“What are you doing today?” she asked me.
“Thanks for returning my calls.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Do you have news?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding constrained. “But it would be better if we could discuss it face to face.”
“Can’t you tell me . . . ?”
“You free for lunch?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, I’ll see you around one p.m. at the office.”
I showered, dressed, and climbed into the VW and headed south. I made the city in less than two hours. I hadn’t been in Los Angeles in nearly four months—and cruising down Wilshire, heading toward Alison’s office, it struck me how much I missed the dump. Though the rest of the world derides the place for its alleged shallowness and its visual deformities (“New Jersey with better clothes,” as one of my wiseass Manhattan friends called it), I’ve always loved its hallucinatory sprawl; its intermingling of the industrial and the opulent; its aching gimcrack glamour; the sense that you were in a Paradise Trashed . . . yet still brimming with possibility.
Alison’s assistant, Suzy, didn’t recognize me at first.
“Can I help you?” she asked, squinting suspiciously at me when I came through the door. Then the penny dropped. “Oh my God, David . . . uh, hello.”
Alison then came out from her inner office and did a double-take when she saw me. My beard was now well below my chin, and I had my hair tied in a ponytail. She gave me a fast peck on the cheek, then sized me up once more and said, “If I ever hear of a Charles Manson look-alike competition, I’m signing you up. You’ll be a shoo-in.”
“And it’s very nice to see you too, Alison,” I said.
“What sort of diet have you been on? Macro-neurotic?”
I ignored the comment and stared at the bulging file under her arm.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Evidence.”
“Of what?”
“Come on inside.”
I did as ordered, sitting down in the seat opposite her desk.
“We could go out to somewhere fancy,” she said. “But . . .”
“You’d rather talk here?”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s that bad. So shall we order in?”
I nodded and Alison picked up the phone and asked Suzy to call Barney Greengrass and get them to send over a platter of their best Nova, with the usual bagel and schmear accompaniments.
“And a couple of celery sodas, just so we can pretend we’re in New York,” Alison said.
She put down the phone. “I take it you’re not drinking?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’re radiating anorexic good health.”
“Do I need a drink for what you’re about to tell me?”
“Possibly.”
“I’ll pass.”
“I am impressed.”
“Enough of the buildup, Alison. Tell me.”
She opened the file. “I want you to think back to when you originally finished We Three Grunts. According to my files, it was sometime during the autumn of ’97.”
“November, ’97, to be exact.”
“And you’re certain you registered it with SATWA?”
“Of course. I’ve always registered all my scripts with the Association.”
“And they always gave you a standard form letter saying it’s been registered, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have the letter for We Three Grunts?”
“I doubt it.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Well, I’ve always been pretty ruthless with my papers, throwing out nonessential stuff.”
“Isn’t a SATWA letter of registration important?”
“Not when I know that, having registered the script with them, it is registered. What the hell are you getting at, Alison?”
“The Screen and Television Writers’ Association does have a script entitled We Three Grunts listed in their books. But they only registered it last month, under the name of its author, one Philip Fleck.”
“But, hang on, they surely have a record of my script registration in November ’97?”
“No, they do not.”
“But that can’t be. I did register it.”
“Hey, I believe you. Not only that, I managed to dig out the original 1997 draft of the screenplay.”
She reached into the file and pulled out a battered, slightly yellowing copy of the script. The title page read:
WE THREE GRUNTS
A Screenplay
by
David Armitage
(First Draft: November 1997)
“There’s the proof you need,” I said, pointing to the date on the title page.
“But David, who’s to say that you didn’t concoct this title page yourself recently? Who’s to say you didn’t decide to steal Philip Fleck’s script and put your own name on the title page . . .”
“What are you accusing me of, Alison?”
“You’re not listening to what I’m saying here. I know you wrote this movie. I know you’re not a plagiarist. And I also know that you’re not any more deranged than any other writer I represent. But I also know that SATWA has no record of your authorship of We Three Grunts . . .”
“How do you know that?”
“Because when the Association told me last week that the script was only registered under the name of Philip Fleck, I contacted my lawyer who, in turn, put me in touch with a private investigator . . .”
“You hired a PI?” I asked, sounding shocked.
“Hell yes. I mean, we’re talking about a serious theft here, and one that could be worth two-point-five million. So of course I got me a gumshoe. You should have seen this guy. Thirty-five years old, worst case of acne I’ve ever laid eyes on, and his suit looked like he’d stolen it off the back of some Mormon missionary. Believe me, he was no Sam Spade. But despite the looks, the guy was as thorough as a tax inspector. And what he turned up with . . .”
She dug deeper into the file, first bringing out the recent official SATWA registration of We Three Grunts, clearly under the name of Philip Fleck. Then she brought out the official SATWA registration of all my scripts. Every Selling You episode was listed. So too was Breaking and Entering. But none of my unproduced screenplays from the nineties was cited.
“Name one of those screenplays,” Alison said.
“At Sea,” I said, mentioning the generic (“but darkly comic”) action script in which Islamic terrorists seized the yacht containing the US president’s three children.
Alison flipped a piece of paper in front of me.
“Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month. Name another of your unproduced screenplays.”
“A Time of Gifts,” I said, mentioning the woman-dying-of-cancer film I wrote in ’96.
“Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month,” she said, handing me another official SATWA letter. “And let’s go for the hat trick. Name a third unproduced screenplay of yours.”
“The Right Place, the Wrong Time.”
“That was the honeymoon mix-up thing, right? Registered under the name of Philip Fleck last month.”
I stared down at the new document that Alison handed me.
“He’s stolen every script of mine that’s been unproduced?”
“That’s the situation.”
“And there’s no record of the scripts being registered under my name?”
“None whatsoever.”
“How the hell did Fleck engineer this?”
“Ah,” Alison said, digging even deeper into the file. “Here’s his real masterstroke.”
She handed me a Xerox copy of a small Hollywood Reporter article, dated four months ago:
FLECK FOUNDATION MAKES $8 MILLION DONATION TO SATWA BENEVOLENT FUND
The Philip Fleck Foundation today announced that it would be making an $8 million dona
tion to the Screen and Television Writers’ Association Benevolent Fund. Fleck Foundation spokesperson Cybill Harrison said that the gift was in recognition of the Association’s sterling work in promoting and protecting the work of screenwriters, while also hopefully assisting those writers facing financial crises or serious illness. SATWA’s executive director, James LeRoy, noted, “This magnificent gift points up a simple fact: when it comes to supporting the arts in America, Philip Fleck is the closest thing the country has to a Medici. Every writer should have a friend like Philip Fleck.”
“Great last line, isn’t it?” Alison said.
“I don’t believe this. He bought the Association.”
“Effectively, yes. More to the point, he bought the ability to have the Association lose the registrations of your unproduced screenplays and to register them in his own name.”
“But, Jesus, with the exception of We Three Grunts, none of the others is particularly distinguished.”
“But they’re still pretty smart and clever, right?”
“Of course they’re smart and clever. I wrote them.”
“There you go. Fleck now has four solid professional scripts to his name—one of which is so good that, according to this morning’s Daily Variety, he’s managed to get Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper to play the two Vietnam vets, with Jack Nicholson in a cameo as—”
“Richardson, their lawyer?”
“You got it.”
“That’s fantastic casting,” I said, suddenly excited. “And the entire Easy Rider generation will definitely turn out to see it.”
“Without question. And Columbia has agreed to distribute the thing.”
“This really is a go then?”
“Hey, it’s Fleck’s money, so it’s also his green light. The problem is, your name isn’t going to be on the credits.”
“Surely there’s a legal avenue we can take.”
“I’ve been round and round this thing with my lawyer. He says that Fleck has pulled off the perfect sting. Your old registrations have been expunged. Fleck has now become the official author of all your old work. And were we to go public—especially on the issue of We Three Grunts—Fleck’s people would play the ‘He’s a deranged plagiarist’ card. They’d also let it be known that, when you were still ‘a legitimate writer,’ Fleck had you out to his island, to talk about writing a movie for him. But he got whiff of the fact that you were trouble and turned you down. So, naturally, you got up to your old psychotic tricks and convinced yourself that you were the real author of We Three Grunts . . . even though there’s no record to show you as the actual writer, whereas there is official SATWA accreditation of Fleck’s authorship.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s amazing what money can buy you.”
“But . . . hang on . . . couldn’t we get Fleck on registering all four screenplays in the last month?”
“Who’s to say that he didn’t get around to submitting them to the Association until now? He could argue, for example, that he’d been writing these scripts privately for the last couple of years. The fact that he was going into production with We Three Grunts meant that he probably decided it was time to officially register everything with SATWA.”
“But how about the studio executive and development people who read my script . . . ?”
“You mean, all those years ago? Oh come on, David. Rule number one of development is: you always forget the script you’ve just passed on, three minutes after you’ve passed on it. More to the point, even if some damn D gal or guy does remember reading your script, do you actually think they’re going to take your side against the mighty Mr. Fleck? Especially given your current position in this town. Trust me, the lawyer, the PI, and I have tried to run all sorts of scenarios on how to fight this. We can’t find any. Fleck has closed every damn loophole imaginable. Even the lawyer had to admire the elegance of the scam he’s pulled. In pool parlance, you’re snookered.”
I stared down at the pile of papers covering Alison’s desk. I was still trying to fathom the hall of mirrors in which I currently found myself and the realization that there was no way out of this situation—that my work was now Fleck’s work. Nothing I could do or say would change that.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Alison said. “When I told the PI about the way that Theo McCall undid your career, he was immediately interested and went off and did a little additional research.”
Again, she dug into the file and pulled out another couple of Xeroxes. Then she handed them to me and said: “Get a load of these.”
I looked down and saw that I was holding a statement from Bank of California for the money management account of one Theodore McCall of 1158 Kings Road, West Hollywood, California.
“How the hell did he get these?”
“I didn’t ask. Because I didn’t want to know. But put it this way: where there’s a will, there’s a relative. Anyway, check out the credit column for the fourteenth of every month. As you’ll notice, there’s a deposit for ten grand from a company called Lubitsch Holdings. Now my PI ran a check on this outfit, and it turns out it’s some shell company registered in the Cayman Islands, traceable to no one. What’s more, he found out that McCall makes a shitty thirty-four grand a year at Hollywood Legit but also manages to pull in another fifty grand as the Hollywood stringer for some British rag. He’s got no family money, no trust fund, no nothing. But for the last six months, he’s been on this ten-grand-a-month retainer from a mysterious company named Lubitsch.”
Pause.
“When did you visit Fleck’s island?” she asked me.
“Seven months ago.”
“Didn’t you tell me he’s something of a film buff?”
“The ultimate film collector.”
“Who is the only person you know named Lubitsch?”
“Ernst Lubitsch—the great film comedy director of the thirties.”
“And only a real film buff would find it amusing to name a Cayman Island holding company after a legendary Hollywood director.”
Long silence. I said, “Fleck paid McCall to find something with which to destroy me?”
Alison shrugged. “We don’t have hard-and-fast evidence, because Fleck has covered his tracks so damn well. But the PI and I both agree: that seems to be the story.”
I sat back in the chair, thinking, thinking, thinking. The pieces of this skewed jigsaw were suddenly assembling in my head. For the past six months, I had believed that the entire appalling scenario I’d been living could be put down to the random workings of fate, the domino theory of disaster, in which one calamity triggered the next calamity, which, in turn . . .
But now the realization hit: it had all been completely orchestrated, completely manipulated, completely instigated. To Fleck I was nothing more than a cheap-assed marionette, to be toyed with at will. He’d decided to ruin me. Like some spurious supreme being, he felt he could pull all the strings.
“Do you know what baffles me about this whole thing?” Alison said. “It’s the fact that he needed to flatten you. Like if he just wanted to buy the script with his name only on it, hell, I’m sure we could have come to an accommodation. Especially if the price was right. But instead, he went for your jugular, your aorta, and every other major artery. Did you really make him hate you or something?”
I shrugged, thinking: No, but his wife and I got awfully friendly. And yet, what the hell really happened between Martha and me? A boozy embrace, nothing more . . . and one that took place far out of view of the staff. I mean, unless there were nighttime surveillance cameras hidden in the palms . . .
Stop! That’s a completely paranoid fantasy. Anyway, Fleck and Martha were virtually separated, weren’t they? So why would he even care if we got a little too affectionate down by the beach?
But he obviously did care—because why else do this to me?
Unless . . . unless . . .
Remember the movie he insisted on showing you? Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom. Remembe
r how you kept wondering, long afterward, why he subjected you to this gruesome little experience? Remember as well his defense of the film:
“ . . . what Pasolini was showing was fascism in its purest pretechnological form: the belief that you have the right, the privilege, to exert complete control over another being to the point of completely denying them their dignity and essential human rights; to strip them of all individuality and treat them like functional objects, to be discarded when they have outserved their capability . . .”
Was that the point of this entire malevolent exercise? Did he want to act out his belief that he had “the right, the privilege, to exert complete control over another being?” Did Martha factor into this equation as well—convincing him that her passing affection for me made me the obvious target for his manipulations? Or was it envy—a need to destroy someone else’s career in order to assuage his own evident lack of talent? He had such deranged amounts of money, such deranged amounts of totality. Surely, boredom must set in after a while. The boredom of one Rothko too many, of always drinking Cristal and always knowing that the Gulfstream or the 767 was awaiting your next move. Did he feel it was time to see if he could transcend all those billions by doing something truly original, audacious, existentially pure? By assuming a role that only a man who had more than everything could assume? The ultimate creative act: playing God.
I didn’t know the answer to this question. I didn’t care. His motivation was his motivation. All I did know was: Fleck was behind all this. He strategized my downfall like a general laying siege to a castle: attack the basic foundation, then watch the entire edifice crumble. His hand controlled all . . . and, in turn, me.
Alison spoke, snapping me out of my reverie.
“David, are you all right?”
“Just thinking.”
“I know this is a lot to take in. It is pretty damn shocking.”
“Can I ask a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Could you get Suzy to make Xeroxes of all the documents the PI dug up?”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I just need the documents . . . and that original copy of my script.”
“This is making me nervous.”
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