Some Unproduced Projects

You were involved in A Clockwork Orange with the photographer Michael Cooper around 1966. How did that project end up with Kubrick?

When Michael Cooper turned me on to that book [A Clockwork Orange ], I read it and said, "This is really good and so cinematic." I sent the book to Stanley, circa 1966, and said, "Look at this." He got it and read it, but it didn't appeal to him at all. He said, "Nobody can understand that language [Nadsat, the newspeak-type lingo Anthony Burgess created for his novel]." That was that. The whole exchange occupied a day. Still, I thought someone should make a movie of this book.

At one point, I was making so much money on movie projects that I needed someone to handle paying the bills. I got involved with this friend of mine, Si Litvinoff, who had produced some showbiz things in New York like off-Broadway theater. He did a couple of things for me as a lawyer. I showed him the book and told him how it would make a great movie. He said, "You have enough money. Why don't you take an option on it?" So I took a six month option on A Clockwork Orange [by Anthony Burgess (London: Heinemann, 1962)] for about $1,000 against a purchase price of $10,000 and some percentages to be worked out. I wrote a script, adapted it myself. I thought I'd show the book around, but meanwhile, I would have the script too. After I finished the script, I showed it to some producers, including David Puttnam, who was working with various companies like Paramount. He was one of the people who read the script and saw the cinematic possibilities of it. In those days, you had to get the script passed by the Lord Chamberlain [then British censor of film and theater]. When we submitted it to him, he sent it back unopened and said, "I know the book, and there's no point in reading this script, because it involves youthful defiance of authority, and we're not doing that." So that was that.

About three years later, I got a call from Stanley, who said, "Do you remember that book you showed me? What is the story on that?" And I said, "I was just showing it to you because I thought it was a good book, but later I took an option on it." He said, "Who has the rights to it now?" What had happened was that there was a renewable yearly option. I had renewed once, and when it came up for renewal for another thou[sand], I didn't have the money; so I told Litvinoff I was dropping the option. So he said, "Well, I'll take it out." Then he held the rights. So I told Stanley, "As far as I know, this guy Litvinoff has it." He said, "Find out how much it is, but don't tell him I'm interested." I tried to do that, but Cindy Decker, the wife of Sterling Lord, my agent at the time, found out about this inquiry of Kubrick's; so she passed the word on to Litvinoff and his friend Max Raab, who had put up the money for End of the Road. He and Raab sold it to Kubrick and charged a pretty penny for it. Around seventy-five thou[sand], I think.

Did Kubrick use much of your script at all?

Well, when I learned that he was going to do A Clockwork Orange, I sent him my script to see if he would like it. I got back a letter saying, "Mr. Kubrick has decided to try his own hand." It wasn't really a relevant point because it was an adaptation of a novel. You're both taking it from the same source.

You and Kubrick also shared the rights to [the novel] Blue Movie. When you decided to write the novel, you dedicated it to him.

He had in a way given me the idea for Blue Movie. One night, around the time of Strangelove, somebody brought a hard-core porn film to show at Stanley's house. They put it on. Very soon into the screening, Stanley got up and left the room. We watched a little more of it, then stopped the film. Later

Kubrick said, "It would be great if someone made a movie like that under studio conditions." I thought Kubrick would be the ideal person to direct such a movie. When I came back to the States, I started writing a novel based on this concept and would send him pieces of the book from time to time. I still have a great telegram from him saying, "You have written the definitive blow job!" in the scene with the Jeanne Moreau—type, Arabella.

Was he ever interested in directing Blue Movie?

No, when he first mentioned it, I assumed that he would be interested in directing it. But it turned out that he has a very ultraconservative attitude to most things sexual. Around 1974–75, John Calley, who was then president of Warner Brothers, decided to make a film of Blue Movie. A number of other people wanted to do it but always with the idea of compromising the work by having simulated sex. Calley, however, was convinced, as was I, that the first production of a full-on erection-and-penetration movie using big-name stars and a talented director, made under studio conditions, would be a blockbuster of Gone with the Wind proportions.

Calley was friends with Julie Andrews at the time, and he and Mike Nichols, who had been signed to direct, were able to persuade her—for love, art, and a lot of money—to play Angela Sterling, the heroine of the story. A fourteen million dollar budget, quite adequate for the time, had been secured, and everything was ready. Ringo Starr had held an option on the book but was quite ready to step aside now that there was an actual production ready to roll. He didn't want any participation. He just wanted to see the book made into a movie. Enter the villain of the piece: Ringo's lawyer—who shall remain nameless—in absolute hysteria, ranting about how he, the lawyer, was "going to look like a schmuck if the picture gets made, and we don't have a piece of it." John Calley and I were prepared to give him a piece, but it turned out that Mike Nichols wanted to retain all points, so he could use them to make deals with actors. That proved to be a deal-breaking stipulation.

Had you written an actual shooting script for Blue Movie?

Well, as soon as I became convinced that the film was for real, I started immediately, without even getting into a contract. I eventually completed a script, but the deals didn't go through. We were as close to a movie being made as I ever experienced or have ever heard of. There didn't seem to be any possible deal-breaking element. When it fell apart, it was just a total freak thing.

Did you try to develop anything else for John Calley after that?

He liked a story I had written called "You're Too Hip, Baby" about a white jazz aficionado who lives in Paris and goes to see the blacks in the clubs in Paris&astric; He had the idea of a screenplay set in Paris, dealing with those charac-

* "You're Too Hip, Baby" originally appeared in Esquire (August 1963) and was later included in Southern's classic anthology. Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (New York: New American Library, 1967).

terms. That got as far as an outline, which I was paid for, but nothing further was pursued. When Blue Movie fell through, that was really the end of our relationship.

Calley was considered the hippest movie producer of the time because he was able to deal with the money guys yet maintain an active rapport with directors like Kubrick and Nichols.

Yeah. I doubt that Kubrick and Nichols would work with anyone else. I doubt if there were any other producers who were percipient, sensitive, and aware enough to be tolerated by Kubrick and Nichols.

Around 1972, you were at work on an adaptation of Nathanael West's A Cool Million with [the director] Jerry Schatzberg?

I had known Jerry Schatzberg since he directed Panic in Needle Park. [1971] He was the first person who expressed interest in A Cool Million [New York: Covici, Friede, 1934]. We finished a script, and he was trying to raise money.

Did he have anyone in particular in mind with the casting?

He was a good friend of Faye Dunaway's. So he had her signed up  . . . not that he thought she was right for the film, but he thought she could generate interest. She understood that and went along with it because they were good friends. We didn't have any male actor. It was going to be someone like Timothy Bottoms as Lemuel Pitkin. The subtitle of the book is "The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin."

After The Magic Christian, did you still see Peter Sellers on a regular basis, or was it only during the time of "Grossing Out" [c. 1980] that you became involved with him again?

I saw him on a sporadic basis, which turned out to be pretty regular. There was nothing planned.

You and Peter started to work on "Grossing Out," a script about international arms dealing, after the success of Being There [1979]. Did you work on Being There at all?

No. Peter ran his lines by me one time.

Andrew Braunsberg, who produced Being There, was going to do "Grossing Out."

Yes. "Grossing Out" dealt with the Western nations selling arms to the Third World and exploiting these countries.

Was there a director lined up before Peter died?

No, but Hal Ashby expressed considerable interest. I had written a script.

You worked with Dennis Hopper on the "Junky" screenplay in 1977, &astric;and then there was the Jim Morrison screenplay, which Hustler publisher Larry

Junkie was originally published by Burroughs under the pseudonym "William Lee" (New York: Ace Books, 1953). When the book was republished under Burroughs' byline in 1977, it was retitled Junky. The unproduced script that Southern worked on was always called by the revised spelling.

Flynt wanted to produce in 1983. How has your relationship with Hopper evolved since Easy Rider?

Well, he's [Hopper] always said, "We're going to make that up to you," regarding Easy Rider. And while we were working on "Junky," I heard him say, "We want to make sure Terry has a good contract because he didn't get his share out of Easy Rider."

Wouldn't it have been easy for them to give you points after the fact?

Oh, yes.

What prevented them from doing that?

Well, I say vicious greed. That's the only reason.

What about "Junky"?

Well, "Junky" was something that Jacques Stem, also known as Baron Rothschild, who was a lifelong friend of Burroughs', optioned.&astric;Then Hopper and Stern commissioned me to write the screenplay. Hopper was going to play the part of Bill Lee, the junkie narrator of the novel, as well as direct. It turned out that Dennis wasn't that interested in making "Junky," and Stern didn't have enough money to produce the film, although he did have enough to option the book and finance the screenplay.

Did you actually finish a draft?

Burroughs, James Grauerholz [Burroughs' secretary], and I wrote a draft, which we showed to Stern [about which we asked] him if he had any criticisms or suggestions. Stern was trained as a physicist and was ultralucid, but he was also a decadent drug user. He had some kind of paralysis which left him wheelchair bound. He was living in Gramercy Park, while we stayed in a hotel uptown. Jacques had a hypodermic-type device taped to his wrist. All he had to do was tap this device, and he would get a jolt of speedballs. Jacques would say to us at our meetings, "See if you can work up some heavy thoughts? I have to get off!"

When you guys were writing "Junky," what was Dennis' function? Was he helping you write it?

No, he was just hanging out and hoping to direct it, but at the time, he was just higher than a kite. That was his preclean stage.

Both the book and script jump around quite a bit from New York to the rehabilitation center to Mexico and then back to the States. It's somewhat episodic. [The book] Junky treats drugs in a noncelebratory and nonjudgmental way. The book itself is a rare document.

Yes. Burroughs wrote some things for Lancet, the British medical journal, like a critique of a British doctor who had one of these remarkably successful

* According to Ted Morgan's biography of Burroughs, Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs (New York: Holt, 1988), Stern, a Harvard-trained physicist, raised $100,000 to hire Burroughs, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern to work on the ill-fated Junky adaptation in 1977

addiction cures using a drug called apomorphine. It's like morphine but is used to reduce the body's dependence on heroin. Apomorphine provided some protection, so that you wouldn't get this terrible sickness when you try to withdraw.

I gather apomorphine was similar to the methadone treatment.

Yes. One of the first scenes in the script deals with this guy who is coming to sell a package of army surretes. These are 3 cc ampoules of morphine which were in medical kits for soldiers on the front, so that if you got wounded, you could shoot one of these up. That was one of the things sold in trafficking in the forties.

You never actually finished a final script.

No. If Jacques Stern had taken it more seriously as a real project, instead of as a way to work out his relationship with Bill, it might have worked. There was an atmosphere of ultraparanoia between Jacques and Bill.

The Telephone (1988)

How did Harry Nilsson get involved in writing scripts?

Nilsson was a very creative guy. He had this story about a reporter who works for tabloids like the Enquirer or the Star, writing outlandish stories like "Headless Man Seen in Topless Bar." So we wrote a script called "Obits." Harry was able to finance the writing.

The Telephone was a collaboration with Nilsson that actually got filmed. I have always been curious about the story behind that.

We had this idea about an out-of-work actor who gets so into hallucinatory-type improvisations that he even makes up phone calls to himself. By chance, we were in the basement parking lot of the Chateau Marmont, and getting out of the car next to us was Whoopi Goldberg. We had seen her work and thought she might be right for the part.

Who were you thinking of originally?

Robin Williams. We wrote it with him in mind. We made this strenuous effort to get the script to him or at least talk to him on the phone. One night, by chance, we ran into him at the Improv [a comedy-improvisation theater]. He hadn't gotten the script, and then after a long time, we found out his manager didn't want him to do the film at all.

How did Rip Torn end up directing The Telephone?

Well, we needed a director, and I had seen some things Rip directed on stage. It just occurred to me that he could do it, and I didn't think there would be much to do, because it all takes place in a one-room apartment. It turned out Whoopi was a great admirer of Rip. When he and Geraldine lived on Twenty-second Street in New York, Whoopi was an unwed mother on welfare and living in that neighborhood. She would be walking to the welfare office to get her check and sometimes pass them in the street.

Was the shooting of The Telephone quick, or was it a long process?

Well, what happened was these big asshole producers told Whoopi that "this is a Whoopi Goldberg movie  . . . ," so she could do whatever she wanted to do. Thus armed, she was able to ignore the script and just wing it. She's a very creative woman, and her improvisations were often good, but she had gotten involved because she really loved the script, and now she was suddenly making all these changes. So anytime she and Rip would get into an argument about a scene, she had this upper hand. After she did her improvisations, Rip would say, "Okay, let's do one for the writer." This went on and on through the production. I was on the jury at [the] Sundance [Film Festival] the year The Telephone was finished and took Rip's cut of the film there. I was ambivalent about it. I was too close to the film to be objective, but a number of people ended up liking the released film. [The New World version] is still selling well as a cassette at my local drug store.