Hollywood (12 page)

I was there at 8:50 a.m. I parked and waited for Jon. He rolled up at 8:55 a.m. I got out and walked over to Jon’s car.

“Good morning, Jon...”

“Hello, Hank...How are you?”

“Fine. Listen, what happened to the hunger strike?”

“Oh, I am still on that. But more important is the cutting off of the parts.”

Jon had the Black and Decker with him. It was wrapped in a dark green towel. We walked into the Firepower building together. The elevator took us up to the lawyer’s office. Neeli Zutnick. The receptionist was expecting our arrival. “Please go right in,” she said.

Neeli Zutnick was waiting. He rose from behind his desk and shook hands with us. Then he returned, sat down behind his desk. “Would you gentleman care for some coffee?” he asked.

“No,” said Jon.

“I’ll have some,” I said.

Zutnick hit the intercom button. “Rose? Rose, my dear...one coffee, please...” He looked at me, “Cream and sugar?”

“Black.”

“Black. Thank you, Rose...Now, gentlemen...”

“Where’s Friedman?” Jon asked.

“Mr. Friedman has given me full instructions. Now...”

“Where’s your plug?” Jon asked.

“Plug?”

“For this...” Jon pulled the towel away revealing the Black and Decker.

“Please, Mr. Pinchot...”

“Where’s the plug? Never mind, I see it...”

Jon walked over and plugged the Black and Decker into the wall.

“You must understand,” said Zutnick, “that if I had known you were going to bring that instrument I would have arranged to turn off the electricity.”

“That’s all right,” said Jon.

“There’s no need for that instrument,” said Zutnick.

“I hope not. It’s just...in case...”

Rose entered with my coffee. Jon pressed the button on the Black and Decker. The blade sprang into action and began to hum.

Rose nervously tilted the coffee cup just a bit. . . just enough to spill a touch of it on her dress. It was a nice red dress and Rose, a heavy girl, filled it nicely.

“Wow! That
scared
me!”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said, “I was just...testing...”

“Who gets the coffee?”

“I do,” I told her, “thank you.”

Rose brought the coffee over to me. I needed it.

Rose exited, giving us a worried look over her shoulder.

“Both Mr. Friedman and Mr. Fischman have expressed dismay at your present state of mind...”

“Cut the shit, Zutnick! Either I get the release or the first piece of my flesh will be deposited...
there
!”

Jon tapped the center of Zutnick’s desk with the end of the Black and Decker.

“Now, Mr. Pinchot, there is no need...”

“THERE IS A NEED! AND YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! I WANT THAT RELEASE! NOW!”

Zutnick looked at me. “How is your coffee, Mr. Chinaski?”

Jon squeezed the trigger of the Black and Decker and held up his left hand, little finger extended. He waved the Black and Decker about as the blade furiously worked away.

“NOW!”

“VERY WELL!” yelled Zutnick.

Jon took his finger off the trigger.

Zutnick opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out two legal-. sized sheets of paper. He slid them toward Jon. Jon walked over, picked them up, sat back down, began reading.

“Mr. Zutnick,” I asked, “can I have another cup of coffee?”

Zutnick glared at me, hit the intercom.

“Another cup of coffee, Rose. Black...”

“Like in Black and Decker,” I said.

“Mr. Chinaski, that isn’t funny.”

Jon continued to read.

My coffee arrived.

“Thank you, Rose...”

Jon continued to read as we waited. The Black and Decker lay across his lap.

Then Jon said, “No, this won’t do...”

“WHAT?” said Zutnick. “THAT IS A COMPLETE RELEASE!”

“All of clause ‘e’ must be deleted. It contains too many ambiguities.”

“May I see those papers?” asked Zutnick.

“Certainly...”

Jon placed them on the blade of the Black and Decker and passed them over to Zutnick. Zutnick took them off the blade with some disgust. He began reading clause ‘e.’

“I see nothing wrong here...”

“Delete it...”

“Do you really intend to cut off one of your fingers?”

“Yes. I may even cut off one of yours.”

“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?”

“Consider this: I have nothing to lose here. Only you have.”

“A contract signed under these conditions can be considered invalid.”

“You are making me sick, Zutnick! Eliminate clause ‘e’ or my finger goes! NOW!”

Jon hit the button. The Black and Decker sprang into action again. Jon Pinchot stuck out his little finger, left hand.

“STOP!” screamed Zutnick.

Jon stopped.

Zutnick was on the intercom. “ROSE! I need you...”

Rose entered. “More coffee for the gentleman?”

“No, Rose. I want this entire contract revised and run out again, but eliminate clause ‘e,’ then return it to me.”

“Yes, Mr. Zutnick.”

We all just sat a while then.

Then Zutnick said, “You can unplug that thing now.”

“Not yet,” said Jon. “Not until everything is finalized .

“Do you really have another producer for this thing?”

“Of course...”

“Do you mind telling me who?”

“Of course not. Hal Edleman. Friedman knows that.”

Zutnick blinked. Edleman was money. He knew the name.

“I’ve read the screenplay. It seems very...crude...to me.”

“Have you read any other of Mr. Chinaski’s works?” Jon asked.

“No. But my daughter has. She read his book of stories,
Cesspool Dreams
.”

“And?”

“She hated it.”

Rose was back with the new contract. She handed it to Zutnick. Zutnick gave it a glance, stood up and walked it over to Jon.

Jon reread the whole thing.

“Very well.”

He walked it over to the desk, bent over, signed it. Zutnick signed for Friedman and Fischman. It was done. One copy each.

Then Zutnick laughed. He looked relieved.

“The practice of law gets stranger all the time....”

Jon unplugged the Black and Decker. Zutnick walked to a small cabinet on the wall, opened it, pulled out a bottle, 3 glasses. He sat them on his desk, poured around.

“To the deal, gentlemen...”

“To the deal...” said Jon.

“To the deal,” the writer chimed in.

We drank them down. It was brandy. And we had the movie again.

I walked Jon to his car. He threw the Black and Decker into the back seat, then climbed into the front.

“Jon,” I asked from the sidewalk, “can I try you with the big question?”

“Sure.”

“You can tell me the truth about the Black and Decker. It will never get further than this. Were you really going to do it?”

“Of course...”

“But the other parts to follow? The other pieces. Were you going to do that?”

“Of course. Once you begin such a thing there is no stopping.”

“You’ve got guts, my man...”

“It is nothing. Now I am hungry.”

“Can I buy you breakfast?”

“Well, all right...I know just the place...Get into your car and follow me...”

“All right.”

I followed Jon through Hollywood, the light and the shadows of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurel and Hardy, Clark Gable, Gloria Swanson, Mickey Mouse and Humphrey Bogart, falling all around us.

There wasn’t much for a week or so. I was playing with one of the cats on the rug when the phone rang. Sarah got it.

“Yes? Oh, hello Jon. Yes, he’s here. There’s no racing on Mondays or Tuesdays. What? Oh god, what a mess...Look, I’ll get Hank...”

I got up off the rug and took the phone.

“Hello, Jon...”

“Hank, it fell through...”

“What?”

“The Edleman thing. They were going around trying to sell
The Dance of Jim Beam
for 7 million behind our back. The people I had hired to go around secretly to find another backer when we were with Firepower have just told me that the Edleman group offered to sell them the rights to the movie for 7 million.”

“But they don’t have the rights, yet...”

“They claimed that they did. They presented the package: the screenplay, the actors, the budget. For the right to produce the film they were asking 7 million. They were going to buy the rights from us for less after they had made a deal in secret...”

“Jesus...”

“We are once again the victim of another bunch of crooks. So that’s out. The Edleman thing is finished. So we are now going to try to get another producer. I didn’t want to bother you with all this but I thought I’d better let you know.”

“Of course. So, how’s it going?”

“We get people on the phone. We present it to them on the phone and they all say, ‘Fine, fine, we’ll do it.’ Then when they see the screenplay they say, ‘No.’ The whole town says, ‘No.’ The moment they see the screenplay they say, ‘No.’ Here’s a film with 2 great actors and a budget so low that there is no way this film isn’t going to make money. Yet the whole town says ‘No.’ It’s unheard of.”

“They don’t like the screenplay,” I said.

“They don’t like it.”

“And I don’t like them. I don’t like them at all.”

“Well, we are going to keep working. There must be some people somewhere that we haven’t tried.”

“It sounds dark.”

“Somehow we are going to do this thing.”

“I like your faith.”

“Don’t worry.”

“All right...”

I got back down on the rug and played with the cat. The cat liked to chase this piece of string.

“The movie’s back to nowhere,” I told Sarah. “Nobody likes the screenplay.”

“Do you like it?”

“I think it’s better than most of the screenplays I’ve seen but maybe I’m wrong. Mostly I’m sorry for Jon.”

The cat missed the string but sunk a claw into the top of my hand. The blood came. I walked to the bathroom and doused the wound with hydrogen peroxide. There was my face in the mirror: just an old man who had written a screenplay. Shit. I walked out of there.

When the horses were running I never got any bad news because I wasn’t home and nobody could find me.

Well, the track did come around again and I went every day, did all right, came in, as was my wont, ate, watched a bit of TV with Sarah, went upstairs to the wine bottle and the typer. I was working on the poem. There wasn’t much money in the poem but it sure was a big playground to flounder around in.

Within a couple of weeks after his last phone call there was another from Jon.

“Everything is hell again,” he said. “We are worse off than ever!”

“What?”

“Listen, we found a producer, he said all right, he liked everything, even the screenplay. He told me, ‘AH right, we’ll do it. Bring the papers, I’ll sign them and we’ll get right into production.’ So a time was set for the signing but before I could get over there he phoned me. He said, ‘I can’t do the film.’ Apparently there is a well-known director who claims he has the dramatic rights to all the works about Henry Chinaski. ‘There is nothing I can do,’ he told me. The deal is off.’”

Henry Chinaski was the name Ihad used for my main character in my various novels. I had used the name again in the screenplay.

“What is this bullshit?” I asked.

“It’s not bullshit. You have sold the rights to the Henry Chinaski character.”

“There’s no truth in this,” I said, “but even if it were true, all we would have to do is to change the name.”

“No, the contract says that he owns the
character
no matter what name you use. Forever!”

“This can’t be true...”

“I am afraid when you sold your novel
Shipping Clerk
to the director Hector Blackford, you also sold those dramatic rights.”

“Yes, I sold the movie rights. It was only 2 thousand dollars. I was starving. It looked like a lot of money to me at the time. Blackford never made a movie out of
Shipping Clerk
.”

“It doesn’t matter. It says in the contract that he owns the character forever.”

“Listen, how did you hear all this?”

“Well, there’s this lawyer, Fletcher Jaystone. He’s in bed with a lady film editor. They’ve completed their business and the lawyer sees the screenplay on the side table. He reaches over. It’s
The Dance of Jim Beam
. He flips through it, puts the screenplay back down and says, ‘HENRY CHINASKI! MY CLIENT OWNS THIS GUY! I DREW UP THE CONTRACT MYSELF!’ And right from there the word goes around town.
The Dance of Jim Beam
is dead. Now nobody will touch it because Blackford and his lawyer own Henry Chinaski.”

“That’s not true, Jon. I wouldn’t sell these rights into perpetuity for a lousy 2 grand. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

“But it’s in the contract!”

“I read the contract before I signed it. I never saw anything like that.”

“See section VI.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I phoned this lawyer. He is a tough guy. ‘We own Henry Chinaski,’ he told me. ‘I invested 15 thousand of my own money at the time and it was lot of money then. It’s
still
a lot of money.’ I started to get excited, I started to scream at him. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘don’t talk to me like that. Don’t you talk to me like that.’ I couldn’t get anywhere with him. I don’t know if he wants a lot of money or what but right now
Jim Beam
is dead, deader than anything around. It’s finished.”

“Jon, I’ll phone you back.”

I looked up the contract and checked section VI. To my mind I could see no implied or direct sale of the rights to the character. I read section VI again and again but couldn’t see it.

I phoned Jon.

“There’s nothing in section VI that says anything about handing over the character forever. What kind of sickness is this? Has everybody gone crazy?”

“No; but that’s what it means.”

“What means?”

“Section VI.”

“Do you have the contract there, Jon?”

“Yes.”

“Will you read me where it states that this guy owns Henry Chinaski.”

“Well, it infers it.”

“This is SICK! I don’t even see an
inference
!”

“If we have to go to court it will take 3,4,5 years...And meanwhile,
Jim Beam
will be dead. Nobody will touch it!”

“IS EVERYBODY IN THIS TOWN THAT FRIGHTENED? THERE IS NOTHING IN SECTION VI THAT STATES ANYTHING IN THE VAGUEST WAY ABOUT SELLING THE CHINASKI CHARACTER TO THESE PEOPLE!”

“You have signed away the rights to Henry Chinaski forever,” said Jon.

He was sick too. I hung up.

I found Hector Blackford’s phone number. It was listed in the phone book as it had always been. I had known Hector since he had come out of filmmaking school at USC. One of his first films had been a documentary about me. It played on PBS one night. The next morning 50 people phoned in and cancelled their subscriptions.

Hector and I had been drunk together a few times. He had shown some interest in doing
Shipping Clerk
and he had even handed me a screenplay but it was so badly done that I told him to forget it. Meanwhile, he went his way and I went mine. And he became rich and famous, directing a number of big hits. I played with the poem and forgot about
Shipping Clerk
.

The phone rang and he was there.

“Hector, this is Hank...”

“Oh, hello Hank. How’s it going?”

“Not well.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about
Jim Beam
. There’s a guy going around town who claims you and he own Henry Chinaski. You know him.”

“Fletcher Jaystone?”

“Yes. Now, Hector, you know I wouldn’t sell my ass and soul for a lousy 2 thousand bucks.”

“Fletcher says that you have...”

“It’s not in section VI.”

“He says it is.”

“Have you read it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen, baby, you’re not going to yank my balls off because of some vague wordage that nobody can understand, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve got a movie under way and this is going to kill it off forever. Don’t you remember all those nights we got drunk together and talked all that good talk?”

“Yes, those were good nights.”

“Then talk to your man and get him off our ass. We only want to inhale and exhale. That’s all.”

“Hank, I’ll call you back.”

I sat by the phone and waited. I waited 15 minutes. It rang.

It was Hector. “All right, Jaystone is going to relent.”

“Thank you, man, I know you’ve got a good heart. The business hasn’t killed you yet.”

“Jaystone is going to send you a release, immediately.”

“Great! Great! Hector, you’re beautiful!”

“And Hank...”

“Yes?”

“I’m still going to make a movie out of
Shipping Clerk
someday.”

“All right, baby! Hello to your wife!”

“Hello to Sarah,” said Hector.

Nine-tenths of this kind of action is resolved over the telephone; the other tenth is the signing of the papers.

I phoned Jon.

“Hector is calling your man Jaystone off. Jaystone is sending a release.”

“Great! Great! Now we can go ahead! Hector was your buddy, wasn’t he?”

“Well, I think he’s proved that.”

“As soon as we get the release I’ll go back to our new producer...By the way, instead of waiting on the mail why don’t I just go to Jaystone’s office and pick up the release?”

“Sure, phone him and set it up.”

“Well, we’re back in the movie business,” said Jon.

“Sure. Maybe we ought to have lunch at Musso’s.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. One-thirty.”

“See you there,” said Jon.

“See you,” I answered.