by Edward Riche
The barkeep was soon standing before him, Elliot’s AMEX card in his hand.
“Elliot Jonson?” he said.
“Yes,” said Elliot. The man’s voice was familiar, as was the size of him, and the thick, nearly white hair —
“Didn’t have the temerity to go with ‘Shakespeare’?”
Elliot looked again. “Gunnar Olafsson?”
“Yeah, Wes, right? Wes Johnston?” He pulled out a chair and sat.
“Well . . . as you can see . . . I’m going by my middle name now.”
They had been in film school together, in Montreal, back in the late ’70s. They hadn’t been in the same class or shared the same interests, Gunnar being a dedicated proto-experimentalist, making, if Elliot remembered correctly, long (“duration as an aesthetic”) films with a delirium tremens camera. He did recall, clearly, that the films, which meant absolutely nothing to Elliot, were highly lauded by the faculty. Gunnar won a student prize. Elliot passed his courses and was little noticed.
“Right. And what’s with ‘Jonson’? Like Ben Jonson, yeah?”
“Lot of Johnstons around. It was a business decision, to distinguish myself from everyone else. So you landed in Toronto after film school?”
“I was back in Winnipeg for a while, at the Film Co-op. I ended up taking a job with the CBC to make enough money to continue making my own films and then one thing led to another, I moved up in the organization, ended up coming here.”
“Great.”
“Well . . . no. I mean, obviously.” Gunnar gestured to the room.
“Have a glass of wine?” asked Elliot.
“My shift is done in fifteen minutes.”
Now, as in university days, the Icelander became easily drunk. His head became too heavy for his neck. Elliot could remember seeing the same movement, the same swinging of the noggin, in the Greek dive Aidoneus, on Park Avenue. Gunnar could be nasty at school, never hesitating to make a crack about his peers’ early and naive efforts in the cinema, but in the bar afterward, after a couple of gros Molson and a few spliffs, he became the sentimental fool.
Gunnar sat at Elliot’s table with his supper, a carelessly scorched T-bone and a pint of beer. Halfway through the tile of beef (and his third lager), Gunnar abandoned trying to saw off another double mouthful and pushed the plate away. Betraying his roots, he took rye whisky for dessert. Gunnar wanted to talk about the good old days.
“And remember Bernadette, what a babe . . . Oh man, I actually went up to the Laurentians with her one time . . . Her parents had a place . . .”
“So you were in management at CBC?”
“At CBC . . . Oh yeah, I was a Creative Head.”
This could mean many things.
“Which is . . . that you . . .?”
“Movies and Miniseries,” answered Gunnar.
“In charge of production?”
“Yeah but . . . not really ‘Production’ production. Commissioning them, or taking an investment position. I’m proooud —” He burped. “Proud of the films that we helped make happen.”
“Like?”
“Well . . . there was Down a Mine, and the Olive Diefenbaker biopic, which I think surprised a lot of people, and Silly Goose, that bird movie, and . . . anyway, a lot of . . . oh yeah, and, of course, Cabane à Sucre.”
“Wow, that’s impressive,” said Elliot, despite never having heard of any of these films.
“And Louise, remember her, she was in animation? She broke my heart. Fucking hot. You know what she used to do?”
“With a track record like that — what happened?” Elliot asked, as if he’d not heard Gunnar’s digression. Gunnar was probably soused enough to wonder whether he’d said the thing about Louise or only thought it.
“Okay, okay . . . audiences were in decline, but you’ve got to remember that, given the demo . . . demo . . . demographics, we were going to lose a significant number anyway.”
“To the competition?”
“No, to death. The CBC audience skews kinda oldish. So I thought maybe more films about dying and disease, that sort of thing, I mean, Bergman did that all the time.”
“Death was even a lead in one of his films, if I remember,” observed Elliot.
“Right . . . anyway, some projects weren’t as ‘light-hearted’ as some VPs might have liked. And a few were ‘challenging.’”
“Challenging as in the art-movie-that-people-don’t-watch way?”
Gunnar’s head bobbed in vigorous affirmation.
“And you have no idea what a low opinion those guys have of their audience. They take them all for boobs and cretins. They were worried about their official mandate, so they had code words for it, stuff like ‘more broadly accessible’ or ‘audience accommodation.’ I mean, hey, sure, this is television, chicks in bikinis eating spiders for money, but this is public television, surely there has to be . . .” The thought filling Gunnar’s head must have been giving it buoyancy, for when he lost its thread, his chin went to his chest. Was he snoring? No, it was a waking snort.
“People used to watch, Gunnar. I mean growing up, I’m sure we had the CBC on all the time.”
“That was before there was a choice. How many channels did you get in . . . where was it you come from, Wes, out east, wasn’t it?”
“‘Elliot,’ and we only had the two channels.”
“You know, there is a gaggle of comfy liberals out there, a tiny educated elite, isolated in gilded downtown enclaves, in their bubbles, who like to imagine that this is a sophisticated, postmodern, secular humanist society. They have that smug, superior attitude toward the States, like they’re all hicks and we up here are opera-going, art galleries on Sunday . . .” Gunnar burped once more. “But you go out there, my friend, out into the suburbs, get out into area codes where the people live. And . . . that whole funding system that was designed to bring all that art and culture to the masses, to subsidize it so that any Canadian could have . . . well, Wes, ol’ buddy” — Elliot flinched at this — “they didn’t want it. Even for free.”
“Maybe it has to cost them something before they know its value.”
“Nah. It’s a Tim Hortons nation. Who should expect a population whose favourite food is Kraft Dinner to go in for documentaries about Stockhausen?”
“You have a point.”
“Hmmm? I . . .” Gunnar was having trouble with his next thought. He looked at his glass with regret. He clenched his jaw in a last push to get out what he meant to say. “Regardless of the reasons, one day I got called before the bosses and told that I either resigned or took the position of Director of Radio for Nunavut. I told them where to go. I left my experimental film practice in Winnipeg for these people. I was happy to be out of there, clear of that institutionalized mediocrity. Besides, over the years I figured I had made a few friends in the independent production sector. There were people out there who had done well by my stew . . . stewardship of tax dollars and would return the favour by giving me a job.” Gunnar’s expression further soured. “The excuses I heard, Wes . . .”
Elliot was about to again correct Gunnar on the Wes front but thought better of it.
“‘Production is way down this year,’ they said, and ‘There is this huge inventory of Movies of the Week,’ and ‘Reality is killing everybody.’ Ungrateful bastards. I thought I had something at the OFDC, but I did a lousy interview and they really needed to hire a woman of colour. I was going lose my house . . . so I said fuck it, I’m going to do it myself, just some porn, low budget, quick turnaround, make some cash . . .”
“And?”
“I got it into my head to . . . when I was writing the script . . .”
“The script?”
“I started getting interested in the formal possibilities and the prospect of making a critique, more a metapornographic film than . . .”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah, well, it was a great film, only not sexy in the conventional sense . . . Anyway, I ended up workin’ the bar here.”
Gunnar surveyed his domain and again let gravity have its way with his skull. Again it bounced back up.
“Hey! Do you remember Lucy Szilard from film school? She was really talented. Whatever happened to her?”
“She ended up in Hollywood.”
“Wow. What about you, Wes?”
Elliot looked at his watch.
“Oh, I ended up in the States too, in the beverage industry. Good seeing you, Gunnar, but I gotta go.”
Six
WITHOUT THINKING, Elliot, Angeleno though he was, walked — walked! — back to the Four Seasons. There’d been a rain shower; the city had shined its avenues and dabbed petrichor behind its ear in preparation for a glittering evening. Toronto wasn’t such a bad little town. A couple of days here wouldn’t kill him.
In his room he turned on the television and, in mind of his company that evening, found the CBC.
The program on offer looked to be one commissioned by Gunnar himself. It was self-consciously arty, shot in high-contrast black and white and with mannered performances. At first Elliot thought that something was wrong with the signal or the set, for he could get no sound. He was considering calling the concierge when the appearance of a title card on the screen told him the silence was deliberate. They were taking great pains to emulate the films of the early montage-mad Soviets — Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and cadre. They’d made the new film look like something pulled from a dusty archive in Leningrad, distressing the negative and chopping out a few random frames as if the print were ancient and much abused. The effect was visually compelling for all of thirty seconds, and ruined entirely when Mike recognized an actress he’d seen in a television commercial for Red Lobster.
At least the film’s lack of soundtrack made it possible to watch while checking his voice mail at the same time. (There might be some future in silent pictures, thought Elliot.) The first message was from Mike, who sounded uncommonly keen. “Elliot, call me as soon as possible. It’s urgent, like for real.”
“Urgent” could mean only one of two things. Someone was taking a meeting — perhaps Litehouse had realized the potential of Nailed and reconsidered. Or, more likely, it was an offer of a quick polish job, perhaps trying to beat a few jokes into another lame comedy. Hopeful, and with nothing better to do, Elliot called Mike.
“Elliot! This is your cell number, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there a pay phone anywhere near there? Are you at the vineyard?”
“I’m in Toronto.”
“Toronto? Like . . . Canada, Toronto? Is there a shoot or something?”
“No, I’m here for a couple of days en route to France. There was some trouble with my passport.”
“Trouble?” Mike swallowed the word, worried. Odd for Mike.
“Nothing serious. It was out of date.”
“Oh . . . good. Listen, are you at a hotel?”
“Yeah, the Four Seasons.”
“That’s perfect. Gimme ten minutes. I’ll call you back.”
The moment the call ended, a blat of distorted sound leapt from the television set. Elliot dove across the king-size bed for the remote and muted the volume. The black-and-white piece had ended. Now there was too much colour and too much light. Onscreen were young people with forced smiles in an improbably spacious apartment. Their movements were halting but exaggerated; they were reacting to what was being said with the grandiloquent eyes and lips of desperation mugging. Elliot thought he might just be able to detect flop sweat blooming beneath the pancake on one particularly cherubic funny-maker. All too familiar, like at least half a dozen sitcom pilots in which he’d had a hand. Those had, thankfully, never seen the light of day. Perhaps this was a comedy about a failing sitcom. He’d mention that idea to Mike. He went back to his voice mail.
“Mr. Jonson, my name is Jasper Crabb, I’m a senior special investigator with the United States Department of Agriculture. I want to talk to you about some of your vine stock, issues concerning provenance. This is a serious matter and I’d appreciate it if you would call me as soon as possible at —” Elliot closed his phone. The jig was up. The USDA had determined that Elliot was cultivating grapes from unauthorized stock and was going to throw the book at him.
The first grape he’d smuggled into the U.S., back in 1992, was Counoise. The crowd at Tablas Creek had already acquired some from Beaucastel and had been responsible enough to put it through three years of quarantine up at UC Davis. It would be several more years before the nursery could make it available commercially, and Elliot, in his early enthusiasm for his venture, decided he couldn’t wait that long. He needed mature Counoise and Mourvèdre and Syrah, five years of age minimum, to make a worthy wine. Elliot smuggled in the cuttings to be on an even playing field with the growers who had pioneered the region.
Yet for all that risk, the Counoise failed to contribute the missing element to the wine. There was definitely some desirable red berry pickle but . . . In for a penny, Elliot soon after got his source in Avignon to score him some shoots of Muscardin. Those planted on flat ground did well and, when introduced to the concoction five years later, gave the wine, while still undrinkable, a more floral bouquet.
He looked back at the TV, thinking again that he’d better pay closer attention; a homecoming to Canada might soon be his only option. They were now on to some sort of drama: it was set in an open-concept office, possibly a newspaper. The lead character was a twitchy old guy, probably playing the editor, who, in a way one would never see on American television, squinted all the time. To its credit, the CBC seemed determined to reflect the nation back to itself, for the performers were all plain-looking, cast, it seemed, to resemble regular folk. There was an aversion to extremes up here. While the stars might lack glamour, the people on the street were not the great waddling obese, the new land-giants you saw in the States. Americans were content to let celebrities be attractive and happy for them. In Canada, Elliot knew, they thought that no countryman was worthy of celebrity and were suspicious of anyone who might be too good-looking or pleased with themselves. Americans were determined to believe in better tomorrows. Canadians wouldn’t take risks in case they should make things any worse. Americans couldn’t perceive irony; Canadians chose to look away from it. Elliot was about to turn the volume back up when the phone on the night table rang.
“Mike! Sitcom about a failing sitcom?”
“Too Inside Baseball.” Mike, like all agents, could respond to a question without having given it any consideration, as though he’d spent the night in study and rumination. “I guess this line is clean, hey? I mean, a foreign hotel, they couldn’t very well . . .”
“Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in a gas station on Wilshire. I’m calling from a pay phone.”
“A pay phone?”
“They’re impossible to find these days. I’ve been driving around for half an hour. Elliot, do you remember that conference call with Larry Werner, about two years ago?”
“Vaguely . . . remind me.”
“Remember you were joking after the call that he took a pass on Pass It On?”
“Right, the pandemic comedy. That was a funny idea.”
“No, it wasn’t. Anyway. It turns out that the conversation was tapped.”
“So?”
“From an illegal wiretap.”
“Why would anyone tap my phone?”
“Not your phone, Elliot, Larry’s. Why would anyone tap your phone?”
“Who was tapping Larry’s phone?”
“A private investigator working for Lucky Silverman.”
“But Larry and Lucky are partners. I even think Lucky was on the call for a bit.”
“They are partners, and Lucky was on the call. The details aren’t important, what’s important is that you not cooperate when the FBI come calling.”
“The FBI?”
“There’s an investigation.”
“Back up.”
“Everybody was tapping everybody else: producers
tapping agents tapping actors tapping producers. It’s a victimless crime.”
“I don’t feel in the least victimized.”
“That’s the spirit. The DA will prosecute the easier cases, and Lucky needs the waters muddied. They don’t have any tape, only the bill from the private detective who did the deed. Unless a person who was on that call gives evidence, they won’t be able to proceed.”
“Okay . . . I guess.”
“Great. And there is nothing the FBI could squeeze you on, to compel you to testify?”
“Like?”
“Narcotics, like that business that got Lloyd Purcell deported.”
Elliot thought about the call from the USDA. Mike had made it plain that he was tired of hearing about the woes of Elliot’s winery, and why worry the guy? “Nope,” he said.
“Excellent. I know that if you let this go, if you don’t cooperate, have a lapse of memory, you can’t remember any call, your mind has been destroyed by alcohol from all that wine, etcetera, then . . .” Mike was panting. “I’m advised to inform you that you could be looking at a producer credit on The Centuri Protocol.”
The Centuri Protocol was based on a comic, something to do with serial-killing aliens who took the form of sexually insatiable, cannibalistic interns at the White House. Early reports said the film was fantastic to look at, utterly moronic, and testing through the roof. It was a hit-in-waiting, and Lucky Silverman and Larry Werner were its producers.
For Mike to even have bothered calling Elliot said that the matter of the wiretaps was a grave one. There wasn’t time, but Elliot knew he should get legal advice before taking a payoff on the advice of his agent. That was what the situation in Hollywood had come to: one needed lawyers to talk to one’s agents, and agents to talk to one’s lawyers. Even the agents needed agents.