The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  EXTERIOR—MOUNTAIN ROAD

  NIGHT.

  The MOUNTAIN ROAD is empty.

  MARLOWE’S CAR RUNS PAST.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  And so on and so on.

  Jerry did not like writing runbys, but somebody had to do it. The runby had to be in the script. Because somebody had to budget for it, set aside time, provide equipment. The director and the cameraman had to go out and find the location, decide the angles. And then they all had to very literally show up and shoot it, because if they did not, and the director got to the editing room and found that he did not have it, and needed it, there would be hell to pay. So Jerry wrote runbys. But it did so remind him of Pet Care Hotline.

  Afternoons, out of boredom, Jerry would either take long walks around the lot or visit the set. Actually, visiting the set was becoming something of a bore for him. Everybody knew him now, and most ignored him. Seldom was any shooting going on, hours and hours of setting up for minutes of rolling, and Jerry soon tired of the crew’s jokes as they hauled cables or lights to and fro. He made a few tense visits to Eric Tennyson’s trailer, and while Eric was nice to him, always offering him a beer or a soda, telling him to sit down and relax, Jerry could not quite fit himself into the busyness of Eric’s life, for there was never a moment when Eric wasn’t doing something, in his slow, lazy, masculine way—on the telephone, talking to the constant stream of businesspeople or front office people or publicity people who came through his trailer, studying his lines, or even just reading a book. Jerry finally stopped the visits.

  Jerry was not on salary, his payment had been lumps, but long ago when he and Rick Heidelberg had been working so closely on the screenplay, they both agreed that it would be good for Jerry to hang around while the picture was being shot, even unto the postproduction to watch the cutting process, and all along it had been understood that when the company moved up to Big Bear Lake for the locations, Jerry would go.

  It would be fun. You worked harder on location, the days were longer, but there was a cheerful expeditionlike feeling to the whole thing. Jerry should not miss it, Rick said more than once. And Jerry looked forward to it himself. But lately he had begun to worry.

  Finally, one day, he called to make an appointment with Rick. First Joyce told him he could come over in an hour or so, but then she called him back and said, “Can you be here at eight tomorrow morning? Rick has a lot on his plate.”

  Jerry agreed to the morning meeting, and was in his office promptly at quarter to eight. At eight sharp he called Joyce.

  “Listen, will you stay there and wait for Rick’s call?” Joyce asked him. “He’s got a crazy day.”

  “I want to talk to him about the location move,” Jerry said helpfully.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Joyce said.

  Jerry sat back and waited for his telephone to ring. His own secretary, Roberta, had long since been reassigned to the production office when Jerry turned in the “final draft” of the screenplay, but Jerry didn’t mind. It would have been horrible to have her sitting over there with nothing to type. So Jerry sat with his door ajar, wondering if he dared go down to the production office and beg a cup of coffee. But he did not want to be out of the office when Rick called. He might not be able to get hold of him again for days, and Jerry wanted this business settled. Was he going on location or was he not going on location?

  Jerry waited impatiently for the telephone to ring. He thought about calling the production office and asking Roberta to bring him a cup of coffee. He knew she would do it. But even as he reached for the telephone a feeling of distaste came over him, and he let his hand drop into his lap. It would be playing their game, their goddamn status game, where three or four men would sit around talking about pussy while the only person in the office who actually has anything to do has to drop everything and fetch the men coffee. Jerry had always held aloof from this, not that he didn’t let the secretaries make him coffee, but it was never that drop everything kind of situation. Come to think of it, neither was this. Jerry was kidding himself.

  His telephone was not on the production company’s set of lines. If Jerry was on the telephone, no one could call in. Jerry didn’t want to call Roberta for fear that Rick might call and the line be busy and not call back.

  What is this?

  Jerry reached for the telephone, but his hand froze. Why not call Joyce and get a clarification about what Jerry was supposed to do? Wait here for Rick’s call, she had said. Joyce was careful with words, so it meant just what it said.

  He took his hand off the instrument and grinned to himself. Joyce is careful with words, huh?

  “Joyce the writer, or Joyce the secretary?”

  It was like dialogue from a Marx Brothers movie.

  Jerry giggled. Well, what was he going to do while he waited? There was nothing to read but a stack of Los Angeles telephone directories in his bottom drawer. He hadn’t picked up the trades that morning in his impatience to be on time, and he was not going to appear at Rick’s office and ask Joyce if he could borrow Rick’s copy. It would look as if he were hanging around, or pressing. He did not want to appear to press. Not that he gave a good goddamn anymore, it was obvious what was happening, Jerry was being stiffed, and stiffed good. Rick obviously had no intention of keeping his eight o’clock appointment, he probably wasn’t even on the lot yet, that was why Joyce hadn’t invited Jerry to wait in with her, sipping hot coffee and reading the trades.

  Jerry could imagine the scene. Rick comes in late, and Joyce says, “You’ve got Jerry Rexford waiting,” and Rick would say in an irritated voice, “Oh, shit, get him, will you? I totally forgot.” And the phone would ring . . .

  But the phone did not ring. Jerry could not quite believe that Rick was doing this on purpose, to put him in his place. It was too blunt and ugly a thing to do, too much the old Hollywood of myth and legend. Rick was just busy, and Jerry was hounding him. But this irritated Jerry. Rick was busy on other projects as well as their picture, and Jerry felt he should not be. Instead of running around setting up development deals, Rick should be paying more attention to the everyday problems of The Lady in the Lake. Including setting up Jerry’s location trip.

  Of course in his heart Jerry now knew that he was not going to get to go. And he had told everybody around the court that he was going. He had even hinted to Brenda that she might visit him, and she had been eagerly interested. Brenda, ah, Brenda, how nice it was to have a neighbor who would come over from time to time and give you a friendly little fuck, and then leave you to your life. Jerry and Jack never talked about this, but Jerry knew Jack knew, and it didn’t seem to matter.

  Maybe he should call Harriet Hardardt, no, don’t want to tie up the line . . . but Harriet was the one to clarify this situation anyway, it was her goddamn job, just call Rick herself and say, “We want a hundred-twenty a day per diem for Jerry Rexford,” and if Rick suggested that Jerry might not be going, just bull it through: “Of course he’s going!”

  Call Harriet. Don’t worry about Rick calling. You have no business with Rick. Let Harriet do it.

  He reached for the phone, but cold sweat between his shoulder blades reminded him that he was afraid. He was so afraid he wouldn’t leave his office even for a cup of coffee, so afraid he wouldn’t even go down the hall to piss, so afraid that until just this moment he hadn’t even admitted to himself that he had to piss, and badly. But would not leave the room.

  Jerry sat back and sighed. Now that it was out, he felt a certain relief. Yes, it was true, he was going to squat in his little corner until The Master called. Jerry had thought he was made of better stuff than this, but obviously he wasn’t. He was a coward, hanging on by his fingernails. Anything to stay on the lot. Anything to stay with the picture. What else did he have waiting for him out there? He had no job and no prospects. His money was rapidly dribbling away. He had written nothing new, and his old screenplays were deadly bad stuff, he could not even bear to read them.

  A hea
viness settled on Jerry’s chest as he sat glowering at the telephone. He had aimed his life at the movies, fired, and missed. No one would hire him. Especially after this picture came out. People would judge his writing by a script that had been butchered by so many hands Jerry could not remember them all. And now the actors and the director were down on the set, their hands blood-red from even further butchery.

  For a moment, Jerry mourned his screenplay, and compared himself to the Old Man, with his great fish eaten by the brown sharks. Yes, that was a good image, brown sharks.

  But Jerry couldn’t quite make it into self-pity. Something inside him said, “You are to blame for everything that’s happened to you. If there is somebody fucking up your life, it is only you.” Jerry smiled sadly. Comparing himself to a Hemingway hero was a bit dicky. Next he would be comparing himself to Hemingway.

  Jerry was in for a long wait, he knew that now, but he felt better. Even though his course of action was cowardly, he would follow it all the way to its cowardly conclusion.

  Now that he knew what he was doing, he looked around for something to occupy his time. Not something short-term, but something he could get into. He opened the drawer of his desk to see if there was anything in there. There was. Paper. He could write. He pulled the typewriter over to him and carefully, lovingly, stuffed a piece of white paper, a piece of carbon paper, and a piece of yellow paper into the machine. This ole machine was the one he used to write runbys. He knew how to work this old bastard. He centered the paper and stuck his finger in his mouth.

  What to write? Jerry had written a few unsuccessful short stories in his time, and of course like everyone who has the nerve to call himself a writer, he had begun several novels. Never finished one, though. He had always meant to get back to serious writing. In fact, long ago, that had been the dream, hadn’t it? To come to Hollywood, make good money, and then have time to write fiction? Wasn’t that what it was all about? He had a few bucks, not enough to write a novel, but sure as hell enough to work on a good short story, maybe several; short stories were the style perfecters that led to novels, anyway. He would be readying himself for his craft.

  Jerry looked at the blank page in front of him and wondered what to write about. Minutes went by. Nothing came to his mind. Why was it he was always having ideas for books and stories when he was working on something, and the ideas were an interference, but now, when he searched eagerly for ideas, there wasn’t one in sight?

  He sat for a long time, trying to think, but his mind kept drifting away. He wasn’t really trying to write. He was posing as a writer, to keep the humiliation of his position from overwhelming him. No wonder no ideas would come to his mind. It was a gross joke. Jerry, who had so much respect for fiction, now trying to use it as a shield. It was disgusting. Fiction did not rise from the wreckage of a hack writer.

  Jerry had to face something now. It wasn’t just fiction he was talking about. Anybody with a little training could write fiction. But great fiction was another matter. And Jerry had been hiding from himself all this time his passion to write greatly. Greatly. His burning young dream had been to stand beside Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Maupassant and Chekhov, Melville and Twain. Beside them as an equal.

  Jerry now knew with terrible contempt for himself that he would never write any books. Something immense within him died. He looked at the blank piece of paper in his typewriter and saw his fate written there. The fate of nothing. To have been nothing, and to be nothing. And nothing to become.

  At this moment, Jerry went a little crazy. He would always remember the moment not for his terrible self-knowledge but for the insanity that followed, even though he did nothing outwardly crazy. But he wanted to. There was a lamp: he wanted to grasp the hot bulb in his hand and crush it, crush the life out of it, cutting his hand. He wanted to piss in the desk drawer, on the Los Angeles county telephone books, and then leave the building forever. He wanted to break into Rick’s office and in front of everybody gathered there stride madly across the room and grab Rick by his scrawny little neck and crunch the life out of him like a chicken, throw the lifeless body through the crashing glass and then turn and walk out and leave the lot. He wanted power to surge up out of his body, all the secret power he knew was there, all his atomic energy, for once at his disposal, to direct this energy in a wave of hatred at the studio itself, to see the whole place suddenly burst into flames, to explode with the violence of his intent, with himself in the middle, all the buildings smashed and quaking, all the people blown to bits, every tree knocked flat, devastation everywhere . . .

  Jerry’s eyes were glassy, and his face was pulled into a terrible mask of hatred. He could feel the muscles so tight they might snap. Consciously he relaxed his face muscles. He had seen people whose faces had fixed in awful expressions, and now he knew how it happened. He had to be careful. He didn’t want to look like that.

  And the insanity passed. Jerry had to laugh. Piss in the drawer! On the phone books! Blow up the studio with his secret energy! In a way it was all very frightening, and later when he looked back on it, it was even more frightening. He had been sitting there slathering in a mad rage for nearly half an hour.

  And the telephone still hadn’t rung.

  For the first time in a while, Jerry thought about his chimpanzee, the one who escapes in his movie idea. Jerry felt tremendous sympathy for the chimpanzee, the animal in all of us, pursued relentlessly for our own good by civilization. That’s something. The scientist should have a lot of really cultural stuff in his house, paintings, sculpture, tasteful little knickknacks to show that he is a civilized man, not just a man of science. And he must be shown to have great compassion for the chimpanzee as well, none of your Skinner Box mentality. He should be, indeed, a Renaissance Man, good with the ladies, tough as hell, magical personality; he should be a vastly superior human being, just as the chimpanzee should be a vastly superior ape.

  But goddamn it, there’s a hell of a problem here that can’t be solved in screenplay, the matter of casting the ape and the way the actor will be made up. He should look like the actor, yes, but he should also look exactly like a real chimpanzee, or people would laugh at him and not feel the strong sympathy Jerry knew they would have to feel to accept the story. It was a bitch of a problem, and the only way Jerry could see out of it would be to produce the picture himself.

  Scenes began forming in his mind, and quickly, with economy, he began putting them on paper. Unlike his last attempt he wrote narrative treatment instead of screenplay, just notes on each scene as he thought of it. Later he could write the dialogue, when he was sure of what he had. Jerry typed smoothly, pages mounting on the other side of the desk. It was easy. He was aware only of the emerging story and of the sweat trickling down from his armpits. All other sensations seemed to have vanished. The old typewriter clacked away, and Jerry wrote page after page. The day passed and the telephone did not ring, but Jerry was beyond caring. He knew without thinking about it that Rick would call him late in the day—six o’clock, as it turned out—and fire him off the picture with a few curt words, but it no longer mattered. This morning Jerry had been a man without a future, and now he had something to work on, something he believed in, and it did not matter if it was crap or gold, Jerry loved it.

  So did Harriet Hardardt, who sold the twenty-nine-page treatment to Alexander Hellstrom, script and two sets of changes to follow, for eighty thousand dollars.