Not Dead Yet

91

‘How can I make my multi-million-dollar movie with a goddamn lead actor who’s off his goddamn face, for fuck’s sake!’ Larry Brooker yelled at the top of his voice, across the floor of the Banqueting Room, at the hapless Third Assistant Director, Adrián González. ‘You wanna tell me?’

González raised his hands in a gesture of despair. His role was to deliver Gaia, Judd Halpern and the other principal actors to the set, and escort them back to their trailers when they weren’t required. He was an earnest, fresh-faced twenty-eight-year-old, with a shock of short, unruly ginger hair, dressed in a blue T-shirt emblazoned in white with the words THE KING’S LOVER, tatty cargo shorts and trainers. He wore a headset with an earpiece and microphone, had a mobile phone and a pager clipped to his belt, and was clutching a call sheet. He shrugged helplessly at Brooker.

There was a pathetic ego thing going on between the two stars, who had taken an instant dislike to each other from day one. Halpern had already kept Gaia waiting twice, so now she refused to come out of her trailer, for any scenes she was doing with him, until it was confirmed to her that he was on set and ready.

The director, camera team and the rest of the crew watched Larry Brooker’s latest tantrum. The bald, tanned producer, in a black Versace shirt open halfway down his chest, displaying his gold medallion, black chinos and Cuban-heeled boots, strode over towards Gonzá-lez, like a pocket dictator, and gripped him by the front of his T-shirt. ‘What the fuck’s going on? Thirty minutes we’ve been waiting for this goddamn asshole. We have a schedule to keep to. We’ve got two busloads of extras sitting out there!’ Still gripping González’s shirt he turned to the Line Producer, Barnaby Katz, a short, tubby man in his early forties, with a barren dome rising from a sparse tundra of fuzzy hair, who looked close to a nervous breakdown. He was dressed in a shapeless lumberjack shirt, baggy jeans and old desert boots. ‘What the fuck are you doing standing there with your thumb up your ass?’ he shouted at him. Then he released González, who stood still for a moment, as if unsure what to do next.

‘I’ll go and have a word with him,’ Katz said.

Brooker tapped his chest. ‘No, I’m going. Okay?’

He stormed out of the Banqueting Room, left the building and strode across the grounds towards the trailers. Along the street, beyond the Pavilion lawns and the cordon manned by the security guards and the row of trucks, was a large crowd of people waiting to catch glimpses of the stars – mostly waiting for Gaia, he guessed.

Judd Goddamn Halpern. Jesus, how he hated actors. Judd Halpern didn’t do public transport, his agent had informed them. Which meant they’d had to put in the budget 150,000 bucks to fly the jerk, his assistant, and some girl he was currently screwing, over to London in a goddamn private jet. Then, because he was, apparently, a method actor, he had demanded that there was unpasteurized milk on the plane, as King George would have drunk, so he could get himself into character.

Fuckwit.

He strode up to Judd Halpern’s motorhome and banged on the door. Without waiting for an answer he pulled it open and stormed up the steps. Inside was a fug of cannabis smoke that took him back to his student days. Through it he could see Halpern, seated at his dressing table, staring bleary-eyed into the mirror that was lit all the way round with bare light bulbs. Today’s script pages, lime green, lay fanned out in front of him, with markings all over them, like a corrected school essay. A bottle of bourbon sat on the desk, alongside a plastic ballpoint pen with the nib and ink tube removed.

Halpern was dressed in bulbous white pantaloons, a velvet, gold-braided jacket with a high collar and a cream neck ruff secured with an ornately jewelled brooch. His wavy black wig sat on the dresser in front of him. A female make-up artist was working on his face, while a joint burned in the ashtray. Standing in front of them, as if trying to block his path, was Halpern’s effete personal assistant, and behind him, slumped over a table, with a cocktail glass in front of her, and a Grey Goose vodka bottle next to it, was a scantily clad girl of barely legal age.

By the relatively tender age of forty-two, Judd Halpern had already blown his career twice. The first time was after being the child star of a global hit US television series, Pasadena Heights, when he had become so impossibly arrogant, no one would work with him. Then, having recovered from that in his early twenties, helped by his almost absurdly handsome looks, which had been compared to those of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, and his unquestionable acting talent, his career had been reborn with two successful movies. Then it hit the skids after a series of drug convictions ending in a four-year spell in jail, when once again he had become a Hollywood pariah.

Now, according to his agent, he was clean, over it, remorseful about his past, anxious to make a fresh start, and had just made a movie with George Clooney that was a slam-dunk to totally relaunch his career. Which was how Brooker Brody Productions had secured an actor with A-list history for only a couple of hundred thousand dollars above scale.

‘Judd,’ Brooker said, more civilly than he felt. ‘Like, we’re all waiting for you.’

‘Ready when you are, CB!’ Halpern said, staring back, with dilated pupils, at his own handsome, if borderline flaccid, reflection in the mirror. He reached for the joint, but before his fingers touched it, Brooker snatched it and crushed it out in the ashtray, stubbing it, snapping it, then stubbing it again for good measure.

‘Hey, man!’ Judd Halpern protested.

‘You have a problem?’

Halpern glared at him. ‘Yeah, I have a problem.’

‘Yeah? Well I have a problem, too. My name isn’t CB, it’s LB. Larry Brooker.’

‘It was a joke!’ Halpern said. ‘CB. Cecil B. DeMille. Right? Ready when you are, CB!’ He frowned. ‘You don’t know it?’

‘If I’d wanted jokes, I’d have hired a goddamn comedian.’ Brooker pulled out his handkerchief and folded the broken joint into it. ‘I have a problem too. I suggest you take a look at your contract. The clauses on how you can be fired. Taking drugs is one of the first.’

The actor shook his head. ‘I’m just smoking a cigarette, man. I like to roll my own.’

‘Yeah? And you know what? I’m the fucking pope.’

The two men glared at each other, Halpern having a hard time focusing. Brooker tried hard to contain his rage. He had a movie to make and bring in on a tight budget, and it was getting harder every day as the schedule slipped. ‘You want to tell me your problem?’

‘Sure,’ Halpern slurred. He picked up the pages, scrunching them. ‘This is not what I signed up to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I took this role because I kinda liked the idea of King George the Fourth. He was an innovative dude. He had a great and tragic love affair with Maria Fitzherbert.’ Halpern lapsed into silence.

Brooker waited patiently and then, as a prompt, he said, ‘Uh huh.’

‘I was assured the script was historically accurate.’

‘It is,’ Brooker said. ‘George screwed Maria for several years then dumped her. What’s your problem?’

‘He was twenty-eight – I’m forty-two.’

‘So why did you take the part?’

‘Because I was told Bill Nicholson was doing a rewrite, that’s why I agreed to this. He’s quality, man.’ He pointed at the script pages. ‘He didn’t write this, surely?’

Brooke shrugged. ‘We had a bit of a problem at the last minute.’

‘You mean you didn’t want to pay his fees, right?’ The star pulled open a drawer, lifted out a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. ‘The comedian who wrote these pages doesn’t seem aware that this Pavilion wasn’t even built at the time this scene was supposed to happen. That’s another problem.’

‘You want to know my problem?’ Larry Brooker said.

Halpern shrugged at himself in the mirror. Then he watched himself draw on his cigarette. ‘No,’ he replied, finally, curling his lips, attempting – and failing – to blow a smoke ring.

‘My problem,’ Brooker said, coolly, ‘is actors. You ask an actor to walk down the street, and he turns round and he says, “Why exactly am I walking down this street?” You know what I tell him?’

Halpern stared at him, clearly struggling to hold focus. ‘No, what do you tell him?’

‘I tell him, “The reason you are walking down this street, is because I’m fucking paying you to walk down this street.”’

Judd Halpern gave him an uneasy smile.

‘So listen to me good, Mr Big Shot Actor. You’re trying to rebuild your busted career. That’s fine by me. For the rest of this production, when you are called, you’re going to come out of this trailer like a goddamn greyhound out of its gate, walk straight on set, and give the performance of your life. You know what will happen if you don’t?’

Halpern looked at him a tad sheepishly. He said nothing.

‘You’ll be history. There won’t be a production company in the world that’s going to want to work with you by the time I’ve finished telling them about you. I promise you. You reading me loud and clear?’

‘I am, but the script is still not right.’

‘Then you’d better use your acting genius to turn it into something magical.’

‘You think I can?’ Halpern said, his demeanour changing.

‘Sure you can, kiddo. You’re the world’s Greatest Living Actor! That’s why I goddamn hired you.’

Halpern stiffened and preened. ‘You really think so?’

‘I don’t think so, Judd. I know so.’ He gave him a winning smile.

‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Let’s rock and roll!’ He reached for his wig.

‘On set in ten minutes, okay?’ Brooker said.

‘I’m there!’

‘You’re goddamn terrific, you know that?’

Halpern smiled and attempted a shrug of modesty. But he wasn’t very good at modesty.

Brooker closed the door behind him and headed back to the set. You total asshole, he was thinking.