“Great flick,” said Dreyfuss, incognizant of the director’s presence. The server merrily prepared a Fiestaware bowl of Spanish olives. “Needs a new title, though: how ‘bout Full Metal Jack-off?” He cackled as someone shouted his name, and then he was gone.
The air was stale from the innocent snubbing, and Betsey’s awkward failure to make an assertion. It would have been so easy to reference the alma mater — her loser-detector must have gone off. Troy asked what brought them to the party. Betsey said they were filming the La Jolla Medea, with Zev’s company producing. People noisily poured in and Troy excused himself, telling her she should have a look at the art in the backyard. It would blow her mind.
He went out front to the circular driveway — blocked in, as he suspected. Just then, Moe appeared and offered a cigar. Troy declined.
“Don’t know why I still smoke — some kinda throwback. I don’t even enjoy it. Freud got cancer of the palate, didn’t he? That’s all I need. ‘Moe, the lower jaw has to go.’ Jesus! Cigars are ‘hot’ again. I know four guys want me to join their ‘smoking clubs,’ I’m supposed to pay twenty-five hundred a year for the privilege. Know what I read in some fashion magazine last week? I think it was Vogue. It said: ‘Black — the new white!’ Black is the new white, isn’t that brilliant? You know what? Pretty soon, it will be. Black-white, in-out, hot-cold, who dictates? W? The gangs? Bill Gates? And I’m the one who’s supposed to know! I’ll tell you something: I don’t have a fucking clue…”
“It certainly is mysterious.” He felt dull and vocational, like one of the caterers.
“Troy, I have a question for you. Would you make a movie for me? I know you’re busy with other projects—”
“A movie?”
“I’d like you to direct a little film, for Zev’s thirty-fifth. Do you think you could do that for under thirty? With, of course, something for yourself.”
“Thirty thousand?”
“No, thirty million. Of course thirty thousand! I’m not that rich,” he said, laughing. “Who you been talking to?”
“What kind of film?”
“It should be totally hilarious.” Troy asked if that meant X, and the personal manager nodded. “This could be a classic. What I want to do is find actors that look like the people in his life — and someone who looks like Zev! That’ll be the hard one — but maybe not. Maybe we can use masks or something. You know a lot of these people, don’t you? Are they any good, these actors? I mean, when you give ’em lines? And we need a dog, a dog that looks like Mimsy! I don’t want anything illegal — but I want it crazy. Think you can do it, Troy?”
Zev Turtletaub
Taj sat by the pool with the writer profiling Zev for the “Calendar” cover. The frothy ethnography — part Day of the Locust, part That’s Entertainment! — was a sexy Sunday staple, its recipe tried-and-true: a breezy, somewhat cynical day-in-the-life of a mogul of the moment (one who played by his own rules, of course) that included brutal and/or sybaritic anecdotes, unhappy childhood bits with foreshadowings of the “inveterate dreamer” (quotes from grade school teachers preferred, along with fuzzy photo of the bucktoothed, incipient Barnum surrounded by classmates/future losers); a little false-starts/years of failure/turning-point shtick, with obsequious and/or borderline libelous quotes from even more famous friends and traumatized unnamed sources re: the Subject’s lavish generosity/pathological niggardliness and longtime generally-rumored-to-be-lithium-treated bipolar moodiness; not to forget his onetime political aspirations and current Major Contributor status; slight pause for some What Makes Sammy Run? pop psychologizing, with REVENGE/FUN/ART/SPIRITUALISM/FOR THE HELL OF IT alternately speculated upon as the Grand Motivation; rounding off with the seems-to-have-slayed-his-demons number, a tip of the hat to Hedonism (“One cannot deny that in this singularly serious world, he is having, well, yes, dare we say it? Fun”) and a quick dip into the Subject’s perennial bachelorhood and sexual ambiguity…topping the whole concoction with a creaky allusion to “Rosebud.” In between, the columns garnished by newfangled City Walk/City of Angels/City of Quartz observations; quotes from Adorno; nonsensical Internet forays.
The assistant-cum-associate-producer, who had toyed with reportage himself, couldn’t believe he once envied the kind of sweaty, Polo-shirted schmuck who sat across from him with a ThinkPad and a glass of Steven Seagal cabernet. He was temporarily at his mercy; the guy was probably livid at Taj’s good fortune and could easily portray him as a kiss-ass wimp. He’d be careful not to mention Harvard — why add fuel to the fire? While they waited for Zev to arrive, the stringer busied himself with deceptively ingenuous interrogations, his stab-in-the-back smile dominating like a rogue fart.
Two years from now, Taj thought, my name will be on seventeen hundred screens and you will be trudging to the Royalton whenever Joe Marginal Icon blows into town. He maliciously finished the “Calendar” piece in his head:
The producer wanted to know why the fax in the Bentley was on the fritz. “Doesn’t anything in this fucking car work?” His driver smiled, accustomed to the employer’s colorful imprecations. On the tarmac, the Gulfstream waited to loft him to azure skies, to the London premiere of All Mimsy. He would dine at the palace with the Queen Mother. As he mounted the steps, Mr. Turtletaub turned, his face breaking into the trademark, toothy grin. “Who would have ever thought that the Mother of all Queens was not to be found on Fire Island?” Minutes later, he was where he belonged, where as a boy he dreamed he might be, far from the dirt and disorder of the world — where he could lay claim to his rightful title in a palace of his own that hung in the sky: Emperor of the Air.
They talked about the Turtletaub Company slate and the writer asked about the Salinger adaptation. Taj was coy. He knew Zev wanted to give the appearance to the press that the reclusive author was involved.
“I read you’re going be associate producer on Dead Souls.”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s an interesting project. Will it be period?”
“Contemporary.”
“It’s been a while since I read the book, but I can’t imagine — the man buys peasants, doesn’t he?”
“The core of the book — the conceit — will be the same.” Taj instantly regretted using that word; the writer would use it against him. “Everything else is quite different.”
“The same but different.” The journalist smiled, savoring the Wonderland doublespeak. “Is there a screenwriter attached?”
“We’re talking to one or two people.”
“And the ‘conceit’ is—?”
“It’s actually Zev’s — Love in the Time of AIDS. It takes place in the viatical settlement industry. Those are the people who—”
“I did a piece on that,” he said eagerly.
“The protagonist is a salesman — they call them ‘sellers’ advocates.’ He’s kind of a down-and-out. He becomes this — merchant of death. And suffers the consequences. It’s also a love story.”
“Wow. That is very compelling. Very cool!”
Mimsy arrived with her trainer. The journalist amused himself with an impromptu interview: how much was a bitch like this worth? did she have a shrink? how could he be sure this was the “real” Mimsy? — surefire fodder for the Nathanael West sideshow angle. When the photographer came, the “Calendar” boy made him take a Polaroid while he mugged, shaking Mimsy’s paw. “I will treasure this,” he said, watching it develop. What a wag.