Hollywood Animal (82 page)

The big mistake had been made by Stanley Jaffe, the studio head, who took the first focus group’s dislike of the original ending so seriously that he forced Phillip Noyce (and me) to junk the script and reshoot the movie.

It made me wonder what would have happened if
Basic Instinct
had been focus-grouped. I was sure that a focus group would have hated that ending, too.

Stanley should have stuck to
Sliver
’s original ending and its rough cut … Sharon finds out Billy Baldwin is the killer and essentially says, “I don’t care what he is, I love him and I know he loves me.”

It would have been a daring and provocative movie instead of this mess.

Critics thought it was a mess, too, although audiences abroad put the movie above the $100 million mark.

Naomi and I and Evans and a bimbo took a limo across town the night
Sliver
opened and talked to the theatergoers who had just seen the movie.

“Hello,” Evans said to a young black woman who had just come out of the theater. “Did you just see
Sliver?
”

“Yes.”

“How did you like it?”

“It sucked. It was terrible. It was the worst. Don’t waste your money on it.”

“Really.”

“Don’t do it!”

“Well, all right, thank you.”

“Hey, man,” the young black woman said, “who
are
you?”

“I’m just a poor broken-down Jew.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m the most miserable Jew in the world,” Evans said.

· · ·

We limoed over to Palm Springs with Evans and one of his bimbos. He stayed at the Racquet Club, a famed Hollywood resort of the thirties and forties, now fallen on seedier times.

Naomi and I stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage; we didn’t want to be around Bob
all the time
.

We were in Evans’s bungalow one night and one of Bob’s girls, now hooking in Palm Springs and Vegas, took out a Polaroid camera and started taking pictures of us.

“You take one more picture of us,” I told her, “and I’ll break the camera.”

I didn’t trust where a Polaroid taken by one of Evans’s girls would wind up.

When we were headed back to L.A., Naomi and I picked Bob and his bimbo up at the Racquet Club. Bloody towels were everywhere around the pool. The bimbo liked to sunbathe in the nude and she was having her period.

The odd thing was that as sky-high, over-the-top in love as we were, I missed Bill and Naomi missed Gerri.

Bill and I had spoken every day for many months before he and Naomi broke up—we’d prowled the bars and clubs together, shared a thousand laughs.

And Naomi felt the same way about Gerri. She kept telling me stories about how much fun she and Gerri had had … before I broke up with Gerri.

Neither of us had a close friend that we loved around us anymore … and it made us sad.

Bob’s brother, Charlie Evans, who had advanced me two million dollars to write
Showgirls
, was threatening to sue me.

I was a month late with the script and I hadn’t even started writing it yet.

I liked Charlie and sat down to have a drink with him. He liked to drink almost as much as I did.

Charlie said, “I hear on pretty good information that you’re never going to be able to write again, that your wife is the anchor in your life and without that anchor, you won’t be able to write. I think you’re going a little crazy.”

I said, “Charlie, have you ever been crazy in love in your life?”

Warily he said, “Yes.”

“Do I look like a man who’s crazy in love to you or a man who’s lost all his marbles?”

He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Okay. I hear you.”

I said, “Who told you all this stuff about my wife being my anchor?”

“Bill Macdonald,” Charlie said.

I told Charlie to hold off suing me for two months—which is when I promised I’d have the script.

· · ·

We decided to go back to Maui, rent a house, and stay there while I wrote
Showgirls
.

We flew up to San Francisco so I could see Steve and Suzi and so I could tell them what we were going to do. They told me that Gerri wanted to see me this time.

Before I met Gerri at Sam’s, an outdoor bar in Tiburon, Naomi and I had lunch at Scoma’s on the wharf in San Francisco. I suddenly started to shake. I went to the bathroom, where I tried to take deep breaths. It didn’t do any good. Now I was not only shaking but I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I went back to the table and lit a cigarette with dancing hands and told Naomi I thought I was having an anxiety attack.

I reached for my glass of wine, but I was shaking so badly I couldn’t get it to my lips. She held the glass to my lips and I drank the wine.

Then I did that myself with two or three glasses and I was okay.

I got to Sam’s early and had another three or four glasses of wine before Gerri got there. I was starting to shake again; my guilts kicking into overdrive.

I got up to hug Gerri when she came in but she backed away and sat down in the booth across from me. She looked pale and exhausted. We found it excruciatingly difficult to look at and talk to each other.

I asked how Steve and Suzi were doing.

She said they were okay—Suzi, she said, cried a lot; Steve had sunk more into himself.

“So, Joseph,” Gerri said without looking at me, “are you happy with your whore?”

“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s beneath you to do that.”

“I saw the pictures of the two of you kissing at the movie premiere,” Gerri said. “Tell me something, Joseph? Why would you want to hurt me like that? Why would you want to hurt Steve and Suzi like that? Didn’t you even consider the pain those pictures would cause us?”

I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. It just … happened.”

Gerri said, “What’s going to
happen
now, Joseph?”

“I don’t know.”

Gerri said, “Are you still in love with her?”

I said, “Yes. Completely.”

She looked down at the table—as though she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore. In a wounded little girl’s voice, Gerri said, “What should I do, Joseph? Tell me what I should do to help myself. You’ve always been there to help. Tell me what I should do now, Joseph.”

I put my hands on Gerri’s. She intertwined her fingers with mine … a little girl, holding on and scared … and I said, “Get a good lawyer.”

She looked at me with a worldful of hurt in her eyes. She said, “Have a nice life, Joseph,” got up, and was gone.

I sat in the booth and ordered another glass of wine and then another and another.

I still had to see Steve and Suzi.

My children got there about an hour after their mother left.

Steve was inheld, monosyllabic. Suzi was pissed.

She said, “Do you have any idea how much I used to admire you, Dad? I used to think I had the best father in the world. Well I don’t anymore, Dad!”

Suzi said, “I hate Naomi—I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!”

I said, “Naomi didn’t cause this.”

Suzi said, “That’s bullshit, Dad! You and Mom never even argued. We never heard a single argument between you.”

I said, “That’s because your mother and I worked very hard not to upset you guys. Not to let you
hear
us argue. Believe me that we argued hundreds of times through the years. All the arguments ended with your mother crying and saying ‘Please don’t leave me, Joseph.’”

Suzi said, “I don’t care how many times you argued. People argue, husbands and wives argue. But you didn’t leave Mom until Naomi came into your life, did you, Dad?”

I said, “I started leaving your mother a long time ago in my heart.”

Suzi said, “
Bullshit!
You’re just trying to protect Naomi. You’re just trying to deny her part in all this!”

We said nothing for a while and I finished another glass of white wine.

Steve said, without looking at me, “What are you going to do now?”

I said, “We’re going back to Maui.”

Suzi said, “You’re just running away. Maui isn’t the real world.”

I said, “I can’t argue that.”

We rented a little house on Maui overlooking the golf course at the Kapalua Hotel behind iron security gates.

Producers, directors, and studio executives flew over from L.A. to have meetings. They usually took a couple of hours and then they and their significant others stayed at the Ritz or the Kapalua for the next four or five days and charged it all to the studio.

They didn’t argue much with me either about the script or the new deal we were discussing because they were relying on me to tell the studio that our meetings took four or five days and not a couple of hours.

On occasion they even relied on me to introduce them to a local contact who provided them with various island substances that made them more catatonic than they already were.

They flew back to L.A. and told their friends in the business how much they’d enjoyed their meetings with me and then their friends flew over … and my new deals to write more screenplays kept piling up.

I started
Showgirls
and, as I sometimes do, I kept a diary.

Entry #1:
I’m going to call her Nomi—Naomi’s mom used to call her that and since I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, I like it that the first script I write since we’ve been together will have her nickname as the central character … Nomi’s young, nineteen, we’re probably going to have trouble with casting, she’s going to have to be a helluva dancer besides being able to act, but I’ll let Paul Verhoeven worry about
that—thank God I don’t direct
. Nomi Malone—the sound’s nice and symbolic, a young woman alone in the world.

Entry #2:
Spent a lot of the day out by the pool, trying to chart the rest of it … it feels like it’s going to be long … a big story … but I have to take her from the lap-dancing, sleazy stuff to the big Vegas stage stuff—different worlds, have to show her progression from one world to the other—have to show the worlds themselves—that takes time and scenes. At the end, is the world of Vegas big stages actually sleazier, more corrupting than the world of the lap-dance clubs? Does Nomi make it and realize that she’s lost it—internally, spiritually? I like the irony.

Is the world as full of irony as my own life is?

Entry #3:
Cristal’s in it now … the meeting between Cristal and Nomi … the beginning of the flirtation or battle or fight or sexual attraction maybe, although I’m not sure where I’m going to take it. Does Cristal like Nomi? Does she see Nomi as a kind of young, unformed image of herself—the mirror reflection—is that good or bad? Does that attract her or repel her? Does Cristal hate or love herself or a gray between the two shades.

Cristal will be a hot part for somebody.
Sharon?
Can Sharon dance? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony—Sharon, after all this personal tangle, playing Cristal. Paul would probably love it, though—we bring Sharon back as a dancer.

Paul’s waiting … Charlie Evans going batshit to get the script—everything’s backed-up like crazy thanks to the craziness of my own life.

Entry #4:
We’re going to have ratings trouble, but there’s no honest way to describe what these clubs are like without making them sleazy—they
are
sleazy—can’t cosmeticize it but the language itself could get us into ratings trouble—more worries for Paul.

Entry #7:
I like what I’ve got. I think it’s working. It’s great to be writing again. It makes the pain with the kids easier. With all the swimming I’m doing, too, I’m a little bit more cooled out at night maybe. Sleep is easier and I love Naomi—not the script’s Nomi, but my Nomi—more than I thought it possible to love anyone. Jesus, I waited almost fifty years for her.

Entry #12:
Debate taking the day off, but I’m too much into it—the characters are speaking to me—up to page 55. The audition scene—Tony. Tough scene, verbal rape, simulated rape—in a way sleazier than the Zip City, lap-dance club stuff. I like that the hotel-casino is supposed to be a classy place and that she’s violated there in a simulated way … much worse than what she went through at the lap-dance club.

How far will I push the bisexual thing with Cristal? It’s almost impossible to push the sexual stuff too far in a movie about Vegas … People think Vegas is gambling and money—that’s only the top, visible layer … underneath it’s all sex.

Entry #17:
I’ve stopped at page 73 and I’m retyping the whole thing from page 1. I’m going to send the first chunk to Verhoeven when I’m done with it. Paul is getting itchy and I don’t want to lose him. I think this piece is so out there on the edge that if Paul doesn’t direct it, nobody else can or will.

It’s completely Nomi’s piece … if she doesn’t work, we’re dead—if she isn’t cast right, we’re dead. Is it possible to find a nineteen-year-old who can act
and
dance?

Why can’t I ever do anything that’s easy?

Entry #20:
I wrote one of the dance sequences for the brothers and priests who’d taught me at Cathedral Latin:

BLISS

The set: a blazing neon cross is center stage. We see spotlights, the spinning red lights of police cars. Time: Night
.

When we open, we see Cristal on the neon cross, crucifìed. She wears only a G-string and pasties. We see the stigmata on her body. A moment of silence as we see her on the neon cross, the others around the cross, barely clad … and then the music begins … and her limbs begin to move on the cross … and she dances off the cross
.

On the ground now, the others dance around her, kneeling to her, beseeching her … the women are topless but they wear veils … not giving her any space. She tries to dance away … we see the blood from the stigmata on her body … but they block her, hem her in, with their prayers and their pleas
.

She blesses them, dancing … she touches them … they reach out constantly to try to touch her … putting their fingers into the stigmata … smearing her blood on themselves … genuflecting
.