by John Gaspard
“So he’s rewriting the script?” I asked quietly, remembering the work Jake had been doing in his motor home and the quick re-write we had improvised with the silk.
“Oh, would that he was the only person re-writing the poor pulpy mess that once was my script. I believe everyone in the cast and crew has taken a crack at violating my script, including the director’s mother and her dog whisperer. All that remains of my original script are the page numbers and even those are now in the wrong order.”
“And there’s nothing you can do about it?”
“I am less than powerless. The schmuck who pours the dressing on the salad at lunch has more say in this process than the writer.”
“Maybe this is an ignorant question, but then why are you here?”
He gave me a long, penetrating look. “Because when it all goes up in flames—and it will, believe me, it will—I want to see it happen. I may not be the one to throw the match on the kerosene-soaked edifice that is this movie, but I’m not going to miss watching the sucker explode.”
I smiled weakly. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “Um…stand over there.” I backed away, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just sat there, shaking his head and sighing.
“Hey, it’s the debunker guy.”
I didn’t recognize the voice and I couldn’t quite place the woman who had approached me, although there was definitely something familiar about her. She was tall and rail thin, with spiked red hair and pale skin. Several tattoos were visible, poking out of various points from under her black tank top. She clearly saw the look of puzzlement on my face.
“I did your makeup for that Halloween show last year on public TV. You were the guy who hated the word Debunker, right?”
“That was me,” I nodded. “And you’re…Laura?”
“Close. Lauren,” she said. “Good effort, dude,” she added, punching my arm playfully. “You’re a magician, right?”
“I am,” I said.
“Can you make me disappear from this show?” Lauren said in a heavy stage whisper. “No, I’m just kidding.” She started digging through the pouch that hung on a strap around her waist. “But, really, can you make me disappear?” She laughed and punched my arm again playfully. I could feel a welt starting to form.
“What is it about this movie that’s making everyone so unhappy?” I asked quietly. “I just talked to the writer, I talked to one of the actors, even the production assistants seem cranky and stressed.”
“Some movies just have a stink about them,” she said as she adjusted the makeup items in her pouch. “And this one has a stench all its own. Everybody’s mad and scared and irritable. It’s a real drag. It pays good, but it’s a real drag.” She gestured across the set toward a woman dressed in what we used to call a power suit. The woman was furiously whispering into her cell phone.
“See the lady with the two hundred dollar haircut and the two thousand dollar suit? She’s Donna, the producer. She’s pissed at everyone, but mostly she’s pissed at Walter,” she said, gesturing toward the director, who was once again seated behind his bank of video monitors. “Walter is four days behind schedule, but every time Donna has tried to fire him, he’s fired one of the department heads first, throwing everything into chaos, so she can’t get rid of him.”
She then tilted her head in the direction of the writer. “Stewart hates Walter, too, because Walter has eviscerated his script, re-writing scenes, adding characters. Stewart told me when they first started meeting on the script, Walter asked him what he thought were the four most important scenes in the movie. Stewart told him, and Walter has since cut all four of them out of the script. All the scenes we’ve been shooting recently is stuff Walter added—including the cute, cloying kid. It’s driving Stewart out of his gourd.”
“That’s the impression I got talking to him just now.”
“If you really want the dirt, get a couple drinks in him. He goes from a trickle to a flash flood in nothing flat. And if it’s fireworks you’re after, get him started on how casting a TV actor, not a real actor, was the final insult to his screenplay masterpiece.”
She then pointed to a young woman sitting under the shade of an umbrella across the set from us. The woman, a long-legged, busty blonde, was wearing a skimpy sundress and oversized sunglasses. She was sipping a cola and reading a gossip magazine with a highlighter pen, stopping from time to time to mark a particular segment.
“Then there’s Noël, the writer’s ex-girlfriend and the female lead,” Lauren continued, her dislike evident in her cold tone. “Casting couch stories in Hollywood are exaggerated, but I know for a fact she got cast because of her umlauts.”
It took me a moment to understand the reference, but as Noël sat up and adjusted the straps on her dress, I understood Lauren’s meaning.
“She got noticed by the producers because she was sleeping with the writer, but as soon as she got the part, she switched beds and started sleeping with Arnold.”
She indicated an older, heavyset balding man in slacks and a Hawaiian shirt. He was also speaking heatedly into a cell phone. “That’s Arnold. He and Donna, the other producer, are divorced but are producing together, which in itself is a trip and a half. They’d make Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf look like a fluffy romantic comedy. I’m surprised they haven’t killed each other yet.”
I looked at Arnold angrily speaking into his phone on one side of the set and then at Donna, talking just as furiously into her phone on the other side. Unless I was mistaken, it looked very much like they were in a highly contentious conversation with each other via cell phone while standing fifty yards apart.
“Anyway,” Lauren continued, “Then Noël dumped Arnold and is now shacked up with Walter, the director.”
I glanced around at the people Lauren had pointed out to me: The angry writer. The psycho director. The warring producers. And the sex kitten actress. “So, is this a typical movie set?” I asked. “I mean, where everyone hates each other?”
Lauren laughed. “Honey, there’s no such thing as a typical movie set—each one is screwed up in its own, special way. But this one is one of worst I’ve seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone ends up murdered before we get to the last scene.” Not hearing a response from me, she turned and saw what I’m guessing was a horrified look on my face.
“Don’t worry, baby, I’m just exaggerating for effect. In Hollywood, no one actually kills anyone because of a movie.”
“They don’t?” I asked, feeling relieved.
“No, they want to keep you alive so they can really take their time torturing you. That’s the Hollywood way.”
Chapter 8
After a painfully slow six hours of watching them film the movie, I would have delighted in the rapid-fire pace of watching paint dry if it had been offered to me. I wasn’t certain what my role on the set was, except to try to keep them from killing Jake, but if their weapon was boredom, they were well on their way to doing me in. I was in the throes of this lethargy when I glanced over to see that someone was sitting next to me in Jake’s canvas chair and it wasn’t Jake.
I recognized him as Arnold, one of the producers of the film who Lauren had pointed out to me earlier. He wore a loud and beautifully-tailored Hawaiian print shirt, which may well have been custom-made by a genuine Hawaiian. He was a large man, balding, with wisps of graying hair fighting it out on the fringes of his skull. He was whispering into his cell phone with a hoarse, angry rasp that conveyed more anger than if he’d actually been shouting at the top of his lungs.
“No, you are dead wrong, my friend,” he hissed. “We are all about catering on this show and if the quality of the paté sinks below the baseline I established one more time, heads will roll. Do you hear me? Heads will roll.” He pushed the END button on the phone and glanced over at me, shaking his head like the embarrassed father of an ill-behaved kindergartener.
“How tough is it to get liver paté right?” he asked and I shrugged because I genuinely didn’t know the answer. If we were going to have a conversation—and it looked like we were—I hoped the questions would get easier.
“You’re the new magic consultant, right?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding, pleased we were now firmly in my conversational ballpark. “The magic consultant.”
“So, what’s your theory?”
“My theory?” I repeated. He’d just hit one out of the park. “My theory on what?”
“On who killed Terry Alexander,” he said with a grin. “One of the world’s great mysteries, never been solved.”
“I think not being solved is the definition of a mystery,” I suggested, but he didn’t really seem to need my participation to keep the conversation rolling. He was one of those people who only needed a sounding board and if I hadn’t been there he would have been just as happy talking to the tree behind me.
“That’s the beauty of this movie,” he continued. “A truly great, real-life murder mystery. Was it the ex-girlfriend, the manager, the current girlfriend, a wronged rival...” His voice trailed off dramatically. Given that I knew none of those answers were correct, yet I couldn’t tell him why, I didn’t know how to respond. But apparently a response from me was merely optional, as he kept talking.
“We’re even considering releasing the movie with four different endings, each one with a different solution. Never been done before.”
“I think they did that with Clue, the movie,” I offered, but he didn’t register any reaction to my voice.
“Groundbreaking,” he continued unabated. “Each ending providing a completely plausible solution to the mystery. Never been done before.”
“Actually,” I offered, “The novel, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, presented a murder with six completely plausible solutions, and that was written back in the 1920s—”
“That’s our marketing strategy,” he said, skating right over my words like there was no sound coming out of my mouth. “That’s the ticket. It will put this little movie on the map.” He finally stopped talking and looked at me, apparently waiting for a reaction of some sort.
“Sounds like a plan,” I finally said.
“Damn straight,” he replied, as his phone began to buzz. “Because God knows we need something to put this movie on the map. Hell, anything.” He got up, pushing his bulk up out of the chair. “Nice chatting with you. Try the paté,” he added, beginning another harshly whispered conversation as he walked away.
Moments later I felt a vibration in my pocket, signaling I had in fact remembered to turn off the ringer. A crewmember had made that mistake earlier, and Walter’s sudden rage was terrifying. He went from zero to insane in no time flat and it took Arnold, Donna and the assistant director to calm him down, each pointing out that the scene was essentially silent and that no harm had been done. Walter calmed down almost as quickly as he had exploded, laughing off the incident, but it left a sour taste and I made a mental note to always double-check the ring status on my phone.
I pulled the pulsating phone out of my pocket as I headed away from the set. The cameras weren’t currently rolling, but I didn’t want to feel Walter’s wrath if I was the moron who was still talking when they called for quiet on the set.
I ducked behind a rustic shed and answered the phone. Before I was halfway through my “Hello,” I was cut off by the rapid-fire barrage of words from the other end.
“Eli, honey, sweetie, I don’t work for you, you don’t work for me, we work for each other. We’ve got an opportunity, I dropped everything when they called, put people on hold, stopped answering emails, to make sure you’re available, as my number one client, I don’t work for you, you don’t work for me, we work for each other, isn’t that right?”
Before I could agree or disagree, the voice continued. “Anyway, it’s a last-minute thing, a house party of some kind, tonight, in Kenwood, can’t beat that, one hour of walk-around magic, paying top dollar, asked for you by name, let’s hope you’re available, are you available, sweetie?”
“Elaine, yes, yes, Elaine, I’m available, yes I am,” I said quickly, suddenly taking on the speech patterns of my agent, a world-class mile-a-minute talker. I had to make a conscious effort to slow down, in the hope she would begin to mimic my more deliberate speech pattern. “So, let me make sure I have this right. It’s tonight. In Kenwood. A house party. And they want some walk-around magic for an hour. Is that correct?”
“Right on the money, honey—”
Before she could continue, I swiftly cut her off, talking as slowly as I could. “That should be fine. Do you know what time they want me? And the address?” I drew out each word slowly.
“Yes, yes I do,” she said, slowing to a more leisurely conversation pace. I could hear her shuffling papers around her desk. “I’ve got all the information. I’ll email it over.”
“That would be fine,” I said patiently, like I was trying to calm a hyperactive puppy. “Are they paying me on the spot or did they pre-pay with you?” For someone who made her living off a percentage of what her clients made, Elaine was notoriously poor at tracking the actual flow of money.
“They said they’d pay you at the gig,” she said, now sounding almost sleepy. “I told them you’d get me the commission. I said you were good for it. I’m sending the information now,” she added.
True to her word, a ping in my ear signaled the arrival of an email. “Thanks, Elaine. Thanks for the call. And for the gig.”
“I don’t work for you, you don’t work for me. We work for each other,” she said. Like shalom, it had become her greeting at the beginning and end of every conversation, its meaning entirely dependent on its placement. The sound of a click and then no sound at all told me the conversation had ended and that Elaine had moved onto her next call.
I’ve often questioned my need for an agent, as most of my work comes to me direct, either from the website, a referral or repeat business. However, I’ve always liked the idea of having my own Broadway Danny Rose, even if she’s actually a bottle-blonde from Anoka with a motor-mouth and a serious chocolate addiction. I was making a mental note to send her a box of her favorite Russell Stover candies along with her commission, when I rounded the corner of the shed and came to an abrupt halt.
Several yards ahead of me I was surprised to see Jake and Noël, the movie’s lead actress, in the midst of what Harry would have called “the full canoodle.” That’s his charming old-world expression for kissing that has gone above and beyond a friendly greeting. They were wrapped in an embrace that looked to be headed from PG-13 to R, on its way to NC-17. They hadn’t noticed my arrival, so I quickly stepped back behind the shed. I looked around for another exit route and as I did I was surprised to see Stewart, the writer.
He wasn’t looking at me. He, too, had spotted the necking couple, but unlike me he didn’t seem to be looking for an exit. He just stared at them, balling his fingers into tight fists at his side.
I turned the other way and spotted a path that would take me away from this mini-drama. Before leaving I took one last look to ensure I had gotten the details right. One more look confirmed it: Noël, current girlfriend of Walter (the director), former girlfriend of Arnold (the producer) and Stewart (the seething writer hiding behind the tree), had taken up with yet another person on the set.
Hollywood. Ya gotta love it.
Later that evening I pulled my car to a stop in front of the address for that night’s last-minute gig. The large house sat among other impressively-large homes, nestled along a tree-lined parkway overlooking Lake of the Isles, one of Minneapolis’ more lovely inner-city lakes.
The house, like its neighbors, could be called a mansion, but this was in the old-world definition, not like the McMansion behemoths that had sprung on lots big and small around the city. I couldn’t imagine anyone in this nei
ghborhood clipped coupons or clicked Groupons.
I let the car idle as I double-checked the address. Something seemed off and it took me a moment to realize that, for a house in the midst of an alleged party, there were hardly any cars parked nearby and only two lights burning in the mansion’s windows. I had expected to see a steady stream of guests and the blur of valet parking staff as they ran up and down the street to park and retrieve each precious Lexus, Porsche and Hummer. Instead, all that was visible was a light over the front door, giving off enough wattage to confirm the address, and two other dim lights on the main floor. The rest of the house was dark.
I have learned, over the years, that a dark house is not always a true indicator you’re at the wrong place. I am friendly with a married pair who constantly wage a war of lighting at their parties, with the husband insisting on bright illumination inside and out, while the wife opts for candles and mood lighting. Most times she is the victor and I have attended more than one party at their home where the lights were so dim, several guests hadn’t bothered to come to the door, thinking they had arrived on the wrong night. Figuring that was the likely explanation for the low wattage at this house, I shut off the engine, grabbed my bag of tricks and made my way up the long walk to the massive front door.
The sound of the doorbell still echoed through the house when a squat and muscular man opened the door. He was the human equivalent of a fireplug with a neck nearly equal to the width of his shoulders and a tightly trimmed hedge of red hair covering his apparently flat head. He starred at me for a long, ominous moment.
“Hi,” I stammered. “I’m the magician. I’m here. For the party. Tonight.”
He gave me another long look, blinking slowly as if the words needed to be processed one at a time, then finally stood back and gestured for me to enter. I stepped into the foyer, a high-ceilinged room with a massive stairway straight ahead and several doors flanking both sides of the imposing hall. The house was dead quiet, with only the distant sound of voices and music barely audible, sounding like they were a long ways away.
