Wag the Dog (41 page)

John Travolta is there in what I am told is a rare public appearance. His wife is home with their child. He greets Maggie with real warmth. I ask him if he minds talking about Scientology. He says he is glad to. “I got to ask you something,” I say. “Can Scientology cure homosexuality?”

It is a conversation stopper, apparently. John just looks at me. Maggie looks at me like I have committed a faux pas. “I don't mean it's a disease,” I say, “or like that. I mean, if someone who is homosexual doesn't want to be, could it help them not be. Hey, guys, I'm asking because Bambi Ann Sligo wants to know.” What the hell, if I'm out of this life and back to the old life, I might as well score a few points with Mel Taylor's secretary, because Mel is not going to be happy to see me.

Travolta says Scientology helps you become
clear.
Once you're
clear,
a lot of important psychological and emotional things happen, almost anything you want, and you take control of your life because you're
clear.
I figure I can tell Bambi Ann what she wants.

David Hartman arrives with Sakuro Juzo and two other Japanese martial-arts types with him. Someone tells me they are his bodyguards, that he no longer travels anywhere without them. Another person tells me how they are trained to kill with a touch. I get to see Van Damme introduced to Juzo. There's a fight that I would pay to see.

Hartman greets me effusively. But then, even if he was planning to have Sakuro decapitate me, I don't think he would be any different. I smile. He asks me how it's going, if I've found anything for Maggie yet.

“A couple of things that are interesting,” I say.

“What?”

“I don't know if I'm enough of a hustler for this business,” I say. “Now that you ask me, I find myself doubting myself. This is my first pitch meeting, isn't it?”

Hartman laughs. Maggie hears him and comes over.

“What are you laughing at?”

“You know, he's not as bad as I thought he was going to be. He's got a nice approach,” he says to Maggie. “Go ahead. It's a free practice session for you. If I like the material, I'll help you with the pitch, I promise.”

“OK. Here goes. First one. Big picture. Historical. I know nobody likes costume epics anymore. But—Catherine the Great. Hear me out. There's a new biography of her. I'm told it's very twentieth-century in feeling. Also, think Russian-American coproduction. They're desperate for hard currency. How much do you think it'll cost to rent the Russian Army for a couple of days? They have crews and equipment and they're pretty good. So I see high-production value for reasonable cost. Second, I just got a book about an out-of-work actress who gets a job as a detective. Part-time. Instead of parking cars or being a waitress. A New York film. It's available. Nicely written.”

“Action film?”

“No,” I say. “It's a character thing. It's more about being an actress than a detective, plus it's got this clash of cultures thing, kind of like
Tootsie
meets
Someone to Watch Over Me.”

“What about the war story? Give that up?”

“I have yet to see anything good in a war story for a woman.”

Hartman looks around the room, waves at someone, and leads us over near the bar. “Barry, you already know Maggie, but you haven't met Joe, Joe Broz. We're teaching Joe how to pitch. Practice on Barry. Maggie and I will watch and critique.”

Now Maggie seems happy with me, but it's pointless. It's an act that can't play much longer. I go on automatic pilot. Maybe that's why Barry likes the pitch—I don't sound like I care. I promise to send over a copy of the book and the coverage in the morning.
⁸⁹
I'm drinking bourbon. Slow and steady. It doesn't seem to matter one way or the other. Our host has an eleven-year-old boy. He's in black tie. It's very cute. The bartenders won't serve him. So when other people put their drinks down, he snatches them and dumps them in his glass of Coca-Cola. The drunker he gets, the more he stares at women's breasts. Around midnight, distinctly glassy-eyed, he goes over to Michelle Pfeiffer and in a voice that has yet to change says, “Lemme touch 'em. Just lemme touch 'em one time.”

Clint Eastwood comes to her rescue and takes the kid away. He says, “Come on, son. Boys your age should be playing with guns.”

Maggie looks at Clint. “I hate him,” she says.

“Why?”

“You think anyone will want me to work when I'm his age?”

 

 

 

⁸⁷
We remind the reader, and the attorneys, that Jacqueline Conroy is a fictional person. The suggestion that a famous person had, or has, fictional sex with a non-existent person should not, in the normal course of things, be libelous.

⁸⁸
Fucking new guy.

⁸⁹
Barry Levinson, director of
Diner; The Natural; Young Sherlock Holmes; Tin Men; Rain Man; Good Morning, Vietnam; Avalon.
The book was
Alibi for an Actress
by Gillian Farrell (Pocket Books, 1992). This is the way material is pitched—as exactly like something else successful, with a twist. The twist is that you're combining it with something else successful.

W
HEN THE PARTY
was over, Hartman went back to his office. Sakuro Juzo and the other two Japanese took up stations outside his door. It was 3:00
A.M.
Nonetheless, he picked up the phone and called Mel Taylor at home. Taylor was asleep.

“Is it an emergency?” Taylor asked.

“What I want to know is the truth about Joe Broz.”

“You have the file. Don't you have the file?”

“Do you really take me for that much of an asshole? These missing years, and the civilian work in Vietnam, what's the real story?”

“I'll get it for you,” Taylor said. “Is first thing in the morning alright? Is that OK?”

“Sure,” said Hartman. He hung up. He liked Joe. Liked him and Maggie together. On the other hand, he liked silk ties, Hunan cooking a couple of times a year, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and London tailors. He liked RepCo agents to wear black socks, but he'd yet to fire anyone for wearing navy blue. “Like” was not one of the heavies.

“
I
DON
'
T WANT
to go home,” Maggie says when the party winds down.

“Well, take the car, I'll call me a cab,” I say.

“Hey, Joe, you got two bits, Joe?”

“Maggie, don't start . . .”

“Buy me a cup of Java, Joe. Come on, Joe.”

It's a cool night, by L.A. standards. Maggie's dress is on the skimpy side. I give her my jacket. I drive. Maggie turns on the radio. Pirates of the Mississippi, k. d. lang, Patsy Cline. “Who is Bambi Ann Sligo?” she asks. I tell her. Maggie slides close, puts her head on my shoulder. “Won't you tell me about yourself, some,” she says. The top is down. One time I went home. On leave after my first hitch. Joey's dad said Joey'd done his duty, it was time to go home. Joey said he was going to re-up. Like me. With me. His dad, Pasquale, owns a grocery, has four kids, three girls and Joey, so, you know how it is, his son is what matters to him. Anyway, he has some money. Tells Joey if he come home, stays home, he'll buy him a convertible. We went down to the Chevy dealer, test-drove one, top down, me and him and his sister, Annette. Pasquale, he comes to me, says, “Tell Joey, stay home. He listen to you, Joe.” I owed him, owed him a lot. So I should've done it. But I didn't.

“What you see is what you get,” I say. “Where we going?”

“Venice,” she says. “There's an all-night place on Pico. I'm hungry.”

“You're hungry?” There had been plenty of food at the party, nouvelle southwestern cuisine. That's the Hollywood version of Mexican food, less fat and fart-free beans because there's nothing worse than a room full of movie stars all stressed and contorted trying not to pass gas.

“I can't eat at those things. I get afraid someone is going to see me eat. Once they see you eat, they look for signs of fat. Then they decide not to even call you because they don't want to have to tell you to your face that you have to lose four pounds before the start of shooting or they can't get a completion bond.”

“That's crazy.”

“Of course it is. But it happens. So sometimes I don't eat at those things. Let 'em think I live on air.”

When we get to the restaurant, Maggie goes into the bathroom, right away. I get us a booth. It's one of those places that could only be L.A., imitating a place that's just like America was supposed to be, back between Buddy Holly and going to Vietnam. Maggie washes her face, takes off all the makeup, and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. Our waitress recognizes her anyway. But she doesn't fuss about it. Maybe she's good about that sort of thing, the celebrity thing, or just tired.

Maggie orders a stack of pancakes, some sausage—which most of the time she wouldn't approve of—and coffee. I get a couple of eggs and toast. There's a bunch of musicians in back. Everything black and lots of leather.

“He was a drunk,” I tell her. Why shouldn't she know about my father. “When he got drunk, he used to whale on me some. Not like on the movie of the week, where he's breaking my ribs and sending me to the hospital and such. Just beating on me.”

“I'm sorry, Joe,” she says, full of sympathy.

“Don't be. You say shit like that, I won't tell you nothin'.”

“I'm sorry. That I was sorry.”

“I'll tell you a story. How I come out on top. First off, you gotta understand, you got an old man like that, it teaches you you can take it, makes you tough.” She still looks at me with sympathy. Which makes me angry. “You don't get it.” She doesn't.

“OK, tell me.”

“Kids used to brag about how hard their old man hit them.”

“Men are such assholes,” she says.

“Yeah, men are assholes. No question about it. Why don't you get yourself a girl. Maybe that's what you should do. Maybe that's what you really want.”

“How tough was your old man?”

“He worked a foundry most of his life. Ever been in a foundry?”

“No.”

“They make molds. They pour molten metal in the molds. Most of the molds are made out of sand. Plain old wet sand. Like at the beach. So the man spent his life carrying around boxes of wet sand, buckets of molten metal. Hundred pounds, two hundred pounds, five hundred, whatever. All day long. And it's hot. The metal splatters. It finds any bare skin you got. You can't drop what you're doing, because what you're doing is carrying one side of a hundred-pound bucket of liquid aluminum, so hot it flows like your morning coffee. So that's how tough my old man was.”

“Pretty tough.”

“Pretty tough. Man's work. Good work for a man. Anyway, problem was, problem was, he drank. So we weren't living too good, between him missing work and spending his money down in the bar. It was mostly when he got drunk that he'd get angry and beat the shit out of me, or take a couple of swipes at me, anyway. It was just a matter of surviving until he thought he'd done enough or he went to sleep. I'm not bitching about it. That's the way it is, until a boy grows big enough to go out and make his own place or big enough to stand up for himself and say ‘No more.' That's the way it is in nature, you know that.”