Who is Lou Sciortino? (2 page)

“More or less.”

“Right. Now, before you take the .22 out of the middle drawer of your desk and shoot me (because if you're going to shoot me in your office you'd better not use anything bigger than a .22 or you'll get blood on the rug and stain your jacket), just give me a fucking minute. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK where the money comes from or what the fuck you do to get it clean. I make pictures and I want my pictures to get made and all the good things that go with it: I want a good percentage of the take, and I don't give a fuck how it gets to me, or who the money belongs to. I mean, sure, now I know the money's dirty and you're using my pictures to clean it, but what the hell? Why the fuck should I care? I mean, someone else could be paying me dirty money and I wouldn't even know it. This money I happen to know is covered in shit, but so what? Am I supposed to go out looking for money that's clean? There's this kid in one of my pictures, he wears an undershirt and a leather jacket, he's got this line, ‘Man, was there ever a clean dollar bill?' There sure as shit might be, but I for one haven't got the time to hunt it down, I have some pictures to make, and for the moment dirty money will do me just fine. And if you think I give a fuck, you got the wrong guy. I'm not clean, you—no offense—aren't clean, and the money that goes through this dump isn't any cleaner than we are, but just in case I haven't made myself clear, I. Do. Not. Give. A. Fuck. That's why you and I should team up and see if we can't make this fucking money even cleaner. What do you say?”

“Nothing, I'm listening.”

“Right. So what I want now is to make a picture with lots of special effects, we can hire some of these young guys who are good with computers that make special effects, and we pay them salaries, then whatever the customers pay the company, they can't ask any questions, right? Because they're on salary. You own the special effects company, you're the customer, you run it the way you want, we buy the computers and all that modern shit and I make my fucking picture with special effects, except for the exploding skyscraper, I want that to be real, not done on the computer. You follow me so far?”

You nodded.

“Here's the deal with the skyscraper. The basic idea is, they want a fucking love story, I'll give them one, I'll give them one and then some. So listen. He's rich and handsome, a father figure, she's poor, she's unlucky, she's nothing much to look at now, but only because she's let herself go. The two of them meet and fall in love. Not right away, maybe twenty minutes in. Okay? Then along comes obstacle number one…”

“Obstacle number one?”

“Sure. First they meet, and there's your first hook—will they or won't they? But of course they will, so it's not much of a hook, just enough to keep the audience in their seats. So they meet, they fall in love, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief,
Aaahhh, that's good! They've fallen in love, I knew they were going to fall in love!
At this point, it's time for obstacle number one. Like, for instance, she runs off with his best friend, a top plastic surgeon with a clinic in South America. What a whore, you're thinking, but as it turns out, she isn't in love with the surgeon after all. Even worse, you're thinking, but no. Later we find out the surgeon's been jealous of his friend since they were children. They went to one of those schools for little assholes, you know, and the little girls always gave his friend candy but never him. So his friend ended up with all this candy the girls gave him, while he had to make do with stamps, right? So now he wants the girl. The girl herself is innocent, in fact she's clueless. What does
she
know from high society? It would never occur to her that a top plastic surgeon could have his own problems and feel such jealousy over a bunch of candy. She looks up to him. So the surgeon tricks her, he tells her if she really wants to hold on to his friend, she needs to have some work done. And obviously, he knows his friend's tastes, so he can tell her what she needs to do. So he takes her to South America, where he's got this well-equipped clinic. In the well-equipped clinic, obviously, the surgeon tries to get it on with her, but it passes right over her head, she's so intent on the man she loves, she doesn't even notice the surgeon is putting on the moves, can you see how frustrating that is for him? Here he is trying to get in her pants and she's oblivious. Okay, so now the surgeon decides to get his revenge, he operates on her and after he's operated on her he tries to rape her, to defile her. He doesn't get violent until he takes off the bandages and she says, ‘Wow! I've turned out really great. I can't wait to leave here and go back to the man I love,' and she starts to pack her bags. He tries to rape her and she runs away through the streets of this South American city, since now she realizes she put herself in the wrong hands. But in the meantime the man she loves is desperate, because she didn't tell him she was going to South America, she kept it hidden because the surgeon told her his friend liked surprises, and she believed him, ‘That's great,' she says, ‘I like surprises, too!' and she's clapping her hands and jumping up and down, you see the kind of girl she is? So all the time they're in South America he's desperate, he thinks they've run away together and so on. He starts to drink, and I mean
drink.
And basically, he doesn't shave, doesn't change his shirt. So he's got this scraggly beard, his collar's filthy, and he walks around the streets of the city with a bottle in his hand. And the friends who meet him on the streets of this ritzy neighborhood say, ‘Hey … hey…' What should we call him? Something refined. Ernest. Ernest, that's a good name for the cocksucker. So his friends meet him on the street and go, ‘Ernest … Hey, Ernest…' they hardly recognize him, right? Ernest was always so elegant. ‘Ernest…' and he looks at them like they don't exist and just keeps on walking. Then, to emphasize how he doesn't care about anything anymore, you know, I put in some gore, for instance he's walking along the street and this pet shop gets blown up by a bomb with all the customers inside. And he's walking over these little pieces of poodle without even noticing. From time to time he takes a swig from the bottle. Then he decides to end it all. He goes into his skyscraper, because he owns a skyscraper, and rides up to the top floor. Except that … except that just as he's about to jump he sees this taxi pull up, and who should get out but her … Because he isn't just rich, handsome, intelligent, and powerful, he's also got a heart of gold, so he's brought this pair of binoculars, to make sure he isn't about to flatten anybody when he jumps.

“Cut to her. She's running across this vast lobby, the lobby of the skyscraper, with her heels making, you know, a racket on the shiny marble floor, heading for the elevator. She's devastated, body and soul. She's got lips like a life preserver, a nose like a playground slide, and tits so big they look like they're going to burst. In her soul she's devastated by the things she saw in South America, the way the surgeon deceived her, how she was mistreated by the nurses, and apart from that, there was a massacre on the streets, they killed five innocent people right before her very eyes. So she can't wait for the man she loves to take her in his arms and console her. And even though she's devastated, she can't resist giving herself the once-over in the elevator mirror, you can see how heartbreaking that is, she's devastated by what she's seen, but inside she's still afraid the man she loves won't like her.

“Cut to the surgeon, brooding. He's eaten up with anger because she rejected his advances and ran away. When they first arrived in South America, the surgeon was really a very pleasant person, and kind to the switchboard operators and the people working in the clinic, so kind that she thought,
What a good man he is,
but now, after she's escaped, he changes, and loses his temper with the switchboard operators, he's consumed with anger. I forgot to mention that while he's operating on her, he's got this sinister look in his eyes, and all the women in the audience, who can see how disappointed he is, are afraid he'll kill her with the scalpel, or else scar her face, or put her nose where her mouth oughta be and vice versa. But it's just a sinister look in his eyes: when he takes off the bandages and everything's gone well, with everything in the right place, the women in the audience heave a sigh of relief … aaahhh. But there's still this nagging doubt. Why did the surgeon have that sinister look in his eyes if he didn't scar her?
Could it be…?
In the meantime, the movie continues, are you with me?”

“Go on.”

“Okay, so she's in the elevator, and we cut to the surgeon, who's brooding. And when he stops brooding, you know what he does? He sneers. That's what the surgeon does: sneers.

“Cut to the elevator. There's this catchy music in the background, catchy, but calm and relaxing. So, la la la.

“Cut to the surgeon, who's sneering and looking at an X-ray. The camera tracks in and we see the surgeon's got a remote in his hand.

“Cut to the elevator door opening. The lovers' eyes meet. They run to each other, fall into each other's arms, and kiss. Then he looks in her eyes, notices how she's changed, and says, like somebody who's found himself back in the Garden of Eden, ‘Darling, I've always loved surprises.'

“Cut to the wicked surgeon, sneering, and pressing the button on the remote control.

“Cut to an exterior shot of the skyscraper, we see the top of the skyscraper explode.

“Cut to the X-ray: the wicked surgeon has filled her tits with plastic explosive! The bastard.”

“Your movie is shit!”

“Spare me your fucking opinion, Lou! What are you, some cocksucker from
The New Yorker?
No. You're just a good kid who's going to build me a skyscraper. And you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I'm going to blow the top off for my picture, and then you're going to sell what's left to a different company. For peanuts, because after all it hasn't got a top and there's not a whole lot of
market
for topless buildings, then all you have to do is rebuild the top and get yourself some tenants, and on paper your first company's lost money by underselling a skyscraper that was fine even when it didn't have a top. Your money's clean and I get to make my picture,
Plastic Love
 … What do you think of the title?”

“It's a shit title,” you said. “But the idea isn't bad…”

*   *   *

That was how the whole thing started.

Insane as it was, your grandfather really liked that crackpot Trent's idea. Movies, construction, and a great big fuck-you to the world!

Things were going well … really well … until one day a bomb went off in the screenwriting department. Pieces of screenwriter everywhere: they didn't know what hit them.

To keep the Feds from nosing around, officially it was a fire. Those who'd heard the blast were politely told to keep it to themselves.

Your grandfather hadn't been expecting it. Now, he said, they had to find out which motherfuckers had done such an insulting thing, and come to an agreement.

You said, “Are you telling me I gotta sit down with the people who stuck a bomb under my ass?”

Your grandfather looked at you like he didn't understand. “Lou,” he said, “listen. You got a company that's right for you, no? I mean absolutely right … Those write-offs of yours were genius … So, you made a whole lot of money, and now some suckass faggot comes up to you and says, ‘You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna share.' What do you do? Do you say yes? You tell him he's out of his fucking mind. Then I come and I say, ‘No, let's go into business together and share.' Do you understand what I'm saying to you?”

You said nothing.

“Lou, that bomb was a smart move for those guys.” He rubbed his foot—“Fucking feet are killing me!”—then said, “Listen, I'd like to see you become somebody people respect … like one of those guys … I don't know, like those fucking La Brunas from Manhattan … before … before I go…”

“Go where, Grandpa?”

“Nowhere. Forget about it, eh? Say”—he looked up suddenly—“do you remember Sal Scali?”

“Sal Scali? The amaretti guy? In Sicily?”

“That's right. He's got a family, he understands. Go to Sicily for a while, stay with Sal Scali.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but the conversation was over.

“I don't want them to hurt you,” the old man said. “Is that enough of a reason?”

*   *   *

It was enough of a reason. You arrived in Catania and were met by a Joe Pesci type who looked like he'd just stepped out of a Madison Avenue tailor's: Sal Scali, a guy who really put on the dog.

Pesci-Scali explained to you the genesis of the Scali Amaretti … how the Sicilians who emigrated to America were crazy about them, how at first they exported them in the form of cakes, how they put some dumb niggers on street corners to sell the cakes wrapped in foil, how the business grew (“Like a dick in front of Sharon Stone,” he said) and how, thanks to your grandfather, Scali's Amaretti now had elegant headquarters in New York.

He revealed to you his Big New Idea: to launch Scali's Amaretti on the market packaged with little romantic mottoes. “You pick it up, you eat the amaretto, and then you read the motto to the one you love …

“So now,” he whispered, “you're going to be … what do you call it?… a copywriter, my American copywriter, for all of Sicily, fuck it, the whole continent. We tell our friends Sal Scali's brought you over from America to write his mottoes, huh?”

He winked at you, and you knew this wasn't a man who inspired your respect …

*   *   *

But where the fuck are you now, Lou? Why is there a wad of wet cotton moving around in your head, right inside your brain? And that fucking light … like out-of-focus neon, like the lights in a Harlem stairwell? And this feeling of numbness in your hands? And this stench, like the smell in your uncle Alf's house on the day of his funeral?