The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “Yeah,” said Alexander.

  “There has to be magic in the casting,” Rick said stubbornly.

  Novotny winked at Alexander. “Terrance Segebarth opposite Richard Thomas,” he said, naming a notoriously filthy old man and a notoriously clean young man.

  Alexander laughed. “All right, we’re getting too serious.”

  They all had another drink, although David only added fresh ice to his.

  “Who’s going to write this, anyway?” Novotny said.

  “I think maybe I will,” Rick said.

  “There you are,” said David. “An Academy Award screenwriter.”

  Rick shook his head. “That’s not the point. The original story’s set on a college campus, old prof, young students, and the old guy’s played as a fool. I want to reverse that, make the young guy a fool, and I just think it would save time for me to write the script rather than to try to get my ideas across to some other writer. But before I proceed, I want some assurance that I’ll have the casting I want. That’s why Newman and Travolta were so appealing to me; I could write for them . . .”

  “This won’t be our last meeting on the subject,” Alexander said, to take a little of the pressure off Rick. But Rick didn’t want the pressure off.

  “I want that casting, and I’m willing to pay for it.”

  “Learn the facts of life, sonny,” Alexander said sharply. “Even you with all your doctors and dentists couldn’t pay for that casting.”

  “Can’t I just buy up the availabilities?”

  “You would have to, in effect, buy out the pictures they’re working on, and even then I’m not sure Fox and Columbia are all that willing to sell. They think they’re making blockbusters, too, why the hell do you think they’re casting those guys? It would cost you a hundred million dollars to just go in there and buy everybody out. Forget it.”

  Rick looked as if somebody had let about half the air out of him, Alexander decided. He was feeling much better himself.

  “Don’t be dejected, kiddo,” he said.

  “I still think Raymond Carr and Dael Tennyson would make a nice combination,” said David. “Ray’s top ten, he’s been top ten for a dozen years, and Dael is a very well-liked young man.”

  “But not a star,” Alexander said.

  “Yet,” David said. “I’m going to send you some film tomorrow. You’ll see a young man who can not only sing and dance, but charm the girls right out of their pants.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink,” Alexander said, and laughed. David got up, leaving his glass half full. “Well, boys, my wife is waiting for me to come home and take a shower and dress up in my tuxedo.”

  “You’ll be beautiful,” Alexander said.

  “Of course,” David said modestly, and left.

  “Let’s have another drink, Richard, and stop being so serious.”

  Rick grinned. “I’m sorry. It all seems so trivial, you know?”

  “And yet it must happen,” Alexander said solemnly. “How do you like Carr and Tennyson? With maybe Brooke Shields?”

  The casting talk went on, Rick finally loosening up under the impact of four drinks of bourbon. Both of us are kind of drunk, Alexander thought. “How about dinner?” he asked Rick.

  Rick smiled. “My lady’s going to meet me at the Roxy at ten, otherwise I don’t have a thing to do.”

  “Swell. We’ll go to Matteo’s and fill up on fine Italian dishes. How is that lovely lady of yours?” he asked with a pang, thinking of his own fine lady.

  “Oh, she’s swell, only . . . well, shit, I have this slight problem with her. I want to move to town and she’s supposed to be looking for a place for us, but she really likes it at the beach, you know?”

  “Why not get some realtor to look for the house? Larry Goldman, for example.”

  “Yeah, but that’s kind of going behind her back . . . you know? So I spend a lot of nights at my office . . .”

  “If you want to do that, we have a couple of old apartments on this lot, you know . . .”

  “No, I didn’t know . . .”

  “We don’t advertise ’em,” Alexander said. “Usually only top-line hambones with paranoid problems get to use ’em. But if you’ll goddamn move your company over here like you’re supposed to, and help me with my overhead problems, I’d let you have one of the places for during the week. Then you and your baby could weekend at the beach.”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Rick.

  “But not what you want to do, huh?”

  “The thought of her stuck in some little apartment . . .”

  “They ain’t that little . . .”

  “And she wants to be an actress . . .”

  “Oh, Christ . . .”

  “She gets offers. Not from me, but she gets them. You’d be surprised at the scumballs who want to hire her.”

  “If she wants to be an actress, how come she hasn’t fallen for any of the scumballs?” Alexander liked that word scumballs.

  Rick laughed. “Because she’s my good baby, and she always asks my advice.”

  “Maybe it would do her good to be on the lot. We could run her a screen test and maybe put her to work . . .”

  Rick said, “I just don’t think she has it. She’s an exotic, you know. What happens if you have an exotic cattle call around here?”

  Alexander had to nod in agreement, even though it made his head swim a little. “Yeah, the same three Chinese girls show up.”

  “What kind of life is that for a girl who’s been on the cover of Rolling Stone?”

  “I see your point.”

  “But let’s go look at those apartments, what the hell,” said Rick. “One more drink and let’s have a look.”

  They had two more drinks. Rick admitted he was screwing his secretary, which complicated the issue. He would come to the office and have to fuck Joyce and then go home and have to fuck Elektra. It was more than he could handle, sometimes, and so he would stay in the office alone. But Elektra wasn’t born yesterday. If they all moved onto the lot, Rick felt things might reach a head at just the wrong time.

  “But let’s go look at the goddamn apartments anyhow,” he said, and Alexander patted him affectionately on the back. This was a nice kid!

  ALEXANDER HAD not been drunk to show it since he could remember. He had always been the man who drank along drink for drink and then helped the others into their cars. But this afternoon, with the sun hanging dimly in its grey-yellow atmosphere of smog, Alexander knew that he was definitely tipsy and would have to be on his guard. It wouldn’t do for people to see him staggering around his own lot. Therefore he was very conscious of walking erectly and with dignity.

  Then he remembered some advice he had once heard, an old actor telling a young actor, “The way to play a drunk is sober; the thing about drunks, see, is that they want to look sober.” The very attempt to be dignified was suspicious.

  “Do I look drunk to you?” he asked Rick Heidelberg.

  “I’m pretty shit-faced myself,” Rick replied.

  They walked down a long narrow canyon between buildings, on one side Studio One, where pictures were scored. Outside the small fire door were a group of musicians, which, as they walked closer, became two groups of musicians, two knots of people on break, obviously not talking to each other. One group was black and one was white, but that did not seem to be the difference; there were a couple of women among the whites, and the men seemed older. The white group was talking in low tones and glancing at Alexander and Rick almost furtively as the two men bore down past them, but the black men, after a glance, did not pay any further attention.

  “What’s all that about?” Rick said.

  “Strings and brass,” Alexander said with a giggle.

  “Of course,” Rick said, and laughed.

  “Best goddamn musicians in the world, right here in Hollywood,” said Alexander with a flush of pride.

  “Yeah, playing whole notes for those big dollar bills,” said Rick.

&n
bsp; “What are you so bitter about?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little ah, shitty? That the best musicians in the world are playing jingle dates and background music?”

  “You like music, huh?”

  “I like everything!” Rick almost shouted. “I like books, comic books, big-little books, records, live music, opera, rock, jazz, movies, plays, puppet shows, ice-capades, limited warfare and Christ knows what-all, I love it all.”

  “What about those little lingerie fashion shows women put on for themselves in department stores?”

  “I love those best of all,” Rick said with what Alexander saw as simple dignity. They turned a corner and the sun, a burnished aluminum disk behind its veil of smog, made them blink.

  “How much farther?” Rick asked. There was the little red schoolhouse across the street, nestled in among its trees and shrubbery. Behind it was a typical small-town street, and beyond that the big New York street. They skirted the edges of the backlot where all the other facade standing sets had been for fifty years, and ducked into another alley between tall white-painted sound studios with outside iron staircases. Along one side of the street were parked a lot of trucks and actors’ dressing-room trailers. People were standing around, and the red light over the door was on.

  “Still shooting, this late at night?” said Alexander. He walked up to a white-haired man sitting with his legs dangling from the back of a truck.

  “Mister Potter,” Alexander said gravely.

  “Why, hello, Boss,” Potter said with surprise. He slid down off the truck. He was a prop man, had been on the lot for years.

  “How’s it going, Potter?”

  “The mills of the gods, Boss. You can go in and see for yourself if you want.”

  Alexander looked over and saw that the red light had gone off.

  “No,” he said. He wondered if Potter could smell all the liquor on his breath. He and Rick kept moving, and were soon around another corner, where there was a white stucco staircase with red concrete steps.

  “Up we go,” Alexander said. He got out his key ring, for he carried the keys to this apartment all the time.

  It was one of his secret hideaways.

  He opened the heavy door and stood back for Rick to enter first. Alexander followed, grinning redly. This was in no way a test, understand, but he would be very interested in Rick’s reaction to this apartment.

  “It’s a reaction medium,” he said aloud.

  “What?” asked Rick.

  “Nothing.”

  They stood in the living room, and Alexander switched on the lights. The room sprung into life, a room preserved from the late thirties intact, decorated the way somebody with very good taste in those long-gone Art Deco days could decorate with an unlimited budget. Soft ivory silks, blue glass, silken lamps, wallpaper and woodwork, rich carpets and round windows. There was a faint odor of dried-to-dust roses.

  Rick looked stunned. He had obviously expected some hot dust-ridden clunky apartment with a lot of discard furniture from the warehouse. Alexander went behind the bar where the small refrigerator hummed efficiently, got out some ice cubes and a bottle of bourbon from the backbar, while Rick wandered silently through the apartment. Alexander wondered how he liked the mirrored bedroom with its red and yellow silk wall panels, the big high old-fashioned bed, the Japanese prints of beautiful young maidens.

  Alexander had their drinks ready when Rick wandered back into the living room. They solemnly clicked their glasses.

  “Do you know who used to live in this apartment?” Alexander said softly.

  “No,” said Rick.

  “Errol Flynn,” said Alexander. Tears almost came to his eyes. “The man was one of my idols,” he said.

  It quite took Rick’s breath away. He looked around again.

  “It was a lot sloppier then, I think,” said Alexander. “The kitchen full of garbage, broken glass in the carpets, blood and urine on the walls.”

  “How long did he live here?” Rick wanted to know.

  “Not very, a few weeks, long enough for his purposes. But he lived here, Errol Flynn, one of my real heroes . . .”

  “Mine, too,” Rick said with awe, and then made a quick oriental praying gesture, touching his palms to his nose.

  “Don’t worry, there’s no ghost here, just memories, and most of them false.”

  “It’s still a religious moment for me,” Rick said. “Dawn Patrol. The Roots of Heaven.”

  “Captain Blood, Robin Hood,” said Alexander. He was liking this young man more and more. “Well, you want to move in for a while? Do you think Elektra would like it?”

  “I think she’d love it, but I can’t . . . move in here, I just couldn’t . . .”

  “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t live up to it. I’d be thinking all the time, Errol Flynn, Errol Flynn . . . nothing would get done. I’d be looking over my shoulder all the time. But thanks for the compliment, and I think it’s an incredible compliment.”

  Rick fumbled in his pocket and came out with a little bottle. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I need a little of this Peruvian wakeup medicine.”

  Alexander had never tried cocaine. Now would be as good a time as any. Rick, using a tiny spoon, helped Alexander to snort the white powder.

  “My first time,” he admitted. “What should I look for?”

  “First time, hey? Well, watch out for your throat closing up, you’ll think you can’t swallow, but you can, you just have to force it. And then in about fifteen minutes it will start seeping down into your gums . . .”

  “My gums?” Alexander gave a lot of thought to his gums. Watch the gums and the teeth take care of themselves, he had been told, and it seemed to be working. “Will it hurt my gums?”

  “It won’t help them. But it’ll just numb them at first.”

  “Some hell of a drug. Why do people take it?”

  “I dunno. Stay awake, I guess,” Rick said. “Do you keep the air conditioning on in the place all the time?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so. I come here from time to time to get away from the office.”

  “Can I bring Elektra here, once?” Rick asked.

  Alexander had never brought Teresa here. Why not? She might have loved it.

  And then, to his great amazement, Alexander sat down on a small French love seat with a brocaded silk cover, and told Rick all about Teresa, and the doubts he was beginning to feel about himself. He felt wonderful doing it. The young man sat silent but sympathetic and listened to every word. And there were a lot of words, my, it just fairly poured out of him, and of course he realized later that this was one of the famous effects of the drug, to make you babble. Yet at the same time he felt a wonderful relief in spilling his misery to another human. It was not like him, it was downright dangerous to do, but it made him feel fine.

  By now he had no appetite at all, and suggested they have another drink.

  “What time is it?” Rick said. “I don’t give a fuck, let’s tie one on and hit the Roxy at ten. Some friends of mine are opening tonight.”

  “Rock and roll?” Alexander said.

  “Rock and roll,” Rick confirmed. “If you don’t want to, the hell with it. I’ll pick up Elektra and we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “No,” said Alexander. “Rock and roll is fine.”

  His head throbbed once, and the shock wave passed nauseatingly through his chest and intestines, ending with a vicious twist of his anus. For one shuddering moment it felt as if he were going to have an attack of diarrhea right there in the bed. If he did not throw up first. Alexander hadn’t had a hangover in years, but he had one now. There was only one way to combat it. He had to get out of his bed, and in the chill of the early morning, go outside and jump into his swimming pool. Swim fifty hard chopping laps, and then eat a big breakfast. He steeled himself. Steeling himself didn’t work. But in return his grateful body, which did not after all have to get up and go swimming, gave him a few moments of relief.
He punched his pillow and buried his head in it.

  As he rested, bits of picture and sound flitted through his mind, like Halloween ghosts. Would there be a headline in the L.A. Times?

  FILM EXECUTIVE IN DISCO BRAWL

  No. He had not brawled. And the Roxy was not a disco. He remembered sitting there beaming at everybody, all those young people, who were all beaming at him. He remembered buying a lot of drinks for people, and he remembered the cute waitresses, all of them, like sweet children. And he remembered loving the music, the three young, men in shining red costumes, The Mercedes Effect they called themselves. Nobody had fawned on him, table-hopped him, or paid much attention to him. Why in his memory did there seem to be a brawl somewhere? Was he forgetting part of the evening? Had he blacked out?

  He remembered sitting with Rick in Errol Flynn’s old apartment on the lot, drinking whiskey and taking cocaine. They had talked about everything, movies past, present and future—Rick was as movie crazy as himself—and that was quite crazy; they talked about women and what a hellish problem they were. Alexander’s stomach throbbed as he thought about some of the things he had admitted to Rick.

  Then he remembered the girl at the Roxy, the one that had been sitting with them, blonde, blue-eyed, about twenty-two and stroking the back of his neck as they sat in the din. Carla. Something. She was going to come home with him and fuck him and bring him out of this goddamn business about not being able to get an erection. He remembered talking freely with her about this forbidden thing, Jesus, what had they had for dinner, well, they didn’t eat at all, as it turned out, just some of Errol Flynn’s leftover peanuts, and then headed late for Sunset Boulevard and the Roxy. Laughing and shaking hands with people as they made their way through the darkened room to their seats in the midst of the crowd. Then Carla with her stroking fingers and murmuring good cheer. And then he remembered, the fragments of memory like torn-up strips of newspaper, that Carla had come here with him, and so had Rick and Elektra, they had all sat in the den and Alexander racked up Dawn Patrol for them. Rick hadn’t seen it in years. David Niven and Errol Flynn, so young, so bright, so sincere . . . He remembered crying in Carla’s arms as she murmured nice things, and then he could remember no more of her. Had they made love? He knew in his bones that they hadn’t.