“Your towel,” Rainer said as he leaned forward, “is coming off . . .”
Meade was travelling along Sunset, headed toward the airport, and Victor was thinking that for once, following his exhausting play-date with Rainer, he’d probably be able to sleep on the airplane, when he remembered he still hadn’t opened the package that had been delivered.
Inside was a revolver. Or rather a fake revolver, looking real enough except that it was too lightweight. Vic handled it, looking it over, trying to figure out what it did or meant. Only when he pulled the trigger, did he understand: it emitted a flame. It was a cute and funny cigarette lighter!
It also seemed to come wrapped in two pages, a Telexed mimeo of Divine’s resume from the Manhattan talent agency that handled the actor, which of course included several photos—most famously the one from Pink Flamingos with a gun outstretched in Divine’s pudgy hand, pointed directly at the camera.
Along with it was a note on the network’s stationery, “from the office of Brandon Tartikoff.”
It had one line and read, ”Bang! Bang! You got me!”
ACT TWO
1986: NOTES ON A
REVISED REWRITE
“ASA NISI MASA! ASA NISI MASA!”
--Federico Fellino & Enzo Flaianao
Children’s Spell from Eight & A Half
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Frank Perry was a smaller man than Vic had expected. But then so had been those two movie stars he’d met at dinner and so was Liza Minnelli at Studio 54 and of course Truman Capote—and just about every other allegedly famous person Vic had met in New York, except maybe for Tommy Tune, who was almost ostentatiously tall and thin and bubbly: far too bubbly for any single human person.
Perry was small and thinnish, with one of those nebbishy bodies all too common in middle-aged straight men: bodies that looked utterly unattended to, seldom if ever remarked upon for any reason either by themselves or their women. Maybe a barber once a month looked closely, if in a limited area. Perhaps a tailor or medico bothered once a year to probe or measure for repair or refitting, so why should Frank bother with it? Unlike Vic and his friends, who, being gay, knew that every other gay man on the planet looked at them with an inborn interior combination telescope, microscope, and ocular slide-rule marked to the millimeter, checking the overgrowth of a sideburn or moustache, the hang of an overbite, any potential excrescence of neck hair, noticing to the decimeter the flesh of any future love handle or past foreskin. Clearly this man was far less looked at than listened to, as Perry was, after all, a film director.
Small, unprepossessingly unphysical, with straight dark brown hair, shorn as though by any haircutter anywhere in the country, with no distinguishing facial hair, facial features from Donegal, Ireland a generation or so ago, not one of which stood out in any particular manner—neither eyes nor mouth nor nose. He could fade into the background of Grand Central Terminal during rush hour, a hydrogen bomb weighing down his valise, and never once be noted by the Hispanic security guards overstuffed in their gray uniforms, or by the cool-dude, chatty, shoeshine Blacks, until they all blew apart into a billion tiny carbon atoms.
Now, for Victor, arriving at his appointment with Perry, there were other surprises. His agent had given him the address on 47th Street off Seventh Avenue, the infamous Brill Building, which had been during the 60’s and 70’s a famous rival of Tin Pan Alley for producers, agents, and arrangers of rock and folk music. The actual office door read “Paul Schrader,” the writer director of sexy Richard Gere’s Armani-fest film, American Gigolo. Perhaps he was a friend or colleague, Victor thought, letting Frank use his office for this visit and interview.
The bigger surprise however was who answered Vic’s ring. Of all people, it was young Sam Alan Haddad, the bottom guy on the rung at Silver Screen Films years before in West Hollywood. Sam still wore his peanut-butter hued hair long if more stylishly cut than before, but gone were the narrow sharkskin slacks and midnight blue faux-silk shirts, his Oil Sheik/Rodeo Drive Pimp-look replaced by a more ordinary, even kinda ’gayische casual wear of the day: well fitted khaki slacks, pastel Tommy Hilfiger cotton sweater, just like those Victor wore, with penny loafers.
“Bet you’re surprised,” Sam said, shaking Victor’s hand.
“Are you behind all this?” he had time to ask just as Frank Perry, smaller than imagined, entered from another office, still on the phone. “I’ll be there in a minute. The Coast,” Frank added, referring to the phone call. “Sit. Sit. Get comfy. Sam’ll get you coffee. Sam?”
Sam fled and returned some minutes later with the coffee—one cream, one-and-a-half sugar—just as Victor took it. Sam had remembered that just from getting it for Victor three times several years ago. He was good.
Victor had a half a minute to ask, “You’re what here?”
“I’m Frank’s assistant. Production Assistant, I guess.”
Victor had to ask, “You brought Justify My Sins to him?”
“No. Not at all. Funny thing is Frank was reading your novel when he hired me. He had it right out there on the desk, a marker about twenty pages from the end. We began talking about it. I think that conversation got me the job, if you really want to know, since I knew the book inside out by then, and he liked it so much.” A laugh which allowed Victor to notice that Sam had gotten new caps on his front teeth, top and bottom. Then in a quieter, more serious tone of voice, he added: “You know that he and Eleanor had this humongous split up. That was a business as well as a personal divorce. Right after that is when I came on board.”
Victor had kind of known that. At least about the marital divorce. But of course it must have been doubly disorienting for both, possibly a real horror, splitting up everything. They’d been a writing-directing team for what, over twenty years, since the early sixties, right? David and Lisa, cute Keir Dullea’s debut before he went on to star in the The Fox and, most famously, in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Had that been the two Perrys first movie together? No, Perry had done those TV films based on Capote’s holiday novellas. And there had been Diary of a Mad Housewife, and that movie on the beach with the dead seagull, and the one from the Joan Didion novel, too, Play It As It Lays. Maybe David and Lisa was the first to be nominated for an Oscar. Eleanor and Frank had been a writing/directing team up till—when? She’d died of cancer a few years back, hadn’t she? Before he did Mommie Dearest, no?
Suddenly Frank was there, gently moving Sam aside. “Done,” he said and Sam slid to a seat in the back of the room, while Frank replaced him. “Glad to meet you!” Frank looked at Victor closely. “Now what is all this Merry said about you not wanting to sell me the film rights?”
“Marcie. And I only came here, Mr. Perry, out of deep respect for you and the films you’ve made. Really and truly. Because I’m sorry to say that my book is unfilmable.”
Perry looked amused. “You base this on what?”
“I’m sure Sam told you about the experience with Silver Screen in 1977. What he may not know is that since then the book has been under film option every year until, I believe, last month, by one person or another. Mostly film stars. Sissy Spacek had it for a while. That television star, Lindsay Wagner, for a time. And then another TV actress, whose name I don’t recall. Producer Renee Missal at Universal Pictures also took an option on it. In the last few years, I usually just take the option money and rent a summer place on Long Island with it, knowing it will be free again soon. And other than that, I’ve stopped thinking about it.”
“The book is still in print!” Sam said. “I saw it on a revolving rack in Woolworths on Broadway among current bestsellers.”
“True fact,” Victor admitted. “The book’s been reissued once more by the paperback house, as it sells so well. A different color background for the cover art, and all the rest is the same. It’s our little money engine.”
“So it must be still relevant, what is it, six, seven years later?” Sam argued.
“It’s relevant per
iod,” Frank said. “Because of its characters and story. I like it. Victor. I want to do it.”
“The book is unfilmable, Mr. Perry,” Vic said. “You’ll be wasting your time and money. Honestly, you will. It’s got traps and pitfalls all over the place. I don’t want to sell it to you or even option it to you. I’m saying this as if I were a friend.”
There was a half-minute of silence, then:
“You know what I’m thinking right now,” Frank asked.
“You’re thinking you can do it, because you’re better than all those people who optioned it. And you are. You’re a pro, you’re among the best in the business. Despite that . . .”
“Sam will tell you how I work. I collaborate. That’s how I’ve worked for years. I collaborate with the novelist, the biographer, the screenwriter. We work closely together. During that collaboration, we reach the heart of the book or play or script. We discover it together—and we conquer it.”
“I understand that. Now hear me out, Mr Perry. Justify has two main problems keeping it from being a successful Hollywood movie. First, even though it’s told from both Theo and Anna-Marie’s alternating points of view, Theo is always the desired object. Anna-Marie never is. It’s Theo’s mostly nude body, not hers, after all, that’s on the book jacket, four hundred and ninety thousand paperback copies later. And even though I know that you’re unusual in that you treat and exhibit your male and female leads equally, I believe this male sex object in the story is a real problem. Hollywood makes movies where women are the desired object, not men.”
Perry was about to say something, but Vic held up a hand to forestall him. “Second, equally crucial, no happy ending to Justify My Sins is possible without making the rest of the book nonsense. That’s what stymied it the first time.”
“You’ve thought this out carefully, haven’t you?” Perry asked.
“Obviously! I’ve been trying to figure out why it hasn’t worked as a film, year after year. Not worked for one person after another. Now if we were in France, say, or Sweden, maybe it could be done.”
“So you do think it is possible,” Perry said.
“It’s possible. Not in our patriarchal time. Not in our sexist society. And not, I’m sorry to say, in your particularly patriarchal and sexist business, Mr. Perry.”
Frank turned to Sam. “You were right. He’s tough as nails, this one. He looks like a little sweetheart, but once he opens his mouth he’s a real street fighter.”
Victor laughed. I’m almost forty years old, he thought. Do I really still look so much younger?
There was another much longer silence in the room.
“That’s a big compliment Frank just paid you, Vic,” Sam said from his seat ten feet away.
“Now Vic, here’s my deal,” Perry said. “You and I will meet once a week at my office from 1:00 p.m. to closing, and even later if need be. We’ll first do the scenario together. Then we’ll write the script together. You’ll take it home and polish it, working at least one day of the week on new material alone, and then bringing in your new stuff which we’ll then go over. We’ll be writing the script together. I can’t give you more time than that as my company is in the midst of preproduction on another film and in actual production on another, and we’ll soon be going into postproduction on that. But it shouldn’t take more than four to five months for us to get something together. We’ll work out the money business with Merry or whatever her name is. It will be Writers Guild of America scale, plus steps and bonuses.”
“I’m not a member of the Guild.”
“You have to be to write this script. We’ll include the WGA sign up fees in the contract. Sam?”
“Got it,” Sam noted it down.
“The long and short of it is I want this book, Victor.”
“But how? By which I mean logistically how? If your offices are in L.A.?”
“My production company has a lease with—what is it, five? six months, Sam?—left on a house off Benedict Canyon up near Mulholland Drive. Three bedrooms. Big decks. Views. No pool, so it’ll be basic. But nice. We’ve got a car for you under lease. Merry—Marcie—whoever, said you just had a show close Off Broadway that Sam saw on his last trip here. Your second produced play. Sneaky, aren’t we? That’s how we know you’ll do fine mixing dialogue and action for the script. She also said you’re not signed up for any new book at the moment so you can’t use that as an excuse. I told you we’re sneaky. You told Sam you liked El Lay. So it’ll be four, five months out there in the sun, at pretty good pay. Having to put up with me for half a day a week! What have you got to lose?”
Nothing was said about a wife and kids or girlfriend having to be brought along. Had Marcie also discussed that angle? No. Come on, let’s be honest, Vic, after Nights in Black Leather’s sensational reviews and sales, everyone on six continents not hiding in an underground shelter had to know by now that Victor Regina was gay.
“And so . . . Victor . . . why not?”
He wanted to say, “This is so sudden, Mr. Perry!” the way the pretty young thing always did in those movies when she is asked to go onstage for the diva, the featured player becoming the lead overnight. Instead he asked, “This would be beginning approximately when?”
“Did you hear that, Sam?” Perry looked back as his P.A. “A real writer! Suddenly all of his words are tentative and ‘approximate.’”
Facing Victor, he said, “It would be as soon as possible. I don’t suppose you can come back with us to L.A. in three days? Look at him panic, Sam.” A laugh and then, “No? Then how about we play it by ear? But pretty soon, after all the contracts are signed.”
“You’re sure you want me to do this, even though I don’t believe we’ll succeed in working out the story?” Vic asked.
That, he knew was the tougher question.
“Sam said you’re a hard worker. You’ve published what, five books and put on two plays in seven, eight years? Sounds like hard work to me. So as long as you work as though you believe in our script, I don’t care whether you really believe or not.”
“Working with you would of course be a great, an amazing honor, really.”
Before he could say anything more, Frank stood up. “You better believe it! Think it over and get back to me or Sam tomorrow. He’ll tell Marcie exactly when our flight leaves. I want this book, Victor. And I very much want you to write it with me. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back on that stupid phone and find out why daily rushes aren’t arriving here for us to check. It’s the Fox screening room, right?” he asked Sam, “Or are they going to Rizzoli?”
“Fox,” Sam said and Frank half shambled into his office again. Sam joined him and they confabbed a minute before Sam came out again and the door was closed and he came up to Victor.
“A house. A car. You’ll still have time for your own work. And whatever else you may need out there. All you have to do is contact me and I’ll try to get it.”
“I know, Sam. But . . . does this work? You’ve done this before?”
“That house? That car? The last co-writer had the same house and the same car. She loved it. And that’s the film being prepped right now. Go home and think it over. But say yes or he’ll be impossible for me to work with.”
Sam picked up Victor’s jacket and walked him out of the office. As they walked, Victor said, “I wasn’t kidding. It really is an honor. Anyone else—I wouldn’t have even shown up today. And Mr. Perry? Frank? He’s not like a psycho once you know him? Screaming in uncontrollable rages? Hiding out in the toilet? Phoning at 4:00 a.m.? Be honest, Sam, for old times sake.”
“Not a bit. Frank’s the best boss I’ve ever had. A little disorganized. But that’s my job. I’d lose a hand for him.”
“Oh fuck, Sam! Don’t say that.”
The elevator doors opened, and two men about Victor’s age stepped out, and Sam held the door for them but didn’t get in.
“This the novelist?” the fellow with dar
k hair and a wiry frame asked with dancing eyes and a wry, familiar grin comma’ed by a dangling toothpick. Vic recognized him as Robert de Niro, Jr.
Sam introduced all three of them. The other, cuter, slightly more solidly built guy with light brown hair and rimless glasses turned out to be Paul Schrader. Given the time, early afternoon, and the toothpick, they were probably coming back from lunch.
“I’ll see you later!” De Niro said as they walked off, pointing his finger pistol style at Vic, his trademark farewell from Taxi Driver.
“And the others?” Victor asked. “From Silver Screen?”
“Ed Trefethern retired,” Sam said, as though only he counted. “Say yes, Vic,” he urged, then turned and went into the men’s room.
When he was gone, Victor could still hear Schrader talking, doubtless thinking that Victor was already in the elevator and gone, clearly saying to De Niro, “He wrote that infamous cult thriller. The black leather book?” The final word blurred as they entered the office.
That was four years ago! Victor Regina thought. But if he knows about it, then they all must!
Thus do we discover our reputation.
Maybe it was time to change it?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
From the moment he awoke he became a detective. The place next to him in their double sleigh-style bed was slightly wrinkled, meaning Mark had indeed slept there. Touching it with his cheek, Victor still detected a hint of lingering warmth. It was 8:14 a.m., but Mark would have been up and out the door at least an hour ago. And yes, he’d been here last night, his furnace of a body chugging away, keeping them warm this mid-Spring morning in 1983 long after the building furnace had shut off for the night. Victor had one quarter awakened in transition from one dream to another, and had seen, even felt with his hand, Mark there.
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