“No shit?” he said, and I’m so sick, the fact that it impressed him made me want to get my producing credit very badly. So when the revised script came, with the new blue page inserts, I poured the coffee and went back to my desk and started reading. I was incensed to see that virtually nothing was changed. I mean, things were definitely different in the script, but if anything they’d gotten worse.
Now the dominatrix was molesting the battered women’s children. I lost it. I called Ronny and got his machine and like a crazy person, I screamed into the phone. I said I realized that he only had his own interests at heart all along, that I knew now that he’d led me to believe he was one kind of person and turned out to be just another Hollywood phony instead. I remember screaming “You can’t do this to people,” into the phone, and then realizing not only that I was crying but that the person I was really talking to when I said all those things was Billy.
It took Ronny days to call me back, and when he did I was out, so he left a message on my machine. It was right after one from Billy saying he was in meetings so late that he couldn’t pick the girls up, during which a woman’s voice was laughing in the background the entire time he was speaking.
Then came Ronny’s message, in which he spoke slowly and in a patronizing voice that made it sound as if he were speaking to a child of two. “Marly, we start shooting this MOW on Monday. The network is so happy with it, they want to make a big overall deal with my production company. I heard what you said, I have made many of the changes you suggested, and I am messengering you over a copy of the shooting script so you can sign off on it, and let me know if you do or do not want your producing credit. All the best to you and the twins.”
The script didn’t arrive until Sunday night. If there were any changes, they were for the worse. Husbands were making harassing phone calls, women were sneaking drugs into the place, one of the women was a Satanist and trying to convert the others. I have never been so appalled by anything in my life. I didn’t sleep for one minute that night, and after I dropped the girls off at school, I drove like a crazy person over to the studio.
I had no idea how I was going to get on the lot. I didn’t have a pass, I didn’t have a clue what stage they were on, I only knew which studio, but I was possessed. I drove up to the gate, and heard myself say to the guard, “Hi, I’m in the cast of Shelter.” That was the name of Ronny Bates’s movie.
The guard picked up a clipboard, on which he obviously had a list of names of the cast, and I didn’t know who any of them were, so I couldn’t give a fake name. “Your name?” he asked. Clearly he had never seen “Keeping Up with the Joneses.”
“I’m Marly Bennet Mann,” I said. He looked for a long time, probably under B and then under M, and then he looked at me and said, “I don’t have you on here.”
I was afraid the next move was the guard calling the set, and Ronny hearing my name and trying to keep me off the set, and I didn’t know what to do. Now, you know how neat I am? So my car is never a mess, but for some reason that day I had the kids’ stuff all over the backseat, and some clothes I was planning to take to the cleaners on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and a whole pile of mail I needed to go through, and a copy of People magazine my mother had sent me from back east because there was a picture in it of me and Billy leaving Spago after Swifty Lazar’s Oscar party.
So for some reason I decided that was the way to go, to get me onto the lot. To use what I hated the most, which was exploiting Billy’s name the way every other dog in this town wants to. But I grabbed the magazine, opened it to the page called Glitterati, at this awful picture of me with Billy waving a fist at the camera, and thrust it out the window at the guard. “Here,” I said. “This is me. Mrs. Billy Mann.” While he was looking at it, I flashed on Judy Garland in A Star Is Born, saying, “Hello everyone, this is Mrs. Norman Main.”
The guard was smiling now. We know how everyone loves Billy, don’t we? And then he looked back at me and said, “You’re his wife? Boy, that must be fun. Go ahead.” I let him keep the magazine, and hated myself, but this was for a worthy cause. I was going to march on that set and raise hell. I was going to terrorize Ronny Bates until he closed down production. I am so stupid, I actually thought there was something I could do.
I stopped a young woman who might have been a production secretary, walking across the lot, and she knew where they were shooting, so I found a parking place and walked over to the stage, pulled the big, heavy door open, and crept through the cool darkness to the set.
It was very dingy. It was supposed to be the bathroom in the shelter, which in reality is very sunny and welcoming. I know because I worked on making the real shelter look that way, and Ronny Bates knew it, too, because he’d spent enough time there. There was a big crew and a lot of actresses milling around who I didn’t know but who seemed as if they were chosen because they looked tawdry, when the truth was that most of the women I’d met in the shelter were very vulnerable looking.
I stood quietly for a while and then watched as a nearly naked actress walked into the bathroom, and the actress who was playing the woman who oversees the shelter was watching her get ready to take a shower. That was it. I walked over to where Ronny was standing chatting with someone, and I could see he was shocked to see me walk in there.
I summoned every ounce of assertiveness training I ever had, and I said, “Ronny, this is criminal. You’re sending the wrong message to women who will be scared away from something they desperately need to change their lives.”
Ronny smiled a self-conscious smile and said, “Marly… come over to the production office and we’ll talk about it.”
“We’ll talk about it right here,” I said, hoping I was embarrassing him. I saw him blanch, and then he said as loud and clear as he could, “Marly, get the fuck off my set, get the fuck off this lot. If you don’t, I’ll have some of my crew carry you off bodily. Stay out of this, or I’ll make you sorry you didn’t.”
I looked around hoping someone would step forward and say I don’t know what, maybe, “You can’t talk that way to her, she’s fighting for truth and honor and justice. This production is shut down for being a bad example to caring people everywhere!” Ha. Everyone on the set was completely self-absorbed. The actresses were yakking to one another and flirting with the crew, one of the cameramen was reading a paperback, no one was even listening.
I was motionless for a minute, and then I remembered him in that buffet line years ago at that party when he picked up the cabbage, and what he’d said. “I’d do anything to get ahead in this business,” and I wished like hell I’d paid attention to my first-fifteen-minutes rule. And even though I don’t believe in Werner anymore, he did say we are all God in our own universe, and I created that situation. So I went home and waited for the show to air.
It got a forty share, and right afterward Ronny Bates bought himself a house with a tennis court in the hills. Somewhere I believe, right near the house that’s reputed to belong to Marlon Brando.
* * *
23
She found the hospital with no sweat at all. She had good directions that she got by calling. It made her laugh when the person on the line told her, “You make a right on George Burns Drive, then you park at the Marvin Davis Building, then you walk through the Max Factor Tower, which is across from the Steven Spielberg Building.” Maybe only people who were big in show business were allowed to be sick there. Maybe when they picked you up off the street after being hit by a car and they took you to the emergency room, somebody at the entrance had the job of asking, “Can we see your résumé? Have you made enough money in this industry for us to let you in?”
She did all the things they told her. Burns to Davis to Factor to Spielberg, and then she was in the lobby, looking at the uniformed guard, who wouldn’t let her go upstairs. Jan was in a coma close to death, at least that was how all the news reports were making it sound. So if the others were there, and they had to be there, at least one of them had
to, they’d never know anything. They’d welcome her, the way Jan had, hug her, and ask her about all the things she’d been doing. She’d tell them she just happened to be in town visiting friends and she heard about poor Jan on the news, and they’d all commiserate.
Perfect! She’d say how heartbroken she was, and perhaps they should organize the memorial service. Because surely at the memorial service all the old friends would be there, and one of them would have a job for her. But the goddamned guard shook his head at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dr. Schiffman gave me explicit orders that only people whose names were on this list could go up. And I can’t violate that. So if you’d like to call Doctor Schiffman, or you can find some way to get your name on this list…”
She tried to read the list upside down, but when the guard saw what she was doing, he turned it over. Goddamn him. Goddamn the fact that she parked her car in a pay lot, figuring that after she visited the hospital, someone would give her a parking validation, and now they wouldn’t even let her in.
“Thanks,” she muttered, and sauntered away, trying to figure out if she could spot a stairway that went up, and after a while, when the guard wasn’t looking, she could somehow find her way to Jan’s floor. The chilly night air blew into the lobby as a handsome man with a Tom Selleck mustache pushed the door open, and his entrance caught the guard’s attention. He was dressed in a tux.
“Hey, Frank,” the man said warmly to the guard.
“Mr. S.,” the guard said, standing, and flushed and put out a hand for the man to shake. “How’s everything, sir? All of your shows going well this season? The staff here sure goes bananas when your camera crew is out there. One of the other guards told me he was going to join the professional extras union, after the last time one of your hospital shows was shooting exteriors here and he was in them.” The guard let out one of those apologetic self-conscious laughs people sometimes use when they’re in the presence of someone who intimidates them.
“That’s nice, Frank. Listen, I was just across the street at Chasen’s at an awards dinner, and I heard some very disturbing news.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir, is there anything I can do?”
She was sitting now on a sofa with her back to them, but in the black night the window became a mirror, and in it she watched the guard and the man chatting away, and she was shaking because she realized the man had to be Jack Solomon. She could turn around right now and say, “Jack, it’s me,” and maybe he’d be thrilled to see her. And the bad news he was talking about had to be…
“Jan O’Malley, a lifelong friend of mine, is in here, and I want to go up and see her. So point me in the right direction, will you, Frank?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Solomon. She’s on seven in surgical ICU. Not doing too well, from what I hear. I’m sorry to break it to you, since she was your friend, but that’s the word. There was a big press conference just a little while ago, and they were very pessimistic about the prognosis. But you go on up, sir. And maybe things will have changed”
“Thanks, Frank,” Jack Solomon said, and breezed off toward the elevators. Jack Solomon. They’d had pajama parties together in the dorms. She sat on his lap all the way to New York. Why hadn’t she called out his name?
Seventh floor, ICU, she thought. How can I get there without going by that lying little weasel of a guard who said your name had to be on the list and then he let Solomon go up but not me. I should have killed them both. Should kill the guard now and go up. Why didn’t I at least have the guts to show myself to Jack and beg him for a job? I’m too afraid. That’s why I married Lou, that’s why I put having kids in my way and didn’t come to Hollywood before, because I was always too goddamned afraid.
* * *
24
The regular sound of the breathing machine was hypnotic, and the cold temperature and soft light in the room made the whole atmosphere sleep-inducing. Ellen yawned, and Rose stood to adjust the blankets around Jan.
“I’m worried that she’s not warm enough,” she said, like a mother hovering over a sleeping baby in a nursery.
“I’m glad they let us be with her,” Marly said. “I have a real sense that she knows we’re here. That she’s hearing us and our stories and that somehow it’s helping her.”
“I probably should call home and see if there’s a message on my machine saying I’m fired,” Ellen said, opening her bag and pulling out her cellular phone. “Is this okay?” she asked Marly, “or will my bad movie studio molecules bring evil energy into her space?”
Marly forced a smile. “I forgive you for that,” she said, and Ellen dialed. After a minute she pressed one of the phone’s buttons to activate the rewind on her home answering machine.
“Look at this, Janny,” Rose said, moving close to the bed, “isn’t modern technology something? It enables a studio hotshot to run her business right out of the intensive care unit.”
Ellen was listening to her messages, and after a few minutes while she did, she smiled and then laughed out loud. “I have to play this back for you,” she said to Rose and Marly. “It’s a message from Greenie, and it’s hilarious. Here.” She pushed a button and handed the phone to Rose, and Rose and Marly put their heads next to either side of the flat little receiver to listen to the playback from Ellen’s machine.
“El, it’s Greenie. I’m sorry to even call you with this bullshit, and I hope like hell that Jan’s going to make it, and that all is well at Cedars, but I figured you’d call your machine and I needed you to know that after you left tonight, Bibberman pulled a full-out shit fit.
“He turned around from going to the screening and came screaming in here and said, ‘Tell her that besides missing the screening tonight, she walked out so soon, we never even talked about our Monday morning meeting with Jodie Foster. I told her yesterday that if we can get Jodie to direct this project, I think we can get Julia Roberts and Geena Davis to star. Then our foreign distribution will pay the difference. You can also tell her if she leaves one more meeting early, she can go back to carrying coffee to the Monkees.’
“I was very calm,” Greenie continued. “I said, ‘Bibberman, darling, if you turn on the news, you’ll learn that one of Ellen’s best friends was shot and is in a coma at Cedars, where Ellen can be found sitting at her bedside. You wouldn’t understand that kind of caring, so I suspect you’ll be trying to reach her there. She loves this friend, Bibberman, in a way that you have never loved, and probably no one has loved you. More than a deal with Jodie Foster, more than, and this may shock you, even a deal with Julia Roberts and Geena Davis. She is probably planning to stay by this friend’s bedside for a long time.’
“Well, don’t you know the little asshole actually took a moment and looked down at his Cole-Haans as if he was feeling a slight twinge of remorse. For an instant I fooled myself into hoping that maybe there was a God looking over show business after all, that maybe somewhere behind that ugly facade of heartless, bloodless studio exec, the man had a soul. Until he looked up into my big blue eyes and said what he thought was a statement of having his priorities straight. ‘Tell her to call me as soon as her friend dies!’
“I wouldn’t have left this message if I didn’t think it would make you and Rose and Marly laugh out loud. I love you, and I’m praying for Jan.”
They were all laughing, the laughter tinged with disbelief at Bibberman’s megalomania. “A bigger asshole has never lived,” Ellen said, putting away the phone, looking up when she heard the buzz of the ICU door. And through the open portal of Jan’s cubicle, they could all see who was entering.
“I spoke too soon,” Ellen said, realizing before the others who the dapper-looking man was who came breezing toward them as if he were one of the doctors on the hospital staff. “Here’s someone who’s an even bigger asshole. Did they forget to spray in here? How did he get in?” The nurses at the desk all nodded a nod of familiarity to Jack Solomon, whose appearance had been dramatically transformed for the better by his success. He had a slim phys
ique, carved daily by a personal trainer out of what once had been a round little paunchy body, a great hairstyle trimmed and shaped regularly by a great barber, a perfectly shaped mustache that looked great on him, custom-tailored clothes that fit to perfection, and a swagger of confidence that was unquestionably sexy.
Tonight he was wearing the best-looking tuxedo ever made. And the only remnant of the former schlemiel who once climbed in the window of the girls’ dorms, to be their platonic friend, because that’s all that was available, was the occasional trace of a New York accent.
“They know me here,” he said by way of explaining his easy access. Then he opened his arms wide as if he expected at least one of them to come over and hug him. “I shoot my shows all over this joint, so I can go anywhere I want… and by the way, it’s nice to see you, too, Feinberg.”
Ellen was deadpan.
He always called them by their last names when they were at Tech. “Bennet and Morris, can’t you teach her how to watch her language?” he asked now, looked at his watch and said, “It’s still the family hour.” When he realized not one of them was going to come to him, he moved forward and put an affectionate arm around Rose. “I can’t believe I was right across the street at Chasen’s at an awards banquet, and out of nowhere Norman Lear leans over and asks me if I saw all the fans outside the hospital when I came by. I guess I was on the phone in my car when we passed Cedars and didn’t notice, so I said ‘No, who’s dying?’ And he said ‘It’s a terrible tragedy about that actress and what happened to her today.’ And then he told me who it was, and I was so stunned I left right in the middle of my chili. How is she?”
Show Business Kills Page 22