The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  As far as Harry was concerned, Victor Ramdass Singh was just another Nervous Camera director, who worked tirelessly to make the audience realize at every moment that the picture was indeed being directed. What made the picture a hit, Harry figured, was all the creepy sex. Victor Ramdass Singh definitely had a feel for creepy sex, but he was being touted in the press as inventive, exciting and avant-garde. Harry wondered how much of it had to do with the fact that Singh wore a turban.

  Even before their meeting, Harry decided that probably the only way he could get rid of Singh would be to make Singh not want to do the picture. But that would not be easy. Fats would probably alter the picture to suit Singh, he would probably raise the salary ceiling that was presently in the budget, and, Harry realized with a smile, he would probably fire Harry if necessary. Harry could not threaten to quit, because Fats would call him an artistic type and the picture would be made, God knows what it would look like, and Harry would be out on his ass.

  The two other major problems facing Harry were the script and the production staff. Fortunately, Fats stayed out of both areas, preferring to read one-page synopses of the script (prepared by Harry) and let the studio production department worry about the little people. But the author of the script was already having second thoughts about the toughness of his story and, without really finishing the first draft, had gone back and started rewriting early scenes. Harry did not want him to do this. He wanted a whole clean first draft so that he and the production manager, whoever they got, could start to work on the production board, and in order to get it, Harry had to slightly terrorize the writer by telephone.

  Wilbur Garton lived in an apartment facing the ocean a few blocks north of the Marina del Rey breakwater, and in the background, throughout the conversation, Harry could hear the squeals and laughter of people playing volleyball on the beach. Wilbur Garton’s defense for not finishing the draft was that he had to alter early events to conform to what he wanted to put into the climax. Harry said, “But we all agreed that we like what goes on in the first act. We all agreed that the cops get shot because they’re in the way.”

  “I don’t want my people shooting cops,” Wilbur Garton said. Over the telephone his tenor voice sounded even higher, and Harry could tell he was very nervous from the way he kept laughing and saying, “Okay okay!”

  “But Wilbur, we agreed on this. The cops don’t mean anything to these characters; they’ve seen the cops—”

  “Okay okay! Listen, the whole point is, I really have been having nightmares about killing Wally off; so I thought maybe if Wally didn’t actually have any part in the actual shooting of anybody, then it’d be okay if he gets away in the end.”

  “You want him to get away too? You want everybody to get away? What’s the story about?”

  “Well, ha ha, about some desperate people who are pushed into stealing. They aren’t bad people, ha ha . . .”

  “No, they’re not bad. I never said they were bad. But they’ll be fucking terrible if you turn them into a bunch of Disney bandits, for Christ’s sake. Have you forgotten everything you knew about drama? The characters have to be interesting exciting people, or nobody will come to the theater to watch them. You put a bunch of namby-pambys in there, who cares? Now for Christ’s sake get off your fat ass and finish the first draft. You have exactly two weeks to run on your contract.”

  After a silence, punctuated by the now eerie sounds of vollyball players, Wilbur said, “I thought we agreed I was to have autonomy over the script, and now you’re talking about canning me.”

  “I wouldn’t fire you, goddamn it, but if we don’t turn in the script I’ve been pitching, and turn it in goddamn quick, I’m going get fired myself, and then out you go behind me. I mean it.”

  But the funny part was, all through the conversation Harry was really thinking more about Jody than the script, and thinking about her took the edge away, made things seem more trivial somehow, as if it didn’t really matter, all that really mattered was Jody. That was the nice thing about falling in love. After he hung up from a whipped and beaten Wilbur, Harry called Jody at the hotel and told her he loved her, and then while she was still on the telephone, a man tapped lightly on his door and opened it, peeking in, a hesitant smile on his broad flat face.

  “I have to run, honey,” Harry said to Jody.

  LEW GARGOLIAN looked like an Indian but he wasn’t. He was an Armenian from Fresno and had been sent to Harry by the production department to audition for the job of production manager. Harry dreaded this particular interview, although he was courteous to Gargolian and stood up, shook hands and offered him a drink.

  “No thanks,” Gargolian said. He sat down on the edge of his chair, his large hairy hands folded primly on his lap. Gargolian was wearing a bright-red orlon sweater and checked slacks, darkly shined loafers and bright-red socks, a style of dress Harry thought of as Technician Mod. The reason he dreaded the interview was not because of anything he had heard about Gargolian but because he had wanted to hire an independent PM, one who would answer to him rather than to the studio, and in order to do this he was going to have to interview every PM the studio threw at him, find something wrong with each of them, and then come up with a man whom Peebles, head of the production department, could not simply dismiss by snorting, “That thief? You have to be out of your mind!”

  But it turned out to be a nice day after all. Gargolian was a quiet sensitive man who had spent most of his professional life working out of London, which was why Harry did not know him, and after only a few feeling-out questions about past productions, Harry found himself warming to Gargolian and wondering why he was a studio man instead of staying independent. At the end of the interview he called Peebles and asked him.

  “Lew’s having trouble with his family,” Peebles said. “Teenage kids.”

  “I like him. Is he a thief?”

  “Would I send you a thief? He was an AD for Charlie Winkelmann for five years. He directed a couple things too. You know, location in Tibet or some goddamn place, the director gets antsy and they fire him and the PM takes over.”

  “What were the pictures, do you happen to remember?” Harry asked. He was pleased with this information. In the first place, Gargolian had said nothing about taking over the direction of two movies, which could either be from lack of pride, or modesty, and Harry did not think he lacked pride. And it never hurt to have a man on the set who could direct, just in case. Of course production managers were not known for artful direction and had a tendency to watch the budget more carefully than the actors, but Harry had no intention of actually using him as a director. Peebles did not know the name of the movies, but he said, “Listen, I think one of them wasn’t released, some tax problem or other, and the other one was a two-hour movie for television. Does it matter? Are you looking at him for director?”

  “I like him,” Harry said, making up his mind. “Can we start on our budget tomorrow morning?”

  TWENTY

  JODY HAD been frightened by the sudden unexpected telephone call from Harry, because it had come while she was in the middle of a terrible debate with herself, whether she should go down to Hollywood Boulevard and have a couple of drinks. She had been getting dressed and made up while she was debating, and so she knew how it would come out, but then Harry called for no other reason than to tell her he loved her. She very much did not want to disappoint him. But she was tense and out of sorts, with really nothing much to do, and she could envision how much fun it would be to sit in some nice dark sleazy bar and have a few drinks while she listened to music and watched the freaks.

  She had been talking to Harry about taking acting lessons over at the Actor’s Studio, but Harry had not been very responsive about it, and she knew she couldn’t get into the Studio without some professional people speaking up for her. So there was just nothing to do. Harry did not have any marijuana around the apartment, or at least if he did she had not been able to find it. In fact the only thing she had found in the
apartment at all was a small cellophane-wrapped package of some pornographic pictures, still sealed, which Jody had discovered under some papers in Harry’s bottom desk drawer. So there was nothing to smoke, and Jody did not like to drink alone. She thought about calling Glenn Duveen but she did not want to see him. If he came over he would probably think Jody had moved in with Harry Lexington because he was richer and had a better place to live, which was not exactly true.

  Finally, if she was to resist Hollywood Boulevard she simply had to have some weed, and so she called Duveen. His telephone had been disconnected. Jody was so angry she did not think until she was seated at the end barstool of the Rainbow Room that an actor whose telephone has been shut off is in deep trouble.

  The freaks were not very entertaining today. The bartender was only about twenty-five, with a thick bland face and a tight haircut, the kind of man Jody thought of as a rapist. He was wearing a white shirt and a small dark bow-tie, and paid no attention to her except to bring her bourbon and water. The only other customer was an old man in a blue suit, bent over his drink as if in silent prayer. The man had an old-fashioned grey hat, a folded newspaper and an old cigar box on the bar next to his drink, and Jody wanted to ask him what was in the box, just for something to talk about, but decided not to disturb the man. She got up and crossed the dark room to the jukebox, idling over her selections like a teenager. She would play a dollar’s worth of music, have a couple of drinks, and wend her way homeward, getting there in time to have a nice hot bath before Harry got home. Harry never got home before six-thirty, so she had plenty of time. She would even have time to go over to the Hughes Market and shop for dinner. They could have spareribs, cooked a special way she learned from a man she had lived with in Florida years ago, with pineapple chunks and green onions. She wished she had some grass; food always tasted so much better.

  The music thumped heavily out of the jukebox, far louder than natural in this empty barroom, and Jody went back to her seat, ready to ask the bartender to turn it down, but three scruffy-looking homosexuals came in and started making a lot of noise at the bar, playing liar’s dice and pretending to be macho, and so Jody just sat and listened to them make fools of themselves, and drank. Pretty soon some more people came into the place, and Jody found herself in conversation with a former stuntman who knew Glenn Duveen, and they had a couple of drinks and wondered what had ever happened to Glenn, and then it was time to go. But Bobby the former stuntman said that he knew a place where Jody could probably score some pretty good weed, and so with a bottle of wine they bought at a little corner market, they got into Bobby’s old car and drove around the dark streets of Hollywood looking for a house Bobby had been to a couple of times, but each time either drunk or fucked up. It turned out that Bobby was actually looking for some heroin, and Jody was drunk but not so drunk that she wanted to get into that kind of a scene, so at the next stop-sign she just opened the car door on her side and got out. “Later,” she said, and walked away from the car. Bobby did not try to follow, but simply drove off as if it had been arranged that way.

  It took her an hour to walk back to the hotel, and she was less than drunk but more than sober when she came into Harry’s apartment at ten-thirty. Harry was sitting in his favorite chair. The television was off. The radio was off. The apartment was silent and Harry was not working. He was just sitting there, looking up at her from across the room. She went in to take a shower after saying, “Hi!” over her shoulder, and Harry came into the bathroom while she was letting the hot water sluice down her body.

  “Where have you been?” he shouted over the sound of the water.

  “None of your goddamn business!” she shouted back.

  TWENTY-ONE

  LUNCH WITH Victor Ramdass Singh finally took place, but not in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Instead, Fats Dunnigan told Harry to meet them at a place called the Peach Pit, on Sunset, and when Harry came up the steps from the parking lot behind the restaurant he could see Fats with a man and a woman, sitting around an outside table with a big orange umbrella shading it. Harry had to smile to himself: the group he was joining looked almost too Hollywood to be real. Fats Dunnigan, a gigantic man, bald on top but with long dark greasy-looking hair down over his collar, bright shirt, leather pants; Victor Ramdass Singh, wearing a dirty-looking pink turban, leather jacket and no shirt; and a woman whose name Harry never really got straight who was obviously with Singh, blonde, big-toothed, bland and pleasant, dressed in a black full-length gown with tight sleeves and a deeply plunging neckline. Singh looked about twenty years old except in the eyes, and the woman seemed to be somewhere over thirty. Harry shook hands and sat down and Victor Ramdass Singh said, “I think I’m going to like you after all. You might even find that you like me.” He laughed.

  Already he sounds more like an actor than a director, Harry thought, but he smiled and said something pleasant to Dunnigan. The menus came and they all ordered salads (the Peach Pit was a health food restaurant), and after the waitress went away Harry said to Singh, “Well, have you had a chance to read the story?”

  “Not completely,” Singh said. “I’ve gone through it, of course.” He laughed again, his teeth bright against his dark skin. He looked into Harry’s eyes and said, smiling politely, “Is this your conception of an important motion picture?”

  “I don’t know about important,” Harry said. He thought he had detected a gleam of intelligent amusement in Singh’s eyes, as if he and Harry were sharing a joke, that perhaps both of them were putting Dunnigan on. But Harry knew better than to act on it. “I think it’s a pretty good story.”

  Dunnigan said, “Victor sees it as an opportunity to show the American predilection for violence in a new light. Would you explain for Mr. Lexington, Victor?”

  “I thought the story was just garbage,” the woman said softly.

  “Yes, my love,” Singh said, and went on quickly, “Yes, America’s predilection for violence, yes. I think it would be an excellent idea to show the essential emotionlessness of these characters as they rob and kill. They feel nothing, of course, except for each other.”

  Harry said, “You mean, they’re all psychopaths?”

  “A word. Merely a word. Let us say their violence is existential instead of emotional. But those are only more words. I think the heart of this story—what are you calling it?”

  “‘Shooting Spree’ is the working title,” Harry said, “but we’re planning on changing it as soon as somebody comes up with a better one.”

  “At any rate, I think the heart of this story lies in the fact that these people do not differentiate between their acts. To them, going to the toilet, eating, making love, killing a bank teller, all have the same distant quality. It should be a film that strikes one emotional note repeatedly, up until they themselves are wounded and hurt and killed. Then, on an emotional upsurge, they cry out in anguish and even rage.”

  “Why not call it The Killers?” the woman said. Singh put his hand on top of hers and patted it.

  “Please mind your own business,” he said to her.

  “I like what Victor’s saying,” Dunnigan said. “What do you think? Isn’t that just about what we had in mind for this story?”

  “Wilbur Garton should be here,” Harry said. “After all, it’s his story. In fact, I think Wilbur ought to be invited to come along on location.”

  “I don’t like to have writers around,” Singh said. “They cause so much trouble. You ask them to rewrite and they get terribly upset, yet the sole reason for having them along is so that they can rewrite. Don’t you think so?”

  Harry did think so, but he didn’t admit it. He was beginning to realize that perhaps Fats Dunnigan was not the person who wanted to see this young man assigned to the picture, that Fats might be looking for a way out too. Harry said, “Who do you see in the major roles?”

  Singh had very definite ideas about casting. He wanted to use British actors for the two leading men, and when Harry said something abou
t accents, Singh said, “American accents are easy to imitate.” Fats kept smiling cheerfully and eating his salad, but Harry was now certain that he was furious. Singh must have had very powerful friends somewhere, because Dunnigan was not a man to hide his emotions unless there was a very good reason for it. Here he was, wasting his time on a bullshit meeting, holding in his emotions, eating what he probably considered to be rabbit food, and Harry began to suspect that maybe Dunnigan was under even more pressure than himself. Harry smiled and stuffed a large forkful of shredded cabbage into his mouth.

  It turned out that Singh had his own British camera crew, and wanted to cut the film in London. “What would be the point of staying in Southern California for a year or so, when I can be where I am happiest?” he asked the table at large, and when lunch was over and they all stood up and shook hands with each other, Harry made sure he walked down to the parking lot with Dunnigan. Standing beside Dunnigan’s big maroon Mercedes, Harry said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Fats, are you kidding?”

  Dunnigan looked sour and said, “I think he’s a very talented young man.” He started to open the door to his car, but stopped and looked off into the distance. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Harry knew better than to mention the pressure, but Dunnigan seemed to be waiting for him to say something. “He’s going to be damned expensive,” Harry said finally.

  The next morning, while he and Jody were still making love, Harry got a telephone call from Dunnigan’s secretary, telling him to meet Fats at Karl Meador’s office at ten sharp. “All right,” Harry said.