With an hour or two of daylight left, I hiked up Doheny Drive toward the steeper roads of the Hollywood Hills, determined to put myself in some kind of shape again.
When my legs felt ready, I’d help Danny Romero do the same. Then, one fine morning, we’d choose a trailhead, hoist our backpacks, and trek off into the southern Sierra together, with Maggie trotting happily ahead.
In a city built on fantasies, I was hard at work scripting my own.
I reached Sunset Boulevard and turned east, past familiar landmarks. The Rainbow Room, where rock stars ate. The Roxy and the Whisky, where they performed before becoming stars. The wildly eclectic Viper Room, partly owned by an actor named Johnny Depp. Book Soup, with its window displays aimed at the Hollywood crowd. Tower Records, where a plywood Madonna, her arms upraised as Evita, rose several stories above the street. Tina Turner, hawking hosiery on the side of a ten-story office building that had been turned into a towering billboard, like so many others along the Strip. Across the boulevard, equally monumental, the image of the beautiful boxer, Oscar de la Hoya, photographed so suggestively that I longed to reach up and run my fingers through his thick tangle of chest hair billowing darkly against the soft studio backlight.
Then I was in that otherworldly zone of chichi boutiques and cafés known as Sunset Plaza, where the rich congregated to spend their endless money on fashionable things they couldn’t possibly need. So precious was the long block that no unsightly trash cans were allowed along the sidewalk, yet not a piece of litter could be seen—not even a stray leaf from the perfectly clipped trees potted here and there among the monied, pretty people who dined outside where they could be noticed.
When I reached Chin Chin and the aroma of spicy Chinese cooking, I crossed the boulevard to Sunset Plaza Drive and climbed. I wound my way past homes that cost more money than most people make in a lifetime until I was a mile or more up, with a wide-open view of the city and legs beneath me that felt as shaky as a serving of fresh flan.
I hadn’t gotten the photographs in Maurice’s living room out of my head. I found myself thinking first of Jacques, then of Danny Romero, then about the disease that had taken one and might one day take the other, unless the new therapies could save him. In between Jacques and Danny there had been a dozen more I’d known well who’d been afflicted and died, all under forty, all imperfect but good and gentle men. Their names and faces were always with me, no matter how much wine I poured down my throat when evening came and the memories started to work themselves to the surface like pieces of old shrapnel.
Evening was almost upon me now. The sun was around the hills to the west, and the first lights were flickering on in the city below.
Above and around me stood lavish estates valued in the millions, many of them owned by Hollywood faggots in hiding or others who had been dragged from the closet kicking and screaming by the more aggressive members of the gay press. One famous producer—supposedly hetero—known for his liberal politics, had spent fifty million dollars to carve the top off a mountain and erect a mansion bigger than any hospice in the country. This was just his Los Angeles nest; there were also homes in Malibu, Manhattan, Aspen, and Paris.
How much outpatient health care would fifty million dollars buy? How much faster could a cure be found if each of them gave up just one of their precious houses? A few of their Keith Harings or Ellsworth Kellys? Half their stocks and bonds? They had no such obligation, of course, and some had already donated generously—advised, of course, by their tax accountants. One saw their names on the walls of clinics, or their photographs in newspapers, getting awards for their charitable efforts at lavish black-tie dinners. But why couldn’t some of the filthy rich faggots who collected corporations like toys be truly heroic and give enough to dramatically change the course of the disease?
Who am I to complain? What have I done, except hide away and wallow in self-pity? Where have I been, while tens of thousands of others have fought the battle so tirelessly, so valiantly? What am I but a whining hypocrite?
I was suddenly thinking of Jacques again, then Danny, Danny and Jacques, back and forth until they began to blur dangerously. It made me feel angry and hopeless and afraid, all of it underscored by shame, a mix of dark feelings taking form and life inside me, and growing too big. Too big and too powerful, the way it had happened seven years earlier, when I’d gone a little crazy and written a series of articles that saw life and death and love the way I’d wanted it to be instead of the way it really had been, and I’d won the big prize for my fine work, then been exposed as the pathetic fraud I was, and my world had come crashing down.
I turned away, trying to leave the memory of it there while I hiked back down, even though I could feel it following like a cold shadow that hovered over my whole life. I needed something to do, something with purpose but no personal connection, something beyond the shadow’s reach.
Back on the Strip, I headed directly for the double doors of Book Soup. I immediately felt safer, embraced by the narrow aisles stacked floor to ceiling with hardcovers and paperbacks, smelling of old wood and new paper, surrounded by words, stories, pictures, ideas.
Work. Get to work.
I found
The Cantwell Method
in the well-stocked writing section on the store’s west side, a single copy wedged in among the other books on screenplay writing I’d seen lined up on Reza JaFari’s desk, plus dozens more.
A single copy of Gordon Cantwell’s book could mean one of two things: It was so popular it was nearly sold out, or so marginal the store kept only one copy on hand.
“We sell a copy now and then,” the clerk at the cash register said, when I asked. “Nothing like the old days.”
“The old days being when?”
“Ten, fifteen years ago. Before all the other experts started doing the same thing, only better.”
I carried
The Cantwell Method
next door to the civilized comfort of the Book Soup Bistro, where I ordered smoked salmon fettucini and a decent bottle of Pinot Grigio from a tall, sleek-looking waiter named Benny. He looked like he might be half-black and half-Vietnamese, with a lovely face the shade of creamed coffee and darker eyes that knew how to say nice things without words. I took a long look at his small, round butt as he headed back to the kitchen, the way lusting straight men ogle good-looking waitresses, thinking their wives and girlfriends don’t notice.
When the door swung closed on his pretty behind, I turned to Cantwell’s book.
The Cantwell Method
was still in hardcover, 212 pages long, with an original copyright date of 1974. I found the author bio on the final page:
Gordon Cantwell brings to the teaching of the screen-writing craft a background rich in experience and expertise. As a former development executive with one of Hollywood’s most successful companies, he read and analyzed thousands of screenplays. In the process, he learned why some succeed commercially while others fail, and formulated his own special approach to screenplay structure—the key to a successful “Hollywood-style” script.
Mr. Cantwell is also a successful screenwriter in his own right and has acted as a consultant to several major studios and leading production companies.
The Cantwell Method is now recognized as the first and foremost approach to solving the problem of screenplay structure, and Mr. Cantwell’s seminars teaching his unique techniques are conducted worldwide.
Mr. Cantwell makes his home high in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, in a house once owned by Charlie Chaplin.
Benny arrived with my wine and offered me a taste, but I told him to pour away. As I finished my first glass and poured my second, I felt a sense of calm settle over me like a gentle change of light, the way the dusk was slowly filtering in from the neighborhood outside.
Getting the gist of Gordon Cantwell’s “method” didn’t require many pages. Essentially, he had taken the basic three-act structure that serves as the foundation for virtually all traditional storytelling—beginning, middle, end—and broken the middle act in half, creating four acts.
With Cantwell’s approach—hardly revolutionary—a short opening act set up the primary problem facing the main character and established his or her main goal. A second act deepened the primary relationships between the main character and important secondary characters as the hero or heroine moved forward in their quest, facing increasingly challenging obstacles along the way. At the midpoint of the story—roughly an hour into the average movie—the plot was supposed to take an unexpected turn that would throw it in a whole new direction, creating a third act that ended with the character at the greatest point of complication or choice. The short final act accelerated to the climax and resolution.
“Your fettucini, sir.”
I studied Benny’s smooth, brown arms as he set the dish in front of me but failed to catch his eyes as I’d hoped, and he was quickly gone. I tried the pasta, washed it down with wine, turned another page.
What struck me most about Cantwell’s method was his insistence that turning points and act breaks fall on specific pages. He was rigid about it: Act I was to end no later than page twenty; the first major turning point was to come between pages twenty-five and thirty-five; the midpoint break, or end of Act II, was to fall between pages fifty-five and sixty-five, with the third act ending somewhere between pages eighty and ninety; the last act was to run no longer than thirty pages, preferably shorter, keeping the entire script to 120 pages.
Cantwell allowed for no flexibility—on one page early in the book was this admonition:
If you are truly serious about breaking into the arena of commercial filmmaking, you must set a firm rule for yourself right at the outset—
no script longer than 120 pages
. The rule of thumb for the standard screenplay is one minute of screen time for each typewritten page. American audiences will not sit through long movies and Hollywood agents and executives do not like to read.
Keep it short!
And this:
To be effective, act breaks must fall exactly on the pages signified in the Cantwell Paradigm, which you’ll find diagrammed on the following page. This will enable you to craft a tight, fast-moving, flawlessly structured screenplay.
I looked up to find the restaurant filled with chattering diners and the last of the lights coming on along Sunset Boulevard. I finished the pasta, emptied the bottle into my glass, downed the last of the wine, and signaled Benny for the check.
As I hit the sidewalk, neon was alive overhead and the street was abuzz with young people. I quickly put the crowd behind me, ambling down side streets that led me into Hilldale Avenue toward home. When I reached the eight-hundred block, just off Dicks Street, I found myself standing in front of the apartment house bearing the address Lawrence Teal had given me.
It was an old, Spanish-style building that looked solid and cool behind its front garden of tropical foliage. Teal’s apartment number was on the door of a first-floor unit that showed light coming from a deep side window.
I found a weathered wooden gate, pushed aside some thorny strands of asparagus fern, and opened it, then made my way along the side of the building until I reached the window where the light shone.
Music came through the open side louvers, one of those synthetic tunes suitable for elevators that Jacques had called jazzak.
Then I saw Teal, naked under the harsh light of a bare ceiling bulb.
He moved, faunlike, over the hardwood floor on his muscular legs, his eyes fixed on the image of himself in a full-length mirror that leaned unattached against a bare white wall. He touched himself as he moved, every part of his body from his thighs to his face, his nipples and penis aroused and his eyes transfixed with self-love.
Then his eyes shifted, meeting mine for a split second in the glass, before darting self-consciously back to themselves.
He continued to dance, one hand drawing graceful parabolas in the air while the other stroked his preening cock, pretending not to know that I was there. I felt my own body responding and hated Teal for making me want him so much when it was Danny Romero I needed, and no one else.
If Teal stole another glance my way, looking for the admiration of his beauty in my eyes, he was disappointed.
I’d found my way back to the gate, shutting it firmly behind me, putting rapid strides between us, determined to have nothing to do with Lawrence Teal ever again.
The autopsy results on Reza JaFari came in Tuesday morning, which was fast for a weekend death, at least in Los Angeles.
“I think Lieutenant DeWinter pushed it through,” Templeton said to both Harry and me. “Probably for the family’s sake.”
We had a patio table at The Ivy in Beverly Hills. Our fellow diners were mostly clonelike blond women in the company of male model types in loose-fitting jackets or slightly older men in ties, who looked and acted like they owned the city, which they probably did.
Templeton glanced across the antiqued picket fence that surrounded the terraced patio toward the sidewalk.
“Isn’t that Charlie Sheen?”
I followed her eyes to a male brunette with good cheekbones, slicked-back hair, and a self-satisfied smirk. He was climbing out of a red Lamborghini with two shapely younger women, while a valet in a green jacket held open the door.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about, Templeton.”
“Surely you’ve heard of Charlie Sheen, Justice.”
“Actor,” Harry said as he opened a menu. “
Platoon
.
Wall Street
. Heidi Fleiss.”
“Ah. Now I recall the name.”
It was Templeton’s idea to lunch with the Hollywood crowd, to soak up some “industry” color—and let
Angel City
pay for it—while she brought me up to date on the Reza JaFari case.
Harry took one look at the prices and tried to bolt.
“Don’t worry, Harry,” Templeton said, sitting him back down. “
Angel City
gets the receipt. We’re here to do some work.”
“I got plenty of work back at the
Sun
,” Harry grumbled. “So do you, dammit.”
“That’s why we’re doing lunch, Harry. To get some magazine business out of the way.”
I looked up from my menu.
“Doing lunch? You sound more Hollywood every time I talk to you, Templeton.”
“We could have eaten downtown on the cheap,” Harry complained. “Been back at the office in a wink.”
Templeton patted him on the arm.
“Order something expensive, Harry. Enjoy yourself.”
He slapped the menu shut.
“I’ll have a burger, well done.”
Templeton looked over at me.
“He’s been so irritable since he quit smoking.”
“I hadn’t noticed the difference.”
The waiter arrived and Harry ordered his hamburger. Templeton selected the Chinese chicken salad while I opted for grilled duck with sautéed vegetables and wild rice.
Then Templeton delivered her news: The coroner’s office had failed to determine the exact cause of Reza JaFari’s death, but placed a high probability on natural causes attributable to AIDS.
“Bullshit,” I said. “Reza JaFari didn’t have AIDS.”
“You did your own autopsy?” Harry said.
“It comes from Danny Romero.”
“The roommate.”
“Right. He’s certain JaFari hadn’t developed AIDS yet.”
“The kid’s a medical expert?”
“He’s a suspect, Harry. He has nothing to gain by discounting AIDS as a possible cause. Quite the opposite.”
“Keep talking.”
“According to Romero, JaFari’s T-cell count was over six hundred. His viral load was extremely low. He was totally asymptomatic for AIDS.”
“You think the coroner’s office botched the autopsy,” Templeton said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Six hundred T-cells,” Harry said. “Viral load. Forgive me for not being a trained lab technician.”
“In simple terms? JaFari was healthy, his blood counts almost normal. His immune system was strong.”
Templeton leaned forward on her elbows and locked her fingers under her chin.
“What I don’t understand is, why would the coroner’s office pass JaFari’s death off to AIDS?”
“The coroner’s office is notoriously overworked and under-staffed,” Harry conceded. “The bodies are stacked up down there like cordwood. Unless you’ve got a death that warrants special attention, the autopsy’s probably cursory at best.”
“And HIV or AIDS might provide a quick answer,” Templeton said. “Inaccurate but convenient.”
“I got to admit,” Harry said, “the medical examiners in this city are famous for sloppy work and bad calls.”
Templeton rummaged in her big handbag and extracted a file folder.
“I have something else for you, Justice.”
She handed it across.
“You asked me to see what I could find on Bernard Kemmerman.”
I opened the folder to a collection of photocopied newspaper clippings and database printouts, all with Kemmerman’s name in them, some with his photograph.
“There was quite a lot, actually. He started out in the mailroom at William Morris in the early fifties, worked his way up, and was one of the more successful agents in town throughout the sixties.”
“What kind of agent?”
“Screenwriters, directors, producers. Went into independent production in the seventies. Several major hits. In the late eighties, the studios made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“Which one?”
“He joined Universal, moved to Paramount, ended up with Monument.”
“Why haven’t I heard his name before?”
“Kemmerman was one of those rare creatures on the production end who shunned the limelight.”
“But he rose to the top?”
“President of production before taking a leave of absence a few months ago.”
“Why the leave?”
“Illness.”
“Where is he now?”
“Forest Lawn.”
The food came and plates were passed around. Harry asked for ketchup and the waiter went for it. I was more interested in Kemmerman’s death than my lunch.
“How long ago?”
“A few weeks. Kidney failure.”
“After a transplant?”
“Never took place. Rare blood type. Couldn’t find the right donor in time.”
“Private service?”
Templeton shook her head.
“Very public. Kemmerman was apparently well liked and respected in the industry. According to the clips, hundreds of Hollywood’s elite turned out for the service.”
“A man that big, I wonder what was so urgent that he needed to discuss with a small fry like JaFari.”
Harry looked up from inspecting his hamburger.
“Especially when he had more important things to worry about—like dying.”
“What about Anne-Judith Kemmerman?”
“Married Kemmerman eight years ago. He was sixty-seven when he died. She’s forty-four.”
Harry raised his eyebrows.
“The young, rich widow—the plot thickens.” He glanced around. “Speaking of which, where’s my ketchup?”
I looked deeper into the file folder. Two faces stared out at me from a
Sun
society page photo taken a few years back. Bernard Kemmerman was a tan, decent-looking man behind aviator-style glasses, casually dressed; he had warm eyes and a calm, contented face.
If Kemmerman looked untypical of the hard-driving studio executive, his younger wife, Anne-Judith, fit the Tinseltown stereotype more closely. She was a knockout, glamour run amok: heavy eyeliner, bee-stung lips, Jayne Mansfield breasts, Grand Canyon cleavage, and enough stacked hair to qualify her for televangelism.
“Nice jugs,” Harry said. “Her hubby must have died happy.”
“Thank you so much, Harry,” Templeton said, “for your sensitive male input.”
I thought of the recording Anne-Judith Kemmerman had left on Reza JaFari’s answering machine:
This message is for Raymond Farr. This is Anne-Judith Kermmerman. You know my number. Find the balls to call me, dammit.
The brassy voice and the tough words matched the face in the photograph, to a
T
.
“The question is,” Templeton said, “what’s the connection between the Kemmermans and Reza JaFari?”
“And how do you figure to find out?”
“I think we should characterize our story as a eulogy to Reza JaFari, the aspiring screenwriter. Death of a Hollywood dream, something sappy like that. Gives us more latitude to ask questions, dig around.”
“You can go almost anywhere with an angle like that,” Harry said.
“And certain sources,” Templeton added, “might be less inclined to turn us down.”
The busboy set a bottle of ketchup on the table. Harry shook it, unscrewed the cap, and dumped a load onto his patty, barely looking at us while he talked.
“Who knows? Maybe you and Templeton will end up with a story you can break in the
Sun
.” He put the burger back together, trying too hard to sound offhand. “You can always do the magazine piece later, as a featurized follow-up.”
I suddenly got it: There we were—Harry, Templeton, and me—sharing a civilized, sociable meal. Trading ideas while a big question mark hung over a developing story. Working as a team. The way Harry had always wanted it.
Clever old Harry. He’d pulled it off again, protesting all the way.
Templeton and I started in on our lunches, exchanging a knowing glance across the table.
Harry ate with his burger in one hand and the menu in the other, like a rich uncle out to lunch with his niece and nephew, trying to decide between the chocolate mousse and the cherry cheesecake for dessert.