Passing Through the Flame (28 page)

“Jango recommends you quite highly, Mr. Conrad,” Horst said. “And this
is
Jango’s project. However, he’s never made your credits quite clear....”

Jango Beck looked into Paul’s eyes; Paul could sense laughter in those depths, but Beck’s eyes also put out a solid front of psychic support. “Tell the man about yourself, Paul,” he said calmly.

Christ, Jango doesn’t really
know
my credits, he doesn’t know anything about
Down Under the Ground
at all, we never talked about it. A tremor of fear went through Paul—would Jango trust him so utterly if he knew how he had blown it on
Down Under the Ground
? How could he answer Horst without fucking everything up? But he felt certain that Beck would back any play, and he felt himself still riding that heady wave of destiny, and he found that he felt no fear of playing little games with John Horst.

“I’ve got a graduate degree in filmmaking. I’ve got twenty-four festival prizes for eight short films....”

He paused, studying Horst’s face, hoping against all reason that he could stop short of
Down Under the Ground.
He saw that Horst’s mouth was beginning to pucker. Taub, strangely, seemed pleased.

“I’ve also done quite a lot of work here in Hollywood in... ah... low-budget productions as... ah... cameraman and assistant director....”

He could see the deal curdling in Horst’s eyes, around the corners of his mouth. But Taub was leaning back and almost smiling. He glanced at Beck for guidance, a tip, anything, but Beck simply stared back at him with utterly neutral and utterly opaque support. As if to say, you’re the director, kid, so direct!

Throwing useless caution behind him, Paul said, “In New York, I also wrote, produced, directed, and edited my own feature film.” Horst’s face relaxed; Taub’s became more neutral. Jango Beck didn’t bat an eyelash. He might as well have been an insect, expressionless and immobile.

“What was the name?” Horst asked. “Maybe I’ve seen it.”

“I doubt you’ve seen it, Mr. Horst.”

“I’m in the film industry, after all. I see a lot of footage you wouldn’t imagine I’d see.”

Paul took a deep breath. “It was called
Down Under the Ground
,” he said.

“What was it about?”

“It was a sort of metaphysical spy story shot entirely in the New York City subway system,” Paul said. “A member of some intelligence agency—could be the CIA or the NKVD or even the Mafia, you never find out—is being chased by agents of a rival agency who are out to capture him at all costs. You never find out why he’s running or why they’re hunting him or who or what any of them are.

“At the opening of the film, the running man decides to disappear into the New York subway system and never come out. He adapts to living in the subway, sleeping in trains and stations, using the public toilets, eating in the underground arcades. That’s what the film is basically about, the people he meets and his adaptation to the subway system as a permanent habitat. In the film, he never gets caught, and the hunters never give up. I used six actors and grabbed extras right on the spot in the subway. Shot the whole thing in three weeks for fifteen thousand dollars.”

Paul was humming inside as he finished, as he watched Horst’s face come alive with genuine enthusiasm. Goddamn,
Down Under the Ground was
great footage, a great concept, in a way a great film!

“Sounds a little like
Mickey One
, which I thought was a great film,” Horst said. “A great film which died at the box office. But if I’d financed it, I would’ve called it money well spent. I wish I’d seen your film. Who released it?”

How do I tell him that nobody released it? Paul thought. How do I tell him I didn’t have the money to do it right? I was a schmuck, Mr. Horst, and I blew it. Is that the way I should put it?

He glanced at Beck, who was doing his Lizard King act, no help there, but Horst seemed sympathetic, a creature of the movie industry, but a man genuinely interested in film. Maybe a man who would understand something like the truth. I don’t have a better story than the truth anyway, Paul realized.

“Nobody released it,” he said. “The technical quality was lousy. You just can’t shoot a color film of theatrical quality in the New York subways for fifteen thousand dollars. I am the world’s expert on the subject, and I learned the hard way.”

Horst nodded sympathetically. “A total budget of fifteen thousand dollars for a whole color feature film,” he said. “I’ve got directors under contract who whine about production values on five-hundred-thousand-dollar budgets. Do you think you could’ve made your film properly on a five-hundred-thousand-dollar budget?”

“And thrown in a remake of
Cleopatra
on the side,” Paul said dryly. He grinned. Horst smiled. Everything was all right!

“You can’t be mingy,” Beck said. “You’ve got to spend the right amount of money to do things right, not a penny more, not a penny less. I’ve seen Paul’s film, and if he had had another forty thousand dollars, he would’ve had a winner. Anybody who did what Paul did on fifteen thousand dollars will have no trouble at all working with a halfway decent budget.”

Paul glowed. What a pleasure it was going to be to work with a producer with an attitude like that. With a studio head who thinks he’s getting a bargain. Hell, he
is
getting a bargain! We’re all coming out well. This is an honest, creative, kosher deal.

But why did Jango lie about seeing
Down Under the Ground?

“I have no objections to Paul,” Horst said, “if you want him, Jango, he’s yours.”

“Okay,” said Beck, “that settles that. Now the question is, will Paul accept the deal?”

Accept the deal! Hand me the contracts, and I’ll sign them in blood.

But Jango Beck leaned back and said, “Before you answer, Paul, I want you to understand what the deal is, so there’ll be no bitching later. People work better if they get this conversation out of the way at the outset.”

He lit his joint, took a short puff, and looked Paul dead on. “I am the producer,” he said, “and I intend to be a creative producer, not just sign checks. The concept of the film is mine. Therefore, I will approve the screenplay. Once the screenplay is approved, I will not interfere again until the shooting is completed, at which point you will edit it to our mutual satisfaction.”

“That seems perfectly fair,” Paul said. Jesus Christ and Stanley Kubrick might get absolute control of the screenplay and the final cut, but a new boy never. By Hollywood rules, Beck is being lavishly generous. We can’t help working together smoothly.

“What about the music and the casting?” Taub said. “You’d better make that clear, Jango. Eden Records has a stake in this film, too.”

“I was coming to that, Mike,” Beck said mildly. “You see, Paul, record tie-ins and publicity are going to make this project possible. Perhaps as many as twenty Eden and Dark Star artists and groups will be recording live albums at the rock festival we stage for the film. So Mike and I have to have control of the festival itself, because we have to milk it for the maximum publicity value for the live albums. Which means we stage it, and you shoot against it. We don’t tell you how to shoot, and you don’t tell us how to run a rock festival.”

“I wouldn’t know how to start telling you how to run a rock festival,” Paul said cautiously. What is all this leading up to?

“Good,” said Beck, “we’re agreed there. Now because of this situation, I have to have some control over the cutting, and final control of the sound track, because we want to insure that the right albums—the most salable albums—get the max promotion in the film. That the right artists appear in the film. And also that they come off properly. Which means that I as producer do the casting, too.”

The green walls of the room seemed to loom into sudden prominence, as if the lenses of Paul’s eyes had made a snap change of focus. He noticed motes of dust swimming in the light from the Tiffany chandelier. He awoke to the fact that he was in some kind of poker game, that Beck’s interest and his did not entirely coincide. That he was no Kubrick with the clout to maintain total control of the reality he worked in and the reality he created on film. That he had no clout at all except what he could win for himself with skill and cunning—that, and what Beck had already granted him, which was a rich portion of control for anyone but a really top-line director.

“I can’t honestly say I like that,” Paul said.

Jango Beck smiled. “I can’t honestly expect you to like it,” he said. “The question is, does the rest of the deal appeal to you enough for you to live with it?”

Knowing that the answer was obvious, Paul found himself doing something that would have been inconceivable to him half an hour ago. I might as well not say yes too soon, he thought. I might as well see how much money I can get. “What
is
the rest of the deal?” he said. “What’s my budget? What do I get paid?”

Jango Beck downed his whole glass of brandy. “Your production budget will be three hundred thousand,” he said. “Of course that doesn’t include the rock festival or anything related to it. That’s what you get to shoot a basic two-character love story. Think you can handle that?” Beck’s eyes told Paul that he knew damn well that that was more than adequate.

“Sure,” he said, “no sweat. Now about my end....”

“I’m not going to let you hold me up for anything outrageous,” Beck said. “I’ll put you on salary for seven hundred and fifty dollars a week from scripting through cutting, with a fifty-thousand-dollar maximum. You get the difference between the salary you’ve collected and fifty thousand dollars on the release date of the film. You get five percent of the producer’s profit, paid annually. This is not a high-budget film, after all.”

Again, Beck’s face told Paul that he knew full well what a magnanimous offer he was making. Paul had expected an initial offer of maybe twenty thousand dollars, which he might have pushed up to thirty thousand dollars. To ask for fifty thousand dollars and participation had never entered his mind. He tried hard not to show his elation, not for any practical reason any longer, but simply to avoid looking like a yuk.

“About this casting thing....” he said. “At least, I’d like to have an idea of your thinking before I commit myself.... Do you have any people in mind for the leads?”

Jango Beck took a long drag on his joint, blew a contrail of smoke at the ceiling. “Just the leading lady, so far,” he said. “The leading lady is Velva Leecock.”

Velva, who had disappeared into the, furniture, suddenly became the focus of the room. Paul couldn’t detect the slightest motion, but her face came alive, her body seemed to ripen. She’s turned on. She’s
really
turned on. Mike Taub, for some reason, seemed very pleased. Only John Horst seemed to see it for the disaster it was.

Only he and I know anything about movies, Paul realized. We’re the only ones who know what a lox Velva would be—a throwback to the worst schlock of the fifties. But Beck’s put me on the spot. I open my mouth to question his judgment, and I’m fighting against myself, endangering a project that means everything to me. And Velva is in the room, and she’s in heaven. Horst is going to have to be the son of a bitch to shoot her down.

“You’re sure about this, Jango?” Horst said. “No offense to you, Miss Leecock, but you have no legitimate credits to speak of—”

“Then let’s not talk about credits, John,” Beck said. “What credits did the Velvet Cloud have when I discovered them? Zilch! Ripe Fruit? Less than zilch! I make my living spotting talent and putting it to work for me. I sniff it out like a pig rooting for truffles. I don’t read credit lists. I don’t even know why I know Velva is going to be a star, I just sense it. When I go with my instincts, I’m seldom wrong.”

“Surely you can give a reason for such a choice,” Horst said.

Jango Beck looked at Velva, not Horst, radiating frank sexuality. Velva ate it up, seemed to flow toward Beck. “You want a conventional justification, John, I’ll give you the most traditional justification in Hollywood,” Beck said. “I’m the producer, and the lady balled me for the part.”

Taub choked on a laugh, and Velva flushed under her straw hat; Paul could not tell whether it was in embarrassment or pleasure. John Horst’s face went cold with disgust.

But before Horst could speak, Jango Beck moved into the center of his disgust, smiling into Horst’s angering eyes. “It’s the grand old Hollywood tradition, John, production executives balling their stars. After all, if a star can’t give the producer a hard-on, who else can you expect to be turned on? Isn’t that right?”

Something seemed to leak slowly out of Horst; Paul could not imagine what. But the anger on his face gradually faded away into something more like resignation. Beck stared at him silently for a moment as this alchemical transformation occurred, then laughed away the tension.

“Don’t look so solemn, John,” he said breezily. “I was just making a point. Which is that I don’t believe in credits or logic, and I have no intention of answering that kind of question again.”

“You’ve made your point,” Horst said. “It wasn’t necessary to embarrass Miss Leecock to do it.”

Beck laughed. “Miss Leecock, are you embarrassed?” He held up his hand. “Don’t answer that.” Velva giggled.

“See, there you are,” Beck said. “I submit that giggle as proof of her star quality. Imagine the last couple of minutes as part of a film.”

Then Beck suddenly became serious again, catching Paul in the dark universes behind his strange, compelling eyes, pinning him with their full attention. “That’s the deal, Paul, and none of it is subject to further negotiation. I want a man who knows himself, a director has to think and decide on the fly, right? So tell me right now, do we have a deal or not?”

The full import of what Beck had done broke in Paul’s mind and expanded this moment out to encompass a nexus of interlocking implications which he experienced in a flash. Beck had shown him that not even Horst could overrule him. He had shown him, therefore, that his chance of doing the film without Velva as the leading lady was zero. And by doing this, he had made it clear that the deal he was offering really was final, in all its aspects, that Paul would be in no position to improve the situation later. He had made it abundantly clear who would be the boss. And he had made Paul acutely aware that he would not be able to work around Jango—he would never understand him well enough. Jango Beck was going to permeate the making of this film, a powerful and utterly unpredictable force.