Frank Wells and I were actually friends-I did not want to hurt the guy.
He said, "Go to your office in the morning. There will be an envelope waiting. Look inside, then call me."
"What is it?"
"Just get the envelope, then call me."
I went in and there was the envelope. Inside was a check for five hundred thousand dollars.
I called Wells.
"What's it for?" I asked.
"Just to be the first to hear the pitch," he said.
"And what happens if you hate the pitch?" I asked.
"Tell me the budget," he said.
"Fifteen million," I said, pulling the number out of thin air.
"Good," he said. "Come in and tell us the story. If we approve, the five hundred thousand is against the budget. If we don't approve, you keep the money."
How can you beat that?
I scheduled a meeting for New York three weeks hence, where we would sit with the heads of Warner Bros. and pitch. I call it the five-hundred-thousand-dollar lunch, because that's all they got for their money-lunch with me and Billy and Blatty.
It's interesting that no one questioned my decision to have that lunch in New York. We all lived in LA-writer, director, producer, all the executives-so why were we flying across the country for a meeting? Well, the fact is, I could not get these guys to agree on a scenario for the movie, so I figured, okay, we'll be stuck together for five hours on the plane. That is when Friedkin and Blatty will work it out. In fact, they did not work it out, and could never agree. By the time we landed, I knew we were in serious trouble.
When we got to Warner Bros., the receptionist told me that Mr. Ross wanted to see me right away. I went in, we spoke. He said, "Jerry, we're buying this movie."
I said, "Buying what? There's no story."
He said, "Well, go and make one up. We're doing this movie."
We went into the meeting, sat at the big table with the food piled in front of us. Ted Ashley and Frank Wells, the chairman and vice chairman of the company, were both in the room. For the first thirty minutes, it was just me, telling Sinatra stories, telling Elvis stories, telling Dean Martin stories, the whole routine.
Frank Wells finally turned to Billy and said, "Okay, Billy, why don't you tell us about your movie?"
Billy bumbled around a bit, then said, "We open in the hills of West Virginia, and the camera comes over the hills and we see a field of dead cows. The camera continues over a hill, and we see Washington, D.C., Georgetown, go up the steps and into a church, then we see a head, severed and bloody, roll out of the confessional."
He turned to Blatty, then said, "Take it, Bill."
"Well, yes," said Blatty, "but I am not sure about the cows."
Then it was over. As we were getting ready to leave, Frank Wells helped me on with my coat. "We're excited," he told me. "We can't wait to make this movie."
"What movie?" I asked him. "There is no movie. That was bullshit."
"No, no, we love it," he said. "We want to do it."
"There is nothing to do," I said. "I'm going to give back your money."
"No, hang on to it," he said. "Think about it."
Well, I did think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew there was no movie. I sent back the money with a note: "Next time." Taking money for a movie you know you will never make is a bad habit. It's cocaine, it revs you up, and you have some fun, but in the end, you're in a worse place than you were when you started.
Around this time, my parents visited Beverly Hills. This was rare, as my mother did not like to fly. Usually I visited them in New York. The trip was therefore a big deal, a chance to show off what I had accomplished. I picked them up at LAX in my chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce. My mother slid in slowly, beaming, but my father looked skeptical. He stared out the window as we drove, now and then asking things like, "How long have you had this car, Jerry?" "What's the miles per gallon?" We finally reached the house, the mansion in Beverly Hills, with the swimming pool and tennis court and gardens and flowers. We sat in the living room. Out came the champagne. Out came the caviar. My mother was enjoying every minute. My father was reserved, pensive. He was a warm and beautiful man. I handed him a Cuban cigar, a Cohiba, his favorite. He puffed at it, looking at the smoke.
"Go get ready," I said. "I have a dinner planned. I am taking you to the best place in town, where the stars hang out."
This went on for a few days-me giving my parents the business, ushering them to the front of lines, through crowds, to the best tables and shows, and so on-until my father finally said, "Okay, listen, Jerry, I want to talk to you. Let's go outside."
Before we got halfway down the front steps, he tapped my chest with his finger and said, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth, no bullshit from you. Are you in the Mafia? How did you get all this? You were never that smart.' "
I stammered. "Uh, no, Dad, I'm creative. I did it."
"Well, where's your inventory?" he asked. "How can you have this much money and not have an inventory? It doesn't make sense to me."
I laughed and pointed at my head. "It's up here," I said. "All the inventory is right up here."
Then he laughed, too, saying, "Well, I guess there was always a lot of space for it, anyway."
That trip was mostly about impressing my mother, showing her a good time, thanking her. It was my mother who instilled the confidence and belief that made my success possible. My mother had two great passions in her life (other than her family, I mean): Cary Grant and horse races. So one afternoon, a week into the trip, I tell her to get ready, we're going somewhere-I won't say where. Thirty minutes later, the Rolls drops us off at the Hollywood Park Race Track. As we're getting out, who does she spot but Cary Grant, elegant as always, standing in front of the ticket window. "Oh, my," says my mother, grabbing my sleeve. "Look who it is." Before she can get his name out, Cary hurries over and slips his hand through my mother's arm and says, "Hello, Rose, will you be my date this afternoon?"
By then, Cary and I had become friends. I must have told my parents this on the phone, but they probably did not believe me. My mother was walking on air. They sat together in the clubhouse, reading through the racing form. Cary made her bets. They watched the ponies through binoculars.
I threw a dinner party that night at the house. I was sitting at the bar, having a drink with my mother, when Sinatra came in. There was always a stir, a happy little party, whenever Frank entered a room. He threw off his coat and came up, smiling, with his arms outstretched. "Hi ya, Rose," he said, "I heard you had a great date for lunch today."
"Yes, I did," she told him-and this part chokes me up, because my parents, well, that was a real love affair, "but I like my Sammy better."
My mother, as I said, was one of those ladies you would see weeping in a dark theater on the Grand Concourse. She loved the movies. In 1986, I actually had a chance to take her out of the seats and put her up on screen. My parents had come to visit me in Florida, where I was making a movie called Happy New Year with Peter Falk, Tom Courtenay, and Charles Durning.
After the director, John Avildsen, met my mother, he said, "Hey, Jerry, why don't you put her in the movie?"
The picture was about a jewelry store robbery, and I built the store on set. Avildsen thought I should have her in the scene in which Falk cases the joint. She would be a customer, walking by with Courtenay, the store manager.
"Not a good idea," I told Avildsen.