The Player

by Michael Tolkin

  “It doesn’t say ‘stupid’ on the headline.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “She’s got to sign her name one of these days. Maybe she’ll call you. Would you see her again?”

  “I’ll do what you tell me to do.”

  “Griffin, if she calls, or if you remember her name, or if she signs her name, be nice to her. If you use the casting couch, pay your debts.”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “The second,” she said. She had closed the case.

  Griffin’s indignation developed a life of its own, and it remembered a party, an actress’s long hair, kisses, promises. At dinner that night with Dick Mellen, his lawyer, Griffin heard himself babbling on about the postcards and the actress. Mellen, sixty-five, silver-haired, with a tan like brushed gold, had known Bogart, he had been drunk with Bogart a dozen times, which was why Griffin had hired him. Mellen didn’t care about the cards.

  “Put her in a movie,” he said.

  “But what if she can’t act?” Griffin was surprised and annoyed with how shocked he sounded.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” said Mellen. “You know what they did in the old days? Prison movie. Visiting day. Long tracking shot down the room with all the little booths with the telephones. Wives and girlfriends, each one gets a close-up, each one the girlfriend of a different executive or producer.”

  “But she’s the star of a television series.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’m sworn not to say.”

  “Griffin, this isn’t a joke.”

  “If she’s any kind of grown-up, she’ll keep it to herself.”

  “No. Grown-ups turn everything to their advantage and don’t worry about scandal. At least they do in this town. If she’s smart, her agent’ll call Levison to talk about projects.”

  Griffin saw that he had lowered himself in Mellen’s eyes, not for the actress but for making things inexcusably difficult.

  Mellen changed the subject. “You know your job is not exactly secure right now.”

  “Everything will work out. We’re making some good pictures.” This was what he was supposed to say, and he didn’t like the sound of it. The lie about the actress had upset his rhythm, he was measuring every thought now.

  “I think they’re bringing in Larry Levy.”

  Griffin exhaled, and with the rush of air again he tortured himself, this time for collapsing, for taking the news as a body blow, taking it badly. He always tried to contain the air, contain the feeling, not show too much excitement, not show unhappiness. This was the closest he came to meditation; when other executives whooped and slapped each other’s palms if an audience cheered during the first sneak previews of a film, Griffin kept the feelings to himself. And now, instead of keeping the air inside, to stay firm, he was breaking one of his first rules. Without any control now he heard himself add another hatefully dull thought to the conversation. “Larry Levy’s a jerk.”

  “Do you want to quit? I don’t think you should.”

  “I’d like to run Columbia.”

  “You can’t turn back the clock.” The job had been offered a year ago, and Griffin had told them no. He had wanted Levison’s job, and there was talk that he’d get it. The talk had been wrong.

  “Keep your eyes open,” said Griffin, another stupid phrase.

  “That’s what I do,” said the lawyer.

  Griffin wanted to tell Mellen that the story about the actress had been a lie, every word of it. If he told the truth, would the fissure between his thoughts and their expression be healed? Or was purification impossible without greater sacrifice and harder work?

  A fresh thought came to him and made him sick. He would end up having to sell something, real estate or cars. If he lost his job during a round of musical chairs, he would be on the way to exile from Hollywood. This wouldn’t happen immediately. The favors due him would be paid off, if he couldn’t get important work at a big studio, one of the stars or directors he’d fought for might hire him to run his office and find material, and let him produce something if he’d been there from the beginning. If the films died, and the next crew of bright young executives saw him as a relic, then where could he go? Smaller companies, with little funding and few contacts. They would hire Griffin for his address book, not understanding that the book was as out of touch as the book’s owner. Eventually, his disgrace would catch up with him, and everyone would know he was old, over the hill. One day he would be out of money. The next day he would put his house on the market, then take the profit and rent an apartment somewhere, and look for work outside of Hollywood, outside of the movies. By then he would be, what, forty? He tried to see himself at forty, selling German cars to young producers and studio executives. He imagined the ad in a newspaper, “Hi, I’m Griffin Mill, here to help put the entertainment professional behind the wheel of a precision motor car.” Why not kill himself now? The fantasy ended with his funeral, and a crowd of pitying friends.

  He didn’t ask himself how he would come to die at forty. He would die of embarrassment. He chased these thoughts away, and tried to picture himself as an independent success, a real producer, a man of accomplishment, a man to be feared. Nothing. No such picture would emerge, there was too much interference from all the confusion in his life. He knew how anyone who had known him in the past would read the ad for the Mercedes dealership, “Hi, I’m Griffin Mill. I had promise, but I fucked myself.”

  Home in bed, Griffin looked through the dark to the postcard writer. He concentrated, trying to beam his mind to the Writer’s mind, asking him to stop the cards. If the night is alive, thought Griffin, then what I tell the night in my room, the night can tell you in your room.

  Leave me alone.

  I’m sorry if I broke a promise. That’s life.

  Griffin saw these thoughts fall to the middle of the bed, dead. He pictured the distance between himself and the secret correspondent as a series of contiguous dark boxes, and he spoke aloud, testing the air with his voice and receiving a slight echo. “Hello? It’s me, Griffin Mill. I said I’d get back to you. Well, here I am. Please stop sending the postcards. I can’t stop thinking about them, and they’re getting in my way. Listen, if I find out who you are before you identify yourself or stop sending these cards, you’ll never work for me.”

  He thought the last part sounded stupid, and imagined an audience agreeing with him, saying, “Yes, Griffin, that pathetic threat sure is stupid.” The sense of someone watching felt like a good sign, that he’d gotten through.

  The next morning he had breakfast at the Polo Lounge with Levison. They met every Wednesday; it was so much a part of their schedules that they no longer confirmed the meeting unless it was going to be canceled.

  “Read any good scripts lately?” asked Levison.

  “Chinatown.”

  “They already made that one.”

  “I read it last week.”

  “You know they’d never make it now. They wouldn’t even make Saturday Night Fever now.”

  Griffin smiled. “Excuse me, but you and I are ‘they.’”

  “I’m ‘they.’ You’re almost ‘they,’ but not quite.” Griffin didn’t like Levison’s curdled smile. The mild remark came quickly, and it seemed to Griffin that Levison regretted it. Levison continued, “In Saturday Night Fever, Travolta wins the dance contest but realizes it’s a hollow victory, that the world of the discos is an empty world. Can you see that now?”

  “He grows up in the story. What difference does the background make? Plus the music is great. And the dancing is great.”

  “Forget it, Griffin, the ending is ironic. The audience is too angry, too impatient. They hate ambiguity, they want everything reconciled.”

  “Why wasn’t I at the meeting yesterday?” Attack.

  “There may be some changes.”

  “Am I in or out?”

  “Larry Levy is coming aboard.” He said this quietly.

  “I report t
o you. I’m not going through Levy. If I have to report to Levy, I quit.”

  “You can’t quit. I won’t let you, and you have a year and a half on your contract. I’ll get in your way if you try. Don’t go looking for offers at other studios. I’ll hold you to your contract, and if you make trouble, I’ll sue you for breach unless you come to the office every day, and I won’t have anything for you to do. Relax. Levy’s bright. He was available, and I thought we could use him. He’s good. He’s real good.”

  “I know him,” said Griffin, irritated.

  “He can make us all look good.”

  “So I’m not the flavor of the month anymore?”

  “You haven’t been for a year. And neither have I. And Larry Levy will lose his flavor, too. Look, if you really want to leave, I won’t stop you. I want you to stay. Griffin, I need you, but I can understand your feelings. Forget what I said about a lawsuit. If it’s impossible to share the power, I’ll give you a development deal. You can be a producer.”

  “Right, so Variety can quote me saying, ‘It’s a chance I’ve been waiting for since I came to Hollywood. I’m thrilled.’”

  “Don’t be bitter.” Levison poured him another cup of coffee, which Griffin accepted against his will. The coffee burned his stomach all day and made him feel like he was gliding over the surface of everything, impossible to find traction.

  At the office, Jan handed him a souvenir packet of “Ten Memories from Southern California,” a pleated strip of cards that folded flat and then closed with a tab inserted through the card on the back. The front was for the address but managed to save room for a cartoon of the region, with the most famous sights drawn in extreme relief. Disneyland’s Matterhorn was the size of Everest, huge surfers rode boards the size of aircraft carriers on tidal waves into Malibu. A camera on a tripod was the Colossus of Hollywood and Vine. The picture on the back was of BEAUTIFUL LAKE ARROWHEAD, JUST AN HOUR FROM THE WORLD’S FINEST GOLFING AND SAILING. Griffin opened the packet. This message was typed.

  Dear Griffin,

  I’m still waiting for you to call. You said you’d get back to me. My answering machine is on all the time, so you can’t say that you called but I wasn’t in. I told you my idea, you said you wanted to think about it, and you said you’d get back to me. My agent said that was a good sign, the part about getting back to me. I’ve waited long enough. You lied to me. It’s obvious you have no intention of hiring me. In the name of all the writers in Hollywood who get pushed around by executives who know nothing more about movies than what did well last week and have no passion for film, I’m going to kill you.

  Griffin folded the cards.

  “Well, who’s it from?” asked Jan. “The actress?”

  “She says she was just having fun with me and wants to know if I’ll have dinner with her soon. She says she knows how hard it is to cross over from TV to film, but she wants to try, and she’s not holding me to any drunken promises.”

  He danced to his office and pulled the door shut. He hoped that he was smiling.

  Why aren’t I afraid? he asked himself. Why don’t I call Walter Stuckel? It would be so easy to show him the postcards. Griffin pictured himself withdrawing from Stuckel’s concern; it would be that arm around his shoulder, an hour of advice about security, a bodyguard, an investigation into his friends. Word would get out that he was a target. Stigma.

  He called Jan on the intercom. “I’m going to be tied up on the phone for a while. It’s important. Tell anyone who wants me that I’ll be back later.” Then he called the number for the time, so a light on Jan’s phone would show that he was talking, that he was busy. He took his desk calendar and sat on the couch. He got up quickly and went to his refrigerator for a can of tomato juice. He put the latest postcard on his coffee table and tried to take a deep breath. The room was quiet.

  A few phrases leapt from the card, like the Southern California Hi-lites on the cover. My idea … my agent … everyone knows writers …

  Griffin turned the pages of the calendar. Three or four times a week he heard ideas from writers he didn’t know. Most of them had never had a movie produced. Griffin barely remembered the names or the faces. He remembered none of the ideas more than two weeks old. He remembered enthusiasm, calculated optimism and offensive cheeriness, and sometimes a sad, embarrassing panic. Yesterday one had come in; Griffin had already forgotten his name and he checked it on the calendar. Doug Krieger. Doug Krieger, without saying hello, launched into the story from the effect of silence after the brilliant title sequence faded to the rhythm of a hundred drummers from Ghana. He was pitching some stupid African adventure story. No one would want to make it.

  Griffin looked at the names of other writers. Jan never gave them longer than thirty minutes. He never needed more than fifteen. Some tried to condense their ideas to twenty-five words, in and out, as they’d learned in some screenwriting class taught by someone who’d made a science of yesterday’s formula. They’d talk about the “arc of the story.” They’d use little code words and phrases like paradigm and first-act bump. They were exact. “At minute twenty-three she finds out …” What does she find out? That this movie won’t get made. They’d talk about “the rules of the genre.” They’d set the scene with casting: Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep are locked in a bank vault. They combined stories: It’s No Way Out meets Jagged Edge with a twist from The Searchers.

  Some tried to chat for ten minutes before they began the story, to make friends with him. They’d talk about politics or try to teach him a little lesson about art. Some were afraid, their mouths dried out in the middle of the pitch; he could see the tide of fear in their eyes when they could read his boredom. Some talked with Jan like they were long-lost cousins, and then they crumpled in his office. Some were cocky and leaned back into the couch like they owned the room, and they looked up to the ceiling, releasing their stories in a monotone. What was their point? They’d pause before the moment which they were sure would force Griffin to his feet and his desk and a pen, where he would yank his checkbook from a drawer and write them that ticket to a legendary career, to the beginning of their real lives, the promised lives they contained within themselves, inscribed in their genetic code, lives of perfect harmony, where even the bad moments were epic, where tragedy replaced confusion, and ecstasy replaced the merely happy. Yes, Griffin Mill could anoint them, make them Gods, he could grant them everything, he could grant them Christmas in Aspen with Jack Nicholson.

  Some worked in teams, like pickpockets or police detectives, completing each other’s sentences, playfully contradicting each other, or sometimes flashing murder as one of them botched that fantastic part of this incredible story which would make everyone rich. Some of them even talked about money, about how much the movie would make the first week if Harrison Ford played the hero, how much less if they went with someone else.

  They came in with big ideas, rebellion, divorce, revenge, honor. They offered atmosphere: It’s sort of a red mood, it’s kind of a gritty future, it’s funny. Each idea represented a million adjustments to reconcile the difference between the writer’s movie of his dreams, which would be the really immortal movie, that tour through the brilliant connections of his freely associating but always focused mind, and the studio’s version of that dream, toward the production of which the writer conceded the banal necessity to tell a story. The writers leapt to all this accommodation in anticipation of the thirty-minute audience they’d have with Griffin Mill, that chance of a lifetime to impress their pure, almost unknowable genius on the mediating taste of someone who knew what America wanted to see.

  He never said no.

  They made their little speeches, then they waited for his response. If he said no, they might challenge him and ask him why, and then they would sell it to him once again, which was futile. He might ask a few questions about the setting, or he would object, moderately, to some unsympathetic quality of the main character, but he would allow them to leave his office thinking that although t
heir chances were slim, yes, yes, yes, there was a possibility. Sometimes, when he walked writers to the door, he pointed to the photographs hanging in the hallway. These were small publicity stills, behind glass, no frame, famous scenes from the movies that had built the studio. He wanted the writers to understand that his door was always open, but they had to bring him a story with crises so powerful that the future could make its images sacred. Kisses while a city burns. Desperate submariners gathered around the periscope. The cavalry leaving the fort. The guilty confronted. The spaceship appearing. Lovers reconciled. Funny men (nervous, innocent) hanging from high places. Monsters. Women screaming. Comedy of inappropriate behavior. Airmen serenading the captain’s girl. These were the emblems of the movies’ spirit, of love, blood, and speed.

  Griffin expected the writers to understand from his silence after a few days that they had failed.

  Now he wondered if using time in the service of so much disappointment wasn’t a sin.

  What happened when writers left him? If the meeting went well for them, did they think that now their lives were different, now their lives had begun? How long before the bogeyman tapped them on the shoulder and said, “No. Not yet. Not you. Not now.” What happened to them then, when they were alone and ashamed under the relentless, boring sun of their usual life, burning them with the mundane, with frustration?