Hollywood Animal (42 page)

I was a cool … rock and roll … DP …
geek
.

I didn’t have a room of my own in our apartment, no place where I could read or study or listen to the radio or jack off or smoke in peace.

At night I slept on that couch in the living room that folded open.

I had a Cleveland Indians pennant and a Rocky Colavito photo I wanted to put on a wall.

“The boy needs a room of his own,” I heard my father tell my mother.

“Why?” my mother said. “What’s he going to do in there?”

He started building my room the next day. We had a small extra bathroom in the apartment with a toilet and a washbasin.

He screwed a wooden board into the wall above the washbasin and got a small chair that fit in front of it at the Salvation Army.

Now I had my own table.

He built a wooden box that fit over the toilet.

Now I had my own cabinet.

I read and studied there and listened to my portable radio. I put my Indians pennant and my Rocky Colavito photos up on the wall.

Now I had my own room!

There was a penny arcade on West 25th Street run by a white-haired American named Timmy. In the back room he sold dirty pictures. I bought one for ten cents and put it in my wallet. It showed a naked woman kneeling.

My father said one afternoon that he wanted me to come to the public library on Bridge Avenue at Fulton Road with him. He sat down on a bench in front of the library. He reached into his pocket, pulled out my wallet, and opened it to the picture of the naked woman.

“Well?” he said.

I said nothing.

“Your mother found it,” he said. “She’s very upset.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. My face was burning. It was all I could say.

“I know you’re masturbating,” he said.

I felt myself flush even more. He was looking right at me. I looked away from him. I felt tears welling in my eyes. He looked away and sighed and contemplated the library’s lawn.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I know it’s a sin.”

He didn’t look at me for a long time, then nodded and looked at me with a sudden smile.

“Who said it’s a sin?” he said.

“Sister Rose.”

“Ha!”
my father said. Just that one word.
“Ha!”

“Isn’t it a sin?” I said. “She says I’ll go blind.”

“Are you having any difficulty with your vision?” he asked, still smiling.

“No.”

“You won’t go blind,” he said. “Nothing will happen to you. Everybody does it. It’s normal.”

I was astounded. “You too?” I said.

“At your age,” he said, shrugging.

“Sister Rose? The other sisters?”

“For certain,” he said, grinning widely now. “Especially the sisters. Much of the time.”

“
Much of the time?
”

I was laughing. So was my father.

“I have one question I want to ask you,” my father said. “Why did you pick a woman with such a big
fenék
?” (It meant posterior in Hungarian.) “Some men like big
fenéks
and some men like little
fenéks
, but the
fenék
on this woman is
really
a big one.”

And with that, my father handed me my wallet. “You don’t have to throw the picture away,” he said, “but hide it someplace where your mother can’t find it.”

I said, “Yes, Papa.”

“And do a better job of hiding it than you did with your mother’s sandwiches.”

“Yes, Papa.”

He looked at me a moment. He seemed to be studying me. I saw tears welling in his eyes suddenly.

And in English—it was the first time he had ever spoken to me in English—he said, “You American now—yes,
Joe?
”

I felt tears in my eyes and in Hungarian I said,
“Nem, Papa.”

And in English he said, “
Ohhhhkay
, Joe,” and walked away.

CHAPTER 10

I Coldcock Ovitz

DAVID

You’re such a cynical sonofabitch.

MATT

That’s why we’re friends.

Jade

I WAS BEING
represented in the summer of 1989 by CAA, Creative Artists Agency, the most powerful agency in Hollywood. My career was skyrocketing … it was after
Flashdance
and
Jagged Edge
, after the
Big Shots
auction, after a six-picture deal at $750,000 a script with United Artists.

Most of those “scores,” as CAA agents liked to say, had been orchestrated by my two agents … the young, preppie-like Rand Holston … and the Kingfish Himself, the Thousand-Pound Gorilla—
Michael! Ovitz!

I didn’t know Ovitz very well, but I liked what I saw of him. I thought he was probably the most intelligent and dynamic agent I’d met. On a personal level, Michael had once offered to fly his acupuncturist to Marin when I badly injured a disc while vacationing in Santa Fe.

I was in Longboat Key, Florida, surfing warm Gulf waters with Gerri, Steve, and Suzi, when I got a call from Guy McElwaine. After an eight-year absence from the agency business, running various studios, Guy told me he was going back to ICM, Creative Artists’ biggest competitor, and becoming an agent again.

Before Guy could say anything else, I said, “You’ve got your first client, pal.”

My instant decision had nothing to do with CAA or with Michael Ovitz.

Yes, CAA had done a superb job representing me.

Yes, Michael had stayed personally involved in my deals.

But I
loved
Guy … it was as simple as that … he had helped me from the day we’d first met. And now, for the first time in my life, as my career was skyrocketing, I could help
him
.

I would become his first “star” moneymaking client at a time when he had none.

Guy thanked me, his voice a little hoarse, and said it meant a lot to him. “It’s not going to be as easy as you think,” he said. “Ovitz isn’t going to like this.”

“Come on,” I said, laughing. “He knows our history. He knows you created the monster.”

“That I did,” Guy laughed. “Call Barry Hirsch, see what he thinks.”

Barry had been my attorney for more than a decade now. At fifty, he was powerful, low-key, and engaging, still doing his gestalt practice on the side. He had given himself a little red Porsche for his fiftieth birthday.

I called Barry from Longboat Key and told him casually that I was leaving CAA and Rand Holston and Michael Ovitz and going over to ICM and Guy McElwaine.

“You can’t do that,” he snapped at me. “They’ve done a great job for you.” He said I was making a “silly and sentimental decision that will hurt your career.

“Guy doesn’t know anything about being an agent in this town anymore,” Barry went on. “He’s too old to be an agent. It’s a young man’s game. The only reason he’s an agent again is because he busted out of Rastar and Columbia and Weintraub and he needs to make a living.”

“I don’t care,” I told Barry. “I owe him. And I like him. And it’s going to mean a lot to him right now to be representing me.”

“You’re not in the charity business,” Barry said. “You’ve got your wife and kids to consider. You’ve got your career to consider.”

“I feel a loyalty to Guy,” I said. “He’s always been loyal to me.”

“What about your loyalty to Michael? To CAA? Haven’t they done right by you?”

“It’s not the same thing,” I said.

“It
is
the way I see it. Michael likes you. He’s going to be hurt personally. You don’t want to make an enemy of him.”

“An
enemy?
What do you mean an enemy?”

“An enemy. You know what it means.”

“Just because I’m going to go back to a person who
made
my career—because for the first time in my life I can help
him
—that’s going to make Michael Ovitz my
enemy?”

“Bet on it,” Barry Hirsch said, “and put it in the bank.”

I told Barry my mind was made up and asked him to notify CAA that I was leaving.

“Not me,” Barry said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this. If you’re really going to do this, then
you
tell Michael personally. You owe him that much.”

“You’re right,” I agreed.

“Joe,” Barry said, his voice softening. “I mean, really think about this. I don’t think I’ve ever given you bad advice, have I? Don’t make an emotional decision here. You do not want Michael Ovitz to be your enemy.”

I called Guy back from Longboat Key and told him what Barry Hirsch had said.

He laughed and said, “I
told
you it wouldn’t be easy.”

Gerri and the kids and I stayed on the Florida beaches for another month, doing our annual beach/wildlife/sun crawl, moving from Key West to Captiva to Longboat to Disney World to Boca and Palm Beach, and I kept thinking about the decision I had made, as Barry had suggested. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I’d made the right decision. It was a personal choice and had nothing to do with business. It was a payback for Guy’s many years of caring.

Maybe Barry was right. Maybe Guy
had
busted out of the studios. Maybe it
was
impossible to be an agent when you were pushing sixty in a town dedicated to eternal youth and new meat. I didn’t care about any of that. All I cared about was that now, finally, after all these years, I could help Guy.

We got home to Marin from our Gypsy-like beach bum binge and I called Barry to tell him I was setting up an appointment with Ovitz. I told him that my decision to leave CAA and Michael Ovitz was final.

Barry said, “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

I called Ovitz’s secretary to set up the appointment and flew down to L.A. Rested from the long Florida trip, I was tan. I wore a beach shirt and shorts and grungy sneakers. My producer friend Ben Myron, whom I’d met in Marin, picked me up at the airport and drove me to the meeting.

I told Ben I knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant, but I thought it’d work out okay. Ovitz, I said,
had
to be enough of a human being to understand my motivation. He had to understand that my decision had nothing to do with his agency’s performance.

I’d never been inside the new CAA building before. I’d never seen the new Lichtenstein painting on the wall in the lobby. I was impressed—it was the classiest-looking agency headquarters in town.

I announced myself and an assistant came down to the lobby and led me up to Ovitz’s office. Michael was sitting behind his desk, waiting for me. He was smiling.

I was struck by how small the office was compared with Guy’s old barn-sized lounge-bar.

We shook hands warmly and he asked me to sit down facing him. He stayed behind his desk.

He was buttoned-down, impeccably dressed in corporate Armani wear—I was a bizarre counterpoint, I realized, in my beach clothes and grungy sneakers. I hoped the sneakers didn’t smell. I hadn’t had time after the trip to buy new ones.

He asked me about Gerri and the kids and our vacation. I noticed his eyes fix on, then flit away from my sneakers.

I cleared my throat.

“Well, I guess you know why I’m here,” I said.

He looked at me a moment and said, “Barry told me.”

I explained to him about Guy and went on at length about the great loyalty I felt to him, about how, even during his corporate years, Guy had kept looking out for me.

Michael listened impassively, nodding. Then he said, “What about your loyalty to me?”

He had a thin and strained smile on his face.

I tried to tell him that I
did
feel a great loyalty to him and to CAA. That, indeed, there was no other possible
reason
, no other possible
person
, that would cause me to leave.

“You mean all the deals we made for you don’t count?” he said. “The three-picture deal, then the six-picture deal, the
Big Shots
sale, all the casting we’ve done for your movies.”

He mentioned Debra Winger and Tom Berenger in
Betrayed
and Jessica Lange in
Music Box
, all CAA clients.

“We’ve made you the highest-paid screenwriter in the world. That doesn’t count?”

“Of course it counts,” I said.

“But not enough.” We were looking right at each other, that thin strained smile still on his face.