June 17–24, 1999

book quarterly

Up, Down and Out in Beverly Hills

Paul Mazursky on the golden years and tarnished days of Hollywood.

by a.d. amorosi

With a subtitle like "My Adventures in Life and Hollywood With Peter Sellers, Stanley Kubrick, Danny Kaye, Freddie Fields, Blake Edwards, Britt Ekland, Jo Van Fleet, Federico Fellini, Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes, Mick Jagger, Paul Newman, Gena Rowlands, Elia Kazan… " (it goes on for another 20 names), writer-director-actor Paul Mazursky makes no bones about his memoir, Show Me The Magic (Simon & Schuster), being a name-dropper. Still, this isn’t exactly a tell-all. It tackles the extended, dysfunctional Hollywood family that Mazursky has grown to love over the years.

Like Mazursky’s best films, Enemies: A Love Story, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas or Down And Out In Beverly Hills, the anecdotes often take the common man to starry elevated heights while deflating the star to muddy, dusty lows. Even though there’s plenty of dishing, Mazursky manages to imbue these tales with an endearing warmth, where the big names are more like close friends than stars.

"I like to stay in touch with a reality that isn’t star-studded, showbizzy," says Mazursky from his Beverly Hills film offices, where he’s currently working on dropping 10 pounds and a new script, Hot Friday.

As he would do when he’s trying to explain a role to any actor, Mazursky acts out each role in Magic, making each character’s voice echo with his own slightly irreverent tone and often shedding light on wacky greats who’ve gone to the great beyond.

"Death is a sure way not to embarrass someone and I did take advantage of it once or twice. But for the most part this is not a book designed to tell all and hurt," he says.

There’s no denying that Mazursky’s worked with an impressive list of talents: acting days in Kubrick’s first feature film Fear and Desire, writing for Danny Kaye’s TV show, directing Natalie Wood in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. He’s also had to handle an impressive array of goofballs: the always precious Warren Beatty, the mercurial Kaye and the completely loopy Peter Sellers.

"I never use kid gloves," says Mazursky about having to dance with and duck from Sellers while making Toklas. Sellers’ raging jealousy toward anyone who got near his wife Britt Ekland would’ve probably sent a lesser man into a tizzy. (Sellers accused Mazursky of having an affair with Ekland, completely without cause.)

"Sellers was genius. And in his own way, so too was Danny Kaye. The world of entertainment can use more geniuses like them. There’s no more true eccentrics around. But you have to use a dose of reality around them.… As for Warren, he’s witty, generous and very wary, so he always winds up not doing my films."

Stories. Mazursky’s got a million of ’em. Playing tennis with the dreaded Elia Kazan. Conning Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands into Tempest or traveling to the Soviet Union to research Moscow On The Hudson in jaunts loaded with black market secrecy, KGB agents and Robin Williams’ dopey schtick.

What makes Mazursky’s stories so much richer than the antics of today’s strip-mall comics, is that Mazursky has a rich sense of his heritage as well as the classic show biz struggle.

"I think what’s missing in today’s comics is that they lack that sense of struggle, the street-level gutsiness, the heart and experience of hard knocks and a genuine religious experience," says Mazursky. "Yuppie comics just aren’t as funny as those who shopped with pushcarts."

And though Mazursky still works consistently (see his list of not-yet-filmed projects at book’s end for a sense of how busy he is), he’s wary of the present-day system with its focus groups, big-money marketing and corporate sponsorships.

"The business has changed in the ‘90s," he says, "more kid execs, more special effects. That’s why stuff like Winchell [his biopic on the legendary columnist Walter Winchell for HBO starring Stanley Tucci] was fun to make, because HBO left me alone. Forget the Taco Bell stuff."