by Joe Keenan
It was laughable that a girl as canny as Moira should affect surprise at the town’s notorious clubbiness and odd too that she had not, in her infinite cunning, found some way around it.
“So after a while I decided why bother? I mean, why does anyone want to make movies in the first place? To make people happy, right?” We could, of course, have argued with that sugary premise, but we just nodded, curious to see where she was going.
“And there are other ways to do that. To make your own special gift to the world. I just had to find one that, you know, spoke to me and would help me nourish my healing, spiritual side.”
Lacking toupees that could leap from our heads and spin around three times before landing askew, we let this comment pass as well.
“So one day I was showing my house to some new friends and it suddenly hit me— this could be my gift to the world. My home! It’s so damn big, so sprawling and beautiful with all this drop-dead landscaping. Why not turn it into a spa and share it with the world? So that’s what I did!”
She detailed for us how she’d hired a brilliant architect who’d gutted and redesigned the vast house, converting the ballroom into a treatment center while peppering the grounds with charming guest bungalows. Moira had meanwhile toured the poshest spas of California and Europe, taking notes and luring away top talent. By the time construction had finished she’d assembled a staff unrivaled in its expertise, plus an Italian dermatologist able to dole out the Botox and a few other surreptitiously offered goodies that had not yet won FDA approval.
“So that’s the story, kids! I named the place Les Étoiles and we opened last month. Needless to say, it wasn’t cheap. It cost me every penny Albert left, not to mention a hefty bank loan, so you can imagine how much it means to me that it succeed. And of course the whole key to that is image. Buzz. And that’s where that little favor I mentioned comes in.
“When I saw you guys tonight with Stephen Donato, I thought to myself, ‘My God, that’s exactly the sort of person who should be coming to Les Étoiles. Someone accomplished and admired who has to cope every day with these incredible pressures and who could really benefit from this blissfully tranquil environment I’ve created.’ And I’m not saying it wouldn’t be pretty nice for me too! Once word got around that Stephen Donato enjoyed little getaways there, the whole town would be clamoring to get in.
“I’d be so grateful if you guys would bring him in sometime. And of course,” she added hastily, “you’d both be welcome too. My treat, everything included — meals, drinks, treatments. Stay as long as you like.”
I glanced over at Gilbert, who, to my unbounded horror, seemed actually to be considering it. He had the torn, troubled look of a child who knows he’s not supposed to enter strange cars, yet can’t help noting that the cookie has icing.
“So we could stay like a week?” he asked.
“Two weeks!”
“Gilbert!” I barked, leaping to my feet. There are moments that call for tactful diplomacy and others that demand swift and decisive action, however impolite. This was unquestionably one of the latter.
“S’cuse us!” I said to Moira, seizing Gilbert by the elbow. “We’ll just be a minute!” I yanked him out of the office and dragged him down the hall to his bedroom.
“Have you gone insane?” I hissed, shoving him onto the bed.
“Ow! What’s your problem? It’s not like I said yes.”
“But you were thinking of it!”
“What if I was? The place sounds fantastic. And it hardly seems all that big a favor.”
“Gilbert!” I wailed. “You dolt! You simpleton! You self-destructive half-wit! What Moira asks for and what she wants are never the same thing and you of all people should know that! Just think, would you, about everything that despicable bitch has put us through! Then think about where we are now, what we’re on the verge of! Success! Happiness! Is this really the moment you want to invite Moira fucking Finch back into our lives? And not just ours but Stephen’s? Do you really want to do that? ”
Gilbert clearly saw the folly of his impulse. He stared, chastened, at the carpet and concurred that further association with Moira was unlikely to redound to our benefit.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t. It’s her. She’s like some fucking hypnotist!”
“Tell me.”
“The gall!” he said, growing indignant now. “What kind of saps does she think we are that we’d actually do her a favor? Or fall for that syrupy new age crap!”
“Okay, then,” I said, relieved that his moment of weakness had passed. “Let’s tell her we’ll think about it, then let the whole thing drop.”
“Fuck that! I’m going to tell her just what I think of her, then give the scheming harpy the boot.”
Though I questioned the wisdom of angering Moira, I knew from the fire in his eyes that there’d be no dissuading him. A part of me relished the thought of seeing the evening’s absurd charade of good-fellowship blown to bits by a refreshing gust of truth. I followed Gilbert as he strode resolutely down the hall and barged through the office door.
“Moira—!” he bellowed, then stopped, seeing that he was about to excoriate an empty couch. Gazing to his left, he saw that Moira was now sitting in an unsettlingly proprietary way at our desk, reading something that lay flat upon it. On hearing Gilbert, she glanced up, and though she could hardly have failed to register his bellicose scowl, all she offered in return was a cool, almost pitying smile. The cause for this smile became devastatingly clear when she tilted her reading matter up so its title was visible to us. It read:
IMBROGLIO
a screenplay by
Gilbert Selwyn
Philip Cavanaugh
&
Claire Simmons
“Sorry,” said Moira in her penitent little girl voice. “I peeked at your spec script.”
Then she leaned back in my chair, making herself comfortable.
“Tell me, boys—is it just me, or are some of these lines awfully familiar?”
Thirteen
IN THE BITTER DAYS THAT FOLLOWED THIS FIASCO, Gilbert and I held frequent and rancorous debates over which of us was more responsible for our sudden and regrettable enslavement. I blamed Gilbert, as he’d invited the little virus home in the first place, while he contended with equal vehemence that it was my fault for dragging him out of our office, giving her the chance to pilfer our desk. But if we could not agree who was to blame, one fact remained unhappily beyond dispute: our once independent little firm was now a wholly owned subsidiary of MoiraCorp, and orders from upstairs could not be ignored without peril.
Moira did not gloat over her victory. She did not even acknowledge it, maintaining instead the same false bonhomie she’d affected before her coup. Her manner was like that of some South American despot politely requesting a favor of two subordinates who need no reminding that plan B involves cattle prods.
“God,” she exclaimed mirthfully, “you guys are too much! Don’t get me wrong—I think it was clever. A little risky, sure, but talk about ballsy! Believe me, no one knows better than I do how creative you have to be to get a career going in this town. But, still... Casablanca? You’re telling me none of those guys has ever seen it?”
Gilbert, speaking in the sepulchral tone of the vanquished, explained that only Bobby had actually read our “spec” and that the Malenfants had hired us on his recommendation. Moira, glancing at the title page, asked how we’d managed to persuade a Girl Scout like Claire to sign on for so dodgy a scheme. I leaped to Claire’s defense, detailing the twisty chain of events that had brought her reluctantly on board.
“Well, I’m just glad it worked out for you! I mean, what’s the difference how you get a job so long as you do it well? And stop looking so nervous. What do you think I’m going to do? Squeal on you? Send Bobby a poison pen letter and a DVD of Casablanca? We’re friends, for Pete’s sake! Sure we’ve had our bumpy patches but we�
��re still there for each other...Right?”
We nodded listlessly, hoisting the flag of surrender.
Moira yawned daintily, checked her Cartier watch, and rose.
“ So glad I bumped into you boys! Here,” she said, handing Gilbert a card. “Call me and let me know when you’d like to bring Stephen in. And thanks for showing me your house. I love it. So manageable. ”
WE DID NOT, of course, breathe a word of this to Claire, whose feelings for Moira were slightly less cordial than those Van Helsing held for Dracula. Were she to learn we were utterly at the old she-thing’s mercy, our most piteous pleas would not dissuade her from quitting and decamping instantly to New York.
As for Gilbert’s and my view of life under our dark lord, our initial anguish gradually gave way to a more manageable level of dread. This was thanks largely to denial and frequent martinis but also to the comparatively innocuous nature of Moira’s demands. We doubted if more typical blackmail victims, bankrupt wretches bled dry by their tormentors, would extend much sympathy to two lads ruthlessly compelled to endure a free day of beauty with a movie star. True, the thought of future, more onerous demands was an unsettling one, but wasn’t it possible that all Moira wanted or would want from us was our help in promoting her business?
The more troubling question was, Could we deliver?
Fortunately for us, Stephen had inherited not only his mother’s full lips and dramatic virtuosity but a soupçon of her avarice as well. It was lucky too that he’d once made a picture with the late Albert and had dined twice at his Bel-Air manse. His curiosity to see what his widow had made of the place, combined with his inborn fondness for high-end freebies, were enough to incline him to accept Moira’s offer.
“You say she’s a good friend of yours?”
“Oh, yes,” I fibbed. “Total sweetie! And talk about taste. She’s outdone herself with this place.”
“Okay, you’ve intrigued me. I’ll give it a try.”
We arranged a date and time and I gave him the address, promising that Gilbert and I would be on hand to offer a more formal introduction to our dear pal Moira.
“Well done!” applauded Gilbert after I’d hung up. “Why the long face?”
I replied that I didn’t like lying to Stephen and felt it especially heinous to have portrayed Moira as a sweet harmless hotelier.
“What were you supposed to say? ‘Great spa, but watch your back, she’s a blackmailing bitch’?”
“I just feel bad, okay? It’s like we’ve lured him into her lair.”
“It’s not a lair, it’s a spa—and a damned nice one. She’ll give him a seaweed wrap, drop his name a gazillion times, and bingo, we’re off the hook.”
“What if we’re not? What if she wants something else from us?”
“You worry too much! Olive or twist?”
I WORRIED, IN FACT, a damned sight less than I should have, as my schedule left me little time for fretting. Not only were my hands full with the screenplay and memoir but I’d also committed myself to the ghastly chore of punching up Amelia Flies Again!
I put off reading it as long as I could, but Lily’s persistent queries finally extracted a promise to read it over the weekend. Come Saturday I rose late to find Gilbert perusing it on the sofa. I knew the script was a drama, so his nonstop giggles were not an encouraging sign. I poured myself coffee, commandeered the script, and padded out to the patio. Ninety minutes later I closed it and sat staring into the hills with a dull headache and a newfound respect for the subtle artistry of Prudence Gamache.
Though I was forewarned that the story centered on the wartime heroics of an improbably resurrected Amelia Earhart, nothing prepared me for the insane plotting, the unspeakably florid dialogue, or the staggering liberties taken with recorded history. Perhaps you’ll get the general flavor if I tell you that the final scene has Amelia, heretofore amnesiac, suddenly remembering who she is as she lies fatally wounded in the arms of her adoring copilot. The scene takes place in Berchtesgaden and the bullet has come from a Luger wielded by Eva Braun. She is seeking revenge, you see, because Amelia has just assassinated Adolf Hitler (who, as rendered by Lily, displays a baffling mastery of American slang).
Despite the guilt that had prompted me to sign on, I saw no reason to labor unduly on improving it. There was not even the slightest chance that a studio would again star Lily in a picture, least of all this one. And even if I’d wanted to give it the massive rewrite it would need to be a remotely viable project, where would I have found the time? No, a quick and dirty job would have to suffice. I left the absurd plot intact, weeded out the more glaring anachronisms, and fixed the dialogue, every purple line of which howled for revision. (When, I wondered, had she grown so fond of the word “alack”?)
That weekend I rewrote the first thirty pages. Lily was ecstatic with the changes.
“It just crackles, Glen! I love how the dialogue sounds more like the way people actually talk. I see now what a mistake it was trying to make it too poetical. I mean, when you think about it, how poetic would a Portuguese fisherman be?”
So grateful was Lily for my slapdash effort that she insisted on cooking me her famous garlic roast chicken for dinner. Too guilty to refuse, I returned that evening and found to my surprise that Lily and Monty weren’t alone.
Seated between them on the sofa was a short plump man in his sixties. He had a blond pageboy hairdo with long bangs over a wide chubby-cheeked face liberally speckled with gin blossoms, the combined effect suggesting a dissipated cherub. His white puffy-sleeved shirt, purchased in slenderer days, clung unbecomingly to his substantial belly and man boobs, and his pants were bright orange clam diggers. Beholding him, I found it difficult not to conclude that Oscar Hammerstein had been wrong—there was something like a dame.
“Ah, Glen!” said Monty, rising ebulliently. “So glad you could join us. I’d like you to meet my very dear old friend Rex Bajour.”
Rex, whose feet did not touch the floor, hopped off the couch and waddled toward me.
“Pleased to meet you, Glen,” he said, giving my hand a languid shake. He had a slight southern accent, and his manner, I noted with dismay, was not merely flirtatious but confidently so.
“Uh, nice to meet you too, Rex.”
“How flustered you look,” observed Lily. “Make him a cocktail, Monty. We’re having sidecars!”
“Oh, he’s fone,” drawled Rex. “He’s just looking at me that way ’cause he recognizes me from my show.”
“Show?”
“Rex,” said Lily proudly, “is a very big TV star. His program’s been on for years and years.”
“Really?” I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I was. “What show is that?”
“Well!” he riposted, cocking a hand sassily on his hip. “It’s not Guiding Light!” He then threw back his head and guffawed as though this had been an actual witticism. This was my first but by no means last glimpse of Rex’s uncanny ability to convulse himself with “quips” that would not draw a polite smile from a drunken hyena.
I shot Monty a helpless look and he explained that Rex was the producer and star of Rex Bajour’s Hollywood Lowdown, a talk show that had been airing on public access cable in LA for more than thirty years. I apologized for not having seen it, saying I hadn’t been in town long.
“Oh, you must watch it, Glen,” said Lily. “Rex is a Hollywood legend.”
“I’ve interviewed everyone, sweetie.”
“All the biggest stars!” she said, adding without irony that she herself had appeared many times.
Even now, mere minutes into my acquaintance with Rex, I suspected strongly that his show would not prove to be superior television, a suspicion borne out by my subsequent viewings.
For the fortunate majority of you who’ve never seen it, Rex Bajour’s Hollywood Lowdown is a daily interview show, the production values of which are shockingly threadbare even by the standards of public access television. His guests are “celebrities” whose fame is e
ither long vanished or not yet achieved, though few in the latter group show much promise of joining the former. His interview style seesaws between fey gushing and personal anecdotes so turgid and meandering that his guests don’t get a word in. Though nowhere near the “cult phenomenon” Rex claims it to be, the show does have a certain following among connoisseurs of kitsch and indiscriminately nostalgic film buffs who enjoy phoning their friends each weeknight at twelve-thirty to scream, “Guess who’s still alive!”
“So,” I asked Monty as we sat down to our salads, “how do you and Rex know each other? Did you meet doing his show?”
“God forbid,” said Monty. “I may be widely viewed as a queeny old has-been, but I refuse to render it official by appearing on Rex. ”
“Bitch.”
“We go back much further than that. We were child stars together.”
“So you were an actor?” I asked Rex, who seemed wounded by the question.
“Do you know nothing about me?”
“Hard to say which of us was worse,” mused Monty. “In terms of sheer volume I, being, let’s face it, the prettier one, racked up twice as many stinkers. On the other hand Rex, when given a chance, could deliver a performance so bad the projectionists would threaten to strike.”
I asked Rex why he’d switched from acting to interviewing. On hearing this query, Monty winced and topped off his wine, for he knew I’d provided Rex a perfect segue into his favorite topic —the rampant homophobia of the film industry and how it had robbed him of the stardom he’d indisputably deserved.
“I see all these actors today who are your age who say, ‘What’s the big deal? I’m gay, I’m out, and I work all the time.’ I want to scream at them because they have no idea what it was like in my day.”
