Tricks Of The Trade

by Ben Tyler

  Like all hyperbolic Hollywood press releases that issue from the studio spin cycles, Bart’s was filled with bullshit lexicon. He knew his efforts had little journalistic merit and much less integrity. They weren’t supposed to. Rabbits could almost do the writing. It was merely a job. It paid for his mortgage, his therapist, and the occasional bag of weed in which he indulged.

  Working for Sterling was merely a means to an end. Bart had other plans. He was a closet novelist. Unlike everybody else in town, he did not have a screenplay being “shopped around.” He was a prose purist. In fact, he had an unspoken disdain for screenwriters. He hoped it was only a matter of time before he had a book deal and could walk away from the unfulfilling and exhausting vice grip of motion-picture-studio drudgery. Until then, he intended to use Sterling as much as Sterling used him.

  Waiting for Shari’s attention, Bart scanned his latest draft, praying not to find a typo or dangling modifier. Not that Shari would recognize a dangling anything unless she was sucking it.

  Draft Number 3

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  Legendary Academy Award-winning director/writer/actor Hutton Brawley and Oscar-nominated Mare Dickerson are set to star in Sterling Studios’s new romantic comedy Ticket to Ride, directed by Gus Girard from an original screenplay by Lowell Pierce and Rachel Drone, it was announced today (insert date), by Shari Draper, executive vice president, Marketing, Sterling Studios. Brawley will also serve as producer. The film, scheduled for summer release, will shoot on locations in Manhattan and London.

  In this modern folk tale, comedy and chaos collide when handsome Jarred Lange (Brawley), a quirky motion-picture writer/director but deadbeat dad, refuses a court order to surrender his beloved Central Park West penthouse apartment to his ex-wife, Erin (Dickerson), and their six adopted, racially mixed children. Complications arise after Erin decides to take revenge and hires legal eagle Max Skylar (Martin Short) to arbitrate. However, Erin’s less-than-virtuous past catches up with her and plays havoc with her battle for control of the multimillion-dollar residence—and the couple’s sublimated, yet undeniable, love. Blah, blah, blah.

  Shari Draper was a stereotypical Hollywood bitch. How she got her job was anyone’s—and everyone’s—guess. There were the typical rumors that she just shtupped the right Hollywood hotshots and parlayed that into her setup as executive vice president of Sterling’s publicity department.

  She was not one of those strong, smart women who unfairly received the epithet simply because she was successful in the predominantly men’s club of motion-picture studio executives. Not by a long shot. In fact, she was more of an idiot savant, a stupid woman whose fearlessness made her appear as though she knew what she was doing. Her greatest talent was that she was quick to make difficult decisions—though her judgments were often scandalously inappropriate.

  An appalling example of this was her infamous faux pas that occurred when the ACLU and a vocal contingent from the Gay and Lesbian Center rallied in front of the studio’s main gate and wrote bombastic op-ed pieces in the New York Times and The Advocate. They were decrying a particularly offensive portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sterling’s hit animated musical feature WACS in the White House in which a cute, wiseacre rat sidekick character, who nested in the private living quarters of the chief executive’s mansion, sang overtly suggestive remarks about the legendary first lady’s sexual orientation. Shari was quoted in Premiere magazine as saying, “Tell those pansies [in the gay community] to just swallow it, like [sic] they do [everything else], and get a life!”

  An unfavorable publicity fallout resulted from the embarrassment Shari caused the studio. Soon there were boycotts of Sterling’s films and water-slide parks by the DAR, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Ru Paul, causing the studio’s board of directors to unanimously vote to recall millions of videocassettes of the blockbuster film and change the offending lyric. For the first time in her career, which had begun inauspiciously as a skateboarding mail-delivery girl at Millennium Films, Shari was reeling. Not from the adverse publicity but from the tyrannical tongue-lashing she received from Sterling’s CEO Jonathan Rotenberg, a Howdy-Doody look-alike who ludicrously fancied himself heir apparent to the studio’s legendary arbiter of quality family entertainment.

  Shari’s renown for being devious was equally legendary. She once wired herself to a tape recorder before meeting with a furious producer of mindless, explosion-filled action/adventure films. During the marathon screaming match, the short, bearded, beady-eyed producer lambasted Shari and the other Sterling marketing executives, blaming them because his blow-’em-to-smithereens “event” film starring Bruce Willis—they always starred Bruce Willis—opened in fifth position its first weekend of wide release. After the meeting, Shari messengered the tape to Vicki Rydell at the Hollywood Reporter, a Cindy Adams wanna-be, who wrote an excoriating diatribe about the director’s distended ego and vulgar language directed at a “lady.”

  Still, Shari’s duplicitous character had ingratiated her to at least one person: Cy Lupiano, the bucktoothed Napoleon who ran the film division of the studio, an infamous little dictator whom billionaire CEO Rotenberg called “Rover” behind his back. Cy’s implicit backing allowed Shari to revel in the fact that she had the wherewithal to jokingly say, “Fuck you,” to Hutton and any other powerful star in the industry. Her distorted sense of self-value seemed solely based on how many people she could lacerate with her tongue. She could turn ordinarily lovely people like Sandra Bullock and Harrison Ford into cross-eyed, hyperventilating lunatics after a marketing-strategy meeting. “If you’d made a better movie, I could have gotten people into the theater,” Shari would say without a trace of tact when they would dare impugn her marketing creativity after one of their films flopped.

  As Shari continued her phone conversation—which consisted of a lot of nonverbal sounds and low-decibel snorts—she leaned back in her black leather executive desk chair. Her fat, stubby, white-as-cocaine-powder legs were propped up on the table, her short skirt riding up her thigh. She pretended to ignore Bart, which was the exact effect she wanted to achieve: the cornered house cat cowering before a ravenous coyote. Her exhibition continued with cryptic dialogue that suggested it was difficult to talk openly at the moment. Rumor around the office speculated that Shari was sleeping with Hutton. It was the worst-kept secret in the company that she was also working overtime with the much-married, with children, studio chairman in her office at night.

  Her secretary, Mitch Wood, usually stood guard at his desk during those private “dinner meetings.” One night, however, a menial from the janitorial staff, doing her trash-collecting duties, slipped by the sentinel and opened the unlocked door. The terrified Mexican woman gasped mea culpas in Spanish as Shari, on her knees, took her lips away from the chairman’s red lipstick-greased, pathetic five inches of penis, fell back on the floor, wrapping her unbuttoned blouse around her exposed, braless breasts, and screamed like Roseanne Barr/Pentland/Arnold/ Roseanne at a story meeting.

  Now, looking at her wristwatch and tittering in a confidential tone into the telephone, Shari leaned forward, exposing her cleavage and revealing a curious, single long strand of dark hair that pushed through a mole. Bart found the sight as disturbing as the soft hairs above Shari’s upper lip. Couldn’t she at least pluck the mole hair, he wondered as Shari snapped her red-lacquered fingernails at Bart with an impatient “Gimmie, gimmie, and make it quick” gesture to hand over the press release for her to review and approve.

  For a moment, Shari divided her attention between listening to Hutton and reading the press release. Then she raised her green eyes to Bart with a look of exasperation, picked up a black Sharpie marker, and scrawled NO! in bold block letters across the page. She tore the papers in two and flipped them back across her desk. “Hold a sec,” she said to Hutton.

  She stared at Bart. “Sublimate?’ Who the hell knows what that word means! How much longer are you going to write shit like this? If you can’t do this job right,
I’ll find somebody who can!”

  “This is the third rewrite, Shari. I need a little guidance,” Bart said. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

  “You’re the so-called writer. Figure it out! And I want it fast! Daily Variety closes in an hour! By the way,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “who ever told you you could write?”

  Bart stalled. He hated altercations. Then, innocently, he said, “Ah, my agent. My publisher. The review in Publishers Weekly of my book about the making of Encino Man. Hmmm. Let me see…the Publicists Guild, who gave me that award last year for Most Innovative and Consistent Artistic Achievement.”

  Outside Shari’s office door, Mitch couldn’t help eavesdropping. He was chuckling at the eddy of repartee swirling in Shari’s den of iniquity. Shari picked up a half-full plastic bottle of Evian water from her desk and threw it out the door, where it crashed and then bounced off the glass-framed poster for Marie Antoinette, with Norma Shearer. Shari’s favorite movie and star.

  Shari was still shouting at Bart. “Don’t get smart with me, you skinny-assed sissy!” she sniped.

  “No! Not you, Hutton, for Christ sake!

  “That’s why the stuff you write around here stinks on ice. You’re too busy writing for other people,” she continued ranting at Bart. “That’s gotta change, mister. I’m warning you. You owe me, and the studio, your undivided attention.”

  “I’ll do better, I promise.”

  “I’ll advise you not to tangle with me, dearie.

  “No. Not you, Hutton. Outta here, you little shit. I want that press release!”

  As Bart exited to the outer office, he shot a look of grief at Mitch, who, in solidarity, blew a kiss from the palm of his hand. Mitch then took the missile of Evian and blindly pitched it around the corner, back into Shari’s office. He winked at Bart as the sound of picture frames being toppled from a bookshelf merged with Shari’s voice, screaming, “Damn you!

  “No! Not you, Hutton!”

  Sotto voce, Bart said to Mitch, “How can her throat stand the strain of all that screaming?”

  “Let’s just say her tonsils get lubed regularly.” Mitch smiled.

  “All I want is enough ‘Fuck you’ money to buy and jam those damned suppositories up her brass ass myself before I leave this dump. Sorry. That’s inappropriate and unattractive language.”

  Mitch, who, like Bart, did not suffer fools gladly (and was known to scream as loudly at Shari as she screamed at him), said he’d happily help but that the suppositories would be filled with gunpowder. Mitch, in his own way, was a very sweet natured man. His life was devoted to planning his retirement in Palm Springs and luring Federal Express delivery guys into the men’s room for coffee-break blow jobs.

  He smiled at Bart, batting his thick eyelashes. “At least I appreciate you. And don’t you dare leave here before we’ve had a date, you talented stud, you.”

  Bart smiled back. “You’d be fun,” he said. “But I’m a hopeless romantic. I can’t do quickies the way you do. I still expect to fall in love and settle down with Dr. Niles Crane.”

  Affecting a Yiddish accent, Mitch said, “Have I got a guy for you. I know you’re his type. He’ll cream when he sees your dimple. Now, you’re Mrs. Molloy, and I’m Dolly Levi—Barbra’s version, of course.”

  Bart did an impersonation of early Barbra: taloned fingers brushing nonexistent strands of her bouffant hair away from her face. “Just leave everything to me eh?”

  “Does the fact that he’s rich and used to be famous make any difference?” Mitch encouraged.

  “Oh, please! Not an actor!”

  “Not anymore. See today’s Variety? Hint: His initials are Jim Fallon.”

  “The star of The Grass Is Always Greener?”

  “Aren’t you clever.”

  “It’s been all over the news. I’ve had his infamous video for weeks!”

  “The one where he’s caught doing naughties with rough trade? Isn’t it fetching? My grandmother loved that! She once got me to pinch a copy of Penthouse magazine for her, the issue with Vanessa Williams…remember she was Miss Something…America or USA…but was dethroned when Larry Flynt printed graphic pictures of her eating box? You go, girl!”

  Bart was too young to remember that cause célèbre. He thought for a moment. “I’m just too vanilla. And Jim’s too scary.”

  “Aw, come on. He certainly needs a sexy diversion about now. You fit all the jeans, er requirements, perfectly.”

  “Why don’t you date him?” Bart asked.

  Mitch smiled coyly. “Who says I haven’t? But you know me. I never do anything twice, is my theme song.”

  Chapter Two

  To be an “old” star in Hollywood, all you have to do is not appear in a feature film, sitcom, or made-for-television movie for a couple of seasons. The public quickly forgets.

  Jim Fallon was about to be an old star. At age forty-five.

  Five years ago, his hit TV show, The Grass Is Always Greener, had made an overnight star of the stand-up comic from Alaska. On Jim’s program, which had been an instant ratings hit, he played a goofball high school gym teacher with two Neanderthal preteen sons and a perky wife who got all the best deadpan comeback lines of each script’s insipid dialogue. The ubiquitous Betty White had been thrown into the cast as the kindly next-door neighbor, to give the show an air of geriatric dignity, elevating it slightly above typical sitcom fare of Set-up. Joke. Set-up. Joke. Set-up. Joke. The canned laugh track didn’t seem to irritate the millions who immediately made the show number one.

  After only a couple of stints at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard, Jim had been “discovered,” and he was suddenly a millionaire, thrust to the top of the Hollywood Hot Heap. The very first season, Jim won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New Male Star and an Emmy as Best Actor in a Comedy or Variety Series. He also received an NAACP Image Award, even though he was white.

  He liked being rich and famous. But once the television tabloid Totally Hollywood got hold of the skeleton in what Jim thought was a hermetically sealed closet, the Middle America audience, who loved him on prime-time Sunday evenings, loathed him this Monday morning, when bold headlines in the entertainment sections of newspapers across the country all proclaimed variations on: “Ass Is Grass for Green Star!”

  Jim’s television persona was that of the virile, all-American male, complete with nose hair, on-screen farting, and offscreen promoting of NRA ideology. In fact, he was a homo hick from Anchorage who happened to have discovered a comedy gimmick that endeared him to all but the most stringent PBS watching demographics.

  His now-revealed secret? Jim Fallon, the Father Knows Best of Generation-X, liked young Latin gang-banger types to rough him up, strip him naked, and lash his arms and legs to a St. Andrew’s Cross in the wine cellar turned dungeon of his Hollywood Hills mansion. Then, with a cattle prod, the bangers would zap his raw nipples (which were squeezed by wooden clothespins) and testicles (which were snared together with rubber bands). Jim captured all the action for posterity on an elaborate videotape monitoring system. He was like Sheldon Needstein, the cult-favorite Broadway composer whose secluded place in the Hudson Valley was legendary for its store of S/M hardware.

  Jim was so naive, he hadn’t a clue that the tabloids kept male hustlers and prostitutes (and nurses at Cedars Sinai Hospital) on retainer just to ferret out dish for their scandalous columns. Thus, when “a source close to the star” leaked one of Jim’s self-made porn videotapes, the habitually nervous network suits and gynecologic hygiene sponsors of The Grass Is Always Greener couldn’t keep a straight face. But they also knew they couldn’t keep Jim. They used the morals clause in his multimillion dollar-a-year contract to get him off the show. It was only a matter of time before the tape went public, like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s, being passed around the industry like Academy screeners at Oscar time.

  The tape that had been stolen from Jim’s home-video library vault showcased a particularly innovati
ve scene of sadomasochism. It had been copied and recopied and recopied until it was down so many grainy generations that there was practically nothing left to prove it was actually the beloved television star caught like an idiot on Stupid Human Tricks. Only his distinctive voice as he begged for mercy from the excruciating ecstasy of electrical jolts provided by his posse of gangsta Hispanic boys was left undistorted. Although Jim’s publicist tried to claim it was a forgery, the tape made the rounds at every party in Hollywood, thus sealing his fate.

  After today, Jim Fallon wouldn’t even get a guest-starring gig on Touched by an Angel or a box on Hollywood Squares.

  If only Jim had been videotaped begging for electrical prods from a harem of whores, he could possibly have pulled a Rob Lowe, Hugh Grant, or Pee-Wee Herman routine. Leno would have leaped to book him as the opening guest. Jim could have acted sheepish and apologetic and laughed at himself amid all the jokes. Heterosexual America would have adored him more for fessing up and being a man. If Eddie Murphy could be caught soliciting a transvestite and then innocently claim he didn’t know “he wasn’t a she,” things might have worked out for Jim.

  But then there was the country’s puritanical God Squad of the religious right: the Christian Coalition of homophobe nuts who were the self-appointed arbiters of the world’s morals, many of whom had invited Jim into their living rooms and laughed at his silly on-camera muggings. They were no longer laughing. Jim instantly became the new poster boy for the virulent disease known as Hollywood. The public at large couldn’t risk subjecting their innocent, gun-toting children to the possibility of subliminal homosexual messages encoded in the program’s weekly scenarios.