by Emma Dibdin
‘What made you say yes to the Nest interview? That was a pretty big surprise, from someone who grants so few interviews. A lot of publications were fuming.’ This is true. Justin had told me gleefully that a longtime rival had given him the dirtiest look when they’d crossed paths at an event, the kind of look reserved for pure envy. Clark Conrad is a unicorn, now more than ever. ‘The fact you said yes, even to a fluffy interview about your house, suggests you’re amenable to a little more exposure than usual.’
He stares at me.
‘Why am I so fascinating to you?’
‘You’re fascinating to a lot of people.’
‘That’s not what I asked. I mean, you’re not some hysterical fangirl.’
‘Actually—’ I hesitate, but to hell with it. ‘I am. Or I was. I used to be one of those girls outside on the red carpet, waiting for hours.’
‘For an autograph?’ he asks, incredulous.
‘No.’ How can he not understand this, after so many years at the eye of the storm? ‘It’s not about the autograph, it’s about the interaction. I waited outside the Odeon in Leicester Square from five in the morning, before the Reckless premiere, hoping to get a glimpse of you.’
‘Jesus. That was— what, ’07?’
‘And you arrived late. It was pouring with rain, the premiere was due to start, but still you spent half an hour signing autographs for fans. You skipped all the press—’
‘—And went straight to the fans.’
It seemed impossible, this gesture, in the moment. I can still feel it, the sensation of being soaked through to the point of forgetting what it is to be dry, shivering in the endless January grey, and after fourteen hours on my feet it seemed impossible that this could end in anything but disappointment. I was not going to see Clark Conrad, and the autograph I’d half-heartedly solicited from the movie’s director was no consolation prize. I remember bracing myself for it, the soggy walk back to the tube station, the bleak ride home to the very end of the Central Line, the farthest possible place from anywhere Clark Conrad has ever touched. When he’d bounded down the red carpet in his three-piece tux and dress shoes and woollen coat, a frantic umbrella-wielding assistant struggling to keep up with him, he’d seemed like a mirage. He made his way down the entire vast pen of screaming fans, holding his Sharpie pen high to meet the notebooks and DVDs and bare palms that were being desperately thrust towards him, and when he got to me I was so cold and numb and disbelieving that I didn’t say a word, only stared as he signed my Loner DVD in a twisted scribble. Gone in a blink, and it would take me days before I came back down to earth enough to regret my silence.
‘So we have met before,’ he says. ‘Before you came to the house.’
‘I’m not sure it qualifies as a meeting. There’s no way you’d remember me from that.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’
Soaked to the bone, hood pulled tight around my face, a disposable plastic raincoat on top of that, handed out to the crowd en masse by sympathetic red carpet runners. There’s no way.
‘You still haven’t told me,’ he says. ‘What’s so fascinating about me that would have made teenage Jessica sleep on the streets of London?’
‘I didn’t camp overnight.’ But only because my mother absolutely would not let me. One of the worst fights we’ve ever had, to this day. ‘Honestly, I’d spent so much time watching Loner that I probably believed on some very deep level that I was meeting Richard Loner, and not you. No offence.’
‘None taken. Richard Loner is a much better man than me.’
‘But a lot of people’s fandom fades away after their show ends. Yours just kept growing. The people out there tonight were here for you, not Loner.’ I pause, then adopt a low, dramatic trailer voice. ‘The star power of Clark Conrad – what is the secret to his enduring appeal? How did he make the near-impossible leap from small-screen favourite to movie star?’ I’m pitching too much, I know, but something about him feels small and diminished and in need of pushing.
‘What’s happening with that interview, since you bring it up?’
‘Nothing. I mean… My editor wouldn’t let us publish it, under the circumstances. Do you mind if I ask—’ I start, then remember one of the only direct pieces of advice I’ve ever received. Never apologize for a question. If you feel the need to apologize, you need to either change the question or change your attitude. ‘How is she?’
‘Alive. I’m not sure what to say beyond that.’
I look down at my hands, trying to remember what I had scripted in my head to say next, but everything is blank.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ I whisper. ‘When I saw her. I froze.’
‘So did I.’ Then, barely missing a beat, he asks, ‘So your editor got cold feet?’
‘She just thought we’d risk looking tasteless.’
‘Well. That seems like a waste. I think I said at least three pretty coherent things in there.’
‘You did,’ I say, holding my breath. ‘And I’d love to be able to use it.’
‘Maybe we can figure something out.’
I hand him my card, the one I’ve had pressed against my palm for the last half-hour, and just as he takes it an explosion of blonde separates us, and a wave of perfume hits me so powerfully I almost choke. Of course Amabella is wearing her own signature fragrance, as she drapes herself around Clark’s neck and kisses him ostentatiously, her perfect ringlets obscuring him from my view.
When she finally lets him up for air, he introduces me as a reporter and Amabella looks right through me.
‘Get any scoop?’ she asks sharply.
‘I’m not sure yet.’ I smile back. I’m waiting for him to explain that I’m not just a reporter, but the reporter, the one who was there on the day it all happened. The one who found Skye. But he doesn’t say anything.
‘My feet are killing me,’ Amabella complains, folding herself into Clark’s lap and letting her skyscraper heels clatter to the ground. There’s a headache building behind my eyes, watching them, a haze of something red and painful. I watch his face as closely as I always do, and it’s lit up, rapt, gazing at her like she’s a wonder.
I mutter a goodbye under my breath as I leave, my words barely registering in their glow.
8
The next morning dawns cold and bright, the sky an impossible vivid blue during my run around the lake, as I try hard to sweat out all eight rounds of alcohol from last night.
Nine o’clock, Schlattman told me to meet him for breakfast, and I’m spending the prep time going over his biography and his filmography in my head, trying to ensure that the details are as solid as possible so that he can’t trip me up. If this interview goes awry, it won’t be because I was unprepared. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, the eldest of three brothers, father an ex-military pilot, mother a nurse, fell in love with cinema the first time he ever went to the movies, to see Planet of the Apes in the spring of 1968. Thought the apes were real and never quite stopped believing it. Co-founded the earliest iteration of Scion in the early eighties, working alongside his younger brother Bill to acquire and distribute arthouse movies, and gradually their savvy selections built up critical acclaim and some modest commercial success, and then, finally, Oscars. A lot of Oscars.
I’m memorizing all of this biographical detail in part because I know Reel does not want a dry recounting of the facts everyone knows about Ben Schlattman, and autobiography is one of the easiest traps to fall into when you’re writing a profile. You ask questions about their life, they respond in dry ways that seem interesting at the time because you’re starstruck by their presence, and you come away with a page full of nothing.
I’m not concerned about being starstruck in this instance. Schlattman has been unusually, unexpectedly accommodating to me, probably because he’s eager to get his side of the story out there before Bill does. There’s an ugly rumour that the real reason Scion broke down is that Ben had an affair with Bill’s recently estranged wife. I’m saving my questions about this until
the very end of the interview, as is advisable with potentially provocative questions. If he walks out, at least I already have my material.
The Hilton is fully accessible once again, my driver able to pull all the way in to the driveway and drop me off at the lobby. Since I’m early, I take a walk around back to where the arrivals area was last night, to survey the glamour deconstructed. The red carpet rolled away, the marquees and lighting rigs still being taken down, metal barriers pulled apart and piled up on the ground.
I’m more nervous than I expected as I’m led over to a table in the window where Schlattman is already waiting, dressed down in a sweatshirt and slacks. He greets me with a brusque handshake, not getting up. After small talk and menus and coffee, I begin recording and ask him a few background questions – the name of the new company, when the official announcement will happen, where they’re setting up shop, how many projects per year he’s looking at.
‘What do you think of the name?’ he asks me. ‘It’s a work-in-progress, may still change.’
‘Panorama Pictures? It’s fine. People might get it confused with Paramount though.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘I thought you might just use your name, to be honest.’
‘Schlattman Pictures? You want my brother to murder me in my sleep?’ He points at my recorder. ‘Don’t print that. Don’t give him ideas.’
‘We’ll call that off the record. Speaking of which, before we go any further, can I confirm that you’re not speaking to any other journalists right now? This is an exclusive?’
‘Exclusive access.’ He nods with a smirk. ‘One journalist at a time is about all I can handle.’
‘And you don’t have plans to speak to anyone else—’
‘You want me to give you a promise ring? It’s you, Jessica, just you, only you, now and for ever. All right?’ And I say yes, with a laugh, the ice now feeling truly broken.
‘Do you live on your own?’ he asks me later, abruptly, midway through a conversation about the pros and cons of going into business alone.
‘Yeah.’
‘No boyfriend? Or girlfriend?’
‘Neither, but I appreciate the open-mindedness.’
‘Unexpected from a man of my generation, right?’
‘Not really. Not here.’
‘You’d be surprised. Lot more bigots in Hollywood than you think, but they know how to keep it on the down-low. Why else you think there’s still so many closet cases in this business?’
‘Just to be clear, you’re saying this on the record?’
‘Why not? It’s not breaking news. Even I can’t get a movie financed with an openly gay leading man. Can’t do it.’
‘Why can’t you?’ I challenge him. ‘If people like you won’t buck the trend and take a risk, how is anything ever going to change?’
‘You have to take calculated risks. No matter how big you get, you’re only as good as your last success, right, and all it takes is maybe three flops to bury even the biggest fish. I’m not out to change this business, I’m out to make money in it.’
I must not be hiding my feelings well, because he lets out a low whistle and murmurs, ‘This is going great so far, huh?’
‘I’m just surprised that someone of your stature, someone who’s known for donating generously to causes like the ACLU and GLAAD, wouldn’t want to do more to fight inequality in his own industry. I’m thinking specifically about the lack of female directors on Scion’s roster.’
He sighs, audibly. He knew this was coming. It’s been discussed enough, online and probably offline, that he can’t possibly be unaware that his company came out as one of the worst in a recent audit of gender equality behind the camera.
‘Well, I’m leaving Scion. We covered this.’
‘Sure, but you had a hand in creating that roster before you made that decision, right? Probably a big hand. Probably at least fifty per cent of the decision-making power. Is that fair to say?’
‘A big part of why I’m leaving is in order to have more say over the kinds of projects that get made. And to take more calculated chances than—’ He pauses, as though second-guessing whether to continue this thought. ‘My brother is a very smart guy, and a great businessman, and in many ways a great producer. But he is risk-averse, and over the years he’s rubbed off on me. Is Idyllwilde the most daring choice we could’ve made this year? No. Probably not. Neither is that Armstrong thing, by the way.’
‘So now that you’re starting your own company, and you’ll pretty much have one hundred per cent of the say in what gets backed, do you plan on righting the wrongs that many have identified at Scion?’
‘If you’re asking whether I want to hire more female directors, the answer is yes. Frankly, I prefer working with women. They’re smarter, they’re more rational, they’re less driven by ego bullshit. They know how to compromise, which is everything. And they’re cunning.’
‘Cunning?’
‘When they need to be. Men aren’t subtle. We see something we want, we try to grab it, try to bulldoze our way over everything to get it, and if that doesn’t work we start yelling. Maybe breaking things. Women don’t make it obvious what they want. They don’t play their hand right away.’ He’s watching me closely as he says this. ‘That seem fair to you?’
‘Mostly. It’s not a great thing, though. Women not being direct in asking for what they want is a big part of the reason the gender pay gap exists.’
Our food has arrived, and Schlattman now seems distracted by the task of trying to cover every square inch of his pancake stack in syrup. The yoghurt parfait I ordered seems insurmountably large, served in a sundae glass and drizzled with something which defeats the purpose of serving actual fruit, and even the granola looks glazed with sugar. So I nibble, and watch him eat, and finally he speaks again.
‘So, I take it you’re a feminist?’ he asks.
‘Is that a question? Of course.’ At some point, I have abandoned tact, because on some level I can sense that Schlattman respects me more for not being afraid of him. ‘I’m so sick of that word being treated like it’s controversial. Do I think men and women deserve equal rights? Because that’s all feminism means.’
‘In my generation, that word has a different meaning.’
‘Well, your generation needs to update its dictionary.’
He laughs.
‘Maybe so. But like it or not, you’re writing about a business that was built by men. I’m not saying that means it should always be run by men, but that’s the reality of it.’
I’m imagining the pull-quotes in this profile already, imagining the outrage it will generate, the opinion essays decrying Schlattman as a dinosaur soon to be extinct.
‘I agree,’ I say. ‘And that’s why I always hope to see men like you – men who matter – doing their part to change things.’
I back off him a little at this point, because there’s a delicate balance at work and I don’t want to alienate him. As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry.
‘You know, I wasn’t going to do this, but I want to tell you about the first project I’m developing under the new banner.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re gonna like it.’ He smiles, and I wait expectantly. ‘But unfortunately, we’re out of time right now.’
‘Oh!’ I glance at my phone, but we’ve been here for barely forty minutes. We never agreed to any particular length of time, which was my mistake. ‘That went fast.’
‘Yeah, listen, sorry to cut you short. Do you want to come back later, maybe this evening or tomorrow night? I’m staying over at the Montage until Wednesday, five minutes down Wilshire. You know it?’
‘Sure, tomorrow night is great. Can we do another forty-five minutes? I just want to make sure I get everything I need.’
‘Sounds fine. Come at eight.’
And then he’s on his way out, heading back towards the lobby where a young, sleek assistant is waiting to hand him his jacket and an iPad. It’
s the same assistant who awaits me in the Montage lobby when I arrive the next evening, greeting me by name.
‘Mr Schlattman’s upstairs, if you want to join him up there. He has a business suite on the seventh floor – he’s finishing up another meeting which went a little long, so it’ll be faster this way.’
I nod reassuringly, because I can tell that she thinks I don’t understand.
‘I get it, I’ve done a lot of junkets in hotel suites before.’
‘Right.’ She smiles. ‘So you know the drill. You can just go right up, room 748.’
Schlattman answers the door in a sweatshirt and jeans and socks, his normally slicked-back hair mussed. I had expected to meet him in the hotel’s sleek, wood-panelled lobby bar and dressed accordingly. Having seen the Montage only from a distance it has always reminded me of an enchanted castle, the one from the Walt Disney logo, sweeping white arches and a golden-lit fountain, nothing like anywhere I belong. Cocktailwear seemed appropriate, but now in my lacy black dress and lipstick I am overdressed for this room, throwing off the dynamic as though I’m ostentatiously putting in effort.
‘Take your shoes off, if you want,’ Schlattman offers, waving me vaguely towards the lounge area of this expansive suite where dark leather couches sit at right angles. I take him up on the offer if only to take the edge off my outfit, leaving my heels beside my bag at the door. He offers me champagne from an already-open bottle, and when I ask what he’s celebrating, he just smiles and shakes his head and hands me a fizzing glassful.
‘Can I start recording?’
‘Whatever you want.’
I can hear him breathing though he’s several feet from me, his exhales heavy. In suits, there’s a heft to Schlattman, a power, but now in his socks he seems older and fatter and sadder, somehow. That champagne bottle may have been opened for him, but he was drinking alone, I’m almost positive.
The first project on Panorama’s slate, it transpires, is a female-directed, female-produced, female-written drama about a woman forced to reluctantly become guardian to her dead sister’s children. The script is by a playwright whose work I love, and I tell Schlattman with sincere enthusiasm that I can’t wait to see the finished film. My excitement is genuine, and not only because this project makes a perfect hook for his earlier quotes about gender equality.