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  Steph and AJ hurried backstage to congratulate their son but couldn’t find him. Morris and Minnie Cohen, the father and mother of Mary Magdalene, also searched in vain. By the time the leads arrived, flushed with excitement, the parents had to board the boat to return to the mainland. AJ raised a cup of punch in a toast. “You were phenomenal. I saw the show on Broadway, and I swear the guy playing it wasn’t as believable.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “That’s great, because I want the chance to audition for the part of Private Morgan in your movie.”

  “Come on. There’s a small matter called school.”

  “Morgan gets killed in that first firefight, so I could do it and only miss a week.”

  Clever timing, Steph thought—go for it when parental pride was burgeoning. AJ jumped her attempt to postpone the discussion.

  “We agreed you could visit the set over Christmas. That’s it.”

  Ricky turned stage left and walked off without saying good-bye. A wonderful visit ended in another meltdown.

  The lake was a mirror as the Antlers powered back to the mainland. “When we couldn’t find Ricky after the show, you know what he was doing?” she asked.

  “Figuring out how to make me a villain,” AJ remarked glumly.

  “No.” Steph smiled. “Trying to get laid.”

  “Please!”

  “I saw a stain on his jeans and the girl’s cheeks were flushed.”

  “Boffing Mary Magdalene?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I need a drink!”

  AJ drove to his old hangout in Raquette Lake Village. The bartender remembered him from past years and provided a pitcher of Utica Club on the house. While they played pinball and shelled peanuts, Steph brought the subject back to their son’s career dreams. “Acting’s a tough life, with so much rejection. I understand why you’re fighting it.”

  “That’s only part of what bothers me. Actors are from another planet.”

  “Some—I grant you not many—are very nice people.”

  “There’s where you’re wrong. They do great impressions of human beings, but they’re really Martians. The idea that we conceived one . . .” He grabbed her hand theatrically. “You don’t think . . . Jess?”

  AJ was too drunk to drive, so she took the wheel. It was almost midnight when she ran over the geraniums at Deer Meadows Motel. A Paul Bunyan apparition named Mrs. Mulcahy emerged in a billowing plaid dressing gown. “Mr. Jastrow, a man’s called five times, saying it’s an emergency.” Suddenly sober, AJ studied the message slip. “I don’t mean to pry, but is that the Steve McQueen?”

  “Did he say anything?”

  Mrs. Mulcahy turned as red as the beefsteak tomatoes ripening on a nearby vine. “I can’t hardly repeat it, but he said, ‘Tell that son of a bitch Jastrow that his script is . . . effing great. I’m in!’ ”

  Within a week the negotiations for McQueen to star in Don’t Tread on Me turned into a debacle that threatened to scuttle the movie. Freddie Fields demanded three million dollars, 15 percent of the profits, a dozen first-class round-trip airfares to location, ten bodyguards, two chefs, and a motorcycle. Sins of the past returned to haunt AJ and Begelman. As agents they’d ravaged buyers, but as producer and studio they now had to choke down the numbers. One point, however, proved a hopeless stumbling block: Steve’s refusal to approve Russ Matovich as the director.

  In order not to overshadow Russ, AJ had deliberately skipped the initial meeting between the two men. It was a mistake, because Steve immediately called to bitch that Russ’s take on the character of Farber was too dark. AJ guessed that creative differences had been less problematic than the director’s failure to acknowledge McQueen’s stature. But the battle of egos grew more complicated than their mano a mano. By forcing AJ and Columbia to fire Russ, Steve was declaring himself the boss. Screw pragmatism—that move offended AJ.

  For advice he consulted the master of talent relations. Ray Stark recovered from his pique the instant AJ needed him. “If you start searching for a director who McQueen will approve, who knows what will happen. Even if you find someone else, Steve’s crazy enough to drop out anyway. Kiss him off.”

  “It’s not that easy. Columbia’s salivating at the marquee. If I lose Steve, it’s going to prick the balloon. I’m worried Begelman will kill the film.”

  “You can’t allow yourself to appear vulnerable. A weak producer is like the president of Poland. The studio, the director, the actors, and the crew are all waiting to march over you. You’ll live a lot longer as a son-of-a-bitch dictator.”

  But without his studio stripes, AJ evolved a different slant on the geopolitics of production. He saw himself as a diplomat whose job was to forge an alliance among the talent, who distrusted—and often despised—one another, an alliance that would last long enough to get the film signed, sealed, and delivered. So he leaned on McQueen to give Matovich a second chance, then drilled Russ on how to behave.

  The site of the summit was his beach cottage. Filling a cooler with beer, he fretted that both his guests were late. To kill time he picked up yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter. The lead story covered the turmoil at Paramount following the firing of Frank Yablans. An axe was hanging inches above Evans’s neck. Had AJ remained, Charlie Bluhdorn would probably have honored his promise rather than turning to Barry Diller, who was rumored to be on his way to Paramount from his post at ABC.

  Matovich’s arrival cut short the what-ifs. The director turned sullen when he didn’t see McQueen. “At USC we only waited ten minutes, and that was for a full professor.”

  “For the number one movie star in the world, you toss your watch.”

  Geographically, Hollywood was built on a fault line. Emotionally, so was the film business. And at the epicenter of most local temblors was a movie star in a foul mood. Was that a rumble? AJ wandered out onto his deck. Sure enough, across the sand he spied Steve marching toward him. AJ hopped the railing. McQueen’s body language announced a cocaine breakfast, which was reason enough to call it a day right here. The actor had a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson stuffed into the waist of his jeans. “Loaded for bear, huh?”

  “I got too many nuts trying to prove they’re tougher than me. I don’t go anywhere without it.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “You had no fucking right pushing me into this. Matovich is a punk.”

  “Come on. Let’s discuss it calmly.”

  McQueen followed him into the house, but politeness didn’t survive the handshakes. When AJ suggested they talk about Farber’s dilemma, Steve cut him off. “Spare me the bullshit. I like the script. I get the character. If John Ford here wants to tell me where to stand, that’s fine. But if he thinks he’s going to tell me how to act, you’re both living in a dreamworld.”

  “I’m no traffic cop,” Matovich shot back.

  “Russ!”

  “I’m not.” He rose from his chair and paced the room.

  AJ tried his last gambit. “Listen, Steve, we all respect your talent. Russ was only offering his thoughts. You make the final choices.”

  “He wants me to play an antihero. That’s not Farber.”

  “You misunderstood,” Matovich interjected. “I said Farber was complex. More than other parts you’ve played.”

  “You think my performances are one-note?”

  “If the shoe fits . . .”

  AJ thanked God Matovich had said it under his breath.

  “Hey, asshole, I asked you a question.” Steve turned purple as Russ continued to pace. “Sit down, you cocksucker, and tell me what you really think.”

  “You already know everything.”

  “I said sit down!”

  “Are you going to make me?”

  AJ saw the black menace of Steve’s gun spotlighted by the sun. The actor’s finger poised on the safety.

  “SIT THE FUCK DOWN!”

  Matovich glanced back. He screamed too late.

  An explosion rocke
d the room. The chair wobbled. One leg crumpled. Another shot splintered the second leg. Impossibly, the chair remained upright for a few agonizing seconds before pitching forward to the floor.

  The acrid stench of gunpowder rushed to AJ’s brain, clearing any illusions. If he didn’t get McQueen’s attention quickly, God knows. “Hey, hey . . . no problem.” He raised his hands in mock surrender.

  Steve stared at him. “What?”

  “If the police ask, I’ll swear the chair shot first.”

  “Fuck both of you.” The actor spit swill and stormed out.

  Matovich collapsed on the sofa. It was the first time AJ had seen him in repose.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok served a breakfast banana that made the Chiquitas AJ usually ate taste like wax. Diaphanous skin, silky saffron flesh, and sweetness . . . he joked that it was sex for breakfast. His passion and imagination had blossomed once he’d arrived to survey locations for Don’t Tread on Me. After the long winter of script development, scouting was the spring of moviemaking, when anything was possible and everything came alive.

  Their Thai production manager, Jimmy Chitapoorn, waited in the lobby with a map and a smile. He claimed to have found the perfect location near the Burmese border. Two hours later AJ wished only for a safe place to land. Brutish thunderclouds enveloped them at two thousand feet. The pilot cinched his harness, but before AJ could follow, turbulence knocked him into the bulkhead. Russ focused his viewfinder on the lightning strikes. Their destination was supposedly just over the horizon, but the only thing AJ could see out the grimy window was a dead beetle trapped in the double glass. How the poor bastard wound up there was a mystery for which there’d never be an explanation.

  A sunburst worthy of DeMille unveiled a jagged valley cut deeply into the terrain of northern Thailand. The verdant hills, teeming jungles, and Buddhist shrines eerily matched the Vietnam in his screenplay—and all stood within a two-mile sweep of the village of Lo An. AJ flashed thumbs-up to Russ and yelled for the pilot to land. On the ground the two men splashed around the rice paddies like kids in a mud puddle, planning shots and blocking action. From beneath his conical hat a suspicious farmer tried to figure out why these strangers were so excited about his home. For AJ it was the promised land.

  A month later—too late—he realized that his euphoria was an arrogant rookie’s blunder and the choice of base camp a mistake from which there was no recovery, only survival. Lo An delivered all the conditions that had made war in Asia a tropical hell. The ground slithered with poisonous snakes. The heat sapped the crew’s energy. Because the locals were neither friendly nor skilled, the company imported every worker who hammered a nail. As for nails, Lo An lacked them—and everything from sixty-watt bulbs to Q-Tips. A truck convoy arrived daily with its deliveries jarred or broken by the potholed roads. And the graft . . . forget the expense, AJ couldn’t determine whom to bribe. An endless procession of Thai officials held out their hands. “A few baht smooth the way,” Jimmy advised. AJ smoothed and smoothed, but the production still encountered friction.

  With principal photography ten days away, dysentery ranked as their most urgent problem. Eric Masters, the production designer, shuffled in late to a meeting. Forty pounds thinner than the day he’d arrived, the man could have doubled for a POW. While describing the ghost temple, Eric gagged and vomited over the blueprints.

  In their tiny community, however, news was contagion, and Russ cut short a camera test to contest AJ’s decision to send the designer home. “Isn’t there a drug that will make him feel better?” The subtext was, Who’s going to build the temple and the tunnels I intend to blow up?

  “Eric has malaria.”

  “It’s war, right?”

  “No, it’s a war movie.”

  Matovich assessed the potential replacements. “A bunch of hacks.”

  “Wake up! Dick Sylbert and Dean Tavoularis are too expensive. We’re hemorrhaging in construction and set design.”

  “Don’t go bean counter on me. Coppola and Altman make movies, not budgets.”

  “The only thing you’ve got in common with those guys is your DGA card. I’ll have someone here by Thursday.” Matovich sulked off, leaving AJ wondering if the dissonant winds from the Vietnam War, still raging among the Vietnamese two hundred miles to the east, had blown paranoia and disaffection in their direction.

  Walking through the lobby of the Sao Mai Hotel, the site of their production offices, he fielded twenty questions before reaching the men’s room. AJ hoped for a moment’s solitude, but found instead a naked male butt stuck high in the air. A stunning Oriental woman prepared to jab the left cheek with a syringe.

  “Hey, AJ, how’s it going?” Michael Douglas grinned through his legs.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m great.” The actor had dedicated the past four weeks to mastering infantry techniques under the tutelage of their military adviser, Colonel Mack Goodwin, a Green Beret hero. “Doc’s giving me a B12 shot. It wards off every local disease.”

  Dr. Sung Si Pak, the company’s physician, waved the needle at AJ. She was lithe, with a doll’s straight black hair, and spoke fractured English with a French accent. “You would enjoy one too?”

  “I’ll take a rain check.”

  Sung Si shook her head. “I do not think it rain.”

  “No, you see—”

  “I make joke.”

  Her laughter charmed him. Unlike most liberated American women, Sung Si seemed content with her lot. After Michael left, AJ decided to take her up on the offer. “Be gentle.” She struck at the instant his walkie-talkie crackled. “AJ, channel four, please.”

  It was Jack Sobel, the assistant director. “Boss, a few of us need to speak to you.”

  AJ might bitch about having no time or place to relax, but he loved living at the center of the action. “On my way.” He smiled at Sung Si. “How about dinner tonight, assuming I can sit down?”

  “I would like that.”

  AJ shut the door to his office, noting that the men in attendance averted their eyes. No one wanted to squeal on Matovich because they respected his zeal and ambition. But the director’s demands were squeezing schedule and budget past the breaking point. Sobel kicked off the confessions. “The way he plans to shoot the ambush can’t be done in three days.”

  “Is this Bo’s bullshit?” AJ asked. With his stringy hair and disdain for soap and authority, Bo Alpert, their cameraman, was pure counterculture. At thirty he was already infamous for waiting half a day for the precise light to shine, but Russ had pleaded that he and Bo were so in sync they’d get the job done on schedule.

  “I don’t know who’s goosing who, but his setups definitely mean two more days.”

  Merle Wrightwood, the stunt coordinator, reported that Matovich had doubled the dynamite and M-16 rounds for the firefights and ordered ten additional stuntmen. Then Dana Dorey, the casting director, asked if he should hire three hundred extras rather than the one hundred previously agreed upon. Staring at his sandals, he whispered, “Russ wants a few of the Thai girls to . . . well . . . work personally for him. Do I bill it to the company or ask him to pay?”

  “Him—and make sure he doesn’t wind up with a case of the clap. Guys, I appreciate this heads-up. Russ is going to make a great movie, but I need to protect him from his own appetite. He could eat our whole budget by the third week.” They trooped out relieved that he’d be the one to say no.

  AJ’s head throbbed at the prospect of tonight’s first full-table reading of Don’t Tread on Me. Would the dialogue reveal the complex characters living in his mind, or would it sound arch and false? And did the first act establish the core conflict sharply enough? Suppose he couldn’t make the necessary changes? If Russ pushed for a new writer, he faced the humiliation of firing himself. The next two hours would tell. Jack Sobel read the stage directions. The actors, swilling coffee and puffing cigarettes, performed their lines 10 percent below full throttle. Russ scri
bbled on a pad. AJ held his breath.

  During a routine search-and-destroy mission, an American squad commanded by Lieutenant Ken Farber and his key men, Sergeant Deeves, Corporal Oman, and Specialist Covey, survived a fierce ambush by the VCs. Upon their return to base, Major Hanley ordered the squad to reconnoiter Tet Vanh, a hamlet suspected of serving as a supply junction on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  AJ exhaled. The first ten pages ripped along.

  The team considered their mission virtual suicide, but Farber kept them from splitting into factions. After they unearthed documents showing that Tet Vanh was clean of VCs, the major insisted they enter the village to verify the finding nevertheless. The second act ended with the heroes in imminent danger only two miles from the target. During a skirmish at the ghost temple at Phat Lao, the enemy killed Deeves, the squad’s father figure. Morale sank. When Farber radioed a second request to abort, his C.O. agreed but announced he would arrange for B-52s to carpet-bomb Tet Vanh as a precaution. Farber knew that would mean the incineration of hundreds of innocent civilians. His choice was either to let it happen or take his men deeper into danger by personally inspecting Tet Vanh.

  His father had posed this ethical dilemma in his screenplay, and though he’d died before Farber chose, AJ knew his intentions. Half the squad remained behind, but Farber, Oman, and Covey pushed forward and radioed an all clear. Their action saved the village.

  The actors and crew broke into applause and besieged AJ with congratulations. He was too giddy to notice that the only person who hadn’t said a word was his director. He caught up with Russ on the teak deck outside the hotel. “That was a relief, huh?”

  Matovich fixed him with a deadly stare. “If you weren’t so in love with your fucking dialogue and the praise of assholes who don’t know shit from Shinola, you’d see we have a huge problem.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The ending of my movie sucks! When they walk into the village, nothing happens. The movie doesn’t climax, it stops. People are going to leave the theater saying, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ ”