by T V Hartwell
“Well, he’s the star of the film so that’s how it should be,” Adam said, and then looked at Amanda. “Are you ready, princess?”
Amanda just gave him a big smile. She looked svelte and radiant in a black and gold sequined Dolce and Gabbana dress which she complemented with a fashionable pair of high heel sandals from Jimmy Choo.
“You look gorgeous, Amanda. So good to see you,” Carolyn said as she gave her a quick hug.
“Thanks, Carolyn. Good to see you too,” Amanda said, having met Adam’s longtime press agent when they’d dated the first time.
Adam made his way down the red carpet with his arm around Amanda’s waist, and then they stood and posed for the flashing cameras in front of the step-and-repeat that had the film’s title splashed across it in big, bold print. “Adam, to your left, Adam.” “Over here, Adam, to your right, to your right, please.” A cacophony of voices rang from the gallery of photographers assembled from around the world, each trying to get shots of him from different angles and vantage points. And then, suddenly, “Amanda, over here.” “Who are you wearing, Amanda?” “Can you look up Amanda?” “Amanda, this way, please,” a chorus rang.
Adam grinned as he watched her pose and respond to the requests of the photographers with confidence and aplomb. She even struck a pose that drew attention to her lightly tanned bare legs, which looked long, elegant, and toned in her short, cut above the knee dress and high heels. Although she did her best to remain calm and poised, Amanda felt somewhat overwhelmed and stunned that so many photographers called her name and seemed to know who she was. Yes, she was known, but certainly didn’t consider herself to be famous. However, unbeknownst to her, Carolyn, at Adam’s direction, had tipped off certain members of the paparazzi and press to let them know that she would accompany Adam to the premiere that night. He wanted to ensure that she would be a part of the storyline that evening and moving forward. Adam Weinstock and Amanda Climent were back on.
“Okay, folks, and here he is live, Mr. Adam Weinstock, the executive producer of the film,” Debbie of Debbie Does Hollywood said to her TV viewing audience as Adam and Amanda approached her.
“Hello, Debbie,” Adam said in a chummy way, giving her a hug and peck on the cheek. He’d done many red carpet interviews with her in the past and they had a friendly, professional relationship.
“Well, and looky who we have here, Amanda Climent. Amanda’s back, everyone, and looking as gorgeous as ever.”
“Thank you,” Amanda said, smiling broadly as Adam wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in close to him.
Appearing distracted at the sight of them together again and looking so happy and intimate, Debbie couldn’t help herself. “Well, I know I only have like sixty seconds to ask you a few questions about the film, but I can’t help but start with: are you two back together again?”
Adam and Amanda looked at each other grinning and acting coy. “Are we a thing?” Adam said to Amanda playfully, but before she could muster a comeback, Debbie put two and two together.
“Well, you were engaged to be married not too long ago,” she said looking at Amanda.
“Oh that,” Amanda said in a sly, playful tone and then hesitated as she chose her words carefully. “Well . . . not anymore. Had a little change in plans,” she said through a forced smile.
“Nice answer,” Adam said to her, grinning from ear to ear before turning to look back at Debbie.
“So I guess if you’re here all snuggled up beside Adam tonight, then indeed, you two must be a thing again.”
“Okay, if you say so,” Amanda said with a giggle, sounding noncommittal while looking like her graceful, charming self for the television camera.
Seeing that she wasn’t going to get any farther than that, Debbie went a step further in her presumption. “Even though you two want to play coy and deflect, I think I’m right about this thing called a relationship between you two. So I’m stating for the record, you heard it here first folks, on Debbie Does Hollywood,” she said as Adam and Amanda blushed and laughed along. Then Debbie turned her attention solely to Adam, asking him a few questions about the film and bantering with him flirtatiously in the style and manner that made her one of the most popular and most followed entertainment news personalities in the business. Adam and Amanda eventually made their way down the red carpet to answer a few more questions from reporters, and then they stepped inside the theater to greet invited guests and to wait for the arrival of the film’s star before taking their seats to watch the screening.
At the premiere’s after party at Spago in Beverly Hills, Amanda found herself in the thick of things as Adam’s date—mingling and sipping cocktails with the film’s leads and other cast members, rubbing shoulders with high powered studio executives and their spouses, having more photographs taken, and being asked for her opinion and reaction to the film by the press. However, before the end of the night, the young attractive woman at the sexy, hotshot producer’s side became a source of speculation and hushed tongue wagging that swept through the room amongst the assembled guests and media. Whether Mr. Henry’s Book Club would result in Adam’s second Oscar nomination and perhaps his first Oscar win for best picture became the second most asked and talked about question of the night. The first ended up being whether Adam Weinstock was now off the market and officially back together with the wealthy heiress who’d dumped him more than a year before for her college boyfriend.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next morning, following the premiere, Amanda awoke next to Adam in his bed, cheerful and happy. “What a fun night last night was,” she said.
“Yeah, I think it turned out to be a pretty decent night.”
“He says modestly.”
“No, I thought it was a good night.”
“Well you don’t seem terribly excited about all of the Oscar buzz the film is generating. I think you might run away with it this year.”
“I don’t know about that. I have to get nominated first, and the competition is already pretty stiff. The King’s Speech and The Social Network appear to be the odds-on favorites, and then Black Swan is about to be released. I’m beginning to think that releasing the film at the end of the year might’ve been a strategic mistake. Black Swan is getting far better press. Plus, Tom is a pretty controversial figure and people might be disinclined to vote for the film or even nominate it just because of him.”
“But he’s a great actor. The best, some might even say.”
“Yeah, but he’s also very eccentric, arrogant, and kind of a right wing, NRA loving cuckoo, picking up where Charleston Heston left off. And in liberal, socially progressive Hollywood that doesn’t make you very popular.”
“Hmmm. Well, I hope the film will be judged on its merits and on Tom’s performance, which was brilliant. I mean, yeah, he’s a little out there, but he’s a very well respected actor who’s still a big draw at the box office. After all, that’s why you cast him for the lead role, right?”
At that point, Adam was sitting up in bed with his laptop in hand, a bit distracted. “Looks like someone else created a lot of buzz last night,” he said with a grin while reading one of the online articles about last night’s premiere.
“What? What is it?” Amanda said, curious, and then leaned over to look at the screen with Adam.
“Look at that hot girl,” he said, pointing to a photo of her on the Debbie Does Hollywood website.
Amanda blushed and smiled. “That’s actually a pretty good photo of us together.”
Adam then began to read a few lines from the article aloud to her. “Listen to this,” he said. “In Mr. Henry’s Book Club, lead actor Tom Field plays a never married, high school English teacher who preys on and seduces a group of teenage girls not known for being popular with the boys or the mean girls who bully and shame them daily. As geeky bookworms who lack self-confidence and struggle with body image issues along with other typical teenage girl angst, they turn to racy romance n
ovels to vicariously experience having the hot, alpha male boyfriend they lack and will never have until Field’s character steps in to help them live out their fantasies. Although the English teacher’s seductive, manipulative ways lead to devastating consequences for all three girls, remarkably, Field manages to make this social deviant masquerading as a caring teacher a sympathetic character with emotional depth and complexity.”
“Field and his Oscar worthy performance were the talk of the night until he was upstaged by the film’s producer Adam Weinstock or more precisely by the young, attractive woman who accompanied him to the premiere. None other than socialite Amanda Climent, who he’d dated more than a year before. Remember her? They made a brief splash as Hollywood’s new glamour couple with rumors of a looming marriage proposal until she shocked everyone and broke things off to marry her college sweetheart instead. It now appears that the wealthy heiress dubbed the ‘Platinum Princess’ may have reassumed her place in Adam’s heart after her million dollar plus wedding was mysteriously called off late last summer. Sorry, ladies, but it looks like Adam may be off the market. Again! I know. Damn!”
The article along with Debbie’s punchline at the end gave Amanda and Adam a good laugh. Later, Amanda watched the playback of her live interview on Debbie’s TV show along with checking the coverage from other entertainment news outlets that had covered the event. And just as Adam had wanted and partially instigated through his publicist, he and Amanda indeed became fodder for lots of speculation on the status of their relationship. However, after Carolyn began to receive multiple inquiries to find out exactly what their status was, Adam and Amanda mutually agreed that the best response would be no response and to simply allow things to play out organically. Such a tactic being standard procedure for Hollywood celebrities in blossoming relationships as well as a good way to keep their names in the press and to stay relevant, something Adam understood and relished more Amanda.
A week later, Adam and Amanda were off to the East Coast for the New York premiere at Ziegfeld Theater on Fifty-Fourth Street in Midtown Manhattan. The routine being roughly the same as in LA, Adam and Amanda pulled up in a limo, walked the red carpet, had photos taken in front of the step-and-repeat and took questions from the press along the way just as the film’s major star and other cast members did. One big difference this time was that among the invited celebrity guests, the hot, Australian born, Oscar nominated actor Cass Bettencourt was in attendance along with Lucy, now officially his girlfriend. So not to upstage the film’s main star, Tom Field, they had arrived and walked the red carpet a little earlier. Cass turned out to be a great warm-up act in the process, energizing the crowd. The females, in particular, went wild, having not expected to see him there.
When Amanda saw Lucy and Cass enter the lobby of the theater after they’d stepped off the red carpet, she grabbed Adam by the hand to make a beeline over to them.
“Hey, girl,” Lucy said, hugging Amanda. “You’re looking fabulous.”
“And so are you, my dear.”
As Amanda went to hug and say hello to Cass, all being forgiven after he’d invited Adam to his birthday party in LA last summer to her complete surprise and chagrin, Adam and Lucy stepped toward each other to embrace as well.
“Am I out of the doghouse now, Lucy?” Adam said teasingly. “The last time I saw you, you barely made eye contact with me, let alone touched or hugged me.”
“It’s okay for you to hug me now. Amanda’s approved my speaking to you again.”
“Well considering that you are the one who originally introduced us, I can’t tell you how delighted I am that we’re all one big happy family again,” Adam said before giving her a big bear hug and affectionate kiss on the cheek.
After that night, the four of them couldn’t seem to get enough of being together and at Cass’s invitation made plans to spend New Year’s Eve with him in Sydney.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Golden Globe nominations were to be announced on the Tuesday morning following the New York premiere. Knowing how on edge and nervous Adam was, Amanda had decided to steer clear of him until after the nominations were announced. She knew that even though he had been pessimistic about his film’s chances, he nevertheless wanted to receive a nomination for something, preferably Best Film. But in case he didn’t, she didn’t want to be around to witness him in a pissy mood. Big shot Hollywood producers like Adam had very fragile egos and they took rejection very hard. For Adam that materialized in the form of depression, expletive-laced rants about everyone in the industry he hated or who he thought hated him, a sense of victimhood and self-loathing, and overindulgence in booze and bud to self-medicate. Although she viewed Adam as a self-controlled recreational drug user and not an addict, it was nevertheless an aspect of his personality Amanda didn’t like. So that morning she had gotten up early to watch the announcement of nominees, broadcast live on local TV. She decided that if he was nominated for something, anything, she’d call and congratulate him immediately. If not, she’d send him a text message instead and allow him to call her when he was ready. However, Adam had other plans and decided to call her that morning, just before the announcements were read.
“Adam, hi!” she said, surprised.
“Hey.”
“Are you watching TV? They’re about to announce the nominees.”
“Yeah, but I’m so fucking nervous that I needed someone to talk to. I was up all night. Didn’t get any sleep at all.”
“Awww . . . honey, I’m sorry,” she said, sympathetic. “I feel nervous too.” She almost started to tell him that everything would be all right and that no matter what happened his film was one of the best of the year, but she knew her praise wasn’t the validation he was seeking and kept quiet.
As the television show nominations were being read first, Amanda tried to make conversation, commenting when a show or actor she liked had been selected.
“Oh, yay, Michael,” she said when Michael C. Hall was announced as a best actor nominee for his role in Dexter. However, dead silence on the other end of the line.
And then again, “Ohhh, that’s great, I’m so happy for Julianna. I love her,” Amanda said when Julianna Margulies was announced as a best actress nominee for her role in The Good Wife. But on the other end of the line all Amanda heard was occasional breathing and what sounded like a glass or cup slamming down on a countertop.
“Adam, are you still there?” she finally said.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“You’re being so quiet.”
“I’m here,” he said again in a voice that sounded slightly irritated, but Amanda chalked it up to nerves and not irritation with her in any way. So she continued to comment in an attempt to break the silence on the line when more television nominations were announced. However, she soon decided to stop, beginning to feel stupid for maintaining a one-way conversation.
When it came time for the film nominations to be announced, Adam finally spoke up. “Okay, here we go.”
“Oh my God, he’s alive,” Amanda replied, trying to be lighthearted and funny, but Adam didn’t seem to get her humor.
As the nominations were read, Adam’s breathing became heavier on the other end of the line which made Amanda feel even more nervous and anxious. When the names for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama, began to be read, she crossed her fingers with her free hand while holding her cell phone to her ear with the other. “Come on, Tom, come on,” Amanda said. Colin Firth, Jesse Eisenberg, James Franco . . . but in the end no Tom Field.
“See? I knew it,” Adam said, sounding bitter. “What a bunch of fucking pricks. Tom didn’t even get the nomination he deserves. Not a single one of those guys gave a performance superior Tom’s. Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Colin Firth’s was pretty good, Amanda had on the tip of her tongue, but bit down.
“Except for Colin Firth. Maybe,” Adam then said.
“Maybe,” Amanda replied, trying
to sound agreeable, but careful not to say anything more.
By the time it came down to hearing the nominations for best screenplay and best picture, Amanda sat at the edge of her seat in her cream colored satin and chiffon lingerie robe, legs crossed tightly, and stomach folded over with her arm clutched around it to calm her nerves while wishing Adam hadn’t called her to share in this agonizing moment. As the nominees for best screenplay were read, Adam’s breathing became harder and more pronounced over the line, and when Aaron Sorkin’s name was announced for The Social Network, Adam didn’t seem too impressed.
“How fucking original. A story about rich kids at Harvard fighting over who started Facebook. That really took a lot of creative effort and imaginative thinking to write,” he smirked. “It was based on a book anyway.”
Amanda tensed up at the scornfulness of Adam’s tone as she shook her head and closed her eyes feeling beyond anxious for Adam and desperately wanting his film to be nominated for something. “Please, God. Please,” she uttered in a low whisper.
And then the final nominee for screenplay was announced. Nothing. Not nominated. Adam sighed hard and cursed under his voice while Amanda sat silently, near tears as she stared at her television screen. “Well, there you have it,” Adam said. “The best screenplay nominees are typically the best picture nominees as well, so I’m a loser. They think my film sucks.”
“Adam, you can’t think about it like that. You can’t judge the artistic quality of your film based on what a handful of unknown foreign journalists think of it. I mean, look at the reviews. Most of the critical reviews have been outstanding and it has an eighty-eight percent favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.”