by Joe Keenan
“Love it,” said Bobby, “but Claire’s question’s a fair one. And, hey, who doesn’t like to be stroked? Only most people don’t earn it the way this lady has.”
He plucked a script, presumably ours, from a pile on his desk. He began with general praise for our deft plotting and crackling dialogue, then began citing favorite scenes. The first of these, which dealt with an amusingly corrupt local official, seemed oddly familiar. I wondered with desperate optimism if it was something we’d written years ago and somehow forgotten. But then, in one ghastly instant, I realized at last the full staggering audacity of what Gilbert had done.
“The whole flashback to Paris!” raved Bobby. “And the way she leaves him the note — heartbreaking! But the scene that really blew me away is the one at the café where those asshole Germans start singing ‘Watch on the Rhine’ only to have Molnar and the whole café stand up and drown them out with ‘La Marseillaise.’ Loved it!”
It has been advised by Mr. William Goldman, among others, that during initial meetings with producers, screenwriters would do well to let the men with the dollars dominate the discussion. The writers should just listen attentively while maintaining a mien at once receptive and inscrutable. This amiable neutrality can be difficult to affect when the job on offer has little to commend it save its preferability to starvation. And the same look, I now discovered, becomes well-nigh impossible to maintain when you’ve just realized that your underhanded writing partner has persuaded your film-history-impaired producer that he and you are the proud authors of Casablanca.
“Actually,” said Gilbert modestly, “I can’t take credit for the ‘Marseillaise’ scene. That was Claire’s inspiration.”
“Brilliant!” said Bobby. “I would love to film that scene someday. And that first Frenchman who stands up to join the freedom fighters in song—I’m thinking Pavarotti.”
“Or Sting,” offered Gilbert.
“Better still.”
Five
AT MOMENTS SUCH AS THIS, WHEN I feel that the weatherman, in predicting the day’s precipitation, ought really to have mentioned the falling anvils, I can never entirely conceal my distress. My legs take on a life of their own, crossing and uncrossing at will, and I writhe in my chair like a lap dancer in need of a pee break. Gilbert, noting this, kicked me smartly and I willed myself to be still. Claire, in contrast, absorbed the shock with a poise that impressed me deeply. She even managed to smile once or twice at Gilbert, a remarkable feat given her scarcely containable urge to fall upon him and commit such acts on his person as would make Hannibal Lecter cluck his tongue and counsel moderation.
“And that scene at the roulette wheel,” enthused Bobby, “where the hero rigs the wheel so the young couple can afford their exit visas—it shows us the guy’s really got a heart!”
“A heart in hiding, ” said Gilbert.
“You know,” said Bobby, giving “our” script a pat, “when we’re done with my movie, I might be interested in making this. What would you say if I wanted to option it?”
“For how much?” asked Gilbert incredibly.
“Gilbert forgets,” said Claire, “that it’s already optioned.”
Bobby frowned.
“Who’s doing it?”
“This fellow back in New York,” I said. “Rich dilettante.”
“Never heard of him.”
Bobby steered things back to The Heart in Hiding, offering thoughts and suggestions I hoped Gilbert was heeding since my mind was reeling so wildly it was all I could do to feign attention.
At least the mystery of our hiring had been solved. It was not, as Claire had theorized, a mix of nepotism and studio politics. Hell, no — we were good! We were the kind of writers they don’t make anymore, skilled craftsmen who could blend romance and intrigue while capturing a bygone era so convincingly you’d almost think we’d lived through it!
“So,” concluded Bobby, “we see eye-to-eye on all this?”
“Absolutely!” said Gilbert.
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” said Bobby. He rose, signaling that the meeting was over.
“This picture,” he intoned solemnly, “could be a fucking classic. That’s what I need you guys to write for me, okay? A classic. ”
“It’s what we do best,” replied Claire.
Bobby walked out with us, saying he was late for a meeting across town.
“Oops!” said Gilbert when we’d reached the exit. “Forgot my briefcase!”
As he nipped back into the office Claire and I exchanged a look, wondering if he was planning to flee down Bobby’s fire escape. He returned promptly, though, jauntily swinging his briefcase. We then exited the office and descended Bobby’s private staircase. He was not, like lesser mortals, compelled to park in the studio lot, and his Ferrari was waiting for him at the base of the stairs. We watched him drive off, then rounded on Gilbert, who, far from turning tail and sprinting to his car as we’d expected, burst into giggles and enfolded us in a boisterous hug.
“You two are amazing! You handled that so well in there! I mean, you did get a bit twitchy, Philip, but who could blame you? I can imagine how jarring it must have been for you when Bobby started congratulating us for Casablanca! ”
“Can you?” asked Claire.
“I was kicking myself for not having warned you. I would have but I didn’t think he’d go on about it so much and I figured why make you skittish going in? I’m sensing from your expressions that you’re worried someone else might read it and blow the whistle on us. Well, don’t be!”
He opened his briefcase and, with a magician’s flourish, plucked out Bobby’s copy of Imbroglio.
“That whole briefcase bit was just a ruse so I could go back in and swipe it. So there’s no way he can show it to anyone now. Quick thinking, huh?”
“Could I see that please?” asked Claire politely.
Gilbert handed her the script, whereupon Claire swiftly rolled it up and commenced whaling him on the head with it.
“Ow! Cut that out!”
“How DARE you!” she cried. “How fucking dare you!!” she added, resorting to the sort of language she reserves for rare occasions, usually Gilbert-related.
“That hurts! Philip! How long are you going to stand there and let her do this?”
“Till her arm gets tired and I take over.”
She gave him one last wallop, then savagely opened the script to the title page.
“Do you see that? That is MY name! In black and white! On fucking Casablanca! ” She hurled the script back at him. “You moron! You contemptible, brain-dead weasel! How could you do this to me? And Philip! Just sit there and watch us take bows for this thing when you know damn well what’ll happen to us when word of this insane scam gets out!”
“Jeez!” said Gilbert, massaging his ear. “This is why I keep stuff from you. You freak out over the least little thing!”
“Have you lost your tiny mind? This isn’t a little harmless résumé padding — this is open-and-shut plagiarism!”
“Uh, Claire,” I said, gesturing toward three tuxedo-clad extras who were smoking outside the next soundstage and eyeing us with frank fascination. Prudence dictated a change of venue, so we started toward the parking lot.
“I don’t see what you’re getting so worked up over. It’s not as if you two had any ethical problems with it.”
“EXCUSE ME?!” inquired Claire.
“Let’s not be hypocrites. You had no trouble taking bows for the script when you thought I wrote it —”
“WE NEVER THOUGHT YOU WROTE IT!”
“Well, whoever you thought wrote it, you knew you didn’t.”
“Actually,” I said, embarrassed, “we thought we did.” I quickly outlined our initial theory, which he greeted with a patronizing snicker.
“Leave it to you two to assume that if Bobby loved the script it had to be yours! Not,” he added, fearing another thrashing, “that your script wasn’t marvelous. It just wouldn’t have gotten us this job. Bobby specif
ically asked me for a World War II script.”
“And why on earth,” inquired Claire, “would he assume you of all people would have a World War II script up your sleeve?”
“I might have told him I did. I mean, I had to pique his interest. I figured I’d pull one of my other scripts out of the drawer and change the period. Y’know, plop in the Third Reich.”
“As if you had anything finished!” I snorted, the time for diplomacy on that issue having passed.
“Well, I had things that were close, ” he said huffily. “But when I tried changing the period on them, it wasn’t easy. The cyber-thriller was a complete nonstarter. And forget Log Cabin Republican. ”
He referred to a script he’d started based on his dubious theory as to why young Abe Lincoln first became devoted to the cause of racial justice. Hint: think hot runaway slave and moonlit hayloft.
“You can see the jam I was in. I’d told him I’d get something to him by the weekend, so I had no choice but to borrow something.”
“But to rip off a masterpiece—!”
“What was I supposed to use? Something bad? Anyway, I was pretty sure Bobby hadn’t seen it.”
He explained that during Max’s dinner there’d been a general discussion about what classic films had most influenced those present. Bobby had proudly claimed to have no such influences, saying that while his pretentious colleagues were in film school earnestly analyzing Hitchcock and Lubitsch, he was soaking up real life and building a business. He claimed that apart from Schindler’s List and some old Westerns he’d watched on TV as a child, he’d never even seen a black-and-white movie.
“He was really pretty obnoxious, making it sound like everyone else is busy churning out ‘homages’ while he’s this complete original. So I thought, ‘Hell, if he doesn’t know his classics, why not slip him one and see if he likes it?’ ”
“But Casablanca?! Even if you haven’t seen it, you know it. All those famous lines—”
“Oh, there aren’t that many. And of course I changed the really well-known ones. In our script—”
“Stop calling it that!”
“— Rick, or, as I call him, Frank, doesn’t ask Sam, or rather Smoky, to play ‘As Time Goes By.’ He asks for ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ which works every bit as well. The farewell scene at the plane was tricky—practically every line is famous! Took a bit of rewriting, but I actually prefer some of my dialogue to—”
“Oh, shut up!” fumed Claire. “I refuse to stand here and listen to you boast about how you improved Casablanca! ”
We reached Gilbert’s car and Claire hurled herself into the backseat. Gilbert, growing testy now himself, slammed the door and took the wheel.
“I’m getting a little tired of your attitude, Claire. I take this incredible gamble to help all of us get ahead. It pays off brilliantly and you’re not even grateful!”
“Grateful?!” she thundered. “I should be grateful that I get to go home now —”
“Go home?!” I gasped.
“— and spend the rest of my life praying Bobby Spellman never turns on his TV and catches Casablanca? ”
“What do you mean, ‘go home’?!”
“Gawd!” groaned Gilbert, peeling out of the space. “You’re worrying over nothing! Once our movie’s made it won’t matter if Bobby finds out. You’ve seen his ego—you think he’d let people know he was duped?”
“You’re leaving? ” I bleated piteously. Claire’s response was a stare of incredulous disdain.
“And you’re not? Don’t tell me you’re actually contemplating going through with this?”
“Well,” I said weakly, “we did sort of promise we would. It doesn’t seem right to renege.”
“Thank God someone here has a few scruples!” said Gilbert.
“And besides,” I argued, as if my lame sophistries could persuade a girl of Claire’s unshakable rectitude to remain a party to such chicanery, “if we back out now, how do we explain it to Bobby? Or Maddie and Max? I mean, I don’t approve of what Gilbert did any more than you do. But that’s water under the bridge. And it’s not as if we can plagiarize this script. No, this one will be our work start to finish, so it’s not as if we won’t be earning our money and...”
I trailed off, thoroughly cowed by her expression. It was a stare of bewildered revulsion such as an abbess might bestow on a young novitiate she’s just caught test-driving a dildo.
“Philip,” she said slowly, each word an ice cube, “you may lack the common sense to run screaming from a job that promises untold creative misery plus the looming threat of fraud charges and lifelong disgrace, but I do not. And for God’s sake, Gilbert, this is not the Daytona 500!”
“If she wants to bail, let her!” brayed Gilbert, running a stop sign. “More money for us!”
“You’ll need it for your defense.”
As we drove the rest of the way to the hotel, Claire’s silence was steely, Gilbert’s petulant, and mine wretched as I pondered my future. Would Claire’s defection sabotage our deal? And even if it didn’t, how could I write the script with just Gilbert? I’d always relied on Claire to handle the heartfelt bits in our comedies, and Greta was nothing but heartfelt bits. As I gazed at my partners’ surly faces I couldn’t believe how quickly last night’s euphoric unity had given way to such rancorous discord.
You might suppose that the demons assigned to torment me would have agreed at this juncture that they’d put in a solid day’s work and could retire to the clubhouse for drinks. But no, they’re a gung ho bunch, my demons, and, unlike my guardian angel, never averse to a spot of overtime. Their next assault came an hour later, and as with their previous salvos, they took care to soften me up before going in for the kill.
I was in Claire’s room watching her pack, pathetically hoping that my sad puppy stare might alter her decision, when Gilbert, a crazed grin on his face, burst in without knocking.
“Philip, there you are! Claire—what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Well, stop it,” he said lightly. “You can’t quit on us. Not now. I have the most amazing news!”
Claire said, “Let me guess — Cameron Mackintosh wants us for his next show on the strength of our score for Porgy and Bess? ”
“No. I just talked to Josh—our agent, swell guy, you’ll love him— and he got a call from business affairs at Pinnacle. The studio is offering us—brace yourselves!—half a million bucks to write this baby!”
“My God,” I gasped, attempting unsuccessfully to do the math. “That’s like... more than a hundred fifty grand each!”
“ And, ” said Gilbert, “we share a million-dollar bonus if the movie gets made!”
This was not happy news for a girl whose honor code compelled her to fly back east to a gloating ex-boyfriend and glittering career as a rehearsal pianist.
“Thank you,” she deadpanned, “for making this easier for me.”
“Oh, honey!” smirked Gilbert. “I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet!”
“There’s a better part than that?” I asked.
“I called Bobby to say thanks and he’d just gotten a call from Mr. Überagent himself, Irv Hackel. It seems he has a certain client that Bobby sent the book to and this client’s just dying to play the lead.”
“Who?”
“You may want to put a pillow on the floor so your jaw doesn’t get hurt.”
“Just tell us!”
“And... that... client... issssssssssss—”
“WHO?!!”
“Stephen! Donato!”
I shrieked like a castrato.
“Stephen Donato?”
“His colleagues call him Steve.”
“ We’re writing a movie for Stephen Donato? ”
“Annnnnnnd —!” said Gilbert, slapping out a drumroll on his thigh. “There’s an ‘ and’?!”
“Guess who wants to play Greta?”
“Who? His mom?”
I said it
facetiously, of course, a casting coup of that magnitude being an inconceivable bonanza for a trio of newbie screenwriters. But Gilbert did not roll his eyes at my outlandishness nor did he ask me to guess again. He just smiled puckishly and waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
“NO! Diana fucking MALENFANT?!”
“Mother and son, together again!”
I sank weak-kneed onto the bed, speechless at the thought that this long and breathlessly awaited pairing, this embarrassment of stardom, was to be lavished on our little script. If any acting team on earth could ram this stinker down the public’s throat and make them say “Yum,” this was the one.
Not even Claire, who’d managed to maintain her look of vinegary disinterest at the mention of Donato, could feign indifference now. She sank onto the bed, her mouth agape as she struggled to make sense of a town in which adored and wildly sought after megastars committed their talents to projects of such dubious merit.
“They both want to do it?” she asked. “All the projects they’ve turned down over the years—and they want to do this one?”
“And soon!” said Gilbert. “We’ll need to get cracking. Now I realize, Claire, how silly you must be feeling over your little snit, but don’t beat yourself up. We artists are entitled to our little displays of temperament. Just unpack and we’ll say no more about it.”
“You will stay, won’t you?” I pleaded. “I mean, you can’t walk away from something like this!”
She scowled and resumed folding her blouse.
“And just what exactly do you imagine this changes?”
“Are you kidding? They haven’t acted together since his first movie when he was, like, ten! Now they’re finally doing their reunion picture — and WE get to write it?! This changes everything!”
“No arguments there! Now if the whole Casablanca stunt gets out— excuse me, when it gets out—the stink will be a hundred times bigger!”
“God!” fumed Gilbert. “I’m so sick of your negativity! You only see the downside!”
“Has there ever once been an upside with you?” she asked and I winced at the cogency of the question.