When I Stop Talking You (14 page)

Thinking back, I realize I've probably combined a few days in my mind, but it was an irrational moment, a whirlwind, a picture drawn by a kid who cannot stay within the lines.

I looked in the coffin. There was Elvis, done up in his finery, his hair slicked back and his face just as white as porcelain. He was a saint now, a martyr to the pop gods, headed straight for the seventh heaven.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, whispered in my ear: " Vernon and Colonel Tom are in the back. They want to see you right away." Vernon was Elvis's father. I went through the kitchen into the maid's room, where the men were huddled. The bed was covered with telegrams, thousands of condolences that had been pouring in-from the queen of England, from the president of the United States, from the most important people in the world. The men were arguing-well, if not arguing, then having a heated discussion about whether it was appropriate to sell souvenirs to the mourners in the street. Hawkers were already out there pushing memorabilia, and the attitude was, well, why should we let them take our money? I got between them and said something like, "What's wrong with you guys? The body's in the next room. We're about to leave for the funeral. Have some respect." I'm not putting them down. I think they were in shock, had not quite realized what happened, that Elvis was never coming back. What a bizarre moment, the entire world gathered around this house in tears, and, in a room in the house, the old man and the Colonel arguing about T-shirts.

We went to the funeral in a long line of white Cadillacs. These had been brought from all over the South for the occasion. I was in the car behind the hearse. Now and then, when I see newsreels shot that day, I know I am in that second Cadillac. The ride was unbelievable. It was as if the president had died. The streets were lined with people, black people and white people and children and babies. In a crazy way, it was very much the ideal of America, what our country should be about. When I had been in the South as a kid, it was segregated. I told you. On the white side, we were shooed away like rats. On the black side, we were given plates piled with food. Of course, I did not understand the meaning of that, all the oppression and suffering and misery that implied. But riding in that car in Memphis, I saw a new America. There was no hatred, no segregation, no bigotry. None of that shit. Everyone in the crowd was connected by a shared love and a shared grief. The death of Elvis marked the end of an era, but it also marked the birth of something new.

In 1974, George Bush, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, asked me to help him throw a party for his fellow ambassadors from around the globe. The party started with a concert by John Denver in Carnegie Hall. It was good for Bush, but it was also good for John, singing for all these men and women who would go back to their countries and talk him up, and maybe even invite him to perform. It's a twofer. In helping George Bush, I was helping John Denver, and in helping John Denver, I was helping Jerry Weintraub.

The show was followed by a party in the apartment I owned on West Fifty-fourth Street in Manhattan. All the New York big shots were there. Jane had helped me put together the list. At some point, after the second cocktail, say, she brought the director Robert Altman over to meet me. Altman had already directed some of his greatest films, M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He had a reputation for being difficult, a brilliant pain in the ass. He did not like producers, studio executives, money men, or anyone who tried to tell him what to do. He was given M*A*S*H-the movie that made his name-only after it had been turned down by a half dozen other directors.

The room was packed with ambassadors and dignitaries, but when we talked, it was just him and me. We connected right away. He asked if I had ever produced films. I told him I had not. "Well, you should consider it," he said. "You would make a great producer. You have just the right personality."

"What kind of personality does it take?"

I was trying to figure out if I was being complimented or put down.

"It's temperament," he told me. "Smarts and all that, but also the ability to sell an idea, attract talent to that idea, bring out the best in the players, while, at the same time keeping everything in line. If you can talk to people, get them to do things because they think it's their own idea, you will be a great producer."

He talked a little more, then said, "You know, I have a script, it's gonna be a great movie, it's in a drawer at home, maybe you want to take a look at it. Maybe you'll want to produce it."

The script came by messenger the next day. Nashville, by Joan Tewkesbury. I sit. I read. And the more I read, the less I get it as a movie. There are a million characters spinning through a million plots. I don't get it. I call Altman, set a meeting. We go to a restaurant in LA. "Look, I'm going to be very honest with you," I told him. "I do not understand it. I was totally lost. But I want to produce it."

"You don't get it, but you want to produce it?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because you get it, and I get you."

Here's the lesson: Know what you're buying. Was I buying Nashville? No, I was buying Robert Altman. I did not understand the script, but Altman did, and it was Altman who was going to make the movie. This is the dynamic you see when you read in the newspaper that a corporation has overpaid for a tiny upstart. You scratch your head and wonder: why? Well, maybe it's not the company that they are buying but an executive who works at the company, or a patent, or an idea still in the pipeline. I did not understand the script, but I was totally sold on the director.

Altman then explained the movie to me, each scene and beat, how the things I had seen in the script would be brought to life, how all the strands would converge in a rush at the end. I walked out of there convinced I had made the right deal.

Altman had not told me he had already shopped the script all over town, had pitched to and been turned away from every major studio. When I showed up, many of the executives seemed pained. The fact is, these guys had been asking me to work with them for years. Because they had seen me work with Presley, because they had seen me work with Sinatra, because they thought I could perform. Now, when I finally showed up, it was with a script they had already rejected and a director, who, while being a genius, was considered a giant pain in the ass.

Here's what they would say: "Jeez, Jerry, we would love to work with you, as you know, love to have you in the business, but this is just not the right project. If it were anything else, blah, blah, blah."

After I had been all over town, I went back to Altman and said, "Look, I can't get the money, I can't sell it, so here's what I decided: I am going to put my own money into it, a million-nine, just to get us going."

Altman looked horrified. "No, Jerry. Don't put up your own money. That's not how it works. You get them to put up their money."

"We're beyond that," I told him. "We're into the contingencies here."

"Well, it makes me feel funny," he said.

He probably did not want someone with money in the picture so close to him-it's a comfort to think of the money people, those who lose if you fail, as a far-off "them," the boys in suits.

"It's just how we're going to get it going," I said. "We'll figure the rest of it on the fly."

I'll tell you my biggest talent. When I believe in something, it's going to get done. When people say, "No," I don't hear it. When people say, "That's a bad idea," I don't believe them. When people say, "It won't happen," I pretend they're joking.

In the case of Nashville, everything worked out very well and very quickly. Soon after I fronted the money, I sold the TV rights to one of the networks. This was unheard of, selling broadcast rights before the film has been made, but as I told Altman, we were in the world of contingencies.

Marty Starger, who ran ABC Entertainment, and Leonard Goldenson, president of ABC-they made it happen. Goldenson, who started the network, had been in the movie business for years. When I told him about Nashville, he said, "I want in on that." He put up the money-recouping my investment-then brought Paramount in as the distributor. Paramount was being run by Frank Yablans and Robert Evans. By the time the movie was released, Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, who had worked with me at ABC, and become great friends of mine, had taken over.

Well, you probably know the rest. Nashville was a phenomenon, one of those projects that launches a career, the low-budget long-shot that turns into a masterpiece. Pauline Kael called it a new Citizen Kane in the New Yorker. That was my first review, my debut in the business. Everything I did later was built on the success of Nashville, from saying yes when everyone else said no. The experience taught an important lesson: Work with the best people. If you have the best writers, the best actors, and the best director and fail, okay, fine, there is even something noble in it; but if you fail with garbage, then you are left with nothing to hang your spirits on.

Besides, life is too short to be spent in the company of morons.

It was an amazing time for me. In those years, I haunted the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times. The first page of the section was, say, Theater. You open it up, I had a play. You turn the page, I had a movie. Turn it again, I had an album. Next page, I had a TV special. All at the same time. That's when I knew I was really making it, when I opened the Arts pages of the Times and was represented as a presents or a producer in every part of the section. And it was not a one-time thing. It happened a number of times. I mean, if something is fun, if you like it, well, you would like to like it again and again.

In those years, things just sort of happened. Around this time, I bought this stunningly beautiful Rolls-Royce limo, and a hired driver. No one else had a car like that. It popped. One day, I had a meeting at CBS with Clive Davis. My car was parked in front. It started to rain. William Paley, who owned CBS and was one of the legendary power media guys-he could make or break careers-came down in the elevator, stepped outside, and couldn't get a car. You know how it is in New York when the rain is coming down. So one of Paley's guys spotted my car and said, "Hey, that's Jerry Weintraub's Rolls. He's upstairs in a meeting. Take it. It will drop you off and be back before Jerry is finished."

Paley said, "I can't take someone else's car."

"Don't be silly. Jerry would want you to take it. He would he honored."

So they convinced Paley, then convinced my driver, who at first objected-No, I work for Mr. Weintraub-then was talked into it. He dropped off Paley and was waiting for me when I got out.

On the way to my apartment, he said, "You know, Mr. Weintraub, when you were upstairs, I took another man home in the car."

Like he was confessing an infidelity, a love affair.

"You can't do that," I said. "You're my driver."

"I know, I told them, but they insisted," said the driver. "The guy was some big deal."

"Who was it?"

He had no idea.

The next day, I was sitting in my office, and my secretary rang in. William Paley was calling.

No. I couldn't believe it.

I picked up.

"Yes, Mr. Paley?"

"Are you Jerry Weintraub?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mr. Weintraub, I want to thank you for use of your car yesterday. Very generous of you."

"Oh, sure, no problem, don't mention it."

He asked me to come to his office so he could thank me in person. I went over, we sat, hit it off. He asked why I wasn't producing for television. I said something like, "Well, because no one asked." He called in two of his key guys and said, "Give Jerry a couple of our summer slots. He's going to put together some shows for us." See how life works? A low-pressure system looms over the Atlantic, and I wind up making TV shows for CBS.

Every ten years, I have built a new career without quite meaning to or even knowing it. (The pattern is apparent only when I look back.) I had already been an agent, a promoter, a manager, and a creator of shows. I now became a film producer. God, it was fun. The movies had always loomed large in my imagination-and now I was part of that world. I remember the early days, when I would drive onto the studio lots to meet executives and pitch my ideas. It was exactly like what Hollywood should be. There were crowds of extras dressed as cowboys, conquistadors, whatever, rushing set to set, shouting, alive. It was like being a kid again, reliving the thrill of driving into movie land. Just because you get older, make money and lose money, does not mean you should forget how exciting it all is.

This was the midseventies. It was an interregnum, a moment between eras. The new Hollywood of auteurs and independent producers was just coming into view, while the old Hollywood of bosses was just fading away. Most of the studio heads today are not bosses in that classic sense. They do not own the studios. They work for a board of directors and can be fired in five minutes. The old moguls, the guys who came from the garment trade, worked only for themselves. They owned the industry as you might own a house or a car. It was theirs. Harry Cohn. Joseph Schenk. Louis B. Mayer. Jack Warner. These men have since been vilified and condemned by the people who replaced them-that's what always happens-but they were in fact terrific pioneers. There is a lot to be learned from their sense of ownership and pride, and how they took responsibility for everything, from the first draft to the final cut.

Soon after I got into the business, Lew Wasserman asked me to come work for him at MCA. "Jerry, we're friends, we go back," he said. "It's only right that you should make pictures with us."

"I already have a deal," I told him. "It's a big deal. You don't want my deal."

"Don't tell me what I want," he said.

"Okay, you want to make a deal? Fine. Good. Bring your lawyer over to my house and we'll make a deal."

I went back to MCA with Lenny Goldberg, my partner in those years. It was coming full circle. I started as an assistant at MCA and returned with the big contract. My first day, I went to eat at the commissary. I was sitting with my corned beef and cream soda, and here came Lew, smiling. He sat at my table. He said, "Jerry, I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you're back." We talked about this and that, then, as he got up, he turned and said, "Oh, and Jerry. Do me one favor. Stay off the WATS line!"