Easy to Like (7 page)

The barkeep was soon standing before
him, Elliot's AMEX card in his hand.

“Elliot Jonson?” he said.

“Yes,” said Elliot. The man's voice was
familiar, as was the size of him, and the thick, nearly white hair —

“Didn't have the temerity to go with
‘Shakespeare'?”

Elliot looked again. “Gunnar Olafsson?”

“Yeah, Wes, right? Wes Johnston?” He
pulled out a chair and sat.

“Well . . . as you
can see . . . I'm going by my middle name now.”

They had been in film school together,
in Montreal, back in the late '70s. They hadn't been in the same class or shared
the same interests, Gunnar being a dedicated proto-experimentalist, making, if
Elliot remembered correctly, long (“duration as an aesthetic”) films with a
delirium tremens camera. He did recall, clearly, that the films, which meant
absolutely nothing to Elliot, were highly lauded by the faculty. Gunnar won a
student prize. Elliot passed his courses and was little noticed.

“Right. And what's with ‘Jonson'? Like
Ben Jonson, yeah?”

“Lot of Johnstons around. It was a
business decision, to distinguish myself from everyone else. So you landed in
Toronto after film school?”

“I was back in Winnipeg for a while, at
the Film Co-op. I ended up taking a job with the CBC to make enough money to
continue making my own films and then one thing led to another, I moved up in
the organization, ended up coming here.”

“Great.”

“Well . . . no. I
mean, obviously.” Gunnar gestured to the room.

“Have a glass of wine?” asked
Elliot.

“My shift is done in fifteen
minutes.”

Now, as in university days,
the Icelander became easily drunk. His head became too heavy for his neck.
Elliot could remember seeing the same movement, the same swinging of the noggin,
in the Greek dive Aidoneus, on Park Avenue. Gunnar could be nasty at school,
never hesitating to make a crack about his peers' early and naive efforts in the
cinema, but in the bar afterward, after a couple of
gros
Molson
and a few spliffs, he became the sentimental fool.

Gunnar sat at Elliot's table with his
supper, a carelessly scorched T-bone and a pint of beer. Halfway through the
tile of beef (and his third lager), Gunnar abandoned trying to saw off another
double mouthful and pushed the plate away. Betraying his roots, he took rye
whisky for dessert. Gunnar wanted to talk about the good old days.

“And remember Bernadette, what a
babe . . . Oh man, I actually went up to the Laurentians
with her one time . . . Her parents had a
place . . .”

“So you were in management at CBC?”

“At CBC . . . Oh
yeah, I was a Creative Head.”

This could mean many things.

“Which
is . . . that you . . .?”

“Movies and Miniseries,” answered
Gunnar.

“In charge of production?”

“Yeah but . . . not
really ‘Production' production. Commissioning them, or taking an investment
position. I'm proooud —” He burped. “Proud of the films that we helped make
happen.”

“Like?”

“Well . . . there
was
Down a Mine
, and the Olive Diefenbaker biopic,
which I think surprised a lot of people, and
Silly
Goose
, that bird movie, and . . . anyway, a lot
of . . . oh yeah, and, of course,
Cabane à Sucre
.”

“Wow, that's impressive,” said Elliot,
despite never having heard of any of these films.

“And Louise, remember her, she was in
animation? She broke my heart. Fucking hot. You know what she used to do?”

“With a track record like that — what
happened?” Elliot asked, as if he'd not heard Gunnar's digression. Gunnar was
probably soused enough to wonder whether he'd said the thing about Louise or
only thought it.

“Okay,
okay . . . audiences were in decline, but you've got to
remember that, given the
demo . . . demo . . . demographics, we
were going to lose a significant number anyway.”

“To the competition?”

“No, to death. The CBC audience skews
kinda oldish. So I thought maybe more films about dying and disease, that sort
of thing, I mean, Bergman did that all the time.”

“Death was even a lead in one of his
films, if I remember,” observed Elliot.

“Right . . . anyway, some projects weren't as
‘light-hearted' as some VPs might have liked. And a few were ‘challenging.'”

“Challenging as in the
art-movie-that-people-don't-watch way?”

Gunnar's head bobbed in vigorous
affirmation.

“And you have no idea what a low
opinion those guys have of their audience. They take them all for boobs and
cretins. They were worried about their official mandate, so they had code words
for it, stuff like ‘more broadly accessible' or ‘audience accommodation.' I
mean, hey, sure, this is television, chicks in bikinis eating spiders for money,
but this is
public
television, surely there has to
be . . .” The thought filling Gunnar's head must have been giving
it buoyancy, for when he lost its thread, his chin went to his chest. Was he
snoring? No, it was a waking snort.

“People used to watch, Gunnar. I mean
growing up, I'm sure we had the CBC on all the time.”

“That was before there was a choice.
How many channels did you get in . . . where was it you come
from, Wes, out east, wasn't it?”

“‘Elliot,' and we only had the two
channels.”

“You know, there is a gaggle of comfy
liberals out there, a tiny educated elite, isolated in gilded downtown enclaves,
in their bubbles, who like to imagine that this is a sophisticated, postmodern,
secular humanist society. They have that smug, superior attitude toward the
States, like they're all hicks and we up here are opera-going, art galleries on
Sunday . . .” Gunnar burped once more. “But you go out there, my
friend, out into the suburbs, get out into area codes where the people live.
And . . . that whole funding system that was designed to
bring all that art and culture to the masses, to subsidize it so that any
Canadian could have . . . well, Wes, ol' buddy” — Elliot
flinched at this — “they didn't want it. Even for free.”

“Maybe it has to cost them something
before they know its value.”

“Nah. It's a Tim Hortons nation. Who
should expect a population whose favourite food is Kraft Dinner to go in for
documentaries about Stockhausen?”

“You have a point.”

“Hmmm? I . . .” Gunnar
was having trouble with his next thought. He looked at his glass with regret. He
clenched his jaw in a last push to get out what he meant to say. “Regardless of
the reasons, one day I got called before the bosses and told that I either
resigned or took the position of Director of Radio for Nunavut. I told them
where to go. I left my experimental film practice in Winnipeg for these people.
I was happy to be out of there, clear of that institutionalized mediocrity.
Besides, over the years I figured I had made a few friends in the independent
production sector. There were people out there who had done well by my
stew . . . stewardship of tax dollars and would return the
favour by giving me a job.” Gunnar's expression further soured. “The excuses I
heard, Wes . . .”

Elliot was about to again correct
Gunnar on the Wes front but thought better of it.

“‘Production is way down this year,'
they said, and ‘There is this huge inventory of Movies of the Week,' and
‘Reality is killing everybody.' Ungrateful bastards. I thought I had something
at the OFDC, but I did a lousy interview and they really needed to hire a woman
of colour. I was going lose my house . . . so I said fuck
it, I'm going to do it myself, just some porn, low budget, quick turnaround,
make some cash . . .”

“And?”

“I got it into my head
to . . . when I was writing the
script . . .”

“The
script
?”

“I started getting interested in the
formal possibilities and the prospect of making a critique, more a
metapornographic film than . . .”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah, well, it was a great film, only
not sexy in the conventional sense . . . Anyway, I ended up
workin' the bar here.” Gunnar surveyed his domain and again let gravity have its
way with his skull. Again it bounced back up.

“Hey! Do you remember Lucy Szilard from
film school? She was really talented. Whatever happened to her?”

“She ended up in Hollywood.”

“Wow. What about you, Wes?”

Elliot looked at his watch.

“Oh, I ended up in the States too, in
the beverage industry. Good seeing you, Gunnar, but I gotta go.”

WITHOUT THINKING
, Elliot, Angeleno
though he was, walked — walked! — back to the Four Seasons. There'd been a rain
shower; the city had shined its avenues and dabbed petrichor behind its ear in
preparation for a glittering evening. Toronto wasn't such a bad little town. A
couple of days here wouldn't kill him.

In his room he turned on the television
and, in mind of his company that evening, found the CBC.

The program on offer looked to be one
commissioned by Gunnar himself. It was self-consciously arty, shot in
high-contrast black and white and with mannered performances. At first Elliot
thought that something was wrong with the signal or the set, for he could get no
sound. He was considering calling the concierge when the appearance of a title
card on the screen told him the silence was deliberate. They were taking great
pains to emulate the films of the early montage-mad Soviets — Eisenstein,
Pudovkin, and cadre. They'd made the new film look like something pulled from a
dusty archive in Leningrad, distressing the negative and chopping out a few
random frames as if the print were ancient and much abused. The effect was
visually compelling for all of thirty seconds, and ruined entirely when Mike
recognized an actress he'd seen in a television commercial for Red Lobster.

At least the film's lack of soundtrack
made it possible to watch while checking his voice mail at the same time. (There
might be some future in silent pictures, thought Elliot.) The first message was
from Mike, who sounded uncommonly keen. “Elliot, call me as soon as possible.
It's urgent, like for real.”

“Urgent” could mean only one of two
things. Someone was taking a meeting — perhaps Litehouse had realized the
potential of
Nailed
and reconsidered. Or, more
likely, it was an offer of a quick polish job, perhaps trying to beat a few
jokes into another lame comedy. Hopeful, and with nothing better to do, Elliot
called Mike.

“Elliot! This is your cell number,
right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a pay phone anywhere near
there? Are you at the vineyard?”

“I'm in Toronto.”

“Toronto?
Like . . . Canada, Toronto? Is there a shoot or
something?”

“No, I'm here for a couple of days en
route to France. There was some trouble with my passport.”

“Trouble?” Mike swallowed the word,
worried. Odd for Mike.

“Nothing serious. It was out of
date.”

“Oh . . . good.
Listen, are you at a hotel?”

“Yeah, the Four Seasons.”

“That's perfect. Gimme ten minutes.
I'll call you back.”

The moment the call ended, a blat of
distorted sound leapt from the television set. Elliot dove across the king-size
bed for the remote and muted the volume. The black-and-white piece had ended.
Now there was too much colour and too much light. Onscreen were young people
with forced smiles in an improbably spacious apartment. Their movements were
halting but exaggerated; they were reacting to what was being said with the
grandiloquent eyes and lips of desperation mugging. Elliot thought he might just
be able to detect flop sweat blooming beneath the pancake on one particularly
cherubic funny-maker. All too familiar, like at least half a dozen sitcom pilots
in which he'd had a hand. Those had, thankfully, never seen the light of day.
Perhaps this was a comedy
about
a failing sitcom.
He'd mention that idea to Mike. He went back to his voice mail.

“Mr. Jonson, my name is Jasper Crabb,
I'm a senior special investigator with the United States Department of
Agriculture. I want to talk to you about some of your vine stock, issues
concerning provenance. This is a serious matter and I'd appreciate it if you
would call me as soon as possible at —” Elliot closed his phone. The jig was up.
The USDA had determined that Elliot was cultivating grapes from unauthorized
stock and was going to throw the book at him.

The first grape he'd smuggled into the
U.S., back in 1992, was Counoise. The crowd at Tablas Creek had already acquired
some from Beaucastel and had been responsible enough to put it through three
years of quarantine up at UC Davis. It would be several more years before the
nursery could make it available commercially, and Elliot, in his early
enthusiasm for his venture, decided he couldn't wait that long. He needed mature
Counoise and Mourvèdre and Syrah, five years of age minimum, to make a worthy
wine. Elliot smuggled in the cuttings to be on an even playing field with the
growers who had pioneered the region.

Yet for all that risk, the Counoise
failed to contribute the missing element to the wine. There was definitely some
desirable red berry pickle but . . . In for a penny, Elliot
soon after got his source in Avignon to score him some shoots of Muscardin.
Those planted on flat ground did well and, when introduced to the concoction
five years later, gave the wine, while still undrinkable, a more floral
bouquet.

He looked back at the TV, thinking
again that he'd better pay closer attention; a homecoming to Canada might soon
be his only option. They were now on to some sort of drama: it was set in an
open-concept office, possibly a newspaper. The lead character was a twitchy old
guy, probably playing the editor, who, in a way one would never see on American
television, squinted all the time. To its credit, the CBC seemed determined to
reflect the nation back to itself, for the performers were all plain-looking,
cast, it seemed, to resemble regular folk. There was an aversion to extremes up
here. While the stars might lack glamour, the people on the street were not the
great waddling obese, the new land-giants you saw in the States. Americans were
content to let celebrities be attractive and happy for them. In Canada, Elliot
knew, they thought that no countryman was worthy of celebrity and were
suspicious of anyone who might be too good-looking or pleased with themselves.
Americans were determined to believe in better tomorrows. Canadians wouldn't
take risks in case they should make things any worse. Americans couldn't
perceive irony; Canadians chose to look away from it. Elliot was about to turn
the volume back up when the phone on the night table rang.

“Mike! Sitcom about a failing
sitcom?”

“Too
Inside
Baseball
.” Mike, like all agents, could respond to a question without
having given it any consideration, as though he'd spent the night in study and
rumination. “I guess this line is clean, hey? I mean, a foreign hotel, they
couldn't very well . . .”

“Where are you calling from?”

“I'm in a gas station on Wilshire. I'm
calling from a pay phone.”

“A pay phone?”

“They're impossible to find these days.
I've been driving around for half an hour. Elliot, do you remember that
conference call with Larry Werner, about two years ago?”

“Vaguely . . . remind me.”

“Remember you were joking after the
call that he took a pass on
Pass It On
?”

“Right, the pandemic comedy. That was a
funny idea.”

“No, it wasn't. Anyway. It turns out
that the conversation was tapped.”

“So?”

“From an illegal wiretap.”

“Why would anyone tap my phone?”

“Not
your
phone, Elliot, Larry's. Why would anyone tap your phone?”

“Who was tapping Larry's phone?”

“A private investigator working for
Lucky Silverman.”

“But Larry and Lucky are partners. I
even think Lucky was on the call for a bit.”

“They
are
partners, and Lucky was on the call. The details aren't important, what's
important is that you not cooperate when the FBI come calling.”

“The
FBI
?”

“There's an investigation.”

“Back up.”

“Everybody was tapping everybody else:
producers tapping agents tapping actors tapping producers. It's a victimless
crime.”

“I don't feel in the least
victimized.”

“That's the spirit. The DA will
prosecute the easier cases, and Lucky needs the waters muddied. They don't have
any tape, only the bill from the private detective who did the deed. Unless a
person who was on that call gives evidence, they won't be able to proceed.”

“Okay . . . I
guess.”

“Great. And there is nothing the FBI
could squeeze you on, to compel you to testify?”

“Like?”

“Narcotics, like that business that got
Lloyd Purcell deported.”

Elliot thought about the call from the
USDA. Mike had made it plain that he was tired of hearing about the woes of
Elliot's winery, and why worry the guy? “Nope,” he said.

“Excellent. I know that if you let this
go, if you don't cooperate, have a lapse of memory, you can't remember any call,
your mind has been destroyed by alcohol from all that wine, etcetera,
then . . .” Mike was panting. “I'm advised to inform you that you
could be looking at a producer credit on
The Centuri
Protocol
.”

The Centuri
Protocol
was based on a comic, something to do with serial-killing
aliens who took the form of sexually insatiable, cannibalistic interns at the
White House. Early reports said the film was fantastic to look at, utterly
moronic, and testing through the roof. It was a hit-in-waiting, and Lucky
Silverman and Larry Werner were its producers.

For Mike to even have bothered calling
Elliot said that the matter of the wiretaps was a grave one. There wasn't time,
but Elliot knew he should get legal advice before taking a payoff on the advice
of his agent. That was what the situation in Hollywood had come to: one needed
lawyers to talk to one's agents, and agents to talk to one's lawyers. Even the
agents needed agents.

“What sort of fee?”

“Well obviously
something . . . not in line with Larry and Lucky. You
weren't even the one they were listening to, you were collateral damage.”

“Collateral casualties are the ones who
get the compensation, Mike. That's the American way. I have to get the same fee
as those guys or no one will believe it. They make it known that it's a real
credit, not a courtesy credit, and I will endeavour to stay out of reach.”

The line was quiet for a moment. Mike
was either considering the offer or had been dragged away by the feds.

“I think that can be done,” he finally
answered.

“One worry, though.”

“Yes?”

“I've said, many times, that I would
never adapt a comic book and never do serial killers.”

“Sure, but who heard you? And since you
may soon be attached to the project, it's ‘graphic novel,' not ‘comic book.' You
would never be in the running for a top comic book adaptation. Though one major
upside to this is that being considered a possible co-conspirator with that
company really ups your stakes in this town. It puts you in another league
altogether.”

“And all this time I've been trying to
get ahead with writing.”

“Don't call me about this, okay? I'm
sure they're tapping the office phones.”

“Who? The FBI or
Larry . . . or Lucky?”

“Any or all of the above.”

“Can more than one person be tapping
your phone at a time? Can you tap a tap? That would be a good twist in a
picture, eh?”

“That's far too complicated for today's
audience.”

“It is rather ‘meta.'”

“It's ‘
meh-ta
,' Elliot. If I don't call you back then you can assume it's
done and you're a producer on
Centuri Protocol
. If
asked, you say it was an honour to work with . . . blah blah
blah.”

“Have you talked to Jerry about
this?”

“Jerry?”

“Jerry Borstein was on the call too.
Are you gonna talk to him?”

“No! And don't you either. Someone else
must be dealing with Jerry.”

“Right. You know what is weird, Mike? I
was at Silverman's house the other day.”

“I know. What were you thinking, not
fucking his wife?”

“Jesus, I thought —”

“ You could have done yourself a big
favour there, buddy.”

“I so misread that.”

“How do you think it makes him look,
some hack won't fuck his wife? And now he's got to keep fucking her on top of
Janice Everston. You insulted one of the biggest players in this town.”

“Janice Everston?”

“Everybody knows this, my friend.”

“Imagine,
though . . . fucking her on top of Janice Everston, I mean
literally, her in the middle while you —”

“Stop, please.”

“This bullshit credit, Mike. It's the
first work you've got me in over a year.”

“Not true, didn't I get
you . . .” Realizing Elliot was correct, Mike refocused. “What I
would really like to know is, what was said in that phone conference that's got
everybody's pee so hot?”

“I have to be candid,
Mike . . . I probably wasn't paying close attention.”

“You don't surprise me much,
Elliot.”

“I say ‘yeah, that's great' and ‘good
idea' and doodle. I could check my doodles when I get back to Los Angeles.”

“Sure, Elliot, check your doodles.