CHAPTER 36
Three days later, Dennis and I are sitting in Brian Grazer’s office. Brian’s a character. Small and wiry, with goofy, gel-spiked hair, it’s easy to think he’s some kind of hyperkinetic adolescent with the attention span of a six-year-old. But if you did think that, you would be very wrong. In fact, he’s an extremely smart, very astute producer who, like Dennis, likes to lull you into a false sense of superiority. And if you fall for it, he’ll probably wind up having you for lunch. Trust me when I tell you it’s not luck that’s put a string of box office hits as long as your arm on his résumé. This is a guy who’s done everything from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas to A Beautiful Mind. It’s no accident that there’s an Oscar in his trophy case.
Anyway, we’re sitting in Brian’s office in a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise right around the corner from the Grill, because Dennis has an idea he wants to pitch. And because Brian’s heard about Axelrod buying the Death by Hollywood script, not to mention the deal for Blind Justice, he’s extremely gracious toward Dennis, who, in his best Columbo way, tells him that he has a nine-year-old nephew named Mikey and the Grinch movie is his all-time favorite, he watches it over and over, so when Dennis had this idea for an animated kids’ movie, he immediately thought of Brian.
Now, Brian’s like a kid himself, practically levitating out of his chair. “Tell it to me, I want to hear it,” he says, and Dennis can’t help grinning at Brian’s infectious enthusiasm.
“Okay,” Dennis starts. “The movie’s called First Dog, and it’s about this talking dog named Bob, who becomes president of the United States …” And because Brian’s already captured by the thought of it, neither he nor Dennis can see the color draining out of my face.
CHAPTER 37
Being a successful agent in Hollywood requires a kind of willful ignorance. I know I’ve preached the virtues of telling the truth, but by the same token, I don’t necessarily believe the truth will set you free. I’ve seen too many examples in this town of the truth actually getting you killed, figuratively speaking anyway. So in the neutral zone that exists between not lying but not always exactly telling the truth, there lurks the Clinton doctrine as it applies to gays in the military: don’t ask, don’t tell. In other words, go along to get along.
I guess it was Bobby’s murder that dragged me, kicking and screaming as it were, to a place where I realized I couldn’t just go along anymore. I had to confront Dennis, knowing full well that we were two voyagers passing in opposite directions. Dennis was in a rudderless ship on a journey away from his moral center, and I was setting sail from the land of situational ethics toward an island of absolute moral conviction. And I was realizing as well, with equal parts fear and excitement, that my boat was also rudderless, its course irrevocably set. Having belatedly blundered into what I hoped was my own true moral nature, it took me about the length of time it takes to get to the parking garage under Brian Grazer’s building to realize that if I didn’t finally look Dennis in the eye and tell him I knew what he’d done, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the eye.
It was a pretty scary decision, particularly if what I was suddenly starting to believe was actually true—namely, that Dennis had gone up to Bobby’s house, murdered him, and made it look like a junkie had broken in and stolen a bunch of his shit, including his computer.
The fact that he had Bobby’s computer and had stolen his scripts and stories was, as far as I was concerned, indisputable. What was up for grabs, of course, was whether Dennis had killed him for it.
At the car, Dennis looks at me, knowing I’m chewing on something. “You haven’t said a word since we left his office. What’s going on?”
I take a deep breath and start. I tell him I wasn’t sure about the script, that it sounded like Bobby’s voice, but I couldn’t be sure, and there was certainly no way to prove he’d written it. Plus, I admit, I was seduced, not only by the high price the script fetched but by the sudden heat my new client, the next Joseph Wambaugh, was generating. Then, while the Blind Justice idea seemed vaguely familiar, I couldn’t really place it. And so it wasn’t until he pitched First Dog to Brian Grazer that I was positive. “I read that story five years ago,” I tell Dennis. “But it took me a while to put it together. I knew Blind Justice was familiar, I just couldn’t think why, but that was in the story too, about the writer with the talking dog who gives him a bunch of ideas, and one of them turns into a smash-hit TV series.”
Dennis says that Bobby told him no one had ever read it. I tell him I’m not no one—I’m his agent, for Christ’s sake, I read everything. And probably because I told him I didn’t think it was very commercial, he never showed it to anyone else.
Unfazed, Dennis says that Bobby had let him read the story when they first began talking about collaborating, and both ideas had kind of stuck in his head. “Besides, with Bobby dead, what’s the difference?”
“The difference,” I say, “is that any way you slice it, you stole another writer’s ideas and represented them as your own, and in all good conscience I feel that it’s probably best for all concerned if we part company.”
“I think it’s a mistake to fire me,” Dennis says, suddenly cold-eyed, and I imagine the coldness of those blue eyes being the last thing Bobby registered before Dennis shot him with that .22.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I say. “I just can’t represent you, knowing what I know.”
“You don’t know anything,” Dennis says.
“I know you stole his work,” I tell him. “What I don’t know is whether you murdered him for it. Not that I could ever prove it anyway—you’re too good for that.”
“Then for the sake of argument,” Dennis says, “let’s pretend I did what you think I did. If you can’t prove it, why not just continue to represent me and make a pile of money?”
“Agents may not be the most ethical people in the world,” I say, “but Bobby wasn’t just a client. He was a friend. And if I turn my back on that, I’m no better than you are.”
“So under the circumstances,” Dennis says, “I guess a blow job is out of the question.”
And if I hadn’t been so scared, I probably would have laughed …
CHAPTER 38
I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve gotten the impression that I have a somewhat cynical view of the entertainment business. But you know what they say: cynicism is idealism betrayed. And while I admit my worldview has been somewhat jaundiced by experience, I want to also make it clear (for whatever it’s worth) how much I love the business. At its best, it’s magical, artful, and thrilling. Making a great movie or television series really is like catching lightning in a bottle. Even when it happens, you’re not quite sure how, but you know that somehow a group of artists and craftsmen came together to create something which, at its best, is greater than the sum of its parts. And if you’ve ever experienced it, you know that it’s the best feeling in the world. You’ve created something, or at least been a part of something, that has brought pleasure, laughs, tears, and insights to a mass audience. You’ve touched people’s lives, and it doesn’t get any better than that.
Which is why there was a time, in my early teens, when I entertained the notion of becoming a writer. I’d read somewhere that Thomas Wolfe used to write You Can’t Go Home Again in longhand on legal tablets, standing in front of his refrigerator, using its top as a writing surface. What an image. This tall man, writing all night and into the wee hours of the morning, alone in his kitchen, penning the great American novel. It’s the stuff of fantasy, and whenever I imagined myself as a writer, that was the image my brain conjured. The only problems being, I wasn’t tall enough and I wasn’t good enough.
Nevertheless, like every aspiring young writer, the idea of writing a novel is what it was all about for me. So it’s ironic that all these years later I’ve written what amounts to a novel-length manuscript that reads like the stuff of fiction. Except it’s not.
While I obviously made up a lot of the dialogue
between the principals in the story, I did so based on extensive conversations I had over the course of the last six months with Vee, Linda, Dennis, and of course Bobby himself, before he died. And when you do the math, it all adds up as neatly as two plus two.
I’m convinced Bobby saw Linda kill Ramon. He says as much in his screenplay (the one with Dennis’s name on it). I’m also convinced Bobby sneaked into Ramon’s house and stole the tapes of Vee and Linda having sex with him.
I believe Bobby insinuated himself into Linda’s and Dennis’s lives so that he could write his screenplay with the kind of realism that only comes from firsthand knowledge of their psyches. What I don’t think Bobby anticipated was the extent to which he’d become so emotionally involved with them. But that’s what good writers do. They go places most of us are afraid to go.
I also believe Bobby framed Vee in a drunken, jealous rage, and I believe that when Dennis finally figured out the puzzle, he made the decision that ultimately cost Bobby his life.
There’s this old joke about the unsuccessful Hollywood hack who wakes up one morning to find a mysteriously uncredited script sitting on top of his typewriter. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and the writer puts his name on it without hesitation and sells it for a bunch of money. About a month later, another script materializes, and he sells that one for even more. Half a dozen scripts later, the writer is living large in Bel Air, he has gorgeous women at his beck and call, and more money than he knows what to do with.
One night he hears tapping noises coming from his office and sneaks down to take a look. There, at his typewriter, is this ugly little troll, typing away.
“You’re the one responsible for all those scripts,” the writer says with awe, and the troll sheepishly admits as much.
“My God,” the writer says. “I owe you everything. I have success beyond measure. I have money, women, this beautiful house, and all because of you.”
The troll nods, embarrassed, and the writer says, “You’ve got to let me thank you properly. What do you want? I’ll give you anything. Money. Women. Cars. Name it.”
The troll says he has no interest in any of these things but perhaps the writer might consider, just this once, letting the troll share screen credit on this script he’s just finishing.
The writer looks at the troll, stunned. “Screen credit? Fuck you, screen credit!”
I mention this joke because it’s illustrative of what happened to Bobby. First, Dennis figures out what Bobby’s done and uses it to blackmail Bobby into forking over a piece of the action. And then, when Bobby finally offers Dennis shared screen credit, Dennis essentially says, Fuck you, shared screen credit, and kills the poor bastard so he can steal the whole ball of wax.
I never would have figured any of this out if Dennis hadn’t gotten greedy and pitched that talking-dog story to Brian Grazer. Once he did, though, all the pieces fell into place. Like I told Dennis, I’ll never be able to prove it, but I’m a little nervous anyway. Actually, if you want to know the absolute truth, I’m more than a little nervous. I’m actually pretty goddamn scared.
Think about it. Maybe I can’t prove Dennis killed Bobby, but I can sure as hell burst his bubble. Gossip and innuendo being what they are in this town, I could probably put some serious stink on him. Plus, I know Vee—she’d drop him like a hot rock.
If I were a naturally suspicious type like Dennis, I don’t know how comfortable I’d be knowing there was someone in my life who could hang me out to dry, which is why I’ve written this manuscript. It took me four months, and I’m not even proofing it as I go, since I have no intention of ever showing it to anybody. Along with the copy of Bobby’s story “First Dog,” which I dug out of my files, it’s going directly into my safe deposit box at City National Bank—an insurance policy, if you will—just in case Dennis ever tries to threaten or intimidate me. The irony is, I not only loved writing it, I also think it’s pretty good. Maybe even as good as Bobby’s screenplay, which Dennis got two million bucks for.
Nevertheless, the only possible way I can imagine anyone ever reading this thing is if I died. And if that were to happen anywhere in the near term, you can bet your house it’d be because Dennis actually got worried enough to kill me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my dear and gifted friend David Milch for urging me to write this novel. I’d also like to thank another great friend and collaborator, Alison Cross, for seconding the motion. My heartfelt thanks as well to Bill Clark, whose life and whose friendship have informed this book.
I want to express in particular my gratitude to my friend Fred Specktor, whose constant enthusiasm, encouragement, and advice inspired me.
My thanks to Mort Janklow for representing my efforts with such talent, regard, and affection, and for warning me about the siren’s call of novel writing.
“When you write novels,” Mr. Janklow told me, “your office is always in your head.” Boy, was he ever right.
I’d like to thank Jonathan Karp, whose editorial contributions were most welcome (not to mention helpful) and whose respect for writers made me feel very protected.
Finally, I’d like to thank the most Reverend Barry Hirsch, whose legal and personal wisdom, along with his friendship, have always helped me steer a true course.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN BOCHCO is the winner of ten Emmy Awards—six for Hill Street Blues, three for L.A. Law, and one for NYPD Blue, now in its tenth year on ABC. In 1996, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Television Hall of Fame, and he was the first television writer/producer to receive the Writers Guild Career Achievement Award and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship Award for his outstanding contribution to his craft.
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all
characters with the exception of some well-known historical and
public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not
to be construed as real. Where real-life historical and public figures
appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons
are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or
to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all
other respects, any resemblance to persons living
or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Steven Bochco
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bochco, Steven.
Death by Hollywood : a novel / Steven Bochco.
p. cm.
1. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. 2. Motion picture industry—
Fiction. 3. Screenwriters—Fiction. 4. Witnesses—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.O325D43 2003 813′.6—dc21 2003046613
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-340-4
v3.0
Steven Bochco Page 17