The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  Jan got into her car, and after hesitating a moment, Jody said to her, “Wait. Listen. What you did. I’ve done a lot worse. And I’m okay.” She laughed nervously. “It’s just that I really hope I get in this picture of Harry’s. I’m thirty-five years old, baby.” She laughed again, the laugh almost out of control. “I sure need this part!”

  In the elevator on the way back to her apartment, Jody could not understand why she had copped out on herself like that. She did not confide in people. Maybe I’m more shook up than I think I am. I know I’m shook up, but this is really bad.

  In bed by eleven Jody smoked the last of a joint, wet out the roach and swallowed it, hoping it would help her sleep. But as good as the marijuana was, she could not feel it. There was no elation in her, just a deep sad feeling for Jan and for herself. She was really scared now. Harry was not going to give her a part. Intelligent men did not give parts to their girlfriends. And it was too late for Jody now. She had frittered her life away, trying this way and that way, but never just getting down to the hard work, always being the sexual object and never the smart determined intelligent person she knew she had to be to get anywhere in show business.

  She had done worse, all right, lots worse. She had been a thief, a pimp, a blackmailer, a junkie, a liar and a cheat. She had pretended to love men she had despised. She had done it all, and none of it had worked. Every time she got into a place where she might have had a chance, something inside her fired up and she ruined her chances. Always. She thought about the time years before when she had been working as a dancer at the Copa in New York, and the headliner had come on to her, not the first star in her life, promising her a job in his traveling company when he took the show around the world, sending her expensive Dupont lighters and flowers and the whole bullshit business, but when he invited her to a party at his suite, and all she had to do was show up, look beautiful and then spend the night, what she actually did was drink champagne and screech at everybody until they threw her out. And that hadn’t been the only time. Her whole life was a clutter of three-day jobs, punctured ambitions and drug-deadened hangovers.

  “Oh Lindy,” she cried out. “Help me! Help me!” She clenched her pillow and sobbed. It had been more than twenty years since she had shed any tears for anybody. Now these tears were for herself.

  Harry got back on Friday, blossoming with optimism. They had found perfect locations, all in one site, and the whole area so remote and so filled with mosquitoes, rednecks and rotten heat that Fats Dunnigan, who had flown down there three days before, was not going to be a problem on the set. Suddenly Fats had business elsewhere.

  “The picture’s mine!” Harry said to Jody, his face ruddy with triumph and airline alcohol.

  TWENTY-NINE

  CASTING THE picture took six weeks, along with all the other thousand details of pre-production, and Harry would come home nights either heavy with whiskey from the couple of drinks he would share with Jack Meltzer and Lew Gargolian after work, or with the thick blue binder containing his master copy of the script. Either way he did not have much time for Jody, a fact he apologized for every time he thought of it. He was not worried about her though. She had been quiet and almost serene since his return from the Deep South.

  The three leads were selected by conference and submission, Fats having decided that Karl Meador should at least be kept appraised of the narrowing-down process. They needed at least one actor who could draw, although nobody put it so bluntly, and their budget would not allow a superstar, and so Jack, Fats and Harry spent hours and days and evenings meeting with agents, having lunch with actors, trying to keep track of copies of the script, and having long two-against-one arguments every time somebody came up with a likely candidate.

  Fats was the worst: he would call Harry and say, “What do you think about Bill Holden?” and Harry could not swear or hang up on him; he had to go through the travesty of pretending to consider Holden on his merits as an actor, ignoring the well-known fact that Holden was too expensive. When Harry finally would bring it up, Fats would be optimistic: “He’s coming to town. I’ll have dinner with him and we’ll see. I know Bill wants to work.” But of course nothing ever came of these ideas, and at last, with the terse approval of Karl Meador, they hired two men and a woman the studio felt were verging on outright stardom. The one box-office draw was Jonathan Bridger, who was willing to take a cut in pay because he liked the story and was fond of Jack Meltzer, and the female lead finally went to Elaine Rudman when Harry agreed to raise her salary to forty-five hundred a week with a six-week guarantee. The second male lead went to St. Francis Magnuson, who, it turned out, had not really worked much since receiving the Best Supporting Academy Award two years before.

  Harry was better than satisfied; he was delighted. Bridger and Rudman were going to look well opposite each other, and neither had bad reputations; and Maggie Magnuson was one of the finest actors in the business. But the lesser roles were driving him mad. There were four parts they figured had to be cast here in Hollywood, with the bits and extras coming from Atlanta and the location.

  The chief of these four parts, and almost big enough to cast a name, was Helen the waitress, the part Jody wanted and the one Harry saw as Jody. He had purposely underplayed the role in the first-draft screenplay to keep them from hiring a name, but damned Jack Meltzer had almost seen through him and said, “Listen, this part could be extended, you know. We could get somebody like Carol Korbel. She’d be dynamite, and I think she’d work cheap for a good spot.”

  “Too good for the part,” Harry said carelessly and hoped Jack did not notice. But who would they get? The casting director, Peggy Spatenhaus, had set up a cattle call of “attractive but cheap-looking thirty-five-year-old women who can inspire compassion, humor, etc.,” and Harry and Jack had sat through hour after hour of women reading for the part. But none of them satisfied Harry. Jack would have chosen two or three of them, but the furrow never left Harry’s brow and the names on his mimeographed list were lined out one by one until there was just nobody left.

  Then one evening Harry took Jack out for drinks, just the two of them, and said, “Jack, I’m living with a woman who’d be perfect for Helen if she can act.”

  Jack did not look up from his drink, but his shoulders dropped slightly, as if from sudden fatigue. This was an opening Jack had probably heard before. “Can she act?” he said.

  “I don’t know. But you know I’m in a funny position. I wouldn’t even think of hiring her except that when I first met her I thought, ‘Helen!’ That’s how I got interested.”

  “She on your back a little bit?”

  “The thing is, I won’t be happy with anybody we look at until we look at her, and look carefully,” Harry said.

  “If that’s it, that’s it,” Jack said. “Do you want me to read her at your place? Have lunch with her or something, try to feel her out?”

  “No, let’s just have a regular reading, in the office,” Harry said. “No special favors.”

  Jack, showing just the tips of his two front teeth, looked put-upon. “Oh come on,” he said.

  Harry was pretty embarrassed, but he tried to hide it under a laugh. “No, I mean it.”

  “If I think she’s the shits, I can just tell you? Then what happens? You go home and no pussy for a month.”

  “Goddamn it, it’s not like that!” Harry insisted, but Jack would only laugh at him.

  Jody arrived at the lot twenty minutes early, paid off the cab at the drive-on gate and asked the officer where to find the production offices, but Harry came out from between two big sound stages and waved at her. She was dressed quietly and Harry was greatly relieved. He took her into a corner under a staircase and kissed her. She smelled of perfume but only faintly.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Nervous.”

  “This probably isn’t going to work out, but we’ll try.”

  “I’m sure you did your best for me,” Jody said.
>
  He kissed her again but she did not respond, and he let go of her and looked at her. She seemed calmer than he did. It was a fact, he was really tense and upset. He had never done anything like this in his professional career, and he sneered at the people who did.

  “Okay, lady,” he said. He led her up to the production offices, now busy with assistant directors, prop men, driver captains, gaffers and everybody else trying to get the bulk of their work done before the big move to the South. The reading was in the director’s office, and when Harry introduced Jody to Jack he watched Jack carefully to see how he handled her. Jack was fine. He was polite to her, led her to the couch and sat next to her, quietly explaining the part and the scene. Peggy Spatenhaus was in Atlanta lining up lesser roles, so the only people in the room were Jody, Harry and Jack.

  “Helen is a woman of middle age, a waitress in a little out-of-the-way roadside restaurant, you know? She hooks up with a gang of bank robbers and ends up getting killed in a big shoot-out with the police. Now, the scene we’ll read from, Helen finds herself for the first time in a motel room with the man she’s going to be with for the rest of the picture. This man will be played by Maggie Magnuson, so you can see that this is an important part, although she doesn’t have all that many lines.”

  “I know the part,” Jody said.

  Harry sat behind Jack’s desk with a copy of the script, and Jody was handed the few pages containing her scene.

  “Harry will read Andy’s lines, and we’ll start at the top of the page,” Jack said. “Any time, and don’t worry, we’ll read it a couple of times just for level.”

  INT.

  MOTEL ROOM.

  NIGHT.

  Andy and Helen enter, both carrying luggage, gun-cases, etc.

  ANDY

  We’ll bunk here for the night.

  HELEN

  You and me?

  ANDY (grinning)

  Well, you can see there’s two beds.

  HELEN

  It’s okay. I’ll sleep with you.

  After a beat and a take, Andy puts his things down and comes up to her. He tries to kiss her, but she still has her arms full of things. She laughs.

  HELEN (con’t)

  Hey, give me a sec, huh?

  ANDY

  I’m a horny man . . .

  He kisses her, and during the kiss she drops the things she is carrying and responds to the kiss. When they break:

  ANDY

  What’s your name?

  HELEN (SHY)

  Helen.

  ANDY (feelingly)

  Come to bed, Helen . . .

  CUT TO:

  Harry sat across the room from Jody and read his lines clearly but without emotion. He did not want to look as if he was helping her more than he would help anybody else. Jody did not read from her part, she simply spoke the words to Harry. She must have memorized the entire part, because she had not known until just then what she would be reading. Harry hadn’t told her because he hadn’t known—the choice had been Jack’s. But the most important thing was that she did not seem to be acting. When she finished and Harry said, “Come to bed, Helen,” she looked at him and smiled.

  “Was I okay?” she asked.

  “That was a nice reading,” Jack said. Harry could not tell how he felt. “Let’s run through it again, and this time why don’t you stand up? And by the way, I appreciate the fact that you know the lines.”

  Jody stood and they went through the scene again. Except for the slightest variations, it was the same.

  “Very good,” Jack said. He wrote something in his script and said, “All right, let’s do it one more time, only Jody, will you give me just a little bit more?”

  “Okay,” she said. This time the character was harsher, cruder and even more vibrant. Harry realized that he was pulling his nose furiously. I must be terribly excited, he said to himself. Jack was making more notes and Jody stood in the middle of the room, her hands at her sides, seeming in perfect control of herself. I love her, Harry thought, maybe it’s fucked up my judgment.

  At last Jack said, “Well, thank you very much. That was a good reading. Have you done much acting?”

  “Not really,” Jody said. “A few things, you know, off-off Broadway. No movies, no hits.” She laughed, and for the first time since entering the office, Harry could tell she was nervous. But Jack stood up and shook her hand and thanked her again, and Harry had the secretary call a cab. He took Jody out to the gate, kissed her and said he would see her later that night. She did not ask him anything.

  When he got back to the office, taking the stairs two and three at a time, too impatient for the creaky elevator, Jack was sitting alone in his office frowning down at his desk top. Harry closed the door and sat down on the couch.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Jack’s head was moving back and forth slowly in negation, and Harry’s heart went cold. So she had been bad and he had not been able to see it.

  But Jack said, “I just don’t know. She’s not an experienced actor, and that’s what we really need. We don’t have any film on her. I really wish we had some film. I wonder what she photographs like?”

  “Did you think she was any good?” Harry said, and Jack’s front teeth showed in a tiny smile.

  “Oh fuck,” he said. “You were sitting right here. She was fantastic and you know it. But God, do we really want to cast her?”

  “It’s up to you,” Harry said, burning his bridges. Jack’s lifted eyebrow was the only sign that he acknowledged this shift in power.

  “I think she’s earned a screen test,” Jack said. “I can’t make up my mind until I see her on film.”

  “That’s a damn good idea,” Harry said. “We can get some of our people together. I wonder if Maggie would come in and do a day’s work?”

  “I’ll talk to wardrobe. When, next Friday?”

  “Suits me.”

  They called in Lew Gargolian, who looked pained at the thought of renting all that equipment and paying all those people, but Harry explained that it was absolutely necessary, and besides, it would give Lew his first look at his crew in action, those of them who were already available, anyway. So it was set for Friday.

  THIRTY

  JODY SPENT Wednesday drunk, Thursday with a hangover, and Friday morning readying herself for the ordeal of the screen test. Harry was to come home and pick her up at two. She was dressed and ready by one, and the temptation to take a couple of drinks or snort some of her forbidden coke was almost overwhelming, but she did not. She sat on the couch and forced herself to watch television, remnants of a W.C. Fields comedy spliced between commercials for stone siding, toupees, upholstery and automobiles. She did not allow herself to think. Her stomach hurt and her palms were wet. Five times that morning she had run to the bathroom with excruciating spasms of diarrhea and she just hoped she could get through the afternoon without humiliating herself. It seemed so stupid. She had worked all her life for this damned cliché of a screen test and now she dreaded it, hated it and wished it were over. What a joke! Her entire life was a cliché.

  She knew why they were testing her. She had known at the reading just how good she had been, and now all that mattered was if she could stand the pressure of acting in front of forty bored technicians, and if she photographed well enough to entertain millions of bored people, who did not want to see their friends and neighbors on the screen but wanted big dynamic exciting superpeople. Today’s test was to discover if she was super. She did not feel super.

  But when Harry came in twenty minutes early, his face drawn in anxiety, her own fears dropped away, and she stood up with a beautiful smile and said, “I’m all ready!”

  “You look fine,” Harry said, although he did not mean it. She was not wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled back and tied, giving her eyes an oriental look. But she kissed him anyway, and off they went.

  Although it was extremely hot outside, the sound stage was clammy and musty. There were abandoned props and piece
s of equipment all over the place, looming out of the shadows like gigantic worn-out toys. Jody felt fine. The makeup man was doing great things to her face, and the costume they had picked out for her, a faded green-and-white checked dress, fit loosely but made her figure all that much more attractive, as far as she was concerned. She did have a little run-in with the costumer, though. He was a small intense-looking man in skin-tight white pants, white deck shoes and a fresh white tee shirt. He stood back from Jody as she modeled the costume for him, his hand on his chin.

  “I can see that panty line,” he said. “Where the fabric brushes against you.”

  “Oh that’s all right,” Jody said. She could see Harry and the director standing next to the big camera talking to a couple of other men. St. Francis Magnuson, already in makeup, was poking around in the shadows somewhere, and the other people just seemed to be standing around waiting for her to get ready.

  “No,” the costumer said. His name was Bitts, she thought. “Those panties are going to have to come off.”

  “Okay,” Jody said, and went into the trailer they had for her to change in. She slipped out of the panties and looked at herself in the oblong mirror on the back of the door. She could now see that if you looked carefully, if you were a pussy man, you would notice that she was not wearing any panties. Jody snorted and put them back on and went out. The costumer was gone, and so she went over to Jack.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “That’s fine,” Jack said. He smiled warmly at her, and then introduced her to a bunch of technicians, and was about to get going when the costumer came back and took one look at her and bit his lip.

  “I thought we were going to take those panties off,” he said. He did not look at Jody. To Jack he said, “That panty line is unbelievably vulgar.”

  “So’m I!” Jody said and laughed.

  “Leave them on,” Jack said. “You’re right. It’s in character.” The costumer gave her a dirty look and shrugged. Jack took her by the elbow and led her toward the set. “Have you met Maggie?” he asked her.