Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (86 page)

'I think it's a mistake,' Tamara insisted firmly, not bothering
to disguise her disgust as she slapped the bound proposal face down on the conference table. This smacks too much of
Marie
Antoinette.
'

'It does not!' young, curly-headed Richard Sonnenthal,
vice-president of creative projects, defended in a miffed tone.
'Affair of State
is about Madame de Pompadour, and in case
you haven't noticed, it's done with a comic twist.'

Tamara rolled her matchless emerald eyes and groaned.
'Spare me the gruesome details,' she said tightly, compressing
her lips into a thin red line of annoyance.
'Marie Antoinette's
not even completed and you already want to stick me in
another one of those damn wigs! I mean, what do you want to
do, recycle the costumes? Use the same sets, God forbid?
Personally, I think you should shelve this idea and let it collect
dust. It creaks.'

'I suppose
you
have a better idea?' he snapped nastily.

She raised her chin with all the dignity she could muster.
'As a matter of fact, I do. I was thinking more along the
lines of something sophisticated. You know, light and witty,
modern. Sort of a . . .a stylish comedy of manners.'

'A stylish comedy of manners!' Sonnenthal sighed nastily
with exasperation and tucked his chin into his chest. 'So it's
something sophisticated she wants,' he said sarcastically, ges
turing with theatrical helplessness. 'You all heard the lady.'

'I think Tamara has a point,' Skolnik said unexpectedly.

They all turned to look at him in surprise. Without
exception, they'd almost forgotten he was there. For the past
half-hour he hadn't voiced a single opinion. He had seemed
content to lounge back in his chair with deceptive laziness,
puffing on his briar pipe with an expression of benign boredom
while the debate had heated up around him.

Outside the French doors, the night was dark and chilly.
The brainstorming session had been scheduled for seven
o'clock, but Tamara and Louis had raced in forty minutes late,
due to complications on the set. Besides them, Skolnik had
summoned Sonnenthal, Claude de Chantilly-Siciles, Rhoda Dorsey, Carol Anderegg, and Bruce Slesin. Upon her tardy but breathless arrival, Tamara had been gratified to notice
that the walls, which were hung with framed IA movie posters,
had among them not only
The Flappers
but also, already in
the place of honour, the poster of the soon-to-be-completed
Marie Antoinette.

'Well, we can always fall back on
Joan of Arc?
Sonnenthal
murmured.

'Joan of Arc?
Joan of Arc?'
Skolnik's voice suddenly
bellowed and he banged a fist on the table in fury. Everyone
jumped. 'Christ, what do I pay you for?' He glared at
Sonnenthal. 'Are you blind? She's a woman, if you didn't notice.
All
woman! How's she going to look running around
in a pageboy haircut and armour? We're trying to push her
glamour image and you want her to play soldier. You want to
ruin me?'

Sonnenthal flushed under the verbal onslaught and ner
vously tapped his pencil against his teeth.

There was a long, drawn-out silence, and the tension in the
conference room was almost palpable.

'In case I need to remind you,' Skolnik continued, 'this is
an emergency meeting. There's only a week's shooting to go on
Marie Antoinette,
and none of you've yet come up with a
single viable vehicle for Tamara to star in.' He looked around
the table. 'That's not what you're getting paid for.'

The others remained prudently silent. From past experi
ence, they knew he wasn't through speaking his mind. 'Maybe
I should simplify matters for you,' he said softly. 'As it is,
you're all running around in circles, chasing your tails.' He
looked questioningly at Sonnenthal. 'What's Tamara's back
ground?'

'A Russian refugee.' Sonnenthal smirked. 'A princess.' He looked around the room with smug laughter in his eyes.

'That's very good, Richard,' Skolnik praised in the
honeyed, sarcastic tones of a grade-school teacher. 'However,
I strongly advise you to wipe that shit-eating grin off your face
at once,' he added in a violent voice. 'I said she's a princess,
so by God she
is
a princess. If you don't agree, you can head
straight for your office and clean out your desk.' Skolnik's face darkened and his voice dropped. 'I can also see to it that you'll
never work in this business again. Do I make myself clear?'

'Yes, sir,' Sonnenthal gulped, blushing so deeply that his
face turned uniformly purple.

'Good. Just so that we understand each other.' Skolnik glared around the table. 'And the same goes for the rest of you.' He paused. 'Now, Richard, bearing in mind of course
that you do agree that Tamara is a Russian princess, what is
the most obvious thing to star her in?'

Sonnenthal's red cheeks quivered with the indignation he was fighting to control. 'S-something Russian,' he said
uncomfortably.

'Ah!' Skolnik made a production of beaming. 'Now you're
on the right track. Suppose you use that imagination I'm pay
ing you so handsomely for and think back to your school days.
Throw a few titles at me.'

'Catherine the Great.'

'No, no, no, no,
no.'
Skolnik shook his head in disgust.
'That isn't a title. Even if it were, it would be too eighteenth-
century—it brings us right back to the Madame de Pompadour
problem. I meant something later, straight from the pages of a classic novel. We barely have the time to work on a script,
let alone the luxury of plotting an entire movie from scratch.
We've got to rely on a book that's already been written.'

'War and Peace!'
Carol Anderegg cried.

Skolnik shook his head. 'It's too long and much too sprawl
ing. It would take half a year just to get all the sets built. And
there's no way we can condense it properly into a ninetyto a
hundred-and-twenty-minute film.'

Tamara sat forward, her eyes suddenly gleaming. She felt a
surge of pulsing excitement flood through her.
'Anna
Karenina!'
she whispered, the gooseflesh breaking out on her
arms.

Smiling, Skolnik sat back and made a flourishing gesture.
'There it is, folks, on a platter,
Anna Karenina
it is. My predic
tion is that it'll be the biggest picture of the year.' Then his
smile faded as swiftly as it had appeared. His tone became brusque and businesslike. 'Richard, I want your writers to
start on the script first thing tomorrow morning. You've got
five days to produce the first draft.'

Sonnenthal blanched. 'Five days—'

'Five days,' Skolnik repeated. 'You can enlist all the writers
you need, except those who are revising scripts for properties currently in production. Just break the book down into sec
tions and fan out the work.'

Sonnenthal relaxed slightly. 'Well, now that you put it that
way, it shouldn't be all that difficult.'

'Good.' Skolnik turned his attention to Carol Anderegg.
'Carol, I want Miles Gabriel to play Count Vronsky. The pub
lic adored him and Tamara together in
The Flappers,
so let's
hope history will repeat itself. Has he finished shooting his
scenes for that war movie yet?'

'The Front?'
Carol frowned. 'I'll have to check, but offhand
I'd say there are probably close to two more weeks of scenes
left for him to shoot.'

'Check it, then. I know it's behind schedule and over
budget, but keep me informed. If need be, have the shooting
sequence revised so that the scenes requiring his presence are
shot first. I want him to be well-rested before he begins work
on
Anna,
and he'll need plenty of time for rehearsal. Also, I
want you to work closely with Richard's department so you
can be kept abreast of the characters we'll use, and those
we're going to cut from the story. Start rounding up talent
immediately. The sooner we know who'll play who, the better.
I don't believe I have to tell any of you that I expect each and every one of you to read
Anna Karenina,'
Skolnik continued.
'Not a condensed version, but the entire book as Tolstoy wrote
it. The studio library's sure to have at least one copy, and
tomorrow I'll have Miss Martinko get extra copies from the
public libraries. If you've already read it, then reread it. That's
an order. Claude . . .'

The art director raised his eyebrows.

'This gives you one hell of an opportunity to design one hell of a production. I want it very Russian in atmosphere, very
elegant, and very, very slick. I don't think I need to tell you
that I want the costumes to complement the set, and vice
versa. Pull out all the stops.'

'What kind of budget are we talking about here?' Roger
Callas, the general manager and ever the financial pragmatist,
asked worriedly.

'Whatever it takes,' Skolnik said. 'I want a projected finan
cial breakdown from the various departments on my desk no
later than a week from today, and we'll know then. Bruce,
you start the publicity mills churning. I want a massive
buildup. Also, you and Tamara sit down together and work
out a more detailed Russian bio of her than the ones we've
released to date. Add a lot of juicy new information. I want
so much press coverage that the public will be panting for this
picture to come out. Also, arrange for a newsreel to be made about it while it's being filmed.' He paused. 'Any questions?'