Show Business Kills (31 page)

As the twins like to say to me when I say something to them that doesn’t hold any water at all, “Yeah. Right.” That’s what
Ronny’s failure to call me back meant. Yeah. Right. Your job is through, bitch. You got me where I wanted to go, now back
off.

But you know me. No opinions lightly held. I believe it was Werner who said that the essence of communication is intention,
and I am always on a straight course when it comes to intention. When my manicurist told me her right-to-life group approved
of shooting doctors to “save babies,” I threw the table over on her in the middle of a fill. She had acrylic in her hair,
and “Fiesta Red” on her blouse right next to her pro-life pin.

The point is, I wasn’t going to let Ronny Bates get away with this. I called him again and again, and one night, off guard,
he answered the phone, and I didn’t even say hello, I just said, “You can’t do it. I’ll fight you. You have to make it right.”
Naturally he greeted me with a big phony warm greeting, as if he’d just been about to dial my number to tell me what he told
me then.

“You’re right, Marly, you’re a thousand percent right. I screamed at the writer, gave him notes.” Him… did you notice that?
Why not a woman writer? “And I promise, you’ll be really proud of it. The network loves it, everyone is hot for it. You have
to know I learned so much because of you, and I will not let you down.”

I sighed, thanked him, and hung up. Fool with me, will he? I actually thought that. I actually told myself that I had showed
him he was not going to pull a fast one on these women. That he was not going to get away with any of that sensationalistic
exploitation garbage as long as he had me on board. I would class this project up so high, if ABC didn’t do it, we’d go straight
to PBS.

I even mentioned it to Billy one night when he came to pick up the girls. The question “So what’re you up to?” had become
a sore spot between us, as you can imagine, since he was now the biggest star on late night, and I was not getting callbacks
on interviews. But that night he happened to ask me that question, and I said, “I’m probably going to be producing a film.”
It was so grand to see the shock on his face. As big a star as he is on TV, what he really wants is to be a movie star. So
I didn’t mention it was a movie for television.

“No shit?” he said, and I’m so sick, the fact that it impressed him made me want to get my producing credit very badly. So
when the revised script came, with the new blue page inserts, I poured the coffee and went back to my desk and started reading.
I was incensed to see that virtually nothing was changed. I mean, things were definitely different in the script, but if anything
they’d gotten worse.

Now the dominatrix was molesting the battered women’s children. I lost it. I called Ronny and got his machine and
like a crazy person, I screamed into the phone. I said I realized that he only had his own interests at heart all along, that
I knew now that he’d led me to believe he was one kind of person and turned out to be just another Hollywood phony instead.
I remember screaming “You can’t do this to people,” into the phone, and then realizing not only that I was crying but that
the person I was really talking to when I said all those things was Billy.

It took Ronny days to call me back, and when he did I was out, so he left a message on my machine. It was right after one
from Billy saying he was in meetings so late that he couldn’t pick the girls up, during which a woman’s voice was laughing
in the background the entire time he was speaking.

Then came Ronny’s message, in which he spoke slowly and in a patronizing voice that made it sound as if he were speaking to
a child of two. “Marly, we start shooting this MOW on Monday. The network is so happy with it, they want to make a big overall
deal with my production company. I heard what you said, I have made many of the changes you suggested, and I am messengering
you over a copy of the shooting script so you can sign off on it, and let me know if you do or do not want your producing
credit. All the best to you and the twins.”

The script didn’t arrive until Sunday night. If there were any changes, they were for the worse. Husbands were making harassing
phone calls, women were sneaking drugs into the place, one of the women was a Satanist and trying to convert the others. I
have never been so appalled by anything in my life. I didn’t sleep for one minute that night, and after I
dropped the girls off at school, I drove like a crazy person over to the studio.

I had no idea how I was going to get on the lot. I didn’t have a pass, I didn’t have a clue what stage they were on, I only
knew which studio, but I was possessed. I drove up to the gate, and heard myself say to the guard, “Hi, I’m in the cast of
Shelter
.” That was the name of Ronny Bates’s movie.

The guard picked up a clipboard, on which he obviously had a list of names of the cast, and I didn’t know who any of them
were, so I couldn’t give a fake name. “Your name?” he asked. Clearly he had never seen “Keeping Up with the Joneses.”

“I’m Marly Bennet Mann,” I said. He looked for a long time, probably under B and then under M, and then he looked at me and
said, “I don’t have you on here.”

I was afraid the next move was the guard calling the set, and Ronny hearing my name and trying to keep me off the set, and
I didn’t know what to do. Now, you know how neat I am? So my car is never a mess, but for some reason that day I had the kids’
stuff all over the backseat, and some clothes I was planning to take to the cleaners on the floor in front of the passenger
seat, and a whole pile of mail I needed to go through, and a copy of
People
magazine my mother had sent me from back east because there was a picture in it of me and Billy leaving Spago after Swifty
Lazar’s Oscar party.

So for some reason I decided that was the way to go, to get me onto the lot. To use what I hated the most, which was exploiting
Billy’s name the way every other dog in this town wants to. But I grabbed the magazine, opened it to the page called Glitterati,
at this awful picture of me with Billy waving a fist at the camera, and thrust it out the window at the guard. “Here,” I said.
“This is me. Mrs. Billy Mann.” While
he was looking at it, I flashed on Judy Garland in
A Star Is Born
, saying, “Hello everyone, this is Mrs. Norman Main.”

The guard was smiling now. We know how everyone loves Billy, don’t we? And then he looked back at me and said, “You’re his
wife? Boy, that must be fun. Go ahead.” I let him keep the magazine, and hated myself, but this was for a worthy cause. I
was going to march on that set and raise hell. I was going to terrorize Ronny Bates until he closed down production. I am
so stupid, I actually thought there was something I could do.

I stopped a young woman who might have been a production secretary, walking across the lot, and she knew where they were shooting,
so I found a parking place and walked over to the stage, pulled the big, heavy door open, and crept through the cool darkness
to the set.

It was very dingy. It was supposed to be the bathroom in the shelter, which in reality is very sunny and welcoming. I know
because I worked on making the real shelter look that way, and Ronny Bates knew it, too, because he’d spent enough time there.
There was a big crew and a lot of actresses milling around who I didn’t know but who seemed as if they were chosen because
they looked tawdry, when the truth was that most of the women I’d met in the shelter were very vulnerable looking.

I stood quietly for a while and then watched as a nearly naked actress walked into the bathroom, and the actress who was playing
the woman who oversees the shelter was watching her get ready to take a shower. That was it. I walked over to where Ronny
was standing chatting with someone, and I could see he was shocked to see me walk in there.

I summoned every ounce of assertiveness training I ever
had, and I said, “Ronny, this is criminal. You’re sending the wrong message to women who will be scared away from something
they desperately need to change their lives.”

Ronny smiled a self-conscious smile and said, “Marly… come over to the production office and we’ll talk about it.”

“We’ll talk about it right here,” I said, hoping I was embarrassing him. I saw him blanch, and then he said as loud and clear
as he could, “Marly, get the fuck off my set, get the fuck off this lot. If you don’t, I’ll have some of my crew carry you
off bodily. Stay out of this, or I’ll make you sorry you didn’t.”

I looked around hoping someone would step forward and say I don’t know what, maybe, “You can’t talk that way to her, she’s
fighting for truth and honor and justice. This production is shut down for being a bad example to caring people everywhere!”
Ha. Everyone on the set was completely self-absorbed. The actresses were yakking to one another and flirting with the crew,
one of the cameramen was reading a paperback, no one was even listening.

I was motionless for a minute, and then I remembered him in that buffet line years ago at that party when he picked up the
cabbage, and what he’d said. “I’d do anything to get ahead in this business,” and I wished like hell I’d paid attention to
my first-fifteen-minutes rule. And even though I don’t believe in Werner anymore, he did say we are all God in our own universe,
and I created that situation. So I went home and waited for the show to air.

It got a forty share, and right afterward Ronny Bates bought himself a house with a tennis court in the hills. Somewhere I
believe, right near the house that’s reputed to belong to Marlon Brando.

  
23
  

S
he found the hospital with no sweat at all. She had good directions that she got by calling. It made her laugh when the person
on the line told her, “You make a right on George Burns Drive, then you park at the Marvin Davis Building, then you walk through
the Max Factor Tower, which is across from the Steven Spielberg Building.” Maybe only people who were big in show business
were allowed to be sick there. Maybe when they picked you up off the street after being hit by a car and they took you to
the emergency room, somebody at the entrance had the job of asking, “Can we see your résumé? Have you made enough money in
this industry for us to let you in
?”

She did all the things they told her. Burns to Davis to Factor to Spielberg, and then she was in the lobby, looking at the
uniformed guard, who wouldn’t let her go upstairs. Jan was in a coma close to death, at least that was how all the news reports
were making it sound. So if the others were there, and they had to be there, at least one of them had to, they’d never know
anything. They’d welcome her, the way Jan had, hug her, and ask her about all the things she’d been doing. She’d tell them
she
just happened to be in town visiting friends and she heard about poor Jan on the news, and they’d all commiserate
.

Perfect! She’d say how heartbroken she was, and perhaps they should organize the memorial service. Because surely at the memorial
service all the old friends would be there, and one of them would have a job for her. But the goddamned guard shook his head
at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dr. Schiffman gave me explicit orders that only people whose names were on this list could
go up. And I can’t violate that. So if you’d like to call Doctor Schiffman, or you can find some way to get your name on this
list…
”

She tried to read the list upside down, but when the guard saw what she was doing, he turned it over. Goddamn him. Goddamn
the fact that she parked her car in a pay lot, figuring that after she visited the hospital, someone would give her a parking
validation, and now they wouldn’t even let her in
.

“
Thanks,” she muttered, and sauntered away, trying to figure out if she could spot a stairway that went up, and after a while,
when the guard wasn’t looking, she could somehow find her way to Jan’s floor. The chilly night air blew into the lobby as
a handsome man with a Tom Selleck mustache pushed the door open, and his entrance caught the guard’s attention. He was dressed
in a tux
.