The Deal, page 6
Meanwhile, Lionel had settled into the back downstairs bedroom of his uncle’s house. He was going to start his new screenplay about the existential Nebraska crop duster as soon as he got a typewriter. With the $5,000 he’d be getting for the option of Bill and Ben, Lionel would be in good shape for the immediate future. His needs were small, and with his map and his growing knowledge of the bus system, he’d get along fine.
He looked out the bus window through the hazy glare of the afternoon sun. The sky was neither blue nor gray, but a neutral color that defied description. Almost nobody was on the sidewalks. All you could hear was the constant hum of car engines and air conditioners. The street corners had pastel minimalls with take-out taco places and suntanning solariums. If you lived in a place where the sun allegedly shone all the time, why would you want to go inside to get a suntan? There were no bars or pool halls or dogs on the street. There were no fire escapes. People sat in convertibles listening to Walkmen with earplugs. The traffic lights changed every thirty seconds. Los Angeles was the most peculiar place that Lionel had ever been to.
Things had been chaotic when Brad Emprin got back to his office and tried to contact Charlie Berns. Tanya, of course, was nowhere to be found, and, to make matters worse, she apparently had the wrong number for Charlie Berns in the Rolodex. He paced the floor of the outside office, trying to structure a deal in his head, feeling the Valium cloud disintegrating, until his secretary returned from her noon yoga class.
“It’s about time you got back,” he snapped.
She barely blinked. Yoga made her placid. He wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t on some sort of downers as well.
“You got the wrong number for Charlie Berns in the Rolodex. And I need to talk to him right away.”
Flipping expertly through the Rolodex, she came up with the number, dialed it as Brad Emprin insisted, “It’s no use. I tried it half a dozen times. You get a recording that the line is out of order. He must have changed his number. The least he could’ve done was told us.”
She flipped the interrupter, dialed the phone company’s business office, found out that it was indeed Charlie Berns’s phone number, but that it had been disconnected and that there was no new listing.
“How can he have his phone disconnected? How can you live in this town and not have a phone that works?”
The other line lit up. Tanya answered it in her narcose voice. “Brad Emprin’s office.”
It was the Business Affairs person.
“I’ll see if he’s back from lunch,” Tanya said into the phone, then, hitting the “hold” button, “You want to talk to Pat Caroway?”
How could he talk to her when he didn’t even know the name of the writer he was supposed to represent? His sinus headache was returning. He couldn’t do a Sinutab if he was going to do another Valium. He’d have to choose one or the other. He shook his head. Tanya released the “hold” button and said, “He’s away from his desk at the moment. Can I have him get back?”
She scribbled a name and number as Brad Emprin retreated into his office, opened the desk drawer, looked at the drugstore he kept in there. Beside the office tranks and the Sinutabs, there was Gelusil, vitamin C, zinc, Rolaids, Bufferin, Excedrin, Bronkaid, Robitussin and Metamucil in tablet form. He went for the Sinutab. The antihistamine gave him a little speed buzz, which he would need if he were to get through this afternoon.
Back in the outer office, he had Tanya write down Charlie Berns’s address. He grabbed it and headed for the door, passing John DeMarco coming in from lunch.
“Tough hours you keep.”
Brad Emprin did not even attempt to explain. He took the elevator down to the garage, got in the car, started it up, felt the vapor lock smother the ignition of the still-warm engine. He babied the 325i out of the garage, and as he sped down Santa Monica Boulevard, the antihistamine kicked in.
Charlie Berns sat on a peeling rattan deck chair beside the ravaged flower beds of his patio, reading a biography of Benjamin Disraeli. It was slow going, a laborious journey through the labyrinthine parliamentary sparring of mid-nineteenth-century English politics. After a somewhat colorful youth as an adventurer and novelist, a parvenu from a middle-class Jewish literary family trying to penetrate the privileged circles of power, he became a bastion of conservative politics, trumpeting the glory of the empire and the queen until he quietly expired from gout in1881. Apart from a few interesting financial peccadillos in his youth and a trip through the Mediterranean whoring with the British garrison at Malta, the majority of his life was spent shuffling between the government and opposition benches of Parliament, riding the thrust and parry of Whig and Tory infighting.
Lionel’s screenplay was a faithful recounting of Disraeli’s political vicissitudes, focusing on his lifelong duel with his Liberal opponent, William Gladstone. There were eloquent speeches from the government bench in the House of Commons, a witty voice-over narration from Disraeli’s letters to his sister, Sarah, and a Wagnerian deathbed scene. It was literate, poetic, well crafted and entirely uncommercial. There wasn’t a studio executive in town who would get past page twenty.
Bobby Mason wouldn’t get past page one—a narration of Disraeli’s speech in defense of protective tariffs over a tight shot of his tombstone at his country house in Hughenden. At no point in the script did Benjamin Disraeli resort to martial arts to resolve his problems. He never took his shirt off. And the only woman in his life, besides his sister and Queen Victoria, was a frumpy widow of a wealthy textile manufacturer whom he married late in life for financial reasons.
Of course, ever since Charlie had first read the script the night of Lionel’s fortuitous arrival, he knew there was no way it would ever go before a camera in Hollywood in remotely the same fashion as his nephew had written it. He was counting on the fact that Bobby Mason wouldn’t read a script until it was ready to shoot, and by that time Ben Disraeli would kick enough ass to keep him interested….
Immersed in thought, Charlie didn’t hear the doorbell ring. It rang several times to no response. Brad Emprin stood at the front door, riding an antihistamine buzz, impatiently pushing the doorbell button. Eventually, he gave up and, pissed, was returning maniacally to the 325i to consider his next move when he noticed the carnage along the side of the house. He had never seen anything like the ravaged condition of the flowerbeds. It was as if some antishrubbery bomb had torn through Charlie Berns’s yard, leaving destruction in its path.
Who the fuck napalmed Charlie Berns’s house? Brad Emprin walked up the driveway on the side of the house to get a better look. That’s when he saw the carcass of the lemon tree protruding from the pool. He kept walking until he reached the rear of the house and saw his client stretched out on a deck chair in Bermuda shorts.
“Charlie?”
Charlie looked up and saw his agent standing on the patio in a Bullocks Men’s Shop Giorgio Armani suit, carrying a Hermès attaché case.
“I didn’t know you made house calls, Brad.”
“I had no choice. Your phone’s out of order.”
Charlie nodded, finished up the note he was making.
“Charlie, how can you do business in this town if you can’t be reached?”
“That’s what I have you for.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Charlie put his pad down. Brad Emprin looked around for some place to sit, but there was nothing on the patio besides Charlie’s deck chair. So he stood, uncomfortably shifting his weight in his new Bally loafers, trying to ignore the fact that there was a tree sticking out of his client’s swimming pool.
“Deidre Hearn. Remember, I told you I had made her aware of you? I pitched her the Disraeli script and she got real interested.”
“No kidding?”
“Uh-huh. I told her about the Bobby Mason casting idea and she flipped.”
“Really?”
“In fact, I got her so hot she made an offer on the script, without even reading it. Can you believe that?”
Charlie shook his head with mock incredulity “That’s terrific, Brad. That’s real good work.”
“The thing is, Charlie, I need to close on the writer too if I’m going to make a deal for you. Who is he, anyway?”
There was no transition between these two sentences. Though Charlie Berns may have been unemployed and suicidal, he was not dumb. On the contrary. If there was one thing he understood it was leverage. And for the first time in a very long time Charlie Berns had some.
“I own the script, Brad. The deal’s going to be with me.”
“With you?”
“Actually, with Charles Berns Productions, Inc.”
“Charlie, it’s not going to fly.”
“How’s that?”
“The studio’s going to want to control the development of the script. They’re not going to do a coproduction with you and give you creative control.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to find another studio, won’t we?”
The Sinutab was starting to break down. He felt the dreaded tightening around the eyes and the slow infiltration of the sinus cavities.
“You’re not going to hold a gun to the head of a major motion-picture studio.”
“They can pass. It’s a free country.”
Brad Emprin was having trouble following this conversation. Though paranoid and a hypochondriac, he was not dumb either. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, a yoga technique that Tanya had taught him for stressful moments, he decided to talk man-to-man to his client.
“Charlie, can I tell you something straight? Just between us?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t take this personally, but I got to level with you. Deals are not piling up on my desk for Charlie Berns.”
“That so?”
Brad Emprin nodded. “To be perfectly honest with you, I consider us lucky to have an offer for any picture on the table. This is no time for you to get difficult.”
“Well, that’s your opinion, Brad. You’re entitled to it. I guess I ought to look for other representation.”
“Charlie, that’s not what I’m saying. I believe in you. The whole agency does. I mean, we’ve been knocking on this door for a long time. Now the door’s opened. Don’t walk away.”
Charlie got up from the deck chair, scratched the back of his neck.
“Sit down, Brad.” He indicated the vacated deck chair.
“That’s all right.”
“Sit down. You look like your loafers are bothering you.”
They were. They were a half-size too small. Brad Emprin went over and sat uncomfortably on the edge of the rattan deck chair. Charlie paced the patio for a moment.
“Okay, Brad, let me explain to you what we’re talking about here. Just so we’re straight. Bobby Mason has a first-look deal with Deidre Hearn’s studio, right? Bobby Mason wants to do a script called Bill and Ben. I have an option deal signed by the author controlling the worldwide rights in all media to Bill and Ben. For eighteen months, renewable to thirty-six. You following me so far?”
Brad Emprin nodded.
“Good. Now if Deidre Hearn’s studio is not happy with a coproduction with Charles Berns Productions, then they have a perfect right to pass. No hard feelings. I will go elsewhere. Someone in this town will be interested in this deal, Brad. Take my word for it….”
“Charlie…”
“Shhh. Here’s where you come in. Listen carefully. If you and your agency are interested in negotiating this deal for me, you’re in for ten percent of everything that accrues to me on this project. If not…”
“Of course we’re interested, Charlie. That’s not the point.”
“Tell me what the point is.”
“I don’t think they’re going to buy it.”
“Let’s put it on the freeway, Brad. See if it gets run over.”
For the first time in his short career, Brad Emprin made a deal from his car phone. He drove around the quiet, tree-lined streets of the Beverly Hills Flats negotiating deal points. Charlie sat beside him with the yellow pad writing everything down. Every time the Business Affairs woman had to go check a point with her superior, Brad Emprin had to call Tanya and have her get ready to patch the call back through to the car phone.
It was a long and arduous process. They reached a fairly serious obstacle when Charlie demanded a small gross position on foreign markets. The Business Affairs woman said there was no way it would ever fly. When she went off to discuss the point with Norman Hudris and Howard Draper, who was now involved, as was Bert Sully from his office in Bobby Mason’s house in Holmby Hills, Charlie listened carefully as Brad Emprin braked the 325i hard and turned the wheel to the right. He swore to his agent that he could actually hear the galump whose existence the BMW service manager denied.
The deal was closed at six-thirty, as the sun was disappearing over the maples of Beverly Hills. In return for giving the studio a three-year option to make the movie, Charlie Berns had a development fund of $250,000 for the script, creative control over the script process, subject only to a good-faith agreement to accept input on the part of the studio, consultation with regard to casting, two gross-profit points in Europe, one point five in Asia and Australia, sequel and remake rights in perpetuity, including television series and novelization, an office suite and a secretary in the producers’ building, and a parking space in the A lot.
When Brad Emprin hung up the car phone, he was a virtual puddle. He shook his head, muttering, “They gave you everything. Can you believe it?”
“When you’re hot, you’re hot, Brad.”
That evening Charlie took his nephew out to celebrate the sale of Bill and Ben. They sat in a booth in a Thai restaurant on Sunset and drank Thai beer and ate things that Lionel had never heard of before.
“Fifty-two grand…?”
Charlie nodded, working his chopsticks through a plate of lamb curry.
“Boy, I never thought they’d pay anything like that. I mean, that’s more money than my old man makes in a whole year…. Do I have to wait till they make the movie?”
“The money’s yours whether they make the movie or not.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
Charlie did not bother to inform his nephew that the money he was receiving for his script, $52,500, was Writers Guild minimum for a high-budget feature film, as this picture most certainly was going to turn out once Bobby Mason’s involvement inflated the above-the-line costs. It was also the minimum permissible to pay for the acquisition of the script. But, besides the rewrite expenses, the rest of the money wasn’t payable by the studio unless they greenlighted the picture.
“If they buy the script, why wouldn’t they make the movie?” Lionel asked.
At the moment Charlie didn’t want to confuse his nephew with too much insight into the abstruse practices of the movie business. He tried to keep it as simple as he could.
“You see, Lionel,” he explained, “this movie’s now what’s called ‘in development,’ which means, basically, that the script has to get rewritten while the studio thinks about whether or not it wants to make the picture.”
“I don’t get it. Why do you have to rewrite it if you like it enough to spend fifty-two thousand bucks to buy it in the first place?”
“Nobody really likes a script unless they’ve had a rewrite or two done on it.”
He shook his head, muttered, “That’s very weird.”
“You get used to it. Like religion. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but you learn to work with it.”
Lionel ate pensively for a moment, chasing the curry with liberal splashes of Chardonnay.
“So what happens now?”
“Well, first we get rewrite notes from the studio. Then we get a writer to rewrite the script.”
“What do you mean, ‘get a writer’? I’m the writer.”
“Absolutely, Lionel. You’re the writer—”
“So what’s this about getting a writer?”
“Lionel, listen. You’re the writer. We wouldn’t be making the movie if it wasn’t for you. You’re the main guy.”
“Main guy? Why are there other writers? I don’t understand.”
Charlie put down his chopsticks. This was going to be delicate. He searched for the right analogy to explain how things worked. He couldn’t simply tell him the truth—that very little, if anything, of the screenplay he had written would appear on the screen. Sooner or later he would have to break the news to him, but not now.
“Let me put it to you this way, Lionel. Think of yourself as the architect of a cathedral. You’re the one that figures out where the nave and the transept are going to be, where the choir loft is, you design the size and placement of the windows…. But you don’t actually paint the stained-glass windows, now do you?”
Lionel shook his head.
“You delegate the little tasks to craftsmen so that you can keep your mind on the whole. You’re the creator. It’s your baby. Your name’s going to be up there on that screen…. ‘Written by…Lionel…’ What’s your last name again?”
“Traven is my screen name. I’m very confused.”
“Don’t be. It’s just pictures. That’s the way they work. How do you like the curry?”
Lionel nodded absently, wondering whether someone else had painted B. Traven’s stained-glass windows.
They sat there eating in silence for a long moment until Lionel asked, “Uh…what if I don’t like the stained-glass windows?”
“You’ll like them.”
“Really?”
“Trust me.”
“Sure.”
“Lionel, try to understand one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“No windows, no cathedral.”
4
When Charlie drove on the lot in the morning, he didn’t breeze through the gate as he usually did, waving perfunctorily and avoiding eye contact. Today he stopped and announced himself.
