When a Script Pales, Who Do They Call?

BY PAUL WISENTHAL.

IT'S 4:30 A.M. on a cold, dark December day on the shores of the Great Sacandaga Lake. Most of the residents of this small Adirondack Mountain summer community have flown south for the winter. One of its few permanent residents, David Rayfiel, lives in a tidy glass and red-brick home and loves the isolation. Although he may be almost invisible in this remote community, in Hollywood his work is in great demand. Rayfiel commands scriptwriting fees of well over $1 million dollars a project and has worked on such films as "The Way We Were" and "Out of Africa." He is one of a select group of writers who are called on by Hollywood's studio heads, producers and directors to polish a script, rewrite a scene, beef up a character or perhaps add comic dialogue. Their creative remedies may be summoned in the middle of shooting or before production begins. Sometimes their services are needed for weeks, other times for only a day. Known as script doctors, screenwriters can grab the chance to earn as much as $200,000 a week, often without screen credit for their work. Of the thousands of scripts written every year, only a few hundred writers see their works produced and receive a screen credit. "Screenwriting is not an easy business to break into," says Marty Waldman, spokesman for the Writers Guild East part of the Writers Guild of America, which has 10,000 members. Unlike Rayfiel, most film writers do not relish isolating their talents in the woods. They stay close to the Hollywood studios, where all the action is. When Mike De Luca, New Line's president, needed some rewrites for the comedy thriller "The Mask," he sought the services of two hot comedy writers, Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, whose screen credits include "City Slickers" and "A League of Their Own." The film, based on the comic-book series of the same name, stars "Ace Ventura's" Jim Carrey and is due for July 29 release. Written by Mike Werb, it is a story about a mysterious ancient relic that turns an average guy into a wise-cracking superhero. Mandel and Ganz added gags to the original material and were paid $150,000 for a week's work. Yet, according to the Writer's Guild of America, only Werb will receive a screen credit. "Most of us are not that interested in rewriting other people's scripts," says John Bishop. "We do it for the money." Bishop got into the script business in 1958, after spending time in the Marines and then driving a truck. For a while he worked as an Off-Broadway stage director / writer. He couldn't support his family, so he decided to take a shot at screenwriting. In his spare time he wrote about a hired assassin, based on the Kennedy assassination. Orion bought it and produced "The Package" with Gene Hackman in the lead role. Today, Bishop lives in Los Angeles and makes a very good living under contract to Paramount Studios as both a screenwriter and a script doctor. He did production rewrites for "Beverly Hills Cop 3." "I worked on the dialogue for John Landis, the film's director," he said. He also had a creative hand in "Sliver" and "Navy SEALs." And he has just completed three months of rewrites on "Deep Zone," a Wesley Snipes movie due for December release. Often studios will call in pros like Bishop to do a quick polish, and sometimes the job may drag on for months. "Rewrites are very common in Hollywood," says Warner Bros. production executive Bill Gerber. When Warner bought "Grumpy Old Men," Mark Steven Johnson's first script, the studio prescribed some seasoned surgery before investing millions in the film's production. They hired screenwriters Will Davies and Will Osborne ("Twins," "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot") to add comedy to the picture. "We usually get hired for three weeks to a month to do rewrites," Osborne said from his home in London. They ended up spending more than seven months adding tension and jeopardy to the story. They brought a number of layered subplots to the story and lots of little bits of physical comedy between the Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau characters. "We had them watering each other's roofs in mid-winter so the snow would fall as one of them left the house. Trying to flip each other's channels with their TV remotes," Davies said, "all with the idea of increasing the pace of the film." Sometimes, one night's work is all that's needed. In his earlier years, screenwriter Robert Towne, who wrote "Chinatown," "Shampoo" and many others, earned most of his sizable income from rewrites and script-doctoring. Famous in the business for his accurate instincts, Towne has performed his anonymous operations on "Bonnie and Clyde," "Marathon Man," "Swing Shift" and others. In 1971, Towne received an urgent call from Francis Ford Coppola during the shooting of "The Godfather." Marlon Brando had one day left on the production, and to keep him beyond the contracted date would have cost the studio millions. The director needed one important scene between father and son that was not in the book and crucial to the plot structure of the film, and it had to be done immediately. "I met with Coppola, Marlon and Al [Pacino] on the set," explained Towne. He wrote until 4 in the morning. The next day they shot the scene where Don Corleone passes the torch of Mafia power to his son. When Coppola accepted the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, he publicly acknowledged Towne's contribution. Towne earned $3,000 for this memorable effort. A great script doctor, as opposed to a competent one, goes beyond merely serving someone else's vision. Oscar winner, producer / director Sydney Pollack collaborated with Rayfiel on a number of his films, including "Out of Africa," "The Way We Were" and "The Firm." He summed up Rayfiel's invaluable contribution to the rewriting process: "More than any other I've worked with, he helped me get at the underpinnings of characters and translating that into words. He's very good with women characters and with love stories, and those are what I do."