by Bruce Wagner
“Donny’s father produced that?”
“Yes!”
“The Walking Dead?—”
“Yes!”
“Zev, stop it! I do not believe this!”
“He makes millions off these movies filled with dead women walking in the middle of the road in their nightgowns! And in the first one—there’s, like, three or four—the guy kills them by running over their heads with his little English car! Isn’t it fantastic?”
Bernie Ribkin
The old man was nervous about the meeting. No reason to be, he told himself. Either Showtime wanted to make a deal or they didn’t. He swallowed a few Halcions, just to take the edge off. Bernie wondered if he should have at least consulted an attorney. He didn’t know any attorneys. There’d be time for that, after the offer. Think positive.
He sat in his den, watching the Range Rover off-road instruction cassette. The car had been trouble-free for a few weeks and Bernie figured it might be a good time to learn how to four-wheel. The guy on the tape looked like George Plimpton. When he came to a creek, he stepped from the car, measuring its depth with a branch. Then he forded—Rover’d—the stream, neat and civilized. The narrator mentioned a driving academy in Aspen where one could master off-road techniques “the rather exceptional way” before caravaning across the Continental Divide. That’s what Bernie would do, when Showtime closed the deal. Spend a few weeks in Aspen, learning the art of rough-terrain navigation. Maybe work in a little romance—the rather exceptional way.
As he drove to the Burbank offices, Bernie distracted himself with the diaries. Had Donny found them under a mattress, or had they actually been willed? Serena would have her revenge. The pages chronicled his extramarital dalliances—and her touchingly improbable devotion to the Cantor Krohn, a love that grew unforeseen from platonic to unbridled and undone. The congregant’s idyll was cut short when the hangdog producer announced his syphilis. Serena had by then passed the scourge to her lover and Krohn to his wife, who fled in turn to her parents in Queens. The Baritone of Beth-El followed, as did Serena in confused desperation—characters in a Preston Sturges nightmare. And that is where, delirious with guilt, the singer of psalms shot himself through the mouth (temple left intact). His colleagues had much success with a face-saving tale of subway homicide. Those were happier days, when a secret was still a secret.
Aside from Mr. Rubidoux, there were two others present—an in-house lawyer named Fred, a fan of the Undead series who’d lingered after an unrelated meeting just to shake the semi-legendary schlock-meister’s hand, and Denny, a shiny-faced boy of voting age who Bernie was shocked to learn was a Veepee. Everybody in town was a fuhcocktuh Veepee.
They kvetched about how the business had changed, and Bernie thought that mildly comical, as no one in the room looked over thirty-five. Nostrils dilating, Pierre rhapsodized about Donny Ribkin. When asked if they were close, Bernie lied—then got a twinge of paranoia. What if the exec decided to call the psychotic, vituperative agent just to shoot the bull about Dad? That didn’t really seem to be an issue; in his current state, Bernie doubted his son would be at work, let alone returning calls. Another possibility was that Donny’s condition might soon go public. Though there wasn’t anything in the papers yet, Bernie had to admit the boy was bound to hurt someone, or himself, unless he found help—fast. He hoped that wouldn’t happen. At least, not before a deal was in place.
“Bottom line: Showtime’s willing to give you two and a half million for the rights. How does that sound, Bernie?”
The old man smiled, trying to be cool. The muscles around his mouth went into spasm and he coughed, to cover. All he’d expected was an option at a token amount. He was glad to have taken the pills.
“For all three pictures—” He coughed again.
“That is correct. But here’s what we need: we need you to come on board, to produce this at a price.”
“You’ve done this before and you’ve done it well,” said Denny the Boy, self-assuredly.
“The more things change, the more things change,” said Bernie. His Sinatra ring-a-ding mode.
Denny the Boy turned to Fred. “Who said that?”
“Travolta,” said the Attorney. “Look Who’s Talking Too.”
“What do you think, Bernie?”
Pierre bore in on him, shining the light of a batty grin.
“I think it’s a beautiful thing,” said Bernie, smooth as a Hillcrest macher. “You know, I was doing this when ‘cable’ was something you sent over the wire. What price are we talking?”
“A million-five, with an eighteen- to twenty-day shoot.”
“For each?”
“We only want to make one. A kind of condensed version of the three.”
A million-five and a twenty-day shoot. Sounded reasonable. Of course, he’d been out of the game awhile…but these men were professionals. They wouldn’t be suggesting impossible numbers. Yet the two-and-a-half-million-dollar acquisition-of-rights fee didn’t add up, in light of the budget. He asked Pierre to reiterate, and the executive said the money was an advance against distribution, foreign and domestic. That made sense, but Bernie didn’t want to open his mouth too much. He’d sort it out with the lawyers.
“I don’t think any of this is going to be a problem, gentlemen. I’m Bernie Ribkin. I like to make movies.”
The sweet rustle of assent; then Pierre grew solemn, like a minister at a sticky theological crossroad. Fred and Denny stared at the floor. “Question, Bernie: do you think you could make it for under a million?”
Truth was, Bernie didn’t know. “Pierre, tell me,” began the scat and softshoe. “What kind of approach are you going to take? What I’m saying is, how do you…does Showtime have an idea how they might want to approach the property? With this material—”
“Maybe something like Tales from the Crypt. Classy, but not taking itself too seriously. Something that can be sexy, funny and gory, all in one.”
“Creepshow,” said the Boy. “Remember that? Leslie Nielsen?”
“Did you know Ted Danson was in that?”
“And Adrienne Barbeau.”
“Jesus,” said Pierre. “What ever happened to her?”
“Hunger commercials with Sally Struthers.”
“She had some very serious tits,” said Fred the Attorney.
“Well, they’re in Ethiopia now.”
“Sally and Adrienne? Or the tits?”
“The tits stayed here. They just signed with Gersh.”
“I think it’s important to come up with a franchise-type narrator,” Pierre said. “Someone like the Cryptkeeper to tie it all together—he’d be our link, our tentpole.”
Bernie nodded. He’d seen Tales a few times and thought it was cute. “Okay,” he said. “I got it. I got it. That’s fun.”
“Now, Bernie,” said Pierre. “I want to ask you something pointblank. You don’t even have to respond.”
“I’m seventy-two years old.”
“I was not going to ask your age,” said a smiling Pierre.
“You look fucking great,” said Fred. “Doesn’t he?”
“I would never have guessed you to be seventy-two,” said the Boy.
“I’ll tell you my secret: I like to fuck. I don’t fuck too well—but I fuck every day!”
The men laughed.
“Bernie—” Pierre began, “—and remember, you don’t have to answer this now.” He inhaled deeply. “Do you think you could make our little movie—at least submit a budget—for four hundred thousand? With a ten-day shoot? I mean, down and dirty.”
How could he deliver a budget without a script? They used to shoot ’em in a week and a half, but that was thirty years ago—without unions or permits. If the movie took place in one location, maybe…
“I don’t know what four hundred thousand gets you, Pierre. And it depends on the script, we don’t have a script! I need to do some investigations.” He turned to Fred the Attorney and smiled cockily. “Four hundred thousand.
Does that rent you a honey wagon these days?”
“Here’s a hypothetical,” said Pierre. “If you can do this show—because this is the way your two and a half million would be guaranteed up front—if you can do this show for a hundred thousand dollars, a three-day shoot, no frills, no bullshit, bam bam bam—”
“You’re kidding. Are you kidding?”
“I’m not fucking kidding, Bernie. You would not be in this room if I was kidding.”
“You mean like a video thing—”
“Feature film.”
“It’s just that—”
“A hundred thousand dollars, Bernie. Three days.”
“Yes!” cried the Boy. “I love it. Come on, Bernie. They made Clerks for twenty-nine thousand and change. El Mariachi was made for seven!”
“I have to go,” said Fred, ill at ease. Again he shook Bernie’s hand. “I have an appointment.”
The room shrank precipitously when he left. Bernie felt woozy and reprimanded himself for taking the Halcion. “Three days!” He rocked in his chair, sweating and grinning like a hooked grouper.
“It’s definitely do-able,” said the Boy. “We’ll get you great people. Some killer kids. We’ll get you the kids from Kids.”
Pierre retreated to his desk. “If you put your mind to it, Bernie, if you work out the logistics, I’m convinced you can shoot this with a Steadicam in forty-eight hours.”
“A one-day shoot would be the ultimate,” added the Boy. “I’d like to make a string of these—a series—each shot in one day. Film-school style.”
“Think about it. Any way you slice it, we have a deal. Congratulations! Cups of borscht and crackers all around. I’ll have business affairs draw the papers and get you half your advance—one-point-two-five, you can buy a lotta kippers with that, Bernie—soon as I see a budget. Cut a check the same day. If you don’t think you can do this, be honest, huh? Because I’m committed to this project and we’ll have to find another way.”
“I know it’s rough,” said the Boy, patting the producer’s shoulder. “But every picture we do is like this. It’s always a nightmare.”
The old man stood and made his way to the door.
“Think it over, you scary old cocksucker,” said Pierre, embracing him. “Mr. Piece of Shit Roadkill.”
“A one-day shoot!” said the Boy, jumping around like the circus had come. “I love it!”
Chet Stoddard
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He sat in the outer office, scanning a ViatiCorps brochure. Horvitz appeared behind the girl at the desk, waving him back.
“I’m sorry you’re leaving us, but I understand. It’s not for everyone.”
“And I thought show business was depressing.”
“Thinking of giving the talkers another shot?”
“Too many out there right now.”
“Every time I pick up TV Guide, there’s a new one. Where do they find these people?” He took an envelope from a drawer, handing it to Chet. “Your paycheck and…a partial commission from the ‘dentist’ deal.”
“I appreciate that, Stu.”
“Not at all. Keep in touch. If you change your mind, the door is open.”
“I’ll call you.”
“By the way, Phil Dagrom just died. The costume designer.”
“I’m not surprised. I thought he was going to die while we were there.”
“No, he got much better—after we gave him the money. Happens all the time: the pressure eases, spirits rise. They get better. And Ryan—the roommate?”
“What about him?”
Horvitz smiled like a maître d’ with no more tables. “He ran off with the money.”
“You’re kidding.”
“With a lover. They get on a plane to Paris.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“And poor Philip dies forty-eight hours later.”
“Did you tell the dentist that?”
He closed his eyes and gently shook his head. Did Chet think he had no finesse? “I told the dentist Mr. Dagrom died in Crete, in his roommate’s arms, while the sun went down on a ruin. Hey! Isn’t that what Jackie O called it when she gave Onassis a blow job? Going down on a ruin?”
Aubrey was subdued. He was desperate to touch her, kiss her. The timing was bad, she said. She’d been to UCLA that day for tests. Something was funny with her eyes. They dilated the pupils and made her scan a grid—she was certain it was CMV. If the virus was confirmed, she’d have to take medicine each day through a shunt. She was forthright and even-tempered except when it came to Zephyr. She didn’t want the boy to see her around the house with a fucking permanent tube in her arm.
Chet laid her shaking body down. She wet his face with tears and sex, and searched his eyes with the drama of the inchoately blind. He pulled off the condom but Aubrey made him put on another. She came in great, shuddering waves, and when Chet caught up, he hated that his come couldn’t find hers, turning stickily onto itself, sheer pornography; he wanted to give her his best, a viscous magic bullet—to fuck her to life as she’d been fucked to early death. Once outside, he tore off latex and quickly wrapped their bodies in sheets, as if to preserve and protect—to cleanse—through an improvised classicism of the bedroom. Aubrey said, “I needed that,” and laughed so hard she shrieked and gasped, pounding his chest with tiny fists.
Zephyr and the sitter were asleep on the couch when they came in. The girl quietly gathered her things, and Aubrey lifted the unconscious child in her arms. She trudged upstairs and tucked him in, then called to Chet from the landing. They went right to bed. It was a long time since Chet had a sleepover. He hoped he wouldn’t snore or cry out from a dream.
His last thoughts were of the treasonous roommate, and not the girl he left behind: Ryan the apostate, the cockatrice à table at a swanky bistro, say, Le Voltaire, beneath what was once the master’s house—supping on canard aux cerises, awaiting his lover’s return from the urinal.
Wish Jason and his Argonaut well…
Troy Capra
The legendary personal manager was well known for his collection of large outdoor pieces. He walked them past a Nevelson, a flock of Lalanne sheep, a Schnabel table with some kind of metal figure in its center, an enormous bronze breast and, finally, the most peculiar of all: a phony garden populated by two male manikins, one young, one old, pants down around the knees, the latter humping a tree while the former fucked a hole in the ground. The figures were motorized; Moe flicked a switch and everyone watched straight-faced. He waved toward a Kienholz—more middle-aged men in suits without pants, standing around a barrel—but the sprinklers had been on and it was too far a trudge.
Rod Whalen’s body was amazingly beautiful, a transformation casually attributed to years of power yoga. It was easy to see how a true collector might be stirred. Instead of desiring him, Troy merely wondered how muscles could look that way—gills seemed but a small evolutionary jump. They reminisced about that Guys and Dolls summer while a gang of pretty boys and fortysomethings arrived, including Zev Turtletaub and the dermatologist Leslie Trott. The producer escorted a ha
ndsome kid with tangled eyebrows and a cold sore: “Taj Wiedlin, my Veepee of Bedevilment.” Troy shook hands all around. Maybe Quinn was right and coming here today would somehow pan out. He liked the queers well enough but rarely went to house parties. Wall-to-wall men had a way of throwing him into heterosexual panic.
When the guests disbanded for drinks, Troy cornered Moe for a little spin control. He told the attentive manager how he was in truth a theater director who’d conflated his labors in the adult film world into an epic monologue that he planned to film before an audience the very next month, with himself as star. Trusskopf said the idea was brilliant and demanded an invitation. He seemed sincere.
The director introduced Up in Adam as his “seminal work” and that got a polite laugh. The half-hour film took place in a barracks. It featured a raw recruit (Rod Whalen aka G.I. Blow) and a black drill sergeant (Sarge Large). For kicks, Troy had ripped off a favorite movie, The D.I.—he had the black get in Rod’s face and shout, just like Jack Webb: “Do you love me?” G.I. Blow rejoined, “Yes sir!” Again: “Do you love me?” “Yes sir!” “I can’t hear you!” “I love you, sir!”—and on and on, until Sarge Large barked, “Prove it, Mister!” At this, the room broke into pandemonium. Troy hung a few minutes, then went to find the head.
As he walked down a hall, Troy imagined big-bellied Kiv waddling after, realtor in tow, face flushed by desire of possession—house-haunted. He stepped into a vast neo-classical salle de bain with white-marble lion-pawed bath and tiny Bonnard. He lowered himself onto the bowl, staring up at a recessed fixture. He imagined a Spy Shop camera hidden within; cued by infrared beam, Troy’s naked ape image might at this very moment be supplanting the shopworn Up in Adam players. In a bit of funhouse high-tech horseplay, the partygoers were actually watching him shit and he’d never be the wiser.
He decided to explore, treading softly toward the cavernous master suite: twenty-foot ceilings, majestic savonnerie, Louis XIV armchairs in suede and leather—a Johns and a Clemente, and a Haring painted on a vast tarp. There was a life-size sculpture of a man that soon revealed itself to be the true flesh figure of Moe Trusskopf, head turned upward like a poet translating the clouds. Kneeling crotch-level was the bedeviling Mr. Wiedlin himself. Troy slunk off as the latter’s coughing began, like croup in a clinic of the damned.
