Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

So here it was at last in the rough and it was long and repetitious and awkward and Perry loved every minute of it. It seemed to move as slowly as syrup, yet to its author it was just as sweet. It was like the unrolling of some endless novel, endemically American in sight and speech and yet in scope seemingly created by one of those ponderous nineteenth-century Russians whose tales seemed to grow from and mimic the vastness of their land.

The pace of the work was quite like that of the foreign art films Perry found so excruciatingly tedious and boring, the hushed Bergman epics and snail-like Japanese morality tales he had hated from the start, when he first had to endure them during his twenties in order to accommodate the cultural longings of sophisticated young women so they would hopefully later satisfy his own baser appetites.

Unlike his faculty colleagues, who almost all were film buffs, Perry was frankly a movie fan, one who preferred real plots and lots of sparkling dialogue to amorphous moods and sullen stares. His taste was epitomized scandalously to his peers (and even to most of his students) by his sincere and unashamed avowal that The Young Philadelphians starring Paul Newman was far superior entertainment and more revealing of the human condition than Bergman’s Wild Strawberries , and was even better with lots of buttered popcorn thrown in. He preferred to be entertained, he argued, rather than mesmerized or lulled to unconsciousness.

Now as he experienced an almost sensuous thrill from simply watching one of his own beloved characters walk across a room in the course of the film, or open a window, or pour a cup of coffee, he understood why the famous European auteur directors subjected their fans to such endlessly drawn-out sequences. To the “creator” ( auteur ) they were pure fascination, as the squalls and dumps of a newborn baby are completely captivating to its own parents.

When the lights came on, Jane squeezed Perry’s hand. He squeezed back, and held his breath. The room was deadly silent. Slowly, heads turned back, craned up, looking toward Archer to see if any reaction could be discerned. Would he tell them to take the whole thing back to the drawing board? Would he curse them all as he had before, threatening to fire the whole damn lot of them if they couldn’t produce the quality he had hired them to create? Would he stand up and read from his clipboard a series of elaborate notes that would mean everyone would have to start from scratch?

Archer sat immobile, inscrutable, his feet propped on the seat in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees, hands held together with the fingertips lightly touching in the symbolic gesture of prayer. But there was no sound or movement from him. Finally Kenton stood up in the front, and, proud but perspiring from every pore of his considerable flesh, he faced up toward Archer, his shoulders thrown back, like a man presenting himself to a firing squad. Ned got up and stood beside him. Perry was about to squirm out of his seat and go join them in the noble presentation of themselves and their work for execution, but just at that moment Archer suddenly shot up to a standing position, aimed a finger down toward Kenton and Ned and said, simply, in a clear, commanding voice: “Go for it.”

Then, wheeling and disappearing back into the projection booth, he was gone. There was first a general sigh, a sound of relief, like pent-up breath released at last, and then someone was clapping and applause spread throughout the little band of fellow workers and all at once everyone in the room was standing, whistling, and cheering, acclaiming Kenton, and Ned, and Perry, and themselves, saluting and praising the work, the thing they had made together, the story and the dream.

“Tell me, what did you really think of it, I mean, your honest gut reaction.”

Perry pulled Jane’s hand away from his crotch and looked her straight in the eye. They had come home and opened a new bottle of good chilled Chardonnay to celebrate, and after a few sips Jane had leaned against Perry on the couch and begun to caress him with her hands as well as her mouth, slowly stroking him along the inside of the thigh while at the same time she made little fluttery butterfly kisses around his mouth.

“Darling love,” she cooed, “I told you already—it’s absolutely wonderful.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes, and I know when it’s really finished it will be incredibly better. All those slow, draggy parts will be gone.”

She started in stroking and kissing him again, but Perry pulled gently away.

“What do you mean, ‘slow, draggy parts’?” he asked.

“You know. Where you just see someone walk across a room, without saying anything.”

“I thought you understood this was the rough cut. That’s the kind of thing you see in a rough cut.”

Jane giggled, and tweaked Perry’s ear.

“I know, darling, but I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was—I mean, some of those drawn-out numbers reminded me of the kind of stuff that drives you up the wall in foreign films, where you wonder when the heroine is ever going to get to the door.”

She nuzzled up under Perry’s chin for a kiss, but he dodged it.

“Maybe you’ll be disappointed in the final cut, too,” he said. “I mean, Kenton isn’t one of those razzle-dazzle sitcom directors.”

Jane reached over to the table and picked up her glass of wine.

“Well, I hope he doesn’t think he’s Fellini, for God sake.”

“You don’t like his direction?”

Jane took a long sip of her wine.

“Is this the only thing we can talk about?”

“No, but I’m interested in your opinion.”

Jane stood up and unhooked her skirt, then shucked it off, and kicked off her shoes.

“My opinion is I might as well go for a swim. Or take a cold shower.”

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said, stripping off her blouse and dropping it on the floor. “It’s not your fault if I don’t turn you on any more.”

“Don’t do this. I said I was sorry.”

“I am too. I’m sorry the only thing in the world you can think about night and day is your damn movie.”

She turned and left the room. Perry started to get up, but instead refilled his glass of wine and closed his eyes as he gulped it down.

“Jane has a headache,” Perry said by way of explaining her absence that night for dinner with Ned and Kim.

They of course were incredibly gracious about it, pretending the age-old excuse was real. Perry was embarrassed, and depressed. In fact he really was more absorbed in the movie than anything else in the world, including lovemaking, and he feared it really was coming between him and Jane. He knew she was right when she said he would only be talking business with Ned and Kim, that she would inevitably feel out of it, a mere outsider.

They did talk business of course, going over impressions and ideas about the rough cut as they consumed one of Kim’s delicious and seemingly effortless curries. Perry was so absorbed in the fascination of it that he didn’t even think about Jane again till Ned poured him a second brandy. He was sure as hell glad that the new “wine only” policy he and Jane had pledged to keep as part of their California health and fitness plan officially counted brandy as wine.

The brandy really loosened him up. It loosened up his tongue, too.

“I’m worried about Jane,” he confessed to Ned and Kim. “There wasn’t any headache, of course. If anything, it’s an ache in the butt. I guess I’m giving it to her.”

Ned shrugged.

“It happens,” he said.

Perry took a hit of the brandy and shook his head.

“Not to us. At least not till now. I mean, the last couple weeks. I guess I’m too wrapped up in the show.”