What’s it like working with Cruise, Pitt or Belushi? Ed Zwick knows

On a recent Friday night, Jim Belushi walked into an apartment high above the city and shouted: “Are you late? Have you talked about me yet?”

He was invited, of course, as were the other forty or so people who filled the apartment of lovely Christie Hefner, the accomplished daughter of Hugh Hefner but, as of this evening, a classmate of New Trier High School (1970). The guest star is film director Ed Zwick, who is in the middle of talking to people about his new book, “Successes, Failures, and Other Delusions: My 40 Years in Hollywood.”

Belushi shouted, some people laughed, and Zwick continued, “I haven’t mentioned you yet, Jim, but I will.”

It’s been a busy couple of days for Zwick, as he was visiting from his home in Santa Monica, California. It was the focus of a Thursday evening event at the American Writers Museum, and there was a lunch gathering Friday at the University Club.

Guests at Hefner’s party included a few other New Trier alumni, such as Bob Falls and Rush Schulfer of Goodman Theater fame, actor Marc Grebe, former alderman and newspaper executive Edwin Eisendrath, and Chaz Ebert, a businesswoman and film widow. Critic Roger Ebert, who will release her own book in April. There were also Stuart O’Kane and Jason Britt, the film production team behind many projects over the years, and whose first encounter with Zwick was the film version of the David Mamet play, “Sexual Perversion in Chicago,” which became “About Last Night.” It turned the duo into what Zwick calls “lifelong friends.”

“I remember being with Ed at the Deauville Film Festival where we were showing ‘About Last Night’ and the two of us staying up all night with director Richard Brooks listening to him tell stories about Hollywood,” he said. (Brooks was known for such films as Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry, and In Cold Blood.) “That’s what I felt when I listened to Ed talk about his book. Ed, in person and in print, is a master storyteller.

About Last Night was Zwick’s first successful film. The film was directed by and starred Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Jim Belushi, who, Zwick wrote, “became a great ally of mine, and performed admirably.”

Belushi’s stories are some of the best in the book, but it’s a good, honest book. Its first line is: “I tell stories for a living.” True to its words, the book’s 300 pages are filled with stories, about the making of TV shows like “Thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life” and nearly two dozen movies, including “Glory” and “Legends of the World.” …Fall, Shakespeare in Love, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. The stories are filled with enough bold names for dozens of old-fashioned gossip columns: Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meg Ryan…etc.

“The book was born when the coronavirus came. I shut down plans to reimagine Thirty Something called Thirty Something (Another) and during that hiatus I started looking at some of the work I had done.” “I’m not a retrospective person. I’m always looking forward. But when I was watching my films, I was amazed by the people I was with, and the relationships I made.”

His book is a generally sunny outing, in sharp contrast to recent work by another local boy with Hollywood adventures. That would be David Mamet, whose recently published book, Everywhere an Oink Oink, lives up to its subtitle, “A bitter, disturbing, and accurate account of forty years in Hollywood.” As she wrote: “There is a certain amount of anger and disillusionment that hangs through this book, reflecting what he feels is the devastation of Hollywood.”

Zwick knows and respects Mamet. “We’re not friends, but there’s a book festival coming up in Los Angeles, and there’s talk about maybe David and I being on the same panel,” Zwick says. “I’ll love that.”

There’s no doubt that Zwick shares some of Mamet’s views on Hollywood and filmmaking. His take: “These days, the big movies with movie stars and all the bells and whistles tend to be about superheroes and comic books. This is not complaining. “It is what it is.”

He is working on a new film project, however, and is pleased with the reception his book has received, with praise like this from the Wall Street Journal: “The author warns early on that he will drop names, and he certainly does…” . . Not everyone is remembered very fondly, but the author generally seems modest about his success and charmingly self-deprecating. …(a) Honest memoir at the movies and more.

The book is interspersed with chapters offering “tips” and “lessons,” such as “It’s Possible to Make a Bad Movie from a Good Script” and “Falling in Love with Actors: But Don’t Mistake It for Real.” . Transfer your fascination with them to the screen. And do not sleep with them even though they are bright and attractive.”

One thing the book doesn’t offer is much about his personal life. We know that he is happily married, has two fine children (both of whom are writers) and successfully dealt with a serious health problem, his high school years? Just a little. His childhood? Not much.

This is the paragraph that begins Chapter Fifteen: “My paternal grandfather was a cruel Jew. I was named after him. My Hebrew name is Isaac. In Chicago in the 1920s, his five brothers (“the Uncles,” as they were known in my family), Duffy, Fat, Zus, Zell, and Jules, were the “bookie commissioners” (read bookmakers) for the Capone gang. As a boy, I secretly reveled in my family’s unsavory past.

That sounds like it might make a good book, doesn’t it? What about the movie?

rkogan@chicagotribune.com