True Hollywood Lies

by Josie Brown

  “That he’s what?”

  “You know: the other guy?”

  In Louis’s threesome.

  No, I hadn’t known for sure until that moment.

  Watching the color drain from my face, Freddy gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Now that you know, you’ve got to walk away from them, Hannah. Both of them.” He stroked Bette under her chin. “Look, doll, it may not be easy, but it will keep you from joining Simone at Betty Ford in a double room, ’cause heaven knows King Louie is too cheap to spring for a single.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Freddy. Mick won’t be able to deny what I saw with my own two eyes, so that takes care of him. And as for Louis—well, he and I have come to an understanding of what I’m willing to do—and not do, if he wants me to stick around.”

  “Just to set the record straight,” Christy said solemnly, “Donnie and I have a similar agreement.”

  “Oh, I’ll just bet you do,” Freddy said under his breath.

  “It’s important to us, too, that we know where to draw the line,” Christy insisted, “particularly since we’re now going to be working together as peers.”

  “What does that mean?” Sandy asked.

  “Donnie’s producing a movie, and he’s got a role in it that he says is perfect for me,” she gushed. “It’s not a very big one, but it’s certainly more than a walk-on. That’s okay, because it’s a small film, anyway. You know, an indie.” She tossed her head with pride. “And we’ll shoot my scenes at night—so it doesn’t interfere with my day job, because that would make Bethany upset… except, I don’t know how we’ll get back in time, since we’re filming on location.”

  “Where?” Sandy asked suspiciously.

  “Chatsworth.”

  “Christy, sweetheart, Chatsworth is only thirty or forty minutes from L.A. It’s in the Valley.”

  “Oh, it is? Well, whattaya know? Donnie made it sound as if it were at the other end of the world.”

  Freddy snickered. “That’s an appropriate analogy, by our town’s standards anyway.”

  “Why? What do you mean?” Perplexed, Christy took a dainty bite of a link sausage.

  I frowned. “That’s where the porn industry is based.”

  Gulping hard, she gave a little cough. “Oh . . . no.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No! Well, yeah. Well—it’s just that… well, Donnie mentioned that I—that I might have to do a—a nude scene. But he assured me that it would be shot very tastefully.”

  “How so?”

  “The director—Harry Dickson—is really well known! He’s won all kinds of awards.”

  “I’ll say he has,” murmured Freddy. “Have you heard of Sponge Bobbie’s Square Panties, Sex with the City, or The Pleasure Locker?”

  Christy squinted in thought. “Uh. . . no. Not really. Should I have?”

  “Those are some of the films he’s directed. And you’re right: they’ve won awards, but not any Oscars. We’re talking Adult Video News awards.”

  “How do you know that?” While Christy frowned, I tried hard not to laugh out loud.

  “Well, sweetums, it just so happens that I have a boyfriend in Hollyporn, as they call it. He was one of the—er—‘stars’ of The Pleasure Locker. In fact, he won an award for that one, too. Ha! He may not recite Shakespeare or Ibsen, but with his kind of talent, he doesn’t need to open his mouth. Others do that—for him.”

  Christy gulped loudly.

  “I’ll say! And you wouldn’t believe the size of his ‘statuette.’ ”

  Chapter 11: Moonstruck

  Dazed or distracted with romantic sentiment; affected by insanity; crazed.

  The good news about Killer Instincts—the psychological thriller Louis was filming in a remote location deep within Oregon’s mystical Klamath Forest along the banks of the Rogue River—was that it fit all the necessary criteria for being a hit movie, as defined by Leo: a first-rate director, a great screenplay, and a superb supporting cast.

  The even better news was that my immediate departure with Louis allowed me to leave behind Mick and all the hurt he had caused me—at least, for now.

  Not that he didn’t try calling me at least four or five times a day after the incident at the Hotel Bel-Air. At first, his voice messages were filled with naive anticipation. (“Hey, babe, didn’t we have a date? Tell that boss of yours you’re calling it a night, and get on over here. I need a Hannah fix.”) They quickly moved on to a mild concern that I wasn’t responding. (“Honey, where are you? Call me, I’m worried . . . ”) Next was his annoyance at my lack of consideration in getting back to him, which was quickly replaced with sullen suspicion: (“Wow. Louis must be keeping you really busy. Okay, I get the message.” Click.)

  And finally, contrition. (“Hannah, please call me. I don’t know what I did, but whatever it is, I think I have a right to know! It shouldn’t be anything that we can’t work out.”)

  Oh, yeah?

  His final message, sent on the eleventh day after the Hotel Bel-Air incident, was a text message which simply asked What the Hell happened????

  Frankly, I was happy for a change of scenery—not that the set of Killer Instincts was any picnic. During the first week of shooting, Louis’s own criteria for making the movie—the assumption that there would be a chance for some on-location hanky-panky with his leading lady, Marcella Kingston, coupled with the opportunity to work with his idol, the legendary Shakespearean British actor and recently knighted Sir Barnaby Chadwick—dissolved completely, like the early morning mists that shrouded the grove of Douglas firs in which the production had set up camp.

  This all happened due to a series of misunderstandings on Louis’s part, the first being that the radiantly beautiful and voluptuously proportioned Marcella, whose wonderfully salty sense of humor was all the more delicious for being delivered in her sweet, throaty lisp, would find him as irresistible as he found her.

  She didn’t.

  But then again, being a lesbian, she wouldn’t.

  Louis was promptly informed of this fact by Marcella’s very, very angry personal assistant (who, by the way, also happened to be her very, very butch lover) after he offered to run lines with the actress in her trailer and then suggested that she could reciprocate the favor by running her tongue over his body.

  “Dammit, why didn’t that git Randy warn me?” exclaimed a truly disappointed Louis, after being escorted back to his own trailer (at his request) by two brawny grips who, luckily, happened to be passing Marcella’s open trailer door just as her PA lunged at Louis with clenched fists. Marcella’s scornful and incredulous laughter could still be heard echoing through the stately ponderosa pines.

  “Why?” I asked. “Would you have changed your mind about doing the movie?”

  I could tell that it was on the tip of his tongue to say yes. But knowing that I’d think less of him for doing so, he shrugged nonchalantly instead.

  “Hell, no, of course not. It’s just that, well, I always find location shoots to be much more, shall we say, ‘professionally stimulating’ if my leading lady—particularly one as mad hot as that one—will at least act as if she wants me in her knickers.”

  “Oh, she’s a pretty capable actress. I’m sure she’ll be able to pull it off somehow.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you, Hannah,” Louis growled. “Blimey, what a waste! Say, you don’t think that I could . . . nah! Forget it. I’ve tried conversions before—I even did two simultaneously. But, alas, they never seem to stick.”

  He was straightening his collar, which had been mussed during the altercation with Marcella’s PA, when another thought hit him.

  “By the way, sometime in the next couple of days, see if you can get the name of Marcella’s publicist from that cow she’s got guarding her. Anyone who can keep the lid on that secret should be on my payroll, too, don’t you think? Not that I’ve got anything to hide from the press, right?” He gave me a wink. “But don’t feel you have to go ‘beyond the call of duty�
�� to get it, know what I mean? Um, that is, unless Marcella’s involved. Then call me. That way, at least I can watch.”

  I called him, alright, but from his expression, it was not a name he had ever been tagged with before.

  At least, not to his face. Before this project was over, however, other voices would be joined with mine in a hallelujah chorus against Louis’s lunacy.

  Including that of his idol, Sir Barnaby Chadwick.

  Sir Barnaby had earned his knighthood the old-fashioned way: one Old Vic play and classic BBC television production at a time. As a teen, Louis’s first taste of legitimate theatre had been Sir Barnaby’s stately yet electrifying rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and, according to Louis, it was why he’d chosen acting as a career—and why he had agreed to do Killer Instincts in the first place: because the director had been able to get Barnaby to sign on as well, for the role of the father to Louis’s character.

  It was also why Louis was letting his insecurities get the better of him. The last thing he wanted to do was blow this opportunity to impress his idol. That said, after introducing himself to Barnaby, Louis made pointed jokes at everyone else’s expense—Marcella, the movie’s screenwriter, Begley Holt, even one of the film’s many hovering associate producers. He then proceeded to chastise the director, Ben Grisham, in front of the whole production crew for allowing the extras, many of them locals, to strike up conversations with the cast’s leads.

  His audacity had the opposite effect on Barnaby: the commanding but soft spoken man, who always went out of his way to treat the whole cast and crew with an appreciative deference, blanched visibly and retreated to his trailer at every break.

  Needless to say, this affected Louis immensely. In fact, it made him work all the harder to prove that he was a star, with a capital S.

  The cast and crew, all one hundred or so of them, willingly granted him that capital S. In fact, they did so every time they called him “Shithead” behind his back.

  They treated me no better, particularly since it was I who did Louis’s bidding. At the start of each day, I was sent forth to negotiate a fresh set of irrational demands, each more outrageous than those made the day before, with Ben, a director who was legendary for the insightful way in which he dealt with his actors, and who enjoyed the undisputed loyalty of those lucky enough to be a part of his crew.

  To my immense regret, in time Ben grew to dread the sight of me. It wasn’t the request for certain delicacies from Louis’s favorite Los Angeles restaurants that had him scowling even before I’d opened my mouth; or Louis’s demand for a larger, more ostentatious trailer than the other actors, tricked out with, in Louis’s words, “the necessary accoutrements to turn this hellhole into a livable ambiance,” including a Cal-King Dux bed with the requisite 700-count sheets and four cashmere throws on top of that, and of course, a Universal gym. No, it was Louis’s whim for the daily delivery of water from the frigid prehistoric Crater Lake some 121 miles away—which was to be specifically used for his daily bath, since its unique “oxygenation” was supposedly blessed with incredible healing and age-reducing properties—that sent Ben over the top.

  “He wants to sit in fucking ice water? What, is that supposed to be some New Age way to shrink that supposedly mammoth cock of his, or something?” yelled Ben, running a hand through what was left of his graying hair. “Jeez, that boss of yours is some whack job! Look, I don’t believe in shooting the messenger, so I’m going to level with you: feel free to grab a bucket and pull as much ‘special water’ as you need out of the river there.”

  He jerked his head toward the raging Rogue thirty feet beyond. “In fact, you can even tell him that I told you to do it, if you want. At this point, I really don’t give a shit! Hell, Clive was my first choice for his role anyway. And guess what? Clive’s current project was just put on hold. So, if Louis walks, it’s a win-win for me.”

  Of course, I cared. And so did all of Team Louis, who would blame me if I allowed Louis to be miffed enough to quit over some damn lake water.

  So I nodded resignedly to this alternative, bit my tongue about Louis’s next request, and headed down the road in search of it, or rather, them, myself: members of the Yahooskin American Indian tribe, who were known for the uplifting mysticism (not to mention the innate eroticism) of their incantations.

  Louis had dreamed up this latest harebrained scheme after talking to the most buxom and definitely most star-struck member of the local catering service. “She claims their mantras are pure aphrodisiacs! Oh, and most importantly, they should help realign my chakras.” He sighed, as if exhausted from just the thought of going another night in karmic turmoil.

  “Louis, you’ve got to be kidding! Where am I supposed to find these—these—what did you call them?”

  “Ya-hoo-skins,” he mouthed patiently. “Try the local phone book.”

  “Under what, ‘Indian tribes’? ‘Native Americans’? ‘Native tribes’?”

  “Bollocks, Hannah, how am I supposed to know? Just Google them!”

  Impatiently, he shooed me out the door. “I’d like at least two of those people here, no later than ten every night, as soon as possible. They are to stay at least an hour. That should exorcise the negative karma of this godforsaken place, particularly if the chanters are women . . . yes, I think that would be best. And virgins, preferably.”

  Oh, sure. It’s not like I have anything better to do than to turn your trailer into a playpen for an underage harem!

  Instead, I’d conjure up a couple of old tribal chieftains in the hopes that Louis would change his mind within a night or two. End of story.

  Borrowing a four-wheel-drive vehicle from the production fleet, I drove the fourteen miles of rough hairpin turns to the closest place with a land line and a local phone book, a tiny country store known as the Gas-n-Gulp.

  That treacherous dirt lane might have been the road less traveled by others, but I was coming to know it intimately. Maybe it was the river, or its roaring waterfalls, or the adjacent cliffs, or the tall pines that enveloped the location—or perhaps even Louis’s bad karma—but obviously something was repelling my cell phone service, and rarely could I make out the frantic phone calls I received almost hourly from Randy, Genevieve and Monique. I found it easier to check in on a daily basis via the Gas-n-Gulp’s land line, for which I was charged a dollar a minute by the store’s enterprising owner, who was smart enough to recognize a desperate sap when he saw one.

  He laughed his head off when I asked him whether or not he knew any Yahooskins willing to come to the set after hours and chant.

  “Lady, what, are you drunk or something? That casino of theirs rakes in tons of dough. Hell, if they wanted to, they could finance several movies!”

  Shaking his head in disbelief, he wrote down the telephone number of the tribal council, then headed over to cut a piece of rhubarb pie for the only other customer in the joint, a balding, bearded guy who had walked in not long after I had.

  The tribal council’s telephone receptionist seemed to take my request for chanters seriously—that is, until I meekly added that, despite the late hour in which the chanters were to appear, it was preferable that they be underage females. After calling me a sicko and threatening me with a lawsuit, she hung up.

  I could now tell Louis I’d done my best to honor his request.

  Next I had to appease a very agitated Randy, who warned me that “Marcella’s people have been on the horn, threatening to toss out some embarrassing rumors about Louis if he’s the source of any dirt at all about her fuckability. Or lack thereof.”

  “Look,” I shot back, “I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Okay, it’s true she shot him down. But you know Louis! Do you think he’d want anyone to know that happened? Besides, he’s barely talking to anyone on the set, not even Ben! Besides, Marcella had her reasons—”

  “Yeah, I’ll say.” Randy snickered. “Hey, has she come onto you yet? Be honest now.”

  “Don’t get na
sty, Randy, or I’ll hang up,” I said darkly.

  “Okay, just wondering, no harm in asking, right? But listen, Hannah—the ball’s in your court. Louis needs this one. But if Marcella gets pissed enough and walks, Louis may get canned over it. Jasper’s already gotten an earful from Ben, so make sure Louis keeps it together.”

  Hanging up, I groaned and plopped down into the portion of the store considered its “diner”: a couple of rickety tables surrounded by a few plastic chairs, where the store’s owner made casseroles created from whatever canned goods were due to expire that month.

  At the next table sat the chubby bearded bald guy. He wore tan Dockers and a worn plaid shirt stretched so thinly over his large belly that the buttons were straining not to pop. I’d seen him before. In fact, many times. Gulping down that day’s blue plate special along with whatever pie had been defrosted, he’d pretend to read the same magazine he carried with him at all times: some fly-fishing rag, which was always turned to the same page. It made me wonder if he was in fact listening in on my embarrassingly exasperated remarks to Team Louis.

  Maybe I was wrong. I mean, hadn’t I also seen him hanging around the craft table on the set, too?

  Aware that I was staring at him, he looked up and grinned broadly, obviously recognizing me, too.

  “From the shoot, right?” he said, as if reading my mind.

  “Yeah,” I nodded. It was great to see another Industry warrior. “I’m Hannah.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand, wiping it on his khakis first. “Jerry.”

  “You too, Jerry.” I took it warily.

  Why was he here, and not on the set, like everyone else?

  “It’s getting hairy over there, isn’t it?” he said conspiratorially.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “Par for the course, I guess.” From the snickers that followed in Louis’s wake—and therefore, in mine—I had learned to be cautious of everyone else on the set, including the other PAs. I wasn’t about to break that rule now, even while I was away from that insanity, if only for a few minutes. “Why? What do you mean?”