What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  “Nice sweater,” I said.

  He tugged at the front of his argyle sweater. He was growing too much girth. “Went home last week,” he said without looking at me. He was Italian, from South Philly.

  “Fun?”

  “Nope.”

  Former lovers are a surprise bonus in life. I patted his wrist. I was remembering the secret pact we’d made that we’d be sitting on rocking chairs on a porch together in our old age.

  Michael Finley sat down on the arm of the sofa near Sam. He slapped Sam on the back. “When you leaving, boy?” he shouted boisterously.

  “I’m not signed, so don’t call me boy,” Sam muttered, stirring the coffee with his finger.

  Michael bent over, forcing laughter. Sam hated authority figures. He’d once choked another head of production who parked in his space in the Burbank lot.

  “It’s just a formality.” Michael stopped his fake laugh.

  “More coffee,” Sam muttered.

  “Allow me.” Michael rushed toward the kitchen and disappeared. I calculated I had two minutes.

  “How can you talk to that asshole?” Sam wrapped one arm around my neck.

  “Judas.” I pulled away.

  “What?”

  My throat closed with self-pity. “You negotiated with Michael behind my back.”

  “Oh, God.” He scratched his beard with both hands and sucked in his lips nervously.

  “You’ll never film Jesus as a radical.”

  “We’re all in the business.” His eyes raked my face. “Anyway, don’t be such a tight-ass intellectual, Carol. I think it’s really an opera of human sacrifice.”

  I had sixty seconds left.

  “If Anita goes, I lose my job,” I said carefully.

  “God, I never thought of that.” He looked away.

  I almost believed him. “I guess Anita won’t like sharing directing credit.”

  “Huh?” He jumped up.

  “The Guild will rule, but she’s completed most of the principal photography.”

  “I’ll slit her throat.” He glared at me.

  Michael approached him with two sugar packets and a fresh cup of coffee.

  “I don’t share credit,” Sam told him in a menacing voice. He flapped sugar into his cup, then laughed apologetically.

  “Let’s call the Guild.” Michael dived at the telephone.

  Sam stood over him. “You didn’t check it out?”

  Michael looked at him and hung up the phone. “Sure, sure,” he lied, “but the only thing is, the secretary’s in Palermo and he’s unreachable.”

  Sam sat again, shifting his weight until the couch rocked. “I’m unreachable until I hear from the Guild.”

  “I want you in Israel next week.” Michael looked ready to kill.

  “Two weeks at the earliest.” Sam faked a yawn.

  I know when to say nothing. But I was elated. I had bought myself two weeks to make things go my way.

  “Just don’t make it bloody,” I teased Sam.

  “Please don’t tell the man how to work.” Michael took several steps toward me, his teeth clenched. He hates me talking during meetings.

  “She’s the only woman who bosses me around.” Sam smiled sheepishly.

  “Don’t forget your sainted mother.” I hit him in the ribs with my elbow.

  Michael squatted in front of him. “Hey, you can handle Jack, right?” I felt punched in the gut. Sam hated Jack; I knew he was jealous of Jack’s reputation with women.

  “How would you handle him?” I asked sarcastically.

  Sam shot me a sideways glance. “I directed the guy when he was first starting out.” He handed his cup and saucer to Michael and raised both arms straight up like a blessing preacher. “I love the guy, love him. The secret is, treat him like your co-director. I mean, God, you have to respect him for never making a false move in front of the camera, and look at some of the turkeys who directed him.” He smiled sideways at me. “Of course, he’s got his problems, big problems, with women.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Michael smirked.

  I hoped Sam didn’t remember my all too casual questions about Jack Hanscomb. He once called me a movie groupie when I said I knew him.

  “He has a disease,” Sam said shortly. “He has to seduce women authority figures.”

  “How does he get them all?” Michael asked.

  Sam fingered his beard. “He’s an actor, he’s a chameleon, he’ll give you whatever you want.” Sam avoided my eyes. I knew he practiced this technique himself.

  “He’s growing as an actor in Jesus,” I said.

  “Carol’s been supervising him. She knows firsthand.” Michael leered up at me, still kneeling. I hoped his knees ached.

  Sam snickered. “She’s his type.”

  Michael plopped down on the couch between me and Sam.

  “Don’t gang up on me.” I leaned around Michael to look Sam in the eye.

  “Anita’s crazy,” Sam said, standing hastily. “This movie’s been Carol’s dream for years.” He circled the room, finally landing on the arm of the couch by me. He began rubbing an affectionate circle on my back. “She’ll be a big help to me on location.”

  I checked my watch and cursed.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

  “I’m late for a date.” Poor Barry, betrayed again.

  “Business?” Michael asked.

  “Sure thing,” I lied, grabbing the phone.

  “I’m leaving. Walk with you, Sammy?” Michael asked quickly.

  “No, I got to talk to Carol.”

  Michael’s face crumpled. Then the door chimes rang, and he ran to answer. If it was room service with the champagne, they’d missed the party. Then I heard Rosemary apologizing in the vestibule. “I kept calling, ’cause I got Carol’s appointments for tomorrow morning.”

  She appeared, lugging my stuffed briefcase, her eyes asking obvious questions.

  “Sit down,” I said, “we’re winding up.”

  She stood looking awestruck at Sam.

  “Goodbye,” Sam said meaningfully to Michael.

  “Talk to you soon, boy.” Michael swung his palms together like a nervous football coach. He gave me a fast Hollywood kiss, buttoned his cashmere topcoat, and then he was gone.

  The whole room relaxed with Michael’s exit and a new kind of tension crept in. Sam sprawled back into the couch, opening his legs. Rosemary perched on the coffee table facing him. “You really start directing in college?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re my favorite.”

  Sam buried his nose in his coffee cup. He didn’t like me seeing how much he craved this kind of talk. We broke up when I learned he was sleeping with every aspiring starlet within a hundred-mile radius of Houston, where he was shooting a rock horror movie.

  “You read Prophet?” Rosemary asked him cautiously.

  “Yeah, it’s dull.” Sam looked at me pointedly.

  Rosemary looked bewildered. But she kept going. “I love your split-screen images.”

  I dialed Barry’s telephone. No answer. Then I called his Princeton laboratory. Then my lobby. The doorman said a doctor waited on the yellow couch for twenty minutes. “Oh, am I in trouble,” I said aloud.

  Rosemary rested her chin on both open palms. She was laughing her squeaky chuckle. “I got to get home,” I said to both of them.

  “Here’s today’s incoming calls.” She handed me my briefcase.

  “Let’s deal with that tomorrow.” I clasped the handle. It was heavier than usual.

  “Ahm, Carol, tell Anita, will ya, it’s just business.” Sam sucked on his lips, looking more guilty. “If it wasn’t for my divorce, I wouldn’t touch this project. I got cash-flow problems.”

  “Cool it,” I said briskly.

  “Carol, I’m sorry.” I heard some of the old feeling in his voice.

  I sighed theatrically. “Better you than somebody who didn’t care about me once.”

  “I still care about you
.”

  I am ruthless when I need to be. “Then keep me posted. I need any information I can get.”

  “Want to grab some dinner?” he asked, looking at Rosemary out of the corner of his eye.

  Rosemary looked at me admiringly.

  “Nope, I got to pack a suitcase.”

  I patted her head and kissed him goodbye above his beard. I liked him but I had to plot and scheme and use my brain and anything else I had to stop him from taking over in Israel.

  Five

  Twelve hours later I was in one of a hundred yellow cabs skidding away from icy Manhattan streets. I clapped my tingling hands. This was an adventure. In the international terminal I spotted Rosemary draped across the ticket counter on both elbows, her lower lip stuck way out. “You look like a hippie,” she said without making a move to help me lift my old suitcase to the counter. A smiling clerk began to type my ticket.

  “I like traveling like this.”

  “Where’d that bag come from?” Rosemary asked after a minute.

  “London. I bought it at Harrods on my first trip.”

  “It sure looks historical.”

  I wrote out my insurance form and wondered if Rosemary would find out how close she came to being a beneficiary of thousands of dollars. It would ruin her life if I perished in the air; all the money would probably make her an instant decadent.

  “You better be back in three days,” she said crossly.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to blow anything.”

  She shook her head and looked down at the floor. “Michael’s trying to fire you.” She was twisting the string handles of her shopping bag filled with screenplays for me to read on the plane. “He told some agent yesterday on the phone while you were in the bathroom.”

  “Arnie?”

  “Yeah.”

  My heart hammered. “What did he tell him?”

  “That he was sending you to Israel to position you.”

  In agent talk that meant I was going to fire Anita and then be in line to be fired for the failure.

  “I guess that’s what he thinks he’s doing.” I started grinding my teeth.

  “Yeah.” She kept shaking her head and looking down at the floor, chewing her lip.

  “Rosemary, you okay?”

  “I’m scared he’ll fire you, and then what happens to me?”

  “You’re in great shape. Worse comes to worst, you get another job at the company or I take you with me on my next job.”

  I didn’t say that nobody would hire me to make movies after this messy public defeat.

  She raised her head. “Then why are you so freaked?”

  “I hate long trips,” I lied, jamming my ticket into my bag, “and my God, I just remembered. I want you to keep calling Barry’s lab today. I missed him last night. I bet he took it off the hook. Tell him I left, and I tried to call him.”

  Rosemary nodded. “The usual fight?”

  “No, this time I want to break up.”

  She groaned sympathetically.

  “I hope Rocky doesn’t get into trouble,” I said. She was taking care of him at my house.

  “I got a lady poodle lined up.” She smiled finally. “I hope he does.” She hesitated. “Does Sam Falco have a girlfriend?”

  “He’s getting over his marriage breakup,” I said, trying to read her expression. “He’s playing the field.”

  She handed me the bulging yellow shopping bag. “I got you two guidebooks in case you go exploring with somebody.”

  “Somebody?” I lifted the bag of screenplays.

  “Jack, of course.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I tried to control a secret delight. I couldn’t wait to see the admiring look on his face when I marched onto the set.

  She was skimming pages of notes. “Here’s what I typed at six a.m. It’s a list of everybody on the payroll there, their credits, the crew, the cast, and those documentary boys from NYU film school making the movie about Anita making the movie. Here’s the latest production reports. I see she hired her mom for a week as a location scout.”

  A woman on the loudspeaker began announcing the transatlantic flights, ending with my Tel Aviv flight that stopped in Paris. I felt a burst of elation, headed for adventure. Rosemary pulled more typed pages out of a manila envelope. “Here’s all the interoffice memos. Requests for dry ice, balloons, purple parrots, plus her contract. You better read it.”

  We were running to the departure gate. “I better pray a lot.”

  “Work on your attitude,” she said, smacking my back. I waved once from the airplane ramp. The stewardess took my boarding pass. I felt bad watching Rosemary squint up at me. I had been so busy worrying about my own peace of mind I had negelcted to notice hers.

  I decided to fast to avoid jet lag. Drinking water, worrying over my mission, and reading Anita’s production reports, I finally fell asleep jammed against the thick airplane window. I was girding my loins for a power struggle with my oldest and best friend.

  When we landed at Orly, I wandered past the duty-free shop and remembered Marilyn Monroe gushing in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: “Pardon me, is this the way to Europe, France?”

  The other El Al passengers were wealthy Arabs in fitted Italian suits except for my old review editor at The New York Times. When I lurched past him on the way to the door marked “Femmes” he peered over his half-glasses. “Kiddo, what are you up to?”

  “Secret business, Ronald. And you?”

  “My son took a house in the Jordan Valley. I had a couple of days coming to me. He’s paying the rent.

  “Come sit,” he added. He looked the worse for wear in a crumpled cotton suit and loose tie. The glasses magnified his melancholy green eyes. He had been my first editor in New York and I worshipped him. These days we meet for deli lunches and I try to make him smile. He prefers pining after William Carlos Williams.

  I saw he was writing a poem on a yellow legal pad.

  “More bureaucratic despair?” I slid past his knees to the window seat.

  He nodded. He had written a passionate short book of poems about the life of an office worker yearning for heroism. He wrote late at night under the influence of searing straight bourbon. By day he stood by his cluttered desk and babied writers on the phone, crossed out their words, tending to literary and movie tradition, and playing office politics.

  “I’ve been saying Kaddish for my father,” Ronald said, clicking his ballpoint pen, “ever since my mother called from Florida to tell me I’m fifty-five and a failure.”

  “You’ll turn it into a great poem,” I said, touched.

  He pulled at the oriental tuft of gray hairs at his chin. “You look tense. It’s the job, no?”

  I lowered my shoulders. “Could be.”

  “When you get tired of the crap, come see me.”

  “What for?”

  “I can toss you a free-lance movie review.”

  “I’m no starving critic. I’m making a serious religious movie where finally Jesus will be somebody Jews can identify with.”

  “This too shall pass.” He began to draw circles with his pen. I laughed and inched past his knees to the aisle. Nobody was banking on my future in the movie business.

  Six

  Wide-angle camera tracks Arab boy with bare chest skipping along black tarmac past small airplane. Sky is blinding, unreal blue.

  The pure desert heat sucked my breath. I jumped out of the yellow plane elated to be back in Israel even if it was just this little sand island off Tel Aviv. Around the airstrip loomed a row of ancient granite houses. They looked sacred and from another world, but it felt like I was coming home.

  Inside the cement airport office, our production manager, Paul Riley, was waving a bare arm at me. He sat at a green Formica car rental counter eating plump black olives next to an old man in a white turban. I waved back, feeling my face stretch into a huge smile, my taste buds tingling.

  “What brings you here?” I asked, dragging my suitcase to him. I was
happy for the breeze from the laboring air conditioner.

  “Your secretary phoned and we’re not shooting for another hour at least,” he said, pulling me against his damp tee shirt.

  “You going native?” I asked, surveying his thong sandals, the white rag around his forehead, and khaki shorts.

  “It’s my location outfit,” he said, reaching for my suitcase handle. I didn’t let it go. “Carry it yourself, it’s too hot to fight another broad,” and he strode away, his sandals slapping the cement floor. My jaw dropped; he had lost patience with Anita, too.

  I caught up with him at the door and relinquished the suitcase.

  “I hear Michael sent you to give us the ax.” He looked worried.

  “Nobody’s shutting anything down. He sent me to play Henry Kissinger.”

  He sighed with disbelief. He’s been lied to a lot by people with jobs like mine. It was 6 a.m. and the street was silent. He spoke over his shoulder. “Two weeks ago, I’d say you had a shot.” He turned into a shadowed alley.

  “And now?”

  I peered up at a slit window in one massive stone house. I had a weird impulse to knock on doors and ask some local person for advice about how I should live out the rest of my life.

  “Why should Jack let Anita walk all over him?” Poor Paul was really mad at himself—the studio’s cop on the movie, Anita had made a fool out of him.

  Inside the heated car, he turned the motor.

  “The two of them speaking?” I asked as we passed sun-bleached gravestones behind a mosque that looked thousands of years old, overrun by tall purple sage. I recognized a setting for one of her miracle scenes.

  “Nope, he won’t come out of his place.”

  “Whose fault is it, do you think?”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “She’s a ballbuster and he’s a self-indulgent brat.”

  “Who started it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s chemistry.”

  “Sounds like sex.” My heart hammered like a silly girl’s.