Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

He made one more phone call before cutting out early. Then he took the elevator down the thirty floors to street level, a slower method than the one he’d contemplated earlier, but at least you didn’t end up a stain on the concrete. He picked up his Audi in the building’s garage, spent a good half-hour in Manhattan traffic (a lousy half-hour, actually, city driving was always lousy), fought a traffic jam all the way out to Bronxville, and parked in front of his townhouse. Sandy was waiting for him when he got home and he got up a smile for her when he walked through the door. That was the most he could get up, though, and they went to sleep apologizing to each other.

All night Arthur dreamt about going through with his suicide, opening his office window and smashing to a jelly on the pavement. In a strange way, the dream didn’t feel like a nightmare. In it, he left a note to his wife saying, “It’s not you, honey, I can’t stand this stinking business.” Which was his dream’s way of making him feel better, because in his waking moments he knew it was her, as much as it was anything.

Sandy would never let him forget that “East Coast casting director” was a contradiction in terms, especially when it came to features. You had to be in California to really be in the business, unless you were Juliet Taylor and did the casting for Woody’s pictures, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and he never would come close.

Arthur French was a peripheral figure in the industry, a name people half remembered in connection with films they would just as soon have forgotten. He’d given up, years before, his original ambition to do work he was proud of and had become a whore for the mid-budget studios who were still willing to use him. Sandy would ask him from time to time why he’d pissed away such talent as he’d had when she’d met him-as though he knew the answer himself. Over the past few weeks Sandy had also started asking him about other women, stopping just short of accusing him of having an affair. Then she was surprised when he flopped worse than Waterworld in bed?

It didn’t help the situation that Arthur couldn’t divorce her, mainly because his townhouse was really Sandy’s townhouse and Goin’ West wouldn’t pay for a replacement. Twenty years of films like Goin’ West hadn’t, and twenty more wouldn’t.

Arthur sat up in bed next to where Sandy lay, blowsy and paunchy and forty-eight, and dragged on his first Camel of the morning, thinking about divorce and thinking about suicide. Suicide seemed simpler and less painful.

He tried to go back to sleep, but he found he couldn’t keep his eyes closed. He went to work instead.

ARTHUR MADE SOMEmore calls before the girls started filling Rose’s office, touching up their makeup and hiding their bra straps. The calls didn’t go well, but why should they? The script for Goin’ West had made the rounds and every agent Arthur called knew it was garbage. No agent would let his actors appear in the film. If Kreuger had been willing to cut the scenes on the beach, maybe, but the bastard had been stubborn. How can you fight a writer-director-producer who’s making his own film? On the other hand, how do you get any actor who’s got a sense of self-preservation to go in front of the camera and play the sort of scenes Kreuger wrote? He made the Farrellys look like Noel Coward.

Arthur ran his fingers through his hair, wiped his hand, threw the tissue out, smoked halfway through a cigarette, and buzzed Rose to start sending the girls in.

The female roles were interchangeable. Arthur kept a checklist and marked off character names one by one. Kreuger would have to approve his choices, of course, but that’s what callbacks were for. Arthur picked two women for each part, jotting down information on the Polaroids Rose had taken while the girls were waiting in the front office.

Angela Meyer showed up at eleven, uglier in person and less talented even than Arthur had expected. She did have a good body, though, and Arthur wrote her down for extra work: the shower scene, the skinny-dipping scene, wherever they needed background T &A. Angela’s face fell when Arthur told her this was all she could get, but what could he do? Ugly is ugly.

Lisa Brennan appeared after lunch, when the crowd had thinned out. Arthur was already numbed from the morning’s parade of spandex-and-silicone hopefuls, and he didn’t stand up when Lisa came in. He was tired of standing up. Lisa sat opposite him and handed him another copy of her headshot. Arthur dropped it on his desk and stared at her.

You could see the desperation in her face, and with thirty-plus showing around her eyes, Arthur wasn’t surprised. Her hands were twisted around one another in her lap. He glanced at Lisa’s credits again and noted that her last project was half a year old-which meant she hadn’t worked for the better part of a year, and that in turn was why she was in his office trying to get a part in a teen sex comedy.

Arthur launched into his spiel. “We’re casting a new film by Daniel Kreuger called Goin’ West . There are several parts for young women…” The words poured out of him on automatic, along with pauses during which he waited for Lisa to answer the standard questions. She answered them. The answers were standard, too. Arthur started to feel his stomach.

When Arthur told Lisa to undress, she stood, pulled her sweatshirt over her head, and undid the knot on her hip that held her wrap in place. Under it she wore an orange two-piece swimsuit. She turned in a circle, then bent to pick her wrap off the floor.

Arthur made a gesture with his hand. The gesture wasn’t any gesture in particular, just a tired wave of the hand that wasn’t holding his cigarette, but Lisa knew what it meant and she forced a smile as she unclasped her top in back and slipped it off her shoulders.

Lisa had a nice body, but that smile… smiles like that gave Arthur ulcers. He forced himself to smile back, but he knew it came out wrong, a pained, cut-the-crap expression that he quickly wiped off his face.

Lisa stopped smiling, too. Arthur waited, but she just stood there, not smiling.

The ones who stripped naked without being asked were bad enough, the ones who thought that seeing another naked, young body could be any sort of bribe at all for Arthur. The ones Arthur had to ask were worse. But it was his job and he did it.

Arthur made his gesture again, knowing already that he wouldn’t use Lisa, knowing that Kreuger would laugh if he sent him any woman who didn’t have the body of a teenager. Laugh, hell, Kreuger would find another casting director. But Arthur made his gesture and waited for Lisa to pull down her swimsuit, let him see what he’d be casting if he’d cast her, which he wouldn’t. Though he’d have liked to, Arthur realized suddenly, since personally he found her more attractive than the twenty-year-olds who had been in and out of his office all morning.

Lisa hesitated. “Do I have to? If you think it’s likely that I’ll get the role, fine, but if not I’d rather not.” She had her thumbs hooked under the straps at her hips.

Arthur’s stomach burned. “You don’t have to do it,” he said. “I don’t care. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t have to be in the movie. No one’s going to force you.” Lisa stood uncertainly while Arthur stared at her.

Here’s a woman who’s done commercials and soaps, Arthur said to himself, and she’s dying inside but she’s letting you get away with this because she’s desperate for a break, which you’re not going to give her anyway. For God’s sake, let her go.

“Listen-” Arthur started, but Lisa had made her mind up and was bending over, stepping out of her bikini, standing up naked in a stranger’s office to get a role where she’d have to do more or less the same thing in front of a million moviegoers.