BUCK HENRY HAS AN IMAGE, BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IT IS.
God only knows what it means to be truly creative. The rest of us merely rearrange Her building blocks.
Veteran writer/actor/director Buck Henry, one of many BIG NAMES appearing at the Portland Creative Conference, doesn’t even want to think about creativity. It makes his head hurt.
Catch your first clue about Buck. Dial his home phone somewhere near Hollywood. A machine answers. Boogie woogie piano music. A gravely, bluesy voice sings “My gal got mad and I did, too. Everybody got to tweak that thing. Un Huh.”
Buck Henry calls back. Your second clue. Not every celebrity does that.
Put clue and clue together, you get… quirky, honest and professional. Suspect may be extremely bright.
If Buck Henry has a motto – to tell you the truth, I never thought to ask – it’s SAY WHAT YOU THINK.
“I have no idea what I am going to say,” he admits when asked for a preview of his Creative Conference offerings. “I said, ‘I’ll come, but I have no speech and I am too tired to write one.”
What does creativity mean to Buck? “I haven’t thought about creativity for even a minute. I have no idea,” he says. “I won’t try to answer questions I don’t have answers to.”
His gay-Arab-biker-sushi bar brawl in Goldie Hawn’s Protocol is a classic example of creativity in LaLaLand. Where does a screen writer get the spark for such a scene? “I have no idea. I haven’t seen that film since it opened. So, I don’t know what I was thinking when.”
His best creative effort? “I don’t know.”
The ubiquitous Henry cut his teeth in improvisational theater and bit the big time as a writer for The Steve Allen Show. Henry hasn’t been out of work since.
“My career from there was just one thing after another,” Buck offers with a note of fatalism.
One thing after another. Television. The Garry Moore Show. That Was The Week That Was.
More movies. The Owl And The Pussycat. What’s Up, Doc? The Troublemaker. The Day Of The Dolphin. First Family. Taking Off.
Big screen performances. Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. The Player. Short Cuts.
After another. Get Smart. Buck Henry created that show, too.
“Somebody called me up and said, ‘Do you want to write a TV pilot with Mel Brooks? A secret agent spoof.’ Mel and I had a good time telling each other jokes for six months. That was basically it.”
After another. “Hosting Saturday Night Live is like having a long dream.” Ten times live, a million times syndicated. “It never was particularly hard work – as I think of work – because I didn’t have to memorize anything.”
A common thread of genius weaves its design across this estimable tapestry of work, and its name is Buck Henry. How does he maintain such creative consistency? “Beats me,” Buck offers. “Maybe he’s just a good mimic.”
Yeah, but Buck Henry has to live up to his own standards, doesn’t he? “Everybody just does the best they can. There isn’t anyone who hasn’t produced a dog. It’s like actors. They have to act, so they go from project to another. And they have to think, in the middle of the most tawdry and embarrassing piece of garbage, they are doing very good work themselves. That’s what makes it all worthwhile. I still have to believe what I am doing is, more than anything else, interesting.”
How does it feel to be an ICON OF HIP? “It’s a terrible burden,” he says with a quick laugh.
“I don’t think I’m a maverick. It’s pretentious to call yourself a maverick or an outsider,” Buck offers. “I never ever thought twice about something in the terms of ‘what-does-it-do-for-my-career?’ I know I have an image, but I’m not sure what it is.”
The startling FINAL CHAPTER of Buck Henry’s identity crisis is a fraction of the total entertainment package known as Portland Creative Conference: A Celebration of Film & Television.
September 16, an opening night celebrity shoulder-rubber is followed by a sneak preview of A Bronx Tale, Robert De Niro’s directorial debut.
The next two days at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts are guaranteed to be startling. Director Gus Van Sant and producer Laurie Parker (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) will discuss their latest feature, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Horror-able Wes Craven (Nightmare On Elm Street) will spill his guts, so to speak.
Actor Raul Julia (The Addams Family), screenwriter Amy Holden Jones (Indecent Proposal), novelist/director Michael Tolkin (The Rapture), producer Debra Hill (The Fisher King), writer/graphics wizard Michael Backus (Rising Sun, Jurassic Park), actor/writer/director Barry Primus (Mistress), and film editor Robert Leighton (When Harry Met Sally) fill out the cast of speakers.
Seating is limited. For insurance purposes, a candid appraisal (“Hoo-ah!,” raved Ab Pacino; “Two Thumbs Up!” – Psycho & Egbert) of the annual WRAP PARTY is available to ticketholders only.
No hype. Sponsored by NIKE (Men In Tights) and Weiden & Kennedy (Boyz From Da Hood), Portland Creative Conference is a once-a-year, one-of-a-kind opportunity to look inside the minds of some of the movie industry’s most innovative minds.
And see for yourself if anybody’s home.
That was the piece submitted. Here’s some leftovers.
“The reason why I work is so I can travel.”
“Garry [Moore] was extremely establishment, middle-class, white-bread kind of stuff.”
The nice thing always is Coming Back, and to have the best of your work done in the last third of your life is extremely valuable not only for yourself and your audience, but just for the general sense of everybody’s artistic – I hate to use the word – survival. Those careers where long-lived men have done some of their most interesting work at the end of a career are enormously satisfying for the rest of us.”
“Directing I don’t like because it’s so physically hard. I HATE getting up at 5:30 in the morning, and I HATE not being able to each lunch because I have to see dailies. I don’t really like the process.
“Acting is PURE pleasure. I don’t mind getting up at 5:30 for that, because I don’t have to answer everybody’s questions.
Finally. He does not have a dog. “I don’t have any animals anymore because of the traveling.” You can tell he misses a critter around the house. “I can’t stand to think they’re unhappy without me.”
Re SNL, “A long dream which is a lot of fun and real hard to remember when it’s over, because it goes SO fast. You go in, and five days later, you’re doing this live 90-minute show and it’s extremely exhilarating.
(re his fantasy) “My fantasy backup was journalism. The two things I dream about being are 1. a foreign correspondent, or 2. a trumpet player in a jazz band. I would much rather have Woody Allen’s Monday nights playing Dixieland than all his films.
Speaking of Robert Altman. “I’ve always liked his films, I’ve always liked him. I have always liked the maverick anyway. I am a little, I don’t know what the term would be. He expands. “I don’t like some of them, and I like some of them a lot. The ones I like, I like equally, but for various reasons. I don’t have a favorite. They’re like kids; you think of them each in a different way. I like The Graduate because it gave me a career. I like Catch-22 because I really like it, and because it tried for something extremely difficult. I like a compleeeeeeetly failed film called Candy, because I had such a great time during the shoot. I like To Die For, the script I just did for Gus Van Zant, because I had so much fun writing it. I like one or two that have never been made. I think that’s the answer you’d get from almost anybody.
His parents were supportive, if not always convinced. “They were enormously frightened I would end up in a pauper’s grave as an ex-gag writer. At times they thought ‘well, maybe he’ll grow out of it and go to work in the advertising business.’ My mother was an actress, but show business is still disreputable in a certain sense.
“Sometimes I don’t like what I’m doing at the time,” Henry confides, when quizzed on his favorite creative role.
“I like to act ’cause it’s fun. I like to write because it makes me think I’m accomplishing something. I have no particular feeling about directing. I don’t even know if I’m good enough to direct anymore. It is an enormous boost to the ego to order a couple hundred people around, but it’s a boost I don’t particularly enjoy.
“I don’t have to worry about going broke or not having a job, but writing – which is the REAL thing – is extremely anxiety-ridden for me.”
“How does Buck approach a blank sheet of paper? “Oh, very, very unhappily,” he admits. “You have to dynamite me to get me to the writing machine. I’ll do anything to avoid it. Usually, I just wander around and think and then something happens.”
(ANOTHER JACK D. WELCH EXCLUSIVE FOR THIS WEEK MAGAZINE. 8/29/1993)
