“Rhetorical question, Rog. It’s just that when I think of how hard we had to work to get her, all the thousand and one demands her new agents made now that Wells Cope isn’t running her life …”
“Look on the bright side, Zach, her work is incredible. You’re getting what you hoped for and more.”
Directors always bitch about stars, the veteran producer thought wearily, just as if they weren’t impossible prima donnas themselves. He hated directors. He hated actors. If only he could make movies without actors and directors, he would be a happy man.
He had hired Zach Nevsky to direct because he was considerably less of a megalomaniac than ninety-seven percent of the other top directors working today. Directors, at this time in the history of the business—and Roger Rowan had been producing for over fifteen years—had more sheer power than they’d ever had before, and that power had transformed them into royal tyrants, with all the grandiose self-importance royalty assumes unto itself. Still, Zach Nevsky had earned a reputation, second only to Norman Jewison and Richard Lester, of delivering a film on time and on budget, and that alone made getting him a coup. He wasn’t unstable, he wasn’t unreasonable, he kept on top of things. If the guy wanted to ask him the source of obscure quotations day and night, it was a small price to pay.
“Would I have fought for an actress if she couldn’t deliver?” Zach said, answering Roman’s question about Melanie. “Look, Roger, I’m not an unrealistic fellow. Leaving out a few noble and notable exceptions, I expect an actress as great as Melanie to be deeply and profoundly narcissistic in a way unknown to other women. I expect her to be impossibly stubborn, fiercely greedy, shrewdly and endlessly manipulative, maddeningly unpredictable—if she weren’t, I’d wonder if she was a member in good standing of SAG. But this business of her fucking grips—two different grips—that’s unprofessional! Fucking actors, sure, it’s par for the course, especially on location, but wouldn’t you expect her to draw the line? Shouldn’t there be a question of status involved, if nothing else?”
“My wife says it’s perfectly simple.”
“What’s Norma’s take on this?” Zach was curious. Norma Rowan was one of those childless wives who make it a job and a half to accompany their husbands on each and every location shoot, both catering to their every need and making sure they didn’t have any unauthorized fun, which almost certainly explained their long marriages.
“Norma says that it’s not unusual for an actress to be hot for the blue-collar guys. Unlike actors, members of the crew aren’t their own major source of fascination, and since they don’t expect the leading lady to deliver for them, they appreciate every bit of snatch they get. Plus they give till it hurts, Zach. Some of them are big, physical guys, used to manual work, as she puts it. Norma can tell you about one of my shoots where the star fucked every grip and gaffer on the set, plus the Stuntmen, the camerman, and four of the drivers—she was an honorary member of the Teamsters Union before her career was over, and it was a long and splendid career. A well-lubricated star isn’t necessarily a bad idea, so long as it isn’t alcohol that keeps her oiled. So what are you so upset about? Did you have other plans for Melanie?”
“Nevsky’s first rule of directing, Rog, never screw the star. Nah, what makes me uneasy is the way she’s setting those guys up, one against the other. Allen Henrick’s worked for me before, he’s a sensible fellow with a wife and kids, he won’t let her get to him—he’s operating on the half-a-loaf theory—but Sid White’s an unknown element … he’s young, unpredictable, a passionate, intense kind of guy. He’s moody, dreamy, maybe a little disturbed. Not your average good-natured grip.”
“A grip’s replaceable, Zach, but if we send Sid back to L.A., you know Melanie’ll hold us responsible and start up, even more blatantly, with someone else,” Roger Rowan pointed out. “Anyway, this is Sid’s first job, we hired him because Lou Cavona asked us to, and you don’t mess with Lou Cavona, grip of grips. He’s more than just our Best Boy on this picture, he’s a major power in IA, the teamster’s union, and if he wants to get his wife’s younger brother into the union, that’s not just his privilege, it’s practically tradition. The Cavonas have been a family of grips since Mack Sennett.”
“I don’t know,” Zach said thoughtfully. “It might be worth getting rid of Sid anyway, no matter how much trouble it is. I’ve been making it my business to watch him all week—like I have nothing else to do, right? Like I haven’t got a picture to make happen?—and he’s madly in love with Melanie, true full-blown romantic love, Rog, in love with capital letters. Yeah, Romeo-and-Juliet-style, and don’t give me that cynical look, I didn’t spend years of my life directing Shakespeare without learning something about passionate love. Sid’s jealous of Allen, I mean insanely jealous, and Melanie’s not only lapping it up, she’s doing everything she can to fan the flames. She’s worse than a pyromaniac. So far, only a few of the other grips seem to know what’s going on, but that’s because it’s too bloody cold here for any press to be hovering.”
“Zach,” Roger said ponderously, “this is just an idea, but what if we tried to get Wells Cope to talk to her? In seven years he must have learned how to handle that woman. I know I’d hate to give him the satisfaction, but isn’t it worth a shot?”
“I’d never do that, Rog,” Zach replied instantly. “The minute I turn to someone else to tell me how to deal with Melanie is the minute I lose control of the picture. No, I’m going to have it out with her before this goes on a day longer. We shoot tomorrow, and Sunday’s her day off, so I’m going to go see her tonight.”
“Look, I respect your point of view,” Roger persisted, “but when we decided to shoot in Kalispell, dozens of people asked me how the hell we could go back to the same place where the catastrophe of Heaven’s Gate occurred. I explained to them that it provided us with a blueprint to know what not to do, and so far we’ve avoided the kind of mess UA had with Cimino. I’m here every second, watching the store, and Cimino didn’t have a strong producer aboard. Once work started on the picture, you became captain of the ship and the rest of us, even me, damn it, are passengers, but are you positive you’re right? Melanie Adams is accustomed to kid-glove treatment.”
“Rog, she’s just an actress. The most expensive, most worshiped, most beautiful actress in the world, but still—an actress.”
Zach shook his head at the perpetually constipated producer, a worry-wart like all producers, more interested in protecting the production than in making the best possible picture. Rowan was a thoroughly experienced professional, but he’d been born utterly cynical, he had no spark of passion, no iota of vision; to him, film was essentially product, just as it was to the studio executives. He, like they, would have been right at home in the pork-belly business. Rowan, who had never produced a picture as important as Chronicles, was a favorite of the studio, who had handpicked him. Reason enough to be suspicious. If only a director could get on with his work with the actors, minus the interference of producers and a studio, Zach thought, he’d be a happy man.
“An actress,” Zach said, warming to his topic, “is a woman with a certain set of powers and talents and physical equipment that combine to make her employable in bringing other women to life. Call her a virtuoso of personality, illuminated and vitalized from within in a particular way that makes audiences ecstatic, but don’t, do not, ever let her get the upper hand. I never forget they’re essentially just women. Controlling actresses is my business. Among many other things, that’s what you hired me for. I’m a bloody diva-wrangler, you should know that by now.”
“Why didn’t you stay in the theater?” Roger asked grumpily. “Stagehands couldn’t be as much trouble as grips, too old for one thing. And Off-Broadway actresses have to be easier to control.”
“You know, I miss it, actually more than I expected, but it ain’t the big time, Rog, it ain’t the ‘show,’ as they say in baseball.”
“The ‘show.’ ” Roger was at his most sardonic. “A twenty-five-
million-dollar budget, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that was a huge commercial success, two hundred and fifty locals employed as extras, two of the biggest male stars in the business—and the producer and director are sitting around figuring out what to do about Miss Adams’s open-door policy. I wish I could produce a Western with male stars, no love interest except for the bad girls in the local saloon—nobody rooted for them. Ah, shit!”
Did he know anything about Melanie Adams that would give him additional leverage to use on her, Zach Nevsky wondered after Roger left. For if ever an actress was unlikely to be influenced or intimidated by a director, it was this woman, who had become an international superstar seven years ago with her very first film, and he’d be a fool not to use every weapon he could command.
In 1976, when she was nineteen, Melanie Adams had left Louisville for New York, where Spider Elliott had launched her as a model, that much he knew. Very soon afterwards she’d become the protegée of Wells Cope, who produced her first film. His career as a supremely well-financed independent producer had made him one of the most consistently successful men in the entire industry, and once he controlled Melanie Adams, he had taken off into the stratosphere.
Legend, Melanie’s second film, had put her to the severe test of acting a part drawn from a character based on the early Hollywood experiences of both Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. She had been up to the challenge, her beauty and talent equal to the enormous demands of the role. Spider’s first wife, Valentine O’Neill, had designed the all-important costumes Melanie wore in that movie.
Since then, Melanie Adams had made three more films, each more important and solidly successful than the last, each produced for her by Wells Cope, who was now in his late forties, a cool, witty, profoundly secretive and brilliant man who managed to hold himself apart from the hurly-burly of Hollywood. He worked Hollywood with consummate shrewdness, but by choice he never became a full-fledged member of the filmmaking community.
Cope’s exact relationship with Melanie had never been understood by all the people who made it their life’s work to understand such things. No journalist had penetrated their closeness, they had never married, each other or anyone else, and if they were having an affair, no one could be certain of it. However, he was her impresario in the grand tradition, the man who guided every move she made, and taking the part in Chronicles, with its single magnificent key leading role for one female star, had been the first decision she’d made for herself as soon as her contract with Cope had expired.
Spider Elliott, Zach thought. He might just know something about Melanie Adams, and at this delicate point any piece of information could be useful, whatever he’d told Roger about not talking to anyone. As if he’d call Wells Cope! Spider was different. He checked his watch and told his secretary to try to reach Spider at Scruples Two, trying not to remember how many times he had called Gigi there.
“Spider, hi, this is Zach Nevsky.”
“Zach! How are you? How’s Montana? Tell me about it.”
“I’m fine, Montana’s gorgeous, but I wish Chronicles had been set in the summer. I didn’t know the ultimate meaning of windchill factor until I got here. I’m such a New Yorker I thought Montana was the Wild West; now I’ve discovered it’s lower Canada. The snowdrifts here are twice as tall as I am. Enough about me, how are Billy and the twins?”
“They’re all wonderful, blooming, thanks. How’s your picture going?”
“Getting there, so far mostly on time, and just about on budget, the dailies look great, but there’s one item I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Shoot.”
“You know Melanie Adams is on the picture?”
“Come on, Zach, the whole world knows.”
“She’s difficult. More than most. Used to having things her own way, naturally, and spoiled by Wells Cope. I’m about to go to the mat with her, and I figured you might have some wise words, considering that you’ve known her longer than anyone else.”
“Wise words? Zach, I’d be the last person on earth to have any intelligent notions on the problem of dealing with Melanie Adams. Better you than me, guy. I’d help if I could, but I never knew her to please anyone but herself. I haven’t seen or spoken to her in, oh, maybe six years, sometime after her first film was released.”
“Yeah, but, Spider, according to what I hear, you’re the man who knows all about women.”
“That’s a highly overrated reputation—no man on earth knows more than a little about women. My reputation depends on my understanding just that. In any case, I never had a clue to what made Melanie tick—she’s an original.”
“You always get the credit for taking the pictures that brought her to the attention of Hollywood,” Zach protested.
“I understood how to light her, Zach, that’s all. It wasn’t hard. I turned on the lights and pushed a button on the camera, her face did all the rest. No way to get a bad picture of her. No fucking way. Listen, maybe this will help. Before Valentine ever met Melanie, she told me, judging on the basis of the way she was behaving, that she thought Melanie must be empty. Then, after she met her, Valentine decided that Melanie was essentially sad. She pitied her, God knows why, because she didn’t like her. ‘Sad’ and ‘empty,’ Zach, words from a woman who had instincts that were right on the ball. Maybe that’ll help.”
“It will, Spider. And I thank you, really thank you.”
“You’re entirely welcome. Wish I could have told you more.”
“Will you give my best regards to Billy? And kiss the kids?”
“Sure. Take it easy, guy, and try to stay warm. ’Bye.”
As he hung up the phone, Zach Nevsky knew two new things besides what Spider had told him. Spider Elliott had been unforgettably in love with Melanie Adams, he could tell that from his voice when he’d talked about her. Spider also knew that things were over between him and Gigi. He’d never so much as mentioned her name … the dog that didn’t bark. Well, what the hell had he expected, Zach asked himself furiously. That Gigi wouldn’t have announced that she’d kicked him out to one and all; that she’d have carried on, for months, as if things were all right, just because … because of what, for Christ’s sake? Over was over. But, Jesus, it had been hard, not asking for news of her. He’d wanted to desperately, just to say “How’s Gigi?” but he didn’t trust his own voice. If he could read Spider over the phone, chances were that Spider could read him.
Spider Elliott put down the phone and put his feet up on the desk. He was deeply disturbed by Zach’s call. In the seven years of her explosive stardom, he’d avoided every Melanie Adams film. She’d damaged him right to the core of his being when she’d disappeared abruptly from his life, with only a foul, lying letter as explanation. She had been his first love, his first true love. No matter what had happened since then, like anyone else whose first love had been thrown back in his face with contempt, he had never completely recovered from the memory of her gratuitous cruelty. Only Valentine could have nursed him through the emotional crisis Melanie had caused.
He’d put Melanie out of his life, even when she’d tried to lure him back, using all her blandishments, and afterwards he’d discovered his love for Valentine, a totally different kind of love, a mature love, a reciprocated love. Then, little more than a year later, Melanie had come back again into his life. Valentine had died while she was working late, driven by the heavy responsibility of completing Melanie’s costumes for Legend.
Melanie hadn’t literally killed Valentine, he realized that, he’d come to terms with it, but it was a fact that if Melanie Adams hadn’t existed, Valentine would still be alive.
And if Valentine were still alive, he and Billy wouldn’t be married. Spider sighed in wonderment at the twists and turns of his life, a life in which Melanie Adams had been the thread of fate. All that he’d accomplished in life, all that he mourned today, all that he cherished today, existed either because of her, or in spite of her, but was, in some way, determined by her. If Melanie had bee
n a girl with normal emotions, Spider was certain that they would have been married long ago and still married now. He’d probably be a successful fashion photographer, for that was where his greatest talent lay, and she’d still be a model, or more likely, given the supremacy of teenaged models, she’d have retired to have children.
He wished Zach Nevsky didn’t have to deal with her, Spider thought as he got up and looked out of the high windows of his big office in Scruples Two at the last red glow of the winter sun drowning itself in the gray rim of the Pacific. He wished Zach Nevsky hadn’t called and brought up old memories. He liked Zach, always had, no matter why or how he had split up with Gigi, for reasons that weren’t clear even to Billy. Gigi Orsini could be trusted to take care of herself, Spider decided. Zach Nevsky, with all his power, was no match for Gigi … that much he did know about women.
Melanie Adams realized that Zach hadn’t asked for this meeting with her alone in order to discuss her performance as Lydia Lacy. She had become the best judge of her work, and the role of a very young and virginal music teacher who causes a blood feud between the two most powerful men in a small town in Montana was one well within the range of several other actresses, but she’d accepted it for two reasons: she was playing opposite Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman, and it was the very first major part that had been offered to her at the moment she had finally fulfilled her contract with Wells Cope.
While she was still unknown and unwary, with no confidence in her potential, Wells had seen the power of her beauty, he had brought her from New York to Hollywood, he had had her coached, he had had her tested, and immediately after he’d seen the dailies of her first movie, he had signed her to a four-picture contract.
She had been eager then to sign a deal that would protect her from all the lurking threats and unknown private agendas that can entrap any new girl in town, particularly when the town is Hollywood. Wells had promised her that he would “invent” her, and with his acute intelligence, his undisputed power with the studio, and his ability to curb her ravening impatience and pick exactly the right roles for her, he was responsible for a career in which she had not made a single misstep.
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