Memorial

III.Chester

LOCATION scout, turned 41 in May. A Taurus who drives a Taurus. 283,000 miles on them both.

Wants to be a producer, all he needs is a stake, like the men who put together a mill for the Saw movies. Did it all on their own and now they’re gazillionaires except for the guy who dropped dead out of the blue, 42 years old, the one who cooked up the whole torture idea in the 1st place, telling the Times in a big write-up the week before he croaked that it felt like he’d “won the lottery”—he won all right. That was hubris for you, karma, whatever the My Name Is Earl guy would call it. Sometimes a person should keep certain thoughts to himself.

Chester scours this longitudinal utilitarian Thomas Bros. dream with wondrous, hazelnut eyes, a city divided into sunshot grids, seeing things no one else could, can, did, ever would, a gypsy-seer that way, a wizardly douser. But LA, like everything else, was being digitized, devoured, and decoded, memorialized like some newfangled karma/chimera/camera chameleon, converted to numbers by a new breed of men yielding images for film and television the way high-tech farmers got the most from crops, square by square mile. Chess couldn’t quite keep up — like an old silents star trying to get a grip on the talkies. Out of breath on Sunset Blvd. Scouting used to be an art, now hardly needing the human touch let alone eye which afterall had been and still was Chester’s strength, what he was actually semiknown and respected for, his uniquely vintage prepostmodern unstereotyped timeless gaze, a quirkily monopolychromatic horizontal 6th sense. The vets of the game, middling aestheticians who went by their gut, still call (enough were around because of the union, guys like Chess who, before graduating to location managers, used to take those same incremental ankle-swiveling panoramic shots, painstakingly pasted into manila folders at the end of each exhausted day, flatfooted but effective Hockney montages), compensating him richly enough for the trouble, sometimes $800 a day on the proverbial Big Feature, but more often half that now. Commercials and videos his daily or weekly or sometimes monthly bread. Chess was younger than most of the managers and 20 years older than the new breed of digitizers, a generation more like paparazzi than scouts. Depending on luck and size of production, he could still draw down enough to go to Jar or the Porterhouse Bistro or whatever new steakhouse with a lady on his arm, like a proper man. Though lately indies and MTV paid pisspoor and every time he turns around he sinks 2 grand into the car, doesn’t even take it on desert or Angeles Crest scouts anymore for fear of breaking down and dying out there, so, on top of everything, he is renting cars and praying that someone steals the Taurus from his garage like they’ve done twice before in the last 10 years.

To keep his health insurance he is forced to pay dues, and finally, miracle of miracles, even get a digital camera (the amiable location managers laughing when they heard that one), sweating while he figures out how to scan images into the old Mac that Maurie gave him. Learning how to do this shit is pure, unadulterated hell. No one even looks at those beautiful manila Fotomat dioramas anymore. They’re stacked in his closet like archival antiquities.

His best friend is Maurie Levin, a scripter who does procedurals and episodics. Maurie sold a spec a hundred years ago to Walker, Texas Ranger. Maurie knew Brad Grey back in the day. Maurie has a ton of ideas for reality shows. Maurie has a hippie girlfriend called Laxmi, pronounced Lakshmi, supposedly the name of an Indian goddess, and she’s always talking about karma and that’s why Chester’s always talking about it (he has a crush). Maurie’s one of those locomotively funny Jews who gets shitloads of pussy. Maurie says he likes em young but if they’re older you better be sure they’re “certified preowned.” They haven’t spoken for a few weeks when Maurie calls to say that A&E is going to shoot a reality pilot he created and he needs “that eye of yours” to find a location for the presentation reel. That’s what he calls it: a presentation reel. (Maurie says it’s low-budge.) They are paying $650 with the promise of multiple days — not bad, especially as Chess is currently rent-challenged, living in West Hollywood in a converted garage. His landlord is Don Knotts’s daughter. Maurie says he needs to find a hospital for the shoot. Easy. Off the top of his head, Chess knows a bunch. Hospitals in LA are always going under and every single one is for rent, even those half occupied by religious groups or Meals on Wheels — type foundations, homeless dot-org whatnots. There was a finite number and it was just a matter of getting the shoot dates, then making a few calls.

Over coffee, Chester asks about the show. Maurie says it’s a “Desperate Housewives/General Hospital thingie, but real,” whatever that means. Chess doesn’t watch network, only The Shield reruns, Larry King, and occasionally Letterman if he happens to be up. Which isn’t too often. The 2 buddies always yammer about making a movie from Maurie’s scripts, Chess producing. Chester had a few scripts at home in “the Herlihy Archives” and occasionally broke them out to refresh himself on plots and characters over inferior coke and a few Coronas, scratching his head at who the fuck he might approach for financing. Maybe Brad Grey. Or the Bing guy. Or that guy Cuban who did Good Night, and Good Luck. He’d settle back, do a few lines, and read awhile then catch himself laughing. Maurie was actually a pretty funny guy, all Jews were funny, it was in their genes, he had to admit the guy knew story structure, the Jews were fuckin funny and knew story structure, but most of the time whatever genre Maurie was working in was slightly impenetrable. At least to Chess. Chess knew that wasn’t his strongsuit, wasn’t supposed to be, his job was to find the money, like the Saw guys. The hard part was, and this was Chess’s problem not Maurie’s, that you couldn’t really sum them up in a couple of sentences which is what the money people always wanted. Chess had to work on that. That’s where the beer and the blow came in.

They talk about the old scripts, Chess reminding him of some of the bits, but Maurie is psyched on this A&E thing. Chess asks what other locations they need and Maurie says a hospital is the priority. If they find the hospital, they can “dress” some of the rooms, and pretty much have everything covered.