Studio (9780307817600)

John Gregory Dunne was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and attended Princeton University. He is the author of twelve books, including
Nothing Lost; Vegas; True Confessions; Dutch Shea, Jr.; The Studio;
and
Playland
. He was a regular contributor to
The New York Review of Books
and
The New Yorker
. He died in 2003.

I tend to distrust, and almost never read, books about show business, in particular those about the motion picture community. Too many are written by people who secretly yearn to become communicants at the altar of fame where the religion of film is consecrated. Envy is the currency of such writers. The “warts and all” approach to which they gravitate (recognizing the readership value of the deep, if unsubstantiated, dish) generally means all warts, exposed of course in the interest of truth, thus evening the otherwise unequal equation between unknown author and too well-known subjects. The crimes and misdemeanors of personality tend to take precedence over the work; what is base is valued in these volumes more than what may be
lasting. This is not to say that the sources themselves are without sin or an agenda; there is nothing like the printed word, especially if it is unattributed, for massaging an ego, justifying a career, settling a score, or kissing an ass.

Most of these books belong to the literature of anecdote. Facts are unforgiving, while anecdotes are only factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss and purged of nuance and subtext in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing. For best effect, they are usually set against gilded venues (or mean streets for contrary effect) and populated with the famous, the infamous, and the familiar, as if fame, infamy, gilded venues, and mean streets certified authenticity. Whether biographical or autobiographical, all anecdote is essentially self-aggrandizing, allowing the anecdotalist to bask in his or her own created (or someone else’s reflected) glory, and to demonstrate whatever it is in the anecdotalist’s interest to demonstrate, either for his or her own good fortune, or someone else’s ill fortune (an equally winning hand under certain propitious conditions). Since these anecdotes are usually provided by professional storytellers, the not altogether unbecoming result is that the stories show folk tell about themselves have the shorthand sense of being scenes from a screenplay, with dialogue, set decoration, and camera movements. In such circumstances, the narrative is all, and truth an acceptable casualty.

What makes accurate books about the machinery of the movie business so rare is the difficulty of obtaining access. For all their grandiosity, for all their ability to infuriate, movie people are rarely stupid. What they cannot control they do not trust, and a reporter with access they view as others might a terrorist. I have a friend, a producer of some
significance, who kept getting calls from the press (or “the media,” as movie people invariably call the press) during the production of one of his pictures; was there trouble and temperament on the set between his stars? Absolutely not, he would tell each reporter, but have you heard what’s happening on the Streisand picture? In a single call, he both averted investigation of his troubled set, and, by pointing the reporter toward another troubled set, won a marker he could perhaps later redeem.

I have no idea why Richard Zanuck gave me free access to Twentieth Century Fox while I was researching
The Studio
. I am sure that Lillian Ross, the author of
Picture
, has no idea why Dore Schary and John Huston let her have the run of the set and the MGM offices and cutting rooms during the production of
The Red Badge of Courage
. And sure also that Julie Salamon wonders why no one realized that her presence on the set of
The Bonfire of the Vanities
was counter to their best interests as she recorded what became
The Devil’s Candy
. In each instance, I suspect, a combination of hubris and aberrant behavior. With no false modesty, let me say that
Picture, The Devil’s Candy
, and
The Studio
are the three best books outsiders have written about how American movies are made. The debt that Ms. Salamon and I owe to Lillian Ross is incalculable; she did it first, seventeen years before I did
The Studio
, forty years before Ms. Salamon wrote
The Devil’s Candy:
she proved it could be done—if you had the access.

If there is one thing these three books have in common, it is the respect the three of us gained for the people who make pictures. It is brutally hard work, sixteen-to-eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, and the closer a picture edges toward disaster, the harder the filmmakers work to
prevent it. There are no surprises: everyone can smell a stiff in the making. Having worked myself in the movie business as a screenwriter for nearly thirty years, I know now there is something I missed in
The Studio
. It is easy to report, and to make light of, the feuds and duplicity, the alliances and conspiracies, that occur on every movie. It is another thing altogether to be part of them, to be overcome with the rages brought about by some minor malfeasance, or even by not getting your own way. Tension is the given of any movie, and it has less to do with ego than with the intensity of short-term relationships, a lifetime lived in a seventy day shoot; if there are location romances, there are also equally irrational location hatreds.

I missed that, but otherwise
The Studio
is not half bad.

New York
August 1997

I finished
The Studio
in the summer of 1968, but it was ten years before I actually read it. I did not read it in manuscript, I did not read it in galleys, I did not read it after it was bound. I disliked the book and at one point asked my publisher not to publish it.

I suppose the main reason that I disliked
The Studio
was that it was the only book I have ever written that went exactly according to plan. Before I started, I knew the voice I wanted: the omniscient cool narrator. I knew the style I wanted: short takes, shifting among a whole range of onstage and offstage characters. I knew where I wanted the book to start (at the annual stockholders’ meeting) and I knew where I wanted it to end
(at the premiere of a major motion picture). I needed only access; if I got the access, I knew I had the book.

The access was granted by Richard D. Zanuck, who was then the vice-president in charge of production at Twentieth Century Fox. There was no reason for him to give it to me, and to this day I do not know why he did; the nature of reporting is such that it certainly was not to his advantage to let me, or any reporter, see the inner workings of his studio. But Richard Zanuck did not hesitate for more than a moment after I proposed that he give me the run of the place. He called in his secretary and dictated a memo to all producers and department heads telling them to give me all the assistance I wanted. If they thought any information was privileged, they were to tell me it was off the record, or ask me to leave the room, location or set. It is an indication of the access I enjoyed that I was put “on hold” only once in the months I was at the studio.

I was given a parking space and an office, and a secretary to type my notes. I never availed myself of the last perquisite. It was several weeks before the personnel at the studio were comfortable in my presence, but after that I became as anonymous as a piece of furniture. My notebook was always out and visible, but I rarely took notes. After a meeting, I would race back to my office and transcribe the scene I had just witnessed—always in dramatic form; if a meeting or a confrontation was running long, I would duck into the men’s room and jot down the things I wished to remember. Because I wanted no complaints that I had suckered anyone, I always identified myself and what I was doing.