L.A. Times

by Stuart Woods

  “Senator Harvey and his wife; Dick and Shirley Clurman—Dick’s retired from Time and Life—he was chief of correspondents—and he’s got a wonderful new book out about the Time-Warner merger; Shirley’s a producer at ABC; Leo and Amanda Goldman. We’re just eight tonight.”

  “Leo Goldman of Centurion Pictures?”

  “I thought you’d like that. Quite apart from running the studio of the moment, he’s an interesting man. Very bright.”

  Vinnie pulled his bow tie into a perfect knot, exactly the way Cary Grant had in Indiscreet. “I’ll be interested to meet him,” he said.

  Everybody arrived almost at once. Vinnie shook Goldman’s hand but made a point of not talking to him before dinner. Instead, he listened quietly to a conversation between the senator and Dick Clurman that was practically an interview. Clurman was quick and asked very direct questions, and he got very direct answers from the senator. Vinnie learned a lot.

  At dinner he was seated between Shirley Clurman and Amanda Goldman; Leo Goldman was one place away, but still Vinnie did not press conversation with him. He was charming to Mrs. Clurman and devoted a lot of attention to Amanda Goldman, a beautiful blonde in her early forties, but not so much attention as to irritate her husband.

  It was not until after dinner, when they were having brandy in the library, that Vinnie said more than two words to Goldman, and luckily, Goldman initiated the exchange.

  “I hear you’re at NYU Film School,” he said. He was a balding, superbly built man in his mid-forties, obviously the product of a strenuous daily workout.

  “Part-time,” Vinnie replied.

  “What’s your interest in film?”

  “Production.”

  “Not the glamour stuff—writing or directing?”

  “No.”

  “What draws you to production?”

  Vinnie took a deep breath. “It’s where the control is.”

  Goldman laughed. “Most people would say the director has control.”

  “Producers hire and fire directors.”

  Goldman nodded. “You’re a smart guy, Michael,” he said. “You think you have any sense of what makes a good movie?”

  “Yes.”

  Goldman fished a card from his pocket. “When you’ve got something you think is good, call me. That’s the private number.”

  Vinnie accepted the card. He smiled. “I’ll call you when you least expect it.”

  Vinnie spent an hour in bed with Barbara, and when he had finally exhausted her, he slipped into the shower again, got into a robe, and took the Parish script into the library. He read it in an hour, then got a legal pad from the desk and started breaking it down into scenes and locations. By daylight he had a rough production schedule and budget. He didn’t need a calculator to add up the figures. Vinnie had always had a facility for numbers and an outstanding memory.

  He got an hour’s sleep before Barbara woke him for breakfast.

  “What were you doing all night?” she asked over eggs and bacon.

  “Reading Chuck Parish’s script and working up a production budget.

  “Was it any good?”

  He turned and looked at her. “Barbara, it is very, very good. It’s a caper film, but it’s funny. It moves like a freight train, and if it’s properly produced it can make money.”

  “What do you need to produce it?”

  “I can bring it in for six hundred and fifty thousand,” Vinnie replied. “Parish has already got three hundred thousand.”

  “Sounds like a low budget to me,” she said.

  “It is. Leo Goldman wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Are you going to take it to Goldman?”

  “No. If Parish is game, I’m going to make it before anybody sees it.”

  “Risky.”

  “Not as risky as you think. You haven’t read the script.”

  “Why don’t I invest?”

  “I don’t want your money, Barbara.” He smiled. “Just your body.” He knew that she was heir to a very large construction fortune.

  “The project interests me,” she said. “I’ll put up two hundred thousand; you come up with the rest.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Vinnie said.

  He had already thought about it.

  As he was leaving she said, “You know what Leo Goldman said about you last night?”

  Vinnie looked at her questioningly; he didn’t want to ask.

  “He said, ‘Your friend Michael is a hustler, but he doesn’t come on like a hustler. I like that.’”

  Vinnie smiled and kissed her good-bye. He was going to have to be very careful with Leo Goldman.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Vinnie worked on the production budget for two days, between collecting debts for Benedetto. He sat at his computer in the Chelsea apartment and constructed beautiful schedules and documents. He was impressed with his own work.

  When he was ready, he went to see Tommy Pro. Vinnie had known Thomas O. Provensano since childhood. Tommy was two years older, but they had formed a friendship early. Vinnie thought Tommy was, in some ways, the smartest guy he had ever known. He had gotten an accounting degree from CUNY, passed the CPA exam, then gone to NYU Law School. Tommy knew as much about Benedetto’s business as Benedetto did—maybe more.

  The office was behind an unmarked door upstairs over the coffeehouse that was Benedetto’s headquarters. Tommy had two rooms—one for an assistant, a fiftyish Italian widow—and one for himself and his computers. Tommy had three computers, and it seemed to Vinnie that all three of them were going full blast all the time. The furniture was spartan—a steel desk and filing cabinets that had come from a restaurant Benedetto had bankrupted some years back, and a very large safe. Tommy had told him once how all the real records were kept on computer disks, and how the safe was wired to destroy them—from a remote location, if necessary. Tommy left work each evening with a duplicate set of disks in a substantial briefcase, and nobody knew where he kept that.

  Tommy wheeled his considerable bulk from computer to computer in a large executive chair, his only concession to comfort or luxury. “What’s happening, kid?” he asked when Vinnie had been admitted to the inner sanctum.

  “I’m going to make a movie, Tommy,” Vinnie said, sitting down and opening his briefcase.

  Tommy Pro spread his hands and grinned. “It was only a matter of time,” he said. “Can I help?”

  “I want to show you what I got here, and see what you think.” Vinnie spread out his schedules and budgets and explained the whole thing to Tommy, who was the only person Vinnie trusted even a little. When he had finished, he sat back. “So, how’m I doing?”

  Tommy smiled broadly. “It works for me,” he said. “Except you gotta come up with a hundred and fifty grand, clean. How you gonna do that?”

  “Between you and me, I’ve got nearly seventy,” Vinnie replied. He had never told anybody about his stash.

  “If I know you, you’ll find the other eighty.”

  “Believe it,” Vinnie said.

  “This stuff amounts to a real good business plan,” Tommy said, leafing through the budget. “What do you need from us?”

  “From you,” Vinnie said. “Not Benedetto. I’ve got this thing trimmed to the bone to make it work, and if Mr. B. gets wind of it he’ll want a rake-off.” He allowed himself a small smile. “You,” he said, “I can owe.”

  Tommy Pro laughed. “Okay, so what are you going to owe me for?”

  “Logistical help, mostly. I want to shoot in the neighborhood, and I don’t want any flak from anybody.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’m shooting this strictly nonunion, and I don’t want any pickets.”

  “A phone call,” Tommy said.

  “And I want you to draw all the contracts,” Vinnie said.

  “Well, I haven’t done a lot of entertainment work, but I’ve got a lot of boilerplate in the computer. You’ll want to incorporate, of course.”

  “Of
course,” Vinnie said. He hadn’t thought of that.

  The two young men spent three hours listing contracts to be drawn and looking for holes in Vinnie’s business plan. There weren’t many.

  When Vinnie was about to leave, Tommy Pro said, “I know a pretty good actress who’s available.”

  “Sure; I’ll find something for her. Who is she?”

  “Remember Carol Geraldi?”

  “Sure, Widow’s Walk, four or five years ago. I haven’t seen anything of her for a while.”

  “Neither has anybody else; she’s on the skids—a junkie.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I think she could still work, and she’s still got a name.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “I’ve got a couple pushers on the street; one of ’em’s supplying her. She owes me eight grand. If you want her, pick up her tab, and I’ll make you a gift of her.”

  “I’ll think about that, Tommy, and thanks.”

  Vinnie was as nervous as he ever got. Chuck Parish was on his way over to the Chelsea apartment, and Vinnie made sure everything was neat and that his papers were laid out. He jumped when the doorbell rang.

  Chuck was accompanied by one of the most beautiful girls Vinnie had ever seen.

  “This is Vanessa Parks,” Chuck said. “She’s my girl and my leading lady.”

  “Great,” Vinnie said, shaking the girl’s hand. She was tall and willowy, with lovely light brown hair. Her skin was without blemish, her breasts were full and high, and her mouth was wide and lush, with excellent teeth. Vinnie wanted her immediately.

  He put them on the sofa, got them a drink, then sat opposite them.

  “Nice place,” Vanessa said, looking around.

  “Thank you, Vanessa,” Vinnie said. He had found it effective to address women by their names often early in a relationship.

  “So,” Chuck said, “what’ve you got for me?”

  Vinnie placed the screenplay on the coffee table. “First of all,” he said, “I want to tell you that I think your screenplay is extremely good. You’re a very fine writer.”

  Chuck glowed a little. “Thanks,” he said, “but let’s get down to it. What’s it going to cost to produce?”

  “There are three ways you can make this picture,” Vinnie said. “Actually, there are dozens of ways, but only three make sense.”

  Chuck leaned forward. “What are they?”

  Vinnie held up a finger. “One,” he said, “you can make this film as a project. You can take your three hundred thousand dollars, hire some students as cast and crew, and make a nice little movie that will probably win you the NYU Film School award for best picture and best screenplay. It will be unreleasable in that form, but you can take it to the studios and use it to get a shot at writing and directing a feature, or you might get a contract to do a TV movie.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Chuck said.

  “But—and you should think seriously about this—it will be the most expensive master’s thesis in history, and you’ll no longer have your three hundred thousand.”

  “I could live with that if it helped me launch a career,” Chuck said.

  “It’s your own money, then.”

  Chuck nodded. “An inheritance.”

  “Chuck, it’s my view that a man ought to be paid for his work. If you do this, you won’t be paid, and you’ll squander your inheritance as well.”

  “I see your point,” Chuck replied. “What are the other two ways?”

  “You can get an agent—I’ve got some contacts—and sell your screenplay to a studio. It’s good enough that you might get two, three hundred thousand for it.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Chuck said, grinning.

  “But they’ll never let you direct it.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ll have to rewrite it half a dozen times for the studio, then, when they’re happy, you’ll have to rewrite it for the director, and when he’s happy, you’ll have to rewrite it for the star. That’s the way it’s done, and I don’t think what you’d end up with would much resemble what you started out with.”

  “I see your point,” Chuck said. He was looking discouraged. “What’s the third option?”

  “The third option,” Vinnie said, “is to make a releasable film and then take it to the studios. Hire professionals for all but the menial work; cast good people who will work for scale.”

  “Can I do it for three hundred grand?”

  “No. You’ll need six hundred and fifty grand.”

  “I can’t raise the rest,” Chuck said.

  “I can,” Vinnie replied.

  “You’d invest in my movie?” Chuck asked, astonished.

  “If I produce it,” Vinnie replied.

  Chuck sat back on the sofa and sipped his drink. “I want to write, produce and direct my own stuff.”

  Vinnie sat back, too. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what you should do.”

  Chuck looked at him cautiously. “But you won’t bring your investors in if I do.”

  Vinnie shook his head. “I couldn’t do that, and I’ll tell you why. You’re an intelligent man, a good writer, and, from what I’ve seen at the film school, a good director. You ought to concentrate on what you’re good at, and my guess is you’re not a very good businessman. I am. I can organize this project, run the business side, and leave you free to do what you do best. That’s what you need, Chuck, whether it’s me or somebody else. You need a producer.”

  “What have you produced?”

  “Nothing,” Vinnie said. “But let me take you through the business plan I’ve worked out and show you how I’d do it.” He went to his desk, picked up copies, and handed them to Chuck and Vanessa. “Page one,” he said, “are overall costs, broken down by category.”

  When he had finished, Vinnie got up and fixed himself a drink, his first. Chuck and Vanessa whispered back and forth while he was gone. When he returned, Vanessa smiled at him, and he knew he was home free.

  “I like this,” Chuck said.

  “It’s not going to be a piece of cake,” Vinnie replied. “You and I are going to have to defer compensation. It’s a twenty-three-day schedule, and you’re going to have to be very well prepared to bring that off. You’re going to have to shoot with Mitchell cameras instead of Panavision; you’ll have to edit on a Movieola, not a Steenbeck—in fact, it would be best if you could edit at school, use their stuff—even if you have to do it in the middle of the night.”

  “I don’t need much sleep,” Chuck said. He flipped through the pages quickly. “I don’t see a Steadicam in here,” he said. “I specified a Steadicam for three scenes.”

  “You can’t have a Steadicam,” Vinnie said. “You can have a rented wheelchair, if we can’t steal one, and all the sheets of plywood you can borrow, for track.”

  “How much time for preproduction and casting?” Chuck asked.

  “A month. That’s ample, I think. I’ve already found all the locations.”

  “All of them?” Chuck asked incredulously.

  “I’ve put the addresses by each scene.”

  “What about interiors?”

  “We’ll borrow them. You can use this place for the girl’s apartment. We won’t be renting any soundstages.”

  “That’s gotta mean a lot of looping, then.”

  “It’s in the budget,” Vinnie replied.

  “Holy shit,” Chuck said, wiping his brow. “This is really possible, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “How do you know we can sell it to a studio when it’s finished?”

  “I have contacts. I believe it’s doable, or I wouldn’t bring my investors into it. You’re going to have to depend on my business judgment, though, when we do the deal.”

  Vanessa put a hand on Chuck’s. “I think you should do it Michael’s way,” she said.

  Chuck looked at her, then turned back to Vinnie and stuck out a hand. “You’ve got a deal,” he said. “When do w
e start?”

  Vinnie took the hand in both of his. “We start tomorrow at a meeting with our lawyer. You can bring your own lawyer, of course. You should do that.”

  “I don’t have a lawyer,” Chuck said.

  Vinnie smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Vinnie loved the work. He tried to get his collection business done in the mornings, then devoted his afternoons and evenings to mounting the production. He wheeled and dealed, offered cash for discounts, rounded up equipment, hired crew, attended casting sessions. He was a producer.

  There was one thorn in his flesh: the fat man. He had come up with the vigorish on schedule and had made two payments. Then, when Vinnie stopped by the candy store to collect the next payment, he walked in and saw a cop. The man was loitering near the office door, reading a magazine from the rack; he was in plainclothes, but Vinnie made him in a second. The old man behind the counter raised an eyebrow and glanced at the cop. Vinnie left before he was made.

  The sonofabitch, he thought as he walked on to his next customer. Benedetto would definitely lose patience now. The fat man had called the cops! Was he insane?

  Benedetto was pissed off. “Why should this man treat me this way?” he asked Vinnie plaintively.

  “You’re right, Mr. B.,” Vinnie said. “He needs a real shock to the system.”

  “He needs getting dead,” Benedetto said flatly.