What Just Happened - Art Linson interview
Interview by Rob Carnevale
SCREENWRITER and novelist Art Linson talks about adapting his book for the big screen version of What Just Happened, working with Robert De Niro and how he’s survived the Hollywood game depicted in the film…
Q. Your book is subtitled Bitter Tales from the Hollywood Front Line, but the film, which is fictionalised, is more bittersweet and comedic. Why did you decide to go that way?
Art Linson: Well, bitter to me is usually funny; everybody has a different sense of what makes them laugh. Other people’s bitterness makes me laugh. The movie is fictionalised only in the sense that it was taken from my last book – it was Bob’s idea – and we had to compress it into some kind of a time frame, which actually forces us to fictionalise it. But the actual incidences are all true; we’ve just changed the names to protect the guilty.
Q. One of the pleasures of the book was that it does name names… was there no chance of that here?
Art Linson: [Laughs] You know, I think naming names in a movie makes it something too specific. This is a movie about letting people see what it’s like to be in Hollywood, how funny it is, how treacherous it is. It’s just like every place else except it’s multiplied by ten; there’s an intensity to the backstage of the film industry that echoes everywhere, but it’s perversely funny when you see it happening to agents and actors and so on.
Q. Can you remember the first time you experienced the brutality of the business when you’re flavour of the month on the Friday and after disappointing box office figures over the weekend, your calls don’t get returned on the Monday?
Art Linson: It happens every couple of years [to me]. It’s happened so many times to me that I don’t even like to recall the pain. I think it might be like childbirth for women. My second movie as a producer was Car Wash, which was very successful, but my first movie, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins… I remember it was at Warner Bros with Alan Arkin, and my associate producer was Jerry Bruckheimer, so someone out of that film ended up doing well!
I remember we screened the movie and this guy who owned this Chinese restaurant, who was called Roy Silver, and it was a place called Roy’s on Sunset Boulevard, I said to him: “What did you think?” And he said: “I just can’t understand why anybody would want to make a movie like that.” And then it came out a week later and it profoundly bombed. You couldn’t give it away. I remember the executive going to the theatre with me on opening night. I was just happy to have a movie out there and be involved in something. But he walked through the lobby, looked in the theatre and came back out and said: “It’s over.” This was before it had even started. So I got a very rude introduction and that behaviour continues throughout your career!
Q. Were you ever worried about biting the hand that feeds you?
Art Linson: It wasn’t the intention. I never saw it as biting the hand that feeds because the hand that feeds is some God-like presence that no one can take a meeting with anymore, so everybody, including executives, seems to be under the same pressure. You don’t ever get to meet that guy. Everyone is hanging on for dear life. It’s an industry that may be a little like journalism in that the competition is so fierce that everybody is like a snail on a pain of glass trying not to slide down.
They don’t even care if they go up. They just don’t want to go down. I think that’s what makes it so funny. I have yet to meet the person who in the old days would be the equivalent of Lew Wasserman, who no matter what happened, he was never in jeopardy. Executives now are in constant jeopardy. I’ve had several friends get fired in the last month.
Q. How close is the Robert De Niro character to you in real life?
Art Linson: I just keep thinking of John Turturro with a stomach disorder. That’s all I think about. When [De Niro] says: “I know what’s the problem between you and your client: you’re scared of him.” And he says in his underwear, about to throw up: “I’m scared of all of them.” That’s when I think it’s closest to the world that I see.
Q. There are two wonderful moments of appalling behaviour: the English director going nuts and Bruce Willis going nuts in the wardrobe department. Can you recall any examples of similar behaviour? And feel free to name names…
Art Linson: Well, you’ve just mentioned two of them that I witnessed that I just changed the names. So, why would I give them to you now [laughs]?
Q. Was the parody of Bruce Willis’s persona all on the page or did he bring more to it?
Art Linson: It’s on the page. Since I wrote the damn thing, I’m going to say it’s all on the page [laughs]. But no, he brought something more to it. They all did. That’s the great thing about Bob too. You write something and then you see it come back and it’s a whole lot better. If you have good actors they bring something to it. And Bruce really did. He took himself seriously. He didn’t just send himself up. He did it with the rage of a guy obsessed with integrity. When he doesn’t want to shave his beard, it just makes me laugh out loud. Watching Bob talk to him about integrity is great. And then having a scene with two people in the movie business talking about integrity, that’s already a joke. He actually changed some lines, but he just elevated it. As Bob always does too. It just makes it something better when you work with other people.
Q. Did you ask Alec Baldwin how he felt about it?
Art Linson: No, I have too much regard for my own health to go there [laughs]. He has a true temper and sometimes if you know someone has a temper like that, it’s best not to act on it.
Q. What are your views on test screenings?
Art Linson: It’s more about how you use this experience. I remember being at a dinner once where Goodfellas was being previewed in a movie theatre up in Seattle. Marty [Scorsese] had just down flown down to this dinner and was sitting next to a director friend of all of ours who asked him: “How did it go?” And he said: “A third of the people walked out and the cards were disastrous.” And then we all ate. So, you know… I think Bob [De Niro]’s right. A comedy, you might be able to fine-tune the timing of something, but often you can just experience that from watching an audience laugh or not.
So you know, the audiences are often right and they’re often wrong, even for themselves. They may dislike the very thing that they like when it comes out. It might have taken them to a place that upset them and they can’t acknowledge on a piece of paper that they liked it because it upset them, but the next day somehow they’re there and their walking around in Hollywood saying how’d that happen? Everybody hated the thing, all they got was “f**k you” on the cards and then they go and buy a ticket to see it again. If it’s to be used, it’s to be used with restraint. You can’t make something other than what it is.
Q. How does someone in your line of work cope with that pressure that we see Ben go through over the course of a week?
Art Linson: I’ve often asked myself the same question. You just learn to take it on. For those of you out there who have had some major disappointments and continue to keep going, that’s what it is. Everybody is good at success. Well, not everybody. Some people behave stupidly. But everybody knows how to handle good news. You’re really tested when you’re handling bad news and in Hollywood you get a lot of it.
Q. But how do you stay sane and has there ever been a point when you’ve thought, I’m done with this?
Art Linson: The sad part about all of this is that you never leave Hollywood; it leaves you. You can talk about wanting to leave, but once you’re in it, it leaves you. You can get over the addiction of wanting to leave it. So, no matter how bad things get, you tend to forge ahead. And with regards to how you stay sane, I don’t think it’s any harder than a young couple raising kids and trying to pay the bills. Let’s not get crazy here. This might be more amusing, but keeping your sanity as you get on with your daily life and face your daily setbacks, everybody has those pressures. If there’s one thing I hope for this movie it’s that people realise it’s not just about Hollywood. It’s a metaphor, a framework for a man juggling his life and trying to keep on top of things. I think everybody feels those kinds of pressures. It just might not be as Hollywood exotic.
Read our review of What Just Happened