by Amy Sohn
Gottlieb
Over the past two days, it had felt like everyone wanted Gottlieb. He loved the high of pitching, the banter beforehand, the way the execs crowded the room just to see Jed. Though Disney and Sony had passed, they had already gotten an offer from Fox for three hundred against six hundred—three hundred thousand for the treatment and first draft, six hundred if it got made. Topper expected Universal and Paramount to come in with offers by the end of the day, and he was still waiting on Summit. He said it could easily go to three-quarters of a million for the draft and twice that if it got made.
In the morning they’d had Lionsgate and Relativity. The last meeting of the day was with Igor Hecht, the head of Warner Bros. Hecht had started out as a producer during the 1980s heyday of male-driven ensemble comedies. His credits included Boogers, Teabags, and the smash homophobic college movie Men Like Us. In the nineties he made a bunch of big-budget flops, but he’d had something of a renaissance in the early 2000s, getting his name attached to several smart indie comedies: Perilous State, I’m Seeing Someone, and DUFFs. These were so successful that in 2008, when Warner found itself looking for a new head, Igor was tapped for the job.
Andy was a huge fan of Igor Hecht, and as he walked into the bungalow building with Gottlieb, he murmured, “I’m freaking out, man. The only time I’ve been more nervous was when I met Bob Balaban at the IFC Awards last year.”
“So which type do you think he’ll be?” Gottlieb asked. They had developed a lexicon for the different types of executives: Ritalins, Frustrated Actors, and Alka-Seltzers. The Ritalins were inattentive and glanced furtively at their BlackBerries during the pitches. The Frustrated Actors raised their eyebrows, chuckled loudly, inserted their usually unfunny one-liners, and at the end of the pitch, went on for fifteen minutes about their own ideas. The Alka-Seltzers listened to the pitch with an expression of severe heartburn and said little at the end, seemingly in a rush to be alone so they could commit suicide.
“I’m gonna go with Alka-Seltzer,” Andy said. “His movies have that undercurrent of sadness.”
“How can he be aggrieved?” Gottlieb said. “He’s too powerful. He’s an alpha, not an Alka. I’m going to go with Ritalin.”
The office area was done in blond wood. Behind high desks sat a handful of twentysomething assistants, attractive and neat. “Andy Shanahan and Daniel Gottlieb for Igor Hecht,” Andy said. The girl nodded, and Gottlieb realized they seemed old. It was frightening to realize you were old to someone else. They sat on a low couch, and Gottlieb’s knees came up to his chest. A plant sat in the center of the table, a snapdragon.
Jed and Ross came in together. Ross was talking on his phone, saying, “Lorenzo is to the manor born.”
“How was Malibu?” Jed asked Gottlieb, plopping down on the couch.
“Awesome. Except no one told me about the parking.”
“You should come out to my place. You can meet my buddies. So what did you guys do last night?”
“I saw some friends,” Andy said. “And Gottlieb watched porn in his hotel room.”
“Did not,” Gottlieb said with irritation, though he had. On his computer, a threesome of cheerleaders. He’d used Kiehl’s grapefruit hand and body lotion that he found in the bathroom. The smell and the water base made it difficult.
“What about you, Jed?” Gottlieb asked. “Were you out?”
“I was at Palihouse with Seth and Will. Got back at three. I’m wrecked. This buddy of mine gave me some weed called Park Dope. Have you tried it? That is some sick shit.”
“Park Slope weed?” Andy said.
“It’s grown in Arcata but packaged and sold in your neighborhood.”
“I’ve never even heard of it,” said Gottlieb. “I knew we had our own Food Coop, I didn’t know we had our own pot.”
“What’s a food coop?” Jed asked.
Gottlieb saw a tall man approaching, and a moment later, he was shaking Igor Hecht’s hand. Hecht had a hooked nose and angular features and would have made a good Fagin.
Andy seemed to be trying very hard to act cool. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hecht,” he said, but there were a few beads of sweat on his upper lip.
Hecht led them to the conference room. Half a dozen other execs streamed in with bright smiles and notebooks. Gottlieb had learned that whoever was taking the most notes had the least power. Again there was a hot female exec—big tits and a slim waist—but she had obviously done a hair-straightening procedure and as a result it looked like a witch’s.
There was a large poster leaning against a wall of one of Hecht’s famous movies, about two brothers who had been separated at birth. In French the title was Les Fils, and the French looked odd juxtaposed next to the mugs of Jim Belushi and Gregory Hines.
The execs were silencing devices or readying pens. Gottlieb glanced at Andy, who nodded that he was ready. Jed gave a little nod. “Okay,” Gottlieb said. “This is a movie about what it means to be an underdog.”
Hecht didn’t smile once during the pitch, but he seemed attentive, and if he had a BlackBerry in his pants pocket, it must have been on silent. He was an Alka-Seltzer after all. After the final beat, Hecht said, “I like it very much. I think you two have a highly original voice.” But he wasn’t smiling, and his voice was flat. A few of the other executives were glancing at one another nervously. Hecht stared out the window, seeming troubled. The girl with the strawlike hair was putting the straws behind her ears. Gottlieb tried to stare deeply enough into Hecht’s eyes to see the word “yes” or “no” printed on the back of his hypothalamus, but it didn’t work.
Then Hecht stood up and said, “Thanks so much!” On the way out, Gottlieb glanced at the poster. Fils looked like Fail.
Outside Andy said, “Was that the weirdest thing?”
“Something’s going on,” Jed said. “We’ll find out what it is.”
“Maybe he just found out he’s dying,” Andy said.
“Or getting fired,” Ross said, as though that were the worse fate.
At the Sunset Tower, Gottlieb changed to go out. He and Andy were meeting Evan Cherry, an old buddy from Princeton who wrote for a network TV show. Gottlieb put on a Krazy Kat T-shirt and a pair of Rogan jeans he had bought at Maxfield’s department store between meetings. They had cost $264, but he loved the way they looked on him, the pick stitching and dark denim. He thought of them as his Hot Jeans.
He dialed CC. It was the witching hour in New York, eight o’clock. He could hear the boys fighting in the background. “I just wanted to say hi,” he said.
“It’s crazy here,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I won’t keep you. I love you.”
“They were a nightmare today. It was ninety-two degrees. August was like July, and September is turning out to be like August. I’m trying to get them down, but they’re overtired. The heat. The AC died.”
“Oh no.”
“I’m having Gordon put in a new one, but it might not be for a couple more days.”
He had learned to perfect the tone of the “away” parent. You had to act concerned, as if you wished you were there, like it was hard not to be. But you couldn’t sound so persecuted that it would be obvious it was a ruse. He felt badly that she was alone with the kids in a hot apartment, but she would figure it out. She was good at handling things, so good that he always felt a little redundant around her.
He got on with each of the boys and had two conversations that were unsatisfying in different ways. Sam told him about his new teacher, Miss Danna, and Gottlieb couldn’t figure out whether that was her last name or her first. Then Harry got on and was cutely inarticulate, years away from understanding the phone and what it meant to talk on it.
Gottlieb knew he would be a better father once he had something going. All these years he had taken his self-hatred out on his kids, as though they were the reason his career wasn’t where he wanted it to be. In a way, they were. But that was normal, you had to make sacrifices for your kids, he had done the r
ight thing by starting the film school. When he came back to Brooklyn, he was going to be a different person, and the boys would pick up on it. They would see that he was fulfilled, and because he was fulfilled, he would be more present around them. That was what CC always complained about, that he wasn’t “present.”
He lay on the bed and flipped channels. He kept thinking about the Hecht pitch and feeling uncomfortable. What had Hecht heard that he didn’t like? Was there something hidden in the pitch, some offensive line that had turned him against them?
The phone rang. “I’m downstairs,” Evan said. He had offered to drive Andy and Gottlieb so they could drink as much as they wanted. Gottlieb took off his wedding ring and set it on the nightstand. Everyone in L.A. was playing a role, lying in one way or another—about age, occupation, marital status. He wasn’t a true Los Angeleno unless he lied a little bit, too.
Evan took them to his house in the Hollywood Hills so they could see it before they went out. His TV comedy was about a fat guy married to a hot woman, Gottlieb could never remember the title—Someone Like You or Two Among Us. Evan gave them a tour of his house, which reminded Gottlieb of a spec house in its lack of character, like the one on Arrested Development. On the shelves of Evan’s walk-in closet, Gottlieb saw printed labels with the words “Socks,” “Undershirts,” and “Shorts.”
“Do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder?” Gottlieb asked.
“I do that for my housekeeper,” he said. “Otherwise she gets it wrong. I can’t stand it.”
“You’re doing pretty well for yourself,” Gottlieb said. “Big house, maid.”
“Everyone has a maid out here because they’re cheap. I had one back when I was a gofer on the Paramount lot.”
They got in his tan 1982 Mercedes to go downtown. He was taking them to some trendy bar in the back of a French restaurant. “My mom gives me shit that my car is German,” he said, “but in L.A. your car’s your avatar. Inside, I’m a Jew-hating grandmother of ten.”
Downtown they passed a guitar store, Mexican men standing on corners, a glowing blue sign reading LIBRARY BAR, the Standard Hotel. As they walked inside the French restaurant, Evan said, “The place feels like you’re stepping back in time. And the chicks are alterna-hot.”
In the back of the restaurant was a plain black door. When they pushed it open, they found themselves in a loud room filled with slender twentysomething women in unironic silk dresses. The walls were brick and it was chilly. The shelves were lined with cocktail books. At a service bar, bartenders shook elaborately mixed drinks. Waitresses in 1920s outfits made their way around the room with attitude.
The hostess led them to a table. As they perused the drink menus, a slender brunette in a white oxford button-down, gypsy skirt, and Sally Jessy glasses beelined to a booth in the back. “That’s the new thing,” Evan said. “Big ugly glasses. They’re trying to make themselves as unattractive as they possibly can and show that they can still look hot.”
Gottlieb regarded the menu, cocktails with strange names and ingredients. He had no interest in any of them. He would get a martini.
A short-haired white-blondie in a long-sleeved flowered sixties-style minidress came in the door. Evan waved to her. “Laah-ra,” he said as the girl approached. “One a, and it’s short. She goes crazy if you say ‘Law-ra.’ ”
Evan cheeked her and introduced her to the guys. Lara was with a friend, a Zooey Deschanel look-alike. Tiffany. Tiffany sat next to Andy, and Lara sat opposite her, next to Evan. Gottlieb was wedged on Evan’s other side at the end of the booth, the only guy not next to a girl. There was something appealing about Lara’s wan Wednesday Addams–ish look.
“Are you the guy from those commercials?” Lara asked Andy.
Andy nodded. “You’re so funny!” Tiffany cried. “I, like, love you!”
“I, like, love that,” Andy said.
He said it so slyly and patronizingly that it was as though he had started to believe the hype about himself. Gottlieb suspected that Andy’s snobbery was compensation for his inability to take full advantage of his fame by fucking all the women who wanted to fuck him now that he was semi-famous. Andy seemed faithful to Joanne. In his case, the Chris Rock line didn’t apply: He wasn’t as faithful as his options.
It took a long time for one of the cocktail waitresses to approach their table. She asked them all for ID even though they had shown them at the door. Annoyed by the long wait for service, Gottlieb said, “I was underage when I came in.” He was proud of the line, but the waitress showed no reaction, either not hearing or not comprehending. Lara heard it, though, and smiled. He felt vindicated.
After the waitress left, Evan said, “There’s no culture of service in L.A. like there is in New York. Everyone is working these jobs to support something else, and they resent having to do them at all. That’s why the service sucks.”
“What are you guys doing out here?” Tiffany asked, looking at Andy.
“We’re pitching a movie,” Andy said. “With Jed Finger.”
“What’s it about?”
“We can’t really go into it,” Gottlieb said. “We have to talk about it every day to the executives, so it’s not good if we talk about it outside the room.”
“Where are those drinks?” Lara said. “I think you need one.” Andy laughed. Gottlieb felt Andy had betrayed him. He decided he had been wrong about Lara. She was horsey, and her minidress was so loose around the torso that it was hard to imagine her figure. Plus, she was too thin. He had never been into the early post-anorexic look, preferring late post-anorexic, after the chin fat started to return and the cheeks filled out.
“Don’t mind her,” Tiffany said. “She’s just being a bitch because her dog died last week.”
“You mean her bitch died,” Gottlieb said. Lara looked at him sharply.
“So what do you girls do?” Andy asked brightly.
“I’m a painter,” Tiffany said. A painter named Tiffany. It didn’t seem possible. “Lara makes clothes.”
“No kidding,” Gottlieb said to Lara. “Are you wearing any?”
“Clothes?” she asked, casting him a look of hostility.
“I meant are you wearing your own clothes?”
“No.”
“Lara’s actually really good,” Evan said. “She had a show at a rooftop pool the other week. Lara and Tiffany are unlike many women here, in that they care about what they do and have career ambition. That’s why I hang out with them.”
“Most L.A. women are gold-digging, soul-sucking whores,” Lara said. “They hold out the pussy for gifts and clothes and jewelry and then the ring. Once they get married, they have to hold out the pussy for the house and the babies and the remodel. We don’t relate to them. Who has the patience not to fuck for so long?” She looked at Andy as she said this. He blushed.
“Maybe they just really hate sex,” Gottlieb said. He expected a laugh, but everyone blinked silently at him.
The waitress arrived with the drinks. Gottlieb took a sip of the very cold martini and felt himself relax. Two and a half weeks ago he’d been at the Whydah Museum in Provincetown, looking at pirate relics with his sons. Now he was in downtown L.A. with his screenwriting partner, wearing his Hot Jeans, surrounded by cute girls, and there was a bidding war in progress for his movie.
“So are you guys married?” Lara asked.
“Yep,” Andy said. “Three kids between us.” Why had Gottlieb left the wedding ring at the hotel? What was the point? Over the next two rounds of drinks, they discussed the admission criteria for the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the food critic Jonathan Gold, Tiffany’s attempts to talk to her ficus, and the gentrification of Echo Park dive bars. They did not discuss school overcrowding, birth order and its effect on character development, bus route elimination, the Prospect Park Food Coop, or the Babies documentary. Gottlieb had never realized how invigorating new small talk could be.
When the second round of drinks were down to the large custom ice cubes, the girl
s said something about a Korean taco truck and they took off in three cars between the five of them. In the Mercedes Evan said to Andy, “Tiffany’s into you.”
“No, she’s not.”
“You didn’t see the way she looked at you? She wants to jump you.”
“It’s not me. It’s the wireless company. I represent a good signal. The signal is very important in Los Angeles.” Gottlieb could tell that Andy was uncomfortable with this line of talk.
“You should take her back to the hotel,” Evan said.
“Shut up, Evan.”
They met the girls in a decrepit lot where they ordered Kogi sliders and short-rib tacos. The food was greasy, and they ate voluptuously. The girls said there was a show they wanted to see at some venue called the Hotel Café. The men got back into Evan’s car, and thirty-five minutes later, which seemed to be the minimum commute time to get from any spot in L.A. to any other, they were walking down an alleyway to a glass door. Inside was an airy warehouse-type space with high ceilings. A young white crowd laughed loudly over classic rock. Wedged into a banquette, in lieu of a table, was an upright piano, though no one was playing it.
They entered a performance area to find Tiffany and Lara seated at one of the tables. Onstage, in front of a bloodred curtain, was a tiny brunette with olive skin and two smudges of rouge on her cheeks. She was accompanied on piano by a Jewish-looking guy with a Harry Connick, Jr., haircut. She looked Puerto Rican and wore her hair short with bangs. She was in low tan heels and a blue sailor-style dress and was singing, “You’d be so easy to love / so easy to idolize all others above.” Her voice was clear and pure and carried none of the warbling, fake-European-accented self-consciousness that you heard on commercials for smartphones.
