Dirty Movies (27 page)

‘I fucking hate him
.’

Bang. Propelled by his lack of discretion the room started spinning more violently. He hoped to god she wasn’
t lying about not being a journalist.

In the meantime
, she had raised her glass in a mock toast to him.

‘
Hurrah! I must say it’s taken you long enough to figure out.’ 

Joe lost his temper then. ‘Enough of the games, Samantha, who are you
really?’

‘A wife of unfortunate circumstance
,’ she said, spearing an olive with her cocktail umbrella. ‘Twelve years ago, I was married to a scriptwriter called Tommy Harper. That wannabe was a sure-fire
gonnabe
until Vincent Edwards came along and effectively took a blowtorch to our lives. My husband was the true creator of
East End Heist 1 & 2,’
she added casually.

Joe stared at her in shock. ‘But
those are Vincent’s first films. His whole reputation is based on them!’

‘
Yes, so he’d like you, and the rest of the world, to believe.’

Joe
knew it was true as soon as she said it. There was no way a producer surviving on a literary diet of trashy film reviews and porn magazines could have written two such fantastic scripts. The only real mystery was how he hadn’t been rumbled before.

‘But
how?’

Samantha shrugged. ‘Tommy was on his way round to show the scripts to a friend of ours when he vanished. He was scraped off the front of
a double-decker six hours later.’

‘Fuck
, that’s awful!’

Samantha’s hand tightened around her dirty martini.

‘But what about copyright and stuff?’

‘Non-existent, like my bank balance
,’ she said tightly. ‘I’m only here because I won a competition in
Hot! Hot! Hot!
It’s my first holiday in years.’

‘But Vincent’s made millions off the back of them
,’ yelped Joe. ‘His whole career was cemented by their success. He’s even got two BAFTAs for Best Original Screenplay!’ The depth of the deception was mind-blowing. ‘Have you ever called him out about it?’

‘Of course I have!
He played to type and called me a gold-digger. I didn’t have a leg to stand on and he knew it. That man had the nerve to stand there and humiliate ME when all those despicable stories about him were popping up in the papers.  Thousands a night on strippers! That money was rightfully mine and he was frittering it away on skimpy thongs and nipple tassels.’

‘Christ, Samantha! People need to know!’

‘Not a chance. Vincent claimed those scripts the day Tommy died.’

Joe stared out of the window at a young couple canoodling in the moonlight. From a distance the girl looked like Polly.

‘Did Tommy write anything else? If his writing style exists elsewhere, then perhaps we could match…’

‘No,
’ said Samantha firmly. ‘I packed up his study myself. All that was left were empty gin bottles, the drunkard!’

Like me
, thought Joe grimly, sinking another rum as he mulled over her predicament. The list of people screwed over by his brother and his crony was growing by the day. He placed a hand over hers and squeezed gently. Right now, GBA Films was like an out of control steam-roller with no conscience, flattening lives but somehow eviscerating Stephen and Vincent’s culpability at the same time. He wanted to commandeer a fleet of bulldozers, trundle them up Wardour Street then tear the damn place apart until there was nothing left except that stupid brass plaque above the door.

The rest of the week passed in a drunken haze of sex and solace. United as victims, kindred spirits of survival, heartbreak had simply poured out of the both of them like a pair of uncapped wine barrels. Daylight hours were spent eliminating hurt with pitchers of rum-based cocktails and nights were passed wrapped in each other’s arms.

W
hen Joe awoke six days later, he did so alone. Padding across the hut in need of a piss, he passed the window and saw that another day had been and gone. The sun was dissolving in the sky like orange aspirin and the tide had retreated well beyond the local dhows, now marooned on a bed of golden silt and scuttling hermit crabs.

Lifting the toilet seat
, he hollered out to Samantha, thinking she was outside on the veranda soaking up the last of the rays.

‘
Are we kicking off with beers or mojitos tonight?’

No answer. She must have headed up to the bar already.

Wondering back into the bedroom, he noticed a large manila envelope, the length and breadth of a stable yard breezeblock, balancing precariously on his bedside table. As he stared at it, the envelope lost its balance, toppled off the table and fired its contents across the room like a canon.

Cursing,
he heaved the package back onto the bed. As he did, a single sheet of hotel stationary fluttered down to the floor. His heart sank at the sight of it. He hadn’t had much luck with mysterious handwritten correspondence lately. Steeling himself, he started reading;

My dearest Joe,

Forgive me, darling, for my dishonesty, but i’m no closer to winning a competition than those poor deluded fools who purchase lottery tickets week after week. The truth is I DID find a long lost remnant of my husband’s legacy underneath all those empty gin bottles but I came here with every intention of scattering the pages to the wind, like I did his ashes off Brighton Pier ten years ago. Then I met you, and in the last week I’ve come to realise that my final au revoir to Tommy might just be a lifeline for us both. Not only is this script all I have left of the complicated, moody, astonishingly funny man I once loved but it may hold the key to reversing all our fortunes.

It’s not much use in a copyright suit I’m afraid, Tommy’s style changed dramatically over the years, but it’s not dolphin fodder either
, so I’d like you to have it. Four provisos though: No ham-fisted actors, no gob-shite producers and definitely no profit over substance GBA nonsense. I don’t want this turned into some generic rubbish that will clutter the top shelves in my local Blockbuster along with the dust mites. And I want you to direct it. You may be a rookie but you’re a rookie with heart and it’s high time you stepped out of your brother’s shadow.

In return
, I seek no final approval over scripts, cast etc. I’m going to leave all that stuff to you, save one final request. When the film is done and dusted, please see to it that Tommy receives his credit. It would mean the world to me to finally see his name in lights, just how he dreamed of so many years ago.

All my love,

Samantha

PS a few of the profits wouldn’t go amiss
either.

The setting sun had all but disappeared by the time Joe reached the final page. Rubbing his eyes, he reached for the phone. Samantha was right. It was good. Actually, it was better than good. In fact, Joe had just finished the best goddamn script he’d ever read, and, for the first time since that awful night in Morocco, he was feeling something close to optimism.

With no time to lose
, he patched a call straight through to LA.

Benny Sanchez pulled up to his first pool cleaning assignment of the day with a
wry grin on his face. The one that softened his grey whiskers and bought a twinkle to his canny brown eyes. Benny was a contented old devil, despite having just spent the last three hours fishing used condoms out of Charlie Sheen’s pool, but hey, what were a few stray rubbers between has-beens.

There weren’t many
who would cite pool cleaning as a die-hard aspiration, but to Benny it was a job rife with opportunity, particularly when the clientele list was a who’s who of Hollywood’s rich and infamous. The tips were lousy, a tight face meant tighter fist round these parts, but where else could you perv on youthful bottoms and bikini-busting silicon tits all day? What’s more, the hush-hush gossip he picked up, poolside, meant that he never had to pick up his drinks tab.

There
was only one client he respected. The owner of the gorgeous white town house that he had just pulled up outside; Michael Wilson. A classy guy and no mistake, and one who always bucked the trend by slipping him a Lakers ticket along with a crisp fifty every month. Michael didn’t reek of shit like the rest of them rich assholes, no matter what the press was saying about him.

Benny
, and the rest of America, had learnt of Michael’s Moroccan sexscapades from the online gossip blogger, Pazooza Miffleton, who had delighted in reporting every squalid detail of him banging that other fella’s wife and torpedoing his relationship with that sexy actress. He had also heard from his security mate, Ron, over at Global Studios, that Michael’s fancy film career had gone belly up as well. Benny wasn’t surprise. It was tough to drum up business when your reputation was as rotten as that dead rodent he had pulled out of Jack Nicholson’s pool filter last week. LA was littered with fallen angels, but there was nothing this town liked more than chucking a few hefty stones at their big glass mansions.

Grabbing his cleaning gear
, he headed straight for the backyard. There was no point ringing the bell. Since his private life had imploded, Michael tended to keep himself firmly tucked away behind drawn blinds whenever the outside world came calling.

Benny
was just unlatching the gate when he heard a noise behind him. The old pool cleaner jumped a mile high and nearly took his eye out on his portable vacuum pump.

‘That you
, Mr Wilson?’ he called out nervously.

The
front door remained shut but a shadowy outline lingered in the frosted glass panel. Intrigued, Benny peeked through a side window and watched as a tall, hairy Michael-like shape shuffled from the front hall to the study. Benny caught a glimpse of a shiny, metallic object in his right hand and he promptly dropped his gear and bounded back to his van as fast as his arthritic knees would allow. Disgraced angels aside, this town was equally notorious for its suicide rate, and Benny Sanchez wasn’t paid nearly enough in surgically enhanced nipples to clean up that sort of mess.

Ignoring the screeching tyres and an unpleasant smell of burning rubber wafting in through the study air vent, a desultory, dead-eyed Michael slumped back into his chair, raised his weapon up to chest-height and fired. A split second later
, he was up on his feet as if a firework had just exploded under his bottom.

Bullseye!

Stymied by a redundant phone and an inbox filled with nothing more uplifting than a torrent of Viagra SPAM, Michael had spent the last few months emptying the belly of his .46 magnum at a wall plastered with posters of Stephen and Vincent. Needless to say, he had just planted a winner in the director’s head and was feeling wildly euphoric about the whole thing. Taking aim once more, he left another particularly smug picture of Stephen with a gaping hole in his abdomen. 

Reaching for
his now ever-present vodka bottle, Michael poured himself a quadruple in recompense. Pouring another, he was interrupted by the squeal of the telephone. After months of radio silence, the noise surprisingly soothing and he let it ring out. Thirty seconds later it was back. This time he snatched it up and was rewarded with an ear-splitting screech then a heavily accented woman asking him to permit a reverse-charge call from Mozambique.

Michael
frowned. It sounded like a planet from Star Wars. He was about to decline it, as rudely as possible, when he had an image of Maisie calling from some exotic five star destination, hammered out of her mind on tequila and missing him like crazy. Accepting the call right away, his faint optimism was smashed to smithereens when Joe’s voice came on the line.

‘Michael! It’s Joe, Joe De Vries. Thank god you took the call. Some thieving bugger’s nicked my phone and credit card and I’m all out of cash!’

Not my problem sunshine, thought Michael sourly, toying with the idea of hanging up. Joe’s lack of contact since the Christine fiasco had upset him more than he cared to admit but an instinct told him to hear him out.

‘Hello? H
ello, Michael? Are you still there?’ There was a note of desperation creeping into Joe’s voice.

‘No credit card, huh?
That must be a real pain in the ass for you.’

Joe
paused. The line was awful, but he recognised a poor attempt at civility when he heard it. Michael must be pissed at him for not staying in touch.

He glanced up at the Mozambique moon, a faint silvery outline in the cloudless sky.

‘Stephen’s an evil bastard, Michael, he’s fucked us both,’ he said suddenly. ‘He screwed my wife six years ago. She couldn’t handle the guilt so she topped herself. I found out on the last night in Morocco.’

Michael’s vodka slipped from his fingers and smashed into the desk, spraying
everything in pungent, colourless liquid.

Hearing the tinkling of breaking glass
, Joe pictured the demise of some mega expensive whiskey tumbler, the sort that got squirreled away at the back of the kitchen cupboard and saved for best.               

Back in LA, Michael was struggling to pick his jaw and
the fragments of his broken 50-cent Walmart glass up off his desk.  ‘Joe, pal,’ he gasped, utterly appalled. ‘Jeez, I don’t know what to say.’

‘Then don’t. I didn’t spill my guts for sympathy
, or to pick apart my ex-wife’s indiscretions. I needed to explain why I didn’t call. I had to disappear for a while. Get my head sorted.’

There was a pause.

‘Well, I hope you punched Stephen’s lights out before you left,’ growled Michael.

Joe grinned
for the first time in months. ‘Best right-hook I’ve ever thrown, totally floored the fucker. Never heard so much cheering in my life.’

Michael let out a whoop of his own. ‘I wish I could have
been there. I’da paid ringside.’

‘You
, and countless others. The other reason I’m calling is, well it’s a bit of a long shot but I’ve just come across the most amazing script. I think you should read it. It could be a fantastic project for us… you producing and, perhaps, me directing?’

Michael stared a
t the receiver in surprise. Joe? A director? Since when had he developed such aspirations?
Apparently when amazing film scripts turned up on desert islands...
Christ, thought Michael in alarm. The poor guy must have done a Keith Richards and fallen out of coconut tree. 

‘I’m not pissed or stoned
, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ said Joe quickly. ‘Not right now, anyway. Listen, I hate to sound like such a grasping dickhead, but if wire me a couple of grand, I’ll catch the next flight out of here and come straight to Global.’

There was a pause.

‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Michael tightly. ‘My Pa kicked me out. Right now, i’m working out of my place. Actually, to tell the truth, I’m doing jack shit. My rep’s shot to, well, shit.  My father and your brother have seen to that.’

‘
Mate! I didn’t realise… Some bird called Serena told me you were on an extended hiatus’

‘Yeah,
very extended. Try indefinitely.’

Joe felt the resignation in Michael’s voice
from three continents away. Dammit. He had been relying on Michael’s connections to help raise funds for the production.

‘But e
nough of the pity party,’ he heard Michael say, ‘tell me more about this script.’

‘Ok, well it’s everything that I love in a film
,’ enthused Joe.
And a woman, he thought privately, trying not to think of Polly:
‘A heart of gold and dialogue to die for.’

‘And the premise?’

‘Has-been actress with serious addiction relives her glory days on deathbed to daughter before carking it,’ he summarised quickly. ‘Not exactly Mary Poppins, but it’s a blinder. We get this right and…well. Think worldwide releases, think…’

Michael laughed. ‘Steady on
there buddy, let me take a look at it before you label it the next
Slumdog Millionaire
. What’s it called anyway?’

‘Memoir
.’

‘Bit abst
ruse, but s’ok I suppose... Fine, i’ll wire the funds if you get your butt on that plane. Look me up when you land. I’m at 4567 Sunrise Place. It’s the house with the white clapper boards and the beers on ice’

Joe grimaced. ‘Better make that tap water if we’ve got to fund this thing ourselves
.’

Once the boring trivialities of bank account details had been relayed, Joe shot down the dimly lit sandy path towards the Island Resort’s front desk, trying not to squish too many kamikaze hermit crabs on the way. After some pretty determined flirting with the hotel’s receptionist, he soon had a one-way flight ticket out of Mozambique added to his final bill. If Michael’s money came through quickly, then in forty-eight hours Samantha’s script might be halfway to putting all their careers back on track. Without his Hollywood pulling-power, Michael was still the most talented and creative guy Joe had ever worked with. Besides, it sounded like the guy needed the lucky break almost as much as he did.

Two bum-numbing airport delays, three touch-and-go connections and four deeply unsatisfactory in-flight meals later, Michael was greeting a very travel-worn Joe on the gleaming doorstep of his LA home.

The two day heads-up had given the American
just enough time to re-hire a house-maid, bust open the blinds and persuade his ace pool cleaner that he didn’t have any intention of topping himself. Benny had eventually backed down for six Lakers tickets and a promise of more to come.

It took considerably less time for the two men to establish a new production company on the strength of Tommy Harper’s script alone.

To Joe’s immense relief, Michael loved it, and, on turning to the last page, had tearfully pledged his commitment to bringing the story to the big screen. After much popping of champagne corks, a hasty run to the awesome take-out place on nearby White Canyon Boulevard, and a drunken dissection of Samantha and Tommy’s sorry saga, it was past midnight by the time they finally thrashed out budget feasibilities.

‘I recko
n we can get it in the can for two mil sterling,’ announced Michael jubilantly, tapping numbers into a complicated-looking spreadsheet on his laptop. ‘It’s such a quintessential Brit thing. Filming it anywhere else would be criminal.’

‘I agree
,’ said Joe, ‘but it still seems an awful lot of dosh to raise. If we cut crew costs, keep the cast to relative unknowns and keep the shoot days down, I reckon we could halve it.’

Michael looked
skeptical. Cosseted by his father’s gargantuan budgets, he had never fully appreciated the penny-pinching complexities and sacrifice behind true independent filmmaking before. Even
Pulp Fiction
, the supposed King of Indies, had been made for $8 million. With a jolt, he realised that he still had a lot to learn about the business.

‘We can do away with expensive studio costs straight away
,’ he heard Joe say. ‘We can shoot most of the interiors in my flat. Guerrilla filming at its most resourceful.’

‘Are you serious about directing this thing?’ asked
Michael, topping up Joe’s glass. ‘I don’t doubt your passion and dedication, but it’s a helluva project for a first timer.’

Joe frowned. ‘I’m afraid it’s no
n negotiable.’

He had
left out Samantha’s proviso when recounting how he came across the script, preferring to stick to his own version of events:  Boy meets girl in bar, boy discovers his brother’s business partner screwed over girl’s husband, girl then miraculously gifts boy long lost script after an evening of gut-wrenching gut-spilling. There was no need to mention the weeklong affair. Joe wasn’t ashamed. He just felt that whatever he and Samantha had shared in Mozambique deserved a fitting anonymity.

Michael wasn’t giving up easily. H
e was still curious about the reasons behind his decision.

‘Are you sure you’re not doing
it to piss off your brother?’

‘Nope, and that’s the
truth. Until last week, I hated myself for wasting six years on that scumbag. But that time afforded me the best training in the world. Stephen’s a prize shit, but he’s a talented one. I’ve learnt a lot from working with him.’