Hollywood Screenwriter Turned Battery Park City Resident Looks Back

Heywood Gould at home in Battery Park City. Behind him are posters of some of the movies he wrote. Photo: Carl Glassman/The Tribeca Trib

During the past 50 years, Heywood Gould has written and directed a prodigious number of screenplays and TV shows along with over a dozen novels, essays and reviews. Many of the books and films, like The Boys from Brazil [1], Fort Apache,The Bronx, [2] and One Good Cop [3], are thrillers, populated with tough, wise-ass talkers and assorted grifters.

A Battery Park City resident for the last 10 years, Gould, 78, has now added an autobiography to his credits: "Drafted: A Memoir of the '60s [4]." He describes his misadventures working in a Brooklyn funeral home, working as a reporter for The New York Post (then considered, he says, a "pinko rag"), living in a hotel for prostitutes in Paris and conning chess players in Washington Square Park. "It was a hard book to write," Gould said. "I had to look into myself and remember times of loneliness and humiliation."

Recently, the Trib's April Koral met with Gould in Rockefeller Park, where he reminisced about his years in Hollywood and the writing life.

Was Hollywood always a lure for you?

Not at all. I started out writing fiction books, and even though they were being published, I still had to work as a bartender to support myself. When I was in my late 20s I did some scripts for the TV show N.Y.P.D. Then the show got cancelled and everyone went out to California. I stayed here because I didn't want to become a Hollywood hack. 

I rented an office from my old employer, Walter B. Cooke Funeral Home on 77th Street. No one wanted to have an office in a building with a funeral parlor but I didn't care. So I had a cheap office for 22 years. I typed all my books there on a Royal Portable I got as a bar mitzvah present. I still have it. I eventually did go out to L.A. and became a Hollywood hack, which turned out to be fine.

Is that really how you thought of yourself?

Yeah. I never liked L.A. I felt like I never really belonged in that culture. But I was making money so I stayed. Whenever I sold a script or even a book for that matter, I thought, wow, I got away with that and if this movie gets made, I'll have a couple more years of business because people will hire me. And if the movie makes money, I'll have even more years in the business. And that's what happened. The movies made money and I just kept going, and I kept saying wow, this is great.

But after 19 years, I could see the movie jobs were coming in slower and they were going to stop. I had writer friends whose time had passed, which happens to everybody—almost everybody—and they hung in anyway and you'd see them in coffee shops bitterly telling old war stories about things that happened years before. I didn't want to be in that crowd. So I left before the work petered out. Now it's kind of coming back, even for me. I don't know what's happening. People are calling me and talking about movie jobs. But I don't know if I want to do it again.

Why not?

Because I don't want to be part of a business where people are forcing me to change and rewrite. My kids are all taking care of themselves. I don't have any more tuitions. It was ok when I had to do it, but I don't need to do it now.

Were you proud of your work?

The movies came out ok. People liked them. But they're not yours. And when I had to make changes in the script that I didn't like, it killed me. I had bitter arguments all the time. My agent said to me, you're burning bridges. But I didn't care. Now I look back and I don't know what I was thinking and it kind of makes me laugh. Also I had to admit that a lot of the changes they forced me to make made the movies more popular.

For example?

In “Cocktail,” which was based on my book, the original story was dark and the movie was, too. But they kept insisting I lighten it up and make a happy ending, which I did. And I hated it. So the movie turns out to be a huge hit and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it has a happy ending. They were in the business  to make successful movies, but what I wanted to do was translate my brooding dark vision onto the screen.

What about when you became a director?

I never understood that the real function of a director is to take a script and make a successful movie, which by everyone's definition is to make money at the box office. If the director doesn't do that he or she is a failure. I was a purist writer and I translated that into being a director. I didn't get that the director should look at the material and always have an eye on the market. There were moments in those movies when I could have gone in a certain direction that would have made them more successful, and I didn't.

I guess you still like to write?

It's beyond liking. I can't say I like or don't like to write. I have to write. I'm compelled to do it. I work six days a week, usually from about 11:30 to 6. Before I start to work, I read one chapter in the Bible. Ernest Hemingway did that and so did Willa Cather. The stories in the Bible produce a vivid image in your mind with a minimum of language, no adornment, no adjectivers, nothing. Just a narrative. It's pretty amazing. It teaches me a lesson that I have to learn every day in my life as a writer. Don't overwrite. Adjectives and fancy elegant variations don't work. Clarity is important. What do you want to communicate?

Is it different to be writing now, when you're 78?

Very different. At 78 you are not worried whether or not you'll find a publisher or a producer. You really are not even worried about how the book is received. Of course I want to be a big hero and get great reviews. But you don't care as much. What difference does it make? Plus I'm already working on something else. And if nobody likes it, ok. The important thing was that you got the book or movie done. It's there.

What are you writing now?

I'm happy to say that I'm experimenting with learning new stuff. I always wanted to write short stories, these little moments in time or space. It took me 40 years to write a proper short story. Now I know how to do it, and I've had some published. I'm also working on a new book.

What's that about?

I've had lymphoma three times. That's what my next book is about. The first time I got it was in 2000 and I had just wrapped a movie for HBO and was about to do another one. My agent said don't tell anybody. I was going through chemotherapy. I looked like shit. I told him that anyone who knows me,, will know that I don't look like this. Don't worry, and he set up meetings with people who didn't know me. As far as they were concerned, I was just some weird-looking guy with no hair. And I worked for the next couple of years writing scripts and getting jobs and no one knew. 

I hope I can finish this book. I do a lot of rewriting. I might have 10 or 15 drafts of a book. This is a very difficult craft, but I think I'm getting better.