“Only if you’re interested,” Paul Fox said. “Only if you’re interested.”
“Let me think about it,” Mann said. For once he seemed relieved when I walked up. “Do you know Harvey Jason? Paul Fox.”
“Hi, Harvey,” Fox said. Fox did not look happy to see me. He knew Mann was giving him the brush-off.
“Hi, Paul,” I said. “What brings theNewsweekcritic to Arizona?”
“I was in Los Angeles,” Fox said, “talking to the executives at Warners and Metro about my screen idea. They seemed very interested. I think somebody will do it. It’s a terrific idea.”
Of course they were interested. They would be interested if it was a story about a pig that ate its own shit. And they’d probably even buy it, if a critic were selling. Which most critics do. You know the old saying: Everybody wants to be in show business. Most movie critics are frustrated writers and directors, and they’re trying to break into the business. (The others are just trying to get laid. You can tell when they do a review and it has a line like, “Fifi Lamammary gave an excellent and sensitive fleshing out of a small role as the serving girl. This is a newcomer to watch.” That translates into,Fifi, if you’re ever in New York, you owe me one, honey.)
Paul Fox was as bad as they came. He was always running around Hollywood, hobnobbing with directors and producers and trying to get some project off the ground. I knew for a fact that Metro had already bought one of his ideas last year. One of the Metro executives told me it was the worst movie idea he’d ever heard of, but Metro bought with the promise to “try and turn it into a worthy script.” Well, that’ll take a year or so, and in the meantime, Paul Fox would be rather well-disposed to Metro pictures. Which wasn’t bad, for about ten grand cash for an idea.
The only thing that rankles, of course, is the fact that those New York critics are so snotty about Hollywood and its values. It looks pretty funny when you realize how many of them are dying for a piece of the action.
Well, Fox was here now, and he was a problem. I asked him how long he was staying.
“Just a few days.”
“It must be slack time in New York,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I have films to screen, but I only screen alone. I insist on that, to retain my objectivity.”
“Movies aren’t made to be seen alone.”
“Oh, you’re one of those.”
You may be thinking that I wasn’t at my diplomatic best in handling Mr. Fox. It was true. I was tired and a little frazzled. And still confused as hell.
“Where did you go to school?” Fox asked me.
“Hard Knocks,” I said.
We could have gone on like this for hours, but I saw Perkins standing over by a group of stuntmen, and I figured I’d better get over and see what was happening.
Fox saw the group too. They were clustered around a piece of equipment resting on the ground. “What’s that?”
“Looks like the stuntmen are setting up a nitrogen ram.”
“What’s that?” Fox asked.
I bit my tongue. Another thing about critics is that they know nothing at all about movies. They are full of little pronouncements about the lighting and the directing and staging, but they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like a color-blind person talking about subtle shades of color.
“A nitrogen ram is a device for knocking people down after they’ve been shot on-screen,” I said.
“Oh, it’s for violence.”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s for violence.”
* * *
“So what happens,” Al Chadney said with a gleam in his eye, “is that you get a blast of nitrogen gas at about three hundred pounds per square inch coming in here, and it blows the cylinder back and yanks the wire, and the guy goes flying. Now, when?—”
“Quiet for a take! Roll cameras!” Claude shouted.
The group of people clustered around Al Chadney, and the nitrogen ram fell silent. In fact, all 120 people on the production fell silent. There was no talking, no walking around. People broke off conversations and just stared patiently at each other until the take was over.
It’s a crazy moment, but it happens all day long in a movie, and you adjust to it. Two people can be in the middle of a shouting argument, and go silent for the take, then pick up again right where they left off.
