Scruples Two (13 page)

Of all the egomaniacs who band together to make films, directors are unquestionably the worst, but wouldn’t you have thought, she asked her pale, clean, perfect face, that
one
of them would have suited Vito, bloated with self-importance though he was? Milos Forman, John Schlesinger and Sir Carol Reed had all read the script, had all been eager to direct
The WASP
, until Vito made it plain that he would attempt to dominate them, until they came to understand that this producer, this mere producer, had every intention of coming to the set every single day and breathing down their necks as they plied their trade, instead of taking himself off to an office somewhere, hopefully deep underground, from which he would devote himself to making their lives easy.

She hadn’t tried to resist telling her husband that it served Vito right for not having signed Fifi Hill who had directed
Mirrors
and won the Best Director Oscar last year, but of course by the time Vito tried to get Fifi he was unavailable. Yet, even then, Susan thought, breaking into a wide smile at the memory, Vito had made another of his last-minute saves. From somewhere he had gotten his hooks into a young director, Danny Siegel, who had been responsible for two low-budget films, both critical successes, a director still so new to the business that he’d jumped at the job of tackling a huge picture in spite of the specter of Vito’s control looming over him.

Yes, at that point even she had almost decided that the movie was out of the woods from a preproduction point of view, Susan remembered. With the stars signed, the character parts cast, a good finished script, a talented if untested director, and an experienced producer who had just won an Academy Award, the number of things that could go wrong seemed to have diminished. Her good humor had faded as Vito seemed to have overcome his problems.

By that time the budget had been thrown away, of course. With so much time wasted on the aborted scripts and finding a director, Siegel would be forced to shoot in “platinum time,” which starts after double time is over, paying everyone on the picture triple time to finish the picture on schedule, to work twelve-hour days, to work weekends and holidays. But what did millions of dollars in additional crew costs matter on what was going to be the picture of the year? Wasn’t that how Curt had put it? Her father would have put it more pungently, perhaps Joe Farber wouldn’t have put up with it at all, but directors in his day weren’t as powerful as they had become.

Susan Arvey began to slowly brush her hair. Getting ready to go to bed was a calming ritual with her and she never rushed, no matter how late it was. She brushed and brushed, all but grinning now at her reflection in the mirror, remembering the way in which young Danny Siegel had immediately made Redford and Nicholson like him, trust him. The man had a way about him, a dynamic force, an all-but-irresistible youthful imagination that was so fresh, so inventive that when he’d had his brainstorm, his stroke of genius, when he’d hit upon the most unexpected and challenging way to use the actors, they had immediately responded to him.

She’d never forget the day Curt came home and told her that on Siegel’s suggestion Redford and Nicholson had decided to
exchange
roles, that Redford was going to play the Mafia prince and Nicholson the WASP. Vito, Curt said, had been totally caught up in their wave of excitement, Vito had completely agreed with Siegel that it was a brilliant idea, Vito had been utterly convinced that only a young jerk of a film student would cast Redford as a WASP, that only a hack producer would cast Nicholson as a Machiavellian mafioso, but that to let them play against type was an act of courage, of daring, of sheer brilliance that would never be forgotten in Hollywood.

The makeup people had done their best, particularly since the two men had to age twenty-five years during the picture, but with stars like Redford and Nicholson there was a strict limit to the amount of makeup you could use to change their internationally famous faces. Susan Arvey walked into her closet to put on her nightgown, shut the door behind her and gave herself over, doubled up, into a fit of laughter that would have turned into hysteria in a less well controlled woman.

Redford, with his blond hair darkened, but burdened with his saintly blue eyes, his indestructible good-guy smile, his entire personal baggage of Anglo-Saxon heritage, his
aura
of built-in sweetness, his beatific
teeth
, for Christ’s sake, plotting corruption against his best friend with an assortment of sinister mafiosi, each one of them supposed to be a member of his very own family; Nicholson, in that perfect WASP toupee over his toned-down but unmistakably diabolic eyebrows, his wickedly gleaming eyes, his marvelously crazed smile, his cacklingly naughty laugh, supposedly having no problem at all in earning the trust of the American voters.… both actors doing their excellent best, God knows, but quite unable to escape from the power of those essential and uniquely personal qualities that were the bedrock reason they
were
stars, not mere actors. Christ, she hadn’t dared to look at the screen during most of the charity showing, for fear that she’d start to shriek with laughter and not be able to stop.

She’d had to concentrate hard on her contempt for the benefit crowd, civilians every one. They were so excited by having secured their coveted, expensive tickets, so awed by the scenery and the elaborate sets, so sucked in by the guaranteed star power on the screen, so pleased by the faithful rendition of the plot of the book, that they hadn’t dared to trust their own judgment about the casting, even assuming that they were making judgments. Critics, she told herself, they weren’t. The critics, the real critics, would have their say soon enough.

You’re dead meat, Vito, Susan Farber Arvey told herself cheerfully, and blew a kiss to herself in the mirror.

“Susan? Where the hell are you?” Her husband was prowling around outside her bathroom, never daring to violate her inner sanctum.

“I’ll be right out,” she called. After all, she reminded herself, twenty-one years of marriage.… she’d have to take pity on the poor schmuck, as her father had called him to his dying day. Tonight at least.

“Tired?” she asked sympathetically, as she emerged, tying the sash of her satin robe.

“Yeah, beat. These previews take a lot out of you, even when the press hasn’t seen the picture yet.”

“I thought Diane Keaton was a revelation, darling, I had no idea she could be so overpoweringly sexy. When a woman can be made to understand that another woman’s sexy …”

“That scene where Romanos seduces her in the suite at the Marriott while Sutherland is making his big campaign speech in the ballroom.…”

“It was as lowdown and dirty a scene as you can get on the screen … everybody will be talking about it … I could see it again and again.”

“I never thought we’d get so many clothes off her,” Curt Arvey said.

“All her clothes were a triumph, darling. The Annie Hall look is gone forever. In fact, everybody who had anything to do with the wardrobe should get a raise.”

“And the music, Susan, was it great, or was it great?”

“It’s still going through my head, the theme in particular.”

“What about the sets, Susan? I told you they’d work, even without those damn places we couldn’t rent in Newport.”

“Who’d ever know? If I hadn’t been to Newport myself, I would swear that you’d shot there. Vito had a brilliant set designer, Curt, not just Newport, the whole picture was drop-dead gorgeous.”

“And that Diane!” Curt Arvey whistled. “When I think that Vito wanted Fonda … I’m glad I talked him out of it.”

“Amazing that you actually talked Vito out of even that one detail, dear. The entire picture is his, you realize, totally his. A Vito Orsini Production, never forget it. Vito’s vision, dear, his responsibility, his final imprint, his every last one of the important decisions.” Susan fussed with the pillows on her bed until she had them arranged in the way she liked them, which no maid had ever quite learned. She turned to Curt, who was sitting on his bed, looking into space.

“You know, Curt, I’d be the last person ever to underestimate the importance of a studio, you financed it, it’s part of your yearly product, but let’s face it, darling, Vito Orsini is going to grab all the credit, there’s no way out of that. I have to admit, in all fairness, that he’s the final creative force on this picture, whether I like him personally or not, and I still don’t, no matter how well this picture does. Just as Vito lapped up all the credit on
Mirrors
, I assume he’ll do the same with this one, and, as usual, we’ll just have to stand by and watch him get the glory, while nobody even remembers the name of the studio that financed it.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that, Susan.” Curt Arvey smiled for the first time in five hours. “Yeah, it’s Vito’s baby, all right, from beginning to end, every last frame of the picture. I think I’ll try to go to sleep now, Susan.”

“Sweet dreams, dear.” Susan Arvey gave her husband a kindly kiss. She would go straight to wife heaven for this night’s work, she thought, as she planned her visit to Geoffrey Beene’s trunk show at Magnin’s the next day. Beene was her favorite designer, and she rather thought she might just order one of everything, in fact she was sure of it.

On the day Curt had come home and told her of the exchange of roles between Redford and Nicholson, on that day which marked the exact minute when Danny Siegel took over the picture and Vito, megalomaniac that he was, had not seen the trap he was falling into, had, incredibly, been so puffed up by his illusion of his personal infallibility, that he had climbed on board little Danny’s bandwagon of lunatics, Susan Farber Arvey had told her husband that he must cross-collateralize the profits of
Mirrors
against the future profits on
The WASP
, and do it at once. She had not bothered to sugar-coat her words that day, she’d said “must” and she’d meant
must
. Curt had listened to her without objections. Vito had made no difficulty about the change in the deal, as carried away by the conviction that he couldn’t make a mistake as he was convinced by Curt’s threat to shut down the picture and write it off as a tax loss.

The Arvey Studio’s yearly balance sheet wouldn’t suffer by so much as a penny from tonight’s delicious debacle, she thought blithely, for
The WASP
, a thirty-million-dollar movie that would lose everything it cost, was completely covered by the profits on
Mirrors
that continued to roll in steadily from all over the world.

In fact, as this happy financial truth sank in deeper and deeper, Susan Arvey decided that the day after tomorrow she’d commandeer one of the studio’s jets, fly to New York and do some meaningful shopping, antique shopping, for there was a limit to how much serious money you could spend on clothes. Perhaps she should consider redecorating the entire house. On reflection, it cried out to be done. She’d call Mark Hampton in the morning. She deserved her little rewards.

Redford and Nicholson wouldn’t lose. They would easily laugh their way through such massively ridiculous miscasting … no more than a glitch for each of them, not even that. But Vito! Vito had had the power to stop the exchange of parts as soon as it started. Vito could have fired that criminally insane Siegel boy, replaced him with any competent nonentity, and the picture, as written and originally cast, would have been a classic, a huge moneymaker for all of them.

Ah, Vito, you persistent overreacher, you’ve finally made the fatal mistake for which Hollywood will never forgive or forget you … your first major picture, your first giant chance, your opportunity to lock in the success of your fluke Oscar, and you’ve screwed it up totally. No one in this town will fail to be delighted by your failure. Haven’t you been asking for it for a long, long time? Susan Arvey mentally crossed Vito Orsini’s name off the list of people with whom she intended to get even. There was nothing she could do to him that he hadn’t done to himself.

Would Curt, she wondered, ever openly acknowledge that she had been the one to insist on the cross-collateralization, that she had seen the iceberg that sank the
Titanic
in time to save the ship? Possibly he would never give her the credit due her. It was late in life to realize you’d married a man as nonvalidating as your father, but there was no help for making such a classic mistake.

Still and all, she was one up on Curt for two or three years—maybe four—and he knew it. When you resort to assuring each other how good the music had been after a screening, you’ve touched bottom. As Susan Arvey moved happily toward sleep she wished that her father, that blindly chauvinistic old bastard, had been here to listen to her performance tonight. But no, he was probably too busy turning over in his grave. In his day you could have bought a huge chunk of L.A. with thirty million dollars. And in his day he had.

5

M
aggie MacGregor shoved her desk chair back on its rollers and put her legs up on her littered desk. The weekly meeting to plan her show was over; her executive producer, her line producer, her assistant producers, her writers and the rest of the drifting flotsam and jetsam who seemed necessary to the network to make the show work every week, had gone, taking their ceramic mugs and leftover doughnuts with them.

Alone for the first time in hours, Maggie forgot the show they had all been busily planning, and considered the most important fact of the meeting. Not one person had so much as mentioned
The WASP
, not even in passing.

The picture had not yet received a single review, not even in the Hollywood trade papers, whose reviews appear before those in the daily newspapers. Full-page newspaper ads had been appearing for two weeks, and first-run movie houses had been showing
WASP
trailers for several months. The picture was scheduled to open in three days in eight hundred theaters across the country and nobody, not the lowest of gofers present at the meeting, seemed to have heard of its existence.

She would have sworn, Maggie thought, that none of her staff was capable of tact, but obviously she was mistaken. They had been supremely tactful, a roomful of people managing to totally ignore the presence of the decaying corpse of an elephant in their midst, an object that weighed a ton more than all of them put together and produced a frightful stench.

Of course, if they had been great actors, they could have dared to just mention the picture in passing, lightly, as if it had no connection to her, but lacking that much talent they had wisely opted for blindness. Had they all gathered together before the meeting today and decided how to behave? They must have, she realized, for not one of them had put a single toe wrong, and such discipline from her usually irreverent and unruly troops was unthinkable unless it had been planned. In these meetings nothing was sacred, the lowest and most scurrilous of industry rumors were treated as ordinary fodder, there was no star big enough to inspire their respect, no potential story too scandalous or vulgar for them not to consider it within their territory.

Maggie had assumed that they had all known about her and Vito for many months, probably longer, most likely since the beginning, since no such secrets could remain hidden to the people who worked for her, people who had been trained by her. Her own wide, well-established spy network, which stretched into every corner of the film business, would have reported on her to them—it was a matter of course. What she hadn’t realized was that the news about
The WASP
had circulated so widely without a single industry screening.

If it had just been a disappointing but nevertheless iffy picture, bound to garner some bad reviews and some good ones, a picture that many people would go to see because of the cast and the lavishness of the production, regardless of conflicting reviews,
The WASP
would not have been taboo as a subject of conversation, not even if Vito and she had been married.

Her people had worked for her too long to think that Maggie would be offended by their speculation on the future of such a picture, in fact they would have been busily presenting ideas to help give the film some positive publicity.

Therefore their silence meant that it was even worse than she had thought. “ ’Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.” Wasn’t that the way it was put? Who would think to find such delicacy among her staff? So Vito’s picture was indeed going to be The Turkey That Ate Hollywood, and the news was out.

Maggie was surprised, but only at the depth of the lack of surprise she felt. Being in love with Vito hadn’t turned her brain to sweetbreads. She’d listened to his vivid stories of his conflicts with that parade of writers and directors, convinced that Vito, as she had always known him to, would somehow make it all come together in the end. Preproduction problems were as normal to making a movie as burping is to bringing up a baby.

But when he had told her of the exchange of leading roles, she had had to turn away to conceal her shock. Later that evening she had managed to say, very casually, that she couldn’t imagine
Gone With the Wind
with Rhett Butler played by Leslie Howard and Ashley Wilkes played by Clark Gable.

“That wouldn’t have worked, Maggie,” Vito had agreed. “But this isn’t the same thing, not at all.” And that had been his only response, for his passion for what he now thought of as his own idea had been too blinding to make him even stop to consider her warning.

Was it then, Maggie wondered, as she listened to the silence of the building in which everyone but she had left for lunch, was it then, at that moment, that she had started to fall out of love with Vito?

Probably. She knew herself well enough to be fairly dispassionate. She was nothing if not self-protective. She could never have lasted in this business, she could never have come as far as she had, if she hadn’t consistently guarded her ass.

Love was a luxury she really shouldn’t let herself afford in her job, but she had decided to indulge herself when Vito and Billy came unstuck. It was too wonderful to pass by. Love was like one of those great dresses that you knew was far too expensive, a dress you knew you wouldn’t get enough wear out of to justify the price, a dress you knew you should leave in the store for some other sucker—but bought anyway because life was too short and you’d regret it forever if you didn’t.

She could afford to fall in love, overpriced item though it was, but she couldn’t afford to be linked to a loser. She had two publics, Maggie told herself: the television audience who wouldn’t know or care if Vito Orsini fell flat on his face, and the important circle of insiders in the industry, who would respect and fear her much less than they must, when they learned that she and Vito were still together in spite of
The WASP
and the reception it was going to get.

Thank God, Maggie told herself, Vito had never suggested marriage. She might have accepted, and where would that leave her now? She shuddered, thinking of women who had to keep smiling through, women who were forced to be loyal, come what may. That particular line of work was not, never had been, for her. Thank you very much indeed, but she wasn’t bucking for the Mrs. Norman Maine Award.

Maggie dialed the New York office of the network, reaching the direct line of the powerful vice-president of the network and director of television specials, Fred Greenspan, who had just returned from the perquisite of his own leisurely Manhattan lunch, almost as long as the dinners enjoyed by Romans. Within ten minutes they had worked out a series of shows she would do from Manhattan. There were enough films being shot on the streets of the five boroughs of New York to keep her busy for months. When would she be ready to start?

“Gosh, Fred, you know me … once I get an idea I can’t wait to get at it. Let’s see—I can pack this afternoon and grab the red-eye tonight. So send a limo to meet the plane, okay? I’ll be on it. Dinner tomorrow? Why, Fred, I’d adore it! You promise not to talk shop? I’ll hold you to that, Fred. I know you’ve always had a funny little itch for me … but I bet you’re still not ready to do anything about it.”

Gigi sat in the chintz-cushioned bay window of her room with her best friend, Mazie Goldsmith, both of them cross-legged, both of them in deeply relaxed jeans and faded T-shirts with their enviable and honorable history displayed by their well-washed tattiness, like the battle standards of forgotten regiments. They were eating steadily through a plate of the special triple fudge brownies with fresh coconut icing that Gigi had just baked on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April.

Mazie and Gigi had fallen into a routine that suited Billy and the Goldsmiths. On most Friday nights they slept over at the Goldsmiths’ Brentwood house, where Mazie’s father, a highly placed MGM executive, invariably gathered a small group and screened a new movie in his projection room, followed by a buffet supper and another movie, very often a classic or a foreign film. On Saturday morning the two girls drove over to Billy’s and spent the day there. Mazie slept over, leaving on Sunday in time to rejoin her family for dinner.

Mazie Goldsmith was a girl who one day, to any adult’s eye, would turn into a classic brunette beauty, although nothing could possibly convince her of that now, with her awkward height, her extra fifteen pounds of baby fat, and the thick glasses she was too squeamish to trade for contact lenses. Mazie got excellent marks, almost as good as Gigi’s, and the two had picked each other out as kindred souls in the crowd the very day Gigi started at Uni.

Gigi, at seventeen and in the middle of her junior year of high school, had grown two inches since she had arrived in California, so that she was now five feet four. She retained all the delicacy of form that had made her seem wispy at first sight, but there had been a subtle transformation in the way she held herself. Her determinedly straightforward stance, which had once seemed a defense against her smallness, now announced itself as downright self-confidence. Although she never thrust herself forward in any group, her upright carriage, the compact directness of the way she unconsciously stood and moved, attracted attention she didn’t notice.

In whatever casual position Gigi arranged herself, she formed a vital and memorable pattern, like a dancer who can’t sit or stand without grace. Her brown hair, which Sara’s scissors had continued to experiment on until her close, straight cut, with its slight outward flare, had reached perfection, was streaked with the vivid tones of a variegated marigold, hues that ranged from downright orange to deep terra-cotta. Gigi had learned to use brown pencil to darken the light hairs of her strongly pointed eyebrows, and she skillfully coated black mascara on her long but invisible lashes. Now her eyes, shadowed under their deep lids and dark lashes, inspired instant curiosity. People who met Gigi found themselves drawing closer in involuntary curiosity so that they could determine the color of her leaf-green irises. Her eyes were eloquent yet artless, her glances still shy, still unaware of the uses of coquetry. Her clear, creamy skin betrayed her emotions, for she flushed easily. She had more than a touch of the theatrical about her, and the sleek 1920s flapper look, which Billy had first recognized as a potential for her to grow into, had been accentuated charmingly. Gigi seemed to command a reservoir of laughter so that even when she was serious she carried the perfume of mirth on her lips.

On this particular afternoon Gigi and Mazie had decided that it was still too damp and cool to drive down to the beach, too early to start the math homework they were supposed to be doing together, too much fun hanging out together to bother phoning around and finding out what everybody else was planning for tonight. All of their many friends went around in packs; no girl went out alone with a boy on a date; a bunch of males and females from Uni would just gravitate together on the weekends, summoned by the jungle drums of the adolescent world.

“I felt my dad getting a little uptight last night while we watched the uncut version of
Last Tango in Paris
, he hadn’t expected it to be so hot,” Mazie mused. “Our being there made him nervous, but what could he do, once it had started? Send us out of the room in front of everybody and ruin his record with the ACLU? He gave me a worried look when the lights went up, but Mom was cool.”

“Didn’t you think it was terrific?” Gigi asked. “I did.”

“I’m not sure I exactly followed it entirely, there were some obscure moments.… but Brando’s butt … hmm … well, what about Brando, Gigi, does he make your team?”

“Absolutely. The first team, the Dream Team.”

“You’re absolutely sure? That picture’s seven years old and he’s gained a ton since then. He’s the Godfather now. You can still change your mind,” Mazie offered generously.

“Maze, if you don’t want to see Brando’s equipment, you have not a shred of genuine curiosity, we’re talking one of the great beauties of all time here, one of the great actors, one of the great personalities, forget his weight, forget his age, think of his
essence.”

“Remember, you’re only allowed ten nominations to the Dream Team, Gigi.”

“Well, he’s made the cut on mine. Yours?”

“Take it easy, I’m thinking it over. Maybe … maybe Belmondo. After Dad screened
Breathless
I began to obsess about him. He’s seriously sexy, he has crazy bedroom lips … wouldn’t you take Belmondo over Brando?” Mazie inquired seriously, her dark eyes squinched up behind her glasses.

“Nope,” Gigi was quick to reply. “I can perfectly well
imagine
Belmondo’s stuff so I don’t have to waste space for him on my team. I’ll bet anything he’s your basic, well-hung
—bien pendu?
—hunk, if the French have a word for hunk. Why don’t you put him on the second team?”

“Ah, the second team,” Mazie said, lighting up. She took off her glasses and unfurrowed her brow. Mazie loved to make nominations for the second team because they didn’t commit her as deeply as the Dream Team. For the second team you could nominate a man who might turn out to have a disappointing penis without worrying too much about what other penis you were losing the opportunity to choose. Like a picky collector in an antiques shop who has finally made that difficult first purchase and now starts to look around with liberated avidity, Mazie felt freed to plunge into a Dream-Team nomination. “Woody Allen,” she announced.