Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

The staff of the “First Year” company sat bunched together in the center of the first few rows of the screening room, while Archer Mellis, who had not come in the door but materialized at the last minute from inside the projection booth, sat in lofty isolation in the top row at the back of the room, his mouth a thin straight line, his eyes unblinking and inscrutable.

  As the overhead lights in the room went out, the tiny lights attached to the clipboards of the professional filmmakers came on like the scattered glow of some exotic breed of illuminated insects. Perry again wished he had thought to ask Ned where you buy these things; he had never seen one for sale in an ordinary stationery store and presumed they could only be purchased at an official insiders’ supply house that sold such stuff as the black-and-white-striped slateboards, and the old-fashioned megaphones of the kind still used on the set by Roger, the crusty first assistant director on their production. Perry was far too nervous now to use a lighted clipboard for its purpose of making notes while the film was being shown; he would simply have liked to have had one as a security prop.

  Better still, he had Jane beside him. He was glad now he’d overcome his apprehensions of breaking protocol by bringing his wife, and he gratefully reached over now and took her hand. He squeezed her fingers tightly as the first of the film began to flicker to life on the big screen in front of them.

  A rough cut runs long by definition, but this one was longer than most, running thirty-eight minutes over. It was especially—almost scandalously—long for television, a medium which by necessity emphasizes economy of time as well as money. This two-hour movie for television would be cut to ninety-six minutes with commercials on a $2.1 million budget, with a nineteen-day shooting schedule, whereas a feature film of similar scope would probably run at least three times that in budget even without any stars, and three or four times in the length of the shooting schedule. A director of a feature might indulge himself in as many as fifty or sixty takes of one angle of one scene, while any more than five or six takes for television was considered excessive. Everyone was doing his best but there was no time for “art,” no extra hours much less days to spend in trying to get the slant of light just so across the cheek of the heroine at the moment the hero’s lips brushed ever so lightly across the top of her brow. The public was waiting, switching the dials; the television tubes were like millions of hungry mouths all over America, waiting to be constantly fed: Making television was like making bread, as opposed to the gourmet cakes and tarts of the features, and in Perry’s opinion, in many cases, the bread turned out better anyway.

  A rough cut for a feature might run three or four hours over its eventual desired length, but in television anything more than ten minutes over was thought of as indulgent. Well, Kenton had wanted the luxury of this kind of indulgence and Ned had fought for him on it, and though Archer had sometimes fought back, he had himself demanded reshooting not only to get something just right by his standard but also to have what was considered in TV almost profligate—a choice.

  So here it was at last in the rough and it was long and repetitious and awkward and Perry loved every minute of it. It seemed to move as slowly as syrup, yet to its author it was just as sweet. It was like the unrolling of some endless novel, endemically American in sight and speech and yet in scope seemingly created by one of those ponderous nineteenth-century Russians whose tales seemed to grow from and mimic the vastness of their land.

  The pace of the work was quite like that of the foreign art films Perry found so excruciatingly tedious and boring, the hushed Bergman epics and snail-like Japanese morality tales he had hated from the start, when he first had to endure them during his twenties in order to accommodate the cultural longings of sophisticated young women so they would hopefully later satisfy his own baser appetites.

  Unlike his faculty colleagues, who almost all were film buffs, Perry was frankly a movie fan, one who preferred real plots and lots of sparkling dialogue to amorphous moods and sullen stares. His taste was epitomized scandalously to his peers (and even to most of his students) by his sincere and unashamed avowal that The Young Philadelphians starring Paul Newman was far superior entertainment and more revealing of the human condition than Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and was even better with lots of buttered popcorn thrown in. He preferred to be entertained, he argued, rather than mesmerized or lulled to unconsciousness.

  Now as he experienced an almost sensuous thrill from simply watching one of his own beloved characters walk across a room in the course of the film, or open a window, or pour a cup of coffee, he understood why the famous European auteur directors subjected their fans to such endlessly drawn-out sequences. To the “creator” (auteur) they were pure fascination, as the squalls and dumps of a newborn baby are completely captivating to its own parents.

  When the lights came on, Jane squeezed Perry’s hand. He squeezed back, and held his breath. The room was deadly silent. Slowly, heads turned back, craned up, looking toward Archer to see if any reaction could be discerned. Would he tell them to take the whole thing back to the drawing board? Would he curse them all as he had before, threatening to fire the whole damn lot of them if they couldn’t produce the quality he had hired them to create? Would he stand up and read from his clipboard a series of elaborate notes that would mean everyone would have to start from scratch?

  Archer sat immobile, inscrutable, his feet propped on the seat in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees, hands held together with the fingertips lightly touching in the symbolic gesture of prayer. But there was no sound or movement from him. Finally Kenton stood up in the front, and, proud but perspiring from every pore of his considerable flesh, he faced up toward Archer, his shoulders thrown back, like a man presenting himself to a firing squad. Ned got up and stood beside him. Perry was about to squirm out of his seat and go join them in the noble presentation of themselves and their work for execution, but just at that moment Archer suddenly shot up to a standing position, aimed a finger down toward Kenton and Ned and said, simply, in a clear, commanding voice: “Go for it.”

  Then, wheeling and disappearing back into the projection booth, he was gone. There was first a general sigh, a sound of relief, like pent-up breath released at last, and then someone was clapping and applause spread throughout the little band of fellow workers and all at once everyone in the room was standing, whistling, and cheering, acclaiming Kenton, and Ned, and Perry, and themselves, saluting and praising the work, the thing they had made together, the story and the dream.

  “Tell me, what did you really think of it, I mean, your honest gut reaction.”

  Perry pulled Jane’s hand away from his crotch and looked her straight in the eye. They had come home and opened a new bottle of good chilled Chardonnay to celebrate, and after a few sips Jane had leaned against Perry on the couch and begun to caress him with her hands as well as her mouth, slowly stroking him along the inside of the thigh while at the same time she made little fluttery butterfly kisses around his mouth.

  “Darling love,” she cooed, “I told you already—it’s absolutely wonderful.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yes, and I know when it’s really finished it will be incredibly better. All those slow, draggy parts will be gone.”

  She started in stroking and kissing him again, but Perry pulled gently away.

  “What do you mean, ‘slow, draggy parts’?” he asked.

  “You know. Where you just see someone walk across a room, without saying anything.”

  “I thought you understood this was the rough cut. That’s the kind of thing you see in a rough cut.”

  Jane giggled, and tweaked Perry’s ear.

  “I know, darling, but I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was—I mean, some of those drawn-out numbers reminded me of the kind of stuff that drives you up the wall in foreign films, where you wonder when the heroine is ever going to get to the door.”

  She nuzzled up under Perry’s chin for a kiss, but he dodged it.

&nbs
p; “Maybe you’ll be disappointed in the final cut, too,” he said. “I mean, Kenton isn’t one of those razzle-dazzle sitcom directors.”

  Jane reached over to the table and picked up her glass of wine.

  “Well, I hope he doesn’t think he’s Fellini, for God sake.”

  “You don’t like his direction?”

  Jane took a long sip of her wine.

  “Is this the only thing we can talk about?”

  “No, but I’m interested in your opinion.”

  Jane stood up and unhooked her skirt, then shucked it off, and kicked off her shoes.

  “My opinion is I might as well go for a swim. Or take a cold shower.”

  “Hey. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said, stripping off her blouse and dropping it on the floor. “It’s not your fault if I don’t turn you on any more.”

  “Don’t do this. I said I was sorry.”

  “I am too. I’m sorry the only thing in the world you can think about night and day is your damn movie.”

  She turned and left the room. Perry started to get up, but instead refilled his glass of wine and closed his eyes as he gulped it down.

  “Jane has a headache,” Perry said by way of explaining her absence that night for dinner with Ned and Kim.

  They of course were incredibly gracious about it, pretending the age-old excuse was real. Perry was embarrassed, and depressed. In fact he really was more absorbed in the movie than anything else in the world, including lovemaking, and he feared it really was coming between him and Jane. He knew she was right when she said he would only be talking business with Ned and Kim, that she would inevitably feel out of it, a mere outsider.

  They did talk business of course, going over impressions and ideas about the rough cut as they consumed one of Kim’s delicious and seemingly effortless curries. Perry was so absorbed in the fascination of it that he didn’t even think about Jane again till Ned poured him a second brandy. He was sure as hell glad that the new “wine only” policy he and Jane had pledged to keep as part of their California health and fitness plan officially counted brandy as wine.

  The brandy really loosened him up. It loosened up his tongue, too.

  “I’m worried about Jane,” he confessed to Ned and Kim. “There wasn’t any headache, of course. If anything, it’s an ache in the butt. I guess I’m giving it to her.”

  Ned shrugged.

  “It happens,” he said.

  Perry took a hit of the brandy and shook his head.

  “Not to us. At least not till now. I mean, the last couple weeks. I guess I’m too wrapped up in the show.”

  Kim placed her hand on Perry’s, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  “This business,” she said, “lays a heavy stress on people. On relationships.”

  “You ought to get away for a while,” Ned told him. “Just the two of you. There’s nothing you can be doing on the show now anyway. We’ve got to let Kenton do his thing. Let him and Kim come up with the next cut, and then we’ll get back into it. I’ve got to go to New York, which I’m glad of, since I won’t be tempted to keep looking over their shoulder all the time.”

  Kim tweaked Ned’s ear.

  “Good boy. Stay at least a week.”

  She turned to Perry.

  “And you get out of here, too. With Jane. I know what she’s feeling. She’s a show biz widow. You’ve been married to this show. Now go off and concentrate on her for a while.”

  “Where?” Perry asked.

  He didn’t know where people went to get away when they already lived in a sort of permanent vacationland. Ned and Kim exchanged a glance, and then Ned turned to Perry.

  “Have you ever been to the desert?”

  “No, but I heard about it. Palm Springs, you mean? I don’t think Jane would like it—nightclubs and all that.

  Kim shook her head.

  “We mean the real desert.”

  “Where’s that?” Perry asked.

  Ned gave him a nudge.

  “Shall we tell him?”

  “Do you think we can trust him?”

  “If you swear a secret oath,” said Ned, “we’ll tell you about our favorite spot. Our hideaway.”

  “It’s magic,” said Kim.

  Borrego Springs.

  You went to Palm Springs first, but only to stop for lunch. It was like an extension of L.A., a satellite of it, flung out in the space of sand and empty distance. Hotels and neon, nightclubs and swimming pools. You might run into Bob Hope or Gerald Ford. Civilization—Southern California–style. Show Biz. Shopping Malls.

  You kept going south.

  Into mountains. Mystery. Narrow winding roads with hairpin curves and purple horizons of rock and sage. Clouds merged into mirages. Cars became sparse as trees. The air thinned and sharpened. Spiraling, slowly, you rose, then saw below, breathtaking, a valley, spread out like peace, quiet and calming as sleep.

  No neon here. No noise.

  La Casa del Zorro. “House of the Fox.” The name made Perry smile. It sounded like the set for one of those old swashbuckler movies with swords and capes, closed carriages, and midnight escapes over moats.

  Or the Hollywood name for a desert motel or resort. But it wasn’t funky enough to be a motel, or fancy enough to be a resort. It was simply a cluster of cottages scattered over several acres beyond a main house with a dining room, and an unobtrusive swimming pool.

  Each little house had a name, and Perry and. Jane were in Mesquite. It was cozy and private. They went into town and bought eggs and sandwich stuff and beer for the kitchen, and at sundown, sat outside on a little veranda and listened to the silence. They felt little need to speak. It was as if all the tension and muck and debris were being drained away and they were being washed clean by the desert air.

  That night they made love.

  Like new.

  As of old.

  Jane led them on nature walks, trails laid out in the desert with botanical names for varieties of cacti and flowering plants. Perry didn’t mind the beating sun, and the sweat soaking through his shirts felt good, like being purged. They hiked into rocky valleys and discovered dramatic waterfalls and deep gorges decorated with bright exotic blooms, tropical pinks and blues. Giant palm trees grew in profusion, whole wild forests of them hidden from highways. It was like an imagined Amazon landscape, a child’s Crayola dream.

  “I needed this,” Perry said that night.

  “I needed you,” Jane told him.

  “You have me.”

  “For a while I didn’t. You were gone. It was scary.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Be with me.”

  “I am. Now. Always.”

  “Even when we get back? To the show?”

  “I won’t let it come between us.”

  “God. It sounds like a woman.”

  “It’s just a show. You’re the woman.”

  “You won’t forget that?”

  “I promise.”

  They touched and clung, making love like a vow.

  “You broke your promise! You went back on your word!”

  Ned Gurney was furious. The veins in his neck were red ropes. His fists opened and shut, as if they were itching to grab the neck of Archer Mellis and squeeze.

  Mellis himself looked cool, nearly Zenlike in his composure. Perhaps that image was heightened (even purposely) by the fact that he was wearing a flowing saffron robe, with thong sandals. He raised his right hand, palm up, in a gesture of peace and reconciliation.

  “Relax, amigo. Amanda and her people understand.”

  “Dammit, I know they say they understand!” Ned screamed. “They won’t even know themselves how it affects them, or doesn’t affect them, but without the music, it’s going to be a bore. Believe me. The music is crucial to this show, more so than if it were cops and robbers or tits and ass. It creates the mood, it—it—”

  Ned was wringing his hands as he groped for words.

  “It sus
tains the action,” whispered Kenton, who looked as if he might cry.

  Archer leaned back in his chair and jabbed his foot against his desk, hefted up his robe, and retied the sandal thongs that crisscrossed up his calf, tightening the whole system with determined concentration.

  “When they see it again, with the music, they’ll be all the more knocked out.”

  “But today is what counts!” Ned shouted. “Today they’ll decide its fate! Without any music.”

  “Our fate,” moaned Kenton, mopping his brow with a big bandana.

  Archer took his leg down, stood up straight, and winked at Perry.

  “Sounds like your colleagues don’t have much faith in your story qua story.”

  “That’s not the point!” Ned shouted, moving perilously close to Archer with a raised and trembling fist. Archer looked with detached curiosity at the fist, as if Ned were holding up some kind of art object for him to examine. Then he looked into Ned’s eyes, calmly.

  “Amanda and her people will not be ‘deciding the fate’ of your project today, or any other day. The real decision will come from Max Bloorman and the East Coast network brass.”

  “But Amanda and her people will decide if they’re going to get behind it today, if they’re going to push it when they go to the meetings in New York next week.”

  “Precisely. And they’ll be much more likely to do that if they’ve had a preview, if they feel like they’re in on it. I’ve already kept them shut out of it for longer than maybe is even wise because of your ‘specialness’ and your collective sense of artistic precocity. They’ve bought that from me up to now, but we can’t keep them away any longer.”

  “Not even for a week?” Ned pleaded.

  “We’ll have the music in five days,” Kenton said hoarsely.

  Archer suddenly turned and hopped onto the top of his desk, drawing his legs up into the lotus position.

  “Amanda and her people will be here in half an hour for the screening,” he said. “I suggest we take this opportunity to compose ourselves.”

  He closed his eyes, took a gulp of breath, and bent his head forward in an attitude of deep meditation.

  Ned, Kenton, and Perry looked at Archer, then at one another. Their very presence in the room now seemed an invasion of their boss’s privacy. Bowing their own heads, either in respect or resignation, they tiptoed out.