Mothers, don`t let your babies grow up to be screenwriters. It`s the pits, according to Larry McMurtry, whose novels have been turned into films:
”Terms of Endearment,” ”The Last Picture Show,” ”Hud.” ”For decades writers have drifted around Hollywood more or less like unloved wives,”
writes McMurtry in ”Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood” (Simon & Schuster). ”If one were to make a misery graph of Hollywood, screenwriters would mark high on the curve. Their gloom may not be as acute as that of a director whose most recent picture has just flopped, but it is more consistent.”
No one can call Bruce Boxleitner an overnight success. He worked in the theater and played small parts in movies and on TV before finally getting lucky with ”Scarecrow and Mrs. King.” Calling himself ”a steady comer,” he sometimes can`t help but get a little jealous when someone like Bruce Willis or John Travolta quickly becomes a superstar. ”It`s human nature to feel a little twinge,” says Boxleitner, ”but I`d rather be a consistent, working actor.” After all, he might add, where is Erik Estrada these days?
Cher is not going gently into middle age. In the August issue of McCall`s she talks about how much she hated turning 40. ”I know I`m very immature a lot of the time,” says Cher. ”It`s funny, but when I was young, I felt much older. When I was 6, I felt as old as I do now. I always thought there was going to be some big door that you walked through at a certain time; then you`d be grown up and older. Well, I still don`t know where it is, if it`s there at all.”
REPLAYS
”The automobile changed our dress, manners, social customs, vacation habits, the shape of our cities, consumer-purchasing patterns, common tastes and positions in intercourse.” John Keats
”Americans (will) accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife-beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn`t drive, there`s something wrong with him.” Art Buchwald
”Climbing into a hot car is like buckling on a pistol. It is the great equalizer.” Henry Gregor Felsen
