The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (19 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s finish this scene, then set up the next one. By that time, there’ll be another gentleman here to finish up today, and to direct you tomorrow. I am off this film after the next scene . . . so let’s make this take a good one, okay?”

They finished the chase setup, and the pursuit. Slavo came and shook their hands, and hugged Pauline. “Thank you all,” he said, and walked out the door.

Ten minutes later another guy came in, taking off his coat. He looked up at Meister, at the actors, and said, “Another coon pitcher, huh? Gimme five minutes with the script.” He went into Meister’s office.

Five minutes later he was out again. “What a load of hooey,” he said. “Okay,” he said to Mantan and the other actors, “Who’s who?”

When they were through the next afternoon, Meister peeled bills off a roll, gave each of the principals an extra five dollars, and said, “Keep in touch.”

Mantan took his friend Freemore up to the place they told him Marcel Slavo lived.

They knocked three times before there was a muffled answer.

“Oh, Mr. Brown,” said Slavo, as he opened the door. “Who’s this?”

“This is Joe Freemore. We’re just heading out on the ‘chitlin circuit’ again.”

“Well, I can’t do anything for you,” said Slavo. “I’m through. Haven’t you heard? I’m all washed up.”

“We wanted to show you our act.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re an impartial audience,” said Mantan.

Slavo went back in, sat in a chair at the table. Mantan saw that along with bootleg liquor bottles and ashtrays full of Fatima and Spud butts, the two razors from the movie lay on the table. Slavo followed his gaze.

“Souvenirs,” he said. “Something to remind me of all my work. I remember what you said, Mr. Brown. It has been a great lesson to me.”

“Comfortable, Mr. Slavo?” asked Freemore.

“Okay. Rollick me.”

“Empty stage,” said Mantan. “Joe and I meet.”

“Why, hello!” said Joe.

“Golly, hi,” said Mantan, pumping his hand. “I ain’t seen you since—”

“—it was longer ago than that. You had just—”

“—that’s right. And I hadn’t been married for more than—”

“—seemed a lot longer than that. Say, did you hear about—”

“—you don’t say! Why, I saw her not more than—”

“—it’s the truth! And the cops say she looked—”

“—that bad, huh? Who’d have thought it of her? Why she used to look—”

“—speaking of her, did you hear that her husband—”

“—what? How could he have done that? He always—”

“—yeah, but not this time. I tell you he—”

“—that’s impossible! Why, they told me he’d—”

“—that long, huh? Well, got to go. Give my best to—”

“—I sure will. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

They turned to Slavo.

“They’ll love it down in Mississippi,” he said.

It was two weeks later, and the South Carolina weather was the crummiest, said the locals, in half a century. It had been raining—a steady, continuous, monotonous thrumming—for three days.

Mantan stopped under the hotel marquee, looking out toward a gray two-by-four excuse for a city park, where a couple of ducks and a goose were kicking up their feet and enjoying life to its fullest.

He went inside and borrowed a Columbia newspaper from the catatonic day manager. He went up the four flights to his semiluxury room, took off his sopping raincoat and threw it over the three-dollar Louis Quatorze knock-off chair, and spread the paper out on the bed.

He was reading the national news page when he came across the story from New Jersey.

The police said that, according to witnesses, during the whole time of the attack, the razor-wielding maniac had kept repeating, “Bend, d–n it, don’t break! Bend, d–n it, don’t break!”

The names of the victims were unknown to Mantan, but the attacker’s name was Meister.

Twenty years later, while he was filming
Mr. Pilgrim Progresses
, a lady brought him a War Bond certificate, and a lobby card for him to autograph.

The card was from
The Medicine Cabinet of Dr. Killpatient, Breezy Laff Riot
. There were no credits on it, but there on the card were Mantan, Pauline Christian, and Lorenzo Fairweather, and behind them the giant Lafayette Monroe in his medicine cabinet.

Mantan signed it with a great flourish with one of those huge pencils you get at county fairs when you knock down the Arkansas kitty.

He had never seen the film, never knew till now that it had been released.

As the lady walked away, he wondered if the film had been any good at all.

—
For Mr. Moreland, and for Icky Twerp

YOU KNOW WHO HE looks like, don’t you?”

Watching the scene, I just shrugged.

“Really, the resemblance is amazing,” Jill said.

“Mmm.”

We were in the studio’s screening room, watching yesterday’s dailies. The director—and I use the term loosely—had been having troubles with the leading actor, if acting’s what you could say that good-looking bozo does. Hell, he used to be a male model. He doesn’t act. He poses. It wasn’t enough that he wanted eight million bucks and fifteen upfront points to do the picture. It wasn’t enough that he changed my scene so the dialogue sounded as if a moron had written it. No, he had to keep dashing to his trailer, snorting more coke (for “creative inspiration,” he said), then sniffling after every sentence in the big speech of the picture. If this scene didn’t work, the audience wouldn’t understand his motivation for leaving his girlfriend after she became a famous singer, and believe me, nothing’s more unforgiving than an audience when it gets confused. The word-of-mouth would kill us.

“Come on, you big dumb son of a bitch,” I muttered. “You make me want to blow my nose just listening to you.”

The director had wasted three days doing retakes, and the dailies from yesterday were worse than the ones from the two days before. Sliding down in my seat, I groaned. The director’s idea of fixing the scene was to have a team of editors work all night patching in reaction shots from the girl and the guys in the country-western band she sang with. Every time Mr. Wonderful sniffled . . . cut, we saw somebody staring at him as if he were Jesus.

“Jesus,” I moaned to Jill. “Those cuts distract from the speech. It’s supposed to be one continuous shot.”

“Of course, this is rough, you understand,” the director told everyone from where he sat in the back row of seats. Near the door. To make a quick getaway, if he had any sense. “We haven’t worked on the dubbing yet. That sniffling won’t be on the release print.”

“I hope to God not,” I muttered.

“Really. Just like him,” Jill said next to me.

“Huh? Who?” I turned to her. “What are you talking about?”

“The guitar player. The kid behind the girl. Haven’t you been listening?” She kept her voice low enough that no one else could have heard her.

That’s why I blinked when the studio VP asked from somewhere in the dark to my left, “Who’s the kid behind the girl?”

Jill whispered, “Watch the way he holds that beer can.”

“There. The one with the beer can,” the VP said.

Except for the lummox sniffling on the screen, the room was silent.

The VP spoke louder. “I said who’s the—”

“I don’t know.” Behind us, the director cleared his throat.

“He must have told you his name.”

“I never met him.”

“How the hell, if you. . . .”

“All the concert scenes were shot by the second-unit director.”

“What about these reaction shots?”

“Same thing. The kid only had a few lines. He did his bit and went home. Hey, I had my hands full making Mr. Nose Candy feel like the genius he thinks he is.”

“There’s the kid again,” Jill said.

I was beginning to see what she meant now. The kid looked a lot like—

“James Deacon,” the VP said. “Yeah, that’s who he reminds me of.”

Mr. Muscle Bound had managed to struggle through the speech. I’d recognized only half of it—partly because the lines he’d added made no sense, mostly because he mumbled. At the end, we had a close-up of his girlfriend, the singer, crying. She’d been so heartless clawing her way to the top that she’d lost the one thing that mattered—the man who’d loved her. In theory, the audience was supposed to feel so sorry for her that they were crying along with her. If you ask me, they’d be in tears all right, from rolling around in the aisles with laughter. On the screen, Mr. Beefcake turned and trudged from the rehearsal hall, as if his underwear was too tight. He had his eyes narrowed manfully, ready to pick up his Oscar.

The screen went dark. The director cleared his throat again. He sounded nervous. “Well?”

The room was silent.

The director sounded more nervous. “Uh . . . so what do you think?”

The lights came on, but they weren’t the reason I suddenly had a headache.

Everybody turned toward the VP, waiting for the word of God.

“What I think,” the VP said and nodded wisely, “is we need a rewrite.”

“This fucking town.” I gobbled Di-Gel as Jill drove us home. The Santa Monica freeway was jammed as usual. We had the top down on the Porsche so we got a really good dose of car exhaust.

“They won’t blame the star. After all, he charged eight million bucks, and next time he’ll charge more if the studio pisses him off.” I winced from heartburn. “They’d never think to blame the director. He’s a god-damned artist, as he keeps telling everybody. So who does that leave? The underpaid schmuck who wrote what everybody changed.”

“Take it easy. You’ll raise your blood pressure.” Jill turned off the freeway.

“Raise my blood pressure? Raise my—It’s already raised! Any higher, I’ll have a stroke!”

“I don’t know what you’re so surprised about. This happens on every picture. We’ve been out here fifteen years. You ought to be used to how they treat writers.”

“Whipping boys. That’s the only reason they keep us around. Every director, producer, and actor in town is a better writer. Just ask them, they’ll tell you. The only problem is they can’t read, let alone write, and they just don’t seem to have the time to sit down and put all their wonderful thoughts on paper.”

“But that’s how the system works, hon. There’s no way to win, so either you love this business or leave it.”

I scowled. “About the only way to make a decent picture is to direct as well as write it. Hell, I’d star in it too if I wasn’t losing my hair from pulling it out.”

“And twenty million bucks,” Jill said.

“Yeah, that would help too—so I wouldn’t have to grovel in front of those studio heads. But hell, if I had twenty million bucks to finance a picture, what would I need to be a writer for?”

“You know you’d keep writing, even if you had a hundred million.”

“You’re right. I must be nuts.”

“Wes Crane,” Jill said.

I sat at the word processor, grumbling as I did the rewrite. The studio VP had decided that Mr. Biceps wasn’t going to leave his girlfriend. Instead, his girlfriend was going to realize how much she’d been ignoring him and give up her career for love. “There’s an audience out there dying for a movie against women’s lib,” he said. It was all I could do not to throw up.

“Wes what?” I kept typing on the keyboard.

“Crane. The kid in the dailies.”

I turned to where she stood at the open door to my study. I must have blinked stupidly because she got that patient look on her face.

“The one who looks like James Deacon. I got curious. So for the hell of it, I phoned the casting office at the studio.”

“All right, so you found out his name. So what’s the point?”

“Just a hunch.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“Your script about mercenary soldiers.”

I shrugged. “It still needs a polish. Anyway, it’s strictly on spec. When the studio decides we’ve ruined this picture sufficiently, I have to do that Napoleon miniseries for ABC.”

“You wrote that script on spec because you believed in the story, right? It’s something you really wanted to do.”

“The subject’s important. Soldiers of fortune employed by the CIA. Unofficially, America’s involved in a lot of foreign wars.”

“Then fuck the miniseries. I think the kid would be wonderful as the young mercenary who gets so disgusted that he finally shoots the dictator who hired him.”

I stared. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

“When we were driving home, didn’t you tell me the only way to film something decent was to direct the thing yourself?”

“And star in it.” I raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, that’s me. But I was just making a joke.”

“Well, lover, I know you couldn’t direct any worse than that asshole who ruined your stuff this morning. I’ve got the hots for you, but you’re not good-looking enough for even a character part. That kid is, though. And the man who discovers him. . . .”

“. . . can write his own ticket. If he puts the package together properly.”

“You’ve had fifteen years of learning the politics.”

“But if I back out on ABC. . . .”

“Half the writers in town wanted that assignment. They’ll sign someone else in an hour.”

“But they offered a lot of dough.”

“You just made four hundred thousand on a story the studio ruined. Take a flyer, why don’t you? This one’s for your self-respect.”

“I think I love you,” I said.

“When you’re sure, come down to the bedroom.”

She turned and left. I watched the doorway for a while, then swung my chair to face the picture window and thought about mercenaries. We live on a bluff in Pacific Palisades. You can see the ocean forever. But what I saw in my head was the kid in the dailies. How he held that beer can.

Just like James Deacon.

Deacon. If you’re a film buff, you know who I’m talking about. The farm boy from Oklahoma. Back in the middle fifties. At the start a juvenile delinquent, almost went to reform school for stealing cars. But a teacher managed to get him interested in high-school plays. Deacon never graduated. Instead, he borrowed a hundred bucks and hitchhiked to New York, where he camped on Lee Strasberg’s doorstep till Strasberg agreed to give him a chance in the Actors Studio. A lot of brilliant actors came out of that school: Brando, Newman, Clift, Gazzara, McQueen. But some say Deacon was the best of the lot. A bit part on Broadway. A talent scout in the audience. A screen test. The rest, as they say, is history. The part of the younger brother in
The Prodigal Son
. The juvenile delinquent in
Revolt on Thirty-Second Street
. Then the wildcat oil driller in
Birthright
, where he upstaged half a dozen major stars. There was something about him. Intensity, sure. You could sense the pressure building in him, swelling inside his skin, wanting out. And authenticity. God knows, you could tell how much he believed the parts he was playing. He actually was those characters.

But mostly the camera simply loved him. That’s the way they explain a star out here. Some good-looking guys come across as plain on the screen. And some plain ones look gorgeous. It’s a question of taking a three-dimensional face and making it one-dimensional for the screen. What’s distinctive in real life gets muted, and vice versa. There’s no way to figure if the camera will like you. It either does or doesn’t. And it sure liked Deacon.

What’s fascinating is that he also looked as gorgeous in real life. A walking movie. Or so they say. I never met him, of course. He’s before my time. But the word in the industry was that he couldn’t do anything wrong. That’s even before his three movies were released. A guaranteed superstar.

And then?

Cars. If you think of his life as a tragedy, cars were the flaw. He loved to race them. I’m told his body had practically disintegrated when he hit the pickup truck at a hundred miles an hour on his way to drive his modified Corvette at a racetrack in northern California. Maybe you heard the legend. That he didn’t die but was so disfigured that he’s in a rest home somewhere to spare his fans the disgust of how he looks. But don’t believe it. Oh, he died, all right. Just like a shooting star, he exploded. And the irony is that, since his three pictures hadn’t been released by then, he never knew how famous he became.

But what I was thinking was, if a star could shine once, maybe it could shine again.

“I’m looking for Wes. Is he around?”

I’d phoned the Screen Actors Guild to get his address. For the sake of privacy, sometimes all the Guild gives out is the name and phone number of an actor’s agent, and what I had in mind was so tentative that I didn’t want the hassle of dealing with an agent right then.

But I got lucky. The Guild gave me an address.

The place was in a canyon north of the Valley. A dusty, winding road led up to an unpainted house with a sundeck supported on stilts and a half dozen junky cars in front along with a dune buggy and a motorcycle. Seeing those clunkers, I felt self-conscious in the Porsche.