Mario Puzo - Fools die

Movies can give you great pleasure and move you emotionally. But they can teach you very little. They couldn’t plumb the depths of a character the way a novel could. They couldn’t teach you as books could teach you. They could only make you feel; they could not make you understand life. Film is so magical it can give some value to almost anything. For many people it could be a form of drug, a harmless cocaine. For others it could be a form of valuable therapy. Who doesn’t want to record his past life or future traits as he would want them to be so that he could love himself?

Anyway, that was as close as I could figure the movie world out, at that time. Later on, bitten a little by the bug myself, I felt that it was maybe a too cruel and snobbish view.

I wondered about the powerful hold making films seemed to have on everyone. Malomar passionately loved making films. All the people who worked in films struggled to control them. The directors, the stars, the chief photographers, the studio wheels.

I was aware that cinema was the most vital art of our time, and I was jealous. On every college campus students, instead of writing novels, were making their own films. And suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the use of film was not even an art. That it was a form of therapy. Everyone wanted to tell his own life story, his own emotions, his own thoughts. Yet how many books had been published for that reason? But the magic was not that strong in books or painting or music. Movies combined all the arts; movies should be irresistible. With that powerful arsenal of weapons it should be impossible to make a bad movie. You could be the biggest asshole in the world and still make an interesting film. No wonder there was so much nepotism in moviemaking. You literally could let a nephew write a screenplay, take a girlfriend and make her a star, make your son the head of a studio. Movies could make a successful artist out of anyone. Mute Miltons no longer.

And how come no actor had ever murdered a director or a producer? Certainly over the years there had been plenty of cause, financial and artistic. How come a director had never murdered the head of a studio? How come a writer had never murdered a director? It must be that the making of a film purged people of violence, was therapeutic.

Could it be that someday one of the most effective treatments for the emotionally disturbed would be to let them make their own motion pictures? Christ, think of all the professional people in films who were crazy or near crazy anyway. Actors and actresses were certifiable certainly.

So that would be it. In the future everybody would stay home and watch films his friends made to keep from going crazy. The films would save his life. Think of it that way. And finally every asshole could be an artist. Certainly, if the people in this business could turn out good pictures, anybody could. Here you had bankers, garment makers, lawyers, etc., deciding what movies would be made. They didn’t even have that craziness which might help create art. So what would be lost if every asshole made a film? The only problem was to get the cost down. You wouldn’t need psychiatrists anymore or talent. Everybody could be an artist.

All those people, unlovable, never understood you had to work at being loved, yet despite their narcissism, infantilism, their self-love, they could now project their internal image of themselves to a lovable exterior on the screen. Make themselves lovable as shadows. Without having earned it in real life. And of course, you could say that all artists do that; think of the image of the great writer as a self-indulgent prick in his personal life, Osano. But at least they had to have some gift, some talent in their art that gave pleasure or learning or deeper understanding.

But with film everything was possible without talent, without any gift. You could get a really rich prick making the story of his life, and without the help of a great director, great writer, great star, etc., etc., just with the magic of film make himself a hero. The great future of film for all these people was that it could work with no talent, which didn’t mean that talent could not make it better.

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Because we were working so closely on the script, Malomar and I spent a lot of time together, sometimes late at night in his movie mogul home where I felt uncomfortable. It was too much for one person, I thought. The huge, heavily furnished rooms, the tennis court, the swimming pool and the separate house that held the screening room. One night he offered to screen a new movie, and I told him I wasn’t that crazy about movies. I guess my snottiness showed because he got a little pissed off.

“You know we’d be doing a lot better on this script if you didn’t have such contempt for the movie business,” he said.

That stung me a little. For one thing I prided myself that my manners were too good to show such a thing. For another I had a professional pride in my work and he was telling me I was fucking off. For still another I had come to respect Malomar. He was the producer-director and he could have ridden right over me while we were working together, but he never did. And when he made a suggestion to change the script, he was usually right. When he was wrong and I could prove it by argument, he deferred to me. In short, he did not fit all my preconceived notions of the Land of Empidae.

So instead of watching the movie or working on the script, we fought that night. I told him how I felt about the movie business and the people in it. The more I talked, the less angry Malomar became, and finally he was smiling.

“You talk like some cunt who can’t get guys anymore,” Malomar said. “Movies are the new art form, you worry your racket is becoming obsolete. You’re just jealous.”

“Movies can’t compare with novels,” I said. “Movies can never do what books do.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Malomar said. “Movies are what people want now and in the future. And all your bullshit about producers and the empid fly. You came here for a few months and you pass judgment on everybody. You put us all down. But every business is the same, they all wave that carrot on a stick. Sure, movie people are fucking crazy, sure, they hustle, sure, they use sex like barter beads, but so what? What you ignore is, all of them, producers and writers, directors and actors, go through a lot of pain. They study their trade or craft for years and work harder than any people I know. They are truly dedicated, and no matter what you say, it takes talent and even genius to make a good movie. Those actors and actresses are like the fucking infantry. They get killed. And they don’t get the important roles by fucking. They have to be proven artists, they have to know their craft. Sure there are assholes and maniacs in this business that ruin a five-million-dollar picture by casting their boyfriend or girlfriend. But they don’t last long. And then you go on about producers and directors. Well, directors I don’t have to defend. It’s the toughest job in the business. But producers have a function too. They’re like lion tamers in a zoo. You know what it is to make a picture? First you have to kiss ten asses on the financial board of a studio. Then you have to be mother and father to some crazy fucking stars. You have to keep the crews happy or they murder you with malingering and overtime. And then you have to keep them all from murdering each other. Look, I hate Moses Wartberg, but I recognize that he has a financial genius that helps keep the movie business going. I respect that genius as much as I despise his artistic taste. And I have to fight him all the time as a producer and a director. And I think even you will admit that a couple of my movies could be called art.”

“That’s at least half bullshit,” I said.