Flavor of the Month (42 page)

“Talents” were Ortis’ clients. The special people, the ones who dreamed big enough to entrance the Regulars. So many Regulars, so few Talents. Christ, how boring was it when most people started in with “I had the most interesting dream last night”? Balls. It was only the Talents, with their weirdnesses, their visions, their little streaks of eccentricity, that really
were
interesting. Ortis worked with the most interesting people in the world. Writers who wrote down great dreams, actors and actresses who looked like great dreams, directors who could put the two together and create great dreams.

Yeah, sometimes the Talents were difficult, sometimes they got fucked up on coke, into bad debt with the IRS, into trouble with their marriages, but, hey, they
produced
. Sy knew how to handle Talents. And he had almost nothing to do with Regulars.

It was the Assholes in the middle that gave him trouble. The ones who
thought
they were Talents and wouldn’t fuckin’ let up on you until you had to crush them and wipe them off your shoe bottom like the dog shit they were. Sy’s biggest problem was unloading an Asshole he’d mistaken for a Talent, and his worst nightmare was the revenge of a Talent he’d treated like an Asshole.

That Morelli character was giving him trouble now. A definite Asshole. Got the pilot, fucked it up, couldn’t go the distance. So why didn’t he just crawl back into the hole that he’d crawled out of? Instead of fuckin’ driving Sy crazy with his phone calls and his crazy letters and his ambushes outside the office. Him and every other Asshole.

But Morelli wasn’t
really
a problem. Sy was virtually certain the guy was a true Asshole. As long as the fucker didn’t have a gun, Sy could give two shits what the little weasel thought or said.

April Irons, on the other hand,
she
was a Talent. A big Talent. So big that now she almost ran International Studios, one of the last big ones in the movie business. And Sy, to his eternal shame and grief, had mistaken her for an Asshole. He’d fucked her bad on a Marty DiGennaro deal, back in the days when you could fuck April over and live, and the bitch would never forget it. Christ, back then how was he supposed to know that gashes could run studios?

So, though he would go to a screening of Crystal Plenum’s latest movie, produced by April, he knew he’d be seated back with the dog shit. That was despite being Crystal’s agent and, he reminded himself, the most powerful man-behind-the-scenes in all of Hollywood. It was just that April was powerful in front of the scenes, too, and the bitch never forgave, never forgot.

Of course, neither did Sy. But he was at the mercy of his Talents. It was an agent’s lot in life. And it pissed him off big-time that Marty, his guy, his resident genius director, was not only doing this stupid television gig, but had gone out and hired one of the little bitches for the goddamn thing without even consulting him. Marty’s latest “find” was already represented by that dying old dragon lady Ara Sagarian, or so he had heard. Ara had represented her mother. Now there was nothing Sy could do about it, except suck his own dick. Instead, he reached for the inhaler on the seat beside him. He’d make Milton Glick pay for this. Okay, Milt had brought in the blonde and they’d tied her up, but Marty himself had also found the other actress, the Melrose one. Sy absolutely
had
to sign
her:
two out of three would give him the majority of representation, if not the unanimity he had craved.

Well, at least Glick
had
come through with that hillbilly. It had been and, he saw, would continue to be, easy as pie with her. Sign here, do this, move there, smile nice. Why couldn’t it always be so easy?

The phone in his car rang and he winced, reached over, and lifted it from the receiver. Jesus, he hated to talk on the phone and drive at the same time. It made him nervous, and that made the asthma kick in worse. He sighed. “Hello?”

“Mr. Ortis? It’s Michael McLain on the line,” his own secretary’s voice told him. “Can I patch him through?”

“Yes.” There were a series of clicks and squawks. Sy almost went up on the divider at the Burbank exit.
Jesus Cristos!

“Mr. Ortis? Michael McLain is on the line.” This time, it was Michael’s secretary. Michael still made
you
hold for
him
. Well, those days will be ending soon if he makes another goddamn flop like
Akkbar
.

“I know that, goddamn it!”

“Hey, you old Spanish son-of-a-bitch. How goes it?” Sy swerved to avoid a Toyota Tercel that nearly cut him off. Sure. He was driving a nine thousand dollar piece of shit. What did he care. Sy almost dropped the phone, recovered it, and tried to inhale.

“What’s up, Mike?” he asked. He knew that Michael hated to be called Mike.

“Listen, I wondered about what was going down with Addison and that script I liked.”

Sy sighed. No way that Rex Addison was going to star Michael in his next action picture. For chrissake, Rex was only twenty-eight. He
grew up
watching Michael McLain movies. To Rex, Michael was an old fart. And the bullshit about Michael always doing his own stunts was bought by the civilians, but Rex was savvy.

“Jeez, I think we can do much better than
that
,” Sy said. “The script has no style, no cachet.”

“Fuck the cachet. Addison’s last three had
legs
. I can give it the style.”

In a pig’s ass. “Listen, Mike, I have something much better. A buddy flick. Something I saw this week that’s perfect.”

“And who’s my buddy?” Michael asked, suspiciously.

“Ricky Dunn.”

“Who?”

Michael knew perfectly well who Ricky Dunn was. He’d had two unbelievable big ones.
People
magazine had voted him “the sexiest man alive.” Sy slowed to avoid an old man just in time. “He’s signed to play a rookie architect in that new Benson thing.”

“Great. And I’m the geezer who shows him how to build a skyscraper? Fuck that.”

“Michael, there comes a point in a man’s career when he has to broaden…”

“I get top billing. My name alone over the title.”

Sy knew it was impossible. Hell, Michael probably knew it was impossible. Although you never could tell: these guys’ egos were so big they often lost touch with reality. Sy reached for his inhaler. “Listen,
compadre
, why would you want to cut off your nose that way? Might as well bring in all the Ricky Dunn fans, too.” Sy knew that there was no way that Ricky would give up top billing. Why should he? Michael, on the other hand, hadn’t had a solid hit in three years. He should be grateful for a chance like this. Sy knew he had to move him in that direction. Because if he could sell Michael on this, he could make a fortune off of packaging the deal—he also represented his client Benson and the crappy script.

“Mike,” he began in a reasonable tone, “this is a real opportunity. Bob Redford asked to see the script.”

“Look, don’t start to tell me that playing second banana to a new kid on the block is
broadening
,” Michael screamed.

“Look at Paul Newman,” Sy began again.

“Paul Newman is almost seventy fucking years old. I’m forty-six.”

“Michael, you’re fifty-three, and everyone knows it but you.”

“Look, I still act as well as I ever did. I still fuck as well.
Better
, even.”

“I, thank God, would have no way of knowing that,” Sy said. He slammed on the brakes, nearly hitting his head on the windshield and almost rear-ending the motherfucker in the Benz in front of him.
Madre di Dios
, the roads had been taken over by assholes! And he was driving a car that cost more than most people’s homes. He sighed. “Listen, just do me a favor.
Think
about the Ricky Dunn movie. It’s just what you need now.”

“Fuck you!” Michael screamed, and hung up on him.
Sangre de los Santos
, did it have to be this hard? Michael had been in a slump lately, and he was aging, but he was still important, and Sy wanted him as a client, at least for another year or two. Sy felt himself begin to gasp for air and reached across the seat again to his inhaler. Okay, he admitted to himself. He was upset. Normally he didn’t let little things like this bother him. After all, he was riding high. He was the consummate deal-maker in Hollywood. April Irons might be powerful, and very visible, but she wasn’t in his league. No one was.

Back in the twenties, it was men like Lasky and Mayer who ran the Industry: the big studio bosses were sultans, with the power of screen life or death over their stable of performers. Then, in the late forties, things began to change. The stars began going independent, and the studio system began breaking down. But no star, no matter how popular, had overwhelming power. It was only by controlling dozens of them that Warner or Mayer had stayed on top, and none of the studios today could afford to pay dozens of big stars.

But agents didn’t pay stars. They were paid
by
them. It was a perfect setup. The more talent you represented, the more power you had, and the more money you made. So a series of superagents arose. In the forties, it was Lew Wasserman and Leland Hayward; in the fifties and sixties, it was Lew Wasserman and Ara Sagarian; in the seventies, it was Lew Wasserman and Sue Mengers; in the eighties it was Mike Ovitz. Now, Sy thought with a smile, laying down his inhaler, now, it’s me. The next Lew Wasserman.

He told himself he should be happy. More than happy. Rich. Because Sy Ortis had a secret. Well, he had many of them, but he had one very big secret. It was that he had also kept the bodega, as his grandma used to tell him.

When he was little, it was his grandmother who had raised him and his five sisters. Tía Maria, as everyone in the neighborhood called her, ran the local bodega, and the rest of the neighborhood. And it was his grandmother who had taught him more about business than Wharton ever could have.

“
Pepito
, if I was Rockefeller,” she’d say, staring deep into Sy’s eyes, “I would be richer than Rockefeller. You know why?”

He shook his head.

“Because I’d also keep the bodega.”

Now Sy, on his way to being as rich as Rockefeller, had come up with a bodega of his own. It was too hard to make a living simply by peddling bodies to producers and taking his percentage while they got rich. Sure, when it worked, it worked big. But Sy understood from the very beginning in the Industry that he should also try to keep the bodega.

So he did. He had started a dummy corporation—two, actually. One of them sold scripts—all bought cheap, mostly useless—to many of his stars’ development companies and to studios. The other bought up merchandising rights from his clients for as little as one dollar, and sold them for a hell of a lot more. A conflict of interests? Perhaps. But very, very profitable. And nothing had ever been as big as the potential on this deal with Flanders Cosmetics. The girls signed up for
Three for the Road
were going to be pitched like a product to America, and unless he was
loco en la cabeza
they were going to be bought faster than condoms in a whorehouse.

Now Sy was only a few blocks from his office. He sailed through a red light and turned onto the wide avenue. He sighed with relief. Well, sometimes it was easy. At least that cornpone blonde had been signed easily, and could be big. Real big. Sharleen Smith. She was an extraordinary-looking girl. Glick had pulled that one out of his ass.

But it was still a constant struggle to stay on top of the slippery pile. Sy mourned the fact that he’d lost the redhead. He tried to take a deep breath. One step at a time. All he had to do today was sign this New York actress of Marty’s, convince Michael McLain to do the Ricky Dunn movie, and then eat April Irons’ dirt at the premiere. That, and manage to breathe.

Jahne sat across the desk from Sy Ortis, watching him while he talked on the phone. Christ, she hated these smarmy bastards. Flesh peddlers, she thought. Pimps. An evil in the Industry, but, she admitted reluctantly, a necessary evil. She didn’t want to be here. But Marty had suggested she see Ortis. And what Marty suggested, Jahne would do. On the set, off the set, anything Marty said, she did. Well,
almost
anything.

“That was Michael McLain,” he said. No apology for keeping her waiting, as if the name alone was explanation enough. “Now, where was I?” he asked.

“You were telling me what you would be able to do for me if you were my agent.” Jahne paused. “Let me ask, how long have you worked for Michael McLain?”

“
With
Michael,” Sy corrected. “Maybe ten, twelve years. Why?”

“That means he came to you as a big star already. You didn’t discover him, make his career. It was already on track.” She watched Sy adjust the sleeves of his shirt under the Armani jacket. Although Sy’s firm was called Early Artist Recognition Ltd., they didn’t usually spot new stars. They exploited the hell out of established ones. Some people said Sy had insisted on the name so he could call himself the duke of Earl.

“He was working, if that’s what you mean. But he vasn’t rich, which is where I come in. He could have made a good living for life without me, don’t get me wrong. But rich?” Sy chuckled to himself. “Nah, that was
me
.” He looked into her eyes. “And I could do that for
you
, too—may I call you Jahne? Rich
and
famous.” He kept his eyes on her, and a smile on his face.

Jahne knew that he was right. He
had
made Michael richer and more famous. And other people as well. And wasn’t that what she wanted, after all? Money and fame? Those gave you power to get the roles you wanted. “The money is, of course, important. Enough to make me independent. But fame? Well, I’d like to have enough of a reputation as an actress to be able to pick and choose my roles, take only the ones I want.
That
would make me happy.”

“You mean like Meryl Streep?”

Was that a sneer Sy had on his lips? “Exactly. Like Meryl Streep,” Jahne said.

Sy got up from behind the desk and came around in front, then sat with one buttock on the corner, his hands folded in front of him. “Except, Jahne, no one ever really gets to that point. Not even Meryl Streep. She has choice among some roles, but, nevertheless, she took the part in
She-Devil
. You remember that big bomb? And
Death Becomes Her?
Worse. Now, why would a talented, established actress take a role like that, risk her box office?” Sy leaned forward. “Let me esplain.” For a moment, his accent slipped. “An agent is more than a contract negotiator. He should be a career maker. Someone advised Meryl wrong, and, talented as she is, she still didn’t have the objectivity to really know a hit when she saw it. Someone like Meryl will bounce back. But maybe not quite so high as before.”