The Boy Who Never Grew Up (26 page)

“Fucking?”

“Norbert sat there behind his big desk looking like a Detroit gangster. Had on this really loud plaid sport jacket, and a red shirt, and a white tie. He told me to sit down. He called me ‘Kid.’ He always called me that. He just sat there looking me over for a while, cracking his knuckles, not saying a word. Then he got up and came around the desk. He was wearing a white belt and white shoes. And his fly was open. The tail of his shirt was sticking way out of it. He came over close to me, real close, and started sniffing at me.”

“Sniffing at you?”

“Like a dog would—no offense, Lulu. His nose maybe an inch from my armpit. I said to him, ‘Is something wrong, Mr. Schlom?’ I’m thinking maybe I forgot to put on my Right Guard that morning. And you know what he said to me?”

“I honestly can’t imagine.”

“He said, and I’ll never forget this as long as I live, he said, ‘Kid, I know shit from scripts. I know shit from dailies. I know shit from rough cuts. I only know one thing—money. And I smell money on you. I’m putting you to work.’ And that’s how I became a director.”

“Kind of a stirring moment.”

“Hey, it happened,” Matthew insisted.

“Hey, I believe you.”

“What he had in mind for me was this new Saturday morning serial they were doing for CBS based on the Rick Brant books of the forties and fifties. All about the adventures of this teenaged inventor named Rick and his pal, Scotty. A fellow named John Blaine wrote them. Schlom wanted me to break
The Rocket’s Shadow
into twelve episodes, with a cliff-hanger every week, and then direct them. For which he offered me a contract paying me five hundred dollars a week. I brought the contract to Shelley. He showed it to one of his law professors, who said it was fair except for this one clause that bound me exclusively to the studio for seven years, at their option. He said we should try to get it reduced to one year, otherwise I’d be signing my life away. The Panorama people said okay. That turned out to be really important later on.”

“I’m surprised they let you reduce it.”

“It was a mistake, actually. Norbert fired the guy who made it. They assigned me a line producer, an old pro, and I went to work breaking up the book. Then we cast our leads and I walked out onto the floor and said ‘Action’ for the first time.”

“What was that like—being in charge of a shoot at age nineteen?”

He sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, a contented smile on his face. This recollection he was enjoying. “Lots of people have asked me that through the years. For me it was no problem. The leads were kids, for one thing. They looked up to me. And the crew, they don’t care how old you are. All they care about is whether you’re decisive. If you are, you earn their respect. What they can’t handle is indecision, tentativeness, vagueness. It makes them freak out. That wasn’t a problem for me. From the first day I walked out on the set, I felt I belonged there. I felt at home. And I knew what the show was supposed to be—something fun,
something I would watch.
I can’t emphasize that last point enough, Meat. Because that’s all I’ve ever tried to do—entertain myself. It’s as simple as that. People in this town, they’re always trying to figure out what will or will not work for this or that audience. It’s all bull. If it’s something you yourself would go see, then it works. That’s the only marketing strategy I’ve ever followed. And, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only one there is.” He dug into the package for another Oreo, animated and effusive. “I knew what I wanted. And I knew when I’d gotten it. That made me a director, even if I was only nineteen. We had to work tremendously hard, fourteen hours a day, to grind those episodes out. It was a grueling pace. But they left us alone, which was a real plus. Nobody from the studio interfered, or even paid much attention to what we were doing.”

“How did Bunny feel about all of this?”

“She thought the whole thing was
nuts
,” he laughed, smacking the table with delight. “She couldn’t believe I was actually directing a real television show. She figured I was selling drugs or something. She insisted on coming down to the set for a look. And she
still
didn’t like it. Thought it was some kind of fluke. That I ought to go back to school. She’ll deny that now, of course. Say she was one hundred percent for it. But she wasn’t. Although she did get a bit more supportive when
The Rocket’s Shadow
premiered. It did really well in the ratings. The kids responded to it. The critics loved it. I started getting a few requests for interviews. At first, I did them, but they made me so uncomfortable I decided to stop. The press didn’t understand that. Still don’t. They don’t get that someone might want to be left alone.”

“They get it fine,” I said. “They just don’t care.”

“Norbert immediately got me started on another Brant,
One Hundred Fathoms Under
, which was all about deep sea diving. We got to use a water tank in that one, which was real neat. It did even better than the first one. By then my one-year contract with Panorama was up. The series was hot. Norbert wanted me to keep going with it. He offered to double my salary to a thousand a week. But Shelley got an offer that was even better. An independent company offered me the chance to write and direct my own low-budget feature. Any film I wanted to do. Shelley called Norbert and told him I was leaving. Norbert hit the ceiling—this would never have happened if they hadn’t screwed up my contract. He basically had to match the offer or lose me. So he went to the Panorama feature people and talked them into matching it. And I did
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
for them, with Norbert moving over into the feature business with me as my supervisor. I ended up staying there with him for the next twelve years. Eight pictures in all. Panorama was my second home. I had my own playpen there. It was great. Norbert let me make the pictures I wanted to make, and let me spend what I wanted to spend. Because my pictures made hundreds of millions of dollars for him. It’s funny—Norbert always takes credit for me. Says he made me. And for a long time I believed that. But the more I look back on it now, the more I realize that
I
made
him.
He got into the feature business because of me. He made it all the way to the Panorama throne because of me.
He
needed
me.
He’s always needed me. That’s why he’s trying to get me back. Trying to buy this place. But I’ll never work for him again. Never. I’ll retire from the business before I’ll make another movie for that man. I mean it.” He grabbed the basketball and jumped to his feet. “C’mon, I’ll play you again.”

“You’ll just lose again.”

“Fat chance,” he exclaimed, dribbling the ball out the door. Until suddenly he stopped. “I can’t go to the reunion dinner, Meat.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a fancy dinner dance.”

“So?”

“I don’t have anything to wear.” He fingered his ravaged scalp. “And my hair …”

“Leave that to me,” I said soothingly. “All part of the service.”

He brightened. “Really?”

“Really. One question—do you care how much you spend?”

“I guess not.”

“Good answer,” I said, rubbing my hands together.

“I still can’t go, Meat,” he insisted stubbornly.

I sighed. “Why not, Matthew?”

He reddened. “I—I don’t know how to dance,” he confessed.

“Well, don’t look at me, buttwipe. I don’t dance with boys.”

T
HE BRAND NEW HEADQUARTERS OF THE
Harmon Wright Agency was on Beverly Boulevard, a half block from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It was a squat, rather ugly six-story concrete bunker with a flat roof and narrow slits for windows. It reminded me a lot of an Iraqi bomb shelter. Except not quite as cheerful.

Joey Bam Bam met me on the fourth floor at the elevator. “Johnny just got here—he’s freshening up,” the pint-sized agent informed me brightly. “This is the new Johnny: professional, cooperative, happy to talk. Scared shitless but happy to talk.”

“Thanks for including me.” He nodded with a vigor that bordered on the convulsive. “No problem. We’re all family here.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, I understand you’re tight with this Lamp.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it tight.” The corridor was long, narrow, and dismal. The walls were bare concrete, the carpeting institutional, the lighting so dim that Lulu, with her shades on, kept bouncing off the walls like a bumper car. I had to remove them for her.

“Great place, huh?” burbled Bam Bam as he bopped along ahead of us. “It really, really sends out the new message: We’re here to serve our talent, not ourselves. CAA, they go out and spend millions on themselves. Hire I.M. Pei to design their place. Not us. We’re lean and mean.”

“Seems like an awfully grim place to spend eight hours a day,” I observed.

He laughed. “Eight hours?! Eight hours is a
morning
around here. Oh, hey, somebody I want you to meet while you’re here …” He opened the door to a small, windowless conference room. A half dozen baby agents were crammed in there like caged animals waiting for a slab of fresh meat to be thrown in. I was the slab of fresh meat. Quickly, Bam Bam shut the door behind us. “Okay, Stewart Hoag, these guys all know you. Christ, who doesn’t? But you haven’t met them yet, and are you in for an ultratreat. Say hello to the new team, each of us pulling for the other. From left to right that’s Len Levitt, Cuffy Cohen, Moke Mokatoff, Bruce Blick, Patty Plunk and Baby Jane Mandel. The Cuffster here is an ultraintellectual. When you go to his house you’ll find hardcover books all over the place.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Bam Bam frowned. “You don’t think he reads?”

“I don’t think I’ll be going to his house. Look, kids, this is great, but—”

“We can make you a star,” vowed the Cuffster.

“Tried it. Vastly overrated.”

“At least let us show you what we can do for you,” Bam Bam pleaded.

“Bam Bam is ultraexcited about you,” chimed in Patty. Or maybe it was Baby Jane. Or Bruce. They all looked alike—like hamsters in Italian clothing.

“Some other time,” I said. “Unless, of course, you’re interested in representing a dog act …”

Lulu scrambled for the door, moaning, and hurled her body against it, paws first. It was the fastest I’d seen her move since the time she surprised a bat in Merilee’s barn. I guess civilian life didn’t look so bad to her all of a sudden.

God, I was proud.

Johnny was waiting for us in Bam Bam’s office, a drab little cubicle with a steel desk, a sofa, and no art or personal objects of any kind. It was the sort of office that would belong to an assistant professor of economics at a state university—in Gdansk. Johnny sat hunched in one corner of the sofa, smoking a cigarette and trembling. He was pale and drawn, his eyes bloodshot. He had tied a red bandana over his dreadlocks, and put on a black Bedford Falls T-shirt. His jeans were still torn. He was nervous and jangly, his mouth dry. He kept licking at his lips.

Lulu took one whiff of his Patchouli and went back out in the hall to wait.

“Here’s your friend Hoagy, John-John,” Bam Bam announced, raising his voice as if we were speaking to a small, slow child. Everyone talked to Johnny that way. Everyone except Matthew.

Johnny hugged his knees and looked up at me vacantly. “I remember you,” he said in his soft, little boy’s whisper. “We met in Homewood.”

“We did,” I affirmed, thinking how much he made Homewood sound like a real place. Maybe he thought it was. Maybe he wasn’t wrong. Maybe I’d been in L.A. too long already.

“Matthew likes you,” he said. “You’re Matthew’s friend.”

“And yours, too,” Bam Bam assured him. “We’re all friends here. Right, Hoagy?”

“We are.”

“Can I get anyone a glass of water?” the little agent offered.

I said I was fine.

“How about you, John-John?”

John-John said he was thirsty.

Bam Bam went bound-bounding down the hall for his drink.

I took off my straw boater and sat and smoothed the trousers of my white cotton planter’s suit. “Matthew has been telling me all about his early days, Johnny. When he first got started making movies.”

Johnny stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one, still trembling. “Where is he?” he wondered.

“Matthew?”

“The cop. Where is the cop?”

“He’ll be here soon, pal,” said Bam Bam, returning with a paper cup of water.

“I was hoping you’d tell me about when you first met Matthew, Johnny,” I said.

Johnny sat there with his water.

“Anything you remember,” I added. “It’s for his book.”

Johnny drained the paper cup and crumpled it and tossed it on the floor. Bam Bam picked it up and put it in the trash.

“The wicked witch,” whispered Johnny.

“The wicked witch?”

“She heard about it.” He was answering me, in his own way. “That this woman, this casting agent, was looking for a little boy to star in a movie. Only, we couldn’t get in to see her. We were new in town. Just got here from Canada …”

“The casting agents practically run this fucking business,” conceded Bam Bam. “I’d like you to meet ours, Hoagy. She’s a terrific—”

“Down, Bam Bam,” I commanded.

“I’m down. Not one more word.” He clapped his hand over his mouth as proof.

“So what did your mom do, Johnny?” I asked.

Johnny sniffled. “Sent Matthew my picture with a loaf of Wonder bread and a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly. And a note that said, ‘Let’s do lunch.’ ” He giggled. “And people wonder why I’m so fucked up.” He stopped giggling. Now he was sobbing. “Abel,” he wailed. “I want Abel.”

“Abel’s gone, pal,” Bam Bam said gently. “How about some more water? You want water?”

Johnny nodded. Bam Bam scurried off to get it.

“And that’s how you got the part in
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
?” I asked.

He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “He didn’t have me read for him or anything. We just played pinball and rode skateboards and talked. He didn’t even show me the script. Never did the whole time we were filming. Just pages … We filmed it out in Sylmar someplace. I was scared shitless the whole time. I was supposed to be—I saw a murder. I did! And nobody believed me, and they were after me and …” He trailed off, his eyes wide with horror. I wasn’t sure if he was still talking about
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
or about what had happened last night on Hazen Drive. He swallowed. “Matthew was scared, too. It was his first movie, too. But he looked out for me. Told the wicked witch off. And she couldn’t do a thing. It was great … Matthew, he really cared about me. The other directors didn’t. I did that Stephen King thing in Alaska with Chris Walken and nobody cared. Nobody. I was stuck there for weeks in the trailer with
her.
Screaming at me, hitting me. I wanted to go to school like a real kid. But she wouldn’t let me. I was making too much money. She made me work. All those other movies. It sucked, man. All of it. Except for Matthew. I’d be dead without Matthew. We’ve always been close. I guess because of
them
.”