Posted by eliza gale on September 11, 2011 - 10:54pm
Tom Bleecker is the Author of two Bruce Lee biographies "The Bruce Lee Story" and "Unsettled Matters." He wrote the screenplay for "The Jacket." His most recent book, "Tea Money" is avalable on Kindle. His website is:
www.tombleecker.com
1. What do you hope to express through your writing?
To date, the lion’s (some would say dragon’s) share of my writing has been biographies. When working as a biographer or investigative journalist, my main, if not only, job is to report to the best of my ability the complete truth of the individual’s life. When writing self help books, my hope is that readers will gain useful knowledge and insights that will help improve their lives. With fiction—which includes books, film, and television—my primary desire is to entertain, and hopefully in an intelligent manner.
2. What do you like about working in Hollywood?
The lack of boredom, the vast pool of creative people who have lived full lives, venturing outside the box, and knowing that practically anything my mind can imagine Hollywood can create. Of course, the above average pay scale and benefits, as well as the opportunity to travel, are all pluses.
Although I was raised in and around the Hollywood community, my family wasn’t part of the rich and famous. To the contrary, my parents lived paycheck to paycheck. Although we lived in rented apartments in Brentwood, I attended the same schools as the offspring of Hollywood’s celebrities. As a result, an occasional opportunity appeared. A while ago, a friend sent an email that contained a link to a YouTube video of an episode from the 1958 television series “The Real McCoys,” starring Walter Brennan. To my surprise (although I had a vague recollection), I appeared in that episode as an extra in a corn eating contest. The show was filmed at the old Desilu Studios. I was 12 years old at the time. After college, when I was in my early 20s, I worked as bit part actor, and then eventually found my way into writing. Hollywood and its creative community, which are seductive and alluring, have somehow always been a part of my life.
3. What don't you like about it?
There is little stability to Hollywood. The old adage that you’re only as good as your last picture (actually last three pictures) applies to most who work in the entertainment business. Because audiences are extremely capricious, careers come and go. Of course, along with the limelight comes an invasion of one’s privacy from a potentially catastrophic media. The odds of maintaining a healthy marriage drop considerably. To survive, one has to learn to live in the moment. If all the planets are aligned in your favor, you can go from outhouse to the penthouse on one gloriously memorable weekend, and vice versa. Perhaps worst of all is dealing with the inevitable rejections and depressions.
4. You've written two books about Bruce Lee; what makes you so interested in him?
I first met Bruce in 1963 when I was 17 years of age and a senior in high school. At that time, he was not a public figure, although that would change in the blink of an eye when he made his appearance at the Long Beach International Karate Championships in August 1964. In the ensuing years, we became good friends, and I helped introduce him around Hollywood and arranged for him to acquire an apartment at the luxurious Barrington Plaza where I lived at the time. By the late 1960s, Bruce’s career had taken off, and he was destined to become an international film star and the first Asian million-dollar director in the United States when he died unexpectedly in Hong Kong in July 1973.
Many years later in February 1988, I produced a tribute to martial arts master Ed Parker that was held at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. Bruce’s widow Linda was one of the guest speakers. A short while after the event, she and I had dinner and she asked me to coauthor the biography of Bruce that was being published along with a movie version DRAGON that was being produced by MCA Universal. The reason Linda had asked me to help with the book was that besides having known Bruce personally, I was a black belt in the martial arts and had worked in Hollywood.
The book that I coauthored with Linda was a one-sided, vanilla version of Bruce’s life, which initially I had overlooked because Linda and I had embarked on a whirlwind romance and married a short time after the book’s publication. Nearly ten years later, following my divorce from Linda, I wrote a second biography on Bruce Lee, mainly to correct many of the misconceptions I had put forth in the first book. This second book, Unsettled Matters, became a bestseller and has been credited with disproving Lee’s highly controversial autopsy report and the verdict at the Hong Kong medical examiner’s inquest.
5. What is your craziest Hollywood story?
Assuming that your question pertains to a story that involves me and not my favorite classic Hollywood story, the truth is that after more than four decades of being in and around this business, I could write a book, although that won’t be happening in the near future. The book aside, perhaps my craziest story contains several mini-chapters about my storybook entry into Hollywood as a lifetime profession.
In late 1969, I was the head instructor at Ed Parker’s karate school in West Los Angeles where I taught evening classes to help pay for my college education. I was finishing my schooling at UCLA and planning to enroll in medical school when one evening director Blake Edwards walked into the school with his 11-year-old son Geoffrey, who was visiting from London where he lived with his mother and older sister Jennifer. After a few rounds of “stop and chat,” as Larry David would say, Blake asked if I would be interested in teaching him and his son private karate lessons at his Beverly Hills home. After thanking him for the offer, I told him that I simply didn’t have the time. Determined to have me reconsider, he invited me to come for lunch the following Saturday to “see if things could be worked out.” He kept pushing, and I finally accepted, mainly because I was under the impression that he was married to Swedish actress Elke Sommer, the beautiful starlet of A Shot in the Dark, which Blake directed. Like practically every young man in his early twenties, I was smitten with the woman, who played a beautiful, naïve Swedish maid.
So I went to the house, which was located at the top of Coldwater Canyon. When I arrived, a staff member showed me into the living room and informed me that Blake was running late but was en route. Minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching from a hallway and looked up to see Julie Andrews walking toward me. Moments later, she extended her hand and said with a warm smile, “You must be Mr. Bleecker. I’m Julie.” Little did I know at the time that the woman who had just introduced herself would in five years become my mother-in-law. In any case, I was flabbergasted. What was she doing here? Didn’t she know that I knew that Blake was married to Elke Sommer? And where was that Swedish siren, by the way? Stretched out by the pool, perhaps?
Just then, Blake entered, walked over to Julie and said, “Hi, darlin’,” and kissed her. So now this tabloid-bound infidelity was taking place right before my very eyes. What was going on in this place? Well, of course, very quickly everything became clear when I realized that Blake never was married to Elke Sommer. By the end of our lunch, Blake had talked me into teaching him and his son private karate lessons and handed me an outrageous amount of cash and told me to “keep track of things and to let him know when I needed more money.”
The Hollywood lure continued when two months later I drove my high-mileage used Volkswagen behind Blake’s newly-purchased Jaguar XKE (in 1969 it actually had a telephone) up Coldwater Canyon and followed him up the long driveway that led into his palatial home. While he parked in front of the house, I continued up the driveway to the pool house where I parked my heap beside the gardener’s truck. As I walked back down the driveway, I saw Blake step from the Jaguar and utter “Dammit!” as he slammed the car’s door. When I asked him what was wrong, he complained that one had to be a contortionist to get in and out of the new Jag of his.
In an attempt to be humorous, I told him that I had a solution to his problem—that all he had to do was to trade cars with me for a week, and at the end of the week he would absolutely love his new Jag. In fact, I guaranteed it.
He looked at me and said, “You like this car?” What a question. I liked just standing ten feet from it. When I told him that, he said, “Here,” and handed me the keys. “It’s yours.”
For several moments, I was speechless and then told him that I couldn’t afford the insurance on the car, let alone the car, itself. He told me not to worry about it and that one day soon I’d have enough money and that I could pay for it later. By the end of the week, that XKE was in my driveway and in Blake’s driveway was a shiny new Rolls Royce. I waited anxiously for several months for him to slam the door on that one, but it never happened.
Things kept getting better. About a month later, Blake told me that he would be directing a picture for MGM. The film was Wild Rovers and would star William Holden and Ryan O’Neal (two months later Ryan rocketed to superstardom when Love Story opened over the Christmas holidays). Blake asked if I would be interested in working on the picture and that he would teach me the business. I couldn’t turn down his offer. Medical school could wait. I was starting to warm to my new lifestyle. As to what would be my job on the film, Blake said he’d find something.
Two weeks later, I stood in the middle of the near-freezing Arizona desert at six in the morning dressed as a cowboy. The job that Blake found for me was as the stand-in for Bill Holden, which got me into the Screen Extras Guild (SEG). Two weeks into shooting, Blake came to me and said, “Tom, we don’t need you to stand-in for Bill anymore. We can light bushes or trees or air for that matter. From now on, your job is to keep Bill happy. He likes you. He says you’re a good card player and better drinking buddy. I can still teach you the business—between beers and hands of cards.”
As a footnote, Bill Holden loved to play Spite and Malice, and he was good at it. I’d never played the game, and the night he taught me the game in his hotel room, I beat him. Not out of skill, mind you. I just happened to have been dealt a hand of cards that a six-year-old could have played and won. To this day, I can still recall standing up from the table around midnight and telling Bill I’d see him in the morning. “Sit down and deal the cards!” he roared with that childish grin of his.
When Wild Rovers wrapped, while I made another picture with Bill Holden (Breezy, directed by Clint Eastwood), I spent my off time rewriting two scripts that Blake had optioned. So that I might feel inspired and wouldn’t be distracted, Blake handed me the keys to his Malibu beach house where I lived for the entire summer.
With the arrival of winter, the bizarre and crazy story of my entry into Hollywood took another forward leap. Blake was set to direct the MGM film The Carey Treatment, starring James Coburn and Loreal spokeswoman Jennifer O’Neill. I was onboard again, this time as the stand-in for James Coburn. As was the case with Bill Holden, Coburn and I became fast friends and I spent little time working as a stand-in. Instead, I gallivanted around the east coast with Coburn and entered into a love affair with Jennifer O’Neill’s girlfriend who visited the set one weekend and never left.
As before, things got better when halfway through the picture, I was approached by the film’s producer William “Bill” Belasco, who tragically died in a car accident while driving to Sal Mineo’s funeral shortly after The Carey Treatment was released. Belasco thought I was perfect for a small part in the movie—that of an orderly who is busted at a Boston hospital for carrying marijuana in his smock. The part called for a wild chase that ended with the orderly being arrested and exchanging lines with James Coburn, who played Dr. Peter Carey.
Everyone thought it was a great idea but me. The reason, which no one but me knew, was that since childhood I was a stutterer. As is the case with most stutterers, if I could choose my own words, I was usually all right. The problem with this bit part, of course, was that I couldn’t ad lib the words in the script. I’d have to say exactly what was on the page. Reluctantly, I agreed to come to Billy’s office and look at the part. I scanned over the words and spotted several that I knew would cause me to stutter. I thanked him and, ignoring his pleadings that I accept the part, left.
Late that afternoon, I was back on the set when I noticed Bill Belasco standing around the coffee area. I strolled over, said hello, and then asked if he had found someone for the part of the busted orderly. While perusing the rows of donuts, he said, “Yeah—you. The contracts are being drawn up now. You’ll make a couple thousand and the studio will pay for you to join SAG.”
I was benumbed. “Billy, didn’t you hear what I said earlier? This won’t work. You need to find someone else.”
Two days later, I arrived on the set with hardly any sleep and a nervous wreck. I must have looked like a stray dog at a whistler’s convention because I had absolutely no idea what was going on and fully anticipated a full morning of humiliation. After the set was lit, and sound and camera were ready, I stood in the hospital’s police shakedown line. As the cops patted me down, I threw my metal tray into someone’s face and took off running. The chase carried me into the hospital’s main lobby where I leapt over the main counter into the awaiting hoard of cops, who threw me onto the floor and cuffed me. Coburn and I exchanged lines, the close-ups were done, and Blake said, “Cut! Print!” bringing to a close my nightmare of biblical proportions.
An hour later, the buzz around the set was that I’d done a commendable job, that I was a natural, and that I truly looked scared to death. A few even commented on how real my few lines of dialogue sounded and that the words seemed to choke in my throat. How little they knew. Needless to say, I was glad to get home and have a beer. As I recall, I had several. Decades passed, and my best friend, author Joe Hyams, wrote a book called Misplaced in Hollywood. The book was about him, but I could have been a close second. And I’ll tell you, if this could happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
6. What advice would you give to an aspiring screenwriter?
I’ll share a story that will illustrate my point. Shortly before Wild Rovers began shooting, while I was teaching karate to Blake and his son, I wrote my first script. It took a few months to complete, and when I finished, I gave it to Blake. A few days went by and I asked him what he thought of the script. He said he was still reading. Another week went by, and he was still reading. Another week, still reading, and so I quit asking.
After another week went by, Blake called and asked me to come by the house to discuss my script. We sat by the pool and exchanged idle chat for a few minutes, and then I asked him what he thought about my script. He settled back into his chair and told me that I could make a good living in Hollywood as a writer.
No kidding. I was floored. I hadn’t expected that. “Really?” I said, beaming. “My first script was that good?”
“No. Not really,” he replied. “In fact, it was one of the worst scripts I’ve ever read, which is why it took me so long to get through it.”
For several moments, I stared into space, then said, “Excuse me. What did I miss here?”
“You have the one main ingredient that ninety-five percent of new writers don’t have—you finish things. You have talent, I can see that. Your script falls down because you don’t understand budget and setups and how to convey things in dialogue and nuances. But that’s all right, I can teach you all that.”
Over the past 40 years, I’ve come to understand the truth of Blake’s advice. Often when I meet a new writer, I’ll ask, “So what are you working on?”
Invariably, their response is, “Actually, I’m working on several projects at the moment.” With few exceptions, when I meet up with these people somewhere down the road, I’m told that they’ve shelved the scripts they were working on and have started several new projects. Although established, seasoned writers can get away with this, new writers have to learn discipline. So my first piece of advice to new writers would be pick your best project—and no matter what it takes and how long it takes, finish it.
My second piece of advice would be to always submit your best work—and that includes a script that is without typos and misspelled words, is written in the industry standard screenwriting software, and falls within the acceptable page length. The same holds for manuscripts. With rare exception, you can’t go back to the well. The first cold reading is the best reading your screenplay or manuscript is going to get. Make it your best work.
Third, get used to rejection. It goes with the turf. Most of all, for god’s sake, don’t take it personally. I have a friend who wallpapered an entire guest bathroom (including the ceiling) with rejection letters. Ironically, I’ve received many of those same letters that line those bathroom walls. As creative people, we have to learn to find the humor in rejection. It’s there; you just have to look around for it. If we can’t, it ultimately undermines our careers. As an aside, when it comes to commenting on your work, choose people who will give you their full honest opinion. Yes-men (and women), although well meaning, are of little help if all they do is tell you how much they love your work.
And finally, if you’re a typical writer, know that you live most of your waking hours inside yourself. Because this is where your imaginative world resides, you will increasingly come to depend upon your inner life to satisfy your emotional needs, which can be devastating to those who rely on you (their outside world) to fulfill their own inner needs. This dynamic that can destroy even the best relationships if it’s not addressed. If you’re a seasoned writer, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re a new writer, you’ve most likely had inklings.
7. How close was the first draft of The Jacket to what we saw on screen?
The Jacket was a true test of patience. I wrote the script in 1970, and 35 years later, it got made. That may a record in Hollywood. There were several writers who worked on that script at various times, including the associate producer Marc Rocco. There was only one major change, which had to do with the parallel universe. In my original script, I had the lead (William Starks played by Adrian Brody) strapped into a straightjacket in a barbaric state prison in the early 1940s. In order to escape the pain and suffering of long hours in the jacket, Starks learned how to “strip out” and travel to another time and place, which turned out to be the Old West in the 1850s. In this sense, with regard to time, Starks traveled backwards in the parallel universe. In The Jacket that was produced, Starks was laced into a straightjacket (and further confined in receptacle in a morgue-like setting) and traveled forward into the future. Because one of the writers on the script was also one of the producers, the Writers Guild mandated that screen credits be arbitrated. The final decision of the arbitration board was that I would receive main story credit because all my characters and story threads held throughout every revised draft of my original screenplay.
8. What is Tea Money about?
The logline taken from my web site (www.tombleecker.com) reads: While writing the biography of a deceased international megastar whose death was ruled an accident, a former street reporter battles a powerful Asian crime syndicate when he discovers that the celebrity was murdered and that his widow, under the threat of death, has become an accomplice in the murder cover-up and the victim of extortion. Although Bleecker has many nonfiction book credits, this is his first novel—a mystery-suspense thriller. On reading the screenplay version, acclaimed actor Peter Strauss commented, ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the material. I do believe the Asian underworld is a rich cinematic plateau. And the script had a nice ‘Chinatown’ and Jake Gittes character feel."
Many have felt that Tea Money is my third and final installment of the Bruce Lee trilogy, and in a way, there’s some truth to this. The novel was inspired by my experiences writing about Bruce Lee’s life and later spending considerable time in Hong Kong researching his sudden and highly controversial death. I am presently in the final stages of completing the screenplay for Tea Money. Together, the script and book, which to date have been my most challenging work, have taken nearly 15 years to complete.
9. Who are some of your literary influences and why?
I would certainly have to say Jack London, specifically for his relatively unknown work Star Rover that was inspirational in my script The Jacket. Another author whose work I admire is Wilbur Smith, who writes about Africa around the time of WWI. In the early 1980s, I was hired to convert his brilliant written book Cry Wolf into a screenplay that was to star Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds at Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, the project became embroiled in creative ego battles and was eventually shelved. I’m also impressed with author Ridley Pearson, who writes crime fiction. His works that center on Detective Lou Boldt are captivating and in place riveting. I particularly like Pearson’s plot threads and dialogue. For many years, more than one producer has come close to making Pearson’s Undercurrents into a movie.
10. What do you consider to be the best screenplay ever written and why?
That’s a difficult question because all screenplays are impacted by casting, budget, the director, editor, music score—a long list. That said, in thinking about movies that held my attention from fade in to fade out, had believable characters, a solid storyline with a balanced beginning, middle, and end, and compelling, engaging dialogue, I would list A Few Good Men as one of my favorites. Another would be Casablanca. As a writer, the one that impressed me the most with regard to story was Angel Heart. That script, which was penned by director Alan Parker from the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, had me guessing right to the end. And when I arrived, I fully expected the writer to hand me some sort of spoon-fed copout. But that didn’t happen. At the end, the writer pulled all the story points together and tied a nice tidy little knot and rolled end credits. The script to me was flawless and brilliantly executed.
Please note; Eliza's interviews are done by email. All answers are unedited and come right from the lovely fingertips of her subjects:)
www.tombleecker.com
1. What do you hope to express through your writing?
To date, the lion’s (some would say dragon’s) share of my writing has been biographies. When working as a biographer or investigative journalist, my main, if not only, job is to report to the best of my ability the complete truth of the individual’s life. When writing self help books, my hope is that readers will gain useful knowledge and insights that will help improve their lives. With fiction—which includes books, film, and television—my primary desire is to entertain, and hopefully in an intelligent manner.
2. What do you like about working in Hollywood?
The lack of boredom, the vast pool of creative people who have lived full lives, venturing outside the box, and knowing that practically anything my mind can imagine Hollywood can create. Of course, the above average pay scale and benefits, as well as the opportunity to travel, are all pluses.
Although I was raised in and around the Hollywood community, my family wasn’t part of the rich and famous. To the contrary, my parents lived paycheck to paycheck. Although we lived in rented apartments in Brentwood, I attended the same schools as the offspring of Hollywood’s celebrities. As a result, an occasional opportunity appeared. A while ago, a friend sent an email that contained a link to a YouTube video of an episode from the 1958 television series “The Real McCoys,” starring Walter Brennan. To my surprise (although I had a vague recollection), I appeared in that episode as an extra in a corn eating contest. The show was filmed at the old Desilu Studios. I was 12 years old at the time. After college, when I was in my early 20s, I worked as bit part actor, and then eventually found my way into writing. Hollywood and its creative community, which are seductive and alluring, have somehow always been a part of my life.
3. What don't you like about it?
There is little stability to Hollywood. The old adage that you’re only as good as your last picture (actually last three pictures) applies to most who work in the entertainment business. Because audiences are extremely capricious, careers come and go. Of course, along with the limelight comes an invasion of one’s privacy from a potentially catastrophic media. The odds of maintaining a healthy marriage drop considerably. To survive, one has to learn to live in the moment. If all the planets are aligned in your favor, you can go from outhouse to the penthouse on one gloriously memorable weekend, and vice versa. Perhaps worst of all is dealing with the inevitable rejections and depressions.
4. You've written two books about Bruce Lee; what makes you so interested in him?
I first met Bruce in 1963 when I was 17 years of age and a senior in high school. At that time, he was not a public figure, although that would change in the blink of an eye when he made his appearance at the Long Beach International Karate Championships in August 1964. In the ensuing years, we became good friends, and I helped introduce him around Hollywood and arranged for him to acquire an apartment at the luxurious Barrington Plaza where I lived at the time. By the late 1960s, Bruce’s career had taken off, and he was destined to become an international film star and the first Asian million-dollar director in the United States when he died unexpectedly in Hong Kong in July 1973.
Many years later in February 1988, I produced a tribute to martial arts master Ed Parker that was held at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. Bruce’s widow Linda was one of the guest speakers. A short while after the event, she and I had dinner and she asked me to coauthor the biography of Bruce that was being published along with a movie version DRAGON that was being produced by MCA Universal. The reason Linda had asked me to help with the book was that besides having known Bruce personally, I was a black belt in the martial arts and had worked in Hollywood.
The book that I coauthored with Linda was a one-sided, vanilla version of Bruce’s life, which initially I had overlooked because Linda and I had embarked on a whirlwind romance and married a short time after the book’s publication. Nearly ten years later, following my divorce from Linda, I wrote a second biography on Bruce Lee, mainly to correct many of the misconceptions I had put forth in the first book. This second book, Unsettled Matters, became a bestseller and has been credited with disproving Lee’s highly controversial autopsy report and the verdict at the Hong Kong medical examiner’s inquest.
5. What is your craziest Hollywood story?
Assuming that your question pertains to a story that involves me and not my favorite classic Hollywood story, the truth is that after more than four decades of being in and around this business, I could write a book, although that won’t be happening in the near future. The book aside, perhaps my craziest story contains several mini-chapters about my storybook entry into Hollywood as a lifetime profession.
In late 1969, I was the head instructor at Ed Parker’s karate school in West Los Angeles where I taught evening classes to help pay for my college education. I was finishing my schooling at UCLA and planning to enroll in medical school when one evening director Blake Edwards walked into the school with his 11-year-old son Geoffrey, who was visiting from London where he lived with his mother and older sister Jennifer. After a few rounds of “stop and chat,” as Larry David would say, Blake asked if I would be interested in teaching him and his son private karate lessons at his Beverly Hills home. After thanking him for the offer, I told him that I simply didn’t have the time. Determined to have me reconsider, he invited me to come for lunch the following Saturday to “see if things could be worked out.” He kept pushing, and I finally accepted, mainly because I was under the impression that he was married to Swedish actress Elke Sommer, the beautiful starlet of A Shot in the Dark, which Blake directed. Like practically every young man in his early twenties, I was smitten with the woman, who played a beautiful, naïve Swedish maid.
So I went to the house, which was located at the top of Coldwater Canyon. When I arrived, a staff member showed me into the living room and informed me that Blake was running late but was en route. Minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching from a hallway and looked up to see Julie Andrews walking toward me. Moments later, she extended her hand and said with a warm smile, “You must be Mr. Bleecker. I’m Julie.” Little did I know at the time that the woman who had just introduced herself would in five years become my mother-in-law. In any case, I was flabbergasted. What was she doing here? Didn’t she know that I knew that Blake was married to Elke Sommer? And where was that Swedish siren, by the way? Stretched out by the pool, perhaps?
Just then, Blake entered, walked over to Julie and said, “Hi, darlin’,” and kissed her. So now this tabloid-bound infidelity was taking place right before my very eyes. What was going on in this place? Well, of course, very quickly everything became clear when I realized that Blake never was married to Elke Sommer. By the end of our lunch, Blake had talked me into teaching him and his son private karate lessons and handed me an outrageous amount of cash and told me to “keep track of things and to let him know when I needed more money.”
The Hollywood lure continued when two months later I drove my high-mileage used Volkswagen behind Blake’s newly-purchased Jaguar XKE (in 1969 it actually had a telephone) up Coldwater Canyon and followed him up the long driveway that led into his palatial home. While he parked in front of the house, I continued up the driveway to the pool house where I parked my heap beside the gardener’s truck. As I walked back down the driveway, I saw Blake step from the Jaguar and utter “Dammit!” as he slammed the car’s door. When I asked him what was wrong, he complained that one had to be a contortionist to get in and out of the new Jag of his.
In an attempt to be humorous, I told him that I had a solution to his problem—that all he had to do was to trade cars with me for a week, and at the end of the week he would absolutely love his new Jag. In fact, I guaranteed it.
He looked at me and said, “You like this car?” What a question. I liked just standing ten feet from it. When I told him that, he said, “Here,” and handed me the keys. “It’s yours.”
For several moments, I was speechless and then told him that I couldn’t afford the insurance on the car, let alone the car, itself. He told me not to worry about it and that one day soon I’d have enough money and that I could pay for it later. By the end of the week, that XKE was in my driveway and in Blake’s driveway was a shiny new Rolls Royce. I waited anxiously for several months for him to slam the door on that one, but it never happened.
Things kept getting better. About a month later, Blake told me that he would be directing a picture for MGM. The film was Wild Rovers and would star William Holden and Ryan O’Neal (two months later Ryan rocketed to superstardom when Love Story opened over the Christmas holidays). Blake asked if I would be interested in working on the picture and that he would teach me the business. I couldn’t turn down his offer. Medical school could wait. I was starting to warm to my new lifestyle. As to what would be my job on the film, Blake said he’d find something.
Two weeks later, I stood in the middle of the near-freezing Arizona desert at six in the morning dressed as a cowboy. The job that Blake found for me was as the stand-in for Bill Holden, which got me into the Screen Extras Guild (SEG). Two weeks into shooting, Blake came to me and said, “Tom, we don’t need you to stand-in for Bill anymore. We can light bushes or trees or air for that matter. From now on, your job is to keep Bill happy. He likes you. He says you’re a good card player and better drinking buddy. I can still teach you the business—between beers and hands of cards.”
As a footnote, Bill Holden loved to play Spite and Malice, and he was good at it. I’d never played the game, and the night he taught me the game in his hotel room, I beat him. Not out of skill, mind you. I just happened to have been dealt a hand of cards that a six-year-old could have played and won. To this day, I can still recall standing up from the table around midnight and telling Bill I’d see him in the morning. “Sit down and deal the cards!” he roared with that childish grin of his.
When Wild Rovers wrapped, while I made another picture with Bill Holden (Breezy, directed by Clint Eastwood), I spent my off time rewriting two scripts that Blake had optioned. So that I might feel inspired and wouldn’t be distracted, Blake handed me the keys to his Malibu beach house where I lived for the entire summer.
With the arrival of winter, the bizarre and crazy story of my entry into Hollywood took another forward leap. Blake was set to direct the MGM film The Carey Treatment, starring James Coburn and Loreal spokeswoman Jennifer O’Neill. I was onboard again, this time as the stand-in for James Coburn. As was the case with Bill Holden, Coburn and I became fast friends and I spent little time working as a stand-in. Instead, I gallivanted around the east coast with Coburn and entered into a love affair with Jennifer O’Neill’s girlfriend who visited the set one weekend and never left.
As before, things got better when halfway through the picture, I was approached by the film’s producer William “Bill” Belasco, who tragically died in a car accident while driving to Sal Mineo’s funeral shortly after The Carey Treatment was released. Belasco thought I was perfect for a small part in the movie—that of an orderly who is busted at a Boston hospital for carrying marijuana in his smock. The part called for a wild chase that ended with the orderly being arrested and exchanging lines with James Coburn, who played Dr. Peter Carey.
Everyone thought it was a great idea but me. The reason, which no one but me knew, was that since childhood I was a stutterer. As is the case with most stutterers, if I could choose my own words, I was usually all right. The problem with this bit part, of course, was that I couldn’t ad lib the words in the script. I’d have to say exactly what was on the page. Reluctantly, I agreed to come to Billy’s office and look at the part. I scanned over the words and spotted several that I knew would cause me to stutter. I thanked him and, ignoring his pleadings that I accept the part, left.
Late that afternoon, I was back on the set when I noticed Bill Belasco standing around the coffee area. I strolled over, said hello, and then asked if he had found someone for the part of the busted orderly. While perusing the rows of donuts, he said, “Yeah—you. The contracts are being drawn up now. You’ll make a couple thousand and the studio will pay for you to join SAG.”
I was benumbed. “Billy, didn’t you hear what I said earlier? This won’t work. You need to find someone else.”
Two days later, I arrived on the set with hardly any sleep and a nervous wreck. I must have looked like a stray dog at a whistler’s convention because I had absolutely no idea what was going on and fully anticipated a full morning of humiliation. After the set was lit, and sound and camera were ready, I stood in the hospital’s police shakedown line. As the cops patted me down, I threw my metal tray into someone’s face and took off running. The chase carried me into the hospital’s main lobby where I leapt over the main counter into the awaiting hoard of cops, who threw me onto the floor and cuffed me. Coburn and I exchanged lines, the close-ups were done, and Blake said, “Cut! Print!” bringing to a close my nightmare of biblical proportions.
An hour later, the buzz around the set was that I’d done a commendable job, that I was a natural, and that I truly looked scared to death. A few even commented on how real my few lines of dialogue sounded and that the words seemed to choke in my throat. How little they knew. Needless to say, I was glad to get home and have a beer. As I recall, I had several. Decades passed, and my best friend, author Joe Hyams, wrote a book called Misplaced in Hollywood. The book was about him, but I could have been a close second. And I’ll tell you, if this could happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
6. What advice would you give to an aspiring screenwriter?
I’ll share a story that will illustrate my point. Shortly before Wild Rovers began shooting, while I was teaching karate to Blake and his son, I wrote my first script. It took a few months to complete, and when I finished, I gave it to Blake. A few days went by and I asked him what he thought of the script. He said he was still reading. Another week went by, and he was still reading. Another week, still reading, and so I quit asking.
After another week went by, Blake called and asked me to come by the house to discuss my script. We sat by the pool and exchanged idle chat for a few minutes, and then I asked him what he thought about my script. He settled back into his chair and told me that I could make a good living in Hollywood as a writer.
No kidding. I was floored. I hadn’t expected that. “Really?” I said, beaming. “My first script was that good?”
“No. Not really,” he replied. “In fact, it was one of the worst scripts I’ve ever read, which is why it took me so long to get through it.”
For several moments, I stared into space, then said, “Excuse me. What did I miss here?”
“You have the one main ingredient that ninety-five percent of new writers don’t have—you finish things. You have talent, I can see that. Your script falls down because you don’t understand budget and setups and how to convey things in dialogue and nuances. But that’s all right, I can teach you all that.”
Over the past 40 years, I’ve come to understand the truth of Blake’s advice. Often when I meet a new writer, I’ll ask, “So what are you working on?”
Invariably, their response is, “Actually, I’m working on several projects at the moment.” With few exceptions, when I meet up with these people somewhere down the road, I’m told that they’ve shelved the scripts they were working on and have started several new projects. Although established, seasoned writers can get away with this, new writers have to learn discipline. So my first piece of advice to new writers would be pick your best project—and no matter what it takes and how long it takes, finish it.
My second piece of advice would be to always submit your best work—and that includes a script that is without typos and misspelled words, is written in the industry standard screenwriting software, and falls within the acceptable page length. The same holds for manuscripts. With rare exception, you can’t go back to the well. The first cold reading is the best reading your screenplay or manuscript is going to get. Make it your best work.
Third, get used to rejection. It goes with the turf. Most of all, for god’s sake, don’t take it personally. I have a friend who wallpapered an entire guest bathroom (including the ceiling) with rejection letters. Ironically, I’ve received many of those same letters that line those bathroom walls. As creative people, we have to learn to find the humor in rejection. It’s there; you just have to look around for it. If we can’t, it ultimately undermines our careers. As an aside, when it comes to commenting on your work, choose people who will give you their full honest opinion. Yes-men (and women), although well meaning, are of little help if all they do is tell you how much they love your work.
And finally, if you’re a typical writer, know that you live most of your waking hours inside yourself. Because this is where your imaginative world resides, you will increasingly come to depend upon your inner life to satisfy your emotional needs, which can be devastating to those who rely on you (their outside world) to fulfill their own inner needs. This dynamic that can destroy even the best relationships if it’s not addressed. If you’re a seasoned writer, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’re a new writer, you’ve most likely had inklings.
7. How close was the first draft of The Jacket to what we saw on screen?
The Jacket was a true test of patience. I wrote the script in 1970, and 35 years later, it got made. That may a record in Hollywood. There were several writers who worked on that script at various times, including the associate producer Marc Rocco. There was only one major change, which had to do with the parallel universe. In my original script, I had the lead (William Starks played by Adrian Brody) strapped into a straightjacket in a barbaric state prison in the early 1940s. In order to escape the pain and suffering of long hours in the jacket, Starks learned how to “strip out” and travel to another time and place, which turned out to be the Old West in the 1850s. In this sense, with regard to time, Starks traveled backwards in the parallel universe. In The Jacket that was produced, Starks was laced into a straightjacket (and further confined in receptacle in a morgue-like setting) and traveled forward into the future. Because one of the writers on the script was also one of the producers, the Writers Guild mandated that screen credits be arbitrated. The final decision of the arbitration board was that I would receive main story credit because all my characters and story threads held throughout every revised draft of my original screenplay.
8. What is Tea Money about?
The logline taken from my web site (www.tombleecker.com) reads: While writing the biography of a deceased international megastar whose death was ruled an accident, a former street reporter battles a powerful Asian crime syndicate when he discovers that the celebrity was murdered and that his widow, under the threat of death, has become an accomplice in the murder cover-up and the victim of extortion. Although Bleecker has many nonfiction book credits, this is his first novel—a mystery-suspense thriller. On reading the screenplay version, acclaimed actor Peter Strauss commented, ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the material. I do believe the Asian underworld is a rich cinematic plateau. And the script had a nice ‘Chinatown’ and Jake Gittes character feel."
Many have felt that Tea Money is my third and final installment of the Bruce Lee trilogy, and in a way, there’s some truth to this. The novel was inspired by my experiences writing about Bruce Lee’s life and later spending considerable time in Hong Kong researching his sudden and highly controversial death. I am presently in the final stages of completing the screenplay for Tea Money. Together, the script and book, which to date have been my most challenging work, have taken nearly 15 years to complete.
9. Who are some of your literary influences and why?
I would certainly have to say Jack London, specifically for his relatively unknown work Star Rover that was inspirational in my script The Jacket. Another author whose work I admire is Wilbur Smith, who writes about Africa around the time of WWI. In the early 1980s, I was hired to convert his brilliant written book Cry Wolf into a screenplay that was to star Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds at Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, the project became embroiled in creative ego battles and was eventually shelved. I’m also impressed with author Ridley Pearson, who writes crime fiction. His works that center on Detective Lou Boldt are captivating and in place riveting. I particularly like Pearson’s plot threads and dialogue. For many years, more than one producer has come close to making Pearson’s Undercurrents into a movie.
10. What do you consider to be the best screenplay ever written and why?
That’s a difficult question because all screenplays are impacted by casting, budget, the director, editor, music score—a long list. That said, in thinking about movies that held my attention from fade in to fade out, had believable characters, a solid storyline with a balanced beginning, middle, and end, and compelling, engaging dialogue, I would list A Few Good Men as one of my favorites. Another would be Casablanca. As a writer, the one that impressed me the most with regard to story was Angel Heart. That script, which was penned by director Alan Parker from the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, had me guessing right to the end. And when I arrived, I fully expected the writer to hand me some sort of spoon-fed copout. But that didn’t happen. At the end, the writer pulled all the story points together and tied a nice tidy little knot and rolled end credits. The script to me was flawless and brilliantly executed.
Please note; Eliza's interviews are done by email. All answers are unedited and come right from the lovely fingertips of her subjects:)
Comments (8)