STAGE : Thriving in Hollywood : Playwrights Can Work in the Industry and Love It--Artistically and Financially

The story, according to Clifford Odets biographer Gerald Weales, goes like this: Odets, that remarkable shooting star of a playwright (“Waiting for Lefty,” “Awake and Sing!”), had been snatched up by Hollywood to write scripts.

His wife, Luise Rainer, planned a party, Viennese-style, on the servants’ night off. She would serve.

Odets was aghast. This wasn’t Vienna, this was Hollywood, and in Hollywood, one had servants. Otherwise, why come here?

Odets presents the classic Faustian image: the powerless playwright given everything but artistic satisfaction by an all-powerful, product-churning Hollywood studio.

The image may have been true in the ‘40s. In 1988, however, it is far from reality.

Today, an increasing number of playwrights live and work in the shadow of the film and television studios and appear to be thriving, artistically and financially.

They have lived in Los Angeles long enough to know that, as playwright and L.A. native John Steppling puts it: “The industry informs every aspect of this town. It permeates everything . It even permeates dry-cleaning stores.”

Yet as Los Angeles theaters have sprouted, providing arenas for new plays and playwrights, the writer need no longer make that fateful choice between Hollywood “money work” and theater “art.”

“You can do both, and it’s OK to do both,” said Mayo Simon, a veteran of television’s so-called Golden Age of live drama (he worked with the promising young director Sidney Lumet) and the author of such difficult and disparate plays as “These Men” and “A Rich Full Life.”

With all the pitfalls and false hopes, Simon says, the dream of a dual-track career for talented dramatists is being realized here as it is in no city this side of London.

“New York is no longer an option for a writer,” Simon said, “but, like London, L.A. definitely is. In both cities, there’s a wealth of gifted people here who move from stage to film and back again.”

Some examples:

Simon, a prolific television writer and screenwriter for “Marooned,” whose latest play, “Elaine’s Daughter,” was at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays at Louisville’s Actors Theatre.

Steppling, whose new play, “Pledging My Love,” has just opened at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and is working on an original screenplay for the director-star duo of “Barfly,” Barbet Schroeder and Mickey Rourke.

Jon Robin Baitz, author of the highly regarded “The Film Society,” recently signed by HBO to write “Jack and Jill,” an original (and first) screenplay.

Jane Anderson, author-performer of two very successful and idiosyncratic plays at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, “How to Raise a Gifted Child” and “Defying Gravity,” now preparing a 30-minute pilot for GTG Entertainment, the new production unit headed by Grant Tinker.

Samm-Art Williams, playwright of the Tony-nominated Broadway hit “Home” as well as “Eyes of the American” (seen at the Los Angeles Theatre Center) and presently staff writer for CBS-TV’s “Frank’s Place.”

Oliver Hailey, who switches between television and stage (“Who’s Happy Now?,” “Father’s Day” and “I Won’t Dance”).

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, who served as creative consultant with husband Oliver on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” just before becoming a best-selling novelist (“A Woman of Independent Means,” which she adapted to the stage), now “happily,” she reports, in the throes of a screenplay.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley (“Crimes of the Heart”), also doing nicely on the large and small screen with her “Crimes” adaptation; “Nobody’s Fool”; the quirky David Byrne collaboration, “True Stories,” and “Climbing the Family Tree” for “Trying Times,” PBS’ experiment in off-the-wall situation comedy.

Many of these have just recently landed lucrative or prestigious deals. Why now? Is it a fad, a momentary lapse of commercial reason on the part of Hollywood? After all, voices such as Steppling’s or Henley’s are considered dark, odd and extreme even by many in the theater world. Yet they’ve entered the world of bigger budgets, and perhaps bigger compromises.

Steppling counters that the growth of independent film in the United States--reflected by the successes of film makers Jim Jarmusch (“Stranger Than Paradise”), the Coen brothers (“Blood Simple” and “Raising Arizona”), films like “Barfly” and companies such as Island Pictures, Cinecom and Alive Films--has created real openings for scripts with vision and language.

“It’s because there’s a solid audience out there for these films now,” Steppling said. “What with theatrical release, video, cable and foreign sales, it’s very hard to lose money on these movies.” And with low budgets come low risks, fostering a climate for more out-of-mainstream stories.

“Writing this screenplay and working with Barbet,” Steppling said, “is identical to the process I go through writing a play.”

Williams will go so far as to say that he has been working to get himself “into the position I’m in right now: writing for quality television.”

“Sure, when you write on staff, even for ‘a writer’s show’ like ‘Frank’s Place,’ you have to leave your ego at the door. But I’m definitely convinced that people are hungry for stories that prize the spoken word.”

In movies or television, though, when it comes down to a sparring match between the word and the image, the image will win every time. Where the playwright has the edge, argued Elizabeth Hailey, is in the mastery of story structure--the aspect of a script deemed most important by producers.

“If they (producers) see that good storytelling on the stage,” Hailey added, “it makes a big impact on them. Oliver’s film and TV work is a direct result of his stage work, especially at the Taper, which is a theater that industry people attend.”

Anderson: “Producers will tell you they’re always scrambling for talented people who can write. The fact is that they are . A lot of them are finding that talent in the theater.”

“There’s no way,” Williams said emphatically, “anybody’s gonna keep me away from the theater. I don’t care what they pay me.”

After years of writing strictly for the visual media, beginning with live TV drama in the 1950s, Simon started writing plays----a reversal of the classic theater-to-Hollywood route.

Crazy? No--pragmatic.

“I did it,” Simon explained, “because of the Dramatists Guild contract, which guarantees that copyright and ownership stay with the author. In that sense, I’m the envy of screenwriters, who are continually yelling and screaming to get back what (rights) they’ve lost over the years.”

“I know I’ve been real lucky with my movie and TV scripts so far,” Henley nearly whispered, as if her luck might end should she say it too loudly.

“Selling one is almost impossible. Writing plays is the only way I can explore my soul.”

But expression rarely pays the bills. And the lack of any steady, theater-based support for playwrights, some suggest, is one of the hidden but major factors today as playwrights cross over into film and television.

“The main problem, as I see it,” said Steppling, “is that theaters don’t commit to writers. They commit to plays.

“So no matter who you are--short of David Mamet or Sam Shepard--you have to take your play to the theater’s artistic directors and the dramaturg and the plethora of middle-management morons who know nothing about theater, but who all feel that you are a property that they now own.”

Yes, the playwright admits, theaters are under enormous budgetary strain and pressure to please subscribers.

“But rather than spending all their money on play development--and I defy anybody to say what that is--theaters would better serve playwrights and the theater by having writer development, sticking with a writer they trust through the early failures. Good plays will result, I guarantee it.

“Otherwise. . . “--Steppling almost shudders, imagining the worst for a young playwright whom he champions, Susan Champagne--”she’ll get a call from her agent to do a ‘St. Elsewhere’ episode. It’ll pay her more money than all she’s ever made in the theater. And she’ll say ‘Yes.’ ”

As for himself, Steppling adds, “I’m getting more freedom working with independent film people like Barbet Schroeder than I am dealing with people like (L.A. Theatre Center artistic director) Bill Bushnell.”

Steppling’s pal Baitz, though, reports that he’s the recipient of a LATC $10,000 grant to write a play, “just on faith. I don’t have a play written for them yet.” It’s support for this play only, he adds, noting that a lot of playwrights in this town, “like John (Steppling), have really gotten a bum deal from theaters.”

A struggling playwright friend, Henley recounted, received her rejected manuscript from a theater by mail--with postage due.

Hollywood may look greener to the victim of such ignominy. But the stakes are higher, and at any time, Oliver Hailey reminded, “you can get fired. Or a star can get absolutely what he wants.”

Or the work can start drying up. Anderson remembered, as if it were yesterday, her staff job on the sitcom, “The Facts of Life”:

“I respect TV writing enormously. Playwrights can get lazy and fall in love with their words, but television writing strengthens your writing muscles. It forces you to get to the point.

“Still, my job was starting to ruin my writing. Up to a point, it made me a better playwright. Past that, I felt like I was churning out jokes. I knew when I had to quit, and I did.”

The tensions are enormous, especially for creative writers who have heard their words uttered before a live audience.

Even worse, Simon emphasized, “paranoia grows. Every profession has its unique affliction, and the writer’s is paranoia. I used to teach a writing class, and I stressed to my students not to have contempt for what they do. A lot of writers do. It can lead to all kinds of internal health problems.”

In line with that, playwrights have to know when to say no to unacceptable TV-film offers.

Oliver Hailey draws his sword in the dirt at the same point Mayo Simon draws his: “I used to say, and still do, ‘I don’t do windows, and I don’t do episodes.’ ”

“I know what it’s like to be poor,” said Williams, recalling his North Carolina farm days when he earned 35 cents an hour. “So I understand very well the temptation to go for the big bucks.

“You have to know when you’re not working on a good show. Then it’s time to bail out. You don’t stay there until it destroys you, no matter how good the money is.”

For all its traps, Hollywood is sneaking up on London as the ideal turf for multimedia writers.

Baitz: “Check out Hanif Kureishi (Royal Court resident playwright and screenwriter of ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ and ‘Sammy and Rosie Get Laid’) and David Hare (author of ‘Plenty’ and writer-director of ‘Wetherby’).

“They’re making great plays and great movies. It helps being where they are. Eventually, the same will be said of L.A.”

“That’s why we moved here 20 years ago,” Oliver Hailey said. “For a dramatist, it’s common sense.”

Steppling, on the other hand, grew up in Hollywood, and saw how unforgiving it can be. Sounding like a survivor from one of his plays about drifters in Tinseltown, he said learning how to protect yourself is an especially important skill in this town.

His theater company, Heliogabalus (which he runs with longtime associate Bob Glaudini), is “made up of actors who, like me, stay on the fringes of the industry. It’s hard to do, because you can either fall off into obscurity or get sucked into the most preposterous projects.”

One he liked to recall was a property that was bounced around at Cannon Group when he worked there. “The title was ‘Zorba the Greek II.’ Are they kidding?”

So Steppling plows ahead with Heliogabalus, preparing a play based on the Old Testament, just as if there were no movie deals in the offing. He’s not alone.

Jane Anderson is looking around for the right home for her new play, after returning from New York, where a rewritten version of “Defying Gravity” is in rehearsal.

Mayo Simon is up in his Pacific Palisades study writing a new play, after writing an “action-adventure.”

Elizabeth Hailey reports she has adapted her latest, semi-autobiographical novel, “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife,” into a two-character drama.

Jon Robin Baitz’s new play, “Dutch Landscape,” is being readied for the Taper, and “The Film Society” has opened in London.

Samm-Art Williams is bursting with plays--a new untitled one, and others he wants to see staged in Los Angeles, such as “Brass Birds Don’t Sing.”

Busy. And not, apparently, selling their souls.