Jerry Aronson, one of my weekly poker game buddies, gave me a last-minute invitation to a sneak-preview. Jerry’s a retired film instructor, and the movie in question was by one of his former students who had graduated back in 1998. That student was Drew Goddard, who later found success as a writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Alias, and Lost (to mention only his TV work, he also scripted Cloverfield, as well as its pending sequel, and Robopocalypse – which Spielberg will release next year). Drew is currently scheduled to set the world on fire this Friday the 13th with The Cabin in the Woods, a directorial debut he co-wrote and co-produced with Joss Whedon. READ MORE

Last month, Carl Reiner turned 90 years old. A show business veteran, to say the least, Reiner began on stage in the late 1940s, became an Emmy-nominated member of Sid Caesar’s TV sketch series Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, produced and wrote The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s, then turned to directing comedy films in the 1980s. The breadth of his career, in which he collaborated with everyone from Sid Caesar to Mel Brooks to Dick Van Dyke to Steve Martin, is truly remarkable.  While I admire the whole of Reiner’s career, right up to his appearances in Steven Soderbergh’s Oceans series, I became a fan because of two films:  The Thrill of It All (1963) and Enter Laughing (1967). Both offer examples of Reiner’s specialty—spoofing the conventions and archetypes of various modes of popular entertainment.

Starring Doris Day and James Garner, The Thrill of It All is one of Day’s romantic comedies from the 1960s, and it will be part of TCM’s salute to Doris Day as Star of the Month. Beginning on April 2 and ending April 6, TCM will be showing 28 of Day’s films, with The Thrill of It All scheduled for Thursday evening. Reiner wrote the screenplay for The Thrill of It All, based on a story he conceived with legendary TV writer Larry Gelbart—an example of Reiner’s talent for picking the right collaborators. In this domestically based comedy, Doris Day plays stay-at-home mom Beverly Boyer, who is wife to successful obstetrician Dr. Gerald Boyer. Because of her “regular housewife” honesty, Beverly is hired as the spokesperson for Happy Soap, a detergent and hand soap company that sponsors a popular television drama. In addition to being the face of Happy Soap for print ads, Beverly goes to the studio a couple times a week to appear during the commercial break of the live drama to tout the virtues of Happy products. The television industry is shown through the point of view of Beverly, who is depicted as a rational person in the real world, just like us. Like Beverly, we see the producers, ad executives, writers, etc. from an outsider’s perspective. The artifice, pretense, and manipulative nature of the entertainment and advertising industries seem alien and slightly ridiculous to us. Adopting this strategy allows Reiner to affectionately poke fun at the familiar conventions of television storytelling—just  enough to spoof but not skewer them.

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It occurred to me recently that I know a lot of talented people, which is one of the blessings in my life. I know or work with artists, filmmakers, musicians, and writers of all types, including my fellow Morlocks whom I learn from every day. I also know two fledgling screenwriters who are both working very hard to land that first big deal. In my day as a gun-for-hire writer, I have penned everything from a how-to book on home hair-cutting to yearly wrap-ups for the housewares industry, but I don’t think I could tackle an original screenplay. I am in awe of their ambition and abilities as well as their optimism that the fruits of their imaginations will be seen and appreciated by audiences.

Film critics continually lament the poor writing in recent Hollywood movies. Action films are so formulaic that the entire genre has gotten tired and old; the current crop of Hollywood screenwriters can’t write roles for women as evidenced by the embarrassing characters and dialogue in romantic comedies. Indie films exhibit sharp writing and complex characterizations, but Hollywood movies continue to decline. I am sure there are many talented screenwriters who could offer fresh voices to a tired industry. For this two-part blog post, I interviewed screenwriters Debbe Goldstein and John Kestner about their backgrounds, their processes, their influences, and their attempts to break into the industry. Coincidentally, both live in the Phoenix area. There must be something in the sunshine that inspires creativity.

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This is the second half of David Konow’s interview with the late Tom Mankiewicz. The first part was posted earlier today.

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It was the early ’70s and Cubby Broccoli was preparing Diamonds Are Forever. He told David Picker, then the head of United Artists, “I’m lookin’ for a writer who’s young. I think we gotta stay hip. He has to be American because 75% of the picture takes place in Vegas, but he has to be able to write the British idiom because I don’t want to hire another writer to do that.” As luck would have it, Picker saw “Georgy” before it was shut down and remembered that Joe Mankiewicz’s kid wrote it. The play was all in Brit speak, but he knew the young Mank was American.

“I went up to Cubby Broccoli’s house, I met with him and the director, Guy Hamilton, and they signed me for $12,500 a week on a two-week guarantee,” Mankiewicz recalled. “They said, ‘Let’s see what you can do with the first thirty pages.’ I went home and thought, ‘Damn it, this is the kind of film when I’m sitting in the audience I’m going: I can do this better.’ I thought if I didn’t work out I was going to get really depressed. I wrote the first thirty pages and they said, ‘This is terrific, keep going.’ Suddenly I was writing a major motion picture.”

Mankiewicz continued to work on the Bond series throughout the ’70’s, writing Live and Let Die, co-writing The Man With the Golden Gun, doing an uncredited rewrite on The Spy Who Loved Me, and writing the story for Moonraker. Now Mankiewicz was the next established and wildly successful writer in the Mankiewicz clan.

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On July 31, 2010 screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz passed away at his home in Los Angeles due to complications from cancer. The Mankiewicz family is the stuff of Hollywood legend and consists of Tom Mankiewicz’s father, the Academy Award winning director and writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, as well as celebrated screenwriters Herman J. Mankiewicz and Don Mankiewicz; and Turner Classic Movie’s very own Ben Mankiewicz. Before Tom Mankiewicz died he spent some time talking to writer David Konow (SCHLOCK-O-RAMA: The Films of Al Adamson, Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal, etc.) about his family and what it was like trying to find work as a writer in Hollywood when the shadow of your ancestors is weighing heavily on your shoulders. Below is the first half of David Konow’s insightful piece on Tom Mankiewicz. I’m sharing it here in an effort to shine a light on Mankiewicz and honor his memory. The second half will be posted later today.

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I was gratified to see the 1950 Warner Bros. title The Hasty Heart scheduled tonight at 8pm on TCM as one of Bob Osborne’s personal favorites.  I’m not sure why Bob is so crazy about it, but I’ll bet we share some of the same respect and affection for the movie.  Based on a Broadway play by dramatist John Patrick, The Hasty Heart tells the tale of an irascible Scottish soldier in WWII whose stay at a British military hospital in 1944 Burma brings him face-to-face with the consequences of his prickly personality and ultimately his own mortality. READ MORE

This is the second part of a profile of actress Helen Walker. The first part can be seen here.

“No wonder so many actors are out of work,…considering all the lousy scripts the agents hand you…with such big build-ups. They’re nearly all tripe. The dialogue is all the same. Everything’s been done before. I’ve read 15 or 20 scripts in the last three weeks and only one was any good.”

–Helen Walker, in one of her more impolitic public comments to a reporter in the 1940s.

After almost three years in Hollywood, Helen Walker‘s life and career came to a turning point by the mid-1940s. As seen in the first part of this two part blog on the actress, found here, Walker had proven that she could hold her own in fast comedic company with popular successes such as Brewster’s Millions (1945) and Murder, He Says (1945).  She had also shown an untapped capacity for drama evidenced by her effectiveness in The Man on Half Moon Street (1943). Critics had begun to describe her as a “charmingly different personality,” noting her poise and ability to uncover a laugh or a character nuance–sometimes despite the quality of the rest of the production. Still, Paramount persisted in using their contractee’s services in several B movies destined for Broadway grind houses and a dismal spot on the lower halves of double bills. Walker refused to appear in one more ill-conceived comedy, (1945′s all-star melange, Duffy’s Tavern (1945), based on a popular radio show), followed by another, Follow That Woman (1945). She also made the tactical error of bluntly pointing out to a Los Angeles Times reporter that she felt “stymied…while waiting confidently for ‘grown-up’ parts.”

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*Spoilers Abound Below*

Ernest Hemingway may have loathed most of the translations of his own stories to film, and sometimes with good reason. Happy endings were tacked on to many of his stories. In The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) a conflicted hero lived, despite a touch of systemic septicemia, a gangrenous leg, and a heckuva death wish. (The author fumed and called it ‘The Snows of Zanuck’ in private). Political realities were sometimes lost. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) does not seem to have a commie in sight and only one mention of a fascist is made, at least by name. Evocative situations were embellished. The Killers (1946) left Hemingway’s terse masterpiece behind after the first superb fifteen minutes, but the author expressed some liking for that one despite this amplification, (his acceptance of the film may have been partly due to the presence of Ava Gardner and the likability of the producer, Mark Hellinger). “A fat actor”–in Hemingway’s words–played one of his best characters when an aging Spencer Tracy took the lead in The Old Man and the Sea (1958)  a novella that led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the writer in 1954. Other, lesser known adaptations of Hemingway stories fared a bit better, with glimmers of the writer’s elusive style in A Farewell to Arms (1932), and The Breaking Point (1950).

Of course, Ernie wasn’t allergic to the money the studios tossed in his lap for these tales, though he was miffed when he learned what some of them eventually earned after he sold the rights to the books to filmmakers. He reportedly didn’t speak to Howard Hawks for six months after he challenged the director to make a movie from what Hawks called “his worst book”; only to have To Have and To Have Not become a giant hit, even though the story had little to do with the original novel.  Nor did he disdain the company of the beautiful and the gifted people who sometimes took roles in these movies. Who can blame him for feeling the pull of the glamorous company of his hunting buddy Gary Cooper, beautiful Ava Gardner or the glorious Ingrid Bergman, among others?

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