Hollywood: A Third Memoir
By: Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster (August 16, 2011)
160 pages
Hollywood, as the title says, is the third memoir of Larry McMurtry. Books and Literay Life came first, and this last one ties the bow on it all. McMurtry eulogises old Hollywood and seems found of the opportunities he found there. If anything, it seems to pay well. I – for the life of me – would not be able to get past losing $15 million.
Two of my favorite quotes:
In my case, particularly, his carelessness cost me millions. Though he always claimed to be a lawyer, in fact law bored him. Thus when Quintex, the multinational that initially set up the Lonesome Dove deal, went bankrupt, Irving did not bother to follow the proceedings, costing me millions in royalties. And the money stream that is Lonesome Dove is still flowing now. I figure Irving Lazar cost me at least $15 million, a sum that would always be useful. But I loved him anyway and so did many others.
ONE THING THAT continues to amaze me about the movie business is the haphazard way people in it go about hiring screenwriters. A particularly intriguing aspect of this practice is the hiring of scriptwriters who have not the slightest intellectual or emotional link to the project in question. I don’t think there are many screenwriters who are qualified to write a script about just anything. Eric Roth, who adapted Forrest Gump, can do certain things, Diana and I can do some things, but none of the above can successfully do just any old thing.