Action! Page 35

  AJ had seen The Scholarship twice in the screening room. He respected it more than he liked it. The director, Paul Hovening, had coaxed the actors to performances that were honest rather than “movie cute.” The resulting film was edgy, sexy, and uncomfortable. Playing the Phi Beta Kappa prostitute, Cheryl Davis didn’t ask the audience to like her. Whether they would or not was the evening’s multimillion-dollar question.

  AJ leaned forward on liquid knees at the scene in which Cheryl first took money for sex. It was the Hail Mary touchdown pass, the jury foreman reading the verdict, the envelope with the notification from the college admissions office, the doctor with the biopsy results. It was every one of those events, profound and trivial, in which people feel that their fate rests in the hands of the gods. AJ felt totally alive and wished he were dead in the same instant.

  When they realized that the winsome Princeton coed hooked for her tuition, people’s hands froze in their vats of popcorn and they ceased slurping their soft drinks. Within a few frames they’d forgotten the day at work or the upcoming exam or the cost of the baby-sitter. A collective “Ooh!” filled the theater.

  Jessie elbowed Andy Faddiman, who was a pro at reading audience reactions. “Was that a good ‘ooh’?”

  “That was a great ‘ooh.’ ”

  AJ paced the back of the theater as if his hockey team had scored the first goal. Every laugh, plot twist, and emotional moment played as designed. Ninety minutes later, as the credits rolled, he embraced Hovening. “You did it, Paul. You trusted the material. That took guts.”

  Next in line were Andy, Jessica, and Shelly, with a special hug reserved for Megan. The audience sat quietly, rating the movie on a five-point scale. NRG staff members tabulated the cards while Farrell conducted a focus-group interview in the front of the theater with twenty moviegoers. Joe combined the authority of a Harvard professor with the glitz of a Mercedes salesman. His job was easy tonight because the audience bought the movie. People praised The Scholarship as original, honest, sexy, and provocative and appreciated the nonschmaltzy ending, even though the heroine wound up alone.

  After the group filed out, the J2 contingent converged on Farrell as if he’d just been handed the Ten Commandments. The preliminary tabulation of the comment cards showed that 41 percent of the audience rated the movie “excellent,” 40 percent “very good,” 7 percent “good,” 8 percent “fair,” and 4 percent “poor.”

  “Yes!” AJ pumped his fist in the air.

  Above 80 percent in the top two boxes was outstanding, suggesting highly positive word-of-mouth on The Scholarship. Joe noted that the ratings were stronger among younger moviegoers, while those over thirty expressed ambivalence about the character’s moral choice. Tonight’s audience was more sophisticated, more liberal, and better educated than average, he cautioned. No one cared—they had a hit.

  Outside the theater the salty air from the Pacific provided an intoxicating nightcap. Too jubilant to drive home, AJ grabbed Megan’s hand and set off for the boardwalk. Only then did he realize how subdued her reaction during the postscreening celebration had been. By her choice, tonight was her first viewing of The Scholarship. Did she hate it? They’d hiked almost to Venice Beach before he found out. “You’ve probably wondered if my script was autobiographical.”

  “Megan, I never—”

  “AJ, come on! You’re my lover. How could you not?” She slipped from his arms and faced the surf. “I did it once—took money to sleep with a man.”

  He’d expected her admission—but not the fact it turned him on.

  “I needed money, I don’t remember for what.” She whirled around wearing a sardonic smile. “That’s bullshit. It was for a Ralph Lauren camel-hair coat, which cost as much as my room and board. One of my jobs was to escort alumni around campus for ten bucks a tour. This billionaire from Dallas wanted to relive his football glory in Franklin Field. At midfield—with fifty thousand empty seats surrounding us—he offered me five hundred dollars to spend the night at the Bellevue Stratford. I was horny, he was distinguished, and the coat had my name on it.”

  “Megan, it’s okay, it—”

  “It’s not! Let me finish! I never repeated it with him or any other man. But watching the film tonight . . . it was like taking off my clothes again. I felt really dirty.”

  “I don’t care, Megan. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of—we all have.”

  She kissed him—more salt than sweet. The wind whipped her hair against his face. He couldn’t get enough. “Will you marry me?”

  Megan didn’t say yes—but she didn’t say no.

  On their way to the car, he noticed a motel with a flashing vacancy sign. AJ checked them in as “Mr. and Mrs. AJ Jastrow.”

  CHAPTER 42

  It was as predictable and nauseating as morning sickness. Six weeks to the day before The Scholarship opened in malls across America, AJ awoke with acid reflux. His burning, curdling burp was not a human sound. When he explained to Megan that it was the first symptom in the prerelease panic he’d suffered since his Paramount days, her concern shifted from his health to the film’s. He assured her that his anxiety was neurotic, not predictive. Producers and studio executives experienced perverse comfort in the role of Sisyphus. On the way up the mountain they and the boulder were one. But after it crested, the rock was on its own. Nothing was more sickening than standing helplessly on the heights and watching its downhill run.

  The only reliable remedy AJ had discovered was working brain-numbing eighty-hour weeks in the company of colleagues with as much at stake. Throughout Christmas, J2 remained as hectic as Santa’s workshop. Obsessively, he triple-checked the selection of theaters, shipping of trailers, and cutting of TV spots until Andy threw a tantrum at his interference. Then he turned his focus to fighting fires on The Coney Island Maniac.

  There hadn’t been a promising moment on the movie since Megan had handed in her draft. Koji had initiated the downward spiral. To revenge AJ for forcing him into rehab, he’d warned his father that the movie would be a disaster. AJ had reassured Seiji that he would keep a tight rein on Maniac, so he’d hired Gordo Slaughter, a veteran Australian director of low-budget movies. Gordo was ruthless, but his compromises produced complications.

  AJ reclined in his desk chair, trying to make sense of the latest crisis. Bobby Manelo, the actor playing the Maniac, talked like one. “Calm down,” AJ urged.

  “I can’t calm down. I’m going to explode.”

  AJ heard Slaughter yell, “Do it for me,” then a door slammed. “Bobby, where are you?”

  “In my dressing room. I told you it wouldn’t work. . . . I’ve tried to be a good guy but this suit’s a disaster. I won’t split my gut for a goddamn movie.”

  The fire in which the Maniac died fused molten steel over his body till he looked like a metallic man. Each morning it took three hours to apply the metal full-body suit and one to remove it, which left little time for shooting. Gordo had chosen a low bidder to design it, but the guy was so inexperienced he’d forgotten to give the actor a way to shit without removing the suit completely. AJ grimaced, anticipating the specifics.

  “I’ve been trying to make sure I used the bathroom before makeup,” Manelo explained. “Maybe it was that three-bean burrito . . . anyway, an hour ago I got these killer cramps. Gordo wanted me to hold out so he wouldn’t lose the rest of the day, but I got to take a crap so bad. He told me to shit in the suit, but that’s too gross.”

  AJ had an out-of-body experience. When he returned to earth, however, Manelo was grunting in pain and farting like an AK-47. Getting a few additional shots today wouldn’t make the difference. “Bobby, take care of yourself. I’ll handle it.”

  After calling Slaughter and ordering him to wrap, AJ grabbed his overcoat and headed to the garage. It was forty-three degrees and gray in Los Angeles; the weather fueled his doom as he drove to Stan Kamen’s house. Until a year ago AJ hadn’t heard of AIDS, and his friend still refused to admit he was dying of it, which gave
the visit another surreal edge.

  “Damn lymphoma’s killing me,” Stan whispered. He was emaciated, his complexion so waxy AJ wondered if the undertaker had gotten a head start. Stan stuffed a gold Rolex watch into AJ’s hand. “It was McQueen’s . . . he gave it to me for making him a star. God knows, you did half the work.”

  AJ leaned close. “Stan, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you don’t have the strength to tell me to shut up. Thank you for believing in me from the start. Thank you for being the best boss I ever had. And thank you for showing me that an honorable guy can make it in Hollywood.”

  Kamen reached out to hug him. AJ managed a tentative embrace. The man was flaky skin and brittle bones. AJ was grateful when the phone rang. “I’ll get it.” He couldn’t believe the caller. “It’s Mike Ovitz.”

  Fury stoked Kamen’s embers. He grabbed the receiver. “Come on, Mike, I know damn well what you’re doing!”

  AJ caught snatches of the CAA chief denying that he’d poached Stan’s clients. Whatever argument Mike offered caused Stan’s blood pressure to spike. His cheeks and lips flushed against his white pallor. “Isn’t there enough business out there for all of us?” Kamen slammed down the phone. After several minutes of wheezing, he regained control. “Tell Mike Simpson . . . watch out. Ovitz having . . . dinner tonight with Al Pacino.” Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—William Morris to CAA.

  “Ride ’em, cowgirl!”

  Sean Devine’s words were all the incentive Jessie needed. He held on to her waist while she gunned a snowmobile thirty miles per hour through the forests of Sun Valley, finally emerging onto a blinding field of fresh powder. A glance over their shoulders confirmed that they enjoyed a twenty-second lead over an army of other machines. The race was the pièce de résistance of a weekend competition organized by Sean and his cadre of baby CAA agents. The attendees were a score of young agency clients, executives, and producers destined to own the future, which in Hollywood’s half-life was five years or less. The beknighted ate and drank, skated and skied for forty-eight sleepless hours.

  Jess wasn’t sure if she’d been invited as Sean’s girlfriend or one of the “hot execs.” Suddenly nothing seemed more crucial than reaching the finish line first, so she opened the throttle on her Arctic Cat. They would have made it if the snowdrift dead ahead weren’t a mogul. Back at the lodge Joel Silver, who produced action films, offered to hire them as stuntmen in his next production. The miracle was that Jess and Sean crawled from the wreck unharmed. Matt Margolin, the boy-wonder head of production at Paramount, bestowed a nickname, “Crash” Jastrow—sure proof that she’d arrived.

  At two A.M. they climbed the stairs to a moment of truth. Jess considered Sean sex on a stick but had resisted making love with him until she knew he really cared. The only four guys she’d slept with previously were steady boyfriends. “I’m really sorry for almost maiming us,” she said upon reaching her door. “I was an idiot and you were a great sport.” She kissed him lightly on the bruise above his lip.

  “Everyone tells me I’m lucky to have found you. But I’m way ahead of them. I’ve never felt like this about any woman.”

  That was good enough. She grabbed his cable-knit sweater and tugged him inside, where they tumbled onto the bed. Sean was a delicious kisser. While making out with abandon, she rushed to get naked. The ski boots delayed things, so he knelt patiently to unhook them. “Would you like me to see if I have something in your size?”

  “I’ll take whatever size you have.”

  His tongue excited her wherever it touched. She’d never been so turned on. It might be ten below, pitch-black, and snowing outside, but Jessie romped in the sun. Later, as he lay in her arms, she discovered that Sean snored. That small imperfection was her final delight.

  At eight A.M. the fax machine beeped in the J2 office. AJ and Andy leaped to grab the incoming transmission. NRG’s tracking study for Monday, January 27, would predict how The Scholarship was going to fare at the box office when it opened on Friday. AJ was so anxious he wrenched his back reading the page as it inched out. Two numbers were as salient to movie marketers as systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings were to doctors. “Awareness”—the percentage of moviegoers who’d heard of The Scholarship—was seventy-three. “Definite Interest”—a surrogate measure of how many people would actually attend—was twenty-six. The first number was decent, the second disturbing. Both trailed Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the Bette Midler–Nick Nolte comedy that was to premiere the same day.

  “We’re in deep shit.”

  “It’s too early to tell,” Faddiman countered. Since they’d started their television campaign only five days ago, the bulk of the commercials would appear this week. And the awareness number suggested that people had noticed the film.

  “They noticed, but they’re not buying. You were right all along—we should switch to the comedy spot.”

  Andy had argued to sell The Scholarship as a comedy, even though it played as a drama. A funny hooker was appealing, but a real one was a turnoff. AJ wanted to stay true to the film, fearing that moviegoers anticipating laughs would be disappointed. And Megan hated the comedy spot because it trivialized her story. But pragmatism dictated making sure the movie got open before worrying about word of mouth—or getting laid. Andy was on his feet. “I’ll call the networks to make the change. We’ll catch most of tonight’s schedule and the rest of the week.”

  AJ tried reading a script, but it was so vapid he couldn’t concentrate, and watching yesterday’s dailies on The Coney Island Maniac depressed him more. Retreating to his desk, he compulsively scribbled numbers with dollar signs on a legal pad.

  J2 Costs: The Scholarship

  Negative$11,000,000

  Domestic Marketing10,000,000

  International Marketing (est.)5,000,000

  Prints for Theaters2,000,000

  Interest, Residual Payments, etc.2,000,000

  Total Costs$30,000,000

  If The Scholarship grossed forty million dollars at the box office, twenty million went to the theater owners and twenty to J2. With video sales and foreign revenues of ten million, they would just recoup their investment. Their current tracking scores, however, suggested a fifteen-million-dollar gross. How ironic that the volatility, messiness, and magic of making movies yielded in the end to something as immutable, precise, and earthbound as a profit-and-loss statement.

  Dinner with Sally Shumatz was a disaster. AJ tried to sell the Premiere editor on doing an article on J2 but was interrupted every ten minutes by executives wishing him luck on Friday. The bastards all had access to NRG’s tracking and their pats on the back were bullshit condolences. He felt like a dead man walking. Sally was too smart not to pick up their funereal tone. When she inquired about the prospects for The Scholarship, he said he expected a modest opening but a big second week. She didn’t buy a word.

  Disappointment multiplied by shame equaled humiliation. By the time he arrived home from Mr. Chow’s, he was desperate to bury his head and hopes in a pillow. No woman had ever thrown anything at him, so he was lucky to duck the vase that winged by his ear and smashed into the wall beside the door.

  “You lying son of a bitch.”

  “Megan.”

  “Don’t ‘Megan’ me. It’s everything I was afraid of.”

  “What is?”

  “Did you see Cagney and Lacy?”

  “How could I see it? I was out to dinner.”

  “There was a commercial for the movie that made it look like Porky’s. You promised me you weren’t going to run the comedy spot. You’ve lost faith in the film. Every promise you made to me was bullshit.”

  For the next half hour he conducted a course in movie marketing. She understood his reasons and didn’t give a damn. AJ hated going to sleep angry, but when he tried to cuddle with Megan, he found a knife rather than a spoon beside him.

  At eight-thirty the following morning, he heard her sobbing downstairs. The television was blaring
when he stumbled into the family room. On the ground at Cape Kennedy in Florida a network correspondent was trying to regain her composure. AJ knew that something awful—worse than the movie’s tracking numbers—was afoot but was unprepared when NBC cut to videotape of the Challenger exploding in an orange ball.

  “That teacher, that Christa McAuliffe was on board,” Megan stuttered. “The kids in her class watched.”

  AJ rocked her in his arms. The tragedy should have put things in perspective. Life, death, sacrifice, heroism, fate, connection—those things mattered. So he hated himself when he calculated the personal consequences, even as the rocket’s fiery descent played from different angles. The inevitable blitz of television coverage would continue, preempting several of J2’s spots and creating a ghastly mood for selling a movie. Given The Scholarship’s already precarious chances, NASA’s hopes weren’t the only ones up in smoke.

  On Friday evening a minibus bearing ten J2 executives pulled into the parking lot of a multiplex in Sherman Oaks. Filmmakers frequented theaters on opening night to monitor real-life reactions to their film, but it was unique for a company to attend en masse. AJ had organized it to acknowledge the effort made by his colleagues. Most of them were kids like his daughter, and he knew that if The Scholarship bombed, it would be better for them to mourn together. As the bus passed a line of people stretched around the block, he looked heavenward and prayed they were ticket holders for his movie. At the hiss of the brakes, they hurdled out like a high-school football team taking the field against its archrival. Unfortunately, the people in line waited to see Down and Out. Megan ran back to announce that the audience for their movie was already in the theater.

  AJ sneaked into Theater 2. In the brief seconds it took to adjust to the dark he sensed less than a hundred people scattered among the four hundred seats. They looked as lonely as he felt. Cheryl Davis’s character traded sex for money, but unlike in the earlier preview, the scene generated no thrill.