Garth looked at Foxx expectantly in the pause that followed. Tony, taking the hint, was silent, and also looked to Foxx to say something.
“Did, uh …” Foxx spooned an enormous strawberry out of his bowl and held it near his mouth. “Did Gloria tell you much about the history of this project?” He ate the strawberry.
“No. She said she thought it would be best to leave that to you. All she mentioned was that there had been a script written which you weren’t happy with.”
“Five.” Foxx said. “We’ve been through five drafts and three writers. It’s tough,” Foxx added, looking off philosophically.
“There’s something I wondered about.” Tony said. Both Garth and Foxx seemed surprised and curious that he wondered about anything. Maybe writers aren’t supposed to wonder, Tony wondered, but he pressed on. “How come you didn’t send me the latest script before this meeting?”
“We want to totally throw them out,” Garth said in the tone of a betrayed lover speaking of the mementos of his ruined romance.
“Even if you were to come onto the project,” Foxx said, “we wouldn’t want you to look at the earlier drafts. We’ve had a lot of meetings—”
“Bullshit. All bullshit,” Garth said. His thin shoulders were hunched, his head hanging low, like a fighter’s. He had just taken a sip of coffee. He set his cup down on the saucer with a harsh clatter. He looked Tony in the eyes. It was transfixing to look into them: Tony felt as if he had become a character in a movie; or that he had been sealed in the front row of the theater. They were dark and suspicious. “It’s hard for me to accept, but you gotta leave the writer alone. Every draft, we’ve gone step by step. Giving notes, doing it page by page. Doesn’t work. All we want is to pick a writer we like, tell him — in general — what we want, and then leave him alone. Only thing that makes sense.”
Foxx nodded gravely, but Tony saw that he really wasn’t paying attention to Garth, like a wife who has heard her husband tell a particular anecdote over and over. “Yeah. This is a special idea. It needs originality. And you can’t get originality writing a script by committee.”
“And you can’t get originality from a Hollywood writer.” Garth said. “They’ve spent their lives writing to suit other people. They have no idea how to be their own man. That’s why we wanted a playwright. You know, in the theater you guys have the final say. So”—Garth smiled, and his famous boyishness abruptly took the curse off of his cranky tone— “that’s what we want. Someone who’ll go off, write us a great script while we lie in the sun.” He banged his fist on the table. “No more script conferences until there’s a script to confer about.”
Tony laughed. Garth smiled mischievously. “Okay.” Tony said to him. He felt completely at ease with Garth. He seemed bright, accessible, and reasonable. “So how do I convince you to hire me?” Tony said. He didn’t know if it was too bold a remark. But it was what he wanted to know, and Garth’s honesty made him feel that truth was the best approach.
“You don’t have to,” Foxx said.
“Let me tell you why you’re here,” Garth said. He ran a hand through his straight black hair, another gesture straight out of his roles. “I saw your play last year in New York—”
“Youngsters?”
Garth smirked. “Yeah. Did you have more than one play on that year?”
“Yes,” Tony said quietly.
Garth looked abashed. “You did?”
“I had two one-acters on at the Quest Guild right after Youngsters.”
“I didn’t know that. I wish I’d seen them. I guess I wasn’t in town—”
“You might have been. They were only on for four weeks. It was a limited run.”
“Anyway, I did see Youngsters. You know, I’ve seen a lot of stuff about the sixties, the antiwar movement, the sexual revolution — nobody got it the way you did. There were no preachy monologues, you snuck in the politics painlessly, you made terrible fun of all of us, and then you turned it around beautifully. I cried at her speech …” He turned to Foxx. “You know, the druggie who yells at her kid sister about how it was worth it, no matter how badly they failed.”
Foxx nodded throughout gravely, but again with that abstracted look of someone who has heard it too often.
“Thank you,” Tony said. He was astonished that Garth had been to his play (and surprised that he hadn’t known it; usually the presence of a celebrity in an off-Broadway theater doesn’t go unnoticed) and intensely flattered by Garth’s vivid recall and detailed praise. Why he should so value Garth’s admiration — hadn’t the Times said he was “touched with genius”?—he didn’t know, but he felt himself suffused with a happy warmth.
“Anyway, I had just read the fourth, the fifth, I don’t know what draft of Concussion—”
“Is that the title of this project?” Tony asked.
“Working title,” Foxx said hastily. “We need something—”
“Less medical!” Garth said impatiently. “Anyway, I’m sitting clapping at the curtain, tears coming down my face, and I think: Why the fuck didn’t we hire this kid to write Concussion?”
Tony smiled. “So why didn’t you?”
“ ’Cause the studio wants people with credits, as if that proves something. Concussion’s a thriller, that’s what’s gonna sell it to the public. Like a Hitchcock movie, it’ll mostly be a glamorous chase picture. But — and it’s a big but — what gives it resonance, some depth, is this: we take a guy in his mid-thirties, he’s in Washington, he’s made it, he’s a partner in a firm that does a lot of antitrust work, basically fighting the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, all the regulating bodies of the Justice Department. So, he’s an establishment guy. But in the sixties, he was a radical. And a real radical. Fell in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman—”
“Meryl Streep,” Foxx offered.
Tony smiled involuntarily, but then he remembered who these people were. If they wanted Meryl Streep for a part, they could get her.
“Yeah, I’d love to work with Meryl again,” Garth said. “She’s terrific. And she’d be perfect for this. Anyway, she’s very radical, and part of the reason he went along with going underground, making bombs, was that he was in love with her.”
“This is all back story,” Foxx said.
Garth smirked. “He says that ’cause it scares the shit out of the studio. Like I’m gonna make a movie in which I blow up the President.”
“Not a bad idea,” Tony said.
“Yeah.” Garth winked at him. “You get the idea. It’s all back story, and he’s sorry he ever had anything to do with making bombs—”
“Why did he stop?”
“Ah!” Garth leaned forward eagerly. “This is how the movie begins. It’s 1968. We see a quiet town house in Greenwich Village. I’m in the basement with Meryl. Quickly establish I love her while I argue with her that we shouldn’t place the bomb — which we see her making along with two other characters — in a situation where anyone could be hurt. She’s very hard-line. Finally, I say we need milk, or they want sandwiches for lunch—”
“He goes out for lunch,” Foxx said impatiently. “He can’t go out for milk.”
“Whatever,” Garth said. “Doesn’t matter. I go out. I’m about halfway down the block—”
“Town house blows up,” Tony said for him. “You’re doing the Eleventh Street incident.”