Selling Out

by Dan Wakefield

  Perry had a bite of squab and some more wine. Ravenna was fabulous. She was not only solving his professional problems, but was evidently about to take care of his sexual needs as well. The flimsy bra lay on the tile edge of the pool, like a signal, a gauntlet thrown. Perry had lusted for Ravenna from the moment he first saw her, but he feared that he would really fall for her, that she was the kind who might really make him stray from his marriage. Well, now that Jane had taken off without so much as a goodbye on Christmas, wasn’t he free to do as he pleased?

  When Ravenna got out of the pool, dripping, Perry stood up. His penis was standing too. He went over and picked up a towel and started drying her off. She didn’t protest. He rubbed her down and then turned her to him, pressing his mouth against hers, digging his tongue in. She pressed against him for one throbbing moment, then pulled away and put on her robe.

  “Finish your salad,” she said. “It’s time to go home.”

  “Hey, what the hell! What’s going on?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” she said.

  “I thought—”

  “Let’s get this straight, darling. It’s my job to get you work, not to get you laid.”

  She tied the cord of her bathrobe, slipped into her high-heeled clogs, and undulated into the house.

  Perry felt old.

  He even looked old. He didn’t look old when he stared full face in the mirror, it was when he caught himself in the glass of a window, unsuspecting, sideways. His California diet that had enabled him to lose six pounds hadn’t done much for his middle, which was still flabby, but it made the skin of his neck sag. It looked like the neck of a turkey.

  That’s what he felt like, preparing to make the rounds of the powerful producers.

  A tap-dancing turkey.

  Worse, an old tap-dancing turkey.

  Perry took another hard look in the mirror and made himself smile.

  His teeth were brown. The tobacco smoke from his pipe had started to stain them years ago, but he never had worried about it. He chalked it up as a kind of occupational hazard of being a writer. Didn’t most good writers smoke pipes? Hell, they posed that way on book jackets!

  But now the stain seemed gross, a sign of the general decomposition of his body, a telltale mark of advancing age and Eastern-style decadence.

  He asked Ravenna to supply him with a dentist.

  “I didn’t want to mention it,” she said, “but I’m glad you asked.”

  She gave him the name of a dentist in Beverly Hills who worked on her actor and actress clients, people whose teeth had to sparkle if they wanted to get any jobs.

  Arnie Lawler looked more like an actor himself than a dentist. Perry had the feeling it was actually the tanned, suave George Hamilton peering into his mouth.

  “I’m afraid we can’t do anything for you,” Arnie said, offering a Perrier in his office following the examination.

  “I just want to have my teeth cleaned!” Perry said.

  “I’m afraid you’ve let them go too long. Also the gums. I’d want you to have gum surgery before we even considered taking you on.”

  “You mean you’re turning me down? You won’t clean my teeth because they’re too dirty?”

  “If you have the gum work, we’ll be happy to reevaluate your situation,” Arnie said. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  Perry went home and gargled some Chardonnay. Holy God, even his teeth had been rejected. He couldn’t stand the thought of making the rounds of dentists, hoping to have one take him on. He decided he would simply try to keep his lips over his teeth in the event he was called upon to smile while taking any meetings.

  He prayed these producers he was going to see would at least be polite.

  Most of them were quiet men, a bit aloof and studious, proud and self-possessed. There was nothing ostentatious about them, either in their personal dress or office decor. They wore no flashy clothes or gold chains, but sported the casual elegance of highly polished loafers, fine slacks, and long-sleeved shirts of muted colors, buttoned at the neck, without a tie.

  Their offices were located on the sun-parched lots of once-mighty studios that were now simply part of the intricate web of the Industry’s interwoven system of production, engaged in their own trimmed-down enterprises and renting out space to independents. Producers who were individual entrepreneurs did not belong to any company’s hierarchy but simply had an office at Fox or MGM, or Paramount, or the gigantic Burbank lot that once was all Warner Brothers and now was home for not only that major but also a host of lesser, newer companies, any one of which might come up with tomorrow’s biggest smash hit. The independent producer was not a mere employee of the studio where he kept his office but simply had a deal with that company, a two- or three- or four-picture deal that gave him a base rather than a home. Perhaps at least partly because of that temporary situation the offices tended to be starkly if tastefully furnished. A fine rug on the floor, a few new prints on the wall, indicating an educated appreciation of the arts. Nothing that hinted of flash or glitter.

  The personal manner of the powerful producers not surprisingly matched the style of their dress and office decor. They looked their guest directly in the eye, and after their secretary or assistant had brought a hospitable cup of coffee or tea or glass of Perrier, they spoke of the type of material they wished to involve themselves in to bring to eventual fruition on the screen. Then, perhaps lightly placing hands together at the fingertips, the host gave a brief, sometimes almost imperceptible nod to the guest to indicate granting him the opportunity of presenting his own proposal.

  In their studied detachment, their polite but cool attention, the sense they conveyed of a calm and almost gracious condescension that stemmed from their superior understanding and mastery of life, these men rather reminded Perry of Freudian analysts. In these meetings, he had the odd sense he was in a psychiatrist’s office, about to have his words and thoughts scrutinized by some scientific process beyond his own ken. After he then poured out his words in what seemed a rush and tumble of childish enthusiasm, his attentive listener would nod, perhaps pose a few pertinent questions, and then conclude the session with a phrase as standard to his own procedure as the “Yes, go on” of the therapist or the “Bless you, my child, go and sin no more” of the priest. Standing, the producer would extend a well-manicured hand, and, bestowing a thin smile like a benediction, utter the ritual words that finalized this discreet little ceremony:

  “We’ll get back to you.”

  A far cry it was from the bad old days of Hollywood when certain uncouth moguls of legend flung shoes and epithets at actors and treated those writers that circumstance forced to their presence with the gross disdain of an immigration officer confronting a criminal alien. No, if these contemporary men of success in the esteemed field of film production bore any relation to their predecessors it was to the fictional image of Scott Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr, that most perceptive and elegant of all tycoons. But unlike Stahr, these new moguls were not doomed by an outmoded system that chained them to a certain corporate fate, but rather, like independent princes, moved about the glittering kingdom as they chose, negotiating their own fate, deal by deal.

  Of course, sad to say, there were still throwbacks to the former men of crass behavior and foul language, those who had not learned to modulate their voice or their scorn, especially for writers. Perry took a meeting with one such Neanderthal, a belching young mastodon who munched on a meatball sub while he laid on Perry the disgusting old line about writer’s rights in a deal being known as “the schmuck rights.” A real producer had in fact once used that term to a real writer (maybe more than once, maybe by more than one obnoxious mogul) who of course had recounted the story into legend, so the character Perry had to endure was not even being original, or even au courant, just offensive.

  “For God sake, Ravenna,” Perry complained when he got home later and called his culprit agent, “why did you send me to that poor man’s Attila the Hun?” />
  “Because, darling,” she said with patient, instructive emphasis, “he gets pictures made.”

  That was a phrase Perry was to hear often in the coming weeks, a judgment that separated the men from the boys, as it were, the final, most basic criterion in the whole entertainment community of Los Angeles; or, as articulated in the local argot, this basic, unadorned, do-or-die determinant was—for sure—the bottom line. The only relevant question to be asked of or about a man engaged in the enterprise of producing feature films was not whether he was good or bad, an angel or an ax murderer, benevolent entrepreneur or bestial burner of innocent babes in cradles, but only “Does he get pictures made?” The question is not why or how he gets them made, or how good they are when he gets them made, but only does he get them made.

  Take Ned Gurney, for instance. It was sad as hell that Ned couldn’t make it in the movies. It was really unfair, but it seemed with each passing week, hell, every day, every hour, his chances grew fewer, his hope was diluted; no matter what the reasons for his project getting hung up, the bottom line was he hadn’t made it. Maybe he never would. And all his charm and ingenuity and savvy and past accomplishments on Broadway didn’t mean zilch.

  Perry was truly sorry. He was not only sorry for Ned’s sake, he also was sorry for his own. He wished they could go on working together, enjoying their easy working relationship, the give and take of ideas and creative insights, the fun of imagining a new scene or story line. If only Ned had made it in the movies Perry could be working with him right now, getting on with his own script instead of just hanging around and waiting for the phone to ring.

  All that nice cozy dreaming about making movies with Ned was based on if, and Perry realized now that if was really an East Coast word, an intellectual word, a word that had no place in the lexicon of Los Angeles, a word that fell somewhere below the bottom line.

  Besides, the distinguished, successful producers with whom Ravenna had so astutely arranged for him to take meetings were every damn bit as civilized as Ned Gurney! The only problem was none of the admirable gentlemen had called him back.

  Perry checked with his answering service several times a day—whenever, in fact, he left the condo for any length of time at all, reasoning that during the twenty minutes he had taken to run some things over to the dry cleaner was probably the very time that the crucial call had come. Usually, however, his only messages were from the few other people he saw for a drink or a dinner, or some kind of telephone salesperson of encyclopedias or hot tubs (he always called them back now, knowing the odds were they were unemployed actors and actresses in need of hearing at least a sympathetic voice and a polite refusal), but with disturbing frequency there were no messages at all. Of course the answering services in Los Angeles—they were surely one of the major industries of the region—were not so downbeat or insensitive as to report that you had no messages, that no one in the whole world had found any reason to call you, so instead of saying anything negative, like “Nothing” or “Nobody called,” the person at the service handling your line said simply, “All clear.”

  Perry had begun to wince on hearing those two plain syllables, felt a rush of embarrassment that the person on the other end (probably an unemployed actor—or maybe, even worse to contemplate, an unemployed writer) knew he was of such small significance that he had no messages at all.

  “All clear.”

  Perry would mumble a thanks and hang the phone up quickly, trying to put the message—or nonmessage—out of his mind.

  After several weeks of hearing nothing at all, Perry took the bull by the horns and called Ravenna to ask what the hell had happened to Phil Clausen. Now there was a guy he had really enjoyed meeting with, a successful producer who had expressed an interest and respect for Perry’s work—he hadn’t actually read any of the stories, nor had he chanced to catch “First Year,” but he had heard excellent comments on both, and was pleased that writers of quality material were now coming out here and trying their hand at film. He seemed genuinely absorbed in Perry’s explanation of the plot he wanted to do in film terms, and said he looked forward to reading the copy of the original short story Perry left with him. Like the others, he promised to get back to him.

  Ravenna was in a meeting when Perry called to ask about Clausen, but her secretary promised she’d get back to him as soon as possible. Perry hung around the condo all day, looking out the window and doing the L.A. Times crossword puzzle and watching the soaps on TV, but Ravenna never called back. Sure enough, when the next morning he went out to pick up the dry cleaning, he came back to get a message that she had called while he was out. Even though he was disappointed and frustrated that he’d missed her, he was secretly pleased that he had a message, so the service knew he had some action in his life.

  “Listen,” Perry said, speaking with speed and urgency when he finally connected with Ravenna, “what the hell ever happened to Phil Clausen? Shouldn’t I have heard something from him by now? And if not, couldn’t you call him? I mean, the point is, of all the people I’ve met, he’s the one I’d really like to do business with. I honestly felt a rapport with the guy, and I think he would really appreciate the kind of thing I want to do, you know?”

  “Darling, I’m afraid Phil passed,” Ravenna said sorrowfully.

  “He what?”

  For a moment Perry panicked, wondering if Ravenna was using some L.A. show biz shorthand for passed away. Surely not.

  “You mean he gave it to someone else?”

  Perhaps he had shown it to some leading director to enlist as a further element in putting together a powerful presentation to offer to a studio.

  “Darling, I’m trying to tell you Phil Clausen decided against the project.”

  Perry was stunned.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Sweetheart, I’m an agent, not a psychic. There’s a number of good ones in town, but I haven’t heard of any who can read the minds of producers.”

  “But didn’t Phil say anything? About the story?”

  “He said he was passing on it.”

  A crucial distinction in just the order of words in a sentence: not passing it on but passing on it.

  “Damn,” Perry said. “Do you think he really read the story?”

  “Did you leave it with him?”

  “Of course!”

  “Well, then either he did or he didn’t,” Ravenna said, with a rising edge of irritation in her voice. “All I know is he passed on it.”

  The phrase this time sounded to Perry almost like “pissed on it,” which was probably closer to the truth.

  “Goddam it, Ravenna, I told you in the first place I wanted to send the story first before I had meetings about it with any producers, so I’d know if they’d read the thing.”

  “And I told you it’s not done that way. You pitch the idea and then you leave a copy of the treatment—or story, or book. Whatever.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. It’s backwards. Look, it’s simply logical that if you’re going in to talk to a guy about a story, he ought to read it first. Then he knows what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s not how it’s done out here.”

  “Why not, if it makes perfect sense?”

  “Darling—don’t blame me. I didn’t make the rules.”

  “Well who did?” Perry shouted. “And where are they written down? Can I go out and buy a rule book, so I can play this ridiculous game?”

  “Why don’t you go out and take a walk on the beach,” Ravenna said, more soothingly now, as if trying to comfort a distraught child. “You know, that stretch you like out at Venice? It’ll do you good. Clear your head. Sweetheart, I’ve got to scoot—”

  She made a kissing sound into the telephone and then hung up.

  Perry stood for a moment still clutching the receiver, the kiss ringing in his ear.

  Thank God for the Vardemans. Maybe they hadn’t been able to get Perry’s movie off the ground exactly when he wanted (he knew they wou
ld in time, of course, they were eminently “bankable,” as Ravenna put it in the argot of the business), but simply having them as friends out here was a crucial source of comfort.

  “I’ve been to almost a dozen producers now,” Perry told them, pouring out his heart between gulps of Japanese beer, “and the plain fact is, I’ve struck out.”

  Pru Vardeman pulled her silk shawl up tighter around her neck and shivered slightly, as if a chill wind had just blown past. She was wearing a pair of dark glasses with enormous round lenses, and looked like some kind of wealthy celebrity on the lam. The spot the Vardemans had chosen to meet Perry—a newly opened sushi bar on a side street in Playa del Rey—was a perfect place for assuring anonymity from the press or a prying public. Perry was in fact disappointed in their choice of a rendezvous, thinking it might boost his sagging morale to be seen with his prestigious friends in one of the popular luncheon spots of the entertainment elite (He had suggested the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel), but their overextended schedule only allowed them a quick late lunch on the way to pick someone up at the airport, so Pru had suggested this tiny, almost hidden spot as both convenient and amusing.

  Vaughan tilted back his head, dropped a giant prawn in his mouth and washed it down with a slug of Kirin.

  “Moss-back,” he said, “I bet you’re a lousy meeting.”

  Pru winced as she picked at her squid.

  “Gawd,” she said, “it sounds like you’re calling him a lousy lay.”

  “That I wouldn’t know about,” Vaughan said, emitting a belch and rubbing his stomach. “All I know is there are writers who give good meeting and writers who don’t, and it’s got nothing to do with how good they are at writing.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Perry demanded. “Suck off these guys in their office?”

  “Please,” said Pru, putting her fork down and readjusting her shawl.

  “Excuse me,” Perry said, “but for God sake, I’m not a nightclub act, I’m a writer.”