Mario Puzo - Fools die

“That sounds perfect,” Valerie said, “and besides, to tell you the truth we could use a rest from each other.”

That surprised me. “I don’t need a rest from you,” I said.

“But I need a rest from you,” Valerie said. “It’s nerve-racking to have a man working at home. Ask any woman. It just upsets the whole routine of my keeping house. I never could say anything before because you couldn’t afford an outside studio to work in, but now that you can, I wish you wouldn’t work at home anymore. You can rent a place and leave in the morning and come home at night. I’m sure you’d work better.”

I don’t know even now why her saying this offended me so much. I had been happy staying and working at home, and I was really hurt that she didn’t feel the same way, and I think it was this that made me decide to do the screenplay of my novel. It was a childish reaction. If she didn’t want me home, I’d leave and see how she liked it. At that time I swear that Hollywood was a nice place to read about, but I didn’t even want to visit it.

I realized a part of my life was over. In his review Osano had written, “All novelists, bad and good, are heroes. They fight alone, they must have the faith of saints. They are more often defeated than victorious and they are shown no mercy by a villainous world. Their strength fails (that’s why most novels have weak spots, are an easy target for attack); the troubles of the real world, the illness of children, the betrayal by friends, the treacheries of wives must all be brushed aside. They ignore their wounds and fight on, calling on miracles for fresh energy.”

I disapproved of his melodramatics, but it was true that I felt as if I were deserting the company of heroes. I didn’t give a damn if that was a typical writer’s sentimentality.

Malomar Films, though a subsidiary of Moses Wartberg’s Tri-Culture Studios, operated on a completely independent basis, creatively, and had its own small lot. And so Bernard Malomar had free rein for his planned picture of the John Merlyn novel.

All Malomar wanted to do was make good movies, and that was never easy, not with Wartberg’s Tri-Culture Studios hovering over his every move. He hated Wartberg. They were acknowledged enemies, but Wartberg, as an enemy, was interesting, fun to deal with. Also, Malomar respected Wartberg’s financial and management genius. He knew that moviemakers like himself could not exist without it.

Malomar in his plush suite of offices nestled in a corner of his own lot had to put up with a bigger pain in the ass than Wartberg, though a less deadly one. If Wartberg was cancer of the rectum, as Malomar jokingly said, Jack Houlinan was hemorrhoids and, on a day-to-day basis, far more irritating.

Jack Houlinan, vice-president in charge of creative public relations, played his role of the number one PR genius with a killing sincerity. When he asked you to do something outrageous and was refused, he acknowledged with violent enthusiasm your right to refuse. His favorite line was: “Anything you say is OK with me. I would never, never try to persuade you to do anything you don’t want to do. I only asked.” This would be after an hour’s pitch of why you had to jump off the Empire State Building to make sure your new picture got some space in the Times .

But with his bosses, like the VP in charge of production at Wartberg’s Tri-Culture International Studios, with this Merlyn picture for Malomar Films and his own personal client, Ugo Kellino, he was much more frank, more human. And now he was talking frankly to Bernard Malomar, who really didn’t have time for bullshit.

“We’re in trouble,” Houlinan said. “I think this fucking picture can be the biggest bomb since Nagasaki.”

Malomar was the youngest studio chief since Thalberg and liked to play a dumb genius role. With a straight face he said, “I don’t know that picture, and I think you’re full of shit. I think you’re worried about Kellino. You want us to spend a fortune just because that prick decided to direct himself and you want to get him insurance.”

Houlinan was Ugo Kellino’s personal PR rep with a retainer of fifty grand a year. Kellino was a great actor but almost certifiably insane with ego, a not uncommon disease in top actors, actresses, directors and even script girls who fancied themselves screenplay writers. Ego in movie land was like TB in a mining town. Endemic and ravaging but not necessarily fatal.

In fact, their egos made many of them more interesting than they would otherwise be. This was true of Kellino. His dynamism on screen was such that he had been included in a list of the fifty most famous men in the world. The laminated news story hung in his den and his own legend in red crayon that said, “For fucking.” Houlinan always said, his voice emphatic, admiring, “Kellino would fuck a snake .” Accenting the word as if the phrase were not an old macho cliche but coined now especially for his client.

A year ago Kellino had insisted on directing his next picture. He was one of the few stars who could get away with such a demand. But he had been put on a strict budget, his upfront money and percentages pledged for a completion bond. Malomar Films was in for a top two million and then off the hook. Just in case Kellino went crazy and started shooting a hundred takes of each scene with his latest girlfriend opposite him or his latest boyfriend under him. Both of which he had proceeded to do with no visible harm to the picture. But then he had fucked around with the script. Long monologues, the lights soft and shadowy on his despairing face, he had told the story of his tragic boyhood in excruciating flashbacks. To explain why he was fucking boys and girls on the screen. The implication was that if he had had a decent childhood, he would never have fucked anybody. And he had final cut, the studio couldn’t doctor up the picture in the editing room legally. Except that they would anyway if necessary. Malomar wasn’t too worried. A Kellino starter would get the studio’s two million back. That was certain. Everything else was gravy. And if worse came to worst, he could bury the picture in distribution; nobody would see it. And he had come out of the deal with his main objective. That Kellino would star in John Merlyn’s blockbuster best-selling novel that Malomar felt in his bones would make the studio a fortune.

Houlinan said, “We have to get a special campaign. We have to spend a lot of money. We have to sell it on its class.”

“Jesus Christ,” Malomar said. He was usually more polite. But he was tired of Kellino, he was tired of Houlinan and he was tired of motion pictures. Which didn’t mean anything. He was tired of beautiful women and charming men. He was tired of California weather. To divert himself he studied Houlinan. He had a long-standing grudge against him and Kellino.

Houlinan was beautifully dressed. Silk suit, silk tie, Italian shoes, Piaget watch. His eyeglass frames were specially made, black and gold-flecked. He had the benign sweet Irish face of the leprechaun preachers that filled the California TV screens on Sunday mornings. It was hard to believe he was a black-hearted son of a bitch and proud of it.

Years ago Kellino and Malomar had quarreled in a public restaurant, a vulgar shouting match that had become a humiliating story in the columns and trades. And Houlinan had masterminded a campaign to make Kellino come out of the argument as the hero and Malomar the craven villain, the weakling studio chief bending to the heroic movie star. Houlinan was a genius all right. But a little shortsighted. Malomar had made him pay ever since.

For the last five years not a month had gone by that the papers had not carried a story about Kellino’s helping somebody less fortunate than himself. Did a poor girl with leukemia need a special blood transfusion from a donor who lived in Siberia? Page five of any newspaper would tell you Kellino had sent his private jet to Siberia. Did a black go to a Southern jail for protesting? Kellino posted bail. When an Italian policeman with seven kids got chopped down by a Black Panther ambush in Harlem, did not Kellino send a check for ten thousand dollars to the widow and set up a scholarship for all seven children? When a Black Panther was accused of murdering a cop, Kellino sent ten thousand dollars to his defense fund. Whenever a famous old-time movie star became ill, the papers noted that Kellino picked up his hospital tab and assured him of a cameo role in his next film so that the old codger would have something to live for. One of the old codgers with ten million stashed and a hatred for his profession gave an interview insulting Kellino’s generosity, spitting on it in fact, and it was so funny that even the great Houlinan couldn’t get it squashed.