From The Independent:

You, too, can be a star

My biggest year was 1994. I wrote five scripts in one year. I made almost $10m. I had houses in Tiburon and Malibu, California, and in Kapalua, Maui.

I made half a million dollars for writing a 30-second television commercial for Chanel No 5 perfume. I fell in love. I got divorced. I married my second wife. Our first child was born.

I had the best tables at Spago and The Ivy and at Granita, Postrio, and Roy’s. I had limos in northern California, in Malibu, and on Maui.

I ate more, I drank more, I made love more, and I spent more time in the sun than I ever had. The world was my oyster.

These are the words hollywood lives by

“Keep your friends close to you, but keep your enemies closer.” These words of advice were first said to me by a female producer who still occasionally slept with her ex-husband, also a producer, even though she had remarried and was “absolutely in love” with her new husband.

Her ex-husband had beaten her, sold naked photos of her to a website, told the court she was a “whore and a druggie” in a custody fight, put a .45 Magnum into her mouth and pulled the trigger, and tried to blackball her in the industry. She loathed and feared him but slept with him whenever he wanted to “keep him close” and neutralise him.

The panic list

Allegedly kept by the studios, it is a list of those who badly need money and will work cheap. The only time I heard direct mention of it was in a studio meeting with a Paramount executive, who suggested hiring a well-known director for one of my scripts and said: “He’s on the panic list. He just bought a house in Martha’s Vineyard and needs to go to work.”

You’re dealing with horribly spoiled people

I sent Sharon Stone 100 red roses once. She sent me a card thanking me. I sent her a gold bracelet. She called and asked me to dinner.

Do anything to sell your script

Actress Sigourney Weaver was in the middle of her gynaecological exam when the doctor said: “I have written a screenplay. Could you possibly read it?”

Call yourself on the phone

If you want people to think that you’re important, have yourself paged by friends at the Polo Lounge or at the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The producer Robert Evans once took a phone call from director Roman Polanski while being interviewed for ABC’s 20/20. An ABC staffer picked an extension up and found Evans speaking to dead air. Bob had faked the call from Roman.

Make ’em feel smart and you’ll get your way

I learned this trick from screenwriter Waldo Salt (Midnight Cowboy). He’d finish his script and then tear six or seven pages out of it and turn the script in to the studio. The studio execs would sometimes — not always — notice that something seemed to be missing from a sequence and suggest that he fill it in with some scenes. Seemingly acting on their suggestions, he would then put the pages that he had torn out back into the script. The studio executives would then praise him for listening to, and acting upon, their suggestions.

Don’t ever quit a job

If you’ve been hired to work on a script and you loathe the director and the producer and you feel that what you wrote is being truncated… don’t decide to quit. Keep telling them that you are “ready, willing, and able to perform” — legalese right out of the contract that you signed. If you are pleasantly intransigent, they will fire you. You’ll be paid in full and reports will quote “creative differences”.

Write six pages of script a day

Stick to this schedule no matter what. You’ll have a finished first draft in roughly twenty days. Then go back and edit what you’ve written. Spend no more than five days on this edit.

Then rewrite your script from page one — with your edits. Spend no more than one week on this rewrite — that means putting out 20 pages a day.

Put the script away for a week; don’t even look at it. Then edit it once again. Spend no more than four days on the edit this time. Then rewrite it again from scratch with your edits — taking another week. This will be your third draft. Now begin the process of trying to sell it — this, your official first draft.

High concept

The best high-concept definition of a film I’ve ever heard is producer Robert Evans’ description of his film The Cotton Club: “Gangsters, music, pussy.”