Action! Page 27

  “It’s about a man having the courage to avoid a slaughter. It’s about the sanctity of life.”

  “We’re not conducting a philosophy seminar.”

  This wasn’t their usual haggle over budget. Still, AJ’s first instinct was to cajole. “Come on, Russ. The ending can be hugely dramatic. If you shoot the grateful reactions from the women and children in the village, the audience will feel proud of our guys.”

  “Now you’re telling me how to shoot it?”

  “I’m suggesting, not telling.”

  “And why should the villagers look grateful? They haven’t seen the movie, they don’t know that Farber saved their asses.”

  The question was legitimate—and AJ was pissed he’d never asked it. “You’re right, we need to—”

  “It’s irrelevant, because even if we figure a way to let them know, the audience is waiting for an explosion. We need a topper when the squad enters Tet Vanh. Hear me out on this—the VC should be hiding in the village. Then we could end with a massive firefight.”

  They lived in opposing universes. “That would make Farber’s decision meaningless. It would make him look stupid and undercut his courage.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  Russ rolled his eyes. “Then let’s have Covey go berserk and try to kill Farber.”

  “If Covey was crazy, why did he go with Farber instead of staying with the mutineers? You’re not making sense.”

  “How about if someone in the village makes a false move and Farber goes wacko and starts a shoot-out?”

  AJ experienced intense déjà vu. Hadn’t he conducted this debate a thousand times? “Your curfew is eleven.” “You will go to college.” “You cannot buy a motorcycle.” Did he possess radar that identified a director who could play his son? The collective frustration of years of parenting raised the stakes. “Let me make this clear. There’ll be no VCs in the village and no firefight. If you felt strongly about the end, you should have said it in L.A. Now you have to try to make it work.”

  “I don’t have to do shit!”

  “You have to do your job.” AJ shouted his last line at Russ’s back and two raised middle fingers. The son of a bitch was probably headed to the local bar to scheme with Bo Alpert, then fuck the girls that Dana Dorey had found.

  AJ glanced at his watch. It was Thanksgiving Day in Los Angeles. He could be home watching the Cowboys play the Packers, eating himself into a stupor. Instead, he kicked a chair over the deck’s railing.

  “Camera’s rolling,” Jack Sobel called.

  “Action!” Russ Matovich sent his actors marching through the jungle in full battle gear. Fearful, pissed, stoned.

  AJ bought it.

  Twenty seconds later Russ called, “Cut.” The first take on the first scene of AJ’s first movie was history. But the director didn’t yell his first “Print” until the fifteenth take, then repeated the same shot ten more times before yelling “Print” again and moving on. AJ fumed as the hours slipped by. At this rate, they should buy homes rather than rent hotel rooms. Later that morning Matovich ordered Michael Douglas to dive into the mud eleven times before he felt the actor looked sufficiently splattered. A torrential rainstorm washed out shooting for three hours, and when the skies cleared, Bo informed them that the fading light wouldn’t match the earlier work. Reluctantly, AJ called it a day. They’d finished a quarter of their scheduled work.

  AJ pulled Russ aside, but the director launched into a spirited defense. “On those early takes they were marching like a band in the St. Paddy’s Day parade. I had to wear them down so you could see their despair.”

  “I’m the one in despair, Russell.”

  “Hey, I wish it had been quicker, but this is art.”

  “No, art is brushing twenty bucks’ worth of paint on a ten-buck canvas in your attic. When you’re spending fifty thousand dollars a day, it’s also business.”

  “I know you’re quaking because the studio’s going to bust your butt. But the only real job you have now is to get me what I need to make this movie. It’ll be tiresome to have this conversation every night.”

  “If we have this conversation one more time, you’ll be on a plane home.” AJ stalked off. His eyes were focused dead ahead, but he couldn’t miss the crew’s astonishment. A few snickered. Behind his back Russ made some insulting remark AJ couldn’t make out. It drew stifled laughs. He should have known from his Paramount days—once the show was going, the balance of power shifted to the director, even one as young as Matovich. The cost of replacing him was catastrophic.

  AJ phoned John Veitch, Columbia’s head of physical production, who took the news with surprising calm. He suggested asking Russ to print the earlier marching footage so Columbia could make an independent judgment about whether he was being too precise. AJ kicked himself that he hadn’t thought of that. It took him hours to fall asleep. When he awoke to go to the john, he felt light-headed and sick to his stomach. Waiting for the nausea to pass, he determined to get control of himself—and retain control of his movie.

  CHAPTER 33

  No one achieved stardom without a first lucky break. Ricky’s arrived ten minutes after his flight from L.A. landed in Bangkok. Medics carried Larry Detmer, who played Specialist Covey, off a plane from Lo An, his patella shattered in an on-set accident, his eyes dazed, and his jaw slack from morphine. “What happens to the movie now?” Ricky asked the assistant director who accompanied the actor.

  “We shoot around him, but Covey’s in most of the scenes.”

  “Who will replace him?”

  The guy shrugged. “That’s up to Russ and your father.”

  Maybe Ricky could save them the hassle and downtime of shipping in a substitute from the States. Technically he was too young for the part, but everyone said he looked older. College girls hit on him, and with the right makeup it might work. Then again, he had no time to prepare an audition. And a friend who’d acted in Russ’s first film said the director took no prisoners when it came to performance. In his overnight bag, between his underwear and a bathing suit, Ricky located a squashed copy of the script. Go with Goethe: “One lives but once in the world.”

  “Why do we have to have this conversation?” Five minutes on the ground and his son was already testing AJ’s patience.

  “Just give me a chance.”

  “This isn’t about chances.” Ricky refused to hear that he was too young, that he would miss too much school, that it was nepotistic for the producer to hire his son. And AJ couldn’t say what he feared most—that his boy would fail and look stupid, as he had in those early days at school.

  Ricky kicked dirt and stalked off.

  AJ tried to maintain his dignity with the members of the crew who’d observed their argument. Why did they assume he was the villain? Maybe they didn’t, maybe he was too sensitive—they had kids too.

  Matovich ambled over. “Look, I don’t want to spoil your family reunion—”

  “Russ, stay out of this.”

  “I’ll read Ricky, reject him, and take you off the hook.”

  Why was Matovich offering to help?

  Russ must have guessed his cynicism. “I need you paying attention to me and the movie, not a sullen sixteen-year-old.”

  Fuck you, Dad.

  It helped to hate in this situation. Ricky was facedown in a circular length of pipe three feet in diameter. Despite the chilled metal beneath his belly, sweat dripped into his eyes, obscuring a pinpoint of light fifty feet down the pitch-black cylinder. Insects crawled over him as if he were a freeway. He couldn’t track time but guessed he had ten more minutes to prove he could survive the combat scenes in the Vietcong tunnels. He would last as long as he had to. How pissed had his old man been when Russ had loved his performance in the scenes he’d read with Michael Douglas? So pissed that he’d concocted this torture in hopes of getting Ricky to chicken out.

  “Time’s up. Give him a hand.”

  Russ’s voice was
welcome relief. The light blinded him, his legs wobbled, and pain shot down his arms. How did anyone survive solitary confinement? Remember the weakness and use it. “That was great,” Ricky bragged.

  “We lucked out,” Matovich announced. “Your kid’s tougher than Detmer—and better. Now we’ve got two Jastrows on the call sheet.” Russ yelled for Peter Jeffries, the costume designer, to outfit him in military garb.

  Ricky could see his dad trying to be a good loser—emphasis on loser.

  AJ awoke to the sound of tiptoeing on the floor. It was five A.M. and inky black in the jungle outside. A week ago, after he’d almost slugged Russ in a fight over the director’s unbudgeted redesign of the ghost temple, Sung Si had come to his room with an herbal drink that tasted of jasmine. He’d sipped, she’d massaged his temples . . . then they’d made love. Just like that. Neither of them had talked of a future beyond the last day of production. The promise of her narrow hips had kept him going late in the day, when they were losing light and Matovich was concocting a new crane shot. It had seemed so simple. But tonight her silhouette was sad. AJ stumbled out of bed to kiss her good-bye, lost his balance, and tripped. “I’m fine,” he assured her, “but you’re not.”

  She checked for broken bones, never looking up. “People are saying I’m your whore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How did they find out? We have been so careful.”

  Gossip about affairs ranked with complaints over catering as the staple of set conversations. “The crew notices everything.” He kissed her forehead. “I shouldn’t have risked your reputation.” Or made myself look foolish and fallible. She disappeared into the night, along with his absurd assumption of no consequences.

  Today’s work involved Ricky’s pivotal scene—Covey reacting to the death of Sergeant Deeves. Casting his son had worked out better than he’d anticipated. Ricky was acting brilliantly—and studying harder with his on-set tutor than he did back in school. Steph had argued that the experience of working together might strengthen their relationship. Although that hadn’t happened—Ricky chose to spend his time with the other actors—father and son managed to avoid further fights.

  Arriving on the set at seven A.M., AJ wished him good luck. “How’s the man of the moment?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “What’s wrong?” The boy was close to tears.

  “Russ told me you guys were going to fire me and get someone else. Why didn’t you say something?”

  Ricky stalked off. No such discussion had occurred. AJ ran over to Matovich.

  “I’ve been here for an hour undermining your kid’s confidence,” the director confirmed. “He’s too much of a rock. When I go in for the close-up, I’ve got to see his guts pouring out.”

  “Fucking with the head of a sixteen-year-old is your idea of motivation?”

  “Grow up, man. It’s good for him.” He pushed the viewfinder inches from AJ. “I’m going in so tight you’ll see every zit.”

  “Put that thing down!”

  “Oooh, whatever you say, master. I should have trusted my mood ring back in L.A.,” he snorted. “You have got to chill, man.”

  For once Russ was right. AJ watched the rehearsal from a discreet distance, lest his presence inhibit Ricky.

  The sight of Deeves’s rubber and plastic head gave AJ the chills. It was supposed to roll toward Ricky, who would pick it up, scream in horror, and attack Michael Douglas. One camera equipped with a forty-millimeter lens covered all his actions, while a second camera, with a hundred-millimeter lens, focused tight on his face. On the first take, the head stopped a yard short. People laughed nervously. But on take two it bounced into his hands on a short hop. Ricky hoisted it off the ground, then impulsively put it next to his cheek and caressed it like a mother with a newborn infant. An agonized howl distorted his features. He threw the head so ferociously it struck a light stand, splitting into smithereens.

  Matovich forgot to call “Cut.” Sobel nudged him, and Russ quickly ordered, “Print it. Let’s move on.” Bo Alpert suggested another take for protection against a technical glitch, but the director iced the set. “If anyone scratches that piece of film, I’ll hurl him—farther and harder.”

  “That was fabulous,” AJ gushed. “Where’d you get the idea of comforting it?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Just came to me.”

  “How about dinner tonight, you and me, to celebrate?”

  “Maybe. I’ll probably be pretty tired.”

  The rest of the crew rushed over to laud Ricky. No one noticed AJ heading back to the production office, head down.

  The citizens of Lo An wandered freely onto the set, ruining shots by popping into the background and toying with the equipment. After Ricky passed on their dinner to stay in for the evening, AJ met with the village elders to encourage them to keep the looky-loos away. He gave the international signal for “How much is it going to cost?” Mayor Kim demanded fifty thousand baht and a milk cow. Before AJ could tell him to forget it, an assistant announced that a David Begelman was on the line from Los Angeles.

  The studio chief was apoplectic. Russ had sent a confidential memo arguing that the scripted ending of the movie was disastrous and complaining that he couldn’t get an alternative because Jastrow was both writer and producer. So Russ had penned his own. AJ downplayed the drama—Russ’s desire for a slam-bang finale reflected a lack of confidence in the audience rather than a genuine problem. Begelman wasn’t interested in a long-distance script conference. Studio chiefs regarded the producer, director, and actors on location like children horsing around upstairs. They could scuffle, but God help them if Dad had to come up to stop the ruckus. AJ promised he and Matovich would resolve their conflict.

  Incensed, he searched the compound. Finally, one of the assistants said Russ had headed down to the set, which made no sense. The path was dark. So was AJ’s mood. He heard the music of the Kinks over the screeching of the gibbons. Another of his penetrating headaches clamped down and he half-imagined he was hallucinating. Or maybe he was suffering some weird Asian flu, since swallowing was difficult. The closer he got, the clearer the music. Someone had lit the set for a night shoot. Through the dense foliage AJ saw a 10K light positioned in front of Russ’s trailer, illuminating a Felliniesque picnic. Blankets covered the ground, but sex replaced the hot dogs and potato salad.

  Bo Alpert had mounted one of the wardrobe girls doggie style. As he pumped like a piston, she squirmed so frantically that his cock slipped out. Bo was too stoned to notice that he was fucking air. Meanwhile, Matovich was lying naked on his back, his viewfinder focused on the crotch of a Thai girl who squatted over him. He masturbated furiously. Ricky stood to Russ’s right, his jeans at his ankles. A village girl no older than eleven sucked his prick, which barely fit in her lollipop mouth. Drugs and pleasure fogged his eyes.

  A bullet shattered AJ’s brain. The fragments flew like shards of crystal. One must have severed his optic nerve, because black paint splashed over his left eye. AJ lunged toward Matovich, but his throat was so constricted that all that emerged from his mouth was “Rrrrr!”

  The girl atop Matovich pissed in terror. He knocked her on her butt, then looked at AJ. “Get away from me, you motherfucker!”

  Ricky grabbed for him, but he backhanded his son, splitting his lip. “You littttt ssss . . .” He screamed for the “little shit to stay out of this,” but words refused to form. AJ seized the tripod supporting the camera—its pointed end a makeshift bayonet—and raised the weapon over Russ. But the fingertips of his left hand numbed. The sensation shot up his arm and shoulder until his entire left side evaporated. All his weight balanced on his right leg as the tripod dropped harmlessly to the ground. He teetered, then collapsed. Matovich pushed his dead-weight aside and yelled something to Bo Alpert. They hightailed it into the jungle.

  His son crawled to his side. “Dad!”

  “Gggg Suuuu nimm . . . !” AJ spoke as if underwater.

  “What’s wrong? I’ll
get help.” Ricky raced to the hotel.

  AJ passed out, sure that he’d become the final American casualty of Vietnam.

  CHAPTER 34

  AJ’s view of the world narrowed to a few square inches. Lying supine, strapped into a stretcher in the rear of the company’s scout plane, he focused on the blackness outside the passenger window. Muted purple crept through, creating a rectangular bruise. Dawn. After last night he hadn’t expected to see another. As the light brightened, he spotted his comrade in arms—the beetle—still ensnared in the double glass. Behind him AJ heard the metallic clack of a seat belt and the sound of muffled voices as Sung Si briefed the pilot. Gunning his engines for takeoff, the man glanced warily at AJ. “You folks have a higher body count than the Marines at Nha Trang.”

  “Please fly low—do not go over mountains.”

  “Forget it, lady. There’s fog in the valleys between here and Chiang Mai. We’d wind up hitting something a whole lot bigger than us.”

  “If you go high, the air too thin and he will die.”

  Their debate was irrelevant to AJ, since he counted his life expectancy in hours. He wanted to tell them that death in a fiery plane crash might elevate his obit to the front page of Variety, but it was useless because he sounded like Peter Sellers mocking an eastern European dialect. Whatever Sung Si had injected had doused the inferno in his head, creating a swampy dullness. A razor blade seemed to be lodged across his esophagus, which made swallowing impossible, so he breathed through his nose and ignored the drool leaking from his mouth. The muscles on his right side contracted spasmodically, as if a rodent was scrambling from biceps to calf in an effort to escape a sinking ship. He preferred that discomfort to the paralysis on his left side, where he couldn’t move a single extremity. His left eye was totally blind, though the vision in his right remained sharp.

  As the plane lurched into the air, he began the dreaded test. With his working hand he reached to his crotch. It was damp. Great, he’d pissed himself. But that wasn’t his primary concern. AJ fondled his penis—nothing. Forget a hard-on under the circumstances, but he could always generate a little action. He squeezed harder—flaccid. Rubbing the shaft, slapping, pinching—dead meat. His hair tingled, his stomach vomited up last night’s peanut chicken, and his working eye twitched SOS. He screamed at himself to relax—why worry when he was going to die imminently? But suppose he didn’t; what if he lived a half life, buried only from the waist down? AJ prayed for the stroke to immobilize his imagination. Instead, it stampeded. He gagged and clawed at his body until something sharp pierced his upper arm and his mind went as inert as his cock.