Meanwhile, I hooked up with director Billy Friedkin, who had just come off the career-making success of The Exorcist. We became friends, decided to make a movie together. Then, one night, as we were talking, I remembered Cruising. I got the book out of my drawer, handed it to Billy. "Look at this," I said. "It might be for you." He knew the story, having followed it in the paper.

"I love this," he said. "We're making this movie."

We met with Frank Wells, who was then vice chairman of Warners. We pitched the movie. He signed off on it without understanding what he was signing off on. He probably thought it was about cars. Billy and I were so hot at that moment-Oh, God!, The Exorcist-that he just said "Yeah, yeah, do it." Then, just before we were to begin shooting, Wells suddenly figured out the movie was not about cars. There would be controversy, noise. He told us Warners could not make the movie. I was in a fury. We had already begun to rehearse, but Wells did not care. It was a bad moment, but in the end we managed to set up the movie at Lorimar Pictures.

A few years had passed since the book was published, and in those few years, the world had changed. The gay community had begun its liberation. People were coming out of the closet. In hopes of getting it right, Billy and I hit all the leather bars of the West Village, then shot the movie in these locations. A reporter from the Village Voice got the script early, then infiltrated the set, where he heard wild rumors, the result being a hysterical article that denounced the film, denounced Billy, and denounced me. It said we were exploiting the gay community, that lives would be put in danger. That it was all bullshit was beside the point. Being in the newspaper made it true. As I said, the job of the producer is solving problems, and this was a big one: Just like that, our sleepy set had turned into a riot scene. Thousands of people came out to protest. They stomped their feet, flashed lights, and blew whistles when we were trying to shoot. We burned up thousands of dollars in film. Then the letters came: You're dead. We're going to kill you, Weintraub. Garbage like that. I did not mind the threats. In this case, my job was to be the loudmouth, the target, take the hit and let the fury of the mob break over my head, giving the actors room to perform. I mean, we had Al Pacino, and it's hard to do the Method while you're being filmed for the five-o'clock news.

In the end, the press was good for the movie. The articles sold the product. One day, Steve Ross, who was the CEO of Warner Bros.' parent company, Warner Communications, and also a friend, said to me, "Wow, Jerry, you are getting so much attention with the picture. Why aren't we doing it?"

I told him the whole story.

He said something like, Well, whatever you want to make next, we want to be involved.

Cruising came out in 1980. It did well at the box office, pushed along by all that coverage. Of course, the movie, in many ways, came too early. If it was released today, when people have opened their minds to lifestyles that differ from their own, it would do gangbusters. As I always say, "Better too late than too early." Too late means you look slow but still make a bundle. Too early means you look like you've lost your mind, and you get people shouting, "Kill that idiot." But it also means there is a chance for rediscovery. In the end, that strange little picture we made in the seventies became a cult classic.

Soon after that, Friedkin said, "That was so much fun, let's do it again."

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Make another picture."

"Do you have anything in mind?"

"Yeah," he said. "Let's make a sequel to The Exorcist."

As an idea, this was automatic. He could have made it with any producer, but if you need a person to deal with studio executives and budgets and marketers and minutiae, well, I'm not a bad choice. Directors know I'm on their side of the table. I will fight for them, make their case, protect them. William Peter Blatty was a partner, as he owned the rights. And he would, of course, write the sequel. He had done such a brilliant job with the original as well as the novel it was based on.

Frank Wells got word of the project. He called and said, "Look, Jerry, I want it."

"After what you did to me on Cruising?" I said. "No way."

"You've got to let me have it," he said. "If we don't get it, it will kill my career with Steve Ross."

Frank Wells and I were actually friends-I did not want to hurt the guy.

He said, "Go to your office in the morning. There will be an envelope waiting. Look inside, then call me."

"What is it?"

"Just get the envelope, then call me."

I went in and there was the envelope. Inside was a check for five hundred thousand dollars.

I called Wells.

"What's it for?" I asked.

"Just to be the first to hear the pitch," he said.

"And what happens if you hate the pitch?" I asked.

"Tell me the budget," he said.

"Fifteen million," I said, pulling the number out of thin air.

"Good," he said. "Come in and tell us the story. If we approve, the five hundred thousand is against the budget. If we don't approve, you keep the money."

How can you beat that?

I scheduled a meeting for New York three weeks hence, where we would sit with the heads of Warner Bros. and pitch. I call it the five-hundred-thousand-dollar lunch, because that's all they got for their money-lunch with me and Billy and Blatty.

It's interesting that no one questioned my decision to have that lunch in New York. We all lived in LA-writer, director, producer, all the executives-so why were we flying across the country for a meeting? Well, the fact is, I could not get these guys to agree on a scenario for the movie, so I figured, okay, we'll be stuck together for five hours on the plane. That is when Friedkin and Blatty will work it out. In fact, they did not work it out, and could never agree. By the time we landed, I knew we were in serious trouble.

When we got to Warner Bros., the receptionist told me that Mr. Ross wanted to see me right away. I went in, we spoke. He said, "Jerry, we're buying this movie."

I said, "Buying what? There's no story."

He said, "Well, go and make one up. We're doing this movie."

We went into the meeting, sat at the big table with the food piled in front of us. Ted Ashley and Frank Wells, the chairman and vice chairman of the company, were both in the room. For the first thirty minutes, it was just me, telling Sinatra stories, telling Elvis stories, telling Dean Martin stories, the whole routine.

Frank Wells finally turned to Billy and said, "Okay, Billy, why don't you tell us about your movie?"

Billy bumbled around a bit, then said, "We open in the hills of West Virginia, and the camera comes over the hills and we see a field of dead cows. The camera continues over a hill, and we see Washington, D.C., Georgetown, go up the steps and into a church, then we see a head, severed and bloody, roll out of the confessional."

He turned to Blatty, then said, "Take it, Bill."

"Well, yes," said Blatty, "but I am not sure about the cows."

Then it was over. As we were getting ready to leave, Frank Wells helped me on with my coat. "We're excited," he told me. "We can't wait to make this movie."

"What movie?" I asked him. "There is no movie. That was bullshit."

"No, no, we love it," he said. "We want to do it."

"There is nothing to do," I said. "I'm going to give back your money."

"No, hang on to it," he said. "Think about it."

Well, I did think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew there was no movie. I sent back the money with a note: "Next time." Taking money for a movie you know you will never make is a bad habit. It's cocaine, it revs you up, and you have some fun, but in the end, you're in a worse place than you were when you started.