“Coming,” I said.
“Mine’s with an olive.”
“I know. I ordered it with an olive.”
“The last time it came with a twist.”
“I asked for an olive,” I said, sitting down.
“You were talking about McDougall,” Perkins said.
“Yeah,” Mann said. “I asked him if he wanted to go hunting with me—you know, a weekend of deer in Nevada, get a feel for shooting a gun—but he said no. He hated killing things. That was when I started to worry about him.”
“I see,” Perkins said.
Mann gave him a quick glance. I could tell that Charles Mann was viewing Perkins in a new light, taking in the elegant dress and polished manner. It was almost in his eyes:Christ, another one. Charles Mann distrusts any man who doesn’t live exactly the way he does, hunting every weekend and lifting weights in the gym twice a day.
“But you were saying you liked McDougall personally.”
“Yeah,” Mann said. “I liked him personally. I didn’t like him professionally. I’ll tell you what he was like professionally. Okay. We have a contract with him, the usual contract—first draft, rewrite, and polish. All the built-ins. But the bottom line is, he has to have his polish in by such and such a time—I think two weeks after the accepted rewrite. Okay. Now we cast Brenda, and I’m happy about that, but it does require some changes. McDougall hasn’t done his polish yet. I say, make the changes as part of the polish.
“He says, no, it’s not a polish. I say, what do you mean? He says, this casting requires a rewrite, not a polish, and you have to pay me more. I tell him his own guild, the Writers Guild—and if you don’t know it already, the Writers Guild is the worst; it’s Snake City—won’t support him on that. They’ll say the changes are within the limits of a polish. He says, fine, submit it to arbitration.
“Okay. The kicker is, I don’t have time. We’re shooting in ten days, and the arbitration would require at least three weeks. So what do I do? I cave in and give him his rewrite payment—ten grand. That’s what I paid him for his first rewrite.
“Only now ten grand isn’t enough. Now he wants twenty. I got to fire him now. But I need a script doctor. Okay. There’s only three decent script doctors in the business—I mean the guys who work under the table, fast, and whip a script into shape, no questions asked, no screen credit, nothing. One is Stirling. He’s in London. The second is Elmo. He’s got two other projects and a television pilot, and he’s swamped. The third is Irving and Sally, but they’re the worst of the three and also the most expensive. Irving and Sally want twenty for an under-the-table rewrite. So I’m screwed. I might as well stay with McDougall.”
Mann sighed at the recollections. “So I paid the bastard his twenty grand. And he’s going to get me the rewrites in ten days. Only he doesn’t. He calls me up and says it would be better if he met with Miss Conrad before rewriting her part. I say Miss Conrad is finishing a picture in Seattle and won’t come in except for one day for wardrobe. He has to do the rewrites without her.
“He says, he can’t, but he’ll try. The bottom line is, he doesn’t try very hard. Now we have to take him with us to Tucson so he can finish the rewrites as we shoot. This is bad for everybody. First of all, he gets his room and a per diem, and that’s going to add another twelve hundred to the cost above the line. Second of all, the whole damned company hates him. But he comes to Tucson. And he meets with Brenda. Okay.”
Mann’s drink came. I was relieved to see it had an olive. He sipped it without comment. “Now, he gets himself alone with Brenda, and I don’t know what he said to her. All I know is that Brenda comes out pissed off and ready to walk. Something to do with his comments on nymphomaniac angles in the character. Now, Brenda is very sensitive about that. Brenda hates him. Brenda wants me to fire him.
“But by now I’m in Tucson, too, and I can’t get a writer just by picking up the phone, and if I did, every agent in Beverly Hills would smell blood. To switch writers on location would cost me fifty grand easy.Bloodrockhas a two-eight budget, and they’ll hit me for at least fifty grand. So I soothe Brenda. Everybody settles down.
“Then McDougall starts talking to Clete. And he sayssomething—Christ knows what—but he sayssomethingabout Clete’s nose. Now, Clete began as a stunt extra, and he’s a little bit of a clod anyway, and his nose is crooked. Not much—he’s had it fixed ten or twenty times, but it is crooked. McDougall, bless his heart, mentions this. Clete goes into a rage. He hits the bottle.”
Mann finished his drink and waved to the waitress for another. Everyone else at the table was quiet. Perkins watched Mann intently. Sally was sitting back and smiling her sweet, dumb smile. I was slurping my Scotch.
“Now,” Mann said, “it’s no secret that Clete Williams has a drinking problem. So I work on Clete and get him off the bottle and soothe his ruffled feathers. And then pretty soon something else happens. McDougall makes some comments in dailies about the lighting. The DP is pissed. Then he makes some cracks about wardrobe and women’s hair. More people are pissed. Everybody is after me to eighty-six him. But I can’t—because the revisions aren’t finished. He knows it. I know it. We’re in the middle of shooting. He’s got me over a barrel. That’s the kind of guy he is. Was.”
Mann lapsed into silence. Perkins waited a moment, then said, “In spite of all this, you liked him?”
“Yeah, as a person,” Mann said. “I try to be understanding. I liked him.” And at this point, he shot a glance at Sally, who had been sitting throughout all this like a beautiful doll, silent and lovely and impassive.
“Did he have any other friends besides you on the production?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did he have any real enemies?”
“You mean, somebody who might kill him?” Mann shook his head. “Let me tell you something about movies: Tempers run pretty hot sometimes, but movie people are not the type to actually kill anybody. They’re like kids. They get mad one minute and forget it the next minute.”
Sally smiled like a child. I found myself absently staring at her breasts and made myself look away.
“I’m familiar with film companies,” Perkins said.
Mann didn’t catch this. “Well, let me tell you, that’s the way it is. Nobody on this company would kill McDougall. If he died because of any foul play—which I doubt; he was a big boozer—it must have been somebody outside.”
