The Ticket Out (20 page)

The lot covered thirty acres—I could run all day for nothing. But I didn't want to give up so soon. I walked outside, picked a bench, and sat down in the shade. From there I could watch the street entrance and the Thalberg at the same time. I tried to be inconspicuous; I'd get kicked out without a pass.

I sat watching people go by. A studio lot was a busy place, but I got bored real fast. After a while my eyes moved automatically and I let my mind wander.

I started thinking about the Thalberg, looming up in front of me. The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Building.

It was a massive, bright white Moderne building, with streamline and WPA influences thrown in. I'd never been a starry-eyed lover of classic Hollywood, not like some movie fanatics. But when I went to my first Thalberg press screening, even
I
had felt the glamor and the weight of movie history—

Two men walked up the ramp from the Thalberg basement. It wasn't my guys. It was two Japanese men with attaches stamped
SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT
.

Irving Thalberg...

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first head of production. The studio system's first boy wonder. The Academy had named an Oscar after him, and posterity elevated him to a god. I'd even heard a local historian argue that Irving Thalberg invented Hollywood as we knew it.

I didn't think I'd go that far. But if the film industry was founded on the conflict between Art and Commerce, then Thalberg was the first producer with enough power, taste, and profits to take the fight to its highest level. He was the creative force behind MGM for eight years; his philosophy and methods established the new studio and an Industry standard. He oversaw hundreds of the types of film that Hollywood still considered its best achievement. He took the big-budget star-studded studio movie as far as it would ever go. He also showed what Hollywood could never do because of the constraints of business, and the business mentality.

When he died in 1936 he was only thirty-seven. Louis Mayer had hated Thalberg by the end. He hated the Thalberg legend; he hated the Industry perception that Thalberg, not Mayer, had made MGM. At the funeral Mayer supposedly said, “Isn't God good to me?” But they named the new administration building after Thalberg...

...and set the Art-Commerce battle in stone.

I reached for my notebook. Against all predictions, and despite some rough years, Sony had not tanked in the motion-picture business. There was a “Ghost of Irving Thalberg'' piece in there somewhere.

I started making notes.

The building stood by itself, outside the original studio walls, on the eastern tip of the lot. The architecture was not imaginative. It looked more like a post office or a bank than the center of redhot artistic activity. But that was the point. Art happened inside the studio walls, on the soundstages and back lot west of the building. The Thalberg was administration, the Thalberg was Commerce. It guarded the studio gates and anchored the rest of the lot—a counterweight to ephemera, a reminder of what Art cost. If you want to send a message, the Thalberg Building said, you buy your stamps here.

I stopped writing and smiled. I'd had a cynical thought. Commerce had triumphed over Art in corporate Hollywood. The battle now was Commerce versus Commerce: conflicting ideas about how to get the most return on the studio's investment. There was a Thalberg quote I read once—I didn't recall it exactly. Someone brought him an oddball idea and Thalberg said something like, “Sounds interesting, let's do it. The studio made enough money this year.” It was a different planet.

I looked up.

Irving Thalberg had been bugging me ever since Neil John Phillips's garage. I remembered Penny Proft's remark: the only person Phillips would nuzzle was Irving Thalberg.

He was a strange hero for a guy like Phillips. Nobody cared who Irving Thalberg was anymore except film cognos and Industry fossils. Besides which, Phillips aimed to be the greatest screenwriter who ever lived. But he had to know that MGM was a producers studio. Thalberg's treatment of writers was famously bad, although he worshiped literary talent and routinely overpaid for it.

I watched two men walk out the main doors of the Thalberg. They weren't who I was looking for.

That coincidence was strange, too. What was Jack Nevenson doing with Neil John Phillips's neighbor on Phillips's sacred MGM turf?

I shut my notebook and jumped up. Jesus, I was dumb.
How could I be so dumb?

The neighbor guy
was
Neil John Phillips.

I
SAID
, “W
HAT
does Neil John Phillips look like?”

Hamilton Ashburn rubbed his nose. I'd tracked him down across town at Raleigh Studios. He was directing a movie; that's why he hadn't returned my phone call last week. He'd made it clear that he was
extremely
busy, and could only talk between camera setups.

The soundstage was freezing. Ashburn had on a big parka and woolen mitts. I suggested going someplace warm—outside in the sun, or under the lights of the set. But Ashburn wouldn't leave the stage, and he didn't want me to see what he was filming. So we stood in a dark, cold corner. I turned up my collar and held it closed around my throat.

He said, "Neil is medium. He's medium-sized, and his hair's medium brown. He's hard to describe—there's nothing to distinguish him physically.”

Ashburn was pretty medium himself. There was nothing to distinguish him from a jillion other young directors. He wore the usual accessories—baseball cap and wire-rim glasses—and had a typical beard. He also disliked Phillips: that much was obvious from his tepid testimonial.

He spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Lisa, bring my binder.”

An assistant rushed up, gave Ashburn a binder, and rushed off again. Ashburn opened the binder and showed me a group photograph he kept inside the front cover. It was the USC Film Class of 1996.

I spotted Penny Proft and Greta Stenholm. Ashburn pointed to a face in the second row. He said, “Neil.”

It was him: the obnoxious neighbor. He had the same spoiled expression, but a lot more hair.

Ashburn closed the binder and checked his watch for time. “Why do you care if Greta was murdered? What is she to you?”

“She wrote a screenplay that she said tells the truth about the condition of women.”

Ashburn nodded. “GB
Dreams Big.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know that Neil cowrote the script.”

I shook my head. “Penny Proft said their partnership broke up years ago.”

“But Neil couldn't get work after
The Last Real Man,
and Greta needed structural advice. Neil told me he did a complete rewrite but left his name off the final version. Greta agreed to split the fee and share credit once the script sold.”

“Do you know who's agenting the script, or who bought it?”

Ashburn rubbed his nose. “Neil was letting Greta handle that part. I haven't read anything in the trades.”

“Do you know if Scott Dolgin was involved at any point? I heard you were doing work for In-Casa Productions.”

Ashburn curled his lip. He didn't like Dolgin either.
“Charity
work. All you need to start a production company is a telephone and some friends, and Scott has no friends. He scraped up backing somehow and came to the SC crowd for material. We unloaded all the stuff our agents couldn't sell. Only Neil was writing original work on spec.”

I said, “Why'd Dolgin come to the SC crowd in particular?”

“Because he knew us. He was in the producing program until they asked him to leave.”

That connection clicked into place. I knew Dolgin had been thrown out of film school; I should have put it together sooner.

Something else clicked. I said, “Do you know Isabelle Pavich?”

“Who?”

I described her. Ashburn listened, and shrugged. “I'd forgotten the name. She's Scott's girlfriend—works some nothing development job.”

“Did she go to USC?”

“Not with us.” He checked his watch again.

“Greta thought In-Casa was a farce but Dolgin told people he had projects going with her.”

“If he did, it's because Greta had no choice. She hated Scott. He's been in love with her since school, but she hated him.”

Ashburn's assistant appeared, holding up five fingers. Ashburn checked his watch and waved her away.

I had to hear it again. I said, “Scott Dolgin was
in love
with Greta Stenholm?”

“And Greta was in love with Ted Abadi. You know what happened to Ted?”

I nodded.

“I still wonder about his death. The police suspected Greta, which is insane. She was devastated by the murder, as Neil was—as we all were. It was a tough break for Neil. He never got another agent, and nobody thinks his career will recover.”

“Greta never got another agent either.”

“But CAA had already let her go. It was her own fault—she made herself unmarketable with her ball-busting ideas. That's why Neil broke up with her in the first place.”

I said, “He agreed to rework
GB Dreams Big.”

“Neil would do anything to get his career back. He saw the commercial potential of the script and wanted to attach himself to it.”

I shivered and rubbed my hands. “If Phillips is so career minded, why did he sabotage himself over
The Last Real Man?
Why's he so nutty for the old MGM? What does that get him when Hollywood's frame of reference is hit movies from the past two years?”

The walkie-talkie crackled: “Ham, we're ready.”

Ashburn switched it off. “Neil's always had one problem—he cares too much about movies. Hollywood isn't about movies, it's about relationships. Neil was golden after he sold
The Last Real Man.
It didn't matter if the star trashed it, or it flopped domestically and the critics blamed the script—Neil was in bed with the right people. You've heard the old saying, ‘The deal is the sex, the movie is just the cigarette.' Neil cares too much about the cigarette.”

 

I
STOOD OUTSIDE
the soundstage and jumped around to get warm. When my hands thawed, I grabbed the car phone and paged Lockwood.

I waited for him to call back. It occurred to me they might still be at Pavich's. I dialed Information to get her number, and tried the apartment. A machine answered. I pretended to leave a message for Pavich, hoping Lockwood might hear and take the call. Nobody picked up.

I started the car and headed over to Neil John Phillips's place. It wasn't far from Raleigh, and he'd had enough time to get home from Culver City.

Ashburn said that Phillips owned a black three-series BMW. I checked the street for it as I drove up to the duplex. I parked blocking the drive in case Phillips tried to dodge me again. I knocked on his door. I peeked through the mail slot and over the hedge in front of his front window. No one. I walked around back to check his garage.

I lifted the door...

All the boxes were gone.
The scripts and the old MGM paperwork: gone. The garage had been cleaned out.

I just stood there staring. There were footsteps behind me. I thought it was a replay of the other day, and turned around. But it wasn't Phillips. A woman stood on the second-floor landing above me: Phillips's upstairs neighbor. She asked what I wanted. I told her who I was looking for. She said that Phillips had done a flit—skipped out on his lease and disappeared. I mentioned that there was furniture in his living room; she said his place rented furnished. I asked if she had any clue where he might be. She shook her head. She knew he had an office in West L.A., but she didn't know where.

I stared into the empty garage and felt myself shiver. It was not from the cold.

 

D
IRECTORY
A
SSISTANCE
didn't have a Neil John Phillips in West L.A. The Writers Guild didn't give out information about its members. PPA blew me off: Jack Nevenson was in a meeting, and the receptionist wouldn't put me through to Len Ziskind. Hamilton Ashburn wasn't taking calls. I tried a long shot—Penny Proft.

She answered with a vampy “Hellooooo?”

I said, “It's Ann Whitehead. How are you?”

“High hard ones are scarce, I'm sorry to report. And yourself?”

“I'm looking for Neil John Phillips.”

“Try Hollywood Cemetery—they buried his career there.”

“Seriously, do you know how to reach him?”

“Seriously, get a shovel and dig. He dead, dat boy.”

“Do you know anyone who knows how to reach him?”

“I'm getting bupkes from you today, Ann.”

“Do you know anyone who knows how to reach him?”

Proft stopped the jokey voices. “I've heard he still hangs with Scott Dolgin and Ham Ashburn. They're a couple of pukes from SC.”

I said, “I just spoke to Ashburn.”

“The Hamster must be thrilled—he's the last man standing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, color him green. He was en-vee-us of Neil and Greta at SC. They were the wunderkids, Ham was the drudge, and he's the last one left.”

I said, “If Scott Dolgin is such a puke, why'd you donate two scripts to In-Casa Productions?”

Proft whistled. “You get around, hermana.”

“Why did you?”

“I was just covering my bases. Today's puke could be tomorrow's studio boss.”

I didn't buy it; I had started to mistrust her humor. I was debating how to break her down when Proft said out of the blue, “Guess who I saw two Saturdays ago at Farmer's Market?”

“Who?”

“I'll give you a hint—she's dead.”

“What's your point?”

Proft put on a broad stage whisper. “My point is,
La Stenholm
was not alone.”

I said, “Quit it. Stop fucking around.”