Chapter 29 – The Filmy Play
Gwen made Laleh tell her about her idea for a movie three more times, knowing that each time Laleh would refine her thinking, which had started out half-baked at best. An hour later she sent Laleh out for two coffees, which they needed after polishing off the bottle of wine they’d started with lunch. While she was gone, Gwen called Roger, Gale, and Jinny, and asked them to come to The Hall. She thought of calling Shim, but she didn’t want to feel guilty about interrupting his writing. With the other three, slackers all of them, she didn’t have to worry about interrupting anything serious. When they arrived and came in through the door at the rear of the stage, the two women were drinking their coffees.
Gale looked at the baskets and plates and empty bottles on the folding tables, and said, “You two had a picnic, and didn’t invite us? What kind of shit is that?” She looked at Roger and Jinny in disbelief.
Gwen smiled and said, “It was a private party. We had some serious thinking to do, and now that that’s over, we called you up.” Gale wasn’t offended by the gentle jest, and Jinny didn’t get it, so he wasn’t offended either. He was rooting around in the baskets looking for an unopened bottle of wine, which he found.
Roger said, “So what was the result of the thinking? Anything fun? Something that involves us, I take it.”
Gwen said, “Yes, on both accounts. Something very fun, and you’re invited to join the team. All of you.”
Gale rolled three more chairs out from the wings, while Jinny poured three glasses of wine, and handed one to Roger and Gale. When they all were settled in a circle, Gwen said, “We’re going to make a movie, or something. It’s Laleh’s project, she’s the boss, but she needs help, and that’s where we come in.”
Gale said, “Hot damn. First a ballet, then a rock opera, and now a movie. Where? Here in Charleston? Who’s in it? Me? Who’s directing? Gwen? When’s it start? Now?”
Jinny smiled at Gale’s exuberance, and asked, “Who’s paying? I don’t see Henric or Paul around.” Henric was a wealthy friend of the Junes who had bankrolled the ballet, and Paul was Paul McCartney, the famous one, who had written and played and bankrolled the rock opera.
“Me,” said Laleh. “I have lots of money. I don’t know how much this will cost, but I think I have enough. What I don’t have is expertise and connections. Gwen said you’d help with that.”
Roger said, “Gale asked all the other right questions, and I guess the answers to those have to do with the serious thinking you’ve been doing, in addition to the serious wine drinking.” He smiled at his wife.
“We have a few of the answers, but not all of them. And that’s what we want to talk about now.” She nodded at Laleh.
“I’ll make this as simple as I can, which shouldn’t be too hard, because I don’t have much of it figured out. I need help. Here goes. We hire George Clooney to be in a movie that’s filmed entirely in this building. The whole thing. The guy who figures out how to do that is Steven Soderberg, the director. He can make any kind of movie. Clooney is the one who gets Soderberg to agree to do it. Clooney also persuades either Renee Zellweger or Catherine Zeta-Jones to be in it too, because he and Zellweger made a film called Leatherheads, which Gwen and Roger like, and he and Zeta-Jones were in Oceans Twelve, which I like. Either actress will work.” She paused and finished her coffee, now wishing she was drinking wine with Jinny and Gale.
Gale asked, “What’s it about?”
“It’s about a woman who steals something from a man, and her boyfriend has to protect her from the man when he tries to get it back. Either Zellweger or Zeta-Jones is the woman, and George is her boyfriend.” Laleh sent telepathic messages to Jinny telling him to pour her a glass of wine.
Jinny is a little thick when it comes to telepathy, so while he was figuring it out and then pouring Laleh the wine, Roger said, “That’s it? That’s the plot?”
Gwen said, “What more do you want? A beautiful woman steals something from a bad guy, and when the bad guy finds out and comes after her, the man she’s in love with protects her. Simple.”
Gale said, “How can you make a movie like that completely in this little theater? It sounds like an action movie, and those are action actors. You sound like you want to make a foreign film, where people sit around a table for hours on end, discussing their dysfunctional families. You’re talking Steven Soderberg here, not Ingmar Bergman.” Gwen and Roger looked at Gale, the wildass fashionista, now talking about Bergman. Normally she talks about Coco Chanel or Paul McCartney’s daughter, Stella, the fashion designer, who’d been part of the rock opera production, along with her father.
In a surprisingly authoritative voice, Laleh said, “Not my problem. That’s Soderberg’s problem. My problem is how to knock over the first domino in the row, and that’s Big George. We get him, he’ll get the others. At least that’s what I’m counting on.”
Roger looked at his wife, said, “I’m in. My guess is it can work. That’s all I know.”
When Gwen spoke in this crowd, that was it; the deal was done. Everyone was quiet, even Gale the Mouth and Little Jinny Blistov, the former second class Russian thug and criminal from Saint Petersburg, now a Charleston man about town. Roger closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of his chair. So it was starting up again. Another production. When his wife invoked her intuition, he knew the likelihood of success was high, with some wild shit happening along the way. He’d been waiting months for this. Thank god he was married to Gwenny June.
The Ayatollah's Money Page 29