Passing Through the Flame (43 page)

“Jango claims he has a nose for talent,” Horst said. “He claims Velva Leecock has star quality, which is not the same thing as acting talent. And he’s certainly proved his ability to spot winners in other areas.” He looked thoughtfully across the table at Conrad. Let’s see how much of a whiner this kid is or isn’t. “Are you telling me you don’t think you can direct her successfully?”

Conrad looked back at him evenly; there was an easiness there that made Horst’s feelings go out to him. “I can make a film with her, whether she’s really directable or not,” Conrad said. “You’ve seen the script; it’s tailored around her, she basically plays herself. I’m not too worried about Velva; she’s a problem I’ve already dealt with. But....”

“But?”

“But the script is already firm, and I don’t have a leading man. If Jango hands me the male equivalent of Velva, I’m stuck, because the script already calls for a specific character, a hard, cynical, sophisticated New York writer. What happens if I end up with Slim Pickens or Don Knotts?”

“So what do you want me to do, Paul?” Horst said somewhat unhappily, knowing that this was Beck’s picture, that much more was riding on it than one film, or even Paul Conrad’s career, that the situation being what it was, he couldn’t afford a real power struggle with Beck, no matter how much he liked Conrad, no matter how right the kid was. It made him feel impotent and hollow. Like a failed father. Like visiting Jodi in that hippie hole in Berkeley, loving her, and knowing there was not a damn thing he could do to save her. I want to help you, Paul, but what can I do? I need Beck’s help to torpedo Mike Taub; the whole future of the studio is at stake. And I can’t even tell you
why
I can’t help you.

“I was hoping you could set up a meeting among the three of us before Jango makes his decision. So he’ll at least be forced to consider input from two professionals who know what they’re talking about.”

“That’s all?” Horst asked incredulously.

Conrad looked at him blandly. “What else?” he said. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m not bum-rapping Jango as a producer. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to shove my choice down his throat.

“He’s intelligent; in fact, in some ways he’s the most brilliant man I’ve ever met. But he’s inexperienced in this area, and his choice of Velva proves it. You know the kind of actor we need to play Doug Winter, I know the kind of actor we need. But I don’t know
if Jango
does, and I think you should make him at least hear our advice.”

Horst felt an almost embarrassing relief. “I’m sure I can set that up,” he said. And here I thought you were going to use my liking for you to pressure me into twisting Jango’s arm. And wanting to help you, I was going to have to turn you down and feel like a louse. I must be hanging around my damned sons too much!

“Well, that’s great, Mr. Horst,” Conrad said. “I’m sure we’re going to bring in a decent film once we get this sorted out.”

“I’m sure too, Paul,” Horst said. “After the kind of people I’ve been working with, you’re areal relief.” Give me ten more kids like this, and we could turn out twenty major features a year for what eight cost now. The earn-out points for each film would be cut at least in half, we’d be turning a profit on most of our features even with the lower box-office figures, and we’d have a healthy studio again without having to grind out crap for television.

And by damn, once Beck gets rid of Taub for me and I’ve really got a free hand again, that’s exactly the way Eden Pictures is going to play it!

“Jodi called today,” Mildred said, getting up off the big mustard-colored couch, walking across the slate floor of the huge living room to the bar, where she poured herself her third martini. “Collect, of course.”

Horst watched his wife walk back toward him across the endless living room with its high ceiling, massive stone fireplace, and modern furniture mixed cheek by jowl with Spanish antiques. It was a room that had come to remind him of a set out of
Citizen Kane
these past few years since the kids moved out. In a house that was coming to remind him of the studio: endless echoing rooms like the rows of half-used sound stages, a hollow shell of some faded past in which Mildred and he rattled around like tiny ghosts, seeing no one but themselves and occasional servants. This house was made for huge parties, the kind thrown by producers and executives on the way up, not by someone who has long since arrived at the top. Still, I hold onto this mausoleum, Horst thought, as if selling it off and moving into a place on a more human scale would be an admission of something I don’t want to admit.

Mildred came across the living room in that stiff-legged jiggling gait of hers, half-crocked, but holding herself under iron control. She sat down on the far side of the long couch from him and drank about a quarter of the fresh martini. “The place she’s been living in was raided by the police,” she said.

“Jesus Christ.”

Mildred laughed a bitter, brittle laugh. “Oh, she thought it was quite funny. She called just to give us a little laugh. You see, they expected it, so they cleared all the drugs out of the house and moved the minors elsewhere. Then everyone took off all their clothes and waited. The police ended up searching a house full of naked hippies for two hours and finding nothing.” She took another sip of her drink. “Don’t you find that funny, John? Isn’t it absolutely humorous?”

“Hilarious.”

“You ought to make a movie about it, that’s what you ought to do. Staring Jane Fonda and Michael Pollard. Directed by Dennis Hopper and produced by that horrible Jango Beck.”

“Very funny.”

Horst stared across the living room, out the glass doors overlooking what Mildred called the “swimming-pool-shaped kidney.” He focused his eyes on the line of heavy-branched old trees that screened the house off from the rest of Bel Air, and enclosed community that was sealed off from the rest of Beverly Hills in the first place. We have arrived, he thought; we have even arrived within the community of those who have arrived. But arrived where? Me at the top of a studio that’s crumbling at the bottom, and Mildred soon to arrive at the bottom of a bottomless gin bottle.

Mildred contemplated the depths of her martini glass, saying nothing. Horst stared at the green tree line. Little auroras of light appeared at the periphery of the green fuzziness that he allowed to fill his field of vision. My God, this place is depressing, he thought, catching his breath. It’s always the same. I come home from the studio, have a drink or two while Mildred has four or five, and unless we go out or someone comes over, I start feeling tired and sorry for myself. Because my wife is a closet lush, and my sons are sponging bums, and my daughter is a hippie, and my house is too big.

It’s ridiculous, really. It’s cheap soap-opera melodrama. The world is full of people who don’t have enough to eat, who live in tiny rat-infested apartments, who work at some awful job that turns them into machines, whose children are heroin addicts, and whose wives are fat ugly harpies who get vomiting drunk and pick up men in bars. And
I
come home and feel sorry for myself.

“Mildred, we ought to sell this house and move into someplace smaller. Maybe out by the beach.”

“We took a long time to get a house like this in Bel Air,” she said, a hard determined look replacing her three-martini softness. “We can’t give this house up. What would people say if John Horst sold off his fine big house in Bel Air and moved into a smaller place at the beach?” She took another gulp of martini. “John Horst is slipping, they’d say. John Horst is going to be fired by the board of directors. Eden Pictures is sliding down the drain. You know that’s what they’d say, John. They’d say that you and the studio are all washed up.”

Horst said nothing, knowing that it was true. In gin
veritas.
He found himself thinking of the lunch he had had yesterday with Paul Conrad—how different he had felt then, how much freer and fuller. Because that was what really mattered: the work, getting good films made, producing something that was real. That’s the reason for playing all the games out, for maintaining a house I don’t want so my image won’t start to slide, for playing dirty games with the likes of Jango Beck, for destroying Mike Taub.

Even saving the studio is a means to an end, and I shouldn’t let myself forget it. I could convert the studio to a television factory like Universal. It would survive and show a handsome profit, and I’d be a hero to the stockholders and the industry. To everyone but myself. Films are what count, good feature films. If I didn’t believe that, I could sell this house and my Eden stock and build a nice little villa in Mexico and let Hollywood go to hell without my assistance. Better that than to become a
television executive.

He stood, feeling a tiny flash of vertigo, stretched his arms and legs. “You’re right, Mildred,” he said. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to try to hold it together.”

She smiled a boozy smile at him. “As Jodi would say, ‘You’ve got to maintain, Daddy, you’ve got to maintain.’”

Horst shook his head ruefully. Boy, do I feel tired, he thought, and began walking toward the bar. “I think I’ll have another one with you after all, hon,” he said.

John Horst noted that Sandra Bayne patted Paul Conrad possessively on the butt as she ushered them into the Dark Star conference room. So the kid’s involved with Beck’s PR head, he thought, filing the datum for possible future reference.

Beck himself, wearing a dead-black suit and bright-yellow shirt, was already seated at the massive oval table, looking as busy as he had claimed to be when he insisted that the meeting be held here instead of at the studio.

Horst had been in this room only once before, but that was enough to make him dislike it. The heavy oaken table, chairs, and woodwork seemed to give the room—and by extension Jango Beck—an atmosphere of historical permanence, like the Houses of Parliament or the formal rooms at the White House. At the same time, the pool-table green walls suggested the underworld connections of Las Vegas, the lack of ornament or windows an interrogation cell in a spy movie, and the solemn illumination of the Tiffany chandelier a cathedral. It was a room designed to make everyone else feel he was being granted an audience with a Mafia don or the Pope.

“Sit down, gentlemen, sit down,” Beck said, without rising or offering his hand to either of them. “I hope we can make this fast, I’m busier than a harem guard mainlining Spanish Fly. I understand you wanted to say something about the male lead in
Sunset City
, John...”

Conrad took a seat a third of the way around the oval table from Beck; Horst seated himself directly across from Beck, trying to offset the intimidating effect of the room. “I want to know who you’re thinking of casting,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this, keeping a director hanging this way till the last minute.” A tremor of annoyance passed across Beck’s face. He glanced at Conrad, seemed to size the situation up for what it was. “I’ve got a theory about keeping the director loose, about not introducing too much determinism into the creative process,” he said. “Determinism is such a stone drag, don’t you think? Dropping the leading man on the director at the last minute creates a random factor—just when the script is finalized and everything seems determined, zap! reality becomes fluid again.”

“That sounds like a recipe for chaos,” Horst said.

Beck shook his head enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah, exactly!” Horst felt as if the discussion had degenerated into hebephrenia before it even started. “I didn’t come here to discuss philosophy,” he said. “I want to know who you intend to cast as the male lead. That’s a simple question. How about giving me a simple answer?”

“Simplicity is such a bore,” Beck said. He laughed, held up his right hand. “But okay, okay, this is as good a time as any. I’ve narrowed it down to a first and second choice. I think we’ll probably go with Rick Gentry. What do you guys think?”

Conrad turned to Horst. “
Who?”

“Rick Gentry?”
Horst muttered at the same time. Ye gods, what gave this madman the idea of dredging up Rick Gentry?

Gentry had been a male ingenue contract player about eight years ago, a dark-haired Tab Hunter type. Like some others of that ilk, he had played romantic leads in a couple of TV series and a few minor features while being as gay as a treeful of chickadees. Unlike the others, however, he had not been able to keep it entirely under control in the public area of his personal life, or ultimately out of his screen portrayals. Since he had no great acting talent, and since faggoty romantic leads were never exactly in demand, he had sunk out of features, then out of television, into obscure stage plays, Andy Warhol type dreck, and TV commercials. Beck must be going stark staring insane to be thinking of casting
Rick Gentry
as a hard-boiled, sophisticated New York journalist.

Horst could see from Conrad’s face that the kid had read something of what his own reaction had been. He looked very nervous—as well he might be!—and when he turned to confront Beck, there was almost an inquisitorial tone to his voice.

“Who the hell is Rick Gentry? What’s he done?”

Beck let his eyes seem to rove casually about the room, falling for a moment on Horst’s. A subjectively endless moment in which Horst found himself staring down into those two obsidian holes like a mouse looking into the eyes of a cobra. They seemed to paralyze him, stop his breath, shadow his soul with dread, make his heart flutter in mid-beat, impel him to silence.

“He’s done some features and a couple of TV series, Paul,” Beck said good-naturedly. “Been down on his luck these past few years, a few TV commercials, some local stage plays.”

“That doesn’t sound very impressive to me,” Conrad said. Beck smiled at him silkily. “I imagine
your
credits wouldn’t exactly bowl
him
over either,” he said. Conrad flushed pink at the cheekbones; the muscles of his hands tightened. “No offense, Paul,” Beck said. “I merely remind you of my low opinion of the relevance of past credits to present realities. Without which, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”