“Enough so he wasn’t afraid of it,” Johnny says.
But Emma thought it was better if they didn’t say anything in the film. It’s more of a movie moment—to just see them watching the old cowboy die. Their dreams, to be movie stars, have died, too; something of that is visible in Carol’s and Johnny’s resigned expressions. That green or blue-gray light from the television screen flickers on their faces.
But Jack would have liked to say the line. (“Enough so he wasn’t afraid of it.”)
“Maybe you’ll get to use it later,” Emma told him, “but not this time. This time, I’m the writer.”
Emma was more than that. She was the architect of Jack’s future in film, the reason he would make the leap from Wild Bill Vanvleck to more-or-less mainstream. Of course Jack Burns was still best known in drag, but suddenly he was serious.
It was quite a surprise when Jack was nominated for an Academy Award; he hadn’t thought of the cross-dressing limo driver as being that sympathetic a part. It was no surprise that Jack wouldn’t win that year. It was Mary Kendall’s first Oscar nomination, too, and she wouldn’t win, either. But they were both nominated, which was more than they’d ever imagined.
The Silence of the Lambs would win Best Picture, and Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively—it was their year.
Emma wasn’t nominated. Screenwriters were nominated by screenwriters; Emma’s famous script notes still rankled. Emma went to the Oscars as Jack’s date, which made it fun. They generally agreed who the assholes were; identifying the assholes was an important activity at an event like that.
Billy Crystal, again the host, made a joke about the evening being delayed—“because Jack Burns is still changing his bra.”
Emma had a very noticeable hickey on her throat. Jack had given it to her, at her request. She hadn’t gone out with anyone in a long time, she thought she was ugly, and she hated her Oscar dress. “At least make it look like someone’s kissing me, honey pie.”
Mrs. Oastler spotted Emma’s hickey on TV in Toronto. “Couldn’t you have put a little concealer on it?” Leslie asked Emma.
It was March 30, 1992—the first time Mrs. Oastler and Alice stayed up to watch the entire Academy Awards show, although Jack told them not to bother. He knew Anthony Hopkins was going to win Best Actor, but Leslie and Alice stayed up to watch Jack not win, anyway.
They always showed a film clip of the nominated actors. Jack knew the shot he wanted them to use for him. It’s his face at the wheel of the limo—Jack-as-Johnny glances once in the rearview mirror at his wife, Carol, who’s all alone in the long backseat of the stretch. Carol is trying to put her hair and lipstick in order; she’s looking a little messy from a hotel-room groping by an overeager tourist at the Beverly Wilshire. Jack’s eyes go briefly to the rearview mirror, then back to the road. It’s a look between stoic and noir; he was proud of that close-up.
But with marketing, there’s no such thing as too obvious. The film clip they showed instead was the call-girl shot: Jack-as-a-hooker is breathing bourbon into the face of the front-desk clerk at The Peninsula Beverly Hills. “There’s something you should know,” Jack-as-a-hooker tells the clerk in that husky voice. “Lester Billings has checked out. I’m afraid he’s really left his room a mess.”
“The money shot,” Myra Ascheim called it, when Emma and Jack ran into her at the Oscar party at Morton’s. It had taken ages to get in; the limos were backed up on Robertson as far as they could see.
Jack was unfamiliar with the phrase. “The money shot,” he repeated.
“He’s Canadian,” Myra explained. Jack saw that she was sitting with her sister, Mildred.
“Two tough old broads in a power booth,” Emma would say later.
“In a porn film,” Milly Ascheim explained, without looking at Jack, “the money shot is the male-ejaculation moment. You don’t get it, you got nothin’. Either the guy delivers the goods, or he can’t.”
“What’s it called when you don’t deliver, or you can’t?” Emma asked the porn producer.
“Crabs in ice water,” Milly said. “You gotta deliver the money shot.”
“The equivalent of that shot of you as a hooker, Jack,” Myra said condescendingly. Perhaps she was peeved with him because he hadn’t recognized her. (She wasn’t wearing her baseball cap.)
“I get it,” Jack told the Ascheim sisters. He was anxious to leave. Emma was holding his hand; Jack could tell she wanted to leave, too. The two tough old broads were looking her over, and it wasn’t a friendly assessment.
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t win, Jack,” Myra continued, staring at Emma.
“It only matters when you win,” Milly corrected her.
“Well, we gotta go—there’s another party,” Emma said. “A younger one.”
“Nice hickey,” Mildred Ascheim told Emma.
“Thanks,” Emma said. “Jack gave it to me—it’s a real doozy.”
Mildred shifted her examining gaze to Jack. “He’s cute, isn’t he?” Myra asked her sister. “You can see what all the fuss is about.”
Jack could tell that Milly Ascheim was thinking over the word cute. In her world, Jack knew, cute didn’t cut it. “I think he’s cuter as a girl,” Mildred Ascheim said; she was scrutinizing Emma again, ignoring Jack. He thought that Milly was weighing whether or not to expose him.
That was when Myra said, “You’re just jealous, Milly, because I met Jack first.”
Uh-oh—here it comes, Jack thought. But Mildred Ascheim surprised him. She gave Jack a withering look, just to let him know she remembered how small his schlong was; yet she didn’t give him away. It was not a reassuring look—on the contrary, Milly wanted Jack to know that she hadn’t forgotten a single disappointing detail of his audition in Van Nuys. This just wasn’t the time for her to bear witness.
“For Christ’s sake, Myra, it’s Oscar night,” Milly told her sister. “We oughta let these kids enjoy it.”
“Yeah, we gotta go,” Emma said again.
“Thank you,” Jack told Mildred Ascheim.
Milly was looking at Emma once more; she just waved to Jack with the back of her hand. He anticipated that Milly would say something as he and Emma were walking away, a parting shot. (“So long, small schlong”—or words to that effect.) But Milly held her tongue.
“Mark my words, Mildred—Jack Burns has a world of money shots ahead of him,” Jack heard Myra Ascheim say.
“Maybe,” Milly said. “I still say he’s cuter as a girl.”
“Don’t let those old bitches bother you, baby cakes,” Emma told him when they were back in their limousine.
They were drifting in a sea of limos. Jack didn’t know or care which party they were going to next. He always let Emma be in charge.
After a night like that, Jack would have expected to hear from everyone he ever knew—even though he lost. (Maybe especially because he lost.) But not that many people reached out to him. Caroline Wurtz called Alice, though. “Please tell Jack I think he should have won,” Miss Wurtz said. “Imagine giving an Oscar to someone for eating people!”
When Jack and Emma got back to their place in Santa Monica, Mr. Ramsey’s was the first message on the answering machine. “Jack Burns!” he cried. That was all; it was enough.
Jack’s old wrestling friends contacted him more slowly. Coach Clum, from Redding, wrote: “You made the right call, Jack. Cauliflower ears wouldn’t have worked on a girl.”