The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood Read Online Free PDF

door. Was I going to grab that germ-ridden handle? Not on your life. So we were at a standstill. Luckily, another man entered, giving us a chance to duck out before the door swung shut again.”
    See a proctologist often .
    P laywright/screenwriter David Mamet: “Writing for Hollywood is a constant trauma.”
    You’ll need to get yourself some Kaopectate, too .
    S creenwriter William Goldman: “I bought a bottle of Kaopectate as soon as I reached the hotel. No joke. For the first several years, whenever I was in Los Angeles, I went nowhere without a bottle of Kaopectate hidden in a brown paper bag.”
    For almost twenty years while I was a screenwriter, I lived in Marin County in northern California and commuted to Los Angeles for meetings.
    If I had a noon meeting in L.A., I’d be sitting at the bar of the terminal in San Francisco sipping two glasses of white wine at nine in the morning.
    I’d have two Bloody Marys on the plane.
    Upon landing, I’d go to the bar of the terminal in L.A. and drink two more glasses of white wine. Then I’d be ready for my meetings. I guess maybe Bill Goldman is smarter than I am. He limited himself to Kaopectate.

    In Shallow Waters the Dragon Becomes the Joke of the Shrimp

    Studio executive Dore Schary’s famous line, originally applied to a down-on-his-luck David O. Selznick. Later applied to Orson Welles, producers Allan Carr, David Begelman, Dan Melnick, and directors Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, and David Lynch, among others.

    If you have to be in L.A., stay at the Chateau Marmont .
    S creenwriter L. M. Kit Carson: “There’s several ghosts at the Chateau. The ghost would come at 3:30 in the morning. Regularly. It would wake me up and make me go to work. It was a writing ghost .”
    If you have to rent a car in L.A .
    S creenwriter and novelist Jim Harrison ( Wolf ): “Certain actors and producers are spectacularly good drivers. I’m so lousy in traffic. Having only one eye doesn’t help. In fifty or so trips to L.A., I tried to drive from the airport in a rental car only once, a shattering experience. After rush hour I could drive locally, though not well, in Beverly Hills and environs, though other cars would beep at me for driving too slow. … A number of times I asked studios to have a five-year-old brown Taurus station wagon sent to my hotel, but they were never able to deliver.”
    Beware of medical help in Los Angeles .
    I was hoarse. I went to see a couple of highly respected ear, nose, and throat guys in Los Angeles. They examined me and said I had a benign polyp that was wrapped around my vocal cord. They scheduled outpatient surgery at a hospital, to take place six weeks later.
    My hoarseness got worse. I went to the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. They told me I had throat cancer. I had surgery and lost 80 percent of my larynx.
    When the head of the ENT practice read that I had throat cancer, he called my agent at William Morris, Jim Wiatt. He didn’t call me ; he called my agent . A doctor—calling not his patient but his patient’s agent .
    He told my agent it wasn’t his fault. The doctor who’d first examined me was no longer with the firm, the head doctor told Jim Wiatt.
    He told Jim Wiatt to wish me good luck.
    Jim passed it on to me.
    Beware of nurses in Los Angeles .
    A young nurse who worked at a hospital in Los Angeles showed me her photo album.
    It was filled with photos of delighted nurses cuddling with their famous patients. The nurses were wearing nifty little goodies from Victoria’s Secret, and their patients, mostly rock stars, were niftily naked. The nurses were smiling coyly, lasciviously, joyously, teasingly, ironically, daringly, contentedly, triumphantly.
    The stars in the hospital bed with them were anesthetized … in postsurgical comas … blasted out of their gourds … an IV sometimes still sticking in their arms.
    If you’re going to be in L.A. working on a script, don’t take your cell phone .
    T he director,