by Robert Cort
There was no time to test the picture to see if it was over the top. By this afternoon Deluxe Laboratories had to strike seventeen hundred release prints—prints that would literally be wet when the shippers packed them into film cans and sent them to theaters. The rush was necessary because the movie’s release was only eight days away. Andy had begged him to delay until January to take the time to market the film properly, even offering to work without salary when money ran out. But AJ had refused, believing the ghoulish spirit in the week before Halloween created the ideal climate for Maniac.
In spite of the time crunch, America knew the movie was coming. Standees in theaters, billboards, bus shelters, and newspaper ads teased, “The Maniac Is Loose.” In a potent radio spot a young girl screamed, “No, don’t . . . please, don’t . . . no . . .” followed by five agonized seconds of silence; then the announcer intoned, “On October twenty-fourth, the Maniac is loose in your neighborhood.” Deprived of actual film footage, Andy had filmed the character talking directly to a TV audience and superimposed his image over three teens walking home from the mall. In a demented hiss—ending with a kiss—the Maniac apologized for the things he intended to do. A scythe swept down toward the heads of the unsuspecting youths. After a bloodcurdling cry, the screen faded to red.
When he arrived at the office after the screening, AJ grabbed NRG’s tracking report. The campaign, especially the TV spot, had revved up the testosterone of young male moviegoers to a fever pitch. Their awareness of The Coney Island Maniac stood at 91 percent, definite interest at 70, with the bulk of the advertising to run in the five days prior to release. The movie was scary as hell, the audience primed. Given the modest negative cost—even with the additional ILM work—all he needed was forty million dollars at the box office. He fiddled with the numbers. But if they could do fifty million . . .
“Boss, we’re screwed.”
AJ saw anguish on Andy’s face. “What now?”
“NBC pulled the spot off the air. Their head of Standards and Practices got complaints from the local affiliates saying our commercial was too violent. They want a substitute.”
“We don’t have one.”
“I know,” Faddiman replied. “NBC’s forty percent of our buy till opening.”
The Challenger was one thing, but this. . . . “I want to see the joker.”
“I thought you’d say that. We’ve got an appointment in Burbank.”
An hour later Carl Lundegren ushered the two J2 executives into his office. A Marine brush cut and steel-rimmed glasses didn’t augur well for clemency, but AJ respectfully explained how important it was to his company to keep the commercial playing on NBC. He could see the man’s impatience, so he ended his appeal by arguing that the spot wasn’t offensive to the overwhelming majority of viewers.
“Mr. Jastrow, I could blow smoke up your ass, but that’s a waste of our time.”
“Mr. Lundegren, maybe I wasn’t clear how critical—”
“Forget it. Your spot’s got our affiliates on the rag.”
“This means everything—”
“My bosses care a shitload more about their happiness than about your fucking company.”
AJ searched for the guy from Candid Camera.
“What kind of changes do you want so we can run the commercial?” Andy asked.
“Tame the actor’s performance. He’s a cut-rate Dracula. Then lose the scythe, the scream, and the red background.”
AJ grunted. “Excuse me, Carl, that’s the whole spot.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
AJ rose to leave. “And no offense, asshole, but you’ve fucked us royally.”
Lundegren laughed. “Hey, I don’t make the rules.”
“Yes, you do,” Andy countered. “I’ll change the direction of the scythe so that it’s not aimed directly at the kids.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll replace the red background with orange.”
“Make it blue.”
“Black,” Andy compromised.
Lundegren clapped. “Now we’re talking turkey. But you’ve got to change the cocksucker’s scream.”
“Aaaahhhhh!”
Andy’s demonstration brought Carl’s secretary in on the run. “It’s okay, Flo,” he assured her. “We’re negotiating.”
AJ could see this was what Lundegren lived for. Faddiman tried again. “Aaahhhh!”
Thumbs down. “Nah, still too scary.”
“Fuck it, I’ll try,” AJ piped up. “Uhhhhhggggg!”
“Too guttural.” Lundegren stood up as if he were backstage at the Met, but what escaped his pipes was more squeak than scream, unlikely to arouse a G-rated audience.
AJ and Lundegren screamed at each other like the tenor and baritone in a bad opera. Finally, AJ couldn’t go on. That his future had come to rest in the potty mouth of Carl Lundegren was a joke worthy of Hollywood. Years of tension shook him to the core, inciting a laughing jag so primitive he melted onto the floor, more protoplasm than producer. His body heaved until his toes were shaking and tears soaked his face.
“Fuck me!” Lundegren turned white, certain that AJ was suffering an epileptic seizure. “Open your mouth!” He shoved in a pencil to keep AJ from swallowing his tongue.
“I’m fffine!” AJ spit it out, spraying Carl. He tried apologizing, but couldn’t force anything intelligible through his hiccups.
Lundegren realized that the joke was at his expense. “Get the fuck out!”
Driving back to J2, AJ broke down again and pulled into an Arby’s parking lot to recover. A song from his youth popped into AJ’s mind—“Que Sera, Sera.” The hell with the spot—they had tried their best. Whatever will be, will be.
Steph concentrated as if the words coming from the cassette deck of her Volvo conveyed the wisdom of the ages. “Cocinar en el horno a cuatro cientos . . .” Bake in a four-hundred-degree oven. She mimicked the Spanish perfectly.
The kudos for the Siamese Cat had whetted her appetite for professional success. Her new idea was to reinvent south-of-the-border cuisine for L.A. diners, so she was embarking tomorrow on a two-month trip to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama to learn the techniques and recipes of provincial chefs. But after lunching with her daughter and hearing about the importance of the opening of The Coney Island Maniac, Steph decided to stop by AJ’s house to wish him luck before she left.
He loved her surprise present. “These are just about the only good things left from the old days,” he observed, relishing the last bite of his Pink’s hot dog. “Then there’s you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You’re better.”
His flirtation caught her unawares. Steph emptied her second beer. “I was a size four. Now I’m an eight. But what the hell?” She polished off the last hot dog.
“Remember how you used to inhale those ribs at the Formosa?”
“Jesus! You’re a stroll down memory lane.”
“How about this?” AJ got up, blew the dust off an LP, and switched on the turntable.
Steph was a sucker for Judy Collins—and she was as tipsy as AJ was nostalgic. But there was one name that would cool him down. “Ricky told me records and tapes will be obsolete in five years,” Steph said. “It’s all going to be these compact discs. Talking to him these days . . . it’s like listening to a guest on Wall Street Week.”
He ignored her diversion. “Come dance with me.”
“No . . .” Reluctantly, she got to her feet. “I think someone’s missing his young girlfriend.”
“Not in the least. And you should have told me I was making a fool of myself.”
“You weren’t. Everyone thought you and Megan made a cute couple.”
“It was against the laws of nature.” He pulled her close.
“What’s gotten into you, besides the brew? I thought you’d be crazed with the movie opening.”
“Maybe it’s you.” He stroked her hair, then gently kissed her lips. “Definitely you.”
Step
h wondered why she wasn’t nervous, why she wasn’t running for the hills. “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” Even Judy urged her on.
At seven A.M. AJ teed off—still tasting last night. He had wanted Steph not because he had once lost her or was horny or on the rebound, but because it felt right. Now, walking down the fairway, he surged with optimism, which was a terrible sign because he never felt good on opening day. His attempt to get anxious by conjuring empty theaters and booing audiences failed. He played better than expected for a man whose professional life was on the line. But on the sixth hole things got real. He hit a perfect six-iron to the par three. It was in line to the pin, and AJ was milliseconds from his first hole in one. But the ball struck the flagstick, ricocheted to the right, and plopped into the sand trap in the middle of the green. That kind of luck was more like it.
He quit after nine and had just returned home when the phone rang. It was Mel Brodsky, J2’s head of publicity in New York. “You know where I’m standing?”
AJ heard blaring horns and jackhammers. “Not in your office.”
“The corner of Fifty-fourth and Seventh.”
“Outside the Ziegfeld?” It was the midtown Manhattan theater playing The Coney Island Maniac.
“Exactly, but I’ll bet you don’t know what I’m looking at, because I’m looking at it and can’t believe my eyes.”
AJ did a quick calculation, but it didn’t make sense. It was just past noon in the East and the first show wasn’t until one P.M. “Do you intend to tell me?”
“A thousand disgustingly dressed, pimply-faced adolescents. They should all be in school, but they’re not—they’re standing in a line around the block! The first show’s already sold out. It’s bedlam. I wish you were here. The manager said we’re going to do forty grand today alone!”
Andy had convinced AJ to let him book Maniac into the National Theater in Westwood, even though the place was a barn. Now every one of its twelve hundred seats was filled for the seven P.M. show with the same kind of moviegoers Mel Brodsky had described. Business in the East, Midwest, and South approached capacity, but for AJ the acid test was seeing for himself how the film played. To save J2, Maniac needed more than a strong opening—it required a long run fueled by repeat business. That meant word of mouth was crucial.
So he paid particular attention when the Maniac stuck his hand down the throat of the captain of the football team and pulled out his heart—bloody and beating. The crowd roared. When Bobby Manelo ate it and belched, they cheered, “Man-i-ac! Man-i-ac!” AJ found himself cheering along. And when the Maniac vomited up the heart and ate the pieces—slurping the veins like strands of spaghetti—it was like watching a tornado barrel into town.
“Whoa!” Their ferocity impressed Jess. “NRG can save their cards tonight.” She squeezed her dad’s hand. “It’s going all the way, isn’t it?”
AJ nodded. “Keep watching. Let me know what happens.”
Slipping into the lobby, he started figuring . . . they might do six million dollars tonight alone, which meant seventeen or eighteen for the weekend. He heard cheering from inside. Jesus! If the film played this well everywhere, the bottom line was . . . the bottom line was: stop calculating.
Through the glass that fronted the street AJ saw the line for the nine forty-five show. The kids looked jazzed. They expected to have a blast—and they would. And it was because of him. His imagination had given birth to Maniac and his perseverance and guts had kept it alive. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
The youthful theater manager interrupted AJ’s solo victory dance. “That’s awesome, man—an instant classic. It’ll play forever. When’s the sequel?”
The question lifted AJ to a new level of reality, as if there was any reality to the movie business. “The summer of eighty-eight.”
“That’s so cool! What’s it called?”
“The Maniac Is Back.”
Stoked, the young man walked away to spread the news.
Jess ran out to announce that the destruction of the roller coaster had generated the biggest reaction yet. While everyone high-fived, AJ dreamed. In his vision the J2 logo stood proudly next to Paramount’s mountain, Universal’s globe, Fox’s klieg lights, and MGM’s lion.
The Maniac was back.
1997–1998
THE
UNCIVIL
WAR
CHAPTER 46
When it came to klieg lights, AJ was moth to flame. At first sight of the beams crisscrossing in the night sky he powered down the window of his stretch limousine, only to get smacked by a zero-degree windchill. Not to worry—a thousand people lined Chicago’s Michigan Avenue to salute the opening of the most outrageous movie theater built in America in the last half century—a theater he’d inspired and paid for. Exiting the car to a barrage of flashbulbs, AJ reached out his hand for his wife. Steph stepped forward bundled in a black mink, her hair gracefully gray. He barely allowed her time to absorb the scene before whispering, “What do you think?”
Before her rose an imposing sandstone pyramid around which architect Tikvi Andasaang had wrapped more than a mile of polished titanium shaped to look like a tangle of thirty-five-millimeter film strips. Bombarded by strobe lights, the strips created the illusion that the film spooled continuously. A black silk curtain was draped strategically over the marquee. AJ kicked at the ice on the pavement until she spoke. “It’s stunning.”
His sigh of relief escaped in a puff. “You’re not just saying that?”
“I love it.”
He romped ahead like a kid taking his best friend to a secret hideaway. “Come on, let me show you the really neat stuff.”
The metallic walls in the lobby sloped majestically to a shimmering crystal chandelier suspended a football field above. Below the glass-brick floor was a lower lobby serving seven theaters, to which moviegoers descended on a pair of sweeping escalators. In the main theater the screen was as big as one in an old drive-in, with a sound system and acoustics that matched those of an opera house. Above the eight hundred stadium-styled seats hung a row of glass-fronted luxury suites. The occupants could adjust the sound and climate, phone for delivery of food and drinks, and, if the movie was a bummer, play the latest video games.
AJ stood center stage. “Now I understand why men build monuments. This is a rush.”
The audience delighted in his joy—and his creation.
“When I was growing up, the most thrilling night was the night we went to the movies. Theaters were palaces. At J-Squared we believe that people still wish for that experience, so it’s our plan to construct flagship theaters in major American cities. We proudly chose Chicago as our inaugural site because I spent a happy decade of my life here as a refugee from Hollywood.”
AJ gestured to the box in which Steph sat next to Mayor Richard Daley. “But there’s a second reason for me to celebrate. Those of you who have visited Los Angeles may have tasted my wife’s cooking. In my unbiased opinion, her restaurants are the best in the city. Stephanie and I have been married since 1958—with time off for my crazy behavior. If you subtract those fourteen years and two months, then tonight is our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
A live television feed from the front of the theater appeared on the screen behind AJ. “In honor of that occasion, I’d like to dedicate this building to a sexy woman, a dear friend—and a great wife.” The curtain over the marquee rose majestically, revealing the theater’s name in electrohieroglyphics: THE STEPHANIE. AJ shouted above the applause, “I can’t see you, Steph, but I hope you’re as happy as I am.”
The house lights dimmed for the premiere of J2’s Lady Icarus, a drama about the first women astronauts. As AJ hurried to join his wife, he heard the opening chords of “Hey Jude” beep from inside his tuxedo pocket. It startled him until he remembered that one of his aides had lent him a Powerline cell phone, which sang rather than rang to signal a call. It was Pete Leventhal in L.A. “Terry Mangiarcina is issuing a ‘sell’ recommendation on our stock this Friday.”
“Can I talk her out of it?”
“Let’s hope so. I arranged a breakfast for tomorrow at the Regency. The jet will fly you to La Guardia at six A.M. Call me after you finish.”
“The Assassin” demanded coffee from the waiter before bothering to say hello to AJ. Terry Mangiarcina had earned her nickname through her brutal critiques of studio mismanagement. With a night-school degree from Temple, coarsely sexy features, and a body that preferred pasta to Pilates, she was pure South Philly. But that hadn’t derailed her from becoming a vice president at the investment firm of Wahlberg & Sparrow and the most influential equity analyst covering the entertainment industry. “I’ve always respected you, Jastrow, because you weren’t like those other self-promoting Wizards of Oz who run Hollywood.”
He offered a wary smile. “Did I catch the past tense?”
“You’ve pissed me off,” she growled. “When J-Squared started, you aimed your movies at the youth market and kept budgets down. It was a smart business plan—and now you’ve abandoned it.”
“We’ve expanded it.”
“By going after adults—an audience your staff can’t hit with a bat. You used to break new directors, but now you throw millions at the A-list. Your budgets have skyrocketed, and so have your risks—case in point, The Older Woman.”
AJ had originated the idea of a love story about a fifty-year-old doctor who marries a girl of twenty-five, only to then fall in love with a woman his age. It had died at the box office. “We’ve already written off that loss, Terry.”
“Hah! Thirty million dollars—poof.”
“We couldn’t find a marketing hook, but it was a fine film and I’d give it the green light again.”
“Those are your emotions talking, Jastrow. And there’s no place for feelings in the film business, not when the investments are of the magnitude they are today.”