Next stop, Mazursky; Writer/actor/director

BYLINE: Chris Garcia, American-Statesman Film Writer --
At the 1998 Austin Film Festival and Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference, whose seventh edition began Thursday around Austin, "Taxi Driver" screenwriter Paul Schrader told his colleagues to quit griping about Hollywood's shabby treatment of the lowly writer. We are ridiculously well compensated for our work, he said, and bothers like fighting for screen credit are one of the hazards of making art.

"Of course he's right," says Paul Mazursky. "Look, if you want all the things writers are asking for, you should direct the picture. They're paid a lot of money to write. The director is not out to sabotage the writer, but he has to have some freedom to exercise a vision on top of what the person's written.

"Writers," he concludes, "will always be whining."

Harrumph.

That's easy for the two Pauls to say. As writer-directors, Schrader and Mazursky have worked both sides of the whining. They've written for directors, directed their own scripts and directed others' work. It's worth noting Mazursky's jump to directing sprang from qualms with how his first script, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas," co-written with Larry Tucker, was filmed.

"I didn't want to make (my second film) 'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice' unless I could direct it," Mazursky says. "The guy who directed 'Toklas' (Hy Averback) did a very good job, but it wasn't quite my dream. I figured the only way to get my dream was to direct. I had directed in the theater. I think I was ready. I was scared, but it was very satisfying."

A movie director was born, though Mazursky didn't stop writing or co-writing his films. After the tidal wave success of the zeitgeist-nailing "Bob & Carol," which landed Mazursky one of four Oscar nominations for co-writing, he went on to write and direct such admired adult dramedies as "Blume in Love," "Harry and Tonto," "An Unmarried Woman" and "Enemies: A Love Story."

One of his proudest achievements is 1976's semiautobiographical "Next Stop, Greenwich Village," a wistful coming-of-age piece about a young man who leaves Brooklyn in 1953 to seek acting stardom in Greenwich Village. The film will be shown Saturday at the Arbor with Mazursky in attendance. Earlier that day, Mazursky will receive the Distinguished Screenwriter Award from the Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference.

"I like the movie a lot," Mazursky says. "It's touching. It reminds me of my own story when I left home. It's relatively like the truth. Shelley Winters plays the mother. She's fabulous. My only concern is that they show a good print."

Reviews of "Next Stop" were mixed, though "Pauline Kael, who was my favorite critic, gave it a great review in The New Yorker," the director says. "We almost won the Cannes Film Festival, and it was extremely popular in Europe, South America and Israel. But it was not very popular in the United States. You never know why."

In the fashion of the film's protagonist, Mazursky's first calling was acting. In Greenwich Village, he studied under Lee Strasberg. His first film role was in Stanley Kubrick's directorial debut, the no-budget 1953 war film "Fear and Desire." But it was his turn as a high school hooligan in Richard Brooks' seminal classroom melodrama "Blackboard Jungle" that pigeonholed the young actor for juvenile delinquent parts.

"So I started doing a comedy act, because I couldn't stand playing delinquents," Mazursky says. The comedy act teamed Mazursky with Herb Hartig and did well for a stretch in the late '50s. He took acting jobs between gigs. "They were real struggling times."

Film school at the University of California at Los Angeles followed, along with television writing. This led to penning the hippies-vs.-establishment comedy "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas," starring Peter Sellers.

Mazursky still acts, in his own films and others'. He's a brash, abrasively funny presence, with a brassy New York-Jewish edge. You can't miss him. Recently he was memorable in the "Pulp Fiction"-esque "2 Days in the Valley" and played Sela Ward's father in TV's "Once and Again. "

"Acting," Mazursky says, "is the easiest, in that when you finish your work, you go home. Directing is very exhausting. You've got to worry about everything -- the actors, the weather, the money, the studio, the locations.

"Writing is probably the most instantly creative challenge, because you're starting with a blank page and an idea. In the case of 'Enemies: A Love Story' -- which is one of my favorites -- it had a great book, so it was relatively easy to adapt. But all the rest of my stuff has been original. All the processes are interesting. But lately I've done a lot of acting, and it's kind of fun. You do it and walk away."

Mazursky's films, like Woody Allen's, demonstrate a generosity toward and understanding of his female characters. He's deft at compassionate and realistic portraits of marriage and divorce and the ploys of sex (though he's been accused of cop-out upbeat endings), culminating with 1978's "An Unmarried Woman." The film, screenplay and star Jill Clayburgh earned Oscar nominations.

Wearing the crown of Distinguished Screenwriter, Mazursky is careful dispensing advice to young writers. "Writing is tricky, and I think a lot of writers today have their eyes set on making hits," he says. "The main goal should be to write great stuff."

He bemoans current Hollywood climes, in which "the bottom line is making money, not great movies. And the bottom line says, 'We don't need a perfect script. We need something to get going and make this movie and to get a big time actor.' That's why there's so much crud. In the '70s, the heyday, the studios were taking more chances on material that now is only done by independents. All my movies were studio movies, and at least half of them are bizarre movies. They were taking those chances."

Mazursky is working on an adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel "Pictures of Fidelman," but is facing the uphill ritual of raising money and casting.

"Getting a movie made now takes too much energy," he says. "That's the real problem I've been confronting the last few years. It's more difficult for me to get the money because I don't make the genre pictures."

But even at age 70, Mazursky isn't slowing up. "I can't seem to quite let go," he chuckles. "No, I don't think I'll stop. Not yet."__Austin American-Statesman (October 13, 2000)