Rewrite

by Gregory Benford

  Charlie takes the lead in developing the arc of the plot for Switching: the opening tension between father and son, the resentment the son feels over his father’s power and control, the father’s veiled fear of losing his youth. Charlie makes the father recently divorced, with Mom a somewhat irresponsible fading beauty, once a model, now playing the field in the new, hip fern bars. A light dusting of jokes about short skirts and varicose veins helps. Dad is more responsible—Charlie makes him the owner of a medium-size company, like his own father. Charlie realizes that he isn’t just ripping off the commercial movies that he saw in his past life, he is rewriting his parents’ marriage. This lets him address some of his feelings about his parents, especially the anomalies that have developed from his coming back to them in time, and his concern about their marriage. He hammers at the keyboard. Dialogue comes fast and sure. Startled at how well this works in the script, he sees finally that using his own life is going to be key from now on. He has material others do not.

  Lewis has a better feeling for the kid in the movie, Ted. At first this bothers Charlie, but then he realizes that his own mind is in its worn fifties, far from the frustrations of a normal teenager. Lewis is pleased by Charlie’s willingness to let him shape Ted’s character. Charlie plays to the notion that he is about thirty, and so is wiser, a few years older than Lewis’s twenty-eight.

  There are interesting twists in the screenplay, driven by Charlie. When Ted takes over his dad’s body, he starts treating his ex-wife/mother with greater compassion, even an energetic friendliness. In the same spirit as Back to the Future, the screenplay mechanics have to play on the humor of the Oedipal situation, without a tragic consummation of the mother-son relationship. Edgy scenes of marital ardor are avoided. Lots of hints, no real stuff—a new, hip brand of humor. Everybody’s read Oedipus, after all—or at least the critics have, and all the humanities majors will follow them. In the end, after Dad loosens up as Ted in high school—the screenplay has the backseat stuff that Charlie knows so well—Ted subtly brings some fun back into his father’s relationship with his mother, and the divorced parents are reconciled after the switch is undone. A happy Hollywood ending. Freud would have lapped it up.

  * * *

  Rog Ebert has said he knows that Philip K. Dick has moved to Orange County, which gives Charlie an opportunity to explore the mystery of his life, in the guise of a Hollywood person trolling for material. Phil Dick has washed up in an apartment complex in Santa Ana, his life in the Bay Area having shipwrecked. “Try the novels!” Rog urges.

  Not only does Charlie appreciate that film versions of Dick’s works will be good box office, he also finds the man’s askew writing strangely sympathetic. When reading Dick, Charlie is able to touch upon his background unease about living his life again, and the tremulous fear that his world might again flicker and dissolve.

  So down the 5 he goes, past the endless light industrial sprawl, down to Orange County. Getting off in Santa Ana exposes Charlie to street scenes he never knew in his first life. Commercial signs are in Spanish, and darker men in cowboy hats, shades, and thick mustaches loiter on corners. Momentarily he recalls something from a dream he had at Elspeth’s, but the image doesn’t quite solidify. Yet the emotional terror of that dream starts to seep into the edges of his perception of this barrio. Driving himself through the ethnically jumbled streets of Santa Ana cements Charlie’s unease, but his Thomas Bros. map gets him to Dick’s modern condo building. Parking is easy. He rolls the windows closed and keeps his wallet with him.

  When he approaches the door of Dick’s small condo, he hears something like a cheap motorbike banging. Charlie starts a bit, then takes a deep breath to settle his nerves before knocking on the door.

  Dick jerks open the door and peers out into the sunlit day like a bear from a cave. After some words and a handshake, Charlie says, “I could hear you hammering on that Olympia”—a nod to a typewriter surrounded by stacks of manuscript paper—“like a woodpecker on meth.”

  Dick’s eyes twinkle. “With one letter change, I am indeed a wordpecker on meth.”

  “Really?”

  “I did it back in the sixties, not anymore.” A shrug. “Gone semistraight.”

  “Wow,” Charlie manages, looking around the one-bedroom setup.

  He has just reread The Man in the High Castle and expected a rather dour sort. But soon enough Phil is clowning around, tossing off funny lines. Charlie savors the ironies of the man who will be known for words he never wrote, like “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” in Blade Runner, a movie he will never see.

  But Dick is not burdened with Charlie’s double knowledge. He insists on showing off his stereo with glinting, mischievous eyes. He starts Wagner’s Tannhäuser prelude and after a few moments asks, “Can you hear the nuances from the left speaker?”

  Charlie nods.

  “Good, good. I can’t. I went to a doctor to check and found that I’m losing my hearing in the left ear. Good news. I was afraid it was my speakers!”

  A woman abruptly comes in the front door in a hurry and without looking at them strides into the bedroom. Charlie stares in her direction when she barges out carrying two suitcases.

  Phil just shrugs. “Girlfriend moving out.”

  Charlie murmurs some commiseration, knowing the vagaries of women only too well.

  Phil says, “You’d guess that a guy who won the Hugo for best SF novel would do better with women.”

  Charlie thinks it doubtful and changes the subject. “Do you ever think about the meaning of scripture, transcendental matters?”

  “Uh, some.” Dick’s eyes widen a bit.

  “Believe in an afterlife?”

  Dick looks down and away from Charlie.

  But Charlie won’t stop. “Let’s say the church I currently don’t attend is Episcopal.”

  “Ah! I’m a friend of the Bishop Pike brand of Christianity,” Dick says with evident relief. Then he speaks of hearing a voice from the cosmic sky but allows that what he heard from on high tended to vary often.

  Spending time with someone else who has gone to strange places is comforting for Charlie. And there could be some film possibilities, if the timing works out.

  Once people are ready. Once I’m ready, Charlie muses as he drives back.

  * * *

  Charlie keeps looking for new approaches, angles, leverage. He has already scored once, but he can’t just sit on that. A puff piece in the back pages of the New York Times reminds him about a book that’s getting buzz at Putnam’s, by a nobody named Puzo. He moves in early and nabs an option on the film rights to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Book rights in hand, he reaches up the studio hierarchy with Merrill’s help to get the chance to pitch the story to the studio’s head honchos directly, as a producer.

  Charlie flash-reads the book manuscript to prepare for his pitch and finds that it’s nearly all narrative, essentially stories Puzo has heard, laced together in a family saga. That’s how Charlie recalls the movie—a tight-knit immigrant tale as the kid Michael Corleone rises. The later films are about loyalty breaking down as Michael sacrifices his brothers to his own survival and widening power. In the end the three-film series is a tragedy, but there’s no way to sell all that to the studio.

  So he pitches from his memory of the first film, not from the book. At first the reception is stiff, phlegmatic. At the studio meetings his enthusiasm is intense, because he knows the movie that can be made of The Godfather.

  His verve shapes it up as a big deal indeed, and he finds himself quoting lines like “Women and children can be careless, but not men.” He knows instinctively that will work with the male studio elite, and it does, especially with the help of his new ally, Merrill.

  He frames scenes with his hands, telling the story of the movie, not the book. The studio’s first read of the book draft was so-so. The project started out as a knockoff movie called Mafia, a minor picture because everybody thought that crime movies were dead—but Cha
rlie changes all that.

  He fights to get another new seventies guy, Francis Ford Coppola, as director. Coppola is Italian and gets the family unity subtext immediately. They kibitz on the script, and when they get the green light, Coppola helps with the casting and Charlie arrows in on the right candidates—easily done, since he recalls by heart the talent that made it a classic in Charlie One’s world.

  He could just let the Godfather casting go the usual studio route, which will pick out Redford or McQueen or some other pretty boy. That would be smart, safe. But to make it what it can be, he decides to force through the same choices that Francis Coppola and Bob Evans did in that other, Old Charlie world. He has to get Brando.

  Al Pacino will come on board if Brando does, Charlie learns—in fact, the whole rest of the cast will. In the Charlie One world, the drama pivots around Brando. But Brando is in decline, Hollywood’s gossip says. Still, his name carries immense weight with studios and distributors. Brando has changed agents yet again and now has Sue Mentis representing him. Trying for a comeback, rumor says.

  The day arrives when Charlie has lunch with her at Chasen’s, where the waiters have learned to get over his long hair, even when he shows up without Greenway. His heavy tips haven’t hurt.

  He wastes no time and proceeds to pitch Godfather to the well-attired, fortyish Mentis before their plates arrive. Sue’s sardonic smile tells him she is not just used to saying no, she likes it. She says, “Charlie, you know I love you—”

  “I thought we played on different teams.”

  “—but we’ve got another big deal going.”

  “We can make it worth a lot, Sue.”

  “Brando is already worth a lot. More than you got.”

  “Then we go with McQueen.”

  “Good choice.”

  So it’s to be hardball, Charlie realizes. “It’s not the dinero, then.”

  “It’s not just the money.” She lifts two eyebrows, acknowledging that this violates the faith they all share.

  She sighs theatrically. “Marlon wants to do this other thing.”

  There is no other thing, not that Charlie can recall. The next big role for Brando is in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and that has to come after the Vietnam War, which is only now really starting to grow warts. Brando’s role in that was sour, too, not a big career lifter. So crafty Sue is bluffing. But he senses that he should let it go for now, let it simmer in her mind. They talk of other things over lunch, particularly the latest shake-up at Action Pictures. Gossip is Hollywood’s grease.

  But the game continues. Charlie starts up a rumor that McQueen is going to get the don casting, even though he knows McQueen is all wrong for the part. It’s easy, just some clipped remarks and eye rolls amid the sushi and Sauvignon Blanc at some parties in the Hills. That circulates, and sure enough, Sue calls him. He picks up the phone and her voice says only, “Dinero.”

  “Half a mil up front—”

  The phone slams down hard and he thinks through the dial tone. He waits for her to call again. Of course, Sue knows he is waiting and so doesn’t call, lets a day go by. But he is the buyer, she the seller, so he lets the hours play out.

  Two days later he picks up the ringing phone at home and her voice says, “You know they’re all crazy, Charlie. Brando won’t hear a number that doesn’t have seven figures.”

  “Tell him I’m doing this for him, Sue. This is gonna be a great flick and it will put him back on top.”

  “He’s already on top.”

  Charlie allows himself a sardonic smile. “Top of the scales?” Hardball time. Everybody knows Brando is gaining weight. The papers have started printing pictures of Brando getting out of swimming pools, a sack of guts.

  “He can get back in shape in a weekend. Women love his body, you know that.”

  “I meant it about putting him on top again.”

  Sue has got to be worrying about that but doesn’t dare acknowledge it. Brando has been moping around in his mansion on the hill for years—no movies, no press, no money for Sue.

  She huffs into the phone. “Got to be better than a mil.”

  A break in the armor. He allows himself to grind it in. Dealers like to deal, so they are disappointed when the deal goes too easily. “We’re looking at a big cast here. Not a lot of camera time for Marlon. And I have McQueen and De Niro ready to go.”

  Dial tone again. Charlie smiles, enjoying the game.

  He doesn’t have a lot of cards, but he knows this should work. Godfather appealed to him last time and still does. It’s mythic, goddamn it. In this new Charlie Two world, he has to make it go.

  Sue knows he is waiting for her, just like last time, and he can sense the clock ticking in her head a few miles away. He is at home sipping a Cabernet, watching the phone—and it rings. “We’ll take it at one point five mil.”

  “It could be too late. You should have come back at me sooner. I’ll have to dial fast to stop the McQueen deal.”

  “He won’t want the work.” But her voice has slid a note higher, tighter.

  “McQueen can do it.” He doesn’t even get all the four words out before she slams the phone down.

  He makes sure he can’t be reached that night or even before the midmorning. When Sue comes on, he cuts off her greeting—itself a telling sign, melodious—in midwarble and says, “I had a tough night with Coppola. He’s scared that Brando will be too headstrong for a young guy like him to handle.”

  “Marlon is a craftsman, a pro.”

  “Come on, he’s a moody method actor and that train’s leaving the station.”

  “If you can’t—”

  “I can get some more cash. Not a lot. I got a mil out of the studio for the part.”

  “Not enough.”

  “That’s a deal breaker.”

  “Damn.” For the first time she sounds deflated.

  He lets the feeling of having missed this boat play through her. Negotiations are all about the pauses. Then, mildly: “You’re a manager, not an agent. You get the full fifteen percent, not a mere agent’s ten.”

  She has to laugh at that. “Charlie, goddamn you, it’s a deal.”

  “I’m grinning over here. It’ll make him king again, I’m not kidding.”

  “Charlie . . .” A sly slide in the voice. “There was no other big picture.”

  He holds the phone until she runs out of air. “Sue?”

  “What?”

  “No McQueen, either.”

  This time the phone bangs even louder, but he holds it away from his ear. And grins.

  * * *

  Putting together movies for shoots is like watching dandruff grow, so Charlie has time to think. Just before shooting begins, he recalls Spielberg and brings the kid in as a subshooter, doing the outlying, establishing shots that Coppola is too busy to handle. That lowers the cost, too. Charlie is tempted to use some of his own savings to buy some profit points, but after an afternoon with his accountant he realizes that he doesn’t have enough. While he’s been busy playing New Prince of Hollywood, his expenses have shot up.

  But he still makes time to see Michelle. Her UCLA roommates take him for a fellow student with his long hair and facial fur. Charlie makes a point of pulling his hair back in a ponytail as he walks into her dorm, letting Michelle’s friends see his unlined forehead and eyes. Around them he says that he is in his twenties and interested in film school.

  Michelle doesn’t approve of this deception, any more than she likes his endless Hollywood parties without her. But she is very pointedly “a liberated woman of the 1970s,” a phrase that she trots out frequently. Charlie has to suppress laughter whenever she wields it. Not that Charlie doesn’t appreciate it. No, he basks in Michelle’s questioning mind, her eager curiosity about the world, her intellectual sparks.

  16 Postproduction on Godfather. All the elements come together—raw film, sound, dialogue, music, effects. The soup that comes out of blending them is a frame-by-frame fix. The elements fight one another unle
ss you get the taste just right; that is the art and science of postproduction. You see it in the dailies. The director picks out his frames, and the editor stitches them together, and if he’s good, the dailies send euphoria through the small crowd that sees them. It runs like that while you’re shooting, and then you go back in and string the dailies together. You look at them, happy at first. Then the floor falls out from under you and you’re on your ass. It is a long parade of crap, with great bits in between, smothered by wrong scenes and bad camera angles and chopped-up sequences.

  Charlie learns a lot from the endless screenings and interminable editing and persistent arguments with Coppola. The first time Coppola sees the death march of scenes, the big, broody man fears that it will all fail, fears that he simply isn’t up to the job.

  But the work is only beginning. Charlie learns that dailies are like brides on their wedding day. All beautiful, no matter what they look like. Then comes the buyer’s remorse.

  Bob is surprisingly calm. “The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up,” he says airily over a canteen lunch. They have just watched five different cuts of the restaurant shooting scene, and everybody around the table wonders if it will work at all.

  Charlie says, “That’s why we keep the earlier scene, where Michael gets instructed to get rid of the gun as soon as he’s shot the two of them. He comes out the restaurant entrance, looks for the getaway car, I guarantee you the audience will be yelling, ‘Drop the gun! Drop the gun!’ Dead certain.”

  They blink, consider. Charlie knows this will be true because it happened the first time he saw the picture.