Onslow retired, and afterward I brought brandy and glasses on a silver tray.
Welles put to Koerner the need to complete the It’s All True project he had gone to Rio to film. RKO had seen the rushes of hordes of leaping black people at Carnival, gone into shock, and abandoned it. “Three segments,” Welles said. “‘The Jangladeros,’ ‘My Friend Bonito,’ and the story of the samba. If you develop the rest of the footage I sent back, I can have it done by Thanksgiving; for a small additional investment, the studio will have something to show for the money they’ve spent, Nelson Rockefeller will have succeeded in the Good Neighbor effort, and I can go on and make the kind of movies RKO brought me out here to make.”
Koerner avoided Welles’s eyes, drawing lines on the white tablecloth with a dessert fork. “Orson, with all due respect, I don’t think the studio is interested anymore in the kind of movies you were brought out here to make. Kane took a beating, and Ambersons doesn’t look like it’s going to do any better – worse, probably.”
Welles’s smile was a little too quick. “The version of Ambersons that’s in the theaters now bears only passing resemblance to what I shot.”
“I’ve never seen either version. But I saw the report on the preview in Pomona. The audience was bored to tears by your tragedy. ‘People want to laugh,’ they said. The comment cards were brutal.”
“I saw the cards, Charles. Half the audience thought it was the best movie they had ever seen. The ones who didn’t like it spelled ‘laugh’ l-a-f-f. Are you going to let the movies you release be determined by people who can’t spell ‘laugh’?”
“We can’t make money on half-full theaters.”
I went back and forth, clearing the table, as they continued to spar. Haran was busy doing something in the salon. After I helped him clean up, Manolo headed for his bunk, and except for the pilot and me, the crew had turned in. I perched on the taffrail in the dark, smoking a twentieth century cigarette and eavesdropping. So far Koerner had proved himself to be an amusingly perfect ancestor of the studio executives I was familiar with. The type had not changed in a hundred years. Barbara, bored, stretched out on a bench with her head in Mary Koerner’s lap; Mary stroked Barbara’s hair and whispered, “In the morning, when we get to Catalina, you can go swimming off the yacht.”
“Mother!” the girl exclaimed. “Don’t you know? These waters are infested with sharks!”
Mother and daughter squabbled about whether “infested” was proper language for a well-bred young woman to use. They fell silent without reaching a decision. It was full night now, and the moon had risen. Running lights glowed at the top of the masts and at the bowsprit and stern. Aside from the snap of the flag above and the rush of the sea against the hull, there was only the sound of Welles’s seductive voice.
“Charles, listen – I’ve got the original cut of the movie with me – the print they sent down to Rio before the preview. Shifra!” he called out. “Have you got that projector ready?” Welles finished his brandy. “At least have a look at it. You’ll see that it’s a work of merit.”
Barbara perked up. “Please, father! Can we see it?”
Koerner ignored his daughter. “It’s not about the merit, Orson. It’s about money.”
“Money! How can you know what is going to make money if you never take a chance?” His voice was getting a little too loud. Mrs. Koerner looked worried. “What industry in America doesn’t spend some money on experiments? Otherwise the future surprises you, and you’re out of business!”
Haran poked her head out of the doorway. “I have the projector set up, Orson.”
“Orson, I really don’t want – ” Koerner said.
“Come, Charles, you owe me the favor of at least seeing what I made. I promise you that’s all I’ll ask.”
They retired to the salon. I crept up alongside the cabin and peeked in one of the windows. At one end on a teak drop table Haran had set up the projector, at the other a screen. The film canister lay open on the bench seat, and the first reel was mounted on the projector.
“I’m tired,” Mary Koerner said. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in.”
“Mother, I want to see the movie,” Barbara said.
“I think you should go to bed, Barbara,” said Koerner.
“No, let her see it,” Welles said. “It may be a little dark, but there’s nothing objectionable.”
“I don’t want her to see any dark movies,” Koerner said.
Welles clenched his fists. When he spoke it was in a lower tone. “Life is dark.”
“That’s just the point, Orson,” said Koerner, oblivious of the thin ice he was treading. “There’s a war on. People don’t want to be depressed.” As an afterthought, he muttered, “If they ever do.”
“What did you say?”
Koerner, taking a seat, had his back to Welles. He straightened and turned. “What?”
Welles stepped past Haran and, with jerky movements, started to remove the reel from the projector. “Forget it, Shifra. Why waste it on a philistine?”
Barbara broke the charged silence. “What’s a philistine?”
Welles turned to her. “A philistine, my dear girl, is a slightly better-dressed relative of the moron. A philistine wouldn’t know a work of art from a hot dog. And you have the bad fortune to have a complete and utter philistine for a father.”
“I’ve had just about enough – ” Koerner sputtered.
“YOU’ve had enough?” Welles bellowed. “I am SICK to DEATH of you paltry lot of money-grubbing cheats and liars! When have any of you kept your word to me? When? Traitors!” He lurched forward and pitched the projector off the table. Koerner’s wife and daughter flinched at the crash and ducked down the companionway. Haran, who had clearly seen such displays before, did nothing to restrain her boss.
Koerner’s face was red. “That’s it,” he said. “Whatever possessed me to put my family in the way of a madman like you, I am sure I don’t know. If I have anything to say about it, you will never work in Hollywood again.”
“You bastard! I don’t need your permission. I’ll work – ”
Koerner poked a finger into Welles’s heaving chest. “Do you know what they’re saying in every clubroom in the city? They’re saying, ‘All’s well that ends Welles.’ ” He turned to the cowering secretary. “Miss Haran – good night.”
With that he followed his wife and daughter to their room.
Welles stood motionless. I retreated from the window and went up to the pilothouse. “What was that about?” the man on duty asked.
“Mr. Welles just hit an iceberg. Don’t worry. We’re not sinking.”
“Rosebud” is the same in German as in English.
My mother fancied herself an artist. She was involved in Les Cent Lieux, the network of public salons sponsored by Brussels, and so I grew up in a shabby gallery in Schwabing where she exhibited her tired virtualities. I remember one of them was a sculpture of a vagina, in the heart of which a holographic projector presented images that switched whenever a new person happened by. One was of a man’s mouth, a mustache above his lip, whispering the word “rosebud.”
I could tell that this was some archival image, and that the man speaking wasn’t German, but I didn’t know who he was. It wasn’t until I left Munich for NYU film school that I saw Citizen Kane.
I was going to be the artist my mother never was, in no way wedded to old Europe or the godforsaken twentieth century. I was fast and smart and persuasive. I could spin a vision of Art and Commerce to potential backers until they fainted with desire to give me money. By the time I was twenty-six I had made two independent films, The Fortress of Solitude and Words of Christ in Red. Words even won the best original screenplay award in the 2037 Trieste Film Festival. I was a minor name – but I never made a dime. Outside of a coterie, nobody ever saw my movies.
I told myself that it was because the audience were fools, and after all, the world was a mess, what chance did art have in a world in
flames, and the only people who made money were the ones who purveyed pretty distractions. Then time travel came in and whatever else it helped, it was a disaster for films; making commercial movies came to be about who could get Elizabeth Taylor or John Wayne to sign up. I got tired of cruising around below the radar. When I was thirty I took a good hard look in the mirror and found the job with Metro as a talent scout.
That sounds plausible, doesn’t it? But there’s another version of my career. Consider this story: I used to be a good tennis player. But my backhand was weak, and no matter how much I worked on it, it never got to be first rate. In a key moment in every match my opponent would drive the ball to my backhand side, and that damn tape at the top of the net would rise up to snare my return. I could only go so far: I couldn’t pull genius out of thin air. And so the films and disks and the Trieste trophy sat in the back of my closet.
I was transferring the contents of that closet into boxes when the call came from DAA. I had a headache like someone driving spikes into my brain, and Moira the landlord hectored me from the doorway. The only personal possessions I had that were worth auctioning online had already been auctioned, and I was six months in arrears.
My spex, on the bedside table, started beeping. The signal on the temple was flashing.
“I thought your service was cancelled,” Moira said.
“It is.”
I fumbled for the spex, sat spraddle-legged on the floor, and slipped them on. My stomach lurched. The wall of my apartment faded into a vision of Gwenda, my PDA. I had Gwenda programmed to look like Louise Brooks. “You’ve got a call from Vannicom, Ltd.,” she said. “Rosethrush Vannice wants to speak with you.”
I pulled off the spex. “Moira, dear, give me five minutes alone, would you?”
She smirked. “Whoever she is better owe you money.” But she went away.
I pawed through the refuse on the bedside table until I found an unused hypo and shot it into my arm. My heart slammed in my chest and my eyes snapped fully open. I put the spex back on. “Okay,” I said.
Gwenda faded and Vannice’s beautiful face took her place. “Det? Are you there?”
“I’m here. How did you get me?”
“I had to pay your phone bill for you. How about giving me a look at you?”
The bedroom was a testimony to my imminent eviction, and I didn’t want her to see what I looked like. “No can do – I’m using spex. How can I help you?”
“I want to throw some work your way.”
After I had helped Sturges desert the studio, Vannice had told me that I would never work for her again. Her speech might be peppered with lines from Nicholas Ray or Quentin Tarrantino, but her movie lust was a simulation over a ruthless commercial mind, and I had cost the company money. For the last six months it looked like I wouldn’t work for anyone. “I’m pretty busy, Rosethrush.”
“Too busy to pay your phone bill?”
I gave up. “What do you need?”
“I want you to end this Welles runaround,” she said.
I might be on the outs, but the story of the wild goose chase for Orson Welles was all around town. Four times talent scouts had been sent back to recruit versions of Welles, and four times they had failed. “No,” said Welles at the age of 42, despite being barred from the lot at Universal after Touch of Evil. They tried him in 1972, when he was 57, after Pauline Kael trashed his reputation; “No,” he said. Metro even sent Darla Rashnamurti to seduce him in 1938, when he was the 23-year-old wunderkind. Darla and that version of Welles had a pretty torrid affair, but she came back with nothing more than a sex video that drew a lot of hits on the net and some clippings for her book of memories. I knew all this, and Rosethrush knew I knew it, and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I needed the work.
“Can you send me some e-cash?” I asked.
“How much?”
I considered Moira. “Ah – how about ten thousand for now?”
“You’ll have it in an hour. By which time you’ll be in my office. Right?”
“I’ll be there.”
A week later, shaved and briefed and buffed to a high luster, I stood in the center of the time travel stage at DAA. I set down the kit bag that held my 1942 clothes and the portable time travel unit, and nodded to Norm Page up in the control booth. Vannice stood outside the burnished rail of the stage. “No screw-ups this time, right, Det?”
“When have I ever let you down?”
“I could give a list . . .”
“Ten seconds,” said Norm from the booth.
Vannice pointed her finger at me like a gun, dropped her thumb as if shooting it, and spoke out of the corner of her mouth, doing a passable imitation of a man’s voice.
“Rosebud – dead or alive,” she said, and the world disappeared.
The thing that separates me from the run-of-the-mill scout is that I can both plan and improvise. Planning comes first. You must know your mark. You are asking him to abandon his life, and no one is going to do that lightly. You need to approach him at his lowest ebb. But you also want to take him at a time when his talents are undiminished.
This situation had fallen together rather nicely. I went down to the afterdeck and smoked another cigarette. Tobacco, one of the lost luxuries of the twentieth century. Through a slight nicotine buzz I listened to Welles shouting at Haran in the salon, and to the sounds of the demolition of what was left of the projector. I heard her tell him to go to hell. The moon was high now, and the surface of the sea was rippled in long, low swells that slapped gently against the hull as we bore south. Behind us, the lights of San Pedro reflected off our subsiding wake.
A few minutes later Welles came up onto the deck lugging the film canister, which he hefted onto the table. He sat down and stared at it. He picked up the brandy bottle and poured a glass, gulped it down, then poured himself another. If he was aware of my presence, he gave no sign.
After a while I said, quietly, “That might have gone better.”
Welles lifted his big head. His face was shadowed; for a moment he looked like Harry Lime in The Third Man. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“But I have something to say to you, Orson.” I moved to the table.
“Go away. I’m not about to be lectured by one of Vidor’s lackeys.”
“I don’t work for Mr. Vidor. I don’t work for anyone you know. I’m here to talk to you.”
He put down his glass. “Do I know you?”
“My name is Detlev Gruber.”
He snorted. “If I were you, I’d change my name.”
“I do – frequently.”
For the first time since he’d come aboard the yacht, he really looked at me. “So speak your piece and leave me alone.”
“First, let me show you something.”
I took my bandana from my pocket and spread it flat on the table between us. I tugged the corners that turned it rigid, then thumbed the controls to switch it on. The blue and white pattern of the fabric disappeared, and the screen lit.
Welles was watching now. “What is this?”
“A demonstration.” I hit play, the screen went black, and words appeared:
And then the title:
Ominous music rose. Fade in, night, on a chainlink fence with a metal sign that reads “No Trespassing.”
“What the hell . . . ?” Welles said.
I paused the image.
Welles picked up the flatscreen. He shook it, rigid as a piece of pasteboard, turned it over and examined its back. “This is amazing. Where did you get it?”
“It’s a common artifact – in the year 2048.”
Welles laid the screen down. With the light of “No Trespassing” shining up into his face, he looked like no more than a boy. He was twenty-seven years old.
“Go on,” he said. “I like a tall tale.”
“I got it because I come from the future. I’ve come here just to see you, because I want you to come back with me.”
Welles looked at me. Then he
laughed his deep, booming laugh. He pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket and lit it. “What does . . . the future . . . want with me?” he said between puffs.
“I represent an entertainment company. We want you to do one thing: make movies. We have technology that you don’t have and resources you can’t imagine. This screen is only the most trivial example. You think that optical printing is a neat trick? We can create whole landscapes out of nothing, turn three extras into an army, do for a fraction of the cost what it takes millions to do here, and do it better. The movie technology of the future is the best toy train set a boy ever had.
“More to the point, Orson, is this: you can fool these people around you, but you can’t fool me. I know every mistake you’ve made since you came to Hollywood. I know every person you’ve alienated. Koerner’s hostility is only the tip of the iceberg.”
“I won’t argue with you about that. But I have possibilities yet. I’m certainly not ready to fly off with you like Buck Rogers. Give me a couple of years – come back in 1950, and we’ll see.”
“You forget, what’s the future for you is history to me. I know your entire life, Orson. I know what will happen to you from this moment on, until you die of a heart attack, completely alone, in a shabby house in Los Angeles in 1985. It’s not a pretty life.”
The notion of Welles death hung in the air for a moment like the cigar smoke. He held the cigar sideways between his thumb and fingers, examining it. “ ‘An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own,’ ” he said, as if addressing the cigar – and then his eyes, cold sober, met mine.
“You can joke,” I said, “but you will never make another movie as unfettered as you were for Kane. The butchery RKO performed on Ambersons is only the beginning. No studio will let you direct again until 1946, and that’s just a potboiler completely under the thumb of the system. When you try for something more ambitious in The Lady from Shanghai, the film gets taken from you and an hour chopped out of it. Hollywood exiles you; you escape to Europe. You spend the last forty years of your life begging for cash, acting small parts in increasingly terrible films as you struggle to make movies on your own. Your entire career? Eleven films – and that includes Kane and Ambersons.”
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