Blue Movie (6 page)

“Well, that’s terrific, Sid,” said Boris, and reached out for it.

“One thing, B.,” said Sid, not relinquishing it, “one thing I want to explain—a technicality, you’ll see it yourself in the cable, but I wanted to tell you about it first, so it don’t take the edge off. Know what I mean?”

Boris, whose hand was still extended for the cable, gazed at Sid without expression, and slowly lowered his hand. “Nope,” he said softly, “I’m afraid not.”

“The government of Liechtenstein,” Sid proclaimed in serious measured tones, “is prepared to advance us—in the form of both credit and cash—up to the amount of
three million dollars
. . .”

Here his voice faltered, and Boris reached out impatiently and snatched the cable from him. Unfolding it, he began to read, muttering the words half aloud, almost verbatim as Sid had described, until near the end, reading this part, quite distinctly: “. . . in combined accreditation and national currency, to a maximum equivalent of three, repeat three, million dollars (U.S.)—providing that such an amount as to be agreed upon is duly and equally matched by an investor or investors of the second party. Stop. Letter detailing proposal follows. Regards, Max von Dankin, Minister of Finance, Liechtenstein.”

Boris carefully folded the cable and placed it on the table. “Where’s my thou?”

“Now wait a minute, B.,” said Sid with real earnestness. “I
swear
to you I know how to get the match money. Just
please
give me the chance to explain.”

Boris sighed. “Go,” he said.

“Well, let’s get out of here first,” said Sid. “I don’t want anybody to know about this.” He looked anxiously around the room. “Place is crawling with fuckin’ lip-readers.”

Boris laughed at this, Sid’s feigned or real paranoia, and they started for the door.

Things seemed to be going Sid’s way again, and his spirits were rising. In the foyer they encountered their waitress.

“What’s the matter, darling,” asked Sid in concern, “do you have a cold?”

“A cold?” said the girl, frowning in surprise. “What made you think
that,
Mr. Kratzman?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sid ingenuously, “your
chest
looks all swollen.” And he reached out to proffer comfort to the afflicted area, guffawing raucously.

B
ENEATH THE GREAT
oil portrait of big Dad Harrison, chairman of the board and chief stockholder of Metropolitan Pictures, sat young Les—sitting at his mammoth desk, slumped almost racing style, as if the desk were some extraordinary vehicle, capable of tremendous power and speed—sitting as though he had been fitted into it, while arrayed about him, like a fantastic dashboard, were the various controls he operated so masterfully—telephones, intercoms, cassette-recorders, tiny TV sets, video playbacks, and a miniature air conditioner (Braun of West Germany) that blasted right into his face, giving him an odd, windblown-hair look, and the illusion of actual motion. And, in fact, there
were
vibrations of power, speed, and above all, weird road-holding maneuverability emanating from this desk, for it was here Les Harrison wheeled and dealed—and that, indeed, was the name of his game.

“I’ve got news for you, my friend,” he was saying quietly into the phone, “patriotism is in the shithouse these days. Too controversial. Nope, not even
dancers
—not if they’re under contract to
this
studio, they don’t.
Nobody who works for this studio goes to Vietnam.
Some of that shit might rub off on them, and who needs it? Right? Right. Talk to you later, Marty.”

He hung up, and in a simultaneous move with the other hand, flicked the switch of the outer office intercom.

“Okay, baby,” he said in his deceptively sleepy voice, “let them come in now.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped, fingers intertwined, so that his nose rested on top of the locked hands, and his chin on the two extended thumbs below—Caligula style. The door opened, and a brace of William Morris agents walked in, employing a somewhat affected saunter. When talent agents arrive in tandem, it means one of two things: an old agent is breaking in a young one; or, the agency considers the meeting critical enough, ten-percentwise, to double-team the adversary. The latter is done almost exactly the way cops do it—in counterpoint, with one playing reasonable, soft-hearted (“Let’s give him a break, Al”), while the other (“I say we take it to Paramount”) dons the antagonistic mask of the impulsive bad guy and ass-hole.

The grace and subtlety of such tactics would go for naught, of course, against the Rat Prick, and were not used by those who knew him well. It wasn’t that he was oblivious to ruse, nor even unappreciative of it well-wrought, but because he was dealing from such a monstro power position it was difficult for him to assign relevance to deceptions other than his own.

The studio had eleven features in production at the moment. Three were shooting in Europe, one in Mexico, and one in New York. This left six shooting on the lot; of these six, one was a Western, one a beach movie, one sci-fi, and one an art-house version of a two-character off-Broadway play. These pictures were budgeted at about a million each, and as a conglomerate, or individually, were referred to as “the garbage.” Their multi-nefarious function ranged from cross-collateralization (i.e., juggling production costs and profits between winner flicks and loser flicks), to renting studio space and facilities (to themselves) at exorbitant rates (paid by the stockholders), and finally, making a token fulfillment of actor, director, and producer commitments—or, in short, grooving with the proverbial tax write-offs, and keeping the gargantuan archaic machine in motion.

This accounted for four of the six pictures, leaving two—and these were boss and monstro. One was the nine-million-dollar vehicle for Rex McGuire,
Hi There, Heartbreak,
and the other a hefty sixteen-point-five,
Until She Screams,
starring Angela Sterling, the highest-paid darling of the silver screen—nailing, as she did, a cool one and a quarter big ones per pic, plus ten percent of the boxoroonie, going in.

In any case, these last two were the sort of projects which interested Les—and he was highly doubtful that the Morris agents who had just come in would have anything of that caliber in mind—so it was rather laconically that he returned their “Hey Les baby” big hellos.

“Saw you at the Factory the other night,” said the older, heavier one, flopping down on the couch with an exaggerated show of relaxation.

Les looked at him momentarily, raised his brows in a quizzical indication of “So what?” and said, “Oh?”

“Yeah, you were with Liz and Dickie—I didn’t come over, I figured you might be, ha ha,” a sly wink to his partner,
“talking business.”

Les continued to regard him without expression, then returned the wink, “I see what you mean—ha ha,” adding the laugh very dryly indeed.

“I was there with Janie,” the agent went on hurriedly, somewhat rattled, “Janie Fonda and Vadim. Whatta gal! Having that kid didn’t affect her figure one bit—she’s still a knockout!”

Les nodded silently.

“Say, Les,” said the second agent brightly, pointing at a small painting on the wall, “isn’t that a new one?”—his purpose in this being twofold: first, to impress on his colleague how familiar he was with Les Harrison’s office; and second, that Les himself might be somewhat touched by his interest. He was aware that the latter was extremely remote, because he was just bright enough to know that Les knew (and knew that
he
knew that
Les
knew) that this sort of thing—memorizing personal details of other people’s lives, the names of their wives, their children, their tastes, their infirmities—this relentless effort to ingratiate, was the talent agent’s bag,

Les looked up to see which picture he was talking about. Aside from the portrait of his father, there were six other paintings in the room—three on each of two walls, the third wall being an expanse of window, and the fourth, behind the desk, occupied by big Dad exclusively.

“I believe you’re right,” he said. It was a blue and white Picasso, of the “Girls of Avignon” series. “Do you like it?” he turned back to the agent, smiling.

“Terrific,” said the agent, shaking his head in admiration,
“fabulous!
Jeez, could that guy ever paint!”

I’ll tell Kelly you like it,” said Les, jotting something on a pad, “or at least that you noticed the change.”

Kelly, as she was called, was his personal assistant, or Gal Friday—if one may receive $1,200 a week and still be considered as such; in any case, among her responsibilities was the occasional rearrangement of the office decor, including the choice of paintings—which she selected from the family collection. She regarded this duty less a privilege than a necessity, because Les Harrison—suffering from an affliction that is curiously, even notoriously, prevalent on the executive level in Hollywood—was totally
color-blind.
So he would tabulate remarks about his office furnishings in much the same way he would study the opinion cards filled out at film previews . . . quite objectively.

“Say, tell me something,” he said, looking from one agent to the other. “The last time you guys were in here—weren’t
you
wearing shades,” pointing to the younger one, who was
not
wearing them, “and
you,”
pointing to the other, who was, “weren’t. Right?”

The two exchanged looks; the older, heavier one gave a low whistle, shaking his head.

“Wow,”
said the younger one softly.

“Talk about
sharp,”
said the heavy. “Jeez, that must’ve been . . . two, three months ago, for Chrissake.”

“How come?” asked Les.

“Huh?” The young one seemed surprised, then slightly chagrined. “Oh yeah, well, it’s . . . it’s kind of silly, I guess. I mean, it’s the old man,” referring to the head of their agency, “he said we shouldn’t both wear them at the same time—said it’s a bad image. Looks
spooky,
he said.” He shrugged, smiling sheepishly, gestured toward the other agent. “So today it’s
his
turn.”

Les nodded thoughtfully, head resting on one hand. As he gazed at each in turn, the young agent shifted about uneasily, while the one wearing the glasses had removed them and was polishing them with his tie, chuckling and muttering, “Jeez, Les, that’s some
memory
you got, for Chrissake!”

Les appeared to be considering it, and it seemed to please him in a vague and absent way—as though this facility might, in some degree, compensate for his being color-blind.

He cleared his throat, and started to speak, but the intercom buzzed, and he hit the switch impatiently. “Yeah, Kelly?”

“Eddie Rhinebeck on two.”

“I’m in a meeting, Kelly.”

“It’s important.”

“Shit,” he said, flicking off the intercom, and picking up the phone. “Bad news, bad news, I can
smell
it. Yeah, Eddie?”

He listened intently, the frown on his brow growing darker.

“You gotta be kidding,” he said finally, with a remarkable lack of conviction. He closed his eyes, and listened some more.

“The
cunt,”
he said then softly, through clenched teeth, “the
stupid . . . irresponsible
. . .
vicious . . . cocksucking little cunt!”
Sigh. “I just don’t believe it. Wait a minute, Eddie.”

He covered the mouthpiece and looked up at the agents.

“I’m sorry, fellas,” he said, gesturing with his hand, his cool having undergone a Jekyll-Hyde collapse, “its
disasterville
—I’ll have to talk to you later.”

They rose almost as one, with smiles of perfect understanding. “No biz like show biz, right, Les?” quipped the older agent, winking broadly. “Talk to you later, Les,” said the other, and with several waves of camaraderie, they went out the door.

Les uncovered the mouthpiece. “Okay, Eddie, now what the hell happened?”

Eddie Rhinebeck was the studio’s head of publicity. For the past two months his exclusive concern had been Angela Sterling and their sixteen-point-five biggie,
Until She Screams,
promotion of which he was handling personally. And to this end he had recently engineered what promised to be a PR coup of the very first magnitude. Through an elaborate process of fête and cajolery, he had managed to persuade a state senator and a rear admiral to allow, even insist, that the men and officers who were to serve aboard the newly commissioned battleship
California
“elect” the lady who would christen their ship. The choice, to be determined by popular vote, was between: (1) Dr. Rose Harkness, most recent American female Nobel Prize winner, (2) Mrs. Hannah Bove, bereaved “Gold Star Mother of the Year,” who lost three sons in Vietnam,

(3) Storm Rogers, attractive wife of the governor of California, and (4) the perfect Angela Sterling.

Studio heads (including Dad Harrison) were apprehensive about the possible outcome. (“Why take the chance—who needs it?”), but Eddie was adamant, and Les went along.

“The prestige bit can’t hurt us,” he said, “should be good for a
Life
cover story.”

“Yeah?” asked Dad, “so what if she loses?”

“Aw, come on, Dad, Eddie’s got the vote in his pocket, for Chrissake, he knows where it’s at.”

The old man sighed, shook his head, whistled softly: “So what if Eddie’s wrong?”

Les smiled, faint and knowing. “Eddie’s not wrong, Dad—not when his head is on the line.”

Still, there had been a certain tension, a certain malaise, while they awaited the outcome—and ample relief when it was announced that Angela had won by a veritable landslide, garnering more votes than the other three ladies combined.

Naturally this was a boss feather in Eddie’s proverbial cap, vis-à-vis Les—as likewise it was for Les, vis-à-vis Dad and the New York office. So there had been an abundance of backpatting all around in anticipation of the great day—which was finally at hand, on San Francisco’s big Pier 97, with the 6,000 men and officers of the
California
standing at attention in full parade regalia, while on the pier itself, seated in a festively draped grandstand, not far from the beribboned bottle of bubbly, a host of notables—including three admirals, the mayor of San Francisco, the governor of the state, and the Secretary of the Navy. Ranged about them, as in ambush, was an army of newsmen and photographers, and on the periphery sat three TV camera trucks.