Thank You for Smoking (25 page)

Jeff responded without hesitation: "I don't have the answers on that. I'm not a doctor. I'm just a facilitator. All I do is bring creative people together. What information there is, is out there. People will decide for themselves. I can't make that decision for them. It's not my role. It would be morally presumptuous."

"Yes, right," Nick said. He was dazzled. The man was a
titan
of ambiguity. He could learn from this man.

"So," Jeff said, "why don't we talk. You're looking for some aggressive product placement."

"Jeff is too modest to mention this," Jack stepped in, "but he was the driving force behind product placement."

"Jack, Mr. Naylor did not fly all the way out here from Washington to listen to you recite my resume."

"Excuse me, Jeff, but I think it's relevant for Nick to know that you pioneered the entire field of product placement. Nick, do you remember how in movies whenever someone drank a beer or soda, or whatever, either the label was generic or it was covered? Then gradually you started to see the labels? And now you can see them so close up you can read the ingredients? Jeff did that. I'm finished."

"That's why we came to ACT," Nick said. "We knew that Mr. Megall was the best."

"Forgive me. I wasn't sure you knew."

"Can we continue, Jack?" Jeff said in a tone of mild impatience. "Or do you want to tell Nick what position I played for the Bruins?" "Continue, please."

"In point of fact," Jeff said, "we
were
the first to recognize the importance of product placement. What isn't so widely known is, and I know this surprises some people, but at the time, we did not do it to raise more investment."

"You didn't?" Nick said.

"Absolutely not. We wanted to involve the audience more fully in the character. People see their heroes up there on the screen. They want to know everything about them. Take James Bond. He drinks, what is it, a 'medium vodka dry martini shaken not stirred'? Don't you think people want to know what
kind
of vodka James Bond drinks? I can tell you this," said Jeff, "they
will
find out what kind of vodka James Bond drinks in the next James Bond movie."

"Aha," Nick said.

"Now, as it happens, the makers of that particular vodka—whatever it ends up being—are more than happy to participate financially in the creative process. But the money was all along a by
-
product of a creative decision." He grinned. "It's nice when that happens."

Dazzling. Absolutely dazzling. The man made it sound as though product placement was crucial to character development.
Call me Ish
mael, and hand me a Coca-Cola.

"We were thinking maybe Mel Gibson," Nick said, blurting it out, unable to contain himself any longer.

"That might be difficult," Jeff said. "He just quit. You know, he's got six kids. Not that he couldn't live forever and smoke, but, listen, I know where you're coming from. Mel was a beautiful smoker. The best contemporary smoking I've seen was in
Lethal
One. He took that smoke in so far you weren't sure it was ever going to come out. And when it did, it was like the breath of a dragon."

"It made me want to start smoking again," Jack said. "I almost did, in fact."

"Remember, however," Jeff said, "that Mel was playing a cop on the edge, someone with some pretty severe psychological problems. What else does he stick in his mouth during that movie? The barrel of his gun. You see, today, when you see people smoking in films, it's generally a sign that there's something wrong with their lives. It's not Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
anymore." Nick shuddered as the image of Peter Lorre flickered past. Jeff continued, "It's Bobby de Niro playing a chain-smoking, tattooed psycho in
Cape Fear,
Andy Garcia smoking through a hole in his throat in
Dead Again,
Thelma and Louise lighting up and getting loaded then going out to the parking lot to blow the balls off a rapist. It can get
very
weird with cigarettes these days. Pat Hingle branding Anjelica with a cigarette in
The
Grifters.
Laura Dern and Nick Cage chain-smoking through
Wild at Heart,
talking about how their parents all died of lung cancer and cirrhosis. Nick Nolte in
Prince of Tides.
Definitely a man with problems. Or Harrison Ford in
Regarding Henry.
He goes into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes and ends up on the floor with his brains splattered all over the place. He didn't even have time to read the surgeon general's warning. What message is being transmitted in these films, do you suppose? That smoking is cool? I think not."

"Exactly," Nick said. "We need a winner. A smoking role model."

"Yes. Set in the 1950s, before all the health stuff got out of hand."

"We'd
like
it to be contemporary," Nick said. "We want people to feel good about smoking now.
Everyone
felt good about smoking in the fifties, at least until they read
Reader's Digest."

Jeff rested his chin on steepled fingers. "We'd have to move quickly. Principal photography starts in two weeks. How do you feel about Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Talk about a role model. And a
very
elegant smoker. That holder, almost feminine
..."

"Beautiful
smoker," Jack said.

"We could fix the script. As a matter of fact . . ."

"What are you thinking?" Jack asked.

"That the cigarettes could be central. The CIA puts the poison in the cigarettes. T
he cigarettes become the McGuffin
."
"Brilliant,
"Jack said.

Nick said, "So FDR dies . . . from smoking?" "Yeah, but not from cancer."

"I think I'd have a hard time selling that to my people."

"Yeah," Jeff smiled, "I can see where that might be a problem. Contemporary is good, but the mind-set is already hardened against it. The L.A. City Council just voted to ban smoking in restaurants here."

"I know," Nick said lugubriously. "Seven thousand restaurants."
"So much for the Constitution. It's late in the game for main-
stream. . . . Wait a minute, wait a minute.
..."
"What? What?" Jack said.
"That's it."
"What?"
said Jack.
"The future."

"Brilliant," Jack said.

Jeff turned back to Nick. "I shouldn't really be telling you this, but UFA has a womjep sci-fi picture in development that's going to be very,
very
big."

" -Womjep'?"

"Woman in jeopardy.
Alien
meets
Dune
meets
Star Wars
and Darth Vader is gay. A
screamer.
I've seen the script. It's a very funny part, an Oscar part. The hero is a disgraced space baron with an alien kid sidekick who can turn into anything. The girl is the emperor's daughter who's run away and gotten into some seriously bad company. It's called
Message from Sector Six.
The effects are going to be amazing. Half an
hour
of morphing. You know what morphing is? What they did in
Terminator 2."

"They're calling it
Morph and Mindy,"
Jack said.

"A million dollars per minute. They've already reserved advertising space on the fuselage of a space shuttle launch. They've budgeted a hundred and twenty million dollars. It will be the most expensive film ever made. And they're making it in
Mexico."

"I heard they're already up to one-forty."

"It better be good. UFA is going to be wide open to product placement."

"Cigarettes?" Nick said. "In outer space?"

"It's the twenty-sixth century," Jeff said. "They're not bad for you anymore. In fact
...
in fact . . ." "What?" Jack said.

"They're
good
for you. The
Sleeper
idea. That reminds me, I need to call Woody, though I don't know what I'm going to tell him. Jack, call Bill Hyman, Jerry Gornick, Voltan Zeig, set up a meeting for this afternoon."

"Done."

"I've gone blank. Ginseng depletion. Who's directing?"

"Chick Dextor."

"Going to be a loong shoot."

"Tell me about it."

"Nick," Jeff said, "this could be very exciting for all of us." "I . . . but don't you explode if you light up in a spaceship? All that oxygen?"

"It's the twenty-sixth century. They've thought that through. That can be fixed with one line of script." "It sounds like
...
I don't know . . ."

"Nick. The leads in this movie are Mace McQuade and Fiona Fontaine."

"No kidding."

"No kidding. Can you see them, sharing a post
-
sex cigarette in their spaceship, in a round bed with satin sheets and a clear bubble top. The galaxies go whi
zzing by, the smoke curls weightl
essly upward. That doesn't prime your pump? You don't think that would sell a few cartons?"

"Yeah," Nick said. "I guess it would."

"I'll tell you something else. It's not my role to get involved in this part of it, unless I'm asked, but if I were you I would
right away
get started on launching a whole new brand of cigarettes and launch it simultaneously with the movie. Sector Sixes. No one has ever done that with cigarettes."

Jeff stood. The meeting was over. He shook Nick's hand. "You've done something to me that I try very hard to resist. You've gotten me emotionally involved."

Outside, Sean was working on a crossword puzzle. In the elevator, Jack said, "You should be pleased with yourself. Jeff
really
liked you."

18

Lorne
Lutch lived on an avocado farm sixty miles west of L.A. Feeling the need to have his own hands on the wheel, Nick dispensed with Mahmoud and his Great White Whale and drove himself in a rented red Mustang, with his bodyguards following in their own rented tan sedan with the half million dollars of cash. Maybe Lutch would appreciate the symbolism of Nick's showing up in a Mustang. Or maybe he'd come out with a double-barreled shotgun and blow Nick out of his bucket seat. It could go either way.

He'd read Gomez O'Neal's amazingly thorough briefing book on the man's personal and financial history, detailed enough to make the wiretappers at the National Security Agency blush—where
did
Gomez get all this stuff?—already he knew to the penny how much
Lorne
Lutch was carrying on his Visa and MasterCard and how much albumin he had in his last urine test. Gomez's boys had their fingers in every urine test that affected tobacco, avid for traces of dope.

This was a very strange mission, one he would only have taken on for the Captain. The night before, he'd placed a call to Polly, the only person, aside from Bobby Jay, to whom he could turn for pointers on bribing dying product spokesmen. Polly had whistled when he told her what he was up to.

"Hm," she said, "if I were you I'd put a get well card in it, leave the bag by the front door, ring the bell, and run like hell." Actually, not a bad idea.

While he was on the phone with Polly, Jeannette called, all sex and heavy breathing, wanting to know if she should be jealous
of
Fiona

Fontaine yet. And while she was on, Heather called, lighting up the third button on the phone console and making Nick feel like an air traffic sex controller.

Heather wasn't calling to whisper sweet num-nums into his ear long-distance. She was all business, except to complain about the Washington heat and the cab drivers. Most cab drivers in Washington are recent arrivals from countries where driving is the national blood sport; confronted in the rear-view mirror with an attractive female passenger with a nice figure in a thin summer dress, they tend completely to ignore the road ahead while suavely propositioning their passengers with the likes of
You like Haiti food?
Today, Heather had had enough of being hit on by sweaty Tonton Macoutes. What she wanted from Nick was what he knew
about the bill Ortolan K. Finis
terre was reportedly gearing up to introduce. They were being very close-mouthed about it on the Hill, and that was
very
unusual. She said that the
Sun
had called her back for more interviews, so now was definitely the time for her reporting to shine. Nick said he was a little out of the loop out here in Hollywood, but would see what he could find out from Leg Affairs.

"By the way," Heather said, "what
are
you doing out there?"

"Not much," he said, "just pumping up our West Coast office. Morale-boosting visit with the troops."