Slot Attendant

by Jack Engelhard

  But Sharon Glazer was okay, Sharon, president of the Motion Picture Unit for Alliance Pictures, said – that time in Hollywood, “We’re making this picture for YOU!”

  She said that I had written a fabulous novel. The Ice King will be sensational as a movie and will do boffo box office. (Which it did.) She was so effusive, when we first met and during the filming, that I thought she loved me and wanted to have sex and that before you know it, we’d be an item. The slight matter of being married, from both ends – well, that’s show biz. That’s Hollywood.

  But someone else was going to write the screenplay, and this was perfectly acceptable. I am no screenwriter. That’s a different skill. What do I know from angles?

  Strangely, though, people keep referring to me as a screenwriter, the screenwriter for The Ice King.

  Out there, a book is but a precursor to a movie. No wonder Salinger said no to Hollywood. “Holden wouldn’t approve,” he said.

  Kathy Lynn Boyer wrote the screenplay and I didn’t mind it when in all those interviews she never once referred to the novel.

  I didn’t mind because I got the check and when you sell to Hollywood, well, it’s sold, gone with the wind. It’s not yours anymore. That’s a different medium. So I didn’t mind when the director, Monty Rogers, and Kathy Lynn Boyer, kept the concept and kept much of my dialogue, but combined to change the locale of my novel and even the ages (younger) of my characters because you cannot insert one art form into another. Beethoven would not dare tell Picasso how to paint his Third Symphony.

  Even the ethnics in my novel were changed to yuppie white breads.

  So I was okay with all that because it’s nothing personal, it’s beezness, and with or without a movie, a novel breathes and lives onward upon its own two feet.

  Maybe I would have appreciated a mention or two when all of them got on TV and the host raved about the movie and about the concept and the audience kept on applauding each time another clip was shown. The actors and the director and Sharon Glazer herself forgot to mention where it all came from, and the screenwriter, taking bows, kept forgetting to name her source. Melanie, slamming the refrigerator door much too hard as all this is going on over the TV, and refusing to watch the rest of the show, and later vacuuming four times around the house as she does when she has bad energy to burn, asked me if I’m surprised at being omitted and I said no I’m not surprised, my name’s in the credits, they even spelled it right, and the check cleared, didn’t it?

  The second time I met Sharon Glazer, over in Hollywood, it was different, a different hello and a different goodbye. The Ice King had already made all that money and I was here, this time, at my own expense, to pitch a concept, also high, as high, I thought, as the first. That first time, all expenses were paid to bring us on the set; we were given First Class Tickets and set up at The Four Seasons. Room service is especially satisfying when it’s on the studio tab. “This is heaven,” said Melanie, so radiant that she outshone even the movie stars on the set.

  The concept that brought me to Hollywood again, now without fanfare, was simple: Joe saves Marty’s life. It’s a highway accident and Joe reacted swiftly and heroically. Marty is grateful, but how much does he owe this Joe, this man who saved his life? For Joe has been coming around making demands. He wants more and more in payment. He even wants Marty’s job, then even his wife. He wants everything. Joe, this one-time Good Samaritan, has turned into a monster, inflicting holy terror upon Marty and his family. So, when someone saves your life, how much do you owe that person? That’s the WHAT IF…the High Concept.

  Sure, towards the end there are Stephen King elements here, but still, high concept, and original, I thought – and still think.

  So the second time I went out there to meet Sharon Glazer, it was on my money and second class. Her assistant, Sandy, a guy, was pleasant, but not quite as before, and said it would be awhile as Sharon is on the phone, and who could miss that, for all the shouting, no, absolute hysteria. Sounded like a relative she was talking to, possibly a daughter. But Sharon Glazer was in there, in a room with thick walls, going berserk and using R-rated language. This lasted for about an hour. I asked Sandy if my timing was bad, and he said no, be patient.

  There was no choice but to assume that this was routine, normal behavior, as here, in the outer office, among the five administrative assistants, no one winced. I had not seen, or rather heard, this side of Sharon Glazer during the filming of The Ice King so maybe things were not going so well since then. Back then it had been all flattery and charm.

  This time, when I went in, when she was ready for her close-up, Sharon greeted me warmly (as if there had been no tantrum a moment earlier), but then seated herself atop something like a throne. I was sunk into a sofa with deep cushions and kept sinking lower and lower, near to drowning and gulping for air. She was up, I was down, she was big, I was small.

  She is a big woman, tall, broad at the shoulders, and lucky for her, she’s brunette, not blonde, as blonde wouldn’t go for someone so formidable.

  I gave the pitch and she said it would have to go through the system. She sent me to another part of the building where I pitched a man I still call Dr. No.

  Actually, I don’t call him anything, not anymore. You get the hint.

  Dr. No just sits there at the far end of the Admin Building and listens politely, never adds, never subtracts. He’s here to listen and say no, and it does not impress him that once you built a railroad, that once you built a movie that most likely is still paying his salary. You are starting from scratch. Every concept is not quite right for us, or has already been done. We want something that is original…but also derivative. A good story? Yes, we’re always after a good story, but we’re after demographics. That’s the story. The young. The kids. But (I protest) we still have old people. Yes, but the young make Box Office. Our Focus Groups can’t be wrong. Light, crazy comedies, you know, where guys make love to pies, and where guys get their penises caught in the zippers of their pants…I wonder, though, if he’s so smart, how come there’ve been so many flops from Alliance, straight to DVD?

  Lately, they arrive at a trend when it’s already over. Alliance released Spoiled Brats after four other studios had already cleaned up with their versions of American High.

  But I have no regrets about the whole thing. It really was great when The Ice King was happening. I don’t get it when writers gripe about The Industry. Hooray for Hollywood. Nobody has it good there or anywhere, so what’s the complaint? We lunched and dined with movie stars, and that is enough. The sentry manning the famous gateway to Alliance Pictures recognized our names without checking his clipboard, and that is enough. Melanie had that operation and recovered just in time to fully enjoy the opulence of the premiere, and that is enough.

  The director of The Ice King, Monty Rogers, was eccentric, a Brit. He walked out on his own premiere. He is temperamental. Well, he’s an artist. Well, I am also an arteest.

  We crossed paths several times on the set, or rather we didn’t, directly. We kept to ourselves, actually avoided any sort of contact. The first time I showed up on the set he asked the script girl who this was, and she told him, and he gave me a snort and a nod. I’ve never figured that out. The last person they want on the set is the writer. They want no part of him. I understand.

  Actually, Sharon Glazer wasn’t all that warm the second time around. The warmth lasted for about eight seconds when she remembered that The Ice King brought in half a billion dollars for Alliance Pictures and made her personally very rich. Then she forgot and she was up on her throne and down to business. “Okay,” she said, “show me what you got.”

  I had been warned, by more than one producer, how swiftly she flashes from hot to cold. Snap she’s on, and snap, she’s off. She was doing me a favor, she said, by hearing me out, for as president, now, she only takes pitches from producers, but in my case, she was making an exception.

  So I made the pitch but pitching is an art, but not for me, and I
knew that I was bombing because I felt as if I were lip-syncing. I did bomb.

  The entire meeting with Sharon Glazer lasted maybe ten minutes. I thought we’d do lunch.

  * * *

  But is it any wonder that so much wife-swapping goes on once people get together to make a movie? That’s no surprise. There is so much (fake or real) effusiveness going around that you are bound to get sucked in. Happens all the time. It happened on the set of Basic Instinct and it still requires a scorecard to remember who ended up with whom. Strangers are thrown in together and snap, they’re family. Love happens, and of course it usually fizzles once it’s a wrap and it’s onto another set and another family. I saw up close how easily you can get seduced, and it wasn’t just Sharon Glazer.

  In proselytizing circles that’s called love-bombing where, to snare you to convert, they overwhelm you with adoration.

  I keep thinking that one day I’ll do a novel or a screenplay based on what happened to Edmund Purdom who starred in The Egyptian back in the 1950s and was ready for above-the-title billing. I think it was Edmund Purdom who shared a garage with his wife who worked cleaning houses as he made the rounds. He finally hit stardom and did what comes naturally; left his wife for someone who doesn’t do windows. The public got a hold of this, back when scandal was bad, and finished him off.

  That’s what I think I will do, one day, I mean write a novel or a screenplay about a down-and-out screenwriter, a near hick from the Midwest, who finally gets to principal photography and dumps his loyal wife in favor of the starlet, who has promised him love everlasting. This lasts until the next movie. She moves on and there he is, humbled and alone, and what a sucker!

  Something like this was already done in the Kevin Bacon flick The Big Picture, but there’s always room for more, and they’re always making remakes anyway, and there is no such thing in the movie business as plagiarism; it’s homage, pronounced French as in frommage. We’re always borrowing from something past. The concept for Planet of the Apes had to come from Kafka’s A Report to an Academy. Though what I’ve got, I’m pretty sure, is original, and derivative.

  * * *

  So how do I approach this, this meeting with Shelly King, director of Marketing up here on the casino’s ninth floor, me in my green slot attendant uniform? Suddenly, I agree with Melanie. It is disgraceful walking around in this when not on duty. It is degrading and disgraceful, makes you like a soldier in the wrong army. So…what does this woman want?

  Shall I dominate? In this outfit?

  Strange, you fought in a war, combat house to house, hand to hand, and NOW you get the heebie jeebies?

  The door is open and I hear someone talking, on the phone obviously. I knock but no one answers. I step in, and it’s Shelly King, and she is on the phone, and now I recognize her. I’d seen her on the casino floor, usually with Bob Foster, our president. I thought she was his secretary or something. But she does have that title – Vice President of Marketing, or Director. She is important.

  She motions for me to have a seat. She sits behind a semi-circular half-moon shaped butcher wood block oak desk. She’s actually tucked in, as if she’s been here forever and will remain forever. I admire such nesting. To the side are vinyl desks with advertising posters scattered all over, even along the floor and around her desk. Busy, busy, busy. “Get Hot With Our Slots,” is our current campaign. Bob Foster has made the claim that our slots pay off at a higher rate than any other casino in Atlantic City.

  Business has picked up, especially among the nickel players. I’d be among the first to notice.

  Shelly offers a smile as she’s still on the phone, a business smile. I smile back, same kind, business, neutral and neutered.

  There’s a photo of some family on her desk, but I don’t think it’s hers. I think it’s her sister’s, for some reason, and for some reason I don’t think she’s married, not anymore. There is something joyless about her. You spot that right off. She was once quite okay, that too is obvious, and I measure her as being in her mid-thirties and as a girl who was runner-up for Prom Queen and runner-up for everything else, always coming in second. She’s still not bad, but the legs are a bit on the chubby side, though she has not let herself go. You can’t if you’re a woman and want a career in business. You sure can’t flaunt it and come on sexy. You can hint but you must not flaunt, and Shelly King doesn’t, doesn’t flaunt. You can tell she’s made it a habit to connect with her male side. She’s done the work, probably beginning in college, where she probably took Marketing, or Business Administration.

  I’ll bet, early on, she probably also took some Lit, and maybe even wrote some poetry, love poems. That’s all over. That’s done. Down to business.

  “So you’re Jay Leonard,” she says after she’s finished on the phone. “What a pleasure to meet you.” We shake hands, firmly.

  I am not surprised when she says she never saw me before. They don’t see your face when you’re down there on the casino floor. One green uniform is the same as another. Then again, all players, all customers, are alike to us as well. We can hardly tell one from another and when someone says, “Don’t you remember me, you paid me my last jackpot,” you say you do, but you don’t. It all blurs.

  Well, she says, she did not know – WE did not know – that we had a celebrity in our midst.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Nothing to tell.

  “You’re a famous author.”

  “I’m a slot attendant.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  She doesn’t even know what that is. I have to explain. She explains that everything that’s done in the casino falls under Marketing.

  “Oh,” I say.

  She sits there unsure of what to do with me, or with my attitude, for I am not being forthcoming. I feel resentful but don’t know why. Is it that I know she can fire me in a snap? Is it that we both know this? We are both uncomfortable. I seem to have her frozen. So, she can have me fired, at a whim, or, she can move me up. Up or down, she can do whatever she wants with me, and this possibly is what I resent.

  She shifts uneasily in her chair and says, “I won’t ask all the reasons that brought you here, I mean as a slot attendant.”

  I thank her.

  Now she gets up and plants herself on the sofa and as she does this, her skirt moves up; up, up and up until her legs are on full display.

  Do women know that practically everything they do is a turn-on? We (men) are all such horn-dogs.

  “Though it is strange.”

  “I agree.”

  She lets that sit for a while. I am not about to volunteer. You never want to answer questions that are not asked.

  “Frankly,” she says, “I’m baffled.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean…we’ve never had an author. You understand?”

  “First time for everything.”

  “Never a famous author.”

  “I’m not so famous.”

  “You had a very big hit, didn’t you?”

  “Six years ago.”

  She shakes her head. She’s beginning to understand.

  “That’s not so long for an author.”

  “It’s still six years.”

  “We do have great Benefits,” she says reflectively.

  “Yes you do.”

  She smiles, and this time a real smile, actually a defensive smile, and says, “You know, one of our lawyers is quite nervous about you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Phil Kraut. He’s suggested that you may be a plant.”

  “Not so.”

  “Some sort of spy.”

  “Not me.”

  “Well you know lawyers.”

  “I know Phil Kraut.”

  He came down once and chewed me out. I didn’t know who he was except for a suit. This was one of those rare nights when I had Zone 1 (Marty Glick was out sick) and some nasty high roller hit a jackpot for twenty thousand and so I did what I’m su
pposed to do, I congratulated him, him and his lovely daughter, except that it wasn’t his daughter, it was his wife, and this offended this man. He went ballistic on me. I apologized, but that wasn’t enough. I said it was a compliment; his wife so attractive and youthful as to be mistaken for his daughter, and this made it worse. He called for my supervisor. Roger Price came over and backed me up and then it got ugly. The man wanted Bob Foster, our president, who wasn’t in, and the closest thing available was Phil Kraut, the casino’s top lawyer. Kraut said that I was just a slot attendant, that I was nothing, and not to be taken seriously. Kraut asked the man if he wanted me fired. He’d be happy to do so, Kraut would. Right here on the spot. My insult was unforgivable. These slot attendants must be taught a lesson. The man said, no, not to go that far. He was okay now, now that a lawyer, such a high authority, had stepped in. Kraut took me aside and I thought he was going to say something nice, something like, you know I had to do this, you know, to cover your ass and my ass, otherwise it would get straight to Bob Foster, so I’m sorry for all those things I said about you. But that’s not what he said. This is what he said: “Watch yourself, boy. Watch yourself.”

  So yes, I know Phil Kraut.