built in 1912 and felt very close to the Yankee Stadium I knew so well. We toured the abandoned clubhouses, and I stood where Mickey and Roger had stood so many years before. As we walked the dark passageway to the visiting team’s dugout, tracing their footsteps, I started to put shots together in my mind, and before I knew it, I was directing the film. I had to. I didn’t want anyone else to go near it. I had been thirteen that summer, and I wanted to return to that time, to re-create it for all the other thirteen-year-olds who were now my age.

Next we had to find Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. When I saw Barry Pepper in
Saving Private Ryan,
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Roger Maris walks the earth,
I thought. Barry was very interested but was concerned about doing a film for HBO at that time. His movie career was just getting going. He’d recently finished an independent film and wanted to do more of them and thought making a movie for television might not be the best move. I tried to convince him that good work is good work, no matter where it is, and that this could be the part of a lifetime. Where else could he play such a misunderstood, moody man who becomes an unlikely hero? And with the way HBO promotes its films, more people would see this than any independent film.

While Barry was making up his mind, I met with Thomas Jane, a free-spirited up-and-coming actor whom I had loved in
Boogie Nights
. His natural boyish charm was perfect for the Mantle I wanted to portray, and his resemblance to Mickey, though not as strong as Barry’s to Roger, was still stunning. He came to my office barefoot (he hates shoes, I later learned), smoking smelly French cigarettes, his hair to his shoulders. I had put together a presentation of Mantle photos and video clips—Mickey just being Mickey—and some home movies of the two of us, and I told him stories about how Mantle always greeted me with “Hey, you little son of a bitch, how ya doing?” and I watched Tom soak it all in. Tom was too young to have seen Mickey play, but as I spoke, he became enthralled with the boozy, cowboyish baseball icon. I explained that this was not just a Hall of Fame player; this was a charismatic and complicated man whose fear of dying young had sent him on his way to becoming an alcoholic, and that’s the portrait I was going after, warts and all.

Tom wanted the part badly, but this time HBO wasn’t sure. The executives wanted stars in those parts. I told them that these parts would make someone a star, but at their request, I arranged a meeting with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I knew it was a long shot, and with all due respect, they were not as suited as Tom and Barry were for the parts. I wanted the audience to see Mickey and Roger, not Matt and Ben. At the meeting, Matt explained that as Red Sox guys, putting on the pinstripes would be too difficult. I got it and, frankly, was relieved because I so strongly believed that Tom and Barry would be sensational. Next, I secretly did a screen test with Thomas. I got him a vintage No. 7 Yankee uniform, pinned up his hair, put the Yankee cap on his head and a bat in his hand, and interviewed him as Mantle. I fed him the answers, lines Mickey had said to me, and Tom was perfect. I sent it to the HBO higher-ups, and their response was “Who is this guy? He’s great!” I said it was Tom Jane, the guy they weren’t sure about. Well, they were sure now. Tom was in, and not long after that, Barry agreed to play Roger.

Now they had to play ball. This was Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and they and every one of our players had to look real. There have been so many baseball movies where the actors are great but they throw like seven-year-old girls. I called on Reggie Smith, a former major league player and now a fine hitting coach, to be my technical adviser. Reggie, a switch-hitter himself, had played against Mickey, and he would have to teach Tom Mantle’s swing from both sides of the plate. Tom had told me he had played baseball in high school; he lied. When I brought him out to Reggie’s place, the first thing he asked was “How do you hold a ball?” I almost fainted. Reggie looked at me and shook his head. He took the French cigarette out of Tom’s mouth and said, “Let’s go to work. Billy, come back in two weeks.”

Two weeks later, I arrived at Reggie’s workout field and said, “Where’s Tom?”

“He’s not here,” Reggie answered. Then he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled toward the outfield. “MICKEY! SOMEONE WANTS TO MEET YOU,” he yelled, and running in from center field, limp and all, was Mickey Mantle. “Hey, you little son of a bitch,” he asked me, “how ya doin’?” He then got into the batting cage and hit the ball beautifully, right- and left-handed. The transformation was stunning.

I hired veteran casting director Mali Finn to work with me. The smartest, sweetest, and most talented casting director I had ever worked with, she had done such recent hits as
Titanic
and
L.A. Confidential.
She had a special relationship with all the actors she regularly saw for auditions; she cared about them and often coached them. Our research team made portfolios on all the ballplayers in the script, and Mali immersed herself in the details of that ’61 season. Basically, this woman who knew nothing about baseball became fluent in Yankee.

Seventy-four-year-old eccentric genius Haskell Wexler joined the team as our director of photography. Even though he was a two-time Oscar winner and his son Jeff was my sound mixer, I hadn’t thought about him doing the film, until Haskell called me himself and said, “If you want me, you got me.”