Howie and his mother take the can of ashes and they drive down the West Side Highway searching for a spot where they could scatter the ashes in the river. But they can’t find an easy place to get close to the river itself. Finally, around Seventy-ninth Street he gets off the highway and makes his way down to the riverbank.
Howie climbs up on a rock and looks out on the river with tears in his eyes. He says, “Goodbye, Dad. Rest peacefully in your wonderful Hudson River.” With that he opens the coffee can and hurls the ashes toward the river.
…But the blustery December wind has other ideas.
It takes the ashes and blows most of them right back into Howie’s overcoat. Unfortunately, it is a dark blue double-breasted coat with a belt in the back. (It looked like cashmere but it wasn’t.)
So for the next half hour Howie smacks his overcoat like he’s beating a rug to get some of the ashes into the river. All the while repeating, “Goodbye, Dad! Love you, Dad! Rest in Peace!” etc.
So I asked him, “Howie, where do you think your father’s final resting place is? In the river? On the banks of the river? Where?”
And he says, “I don’t know for sure, but I’ll tell you this—every time I pass Rand Cleaners on Seventy-ninth Street I break into tears!”
So that bizarre but true story worked perfectly in the goodbye-to-Sailor scene in Life Stinks.
* * *
—
The aforementioned Rudy De Luca, one of the writers, played a homeless guy who was delusional in Life Stinks. He thought he was actually billionaire J. Paul Getty, and when my character tells him he’s a real billionaire living in the slums on a bet, Rudy’s character becomes incensed and insists he’s much richer. So we begin to fight. We get into a Three Stooges–type slapping scene. It’s funny as hell, but unfortunately in order to make it work we really slapped each other senseless. Talk about slapstick—we turned it into slapschtick and really went to town.
That’s one of the key things I keep in mind when making a movie: You must always strive to create an illusion of reality. Hence, the real slaps. While the actor in me was unhappy with the pain, the director in me, after looking at the monitor after the last take, was happy with the utter crazy reality of the scene.
It wasn’t easy directing myself as an actor. I always demanded the best from my actors, and I didn’t stop when I demanded it of myself. After all, this was the first and only picture that I made in which I carried the whole film as the lead. Its success hinged on my performance. Normally, in other movies, I’d nail a scene in three or four takes, but in Life Stinks sometimes I’d do up to sixteen takes to make sure that I wasn’t just phoning it in.
There was another scene that I really thought was telling in the film. It concerns the fact that even though my character lived on the streets for thirty days and had won the bet—my lawyers sell me out to my rival. I tell them, “You’ve been with me ten years. How could you turn on me? Where’s your sense of loyalty, honesty, decency?”
They respond: “Mr. Bolt…we’re lawyers.”
(I’m sure that didn’t sit well with some of the lawyers of the world!)
* * *
—
Near the end of the movie, Lesley Ann Warren’s character, Molly, has a wonderful speech, where she’s trying to motivate my character in the hospital as my health is touch-and-go:
Molly: I know you wanna give up, but you’re wrong. Even without money, life is good. No? What about when—when you didn’t eat for two days and then you had your first big meal at the mission? Wasn’t that good? Remember the other night? When we drank champagne and danced…and rolled around in rags? I know they’re only moments, but that’s all life is: just a bunch of moments. Most of them are lousy…but once in a while, you steal a good one. Come on. Come on back to me. Don’t be such a selfish bastard. You’re the only person I can stand!
By the end of it she’s crying and begs, “Don’t leave me. I love you. Please. Don’t leave me.”
Somehow the speech gets to me and I open my eyes and say, “Molly, you’re crying. What happened? Did somebody die?”
And through her tears she smiles and says, “No, somebody lived.”
* * *
—
I loved making Life Stinks. Every minute of it: living down in the slums, the rats, and the unrelenting smell of urine. I loved saying what I had to say about these courageous people who lived in alleys, in the gutter, who went to the mission for their dinner, and despite all of their adversity they were kind to one another. There was a sweetness about it. I felt it was a testament to the enduring human spirit.
I believe Life Stinks was also the best work I have ever done as an actor. One of my personal favorite moments of all my movies is in this one: I’m on the roof of an old warehouse in the slums. I’ve done thirty days’ living in garbage and filth. I’ve been a billionaire for the last twenty years, and now here I am penniless.
I go up to the roof and I say, “God, thirty days. A month.” And I began to cry. I’m just so happy and relieved that I did it.
And I say, “Thank you. Thank you, God.” And then I take a pause and I say, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you when I was rich.”
And then I just leave. It’s my favorite line because it’s both funny and touching.
* * *
—
It was a foolish and brave movie to make, and I’m lucky that even with the title Life Stinks, it actually broke even. Not only did it get its money back, but also, interestingly, foreign sales did very well—especially in Italy, where it was actually a big hit. Number one for six weeks running! Unbeknownst to me, but knownst to the Italians, I made a kind of Italian movie. I guess I joined De Sica and Fellini as a fellow filmmaker in speaking to the human condition.
Chapter 23
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Not many people know this, but Robin Hood: Men in Tights was not the first time I had fun with the legend of Robin Hood. In the mid-seventies, Norman Steinberg (who was one of the writers on Blazing Saddles) and two other writers, Norman Stiles and John Boni, came to me with an idea of a parody of Robin Hood. I liked the idea, so we turned it into a half-hour television comedy called When Things Were Rotten.