Anyway, Bobby gets home in an understandably dark mood, opens up another bottle of wine (there’s a shocker), and goes into his office to read the script I gave him. It’s called Fathers and Daughters, it’s written by a woman named Mimi Webster (who I happen to also represent), and it’s a story about this guy Jonathan, in his late fifties, good-looking, successful, married for the second time to a beautiful and successful woman (Caroline) for twenty years. He’s got two grown children from his first marriage, and Caroline has a twenty-seven-year-old daughter from her first marriage. The daughter, Heather, has a troubled marriage of her own that’s beginning to teeter.
Caroline gets diagnosed with cancer, which it turns out she’s had a while but was in total denial about, and by the time it’s discovered, it’s too late. It’s spread all over the place, and pretty quickly she goes out of the picture. Literally. It’s a tragic loss for Jonathan, and though his friends try to help him through his grief, he’s inconsolable.
Caroline’s daughter, Heather, struggling with her own demons, is also devastated by the loss of her mother. And so, Heather and Jonathan, each for different reasons, are drawn together by the pain of loss and loneliness. For him, Heather is like the good daughter he lost years earlier when he divorced his first wife, instead of the daughter who bitterly resented him for leaving her mom. And for Heather, who was raised mostly by her real father and his new wife, Jonathan’s the father figure who can identify with her loss and share her grief.
You can pretty much figure where it goes from there: the relationship deepens to the point where they both realize they’re in love with each other. Jonathan is obsessed by the profound similarities between his dead wife and her beautiful young daughter, and Heather feels guilty and conflicted competing against the memory of her mother for Jonathan’s love and affection. The sexual tension between them is agonizing, but the guilt they feel scares them both off.
Finally, they agree they have to get away from each other. He goes off to Europe, and she renews her efforts to put her failing marriage back together. Needless to say, the marriage goes pffft, Heather jets off to—where else?—Prague to hook up with Jonathan, and, notwithstanding the obvious difficulties they know they’ll have to endure, they give in to their feelings. Music swells, fade-out, not a dry eye in the house.
If you like that kind of movie, fine. It is what it is. But I think what Jared Axelrod’s looking for is something a little edgier, tone-wise. Or, as he put it to me, more muscular—which is a current favorite term of producers when describing their material. And the reason I was able to sell him on meeting with Bobby is that Bobby’s always basically worked in the action-adventure genre, he’s generally pretty fast (or at least he used to be), his characters tend to be tough, macho guys, and his dialogue is, well, muscular.
The idea being, in principle, that you get the women in the tent because of the romance and you get the guys to come along because the male lead is tough, hard-nosed but, underneath it all, sensitive. Think Harrison Ford trying to hold off boning Gwyneth Paltrow because he knows it’s wrong, and you get the drift.
Anyway, it’s about four o’clock in the afternoon, Bobby’s halfway through the script, and Vee comes dragging in, saying she spent the afternoon shlepping from studio to studio, auditioning for various roles in Judging Amy, E.R., and The Guardian. Typically, Bobby doesn’t ask how it went. Instead, he gestures to the bottle of wine. “You want a glass?”
Vee says, “Okay, let me just take a shower and change into sweats first.”
Maybe if Bobby isn’t half-bagged (what else is new), he confronts her right then and there about what she’s doing outside the Peninsula Hotel playing grab-ass in public with some asshole in an Armani suit. But he is, so he doesn’t. Maybe because he’s afraid that instead of being all remorseful and guilty, she’ll tell him, au contraire, she loves fucking this other guy, he touches her in all the right places, he takes his goddamn time about it, he waits till she comes, then he gently works her around till she comes again. Plus, Bobby doesn’t need to hear from her (again) how on those rare occasions when he does express an interest in making love, he can’t even get the little bastard to stay up (which the Prozac might have something to do with).
I realize it’s easy to think Vee’s a promiscuous, cheating bitch or that I don’t like her, neither of which is true. This is not to say I approve of her behavior; I don’t. But let’s face it. Being married to Bobby Newman is no picnic. He’s self-absorbed. He has serious bouts of depression. You already know he drinks too much. Plus, he can be hostile and manipulative when he’s not being an emotionally withholding prick. I also know for a fact that while he may love Vee, he also takes her for granted, belittles her career aspirations, and generally doesn’t take the time to display the little gestures of affection that make a person feel special, loved, or desired.
I also know for a fact that she’s begged him, on more than one occasion, to go see a shrink with her, which Bobby flat-out refused to do. He also recently quit taking his Prozac, on the grounds that it was dulling his writing edge (to which I say what writing edge, but that’s another story).
So while you’re thinking about Vee cheating on her husband, also think about how she’s a thirty-two-year-old woman with legitimate needs that her husband, for one reason or another, is neither willing nor able to satisfy.
By now you’re also probably asking yourself, How come she didn’t just leave him if he’s such an asshole? It’s a fair question, particularly when you’re asking it about someone else’s marriage and not your own. I’m no shrink, but I’ve been around the block a few times myself, marriage-wise and otherwise, and I think the answer is, people get scared. Scared of divorce. Scared of losing their money or their social standing. Scared of being alone. Or maybe sometimes they just don’t think they deserve any better than what they’ve got and they’d rather be in a shitty relationship than no relationship at all.
And then there’s sex.
It’s my own personal observation, at least as far as men are concerned, that sex is the great broken promise of marriage. This is not to imply that men only get married for sex or that they don’t get sex after they’re married. But for most guys, it’s not just the sex per se but the idea of sex. You know, sexy sex. The kind of sex where you’re doing it in the car, in the shower, on the floor, and it’s like you can’t get enough of each other, which is what being in love is all about. It’s why you ask her to marry you in the first place, because you can’t remember it ever being like this with anyone else in your whole life and you never want it to stop, and then you get married and … it stops. Not right away maybe. But gradually, it stops. Her see-through nightgowns disappear. She doesn’t put on the sexy underwear for you to take off her, or wear makeup to bed to make love. Maybe because it’s not new anymore. Or because it’s not forbidden. Or maybe because the reality of life—kids, jobs, money, bills, in-laws—gets in the way of the kind of spontaneous sex I’m talking about. Whatever the reason, sex—the kind of sex men leave their wives and marry other women for—almost always disappears over time. I don’t mean to be crude here, but do the math. How many times did your wife let you come in her mouth before you were married versus how many times after?
I’m not suggesting that women don’t have their own issues when it comes to the men they marry, or their own deep feelings of having been cheated out of legitimate expectations. And I’m sure that their reasons for feeling cheated, or unfulfilled, are no less legitimate than the guys’ are. My only point is, people who shouldn’t be married stay married all the time, for all sorts of reasons, and one of the ways they manage to do it is by never telling each other the truth and never confronting each other honestly about their fears, resentments, and desires. Which means, of course, that all those fears, resentments, and desires harden into nasty, unforgiving, poison-tipped arrows that they carry around in their quivers, just waiting for the right moment to whip one out and fire it into their loved one’s cold, cheating hea
rt.
As I said, I’m no shrink, and I’m in way over my head talking about shit like this, but I wanted you to know a little bit about Vee so you wouldn’t think she’s just another airhead actress with phony tits who married a screenwriter, hoping he’d open the door to a career for her.
Because, for openers, her tits aren’t phony, which I guess puts her in the one half of one percent of all women in Hollywood who haven’t had their tits enlarged.
And as long as we’re on the subject of tits, what’s up with these women, anyway? Have they all gone nuts? Do they think people can’t tell they have water balloons stuck up under their chest walls? Don’t they realize that they all look alike? That every person, man or woman, takes one look at them and knows immediately that they have implants, the same way you can always tell a guy who’s wearing a rug? Doesn’t it matter to them that their nipples are constantly poking out like pencil erasers and that their breasts don’t move around under their shirts when they walk? Or that when they lie on their back, their tits shoot straight up in the air like a pair of Titan surface-to-air missiles? I guess they don’t care because men don’t care. They’d rather grab a handful of phony tit than no tit at all.
In any event, one of the great things about Vee is, she’s maybe the only woman I ever met who genuinely, unself-consciously seems to like her body as is. Of course, what’s not to like? She’s about five-eight, 125 pounds or so, with great legs, terrific breasts—not huge, but really nicely shaped, and they’re 100 percent real—and the kind of ass you try not to spend too much time looking at, because it’d be rude, but you do anyway. Plus, she’s cute. Not beautiful exactly, but not your standard American pretty, either, with blond hair, bright blue eyes, a sexy, full-face smile showing teeth just uneven enough that you know they’re real, too. If I were to give you an image to compare her against, I’d say think Meg Ryan, ten years ago.
Perhaps now you have a little more sense of the woman Bobby follows into the bedroom, glass of wine in hand, watching as she undresses. Shoes, skirt, blouse, down to her sexy little bra and thong panties, and when those come off, Bobby picks them up off the floor and smells them.
“You’re disgusting,” Vee says.
“Thank you,” Bobby says back, following her into the bathroom, watching as, naked now, she leans into the stall and turns on the shower faucets. And even half-drunk, angry and humiliated as he is, he can’t help admiring her physical beauty, which he experiences as an ache. But instead of taking the opportunity to tell her he loves her, that he knows their marriage is fucked-up and he wants to try and fix it before it’s too late—in other words, instead of taking the direct approach, which at least would’ve been the grown-up thing to do—he tries to goad her into a fight by suggesting he’s kind of sweaty, too, and how about he jumps into the shower with her for a game of Lather the Lizard.
“I’m not in the mood for Lather the Lizard,” Vee says, climbing into the shower. “I just want to get cleaned up, have a nice cold glass of wine, and get relaxed.”
“You’re always complaining we never have sex. Here I’m offering myself up and suddenly you’re the one not interested. What’s up with that?”
By now, the steam is billowing out of the shower stall and water is spraying the front of Bobby’s clothes. “All right,” Vee says, giving in. “Take your clothes off and get in.”
“Never mind,” Bobby says. “I don’t need a mercy fuck.”
See, that’s how the really bad fights start between people. Because now Vee says, “What is the matter with you? Why are you like this?” which immediately takes things from the specific issue of are they going to fuck in the shower or not to the more general issue of their free-floating anger toward each other, and once you go there, watch out.
Predictably, like the dance that it always is, Bobby says, “Why am I like this? Why am I like this? Why am I like what?”
“Like, I don’t know—like so fucking hostile all the time.”
“Did it ever occur to you maybe I’m so fucking hostile because you never show me any fucking affection, or express any fucking sympathy for the fact that I’m going through the worst miserable fucking time in my whole fucking career right now?”
“Oh, please.”
“Ever hear the concept, I love you, Bobby, let’s take a shower together, instead of me always having to feel like a fucking beggar?”
“I’m not a mind reader! If you want to fuck, say so,” Vee shouts, trying to match Bobby’s rising volume.
“Which is why I said let’s take a shower!”
“And I said okay! And you said forget it!”
“Jesus Christ, this is where I came in,” Bobby says.
Now Vee starts to cry, as much out of frustration as from hurt. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Right. It’s always about you,” Bobby says.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’d feel like having sex more often if you actually did something productive once in a while instead of getting shit-faced at four o’clock in the afternoon and picking a fight?”
“Fuck you, Vee,” Bobby says, and throws the contents of his wineglass at her crotch.
“You are such an asshole,” Vee says, and slams the shower door shut on him.
“Maybe your boyfriend’ll lick it off for you,” Bobby says, and walks out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him, not sure if she heard him or not and not wanting to stick around to find out.
CHAPTER 4
The next morning, Bobby wakes up on the couch, dehydrated and hungover, and by the time he’s chewed three aspirins and taken a hot shower, Vee’s headed out the door, her voice as cold as a well-digger’s ass, informing Bobby she’s going over to Paramount for an audition.
And because writers like to torture themselves, Bobby quickly gets dressed and drives over to the Peninsula Hotel, where he parks across the street, waiting an hour and a half till he sees his wife exiting the hotel with the same guy from the day before, watching them as they kiss and grab-ass each other good-bye.
The toughest part of finding out your wife is cheating on you is not being able to get the picture of it out of your head. You see them in your mind’s eye making love, your wife—your fucking wife, for God’s sake!—opening her legs to this prick, saying intimate things in his ear, touching his body, touching his cock, doing things with him she won’t do with you anymore. Or maybe never has.
You see him touching her, putting his hands on her, in her, all over her, invading your territory. And as each obsessive image mocks you, insults you, violates you, you experience what’s commonly referred to as jealous rage, and you realize you’re actually capable, in that moment, of murder. They used to call it a crime of passion, and under the right circumstances, no jury in the world would convict.
By way of example, there was a guy—this is years ago—named Jennings Lang, who was a big-shot talent agent at MCA (which later became Universal Studios in the days before the studio morphed into a multinational entertainment conglomerate).
Jennings Lang was supposedly having an affair with one of his clients, a beautiful movie star by the name of Joan Bennett, who was married to a producer named Walter Wanger. The story goes that Walter Wanger found out about the affair, confronted the two of them in flagrante delicto, as they say, pulled out a pistol, and shot off one of Jennings’s balls.
Needless to say, he never spent a day in jail for what he did, and the guy who told me that story, a director named Jack Smight, swore to me that from that day on, he called Jennings Jenning.
Anyway, Bobby drives around nursing his jealous, obsessive rage, killing time until his two-thirty meeting with Jared Axelrod, and when he finally works his way through the Twentieth Century Fox studio security barricades at the front gate, parks his car halfway across the lot, and gets lost looking for this guy’s bungalow, who do you think this Axelrod turns out to be?
If you guessed the guy his wife’s been banging at the Peninsula Hotel, you’d be right. If y
ou also guessed the meeting was a total disaster, that would be right, too.
For all the reasons I mentioned before about why I think Bobby didn’t confront Vee, he’s not about to confront Axelrod, either, particularly in front of Axelrod’s development executive, a young, attractive woman named Lainie Ginsberg.
After several moments of strained amenities, while the assistant fetches Evian for everyone, Axelrod gets to it. “So. What’d you think of the script?”
Bobby now commences, predictably, to shoot himself in the foot. He tells Axelrod that the premise of the movie is bullshit and that the audience will be offended by the fact that this old guy is seducing his young stepdaughter. In the alternative, Bobby suggests the notion of turning the story into a less complicated emotional landscape by having the love interest be his dead wife’s somewhat younger sister.
Now, even I know that’s a terrible idea, and I represent the guy. But the real dynamic in the room has nothing to do with Bobby’s ideas about Axelrod’s script, good or bad. It has to do with the fact that Axelrod is fucking his wife. Bobby knows it—hell, Lainie Ginsberg probably knows it—and even though Axelrod doesn’t know for sure whether Bobby knows it, off the hostile vibe emanating from Bobby, he suspects it. So, without being totally disrespectful (for obvious reasons), Axelrod, as nicely as he can, pisses all over Bobby’s idea, saying maybe we’ll get together on some other project some time, I’m a big fan of your work, blah blah blah.
Of course, what Bobby probably hears is I’m fucking your wife, you impotent third-rate hack. Now get the hell out of my office so I can laugh my ass off behind your back.
At the door, Lainie Ginsberg offers Bobby her hand, telling him she’s also a longtime admirer of his oeuvre. Bobby wants to say, Stick my oeuvre up your tight little Jewish ass, but instead he gives her a phony smile and beats it out of there.
Steven Bochco Page 2