Easy to Like (22 page)

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will
clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the
chaff with unquenchable fire.

— Matthew 3:12

ELLIOT'S TORONTO
cellphone chimed
at least five times before he realized it was his. With half the CBC on summer
holiday, it rang only when Hazel called from a show in production with news of
one crisis or another. She could have it — watching disappointing rushes,
auditing hastily imagined story revisions . . . Elliot
shivered at the thought of the
501 Pennsylvania
writing room: one-time stand-up comedians trying to force out the funny
like old men straining at stool, trading sour quips, seeing who could out-blue
the other with tragic accounts of indignities visited on their genitals or anus.
Assuming the call was from Hazel, he didn't bother looking at the display before
answering.

“Fire them, Hazel.”

“No, this is Mike. Hazel your latest
conquest?”

“No, she — she works with me.” Elliot
glanced now: 310 area code. “How did you get this number, Mike?”

“Allan, Lucky's EA, had it.”

“How could he . . .
?”

“I'm flying in.”

“To Toronto?”

“I'm on a jet right now. Good
news.”

“Which is?”

“I'm coming to talk with my newest
client.”

“Who is?”

“Barry Hart!” said Mike. “He ditched
Herb Devine.”

“Congratulations.”

“It's a reshoot for that romcom
Indiana Wants Her
, a couple of scenes, the ending
tested badly and they still want to release it before Christmas.” Mike was
chewing on something as he talked. “Barry needed to see me about some problems
he has with the director concerning this sort of funny, sort of Mexican accent
he wants to do. At this delicate stage of our relationship I want to be there
for him.”

“Speaking of testing, what's this about
Jerry Borstein?”

“Clarification, please, Elliot.”

“He went to some test screening in the
Valley and disappeared?”

“That's the first I've heard he was
going to a test,” said Mike. “I never liked Jerry.”

“‘Liked,' past tense?”

“You said he had disappeared. Did you
mean he's actually hiding somewhere?”

“No.”

“But you'd tell me if you knew?”

“Why?”

“How about we say Fuck Jerry — there's
something I need to talk to you about.”

“Sure. When do you get in? What's your
flight number?”

“Flying private, belongs to some
Azerbaijani oil company — Lucky Silverman is on their board. He lent it to me.
Barry's still shooting when I arrive so I'm meeting him on set
at . . . Toronto is the same time zone as New York,
right?”

“Yes.”

“. . . at around four thirty this
afternoon. Maybe I could come by your new presidential suite on the way.”

“Bad idea,” Elliot said.

“Why don't you come by the set then,
around four this afternoon? Barry's gonna be late anyway.”

“Where is the location?”

Elliot heard Mike shout the question to
someone.

“Queen's
Road . . . no, what? Queen Street, does that make
sense?”

“West or East?”

“West or East?” shouted Mike.
“West.”

“See you there.” Elliot hung up,
wondering why he had dismissed Mike's offer to meet at the CBC.

They were shooting a couple of
scenes of
Les Les
in a storefront on Queen Street
West that day. The streetscapes there doubled easily for any in North America,
so it was a commonly used location. Elliot decided to drop by the set
unannounced, en route to his meeting with Mike.

Elliot did not enjoy film shoots.
Inefficient enterprises, they tried his patience. The majority of the workforce
did nothing for most of their long days. And though their job might involve
little more than pushing a cart, the hype machinery of showbiz told them they
were more skilled and worthy than someone doing the same thing at Costco.

What was more, atomizing the script
into various shots sucked the life from the drama (film editors, unacknowledged
as the most important agents in cinema, did their best to breathe it back in).
The process had overtaken the purpose; it was the most managed of mediums. On a
film set, storytelling was, too often, the last thing on anybody's mind.

Elliot found the location easily
enough; seven long trucks, in Airstream silver, occupied the street outside the
retail frontage. Beefy crew members fretted over a piece of hardware in the open
back of one of the trucks, five men and two gals all wearing headsets and
utility belts. They were studying a hinged joint on a heavy metal stand, for
lights or accessories, Elliot assumed. Maybe they'd found it amidst all the
other mechano but could not remember its function. Maybe they were trying to
give it a pet name, dub it a “wingy” or a “ding flap” or a “treble futz.” This
sort of thing took many hours in the business of making movies.

So entranced were they with their pole
they did not notice Elliot passing by them and walking into the location. They
were between set-ups. Elliot gathered this from the presence of the rest of the
crew around a temporary table set with snacks and coffee. No one stopped his
advance, so Elliot moved toward the glow of the set.

The camera was a new-generation digital
affair, and unattended. Hanging by a string from the arm of the tripod were the
sides for that day, the script pages reduced to four-inch by five-inch cards.
Elliot could not resist.

INT. A women's clothing boutique --
DAY

Betty is dismissively looking at items
on the racks. Claudette enters from a change room off. She is wearing a green
pantsuit. She stands, rigidly, waiting for inspection. She looks like Gumby.

CLAUDETTE

How do I look?

Betty stands and walks to
Claudette.

BETTY

That is so hot.

CLAUDETTE

“Hot”? I don't want “hot,” this
is a job interview.

BETTY

You look just like the supervisor
at my juvenile detention centre, Mrs. O'Leary.

CLAUDETTE

Had sex with her, I suppose?

BETTY

Why else go to juvy?

Betty adjusts the collar of
Claudette's jacket.

BETTY (CONT'D)

I'm proud of you.

CLAUDETTE

Going for this job?

BETTY

And doing so boldly as an out
lesbian.

CLAUDETTE

What do you mean?

BETTY

I was going to insist you bring
it up.

CLAUDETTE

They're probably not even allowed
to ask.

BETTY

Regardless--it's not important.
They see you in that pantsuit and they are going to know right away.

It wasn't bad, Elliot thought. Preachy
and polemic, true. Half the dialogue was superfluous and would have been cut by
a good editor. Claudette didn't have to say “How do I look?” when a much better
line in was “That is so hot.” It was too “on”; you could taste nothing but the
fruit. The temptation to state what should be seen was acute in Canadian
projects because of their poverty. Since his arrival, Elliot had read seemingly
infinite variations on “You'll never guess what just happened!” What had
happened was always something they could not afford to shoot.

The cast was rehearsing the scene with
the director, an excited middle-aged guy trying to dress like a twenty-year-old
to stay in the biz. The set was not so much lit as it was exposed; there was an
eerie absence of shadow. You could cook an egg in the darkest corner.

The proposal Elliot had read a few
months earlier called for two large women, but these actresses were, if a bit
hefty for film and television, surely a healthy weight. The actress playing the
Québécoise was wearing an unfortunate wig. Elliot thought for a moment it was a
gag but soon saw it was merely a poorly made and ill-fitting blond piece that
would steal every scene in which it appeared. Budget, no doubt, as was the case
with the rushed lighting.

From where he stood Elliot could pick
up their cadences as they ran their lines. The woman supposedly from
Newfoundland spoke without a discernable accent, the other with the faintest
French Canadian lilt. The Newfoundlander seemed engaged and witty, the French
Canadian placid. They seemed to be playing it straight, so to speak,
naturalistically, not leaning on or pointing at the jokes. It was being shot
with a single camera, without an audience. The performance would not accommodate
a laugh track.

It would never fly. It was a modest,
faintly charming, and forgettable stage play, not a television comedy. TV didn't
challenge expectations, it reinforced them. The English Canadian audiences
wanted their Québécois angry, their Newfies Irish, their lesbians shrill and
cock-starved. And while tame, the script was still too racy to air early enough
in the evening schedule to attract a substantial audience.

Ellio
t
abandoned the idea of introducing himself; it would only put the cast and crew
on edge. He left as discreetly as he'd come.

Halfway down the block Elliot glanced
in the window of a used book store and saw, with a paperback just about stuck to
his face, Lloyd Purcell. This stopped Elliot so hard he stumbled. Lloyd was
standing near the store's front window, not ten feet away, his chunky spectacles
riding the top of his expansive bald head. He was wearing a mustard and mauve
lumberjack shirt, something only a younger man could get away with. His jeans
were shapeless. Lloyd wore the expression, not unlike a scowl, of someone in
deep concentration. Elliot was close enough to see Lloyd's beady eyes darting
across the page.

Elliot had not gone to see his old
friend's play. He asked Stella to gather what few notices there had been in case
he wanted to pretend he'd attended. But none of the reviews, all good, gave much
of the plot away. Elliot guessed, given the comparative freedom of the second
space of an obscure indie theatre, that it would not have been a plot-driven
piece anyway. Stella also let Elliot know that despite the positive reviews, the
houses were only modest, and it closed, on schedule, with a whimper.

Elliot liked Lloyd. He was saucy and
candid. His wit had won him many friends in the writing fraternity of Los
Angeles. Yet Lloyd always took his work seriously, was quite the opposite of
Elliot in believing that what he wrote meant something. In the good days, Lloyd
had been a frequent dinner guest; he never failed to make Lucy laugh, had her
holding her pee, with his stories. But he drank too much and could never limit
himself to “a couple of lines.” These character traits were the first links in
the chain of bad decisions leading to the east-end takedown — and front-page
fiasco — that got him kicked out of the United States. There was Lloyd in the
L.A. Times
, shirtless, moon-faced, whitest guy
busted, so pasty he glowed, being dragged from the building. Fast-tracked
deportation of some Canadian fatty wasn't what they'd meant when they sang
“straight outta Compton,” but that was Lloyd's fate.

What was Lloyd reading in there this
quieter day in Toronto?
According to Queeney
?
Whatever it was, it generated enough mental enthusiasm that Lloyd was
unconsciously sort of chewing as he read. Was that ever an unfuckable look. In
the end, here was Lloyd Purcell without a pot to piss in, writing plays, having
grown old, his gums flapping involuntarily as he read from a page held four
inches from his face. That's what happened. Elliot kept going.

The
Indiana
reshoot was a further ten-minute walk.

It appeared Toronto was under
occupation. The line of trucks and trailers for the production ran the length of
three city blocks. Elliot's name had been left at a temporary security gate, one
watched over by an armed guard. Elliot was directed to a numbered trailer.

On his way he saw the greensmen
hoisting, by crane, a large tree from the back of a truck. Once the tree was in
position, an animal handler brought a basset hound alongside to piss on the base
of its trunk. Elliot recognized the dog from a billboard that had hung over
Sunset Boulevard last year. Big picture, that one.

Elliot knocked. Mike's assistant Blair
opened the door. “Come in,” he scowled. The trailer's interior was comfortably
appointed with couches and chairs, a small wet bar, and a couple of large-screen
monitors. Mike was standing, talking on a cellphone. On the floor between Mike's
feet, as if guarded, was a leather Coach cabin bag — containing, no doubt, the
dozens of fresh cellphones Mike would need on the trip.

“Look, I'm sorry, I have a meeting that
I really must . . . Okay, I, or maybe Blair, will get back to
you. It's truly brilliant.” Mike closed the phone and pointed the device at
Blair. “This is what happens when shit gets to me without coverage.” Now the
phone was pressed against Blair's temple. “You read every script we are supposed
to be looking at! Every one!”