by Dorsey, Tim
“Gentlemen!” boomed Tatum. “Governor Conrad is soft on the death penalty!”
Tatum looked over at Jackie. She nodded in approval. The editorial board also looked over at Jackie. She nodded at them, too.
Tatum continued: “While our schoolchildren are forced to eat stale pizza squares and fish sticks for lunch, murderers have been treated to a five-star menu of last meals under the Conrad administration. Just listen to this list: Delmonico steak, lobster, ribs, Cajun blackened mahimahi”—Tatum began salivating—“rack of lamb with curly fries, Denny’s Grand-Slam breakfast…Gentlemen, if I’m elected, I won’t just fry ’em. I’ll fry ’em hungry!”
THE Orange Crush headed south on US 1. It was a weird stretch of road. People living permanently in motel rooms, arguing at bus stops. Boarded-up restaurants. Body-piercing joints. A sign: “Psychic on duty 24 hours.”
Gottfried Escrow had an “action item” that he just couldn’t seem to clear from his clipboard. “Get Frank Lloyd Sirocco’s death warrant signed.”
Marlon kept putting it off.
“Tatum’s killing you on this. You have to get an execution in,” said Escrow. “If you don’t warrant Sirocco soon, we won’t be able to smoke another one until after the election.”
“I’m still ahead,” said Marlon. “I can win without it.”
“Tatum’s in your margin of error! Every day he hammers on this, he chips away at your lead.”
“I have faith in the people.”
“I give up,” said Escrow. “Here, sign this other crap.”
Escrow fanned a stack of papers on the dashboard of the Orange Crush, and Marlon scribbled quickly at stoplights. Official proclamations. Appointments to ceremonial boards. Don Knotts Appreciation Day. The last item on the bottom of the stack, with just the signature line showing, was Sirocco’s warrant.
Escrow checked his clipboard. “We got nothing for the rest of the day except your commercial shoot.”
“That thing’s today?” Marlon said with apprehension.
“You’re not going to back out, are you?”
“No, I gave my word.”
“Good,” said Escrow. “I’ll call Ned and tell him we’re on.”
NED Coppola was the undisputed king of the thirty-second political TV spot.
Single-handedly, he had reinvented the medium. Nobody but nobody could strike a chord so deeply with so many people in so short a time. The images, the words, the emotions—they flowed and built and exploded in operatic grandeur. All in a half minute. Wham bam, in and out, leaving some viewers weeping, others in the glow of a religious experience—but all compelled to rush out and vote with a blind fervor. Sometimes Ned produced commercials for both sides in a race. Viewers would see one spot, then the other, and were left severely conflicted and often gained weight.
Ned was outrageously expensive, and everyone gladly paid. To hire anyone else was to automatically forfeit a deciding chunk in the polls. Ned wasn’t just the leader in his field; he was deity.
He hated every moment.
Ned was an extremely distant stepcousin by divorce of Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola, and all he ever wanted was to follow, however far behind, in his famous semirelative’s footfalls. He aspired to produce celluoid art, not the manipulative schmaltz that all the campaigns called genius.
But while Ned was without peer in the political world, he couldn’t get arrested in Hollywood. Not a toe in the door. And with good reason. Ned’s talents hit a kind of a ceiling at the thirty-second mark. Anything longer than a Bicentennial minute would come off the reels with stupefying results. Ned flourished at MTV sprint distances, but he had no cinematic endurance whatsoever. It was almost mystical. People who saw the rare footage couldn’t believe it. How could this be the work of the same person?
It was the source of unrelenting bitterness for Ned, who poured his frustrations into the campaigns, which only improved the quality of his work and made him that much more popular and pissed off.
Ned’s business office was a condo penthouse that occupied an entire fiftieth floor on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. His studio was in an office park just over the Broward line in—where else?—Hollywood, Florida. He spent the mornings in the penthouse taking calls on his portable phone and the afternoons directing at the studio.
On this particular morning, Ned paced around his penthouse balcony in a white terry-cloth bathrobe with the monogram NIC. I for Ingmar. His hair was dark, shaggy and unmanaged, because he was going for “The Oliver Stone.” He was inexplicably tanned for someone whose nebbish accountant looks suggested a lot of scurrying around under fluorescent lighting. He was tall and lean, but his features were on the small side and heavily weighted toward the vertical axis of his face, leaving his cheeks and jaw without a whole lot to do. Although not unattractive, the overall result prompted suspicion that his mother had been on something during the pregnancy.
The penthouse’s tiled terrace wrapped all the way around the building, and Ned made hyperactive laps as he talked on the phone. The views were astounding, and Ned saw none of it. To the east, the clear Atlantic; north, waterfront golf courses; west, Biscayne Bay and uptown Miami; south, the art deco jewels Delano and Dilido. He snapped the phone closed in frustration, then opened it and dialed again.
“Chad, Coppola here, what did ya think of my new treatment?…I see…I see…Well, did you read the whole thing?…I see, just the title…But the title is the hook, Thelma and Louise II…. Of course I know you can’t have a sequel when the main characters are killed—so get this: They had parachutes!…Hello? Chad? Hello?…”
Ned hung up and dialed the number for Paramount Studios.
“Is Brad there? This is Coppola.”
The studios had stopped returning Ned’s calls months ago, and recently had stopped accepting them as well. So Ned started introducing himself simply as Coppola.
“Brad—Coppola here…No, Ned Coppola, Frankie’s cousin…Hello? Hello?…”
He dialed MGM.
“Harrison, Coppola here…Yeah, I know you told me not to call anymore, but you’re going to thank me after you hear this…Okay, I’ll make it quick. Four words that will slay the Academy: Apocalypse Then and Now. Martin Sheen opens a health food store in Monterey…. Hello? You still there? Hello?…”
He dialed Universal.
“Isaac, Coppola here…. Right, the Coppola you never wanted to hear from again…. Just hear me out. Hoffman goes for his master’s in The Postgraduate…. I disagree. No, it is not the stupidest idea in the world…. Okay, try this one on: More Terms of Endearment…. Hello? Hello?…”
Ned threw the phone in disgust on the sofa, and it bounced off a stuffed pillow into his hundred-gallon saltwater aquarium. The wall phone rang.
“Coppola here…Oh, hi, Escrow…Yeah, we’re set for this afternoon…See you then….”
THE Orange Crush arrived at Eagle Studios a few minutes ahead of schedule, and Ned gave everyone the quick tour. Most of the studio was taken up by the set, where stagehands wheeled away a backdrop of Washington crossing the Delaware and replaced it with the 1980 Olympic hockey team. There were movie cameras everywhere, arrays of lights and boom microphones, makeup trays, and an old-fashioned cone megaphone next to a tall director’s chair with COPPOLA stitched on the back.
Ned showed them the prop room. On one wall, shelves of baseball gloves, American flags, high school trophies, priests’ collars, facsimile bills of rights, plastic apple pies, plastic hams, plastic mashed potatoes, plastic cocker spaniel puppies, cowboy hats, crutches, baskets of combat medals, Norman Rockwell paintings and Gutenberg Bibles. On the other wall, the racks of costumes: police officers, kindergarten teachers, firemen, crossing guards, soldiers, varsity lettermen, nuns, Boy Scouts, factory workers, Red Cross volunteers, grandmothers and Abe Lincoln.
A director’s assistant approached. “Ned, it’s time to get Marlon ready.”
Marlon was taken to a small room with a star on the door, where he was dres
sed in a sky-blue long-sleeve shirt and sky-blue pants.
“Are you sure this is right?” Marlon asked, lying back in a chair as the makeup went on.
“Shhhhh!” said Escrow. “Ned’s very temperamental about his work.”
Marlon was taken to wait in the green room, where Ned’s stable of actors sipped champagne from plastic cups and snacked on trays of cold cuts and Triscuits. Everyone else was pacing, reciting lines. A bad English Shakespearean actor, a bad Hollywood Method actor, an off-off-Broadway stand-in, a waitress with dreams, a bellhop with migraines, a chorus line floozy, a body double, a foul-mouthed octogenarian, child-size midgets smoking cigars and Erik Estrada.
Marlon was finally brought to the set, which now had a plain sky-blue backdrop that matched his shirt and pants.
Ned sat in his director’s chair. He clapped his hands twice, and a stagehand placed a large box on the set and directed Marlon to sit on it. He handed Marlon a Gutenberg Bible. They started filming.
“Cut! Cut!” Ned yelled. “Hate it!”
The stagehand took away the Bible and put the plastic cocker spaniel on Marlon’s lap, and they started filming again.
“Cut!” Ned yelled. He got out of the director’s chair and began marching back and forth with his hands behind his back. He grumbled and insulted his crew and invoked the names of Hollywood greats.
The stagehand took away the puppy and handed Marlon a beach ball.
“Cut!” Ned yelled. “This ain’t fuckin’ Olin Mills!”
The stagehand took away the beach ball and put an Army helmet on Marlon’s head.
“Make him stand,” said Ned.
Marlon stood. They filmed for thirty seconds.
Ned smiled and bunched together the fingertips of his right hand and kissed them like a chef. “Perfect!”
Marlon looked down at his light-blue pants and shirt. “The helmet doesn’t go.”
“Trust me,” said Ned.
“What about the background?”
“We add all that later with computers.” Ned raised the cone megaphone. “That’s a wrap!”
Everybody shook hands as they prepared to depart, and Pimento asked Ned to autograph his scrapbook. “I’m a huge fan. Loved watching you work.”
“Why, thank you,” said Ned, faking humility. He signed Pimento’s book boldly.
“You were incredible,” said Pimento. “Very Godfather.”
Ned looked up. “Godfather! That’s my favorite movie! My stepcousin made it!”
“It’s obviously in the blood,” said Pimento.
“You really think so?”
Ned was so touched by Pimento’s praise that he invited everyone back to his penthouse so he could spend more time with Pimento and hear more praise.
“We’ll have to pass,” said Escrow. “We’ve got a full schedule.”
“Marlon, please,” said Pimento. “Just for a little bit.”
ESCROW fumed as he sat with folded arms in a fiftieth-floor penthouse on Collins Avenue. He glanced at the fish tank and saw a tiny skeleton popping in and out of a bubbling treasure chest, next to a phone.
“The studios are run by yes-men entrenched in a Titanic mentality!” Ned told Pimento as they sat in Coppola’s office. The walls were covered with family photos, mostly of Ned as a child on the sets of his famous cousin’s movies. “Everything has to be a big-budget action film! You’d never get a Last Picture Show made today!”
“I hear ya,” said Pimento, studying a photo of little Ned shaking hands with James Caan, covered with bullet holes.
“You appreciate film. Tell me what you think,” said Ned. “Midnight Cowboy II. After Ratso Rizzo’s funeral, Joe Buck opens this wacky delicatessen on Miami Beach.”
“It’s got comeback vehicle for Jon Voight written all over it.”
“That’s what I keep telling them, but I can’t get the time of day.”
“Hollywood-types.”
“I got a million of ’em. Every one, solid gold. Citizen Kane II—some kid pulls the sled out of the furnace, and get this: It’s a magic sled!…Kramer vs. Kramer, K2: The Next Generation—not even a nibble!”
“They’re too busy cranking out The Flintstones, The Mod Squad and Lost in Space.” Pimento stopped to admire a photo of little Ned in the Philippines, sharing a banana split with Brando. A lightbulb came on. “I got an idea! Why don’t you come with us?”
“What for?”
“Bring some cameras. Film the whole campaign from the bus. It’d be like a Merry Pranksters thing.”
“You may have something,” said Ned. “I’ve been waiting years for a project like that. A close-to-the-bone docudrama. I’m sick of this political hackwork.”
“I’m the press secretary, so consider yourself credentialed.”
“Great. Give me a couple of days to wrap up here, and I’ll meet you on the road.”
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
28
THE NEXT MORNING, a high-performance Bell Jet Ranger helicopter lifted off a rooftop helipad above Miami and headed north along the coast. It traced the condo canyons and hotels from Ocean Drive to Bal Harbor, then headed inland over funky Dania.
FCN correspondent Blaine Crease pointed down at another condo. “Didn’t that use to be Pirate’s World?”
The pilot said he didn’t know.
MARLON wasn’t getting enough sleep. He yawned at the wheel on I-95. The morning drivers weaved, flipped birds and darted around the Orange Crush. Escrow brought a box of letters to the front of the Winnebago.
“And here’s the mail. A hundred dollars from some nobody, another hundred from nobody, another hundred…” Escrow flipped fast-forward through the checks in disbelief. “They’re all a hundred dollars! And I’ve never heard of any of these people!” He kept flipping.
“Maybe I’ve struck a nerve with the common folk,” said Marlon. “Maybe that’s all they could afford.”
“Then why are they giving it to the GOP?” said Escrow. “You know the saying—‘There’s no dumber animal than a poor Republican.’”
Marlon hugged the shoulder of the road as a Beemer flew by, shot between two semis and skidded onto the exit ramp.
“And now we move on to your fan mail,” said Escrow. “‘You suk,’ ‘You suk big time,’ ‘We should call you Hoover you suk so much,’ ‘I think you’re great! Just kidding—you suk!’ and ‘Why did you implant the transmitter in my head?’”
Another car began passing on Marlon’s left. A convertible. The driver raised a pistol at the Winnebago. The other drivers saw it, changed lanes and sipped coffee. The car advanced slowly, moving up along the side of the Orange Crush, a convertible red Ferrari with a vanity tag. DAY-TRADR. It was nearly to Marlon’s window.
“THERE he is!” shouted Blaine Crease. The Bell Jet Ranger swooped down over the morning traffic on I-95, made a hard bank and came up the southbound lanes until it was hovering over the Orange Crush. A rope ladder unrolled from the side of the helicopter.
“LOOK what I bought!” said Pimento, holding a tiny, pocket-sized TV with a three-inch crystal screen. “Isn’t this an incredible gadget? I picked it up at Wal-Mart so we could watch Marlon’s commercials on the road.” Pimento looked at his watch. “His first should be airing any second.”
Right on schedule, Marlon’s spot opened with a soft fade-in on a playground, followed by a Veterans Day parade and an old woman in a rocking chair looking at a picture of herself as a young girl. There were violins and a mellow flute. A police officer on horseback as sunrise broke through elm branches. Children chasing an ice-cream truck. A church picnic. Finally, a ground-level shot looking up at Marlon Conrad in an Army helmet. The camera pulled back to show Marlon in a soldier’s uniform with a big-ass medal on his chest that said “Hero.” Behind him a massive American flag unfurling in gossamer slow motion. Fade-out.
“Genius!” said Escrow.
“That’s it? No words?” said Marlon. “Where’s my message?”
“The medium is the message.”
“So get Marshall McLuhan to run the state.”
After the commercial, ABC broke in with a simulcast from Blaine Crease’s helicopter. A news caption read: “Live—Interstate 95.”
“Hey, check it out!” said Pimento, pointing at the tiny TV. “It’s that dude from the debates. What the hell’s he doing? Must be some kind of cool stunt—he’s trying to climb down onto that RV.” Pimento looked out the window at their surroundings. “I’ll bet that’s going on right around here somewhere.”
The red Ferrari gained on the Orange Crush and finally pulled even with Marlon’s window, and the gunman stiffened his arm in aim.
“He’s at the bottom of the ladder!” said Pimento, pointing at the tiny TV. “He’s letting go!”
They heard a loud thump on the roof of the Orange Crush. They all ducked and looked up at the ceiling. “What the hell was that?” said Pimento.
The sudden noise distracted Marlon, and he swerved left, then noticed he was about to collide with a red car in the next lane, and jerked the wheel hard the other way.
“Uh-oh,” said Blaine Crease.
He was catapulted from the roof of the Orange Crush and onto the windshield of the Ferrari, which veered off the left shoulder of the highway and began bounding down the median.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” screamed Crease.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” screamed DAY-TRADR.
They crashed through a palmetto thicket and kept going, Crease screaming and hanging on to the top of the windshield with both hands. They finally slowed and sank in wet sawgrass.
Back on the highway, Marlon had overcorrected and was straddling the shoulder, the right wheels bouncing through rough gravel. He carefully eased the wheels back onto the pavement.
“I hate driving in Broward County,” said Marlon.
Pimento remembered his tiny TV. He looked down at the small screen. The helicopter was pulling away from traffic with an empty rope ladder swinging in the wind. No sign of Crease.
“Hey, we never got to see what happened,” said Pimento. “Hope everything turned out okay.”