Read Studio (9780307817600) for Free Online

box office possibilities of
The Severed Head
. He thought the property too intellectual for the budget involved and just that morning had expressed his doubts over the telephone to Freddie Fields, president of Creative Management Associates, the agency involved in packaging the project.
    Zanuck’s secretary brought in some letters for him to sign. He read them quickly, then flicked on his intercom.
    “Yes, Dick.”
    “Can you come in?” Zanuck said.
    A moment later, David Brown popped in the back door of Zanuck’s office. Brown is a handsome, gray-haired man in his middle fifties, the husband of Helen Gurley Brown, author of
Sex and the Single Girl
and editor of
Cosmopolitan
magazine. He had been the head of the Studio’s story department for years, then had left to go into publishing as editorial director of New American Library. He had subsequently returned to Fox as vice president of story operations, and was now, after the Zanucks, the most important man in the productionend of the Studio. His headquarters are in New York, but he divides his time between his New York office, Los Angeles and Europe. With the Zanucks, he passes on every important property acquisition and is in on all major packaging, casting, budgeting and scheduling decisions. He is bland and slightly vague, except when talking to either Zanuck.
    “Yes, Dick,” Brown said. He pulled out a pipe and blew through the stem.
    “It looks like we won’t be able to start
The Strangler
until the week after New Year’s,” Zanuck said.
    “What’s that do with Bob Shaw?” Brown asked.
    “He’s intrigued with the idea, but he won’t comment until after he sees some pages.”
    A billow of smoke rose from Brown’s pipe. “When will we have a script?”
    “Fryer says November 1st.”
    “A long time to keep him waiting,” Brown said. He puffed on his pipe. “Can we lay off
Severed Head
on Metro?”
    “I talked to Freddie Fields and he’s working on it,” Zanuck said. “He says it can be made for one-eight. I think we’re in for two-five minimum.”
    “Minimum,” Brown said. He took a pencil and wrote some figures on a scratch pad. “$300,000 for Shaw, $150,000 for Aimee, $210,000 for Raphael, $100,000 for the producers—that’s almost $800,000 above the line and that doesn’t include a director. What’s the director laid in for?”
    “$75,000,” Zanuck said.
    “You’ll never get anyone for that,” Brown said. “It’s too low.”
    Zanuck nodded. “For anyone good.”
    “How about Michael Winner?”
    “He’s one-fifty after
The Jokers
.”
    Brown watched Zanuck carefully. “It’s a marginal property,” he said finally. “No question, we’d jump at it for one-six.”
    “With overhead,” Zanuck said.
    “With overhead,” Brown echoed.
    Zanuck leaned back in his chair. “Let’s drop it then,” he said with finality. “One more thing. Larry Turman said that Joe Levine was interested in
In the Spring the War Ended
.” Turman was a young producer under a non-exclusive contract to Fox. He had brought the novel by Steven Linakis to the Studio, which had spent several hundred thousand dollars developing a screenplay before deciding not to go ahead with the project. “I told him we put $280,000 into it, all told, and that if he could lay it off on Levine, we’d settle for fifty cents on the dollar.”
    “Fine, Dick,” David Brown said.
    Star!
was shooting on Sound Stage 14, and a day or so later I walked onto the set as director Robert Wise was setting up a shot. A onetime film editor who worked with Orson Welles on
Citizen Kane
, Wise won Academy Awards for his direction of
West Side Story
and
The Sound of Music
. He was sitting high up on a camera crane, shouting instructions through a salmon and gray bullhorn. The shot was a studio pickup of a double-decked London bus carrying revelers to a party given by Julie Andrews, who was playing Gertrude Lawrence. The first part of the sequence had been shoton location in a mews