by Cate Andrews
Benny, and the rest of America, had learnt of Michael’s Moroccan sexscapades from the online gossip blogger, Pazooza Miffleton, who had delighted in reporting every squalid detail of him banging that other fella’s wife and torpedoing his relationship with that sexy actress. He had also heard from his security mate, Ron, over at Global Studios, that Michael’s fancy film career had gone belly up as well. Benny wasn’t surprise. It was tough to drum up business when your reputation was as rotten as that dead rodent he had pulled out of Jack Nicholson’s pool filter last week. LA was littered with fallen angels, but there was nothing this town liked more than chucking a few hefty stones at their big glass mansions.
Grabbing his cleaning gear, he headed straight for the backyard. There was no point ringing the bell. Since his private life had imploded, Michael tended to keep himself firmly tucked away behind drawn blinds whenever the outside world came calling.
Benny was just unlatching the gate when he heard a noise behind him. The old pool cleaner jumped a mile high and nearly took his eye out on his portable vacuum pump.
‘That you, Mr Wilson?’ he called out nervously.
The front door remained shut but a shadowy outline lingered in the frosted glass panel. Intrigued, Benny peeked through a side window and watched as a tall, hairy Michael-like shape shuffled from the front hall to the study. Benny caught a glimpse of a shiny, metallic object in his right hand and he promptly dropped his gear and bounded back to his van as fast as his arthritic knees would allow. Disgraced angels aside, this town was equally notorious for its suicide rate, and Benny Sanchez wasn’t paid nearly enough in surgically enhanced nipples to clean up that sort of mess.
Ignoring the screeching tyres and an unpleasant smell of burning rubber wafting in through the study air vent, a desultory, dead-eyed Michael slumped back into his chair, raised his weapon up to chest-height and fired. A split second later, he was up on his feet as if a firework had just exploded under his bottom.
Bullseye!
Stymied by a redundant phone and an inbox filled with nothing more uplifting than a torrent of Viagra SPAM, Michael had spent the last few months emptying the belly of his .46 magnum at a wall plastered with posters of Stephen and Vincent. Needless to say, he had just planted a winner in the director’s head and was feeling wildly euphoric about the whole thing. Taking aim once more, he left another particularly smug picture of Stephen with a gaping hole in his abdomen.
Reaching for his now ever-present vodka bottle, Michael poured himself a quadruple in recompense. Pouring another, he was interrupted by the squeal of the telephone. After months of radio silence, the noise surprisingly soothing and he let it ring out. Thirty seconds later it was back. This time he snatched it up and was rewarded with an ear-splitting screech then a heavily accented woman asking him to permit a reverse-charge call from Mozambique.
Michael frowned. It sounded like a planet from Star Wars. He was about to decline it, as rudely as possible, when he had an image of Maisie calling from some exotic five star destination, hammered out of her mind on tequila and missing him like crazy. Accepting the call right away, his faint optimism was smashed to smithereens when Joe’s voice came on the line.
‘Michael! It’s Joe, Joe De Vries. Thank god you took the call. Some thieving bugger’s nicked my phone and credit card and I’m all out of cash!’
Not my problem sunshine, thought Michael sourly, toying with the idea of hanging up. Joe’s lack of contact since the Christine fiasco had upset him more than he cared to admit but an instinct told him to hear him out.
‘Hello? Hello, Michael? Are you still there?’ There was a note of desperation creeping into Joe’s voice.
‘No credit card, huh? That must be a real pain in the ass for you.’
Joe paused. The line was awful, but he recognised a poor attempt at civility when he heard it. Michael must be pissed at him for not staying in touch.
He glanced up at the Mozambique moon, a faint silvery outline in the cloudless sky.
‘Stephen’s an evil bastard, Michael, he’s fucked us both,’ he said suddenly. ‘He screwed my wife six years ago. She couldn’t handle the guilt so she topped herself. I found out on the last night in Morocco.’
Michael’s vodka slipped from his fingers and smashed into the desk, spraying everything in pungent, colourless liquid.
Hearing the tinkling of breaking glass, Joe pictured the demise of some mega expensive whiskey tumbler, the sort that got squirreled away at the back of the kitchen cupboard and saved for best.
Back in LA, Michael was struggling to pick his jaw and the fragments of his broken 50-cent Walmart glass up off his desk. ‘Joe, pal,’ he gasped, utterly appalled. ‘Jeez, I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then don’t. I didn’t spill my guts for sympathy, or to pick apart my ex-wife’s indiscretions. I needed to explain why I didn’t call. I had to disappear for a while. Get my head sorted.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, I hope you punched Stephen’s lights out before you left,’ growled Michael.
Joe grinned for the first time in months. ‘Best right-hook I’ve ever thrown, totally floored the fucker. Never heard so much cheering in my life.’
Michael let out a whoop of his own. ‘I wish I could have been there. I’da paid ringside.’
‘You, and countless others. The other reason I’m calling is, well it’s a bit of a long shot but I’ve just come across the most amazing script. I think you should read it. It could be a fantastic project for us… you producing and, perhaps, me directing?’
Michael stared at the receiver in surprise. Joe? A director? Since when had he developed such aspirations? Apparently when amazing film scripts turned up on desert islands... Christ, thought Michael in alarm. The poor guy must have done a Keith Richards and fallen out of coconut tree.
‘I’m not pissed or stoned, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ said Joe quickly. ‘Not right now, anyway. Listen, I hate to sound like such a grasping dickhead, but if wire me a couple of grand, I’ll catch the next flight out of here and come straight to Global.’
There was a pause.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Michael tightly. ‘My Pa kicked me out. Right now, i’m working out of my place. Actually, to tell the truth, I’m doing jack shit. My rep’s shot to, well, shit. My father and your brother have seen to that.’
‘Mate! I didn’t realise… Some bird called Serena told me you were on an extended hiatus’
‘Yeah, very extended. Try indefinitely.’
Joe felt the resignation in Michael’s voice from three continents away. Dammit. He had been relying on Michael’s connections to help raise funds for the production.
‘But enough of the pity party,’ he heard Michael say, ‘tell me more about this script.’
‘Ok, well it’s everything that I love in a film,’ enthused Joe. And a woman, he thought privately, trying not to think of Polly: ‘A heart of gold and dialogue to die for.’
‘And the premise?’
‘Has-been actress with serious addiction relives her glory days on deathbed to daughter before carking it,’ he summarised quickly. ‘Not exactly Mary Poppins, but it’s a blinder. We get this right and…well. Think worldwide releases, think…’
Michael laughed. ‘Steady on there buddy, let me take a look at it before you label it the next Slumdog Millionaire. What’s it called anyway?’
‘Memoir.’
‘Bit abstruse, but s’ok I suppose... Fine, i’ll wire the funds if you get your butt on that plane. Look me up when you land. I’m at 4567 Sunrise Place. It’s the house with the white clapper boards and the beers on ice’
Joe grimaced. ‘Better make that tap water if we’ve got to fund this thing ourselves.’
Once the boring trivialities of bank account details had been relayed, Joe shot down the dimly lit sandy path towards the Island Resort’s front desk, trying not to squish too many kamikaze hermit crabs on the way. After some pretty determined flirting with th
e hotel’s receptionist, he soon had a one-way flight ticket out of Mozambique added to his final bill. If Michael’s money came through quickly, then in forty-eight hours Samantha’s script might be halfway to putting all their careers back on track. Without his Hollywood pulling-power, Michael was still the most talented and creative guy Joe had ever worked with. Besides, it sounded like the guy needed the lucky break almost as much as he did.
Two bum-numbing airport delays, three touch-and-go connections and four deeply unsatisfactory in-flight meals later, Michael was greeting a very travel-worn Joe on the gleaming doorstep of his LA home.
The two day heads-up had given the American just enough time to re-hire a house-maid, bust open the blinds and persuade his ace pool cleaner that he didn’t have any intention of topping himself. Benny had eventually backed down for six Lakers tickets and a promise of more to come.
It took considerably less time for the two men to establish a new production company on the strength of Tommy Harper’s script alone.
To Joe’s immense relief, Michael loved it, and, on turning to the last page, had tearfully pledged his commitment to bringing the story to the big screen. After much popping of champagne corks, a hasty run to the awesome take-out place on nearby White Canyon Boulevard, and a drunken dissection of Samantha and Tommy’s sorry saga, it was past midnight by the time they finally thrashed out budget feasibilities.
‘I reckon we can get it in the can for two mil sterling,’ announced Michael jubilantly, tapping numbers into a complicated-looking spreadsheet on his laptop. ‘It’s such a quintessential Brit thing. Filming it anywhere else would be criminal.’
‘I agree,’ said Joe, ‘but it still seems an awful lot of dosh to raise. If we cut crew costs, keep the cast to relative unknowns and keep the shoot days down, I reckon we could halve it.’
Michael looked skeptical. Cosseted by his father’s gargantuan budgets, he had never fully appreciated the penny-pinching complexities and sacrifice behind true independent filmmaking before. Even Pulp Fiction, the supposed King of Indies, had been made for $8 million. With a jolt, he realised that he still had a lot to learn about the business.
‘We can do away with expensive studio costs straight away,’ he heard Joe say. ‘We can shoot most of the interiors in my flat. Guerrilla filming at its most resourceful.’
‘Are you serious about directing this thing?’ asked Michael, topping up Joe’s glass. ‘I don’t doubt your passion and dedication, but it’s a helluva project for a first timer.’
Joe frowned. ‘I’m afraid it’s non negotiable.’
He had left out Samantha’s proviso when recounting how he came across the script, preferring to stick to his own version of events: Boy meets girl in bar, boy discovers his brother’s business partner screwed over girl’s husband, girl then miraculously gifts boy long lost script after an evening of gut-wrenching gut-spilling. There was no need to mention the weeklong affair. Joe wasn’t ashamed. He just felt that whatever he and Samantha had shared in Mozambique deserved a fitting anonymity.
Michael wasn’t giving up easily. He was still curious about the reasons behind his decision.
‘Are you sure you’re not doing it to piss off your brother?’
‘Nope, and that’s the truth. Until last week, I hated myself for wasting six years on that scumbag. But that time afforded me the best training in the world. Stephen’s a prize shit, but he’s a talented one. I’ve learnt a lot from working with him.’
Michael raised a skeptical eyebrow. ‘How not to keep to a budget,’ he listed dryly, ‘how to treat a crew with the utmost disrespect…’
‘…How to bang every woman with the word, assistant, in her job title,’ added Joe, laughing. ‘Don’t worry i’m not going to model myself on the guy. I’ve always had a longing for that director’s chair. It was my dream too, before Stephen came along and whisked it away like a musical chair cheat.’
Michael seemed satisfied by this. ‘Then who am I to stand in the way of ambition? Still, I would’ve taken the project even if it were a revenge thing. We could’ve moved our release date to coincide with whatever crap GBA chose to release next. Pitch the De Vries siblings head to head. Puerile, but great for publicity! And with a script this good, we’d have wiped the floor...’
‘Stephen’s gonna flip out enough when he hears about this. Fuck, I hope he doesn’t take it out on his crew.’ Joe had an awful image of Polly in floods of tears after another of his brother’s sadistic rants.
‘Let’s not give him the chance,’ said Michael with a gleam in his eye. ‘I bet if we got our asses in gear and sort our finances, we could lure his crew away like a bear and a bucket of honey.’
Joe shook his head, doubtfully. ‘They’d never ditch GBA. What we could offer would look pretty wretched compared to what they usually invoice for.’
‘Money doesn’t always make the world go round, nor does it secure an unhappy crew,’ argued Michael. ‘Those guys worship you, Joe, they’d follow you to the ends of the earth if their contracts would allow it. Just so happens I know an entertainment lawyer who’ll happily find us a loophole. Having said that, there’s no point luring them away under false pretenses. We need to raise the dough first.’
Whilst he listed out the various lengthy and increasingly complicated finance options open to them, Joe rose from the sofa and padded over to the window. Buoyed up by two bottles of champagne, a crazy idea was starting to take hold, in amongst the fuzziness and the hiccups. Meanwhile, Michael had pulled out a notepad and was copying down numbers from a website.
‘First thing tomorrow, I’ll get on the phone to the UK Film Council. With our combined charm, it might be enough to sway something in our favour…Joe, pal, are you listening to me?’
‘Yes...no, not really. Sorry.’
Michael looked amused. ‘I’ll forgive ya if you’ve just remembered some long lost inheritance gathering dust in a Swiss vault.’
Joe shook his head.
‘Secret bank account in the Caymans?’
‘I wish, but still, you might want to hold off on that phone call for a day or so.’
Michael closed his laptop with a bang. Joe smiled at him grimly.
‘You might not like this but I think I’ve just come up with another way to raise the dough.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The explosion of 90s Britpop cokehead decadence had done more to glorify rehab than Spielberg had sexing-up archaeology, and none had benefited more so than Berkshire’s very own, Serenity Heights. In the last two decades, the establishment had been a beacon of respite for every superstar and Z list reality desperado burnt out by the relentless celebrity party circuit.
Originally built as a mental asylum in 1872, Head Therapist, Frances Sharpe, often wondered what the founding predecessor, the somewhat unfortunately titled Lord Alfred Batty, would have thought of his once stalwart institution becoming such a chic destination for actors, rock stars and disgraced politicians alike. Indeed, one was only considered a true celebrity these days after a lengthy stint behind the building’s immaculate whitewashed brickwork.
Beak-nosed, thin-lipped and notoriously mean with the beans, fifty-eight year old Frances secretly despised the never-ending procession of wealthy wastrels that wafted through her study, whining about their problems and stealing her shortbread. Much of her contempt, however was directed at one such individual who, felt Frances, truly embodied the revolting self-indulgence of today’s celebrity culture: Christine LaVelle.
In all her professional years, she had never come across a more stubborn, unpleasant and profligate character. Sadly for Frances and the rest of the staff at Serenity Heights, Christine was a repeat offender and even now, after several lengthy spells, was still being re-admitted with depressing regularity.
Frances had been gazing out of her study window, admiring the turning leaves of the old oak opposite, and imagining a Mills and Boon scenario with old Roger the gardener under it, when Christine’s silver Rolls had appe
ared on the horizon for the second time that summer.
Shrieking loudly enough to rouse old Batty himself, she lunged for her much maligned shortbread tin and started ramming fistfuls of that buttery comfort into her mouth. A good ten biscuits down, she finally felt strong enough to face her nemesis. Ten minutes later, she was standing in reception, watching Christine’s driver stagger over the threshold with the familiar, overabundance of designer luggage, and waiting for the actress to stride in after him, smacking her Chanel leather gloves against her thigh and snarling like her horrid Chihuahua. But when Christine did eventually shuffle into view, her head was hanging lower than her neckline and there wasn’t a single lip-curl in sight.
Frances blinked, and then blinked again when her solicitous greeting was returned with less venom than the bite of a pestered rattlesnake.
‘I’ll give it ‘til dinner time,’ she muttered to the receptionist, sweeping Christine over to the celebrity wing. Knowing the actress as she did, it was only a matter of time before her true colours were splashed up the wall, along with her bolognaise.
But who could have predicted that this preconception would hit so wide of the mark? Christine’s transformation was the talk of Heights. For the first time in history, nurses stopped cowering into their medicine cabinets when she past. Even Roger’s rummages in the bushes under her window every morning revealed a surprising lack of empty bottle.
It wasn’t just her attitude that had changed either. A spell without the hard stuff had vanquished the whispery thread veins in her cheeks, the booze bloat was gone and her skin glowed brighter and clearer than a woman’s half her age.
It was this very skin that Frances was secretly coveting as they sat down together for an early morning counseling session, four months later. A brisk scrub with a discounted supermarket soap every morning did nothing for the therapist’s wrinkles.
Just then, a young nurse appeared in the open doorway, jumping up and down in extreme agitation and waving today’s paper at her.
