What Just Happened? (15 page)

‘Ees going to be great, I think, huh?'

‘I think it's great now.'

‘Don't worry, we're almost there.'

Two women and a man all dressed identically in khaki Bermuda shorts strolled on the grounds taking photographs. One of the crew motioned for them to stop, and as they started to walk away, the man turned to us, held his nose, and said disappointedly, ‘Boy, they've really let this place go downhill, haven't they?'

We both nodded and smiled.

‘See, it's making
them
sick. I think we're there,' I said.

It was a couple of weeks before we were to start photography, and considering that costs were already bursting, the mood from Fox was remarkably quiet. I soon learned why we seemed to be flying under the radar. A month and a half before we started photography,
Titanic
began filming. The scale and the costs of that movie were so immense that until we got into real trouble, no one at Fox paid any attention to us. We were the little Negro stepchild who occasionally needed another pair of shoes, while the other kid was off building a nuclear bomb. When the name James Cameron was uttered above a whisper, Mechanic, Rothman, et al. would jerk their heads upward and downward as if they were jolted by a fire drill. When we completed the first eight days of shooting, we were already a week behind schedule, and no one from Fox had even called us.

Let me take an ugly left turn for a moment, if for no other reason but to keep both of us enthused. Mechanic and Rothman didn't tell Cuarón or me that a pivotal scene in
Titanic
– one that centered the entire romance in the film – was identical to one in our movie. Whether it was a grand coincidence or an accidental
stealing or something even darker, I don't know. Both main characters were burgeoning young artists hired by the rich girl to be drawn nude, resulting in love, romance, and sex. We never saw the
Titanic
script, but if you look at both movies, it would be clear that Fox had to hold our little movie from release until the monster drank first. If we had anything fresh to offer, it was preempted. We were steamrolled.

By the time we were in release, critics, and no doubt half the paying audience, were commenting that this must be the year of the young artist who paints his girlfriend naked. But since we didn't have enough money, or the inclination, to sink an ocean liner, this love story was our best shot, our only shot. By the time
Great Expectations
was seen,
Titanic
had already grossed five hundred million dollars. I admit that the big boat going down was their denouement. Nonetheless, when Gwyneth removes her shoes, unhooks her bra, slides off her panties, and asks a twittering Ethan, ‘Do you want me standing or sitting?' what else could the audience feel but ‘been there, done that.' We were as fresh as an
I Love Lucy
rerun.

‘What sort of twisted logic would get you to compare
Titanic
to whatever you're doing?' Jerry asked.

‘There was a run on young artists as a theme. No one told us.'

‘Get over it.'

‘That's what I'm trying to do.'

‘Oh, boy.'

‘What?'

‘A movie producer that pretends, oh, that's good.'

‘Facts are facts, Jerry.'

‘I believe you're taking this whole thing too personal.'

‘That's very accurate.'

‘Weren't you the one that said a producer is merely the mayonnaise?'

‘Well, thank you for remembering.'

‘
Mayonnaise!?
'

‘That was a long time ago.'

‘What exactly—'

‘It means we're supposed to—'

‘I know what't means.'

‘Supposed to make things go more smoothly.'

‘I think your exact words were, “Producers are the
mayonnaise
between the talent and the money on the way to making a
shit
sandwich.”'

‘Not exactly how I put it, Jerry.'

‘Do you know what happens when you leave mayonnaise out in the
sun
?'

‘Gosh, let me guess … it goes off,' I uttered, continuing to be Laurel to his Hardy.

‘If I were you, I'd be spending more time in the
shade
.'

That made him laugh. I took a big gulp of the Chianti.

‘My God, don't they serve hard liquor here?' he asked.

‘Only wine.'

We were seated in the center of Giorgio's, a small Italian restaurant located at the mouth of the Santa Monica Canyon across from the Pacific Coast Highway. Sandwiched between a gay bar and a bikini shop, Giorgio's is a tiny hot spot that caters to the famous and tries its best to cater to the less than famous. The waiter, reminiscent of Joe Pesci down on his luck, had just brought the obligatory free starter of shaved octopus with steamed potato. While he started to run through the specials, Jerry, now in rare form, was mocking the waiter with macho Italian hand gestures. Actually, I'm not sure what he was doing. He grabbed his balls with his left hand, stiffened his right forearm, and made a fist. I guess Jerry was getting a bit too heady from sitting at such a prime table. Even Giorgio waved to him from the kitchen, figuring that he must be somebody. Jerry was so splendidly out of the loop that his eccentricities seemed comical. I indulged him.

‘Don'tcha think,' Jerry said, ‘the water level for producers is getting irrepressibly low?'

‘You may be right.'

‘Mind if I'm direct?'

‘Do I have a choice?'

‘If you didn't have Bob De Niro's home phone number, you might not have much of a producing career.'

‘Oh, that's gone too far.'

‘Hey, according to you, you'd send a script about an all-girls school to De Niro. What's with that?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘You think you'd get that masterpiece of yours made if you only had Joe Mantegna's number?'

‘Bob was good casting.'

‘Who cares?'

‘It was an artistic choice.'

‘Oh, let's not go artistic again.'

‘What would you call it, Jerry?'

‘Desperation.'

‘I think not.'

‘What happened to the producer's motto “I saw, I conquered, I
came
.”'

‘We've grown up.'

‘Hoo haa. Hoo haa.'

There he goes again with that bad Pacino imitation, and again he started banging the table trying to control himself. Elena, Giorgio's daughter, who ran the room, looked over, concerned. She backed off when I held up my hand indicating that all was cool. This was going to be a long night. I was suddenly feeling a pang of regret that I didn't do drugs anymore. I had to pace myself. Anyway, Jerry's credibility was in the margins. That caustic bastard. He was burnt. Hell, there was a lot more to this producing thing than just getting ‘Bobby' on the phone. Wasn't there?

The grind had begun.

I was on a plane returning from Canmore, Canada, to Miami, Florida. It was my third trip in the last four weeks. I had just gone through the horrendous beard incident with Alec Baldwin, and my nerves were brittle. I had waved good-bye, leaving Baldwin clean-shaven, fat, and pissed off, and Lee Tamahori unsettled—although they both had Elle Macpherson around for company. That's right,
if you've been paying attention, both
The Edge
(that bear movie) and
Great Expectations
were shooting at the same time. This required a lot of traveling and a lot of accommodating.

The thunderstorms in Miami forced air traffic control to keep us spinning and bouncing for an extra hour before landing. I soon found out that it mirrored what was happening on the ground. Over the last few weeks, with the pressure building, Alfonso was getting racked. When filming was going well and dailies looked fine, he was excited and motivated. When things got rocky, he got rocky. When you're in the middle of the stampede, and you're a new director, all kinds of monsters can surface. Usually, the director gets sick during filming and has to work with the flu for several weeks. In that sort of weakened state, directors are manageable. It was too soon to know how Alfonso was going to fare, but his health was fine. As the plane jerked on the tarmac, I had the ugly recognition that the real ‘tough' stuff hadn't even begun.

The initial problems on the set were minor and typical. Chivo and Alfonso were having a hard time getting the day's work done and were blaming it on weather, sun, shadows, and of course, not enough money or time. That first week of shooting is a shakedown cruise. It is always a bit unpredictable how the crew, the director, and the cast are going to mesh. Sometimes it takes a week or two for the machinery to run smoothly. When I arrived on the set, Cuarón and Chivo were huddled off to one side speaking Spanish. They would speak Spanish to each other when frustrations peaked, and they would speak English when things were going swell. When I saw John, he told me that they hadn't spoken English with each other for three days.

‘We have to find a way to go faster,' I said.

‘But the light ees killing us.'

‘We're behind—'

‘I know, I know.'

‘But we haven't even burnt film on our stars yet.'

‘That's a good thing, no?'

‘No, it isn't a good thing.'

Our schedule required that we start with Gwyneth's and Ethan's characters when they first met as ten-year-old children. For those of you who saw the film, it included those scenes where the boy was first smitten, when they had their first kiss by the fountain, etc. Usually, when your principal actors are working, things will go even slower, and that we were already falling behind was a bit concerning. Even though Fox was leaving us alone for now, we would certainly have to pay the price at the end of the schedule. Important things that we would need down the road would be compromised. I didn't want to waste all of our extra time on the first week of shooting. It was difficult to explain this to Alfonso because he was knee-deep in the heat of battle.

‘It rains, then it suns; it rains, then it suns.'

‘It's Florida,' I said.

‘The script needs more work.'

‘Mitch is here to work on it.'

‘Maybe we need more money.'

‘We just started.'

‘You said when we first talked that we would have lots of money.'

‘We do have a lot …'

‘Maybe we need more.'

‘Maybe we can't get more.'

‘Well, I thought we would be driving a Rolls-Royce.'

‘What are we driving?'

‘A Pinto.'

This wasn't as scary as it sounded. The dailies looked magnificent. The performances as well as the photography were a cut above. Cuarón was quickly exhibiting the skills of a good director. I was sure that his worries would recede as the production continued.

The Dickensian name of Pip was discarded early by Mitch, who renamed him Pompi in the earliest of his drafts. Cuarón, who struggled with the name Pompi, got Mitch to change it to Jimmy. Ethan, who had been prepping in Florida for several weeks, and who was deliberating over the ‘right' wig to make him look sixteen
for the early scenes, was also concerned with the ‘right' name for his character. When Ethan started rehearsals, he didn't like either name. He told us he was going to work on it. Two days before photography began, Ethan decided the character's name had to be changed to Finn. No one particularly liked this choice (I truly hated it) but, call it jet lag, pathetic capitulation to your lead actor, or being distracted by other problems, we decided to go with Finn. I heard later that it was the name of a dog that Ethan had had when he was growing up in Texas.

Weeks later, things got worse. I called Mitch in the middle of one of his rewrites to tell him that I had just seen Ethan's wig.

‘What did you think?'

‘It ain't making him look younger.'

‘That's not good.'

‘It's got that queasy look to it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It makes him look like a recovering cancer victim.'

‘Did you tell him?'

‘I was subtle, I grimaced.'

‘Did he notice?'

‘No.'

‘I think you should tell him.'

‘I know.'

I was clearly losing it. After the Baldwin beard confrontation I was starting to leak oil. My compass needle was spinning. I was contracting the disease that made me feel that maybe these guys knew better than me.

The police should have put me on producer's suspension.

A larger issue, and one that can profoundly haunt a production, is if a director starts shooting and then loses confidence in the script. This does not necessarily mean that the script is flawed. For months prior to the start date, Alfonso, Mitch, and I (and even Ethan) had worked on the script, making significant changes throughout. The hope is always that those early script concerns are worked out well ahead of time so that when the scenes are shot,
they can be executed with confidence. Of course, rewrites are quite common during photography, but when they start to engulf the production, indecision and turmoil can result.

For those of you who have not seen the title page of a script after it has been filmed, ours looked like this: