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January 5, 2019
You can’t know what that means if, most of your life, you haven’t been stuck in your pit, locked forever with your own limitations, unable to tap the wonderful stuff that lurks there in your head but flattens out whenever it comes near paper.
After lunch we rehearsed again, and now Andre was working with our Inigo, Mandy Patinkin. They were doing one of their scenes and Mandy was trying to get some information out of Andre and Andre was giving one of his slow, rote memory readings. Mandy, as Inigo, tried to get Fezzik to go faster. And Andre gave back one of his slow, rote memory readings. They went back and tried it again and again, Mandy as Inigo asking Andre as Fezzik to go faster—Andre coming back at the same speed as before— —which was when Mandy went, “Faster, Fezzik”—and slapped him hard in the face. I can still see Andre’s
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since he was little. He looked at Mandy and it was all so sudden and there was a brief pause … And Andre started speaking faster. He just rose to the occasion, gave it more pace and energy and you could almost see his mind going, “Oh, this is how you do it outside the ring, let’s give it a try.” In truth, it was the beginning of the happiest period of his life.
“Hermits need hope,” The Magician says, one of the truer lines I’ve written in my life.
I think the reason I never told Donner about the Scarne story was because writers need secrets just as much as hermits need hope.
Stephen Sondheim once said this: “I cannot write a bad song. You begin it here, build, end there. The words will lay properly on the music so they can be sung, that kind of thing. You may hate it, but it will be a proper song.”
I remembered a Mr. Abbott moment. He was coming from backstage during rehearsals, and as he crossed the stage into the auditorium he noticed a dozen dancers were just standing there. The choreographer sat in the audience alone, his head in his hands. “What’s going on?” Mr. Abbott asked him. The choreographer looked at Mr. Abbott, shook his head. “I can’t figure out what they should do next.” Mr. Abbott never stopped moving. He jumped the three feet from the stage to the aisle. “Well, have them do something!” Mr. Abbott said. “That way we’ll have something to change.” The choreographer got off
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“Forget about the novel—I haven’t read the novel—my main strength is that I haven’t read the novel—the novel is killing you.”
“If I saw actors, I sympathize with them so much I’d hire everybody.
Rob Reiner says “Action” and now here comes Cary Elwes as Westley leading my beloved Robin Wright as Buttercup into the Fire Swamp and they are making their way through the place— —and suddenly flames— —and I scream out loud, “Her dress is on fire!” The shot is obviously ruined. Rob says “Cut,” Robin’s dress is made flame-free, the actors go back to their positions. And Andy Scheinman, Rob’s partner, sidles over to me and says quietly, “Bill, try and remember this time—her dress is supposed to be on fire.”
“I like working with actors who don’t have anything to prove.”
POETRY IS COMPRESSION.
I wonder if there is any connection between why you write and what you write well.
The only change in a woman is this:
for reasons known only to God, there is a slight rise in the temperature of the roof of her mouth. (Who else but me and Suzy tell you these things?) And if you can figure out how to measure that, I don’t know what it is you’re interested in, but it sure isn’t sex.
So I make a list and tape it to the wall in front of my Mac. On my wall I put these five words for the start of Misery— 1. finishing 2. leaving 3. driving 4. storm 5. crash Hopefully, the whole movie, the entire story would be thirty shorthanded words. They could tell me about something as short as a single cut. Or a ten- or twelve-page sequence. Which I hope is in my head. Then, always checking out the list, all I have to do is write the movie.
We must enter all scenes as late as possible.
