380
PARTISAN REVIEW
A shooting schedule was drawn up and a date for rehearsals set. I
was told to cancel whatever I was doing, make no further plans, be
in Hollywood on that date. Since it was a low budget production, no
more fine hotels for me. I'd sleep in motels near the lot.
The lot, Hollywood Center, was crowded and hectic, movies in
production all about. Gorgeous women strolled by like normal peo–
ple. It came home to me that making movies was a way oflife, and I
was eager to begin, but a few days later I was kicked out.
I made the actors uneasy, inhibited their creative impulses.
\
"We want to be alone with our director." I sat in the production of-
fice with nothing to do. Finally someone said, "Why don't you go
back to Berkeley? You can read poems to pretty coeds . You don't
really have to be here. Your script is so good they can't ruin it.
Return when filming begins."
It's best if the writer isn't present, but I'd been told to be there,
make no other plans, etc. Now I felt exiled. To explain this to friends
in Berkeley was hard. One said, "Are your feelings hurt?"
"I don't feel great."
"But are your feelings hurt?"
Exiled from myself, too, I was unable to say my feelings were
hurt. I languished for weeks in crepuscular gloom.
The director, Peter Medak, sometimes phoned. "Today the air
conditioning system broke down. It's the hottest summer in L.A.
history. But everything is going well. You needn't be worried about
your lines. The actors are saying only what you wrote, at least eighty
percent."
Just before filming began, he said, "You're welcome, darling,
but please don't come. I'll let you know how things are going.
There's nothing to worry about. You're in reasonably good hands."
Others phoned, too. I heard about disagreements over camera work,
screaming fights on the set, blood on the walls, broken glass, teeth
knocked out.
"What about the fighting, Peter?"
"It means people care. It's a good sign. What a courageous
script. Such truth. Get your tux ready for the Academy Awards."
When the filming ended, I was reinvited to L.A.
On a hot dead Hollywood afternoon, in the summer of 1985,
six years after I'd submitted a story called "The Men's Club" to
Cosmopolitan,
I sat in a cool, comfortable screening room and
watched the rough-cut version of the movie.
"That it should come to this," says Hamlet. What force and
