The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “Do you mean,” Harry said slowly, forcing himself to look into her hard little eyes, “that it is immoral for you to rent us the place for a couple of days, or it’s immoral to make movies?”

  She did not seem to want to answer such direct questions. She said, “You tell them,” to her husband, and turned away from Harry. Lew looked at him as if to say, “You see?” and Harry said, “Well, it’s a shame. I was not only hoping to use this place, I wanted you folks to be in the scene, sort of local atmosphere.”

  “We are not interested in such things,” Mr. Lorbun said.

  “You don’t want us in your movie,” the old woman said. “You’re just trying to weasel us.”

  “All right,” Harry said. “I don’t have the time. I honestly do not think there is anything immoral going on, and you will certainly be present while we film. I’m going to offer you five hundred dollars per day to use your place, with a minimum guarantee of one thousand dollars. If you think there’s anything even slightly immoral about it, why don’t you talk to your minister? I’m sure he will tell you if anything funny is going on.”

  “Our church is over to Tuscaloosa,” the old woman said.

  “Call them at our expense,” Harry said. It was going badly. He really did not want to give up this location. It would cost them too much time and sweat trying to dress, much less find, another place. This goddamn cafe was half their reason for picking Sugartown as their location in the first place; Harry could remember the marvelous breakfasts he and Lew and Jack and the cameraman had had on the location survey, when the old woman must have been out of town. But nothing was happening now, and he could see that the couple were frozen into a position they might really like to take back. On impulse, Harry put a five dollar bill on the counter beside the old woman.

  “That’s for the telephone call,” he said.

  “Well, I guess it would be all right,” the old woman said.

  Harry could never figure out what had worked. Maybe just the sight of real money. It did not matter: they had their location back, and Harry had work to do.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  WHEN HARRY got back to the production office the secretary told him Fats Dunnigan had called and wanted to speak to him. Harry’s heart sank. Dunnigan had obviously been seeing the dailies as they sent them back, and now he was calling to scream. It was still relatively early in the morning on the Coast. But Donald Bitts the costumer was standing there looking tense and worried, and so Harry had to smile and pretend he liked the man and listen to another of his innumerable problems. Donald Bitts was not having a good time on location. In Hollywood he had been bitchy and self-important, with a reputation as an excellent man for the price, but since landing in Alabama he had been tense.

  “Come out to the honeywagon,” he said to Harry. “I want to show you something.”

  Harry held in the sharp retort and followed the smaller man out of the air conditioning and across the parking lot to the trailer used as a dressing room and toilet. Inside the dressing room it was terribly hot and stuffy. Donald Bitts waved his arm dramatically at the racks of clothing and said, “There!”

  “All right,” Harry said, and waited.

  “Well, don’t you see? There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, for the Helen character! I mean somebody back in Hollywood absolutely fucked up, and I am not going to take the responsibility.”

  “You mean there’s nothing for her at all?”

  “Not a stitch. You remember, don’t you? We waited so long to cast her there wasn’t any time for me to take her for fittings. Remember, you said, I think it was you, that we could get things for the character down here, and now we’re here and no one has spoken to me at all about taking her out and fitting her.”

  “Well, that would be a good thing to do today,” Harry said.

  “But my God she’s in a scene tomorrow and the stores around here are the most godforsaken things I’ve ever seen. I’ve been to Selma and Montgomery and Tuscaloosa and they haven’t got anything, and frankly I’m getting tired of mousing around those stores!”

  “It’s all right,” Harry said.

  “It is most definitely not all right!” Donald Bitts said. Sweat was running down his face and his lips were almost white with tension. “I’m the one who has to go out there all by myself and have those people staring at me. The pressure is unbelievable, and I’ve got all those things to get ready for the effects person, and I just do not have the time to run all over central Alabama with that woman looking for dresses!”

  “Can’t we get out of this heat?” Harry asked him.

  “I just wanted you to see,” Bitts said. “There’s no air conditioning on those damned streets, either. I’ve been dying from the heat.”

  “Let’s go back to the office,” Harry suggested, but halfway there he patted Bitts on the shoulder and said, “You go ahead, I’ll meet you there.”

  “I just don’t have time,” Bitts said, and walked off toward the office. Harry watched him. He wasn’t even walking the same as he had in Hollywood: back there he had moved with a nice economy and a sense of personal style; here he was just dragging along, putting one foot in front of the other. Harry decided that Donald Bitts was going to be the first of them to flip. Of course by the time they wrapped the picture just about everybody would have flipped at least once. But Bias would be first, Harry would bet on it.

  He knocked on Jody’s door, and after a moment she opened it slightly. Her hair was wet and he could tell she was naked behind the door.

  “I just jumped out of the shower,” she said, and gave him a pretty smile. She opened the door and let Harry in. Actually, she was wearing a towel. He looked around her room. Since the night before she had unpacked everything and by putting her things around the room had managed to make it look less like a motel and more like a place to live. There were candles, a lovely old scarf thrown over the television set and some flowers in a water glass on her bedside table.

  “I got those in the woods over there,” Jody said, pointing across the parking lot.

  “Listen,” Harry said. “I have a problem and I could use some help. I fucked up and we don’t have any clothes for your character. She needs the dress she wears as a waitress and runs off in, and some underwear that will be seen, shoes, purse, stuff like that. Just the things she would have at work.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It was just a simple fuckup. I thought we could buy the stuff down here and then I forgot to reserve the time. So, would you go with a driver and look around and buy three or four alternative costumes and stuff?”

  “Sure,” Jody said. “Give me a kiss.” She held her arms out for him, and he kissed her. “I love you,” she said.

  Harry said, “I love you too, baby. I’ll send the driver down in about thirty minutes, okay?”

  “When do I have to go to work?” Jody asked. “I’m really getting up for it.”

  “I just don’t know,” Harry said. He kissed her lightly and left the room, snapping his fingers and wheeling to go back after only a few steps.

  “Listen, what you have to do is get like three or four of the things you’re going to wear. We’re going to have to tear some, put squibs in, get them dirty; no, better get five of everything—shoes, dress, everything.”

  “Five of everything,” Jody said. “Some little clerk’s going to love me. But the clothes should be used, shouldn’t they?”

  “Bitts can age them,” Harry said, and went back to the production office. Bitts was waiting for him.

  “No sweat,” Harry said. “Jody McKeegan will do the shopping, and you can get back to what you were doing.”

  “Her?” Bitts said. “She won’t know what to buy!”

  “Do you want to go with her?” Harry asked.

  “I can’t! I just don’t have time this morning!”

  “Then that’s that.” He broke eye contact with Bitts and said to Alice Wanderove, “Babe, get one of the drivers to run Jody around this morning,
okay? And tell him to take her down to Selma to that new Sears first. Then get Fats for me, will you?”

  Fats’s voice sounded bland and noncommital. After the Hellos and How’s it goings, Fats said, “I like the dailies, Harry. You people are doing a hell of a job. How many setups a day are you getting?”

  “About twenty-five,” Harry said. “But it’s getting better.”

  “The stuff is really pretty. Tell Jack for me. Really pour it on, okay? Let him know we support him all the way.”

  “Okay, Fats,” Harry said, still waiting.

  “You guys are really shooting up the film,” Fats said. “How does the editor like it so far?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Harry said. “He’s there on the lot with you, not down here.”

  “Right, but I wondered if you’d talked to him. He’s probably as happy as can be, with all that film to work with. I certainly hope you people don’t run out of stock before you get to the end of the picture.”

  “We can always get more,” Harry said. “Film is cheap.”

  “Ha ha, it sure is, Harry. Well, keep up the good work. Listen, one piece of constructive criticism: the stuff is really great, the acting is great, but I wonder about the pace. It seems kind of soft to me, do you know what I mean?”

  “It’s all in the cutting,” Harry said.

  “Sure it’s all in the cutting, these aren’t my first dailies, Harry. I’ve seen uncut film before. This is not my first motion picture. What I mean to say is the pace is goddamned slow for a nice little action adventure movie of the type that we’re making.”

  “I’ll talk to Jack about it,” Harry said. “But I think the pace is just fine.”

  “I just wanted to pass along that little piece of advice,” Fats said. “We’re not making War and Peace you know.”

  “I know,” Harry said, and managed to get off the telephone. Two seconds later Fats was gone from his mind, as Lew Gargolian came into the office with the assistant director. For once, Lew’s face was bright and cheerful.

  “I think we found a place for one-thirty-five and one-thirty-six,” he said. “Come over and look at the board.”

  “Lew, sit down,” Harry said.

  “Oh Jesus, what now?” Lew said, and threw himself into a chair.

  “We’re going to have to put back the riverbank scene at least a week,” he said.

  Lew closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them, looking at nothing. His mouth was drawn down in fatigue and disappointment. “Somebody doesn’t want to take off her shirt,” he said in a low flat voice.

  “That’s right,” Harry said. He did not explain who.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  JODY’S CALL for the riverbank scene was at ten, and she arrived in the production offices at nine, ready for her costume and makeup. She was wearing only her mallard-green robe, because the scene called for her to undress on camera and she would be wearing the things she had shopped for her first day in Alabama, just over a week ago. From then until now Jody had more or less imprisoned herself in her motel room. She hadn’t lain by the pool because Harry had almost been angry at her for the tan she did have, and wanted her to lose as much as possible while she waited. She did not go out to the set every day because she did not want to appear to be just Harry’s girlfriend, so she read, watched television, went crazy on a regular basis, worried about her part and wished there wasn’t a bar just on the other side of the motel. When Harry was back at the motel he was usually in his own room working or down in the production office having one of his endless meetings. When he did come to her room it was either to sleep, holding her tightly, or a flying visit to check if she was drunk on the bed or glued to the ceiling on some kind of drug. As far as Jody knew, however, there were no drugs of any kind in the entire Deep South, and even if there had been she did not want any part of them.

  The production office was jammed with people, and Jody made her way through to the back where Benny the makeup man was working on Elaine Rudman. Benny was a handsome tanned white-haired man of sixty who had been in the business since early silent movies. He turned to Jody and smiled and shook her hand. “I’m supposed to do Johnny Bridger next, and then you,” he said. Jody moved into the background and watched him work on Elaine, who smiled at Jody once without really meeting her eyes and then went back to watching what Benny was doing to her in the big mirror.

  They were all being made up to look as if they had spent the night crossing open fields and forest lands. The riverbank scene is where they clean off, wash their clothes and try to make themselves look as little like people on the run as possible. The makeup was subtle, and most of the effect was created by Nancy the hair stylist, who was working on Elaine in the next tall canvas chair while Benny worked on Jonathan Bridger. Bridger grinned and said hello to Jody and told her a Polish joke and read Time while he was being worked on.

  When Jody’s turn came most of the others were gone out to the set, leaving only the two women who worked in the production office, and after Jody’s face and hair had been finished, Benny and Nancy went also, leaving her to wait for Donald Bitts and her costume. Jody sat in one of the high chairs and waited. Fifteen minutes and then half an hour went by, and still Bitts had not come back with her costume. Finally Alice Wanderove looked up from her work and said, “Hasn’t that little bastard shown up yet?” and went looking for him. In another ten minutes she came back, followed by Donald Bitts carrying Jody’s five different sets of costume, each set in a different condition, from clean and well-worn to filthy and ragged.

  “I’ve been working my little tail off,” he said to Jody in an accusatory tone. “These things you bought are really dreadful, but I think if I could just work on them a bit more, we at least wouldn’t be embarrassing ourselves out on the set.” He held up the cleanest of the dresses for Jody to look at. “See? I mean it’s just nothing.”

  “It’s what waitresses wear,” Jody said.

  “You should know, I suppose,” Donald Bitts said and walked into the adjoining room for a moment. When he came back he said, “Well, get into it, dear. Do you expect me to help you dress?”

  “Which one?” Jody asked.

  “My God, the clean one, you’ve been out running through the woods all night, wear the clean one. Which one, for God’s sake. Oh, you need me, all right.” He picked one of the medium-soiled dresses and handed it to her and went out of the room again. Jody followed him.

  “I need the underwear and shoes and stuff,” she said.

  “Oh God,” said Donald Bitts.

  Finally she was dressed and ready but Bitts made her turn around for him three or four times, sucking air in between his teeth and shaking his head.

  “They are just all wrong,” he said. “I should never have allowed you to pick out your own things.”

  “What have you got against me?” Jody asked him. She was getting nervous and she had missed her call. The driver named Tommy was sitting in the front of the office reading the paper and waiting for her.

  Donald Bitts did not answer, but frowned as he looked at her clothes. “I think if I let out the waist you’d look a little less like a 1939 hooker and a little more what the part calls for. Take off the dress, please.”

  “I’m late for the scene,” she said.

  “I can’t be responsible for that,” he said. “The costume is hanging wrong and I’m going to fix it. Take it off, please.”

  “Does it really matter that much?” she asked him, but he went into the other room to wait for her to take it off. Forty-five minutes later he came back from his room, where he did his work, and said, “All right, now try it.” She put the dress on and modeled for him. He was still looking at her and shaking his head when Harry came in. Harry’s face was red from the heat, but otherwise he looked calm and even pleasant.

  “You’re fired,” he said to Donald Bitts. He went up to Alice Wanderove in the front of the room and said, “Get him on the three o’clock plane to Atlanta. Lew will call for a replacem
ent.” He smiled at Jody.

  “Sorry about the delay. Do you feel okay?”

  Jody said, “I’m a little nervous.”

  “Let’s go.”

  On the way out Harry told the driver Tommy that he was to wait around and take Bitts to meet his plane in Montgomery. Turning to Bitts, Harry said, “Do you need any cash or anything?”

  “No,” Bitts said. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Harry took Jody’s arm and they left the office.

  “What happened?” Jody asked him as they sat sweltering in his car waiting for the air conditioning to work.

  “I called Alice to see what was holding you up,” he said. “It’s my fault. I should have waited. I knew he was getting ready to blow. He really wanted to get fired. He doesn’t like this location one bit.”

  They drove out the highway that bisected Sugarville and then down a side road, passing through parklike open fields and woods, past small herds of black cattle and down red dirt roads through forests of pine trees almost buried in bright-green kudzu vines, making the forest look like a jungle. Finally they came to a clearing by the banks of the Alabama River where the big grip truck, the Cinemobile, the honeywagon and assorted cars and small trucks were parked.

  Harry pulled his car into a small patch of shade and turned off the motor. “Well, here we are. How do you feel?”

  Jody felt nervous and frightened. “Fine,” she said.

  Maggie, ragged and grimy, came over to the car and opened the door for Jody. “Missed you this morning,” he said. “I got up early and came out with the camera crew. I hear the little twitch got fired.”

  “How did you know that?” Jody said.

  “There’s a gas station down the road about two miles,” Maggie said. He seemed to be feeling good. “Can I take you to lunch?” he said.

  “Good Christ,” Harry said. “Is it lunch time?” In the shade of a gigantic mimosa the caterer’s helpers were laying out the big tables, and two more were bringing the food out from the back of the catering truck. The meals were trucked in all the way from Selma, forty miles away, because there was no restaurant in Sugarville that either Harry or Lew would trust with the job. Even so everybody was already bitching about the food, Jody noticed. She herself did not eat but sat quietly waiting for things to start and listening to the conversations around her. Harry was gone doing something. Maggie sat beside her, eating a heaping plateful of food and talking to Doug the electrician about golf. When he was finally through he said to Jody, “Take a little walk with me, okay?”