by James Franco
Marc Steely went to the head teamster, Joe Donuts, and found out that the star trailer Cent occupied had indeed been used on the Spider-Man 3 production and had belonged to The Actor. The journals were undoubtedly the work of The Actor, a not particularly talented but fairly attractive actor in his late twenties. He wasn’t sure why Cent’s discovery upset him so much, but it undoubtedly did.
It was hard being a balding producer with a hot young girlfriend. Usually Cent stayed at Marc’s house in Beverly Hills, but that night Cent told him that she wanted to stay at her own apartment. Another disturbing turn of events.
The following morning Marc knocked on her Great Western trailer door at 8 a.m.
“Come in,” Cent said.
She said it without knowing it was Marc. She could have said it to anyone. If it had been her young costar Zack Needly or even The Actor, she would have said the same thing. Very disturbing.
When Marc entered, she was sitting on the carpeted floor, smoking, looking at the journals. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she wiped a tear from her eye. She didn’t look up.
“You just say ‘Come in,’ without knowing who it is?”
Cent looked up at him.
“Oh, good morning.” She definitely had been crying.
“What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
She looked back at the violent drawings.
“No. I just… my brother is in trouble with the police again, and my mom is being so crazy.”
“That’s why you’re crying?”
“I’m not crying. I’m just pissed at the whole situation. That Butch doesn’t have a dad, because our dad ran off when he was like two, and he’s just so fucked up.”
“I thought you didn’t care about your family.”
“Why would you say that?” She looked up at him again.
“I don’t know. That’s what I thought. So, you’re not crying over those sketches?”
“Why would I be crying over the sketches?”
“I don’t know, just a question.” He was standing against the wall by the door. For some reason he didn’t feel like he could get close to her. “You know they belong to The Actor.”
She didn’t say anything. She just took a long drag from her cigarette.
“I thought you were going to stop smoking.”
“Oh, God. Are you going to be my dad now?”
“Did you hear what I said? Those drawings belong to The Actor.”
Cent turned over one of the pages, very gently.
“I already knew,” she said, without looking up. It looked like she was crying again.
“Do you know him?” said Marc.
“Who? The Actor? No.”
“Are you, like, in love with him?”
She looked up at him.
“What? Jesus. No! What is your problem this morning? I’m sorry I didn’t stay over last night. Do I have to like, be with you every second for you not to be a total asshole?”
“No. I’m just wondering why you’re crying about those stupid pictures.”
“I’m not crying! God. And they’re not stupid. Will you just get out of here, please? I can’t deal with you being like this right now, I have to get ready for work. You do want me to be good in this movie, don’t you?”
Marc left and got himself a cup of coffee with two packets of Splenda from the craft service truck. He definitely didn’t like this business with The Actor’s sketches.
He finished his coffee, had another, and then ate half a breakfast burrito with turkey bacon, when his stomach started to hurt. He tossed the other half of the burrito and decided to contact The Actor directly. He was a producer; that’s what producers did, they contacted actors. It would be no big deal. He would just tell The Actor to come pick up his sketches, and he would be done with them. He could have his regular loving, nonsmoking Cent back.
Marc called Endeavor and was connected to The Actor’s tough-talking female agent. She said that The Actor was currently not working. When Marc said that he had something that belonged to The Actor, the agent told him that he should keep it. When Marc asked if it was possible to get a contact number, the agent said it was impossible and hung up.
Marc had the impulse to contact the head of the agency and have the agent fired, but he didn’t call. He wasn’t sure if he had that kind of power, but he didn’t try. Instead, he called a club promoter friend, Sasha Apple. Sasha was pushing forty-one, but she knew all the young actors in LA. She was at the center of every hip gathering and had slept with half the guys in town under twenty-five.
At 9:30, Marc got her voice mail. He called several more times that morning, but couldn’t reach her. He wandered around the lot, thinking of people to call. He couldn’t focus. It was strange how worked up he was getting, but he couldn’t help it. He stayed away from the set of Day’s End, even though he was one of the producers. He knew that seeing Cent would only upset him, and he didn’t want to do anything that might ruin her performance. She was doing very well in the movie, and there was the potential for her career to really take off. The prospect made Marc proud but also paranoid. More paranoid than proud. He thought of all those young actors that she would be kissing in all those future movies. Not good.
He contemplated sneaking into Cent’s trailer and stealing the sketchbooks, but there were a bunch of PAs around and he would be seen.
By noon there was still no call from Sasha Apple, so he went to his office in the Thalberg Building and googled The Actor. He found a bunch of fan sites and some news items about The Actor’s drug addiction, but those were all from three years ago. The most recent items were about the death of The Actor’s father. They said he was shot in his Palo Alto home last Christmas. Some of the less reputable outlets linked The Actor to the murder. One of them said that The Actor was currently at an undisclosed institution.
After learning this information, Marc decided it was his duty to go into Cent’s trailer and confiscate the sketchbook. If The Actor’s father had been murdered, it was probably not a good thing for Cent to be holding onto a sketchbook that said Kill the Father three times.
Marc made sure that Cent was shooting on-set, waited for the PAs to clear, and then went into her trailer. If anyone caught him, he would just say he was doing producer things.
The sketchbook was gone. Marc searched the whole trailer, but it was obvious that Cent had taken it.
Marc stormed out of the trailer and slammed the door, no longer concerned about who saw him. He paced around. He was very upset. She was choosing the sketchbook over him. Marc bummed a cigarette from one of the grips, even though he didn’t smoke. The cigarette made his head light and his throat hurt. It was his third cigarette ever.
Finally, at 1:30, Sasha Apple called back. Her voice was always gravelly, but it was extra gravelly that afternoon. She talked quickly.
“Marc? Sorry, I had a long night last night. We just opened a new place on La Cienega. You and that new little cutie should come by. Oh, wait, you’re keeping this one a secret aren’t you?”
“Sasha, shut up for a second. Do you know The Actor?”
There was a pause. Then she said, “Yeah. Everyone knows The Actor. He used to go out a lot.”
“He used to?”
Another pause, then, “He doesn’t anymore. I don’t know where he is.”
“Is there like some big secret I don’t know about? Why is everyone being so fucking crazy about this guy? His fucking agent hung up on me!”
Sasha was silent again. This was the most quiet she had ever been. Usually one had to force words through her endless barrage of talk.
“Sasha? What the fuck? What is going on with this Actor guy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask someone else.”
“Tell me!” A few grips walking by looked over. Marc lowered his voice. “Fucking tell me now, Sasha.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think his dad was murdered or something. Then he just disappeared. I haven’t seen him in months.
I swear to God, that’s all I know.”
“Do you have his number?”
“Marc, I…”
“Give me his fucking number, or I swear to God, Sasha, I am going to have your new place shut down for serving minors and cocaine use and for being a fucking whorehouse! I swear to fucking Christ!”
“Jesus, Marc. What is your problem? I’ve never heard you like this, except when you were on coke. I don’t have his number, all I have is an email.”
“Give it to me!”
Marc was so intent on getting The Actor’s contact info that he found himself suddenly unsure about what to do with it once he got it. He could write to The Actor and tell him to come and pick up his sketchpad, but in light of his father’s recent murder, this track seemed unwise. He looked at the ripped piece of the day’s shooting schedule where he had written the email address:
[email protected]
A palindrome. What did it mean? “Mock The Actor”? “Rot California 80”? “Rot cat”?
Instead of writing to The Actor, Marc called his friend Ty. Ty was an editing teacher at a third-rate film school in the Valley called Encino Film School. It was right next to a drug rehabilitation center called the Warm Heart Treatment Center, which specialized in a ninety-day detox program. Because the two facilities were separated by a chain-link fence, the film students and drug addicts often mingled during smoke breaks, and more than one addict had pursued a relationship with a film student after his treatment ended. Marc Steely knew Ty from college and often went to him with computer questions.
“Ty, how are you?” Ty was never good. He hated his students.
“As fine as can be, over in hell.”
“What happened? Another film student/addict romance?”
“What? No, we have plenty of those. No, one of the kids had the great idea to film one of the addicts shooting up into his dick.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“It was just water in the syringe, just to make it look like heroin, but his dick got infected and had to get cut off. Now, the treatment center is suing the school.”
“That’s fucked, man, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever. Stupid fucking kids. And yesterday, I had to hear from about five of them that I look like Norman Bates. These morons haven’t seen a movie made before 1999, and then spring semester, Richard always shows them Psycho, so I have to hear it every year, like they’ve made some great fucking discovery. Okay, I look like Anthony Perkins, big whoop, blame my fucking dad.”
“Sorry, man,” said Marc. Ty was always complaining, and it was best to cut to the chase with him or he’d go on forever. “Listen, I have a job for you. I want you to hack into someone’s email.”
“Oh shit, illegal shit from the big producer. How about giving me a real job, like editing a studio movie?”
“I’m working on it, but do this thing for me, okay?” Marc told him the situation.
“Whoa, The Actor?” Ty said “That fucking guy went through the treatment center over here. Weird dude. Quiet. I’d always see him across the fence, standing alone in the courtyard like he was a junkie Jimmy Dean. I never heard him say anything, but I am almost positive he fucked a couple of the students. It was a pretty big deal when he was there. Everyone tried to keep it quiet, but all the students knew…”
“Okay, okay, what I’m interested in is any emails that are to or from his father, about his father, or the death of his father. Will you find me anything on that?”
The rest of the day passed without Marc hearing anything from Ty. That night, after work finished, Marc went to Cent’s trailer where she was changing out of her teenager character clothes into her teenager real clothes. Usually Marc wouldn’t be anywhere near her trailer if she were changing, but things were getting desperate. And then, before he could say anything, she told Marc that she was not feeling up to staying at his place again.
“Oh, what the fuck?” he said.
“What? What is your problem, Marc? I’m not your wife! Or your daughter! I just want to stay at home tonight, okay?”
“To what? Cuddle up with those sketches?”
“Are you serious? What is it with you guys? You can’t get over the fact that I like The Actor’s sketches?”
“They’re dangerous, Cent! They’re dangerous! You don’t know what you’re dealing with! And wait, what do you mean, ‘you guys’? Did you show them to someone else?”
“I showed them to Zack, and he got all weird about them too. He said they were terrible, but it was like he was jealous or something.”
“You showed them to Zack? Fucking great!”
“What?”
“Why are you showing that idiot anything? He’s an idiot!”
“Oh, God, I don’t want to get into another thing about Zack.”
“What do you mean, ‘another thing about Zack’?”
“Nothing, this is stupid. You just get all uptight when I talk about Zack, just like you’re doing with these drawings. I don’t know what your problem is. It’s like you think I’m cheating on you or something, and I’m not. This is stupid. I’m going home.”
“Cent, you don’t know what these drawings are.”
But Cent was already leaving.
Something came over Marc. He grabbed the sketchbook from her hands and started ripping the pages. She screamed and tried to take it back. The sketches fell on the ground and Marc started stomping on them like they were roaches.
“Stop it! Stop it, Marc!”
Finally, she slapped him. He slapped her back, and the struggled ended. Cent was crying as she picked up the torn sketches and got into her car.
That night Marc called Cent five times, but she didn’t answer. He rented one of The Actor’s films. It was a weird movie, almost a comedy, about heroin. The Actor wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t good. Just a handsome sensitive guy without any backbone.
At 1 a.m., Ty sent him an email:
I did it. His password turned out to be “mock-me.” I figured he must be really insecure, so… Anyway, there was not much stuff on his father, but the following two letters were written last December. They were the last two in his box. After January it seems like he didn’t write anything. I don’t know if he’s dead or what? Here you go, I hope it helps,
Ty
12/31/xx—11:30 p.m.
Dad,
I am sorry for how my trip ended. I did not enjoy leaving like that, I was angry and I didn’t want to say anything that I would later regret.
I am sorry if I embarrassed you at the dinner. Of course it was not my intention to do so. I agree that the dinner was awkward, and I apologize for my contribution to that awkwardness. But I am still unsure about what I did. You said I acted like a dope. I suppose that means that I was not engaging or talkative. If that is so, I agree; I was not talkative, because I was uncomfortable. I did not know those people, and I was immediately introduced to the director and producer of the play (I think they were the director and the producer, I still don’t know), which made me think that there had been some planning for the get-together of which I had not been made aware. Because they were show business people, it made me think that I was expected to talk about show business.
I like to go to Palo Alto because I can relax. I did not feel relaxed at that dinner. If you want to spend one of the few nights I have with the family out with your boss, that is fine, but please don’t expect me to be the life of the party. I am not that kind of person, and I usually don’t like to discuss my work, especially with a whole table of strangers.
And if it has to do with my level of enthusiasm rather than the amount that I spoke, you’re right, I was not very enthusiastic. One of the nice things about coming to Palo Alto is that I get to spend time with the family, and I don’t feel any pressure to be anything other than a family member. I am happy to spend time with your friends, and maybe it would be a good thing, but I can’t help but feel like there was a spotlight on me that night. It was not just a friendly dinner; there was pressu
re to “perform.” To tell stories about movies, or, if I was not expected to talk, I was expected to be interested in what the director and the producer had to say. I am interested in what they had to say. I think that the play was very good, and I was not lying when I said it was the best play I had seen in the Bay Area. But, because I felt like there had been planning done without my being made aware, I shut down. I was just uncomfortable. I didn’t try to be rude, or show anyone that I was uncomfortable, I just tried to get through the dinner as best as I could. If there had been no expectations of me, I think my conduct would have been fine. The fact that we are talking about this and that I am being singled out shows me that there was some expectation put on me.
I was not excited about this dinner. The first I heard about it was the night before. I wish you had told me that it was an important dinner for you. I am still not sure if it was. At first you said that “you didn’t mind playing the fool,” but when the person you have to work with every day is there, it is embarrassing. That sounds to me like your business was involved. Of course I don’t want to hurt your business, and I would love to help in any way that I can, but I like to be informed when I am doing so. Like with the premiere. Those tickets were very valuable, not only because the movie had a lot of interest, but also because it was a charity. I think the tickets ran from $300 to $1,000. I had many friends that I could not invite. When I saw that you had put your partner and his wife on the list, without even asking me, I questioned it. I was told that it was important for your job that they come, so I allowed it. That is something that I am happy to do, but you didn’t even ask me, you just slipped them in. That is how this dinner felt, that something was being set up without asking me.
If I am completely off base, I am sorry. If your only complaints are the two that you mentioned—that I said “bad meat,” and that I didn’t sign an autograph—then I think this situation has been blown out of proportion. I absolutely meant nothing about her cooking when I said “bad meat.” She said that she cooked the apples in honor of Apple Train, and then Ryan said, “Do you have any Coffee?” So I jumped in and said “bad meat,” for no other reason than it was a bad joke on the title of Ryan’s movie. I was just being a stupid older brother, I hadn’t even tried the meat. Maybe it was ill-timed, but I am sure that we are all guilty of a badly timed joke. And I absolutely meant nothing by it, I don’t know how you could think that I did, my manners are not so bad that I would insult anyone’s cooking. Or maybe, as you said, she was already feeling insecure, which gave the comment more significance than it should have had. Why she might be feeling insecure at that point, I don’t know, unless I was supposed to be behaving in some manner other than I had been. Up to that point I was fairly quiet, but I had not said anything that could even be considered rude. So I am not sure why she was insecure, unless she was expecting more enthusiasm from me for some reason. If the stupid joke, that had absolutely no significance as far as her cooking went (it was good meat), was ill-timed or unnecessary, I am sorry for that. But I don’t think it was so heinous as to ruin a whole meal, which makes me think that something else had already ruined the meal.