The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  Ted Gage said, “Time or money. I would prefer that we take another look at the script and see if we can’t get a couple of extra days out of it.”

  That explained the presence of Dick Matthews, the writer.

  “I just don’t see it,” the director said.

  So there it was. Alexander looked at the sheaf of Daily Production Reports on his desk, glancing at the setup time, number of setups per day, shifts, changes and utilizations. It was obvious that the director had been taking a lot of time with each setup, but there was nothing criminal in his slowness. Alexander had seen dailies, and the stuff was coming out okay. It was simply that the budget was too tight. Gage had won too many victories in the preproduction battles, shortchanging department after department until the picture was anemic with economy. All in response to front-office pressure, of course. But Gage had been too good at his job.

  Alexander had been a production supervisor; into the business as a grip, then location manager, production manager, Executive in Charge of Production for the whole lot, and now head of production. Not the king, but the prime minister. He knew what Gage wanted, a typical production-style solution. He wanted the script cut down again, therefore fewer days shooting. At sixty thousand dollars a day it mounted quickly.

  Reaching out with one hand, Alexander adjusted the Venetian blinds so that he could see the towers and battlements across the way. It was a pleasant sight, and added to the unreality of it all. There was, he could see, a big yellow tabby cat sitting in an embrasure, giving himself a thorough wash. There were several furtive cats living on the lot, keeping the rats and mice down, and, Alexander had heard, a couple of humans who existed somehow without leaving the grounds. Living in Fairyland on crusts of bread.

  Alexander could just smell the odor of Teresa di Veccio rising from his clothes, and he wondered if anybody else could. Matthews, the writer? Would he be entertaining the boys at the Cock ’N Bull with tales of his meeting with the Boss? “Dresses like a banker, smells like a fag . . .” Sure, we’re all fags in Hollywood, sensitive folks, screw anything . . .

  The scent caught at him again, and he could feel his penis swelling slightly at the memory invoked. He had already made up his mind to give them the money, God knows where he would find it, because the mistake was his. The buck stops here. Meanwhile, Alexander smelled the faint ripeness of rutting, and watched the cat at his bath . . .

  CHAPTER THREE

  NORTH OF Malibu, almost to the Trancas light, a lonely beach house jutted over the cliff, surrounded by sheltering windswept Monterey cypresses, the house itself old weathered lapstrake redwood, with a roof garage, a large wooden deck on three sides, potted shrubs and gaily striped beach furniture. From Highway 1 all you could see were two massive fieldstone pillars supporting a big double-doored automobile entrance, thick cypress, a dilapidated mailbox, and a fresh sign printed in bright red: KEEP OUT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED. This sign had several .22 bullet holes in it, but was still readable.

  It was not a place you would enter unless you had a clear invitation.

  Within, on this early Monday morning, were Richard Heidelberg and his lady love of the moment, Elektra Soong. Although it was just the kind of morning when one would love to walk down the sand-swept wooden steps to the beach and lie on a towel, getting a tan and listening to the radio, neither Rick nor Elektra was at all interested in the outside world, and every blind in the house that could be lowered was lowered, leaving the interior in semidarkness. Cold jazz trickled into every room from a network of loudspeakers, and in a couple of rooms there were color television sets making a morning soap opera visible but not audible. Rick and Elektra were in different rooms. Elektra was in the big master bedroom, reading a magazine, rapidly flipping the pages and rhythmically biting her reddened and puffed lips. She was also rubbing her toes together, making a sound like rats. This sound drove her crazy, but she would not or could not stop making it. The magazine was Vogue and she had read it thirty or forty times.

  Rick was in the living room, still dressed in Arab costume made from sheets, bedspreads and scarves. He was trying his belt on around his forehead, looking critically at himself in the long mirror over the mantel. They were going to revolutionize the clothing industry, they had decided a couple of days before. It was simple, they would make Arab dress fashionable, and then corner the market. Rick wondered a hundred times why no one had thought of it before.

  Satisfied that the belt did nothing for his costume, a decision he had made several times, Rick returned to the glass-topped table in front of the fireplace and kneeled beside it. On the table were the remains of a thousand dollars’ worth of Peruvian pearl cocaine, and a variety of paraphernalia. He and Elektra had been having themselves a nonstop cocaine party, just the two of them, prepared for in advance: groceries, liquor, weed, the phones shut off, cover story (Tahoe) and all; and now they were down from the original half-ounce to a couple of grams. This was the fourth day. Neither had slept or wanted to, but they made sure they took their vitamins and drank a little milk or orange juice every hour. Rick wasn’t feeling too bad. He was frightened, of course, by the fact that they were going to run out some time that afternoon, and that the curtains would have to be pulled back, the blinds lifted, and the sunshine let into the place. It made him shudder to think of the sunshine. The sun was God, after all, for any practical human purpose, and God is not mocked.

  “Lines!” he called out, and started cutting four, then eight, lines of the cocaine, now chalky from the sea air.

  Elektra drifted into the room, naked, perhaps the most beautiful girl Rick had ever seen, a mix of Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, a real hapahaole from the streets of downtown Honolulu. “Oh, swell,” she said, and got down beside him. He kissed her tiny shoulder affectionately and she gave his penis a squeeze. Then they snorted their lines.

  Rick sat back against the couch. It would soon be over, this little trip into the white universe, but it had been a good one. No long nights of anxiety, no horrible thoughts crowding all pleasure from sight. Not much fucking, but long hours of quiet conversation about everything under the sun, both of them naked and hugging their knees. And of course the two great ideas. Rick often had great ideas when deep into cocaine, but sometimes you sobered up and the ideas turned out to be false. That was okay; this time, these two ideas would survive the sunlight.

  The first was the Arab dress idea, and for two days they played costume and looked through books and magazines for anything having to do with dress or fashion. It all seemed so childishly simple: fashions were dictated by what the “people of the moment” were wearing, and right now Rick was a “person of the moment,” and so, by extension, was Elektra. They were always being photographed and interviewed, and what they did became news. This would always work as long as they weren’t pigs about it; the young public enjoyed success for its heroes, and Rick was certainly a hero. The Endless Unicorn had cost two hundred thousand dollars and had grossed worldwide something like forty million dollars, because young people everywhere liked it. Rick liked it, too, that’s why he made the goddamn thing; he liked it and he forced it through, and it hit the bull’s-eye. So even the establishment liked him, although it did not trust him.

  Which brought his mind, now riding high on the new lines, to the second idea, which was not so simple as the first, but much more exciting to Rick. He would take over the studio, grab it away from Alexander Hellstrom, and with the whole creative power of the studio behind him, and with his friends, the young up-and-coming filmmakers of the world, he would begin a reign of moviemaking equal to the age of the pyramids.

  At one point Rick laughed wildly and kissed Elektra and said, “We’ll make The Martian Chronicles, with actual locations! On Mars!”

  She loved it. “Can I be in the picture?”

  It was time to blow the rocks out of his nose. Rick went into the bathroom off the bedroom, taking along a fresh wineglass, which he filled to the brim with warm water. He dipped his nose into t
he water, much as a bird might, and inhaled. Warm itchy water trickled down his throat, almost making him cough. He held the cough, and let the excess water drip from his nose. He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were feverish, big as prunes. He inhaled more water, repeating the process three times, and then with a shake of his head, blew. He could feel huge masses of wreckage up inside his head, and, closing off one nostril at a time, blew and blew. Once it started it rose to a torrent, and the sink was spattered with shiny crimson blobs and red rills of blood. God, but it felt good to blow that stuff out!

  Rick cleaned the bowl thoroughly, reflecting on the fact that his snot was worth money. He was still high, and his nostrils felt like twin wind tunnels. In the bedroom Elektra was trying to get some sleep, lying on her side with the sheet up over her shoulder, breathing like a wounded buffalo. He did not disturb her, but walked on through to the living room and sat once again by the coffee table. Coffee table. There had been just about everything on that table but coffee. She was right. It was time to quit, even though there was a lot of coke left. His nose was clean and clear, even starting to hurt a bit; this was the time to take a double shot of 100-proof whiskey, lie back, and come gradually down.

  Instead, he snorted three lines on each side and began riffling through a copy of Playboy. With Elektra snoozing there was twice as much coke for him, and somehow at the time it seemed like a good deal. She slept all day Monday while he sat in the living room, either going through magazines or thinking feverish thoughts, doubling his intake of the drug out of spite, going deeper and deeper into anxiety, fear of running out, fear of existence, fear of moving, fear that he was addicted to cocaine and would spend the rest of his life in this crippled trance, having an awful time. Later he started hitting the whiskey, and by midnight he was blistering drunk, helplessly throwing up into the toilet, somebody holding his shoulders and applying a hot washcloth to his temples; and then he was in bed, nauseated but able to keep the room from spinning, and then he was gone.

  When he woke up, he felt as if somebody had been hitting him on the nose with a crowbar, but otherwise he was all right. He sat up. Elektra was not there. The magazines were all put away and the bedroom was neat and orderly for the first time in days. The smell of food was in the air. Food! Rick had not had an appetite for a long time. It was a delicious sensation. He got out of bed and walked, wobbling only a little, into the other part of the house.

  Blinds were up, curtains open. All the mess was gone. He could hear the reassuring beat of the surf, and the sky stood richly blue against white clouds.

  “You want some O.J.?” Elektra asked. She came out of the kitchen wearing a tee shirt and a bikini bottom. She smiled at Rick and kissed him lightly and gave him the big glass of orange juice, which he threw back all in one long gurgling gulp. “Can you eat yet?” she asked. “I had some bacon and eggs and muffins . .”

  “Let’s give it a try,” Rick said. He followed her into the brightly lit kitchen and sat in the nook by the window that overlooked the cliff and the ocean beyond. Down the beach came a man riding horseback, galloping right along, a big older man with a mane of grey hair and a tan so dark he looked almost like a Kanaka. The man wore only faded jeans, and as he rode out of sight under the overhang of the cliff, Rick wondered if that was going to be the last few chapters of his life, rich enough to be able to horseback ride on this beach, bored enough to have to go ahead and do it.

  Quietly he watched Elektra make his breakfast. Her timing and methodology were impeccable. While the bacon sizzled over a low flame in the black cast-iron frying pan on a back burner and the English muffins toasted in the toaster-oven on a shelf beside the stove, she put butter, salt and pepper into the long-handled French frying pan and shook the pan gently as the butter melted, bubbled and settled back down. Still holding the pan handle in her left hand she opened the refrigerator and took out two AA large brown eggs in her tiny hand, closing the refrigerator with a little swing of her hip, and broke the eggs one-handed into the pan, tossing the broken shells into the garbage sack at her feet. Quickly, but without splashing grease, she turned the bacon with her fork. The eggs began to bubble as she continued to shake the pan with her left hand, and now with the fork began stirring the eggs rapidly.

  The heat was low and the eggs came together slowly, at first yellow and white, like mixed-up fried eggs. As she kept stirring, taking care to let no part of the eggs remain against the heat for long, they began to turn pale yellow and solidify. She turned off the heat, still stirring, and dumped the scrambled eggs on the plate. The toaster-oven popped open but she ignored it for the moment, scooping up the bacon and placing it aside on a folded paper napkin. Then she plucked the hot brown-crusted buttery muffins from the toaster-oven and onto the plate. Adding the bacon she slid the plate of food in front of Rick.

  “Smell good?” she asked.

  Rick nodded and murmured and started to eat. The eggs were the best he had ever had. The kitchen was neat and clean. Elektra had obviously been working away all the time he slept, quietly, so as not to disturb him, but working working working, where some other broad might have just headed for the beach and waited for the Mexican servants to show up. But not Elektra, and once again he congratulated himself on having her for a girl friend. God, this bacon was just right!

  Was it love? He did not know. There was no reason to call it that. They said they loved each other all the time, but they also said they loved this and that, so the word was really just a way of expressing enthusiasm. Rick knew he wouldn’t have had a chance with Elektra if he hadn’t been Richard Heidelberg, and she wouldn’t have stood a chance with him if she hadn’t been so royally beautiful and so smart and so lucky. But of course what was the point of being Richard Heidelberg if not Elektra Soong?

  “With a Soong in my heart,” Rick sang mischievously.

  “Oh, eat your meal,” she said, and sat opposite him to watch. He ate with little yelps of joy at each new flavor, complimenting her on her cooking.

  “Oh,” she said, “eggs and bacon are easy. Someday I’ll really cook for you, but you have to have about twelve people here or it’s not worth it.”

  “That would be a swell party,” he said, his mouth full of egg. “You in the kitchen slaving away.”

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “I’m going down to the beach for a while. Are you gonna come down?”

  Rick swallowed and suddenly remembered the Two Great Ideas. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He sipped his coffee, as Elektra watched him, her head cocked to one side.

  “Remember the Arab clothes?” Rick looked embarrassed.

  “Sure. That was fun.”

  “But not such a great idea, huh?”

  She laughed. “ ‘My son, the Arab!’”

  “Sweeping into Nate ’N Al’s in our sheets and pillowcases!” Rick laughed. “Amidst the machine-gun fire . . .”

  Another great idea down the drain.

  But what about . . .

  “Hey,” he said to her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s go to bed . . .”

  And off they went.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE TRADE journal had offices in the Hany Building, on Hollywood Boulevard near Cahuenga, a musty old building whose lobby was the only bright spot, with a florist on one side and a twenty-four-hour smut bookstore on the other. Jerry Rexford stood waiting for the elevator, looking at the orchids in the refrigeration case, just to keep from looking at the rows of specialty pornography and sex equipment displayed on the other side. Not that he wouldn’t look at the sex stuff, but he didn’t want the clerk to see him. They were always fairly degenerate types, and when they caught you ogling, they gave you this knowing look, somewhere between a leer and a sneer, as if to say, “Ah, you’re as filthy as the rest of us!” Which was true, but why bring it up?

  Jerry could hear the elevator arrive, but the doors didn’t open for a few more seconds, as if it took all the machine’s strength to force the door to the wall. Then ther
e was a criss-cross steel door with a shiny worn brass handle to push, while the elevator creaked impatiently. Once inside and both doors closed, Jerry punched 5 and waited. A smell, something between stale cigarette smoke and tired feet, defied him to analyze it. He had plenty of time. No one got on or off as he slowly proceeded, laborious inch by inch, to the top story of the building.

  Jerry’s palms were wet. He hugged his briefcase, full of resumes and exemplars of his writing, to his chest, feeling the strangling clutch of his necktie at his throat, tied too tight because since arriving in Los Angeles Jerry had gone up a size in necks and could not button his best shirt, the only one that worked with his blue suit, and had to use the tie, a nice maroon with white polkadots, to cover up.

  The name of the trade journal was Pet Care Hotline, but Jerry did not laugh. Trade journals were a world to themselves, and a lot of them had laughable titles—if you went for that sort of humor. Indeed, to Jerry the hubris of calling yourself Time was funnier than Pet Care Hotline. Here they were, at the end of a long corridor of dirty white octagonal tiles and pebbled-glass doors. He could hear the sounds of routine office work faintly through the glass, and this reassured him. After the wonderments of getting settled in Hollywood, this was like home ground.

  As Jerry politely sat waiting in one of a row of hard chairs the color of dead bananas, he looked over the office. A small bullpen, surrounded by “private” doorless offices glassed in to a height of about seven feet, and the real private offices at the other end. Five or six people milled around or sat at desks, looked up with disinterest. There were no handsome men and no good-looking women. The men were in shirtsleeves, with ties, the women a little less formal. One very large woman wore a slack suit, which in Jerry’s opinion she shouldn’t have been wearing. So here it was, a drab little office full of drab people doing a boring job. Also, the pay would be terrible.