Ron Bass: The Collaborator

Of course, not all of Bass's efforts at team playing have worked out to his satisfaction. Some of his work has mutated into forms radically different from his original conception. He developed Dangerous Minds for Michelle Pfeiffer, but they disagreed over the tone of the film, and Pfeiffer brought in Elaine May to rewrite Bass's script. He ended up with sole screenwriting credit on the movie, but it bears little resemblance to the movie he envisioned.

"Almost all the dialogue in the film that was finally released was Elaine's," Bass says. "And the sensibilities of that film were different from the way I would have done it. The film was enormously successful, so they may have been right to fire me. My version might have been a big flop. But the storytelling choices, the character choices, the mode of interaction between teachers and students, all were considerably different from the decisions I would have made. I was very disappointed because I loved the [original] piece." Bass's fate on Dangerous Minds, which he describes as "part of the writer's lot in life," points up the pragmatic value of the "corporate" approach he's taken to screenwriting. "If you're only writing one script, and you have nothing else on the horizon, I don't know how you'd survive being fired. But the next day, I can say, 'OK, now I get to go back to this other project.' You have more of a chance to keep an emotionally stable course."

Bass's skill at collaboration can be illustrated by the fact that he once worked with two very strong, very different directors on the same film and got along successfully with each of them. The film was Rain Man. The first director was Steven Spielberg (who eventually left the project) and the second was Barry Levinson (who ended up directing the movie). According to Bass, one illustrative difference in their approach to material is that Spielberg envisioned an ending where Tom Cruise jumps onto the train platform to join his brother, Dustin Hoffman, just as the train is about to leave. Levinson considered that too sentimental and insisted on removing the final clinch. Bass, ever the diplomat, sees merit in each director's approach: "If Steven's film had been made and Levinson's film had been made, the films would have looked very different, and they both would have been wonderful. The film that Steven and I were doing was more about going with the big emotions. It was more operatic. Barry's stuff is more in a minor key; it's indirect, it's off the nose, and totally wonderful in a different way."

One might think that Bass's track record and obvious willingness to be flexible when necessary would protect him from reckless meddling, but like every other writer in Hollywood, he runs up against the maddening capriciousness of studio executives. "The biggest problem with the studio development process," Bass says, "is that with all good intent, there's this irreducible adversary element to it. How can executives justify their position if they say, 'Ron's script is brilliant, don't touch a word'? If that's their only comment, why do they have their Mercedes in their parking space?" But once they've justified their existence by suggesting changes, they have an investment in seeing them made. "It's one thing to give input. But I'm not a first-year writer. They paid me a fortune because they believe I really know how to do this. When we disagree, why don't they take my opinion? It never fails to amaze me the number of executives who feel that they are better writers than the writer."

If studios are the least rewarding partners in collaboration, actors are, Bass feels, the most overlooked opportunity. Bass himself has developed a close rapport with several actors, and he believes that writers should make a concerted effort to develop more projects in conjunction with stars. "I've always felt closer to actors than to anybody else, including directors," he says. "I love to find actors that I want to work with again and again. Some people just say your words better. I've always felt that way about Julia Roberts. Whenever I hear Julia reading dialogue I've written, it's as if she made it up herself. Meg Ryan is another actor I could write for all day. She just says my stuff the way I hear it in my mind."

Bass wrote When a Man Loves a Woman for Ryan, and he has written Sleeping With the Enemy, My Best Friend's Wedding and Stepmom for Roberts, as well as a couple of projects that have not yet been made. Several years ago he actually wrote a project that Roberts and Susan Sarandon hope to make together, but it is still stuck in development hell. Then he worked with them again on Stepmom. "They had been looking for a long time to find a film that they could do together," Bass says. In Stepmom, Sarandon plays a dying woman who must entrust her children to her ex-husband's young girlfriend, played by Roberts. Bass worked closely with the two actresses to incorporate changes they wanted made. "Those are the fun things in the job," Bass says of their collaboration. "We worked in a very shorthand way. It was not like meeting with studio executives. There was none of that diplomacy. Everybody talked very plainly. It was down-and-dirty. Susan and Julia would say, 'Here's what it needs.' And we plunged right in." Bass was struck by the difference in the style of the two actresses. "Both of them are articulate," he says, "but Susan generally is the one who takes the lead. Julia will sit back and listen, then will step in and make her point directly and succinctly. She's more surgical, whereas Susan is more expansive. Yet they're very tight with each other. They communicate with their eyes, almost like sisters."

Contrary to some people's belief, Bass did not write My Best Friend's Wedding in order to rescue Roberts from some of the dreary dramas (like Mary Reilly and Michael Collins) that she had been making. He wrote the script on spec, one of the only times he has ever done that. "I'd never written an all-out comedy before," he explains, "and I didn't want someone at a studio telling me how to do it. Comedy is so subjective. So I wrote it on spec, and it sold. I tried not to think of a specific actress while I was writing it, but I probably did have Julia in mind even more than I realized. So much of it just kept sliding toward the stuff that she does so well--that Lucy Ricardo nutsiness, and the way she can be frantic and staccato and waspish, and then just break your heart in the next instant."

When Bass completed the script for My Best Friend's Wedding, his agent planned to send it to the top companies around town and auction it to the highest bidder. But Bass was about to take a trip to Hong Kong with filmmaker Luis Mandoki (the director of When a Man Loves a Woman) and an executive from United Artists to research a project, and he wanted the auction to begin after his return. Right before his departure, the script was leaked to a few people, and it then ended up being sent to all the major players in Hollywood just as Bass was boarding the plane for Hong Kong. While they were on the plane, Bass gave the script to the executive from United Artists.

"He read it and loved it and wanted to make an offer on it," Bass recalls. "He wanted to call the head of the studio right then and there. But the phones weren't working on the plane. So he said, 'Tell me how much money would be the offer you couldn't refuse.' I didn't want to do it, but he kept pressing me, so finally I named a very high number. He said, 'Great. As soon as we land, we're going to take the limo to the Peninsula hotel and go right to the phone before we even go to our rooms, and we're going to call the studio and buy it for your price.' I said, 'This is the easiest deal I ever made.' We landed in Hong Kong and went to the Peninsula hotel, and the clerk said, 'Mr. Bass, you have a fax.' It was from my lawyer, saying, 'Congratulations, the script has been sold to TriStar, and Julia Roberts is starring in it.' I have no idea how she got it so quickly. It all happened in the 17 hours that I was on that plane. It actually sold for the price this guy from United Artists would have paid."

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