The Making of Minty Malone

by Isabel Wolff

  ‘But we don’t know what those places are,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh yes we do,’ she said. ‘It’s all in here.’ She waved the Time Out Guide to LA at me. ‘I studied it assiduously on the plane. And the first place we go is Barneys department store and have breakfast in the rooftop café. It’s stuffed with film people and celebrities. So we just ask their advice.’

  ‘Amber,’ I said, ‘we can’t just go up to famous people and talk to them. They don’t know us. They won’t like it. I wouldn’t like it if I was them.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Minty,’ she replied with an indulgent laugh. ‘They’re human beings, aren’t they? Like you and me. They’ll probably be only too delighted to help. No, I’m really not intimidated by famous people,’ she added, as the lift arrived with a bright falsetto ‘ping’. ‘I’m not intimidated at a –’

  The doors drew back. And there was Hugh Grant. We looked at him. He looked at us. Then he smiled, slightly shyly, and said, ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied, as we stepped in. I glanced at Amber. She was staring at the ceiling, her face bright red. And she was unusually silent as we floated down to the ground floor.

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t afraid to speak to the stars?’ I whispered to her as Hugh Grant faded from view.

  ‘I’ve just got to warm up to it a bit,’ she said, ‘that’s all. It’s just jet-lag. I’ve got to get into my stride. But I’m really not phased by famous people. Oh my God!’ She exhaled as violently as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus.

  ‘What? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Overthereoverthereoverthere,’ she hissed. ‘Atthedesk!’

  I looked. Standing at the reception was a very tall, handsome, dark-haired man wearing wire-rimmed glasses.

  ‘It’s Oscar Schindler,’ Amber breathed. ‘Don’t stare, Minty,’ she added fiercely. ‘It’s rude.’

  ‘I’m not staring. You’re staring. That’s Liam Neeson. Great. Come on.’

  The hotel foyer was dominated, appropriately enough, by a vast arrangement of stargazer lilies. Smartly dressed guests tapped their way across the marble floor or sat on plumptious sofas, doing deals. We walked out of the front entrance past a battalion of uniformed doormen, then set off down Doheny Drive. Now, I’m useless at map-reading. I just can’t do it at all. I’m happy to confess that the depths of my cartographic incompetence are quite unfathomable. But Amber’s the opposite. She’s brilliant at it. She reads maps with the same facility and speed that she reads books. She can instantly see what’s north, what’s south, what’s what and what’s where.

  ‘OK, it’s four blocks this way,’ she said confidently. ‘Then we take a right and it’s six blocks to Barneys. It’ll be good to walk – to get our bearings.’

  The sky was Hockney blue and the pavements a refulgent white as we strolled through Beverly Hills in the startling sunshine. We passed Spanish-style haciendas and miniature mock-Tudor mansions with exquisitely manicured front lawns.

  ‘Unreal estate,’ muttered Amber, wonderingly.

  ‘Have you noticed?’ I said after a little while. ‘There are no other pedestrians. Isn’t it spooky?’ Indeed the sidewalks were as deserted as the Marie Celeste.

  ‘Everyone drives in LA,’ Amber explained. ‘This city was built for the car. Angelenos love their cars so much they drive from their bedrooms to their bathrooms.’

  Twenty minutes later we pushed on the door of Barneys and wandered around surveying the merchandise with the enthusiasm of a couple of vampires at a blood transfusion centre.

  ‘Lovely stuff,’ drooled Amber as we scrutinised some gorgeous velvet scarves.

  ‘Do you have any questions for me today?’ enquired a sales assistant. She had descended on us with the same certainty of purpose with which a hawk might swoop on a rabbit.

  ‘Do you have any questions for me today?’ she repeated pleasantly.

  ‘Questions?’ I said quizzically. What on earth did she mean?

  ‘Yes. Questions.’ Ah. This was sales patter, LA-style. ‘Do you have any questions for me?’ the woman tried again.

  ‘Well, is there a God?’ enquired Amber facetiously. ‘How close are we to commercial space travel? And where might we find the lift to the rooftop café?’

  ‘We must be polite,’ I hissed as we walked away. ‘Americans are very courteous and civil. I don’t think we should be sarcastic to them. It’s not nice.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me about being nice, Minty. If it wasn’t for you being not nice we wouldn’t be here at all!’

  This was true. The lift deposited us on the fifth floor at the Greengrass Café. We took a table outside, drank in the sweeping view, then got down to some strenuous eavesdropping while we sipped our Mocha frappuccinos. Amber was right – this was a good place to start. The air was buzzing with showbizzy badinage.

  ‘– Kevin will never buy it.’

  ‘– Not less than eight million.’

  ‘– friend of Calista’s.’

  ‘– I think it’s a really great script.’

  ‘– Not really BO.’

  ‘BO?’ I whispered to Amber. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Box Office,’ she explained knowledgeably, waving a copy of Hollywood Reporter at me. ‘Not body odour,’ she added.

  Certainly not. Everyone smelt wonderful. Scentsational. And they were dressed with the easy, affluent elegance you find in Cannes or Nice. They were all Pradaed and Karanned. Guccied and Vuittonned. Bodies toned and tanned, gymmed and slimmed – eyelids and jawlines trimmed. We couldn’t approach these people in a million years.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Amber exclaimed theatrically, as she ‘accidentally’ dropped her sunglasses at the feet of the middle-aged man seated at the next table. He politely retrieved them and handed them back, and within thirty seconds she had told him all about the purpose of our visit.

  ‘Can you offer us any tips as to how we might find our friend?’ Amber enquired. Her considerable charms were not lost on the man, whose name was Michael, and he seemed only too happy to help.

  ‘Who’s his agent?’ he asked. ‘That’s the first thing you’d need to know.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t got one,’ I explained. ‘He sacked his British agent. He said he was going to sell the film script himself.’

  ‘I see. Well, he’ll be lucky,’ Michael said. ‘That’s extremely hard to do in this town.’

  ‘But it’s a wonderful story,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ he replied with a breezy laugh.

  ‘No, it really is. You see, it’s set in Poland after the war, and it’s about a little autistic boy who’s completely locked in. And what happens, right, is that the boy befriends this stray dog, which has got lost in the snow, and through his friendship with this dog, the boy’s condition gradually starts to improve and he eventually learns how to speak. And loads of other things happen too, to do with the aftermath of the war, but basically it’s about the way animals can open doors in human minds.’

  ‘It does sound interesting.’

  ‘It’s wonderful. And very moving too. It’s taken from his novel,’ I explained. ‘His name’s Joe Bridges, by the way. He’s English. And I’m trying to find him.’

  ‘Are you in the business?’ asked Amber.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work at Paramount.’

  ‘Do you have any advice on how we can find Joe?’ I said with a sigh.

  ‘Well, you should contact the agencies,’ he replied, ‘because that’s what he’d be doing. He’d be cold-calling them, trying to set up meetings.’

  ‘Which ones?’ I asked him as I got out my pen and pad.

  ‘You gotta try CAA – that stands for Creative Artists Agency – they’re the tops. They’re on Wilshire Boulevard. Then there’s ICM and William Morris – just ring ‘em all up and ask if any of their guys have been in contact with your friend.’

  ‘We’ll do better than
that,’ said Amber. ‘We’ll go there in person.’

  But first we took a cab to Hertz and picked up a car. Half an hour later we were bowling along in a Ford Mustang convertible with the roof down. I switched on the radio and spun through the dials.

  ‘This is KLSX Talk Radio on 97.1 …expected high, 74 degrees///Call Attorney Frank Cohen – no win, no fee/// …smog levels good today …long tailbacks on Santa Monica …///And God said to me, “Go forth and slay the devil …”///You’re listening to KXWQ/// …And now these messages: Why not make new friends and find that special someone …?’

  I had found that special someone, I realised ruefully, but then I went and lost him again.

  ‘Dorothy Parker described Los Angeles as “seventy-two suburbs in search of a city”,’ said Amber. ‘I think that’s rather good, don’t you?’

  Indeed I did. For where was the centre? There didn’t seem to be one. We just criss-crossed street after palm-punctuated street, all looking roughly the same – low-rise buildings topped by huge billboards with vast, iconic images of the stars. Sandra Bullock and Sharon Stone were projected forty feet high. Harrison Ford seemed to gaze down on us with Pharoanic grandeur. The Marlboro Man loomed as large as Godzilla or King Kong. Overhead, signs directed us to Bel Air and Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Fairfax, Malibu and Hollywood Hills. I stared at the map on my lap, but it might as well have been differential calculus for all the sense it made to me. I hadn’t a clue where we were, but it didn’t matter, because Amber did. She knew exactly. And it occurred to me, not for the first time, that there’s a parallel here with her career. She’s so much a better critic than she is a novelist, just as she’s a much better navigator than a driver. I mean, she’s really not very good behind the wheel, but she sure as hell knows the way.

  ‘OK – this is Sunset Boulevard,’ she said, stabbing the map with her right index finger as we drove along. ‘That’s the House of Blues-’ she pointed to an artistically dilapidated tin-shack. ‘It was owned by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. And that,’ she said, swivelling her head to the right with an alarming lack of rearwards observation, ‘is Spago’s, Los Angeles’ most famous restaurant.’

  ‘How do you know all this? We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘By meticulous study of the guide books,’ she replied. ‘I love guide books, Minty, don’t you? I read them like novels.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Now, that black building must be the Viper Room,’ she added as we approached a traffic light. She looked at her guide book. ‘Yes, it is,’ she confirmed happily. ‘It’s the Viper Room –’

  ‘Amber!’

  ‘No, it was still green.’

  ‘It had gone red!’

  ‘Oh well, I just can’t find the brake on this bloody car. Anyway, the Viper Room’s owned by Johnny Depp,’ she explained calmly as my soaring pulse began to dip. ‘That’s where River Phoenix died. Right there. On the pavement. Terrible. OK,’ she went on, ‘we’re going to the top of Sunset. And of course everyone knows what happened to Hugh Grant on Sunset Boulevard, don’t they? Poor love! Anyway, we should hang a left somewhere soon and that’ll take us on to Wilshire Boulevard, and with any luck we’ll find CAA somewhere near the top.’

  Five minutes later we slammed to a halt outside a white office building, bowed at the front like the space ship in ET. I ran inside and spoke to a woman on reception, and she put me through to someone called Cathy on an internal phone.

  ‘Do you know a British scriptwriter by the name of Joe Bridges?’ I asked her. ‘He’s written an absolutely brilliant screenplay.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said warily. She was as warm as Icelandic cod.

  ‘Yes,’ I persisted. ‘It’s about an autistic boy and his dog. It’s set in Poland after the war. It’s very, very moving, and it’s based on his novel, which was published in Britain last year. He’s called Joe Bridges,’ I repeated, ‘and I’m rather anxious to find him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cathy, ‘I really can’t help you. We get so many enquiries from scriptwriters.’

  ‘But I’ve flown to LA from London specially. I’m in love with him, you see.’

  ‘You’ve come from London?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

  ‘You’ve no address for him, and you’ve just flown here from London?’ she repeated incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I suddenly felt silly and rather self-conscious.

  ‘Oh, that is so romantic!’ she exclaimed. ‘Hang on, I’ll be right down.’ And so she came down to reception.

  ‘Now, I haven’t heard of this guy – what’s his name again?’

  ‘Joe Bridges. He’s only been in LA two weeks.’

  ‘And his script’s about an artistic Polish boy who befriends a dog.’

  ‘Not artistic, autistic. Like in Rain Man. It’s absolutely brilliant – incredibly moving. Anyway, as I say, I’m trying to find him. Could you possibly ask your colleagues if they’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Hmm, I guess I could send an e-mail round to everyone, but I’m afraid they’ll take time to get back to me.’

  ‘Well, if you do discover that someone working here knows him, or has even met him, please could you ask them to call me at my hotel?’

  ‘Sure. Oh, this is so great – I just love stories like this.’

  ‘Well, thanks very much for your help. If he does turn up here in the next five days, could you possibly tell him that Minty’s at the Four Seasons and would really like to see him?’

  ‘Sure. Lemme write that down. Minnie’s at the Four Seasons …’

  ‘No, not Minnie, as in Mouse – Minty.’

  ‘That’s what I said, Minnie. Good luck.’

  Next stop was ICM, a little further down Wilshire Boulevard, where I repeated my spiel about Joe and his script, only to be told the same thing. And then we drove up to William Morris on El Camino Drive – I drew a blank there too. By which time Amber said she was exhausted and feeling jet-lagged and needed to go shopping in Rodeo Drive.

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone straight to a producer,’ she said as we wandered out of Versace and into Tommy Hilfiger twenty minutes later. ‘Perhaps he’s working in a studio. Perhaps he’s sweeping the streets.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s living on the moon with Elvis,’ I said bleakly. ‘I mean, where do scriptwriters go in Tinseltown?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the young assistant, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you, and I think I might be able to help.’

  ‘Yes?’ we said.

  ‘I’m trying to break into scriptwriting too,’ he said. ‘There’s a café where a lot of the writers hang out. It’s on Beverly Boulevard, and it’s called Insomnia because it’s open until four a.m. Maybe you’ll find your friend there.’

  Amber had parked the Mustang at an oblique angle under a jacaranda tree. She released the handbrake and off we went, her head darting dangerously from road to map.

  ‘It’s at 7285 Beverly Boulevard,’ she said. ‘OK, we go up here to Olympic Boulevard, then cross La Cienega, drive about fifteen blocks, take a left down …Cloverdale, all the way up, on to Beverly, and then it should be a couple of blocks down on the left-hand side.’

  And she was right. That’s exactly where it was. Opposite a synagogue. The café was done up in theatrical, shabby-chic style, with heavy velvet drapes, dusty chandeliers, battered chairs and tables, and shelves groaning with books. It was packed, yet it was silent. This was because everyone – including the waitress – was writing. They sat there in silence with their latte and their lap-tops, or with pens and pads of A4. The atmosphere was as quiet and intense as that in a university library the day before finals. Inhibited by the atmosphere of studious concentration, I idly looked at the books. How to Sell Your Screenplay; How to Hack it in Hollywood; and Body Trauma – A Writer’s Guide to Wounds and Injuries.

  ‘Ask him!’ whispered Amber hoarsely. ‘That chap over there, in the blue jumper. He looks like he’s taking a break.’
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  I went up to him, introduced myself, and explained that I was trying to find Joe.

  ‘Joe Bridges?’ said the young man thoughtfully. ‘Joe Bridges? Mmmmm. Joe Bridges …?’

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he’s written a script,’ I explained. ‘It’s set in Poland. It’s about an autistic boy and a dog. It’s absolutely brilliant. He’s trying to sell it, and I just don’t know where he is or what he might be doing. His mobile phone doesn’t work, and I don’t have any leads and I’ve only got five days and I don’t really know LA, so I can’t begin to imagine where he might be or what he’d be doing.’

  ‘Well …’ said the writer, whose name was Jed, ‘he’d be hanging out in the bars; crashing the Hollywood parties; trying to get an actor or a director interested in his film. I’ve got a deal,’ he went on as he sipped his coffee, ‘and I got it by disguising myself as a waiter at a party where I knew John Boorman was going to be. When I brought him his drink, I gave him a copy of my script. Just like that! And he read it, and he liked it, and now it’s in the early stages of development.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘A friend of mine got a job washing the cars of famous directors. He was cleaning Tim Burton’s car and he just left a copy of his script on the passenger seat. And Tim read it and liked it.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘And a girlfriend of mine posed as a hairdresser and did Meg Ryan’s hair. While Meg was sitting there, she told her all about her script.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, you know that messy, just-got-out-of-bed look Meg’s got?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unfortunately that was the best my friend could do. Luckily, Meg liked it. Then someone else I know disguised himself as a dentist and got to do Kevin Costner’s teeth, and while Kevin was stuck there, in the chair, he said he’d extract them all if the guy didn’t read his script.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He got arrested. So your friend might be doing that kind of thing.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I mean, he’ll be networking like crazy by any means he can, because it’s just so hard in this town. I mean, like, every day two hundred people move to LA in the hope of becoming successful scriptwriters. It’s desperate.’