From the "People" Archives:

by Anthony Kaufman

Comedian Mort Sahl told documentarian Robert Weide to label the video box of his new documentary "Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth," reading: "12 years in-the-negotiations." Although the film had been mostly completed and mostly shot throughout the early 80's, Weide still needed to negotiate the extra finishing funds to bring his film to the screen. Now, 12 years, several documentaries, and one feature film later, "Lenny Bruce" finally returns to New York with a two-week run at the Film Forum.

After making a living on documentary profiles about famous comedians like "The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell" (1982), "The Great Standups: Sixty Years of Laughter" (1984), and "W.C. Fields Straight Up" (1986), Weide hoped to explore that "pivotal period where we went from mother-in-law jokes, and your wife's cooking to more socially and politically-conscious material" with a 3-part documentary series for PBS on Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Dick Gregory. With seed money from PBS and the "American Masters" series, Weide was able to finish the first in the series, "Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition" (1989), but, he says, "Lenny and Dick Gregory had been sitting on the shelf all that time."

After putting much of his own money into the project, he put together a cut in 1995, for the Toyota Comedy Festival. With a fine cut in hand, Weide approached HBO and the rest is explained below. Weide, just back from lunch with author Kurt Vonnegut (who he's been making a documentary about for 10 years), speaks about his happiness with HBO, getting Robert De Niro to do the voice over, and his experiences with Fine Line over his writing and producing debut, "Mother Night."

indieWIRE: Why didn't you approach HBO in the 80's, after you had done that "The Great StandUps" film for them?

Weide: I thought HBO would never do this, because, if you think about it, they don't really do documentary profiles of this sort. Although I guess they're starting to do some. They just did "Babe Ruth," although I don't even know if that was their documentary department; it may have been their sports department. They tend to do titillating subjects. . . . But, yeah I had done some other things for them as well. But the fact that the seed money was PBS's, I just felt that I'm going to have to make this for PBS. Eventually, once HBO got interested, I worked out a deal with PBS, whereby for the money that they had already invested, they'll still get a broadcast window subsequent to the HBO broadcast.

iW: How did that work?

Weide: It was that or wait another 12 years to get the money. PBS was happy about it, because I was able to finish my show with someone else's money and they would still get to air it. So, they weren't that hung up on getting the first window, necessarily, as long as they could get it eventually. The understanding between PBS and myself was that I would look for money, they would look for money. And they never came up with anything, and I was having all kinds of trouble, so they were happy still to get the show after all these years.

So I just thought it was unprecedented for HBO, but to her credit, [HBO Executive Producer] Sheila Nevins, she saw it and she loved it and called me up right away without any reservation and said, "We have to finish the show, what's it going to take, what do you need, what do you have left to do?" We basically worked it all out. We came up with a budget figure that would allow me to finish what I needed to finish, plus pay off all the clips. Part of the problem with a show that utilizes so many clips is if you're licensing that material -- this applies to everything, music, still photographs, but primarily film and TV clips -- if you're licensing just for PBS, you might get charged X number of dollars per minute, but if you come to them for cable, it's going to be X times 4 per minute, because cable is viewed as a commercial enterprise and PBS is not. So, I knew it was going to raise all the licensing fees. So, we worked it out with HBO so that we'd have the money we needed to license all the material and finish the show.

I'm not one to blow smoke up anyone's ass -- I say this for no other reason than it's true -- but this has really been the best relationship I've had with the money people on any project. It just makes all the difference when they're really behind it, when they have something to gain from it. Sheila Nevins loved the project, she became extremely passionate about it. . . . They see this as their big documentary for ‘99. They paid to have a film print struck off of the edited video master, so that we could run it at the Film Forum and qualify for the Academy [Awards]. Usually, it's like pulling teeth to get anyone to promote anything or to get behind it, but HBO has just been great.

iW: Did HBO bring De Niro aboard to do the voice over? [Comedian David Steinberg narrated an earlier cut.]

Weide: HBO understandably wanted a bigger name. So, then the whole question came up, who do we go to? HBO was really pushing for George Carlin. And I just felt that was too on the nose, too close. I thought that's going to come off as, here's the guy who carried the torch from Lenny and I didn't want to invite those comparisons. So, I was really fighting for an unexpected choice, someone who might bare some spiritual connection to Lenny, but wouldn't be a comedian cut from such similar cloth. I was suggesting weird names like Paul Simon, who's paid tribute to Lenny in a few of his songs and I thought if we did go with a comedian, someone very unlike Lenny like Steve Martin. . . . And then what happened was, we were watching the film and one of the HBO executives saw a picture of Lenny that looked like De Niro. . . and [Supervising Producer] Anthony Radziwill said, "What about De Niro as narrator?" And my jaw just dropped and I said, "Perfect idea." There's something about that that's so right and I don't know why, but it really worked.

De Niro and I both have the same agency, CAA. So I called up and said, "Who do I get this to?" And they gave me a name for someone at his office in Tribeca. But the problem was De Niro was in Miami, on location. . . . What happened was there was a lot of confusion. They confirmed the tape was sent to him, nobody knew if he had seen it, then after they wrapped location, he went on vacation somewhere. Then his assistant called me back, and said we've just heard from him and he watched the tape on the boat or something, but he wants to do it. So that's how we got De Niro. And I asked De Niro how much he knew about Lenny, or if he was a big fan, and he said, "No, not really." He just responded to the material, he liked the film, and he agreed to do it, and he did it for very little money.

iW: What do you think of the market for docs right now?

Weide: These ancillary markets specifically cable, Bravo does some wonderful stuff, IFC is starting to do some original things. Again, Sheila Nevins has kind of become the patron saint of these things. There may be some people out there who want to do real, wild, radical, socially-hard-hitting documentaries who think that HBO is just another big, commercial network. But the kinds of stuff that I do, luckily, are suited to HBO and I hope to more things with them. But the fact is, my story, as far as documentaries that have needed help, HBO has come to the rescue and I think that's a common story now. PBS, there's still wonderful things on PBS, but if you've ever tried to get PBS money, it's just such a bureaucratic, time-consuming situation and their applications, and guidelines and cycles and what you need to submit, I just don't have the patience for that anymore and I'm not really staffed to be on top of the funding cycles and all that.

iW: With the release of "Mother Night," your first narrative feature, did it make things easier on your career? [Weide wrote and produced the movie from the Kurt Vonnegut novel. Keith Gordon directed.]

Weide: Whenever you do a film like this, very well-meaning friends always tell you, "You'll be able to write your own ticket after this. Once this film gets out there, and you make millions, and it wins all these Academy Awards." Keith used to laugh at that, because if we were out to win Oscars and be wealthy, we'd be doing different kinds of films. We knew that "Mother Night" was never going to be a hugely commercial film. I think we both have some complaints about how the film was handled, and marketed and all that, but even if Fine Line had done everything right, I don't know that the film would've made that more much money than it did.

Ruth Vitale was very much behind our film, and very passionate about it. She greenlit it. But the problem is the people who greenlight the films up-front, are not the same people a year and a half later who have to sell them. So, you might have a Ruth Vitale at Fine Line who's very enthused about the film, and she was, and you make the film. And then you hand it in a year and a half later to these marketing people who look at it and go, "We didn't greenlight this. We don't know how to sell this." That's part of the problem.

iW: Did it do well overseas?

Weide: No. They really dropped the ball overseas. . . . Both the German distributors and the Israeli distributors decided not to release the film. . . I was joking, "Talk about a new world order, we'd created something that's reunited a reunified Germany and Israel." They barely opened it in London. . . . I was getting e-mail from British Vonnegut fans, saying, "When is the film coming to London?" And I'd say, "It's there now! Don't look for ads, because there aren't any." They really didn't publicize. They were going to fly me and Keith out, and then just Keith out for publicity, and then they failed even to fly Keith out. No ads, no posters, no nothing.

iW: You have a new Kurt Vonnegut novel you're adapting, "The Sirens of Titan"?

Weide: I'm just going to write it on spec. . . . There was actually a piece in Variety some time ago, about the fact that I had the rights to this. Calls started coming in from the smaller, independent studios, saying, we'd like, maybe, to do some business. Maybe, we can buy the book for you, and I was like, "No, I'm getting it free, so no one needs to buy it for me." I don't want a studio looking over my shoulder, telling me what to do, or saying your option expires, so I said, No, I'm going to do what I did with "Mother Night." I'm going to write this on spec and when I'm finished, I'll take it around and whoever wants to make it and whoever understands it, gets it -- whoever doesn't want to change it, or put it into development Hell, or cast Pauley Shore as the lead, will have a crack at it.

[With "Mother Night"], Fine Line did not own the script, rights did not pass into their hands until Nick Nolte, Keith [Gordon] and I were all pay or play, and it wasn't until the first day of principle photography. Because the idea was not to sell the script to somebody who would then sit on it forever, or put another writer on it, or start to develop it or change it or not make it or whatever. So, the contract actually said that the script was pre-approved. We actually had a clause in the contract saying that the ending would not be changed, meaning that our hero dies at the end. So, number one, the script was pre-approved and number two, they didn't own it until they were too far into it to turn back. It's funny, because it seemed like such a natural way to go for us, and yet people that I mention that to, say, "Wow, that's interesting. That's really clever." I'm surprised more people don't do that. Some writers will go out on a limb, will write something on spec, and then sell it to the highest bigger, without any thought about who's actually going to make it or who's going to make it right.