Action! Page 23

  “Amen,” AJ whispered.

  Bob Evans, who was sitting two rows ahead, next to Charlie Bluhdorn and his wife, Yvette, turned around—his fingers crossed—and mouthed, “Good luck.” The first category, Best Performance by a Supporting Actress, would provide an early indication of the voters’ predilections. The nominees were Candy Clark for American Graffiti, Sylvia Sidney for Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, Linda Blair for The Exorcist, and Madeline Kahn and Tatum O’Neal, both for Paper Moon.

  Tatum jabbed AJ’s ribs. “I bet I didn’t get any votes.”

  During his frequent set visits he had struck up an easy friendship with the actress, who was a year younger than his daughter. AJ had chosen to sit next to her because Ryan was shooting Barry Lyndon in England. “I voted for you, so you’re going to win.”

  “Nope. I’m washed up at the age of ten.”

  Not washed up but maybe a little screwed up. His hand enveloped hers.

  “And the winner is . . . Tatum O’Neal for Paper Moon.”

  For one instant Tatum had the only thing she wanted in the world—a career. As she skipped to the stage, AJ noticed his mother’s old friend Sylvia Sidney applauding like a generous runner-up. It wasn’t her most convincing performance—after four decades trying to capture an Oscar, Sylvia knew she’d die without one.

  Three hours later AJ exited the men’s room and spotted Julia Phillips clumping toward him across the lobby in giant platform shoes bedecked with rhinestones. She had sharp, fierce features, and the feathery boa around her black Halston made her appear a wild child dressed in adult clothing. She and her husband, Michael, and their partner, Tony Bill, were the producers of The Sting, which was in a horse race with The Exorcist for Best Picture. “Don’t jinx me,” she warned before he’d even managed a hello. If she won, Julia would become the first woman to receive that coveted Oscar.

  “You look beautiful.” AJ adjusted her boa so that her pearl necklace was visible. It was an intimate gesture for such a public setting.

  “I want to win so badly, Jastrow. Kiss me good luck.”

  He did so, and instantly her tongue darted into his mouth. AJ refused to break first, but when she pushed him behind a column, biting his lip and grinding her body, he came up for air. She had certainly grown up since the day he’d first met her, a year out of Mount Holyoke, slaving as David Begelman’s assistant. Although it would make a grand story, this wasn’t the time to consummate their long-standing flirtation. “Go make history.”

  “I’ll try.”

  It was past midnight in the East when David Niven introduced the final presenter of the evening. Elizabeth Taylor reacted like a deer caught in headlights when a figure leaped from the wings. He was pencil thin, hairy—and stark naked. AJ gasped, then giggled and booed with the crowd. When the security guards finally corralled the streaker, Niven deadpanned, “The only laugh that man will ever get is stripping and showing off his shortcomings.”

  With order restored, Taylor announced the nominated films: The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Cries and Whispers, A Touch of Class, and. . . . “The winner is . . . The Sting.” Julia jumped up, only to snag her string of pearls on the arm of her chair. An instant before they garroted her, Michael untangled the strands. Tony Bill hustled to reach the microphone first. It was too late for Julia to catch him, but fate favored the trailer—his standard speech served as the lead-in to her spontaneity. “You can’t imagine what a trip it is for a nice Jewish girl from Great Neck to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor all in the same night!”

  Millions of men around the world fell a little bit in love.

  In a flash AJ recognized his mysterious ice-dancing partner.

  At the Governor’s Ball he skipped the celebration of the winners and their entourages because the participants were so drunk with their immortality they wouldn’t remember he’d stopped by. The losers were a shrewder investment. Ten minutes spent listening to Bill Blatty bitch at how The Exorcist had been robbed won AJ a comrade in arms. It also gave him a headache, so by the time he arrived at the studio table, he needed the champagne Bluhdorn was pouring for Jack Lemmon. The actor had won an Oscar for his performance in Paramount’s Save the Tiger. “Lemmon’s fucking award cost me two million bucks,” Charlie whispered hoarsely to AJ. Despite critical acclaim, the film had bombed at the box office.

  AJ smiled at Yvette. “Your husband’s shedding crocodile tears.”

  “What’s a handsome man like you doing without a date?” she asked. “I like that girl you were with last year, what was her name? Kate something . . . ?”

  “Katharine Ross. We went our separate ways.”

  “Hey, Samson—or is it Delilah these days?” Short and bald, Frank Yablans never missed an opportunity to needle AJ about his shoulder-length hair. Bluhdorn had appointed Yablans president of the movie division—over Evans—so that Bob could concentrate on production rather than worry about marketing, administration, and legal matters. “I’m putting a clause in your next contract that keeps you from walking around like a pansy.”

  It was the typical defensiveness of guys who’d started their careers on the sales side of the business. AJ dealt with bullies by ducking under their jabs to land an uppercut. He stepped forward and kissed Frank full on the lips. “I love it when you talk tough.”

  Yablans was either homophobic or bacillophobic, because he backed away, spitting and wiping. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Gentlemen, a toast.” Bob Evans raised a champagne flute. “One year from tonight we’re going to have forty nominations—and God knows how many Oscars. We’ll own this ballroom, and everyone in it will be hailing us as the reincarnation of Mayer and Thalberg.” Their rousing “Hear! Hear!” narrowed the envious eyes of executives at bordering tables. With Chinatown, The Conversation, and The Godfather, Part 2 slated for release in 1974, Bob’s was no brazen boast.

  It was midnight by the time AJ directed his driver to a house on a cliff. Frank Konigsberg, the new head of the International Famous Agency, was the geek in high school—a TV agent trying to curry favor with the movie crowd by throwing a wild party. Unfortunately, his effort was wasted because no one knew who he was, even though he was the host. Socializing on automatic pilot, AJ navigated among the agents, attorneys, and executives, who outnumbered the actors and directors ten to one. From too chummy greetings he guessed the rumors of his promotion had intensified. To avoid the limelight he edged over to the terrace, gazing down a thousand feet to the Sunset Strip. On a night like this, a guy with the right job on the right lot could imagine he ruled the world.

  But even a prince’s stomach rumbled, and the buffet looked more appealing than anything in the room. He dunked a slice of French bread into an enamel pot and promptly singed the roof of his mouth with fondue. It was past time to go home, but AJ had a final congratulation to offer. Taking the stairs in twos, he left behind the chattering exuberance, finding in its place . . . near silence. The upstairs crowd was smaller and more artistic, and the drugs they were doing drove them into their psyches. No one looked as if they were enjoying the trip.

  AJ located Julia in the master bedroom. White powder dripped from the edge of one nostril. Her companion ranted about his Mexican gardener. Don Simpson worked in publicity at Warners. He was street-smart and a coke freak. AJ ignored him. “Hey, Jule, I’m really proud of you. Your speech was great.”

  She hugged him as if he were a life preserver. When Simpson offered AJ a hand mirror striped with lines, Julia gave Don a dirty look and pulled AJ into the hall. “I know this isn’t your scene.”

  “I was wondering . . . I have this favor . . . could I stop by in the afternoon—”

  “Michael and I are leaving for Mexico in the morning. When I get back?”

  “Absolutely. There’s no pressure. Have a great time.” They kissed good-bye, this time chastely.

  AJ detoured to the kitchen. A woman in a chef’s toque sliced and diced vegetables into crudités with amazing dexterity. �
��Excuse me, could I bother you for some ice water?”

  “Sure.” She handed him a glass, which he almost dropped.

  “Steph?” Although they talked whenever he picked up Ricky and Jess for weekend visits, this chance encounter with his ex-wife spooked him. He couldn’t think of anything to say. “Your fondue’s fabulous.”

  Reflexively, Steph smoothed her apron and pushed aside a stray hair. “Thanks. The Gruyère’s imported from Switzerland.”

  “But I’m always burning myself on your cooking.” Her back stiffened. “What are you doing here?”

  “I cater IFA’s staff luncheons. Frank gave me a shot.”

  “I didn’t know you were expanding your business.”

  “If I get successful enough, I won’t need your alimony.”

  Now it was his turn to take offense—he’d never begrudged her a dime. “If you don’t have enough money, we should discuss it.”

  “I have all I need.”

  Count to five, then go anyplace but the past. “Have the kids made a decision about the summer?”

  “They’ve both decided to go back to Raquette.”

  “Great.” Ricky and Jess attended his old camp in the Adirondacks, which meant he’d get one last visit to his favorite place.

  “And for your birthday, Jessie wanted to know if we could celebrate together.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He was thirstier than ever as his limousine sped west on Sunset, the only car headed toward the beach. He couldn’t remember the last time Steph’s body had looked so tight. The only reason she was in such good shape . . . shit, she must have met a guy.

  CHAPTER 29

  Kierkegaard was cool, cooler than anyone Ricky knew. The nineteenth-century Dane was this tortured genius who’d dumped his fiancée, even though he was desperately in love, because he feared revealing his despair and lust. Kierkegaard’s “dread” wasn’t fixed to an external danger, like a hit man or a wild dog; it lived inside him. But the dread was also positive, because it drove him to sin, and once he’d sinned, he was free to figure out how to assuage his guilt. People who were innocents weren’t free—or alive.

  Ricky pondered this heavy philosophical shit until his father interrupted to say they were late for a barbecue at Joe Wizan’s. That was so lame. He’d be bored, sandy, and sunburned inside an hour. The old man called him selfish and left with his sister. Screw barbecues. If Kierkegaard lived in L.A., they’d make him write lyrics for Jan and Dean.

  “Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward.” Ricky unfolded his lanky body from the overstuffed sofa to search for a Magic Marker to underline the passage. His scruffy bell-bottoms dragged the floor from room to room. He preferred home to Malibu. His mother wasn’t scintillating company—unless you wanted to discuss braising versus roasting—but at least he knew where his things were. The custody game was bullshit. Saturdays and every other Tuesday he and his father were supposed to become pals . . . chaps . . . buddies . . . amigos—not in this lifetime.

  Rummaging through the desk in the den, Ricky spotted the title page of a screenplay. Don’t Tread on Me. Sounded intense. But the name of the author—whoa! Talk about lame ideas—his father writing a screenplay had to be a howl and a half. The only sure thing was a gooey ending, like that pappy Paper Moon. The barbecue had an hour to go. If he skimmed, he could get all the way through the script.

  But after a few pages, skimming wasn’t an option, and by the end of the second act, he paused to read a scene twice:

  EXT. JUNGLE—PHAT LAO—DAY.

  Farber and his platoon slog through heavy vegetation. Ahead lies an abandoned Buddhist shrine. The roots of huge banyan trees have tumbled the statues and cracked the walls. Light and shadow create an eerie mood. Farber signals to Cpl. Oman to take two men and scout ahead. Oman moves forward. Farber consults a topographical map with Sgt. Deeves.

  FARBER

  Either the chopper dropped us too far east or the map is wrong, because this pit stop’s not on here.

  DEEVES

  You check all the tourist sites in Phat Lao?

  FARBER

  Yep. Amusement parks, museums . . . but no “ghost temple.” (refolds map) You ever see one of those Triple-A TripTiks?

  DEEVES

  With the route marked in yellow? Yeah.

  FARBER

  If the auto club had mapped this hellhole, we’d have already won the war.

  Without warning, MONKEYS and BIRDS start to chatter. Farber barely has time to look up before MACHINE-GUN FIRE explodes. He sees Oman and his team exiting the temple on the run. They’re too terrified to shout. Farber whips around to his men.

  FARBER

  GET DOWN!!

  As he turns, Deeves’s HAND SMACKS him across his face. He can’t believe his sergeant hit him. But it wasn’t Deeves’s fault—he stepped on a LANDMINE that BLEW OFF his arm. The arm hit Farber on the fly. Both men look shocked. Then Deeves’s HEAD falls off his neck and rolls to a stop in front of Specialist Covey.

  Ricky heard Jess and his dad singing summer camp songs. He shoved the screenplay back into the drawer and dived back onto the sofa. Kierkegaard was calling Hegel a jerk, but all Ricky could think about was what a sick fuck his father was—in the best sense of sick fucks.

  Turnabout was fair play. As a production executive, AJ pissed judgments on hundreds of scripts, but after finishing his own, he empathized with the writer. Rereading his screenplay revealed massive inadequacy. Who the hell was Farber? How could AJ have written a character with no back story? Sure, the script started with a bang, but then it bogged down. Condense the first thirty pages into ten. As for the title, how many readers would know what Don’t Tread on Me meant—unless they were a friend of Tom Hayden’s? Overpunctuation and commas killed the rhythm of the speeches. Oh, yeah, the margins were too fat and he’d left too little space at the bottom, destroying the symmetry of the page layout. And . . . just give up.

  He chose as his initial reader someone smart and vicious enough to end his misery in one fell critique. AJ entered Alice’s Restaurant and asked the maître d’ to take him to Julia Phillips’s booth. She sat on the patio wearing a sombrero that shaded her reaction. The script shared the table with a butt-filled ashtray and a bottle of tequila. “Lousy, huh?”

  “Shut up.” She poured him the drink he needed. “When you asked me to read your screenplay, I assumed a romantic comedy, maybe an earnest drama if I got unlucky. But a violent, kick-ass war movie—no way, not from AJ Jastrow. I can’t believe you did this. You did do it, right? This isn’t Schrader or Milius?”

  “Mea culpa.”

  “It’s fucking fabulous!”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “I’m not that kind of girl.” She leaned close. “No one’s seen this movie. It’s what Peckinpah did for westerns with The Wild Bunch. Farber’s a fantastic character. The dialogue’s too grand in places and the descriptions too gruesome, but it’s small stuff. For Christ’s sake, where did this come from?”

  “Catch-22.”

  “Huh?”

  “Heller’s book. I fought for Paramount to make the movie. War with an attitude—Mike Nichols directing—it had to succeed. The day it opened I hung around the Bruin, but no one came, so I crossed the street to the Village, where The Out-of-Towners was playing, and asked the people in line if they had any interest in Catch-22. Nope. To boomers who’d lived through moonwalks, assassinations, ghetto riots, Kent State, and Agnew, World War Two was ancient history.”

  “The film was a self-conscious piece of shit.”

  “Yeah, Mike tried too hard to be ironic. But I loved the idea. Men in combat surrounded by lunacy. Only it needed a war relevant to today’s moviegoers. That night I reread an unfinished screenplay my father had written about his experiences in the Pacific. Adapting it for Vietnam seemed a cinch, so I tried. In the end I scrapped almost everything except the heart.”

  “You have to offer it to Paramount first?”<
br />
  “Contractually.”

  “In case they’re too dumb to appreciate it, I’ll figure out where you should go next and come up with a list of directors.”

  “Julia, thanks. What you said meant so—”

  “It’s a great script and you should be really proud. Now I’ve got to get home. Michael and I decided to call it quits last week, and we’re trying to settle without lawyers.”

  “Jesus! I’m sorry—”

  “Hey, it’s open season on marriage. Save the condolences and find me a new guy. Preferably a twisted writer.”

  Gulf + Western ruled a Caribbean nation. The South Puerto Rican Sugar Company, a G + W subsidiary, was the dominant employer and landholder in the Dominican Republic, so “Emperor” Bluhdorn had bullied the government into ceding him hundreds of prime acres on the northern shore of the island, where he built a lavish resort. When AJ first visited Casa de Campo, he observed that the location was perfect for a tropical Pebble Beach, so Charlie hired a young golf architect named Pete Dye, who proved as consummate an artist as the best directors AJ had worked with in Hollywood. His construction crew chiseled, pickaxed, and dynamited eighteen memorable holes out of the violent terrain by the ocean.

  At Bluhdorn’s behest AJ’s golfing partner today was Joachim Balaguer, the president of the country. The way the man cheated, AJ despaired for the national treasury. On the par-three seventeenth, Balaguer’s iron shot plopped into the slate gray sand, but when they reached the ball, it had magically ricocheted onto the green—via his armed bodyguard’s left instep. Balaguer sank his putt and declared himself the winner. AJ reluctantly forked over a hundred dollars, since El Presidente wouldn’t accept the local currency, and made a note to submit his loss as a business expense.

  The round was a useful diversion before the meeting in which he would learn the fate of Don’t Tread on Me at Paramount. With its CinemaScope windows overlooking a darkening sea, Bluhdorn’s living room reminded him of Gibson’s Gulch. Charlie entered and hurled the script against a wall. A charming naÏf painting clattered to the floor. “You’re a fucking Communist!”