{"id":379,"date":"2015-04-18T07:41:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T14:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=379"},"modified":"2015-04-18T07:41:28","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T14:41:28","slug":"twiddling-my-black-mustache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=379","title":{"rendered":"TWIDDLING MY BLACK MUSTACHE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DJ<\/a><\/p>\n

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In the brightly colored comic book world of my youth, I was infatuated with Time for Beany<\/em>, a wonderful puppet show recounting the adventures of a wide-eyed boy named Beany as he sailed the seven seas on the Leakin\u2019 Lena<\/em> under the command of his pompous uncle, Captain Horatio K. Huffenpuff.<\/p>\n

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The characters were wonderful: their names alone told you almost everything you needed to know about them.<\/p>\n

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There was Beany\u2019s faithful, if somewhat dimwitted friend, Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent.<\/p>\n

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There was, of course, the yogurt-loving Tear Along the Dotted Lion.<\/p>\n

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And let us not forget his fellow terror of the jungle, Mouth Full of Teeth Keith\u2014the mangy lion with the slippery, ill-fitting dentures.<\/p>\n

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But my particular favorite was Dishonest John, whose black cape, black hat and black mustache announced his villainy to the world as he swept on stage, holding his cape in front of his wicked face and cutting loose with a nasty, sneering, sniggering laugh.<\/p>\n

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You had to love this guy, and I did.<\/p>\n

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The thing is, I\u2019ve always been drawn to villains.<\/p>\n

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Ming the Merciless of Mong was always more interesting to me than Flash Gordon.<\/p>\n

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Jeffrey Hunter as Christ was a bit of a snore, but Frank Thring as Herod the Great stepping on his father\u2019s corpse as he ascended the throne, now he<\/em> was something!<\/p>\n

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And Darth Vader?<\/p>\n

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The Dishonest John of the future!<\/p>\n

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Who would not prefer his \u201cfoul stench\u201d and unforgettable voice\u2014the very embodiment of EVIL\u2014to the nice guy heroics of Luke Skywalker?<\/p>\n

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I like villains, and I\u2019m proud to say that my five year-old grandson is following in my footsteps.<\/p>\n

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In the games he plays during recess at pre-school, he always wants to be the villain. He almost always gets his wish. And he almost always get the holy crap beaten out of him as his good-guy friends, determined not just to overcome evil but to wipe it from the face of the earth, gang up on him with their fists flying.<\/p>\n

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He is undeterred, and I admire him for it.<\/p>\n

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I admire him for succeeding where I myself, in my high school acting days, failed.<\/p>\n

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I always wanted to be the villain, and I always ended up playing the dull, colorless, nice-guy hero.<\/p>\n

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I was, for example, doomed to portray Mortimer, that nicest of all bewildered nice guys, in Arsenic and Old Lace<\/em> when the role I really wanted was Jonathan\u2014Mortimer\u2019s demented brother whose plastic surgery had made him a dead ringer for Boris Karloff\u2019s Frankenstein.<\/p>\n

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Now there was a role I could really have gotten my teeth into!<\/p>\n

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But it was not to be.<\/p>\n

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It turned out that my high school stage experiences were a preview of coming attractions\u2014a trailer for my adult life.<\/p>\n

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Dull.<\/p>\n

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Colorless.<\/p>\n

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Nice.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a sad story and I won\u2019t go into it here, but you can imagine my excitement when I recently discovered that for one brief shining moment I actually achieved my life-long ambition to be proclaimed a villain.<\/p>\n

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I, it turns out, was the<\/em> villain who destroyed a masterpiece of filmmaking art.<\/p>\n

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I learned about it this way.<\/p>\n

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A few days ago, I engaged in that most popular of current pastimes: I googled myself and discovered that I appear in a footnote to an academic essay entitled \u201cThe Screenwriter as Auteur: Nora Ephron\u2019s Heartburn<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A footnote<\/em>? you ask.<\/p>\n

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Well, it\u2019s not just any<\/em> footnote.<\/p>\n

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I happen to be keeping very good company in this particular note.<\/p>\n

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My companion in academic esoteria?<\/p>\n

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Jeffrey Katzenberg!<\/p>\n

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The footnote cites the development notes I wrote for Jeffrey about Ephron\u2019s script, and the text which this note documents holds me personally responsible for ruining Ephron\u2019s work!<\/p>\n

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I can\u2019t say that I fully understand just how I managed this because the essay\u2019s author uses all sorts of wonderful words with meanings beyond my feeble understanding.<\/p>\n

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She is, in fact, a mistress of academic jargon and clearly more brilliant and insightful than I could ever hope to be.<\/p>\n

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According to her, I intimidated Ephron and her director, Mike Nichols, into cutting the heroine\u2019s monologues and fantasies\u2026or to put it in her own unforgettable words, \u201cthe film omits the diegetic Rachel and refrains from adding any goal or obstacles for the enacted Rachel, [and so] the film\u2019s narrative fails to present a compelling narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s some other stuff about \u201csyuzhet structure\u201d and the film\u2019s \u201cfabula,\u201d but the bottom line is this\u2026<\/p>\n

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I SINGLEHANDEDLY\u2026well, I may have a little support from Jeffrey.<\/p>\n

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Let me rephrase that.<\/p>\n

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I, STUDIO DRONE DAN BRONSON, HAD COMPROMISED A MASTERWORK OF THE CINEMA, REDUCING IT FROM GENIUS TO MEDIOCRITY!<\/p>\n

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I am so proud.<\/p>\n

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It turns out that I was, if only for a moment, what I\u2019d always aspired to be.<\/p>\n

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I can almost hear Hamlet denouncing me.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOh, villain, villain, damned smiling villain.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It was, I feel, a major achievement to have reduced one of the finest writers and one of the three or four most powerful directors in Hollywood to quivering jelly, shaking in fear of the consequences if they failed to execute my<\/em> notes!<\/p>\n

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This strikes me as all the more remarkable when I recall an experience at director John McTiernan\u2019s Wyoming ranch. I was there, working with him and Jonathan Hensley on the screenplay for Die Hard: With a Vengeance<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan and I had just received Fox\u2019s notes on our work, and we were in despair\u2014the notes were so wrong-headed and destructive.<\/p>\n

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Just then, McT walked into the room, took one look at our faces, and asked what was wrong. The notes, we told him. We just didn\u2019t know what to do with Fox\u2019s notes.<\/p>\n

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John\u2019s response?<\/p>\n

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He picked up the notes.<\/p>\n

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Said, \u201cI\u2019ll show you what to do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And he threw them into the fire burning on the hearth!<\/p>\n

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Now John was big, but Mike Nichols was even bigger, and I\u2014little ol\u2019 me\u2014had forced him to alter his entire conception of his film.<\/p>\n

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Now I have to confess that I didn\u2019t even remember that I had done the development notes on Heartburn<\/em> until I stumbled across this insightful essay on the Internet, so I headed out to our storage barn, dug up my coverage from my Paramount days, and found a copy of the coverage in question.<\/p>\n

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I started to read, prepared to be dazzled by my brilliance.<\/p>\n

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And what did I discover?<\/p>\n

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That I had loved the Annie Hall<\/em> approach Ephron had taken to her material!<\/p>\n

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What?<\/p>\n

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I\u2019d loved<\/em> the heroine\u2019s monologues and fantasies?<\/p>\n

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The very elements the essayist claimed I had forced from the script?<\/p>\n

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Oh, I\u2019d suggested they were a bit too verbose and could use some tightening, but search as I might, I could find no place in the notes where I recommended they be cut.<\/p>\n

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You can imagine my disappointment.<\/p>\n

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One minute, I had stood proudly in the villain\u2019s hall of fame, heir to the legacy of Dishonest John, Ming the Merciless, Herod the Great, and Darth Vader himself.<\/p>\n

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The next, I was just another nice guy.<\/p>\n

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Oh, the pity of it!<\/p>\n

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\"Share<\/a>