There and Back Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

roughness, it conveyed my sense of morality and had a genuine emotionality to it. And now, Ricardo, another honcho in the biz, wanted to see it. I was apoplectic. Operating behind the scenes during this time, or at least out of my purview, was another person I consider to be one of the giants in Hollywood. Daniel Petrie Jr., who needed a lot of convincing before he agreed to hire me in Toy Soldiers, has probably been my most important mentor. Dan spent countless hours on the phone counseling me, guiding me, sharing his wisdom and experience, and trying to protect me from myself. Furthermore, he knew what I wanted to accomplish and offered a considerable amount of his genius to help me achieve it. Why? That’s just the kind of human being he is, and my name is one of many on a long list of folks he’s helped along the way. Jeffrey and Ricardo knew how close Dan and I were, and they enlisted his help to try to “land” me for Encino Man. Dan told them that the way to my heart was through my desire to become a filmmaker.
    I want to stop here for a beat.…
    Picture the scene: It’s pouring rain, and Christine and I are standing at a phone booth in Barcelona. All of our worldly possessions are in a storage shed in Van Nuys, California. I have close to eighty thousand dollars in the bank, and Christine and I are madly in love, traveling the world and learning about ourselves. I think at that point we’re in escrow on a lovely little two-bedroom house in Sherman Oaks, and we’re talking about going to college together. This phone call from Ricardo was like a bolt of lightning from the Hollywood gods. Never mind that I’d been praying to those gods for years, and now in what felt like an unlikely way, my prayers were being answered. But before I tell you what happened during that call, I want to explain a little about my life, my upbringing, and my particular worldview.
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    The actor Dan Aykroyd once employed an interesting phrase to describe Steven Spielberg: “artist-industrialist.” I love that. It acknowledges that some of the most accomplished and visionary men (and women) in cinema are also astute financiers, technicians, and leaders. Spielberg, and others at or near his level, understand the wanton waste that comes with being too self-indulgent an artiste . When Spielberg directs a movie, he understands and accepts the extraordinary responsibility that comes with the hiring of a cast and crew, the careful handling of a budget that exceeds the GNP of some Third World nations, and of course, the crushing weight of expectation. Critics, studio executives, and movie fans all expect him to hit a home run on every trip to the plate, to create movies that win awards, earn stellar reviews, and make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. It’s quite a thing, I believe, for a filmmaker (and Peter Jackson now falls into this category as well) to open his arms to all of this, and to succeed more often than he fails.
    I don’t mind saying that I’ve long aspired to join the ranks of the artist-industrialists, and I think that at least partially explains the way I’ve managed my fiscal life and my career as a business. There are times when I make decisions that I know are going to move toward the pure artist track, and there are times when I make a business-track decision. Sometimes it’s just a matter of paying the bills, of being a professional actor—hitting your mark, saying lines, and doing the best work you can, regardless of the circumstances, because you have a responsibility to other people. And then there are times when I make a business decision with the hope that it will in some way facilitate the artist track. The Lord of the Rings , rather obviously, is one of those rare and beautiful projects that is symbiotic. You see, the goal is to keep closing the gap: Mel Gibson stars in Lethal Weapon, and then he leverages the