Hollywood Tough (2002) (33 page)

She smiled at him as the elevator arrived and they got aboard. "A little mess is when you drop a plate, Shane. When you drop three assholes, it's called a major incident." They rode down to the lobby, and after they exited Alexa took his hand.

They walked out into the sunshine and kissed in the parking lot, then headed to their separate cars.

The Acura was boiling hot, so he quickly rolled down the windows. It was ten-thirty, and the temperature was already in the high seventies. The Valley was headed toward another triple-digit day. The northern winds that had cleansed the city and kept it cool for the last half week had left as suddenly as they had arrived. Now the Basin was baking in one of its classic inversion layers. As Shane started his car, he looked up at the hospital windows on the second floor and wondered what would happen to Delfina. Would she carry these scars forever, or could she find the strength to bury the ugliness and leave it all behind? Where there's no fault, there should be no guilt, he thought. But then a soft voice argued from inside his head.

Some things can be true and, at the same time, have no meaning.

Chapter
35.

When Shane arrived at Hollywood General Studios, he couldn't drive onto the lot because a huge eighteen-wheel truck, with a gargantuan redwood log strapped onto the flatbed trailer, was maneuvering back and forth on Monitor Street, trying to back through the gate. Shane parked outside at the curb and walked onto the lot past the retired motor officer, who had a clipboard in one hand and his phone in the other. He saw Shane and waved him over. As Shane approached, he could hear one side of an angry conversation.

"
. . . no place to put another eighteen-wheeler. You're also gonna have t' find parking off the lot for the star dressing rooms, the honey wagons and two-holers. The wardrobe, prop, and camera trucks I'll try to squeeze in here for security reasons, but that's it. I only got two hundred parking spaces." The guard listened for a moment, making a face for Shane's benefit. "I don't care if you're pissed off! I'm pissed off! You're not the only film shooting here." He slammed down the phone.

"Problems?"

"Your director is an asshole. His rental trucks started moving in here this morning and knocked the shit outta the place." He looked up at the growling logging truck, which seemed to be getting itself hopelessly wedged in the studi
o d
riveway. "Lookit this asshole. He's never gonna get that thing through the gate."

"Is this all for The Neural Surfer?" Shane asked, looking past the guard shack into the lot, where a dozen rental trucks were parked with their back doors open and tailgates down. Twenty or more men were taking inventory, unloading camera equipment and grip and electrical packages.

"We're not equipped to make a hundred-million-dollar film here," the gate guard protested.

"A what?!"

"That's what the director said . . . Lubinski, or whatever his name is."

"Lubick . and this picture isn't gonna cost anywhere near a hundred million."

"Somebody better tell him. I never saw this much rolling stock."

Shane started toward the production office, but the guard' grabbed his arm. "Reason I waved you over is Mr. Marcella wanted me to give you something." He ducked into the shack, then reappeared a second later and handed Shane a folded note.

Shane . . .

Meet me at the vomitorium before noon.

Imperative.

Nicholas

The little grifter was wedged behind a tiny table in the dining car, drinking coffee. He had a copy of The Neural Surfer and looked up from it as Shane approached and slid into the empty seat across from him.

"Where the hell you been?" Nicky groused.

"You're not my only project." Shane looked down at the red-paged script. "You finally got it?"

"Yeah, I stole this from Rajindi's desk."

"Is it full of ferae naturae?" Shane deadpanned. "Huh?"

"Untamed nature."

"This script is more confusing than a Palm Beach ballot," Nicky said solemnly. "It's like somebody threw it all over the room, randomly gathered up the pages, then bradded the flicker with everything out of order."

"But a bargain at any price."

"Not to quibble, but Lubick told me this morning, whatever the printed budget number is, cube it."

"He's crazy. Doesn't anybody know that but us?" Shane groused.

"There's an old rule in Hollywood, which we call the Dennis Hopper Rule. Dennis is a good citizen now, but this was written back in the seventies, when he was a flicking head case. The rule states that it's perfectly okay to hire crazy, creative people for a film, unless it's Dennis Hopper, who you should never hire, because he's not crazy, he's insane." Nicky closed the script and glared at Shane. "Lubick isn't insane, he's only crazy. I'm trying to slow him down by telling him we aren't funded for anything close to a hundred and fifty million dollars."

"A hundred and fifty million?! The gate guard said it was a hundred million."

"Now the gate guard's doing budgets?" Nicky sighed. "But what's it matter . . . a hundred million, a hundred fifty? We don't have it, anyway."

"Good point."

"This asshole, Lubick, tells me just this morning that it's his solemn obligation as a director to bring this film in as far over budget as humanly possible."

"Dennis Valentine wants to take him out and kick the shit out of him."

"Where do I sign up?" Nicky said, then leaned forward. "But all is not lost, boychik, because I have secured what we call in the biz 'major studio interest.' I told you my phone's been ringing off the hook with guys from the majors who all want to get in on this project. I've been fending them off, but I think the time is ripe to bring in a partner, which is a seven-letter word we use in the film biz that means sucker."

"Who?"

"There's a guy at Universal. Actually, he's the president of production, and I think he's perfect. Name's Steve Bergman, known around town as Stevie Wonder because he can't read."

"I'm sorry . . . ?"

"He can't read. He's illiterate."

"And he's head of a major studio? How can the head of a studio not be able to read? That's crazy."

"Right. It's also the Dennis Hopper rule. Besides, he doesn't have to read. He's not stupid, just seriously dyslexic. Actually, he's a smart son of a bitch and a killer when it comes to deal points. Besides, a studio only has to say yes to twelve or fifteen films a year, so when Steve's development execs are ready to punch one up, and need him to green-light the project, they just put together a little table read. They hire actors to perform all the characters, and Stevie just sits at the head of the table with his eyes closed and listens. Nobody talks about the fact that he's illiterate and probably has ADD to boot. All the players know, but nobody makes anything out of it. It's like The Wizard of Oz without the funny costumes."

"You're putting me on," Shane said. "If you can't read, how can you pick a good script?"

"Lookit us. Our script reads like it came apart in the Xerox machine, and we're already half a million into preproduction."

"Okay . . . okay, so tell me how we get Stevie on board." Shane was grasping at straws, dreading his next meeting with Filosiani.

"We've got a late lunch with him in"--Nicky looked at his Rolex; Shane wondered if it was rented--"one hour, in the private executive dining room at Universal. He's talking about putting up half the budget and all the P and A."

"On a script he hasn't read?"

"On a script he can't read."

"Which undoubtedly works to our advantage here."

"It doesn't matter, Shane. We've got so much momentu
m
, this thing could be as hard to understand as a Salman Rushdie novel and nobody would care. Stevie sees this as a good commercial investment, a shared risk with CineRoma. By the way, you like that name? It's starting to sound way too ethnic to me. I was thinking maybe we should be Platinum Pictures--get a cool, interlocking P logo. . . ." He spread his hands in the air. "Platinum Pictures presents: a Nicholas Marcella film. . . ."

Nicky had parked his car around the corner from the vomitorium and was anxiously looking over his shoulder as he scurried along toward it.

"Are you trying to avoid someone?" Shane asked as he followed.

"You bet. Half this fucking town wants a piece of this deal," the little grifter answered. "As of right now, we're the hottest flicking producers in showbiz."

Chapter
36.

Universal was a big-time film company located on hundreds of acres with thirty or more soundstages and a huge back lot. You could fit all of Hollywood General Studios onto half of the east parking lot. Nicky docked the maroon Bentley in a space near the commissary. Shane got out and was gawking at ten scantily clad women dressed as space aliens, walking away from the kiosk eating candy bars.

Nicky joined him, pointing. "Probably extras on Space Mission Earth, the new Gene Roddenberry TV series spinoff."

"I thought Gene Roddenberry was dead."

"Death is relative in show business. In Roddenberry's case, he died physically but not professionally. Commercial viability transcends mortality. A confusing but meaningful concept. Okay, boychik, lemme do the talking."

"When you talk, are you gonna actually say anything this time?"

"I had a cough drop stuck in my throat at CAA. I'm fine now."

They entered the main commissary, where the hostess took their names and led them to the rear of the large dining room, which had been designed with curved walls. The tables were arranged in clusters.

"There's no east wall," Shane said to Nicky as they followed the attractive blond hostess through the crowde
d r
oomful of studio employees. "You said the room was a rectangle and the tables were in rows. That people tried to sit near Lew Wasserman by the east wall."

"The dumbass things you pick to worry about," Nicky said, brushing this useless remark aside. "After Seagram's bought the studio, they redesigned it, put in the S-curves and the seating clusters. Happy now? Try and focus on business, not bullshit."

They were led through a door into a private dining room that was very tastefully decorated with antiques. A man in a white coat stood at the far end of a twelve-seat rectangular table and smiled at them as they entered.

"Take any chair you like," the waiter said. "My name is Arthur."

"Thanks." Nicky picked the seat at the head of the table. "I should have said, except that one," Arthur amended. "That's Mr. Bergman's place."

Nicky got up quickly, then picked a seat at the center of the table, while Shane took the chair beside him. Nicky smiled at Arthur. "How many people are attending this luncheon?"

"Mr. Bergman, Ms. Smart, Mr. Feltheim, Ms. Ansara, and Ms. Freeman."

Nicky was doing the math on his fingers as Arthur went back into the kitchen. "Five. Shane, move over there, tak
e t
hat one across from me." "Why?"

"We're gonna get flanked if we sit like this. Emotionally, this room is his territory. He's also got the power chair at the head of the table. We don't want to be sitting side by side like a couple of schmucks on a park bench. Whatever you do, don't get pushed to the weak zone down there at the far end of the table."

Shane got up and moved around to the other side, but he was smiling. "The dumbass things you pick to worry about."

"This isn't lunch, it's war. You'd never catch Schwarzkopf with his battle groups side by side. Everything in
a n
egotiation has intense subtextural meaning."

The doors opened and a Napoleonic curly-haired man wearing a Hawaiian shirt topped by a fancy leather vest with silver conchos walked into the room. He was followed by a group of Hollywood-chic executives. They were ethnically mixed but similarly dressed. Some wore T-shirts and jeans with plain leather vests, others short-sleeved shirts, jeans, and plain leather vests. The vests seemed to be the preferred uniform on this side of the hill, but only Bergman got the one with cool silver conchos.

"I'm Stevie Bergman," the man said, smiling. He took off a pair of Nikon darks and hung them on the top button of his Hawaiian shirt.

Nicky stood and began moving his mouth like a beached flounder. This time Shane was ready and leaped forward. "I'm Shane Scully. May I present my associate and partner at Cine-Roma, Nicholas Marcella."

They both shook Stevie Bergman's hand; he had a soft but firm grip. Then he turned to the crowd behind him.

"These are my D's," he said. "This is Tammy Ansara and Bobby Feitheim."

Shane shook hands with them. Tammy was a strikingly beautiful woman in her late twenties with auburn hair. Feltheim was the same age, blond, and had aqua babyblues--probably contacts. "Everybody calls me 'the Felt,' " he offered warmly as Arthur returned from the kitchen.

Bergman turned and introduced the African-Americans. Ms. Freeman was Denise; Ms. Smart was Sondra. They were trim, beautiful, and still professionally safe at under thirty.