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  It was a fine plan . . . until AJ caught the reflection of Russ Matovich in the picture windows that fronted Central Park. “What did you think?” the director asked with feigned casualness.

  AJ hadn’t called after screening the movie in L.A. “It’s ugly.”

  “Ugly? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “You don’t want me to go on.”

  Russ tried regaining his balance. “You’re the only one who sees it that way, except for those idiots in the test screening.”

  “Those idiots are the public.”

  “What kind of a producer bad-mouths his own film?”

  “The kind that can’t tolerate a sick, lying, egomaniacal director.”

  Matovich laughed savagely. “If you weren’t already a cripple, I’d make you one.”

  AJ lowered his head and butted the director in his chest, knocking him to the floor. The first referee to the scene was Matovich’s new agent, Mike Ovitz, who yanked his client away. “Cool down, Russell. You’re the star tonight.” Matovich shook off Ovitz’s grasp and stalked away. Mike soothingly put his arm around AJ. “I know you two didn’t get along during shooting. Russ is hotheaded, but he’s a brilliant talent who’s going to direct great movies. And we both know directors make movies happen. There’s no reason why some of them shouldn’t be for the producer who gave him his first break.”

  “Mike, let me be crystal clear—your client will never work with me again.”

  The agent smiled wanly and patted AJ’s hand. “This isn’t the time to discuss the future. Let’s just enjoy the moment.”

  AJ sat sipping a Courvoisier when he heard a familiar voice over his shoulder.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, Mom. Just tired from standing on my feet.”

  “You did well to get the movie made,” she volunteered. “It’s much better than you think.”

  “Dad would have hated it.”

  “Harry’s been gone almost thirty years. Give him—and it—a rest.”

  “I wanted him to rest in peace.” They never talked on the same wavelength about the most important man in either of their lives. “I’m sorry Leon couldn’t make it. “

  “He sends his regrets, but The Newlyweds is taking all his time these days.”

  “Another jewel in the crown.” Ginsberg’s latest series about a husband-and-wife spy team was his third show in the top ten this season.

  “He’s amazing, isn’t he? Right from Kelly and Cohen he’s had an incredible eye for what people want.” She spoke in an uncharacteristically soft voice. “Leon’s asked me to marry him . . . this time I said yes. He’s getting old and I want us to spend what’s left of his life together.”

  AJ toasted with his snifter. “Relax. I’ve had fifteen years to get used to the idea.”

  At the sound of laughter they turned their gaze to a table across the room, where a television reporter interviewed Ricky. Maggie reached for the bottle of brandy. “Here’s another idea to get used to. Your son’s not going to college.”

  “Of course he is. He’s applying to Carnegie-Mellon and Northwestern.”

  “He was only going for their drama programs, but now he’s decided he can act without a B.A.”

  “He’ll never earn a living.”

  “Mike Ovitz is the shrewdest man I’ve met in a lifetime in the business. He’s agreed to represent Ricky.”

  How many times could he fight the same fight? “Was this your idea?”

  “No. Frankly, I’d rather see him do something more significant, but he asked if I thought he was talented and I said he had the makings of a star.”

  “Everyone, come on over.” Ovitz hefted a stack of newspapers. “Four stars from the Daily News. A rave in Newsday.” He held The New York Times aloft, open to Vincent Canby’s review. “ ‘During the Vietnam War our generals claimed there was light at the end of the tunnel. Their boasts proved hollow lies. But with the arrival of Don’t Tread on Me, the light finally shines with this dark, deeply disturbing and brilliant film, the first to look at the war without John Wayne’s rose-colored glasses.’ ”

  Ovitz smiled to the audience that circled around him. “Let’s skip to the really good parts. ‘Russell Matovich has directed a war movie in which the final scenes are as shocking and brave a statement about the idiocy of combat as those in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Michael Douglas leads a convincing cast highlighted by the indelible performance of newcomer Ricky Jastrow.’ ”

  The Don’t Tread on Me team might as well have won the World Series. Cheers, hugs, tears—even the requisite champagne poured over the heads of the cast by a jubilant Matovich. AJ experienced not a scintilla of joy but knew that showing anything less than public delight would mark him a spoilsport. His grin hurt. The party found a gusty second wind, but none puffed his sails. A torturous hour later he grabbed his coat and slipped out of Tavern. Thank God the only person he encountered was Paul Glaser, who was reclining in a horse-drawn cab, stoned on weed. AJ took a couple of deep hits that made Central Park look greener. On the walk back to the Plaza he mused as to how long it would take anyone at the party to realize he was gone.

  The stroke had made him invisible, irrelevant, and a pain in the ass. Despite everyone’s elation over the reviews, the film would prosper only in the artsy sections of Manhattan and in upmarket, intellectual enclaves. That salesguy from Columbia had called it right. Don’t Tread on Me would hit middle America with a thud, knocking AJ back to square one as a producer. Remaining independent was suicide. Tomorrow morning he would accept Stark’s offer. Nobody fucked with Ray, and starting now, that made him AJ’s role model.

  1985–1986

  MANIAC

  CHAPTER 37

  For a man with a plan at a price tag of fifty million dollars, Tokyo was the place to be. After forty-eight hours in town, AJ understood how the country had launched itself on a trajectory to rule the world and why “Made in Japan,” once synonymous with cheap and shoddy, now announced quality and innovation. People on the Ginza didn’t stroll, window-shop, relax on benches, or sip cappuccinos in sidewalk cafés. They hustled to their destination, heads down, feet churning. But try flagging them over to get directions. For the past half hour AJ and Pete Leventhal had searched in vain for the Nippon Maritime Building.

  “I’m going to have a heart attack,” Pete grumped.

  “Catch your breath.” His lawyer was alarmingly out of shape—not just fat, but soft, buttery fat. Pete’s curls had gone gray, making him look a decade older than AJ, even though their birthdays were only days apart. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “They confiscated it in customs. Maybe you find it fun sleeping on a tatami mat, but to me it’s like camping in the backyard. And I hate sushi.”

  AJ handed him a Snickers bar. “Don’t eat it all at once. It cost me twelve bucks.”

  Leventhal stared at the incomprehensible street signs. “These are not our kind of people. When Commodore Perry first visited, he said the Japanese were the most xenophobic race he’d ever met.”

  AJ smiled. “That was 1850.” Middle age, a mortgage, and marriage to a Jewish princess had subdued the spirit of the passionate activist AJ had met at Dan Cohen’s antiwar symposium. As a lawyer, however, he remained sharp and challenging. “Pete, has even one person been rude to us?”

  “The bowing and nodding is their aggressively passive-aggressive way of telling the gaijin to go home.”

  AJ clapped an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Maybe, but for us, that’s not an option.”

  Their journey had started improbably six months ago, at the premiere of The Answer Man, the first movie AJ made for Twentieth Century–Fox under his J2 production banner. It was a comedy about a depressed failure, played by Steve Guttenberg, who discovers one morning that he’s able to answer every question anyone asks. A young Japanese man with a ponytail, dressed head to toe in Versace, had pumped AJ’s hand, saying he loved the film because he identified with the main character
. Sensing a psycho, AJ had smiled and escaped to work the crowd.

  But after The Answer Man opened at number one, Koji Keiku had tracked him down. For months AJ had been seeking a wealthy financial partner to fund a new studio. He’d talked to pension-fund managers, venture capitalists, self-made millionaires, and heirs of fortunes great and small—any investor, domestic or foreign, who evinced a twinkling of interest in Hollywood. He’d even met a character who’d turned out to be a Mob ambassador—all to no avail. Koji had explained that his father was a wealthy entrepreneur. They had secured a copy of AJ’s prospectus from a banker at Nomura Securities, and its possibilities intrigued them.

  An over-the-transom solicitation was too good to be true, even in a business where producers discovered stars at soda fountains. But when AJ did his homework, he learned that Seiji Keiku controlled the largest whaling fleet in Japan. Capitalizing on his countrymen’s insatiable appetite for whale flesh, he’d built a fortune in excess of a half billion dollars. As for Koji, he eschewed becoming a mini-Ahab. By investing in J2, he hoped to transform his principal joy—he was the ultimate movie geek—into a profession, at once impressing his father and declaring independence.

  The Japanese were an unsettling choice for a partner for AJ. He still remembered the awesome image of his father hobbling off a troop transport from Tarawa. But he had no use for racial prejudice. So AJ had courted Koji assiduously, introducing him to Michael Douglas at the premiere of Romancing the Stone and Paul Glaser, whom Koji idolized from Starsky and Hutch. But when his mark had suddenly stopped returning calls, AJ had crossed his name off a dwindling list. Then on New Year’s Day 1985, Koji had phoned to say his father would give him an audience in Tokyo.

  While Pete trailed behind in a cab, AJ jogged the four blocks to Keiku Enterprises. It was no sweat for him, since he had never abandoned the vigorous regimen that had enabled him to overcome his stroke. Gone were any vestiges of limp, stutter, or twitch, and he’d even regained the eye-hand coordination required to break par at Riviera. As final proof of his recovery, he imagined that the stroke had happened to someone else.

  A dentist’s office displayed more character than the reception area. AJ leafed through pictures in an old whaling magazine until a photograph on the wall caught his attention. “You have to see this.”

  Leventhal rose from the vinyl sofa to examine the picture of a young Seiji in a World War II naval uniform. “He came from a whaling family, so it makes sense.”

  “But it’s on the flight deck of the Akagi. See the date.”

  “October 1941.”

  “The Akagi launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.” AJ shook his head in wonder. “Can you imagine what he must have felt like the morning the Zeros took off? And when they returned, dipping their wings in homage to the emperor, he probably believed his country had conquered America.”

  “So he was wrong . . . by forty years.”

  AJ glanced nervously at his watch. “I wish they’d call us. Otherwise we’re not going to have enough time for our presentation.”

  Time always seemed to be running out. Not just any time, but the most precious kind—time to succeed. In a business dominated by youth, an almost fifty-year-old couldn’t squander so much as a minute. He’d enjoyed numerous triumphs in his five years at Rastar. Murder by Death, California Suite, The Electric Horseman, and The Goodbye Girl were good movies, but they were Ray’s, not his. No matter how hard he worked, he remained the guy people called when they couldn’t reach Stark. When he’d quit, the gossip in town said that he’d fizzled and would never achieve the illustrious station predicted for someone with his head start in Hollywood. Compared to Barry Diller at Fox, Sid Sheinberg at Universal, and a dozen others, AJ was an overripe second banana.

  And then there was money—or the absence of it. In the 1980s Hollywood had raised the bar of financial success, making him feel like a high jumper among pole-vaulters. Eddie Murphy had earned ten million on Beverly Hills Cop. Jim Brooks could make three million for directing the phone book. Terry Semel’s salary for running Warners exceeded four million, and Mike Ovitz had accumulated a personal art collection worthy of a small museum. Although AJ earned three hundred thousand dollars, drove a Jaguar, and wore Armani, he spent every cent he had to keep up.

  Koji bounced out to greet them. “Hey, Jastrow, good to see you. Really good, good, good.”

  The man’s manic manner struck AJ as anything but. “Is your dad ready?”

  “Absolutely ready. Totally, totally ready.” AJ made a sniffing gesture to Pete. “Just remember, he’s not an upbeat guy, so don’t expect a lot of enthusiasm. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested. So let’s get going, okay? Okay? Okay?” The guy bounced down a bleak corridor with low ceilings to a cramped conference room.

  Around a table of inlaid wood with designs of sea serpents sat a dozen Japanese businessmen, none under sixty. Their eyes had two positions: cast down at their documents or up in obeisance to their boss. As for the elder Keiku, his eyes were impassive, tiny marbles resting in pouches of flesh. After polite introductions Seiji barked something in Japanese that flustered Koji. “He wants you to start because they’ve got another meeting after this one.”

  AJ signaled Pete.

  The crowd soured Leventhal even more. He rushed through the key points in the proposed deal, making it difficult for Koji to translate. Keiku Enterprises would invest fifty million dollars of equity, in return for owning 40 percent of J2. As managing partner, AJ would retain 60 percent and control all business decisions. In lieu of putting up his own money, AJ would take no salary until there were profits. Wells Fargo Bank had agreed to loan one hundred million dollars, and HBO had contributed an additional twenty-five million in return for the cable and videocassette rights to J2 films.

  AJ would use the funds to green-light four movies per year through 1990. According to the plan, the output would then rise to ten films annually, but revenues generated by the earlier releases would fund the new production. The initial working capital would also cover the company’s overhead. Leventhal was slated to serve as chief financial officer and second in command, while Andy Faddiman would head marketing, choose release dates, book theaters, and advertise the movies to the public.

  AJ tried gauging Seiji’s reaction but might as well have studied the dregs in his teacup. The only evidence the man was alive was that he periodically sipped from a tumbler filled with fifty-year-old Glenlivet. Pete didn’t so much finish as wind down. When he turned the podium over, he sighed, “That’s the toughest jury I ever faced.”

  AJ stared into the abyss. No, it wasn’t a jury; it was an audience. And he was in show business. “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

  No one expected to hear an American scream the code for the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the functionaries shouted a reflexive “Hai! Hai!” Another knocked a saucer to the floor. Koji’s mouth dropped open. His father sparked.

  “Gentlemen, no one understood an opportunity better than your military did in 1941. Their intelligence and instincts told them America was a complacent foe. They dared to steal the moment—and almost won the war. Today Hollywood is the same soft target.

  “In 1982 the Coca-Cola Company purchased Columbia Pictures and created a sister company called Tristar in order to double the output of movies. They offered me the job of president, but when I flew to Coke’s headquarters in Atlanta, I found arrogant men who assumed movies were carbonated beverages. They told me to use marketing research to test the concepts of films. When I counseled that such techniques wouldn’t be automatically transferable, they smugly said I’d learn. Then my hosts escorted me to a secret facility where the company had changed the formula for Coca-Cola—the best-loved franchise in industrial history. When I tasted ‘New Coke,’ I found it too sweet and flat, but they told me that research proved that consumers favored it. I shook hands and passed on the job.”

  Koji’s translation brought nods of approval and knowing smiles.

  “I began to wonder .
. . if this was the quality of the competition in Hollywood, maybe it was time to start a new studio, because the movie business—as a business—is a gold mine. Attendance rose last year, as it has every year since the middle of the 1970s. The procession of blockbusters that started with Jaws continues with Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. And a technological innovation—a Japanese innovation—makes my idea truly viable. The availability of movies on videocassettes has fundamentally altered the economics of the business. Most film executives issued dire warnings saying ‘home entertainment centers’ would kill theaters. This whining reminded me of the first reactions to television. But cannibalization hasn’t occurred. A movie now earns as much from videocassette rentals and pay TV as it does in its theatrical release.”

  Seiji put his Scotch on the table. “I have studied your career and read your business plan.” The man’s crisply accented English shocked AJ. “But until now I was doing it more for my son’s benefit than my own. You are familiar with a man named William Goldman?”

  “I am.” Why, AJ wondered, should Seiji reference the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

  “In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, he says that ‘nobody in Hollywood knows anything.’ He says it is all a gamble. Do you not think that thirteen billion yen is too much to invest in a game of craps?”

  Koji jabbered something in Japanese, then sulked when his father curtly cut him off. Pete’s grimace said “Forget about it.” But AJ smiled. An accomplished sixty-five-year-old Japanese industrialist wouldn’t struggle through a smart-aleck book about the movie business unless he was genuinely interested in joining it. “Goldman is a wonderful writer, but he hates the authority of the studio chiefs who pay for his handsome lifestyle. To ridicule them, he argues that they are all frauds.”

  “You do not agree?”