Jerry Weintraub, Star of the HBO Documentary "His Way," Might Never Run Out of Stories
Jerry Weintraub’s still talking and so, as per the title of the memoir he published last year, he’s not dead. Good thing, because tonight at 9pm HBO will debut the documentary His Way, about the life of the legendary Hollywood producer, who, for the first time in as long as he could remember, gave up creative control over a project.
“I truly had no idea what they were doing, day-to-day,” he said of producers Graydon Carter, Alan Polsky, Gabe Polsky, and director Douglas McGrath. “I just knew I was answering a lot of questions, and I had 80 hours of film sitting around my house.
Many of Weintraub’s assorted high profile friends appear in His Way: George H.W. Bush, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, and Bruce Willis, to name a few. George Clooney is also featured, and for the first time probably ever in his career, fills a role somebody wishes had gone to the I-Man instead.
“They let him tell the Ferguson story!” Weintraub, whose book When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead is out in paperback, lamented. “If I would have had any creative input, it would have been Don Imus telling the Ferguson story. Nobody tells it better than you.”
(What’s the Ferguson story? Click here to find out.)
Weintraub was not surprised by anything revealed in His Way, and complimented the final product as “masterful.” Since he is known for his unrivaled storytelling abilities, Imus asked him to share today the tale he is asked to recount most frequently. Which is, of course, about the King.
After recalling—in brief—the hoops he jumped through to finally land himself a gig as Elvis Presley’s tour promoter in the 1970s, Weintraub told Imus that Elvis only cared about two things: filling every seat in the house for a concert, and ensuring the first 20 rows of seats went to fans, and not to big shots. “They juice me up and get me going,” Presley had told Weintraub of his fans.
Accordingly, Weintraub booked Presley at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and the show sold out, he said, “in no time.” As such, he quickly got Presley to agree to do a matinee show that same day.
“It was July 4th weekend,” Weintraub said. “July 4th weekend in Miami—even the alligators leave. It’s beyond humid there, it’s terrible.” Even so, the box office at the Miami Beach Convention Center informed Weintraub that the matinee had also sold out.
On arrival in Florida, he learned that the box office workers had merely told him what he wanted to hear. With 5,000 seats still left to fill, Weintraub called Presley’s manager, known as the Colonel, and informed him, “We have a problem.”
To which the Colonel replied, “Son, we don’t have a problem. You have a problem.”
But not for long. Weintraub quickly noticed that the Dade County Jail was adjacent to the concert venuem and he struck a deal with the sheriff to have prisoners help him cart out the extra 5,000 seats for the matinee, store them under a tarp in the parking lot, and then haul them back inside the Convention Center for the evening show.
Once the day’s activities were over, Weintraub and Presley grabbed a bite to eat. “He said to me, ‘You know, the audiences at night are much louder and much more involved in the show than the ones during the day,’” Weintraub remembered, laughing, which is the way most of his stories end.
The stories themselves, however, are endless.
-Julie Kanfer
Reader Comments (1)
Jerry Jerry
You should have stopped with the book....watchin you describe..with glee...bedding some young wannabe starlet
and getting caught by your wife...doesn't cut it....
But...if you will lie to big stars...who's to say u aint lyin now...keep it in yur pants.