Then the lights came up, and the entire company groaned. They all knew what was missing—all the riding shots of Clete. Most of the previous morning had been spent making those shots, using sunrise to act as sunset. These shots were obviously all on the missing magazine of film.
Mann and Franklin immediately began to discuss making up the lost shots. Claude talked to the DP about whether there was any chance the lab might still have the film—was there somebody the DP could call? DPs always have a special relationship with the film labs, because if something goes wrong, it’s one of their heads. Either the DP gets axed, or the lab gets axed on a screwup. The DP said he’d make a couple of calls.
The general atmosphere was businesslike, and nobody seemed to be aware that their writer had died that morning. I noticed that and wondered if Perkins had noticed it too. Perkins stood, adjusted his jacket, shot his cuffs, and said, “I would like to have dinner. Why don’t you ask Mr. Mann if he is free to join us? And I would like to see Mr. Binyon before dinner.”
I went over and told Claude that Perkins wanted to see him. Claude apparently knew Perkins from some past insurance thing. He nodded, and a moment later I saw Perkins talking with Claude.
I asked Mann about dinner. “Yeah, fine,” Mann said. “But I’ll be a little late. I have to call Greenblatt first. I’ll be fifteen minutes, if I can get through.”
I went back to Perkins. He had finished with Claude. Perkins and I walked next door to the dining room. We got a table for four, in the corner. The cocktail waitress asked if we wanted something. I wanted a double Scotch. Perkins wanted orange juice, if it was fresh. It wasn’t. He had tonic water instead, specifying Schweppes. The girl left.
“What’s your impression so far?” I asked.
Perkins gave me a little frosty smile, the first I had seen. “Binyon is a good UPM. He’s holding the company together because Franklin is weak, though competent. Mann is obviously not well informed on the process of making films.”
I let that one go without comment.
“Not going to defend your producer?” Perkins asked.
“Fortunately, that’s not part of my job,” I said. “What did you want with Claude?”
“Just a few technical details.”
The drinks came.
I sipped my Scotch and suddenly felt overpoweringly tired. I hadn’t realized how tense I had been all day. And it had been a long day. I looked over at Perkins and thought I should make polite conversation, but I just couldn’t.
I looked at the rest of the company in the dining room. Here, you could tell that something was wrong. The conversation was subdued, and there was no sense of the usual fun, the joking and banter. The coeds who drifted in for a little action were ignored. Jim Stone, the second assistant director, went around the room, distributing call sheets for the next day to everybody on the crew. Usually, people joked with him. Not tonight.
When Jimmy got to our table, Perkins took a call sheet and said, “Can you get me yesterday’s call sheet?”
“I think so,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it,” Perkins said.
After he left, I said, “Why do you want that?”
“Just curious.”
Mann came down with Sally Oldman, the ingenue lead. I’ve mentioned her before, along with why her name was all wrong. Charles discovered Sally, who was working in Malibu for the summer as a waitress. She was a coed at the University of Texas, and he and Greenblatt decided she should be in movies.
Everybody was fond of Sally. She was a sweet, simple girl who happened to be absolutely gorgeous. She had no particular ambition to act or to be in movies, so you may wonder why Mann and Greenblatt were so insistent on her being inBloodrock. It didn’t seem to be a trade for her favors, as they say. Not at first, anyway. Actually, it was probably just some sort of ego thing for them. A lot of studio people have this habit. They decide that somebody is going to be a big star, and then they stake their reputations and their jobs and the company’s money on that fact. It has nothing to do with getting laid. It has to do with sheer will. They just want to make somebody a star. I guess it makes them feel powerful.
Sally was the rather unwilling recipient of their enthusiasm, but she was nice about it. Everybody liked her, as I said. She was pleasant and friendly and not stuck-up. And she was awfully beautiful in a sweet and gentle kind of way.
If anybody should have disliked her, it was me. I had to arrange interviews and press releases for her, but there weren’t any interesting angles on her, so it was very hard to manage any copy for her. Most interviewers ended up taking the “beautiful new face” line with her, which is what they always do when the new face has absolutely no drama behind it.
But I didn’t dislike her. I actually kind of adored her and was protective toward her, like everybody else.
Mann and Sally sat down. Mann shook hands with Perkins. “Glad to meet you,” Mann said, in his he-man manner. “I hope you can clean up this mess quickly.”
“I’ll do my best,” Perkins said.
“Get the waitress, Jason,” Mann said. I left the table to get the cocktail waitress and ordered what Mann wanted—a dry gin martini with an olive, straight up, and a glass of white wine for Sally. When I came back, Mann was saying, “No point in giving you a line. I liked the man, personally, even though he gave me plenty of reason to hate him. He wasn’t easy to deal with. Writers never are.”
“What do you mean?” Perkins asked.
“He had that slippery way of doing things,” Mann said, “and he was pretty precious, you know what I mean? And he talked out of the corners of his mouth. And he didn’t get along with women. And he hated guns. Isn’t that a bitch? A guy writes a Western and he hates guns. I’m a hunter myself. As a matter of fact...” Mann looked up at me. “Those drinks coming?”
