The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(101)

We shook hands again, and as I was leaving, Roger said, “You know, I like to think that I turn out directors for Hollywood the way USC turns out running backs for the NFL.”

“I’d very much like to be one of those running backs,” I said.


A FEW DAYS later, Roger called me. “You and your father have written a very good script,” he said. “But it’s a character piece. An arthouse film. That’s not the kind of film that I make. But look, I watched your shorts and I can see that you can direct. So I have a counterproposal for you.”

On paper, what Roger suggested looked like one of those comically lopsided trades in baseball, with him the savvy GM and me the sucker. There were a ridiculous number of hoops for me to jump through. If and only if I agreed to be in Eat My Dust!, Roger would pay me a whopping $2,500 to write an outline for a new film. I could write it by myself, with Dad, however I wanted—I just couldn’t resubmit ’Tis the Season or anything like it. Then, if Roger liked the outline, I could turn it into a screenplay for $12,500. Then, if Roger liked the screenplay, I could direct the movie—but only if I also starred in it.

And here was the kicker: failing all that, if he didn’t green-light a feature for me to make, the consolation prize was that he would assign me to direct the second unit on one of the many low-budget action flicks he churned out each year.

This was hardly a situation where some beneficent financier was saying, “Yes! I shall back your movie and it shall premiere at next year’s Cannes Film Festival!” But it was as close as I was going to get to a real chance.





22


Rance to the Rescue


RON


Eat My Dust! turned out well for a film called Eat My Dust! It was a quick, zany car-chase flick written and directed by Chuck Griffith, who had also done the screenplay for Roger’s The Little Shop of Horrors. I played the renegade son of a sheriff who steals a race-car driver’s jacked-up ’68 Ford Fairlane. My love interest was played by Christopher Norris, a blond beauty who had been one of the stars of Summer of ’42. She was outfitted for the occasion in an exploitation-flick-ready ensemble of white micro-shorts and go-go boots. I wore a blue windbreaker and a Union Army–style kepi cap.

In what was now a familiar pattern, Clint and Dad participated, too: Clint as one of my goober buddies hanging out in the back seat of my stolen wheels, Dad as one of the sheriff’s incompetent goober deputies. Chuck cast them of his own volition—I never pushed him. There were also a bunch of great character guys in the movie: Dave Madden, better known as Reuben Kincaid on The Partridge Family; the wiry Warren Kemmerling, so good in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and countless westerns; and Peter Isacksen, a gawky comic actor who played Seaman Pruitt in Don Rickles’s navy sitcom CPO Sharkey.

Making the movie damn near killed me, not because it was unpleasant to do but because, miracle of miracles, a prestige acting role came my way right after I reached my agreement with Roger. I was cast as John Wayne’s young protégé in The Shootist, his final film, directed by Don Siegel. So, for a short period, I shot Eat My Dust!, The Shootist, and Happy Days at the same time. The production side of Happy Days was, as ever, gracious—they kindly accommodated me so that I only had to show up to Paramount two days a week, rehearsing on Thursdays and filming on Fridays. Corman crammed my Eat My Dust! workload into just eleven days of the four-week shoot, which took place near Lake Piru, an hour northwest of L.A. For the rest of my time, I was in Carson City, Nevada, where The Shootist was filming on location.

I don’t know how I shouldered this workload except that I was twenty-one and had the physical stamina not to collapse in exhaustion—barely. The Shootist was a trip, because it starred not only Wayne but also Jimmy Stewart and Lauren Bacall. The Duke was dying of cancer and the old gang was rallying around him for one last adventure.

That’s what he preferred to be called, Duke. When I first arrived in Carson City, Don Siegel met me downstairs in the hotel where we were all staying and suggested that we go straight up to Wayne’s suite to meet the great man. On the way to the elevator, we passed the gift shop, and there was the latest TV Guide magazine with Henry and me on the cover. Siegel laughed and bought a copy. “Duke will love this,” he said. I wasn’t so sure.

When we knocked on the door, we were greeted by an instantly familiar figure: tall, imposing, rugged, and . . . bald? “I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t bother to put on my wig,” said the sixty-nine-year-old Wayne. He reached out to shake my hand, which disappeared into his like a ten-year-old’s. Siegel held up the issue of TV Guide for Wayne to examine. He looked down at it, looked up at me, looked down at it once more, and then said in a pointedly drawn-out John Wayne drawl, “Ah! Big shot, huh?”

Thanks a lot, Don, I thought.

But Duke and I got along well from that moment onward. He admired my professionalism. Sometimes, I noticed, he struggled with his lines. While Ms. Bacall kept to herself and most of the other people on the set were too much in awe to comfortably engage with Wayne, I asked him if he wanted to run his lines with me; that’s what I always did between takes. To my delight, he welcomed the suggestion. I went to school on this opportunity—me, rehearsing one-on-one with the most iconic western star of them all!

Working on The Shootist was an eye-opener for me because, as legendary and decorated as Wayne, Bacall, and Stewart were, they worked harder than anyone else on set, putting in the hours and doing as many takes as necessary to nail a scene. I had observed this same trait in Henry Fonda, even on a project as half-hearted as The Smith Family. I would see it again when, in the years to come, I would direct Bette Davis and Don Ameche. It wasn’t the studio system or their distinctive looks that had made these actors the giants of Hollywood’s golden age. It was—surprise, surprise!—their common work ethic and commitment to quality. They simply outhustled everyone else.