Authors: Joe Keenan
“Have a seat, dear,” said Claire, her tone murderously cordial. Gilbert hung back, smiling nervously, but then, deciding we
couldn’t dismember him in front of Miss Moscow, sat across from us.
“Can I get you something?” asked Svetlana. “Coffee, water, soda?”
Claire, shrewdly noting the lack of a coffee machine in the room, said she’d changed her mind and would love a coffee; could
she warm the milk if there was a microwave on hand? Svetlana happily complied, disappearing into a small adjoining kitchen.
“So, kids!” began Gilbert, jabbering a mile a minute. “There are a few things you should know about Bobby before we go in
let me run them down for you real fast for starters —”
“Can the flibuster!” barked Claire.
“You could have warned us what a shitty book it was!”
He regarded us with injured surprise.
“You didn’t like it?”
“You
did?
” snorted Claire.
“Loved it! I laughed, I cried. Mostly cried of course. I thought you’d adore it too, but what can I say?
Chacun à son goût.
”
“ ‘Goo’ is right!” snapped Claire.
“Thank you. Anyway, don’t bad-mouth it in front of Bobby. I already told him you both loved it ’cause I honestly assumed you’d—”
“Bullshit!” I hissed. “You knew we’d loathe it. That’s why you lied to us.”
“When did I lie?” he asked, his tone less defensive than puzzled, as though he’d lost track.
“You said it was a comedy!”
“I said it had
room
for comedy. And I stand by that. Why, think what fun Coward got out of an impish ghost in
Blithe Spirit
. And it should be even easier for us, our ghost being a kid and all.”
It was lucky for Gilbert that Svetlana chose this moment to return, as Claire and I had started advancing on him with defenestration
uppermost in our thoughts. She gave Claire her coffee, said Bobby would see us now, and led us down a short hall.
Bobby’s office was a striking, somewhat futuristic chamber with gray suede walls and a curved brushed-steel desk I recognized
as a prop from the planet-saving hero’s spacecraft in his asteroid thriller,
Kingdom Come
. The room couldn’t have screamed “power” more loudly if it had had a platinum throne flanked by twin dynamos with bolts of
electricity zapping between them.
Bobby, seated at his command console, rose to greet us. It was immediately clear that he was not one of those cunning Hollywood
potentates who like to confound expectations by affecting a schlubby or innocuous appearance. Just as our lady friend on the
plane had striven to make it apparent to all that she was a once-famous actress, so Bobby’s costume and grooming loudly announced
his profession and status within it. His black Dolce & Gabbana suit was
le dernier cri
in Italian tailoring, as was the black open-collared shirt he wore beneath it. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed back above
his long wolfish face, which sported a Mephistophelian goatee. His smile was as crooked and smug as those of his bad-boy heroes
and his gaze held a calculated hint of menace as though to say, “I like you at the moment but reserve the right to crush you.”
“Bobbeee!” sang Gilbert, as though they’d been friends for years. “Love the suit.”
“Come in! Sit!” said Bobby, gesturing to a gray boar-skin sofa. “It’s not every day I get three geniuses in here. Which one’s
Philip and which one’s Claire? Kidding!”
We laughed, piglets humoring the wolf, and seated ourselves. Bobby said he’d heard this was our first trip to LA and asked
how we liked it. We replied, of course, that we liked it very much.
“I took them to BU last night,” said Gilbert, not mentioning Max so as to imply he’d gotten us in on his own.
“I
love
that place!” said Bobby with what struck me as unwarranted vehemence. I’d soon learn though that Bobby never made mere statements;
he issued pronouncements, and no subject was too trivial to merit this stentorian intensity.
“BU is like my
dining room
. The crab cakes are fucking brilliant. You have the crab cakes?”
“No,” I said.
“Do not,” he said gravely, “go again without having the crab cakes.”
“They’re amazing,” said Gilbert.
“They’re a fucking
rhapsody
. ” A strained silence fell. Bobby broke it by saying,
“So!”
with great gusto.
“So!” I repeated,
“A Song for Greta...”
“No,” proclaimed Bobby. “Shitty title.”
“I was just saying that,” remarked Gilbert.
“No, no — our picture will be called...”
He paused and swept his hand through the air as though conjuring a marquee. His voice dropped to a reverent hush and he said,
“The Heart...in Hiding.”
It was clear that he couldn’t have been prouder if he’d picked up a legal pad that morning and torn off
A Streetcar Named Desire
. I supposed the title did capture that majestic vagueness Hollywood aims for when christening films of high purpose suitable
for December release. It was clear too that Bobby expected praise if not actual salaams for having thought of it. This we
hastened to provide.
“It’s beautiful!” I said.
“Very apt,” nodded Claire.
“It’s like some perfect four-word sonnet,” said Gilbert.
“Fucking luminous,” agreed Bobby.
Gilbert gushed some more, then explained to Claire that the title referred not only to Greta’s hidden family but also to Heinrich,
whose own heart is in hiding until Greta gently draws it out. Claire, who looked ready to draw Gilbert’s heart out and not
gently, replied that she’d gotten that.
“This,” said Bobby, punctuating his words with little karate chops, “is going to be a phenomenal picture. Life changing. There’s
only one thing I want you guys to fix.”
“The ghost?” said Claire hopefully.
“Exactly!”
he said. “I LOVE it that we went straight to the same place.
Very
good sign. The ghost is all wrong!”
“Well, we’re with you on that,” I said, encouraged for the first time since reading the damned thing.
“Totally wrong,” declared Gilbert.
“It should be a boy,” said Bobby.
Gilbert turned excitedly to Claire. “What did I
just say
in the waiting room!”
“Fan
tastic!
” boomed Bobby. “It’s like some fucking mind meld! I think you guys are the
perfect
team to write this picture.”
Why?!
“And I’m not just blowing smoke up your asses. The minute I finished your script, I knew you guys were it.”
“We’re glad you liked it,” I said.
“I. Fucking. Adored. It.”
“You know,” said Claire, smiling shyly, “this may sound like a dreadfully conceited question, but I’m curious — what was your
favorite scene?”
“Now, Claire!” chided Gilbert. “I think our heads are swelled enough without you begging Bobby to stroke us even more. Let’s
get back to
Greta
—excuse me,
The Heart in Hiding
— goose bumps!— what say we get Springsteen to write the title song?”
“Love it,” said Bobby, “but Claire’s question’s a fair one. And, hey, who doesn’t like to be stroked? Only most people don’t
earn it the way this lady has.”
He plucked a script, presumably ours, from a pile on his desk. He began with general praise for our deft plotting and crackling
dialogue, then began citing favorite scenes. The first of these, which dealt with an amusingly corrupt local official, seemed
oddly familiar. I wondered with desperate optimism if it was something we’d written years ago and somehow forgotten. But then,
in one ghastly instant, I realized at last the full staggering audacity of what Gilbert had done.
“The whole flashback to Paris!” raved Bobby. “And the way she leaves him the note — heartbreaking! But the scene that really
blew me away is the one at the café where those asshole Germans start singing ‘Watch on the Rhine’ only to have Molnar and
the whole café stand up and drown them out with ‘La Marseillaise.’ Loved it!”
It has been advised by Mr. William Goldman, among others, that during initial meetings with producers, screenwriters would
do well to let the men with the dollars dominate the discussion. The writers should just listen attentively while maintaining
a mien at once receptive and inscrutable. This amiable neutrality can be difficult to affect when the job on offer has little
to commend it save its preferability to starvation. And the same look, I now discovered, becomes well-nigh impossible to maintain
when you’ve just realized that your underhanded writing partner has persuaded your film-history-impaired producer that he
and you are the proud authors of
Casablanca
.
“Actually,” said Gilbert modestly, “I can’t take credit for the ‘Marseillaise’ scene. That was Claire’s inspiration.”
“Brilliant!” said Bobby. “I would
love
to film that scene someday. And that first Frenchman who stands up to join the freedom fighters in song—I’m thinking Pavarotti.”
“Or Sting,” offered Gilbert.
“Better still.”
A
T MOMENTS SUCH AS THIS, WHEN I
feel that the weatherman, in predicting the day’s precipitation, ought really to have mentioned the falling anvils, I can
never entirely conceal my distress. My legs take on a life of their own, crossing and uncrossing at will, and I writhe in
my chair like a lap dancer in need of a pee break. Gilbert, noting this, kicked me smartly and I willed myself to be still.
Claire, in contrast, absorbed the shock with a poise that impressed me deeply. She even managed to smile once or twice at
Gilbert, a remarkable feat given her scarcely containable urge to fall upon him and commit such acts on his person as would
make Hannibal Lecter cluck his tongue and counsel moderation.
“And that scene at the roulette wheel,” enthused Bobby, “where the hero rigs the wheel so the young couple can afford their
exit visas—it shows us the guy’s really got a heart!”
“A heart
in hiding,
” said Gilbert.
“You know,” said Bobby, giving “our” script a pat, “when we’re done with my movie, I might be interested in making this. What
would you say if I wanted to option it?”
“For how much?” asked Gilbert incredibly.
“Gilbert forgets,” said Claire, “that it’s already optioned.”
Bobby frowned.
“Who’s doing it?”
“This fellow back in New York,” I said. “Rich dilettante.”
“Never heard of him.”
Bobby steered things back to
The Heart in Hiding,
offering thoughts and suggestions I hoped Gilbert was heeding since my mind was reeling so wildly it was all I could do to
feign attention.
At least the mystery of our hiring had been solved. It was not, as Claire had theorized, a mix of nepotism and studio politics.
Hell, no — we were good! We were the kind of writers they don’t make anymore, skilled craftsmen who could blend romance and
intrigue while capturing a bygone era so convincingly you’d almost think we’d lived through it!
“So,” concluded Bobby, “we see eye-to-eye on all this?”
“Absolutely!” said Gilbert.
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” said Bobby. He rose, signaling that the meeting was over.
“This picture,” he intoned solemnly, “could be a fucking classic. That’s what I need you guys to write for me, okay? A
classic
. ”
“It’s what we do best,” replied Claire.
Bobby walked out with us, saying he was late for a meeting across town.
“Oops!” said Gilbert when we’d reached the exit. “Forgot my briefcase!”
As he nipped back into the office Claire and I exchanged a look, wondering if he was planning to flee down Bobby’s fire escape.
He returned promptly, though, jauntily swinging his briefcase. We then exited the office and descended Bobby’s private staircase.
He was not, like lesser mortals, compelled to park in the studio lot, and his Ferrari was waiting for him at the base of the
stairs. We watched him drive off, then rounded on Gilbert, who, far from turning tail and sprinting to his car as we’d expected,
burst into giggles and enfolded us in a boisterous hug.
“You two are amazing! You handled that
so
well in there! I mean, you did get a bit twitchy, Philip, but who could blame you? I can imagine how jarring it must have
been for you when Bobby started congratulating us for
Casablanca!
”
“Can you?” asked Claire.
“I was kicking myself for not having warned you. I would have but I didn’t think he’d go on about it so much and I figured
why make you skittish going in? I’m sensing from your expressions that you’re worried someone else might read it and blow
the whistle on us. Well, don’t be!”
He opened his briefcase and, with a magician’s flourish, plucked out Bobby’s copy of
Imbroglio.
“That whole briefcase bit was just a ruse so I could go back in and swipe it. So there’s no way he can show it to anyone now.
Quick thinking, huh?”
“Could I see that please?” asked Claire politely.
Gilbert handed her the script, whereupon Claire swiftly rolled it up and commenced whaling him on the head with it.
“Ow! Cut that out!”
“How DARE you!” she cried. “How fucking dare you!!” she added, resorting to the sort of language she reserves for rare occasions,
usually Gilbert-related.
“That hurts! Philip! How long are you going to stand there and let her do this?”
“Till her arm gets tired and I take over.”
She gave him one last wallop, then savagely opened the script to the title page.
“Do you see that? That is MY name! In black and white! On fucking
Casablanca!
” She hurled the script back at him. “You moron! You contemptible, brain-dead weasel! How could you do this to me? And Philip!
Just sit there and watch us take bows for this thing when you know damn well what’ll happen to us when word of this insane
scam gets out!”
“Jeez!” said Gilbert, massaging his ear. “This is why I keep stuff from you. You freak out over the least little thing!”
“Have you lost your tiny mind? This isn’t a little harmless résumé padding — this is open-and-shut plagiarism!”