The Writer's Cut

by Eric Idle

  She was a very pale young lady with sparkling orange lips and flecks of red highlights in her hair. Her ears were triple pierced, giving her an exotic Arabian appeal. She had a single stud in her left nostril and I wondered vaguely if that meant something, in the current sub culture. Our meeting had been set by Stephanie Sharp.

  We were lunching at The Grill in Beverly Hills. In a back booth, no less. Dharma, for that she claims is her name, must have laid some serious green on Michael the Maitre D, for this is above the title seating only. Unless you run a studio. I can see Mike Medavoy working on his Crab Louie. He glances at me as I pass, trying to place me. Michael leads us to the booth with a flourish.

  “Enjoy,” he says, winking at Dharma.

  I decide she has something on him, as during lunch he keeps glancing over and smiling nervously at her. She carefully ignores him. Her attention is solely on me. Her victim. Her prey. It’s flattering and a little scary. I wonder about the sexual possibilities in the situation. This is not a date, and yet she is an attractive young woman, and we are lunching together and, as we know, I haven’t had anything for a while now. Not since Tish left her underwear so provocatively on my bed and fucked off.

  A tiny silver Sony tape recorder is picking up the rattle of cutlery, its red eye flashing at us, as we order from the large menus. She glances at the publisher’s handout. She hasn’t read the book yet, she confesses.

  How could she? I haven’t written it yet.

  I would like to tell her the truth but it’s going to be fun lying anyway. I order a cocktail and then some wine and determine to enjoy this new game. Screenwriter’s don’t get interviewed. But I’m a celebrity author.

  James Woods is shown into a booth across the way. He nods at me. I’m happy to see Dharma notices this.

  “Hi Jimmy,” I say. He hasn’t a clue what my name is, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is I Jimmied him.

  “Let’s get to the famous names,” she segues.

  “If we must,” I answer coyly.

  She is looking at me frankly, open eyed. I think she has already decided what is going to happen.

  “I hear there are a lot of famous names dropped in this book in some pretty compromising sexual positions?”

  “Compromising, but not pretty,” I joke.

  She ignores this. My habit for humour she finds tedious, she tells me later. Much later, after she has squeezed everything else out of me. Right now she is laying bait. She is after some big fish.

  “You confess to having sex with some major stars.”

  “I would say I boast about it.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Largely.”

  “You have had sex with these stars?”

  “The character in my book has,” I say carefully.

  This is the line Legal Affairs at Pangloss have directed me to take. Good name for a sexy book that, by the way Legal Affairs. Kinda Grishamy. I made a note of it. I love writing titles. I have hordes of them. Slender is the Knight. A Tsar is Born. Unexpectedly Available. I’ve got hundreds.

  “So who are these famous people?”

  Pangloss are very aware of potential legal complications, but I feel completely safe in the knowledge that I haven’t written anything yet, and, when I do, I intend to lie anyway. So what’s to worry?

  “Well, that would be telling.”

  “But you invite us to speculate.” She holds up the hand-out.

  “Pangloss Press invites you to speculate. I’m merely the author.”

  “Can you give me a hint?” she says.

  “You know, if you read the book it’s pretty evident.”

  “I can’t wait to read the book.” She sounds genuinely enthused. Of course by now she has utterly decided my fate. I am prey. She is going to fuck me ragged. But I don’t know this yet. Indeed, as so often with women, I actually think it is my idea. She looks intently at me, like she’s going to guess my Star sign.

  “I’m an Aries,” I say.

  I think I catch her there.

  “I knew it,” she says.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this at my very first interview but I reach under the table and squeeze her knee. She smiles, and moves her knees open.

  Is this possibly happening to me?

  “I’m very compatible with Aries,” she says.

  Turns out she’s compatible with the entire fucking horoscope, but I won’t learn that for a while.

  Cut to: My house. Later.

  I’m lying on my back on my orange shag floor carpet and I’m inside her. She is squatting on me, holding the tape recorder to my face, occasionally moving her hips. She squeezes me deliciously from time to time with her vaginal muscles. Keeping me interested. She has great muscle control. I am still high as a kite from the tiny joint she produced from her red plastic bag and which, now I come to think of it, I smoked largely alone.

  “Tell me those names then.”

  She pulls out a tiny bottle and places a pinch of glittering white powder under my nose. I defy anyone in my position, in all the honey traps of the world, with all the CIA truth serums, to do better.

  What could I do?

  What could I say?

  Dear Reader, I lied.

  I kissed and told. Beyond my wildest dreams. Beyond your wildest dreams. And well beyond the borders of veracity. Spread-eagled below her with a Sony recorder in my mouth and cocaine up my nose I lay underneath her and lied through my teeth.

  Oh it was glorious. I fucked and told, while she the recording angel poised above me, encircling me, giving me the warmth and comfort of her glorious lower body, occasionally encouraging me with her hands and mouth on my secret places, she sat on me, taping everything for posterity on her little silver Sony. In full clear digital audio. In broadcast quality. In stereo. Interminably.

  You could almost hear her pubic hairs caressing mine. Oh dear God, dear Reader, it was shameful, it was horrendous, it was fucking magnificent. A fuckfest afternoon filled with fun, with feeling and on into the evening with Ecstasy, and even, yes, with Irony, for with a shudder of total recall I remember lying naked inside her, seriously answering questions on comedy. Oh no. Oh no no no.

  I spilled the beans, I spilled the brandy, I spilled my seed. She kept me happy, horny and constantly improvising on the sexual habits of some very famous names. It was incredible. It was inspirational. I was well and truly fucked.

  When I woke next day to the incessant ringing of the phone, with my face on the rug and a growing hangover of monstrous proportions and Morty offering me an immediate flight to London, that is when I panicked. And fled. To London. I was going to hell anyway. I might as well go First Class.

  “Dharma is raving about you,” says Stephanie. “She feeds things to Marilyn Beck’s column, and now she’s on to Jann Wenner about a piece for Rolling Stone. Oh, by the way, did you do a radio interview with her?”

  “Sort of.”

  Sort of? I gave a serious in depth interview on comedy while porking the interviewer.

  “Well they want to run it on NPR.”

  I’m too shocked to say anything.

  “They have the tape recording.”

  At least it’s not television!

  OMG.

  “We have doubled the print order again, and I think I can get you lunch with Liz Smith.”

  Dear God, will I have to sleep with everyone?

  4

  How much should a man reveal of his sexual history? Are there boundaries for men, but not for women? Is there anything that ought not to be revealed about the intimate acts between consenting adults in the world of today’s publishing? Is there any limit to what we consider off-limits, or Have we gone too far?

  These are not my thoughts, dear long-suffering Reader.

  These are the thoughts of the LA Times.

  On their Op Ed page, no less.

  In a long and vituperative editorial headed

  Shame Dropping

  When freedom of speech flies in the face of go
od taste.

  in which I am well and truly roasted.

  By name. And by picture.

  “The Writer’s Cut is probably the most shameless book ever to emerge from American publishing.”

  Pangloss are delighted.

  Thrilled.

  “Such a public outing has undoubtedly assured the success of the book,” says Richard Hume. “We are increasing the print run. We’re sending out a new Press Release and we’re leading with the LA Times quote.”

  Shameless.

  “But they are incredibly rude about me.”

  “Who cares what they say, Stanley, they mention the book eight times. We have been inundated by requests for interviews.”

  “But they haven’t read the book.”

  “Of course they haven’t read the book. No one in the media reads books. They haven’t time. You will be interviewed by a hundred people, and not a single one of whom will have read anything except the short blurb we send them and some of them not even that. These are professional interviewers. That’s what they do all day. The only point for them is if they can make a story from it. And for them, this one has everything. They’re lapping it up. Sex and fame, Stanley, the twin carburettors of American publicity. We have quadrupled our print run. We’re currently at 120,000 and we have ordered new paper from Sweden. It’s being shipped today.”

  Wow Swedish paper. Perhaps the ship will sink.

  I’m proud and insulted in equal parts.

  The fact that I’m pissed at the LA Times for condemning me without reading my book is somewhat mitigated by my appreciation of the irony that there is no book for them to read.

  And at least the book I haven’t yet written for them not to have read is going to be a Bestseller. It says so in the papers.

  I think it is high time to get down to writing my novel, now that everyone wants to read it, and I actually get to my desk before I am interrupted by a barrage of phone calls. My friends all want to know if I have mentioned them. Some remind me of stories I may have forgotten and ask me if I’ve included them. Especially the girls. I get the distinct impression some are actually hoping to be included.

  Am I missing something here? People want to be outed?

  An old flame, Willow, reminds me of a time in Cannes where I took her to a hotel on the coast and fucked her out of the window.

  “Do you remember?” she says. “The beach was crowded with tourists and I leaned forward with my hands on the sill, looking at the view, stretching my legs and backing into you, moving my ass, grinding you.”

  I swear this never happened but Willow is giving me a boner with her phoner.

  “Do you remember what happened next?” she whispers wickedly.

  “No.” How could I? I’m fairly certain this didn’t happen.

  “Chloe came in, and seduced us both, with a strong joint and a bottle of wine. I remember your face Stanley, just looking up in disbelief to see her kissing me with one hand on your cock. Then we tumbled around on the bed for hours in a delicious tangle of lips and limbs. And afterwards you watched us take a bath together, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, with just a slight movement beneath the water where we touched.”

  Willow swears this is true but it never happened. She must have me confused with some other writer, but it gives me a pleasant buzz to hear her talking dirty on the phone. Like all writers I am easily and gratefully distracted and the fact of my sudden celebrity is a pleasant novelty for me to savor. What with one thing and another all I have managed to write by the end of the morning is: Geena Davis? Daryl Hannah?? Meg Ryan???

  I’m going to have to work a lot harder.

  Or stop having phone sex with ex-girlfriends.

  My after lunch nap is interrupted by a phone call from the PR lady of a very famous female rock singer. She is blonde with great tits and that’s all I dare say here. I swear to God this is true: her PR woman offers me cash and oral sex if I will include her client in the book.

  Can you beat that? I am being bribed to lie about having sex with a celebrity.

  Morty is thrilled. His phone is ringing off the hook. The film rights are being hotly disputed by half the industry. Jeffrey Katzenburg has been on personally. Only Disney has abstained.

  “You can’t put Michael Eisner in there somehow can you?” says Morty.

  “Morty I am not going to pretend to have had sex with Michael Eisner.”

  “Pretend? I thought this shit was true?”

  He’s sharp, that Morty.

  “Of course it’s true. But not the Michael Eisner thing.”

  “How about Sex at Disneyland?”

  “That’s a great angle, Morty.”

  “Can you have been boffing Christina Aguilera in the car park?”

  “Why don’t you write it Morty?”

  “Hey, kiddo, just trying to help. Don’t get shitty.”

  Shitty? I was being serious.

  *

  The USA Today article was fine. Dharma’s radio interview, with my carefully phrased answers (carefully phrased because I was inside my interviewer at the time) was good, but the denunciation in the LA Times is the capper. It has secured me my fifteen minutes of fame.

  I am due on Leno in half an hour.

  I am sitting in my dressing room with Luke from Lucaro doing my hair and telling me all about Brooke Shields and the cast from Will and Grace, when Jay himself pops his beaming face round the door and wishes me well.

  “Heard it’s a great book. Can’t wait to read it. I’m not in it, am I? Just kidding. Have a great show. You’re on after Tom Hanks.”

  Oh. My. God.

  “My next guest,” says Jay, “is a great writer here in LA, who has just ripped the roof right off Hollywood. This book is so hot Wolfgang Puck is using it to cook on.”

  Laughter

  “This book is so hot - the jacket’s by Armani.”

  Hoots. He smiles his sideways smile.

  “Let me tell you,” says Jay “this book is so hot, even the writer’s getting laid!”

  Bu-bum goes the drummer, in that way they have.

  “Thank you. And here he is, my good friend Stanley Hart!”

  Tremendous applause and I’m on. Tom Hanks leans across and shakes my hand. I’ve never met him but he says “Hello, Stanley” like we’re old buddies.

  “You’re looking good,” says Leno.

  Indeed I am good tonight. Tom laughs at everything I say. The audience laugh. Jay is laughing, and there’s a nice big close up of the book jacket, specially printed by Pangloss. At the commercial break Tom says he and Steven have discussed how to option my novel. He is referring to Spielberg.

  “I think it could go to a series” he says. “Steven wants it for a movie but I like the HBO thing. Stanley Tucci could be you.”

  Stanley Tucci? Sure he’s funny, but is he good looking enough to be me?

  “What about Cruise?” I ask, careful to use only his second name.

  “I don’t think he does television,” says Tom.

  *

  Richard Hume just called and told me my book is now officially a Best Seller. Amazon have taken advance orders of 120,000 for The Writer’s Cut.

  I didn’t even know it was listed on the internet. How can they be selling it?

  I haven’t written it yet.

  “After Leno, advance orders have gone through the roof. The initial print order,” he says, “is now at 250,000.”

  Can you beat that? Not even published and it’s a flat out genuine run-away hit.

  I am seriously considering flight.

  Richard Hume is so overjoyed he doesn’t hassle me for delivery, which he has been doing on a daily basis for two weeks now. I have completely run out of excuses. I’m amazed he believes anything I say.

  Today he is hyper.

  “Our reps came back after your Leno show and told us the retailers are lapping it up, what with the LA Times scandal and all the publicity. They said we aren’t printing nearly enough.”

&nbs
p; Wow. That is serious. Normally publishers’ reps come back and moan and mutter that they can’t get Barnes and Noble to take more than a dozen of any particular title, but here they were ordering my book by the box load and asking for displays and guaranteeing windows as if it were a Grisham or Le Carré. This is music to a publisher’s ear. Loud music at that. Richard Hume says Pangloss are worried that with the Beach market approaching, if this book “goes through the roof,” as they all expect, they won’t be able to reprint in time. Publishers hate running out of books more than anything. Worse to them than unsold books are unprinted books that they might have sold. So to make sure they have enough copies, they are toying with the idea of doubling the current order. That would be half a million books. Even though they don’t yet have the text. What do I think?

  What do I think? I can’t think. I’m completely paralyzed. I think nothing. None of it matters. What matters is that I don’t have a book to give them. They are selling something that doesn’t exist. I have a Ponzi novel on my hands. Even I can see there’s going to have to be a crunch. Someone is going to have to tell them. But dear Lord, not me. Not now. I’m too busy. I’m too busy because my book is so successful. I’m too busy being famous. I’m too busy giving interviews and being photographed for fancy magazines.

  “Hold up the jacket and smile.”

  Apparently you can judge a book by the cover. You can certainly sell it, because everyone wants mine. I’m rushed from studio to studio with a hastily knocked-up mock-up of the cover of my unwritten epic.

  It’s a pair of scissors.

  Perfect metaphor, don’t you think? If my balls were included. But everyone loves the image, a pair of orange scissors on a plain white background with in very elegant type The Writer’s Cut. Then underneath it says A Stanley Hay Novel.

  I have a possessory credit on a novel! That was my lawyers doing, apparently. It’s a first for a first time writer.

  They all love it. The lawyers are pumped, the publishers are pumped and my agent is on Cloud Nine. I’m everywhere. Even Mickey Mikado wants to option it.

  I’m holding the jacket up on Larry King and Larry, in his red suspenders, is joshing me.