The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (21 page)

“Walt, I’m not exactly trying to sneak him away from you. You don’t have him under contract, do you?”

“And what’s this project called
Mercenaries
? What’s that all about?”

“It’s a script I did on spec. I got the idea when I heard about the ads at the back of
Soldier of Fortune
magazine.”

“
Soldier of
. . . David, I thought we had a good working relationship.”

“Sure. That’s what I thought too.”

“Then why didn’t you talk to me about this story? Hey, we’re friends, after all. Chances are you wouldn’t have had to write it on spec. I could have given you some development money.”

And after you’d finished mucking with it, you’d have turned it into a musical, I thought. “Well, I guess I figured it wasn’t for you. Since I wanted to direct and use an unknown in the lead.”

Another thing you can count on in this business. Tell a producer that a project isn’t for him, and he’ll feel so left out he’ll want to see it. That doesn’t mean he’ll buy it. But at least he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that he didn’t miss out on a chance for a hit.

“Directing, David? You’re a writer. What do you know about directing? I’d have to draw the line on that. But using the kid as a lead. I considered that yesterday after I saw his test.”

Like hell you did, I thought. The test only made you curious. The items in the trades today are what gave you the idea.

“You see what I mean?” I asked. “I figured you wouldn’t like the package. That’s why I didn’t take it to you.”

“Well, the problem’s hypothetical. I just sent the head of our legal department out to see him. We’re offering the kid a long-term option.”

“In other words, you want to fix it so no one else can use him, but you’re not committing yourself to star him in a picture, and you’re paying him a fraction of what you think he might be worth.”

“Hey, ten thousand bucks isn’t pickled herring. Not from his point of view. So maybe we’ll go to fifteen.”

“Against?”

“A hundred and fifty thousand if we use him in a picture.”

“His agent won’t go for it.”

“He doesn’t have one.”

That explained why the Screen Actors Guild had given me Wes’s home address and phone number instead of an agent’s.

“I get it now,” I said. “You’re doing all this just to spite me.”

“There’s nothing personal in this, David. It’s business. I tell you what. Show me the script. Maybe we can put a deal together.”

“But you won’t accept me as a director.”

“Hey, with budgets as high as they are, the only way I can justify our risk with an unknown actor is by paying him next to nothing. If the picture’s a hit, he’ll screw us next time anyhow. But I won’t risk the money I’m saving by using an inexperienced director who’d probably run the budget into the stratosphere. I see this picture coming in at fifteen million tops.”

“But you haven’t even read the script. It’s got several big action scenes. Explosions. Helicopters. Expensive special effects. Twenty-five million minimum.”

“That’s just my point. You’re so close to the concept that you wouldn’t want to compromise on the special effects. You’re not directing.”

“Well, as you said before, it’s hypothetical. I’ve taken the package to somebody else.”

“Not if we put him under option. David, don’t fight me on this. Remember, we’re friends.”

Paramount phoned an hour later. Trade gossip travels fast. They’d heard I was having troubles with my studio and wondered if we could take a meeting to discuss the project they’d been reading about.

I said I’d get back to them. But now I had what I wanted—I could truthfully say that Paramount had been in touch with me. I could play the studios off against each other.

Walt phoned back that evening. “What did you do with the kid? Hide him in your closet?”

“Couldn’t find him, huh?”

“The head of our legal department says the kid lives with a bunch of freaks way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. The freaks don’t communicate too well. The kid isn’t there, and they don’t know where he went.”

“I’m meeting him tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Can’t say, Walt. Paramount’s been in touch.”

Wes met me at a taco stand he liked in Burbank. He’d been racing his motorcycle in a meet, and when he pulled up in his boots and jeans, his T-shirt and leather jacket, I shivered from déjà vu. He looked exactly as Deacon had looked in
Revolt on Thirty-Second Street
.

“Did you win?”

He grinned and raised his thumb. “Yourself?”

“Some interesting developments.”

He barely had time to park his bike before two men in suits came over. I wondered if they were cops, but their suits were too expensive. Then I realized. The studio. I’d been followed from my house.

“Mr. Hepner would like you to look at this,” the blue suit told Wes. He set a document on the roadside table.

“What is it?”

“An option for your services. Mr. Hepner feels that the figure will interest you.”

Wes shoved it over to me. “What’s it mean?”

I read it quickly. The studio had raised the fee. They were offering fifty thousand now against a quarter million.

I told him the truth. “In your position, it’s a lot of cash. I think that at this point you need an agent.”

“You know a good one?”

“My own. But that might be too chummy.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“The truth? How much did you make last year? Fifty grand’s a serious offer.”

“Is there a catch?”

I nodded. “Chances are you’ll be put in
Mercs
.”

“And?”

“I don’t direct.”

Wes squinted at me. This would be the moment I’d always cherish. “You’re willing to let me do it?” he asked.

“I told you I can’t hold you to our bargain. In your place, I’d be tempted. It’s a good career move.”

“Listen to him,” the gray suit said.

“But do you
want
to direct?”

I nodded. Until now, all the moves had been predictable. But Wes himself was not. Most unknown actors would grab at the chance for stardom. They wouldn’t care what private agreements they ignored. Everything depended on whether Wes had a character similar to Deacon’s.

“And no hard feelings if I go with the studio?” he asked.

I shrugged. “What we talked about was fantasy. This is real.”

He kept squinting at me. All at once, he turned to the suits and slid the option toward them. “Tell Mr. Hepner my friend here has to direct.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” the blue suit said.

“Yeah, well, here today, gone tomorrow. Tell Mr. Hepner I trust my friend to make me look good.”

I exhaled slowly. The suits looked grim.

I’ll skip the month of negotiations. There were times when I sensed that Wes and I had both thrown away our careers. The key was that Walt had taken a stand, and pride wouldn’t let him budge. But when I offered to direct for union scale (and let the studio have the screenplay for the minimum the Writers Guild would allow, and Wes agreed to the Actors Guild minimum), Walt had a deal that he couldn’t refuse. Greed budged him in our favor. He bragged about how he’d outmaneuvered us.

We didn’t care. I was making a picture I believed in, and Wes was on the verge of being a star.

I did my homework. I brought the picture in for twelve million. These days, that’s a bargain. The rule of thumb says that you multiply the picture’s cost by three (to account for studio overhead, bank interest, promotion, this and that), and you’ve got the break-even point.

So we were aiming for thirty-six million in ticket sales. Worldwide, we did a hundred and twenty million. Now a lot of that went to the distributors, the folks that sell you popcorn. And a lot of that went into some mysterious black hole of theater owners who don’t report all the tickets they sold and foreign chains that suddenly go bankrupt. But after the sale to HBO and CBS, after the income from tapes and discs and showings on airlines, the studio had a solid forty million profit in the bank. And that, believe me, qualifies as a hit.

We were golden. The studio wanted another Wes Crane picture yesterday. The reviews were glowing. Both Wes and I were nominated for—but didn’t receive—Oscars. “Next time,” I told Wes.

And now that we were hot, we demanded fees that were large enough to compensate for the pennies we’d been paid on the first one.

Then the trouble started.

You remember that Deacon never knew he was a star. He died with three pictures in the can and a legacy that he never knew would make him immortal. But what you probably don’t know is that Deacon became more difficult as he went from picture to picture. The theory is that he sensed the power he was going to have, and he couldn’t handle it. Because he was making up for his troubled youth. He was showing people that he wasn’t the fuckup his foster parents and his teachers (with one exception) said he was. But Deacon was so intense—and so insecure—that he started reverting. Secretly he felt that he didn’t deserve his predicted success. So he did become a fuckup as predicted.

On his next-to-last picture, he started showing up three hours late for the scenes he was supposed to be in. He played expensive pranks on the set, the worst of which was lacing the crew’s lunch with a laxative that shut down production for the rest of the day. His insistence on racing cars forced the studio to pay exorbitant premiums to the insurance company that covered him during shooting. On his last picture, he was drunk more often than not, swilling beer and tequila on the set. Just before he died in the car crash, he looked twenty-two going on sixty. Most of his visuals had been completed, just a few close-ups remaining, but since a good deal of
Birthright
was shot on location in the Texas oil fields, his dialogue needed rerecording to eliminate background noises on the soundtrack. A friend of his who’d learned to imitate Deacon’s voice was hired to dub several key speeches. The audience loved the finished print, but they didn’t realize how much of the film depended on careful editing, emphasizing other characters in scenes where Deacon looked so wasted that his footage couldn’t be used.

So naturally I wondered—if Wes Crane looked like Deacon and sounded like Deacon, dressed like Deacon and had Deacon’s style, would he start to behave like Deacon? What would happen when I came to Wes with a second project?

I wasn’t the only one offering stories. The scripts came pouring in to him.

I learned this from the trades. I hadn’t seen him since Oscar night in March. Whenever I called his place, either I didn’t get an answer or a spaced-out woman’s voice told me Wes wasn’t home. In truth, I’d expected him to have moved from that dingy house near the desert. The gang that lived there reminded me of the Manson clan. But then I remembered that he hadn’t come into big money yet. The second project would be the gold mine. And I wondered if he was going to stake the claim only for himself.

His motorcycle was parked outside our house when Jill and I came back from a Writers Guild screening of a new Clint Eastwood movie. This was at sunset with sailboats silhouetted against a crimson ocean. Wes was sitting on the steps that wound up through a rose garden to our house. He held a beer can. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt again, and the white of that T-shirt contrasted beautifully with his tan. But his cheeks looked gaunter than when I’d last seen him.

Our exchange had become a ritual.

“Did you win?”

He grinned and raised a thumb. “Yourself?”

I grinned right back. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

He shrugged. “Well, yeah, I’ve been racing. I needed some downtime. All that publicity, and. . . . Jill, how are you?”

“Fine, Wes. You?”

“The second go-around’s the hardest.”

I thought I understood. Trying for another hit. But now I wonder.

“Stay for supper?” Jill asked.

“I’d like to, but. . . .”

“Please, do. It won’t be any trouble.”

“Are you sure?”

“The chili’s been cooking in the Crock-Pot all day. Tortillas and salad.”

Wes nodded. “Yeah, my mom used to like making chili. That’s before my dad went away and she got to drinking.”

Jill’s eyebrows narrowed. Wes didn’t notice, staring at his beer can.

“Then she didn’t do much cooking at all,” he said. “When she went to the hospital . . . this was back in Oklahoma. Well, the cancer ate her up. And the city put me in a foster home. I guess that’s when I started running wild.” Brooding, he drained his beer can and blinked at us as if remembering we were there. “A home-cooked meal would go good.”

“It’s coming up,” Jill said.

But she still looked bothered, and I almost asked her what was wrong. She went inside.

Wes reached in a paper sack beneath a rose bush. “Anyway, buddy.” He handed me a beer can. “You want to make another movie?”