James Caan: The Ultimate Caan Game

Actually, "bastard" has always been synonymous with Caan. He has always come on as a cocky, world-on-a-string, sad-eyed, jokey stud. Most people first noticed Caan as the dying Chicago Bears football player in Brian's Song on TV, or as the testosterone-powered Sonny in The Godfather. That was Caan in his "New Hollywood" days, when Time magazine called him (in 1975) "one of the five top box-office draws in the country."

But 10 years before The Godfather made him a superstar, he'd left New York to unleash himself on Hollywood and pay dues. Out of the shadow of the tenement, and bathed in California gold, the sinewy Caan was exactly the sort of hot boy lusted after by Hollywood of that day. He did stunt work, but he also got roles in four top TV shows in the first five weeks after he hit town. Universal dangled a seven-year deal, but he shined it on and went to work making movies with some greats of the Old Guard. Billy Wilder gave him a bit part in Irma la Douce. In Lady in a Cage opposite Olivia de Havilland, he played a sweaty punk who growls, "I am all animal." Little Caesar director Mervyn LeRoy thought he should star opposite Jean Seberg in Moment to Moment, but, on meeting Caan for the first time, the director eyed him and belched, "Do you always wear your hair like that?" "Then," Caan recounts, "LeRoy asks, 'What's the best thing you've ever done?' and I said, 'I once ran 90 yards for a touchdown.' See, compared to these other guys who came off a surfboard with their blue fucking phony lenses and who can't spell 'act,' I was part of the 'angry New York contingency.'"

Journey to Shiloh, says Caan, was a "rank piece of Civil War horseshit. I played a leader and all these guys, Harrison Ford, Michael Sarrazin, were riding behind me. It's a terrible thing to say, but, aside from having some talent, if I can attribute my success in the early years to anything, it was that I'd say no to the [bigwigs]. And they'd go, 'Who the fuck is this punk to say no to me? I'm God.' Angry? It was just that I don't care who they are. I was brought up to at least be able to say, 'How do you do?' when I met someone."

But Caan said more than "How do you do?" to action maestro Howard Hawks, maker of Red River and The Big Sleep, who starred him back to back in Red Line 7000 and El Dorado. "Hawks was 72, but, boy, he loved them girls," Caan recalls, with a hellion's gleam in his eye. "He'd invite me down to Palm Springs and there he was with one of his 20-year-olds. And they all looked like his wife, Slim. So, we're making this movie in Old Tucson. And I'm in my twenties with [Robert] Mitchum, who had basically retired to his ranch and was a fucking wild man, and [John] Wayne, who was like a 12-year-old and called me 'Jiminy Cricket,' and Hawks, who had millions from the studio to spend on this fucking movie.

Every day, Hawks would disappear in his trailer and wouldn't come out all day, then emerge with an eighth page of corny, horrible dialogue. Sometimes we wouldn't even shoot. And, meanwhile, we'd be fucking around all day. Who was going to tell Howard Hawks what to do?"

Caan claims he's never watched a foot of Red Line 7000. "Hawks liked me. I mean, hey, fuck--I was looking to pay the rent. The other day, I was with a young friend of mine, who's a writer and director and who feels kind of uncomfortable because he's from a wealthy family. I told him, 'Money can allow you to have integrity right from the beginning. You don't have to do shit.' But I had to do it and other actors had to. I hit Hollywood and was making $3,500 a year but I always owed the bookmaker $2,000 by Tuesday. It was impossible. On Monday night, I'd go buy myself a suit just to say, 'Fuck it.' I don't know how but, boom, a job always somehow happened."

Once he made The Godfather, Caan's booms came even faster. "I had the world by the nuts back then," he says, "as far as business goes. But that's not really having the world."

I ask Caan if it's true that bad blood brewed between him and Coppola at the time of Apocalypse Now, in which Caan had been expected to star. Caan shakes his head.

"Francis once said about some of us who were in The Godfather, 'Fuck, all you guys want is money.' I went, 'Hey, Francis, you made $11 million, we each made $35,000.' He starts walking down the street, going, 'I bought this, this, this. I do good things with my money.' I said, 'So do I. I drive nice cars, I go to nice restaurants.' So, he gives me the script for Apocalypse and says, 'Any part you want.' Now, he used to play poker with me, this fuck. He's my friend, right? I wanted to play Colonel Carnage [the original name of the Lt. Col. Kilgore character]; the guy is nuts, he's blowing things up, he's surfing. So, I go up to Francis's house in San Francisco, and he goes, 'I don't think I can give you that.' 'Asshole,' I say, 'didn't you say any part I want?' He says, 'I want you for another role.' But I didn't want to play that."

Caan turned down plenty of roles that could have been booms for him, and chose busts instead.

Love Story? He declares, justifiably, "Made a ton of money, right? Look at it today: worst actor, worst director, worst written."

M*A*S*H? "Bob Altman was a friend--I did one of his early films, Countdown. I didn't know that this schmuck would turn into...anyway, I did Rabbit, Run instead. Smart, huh?"

Caan also nixed a second Freebie and the Bean, the money-making buddy cop movie he starred in with Alan Arkin, which he called "The Odd Couple in a squad car." "They offered me a fortune to do, like, 15 of those. But where's the fun in it? I hate remakes. I'm not gonna be Sonny again, either."

Superman? "Mario Puzo wrote a hysterical script, with Superman doing loop-the-loops and shit. Marlon [Brando] called me and said, 'Come on, do it too, I need some laughs.' I said, 'Yeah, but you don't have to wear the cape with the red and blue suit.'"

Kramer vs. Kramer? "I was first, Dustin [Hoffman] was last on the list of five guys they wanted. The director [Robert Benton] kept it up with me for three months. I said, 'This is middle-class, bourgeois horseshit.' I mean, 'Cut to kid crying.' Oh, please. Fuck you!"

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? "Four or five different directors came to me with that at different times. I go, 'It's not a movie. Who wants to look at four institution walls?' Milos Forman made it great. Jack was great in it. I made a flat-out, fucking mistake."

Worse mistakes were some of the films he did make-- T.R. Baskin, Comes a Horseman, Chapter Two, Rollerball, The Killer Elite.

Caan launches into a hilarious binge of agent-bashing. "I thought agents were supposed to check out directors for me, you know? I forgot that they're slavers. Oh, by the way, you forgot to mention Harry and Walter Take a Dump." Caan is referring to Harry and Walter Go to New York, the hugely expensive, period comedy, inspired by The Sting, that co-starred Caan, Elliot Gould, Michael Caine and Diane Keaton.

And what about Funny Lady, in which he and Barbra Streisand sparred? "This was when I was a star. And I commanded big salaries. At the time, George Segal and Robert Redford, who had made movies with Barbra, said they had a horrible time. Anyway, I said yes to this, completely unaware that Barbra thought I didn't want to work with her. She'd been pitched as the co-star of a couple of movies that I didn't want to do. Not because of her, but because I didn't like the scripts. So, we're doing Funny Lady and she's tough, but she couldn't have been nicer. I got out of her probably the greatest fucking take she ever had."

How did that happen?

"The director, Herbert Ross, wasn't in his screaming stage yet. That came later. He had mapped out this scene that took hours and hours to set up and rehearse in Fanny Brice's dressing room. She's supposed to be in front of the make-up table and I lean down, kiss her, then she reaches behind her and hits me in the face with a whole box of powder. She goes, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Billy, da-da-da, whatever,' and I'm supposed to hit her in the face with the powder and while we're both standing there, I draw a smile on her face through the powder.

"Next day, I show up to do the scene and Barbra looks gorgeous in this sensational, emerald green, 80-pound dress--she must have, like, strong legs--and she goes, 'Herb, I'm sorry, he can't hit me in the face with the powder.' Herb looks like he's lost his mother, and he's going, 'Barbra, we rehearsed and rehearsed last night. The lighting took the whole night and . . .' She whispers, 'The powder. It's toxic.' She won't quit. I figure she just didn't want to spoil her makeup. So I go, 'Herb, she's right. I can do this without hitting her.' I could see Herb wanted to stab me. But she's listening now, she's got support, so I tell her that after she hits me, I'll pick up the box and go to hit her, but she should stand up to me, just like, 'Go ahead, shoot me,' so I back down. Herb is going cross-eyed, so I go, 'Just shoot the fucking thing.' And when he did, she didn't blink or flinch, and I scooped up that motherfucking box and hit her right between the eyes.

Pages: 1 2 3