Hollywood (15 page)

We went down to the other set on Alvarado Street on Monday a week later. We parked a couple of blocks away and walked over. As we got closer we could see that there was some activity around Jack Bledsoe’s Rolls-Royce.

“They’re taking some shots,” said Sarah.

There was Jack Bledsoe standing on the hood of the Rolls and standing up there with him were two of his biker pals. The flashbulbs went off, the bikers laughed, Bledsoe smiled and they all walked around on the hood in their heavy boots, changing positions for more shots.

“I don’t think that’s too good for the hood,” said Sarah.

Then I saw Jon Pinchot. He walked toward us. There was a tired smile upon his face.

“What the hell’s going on here, Jon?”

“We have to keep the children happy.”

Then there was a yell from one of the bikers. Everybody leaped off the hood. The shots were finished. They walked off, laughing and talking.

“Look at those dents on the hood,” said Jon.

“Everywhere. Didn’t they notice?”

“They don’t know. They live, not knowing.”

“That poor beautiful car,” said Sarah.

(It would later cost $6,000 to get those dents taken out of the hood and to repaint it.)

“You talked to the lawyer at the party, didn’t you, Hank?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said the checks had been mailed out.”

“That’s true. I got them and deposited them in my account.”

Jon opened his wallet. He took them out. There were two of them. Stamped across the face of each it said:
Insufficient Funds
.

“They are on a Netherlands bank. Rubber.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said.

“Why?” Sarah asked. “Why is Firepower doing this?”

“I don’t know. I confronted Friedman this morning. He claimed the checks were good, that the accountant deposited funds in the wrong bank account and that as soon as the funds were transferred back the checks would be good. I told him, These are drawn on a Netherlands bank. No bank here will touch them when they are marked and stamped as they are. You must write me new checks.’ Friedman said, ‘No, I can’t do this on my own. I must wait for my accountant to straighten it out.’ “

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

“I told Friedman, ‘All right, let’s get your accountant in here.’ And he said, ‘My accountant is at the deathbed of his mother in . Chicago. She is dying of cancer.’ Then he leaned back in his chair and looked out the window.”

“ ‘Mr. Friedman,’ I told him, ‘this is not right.’ “

“Then what did the monster say?” Sarah asked.

“He looked at me with those innocent blue eyes and he said, ‘Remember, baby, nobody else in this town wanted this film. They spit on it. They laughed at it. We took it on, remember that. Work with us, honey-boy, and you’ll be in the clover.’ “

“Then what did you do?”

“Sarah, Hank, please come with me now,” Jon said. “We are getting ready to shoot the bathtub scene. Remember it?”

“Yes, of course. Are you going to go ahead without pay?”

We walked toward the set.

“The bathtub scene is going to be a good one. I like it,” Jon said.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s all right.”

Jon continued his story. “Anyhow, after seeing Friedman, I went around the block. I walked around the block twice looking at that green Firepower building. Then I finally had had it. I walked back to Friedman’s office...Pardon me, Hank, please stand behind me as I sit in this chair...”

“Huh?”

There was a photographer standing and waiting. Jon sat in a chair.

“Are you behind me?”

“Yes.”

“Now give a big phoney smile.”

I did.

The flash went off.

“Again,” said Jon.

The flash went off again.

“Good. That’s it.”

Jon got up. “Follow me. We’re shooting upstairs...”

We began up the stairway.

“Friedman and Fischman had a photo just like that taken last week, Friedman in the chair, Fischman standing behind him, both of them smiling. The photo appeared as a full page ad in Variety. And under it were the words, FIREPOWER WILL WIN!”

“Yeah?”

“Wait. Stop here. Let me tell the rest before we enter the set.”

“All right.”

We stood there at the top of the stairway. The shooting was to take place down the hall.

“I went back to his office. I told Friedman that I had seen his ad in
Variety
. I said that you and I were taking out an ad next week. You and I with the same pose. And underneath would also be a picture of the two bounced checks with the caption, FIREPOWER WILL WIN, BUT HOW? I told him that unless we received two
certified
checks
within 48 hours that this ad would appear.”

There was an extremely tall man standing at the end of the hall. It was Jon’s assistant director, Marsh Edwards.

“We’re ready to shoot, Jon. Everything’s ready.”

“Wait...I’ll be right there...”

“Maybe you can tell us later?” Sarah asked.

“No, I want to finish. Then I told Friedman, ‘On the other hand, if we get the
certified
checks
within 48 hours, we can still run the ad in
Variety
, minus the Netherland checks, and the caption will say, FIREPOWER, WE WILL HELP YOU WIN!’ “

“What’d he say?” I asked.

“He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, ‘O.K., you’ll have your checks.’ “

“But those shots you just took of us have big fake smiles. Won’t we need better shots for a FIREPOWER, WE WILL HELP YOU WIN! ad?”

“If we get the checks,” said Jon, “we’ll forget the ad. Such an ad would cost $2,000.”

With that we moved along the hall to shoot the bathtub scene.

The bathtub scene was a simple one. Francine was to sit in the tub and Jack Bledsoe was to sit with his back against it, there on the floor, while Francine sat in the water talking about various things, mainly about a killer who lived there in her building, now on parole. He was shacked up with an old woman and beat her continually. One could hear the killer and his lady ranting and cursing through the walls.

Jon Pinchot had asked me to write the sound of people cursing through the walls and I had given him several pages of dialog. Basically, that had been the most enjoyable part of writing the screenplay.

Oftentimes in those roominghouses and cheap apartments there was nothing to do when you were broke and starving and down to the last botde. There was nothing to do but listen to those wild arguments. It made you realize that you weren’t the only one who was more than discouraged with the world, you weren’t the only one moving toward madness.

We couldn’t watch the bathtub scene because there just wasn’t space enough in there, so Sarah and I waited in the front room of the apartment with its kitchen off to the side. Actually, over 30 years ago I had briefly lived in that same building on Alvarado Street with the lady I was writing the screenplay about. Strange and chilling indeed. “Everything that goes around comes around.” In one way or another. And after 30 years the place looked just about the same. Only the people I’d known had all died. And the lady had died 3 decades ago and there I was sitting drinking a beer in that same building full of cameras and sound and crew. Well, I’d die too, soon enough. Pour one for me.

They were cooking food in the little kitchen and the refrigerator was full of beers. I made a few trips in there. Sarah found people to talk to. She was lucky. Every time somebody spoke to me I felt like diving out a window or taking the elevator down. People just weren’t interesting. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn’t understand it.

Jon Pinchot was still one day ahead of the shooting schedule and I was damned glad for that. It kept Firepower off our backs. The big boys didn’t come around. They had their spies, of course. I could pick them out.

Some of the crew had books of mine. They asked for autographs. The books they had were curious ones. That is, I didn’t consider them my best. (My best book is always the last one that I have written.) Some of them had a book of my early dirty stories,
Jacking-Off the Devil
. A few had books of poems,
Mozart In the Fig Tree and Would You Let This Man Babysit Your 4 Year Old Daughter?
Also,
The
Bar
Latrine
Is
My
Chapel.

The day wafted on, peacefully but listlessly.

Some bathtub scene, I thought. Francine must be fully cleansed by now.

Then Jon Pinchot just about ran into the room. He looked undone. Even his zipper was only halfway up. He was uncombed. His eyes looked wild and drained at the same time.

“My god!” he said, “here you are!”

“How’s it going?”

He leaned over and whispered into my ear. “It’s awful, it’s maddening! Francine is worried that her tits might show above the water! She keeps asking ‘Do my tits show?’ “

“What’s a little titty?”

Jon leaned closer. “She’s not as young as she’d like to be...And Hyans hates the lighting...He can’t abide the lighting and he’s drinking more than ever...”

Hyans was the cameraman. He’d won damn near every award and prize in the business, one of the best cameramen alive, but like most good souls he liked a drink now and then.

Jon went on, whispering frantically: “And Jack, he can’t get this one line right. We have to cut again and again. There is something about the line that bothers him and he gets this silly smile on his face when he says it.”

“What’s the line?”

“The line is, ‘He must masturbate his parole officer when he comes around.’ “

“All right, try, ‘He must jack-off his parole officer when he comes around.’ “

“Good, thank you! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE 19TH TAKE!”

“My god,” I said.

“Wish me luck...”

“Luck. .

Jon was out of the room then. Sarah walked over.

“What’s wrong?”

“19th take. Francine is afraid to show her tits, Jack can’t say his line and Hyans doesn’t like the lighting...”

“Francine needs a drink,” she said, “it will loosen her up.”

“Hyans doesn’t need a drink.”

“I know. And Jack will be able to say his line when Francine loosens up.”

“Maybe.”

Just then Francine walked into the room. She looked totally lost, completely out of it. She was in a bathrobe, had a towel around her head.

“I’m going to tell her,” Sarah said.

She walked over to Francine and spoke quietly to her. Francine listened. She gave a little nod, then walked into the bedroom off to the left. In a moment Sarah came out of the kitchen with a coffeecup. Well, there was scotch, vodka, whiskey, gin in that kitchen. Sarah had mixed something. The door opened, closed and the coffeecup was gone.

Sarah came over. “She’ll be all right now...”

Two or three minutes passed, then the bedroom door flung open. Francine came out, headed for the bathroom and the camera. As she went past, her eyes found Sarah: “Thank you!”

Well, there was nothing to do but sit about and indulge in more small talk.

I couldn’t help but look back into the past. This was the very building I had been thrown out of for having 3 women in my room one night. In those days there was no such thing as Tenants’ Rights.

“Mr. Chinaski,” the landlady had said, “we have religious people living here, working people, people with children. Never have I heard such complaints from the other tenants. And I heard you too-all that singing, all that cursing...things breaking...coarse language and laughter...In all my days, never have I heard anything like what went on in your room last night!”

“All right, I’ll leave...”

“Thank you.”

I must have been mad. Unshaven. Undershirt full of cigarette holes. My only desire was to have more than one bottle on the dresser. I was not fit for the world and the world was not fit for me and I had found some others like myself, and most of them were women, women most men would never want to be in the same room with, but I adored them, they inspired me, I play-acted, swore, pranced about in my underwear telling them how great I was, but only / believed that. They just hollered, “Fuck off! Pour some more booze!” Those ladies from hell, those ladies in hell with me.

Jon Pinchot walked briskly into the room.

“It worked!” he told me. “Everything worked! What a day! Now, tomorrow we start again!”

“Give Sarah the credit,” I said. “She knows how to mix a magic drink.”

“What?”

“She loosened up Francine with something in a coffeecup.”

Jon turned to Sarah.

“Thank you very much...”

“Any time,” Sarah answered.

“God,” said Jon, “I’ve been in this business a long time and never
nineteen
takes!”

“I’ve heard,” I answered, “that Chaplin sometimes took a hundred takes before he got it right.”

“That was Chaplin,” said Jon. “A hundred takes and our whole budget would be used up.”

And that was about all for that day. Except Sarah said, “Hell, let’s go to Musso’s.”

Which we did. And we got a table in the Old Room and ordered a couple of drinks while we looked at the menu.

“Remember?” I asked, “remember in the old days when we used to come here to look at the people at the tables and try to spot the types, the actor types, the producer or director types, the porno types, the agents, the pretenders? And we used to think, ‘Look at them, talking about their half-assed movie deals or their contracts or their last films.’ What moles, what misfits...better to look away when the swordfish and the sand dabs arrive.”

“We thought they were shit,” said Sarah, “and now we are.”

“What goes around comes around...”

“Right! I think I’ll have the sand dabs...”

The waiter stood above us, shuffling his feet, scowling, the hairs of his eyebrows falling down into his eyes. Musso’s had been there since 1919 and everything was a pain in the ass to him: us, and everybody else in the place. I agreed. Decided on the swordfish. With french fries.

The film was being shot in 3 locations. Different rooms, different streets and alleys, different bars had to be juggled about.

There was a night scene which was to entail some stealing of corn from a vacant lot and a chase by the police.

The corn had been planted and was ready to steal.

To use the location cost the budget 5 thousand dollars. The vacant lot was now owned by a Rehabilitation Center for Alcoholics. Pinchot had searched everywhere for a cheaper location but finally had to settle for that one, which actually was the same vacant lot which my lady had stolen the corn from over 3 decades ago. The new corn had been planted in the exact location where the old corn had been planted. Other things were not quite so exact. The apartment building nearby where the lady had lived, the one I moved into with her, had now been turned into a Home for the Aged.

The large building next to the vacant lot, now being used as a Rehabilitation Center, back then had been a popular ballroom. It was always busy especially on Saturday nights. The entire bottom floor was a ballroom, gigantic, with large globes of light slowly turning in the ceiling as the live band played dance music until early in the a.m. while many fancy cars, some with chauffeurs, waited outside.

We hated that ballroom and those people while we starved and fought with each other and the police and the landlord, as we were taken to and then bailed out of the Lincoln Heights Jail.

Now that building was full of reformed drunks who read the Bible, smoked too many cigarettes and played Bingo in the room that had once been the grand ballroom.

The vacant lot was all that hadn’t changed. In all those decades nobody had ever built a structure of any kind there.

Francine and Jack had already had a couple of rehearsals and had vanished into their trailers and we were standing around waiting for the action. I was tilting a beer when there was a tap on my shoulder. It was a nice looking fellow, neatly trimmed beard, nice eyes, nice smile. I had seen him about, but didn’t know him, didn’t know his position and didn’t ask. Actually I guessed that his real job was being a Firepower spy.

“Please,” he said, “we can’t have drinking on the set here.”

“Why not?”

“In the contract we signed with the people here it states that we can shoot on the premises but no drinking will be allowed.”

“Water?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, those x-drunks can’t stand to see anybody else have a drink.”

“They don’t believe in it.”

“But the whole movie is
about
drinking.”

“We had a very hard time securing these premises. Please don’t spoil it.”

“O.K., buddy. But it’s for Pinchot, not you...”

He walked off with his clipboard, wobbling his soft little ass which had not been kicked often enough.

I turned my back to the building, took another gulp, put the bottle in my coat pocket.

“They can see you,” said Sarah.

“You mean all those x-drunks are hanging out of windows watching me drink this beer?”

“No, but they have people around.”

“All right, I’ll go into hiding when I take a hit of my beer.”

“You’re acting as spoiled as some of these stars.”

Sarah was correct. I had no right to be spoiled. The leading man was making 750 times as much money as I was.

Then Jon Pinchot found us.

“Hello, Sarah...Hello, Hank...”

He told me that Friedman had actually sent the new checks, that mine had been made out directly to me and was in the mail. Our scheme had succeeded.

“I’ve got to go,” said Jon, “we’re about ready to shoot the cornfield scene. You watch it and let me know what you think...”

Finally they went into action and Francine ran up the hill to the rows of corn.

“I want some corn!” she screamed.

I remembered Jane going up that same hill while I was carrying the large sack of bottles. Only when she had screamed “I want some corn!” it had been as if she wanted the whole world back, the world that she had somehow missed out on or the world that had somehow passed her by. The corn was to be her victory, her reward, her revenge, her song.

But when Francine screamed, “I want some corn!” it sounded petulant, there was a whine in her voice, and it was not the desperate voice of the drunk. It was all right, it was good but it wasn’t quite right.

Then when Francine began ripping at the ears I knew that it wasn’t the same, that it could never be the same. Francine was an actress. Jane had been a mad drunk. Properly and finally mad. But one doesn’t expect perfection from a performance. A good imitation will do.

So Francine ripped the corn, stuffed it in her purse, Jack saying, “You’re drunk...That corn is green...”

Then the cop car rolled up, flashing its red light and its bright spotlight on them, and Francine and Jack ran toward her place, just as Jane and I had, and they just got to the elevator as the cops shouted over the loudspeaker, “HALT OR WE’LL FIRE!”

But instead of those cops jumping out of the car and running after Jack and Francine they just sat there. The shot was over.

It took Sarah and me a few minutes to find Jon Pinchot.

He was just standing there, quietly.

“Jon, man, the cops were supposed to get out and chase their ass!”

“I know. The car doors got stuck. They couldn’t get out.”

“What?”

“I know. It’s unbelievable. We are going to have to fix the car doors and shoot it all over.”

“We’re sorry,” said Sarah.

Jon was depressed. He usually laughed when things went wrong.

“I’ll get back to you after we re-shoot it.”

We left, walked back across the street. I hated to see Jon deflated that way. He had natural guts. Some people disliked him because he seemed to have too much bravado. But most of it was real. We all played at being brave. I did too. But I didn’t like to see Jon lose his bravado.

Francine and Jack and many of the other people returned to their trailers. I hated the long delays between shots. Movies cost a great deal of money because most of the time nobody was doing anything but waiting and waiting and waiting. Until this was ready and that was ready and the lighting was ready and the camera was ready and the hairdresser had finished pissing and the consultant had been consulted, nothing happened. It was all a deliberate jack-off, a salary for this and a salary for that, and there was only one man who was allowed to put a plug in the wall, and the sound man was pissed-off at the assistant director, and then the actors were not feeling good because that’s the way actors were supposed to feel and so forth. It was all waste waste waste. Even on this extremely low budget film, I felt like yelling, “ALL RIGHT, CUT OUT THE SHIT! THERE’S NOTHING HERE THAT CAN’T BE DONE IN 10 MINUTES AND YOU HAVE BEEN TAKING HOURS PLAYING AROUND WITH IT!”

I didn’t have the guts to say it. I was just the writer. A minor expense.

Then I got an ego boost. A television crew came from Italy and one came from Germany. They both wanted interviews with me. The directors were both ladies.

“He promised us first,” said the Italian lady.

“But you’ll take all his juice away,” said the German lady.

“I hope so,” said the Italian lady.

I sat down before the Italian lights. We were on camera.

“What do you think of film?”

“Movies?”

“Yes.”

“I stay away from them.”

“What do you do when you’re not writing?”

“Horses. Bet them.”

“Do they help your writing?”

“Yes. They help me forget about it.”

“Are you drunk in this movie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think drinking is brave?”

“No, but nothing else is either.”

“What does your movie mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Peeking up the ass of death, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe means not sure.”

“What do you see when you look up the ‘ass of death’?”

“The same thing you do.”

“What is your philosophy of life?”

“Think as little as possible.”

“Anything else?”

“When you can’t think of anything else to do, be kind.”

“That’s nice.”

“Nice is not necessarily kind.”

“All right, Mr. Chinaski. What word do you have for the Italian people?”

“Don’t shout so much. And read Celine.”

The lights went out on that one.

The German interview was even less interesting.

The lady kept wanting to know how much I drank.

“He drinks but not as much as he used to,” Sarah told her.

“I need another drink right now or I’m not going to talk anymore.”

It came immediately. It was in a large white paper cup and I drank it down. Ah, it was good. It suddenly seemed foolish to me that anybody wanted to know what I thought. The best part of a writer is on paper. The other part was usually nonsense.

The German lady was right. The Italian lady had used up all my juice.

I was now a spoiled star. And I was worried about the cornfield shoot.

I needed to talk to Jon, to tell him to make Francine drunker, madder, with one foot in hell, one hand yanking corn from the stalk as death approached, with the nearby buildings having faces out of dreams, looking down on the sadness of existence for us all: the rich, the poor, the beautiful and the ugly, the talented and useless.

“You don’t like movies?” the German lady asked.

“No.”

The lights went out. The interview was over.

And the cornfield scene got reshot. Maybe not exactly the way it could have been, but almost.