… On working with Budd Schulberg
Having the opportunity to work with Budd Schulberg is a bit like rubbing shoulders with Santa Claus (minus the beard). When we first met on October 19, 2003, he was already 89, sufficiently advanced in age to suit his legendary status. I remember it as though it was last night.
He had come all the way from New York to Paris’ tiny
Balzac Cinema to present Mark Robson’s film adapted from Budd’s powerful boxing
novel, THE HARDER THEY FALL (Humphrey Bogart’s last film) to a bunch of die-hard
French cinema buffs, myself included. I
already knew Budd’s body of work, including masterful screenplays for Elia Kazan
and Nicholas Ray and some of his landmark novels. What I didn’t know was that Budd was still alive.
Imagine my surprise, and my emotion ! After waiting patiently while Budd signed
autographs, I stepped up and introduced myself to the elegant octogenarian and
immediately felt awash in the glow of Budd’s benevolence - a sensation that
would last through the six years of our professional and personal relationship.
When I asked what he thought of the idea of a feature adapted from his little
known story, THE DARE, his answer was a conspiratorial smile and a whispered “could make a very good movie…” . A few days later, I found myself settling
into a plush leather couch with Budd in the Paris home of his nephew, K.C.
Schulberg (now the film’s Producer and Co-screenwriter) and presenting to both
Schulbergs my vision of how the story could be built out into a feature
film.
Budd listened intently. His comments were economical, precise and quite
brilliant. Over the course of the
ensuing years, he helped guide us in the formulation of the story we have
today.
K.C. and I owe much to his
generous counsel, faultless instincts and unflagging support. I only hope that our many meetings, phone
calls and email exchanges (yes e-mail even into his 90’s) cannot be blamed for the
fact that volume two of his memoirs remains unfinished.
Now, let me set the figure of Budd Schulberg in historical context. Imagine if you will… In 1914, Mary Pickford, then at the height of her career, leaned over his crib to cluck him under the chin. B.P. Schulberg, Budd’s father (and K.C.’s grandfather) was a motion picture pioneer, working alongside Adolph Zukor, co-founder of Paramount Pictures, a studio B.P. would go on to run for a decade during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
While still in New York, the family hosted dinners for Louis B. Mayer (co-founder of MGM), while Lewis J. Selznick (father of David O. Selznick) preferred B.P.’s all night poker tournaments. The three were young Turks in this new industry called “moving pictures”. The Schulberg family moved to Hollywood in 1921, where young Budd met many of his father’s employees : Lon Chaney (“the man of a thousand faces”), Boris Karloff, Walter Huston (father of John Huston) and two young unknowns who owe their start in movies to B.P. : Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. As a boy, the studio back lot was Budd’s front yard. One of his buddies was Jackie Coogan (Charlie Chaplin’s THE KID). B.P. also brought Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier over from Europe to jumpstart their US movie careers. He discovered Clara Bow and named her the “It Girl”. He lost fortunes playing poker with the Marx Brothers whose prodigious wit on the screen paled next to their cunning at cards. B.P. won the first ever Oscar as producer of William A. Wellman’s WINGS in 1927. And Budd’s progressive mother, Adeline Jaffe Schulberg, became Hollywood’s first female talent agent.
The family’s frequent houseguests were Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn and the Mankiewicz brothers (Herman J, screenwriter of CITIZEN KANE and filmmaker Joseph L.) as well as director William Wyler. The Wylers and Schulbergs remained friends through the generations. In May of 2005, I dined with Sandra Schulberg (Budd’s niece, K.C.’s sister) and Katherine Wyler, William’s daughter. Budd grew out of Hollywood to write some of the last century’s most affecting novels : WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN ?; THE HARDER THEY FALL; THE DISENCHANTED (based on his friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald); SANCTUARY V; and searing screenplays for ON THE WATERFRONT (Elia Kazan), starring Marlon Brando for which Budd won the Best Screenwriting Oscar; the prescient A FACE IN THE CROWD (also by Kazan); WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES (Nicholas Ray) as well as plays, countless short stories and an enormous body of non-fiction. A French novelist once described Budd's life in this way :"It is a true novel unto itself." Aside from Budd’s writing, he worked for the OSS (forerunner of the CIA), helped form the Writer’s Guild, arrested Leni Riefenstahl, was a confidante of Muhammad Ali and Bobby Kennedy, eye witness to the Cuban Revolution, meeting both Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, testified questionably at HUAC, started the Watts Writers Workshop, is a member of the Boxing Hall of Fame and the only man to have traded punches with Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Norman Mailer and John Wayne. So, Santa, what do you and Rudolph have to say to that…?
He
left us on August 5, 2009 and now joins those who hail from a place that was
still a small town until the Second World War : Hollywood !!…Claudette Colbert, Gloria Swanson,
Louise Brooks, Linda Darnell, Jean Arthur… Wallace Beery, Emil Jannings, Peter Lorre, Melvyn Douglas,
Glenn Ford… Victor Fleming, King Vidor,
Mitchell Leisen, Josef Von Sternberg, Tod Browning on and on and on and on…
A swirl of names that makes our heads spin, makes
us swoon… A bit like the fleeting vision
of a beautiful woman (or handsome man if more to your taste) who disappears around
a corner before you get a second glance.
You wanted to catch her (or him), to make time stop, or stand
still. Such is the seductive charm of
that brief glimpse. And yet, we don’t
move. Time stops amidst the flood of
people moving around you… A seeming eternity while the mind reels in regret… In
reality the snap of a finger. We turn, they’re
gone. Did we dream ? Did they exist ? THE DARE, Budd’s
short story, and the screenplay emanating from that story, A DREAM LAST NIGHT,
pose that question. They both evoke
something that no longer exists; a moment, place, or person…
that may never
have existed outside our imagination.
The musical comedy WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN ?, adapted by Budd and Stuart Schulberg (K.C.’s father) from Budd’s best-seller, ran on Broadway for more than 500 performances in 1964 and 1965. The poster for the show depicted a Hollywood producer encircled by a curvaceous dame. On the opening night of the musical comedy, a very young K.C. - from whom I heard this anecdote, remembers asking his uncle who the woman on the poster was. She clearly didn’t resemble either of the two female leads. Budd answered : “Who is she ? …She’s Hollywood.”
She is Hollywood. She who haunts A DREAM LAST NIGHT and who is now called “Angie”. A Hollywood that recedes as we approach, a Hollywood that may never have existed except in the mind of the cinephile that I am. But “Angie” really did exist for me, through the eyes of another… for “Paul” the French projectionist who sets off for an adventure near Key Largo, a mythical Key Largo where “Angie” is the incarnation of the perfect woman, a woman who surpasses all reality. “Paul” is certain Angie exists in flesh and blood. He saw her, touched her and so, she must exist. Her perfume haunts his every waking hour. She will be his muse. Thanks to her, he will achieve his ambition, he will direct his film.
Our
film owes much to this perspective, the perspective of “Paul.” It is also my point of view as a director,
that of a somewhat idealistic Frenchman who dreams of a magical land just beyond
our reach, where all becomes possible…
And
isn’t that after all, the very essence of cinema ? Thank you, Budd.
