The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  Now we were in front of Stage Five, the huge door open and some of our crew out in front, lazying in the sun or playing with a Frisbee. They saw us round the corner like a color guard. They squinted at us but did not move.

  Often when the crew is hanging around outside, it means that something is going on inside that they wish to disassociate themselves from, like a star tantrum or a royal ass-chewing, but we did not even suspect, or at least I didn’t, and when Karl said, “You boys go on in, I want to speak to Sonny for a minute,” we just went ahead. Since the crew was there, I kissed Sonny and said, “Don’t let him put his hands on you.”

  She smiled at me sadly and I turned around and stumbled on some goddamn thing and went in. Jim was in his trailer by then, which was close to the door. I crossed the open area back of the set toward my own trailer and into the lights, which were blazing down on nobody, and heard out of the gloom over by the camera, “Yeah, well fuck you, and fuck your job!”

  It was the voice of Baby Cakes, shrill with anger. Thank God we were about done with principal photography.

  IT TOOK me a couple of minutes to get used to the darkness, and then I could see two groups of people. Over by the set were a handful of reporters and feature writers, looking mean as hell, God, don’t ever offend one of these small-time Hollywood hacks because all they are sniffing for is some little hunk of nastiness they can magnify into a career-wrecking anecdote; just seeing them there and remembering that Marty had arranged the press conference pissed me off—a couple of hours of wrestling that toothless old shark across the lot had put me in a shitty mood anyway. And now the other group, which was two guys and Baby Cakes and Marty.

  Nobody had seen me yet, so I stayed in the shadows for as long as I could. The two guys with Baby Cakes were obviously the cause of the trouble. They were black guys, not your average people but guys with LOSER stamped across their faces at birth, sunglasses, shapeless hats pulled down, dirty suits and shoes from out of the garbage can someplace, easy to tell from their swaying and murmuring, hands in bulging pockets, that they were drunk, I could almost smell the cheap boozy stink from where I was standing. One of them laughed at Marty’s stiff face and showed a bunch of horrible teeth, and Marty stepped back, probably without even knowing it, and Baby Cakes said, “We’ll wait in Jim’s trailer, goddamn it.”

  Marty said stiffly, “The set’s closed until after the press leaves, and I don’t want you on the sound stage.”

  “Jim is expecting me, and he’s gonna be royally pissed off you fired me,” Baby Cakes said.

  Naturally, the press is eating it up, though still uptight at being kept an hour. Marty, although it was obviously killing him, told Baby Cakes that he was not fired, he quit, and nobody believed him anyway, and to please clear the set with the rest of the crew. . . .

  BABY CAKES: I’m not crew, you asshole . . .

  ONE OF THE GUYS: Hey, man . . .

  With wonderful timing, in came Karl Meador and Sonny, walking right into the middle of the mess. This stirred up the reporters and they broke formation and started toward Karl. Karl is good with reporters, although he hates them, and he went among them shaking hands, being introduced by the studio publicity guy, and I came out of the shadows and up to Marty and his group.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Marty. Baby Cakes backed away from the look on my face.

  “We’ll wait in Jim’s trailer,” Baby Cakes said.

  Marty’s eyes went to glass. “You’ll shit!” he said, cold. “Get off the goddamn set before I have you thrown off!”

  “Say that in front of Jim!” Baby Cakes said, and the two black guys weaved uncertainly and looked at each other. Now Marty could see all the reporters plus his boss Karl, and Sonny, a beautiful woman, watching. He turned to me:

  “You throw them off the set!”

  “Nobody’s throwing me off any set,” Baby Cakes said. “These are some people I want Jim to meet.” He looked at me with terrible dislike and fear in his eyes. “And Jim wants to meet them, too!”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said to him, and turned away. Marty and I walked over to where the reporters were milling around Karl and Sonny, and the PR guy said in a really fake cheery voice, “And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, David OGILVIE!”

  I raised my hands like a champ and said, “Deelighted to be here, but just give me a little moment, perhaps you could pass the time most profitably by interviewing Miss Sonny Baer, and I hope you’ll accept our apology for being late, but as you know, we’re right at the tag end of making our picture and things are in a bit of a squeeze . . .”

  I heard a girl reporter say in an amazed little voice, “Oh, he speaks so fast!” In character, I drawl.

  Karl, bless him, took it up and began to introduce Sonny to them by quoting from the promotion handout, and I moved away and started toward Jim’s trailer. Baby Cakes and the two guys were standing out in front. Baby Cakes looked upset and almost flinched when I grinned at him.

  “Where’s Jim?” I asked.

  “Not in there,” Baby Cakes said. “He wants to see us.”

  I walked around the trailer and beat on the toilet window, but no response. I went back and opened the unlocked door. No Jim inside.

  I beckoned to Baby Cakes and the two guys to come in and sit down.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” I said. I introduced myself and we all shook hands. “Would anybody like a drink?” I said. “Baby Cakes, how about being a good guy?”

  In fifteen minutes we were all pals. The guys, it turned out, had something to sell to Jim, straight off the boat, uncut, topgrade stuff, only 125 dollars a gram, and after a nice warming drink of whiskey, I paid for two grams, folded into bindles in magazine paper, patted everybody on the back, winked at Baby Cakes and escorted the three of them to the door of the sound stage opposite to the one where the crew was hanging out. Then I went back to Jim’s trailer and flushed the garbage down the drain.

  I walked back to the press conference and answered stupid questions, trick questions and just plain ignorant questions for thirty minutes, and then Ron came out, smiling, from his little office, with Luigi the first assistant director and Leon the production manager. Luigi, as was his job, cleared out the reporters.

  “Where were you when I needed you?” I said to Luigi.

  “Huh?”

  We waited two hours for Jim but he never did show up. That was when Marty crossed the street for his one big Bucket of Gin, and I began to fear that I might never see my partner again.

  “I THINK I’m going crazy,” he told me up at the ranch, in fact, he must have come to the ranch just to tell me that, but then other things happened and we never got back to it. Maybe we should have gotten back to it, I think as I sit in my dressing room waiting for the walls to explode. This year he disappears, what the fuck, one year he came down with some kind of insane virus and his face swelled up and turned red and he had a temperature of 104, an hour before we were due to make our opening night entrance at the Golconda. Galba had his pet doctor up there—I wasn’t around for fear of catching it—but Jim told me later Galba really leaned on the doctor, like in a cheap movie, “Fix him up, Doc!” while the wounded bankrobber lays blubbering about Mary Ann and the rain hits the windowpanes. Doc gave him a shot of something and we went on and that was the end of it.

  Another time, it was me. Right in the middle of shooting our picture I went all cold inside and couldn’t do anything. I’ve been depressed before but this was more like despair. It just didn’t seem to matter. I mean, really, who gives a shit whether we make another movie or not? Who goes to see these things? What are we doing to their minds? I lay in bed in the motel and the despair was like a heavy airless weight on my chest; how long had I been alive, and what did it all mean? I had no wife, no children, my parents were long dead, I loved my relatives but I couldn’t stand to be around them, what, really, had I contributed to existence? What had I done with my life except take my big paychecks and stow the money and ruthlessly sc
rew everybody who came near me?

  I didn’t blame anybody but myself for the goddamn funk, so for a couple of days I would let them dress me up like a farmer (in this movie I was a farmer and Jim was my old army buddy from the big city) and lead me out onto the set, and everyone was very sweet to me, especially Jim, whose sweetness took the form of leaving me the hell alone, and they would fuss with the lighting and get everything right and Luigi would yell for everybody to be quiet, Ron would cue the camera, the sound man would quietly say, “Speed,” the camera guy would clap the clapper, Ron would quietly say, “Action,” and it was all up to me to speak my five words or look droll, or whatever, and I couldn’t do it.

  Fifty people standing around on salary waiting for me to chortle like an idiot, and I couldn’t do it. I would be all cold in the middle and somehow not realize it was my turn to perform, and Ron would say quietly, “Keep rolling,” and then to me, “You okay, Ogle?” and I would nod and say, “Sorry,” and Jim and I would get back on our marks. “Action,” and Jim would look expectantly at me and I would go all cold inside.

  Later in my motel room I lay there and wondered if this wasn’t the beginning of the end for me, not as a performer but as a human. From now on I would be nothing more than a humanoid. Why eat? Humanoids don’t eat. Humanoids don’t drink or take drugs or fuck or yell at people. They just move around until somebody unplugs them.

  It lasted three days and everybody went nuts all the way back to Hollywood. Doctors were sent out, psychiatrists, holistic miracle workers, telephone calls from Karl personally, but I just lay in that room and sweated out my emptiness.

  Then on the fourth morning I was fine. I didn’t even notice until I was sitting in the motel coffee shop having a cup of coffee. Everybody around me was so pointedly not looking at me that I broke out laughing and made the waitress think I was nuts.

  So maybe I should have listened to Jim.

  The night he disappeared I dragged myself over to the hotel, preferring to walk the four or five miles because I was sick of sitting in the back of studio limos while the Teamster behind the wheel babbles his life story, which I don’t give a rusty fuck about. Besides, walking took about an hour and a half, and gave Jim time to undisappear, show up in my apartment snorting my precious stash and laughing.

  It didn’t happen that way, of course. My apartment was empty and still. It was just getting dark outside. I kicked off my shoes and pulled the socks off and let my feet luxuriate in the twilight air. I sat on the terrace overlooking the city and wondering for the ten thousandth time why I allowed myself to get tense about this shit. Jim would show up or he wouldn’t. I wiggled my toes in the cool air and they thanked me after the hot walk. Ten little toes. Hello, toes. A line of Lenny Bruce’s: “It’s so good to get out of the box!” I sat there a minute silently doing Lenny’s act for an appreciative audience of ten.

  I looked over the rooftops to the left: that was where Lenny got his start, cheap night club between strippers, making his jokes to the band because it was “a little Squaresville” out in front. I thought a minute about getting out his records and playing them, just to hear the guys in the band laughing at Lenny’s nasty humor. Oh, balls, some other time. But he was a god to me, a sleazy dopy god. I looked to the right; just down the street is where Lenny died. I didn’t want to die like that, half in and half out of the toilet, naked on the floor with a needle in my arm. God, I didn’t want to die at all. I started crying.

  “Lenny, you cocksucker,” I cried to the dull red horizon, but I was really crying for myself.

  I WENT into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. Half an avocado, wrapped in plastic, three small hunks of different kinds of cheese, wrapped also in plastic—I have never been able to throw good food away, except, of course, drunkenly and deliberately throwing food—but any sliver or scrap of food in the house must be preserved until it is either dead and grey or eaten, perhaps at three in the morning, me standing in front of the refrigerator, the door open and its light spilling over my nakedness in the otherwise dark apartment, munching on a hunk of cheese and hoping I could get back to sleep from whatever woke me, drunken shouts from the drive below, sirens down Sunset, the sky opening up with a tremendous explosion and God reaching down, crushing L.A. under His paw. . . . It didn’t take much to waken me in Hollywood, although on Sonoma Mountain I usually went to bed with the sunset and got up with the dawn, ten or twelve hours of sweet unbroken sleep.

  There was also an unopened package of two T-bone steaks, a pound of ground round, a package of dinner franks, what my relatives called tube steaks, “Somebody’s got to eat the ears and snouts!” my cousin Harold would say cheerfully, “no use throwing out good pig meat!”

  These were all-beef.

  There was half a jar of cucumber pickles, a couple of quarts of milk, three cans of Miller’s High Life, and, in the freezer compartment, two trays of ice and half a pint of Dreyer’s deadliest vanilla ice cream.

  I could have called the desk and ordered dinner from Greenblatt’s or Schwab’s or for that matter Chasen’s, all you have to do is pay for it, but instead I called down to Sonny’s apartment. She answered right away. She’d had a tough day, too.

  “Do you have any potatoes or salad stuff? I got some steaks,” I said.

  “I was just going to go to bed,” she said. “I just got out of the tub.”

  “Did you have dinner?”

  “I had a couple of cookies when I got home,” she said. “I just thought I would read.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Shogun,” she said.

  “Can’t you hear those steaks, sizzling in the pan?” I asked.

  “You’re talking me into it,” she said.

  I had time to take a nice hot shower before Sonny showed up with a big bowl full of salad and a baguette of bread. The television was on, Connie Chung with the news, and I was drinking a beer and watching.

  “What’s new?” Sonny said as she passed through to the kitchen. She was dressed in jeans and a faded pink sweatshirt, no shoes, her hair up under a scarf.

  “Beats me,” I said. My private phone rang, and for a second I thought it would be Jim and my low-down feeling of doom would go away. But it was Johnny Brokaw, a comedian friend. Johnny lived at the beach when he wasn’t in residence in Vegas or touring, but right now he was in town with nothing to do. I asked him to dinner and told him to stop by the market and pick out his meat course. “We’re having steaks,” I said.

  Johnny protested, saying he thought I’d probably want to be alone, but I laughed at him and said, “Come the fuck over.” Johnny was a very funny man, naturally funny, handsome as hell although nobody really ever thinks of him that way when he’s working; a damn good dresser, a doper and a good pal. Sonny had never heard of him.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Did you ask him to bring some wine?” she asked. I hadn’t, of course, so I had to put on my huaraches and slip-slop down the hill to the Liquor Locker, where I picked up two bottles of grey Riesling, Wente Bros., a can of deluxe mixed nuts, and trudged back up the hill. Sonny had changed channels and was sitting watching the Dinah Shore Show. I sat next to her after getting a beer for myself. It was comfortable. Sonny and I had taken to spending quite a few of the dead dull weeknights together, watching television or even going to bed together. Karl was too busy to see her, although he claimed he loved her and she was the only girl for him. She knew what Karl was like, by now, and oddly, as friends, she and I had some remarkable times in bed.

  There was a tapping at my door. I said, “That’s Johnny,” and went over to open the door, but it wasn’t Johnny, it was an actor friend named Mike Leary, grinning, leaning against the wall.

  “Hello,” he said, “or is it goodbye?”

  “It’s hello and come on in,” I said. We hadn’t seen each other since last year, when he had gone to Hawaii. Mike was too good for our pictures, although he had appeared in a couple of them some years ago.


  “Have you had supper?” I asked him.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,” he said. I introduced him to Sonny and they laughed and said they had met, at “the club,” long ago, and had even been on a couple of casting calls together.

  “What’s ‘the club’?” I asked.

  “God, you mean to tell me you’ve never been to ‘the club’?” Sonny said. She and Mike exchanged grins.

  Mike said, “He’s probably the only performer in America who’s never been to ‘the club,’” and I knew what he was talking about. Unemployment.

  “I’ve done more time in the unemployment line than you’ve been in pictures,” I said without originality.

  “Tell us about it, Pops,” Mike said, and grinned at Sonny, who patted the seat next to her. Mike sat down.

  When I had gotten home I had wanted nothing but to be alone. Now I was in the mood for a party.

  “Hey,” I said to Mike as the three of us passed a joint, “let’s call Phil and Oona and have ’em stop by the Hughes Allnight Supermarket. Oona can pick out whatever she likes, I’ll pay for it when they get here. You could call Debbie and ask her to bring her cousin. We’ll have a dinner!”

  Sonny looked at me strangely.

  “Fun!” I yelled. “Fun! Fun!”

  “Oona’s a great cook,” Mike said. “Let me at that telephone.”

  Sonny sighed and went into the kitchen.

  BY NINE or so there was a gang of people in the apartment, hanging out in the living room drinking the booze that various groups or individuals brought with them and watching the television or talking, moving in and out of the kitchen where Oona Naglio supervised the cooking, or out on the terrace where Mike had taken charge of the charcoal grill and a fifth of Wild Turkey. It was a good bunch of people, all working in show business one way or another. Nobody knew everybody, but that was all right, too. Johnny Brokaw showed up with a bag of groceries including a big jug of red wine and a couple more steaks, and on his arm was one of those beautiful long-legged Vegas line dancers that he liked so much even though they were all a few inches taller than Johnny, and right behind him came the Naglios, Phil and Oona, a writing team who lived over in Nichols Canyon; they had double armfuls of bulging sacks, having stopped at the Hughes Allnight Market, and Oona was carrying a big shallow bowl in case I didn’t have one, for the main dish, which would be a rice and seafood conglomeration, and they had called Debbie (casting director) who had been in the middle of getting dinner for her cousin, her lovely cousin whose name I never learned, a secretary at Fox, and her cousin’s date, Ford Hamilton, a rich boy turned comedian out from New York to make a picture at Fox and incidentally, a guy Rolling Stone had called “the hip David Ogilvie.” During the first part of the evening Ford Hamilton and I sort of ducked around and didn’t make any eye contact. I had been in the toilet when Debbie and What’s-her-name and Hamilton arrived.