‘Never doing that again,’ he said, actually opening a bottle of my eau de cologne – my only bottle of eau de cologne – and holding it under his nose to sniff in its cleansing floral scent. ‘It was like walking into a septic tank. But the guy has made a great little movie which is going to make me a considerable amount of money.’
‘
Make
me
a considerable amount of money
.’ As I reflected back on all this much later on, I realized that, from the outset, Theo saw this potential windfall as benefiting him and him alone.
Full credit to Theo – I would never have thought that more than ten people would ever dream of watching
Delta Kappa Gangster
. But he immediately saw its big potential and also considered Stuart to be a major talent, ‘if I can ever get him to wash’.
He’d met Stuart at the archive where he had a part-time job in the film library and, like Theo, thought nothing of watching movies for ten hours a day. As it turned out, Stuart had used a very small inheritance from ‘a crazy aunt’ (‘I mean, she had to be crazy to leave me anything’) to finance this eighty-minute horror fest. He’d shot it on HDV on the campus of a local community college in Marblehead. All the actors were locals, everyone worked for a $300 fee and Stuart shot the entire movie in ten days. He also knew a couple of budding special-effects guys who looked upon this film as a chance to try out, on a minuscule budget, some of their more outlandish ideas.
That was the first thing that struck me about
Delta Kappa Gangster
: its absolute outlandishness and crudity. Theo insisted on screening it for me at home. He even made a massive bowl of popcorn for us to munch while we watched the damn thing. It was, in its own strange way, riveting stuff. Behind the primitivism of much of the acting and the low-budget effects was a noticeable flair when it came to grabbing the audience by certain soft parts of the anatomy and forcing them to pay attention.
The story was a straightforward horror-cheapie idea: a homecoming weekend at a particularly moronic fraternity turns most gory when a geek and his goth girlfriend wreak havoc on the jocks who once hounded him. The geek and the goth become avenging angels and devise horrible deaths for the football-playing, beer-swigging stooges: electrocution, eye-gouging, defenestration onto a spiked fence, impromptu brain surgery with an electric drill, even yanking out a tongue with a handy pair of pliers . . .
And then they start robbing banks.
The film’s violence, though utterly extreme, was also executed with a maniacally black wit. Stuart and his colleagues poured on the gore but they did so with such brio and subversive anarchy that you couldn’t help but be amused by it all – while simultaneously feeling uncomfortable about being so taken in by such slasher stuff.
What intrigued me even more was the film’s overall subtext: how it could be viewed as an attack on the sort of rabid anti-intellectualism that has always been a component of American life. It was the ultimate Geek’s Revenge movie – the kid who had always been ridiculed and picked on turning the tables against the arrogant, vapid morons who found his bookishness a threat. As much as I was appalled by the rabid violence, the part of me which had always loathed bullies was cheering the madman on.
‘Well, that certainly got my attention,’ I said as the final credits rolled. ‘Now all I need is three steadying vodkas and a cleansing hot shower.’
‘It’s a masterpiece,’ Theo said.
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘I would. You just don’t run into this sort of talent every day.’
‘It’s a pretty unrefined talent.’
‘Yeah, that’s what makes him so interesting. He’s a primitive – with the body odor to match.’
‘Yes, it does have a decided stench to it.’
‘What you also need to know is that this kind of movie sells. Properly distributed it will be a huge hit in every college town in the country. Even the fraternity types will dig it. And when it gets released on DVD . . . I’ll be driving a Porsche.’
‘I can’t exactly see you in a Porsche, Theo.’
‘I was being metaphoric. I promise you, this film will do gangbusters. All I need to get things rolling is about fifty grand.’
‘And where do you propose to find that?’
‘Well, I was hoping that you might like to invest in the project . . .’
I knew this pitch was coming, but it still made me feel desperately uneasy.
‘I don’t really have fifty thousand to spend on something like that.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Because I’ve seen your bank statements.’
‘You’ve been going through my papers?’
‘Hey, lose the accusatory tone. Of course I haven’t been rifling through your papers. But last month, when you were doing your accounts, you did have all the bank statements on your desk . . .’
‘And you just had to look them over.’
‘If you leave stuff on a desk for all to see, it will get seen.’
‘Only if someone decides to take a look themselves – which is what you did, Theo. I mean, you leave your journal on your desk all the time and I have never,
ever
opened it.’
‘Well, why would you? It’s a closed book. But paperwork scattered on a desk . . .’
‘Are we really going to get into a semantical debate here about what constitutes a breach of privacy?’
‘The thing is, I know you have around sixty-eight thousand left in the bank.’
‘That’s money I’ve saved over the years, month by month.’
‘Well, it’s just sitting in some account. And if you were to go into partnership with me and Adrienne . . .’
That was the first time he ever mentioned her name.
‘Who’s Adrienne?’
‘Adrienne Clegg. This absolutely brilliant film distributor I’m planning to work with.’
‘I see,’ I said, my tone chilly. ‘And when exactly did you meet this “absolutely brilliant film distributor”?’
‘Don’t worry – I’m not fucking her.’
‘Well, that makes my day.’
‘I met her through Stuart. He met her at this big horror festival in Bratislava last year—’
‘Bratislava, New York?’
‘Very funny. Stuart was in Slovakia covering the Bratislava Horror Festival for some fanzine he writes for. And the only reason he was able to get to Bratislava is because the festival agreed to fly over one fanzine journalist to cover it – all the horror distributors know that they shift a hell of a lot of DVDs through these magazines. As Stuart is considered the most knowledgeable horror-film journalist out there these days—’
‘So he’s the Pauline Kael for the “Driller Killer” set, right?’
‘Very witty.’
‘I don’t like the set-up, Theo.’
‘Look, Adrienne is this amazingly knowledgeable woman—’
‘Whom you met during an intimate dinner at Stuart’s hovel?’
‘You actually sound jealous . . .’
‘I’m just surprised you didn’t mention her before now.’
‘Do I ask you for a detailed rundown on everyone you’re meeting, day in, day out?’
‘No, but I haven’t suddenly announced that I’m going into business with someone . . .’
‘Adrienne came by last week to the archive after I first saw the final cut of Stuart’s movie and told him that I wanted to distribute it. He told me he was up for that but only if I’d work with Adrienne, as he thought we’d be a great team. Which, as it turns out, is the truth. She’s got the business clout and I’ve got the passion. She figures we should do fifteen million dollars minimum, which, given that the distribution agency takes thirty-five percent, is—’
‘Five hundred and something . . .’
‘Five twenty-five. Your fast math is impressive.’
‘You really think it can make that sort of return?’
‘I don’t
think
. . . I
know
it will surpass that. And if you invest fifty grand, I can assure you that the first fifty thousand we make will be immediately refunded to you, and then you’ll receive twenty percent of our commission. So you could easily make back the principal and double your money in less than a year.’
‘If the project is so sure-fire wouldn’t it be better to approach a bank or a finance house?’
‘Banks and big-deal investors don’t touch no-budget splatter movies. It’s not exactly the sort of thing that’s in their field of vision.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll find some well-heeled cinephile who’s willing to gamble on this . . .’
‘Whereas you won’t touch it – because that would mean investing in me.’
‘Now that’s a lousy thing to say,’ I said, trying not to sound too angry or too hurt – and failing badly.
‘But it’s the truth. You have never trusted me, you have never believed I could succeed at anything.’
‘How can you say that? I’m always telling you what a brilliant guy you are. I laugh at your jokes, I brag to my friends how talented and—’
‘You don’t have any friends.’
That comment landed like a right to the jaw.
‘That’s not true. I talk with Christy all the time . . .’
‘She’s three thousand miles away. Other than that, you see no one.’
‘And how about you, Mr Solipsistic? You were living like Oblomov before I—’
‘I have plenty of friends,’ he said quietly. ‘You simply never meet them because I know you’d look down on them. Just as you have already decided to look down on Adrienne and Stuart.’
‘I am simply troubled by the idea—’
‘That I might actually succeed at something and then leave you.’
‘That is not what this is about,’ I said, even though there was an uncomfortable truth to what he had just said. Our entire relationship was predicated, in part, on my fear that he would take the door marked Exit out of our lives – and I both hated and feared that knowledge.
‘I would be thrilled if you succeeded with this film. And you know I would always support you in just about anything you’d want to do . . .’
‘Then you have to invest in me.’
There was so much I wanted to say here: about how couples should never mix money and business; how, by investing in his project, I would be forced to confront my own doubts about Theo’s sense of responsibility and that I would be giving him this rather substantial sum of money under duress. But I was in one of those tricky no-win situations. Refuse to plunk down the money and I would be telling him I had no faith in him. Invest the money and I would feel as if I had been strong-armed into this, with someone whose business sense was, at best, unevolved.
Trust your instincts
. That is, perhaps, the best piece of advice you can ever heed, followed by:
Never put money into a movie
. So I decided to play for time and told him: ‘I’ll need to have some sort of partnership agreement. And I’ll also need to meet your associate.’
Theo smiled the smile of someone who knew he was going to get what he wanted.
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘No problem at all.’
Two days later, Adrienne came over to the apartment for dinner. Theo spent much of the day cooking an elaborate Indian meal. Though part of me was dazzled by the extent of his preparation (he’d sourced all the ingredients at a tiny Indian shop in Chelsea and even went so far as to hand-grind his spices) I couldn’t help but think that he had only cooked me three meals in the two years we had now been together. He also insisted on buying champagne and several ridiculously expensive bottles of Bordeaux.
‘It’s an Indian meal,’ I told him. ‘The food is going to smother such rarefied wine.’
‘This dinner will mark the beginning of our business partnership and I want it to be as special and important as this project.’
‘You’re talking about hawking a cheapie horror movie, not reprinting the Gutenberg Bible.’
‘You really know how to piss all over everything.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Nor is your insinuation that I am being extravagant for no other reason than to be extravagant.’
Five minutes later, Adrienne made her entrance.
‘Entrance’ was the apt word, though it was actually more of a performance. She showed up at our door wearing a floor-length coat that looked like a cross between a kaftan and an Afghan rug. She was very tall – somewhere over six foot – with densely curled hair, dyed virulently red. Everything about her instantly screamed ‘extremity’: the coat, the hair, the capped teeth, the huge bronze sunburst earrings, the vertical musky perfume that radiated from every pore. Then there was the matter of her voice. It was loud. Wake-up-the-neighbors loud. What made it even more grating was the way it oozed specious bonhomie.
‘Oh, my God, you are as beautiful as Theo said you were.’
Those were the first words out of her mouth. Followed by: ‘And – oh, I don’t believe it – what an awesome apartment!’
This comment came when she was still in the doorway and hadn’t yet taken in the ‘awesomeness’ of our place. But after throwing her arms around me like a long-lost friend she rushed inside and started talking in exclamation points about everything – from the color of our sofa to the ‘fabulous’ parquet floor to the ‘gorgeous’ new kitchen. And when it came to Emily . . .
‘Oh, you are the most absolutely beautiful little girl . . .’
As Adrienne approached her with outstretched arms, my daughter instinctively curled herself up into a ball and turned away from this towering shrike. Emily, from the outset, always figured out who to trust and who to shun.
Now I do realize that I am engaging in excessive character assassination when it comes to Adrienne Clegg. But she was one of those people who didn’t exactly provoke a neutral response. Within five minutes of her arrival, I was desperate for her to leave.
But there was no way I could say that. Instead I offered Adrienne a drink.
‘A little Martini-wini would go down a treat,’ she said.
‘And do you want your Martini with gin or vodka?’ I asked.
‘You wouldn’t happen to have Grey Goose by any chance?’