"Saint Jack"

The House is off Sunset Boulevard, just north of the UCLA campus and within jogging distance of the clean, hip collegiate streets of Westwood, where even on weekdays the block-long lines at the dozen or so moviehouses begin at noon. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the reputations of many American films and their directors are made or broken by the first seven days' business at this fashionable suburb's handful of theaters; if not the reputation, the financial fate-- and, in the geographically undefined suburb called Hollywood, a few miles' drive to the east, the two are usually synonymous. It was in Westwood that such films as The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What's Up, Doc, Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon pulled them in or turned them off, In the house off Sunset, the director of those six pictures--three hits, two misses, one maybe--brooded recently over the editing, the release date, the eventual fate of his first creation in two years, a morality tale of an American pimp in Singapore: Saint Jack.

The house sits in Spanish splendor behind a private gate, a reminder, for those so inclined, of Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu. Inside an enormous living room, dozens of objets d'art are placed in uneasy juxtaposition; a semi-abstract painting in splashy colors is flanked by steely 18th Century English engravings. Bulky mirrored South American pillows squat on Empire sofas. Servants discreetly come and go. A fountain burbles in the courtyard beyond an open door. A recent visitor waiting in this room heard one half of a telephone conversation from somewhere nearby. "It's a tough picture," a voice was saying. "It's really pretty strong. I think it's my best since Picture Show. . . . Well, when is the latest you can see it and still decide for the festival?" A few moments later, the voice's owner appeared. He had been on the phone with the director of the New York Film Festival, he explained. That event was opening with Robert Altman's A Wedding and there was talk of Saint Jack's closing it. "But they wanna see it," said Peter Bogdano-vich with a tight, ironic smile. "They like to see the pictures."

He was wearing small, round, slightly tinted glasses and seemed to be growing a mustache. He smelled pleasantly of Eau Sauvage. In the library, seated in a high-backed chair at a table the length of the room, he finished what was left of a light lunch and explained how he had come to make this movie of the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux, portions of which appeared in Playboy's January and February 1973 issues.

"Orson Welles had told Cybill [Shepherd] he thought it was a good book and she ought to read it. She liked it and she said I ought to read it, so I read it. Eventually. And I thought it was a pretty good book. Interesting idea, interesting situation, interesting little . . . conceit. Basically, it deals with moral questions, and it was a question of figuring a way of dramatizing the book. It's not written chronologically. You have to sort of straighten it out."

Bogdanovich didn't mention it, but even more straightening out had to be done before Saint Jack made it to the filming stage. It all goes back to a suit Cybill Shepherd, Bogdanovich's longtime lady, had filed against Playboy over a picture of her published in 1972. This had been slowly wending its way through the tortuous paths of legal procedure when, at a Hollywood party for Jimmy Carter at the home of actor Warren Beatty, Bogdanovich was introduced to Hugh M. Hefner. Eventually, when Bogdanovich and Shepherd learned that Playboy Enterprises held the film rights to Theroux's novel, a bargain was struck: Instead of becoming adversaries in a courtroom, Hefner and Bogdanovich wound up partners in a film production.

As conceived by Theroux, Saint Jack's title character is a strangely vulnerable fellow whose very personal notion of morality permits him to manage a U. S. Army-sanctioned whorehouse for GIs on R & R from Vietnam--but is tested by seamier tasks. "It's about making moral choices in life," Bogdanovich said. "Whether or not to sell out. Whether or not to take a lotta money for something you don't believe in. What's right or wrong, when push comes to shove. And since it deals with a pimp--which is not a profession noted for morality-- I think it's rather interesting. The trick was to translate that idea into a movie."

Bogdanovich wrote one script, then he and playwright Howard Sackler wrote another. Financing was provided by Roger Corman. Playboy Productions coproduced the film, with Hugh M. Hefner and Eddie Rissien, Executive Vice-President of Playboy Productions, serving as executive producers. Once the company was in Singapore, a thorough rewrite was done, with star Ben Gazzara and associate producer George Morfogen making important contributions. "We tried to make a movie devoid of bullshit. I mean . . . all movies are slightly bullshit. It comes with making movies. We at least were trying consciously to avoid that. And, you know, it isn't easy. I don't know if we did or not, but I think it's pretty good. The picture moves very quickly. I don't think it's lugubrious, or heavy, but it's not your light, frothy entertainment. It has a tough quality."

Bogdanovich was in Singapore for almost five months. There hadn't been a picture made there in 20 years. An international crew of amateurs and professionals--Dutch, French, American, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian--was assembled. The budget was small: about $2,000,000. The political realities of Singapore created special difficulties.

"We were in a country that is, uh, not free. I suppose no country's free, but they're very, very strict about certain things. They're very repressive in terms of sex, you know; Playboy is not allowed in the country. In fact, when I arrived-- it's rather funny--when I got to customs, they specifically asked me if I had any copies of Playboy. You know, there's a big war against drugs; they executed a couple of people for drug trafficking. Several. It's a capital offense."

Finished with his lunch. Bogdanovich produced several vitamin capsules, which he aligned and realigned on the table's polished wood, like worry beads. He spoke of having prepared a cover story for the Singapore authorities, in order to gain permission from the ministry of culture to film at various sites. As far as anyone there was concerned, he was in town to make a picture called Jack of Hearts, and he had the synopsis to prove it.

"It was sort of a Love Is a Many Splendored Thing movie. Probably one of the funnier things you've ever read. About a guy who runs away from America because he's falsely accused of a murder, and he gets involved with a bunch of English and Chinese show people who are putting on a night-club act and . . . that kinda thing. Make a pretty good picture. I could probably sell it at Fox next week--with Bill Holden and, uh. . . Diana Ross."

The ploy worked. "They were very nice to us. I mean, we lied, but I don't feel bad about it, because the picture's not anti-Singapore. I think you'd probably see it and say, hey, that's, maybe, an interesting place to visit. And it was necessary. Otherwise, the picture would never have been made."

Saint Jack is Bogdanovich's eighth film, including his debut, a gritty, low-budget thriller called Targets starring Boris Karloff, with Peter himself playing a young film director. Bogdanovich also appears, as an Army Intelligence type, in Saint Jack, which he said was unlike any of his other films.

"I don't think it's like any movie I've ever seen, really. I don't think there's ever been a movie quite like it." Uncomfortable in one straight-backed chair, Bogdanovich began balancing himself between two of them. "This may sound facetious or . . . mock humble, but I feel that after having made eight pictures, I'm ready now to . . . make some pictures. What I mean is, the older directors had a lot more time to serve an apprenticeship. John Ford didn't make a really extraordinary movie until he'd made maybe 20 or 30. But we don't have that option any longer. We're expected to, you know, do something right away. So, through a lot of those pictures, I felt I was learning how to make pictures!

"So I feel Saint Jack is really kind of a new beginning. Not like starting over, but . . . it's the most serious picture I've made since The Last Picture Show. I suppose Daisy Miller was a pretty serious picture, but it didn't strike you with that kind of impact. After that, I think some of the other pictures were . . . light-hearted. Paper Moon I always thought had a darker surface than anybody cared to notice. It had a considerable amount of charm, but I always thought it was a pretty sad picture. Well, I think Jack has some of the feeling of Picture Show, though I think Jack is a much better picture. I think it's as good as I've done. It's certainly the most ambitious, in trying to do something that has some weight."

Bogdanovich is well aware that his (concluded on page 366) "Saint Jack" (continued from page 286) past two pictures have been critical and box-office failures. Yet he is said to have turned down million-dollar offers to direct such projects as The Exorcist, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, A Star Is Born and Hurricane because be did not care for those projects. Of the last picture, he reportedly exclaimed, "I don't want to stand around Bora Bora for five months, yelling, 'More wind! Get that sarong to fly off!"' But what of his career? Did he feel great pressure to come up with a hit? Lying languidly across the two chairs now, arm draped above his head rather like the famous photograph of Truman Capote sprawled on a divan, Bogdanovich answered, "Let's put it this way: It's a lot easier to survive in an industry--a business, an art, what-ever--if you pay for yourself. Know what I mean? Howard Hawks said to me," and here his voice took on a pompous tone, "'Peter, I'll just give you one piece of advice: Make pictures that make moneyl"' Bogdanovich flicked his eyes heavenward. "It's good advice, but the thing is, you have to make a picture that's good, and hope that it also makes money. Otherwise, the emphasis is wrong. The couple of times I've compromised--tried to cut something, shorten it or tried to make it more commercial--I've fucked up the picture. I've damaged it in ways I wish I hadn't.

"The key thing is to try to make the best picture you can and to still all those voices that are saying, 'But will it sell?' Everything in making a movie is choice. Should this button be unbuttoned? Should the camera be placed there? Should we do another take? And when you make those choices, you should be as innocent and as free of financial considerations as possible. Otherwise, the scale is going to be subtly but irrevocably tipped. The wrong way. 'Jeez, that's a little rough, you know--maybe we should soften it a little.' 'Jeez, that's gonna offend a lotta people,' and pretty soon you end up with oatmeal."

Bogdanovich had a choice to make that very moment. The film cutter who was busy changing the rough print of Saint Jack into a smooth one appeared in the open doorway, and the director followed him outside and around the corner to a handsomely appointed editing room, where the tins of footage from those months in Singapore stood in neat stacks against the wall. As Peter and his cutter went over and over the nuances of a few frames from the movie's final scene, Saint Jack himself, Ben Gazzara, strode in silently, puffing a big cigar. He was shorter than might have been expected, as actors often are; but his eyes shone with a personal intensity that made the object of his gaze feel Gazzara had been his closest friend for years. "Ben has feeling," Bogdanovich had earlier said of his star. "Once I thought of him for the part, I didn't even offer it to anyone else. He just seemed so right for it, being Italian-American, having a sort of garrulous nature and having a heart. There's something . . . wounded about him also, which was good for this. With one or two exceptions, I never felt movies found the proper role for him. I think this is it."

Editing problem solved, director and actor went to the library for coffee. Bogdanovich spoke of the ephemeral nature of moviemaking. "You're dealing with feelings, with a twitch, with something that happens by chance--I tip this cup, like so--then you do it the second time and it looks contrived. John Ford said once--uh, to me--that the best things in movies often happen by accident. Orson Welles said he thinks the director essentially is a man who presides over accidents. It sounds mystical, and it is, to a degree. If you're outside and the sun goes behind a cloud--it's only going to do that once." He referred, of course, to that wonderful moment during Ben Johnson's poignant soliloquy in The Last Picture Show, the film that for no predictable reason became an enormous success and made its unknown creator Wunderkind for a season.

"Some of the best things," he continned, "are things that just happen once and then don't happen again. They just don't. No matter how much you want them to."

A phone behind him buzzed and Bogdanovich picked it up to talk to his secretary. "Johnny's calling me? Where, on one? Yeah?" It was John Cassavetes, who had seen the rough cut of Saint Jack at a screening the night before. "Johnny. . . . Did you really? Is that good? Yeah? You know, it's funny, because, you know how it is when you. . . . You do? God, I hope so." And as Cassavetes told him he thought Saint Jack was a masterpiece, that it captured a sense of place as no film had ever done, that he thought it would certainly get wonderful notices and be very commercial as well, the director nibbled his thumbnail and looked worried. "I think it'll do well in New York. I think they're ready for me. Yeah. Could happen all over again? Christ, I hope you're right," said Bogdanovich. "Wouldn't that be nice? For everybody."

"'I think "Saint Jack" is as good as anything I've done. It's certainly the most ambitious."'