Part one and two of the interview.
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Yeah,
I guess I am. I've never been attracted to privileged women, wealthy
women or debutantes. To this day, I'm turned off by the concerns of
wealthy women and I think some great women change when they become
wealthy. I've always been kind of drawn to girls who have been dealt
bad hands in life and managed to somehow prevail.
THE
BOOST, which you made with Harold Becker, concerns an L.A. couple
(James Woods and Sean Young) in the mid-80s who become addicted to
cocaine. Dealing with Hollywood as a screenwriter, did you encounter
much drug-related behavior that impacted upon your writing of the
script?
I
didn't, no, because I never really went to many parties and I've
never been one to snort lines of coke at a party when I did go. The
people I knew in Hollywood for the most part worked too hard to have
a coke habit. The hours you work, especially when you're making a
film, are just too long. I never used it myself for pretty much the
same reason. My focus is somewhere else, and you can't let anything
get in the way. It was ironic that I wrote the screenplay to THE
BOOST really. Warren Beatty called me up once to feel me about a
project and to talk about THE BOOST. I had never met him previously.
During the course of our conversation he said ''Are you clean and
sober now?'' I told him that I had always been clean and sober!
I've
always been pretty good at controlling my ego. There have been times
in my life and career, I'm sure, when I have acted like an asshole
and have thought I was hot stuff, but I think for the most part I
have come in with a sense of humility and come out with a sense of
humility. Finally, screenwriting is hard work and luck and doing the
right thing.
How
did your acting roles in NUTS and THE BOOST come about?
I
actually had a speaking role in THE BOOST. I had a scene with Jimmy
Woods, running on the beach. That was fun. Barbra Streisand actually
wanted me to play the role of the psychiatrist in NUTS, but the
original director, Mark Rydell, was having none of it, and then when
another director came on, it had already been cast with Eli Wallach.
Martin Ritt, the new director, said ''Why don't you sit at the bar
and bark at Barbra when she comes in?'' It was just a little cameo.
It
was certainly the strangest experience of my career. Nothing is all
bad or good though. There are a lot of memories of that film that I
cherish and were good, and then there is the shoddy stuff. It's all
yin and yang, it all balances out.
In
the end, did you enjoy collaborating with another writer (Alvin
Sargent) on the screenplay?
Alvin
has been a dear friend for years and years, and still is. He was one
of my first friends in the business, and one of my last friends in
the business. It was fun to work with him. He has always been in his
own world and his way of working is unlike most people's. He takes an
awful long time and he's a quietly brilliant writer. He has no ego at
all and he suffers from a lack of confidence in his life. I wound up
being the drill sergeant of the two of us, the one who had to crack
the whip. I loved getting inside Alvin's head. He's a remarkable
human being.
She
surprised me because she had this reputation of being a ballbuster
but I found her to be funny, smart, hardworking and just great to
hang out with. I really enjoyed my time with her. She's driven, very
focused and she is one of these people that lets perfect get in the
way of good. I've always had a difficult time with perfectionists.
I've always felt it comes out of a sense of insecurity because in
truth nothing is perfect and they keep beating themselves over the
heads to be perfect. But there's nothing I don't admire about her.
She's a wonderful lady.
With
RANDOM HEARTS, how different was your original script to the
rewritten Sydney Pollack/ Harrison Ford version?
I
saw the Harrison Ford film once and didn't like it. I'm sure my
script was different but I have a hard time remembering how. I was
working with Ivan Reitman and writing for Dustin Hoffman, who was
playing a Congressman, and Harrison Ford played a cop in the Sydney
Pollack film, which makes it a different kind of picture. Sydney
Pollack was a wonderful director and had terrific taste, but
unfortunately this was one of his stinkers.
The
executive producer of the film of LAST FLAG FLYING, Tom Wright, and I have been friends for a long
time, and he was such a fan of THE LAST DETAIL. He kept after me to
make a sequel and I kept telling him I didn't want to because it
didn't make much sense. But over time, as we got involved in Iraq and
these endless wars, and paranoia swept over the country, I couldn't
help but start wondering what these characters would be doing now. If
they had to somehow duplicate the journey that they did, how and why
would they do it, and what would they think about what was going on
in the country? I became obsessed with George Bush and Dick Cheney,
and the stupid war they led us into, and so once I sat down to write
the book, it went real quick.
Was
it a cathartic experience revisiting your first success?
It
was not only cathartic but it gave me a sense of coming full circle,
which was very gratifying. The Last Detail was published in 1970, and
the film of Last Flag Flying and the new edition of the book, is
coming out in 2017, 47 years later. That in itself is incredible. I'm
enjoying this sense of closing the circle.
Oh
sure. The movie informed the characters in the book. The characters
evolved from the Last Detail book into the film version and then into
the Last Flag Flying book and then the film version. It's really a
strange process for any writer I would think.
What
do you admire the most about Richard Linklater?
I
think he's got tremendous heart. He's at peace in his own skin. He
knows what he wants out of a film. He's not going to imitate anybody
else. I think he trusts the people around him. He's a special guy,
and people recognise this. Anytime he releases a film, anybody who
knows about movies wants to see it. They're not always great but
they're always honest to the filmmaker himself.
Were
you disappointed that Jack Nicholson chose not to return?
You
know, it's the best thing to ever happen, really. I’m sure it would have been a terrific picture with Nicholson, but we
made the movie at what it would have cost to get Nicholson, and then the
other two would have wanted equity. It’s economics. At the time it
looked like it wasn't going to happen, I had other things, health
concerns, on my mind, so it was easy for me to just brush it off. The
film happened because Rick never gave up on the project and held on
to it. He was off doing BOYHOOD (2014) and other films but he never gave up.
Then one day I got an email from him saying ''I told you this day was
going to come. Amazon is going to finance the movie. '' I said
''Wow!''
He
doesn't do an imitation of Jack Nicholson. He's incredible in his own
way. The movie isn't technically a sequel to THE LAST DETAIL. It's an
adaptation of a book that continues the story of the book and film of
The Last Detail, but it's not actually the same characters. It's
similar guys on a similar mission to the original film and book, and
the story echoes that book and film.
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