The Comedy Writer (34 page)

The driver and his four startled passengers were Hispanic, and they sat there looking dazed and guilty and thoroughly intimidated by this maniac, my savior. Bowman didn't acknowledge me, so I tried to slink off, but he called my name.

“Did you see that? Did you see what happened?”

“Well, I was in line …”

“So you're my witness, right?”

“The thing is, when you passed me, everything was so fast …”

“Good. I'm counting on you, man. We got this fucker dead to rights. We got him dead to rights!”

but I wasn't in the mood. “Let's go back to 'our place,' “ she said—meaning Dominick's—but I said no. She couldn't understand how I could get the biggest break of my life and not want to get hammered. I explained to her that my big break was in jeopardy, it wasn't a done deal yet. I hated myself. If only I'd bolted the studio after my meeting, I wouldn't be in this mess. I had to be the bigshot, had to phone everyone from the studio, couldn't leave the fucking
Cheers
guys alone. For Christ sakes, that show hadn't had a decent episode in two years!

I called Levine's agency, but he'd gone home. I tried to find him
in the directory, to no avail. I attempted to read
The Princess Bride
, but couldn't get past the preface. Doheny stripped down to her bra and panties, sat next to me on the bed. She put her hand on my thigh and I felt sick. She tried to snuggle; I went into the kitchenette. When I came out, she was sprawled on her back, naked. It looked like a raccoon was on her lap.

“Come here, Monkey,” she said.

“No.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

I poured an eight-count of Stoly and went out to the pool, stunned and dizzy. The afternoon was Everest, this was Death Valley. Why couldn't I for once get something good without something bad having to balance it out.

Doheny came out wearing one of my T-shirts. She lit a butt, chewed the polish off her nails, asked if I wanted to play a game.

“No.”

“It'll take your mind off things.”

“That's what you said about the joint on the way to the Hard Rock.”

“Let's not talk about bad things. This is a good day.”

“It's not a good day, it's a horrible day. I'm fucked.”

“Just tell him you didn't see nothing.”

Tempting.

“Maybe the problem will just go away,” she said.

This sounded even better. Who knew, maybe it would.

“We're gonna play a game called 'confession.' You have to confess something about yourself that you never told anyone else.”

“No.”

“Come on, it'll help us bond.”

“We've bonded enough.”

“No, we haven't. You've been really distant lately. Please, don't be a poop. Let's tell each other something we did that was really stupid that nobody knows about.”

She put her hand on my package. I lifted it off.

“You go first,” she said.

“You
go first.”

“No,
you
go first. I called it.”

She explained the rules again and I finished my drink, then I went in and poured another six-count and while I was there I took a hit off a roach. It took me a while to think of something dumb that no one knew, and then I felt the roach and remembered.

“I got one,” I said, “but it's probably not what you're looking for.”

“So what? So what? Go ahead.”

“I had a girlfriend when I was eighteen and I loved her a lot, but I had this stupid thing in my head that I'd only tell one girl in my life that I loved her, because I thought that was the way it was going to be. And even though I loved this girl, I didn't tell her because I wasn't sure she'd be the only one.” I rolled my ice around. “Since then, I've told a few of them that I love them. But I think maybe she's the one that I loved the most. And I think she loved me the most, too.”

“That's pathetic, Henry.”

Her light touch made me smile. “Yeah.”

“What happened to her?”

“She's gone.”

“Where'd she go?”

I took a big gulp.

“Away.”

'Okay, you told me a story. Now I'll tell you something personal.”

“You don't have to.”

“I want to. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Just tell it.”

“Okay.”

She bit her thumb and kind of smiled and I kind of smiled back and I thought it was going to be a fun one, and she said, “I blew a dog once.”

Back inside my phone machine was blinking. I hit the button: “Henry. Ted Bowman. Kudos on the pitch today. You're a stud. I'm looking forward to working with you, dude. Listen, lunch tomorrow, one o'clock, Ivy on Robertson. Oh, um … ah … I also need you to call my lawyer, tell him what you saw. Um … ah … well, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Ciao.”

When Doheny came in, I took my pad back outside and started writing
Ice Cream Man.
I was determined to make this something more than run-of-the-mill slasher shit. I wanted to elevate the genre, the way
Psycho
did, and
The Fly;
I wanted to give it depth, make it fun. Make it so good that they couldn't say no.

Sometimes writing is hard and sometimes it's easy and often there's no accounting for either. You can be happy as a clam and all blocked up or feeling like shit and watching it flow. This much I know about creative endeavors: They're out of your control. You have to be disciplined enough to sit down and give an effort, but what comes forth is not up to you. Inspiration is not earned, it is a
gift. It's why Van Gogh spit out most of his great stuff in eighteen months in Aries. It's why someone can write two great novels in a row and never write another decent chapter; why songwriters can have ten hits in five years and not be heard from again. What happened to Papa John Phillips, and the guy who wrote all the Rascals' hits, and Christopher Cross and Bobby Boyce and Tommy Hart and Brian Wilson and Carlos Santana and Peter Townshend and Nils Lofgren and George Harrison and the Jefferson Airplane? It's not that the music changed so much, it's that the spark isn't there for them anymore. It's not their fault. They were lucky to have once been blessed, but the gift was not theirs to own, only to borrow, and it moved on as good fortune inevitably does.

When I sat down to write
Ice Cream Man
, I had the flow working for me. The entire first act spilled out of my head in seven hours. I didn't think, just scribbled fast, tried not to get in the way. Twenty-four pages. I was so pleased that I celebrated by sparking a roach and jotting down fifteen more pages of notes. By sunrise I had the whole thing figured out. And what I had was good. I was proud for having dragged myself out of the gutter. I'd been inspired by my setback, taken advantage of my despair, and that, I think, is the key to success for a writer.

I told Levine's assistant it was an emergency and five minutes later I was in. It was just as I'd feared. Bowman had told business affairs not to negotiate until after we talked. Levine was confused; it should've been a simple deal, Guild minimum, forty-two-five. As I started explaining,
Levine took off his telephone, mesmerized. He called in a couple other agents and I repeated the story.

“He wants you to lie for him?” a man named Adam Pollard asked.

“Yes. Well, I mean, it's not a lie to him. He really thinks he's right.”

“He doesn't think shit,” Levine said. “Guys like him don't think. He's a fucking sociopath—right and wrong don't matter, as long as he wins.”

“Maybe he doesn't have insurance,” the other guy, Flynn, said.

“He has insurance,” Levine said.

“Then what's the big deal?” asked Flynn. “Why does he even care?

“Because he's a fucking maniac.”

“He must not have insurance,” I repeated.

Pollard snapped, “Of course he has insurance, he has insurance up the kazoo. Listen to me, Henry, I know Ted Bowman. I once worked for a Ted Bowman. I understand the Ted Bowmans of the world.
They're fucking insane.
Give you an example: One day this asshole—name's Joe Baer, used to be an agent at ICM—anyway, he has a fender-bender. Not even a fender-bender really, more like a fender tap. Not the slightest dent in the car, just a little chip on the paint right above the headlight. So he gives me the keys and tells me to get the whole thing painted. We're talking five grand. I look at the car and look at him and I say, 'But you can't even see it. Why do you want to get the whole thing painted?' He says, 'Because it's not perfect.' “

Levine glanced at his e-mail. “There's no talking to these guys.”

“Well,” Flynn said, “if you want my opinion, just tell him what he wants to hear. He'll probably never need you to testify anyway.”

“What if he does?”

“Let me tell you something,” Pollard said. “In Bowman's mind it's immoral that you would forsake him. He's handing you forty-some-odd thousand dollars, and now you're going to pork him, that's what he sees.”

Flynn said, “This isn't some movie where the good guy knows he's good and the bad guy knows he's bad. In the real world, most bad people don't know they're bad.”

I put my head in my hands and growled.

“You're making way too much out of this,” Levine said. “It'll probably just go away.”

“It's not going to go away,” I said. “I have a lunch with him today. He wants me to talk to his lawyer!”

“Okay, I have to ask this,” said Pollard. “Was it even close? I mean, is it possible you saw it wrong?”

“He ran a fucking red light,” Levine said.

“Well, if you want to be a boy scout about it, you could just say you didn't see anything,” Flynn said. “I mean, that's a way out.”

“And what about Pedro and his wife and kids?! They can't afford to fix a Rolls-Royce! They'd be better off jumping back over the fence and drinking diarrhea water down in Guadalajara!”

I didn't actually say this, which would've limited my options, but I thought it.

“Look,” I said, “he said I have a deal. Doesn't that mean I have a deal?”

“Henry, I haven't received a deal memo yet,” Levine said. “You don't have shit.”

“You mean he can definitely back out … ?”

“Of course. Nobody's signed any paper.”

“Then give me something to sign.”

Pollard and Flynn could see I was getting irrational and bowed out of the room.

“That takes time. For Christ sakes, you probably won't see an actual contract until you're done with the first draft.”

“So how do I protect myself? What can I do? Am I just fucked?”

“Don't work with guys like Ted Bowman, that's how you protect yourself. Work with Ron Howard or the Zucker brothers, not Ted Bowman.”

“How stupid of me!” I yelled. “I should've taken their fucking calls instead of jerking off on that 976 line!”

“I'm just saying I warned you.”

“How is this guy even allowed to operate?”

“He's able to operate because this is Hollywood.” He stared at me. “So what's it going to be?”

I was stumbling. “I'll go to lunch. Of course. I'm not going to be rude, he just offered me my first deal, I think I owe him a lunch.”

“And what'11 you tell him when he asks you to back him up?”

“I don't know. What would you do?”

“It doesn't matter what I'd do.”

Levine looked out the window at the sprawling L.A. Country Club below.

“If I've learned one thing out here, Henry, it's that there are a lot of sociopaths in this world, and they're not all killers.”

in a nondescript building behind a distressed picket fence. You'd never
suspect it was one of the fanciest restaurants in L.A., if not for the line of late-model foreign cars being valeted out front. The waiters and hostesses were all clean-cut, good-looking actors. They seemed unfazed by the celebrities and celebrity wives filling the place and were anything but impressed by my appearance at the hostess stand in shorts and a T-shirt. Ted Bowman's name perked them up, and a man in a suit—the manager, I presumed—took the menus from the unbelievably gorgeous hostess and led me to a corner table.