Authors: Joe Keenan
He said he was leaving tomorrow for a week of “fucking reshoots” on his most recent film, a fourth Caliber picture, but would
be happy to meet when he returned, presuming I had anything of substance to report.
“Oh, I’m sure I will!”
“How about, uh, a week from Wednesday? Say around seven?”
“Works for me!” I replied, my heart beating so briskly I was afraid he’d hear it over the phone.
“It’s a date,” he said and hung up.
A date!
He
called it a date!
Not me—
him!
“I have a date with Stephen Donato!” I cried as though cueing the orchestra to strike up the title song in the giddy musical
my life had suddenly become. I bounded ebulliently from my suite, danced down the stairs, and practically floated across the
street to Sunset Plaza, my feet only touching the ground when I reached Crunch Gym, where I took out a one-year membership
and inquired about personal trainers.
O
H, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT.
Just what, I hear you asking, did I imagine in my most girlish flights of fancy was going to happen romantically between
me and a film star twice voted
People
magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive? It’s a fair question and one I asked myself with some regularity. My answers varied widely
according to my mood and recent intake of wine.
There were moments, nocturnal and chardonnay-abetted, when I actually believed we might fall into an affair, or at any rate
a fling, or at least One Very Special Night to Be Remembered Always. The scenarios I spun ran something like this:
Stephen, deeply impressed by my spy craft, writing skills, and recent progress at the gym, invites me to his secret pied-à-terre
in West Hollywood. His ostensible purpose is to discuss the screenplay but he mainly wants to offer his side of the gay stories
I’ve heard from Lily and Monty. He admires me so that it pains him to think I may secretly regard him as a hypocrite. His
voice choked with emotion, he describes to me the demands and pressures, incomprehensible to the nonmegastar, that have kept
him from publicly acknowledging his sexuality. He speaks of his loneliness and lifelong dream of meeting a caring, nonjudgmental
soul mate who’ll understand his dilemma and embrace him as he is. I embrace him as he is.
On other nights, too tired to mint such elaborately romantic scenarios, I devised more streamlined versions.
I bring new script pages to his trailer on location. He has just stepped out of the shower. “Don’t just stare,” he drawls
saucily, “make friends with it.”
These reveries were balanced by moments of rueful realism in which I sadly acknowledged that my odds of bedding Stephen were
roughly the same a cocker spaniel might enjoy in pursuit of a pilot’s license. Most of the time I hovered between hope and
despair. How, I reasoned, could I begin to assess my chances with Stephen until I knew him better? And if the possibility
of a dalliance seemed indisputably remote, was it really
impossible?
Certainly anything seemed possible in those first heady weeks after I’d won Lily’s trust and cemented our place in the glittering
orbit of the Malenfants. In that brief, idyllic period the news was so consistently good I began to feel as though somewhere
on high the Showbiz Gods were commencing each morning’s meeting with a brisk bang of the gavel and a hearty, “What shall we
do for Cavanaugh today?”
For starters there was my lovely mention in
Variety
. I was told to look for it by Bobby Spellman (who, after three days of avoiding our calls, was once more our dearest friend).
The morning it appeared I raced down to the lobby at eight to be sure to get one of the Chateau’s small allotment of copies.
The agreeably large headline read “Spellman Coaxes Donato, Malenfant into ‘Hiding.’ ” I was so excited I began reading it
right there at the front desk.
Stephen Donato and proud mom, Diana Malenfant, who’ve been in hiding as acting partners since playing the beloved floozy-and-waif
duo in
Sophie and Sam,
will pair up again for
The Heart in Hiding
, a WWII romance/ adventure from producer Bobby Spellman. Making the pic even more a family affair will be Donato’s wife,
Gina Beach, who’ll play his love interest. The plot, says Spellman, “has moving echoes of the Anne Frank story” but with “strong
action elements” and “this time,” he promises, “the good guys win.”
I skipped ahead, scanning eagerly for our names, and finally spotted them one paragraph from the end.
In a move that raised insider eyebrows, the writing chores for the high-profile project will go to three tyro scribes, Gilbert
Selwyn, Philip Cavanaugh, and Claire Simmons. The trio, with no screen credit to date, won the assignment on the strength
of their spec script. “They are kickass talents,” said Spellman, “who share my dynamic vision for this unforgettable story
of courage and triumph.” Trio is repped by Josh Soboloff of CAA.
I was unable to resist sharing this milestone with Sandra, the amiable day manager. Her eyes bulged gratifyingly when she
saw the names Malenfant and Donato. She congratulated me warmly, mentioning in passing that she was an actress.
Some benevolent Showbiz God, observing this scene, gave a worried cluck and said, “How is Philip to get on with his work with
all these new admirers pestering him? I say we move him out of that hip Hollywood hotel and into an even hipper movie-star
home in the hills. All in favor?”
There was, in fact, an authentic Showbiz God behind this move, namely Max Mandelbaum. The mogul, though delighted for Maddie’s
sake that her son’s career was off to such a roaring start, could not help noting that the job would keep Gilbert in LA and
more specifically his guesthouse for the foreseeable future. Was it fair, he asked Maddie, to expect so dynamic a young man
to molder in sleepy Bel-Air tethered to Mother’s apron strings? Wouldn’t he be happier on his own enjoying the gay social
whirl of West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip? Thanks to his new income Gilbert could easily afford to lease a nice little
house, especially if his partners joined him and shared the expense.
As luck would have it an associate of Max’s knew of just such a house, a stylish three bedroom high atop the strip. It was
now under lease to the Scottish heartthrob Angus Brodie, who’d made waves this past summer as Gwyneth Paltrow’s psycho boyfriend
in
Forever, Baby
. He was leaving soon for a lengthy shoot and hoped to sublet it. Max endorsed us to Angus’s manager and by week’s end the
keys were in Gilbert’s hands.
Gilbert, whose tightness with a dollar has been noted, had not seen his windfall as presenting any reason to cease mooching
off Max. He accepted his eviction philosophically though, reasoning that he’d managed an impressive run and that when the
Houseguests Guild held their annual awards banquet, he’d be a shoo-in for the Golden Sponge. Besides, for Gilbert, to whom
Hipness was all, the cachet of inhabiting a genuine movie-star bachelor pad provided at least some compensation for the regrettable
expense.
I was pretty puffed up about the move myself, even though I’d never seen Mr. Brodie’s films and wasn’t crazy about the house
itself. It was one of those spare, starkly modern LA homes that make you feel you’ve awoken in some future society where fashion
favors shaved heads and jumpsuits, and possession of chintz is a felony. I kept this opinion to myself, though Claire, who
came with us to inspect the place, voiced it freely.
“You don’t find it a tad sterile?”
“No,” I fibbed. “I think it’s nice and... airy. Those huge glass walls.”
“It looks like a great party house!” said Gilbert.
“It looks,” said Claire, “like a very small airport.”
My other reservation was the rent, my share of which came to two thousand a month. I tried to persuade Claire that if she
joined us and shared the expense we could find ways to make it homier. She declined, saying that it would be aggravating enough
writing with Gilbert; if she had to live with him on top of it, the most she could hope for would be a sympathetic jury. She
opted instead for a frugal but charming one-bedroom flat on King’s Road.
W
ITH THE HOUSING SITUATION
sorted out, it was time to grapple with my main conundrum, i.e., how to collaborate on two theoretically full-time projects
without either Claire or Lily finding out she was sharing me. Here too the Showbiz Gods had provided a blessing in disguise
by encumbering Claire and me with a doggedly hedonistic partner whose mornings were given over to restorative sleep and awkward
breakfasts with young men whose names eluded recall.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said as I strolled with her through Williams-Sonoma, helping her stock her new cupboard, “we should
probably try to get in a good five hours a day. What say we start at one and go till six?”
“One?”
snorted Claire, who, had she been a pioneer gal, would have built several homesteads by that hour.
“If we start any earlier Gilbert won’t be there.”
She eyed me quizzically.
“And this hinders us how?”
I argued that it was a matter of principle. Gilbert was getting a third of the money and even if he were no help at all he
should at least be compelled to be present. Claire disagreed, seeing Gilbert’s absence as less a drawback than a sound effciency
measure. I held firm though and eventually she relented, deciding that it might be nice having mornings free for her music.
A
T FIRST
L
ILY WAS
more put out at losing my afternoons than Claire had been over my mornings, an odd stance, I felt, given the effect her lunchtime
lemonades had on her subsequent lucidity.
“Really, Glen,” she frowned, “I don’t see how we’ll ever finish if you can’t stay later than one!”
“I’m really sorry. It’s just that you’re not paying me till we see how things work out, so I need to keep my other job.”
“Other job? What other job?”
Not having anticipated the question, I glanced nervously at my feet, next to which lay my gym bag.
“I’m a personal trainer.”
“Well, I wish you’d said something sooner!”
“It’s just part-time. Of course,” I said, risking a bluff, “I could always quit that job if you started paying me now. But
to make up the loss I’d need...oh, about eight hundred a week.”
Nothing I’d seen in Lily’s film work so poignantly exposed her limitations as an actress as the effort she now made to look
as though she was actually considering paying me. She cocked her head, pursed her lips, and even, God bless her, brought a
finger to them.
“Perhaps I have been a bit unreasonable, Glen. I don’t
own
you. We must all do what we must to make a living. Why even I have once or twice done a picture I considered less than first-rate
just for the money.”
“I can’t think which ones you could mean.”
“Aren’t you a dear!”
Our schedule settled, she seated herself at the dining table, her scrapbooks and albums arrayed before her. I took the seat
to her left so as to favor her good ear and began taking notes on a legal pad with a tape recorder for backup. A stickler
for chronology, she began with her earliest memory, which was of Diana, “a stout child with cruel, piggy eyes,” dropping spiders
into her crib.
And so the great work commenced.
W
ORK ALSO COMMENCED ON
our adaptation of
A Song for Greta,
a chore that, alas, entailed rereading it. I tried without success to find any of the virtues my Stephen professed to see
in it. Though I could agree with him that Miss Gamache had a good heart, I couldn’t read her book without wanting to plunge
an ice pick into it while screaming, “That’s for chapter four!”
Bobby had instructed us not to begin the script until we’d submitted a “treatment” outlining our vision for it. He encouraged
us to take liberties, especially if those liberties bolstered Diana’s part or spiced up the romance between Heinrich and Lisabetta,
who, as rendered by Prudence, were as steamy as a pair of Hummels.
By the end of day two we’d decided, in broad strokes, what we would do. Our version did not completely expunge the book’s
grotesque sentimentality—something we dared not do, given the Malenfants’ apparent weakness for schmaltz—but we felt it subdued
it somewhat and that now only half the audience would race up the aisles retching into their popcorn.
And what, you may ask, was it like writing with Gilbert? I can only reply that should I ever have the pleasure, I’ll tell
you all about it. Gilbert, it soon became clear, did not care a whit if he actually contributed to the script so long as he
could contrive to
feel
that he had.
Toward this end he insisted on manning the keyboard. Claire and I balked at this until we saw what wonders plagiarism had
done for his typing speed. When not tapping away he confined himself to making observations that were either uselessly vague
(“This middle section— it needs something”) or screamingly obvious (“This strudel recipe doesn’t advance the plot much, does
it?”). He also developed a maddening habit of instantly paraphrasing everything Claire or I said as if to imply we’d merely
been intuiting what he’d been
about
to say. This incensed Claire, who swiftly developed counterploys. A typical exchange went something like this:
Claire: “What if we just cut —? Oh, but I see you’re ahead of me, Gilbert. Go on, dear.”
Gilbert: “No, you go ahead.”
Claire: “We could cut Snelling from the scene entirely and have Heinrich give that information to Helga in the base —”
Gilbert: “Basement scene! You totally read my mind!”
J
UGGLING THE TWO JOBS
was no cakewalk, but I soon fell into a manageable if grueling routine. I rose daily at seven, hit the gym, then made it
to Lily and Monty’s by nine. We’d work for about four hours, then I’d dash home to meet Claire and the invariably tardy Gilbert.
We’d finish at six and only then would I remove the morning’s notes from my gym bag and, to the galling accompaniment of Gilbert’s
cocktail shaker, start coaxing Lily’s rambling recollections into something approaching coherence.