Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army

by Steven Paul Leiva

  Lapham unhappily took the paper. Like most people in his position in Hollywood he is usually surrounded by a financially tied, thus loyal, staff that does everything for him, including a great deal of mundane thinking. To be sitting in the familiar surroundings of his glass and gray cocoon at an odd time and with a stranger whom he considered dangerous instead of the comfortable, warm, helpful bodies he usually relied on brought out the defenseless child in him. He fumbled the phone slightly, forgetting, at first, to dial 9 to get an outside line, but he finally got it, and Roee’s voice came through hushed but clear.

  “Talk.”

  “Are you secure?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Has the target arrived?” Lapham darted me a look on that one.

  “Yes.”

  “The equipment is functioning properly?”

  “Everything checks out. All tests positive. The lights were lowered just a moment ago. The night vision is clear.”

  “The target is in sight then?”

  Lapham jumped in, “You mean Jordan?”

  I nodded yes while sternly motioning him to be quiet.

  “Report once you have a positive on the shooting.” I instructed.

  “I will be happy to do that.”

  The line then went quiet. Lapham, worry widening his eyes, began to speak. I hushed him, stared him down, then casually and quietly sat, unmoving. After about fifteen minutes, during which time I practiced certain deep breathing relaxation techniques and Lapham sweated, Roee came back on the line.

  “The target is down—”

  Lapham jumped up screaming. “What the hell have you done, you bastard! You shot him, didn’t you!? God damn it I said no—”

  I had pulled a gun out of my jacket and was pointing it at Lapham’s heart. It was a Russian Tokarev TT-33, short barreled, light, but with a lovely muzzle velocity that far surpasses a Colt 45. I like to think of it as a silencer—of hysterical nincompoops.

  “May I finish now?” came Roee’s voice laced with exasperation.

  “Please do,” I quietly said keeping my aim steady.

  “Thank you. The target is down, rolling on the floor with laughter.”

  “Literally?” I asked.

  “Well, metaphorically—but close.”

  “Excellent. Keep shooting. I want the whole thing documented for posterity.”

  “Your wish: my command.”

  The line went dead from Roee’s end. Lapham still stood, staring at the Tokarev. “You can hang up now,” I said.

  Lapham slowly turned to the phone, and pushed the speaker button off. Then he sat and said, “What the fuck…?”

  I put the gun back into my jacket. “I am constantly being misunderstood. I carry this for clarity.”

  Lapham seemed to have nothing more to say. So I spoke. “All films for review are screened for Robert Jordan at the Rizzoli Screening room in midtown Manhattan, always at eight in the morning. The booking for screening your film was set for today. One of my agents, who, of course, I shall not name, flew to New York three days ago and was able to arrange with certain staff members of the screening room to allow him full access to the room and other connecting areas of the building. At this moment, he is sitting in an empty office two floors above the screening room keeping watch on a video monitor that is connected through a thin fiber optic line to a digital video camera, outfitted with the excellent AN/PVS-4 military night scope. The camera has been surreptitiously placed in the screening room and is directed at, and focused on, Mr. Jordan, documenting every he-he, every ha-ha, every ho-ho, and, most importantly, every guffaw that he is expelling in immediate, instinctual and unguarded response to your film. If he continues to respond to the rest of the film as he has responded to the beginning, we will have documented proof that he finds this particular “Film by Larry Lapham,” at the very least, quite funny, and at the very most, knee slapping hilarious. If he so reports in his review, then there is nothing left to do, and, indeed, I will charge you only ten percent of the agreed upon fee, plus expenses, of course. However, if our reading of Mr. Jordan is correct, he will not give a positive review of your film, he will go on the air and slam it. I have arranged that he will review your film on the This Day show before he reviews it on his own, syndicated show. Imagine now, if you will, that shortly after slamming your film on the This Day show, Charlie Wise, the host, will suddenly introduce you to come out and face your accuser. This will take Mr. Jordan by surprise, and, I assume, make him nervous. but it is live television, what is he going to do? He will just have to roll with it. You will face your accuser by running the video images of Mr. Jordan ‘losing it’ to the mastery of your comedic touch which are currently being electronically laid onto digital video tape, thus exposing his complete lack of professional integrity and ethics over live, national television to a viewership of 15 million people.”

  During my speech Lapham’s jaw had slowly separated from his overbite and his mouth now stood fully open in awe and wonder. He held that for a moment—then broke out into a large and loud fit of laughing. It offered a certain balance to the continent: Robert Jordan in New York laughing at Lapham’s film; Larry Lapham in Hollywood, laughing at Jordan’s coming extreme embarrassment.

  Lapham finally got control of himself and asked, “How—how are you going to get Charlie Wise to cooperate?”

  “As I have tried to convey to you, I never give answers, so questions are superfluous.”

  *

  A little over a week later, Roee and I in the guise of Charlie Wise arrived on the set of This Day at 5:30 in the morning to do a last minute check, making sure the staff had everything clear, and that all equipment was functioning properly. On the way over in the Limo, Petey’s blizzard was just starting to kick up. We put a quick call in to him up in the plane.

  “Super-Seed seems to be doing the trick,” I said, looking out the car window watching the visibility slowly fade.

  “What?! Maybe you expected I wouldn’t come through for you?!” Petey shouted.

  “Petey, I’ve never lost faith in you.”

  “I should say not!”

  “It occurs to me, though, that if Manhattan was slated for a blizzard anyway, I’m paying you for nothing.”

  “Hey, didn’t you read my weather report!? Without me, New York would just be having a normal miserable snow fall. Now it’s got a blinding blizzard of history making proportions! Do you know how much money this area is going to lose just in the shutdown of commerce alone!?” Petey seemed to be taking delight in his minor deity-like position. “Neat, huh!?”

  “I like a man who takes pleasure in a job well done.”

  “Damn right! That’s what made America great!”

  *

  Andrea greeted us when we arrived at the studio. She was nervous and wide-eyed staring at me, or not me, but him, or not him, but…. “Jesus,” she said.

  I brought her back to clear thinking by addressing her in my own voice. “Get over it if you want to remain on the payroll. I need you to be operating in the mundane of the ordinary. Only the blizzard has made this day different.”

  “Yes—yes, sir.”

  Then I addressed her in the gentle, Midwest wind of Charlie Wise’s voice. “Would you be so kind as to get me a cup of coffee, Andrea?” I gave her Charlie Wise’s patented kind smile. “I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Of—of course—Charlie,” she said, her brain screaming orders at her legs to get a move on while simultaneously sending out urgent messages to all the senses asking for some kind of rational explanation.

  After our check of things, and a little talk with the staff, I looked at my watch, saw that it was 6:33, and said, “Roee, it’s time to make the call.”

  Roee stepped over to a phone and dialed Robert Jordan’s number. “Hello, Mr. Jordan? It’s Joe over at This Day. We have a hell of a problem here and we really need your help. Well, you see the blizzard’s screwed everything up. We’ve just found out that our guests for the first half
hour can’t land at the airport, so we really need you to come in now and do tomorrow’s segment today—Yes, I know, Charlie mentioned that you always review films on your show first, but he would really like you to bend that rule today, it would really, really, get us out of a jam—Look, what Charlie wants to do is have you review the film right after the weather, then sit down with him for the rest of the half hour and discuss whatever you would like about film. You know, any pet peeves you got going right now, that sort of stuff. Charlie says, in the circumstances, it could be quite entertaining. He just wants to give you a lead in, then turn the rest of, say eight minutes, over to you—Yes, well, yes, I know, well, we called you because you’re only a couple of blocks away. Well, yeah—yeah—no, no, we know you can’t walk to the studio, we got a car heading over there now—Sure, sure, we’ve got the best drivers in town, they can drive in this muck—Yeah, yeah, we already got your review on the TelePrompTer, we were all set up for tomorrow—Oh, that’s great! That’s really good of you. Look, the car should be there any minute, if you can get ready right away, you go on the air at 7:15.” Roee hung up and turned to me. “He expressed pique until I piqued his interest.”

  “Eight minutes of airing your cultural pet peeves on network television to 3 million people. For a man like Jordan, that’s high grade heroin.”

  *

  “Andrea!” I shouted into the air after Roee left for makeup.

  She materialized in a zip of point A to point B action. “Yes, uh, Mr.—uh—Charlie?”

  “Larry Lapham?”

  “He’s been picked up at the hotel, the Limo has him, he’s on his way.”

  “And when he gets here…?”

  “I’ll—I’ll greet him and take him immediately to the green room.

  “Thank you, Andrea.”

  *

  At exactly seven o’clock I went on the air as Charlie Wise, opening with his signature two words, “This Day—” Then continuing with the month, the date, the year, then: “Is a brutal day here in New York City.” I explained quickly how a blizzard of unprecedented proportions had ground New York City to a halt, affecting businesses large and small, including the This Day program, which was working with a skeleton staff and valiant substitutes, such as Harry Stoner from our local affiliate, who would do the newscast, sitting in for our regular Mary Magnolia, who’s stuck somewhere between Connecticut and our studios here in Manhattan.

  I thought Roee committed himself rather well, doing the news. Even if he did spend an inordinate amount of time reporting on a Festival of Samuel Beckett plays. He also did double duty and covered the weather, the lead story being, of course, “The Great Blizzard”. Just as he was coming to the end of the report, detailing the record highs in Los Angeles, I saw the short, bald bulk of Robert Jordan being rushed into the studio, stripped of his outerwear by Andrea, then placed into his little reviewing cubby hole of a set that featured a simple, yet oddly royal, red velvet mock Victorian chair. He sat down, and just had time for a quick, deep breath of calming air, a quick sip of water, and a quick glance at the TelePrompTer, when he was given the cue to begin.

  “As the grand old actor said on his death bed,” Jordan started in his well-known high pitched voice, “‘Dying is easy; comedy is hard.’ Well, boys and girls, I’m not sure in all cases that that is true, but it certainly is for Larry Lapham, who’s newest opus—I use the word opus because it’s the name of a flightless bird—who’s newest opus, War of the Wimps, is scheduled to hit the theaters on Friday. If the theaters have any good sense at all—they’ll duck! You know, I’ve tolerated Lapham’s regurgitations of American film comedy highlights for a number of years now, and I’ve tried to do it with, well, with good humor, but even my normally beatific forgiving nature can’t stretch this far. What in the confines of Mother Nature’s grand good Earth gave Lapham the idea that he could take Jean-Claude Van Damme and turn him into Buster Keaton?! Except in the locker room scene where Jean-Claude in drag, a cinematic moment to be missed—as often as possible—reaches more for Diane Keaton than Buster Keaton. And the dialog! Larry, I’ve got to be straight with you, English is not Jean-Claude’s native tongue. It just wasn’t fair of you to ask him to deliver lines that would ruin Robin William’s career. I would blame the writers, but I happen to know, for a fact, that the writers on a Lapham film are basically stenographers! Which makes the director a dictator! Hey, Larry, dictatorships are passé, haven’t you heard? Next time, let some good, funny writers actually write some good, funny stuff. Stuff funny enough that even you can’t mess it up. This is Robert Jordan saying, regarding War of the Wimps, I am very much not pleased.

  “This Day will return after these messages.”

  People scurried, repositioning cameras, retouching make-up, getting Jordan’s small mic unplugged, leading him over to the host’s area where I sat, plugging him back in.

  “Thanks for coming in, Robert,” I said, smiling at him.

  “Well, I’d like to say it’s my pleasure, Charlie, but I’ve got to tell you, I live only a couple of blocks away, but I felt like Scott racing Amundsen to the South Pole.” His voice was still dripping with the inconvenience of it all.

  “Ten seconds gentlemen,” came the word from the floor manager. We both gathered ourselves up, and:

  “Welcome back,” I said into the camera. “I’m here with Robert Jordan, our resident film critic and culture creature.” I turned to Jordan. “So, Robert, War of the Wimps? I guess it’s not going to make your top ten list.”

  “Or anybody else’s, I would guess.”

  “Really? Lapham’s films don’t do that bad in the box office, do they?”

  “The miracle of modern marketing, Charlie. In the old days hucksters were checker-suited, fast-talking men relegated to the back roads of America pushing useless patent medicines to the local yokels as quick cures for what ails ya. Now they’re Armani-suited, face-lifted, communicators of cinematic glitz. You know, there used to be a plethora of patent medicines sold in America.”

  “Whoa! I’m glad you don’t review television.”

  “I’m glad I don’t review television.” I did Charlie Wise’s well-known chuckle in response. “Although, these days some of the writing for television puts Hollywood features to shame.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, let’s put that to the test. We have a guest television reviewer today.” Jordan was jolted into perplexity. You could see it in his face, magnified, I’m sure on the television screen. “For a look at the current state of television film criticism, here’s film producer/director, Larry Lapham.”

  With panic now peppering the perplex, Jordan looked around and noticed the electronic Lapham on the monitors and, worse, the flesh and blood one over on his set sitting in his red velvet chair.

  Lapham was calm and natural on camera—and just a tad vicious. “Being a big believer in turnabout is fair play I would like to review the review you have just heard of my film, War of the Wimps. I found Robert Jordan’s review to be extremely well written, witty and pungent in that pure Jordanian manner of his. I found his delivery and comedic timing to be impeccable, as always, but I found it disturbing in the extreme that the content of the review was dishonest and deceitful.”

  Jordan turned to me and growled out a whisper, “Charlie, what the—”

  “Keep smiling, Robert, you never know when the director will cut back to us.”

  Lapham was continuing. “Of course, I could be accused of not being objective in this, as Jordan’s review was of a film I spent a year of my life on, and am, quite frankly, proud of, but I didn’t say his opinion was wrong. That is not for me to say. I said it was dishonest. For I happen to know, for a fact, that Robert Jordan loved War of the Wimps, or, at least, liked it enough to spend most of the time while he was screening it in the throes of laughter. As this video tape clearly shows.”

  The tape ran on all the monitors, and Jordan looked wide eyed at his electronic self in
the green light of the night video, laughing heartily every few seconds; a good round laugh, an old fashioned laugh, the kind of laugh that is almost a pleasure in itself, as well as a vocalization of pleasure. Yet it was eerie. For he was alone in the theater, and one man laughing alone can’t help but seem—mad.

  I leaned over to Jordan and whispered, “Out of courtesy, we edited out the times you picked your nose.”

  Jordan stood up, intending to leave, but Roee was right there to put a particularly strong pinch onto his right trapezius muscle, which has a tendency to make one want to sit again.

  “I’ll do that to your testicles next time you stand up without permission,” Roee said quietly to Jordan. He wasn’t fooling. Something Jordan—I could tell from the open mouth stare he gave Roee as Roee walked off—did not doubt.

  The tape ended just as Lapham came over. He sat and joined me in looking to Jordan for an explanation. Jordan wiped the flop sweat off his brow. Then took a deep breath and tried to remember, I’m sure, just who the hell he was.

  Jordan gave a little laugh, “As good a time as any to go to a commercial?”

  “Don’t need to,” I said, “this portion of our program is being brought to you as a public service by Mr. Larry Lapham, director of War of the Wimps, coming soon to a theater near you.”

  “Well, what can I say?” Jordan was trying his best not to look cornered. “Except this is the most outrageous behavior I have ever seen in fifteen years of broadcasting, and you will be hearing from my lawyer.” He was starting to give in to his anger. “That tape—that tape could well have been made when I was reviewing, uh, uh, I don’t know, uh, Mel Brooks’ last film.”

  “Well, that’s hardly likely,” I had Charlie Wise say with an uncommon bit of sarcasm. “Before we march off to court, why don’t we hear what the dean of broadcast journalism has to say, shall we?”

  The monitors came alive with the avuncular face of his gray eminence. “This is Walter Cronkite.”

  Everything opened wide on Robert Jordan: eyes; mouth; bowels, most likely.